Zcom_simple

Hello,

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.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

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.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

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


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

GPF Global Policy Forum's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/Global Policy Forum
Bio:   Global Policy Forum or GPF, founded in 1993, is an organization seeking to promote accountability of international organizations such as the United Nations ... (More)

All Global Policy Forum Blogs

Who are the real pirates?

By GPF Global Policy Forum at May 03, 2010


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On April 27, the Security Council unanimously voted in favor of five recommendations to tackle piracy of the coast of Somalia; including, proposals to create a tribunal to prosecute the pirates. However, Resolution 1918 fails to address one of the main causes of Somali piracy - illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing by foreign companies.
 
According to the High Seas Task Force, eight-hundred IUU fishing vessels operate in Somali water, reaping profits of $450-million annually. This sum outstrips foreign development assistance to Somalia five-fold.
 
The IUU fishing vessels, which are mainly based in Europe and South East Asia, started fishing Somali waters after the collapse of the government in 1991. In the absence of coastal patrols and monitoring, Somalia's rich fish stocks were easy targets for large, foreign fish trawlers. A UN report in 2006 recognized these problems, labeling Somali waters "an international free-for-all."
 
Unfortunately, this UN report has done little to inform the Council's recent decision. So, why not?
 
European and Asian fish markets depend on IUU catches, especially if prices are to be kept low. Foreign IUU trawlers began fishing Somali waters following the chronic depletion of their own local fish stocks.
 
Local fisher-people have also reported physical abuse from these piratical foreign IUU fishing vessels: doused in boiling water, fishing vessels crushed and nets cut. Also, the IUU fishing methods are far from "conventional"; cyanide and explosives are polluting this fragile ecosystem and destroying fish-stocks.
 
Security Council members must stop protecting IUU fishing fleets and take a more creative stance to tackling piracy. Suggestions could include creating a UN-mandated Somali coastguard and further investing in a fish DNA-tracking system so that IUU vessels cannot pass under the radar.

Global Policy Forum
Global Policy in Brief
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