I am not an educated man. Most of the arguments about the use of this method or that software goes right over my head. I do think that I was given some powers of logic however. This is what logic is telling me now. The governments of England and Canada are on record as preparing to mobilize their military for the year 2000. I think that their scientists are every bit as good as ours. I do not think they are third world, panicky races of people. I also think that our leaders have just as much information as do theirs. Our government has intentionally remained almost silent on the issue and I think they will give the whole issue a spin that will lay the blame on cyber terrorists or some such rot. The media will not or dares not report the issue squarely. Why hasn't some journalist asked the administration a simple question like, Why are England and Canada mobilizing Mr. President?" "If there is nothing to worry about Mr. President, how come England and Canada are so stupid?" I think the answer would be newsworthy no matter what is said. We could start a international incident with England which would divert the publics attention from Iraq, Bosnia, Yugolsavia and Isreal. If England is so stupid, why did we place some of our troops under their commanders in two world wars? It was England that gave us radar for god's sake. I love America, but I hate being taken for a sucker. I would love to hear from those who see fault at my simple logic.

Bill in South Carolina

-- Bill Solorzano (notaclue@webtv.net), November 07, 1998

Answers

Bill, I think sending e-mail's referencing Canada's and Englands plans to each of our local paper's investigative reporters, and asking them to find out why, would start those media questions rolling.

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), November 08, 1998.

The media has supported Clinton - Gore to the exclusion of honesty and good faith (even to the point of willingly promulgating his lies while they admire how they are being lied to).

Gore has positioned himself as the "high-tech" whiz, and has staked a claim (wiring the schools, re-inventing government, the Internet everything, and latest of all, suing Bill Gates about trumped up charges on behalf of his Silicon Valley supporters.) They (the national media) will do NOTHING to embaress either man.

Also: to admit that anything could happen that the government could not prevent would destroy their (the media's) liberal illusion that socialism is our salvation - to them big government is the solution, and busines and freedom are the enemies. Self-reliance and initiative are two things required to sutvive the troubles coming - and they (the liberals in the media and in Clinton-Gore administration) abhore those principles.

They abjectly hate any group that opposes bigger government - the Y2K "group" of experts all roundly criticize the government's inaction and failure - so these groups become "kooks" and so can be ignored in the face of official liars that they WANT to believe.

Also - of all of the independent groups preparing and talking about Y2K many of the most active are associated with churches and the religious right - whom this same group even more pasionately hate than any other. So again, the labels of extremists and right-wing wackos and militia and hate-mongers are liberally applied.

Conspiracy theorists propose Clinton WANTS Y2K mergencies to drive otherwise desperate individuals into the federal arms - offering military protection, warmth, and power at selected sites. And removing liberty and self-interests in a step that will lead to Communism and National Socialism. At the same time, they believe that Clinton (& his group) can use Y2K to remove guns, local government, self-determination, and the will to maintain freedom by NOT minimizing Y2K disruptions. They have certain points - Clinton is at his best being seen in misery with his people, offering them federal aid, and taking freedoms - he has lied before to advance his agenda, he will continue to lie.

The FEMA, IRS, BATF, FBI, etc are Clinton's latest,largest private army - trained to fight domestic terrorists - trained and brainwashed to arrest US citizens declared enemies and terrorists by the administration. He has used Arkansas state troopers to get private citizens for public sex acts before - he has been using the IRS to fight his political enemies - and this abuse is still happening.

So, when will it stop? Don't know. He has no morals, no scruples, no sense of decency. Would he condem you and I (this country) to Y2K disasters so he looks good? Why not? His only desire is to "look good" in the history books - and so far he has been unable to find a war to win, despite hiring our troops to the UN to fight their wars.

So, Clinton-Gore have reasons to NOT prepare the US for Y2K, they have NO morals to prevent them from making it worse, and the people they consider enemies are trying to prepare for Y2K. Since they are in charge, any troubles from Y2K seen in advance are an admission that they have failed to do tehir job the last six years.

