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WhatReallyHappened.com rocks
Newsweek,
establishes new trend in web
news
Tuesday June
04, 2002
By Contributing Author
J.
Conti
BankIndex.com
Interview II with Michael
Rivero
Dear readers,
First and foremost, the
editorial staff of Bank Index wishes to thank all the people who
wrote in regarding the first interview with Michael Rivero.
Amazingly, we are told that even as this article is being written,
e-mails keep coming in with comments and questions. Accordingly, by
popular demand and in an effort to satisfy the hunger of our readers
to learn more, we have conducted a second interview. The second
interview is being conducted in the wake of what can be said to be
one of Michael Rivero's greatest accomplishments to
date.
Single handedly, overcoming countless obstacles,
working long hours, pursuing his truth and making his statements
Michael Rivero not only has captured the imagination of millions of
readers from all over the planet, he has actually accomplished the
unimaginable. As reported in Alexa.com, Michael Rivero has surpassed
the traffic statistics of one of the most widely read magazines in
the world, NEWSWEEK! This is no small accomplishment. It is the type
of gargantuan event that can send a powerful message to the media
establishment and we don't intend to lose the
opportunity.
Of course, a lot of this has to do with
you, the reader, the seeker of truth, the critical thinker, but more
importantly it shows that the tide is changing. Even if the larger
news organizations refuse to acknowledge it, the tide is changing.
This turn of events shows that people are seeking alternative
information sources to balance their critical thinking in pursuit of
their individual truths.
Should the whole world know
about this accomplishment ? We think so ! Can you help get the word
out ? We know so.....
What can you do ? Write to the
newspapers, write to the media outlets, post this interview on your
websites, e-mail it to your friends, tell your friends and relatives
about it, request opinions and ask for comments from the authors and
editors of all major media outlets. And above all, send Newsweek a
few words asking them to comment. It will be very interesting to
find out what they have to say. We will post any replies here at
Bank Index.
Interview:
JC
Mike, this is
truly incredible, we have confirmed that your site has surpassed
NEWSWEEK. How is this possible? Please tell us what is going
on?
MR
Obviously I am pleased that What
Really Happened has such a large readership compared to Newsweek's
web site. But readership at all online news websites, including
BankIndex.com, has seen a general upward trend in recent months.
It's not just my website that's affected.
What is going on is
that the mainstream media has lost its monopoly on the flow of
information to the public. The public is aware that the mainstream
corporate media serves mainstream corporate interests and they are
starting to look for other sources.
JC
Why do
you think your viewership has been increasing so
fast?
MR
Disaffection with the conventional
media, coupled with a growing awareness of global political turmoil.
People don't trust the mainstream media and are turning to
alternative sources of information, not necessarily with any more
trust and acceptance but simply to satisfy themselves they have all
the available facts from all available points of view before they
decide what is going on.
JC
Are your readers
communicating with you, if so, what are they saying to
you?
MR
The email is overwhelmingly positive,
consisting of encouragements, a lot of questions the readers hope I
can answer, leads to potential stories, and so
forth.
JC
In your opinion, what is it that makes
you so successful at what you do?
I'm not sure the word
"success" applies here. The mission of What Really Happened is to
restore a government that is truthful to the people who pay the
taxes. Check your Constitution. Nowhere in there is the government
authorized to lie to the people and the 10th amendment prevents the
government from assuming that power. When the government lies to the
people it acts unconstitutionally and illegally.
What Really
Happened exists to make the cost of government lies exceed their
benefit, and to remind the public that a free people must be a
skeptical people.
What Really Happened will be a
success when the government realizes that being truthful is a better
way to run a nation than continual deceptions. On that day I'll shut
the web site down. It won't be needed any
more.
JC
What do you think news sites can learn
from what is happening with you and
WhatReallyHappened.com?
MR
The mainstream news
already knows the lesson. The people want hard facts, unfiltered
through corporate and political agendas, and to decide for
themselves what it all means.
The American people do
NOT want some talking head treating them like children and telling
them what they should think about the world. The public will watch
the talking heads if they have no other choice. But in the age of
the Internet, What Really Happened and the hundreds of sites just
like it provide an alternative.
