Posted by andreas from p3EE3C5B3.dip.t-dialin.net (62.227.197.179) on Sunday, November 24, 2002 at 4:27AM :
"WhatReallyHappened.com " has some good % well-researched points but generally needs to be put in perspective, yet is a good starter.
Please pay attention to the economic issues Rivero focusses on in the last section of this interview.
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WORLD EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW TO GoOFF!COM WITH MICHAEL RIVERO OF WhatReallyHappened.com
Interviewer: Arthur B. Rosenberg
In a world exclusive interview to GoOFF.com, home of the uncensored truth, living legend Michael Rivero of WhatReallyHappened.com shares some of his views. This world exclusive interview is brought to you by GoOFF’s correspondent Arthur B. Rosenberg.
ABR
So, for the readers out there who don’t know what WhatReallyHappened.com is about, would you be kind enough to tell them a little?
MR
What Really Happened has a very simple agenda. The government is not allowed to lie to the people. Read the Constitution. It isn't in there. And the Tenth Amendment bars the government from assuming that right. The lies I focus on relate to crimes by the government that are covered up, assassinations such as Vince Foster and Ron Brown, or the covering up of accidents and mistakes such as TWA 800 and Kursk. The government is supposed to work for We The People, and they owe us total honesty and truth. My hope is that by making the cost of lies exceed their benefit, the government will discover that truth is a virtue. When government becomes truthful, I'll shut down the site.
ABR
I have noticed that WhatReallyHappened.com is becoming one of the most visited news venues on the Internet. Why do you think this is happening?
MR
People want the truth. They'll watch the mainstream propaganda organs if there is nothing else, but as more and more people gain access to the Internet; we see readership/viewer ship of the mainstream media in decline while readership of sites like mine grow daily. The Internet today is like the "Samizdat", a loose network of FAX machines in the old USSR that distributed news of governmental wrongdoing and exposed the lies and propaganda the Russian people were living under. Despite attempts to shut it down, infiltrate it, or "spoof" it, enough factual information flowed through the Samizdat that the corrupt government eventually collapsed from too many exposed scandals.
All governments survive on the trust and faith of their people. When that faith and trust is gone, government can no longer function. A government might create a false enemy to lure their people into war but that trick works so long as the people still believe in and trust that government. Hitler was able to pull it off because there was no Internet in 1930s Germany to get the word out, and the White Rose did not have enough printing presses.
FDR was able to trick the US into war by provoking Japan into the attack on Pearl Harbor, again because those who knew there was trickery involved could not share that information with a mass audience.
Today things are different. The Internet has provided a means for people in possession of facts to make those facts known to others. It is the modern descendant of the Samizdat, and indeed of the Liberty Tree of Colonial America, and just as the British could not silence the Liberty Tree because there were too many trees, the internet cannot be silenced because there are too many computers, and even if the present backbone were to come under total government censorship, there are many peer-to-peer packet message systems available to keep the flow of communications going. As long as that information is there, people will want to read it. They understand that it is not only their right, but also their duty, as Thomas Jefferson stated, to stay fully informed about what is going on, so that they may make good decisions.
ABR
Do you think anyone is getting upset because of your success? If so, who? More importantly, why?
MR
All of history has been a contest between those who want freedom, and with it the free flow of information, and institutions that seek to control people by controlling what they know. Therefore, any institution that is lying to preserve its power and prestige is likely to view sites like mine with a great deal of “concern”.
ABR
Recently I read about Antonia Zerbisias’s extremely crass statement regarding the retraction of WhatReallyHappened.com as a recommended site in the Toronto Star? Please clarify for us what that was all about. I can imagine that the thousands of web operators who link to your site were furious! I know I was!
MR
Antonia Zerbisias wrote an article suggesting that people look deeper into 9-11. Her article mentioned several sites, of which mine was just one.
By Antonia Zerbisias’s own report, she received thousands of positive emails regarding her article, but two complaints that described my site as "anti-Semitic" because of my focus on Dr. Philip Zack as a far more likely suspect for the Anthrax letters than Stephen Hatfill, based on a story in the Hartford Courant which reported that records showed Dr. Zack entering the Anthrax storage area without proper authorization. Now, the media has not been shy since 9-11 about promoting the illusion that only Arabs can be terrorists. So, to counter that clear bias, it is valid to point out that neither Dr. Zack nor Dr. Hatfill is Arab.