Why should they advance warnings? It makes them look bad.

Altogether, the media elite has deep-rooted emotional ties to want to ignore Y2K, the media have deep-rooted reasons to suppress and minimize its impact, and they have many reasons to show those who are fighting Y2K are kooks and fanatics who should be arrested, not applauded.

Clear? Or am I sounding like Woe?

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), November 08, 1998.

Well, we elect these politicians. And they poll us all the time to find out what we want so they can promise it to us. The media you refer to sell a product, and we buy what we want to hear and read. Perhaps we have met the enemy and they is us?

Of course, if the internet is a communications medium, I guess that makes us part of the elite. Hey, I feel better already.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), November 08, 1998.

Your logic is spot-on Bill. This is my (admittedly simplistic) take on things as a Brit expat living in America - and my views tend to vary as new factors emerge or I give things a little more thought.

Washington DC has always been gun shy with coming clean on issues. Why would things change now with possibly the worst calamity to hit the human race looming on the horizon? There are simply too many financial and societal implications for DC to tell the truth at this point in time.

The markets (Japan a lost cause, USA - trillions in debt) at the moment are *really* close to meltdown, they are being artificially manipulated - no question. DC does not want a run on banks - hence keep quiet, downplay the situation. For every $100 dollars in your checking account your average bank has less than $2 in currency. When the general public wakes up the bank run issue is very likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy whether DC tells the truth on Y2K or not - especially if there is a financial meltdown in late '98 or '99. Yet DC *is* failing the people by not realistically addressing the situation - damned if I do, damned if I don't...

USA = 280 million to feed, huge country, agriculture extremely mechanised/computerised, dependent totally on trucking and rail for the food chain, great extremes of weather and access to water and viable growing land, logistically a nightmare if things go up the swannee.

UK = 50 million to feed, plenty of water, much smaller country, still a fishing industry (just), no hurricanes, no real extremes of heat or cold, not too many guns floating about, you get the picture. Bottom line is the Brit's have got less to lose financially and more to gain by getting a head start in the "hey this is real" stakes.

The UK is a pretty sturdy little ship and the logistics of muddling through if things get really bad are not in the same league as the USA will have to cope with. But hey, we do like a good riot every now and then, it's going to be bad everywhere...

I can't comment on Canada but it looks like they are getting their act together - printing currency, prepping the reserve etc. - but it does get bloody cold up there - especially in January 2000.

What can you do? - keep asking questions, write to your local newspapers, call talk radio stations, tell your friends and family, but *don't* analyse this thing to death and not (or leave it too late) make your own financial, physical and mental preparations.

Maybe I've got this all totally wrong - I really hope so, but I'm not betting my life on it.

Good luck, Andy

P.S. Funnily enough I think Americans are much more aware of the situation with site's like this and Gary North (don't blame the messenger!)... the UK has a long way to go in this respect.

-- andy (andy_rowland@msn.com), November 08, 1998.

Flint said, "Of course, if the internet is a communications medium, I guess that makes us part of the elite. Hey, I feel better already."

Last night on the news they were reporting (again) plans to tax everyone on the minutes they use on the Internet. I wonder......if prices got high enough, could you force a lot of people off? They said the phone companies were pleased with the plans. DUH!

-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), November 08, 1998.

The BIGGEST THREAT to this administration is public access to the truth. The most effective control mechanism they have to destroy this is monetary. If they succeed in charging per minute long distance rates for internet access THEY WILL HAVE EFFECTIVELY DESTROYED PUBLIC ACCESS TO TRUTH. the millions of citizens like me who access ideas on the internet would simply be forced by finances to abandon the media. They will have won and seized control and freedom from us.

-- Ann Fisher (zyax55b@prodigy.com), November 08, 1998.

Andy, Sir Richard of Dale, Craig, Mr. Barbour, etc.

