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Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


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Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

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All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

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Blogs

Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Paul Street's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/paulstreet
Bio:         Paul Street is an independent radical-democratic policy researcher, journalist, historian, and speaker based in Iowa City, Iowa, and Chicago, Illinois.&nbs... (More)

All Street Blogs

"When Will the West Stand up for Justice?"

By Paul Street at Jan 11, 2009


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"When Will the West Stand Up for Justice?""

http://www.ikhwanweb.com/

No essay here.  Please view the slides.

Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: "When Will the West Stand up for Justice?"

By Street, Paul at Jan 13, 2009 09:57 AM

Welll, it being up to Obama is a reason for some pessimism....see my recent Sustainer commentary on Obama and Gaza: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3732

We need citizen pressure to  somehow improve Obama on Israel-Palestine.  That could happen somewhat.  

Here is a perhaps somewhat useful reflection on the mentality behind the Gaza assault by Israeil historian Benny Morris; http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/opinion/30morris.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

I'm not comfortable with all of Morris's positions on the past and current events (not that I'm anything like an "expert" on Israel-Palestine), but this seems to provide some interesting information on the "walls closing in"  mindset behind the attack.

This line from Morris seems partly true to me: "Second, public opinion in the West (and in democracies, governments can’t be far behind) is gradually reducing its support for Israel as the West looks askance at the Jewish state’s treatment of its Palestinian neighbors and wards." 

I find the notion that we have citizen-responsive democracies in the West to be naive (we have an extreme opinion v. policy democracy-disconnect in the U.S. in particular) but I do sense changing opinion along the lines he suggests.

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Miss_s_clause

Re:

By Shapiro, Tali at Jan 13, 2009 13:56 PM

I have a dream: That Israeli Jews wont fear the possibility of an Arab prime minister, let alone be able to conjure up the thought. This article is completely bias, and what it demonstrates is the rhetoric of fear that's instilled in Israeli Jews, since the day they are born. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you have riots from a population that you are occupying- you control their lives, you control their freedom- you sure as hell better check yourself. The Israeli government knows it's guilty, otherwise why is it so preoccupied with the world's opinion.

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Re: Re:

By Street, Paul at Jan 13, 2009 15:03 PM

I don't doubt you're right, Tali. My sense is that people who have killed and oppressed are habitually terrified of those they victimized. Here in the U.S., the historically exaggerated fear the white majority has long exhibited in relation to "savage" Native Americans (upon whom a long genocide was savagely inflicted from colonial origins through the 20th century) and blacks (2.5 centuries of savage chattel slavery then Jim Crow and urban ghettoization, and now mass incarceration and so on) is an example. A big part of it is a buried projection of how the majority would feel and what it thinks it would do if the tables were turned. Obama could become the first black chief executive only after going to great lengths to prove that he rejects any sense that white America has to pay any price for its crimes against blacks. It is darkly depressing to trace his strong alignment with and pandering to right-wing Israeli opinioh over the last few years.

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Re: Re: Re:

By Shapiro, Tali at Jan 14, 2009 14:42 PM

You know, there was this issue about Rice's UN vote and how our idiot PM was bragging that he called Bush and that's why she voted the way she did. (I saw the footage, the way he was talking, I would have believed him more if he said he got under her skirt - pathetic...) Rice Issued a statement that she doesn't believe that's what Olmert said and that it was taken out of context, but in any case it was completely untrue. Under any other circumstances, I would have expected embassies to fall, but it seems the US and Israel liaison is strong as ever.

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By Shapiro, Tali at Jan 12, 2009 15:10 PM

I have to look at it. I have to know. I don't want to be one of those people who later said "I didn't know." Thank you for posting, Paul. These images are more important than any essay. They are the point. People are dying- that's how simple this "conflict" is.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re:

By Street, Paul at Jan 12, 2009 21:50 PM

In the West the violence and poison of not knowing is very strongly linked to the violence and poison of not caring. They are both very well developed here. On the happier side, though I should report from the U.S. "heartland" that I've never seen more anger at Israel. There seems to be some very good activism on this issue in the U.S. and thats nice to see. There's also been some half-honest reporting and shocking images at times in the mainstream (corporate) U.S. media.

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Re: Re:

By Shapiro, Tali at Jan 13, 2009 06:33 AM

I can't help but be pesemistic. In the end- it's up to Obama- it doesn't look good. They showed some footage of the dead and wounded children on the Israeli media. For a moment, I thought that it was strange, but then I saw my own parents' reaction. My dad, a doctor, in complete denial, just unwilling to see what's right in front of him, said "That reporter doesn't know what a burn is. How can he asses if it's a burn?!" and my mom was silent. I guess she's one step away from me- I couldn't help but cry. But since that would expose me in all my treacherous glory, I went to the other room.

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