The whole Anthrax story has become a very hot issue, because whether one thinks Dr. Zack or Dr. Hatfill is the culprit, the presence of those letters, written to plant the blame on Arabs, proves the existence of a plot to frame Arabs for terror attacks in the United States. Those letters prove that such a plot exists; the unknown question is just how far did that plot to frame Arabs for terror attacks reach? Did it reach, perhaps, as far as the World Trade Towers themselves? After all, FBI Chief Robert Mueller has admitted that the 9-11 hijackers used fake IDs with identifies stolen from Arab men. We do not know who was on those planes, only who the provider of the fake IDs wished the world to think was on those planes. Compounding the issue is the admission made by a US Government official to FOX News' reporter Carl Cameron that evidence exists that points in a direction away from Arabs, but that the US Government has classified this evidence. This strongly supports the suggestion that the plot to frame Arabs for terror attacks proven by the Anthrax letters does indeed extend as far as the events of 9-11. And if Arabs have been framed for 9-11, then can We The People in good conscience make war upon them.
ABR
Mike, let’s face it, to thousands, if not millions, you are becoming a living legend. What’s ahead for you, perhaps a book? I am sure your fan base would love a book from you. I know I would be among the first to buy it.
MR
I have been approached by a publisher regarding a book. The working title is "Cyber-soldiers and Silicon Patriots" and it is an overview of how the Internet has reshaped contemporary political dialogue. Dandelion Books is the publisher and the book will be out early next year.
ABR
Where are we heading Mike? That is, where do you see this country heading under the current dictatorship, pardon me, I meant to say, under the current leadership of our government?
MR
I am aware of (indeed get many letters from) those who think the time has come for a violent response to the government's tyranny. I do not think this is wise, nor ultimately do I think it is necessary.
Short version: I think the US Government will soon collapse from its debts, scandals, and loss of trust, much as the USSR did.
Long version: The reason for this sudden push to war is an economic one. The various governments of the United States are deeply in debt. Indeed for many of them, including the Federal government, the debt is too deep to get out of. So great is the Federal debt that all the income tax paid by all US citizens cannot cover the interest, let alone the principal. The debt started simply enough. Politicians, worrying only about their terms in office, borrowed money and left it to subsequent generations to pay it back. Each succeeding legislative body simply carried that debt along, usually adding a bit more to it. At present it is estimated that the combined debt of the state and federal governments totals roughly $14 trillion dollars. Debts by county and city governments add to the problem. So great is the debt problem that Presidents have taken to looting various trust funds, including but not limited to, Social Security, to balance the Federal budget. When the Clinton administration moved money from the Social Security trust fund to the general fund, it was described as a loan. However, common sense will tell you that if the government has to borrow money at a time when the economy is supposed to be at a peak, that there can never be a situation where the government can pay that money back. Other trust funds, such as Native American trust funds, have also been looted. Two Cabinet Secretaries were caught in that scandal, as I recall.
So, the government is in a hole, staying afloat by raiding Federal pension funds, trust funds, and playing bookkeeping games (which set the example for Enron, WorldCom, et. al. ad infinitum) to conceal the problem. Add to that the state governments that are hovering near default and have announced huge tax increases, and you get an idea of how serious the problem is.
Our society turned its back on manufacturing back in the 80s. Those who made millions from fancy financial dealings were held up as heroes and ideals while those who made things were looked on as social inferiors. Manufacturing headed for tax and socially friendlier places. Core technologies were sent to other countries. Nations that had once bought IC chips from the US bought the machines to make chips from US companies that did not want to be bother with actual manufacturing any more, spurred on by CEOs looking for a quick bump to their stock before cashing out. Thus, Americans now buy this most important commodity, invented in America, from other nations.
Manufacturing left and with it manufacturing jobs, and for a while the US tried to conceal this job loss with the "Service Economy", a rather ridiculous notion that you can prosper a country by doing each other’s laundry. In truth, the service economy moved money back and forth among the people, but with each transaction, taxes shaved off part of that money to the government. Too little new money was coming in from product sales to other nations. Over time, the government had more of the available money but the people had less. As a result of this steady siphoning from citizen to state, 80% of all Americans now have a lower standard of living than did their parents.
That brings us to the trade deficit. Money flows out of this country at over a billion dollars a day, half a trillion a year. Sooner or later, this imbalance has to drive the value of a dollar down. This in turn will drive the cost of servicing loans held by foreign lenders up.