JC
If you
could address the entire media establishment in one venue, what
would your message be to them?
MR
Thomas
Jefferson stated that it is the duty of all Americans to keep
themselves fully informed, so that they could make good decisions.
Originally, the role of the media was to keep the public fully
informed. We had a diversity of opinions in the press, and laws that
guaranteed a multiplicity of points of view behind those presses and
transmitters.
The media as it exists in the United
States today has changed. The laws that guaranteed a multiplicity of
points of view were rescinded in the last few decades. Today, all
the media in the US is under the direct control of just five
corporate entities all with profits and preservation of the status
quo as their prime agenda.
The media has ceased to be a
source of information for the public and has taken on the role of
deciding what the public knows and does not know. As Richard Salent,
Former President of CBS News put it, "Our job is to give people not
what they want, but what we decide they ought to have." That’s an
awesome power, to control what the public “ought” to know. The
public has every right to circumvent that control.
The media
has been caught intentionally misinforming the public too many times
to expect the public to accept what is offered as news at face
value. Recent cases over the last few years include John Stossel's
report on 20/20 that food at organic health food stores had higher
rates of E. Coli infection than food bought at regular supermarket
chains, based on lab tests that were never actually
conducted.
Another case where the mainstream media news
got involved in an inter-industry battle was the Food Lion scandal,
where producers from ABC's Primetime Live, assisted by a union that
had failed to unionize Food Lion, filmed a documentary that claimed
Food Lion sold unsafe meat. Food Lion had to close 84 stores as a
result of the smear, and sued. In court, it was proven that ABC
Producer Rick Kaplan had used staged shots, featuring ABC employees
posing as both Food Lion employees and customers, to create footage
of Food Lion selling tainted meat to customers. ABC paid a
multi-million dollar judgment in the case. Kaplan, far from having
his career ended by exposure of the ABC deception, left ABC to head
CNN news.
Still another famous case was the NBC News story on
GM trucks with side-mounted gas tanks, in which NBC used explosives
to create the impression that such gas tanks were more dangerous
than they really are.
Sometimes such frauds are the result of
ambition on the part of reporters. One example is Patricia Smith
formerly of the Boston Globe, who invented characters for her news
stories to make them more sensational and promote her own career.
But in many cases, bogus stories in the mainstream media are the
result of Public Relations firms who are promoting their clients'
interests often by attacking competitors from behind the facade of a
non-profit organization claiming public safety as their concern.
This is the origin of stories that fraudulently claim a particular
product is unsafe, based on rigged tests, delivered to the editing
room as a pre-packaged tape. Most of what passes for news these days
is really advertising.
JC
And to the people, what do
you say to the American people given such an
opportunity?
MR
Don't trust anyone to tell you
the truth. You have to go out and find it for
yourself.
JC
If everything you are saying is in fact
true, and based on your prolific statistics it would appear that
millions of people think so already, then what.....what are we the
people supposed to do? Who do we turn to?
MR
The
very LAST thing anyone should do is "turn to" anyone else. That's
how we got into this mess; by relying on others to tell us all what
reality was.
The first step towards being free is being
self-sufficient and that includes being self-sufficient in finding
out what is going on. Yes, it's very convenient to have a good
looking face tell you what is going on, but the convenience is
really for those who want to control what America thinks by
controlling What America knows.
The American people
need to relearn how to trust their own analytical ability, to figure
out what is going on.
As to what Americans should do,
they need to start talking to each other and work that out for
themselves. Right now the media and the government are working hard
to try to cast doubters of the official truths as nuts and
kooks.
The American people still have a First Amendment right
to speak their minds, but when the government and media can trick
and shame people into staying silent, it's just as good as having
repealed the amendment itself. Ella Wheeler
Wilcox said it
best, "To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards out of
men".
Tyrants rule by illusion. No tyrant ever really had the
power to crush down his own people that the people believed the
tyrant had. Look how fast Romania under Ceaucescu fell apart. All it
took was one spontaneous outpouring of anger at a sporting event and
the illusion of control was broken. Two weeks later the dictatorship
was overthrown. All it took was for the people to remember that they
were a people and that in unity they were the strongest force in the
nation, far stronger than the government itself.