Interesting thought - just conjecture, but why not ask -

Britain (and by extension the former UK in general), suffered twice this century (recent enough to be remembered and lived through by the population at large (and skinny)) devastating war-related losses. Close enough in the submarine wars to be near losing the war itself.

Does this remove the false sense of "it can't happen here" - "the government is always here to be your big protective brother" that we sense from the liberal elite and DC-LA-NY crowd.

On the other hand, this same crowd sees the national level of media and therefore government as the one level they best control - and so the natural basis for their strength. So they do not want to do anything to reduce "the religious faith" in a bigger government.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), November 08, 1998.

I will play devil advocate (i guess that means I'm Bill's advocate.. oh well). This is my take on the Washington scene. The 50 or so key players in Washington are awre of the Y2k threat. Some fully "get it" and others don't or won't. I suspect Big Al is fully aware and has pushed for some Federal action. Bill is waffling and is not committed to either side. The Executive Orders were probably pushed by Al and a contingent out of the Pentagon. They envision severe civil disorder. Other than that, there is NO leadership, just cliques protecting their turf. DefSec Cohen is on Al's side and is pushing the military hard. They have some unique problems. One off languages and operating systems for advanced weapons systems, ancient legacy systems barely doddering along in the best of times, a mix of commercial systems that cover a lot of business like systems and so on. The military doesn't have nearly enough software types and they haven't really figured out how to define "mission critical". The situation is so bad that it made certain decisions easy. First, hide as much as you can but claim you are still militarily capable. One of my private worries concerns nuclear weapons. They employ multiple embedded parallel systems for arming/disrming and for dialing in yields. This much is public knowledege. Date/time is often used crypto purposes (usually provided by a central broadcast). If the weapon's BIOS and CPU are are not Y2k compliant, the most probable event is weapon that wouldn't work even if you wanted it too. Now that may sound like GOOD news, but if a foreign power decides our nuclear strike capablity is gone, then what? Just speculation of course. But perceptions can be as dangerous as fact.

Got a little sidetracked there. I simply don't see a grand conspiracy. Just little internal Fed clans battling it out.

-- R. D..Herring (drherr@erols.com), November 08, 1998.

There is no such thing as the 'liberal media' if you refer to the mainstream press. Who owns newspapers and radio stations in this country? More and more newspapers and radio stations are being bought up by the few, and our access to the news is restricted to what they want us to know. That's why Y2K and all the rest of the news gets shelved in favor of minor irrelevant news items. Did you know that Chevron hauled in military personnel to kill non-violent protesters when they said that they wanted Chevron to stop the pollution it's operations were causing? Of course not, and it won't stop you buying there, either, will it, because it's not on your doorstop and it only involves Africans... If you want liberal press, read "The Nation", or "Mother Jones" or "Utne Reader" or check out www.oneworld.org. If you want the same bull as yesterday, keep reading your daily paper...let them keep feeding you meaningless drivel.

-- Ariel (giveme@abreak.com), November 08, 1998.

"Gore has positioned himself as the "high-tech" whiz, and has staked a claim (wiring the schools, re-inventing government, the Internet everything, and latest of all, suing Bill Gates about trumped up charges on behalf of his Silicon Valley supporters.)"

Robert,

In reference to Bill Gates being sued, I have often entertained the idea that it probably had something to do with the following:

I had read earlier last year, that Bill Gates had gathered a group of high-tech companies together up in Washington State to discuss the industry. Al Gore was a special guest. (I wish I could remember who wrote or published the article but it was a news update on AOL. I think it was Newsweek.)

One of the speakers, made a speech about electronic voting. As I recall from the article, he basically told Al Gore that with today's technology, we did not need politicians any more. That people could represent themselves.

At the time, I thought, "Oh my God, that guy has balls!" (Sorry about the language, but that's what I thought.) "He just told the Vice President of The United States that the computer companies are going to put most of Washington D.C. out of business!"

I found it very amusing to think that these techno-geeks where going to pull off the ultimate corporate downsizing of Washington, D.C. OK, call it rightsizing. Whatever. The analogy fits.