Then there is the stock market. Contrary to the claims made by the previous administration, the soaring stock market was not a sign of economic health. In a healthy market, the price of the stock is supposed to be related to the stock's value, expressed as earnings ability. A good P/E ratio is about 16. That means that a stock's price should be about 16 times its annual dividends. But market forces, often of questionable ethics, can drive up the price of a stock. The Plunge Protection Team did this, buying huge blocks of S&P 500 futures contracts to create a market demand that drove prices up. It may look good on the ticker, but the reality was that those stocks were over-priced for their earnings ability, and the longer PPT rigging kept the stock market up, the worse the gap between prices and worth grew. Despite the recent declines, the stock market is more overvalued than it was in 1929.
So, there is a triple threat to the economy. Heavy government debt, a huge trade imbalance, and a stock market still poised for further declines and aggravated by scandals that make every claim of profit suspicious. The government cannot wave a wand and bring back manufacturing overnight. Nor can they erase the debt (other than by closing down and making way for someone else with better fiscal sense to start a new government). Nor can the stocks be suddenly made to be worth what their prices justify.
The only part of the problem that can be reversed quickly is the trade deficit, because much of trade deficit involves oil. Oil is predominantly an imported product in the US. Were it to become an export, by placing the oil fields of the Mideast in the hands of US oil companies (by conquest), the flow of cash would reverse across our borders. This would not fix the economy but it would hold off default for a little while. Were the US in control of a major portion of the world's oil supply, those nations to which the US owed money might be reluctant to attempt to collect.
This is the real reason behind the push for oil. The US Government sees control of the oil as the only way to prolong its power, and having confused the welfare of the government with that of the nation itself, appears willing to turn the nation into a police state in order to carry out the conquest of the Mideast unopposed by its own citizens.
The picture is grim, but there is a flaw in the plan. War is expensive. It is one thing to start a war when one has the cash to carry it out. Quite another when you are broke, in debt, and those that you might approach for backing for a war see little chance of getting their money back from a US Government already nearing default on its existing debts. Another point the war hawks appear to have overlooked is that foreign investors have trillions of dollars in the US markets, lured there on the promise than any real losses will be covered by the US taxpayers, as happened during the S&L bailout of the 80s. When those foreign investors decide that the US taxpayer will not or cannot cover losses, those investors will seek a safer home for their money. The commencement of war will hasten that day. And unlike Vietnam, where the war was well and truly along before the American people rose up against it, the war for Mideast oil has barely started and already mass protests are occurring on a regular basis. When those mass protests turn into general strikes, foreign investors will yank their money out of US institutions. That will bring the whole banking system, Federal Reserve included, crashing down. That in turn will bring down the US Government, without a shot being fired (I hope).
ABR
In America, democracy is nothing more than an illusion. The press, television and most media outlets are controlled or owned by the same people who want this war. The international Bankers who own our Federal Reserve are making windfall profits from the populace. Lies and more lies are being propagated. Our leaders wont hear the our cry for peace and want to force us into a racist war that only benefits the oligarchs. What words of encouragement do you have for Americans at this juncture Mike?
MR
The fact that people are reading these words proves that media has lost its monopoly in the flow of information. We can no longer be controlled because what we know cannot be controlled. The sheer scale and number of anti-war protests pretty much proves that the government and media have utterly failed to sell this war to the people of this nation, let alone the rest of the world. At bottom, one cannot win a war without committed troops and too many people in the military already know that the excuse for this war is a total sham. Most lack enthusiasm for killing people who have not actually harmed the US. The war hawks will probably start this war because they feel they have no other choice, but I do not see that the necessary social and economic requisites are in place to win it. The real danger is that in a moment of desperation, someone (including third parties) may go nuclear because they can’t think of anything else to do.
I do have one suggestion for everyone reading this, and that is to openly talk about your concerns about the war with others. One goal of media propaganda is to persuade you that everyone around you agrees with the war and that if you speak out you will be perceived as some kind of nut. The truth is that everyone around you (except for the usual informants, profiteers, and armchair warriors who do not personally have to face the bullets) knows this war is wrong. They need to realize that they are not alone. Once everyone starts talking to each other the myth of the positive poll numbers will evaporate. People will realize that opposition to this war is the majority view, and in this nation, the majority is still supposed to have some say in things.
Thank you very much Mike. It has been a great pleasure.
Note to readers: Mr. Rosenberg can be reached at info@GoOFF.com
-- andreas
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