By David M. Bresnahan ) 1999 WorldNetDaily.com

Plans have been made for mass evacuations, government takeover of private industries, and the use of martial law, according to a Y2K consultant to municipalities in the state of Michigan. Link
-- Jim P.E. (outstrip@hotmail.com), March 05, 1999

Answers

This is OLD news. Yes, they are a reliable news source.They broke the National Guard story a few weeks back.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), March 05, 1999.

David Bresnahan has been right on many other stories first reported on World Net Daily such as the articles on military practice operations in Texas. At least he seems to investigate these stories. So much of what is printed today is simply Press Releases from Gov't agencies and private companies.

-- D. Rehus (dale@spicreative.com), March 05, 1999.

Jim PE, yes, it is all true, and actually came out on this Forum last Summer & Fall before any news media picked it up. If you look thru the archives you can find very detailed discussions about all this. KoSkin'em's comments triggered much confirmation and investigative reporting.

What we must do, in light of all the news and the jigsaw puzzle which has been rather brilliantly pieced together by all the brain power collectively working on this Forum, is implement a personal way to come to terms with dramatic changes in our world.

It is scary until one prepares, and then it is a see-saw watching for the shoes to drop, but at least preparation affords a measure of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual peace.

Check WorldNetNews daily, and then search for corroberating news, which usually comes soon after. This Forum is wonderful for comradery commiseration, and more important, tips on preparing.

And humor!

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-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), March 05, 1999.

IMHO, characterizing WorldNetDaily as a "reliable news source"s a bit of stretch. They, like Gary North, seem to be an agenda in search of a crisis. Kernels of truth under a heapin helpin of opinion.

You can read his biography here if you want:

http://talkusa.com/bio.htm

Look around TalkUsa a bit.

-- Lewis (aslanshow@yahoo.com), March 05, 1999.

Exactly Lewis. Their slant leans more towards bent. I like to read their news, but then I check it with other net news.

-- gilda jessie (jess@listbot.com), March 05, 1999.

Lewis commented:

"IMHO, characterizing WorldNetDaily as a "reliable news source"s a bit of stretch. They, like Gary North, seem to be an agenda in search of a crisis. Kernels of truth under a heapin helpin of opinion.

-- Lewis (aslanshow@yahoo.com), March 05, 1999.

Lewis, I believe you just described the major media outlets in our country. If you really want SPIN listen to the news on NBC, ABC, CBS and the infamous CNN every evening. I assume you do. Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), March 05, 1999.

I'm quite sure there are many different plans somewhere in the government (especially the military) to handle, or at least respond to, every situation everyone with any imagination has been able to dream up. Our tax dollars at work.

In practice, none of these plans is ever put into action, since the occasion for use never comes up. And if such an occasion did arise, the majority of plans for that occasion wouldn't (and couldn't) be used anyway. A compendium of all the truly wacky plans that have been developed (or simulated on computers) would make very entertaining reading. But they're mostly classified because we can see that several denizens of this newsgroup would take them seriously!

Nonetheless, a carefully thought-out plan for government reaction to a genuine national (or global) emergency is probably better than a government totally unprepared, never gave it a thought, acting reflexively and inconsistently, at cross purposes with itself. Think -- if an evactuation is required, would you prefer that it is planned and organized, or would you prefer sheer undirected panic?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 05, 1999.

Lewis: Thanks for the link to his Bio. This led to a followup story on Firth which tries to lessen the impact of his statements. He counters with facs of his own.

LINK 2

Flint: I agree with you that many, many old contingincy plans are in existence for many, many different scenarios, but isn't it possible that many of these are now being dusted off and adjusted for Y2K problems. One in particular is the revamping of the Canadian War Measures Act which is being re-written( under a new name)to take into account what may happen on Jan 01 2000.

-- Jim P.E. (outstrip@hotmail.com), March 05, 1999.

Jim:

That seems to be a reasonable probability. Why recreate contingency plans from scratch if they are basically sound, and only need a little modification to fit slightly changed circumstances?

But I have to laugh at the conviction some of the resident lunatics have that the government is basically evil, that it's out to get us, and that all plans no matter how useful or helpful are really devious and sinister plots to enslave us, or reduce our quality of life in some drastic manner.

My observation, as someone who once worked there, is that programmers understand government and politics about as well as most bureaucrats and politicians understand computers. And this utter, complete ignorance allows both sides to speak with doubt-free conviction about the others' specialty, while recognizing the complexities and ambiguities of their own fields very well.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 05, 1999.

