Public Notice ....

We are in the process of moving the final copy of the scoop site. Once this process is started, your account here will no longer work. This site is moving into an archived state ... all of your commentaries will be available again soon, but the site will no longer be open for posting and commenting.

Visit us at ePluribus Media 2.0!  You should have received an email with login information for the new site at http://discuss.epluribusmedia.org

If you have problems with the new site, please send an email to epluribusmedia@epluribusmedia.net and we will be happy to help.

Just wanted to give everybody a little update on the site migration (which is going very well!) and thank everybody for helping test the new sites and for all of the feedback they have given.  It is much appreciated ...

If you encounter broken links, glitches or have any other problems when using the new sites, please send an email to administrator@epluribusmedia.net.

Here is where we are now:
All of the sites you know and love have been migrated.  Yipee! Yahoo! We are still working on a few minor glitches, but all of the new sites and all of the old (archived) sites are available and functioning within normal operating parameters.

The new sites are best viewed in Firefox 2.X and IE 7.X ... if you have an older browser, we strongly recommend that you update it. We are getting reports of display glitches in older browsers that magically disappear when the browser is updated.

ePluribus Media 2.0

Originally posted Sun Nov 04, 2007 at 02:08:54 PM CST - bumping to keep it on top for more eyes to see

with standingup and lefty

Update!!: The sites will be are migrating over the Thanksgiving Weekend. You can expect some hiccups and maybe brief intervals when the sites will be unavailable. This is to be expected.

Please bear with us as we get things moved. We thank you in advance for your patience.

The community spoke and we listened.

We have been compiling a "wish-list" for quite some time and although we have tried to make the existing framework meet those needs, there are deficiencies in the software that we just can't work around. So, the technology team has been busy putting together ePluribus Media 2.0 and they are finally ready for "show and tell".

• Tags! we got 'em.
• Image galleries! we got 'em
• Embed videos! yup ... got that too!

We have tried to keep things as much the same as possible, and at the same time provide enriched features.

with Ava Home

On February 18, 2007 ePluribus Media first published the results of an ongoing study The Political Profiling of Elected Democratic Officials. The study and its preliminary results gained a lot of national attention, and critics tried to undermine the basis of the study.

In an interview with ePluribus Media, Dr. Shields explained, "The focus of the study was the reporting (and thus the leaking) of federal investigations from supposedly secret grand jury subpoenas, federal agent inquiries, and grand jury testimony."

Since the preliminary results were published in February, along with the data tables and the analysis, Dr. Shields has continued to compile data. He now has the data analysis through August 18, 2007 -- the date of Alberto Gonzales' resignation from the Department of Justice.

As ePluribus Media has reported previously, there are serious problems with protecting our elections process. Voter caging, a tactic covered by ePluribus Media in Voter Caging: Is this Tool still in the RNC Arsenal? has now become a publically funded state law in Ohio. The process of caging is thoroughly explained in Voter Suppression, an indepth piece by Mark Johnston.

"Caging" is a method of voter suppression in which first-class mail is sent to registered voters to confirm their addresses. If the letter is returned to the sender, the name and address on the returned mail is entered into a database known as "caging list."

McClatchy Washington Bureau reports:

In Ohio, which swung the 2004 election to Bush, new Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said in a phone interview that an election law passed last year and signed by former Republican Gov. Bob Taft effectively "institutionalized" vote caging. [emphasis mine]

The law requires that the state's 88 county election boards send non-forwardable, pre-election notices to all 7.8 million registered Ohio voters at least 60 days before the election. Undelivered letters are public record, she said, meaning that effectively, "now the counties are paying for" the data needed to compile challenge lists.

Under the present administration, the dirty tricks used to disenfranchise voters have been taken to new levels and -- as evidenced by the new law in Ohio -- they are finding "cagey" new ways to do it.

Saw an interesting piece in the Washington Post this morning ... Blog Comments Become Fodder For Attack Ads.  Here is a sampling ...

A review of Raising Kaine shows Pitin frequently contributed diary entries, and de la Piedra supported Meyers in the Democratic primary. Pitin often accused Simmons of negative campaigning.

Hugo campaign advisers stressed that Pitin's entry is fair game because blogs are ultimately responsible for the comments that are posted on them.

They also said that much of future political advertising, especially in local races, probably will be sourced to blogs because that is where candidates and their supporters are migrating.

[emphasis mine]

Thoughts?

The current gathering of the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) is in Istanbul, and on Monday, they are due to hand down "a symbolic verdict" on the the United States and the Coalition of the Willing -- and their actions against the people of Iraq.

The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) is a people's court consisting of unelected intellectuals, human rights campaigners and non-governmental organizations. It sprung from the anti-war movement and is modelled on the Russell Tribunal of the American movement against the Vietnam War. It counts among its supporters Indian author Arundhati Roy and United Nations assistant general secretary Denis Halliday, though consciously avoids a hierarchical structure. The WTI routinely finds that the coalition forces in Iraq are guilty of war crimes and violations of the Geneva Conventions. Criticized as a "kangaroo court" by supporters of the war, it receives less coverage in the United States and UK than in the Middle East and Europe. Source

 

Africa, the cradle of civilization, has become one of the final frontiers in the world's quest for petroleum. An estimated 30% of the world's discovered oil reserves are to be found on the west coast of Africa¹, making it a prime target for exploitation by oil hungry industrialized nations.

In December of 2005 the Boston Globe's John Donnelly wrote a series of articles on the reserves of African crude oil. The US currently receives 15% of its crude from Africa, and African crude is "sweet" making it easier and cheaper to refine.

Since World War II the US has not had much interest in the African Continent ... at least militarily, but since 2005 there has been not only an increased interest in Africa, but an increased presence of US military personnel as well. An incident on the Mali/Algerian border in 2005, and credited to Islamic terrorists, provided the perfect opening for deploying "training forces" to Africa. The Saharan region was identified as a terrorist "hot-spot" -- a wide expanse of desert and dunes that could swallow terrorists and hide them indefinitely.

General Charles Wald is credited with putting the Saharan Region on the radar in the Global War on Terror.