Yesterday we received an email from a reader which was also sent to Mike Rivero of What Really Happened and Jeff Rense of Rense.com. The message:

Listen, in recent days you all have posted stories from the following website which is a tongue-in-cheek SPOOF. Repeat, the *ENTIRE* website is a SPOOF. Please take a brief moment to familarize yourself with this site's contents so that the next knucklehead who sends you a nonsense link doesn't sneak another HOAX onto your site and thereby further damage your credibility.

http://www.ecoenquirer.com/

A particular favorite this week has been the transparent HOAX about the dolphins swimming north from Florida. Another favorite appears to be the SPOOF "levitating islands" in the Caribbean photographed from orbit. Please take a moment and review **ALL** of the stories posted at www.ecoenquirer.com so that when someone sends them to you you can simply sort them into the appropriate circular file.

Better yet, why doesn't Laura Knight-Jadczyk do one of her COINTELPRO expose articles on this website, and then the rest of you can link to her COINTELPRO expose of www.ecoenquirer.com and consign this website to the total obscurity it so richly deserves?

Its obvious function is to muddy the waters of alternative news reporting and create confusion.

Here is the WHOIS information:

Registrant: c/o ECOENQUIRER.COM
P.O. Box 821650
Vancouver, WA 98682 US

Registrar: 000DOM
Domain Name: ECOENQUIRER.COM
Created on: 24-FEB-06
Expires on: 24-FEB-07
Last Updated on: 25-FEB-06

In other words, ecoenquirer.co has just sprung up like a mushroom two weeks ago. It is registered for one year. No responsible individual is listed as a contact. Just a P.O. box. If you call the phone number you get a recorded message from WHOIS Privacy asking you to send a letter to the owner's P.O. Box. This has "COINTELPRO" stamped all over it.

Be alert, idiots will be sending you links to articles on this website -- or links to websites that mirror articles from ecoenquirer.com. Jeff, I know you're very busy, but you've got to read and scrutinize more carefully before posting, Buddy, you just have to. And you have to assess the URLs to ascertain their reliability. You're the one who first posted the dolphin story and had it cycling all over the alternative net before the day was out. The same goes for the rest of you who followed Jeff's lead (whether directly or indirectly).

I would expect we'll be seeing more websites like this, on all sorts of topics, to fool and confuse people, damage the credibility of websites such as the ones you all have, and muddy public discourse to the maximum extent possible.

Yes, we published a story from the EcoEnquirer on March 6, Dolphins Discovered Fleeing Warming Tropical Waters which was sent in by a reader.

After receiving the above email, I went over to EcoEnquirer to have a better look around. I found their disclaimer which reads:

...and I wondered what kind of sick people would exert the energy to create such a website that looks so professional, that touches on so many ecological issues and thus has so much potential to do good. The only conclusion is to agree with my correspondent: "I would expect we'll be seeing more websites like this, on all sorts of topics, to fool and confuse people, damage the credibility of websites such as the ones you all have, and muddy public discourse to the maximum extent possible."

As always, we ask for any readers to let us know when they find anything questionable about a source or article we publish. It's going to be more and more difficult to discern the true from the false in the coming years of darkness that has descended on our planet. We all need to stay vigilant and aware.