Online Indymedia E-Voting Truth Alliance....

[althecat]

Open Letter To Online Media From Scoop Editor Alastair Thompson

PROPOSAL: Online Indymedia E-Voting Truth Alliance....

Dear Duers…

(where this announcement is so apropriately being made. I will post on Scoop too shortly – althecat.)

…. and ….

Dear Online Media Providers,

(Note: I will be following this up with personal approaches in coming days. Please email [e-mail] with advice on people to write to on this.)

Here at Scoop we have some ideas for developing the page into the basis of an E-Voting Indymedia Truth Alliance.

This would work around reciprocal link agreements with the likes of Democratic Underground, Truthout, WhatReallyHappened, Buzzflash, From TheWilderness, Rense etc. Basically – all those courageous online media who have as yet not been afraid to tell the truth about black box voting machines.

The alliance I propose will revolve around this page

http://scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=usacoup

THE FORM OF THE ALLIANCE – WHAT YOU DO - WHAT WE DO

It will consist simply of graphical links to all the other websites in the alliance – linking to their homepages – or to features on E-Voting if they prefer, and have one. In return members of the Alliance agree to maintain a "prominent front page" link back to the http://scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=usacoup">"A Very American Coup" page.

AND THAT'S IT…

Plus of course Scoop keeps updating the page with links to stories about E-Voting from Truth Alliance members and others. Making it a win-win arrangement.

Meanwhile Bev and I will continue to probably lean heavily on the wonderful team of people at the DemocraticUnderground.Com too, people who deserve probably even more the credit for all this than Scoop.

We hope to build this page to become the key source for breaking news and views about E-Voting issues, which - let's face it - will only grow in importance as we countdown to November 2004.

THE OBJECTIVE – TRUTH PREVAILS – BENEFITS FOR ALL

TRUTH PREVAILS - Here at Scoop we want this page to become the authoritative source for news on this story.

That way it will be Bev Harris and the Online Indymedia that continue to tell the story - not those who will most probably try to tone down the harsh realities in this area - realities that America must now deal with.

Many more sites on this subject will no doubt get built. But we hope to make this one "the source". The source of the truth about a terrible failure in America's democratic system.

BENEFITS FOR ALL - This is an incredible opportunity in Online Indymedia history.

Here is a story that - so many people have been talking about online for years - which the mainstream have ignored resolutely to the extent that they even failed to report properly into the failure of the VNS system in November 2002.

They cannot fail now to recognise that we were right and they were wrong on this. And this is a credit to us all. And it is a credit to the power of prayer, hope and love. And it is an opportunity for online media to move into the mainstream.

If we do achieve this objective – creating an authoritative online news source on a huge story – then we will have the news equivalent of an authoritative news source for a story as big as the Iraq war (but which the media that squirm have till now refused to tell us about).

And with that exposure – the Online Indymedia Community As A Whole – can begin to make a difference to the millions of people who have till now been getting their news solely from CBS, CNN, the BBC, Yahoo, The NYT, Washpost etc etc etc…

I want the new readers of our sites to arrive at the American Coup page … and find a whole new world.

WE NEED TO MOVE FAST

The moment to get this going is RIGHT NOW! When the mainstream media finally publishes our name - and stops calling this story a fluke - we will have an audience potential of millions, and the audience will come in a spike – I want Scoop to be ready.

Therefore I Propose: What You Do… What We Do

**************
To Webmasters Everywhere (Big Small Tiny…):
**************

Please put a prominent link on your front page to

http://scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=usacoup

1 – If you think you warrant a graphical link send your graphic to [e-mail] - 200 pixels wide 30 deep. Subject Line: E-VOTING TRUTH ALLIANCE. Include the link you wish us to link to, and an indication of your traffic levels.

(We will post graphical links to the top 20 referrers. And text links to everybody else with a legitimate contribution on this. And we will tune the position of the reciprocal links at the page on the basis of actual referrals. I will provide referral data here at DU to back up the decisions on this.)

2 - If you have the capacity to do so please take an auto-updating mirror of

http://scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=usacoup

Not just in case we fall over – we cannot really deal with the levels of traffic we expect on this story at Scoop. And some of you will have much faster transmission speeds to your servers than us.