Well anyway, I was so enamoured with the concept, that I even spent some time on the internet researching electronic voting. I found that MIT was working on a protocol that would soon be ready for beta and I sent an e-mail to the person at MIT who was the contact at their web site. I was really curious to find out if there had been any interest expressed by anyone in our government. The response I got was no, but a group of programers from South Africa had flown over here to discuss the feasibility of using it in their country.

When I heard the news late last year that Microsoft was being investigated by the DOJ, the first thing that came to mind was that speech made earlier that year. The rest is history.

I just see it as the ultimate struggle for power. Gives you something to think about.

Best regards,

Anna

-- Anna McKay Ginn (annaginn@aol.com), November 08, 1998.

One of the speakers, made a speech about electronic voting. As I recall from the article, he basically told Al Gore that with today's technology, we didn't need politicians anymore. People could represent themselves through electronic voting.

-- Anna McKay Ginn (annaginn@aol.com), November 08, 1998.

For a facinating read on voting by internet, "The Stone That Never Came Down", by John Brunner is a great sf book about just this subject (written when only large companies had computers, BTW).

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), November 08, 1998.

For a facinating read on voting by internet, "The Shockwave Rider", by John Brunner is a great sf book about just this subject (written when only large companies had computers, BTW).

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), November 08, 1998.

Of course, the error was made by my evil (American) twin, we Canucks never err... 8-). The second entry is correct, BTW.

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), November 08, 1998.

Being born in England, and living in Canada for most of my life, I think I understand why the press in both countries have been more forthcoming with military preparation etc. than in the USA.

It's primarily a matter of cultural and political differences. In England, and much of Canada, when the public hears that the government are considering sending troops in to keep order, the average person says "Oh goody, the government are here to help us again." However, in the USA, the general feeling is more like "Uh Oh, the damn feds are coming to take away our rights........."

Therefore, the press in the U.K. and Canada can print such stories with far less alarm than the press in the USA.

Granted, there are certain areas of Canada where politically we are closer to that of the USA, however most of the major population centers are very socialist oriented as are much of the English people.

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), November 09, 1998.

Full article text: http://www.salon1999.com/media/media961206.html

Excerpt:

"When an industry leader stands up in public and mournfully declares that he is "truly alarmed" by major trends in his business  in particular by corporate mergers  this is remarkable. When the man is widely revered, having been amply decorated for valor by his profession, it's all the more remarkable.

The industry is newspapers and the man is Gene Roberts, managing editor of the Times since May 1994, and before that for 17 years the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. At the Inquirer, it is fair to say, Roberts was responsible for more serious investigations than all of Rupert Murdoch's papers on four continents over their entire lifetimes. The best known of Robert's initiatives was a multi-part series by Donald Barlett and James Steele that blew the whistle on the savings and loan bailout (a multi-hundred-billion dollar detail that's routinely overlooked when the subject of the infernal deficit rears its head). Hundreds of thousands of requests poured in for reprints, and the book version, "America: What Went Wrong?", was a best-seller. ... Roberts, in a baritone Southern drawl that makes Bill Clinton sound like a city slicker, makes a devastating case against the chain newspapers that clank across the land. Absentee managers discover that, in the short run, at least, they can make more money by publishing less news, shallower news, more celebrity puffs. Roberts cites a study of the fate of the Louisville Courier- Journal since it was bought by Gannett, the biggest of chains. The overall news space did go up, but much of the increase consisted of features, soft news, and wire copy. The average local news story shrank. Wire service copy went up by an astounding 76 percent. So it happens that at a time when the Federal government is foisting more power upon the statehouses, coverage of those muck-filled precincts declines. Less scrutiny translates into emboldened lobbies and mindless legislation.

To care about this sort of degradation, of course, you have to care about some fusty-sounding ideals, namely the connection between information and democracy. Roberts, who covered civil rights at the Times in the '60s, finds there his strongest precedent for claiming that newspapers matter. During the civil rights era, he says, "a double handful of Southern newspapers, independently owned, stood up for civil rights, and made an incalculable contribution."