JC
If
we the people choose a different reality for ourselves, one without
lies, manipulation, death, war, genocide and suffering, where do we
begin, where would you begin?
MR
I think the
Constitution was and is a great beginning, with necessary civil
power held at the local levels and strict limits on the Federal
government as a whole. Government should be kept weak. The people of
the nation have to remember that they ARE the nation, that the
government is their servant, not their master, and that ultimately,
the choice and the responsibility for what happens to the nation
rests with the people.
The other change I think the time has
come for is the abandonment of beliefs as a mode of social control.
From birth we are all conditioned to accept certain things on faith
alone, without proof, without even the demand for proof, often
without the expectation that beliefs will make sense. We are taught
to believe in honest, benevolent, and truthful government, Santa
Claus, life after death with wings and a harp if we'll just tolerate
some inconveniences in this one, and so forth.
Beliefs
are chains that hold free minds slaves. No chains of steel ever
bound a human tighter than the chains formed of that human's beliefs
about who he is and what the world around him is supposed to be,
chains which, unlike their steel counterparts, are often invisible
to see and hence more difficult to escape from.
History's
greatest atrocities took place in the middle of populations who did
not see what was going on because their beliefs that the government
could not possibly be capable of such evil blinded
them.
JC
Many books have been written about a secret
government, an "elite" group of dynastic bankers, oil tycoons, and
billionaires as being the true rulers of our people. Do you give
credibility to this? In fact, your website mentions the oil as one
of the main reasons for sending our boys to war...if this is the
case....if it's really the oil we are after, who would it go to? Who
would be getting the trillions of dollars that 500 years worth of
oil supplies under the Caspian Sea Basin would
yield?
MR
It is no secret that people with a
great deal of money and power are always making deals to obtain more
money and more power and that sometimes those deals do not bear
public scrutiny. “Other” interests have clearly subverted our
current government or the FBI would not consider those who refer to
the Constitution as suspicious.
As for the oil, the real core
issue is the economy of the United States. The state and federal
governments together are in debt for about $14 - $17 trillion
depending on which figures you think are more accurate. The Pentagon
has misplaced about $2.3 trillion and the Federal Government
misplaced $17.3 billion last year alone for which it cannot account.
For the last few years, even during the supposed economic boom of
the 90s, the Federal Government has had to loot Social Security to
balance the books and create the illusion of a budget surplus for
election purposes. As bad as that reckless spending is, the balance
of trade to other nations is three times worse. Money is pouring out
of this nation to other nations for products, many of which were
invented in America but are licensed and manufactured overseas. This
creates a dual problem in that not only is American cash flowing out
of the US, but so are the jobs and revenues from the manufacturing
itself. While the stock market games of the 90s made a small portion
of the public wealthy, actual standard of living for most Americans
continues to decline. The state and federal governments, caught by
their huge debt loads, have to raise taxes on people making less
money. Another common media myth is that taxes "soak the rich". They
don't. Higher taxes soak EVERYONE. Everyone has to make do with less
so that the government can have more.
The nation is hovering
on the edge of insolvency with a huge debt to pay and no way to pay
it. The federal debt ceiling was raised recently to allow the
government to borrow more to prevent a default on the existing
loans, but that's little more than when you use one credit card to
pay off another that is due. It doesn't solve the problem; it just
puts it off a few more days while making the total problem
bigger.
This brings us to the oil. Right now the largest
single cash flow out of the American economy is into the nations
that own the oil. Were that oil to come under American control, the
cash flow would reverse. This is the one geopolitical target the
acquisition of which could slow the downward slide into bankruptcy
of the United States Government. It is a desperate gamble; a gamble
which, if lost, will see the government of the United States follow
that of the USSR into the dustbin of history. A gamble which if won
will only enrich the holders of the debts owed by the government,
and will not in any way reduce the degree of tax-slavery under which
the American people and their children will continue to
suffer.
More to come........................tune
in.
A note to our readers:
To find out for yourself
why WHATREALLYHAPPENED.COM is taking
the Web by storm...click
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