Posted on 09/24/2002 7:17:52 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
Conspiracy web sites are two a penny. Normally, I just ignore them. However, when they start drawing the huge number of visitors that whatreallyhappened.com seems to be getting, then it's time to at least take a quick look.
The site is sub- titled "The history the government hopes you DON'T learn!" and is chock full of anti-war, anti-American and anti-Jewish rhetoric and conspiracy theories as well as "information" about who webmaster Mike Rivero thinks was really behind 9/11 and his contention why we shouldn't go to war with Iraq.
In an e-mail interview, Rivero told me, "the site presents FACTS and asks questions. To those with something to hide, the label 'conspiracy' is hurled as a means to end the debate without dealing with the actual facts. But conspiracies do exist, which is why there is a law against them."
When I asked Rivero if he had proof for his contentions, he responded, "Just follow the links. In many cases such as the Vince Foster page, my sources are the original laboratory reports and witness statements."
And as to how he arrived at his bizarre philosophy, Rivero told me, "I will not tolerate a government that lies to the people." Well, should readers tolerate an unpatriotic, Jewish-hating web site that possibly lies to its readers due to its apparent premise that the American government and the Jews are evil? You decide!
Here's a sampling of some of what you can find on whatreallyhappened.com
One diatribe begins, "This is the article that triggered a major denial-of-service hacker attack on my web site. No sooner had this article been copied and posted to a British web site ... then that site too was hit with a denial-of-service hacker attack. This is the chain of facts that the government and its allies in the creation of a new world war did not want you to read."
The article :whatreallyhappened.com/govknow.html then starts. Headlined "What did the government know and when did it know it," it reads, "The task was simple, deny the evidence, cover-up the embarrassing arrest of two Israelis with an explosives-tainted truck, and give the media a reason to return to the mantra of 'all terror is caused by Muslims' (but) ... the reality of 9-11 is not what the US Government and media have been telling the American people it is."
Then half way down the page at whatreallyhappened.com and in bold red capitals, anti-war mongers could read this:
"It's the weekend! Congressional staff are gone by (sic) the fax machines remain on. Rest assured that those who expect to reap huge profits by sending your children to die in a war for oil have paid people to fax congressmen all week long, pretending to be you! Don't be fooled by claims that Bush has a lock on congressional approval. It is the old propaganda trick to convince your opponent to quit the fight by claiming they have already lost. Don't fall for it. Fax your congressmen and demanding (sic) an end to the war. Do it now."
By Monday this diatribe had been replaced by another message, reading: "Keep calling, visiting and faxing your congressmen. More and more senators and representatives are starting to waver on support of Bush's unlimited war-powers. Whoever gets tired first and quits will lose. No votes for those who vote for war. Do it now!"
A link to an article titled "Patriotism: an Enemy to Liberty," made my blood pressure rise. Located (not surprisingly!) on the Berkeley University web server ... It read:
"Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others."
However, it was the link to Iver Bogen's opinion piece that made me want to tell both the author of the article and web site owner Mike Rivero where they could go. Located at (go to source link), the article was titled "Hitler...Bush...listen, there are some eerie parallels."Bogen, who is a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota at Duluth, wrote in part:
"There are as many frightening similarities between the current reactionary right wing Republican dominated administration and that of Nazi Germany. Just as Hitler was installed (but not elected by the German people) as the Fuehrer, so George W. Bush was installed as President of the United States by a conservative Supreme Court. In both cases, governments used 'national security' as an excuse to launch an assault on democratic freedoms. While 'lebensraum' was a rallying cry for Hitler, Bush's 'evil axis' referring to North Korea, Iran and Iraq, was supposed to generate patriotic 'no think' here in the USA."
Of course, Bogen is not the only one to have made such an outlandish comparison. Last week, a reported remark by a German government minister compared President Bush's proposed plan for Iraq to that of Hitler's. Not surprisingly, the comment which was reportedly made during a conversation with some trade union representatives, unleashed a firestorm of protest and the minister, Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, is backpedaling. She's now telling German media, "I didn't compare the persons Bush and Hitler, but their methods."
That notwithstanding, I'm sick of these anti-American, anti-Jew, trash-pedlers like Daeubler-Gmelin, Bogen and Rivero. So here's an idea. Bogen could go over to Germany and live with Daeubler-Gmelin. Maybe Rivero could move over there too and be their webmaster. After all, he doesn't appear to like our country any more than these other meat brains do.
If you don't appreciate Rivero's rampage, drop him a note at (go to source link) and tell him so. It's his right to have the site but it's also your job (and maybe even your responsibility in this case) to let him know how you feel.
Jeremy Reynalds is a freelance writer and the founder and director of Joy Junction, New Mexico's largest emergency homeless shelter. He has a master's degree in communication from the University of New Mexico and is pursuing his PhD in intercultural education at Biola University in Los Angeles. He is married with five children and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His work can be viewed here and weekly at www.americasvoices.org. He may be contacted by e-mail at reynalds@joyjunction.org
We believe, for example, that polls have consistently shown that the majority of Americans do not believe that the Warren Report really brought out the truth, whatever it may be. The same can be said about many other such commissions and inquiries.
We seem to have accepted, until the recent development of the Internet, that government "inquiries" are entitled to obscure as much as they reveal.
Sometimes these things are more of a culture of resistance to truth when it is inconvenient rather than an active conspiracy to cover up.
This Rivero character has gone off the deep end. I have a deep skepticism about conspiracy theories in general, having been an insider at a company frequently accused of them. Conspiracy theorists are similar to drug addicts, they must constantly increase their claims/dosage to get the same thrill.
Of course, having written all this, I do admit to being a big X-Files fan. It was a blast for the first six seasons.
They said Vince Foster's fingerprints weren't on the gun because they....ahem...melted off due to a 90 degree day. Now if you swallow that one, let me aks you this:
Why, then, did one (1) (unidentified) fingerprint remain? Why didn't it melt off too? Hmmmmm?
Serious I-saved-this-thread-to-my-hard-disk-because-of-this-post BUMP!
The assasination of President John F. Kennedy was a defining moment in U.S. history.
Basically, there are only three types of people in the U.S. today.
There are people who accept that Oswald acted alone.
There are conspiracy theorists.
There are people that don't care, one way or the other.
To be honest, I don't know which group I have the least respect for, the people that don't care or the people that have examined the evidence and can accept that Oswald acted alone.
Oh puhleez! You can't be serious. The FBI are the leading perpetrators of this cover-up. That they think it is "not extraordinary" to have missing fingerprints is like the fox telling the farmer those chickens are okay even though they are lying bloodied on the chicken coop floor.
But just for grins lets parse this paragraph. The grip handle is just one part of the gun. Foster had to have touched the smooth parts of the gun in order to shoot himself the way they claim he did. So where are those fingerprints? Hmmmmm? And why, if we are to believe they melted off, did one lone "unidentified" fingerprint remain under that "textured" grip? Hmmmm?
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