**************
To Bloggers, Democrats, Duers and News Consumers Everywhere:
**************

Please get the news of this offer out to your favourite online media providers…

I will advise on this thread when people join the alliance… bookmark this page. I will link it on

The first member of the Alliance is WhatReallyHappened.Com, and I would like to acknowledge that it is Michael Rivero's phenomenal support and encouragement – and his absolutely awesome website - that have inspired this idea.

Alastair Thompson
Scoop Media
New Zealand

[gristy]

1. good idea!

Alastair,

Excellent. I think coordination of effort will make the message more coherent and visible. Rivero and his website are awesome. I have been working on the DRE voting machine problem locally in MN for many months now. Had asked DUers a while back to help out on www.verifiedvoting.org's need for individual state information. So far nobody has indicated that they can help. A bit disappointing...:(

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=106&topic_id=641&mesg_id=641&page=2

on edit: spelling and grammar

[althecat]

2. Thanks Gristy....

[althecat]

3. Here is the URL for the proposal for a Truth Alliance on Scoop...

Here is the URL for the proposal for a Truth Alliance on Scoop...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00225.htm

In order to promote this campaign the best way to help will be to send this URL to your favourite online news websources...

[althecat]

4. Pumping Up The Volume - A Letter To Scoop's "Superlist"

Dear DU

When I published Bev's first Scoop I promoed it in part by sending it off to a list of scoops contributors, columnists and existing online media partners. I suspect this served a small part in the success of Bev's and Scoop's plan to kick this story as hard as a story can be kicked....

I have just moments ago sent out another post on the same terms. This is how it read.

**********

Dear All,

(Do you know that being on Scoop's superlist is kinda special... you are special - and don't you forget it...)

That said if anyone wants to be taken off this list please do so.

TO RECAP: As you will be aware the NY Times broke the Diebold FTP Files story in the mainstream on Thursday last week. Since then it has been the biggest technology story on the web. Political traction will come next, and we will have some more scary revelations from other parts of the motherload of files. Hopkins Heroes only looked at a tiny fraction of the 40,000 files on the site.

Here is bev's latest... a riposte to the first round of lies from Liebold.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00224.htm
DIEBOLD DENIES EASE OF VOTING MACHINE TAMPERING -- BUT REBUTTALS DON'T STAND UP

Webmasters feel free to repost this on your site. But please include the links to the USACOUP page and to the earlier stories. You will realise why when you read on. BTW - this is not a condition for reposting. Just a request.

Everybody else - you know the drill, write, harrass your editors, post, email, forward, we want this to be everywhere.

Which brings me to part two of this letter.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00225.htm

Is an open letter to webmasters, so webmasters, please give this your serious attention. If the answer is no I would like to know why so I can make the offer more attractive.

This contains hotlinks, some of which are to your sites, and two Michaels, Rivero and Ruppert play a starring role towards the end.

Yours Sincerely
Alastair Thompson
Scoop

[althecat]

5. WOW THAT WAS FAST…. We have our first member…

WOW THAT WAS FAST…. We have our first new member…

See… Just below the cover shot for Bev's book.

http://scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=usacoup

I will move truth alliance logos into the panel on the right as soon as my tech guru gives me a panel to do so.

Falloutshelternews is one of the best indymedia sites around… and it has directed lots of traffic scoops way in the past. For which we thank Carol greatly. She has provided an absolutely awesome front page presence for BBV..

In submitting her link Carol wrote:

************

link: http://www.falloutshelternews.com/

Note: I know we are not one of your bigger sites, but we are Florida based so this is very important to us. I have just turned one of our local anti-war groups onto this and we are starting a task force.
Additionally, I am a software tester by profession. I have done this for the last Twenty years and I have been saying that we have a problem with these things for a long time. A piece I co-authored with William Sterner is sited as a reference for a piece done by Rebecca Mercuri on the dangers of e-voting:

http://mainline.brynmawr.edu/~rmercuri/notable/evote.html

Although I don't think TheFalloutShelter will make the top 20, I am enclosing the graphic anyway. Floridians really need to know about this, and my site has primarily served the Florida progressive community.

