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Y2K Hamre Goes, Kossi Stays and You're So Reprehensible

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), January 14, 2000

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Y2K Hamre Goes, Kossi Stays and You're So Reprehensible

The Defense Department Y2K Czar Mr. Hamre has done the right thing by resigning-not that my call for him to do had anything to do with it.

No such illusions exist in my doomer mind. Mr. Hamre repeatedly assured everyone that Y2K wouldn't strike DOD. He was wrong. There was a Y2K failure, a significant one; a permanent one. We will never know exactly what happened in Russia and the Mid East during the first two hours of Y2K. Maybe nothing, or maybe Saddam moved his biological toxin vats.

The result of my "Y2K intelligence failure" is that you have four pairs of shoes and plenty of toilet paper. The result of Mr. Hamre's was the permanent loss of information vital to the defense of the United States. So, hold onto that Y2K toilet paper for a while longer troops.

The post Y2K media slash and burn, maybe sneer and leer is a better term, campaign continues unabated. A local AM radio airhead has decided that what people who actually stored food for Y2K need to do is give it away to food banks. Well, airhead I always planned to with some of mine. For the record, the vast majority of Y2K preparers, aside from a few antisocial flakes inhabiting usenet, stored some to give to their hungry neighbors. This simple fact seems lost on the Sneer and Leer crowd.

A fair question for the sneering media is this: Exactly what would you have given your neighbor since you didn't store any food? There was also a quite funny radio spot for a local tax preparer featuring two Y2K doomers who were upset the IRS hadn't collapsed. The jury is still out on that one until April 15th. We can always hope can't we?

The corporate media, having not taken Y2K seriously when it still had catastrophic potential, is now ignoring it and laughing at anyone who prepared. ABCnews.com now lists Y2K in the technology section and places the above mentioned intelligence collapse after the famous $91,000 dollar video late charge. So what if we couldn't see the Russians urinating on the Kremlin wall is the mindset. I see no reason to stop treating the corporate predator press, now bloated into the AOL/TimeWarner media mutation, like the fools they really are.

One gold-eagle.com reader emailed that I was the clown and reprehensible to boot for being mean to Kossi the klown. First, I'd prefer Natalie Cole serenade me with her version of "You're Reprehensible." But seriously, I'm a big boy now and can take it as well as dish it out. I've no intention of hiding under a rock, although I'm sorely tempted to pick one up and throw it.

I'm just a doomer who used widely available information to reach logical conclusions, that many other people also reached, about the likely severity and duration of an event. Only the effects, so far as reported, are a lot less than many, many people, now seeking to deny everything they ever said about Y2K, said they would be. So what? Happens all the time in real life. Get used to it.

Let's get one thing straight about both Kossi the klown, the corporate media whores and Y2K. They didn't care. Kossi the klown's sole reason for official existence as Y2K Czar was to convince the Soccer Moms not to take Y2K seriously. Kossi's only Y2K message, equal to the Russian artillery barrage on Chechnya, was for the American people not to make serious preparations for any emergency, much less Y2K. Kossi, aided by the corporate media, preached an officially sanctioned message of dependency upon the government and apathy towards a looming disaster.

Far from being a hero in my book, Kossi the klown is still the mouth of Sauron. The official Y2K message was one against taking personal responsibility for your own life, against being accountable both to and for your own family and especially against self reliance.

The company line was to be dependent upon Big Mommy government for anything past three days. Even as the 72 hour mantra came out of the mouth of Sauron, he must have known the truth. Even as Kossi told people not to prepare, the government prepared. Even as Kossi kosifomed the American public, the government did the exact opposite of what they told the rabble to do.

They bought emergency generators, while they laughed at you for doing so. They built emergency command bunkers, while they sneered at anyone who left the city. They printed billions for bank runs, while they manipulated both the stock and precious metals markets. In other words, our leaders were perfectly willing to sell the Soccer Moms out to cover their butts. If things had gone south, Kossi the klown would have been with the child king in a warm command bunker; well protected by the Darth Vader clones. Hypocrisy approaching the sublime!

I've never received an adequate answer as why exactly Kossi the klown went into anal retentive mode at the thought of Americans taking their money out of the bank, or storing thirty days of food and two weeks of water. For all those media types in the sneer and leer crowd, I just wonder why you never had the intellectual honesty to ask our leaders exactly why they were preparing to save their butts. Could it be because you were promised a cot in the command bunker?

I learned a long time ago not to judge motives. Only God knows a person's heart and only God can judge what a person's motives are. It's perfectly acceptable to be a fruit inspector. This is what I tried to do with Y2K. The official Y2K line was like one of those shiny, waxed grocery store Red Delicious Apples that tastes like mush when you bite into it. I have no idea what Kossi the klown's motives were. I just judge the man's fruit.

Rather than give him kudos, I see a lawyer who took a job to try and prevent the American people from protecting themselves from a potential disaster. The fact the disaster didn't happen is not the issue for me. The issue is that our elite leaders, business, media, political and religious, placed the status quo above people's lives.

They really did value the stock market above the lives of the American people. This is the only conclusion a reasonable person can reach after watching the official spin for the last year. The fact the media colluded with this complete failure of leadership simply means the media also values the "system" above human lives.

If you want to understand what is going on in the world right now then remember that line. We have in control of the world elite that value profits over people, stock markets over human lives and the pursuit of obscene levels of greed over even basic human dignity. Y2K simply highlighted the fact that the elites really don't care whether the masses live or die. They really didn't care if the poor, weak, elderly, handicapped lived or died if things went south.

If you don't understand that, then you really don't understand the venal nature of the people in charge of the world right now. I'm glad Y2K hasn't so far destroyed our technological infrastructure and caused millions of innocent deaths. I just understand that the elite were perfectly willing to take that chance in order to protect the stock market and banking system. Don't hold your breath for a media expose on that Y2K angle however.

In early 1999 one of my ex employers did a Y2K upgrade to their communications system. In the confusion they apparently forgot that they had two buildings about 2 blocks apart. Any 911 call would show up on the dispatch screen as coming from one address, regardless of whether the call came from the other building.

No one noticed until one March evening when a Portland Fire Rescue unit came roaring up to the address listed on the screen. Being convinced that the computer generated address was correct, the affirmative action Firepeople simply ignored my protests that they had the wrong building. They proceeded to go upstairs and try to find a person who was two blocks away. In about ten minutes they came back down and finally left for the right building.

The next day I commented to my supervisor that they had narrowly avoided a death, a negligent manslaughter lawsuit and were very, very lucky that the medical emergency had been a nosebleed and not a heart attack. His response is a very accurate portrayal of the current Y2K attitude. "Well nothing happened so everything is ok."

Too bad we can't be sure in life whether we're responding to a heart attack or a nosebleed. I'm sure glad the ambulance crews don't throw away all their heart attack gear because they feel all they will see is nosebleeds. So what if Y2K turned out to be a nosebleed? Am I supposed to admire a man like Kossi the klown who advised the ambulance crews that they didn't need to carry heart attack gear? "Just carry enough for 72 seconds." Am I supposed to admire a system that made sure the ambulances responding to the elite had heart attack gear, while telling others they didn't need similarly equipped ambulances?

No, I'll call them for what they are. As for Y2K, there are a lot of issues still unresolved in the areas of economics and politics. I'll get into those in another essay later.

WHO WILLS CAN - WHO TRIES DOES - WHO LOVES LIVES
Doug McIntosh
14 January 2000
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-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), January 14, 2000.