And where have all those flowers of enlightenment gone? Gone to chain gangs, almost every one. Little Rock's now-defunct Arkansas Gazette, which called for Federal intervention to enforce the court order to integrate Central High School in 1957, is now Gannettized, as is the Nashville Tennessean. In Greenville, Mississippi, the Delta Democrat- Times, owned by the Hodding Carter family, which spoke up against the White Citizens Councils at a time when you could get your house burned down for doing that, is now owned by a chain with the perfect Orwellian name of Freedom Newspapers. "

-- Ariel (giveme@abreak.com), November 09, 1998.

Ariel,

If you look, youll find the people you need to make a difference right here, on this site -- both lurkers and posters. If we all keep pestering our local media, eventually we will find the chinks in the big media armour. Remember playing dominos? All it takes is a few to create a ripple effect. The media is made up of lots of little people. Who knows, but they might be able to effect an attitude change within their organizations if enough people on the outside keep nipping at their heels.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), November 10, 1998.

What you said about the Louisville Courier-Journal is quite true, Ariel. This area's newspaper has gone from having a solid nation reputation (in the 1970's) to something more along the lines of USA Today.

My favorite story about the Courier-Journal is the September 10, 1998 issue. The front page has big, bold headlines saying "House gets Starr's report on Clinton." On page two, there's a tiny 2" by 3" newsbrief about the House technology subcommittee and its prediction that more than a third of the federal government's most important systems won't be fixed in time.

I'd say page two had the more important story...

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), November 10, 1998.

Bill:

Your logic is sound. Even though Canada and the UK have publicly stated their military plans, there is not panic in those countries, at least not that I am aware of. The US leadership has taken the stance that to go public with their plans (assuming, as I do, that there are indeed plans) will induce mass panic. This is obviously not so, based on reaction in other countries.

When the media jump on the story, the strategy undertaken by TPTB will backfire in a huge way. The battle lines have been drawn. I refuse to be taken for a sucker as well. The truth is out there. Prepare for the worst.

-- Steve Hartsman (hartsman@ticon.net), November 10, 1998.

"It's primarily a matter of cultural and political differences. In England, and much of Canada, when the public hears that the government are considering sending troops in to keep order, the average person says "Oh goody, the government are here to help us again." However, in the USA, the general feeling is more like "Uh Oh, the damn feds are coming to take away our rights........." "

Craig, you stole the words out of my mouth. Anytime Americans, or at least a vocal amount of us, here the Feds are coming, we start getting all antsy. Just today, a friend of mine had to meet with an FBI agent at her to do a character reference for a friend applying for a federal job (no clue what it was). She told me that her husband, an avid gun collector, took every gun in the house and hid them when he heard the FBI guy was coming. Why? Every gun he has is licensed. I have been in his house, unless the FBI guy had gone to his bedroom and looked behind the bedroom door, all he would have seen were two civil war era black powder rifles above the fireplace. His reply "Well he was a fed!" Um...ok

Good point Craig

Rick

-- Rick Tansun (ricktansun@hotmail.com), November 11, 1998.

Graig is right on. I'm a transplanted canadian in USA, and I agree with Graig. Canada's population is much more socially coherent in culture and views, there isn't the "melting pot" problem of widely differing extreme in views and reactions to events. USA's gov. has to take that into account.

Also, don't forget that in Canada, there's only 26+/- million lunatics (tongue in cheek) to contain, spread out over a much larger territory, as opposed to 260 million lunatics councentrated in huge cities...the US gov., I'm sure, is walking a tight rope of how much/how forcefuly to inform the public.

Bill's logic is obvious. Sometimes even the over-educated miss the forest for the trees. No degree is needed to grasp the obvious, only a good brain.

-- Chris (catsy@pond.com), November 11, 1998.

Welcome back, Chris!

-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), November 11, 1998.