Thanks for doing this and for all your hard work. If I can be of any more use to the project, please let me know.

Sincerely,
Carol Schiffler
http://www.falloutshelternews.com/

************

Thanks Carol! You rock my world.

Alastair
Scoop

[DUreader]

6. kick

[althecat]

7. A graphic to use for promotion of the USACOUP page...

More graphics for this purpose would be greatly appreciated. And I happen to know that WhatReallyHappened.com is looking for a cartoon.

alastair

[althecat]

8. Welcome to the Voting Truth Alliance - GuluFuture and Hermes Press

Welcome to the alliance GuluFuture and Hermes Press

http://www.gulufuture.com


http://www.hermes-press.com

[althecat]

9. We Have Renamed Alliance: "Independent Media Voting Truth Alliance"

or just...

Voting Truth Alliance

For short.

Utunga pointed out, quite rightly, that "Indymedia" refers to a particular branch of online media... and why should we confine the alliance to online news providers.

Can I encourage DUers to forward this thread to sympathetic webmasters everywhere.

Regards
Scoop

[althecat]

10. The name change is now reflected on...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00225.htm

Which is the link you should send out to your networks, should you choose to support this initiative.

[althecat]

11. Top USACOUP referrers..

664: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/
113: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
93: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
54: http://slate.msn.com/id/2086455/
44: http://www.alternet.org/mobile/story_mobile.html?StoryID=16474
31: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/index.html
29: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16474
23: http://www.falloutshelternews.com/
21: http://www.questionsquestions.net/
19: http://www.hermes-press.com/indexIE.html
18: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=95169&mesg_id=95169&page=
13: http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/07/25/1349255&tid=4
12: http://www.kathymcmahon.utvinternet.com/mrn/mrnews.htm
10: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=59277
7: http://whatreallyhappened.com
7: http://surveying.mentabolism.org/
6: http://falloutshelternews.com/
5: http://www.opednews.com/hartmann_theft_of_your_vote_just_a_chip.htm
5: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=87144&mesg_id=87144&page=
5: http://hermes-press.com/indexIE.html
5: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/Jul03articles.html
4: http://us.f114.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?MsgId=5520_6560636_76592_1239_6638_0_61321_16329_2973737639&YY=25753&inc=25&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=&head=&box=Inbox
4: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=12461
4: http://whatreallyhappened.com/index.html
4: http://new.globalfreepress.com/article.pl?sid=03/07/29/0155228&mode=thread
3: http://www.keystoliberty.com
3: http://www.govsux.com/voting.htm
3: http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill.html
3: http://www.opednews.com/harris_diebold_rebuttals_don.htm

[althecat]

12. Top USACOUP referrers.. as of August 1 2003

Top USACOUP referrers.. as of August 1 2003

664: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/
113: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
93: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
54: http://slate.msn.com/id/2086455/
44: http://www.alternet.org/mobile/story_mobile.html?StoryID=16474
31: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/index.html
29: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16474
23: http://www.falloutshelternews.com/
21: http://www.questionsquestions.net/
19: http://www.hermes-press.com/indexIE.html
18: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=95169&mesg_id=95169&page=
13: http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/07/25/1349255&tid=4
12: http://www.kathymcmahon.utvinternet.com/mrn/mrnews.htm
10: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=59277
7: http://whatreallyhappened.com
7: http://surveying.mentabolism.org/
6: http://falloutshelternews.com/
5: http://www.opednews.com/hartmann_theft_of_your_vote_just_a_chip.htm
5: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=87144&mesg_id=87144&page=
5: http://hermes-press.com/indexIE.html
5: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/Jul03articles.html
4: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=12461
4: http://whatreallyhappened.com/index.html
4: http://new.globalfreepress.com/article.pl?sid=03/07/29/0155228&mode=thread
3: http://www.keystoliberty.com
3: http://www.govsux.com/voting.htm
3: http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill.html
3: http://www.opednews.com/harris_diebold_rebuttals_don.htm

[4dog]

13. You go guys!

Thanks so much. Trying to send a few letters, make calls to my local officials.