Flint. IMHO governments make decisions based on whether or not it will get them re-elected. I know they are not intentionaly evil, at least most of the time, but in light of y2k and the unexpected and unknown problems that may be experienced, don't you think its time for them to come clean. For example if they know people should be putting away more than three days of supplies why not come right out and say, Folks , you will need three weeks minimum of water, food, and heat. This to me seems to be a very simple thing to do, and I,m sure the people would appreciate the fact that they are being candid.

-- Jim P.E. (outstrip@hotmail.com), March 05, 1999.

Jim:

I don't want to go into really longwinded detail here. There are a few important points to consider, though:

1) The government is (or should be) obviously not monolithic. The federal government is composed of about 3 million employees, no two of whom hold the same opinion.

2) You are talking about politicians, not bureaucrats. Of those 3 million, 537 are elected. They are NOT 'the government' and have about as much knowledge and control of the details of actually governing as Bill Gates has control of the details of every line of code in every Microsoft product.

3) Consider this forum alone. Among us, we know far more about y2k than almost anyone of those 3 million government employees. And we don't 'know' that we're facing 3 weeks, or 3 days, or 3 decades of problems. I know I catch it from both sides for refusing to slide into fanaticism.

4) Motivations are important, and so are goals. If you were President (and had the bully pulpit) and had no better clue than we do about what will happen, and if you genuinely had the goal of the greatest good for the greatest number, what would you do? As individuals, we should all prepare. But as individuals, we are also (most of us, anyway) employees of businesses which might be adversely affected by that same level of universal preparation. In this situation, there is an excellent chance that the cure would be worse than the disease, for almost any cure you could come up with. The best approach is obvious only to those who don't know what they're dealing with.

Because you have the ability to do so (as President or Koskinen or whoever), you come up with as many contingency plans as you can, for as many different scenarios as you can dream up, so as to be as prepared as possible for whatever happens. You make (in advance) the best tradeoffs you can among conflicting desires for flexibility, reaction speed, respect for law, budgetary constraints, clarity of purpose, chain of command, it's a long list. And you keep your finger on the pulse of remediation worldwide and domestic, tuning all of these myriad plans day to day.

And always, you need to keep in mind that these plans are useless if those required to carry them out aren't aware of them. And when you release them (and you must, or they're worthless), the Andys of the world will publish distortions of them for perverse reasons of their own, and the Rays of the world will listen and believe.

And you pray you won't need them, and you know if things are bad your best cannot be good enough. And meanwhile, there's other important business to take care of day to day. The tyranny of the urgent rules us all.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 05, 1999.

Flint: I've been following this forum for over 8 mths. Its a good source of information and links, but I find that a person has to keep an open mind and be prepared to sort the wheat from the chaffe. But that said I agree with the idea of preparing for the worst and hoping for the best, what's to lose. Thanks for the input.

-- Jim P.E. (outstrip@hotmail.com), March 05, 1999.

I don't understand why all the paranoia about national guard, fema or any other government organization, putting into place a contigency plan for any problems that might arise out of y2k. If the national guard didn't plan for communication systems going down, then I would be concerned. If Fema didn't plan for mass evacuation, then I would be concerned. You all know that many people aren't planning and preparing, which will mean that alot of people aren't going to know what to do if it lasts longer than the food in the pantry. That's why we need FEMA to prepare for them. That's all

-- lulu (lulu010101@aol.com), March 06, 1999.

lulu:

I must agree with you. Effective contingency plans are very important. If you read the discussion Kevin posted about Hurricane Hugo (in another thread) you can see the consequences of poor planning throughout. Relief stations were neither adequately controlled nor properly publicized. Incoming supplies were inappropriate. Relief efforts were understaffed. Essential enabling commodities like power and fuel weren't available. All of this could have been prevented with proper planning, and we have considerable experience with hurricanes.

No doubt that drastic problems require drastic measures. To hear some posters tell it, if the government prepares for martial law, they're evil. If they don't, they're incompetent. Whatever they do is wrong, and if they do nothing they're wrong too. But something may well need to be done, and I also welcome efforts at planning for as many contingencies as possible. I just hope the plans become moot.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 06, 1999.

WND is a combination of brilliance and trash, sensationalism and fact. Sometimes they are the first to get ahold of breaking news. On the other hand they only report one kind of news...stuff that agrees with their radical, nationalist, right-wing, libertarian agenda. Again, some of the stuff really makes you think--but don't rely on it as a sole news source and take some of it with a grain of salt. Then again, why rely on stories based on the UPI or Reuters 'wires as your sole news service?

-- Coprolith (Coprolith@rocketship.com), March 06, 1999.