Pre PS: Pollies don't bother reading, and for those of you who don't believe in Providence (and old word for the Lord), you can still profit from thinking about Pilgrims and y2k preps...

November 22, 1999.

We are about the have the last Thanksgiving of the 20th Century! I hope you all have a GREAT day of rejoicing..

There are many parallels between the Mayflower voyage and first years of settlement at Plymouth and the precarious y2k situation now. While the two societies and their resources are vastly different (except for the resource of God's grace), and strict historical comparisons can't be made, there are similarities.

The pilgrims were not prepared for being blown off course and landing further north than where they wanted to. Yet, in the providence of God, they landed in Plymouth and survived and then thrived.

We too are heading into y2k with lots of hope that all will be well and that problems will be small. We are planning to thrive into the 21st century and not be blown off course by any "overblown" (are they?) y2k concerns.

BUT, also in the Providence of God, 50% of the voyagers died the first winter, and they ALL nearly starved the next winter. They lived, but went through very, very difficult times. They had a critical failure in their supply chain and their ability to produce enough food. That is not often brought up in the happy pictures and stories of the Pilgrims.

Is our world, our nation -- YOU and I -- ready to be blown of course by Providence IF that should happen? If it is true that 'no one knows what will happen" next year as y2k effects multiply, then this means the possibility or our being blown into rough waters and cold weather is just as probable as our sailing smoothly into the new millennium.

Many y2k analysts of all stripes agree there are just too many dangerous risks (economic, technological and political) threatening our way of life not to prepare for y2k disruptions. And there are too many good ones to prepare for the worst while hoping for better.

Please forward the two below articles on to friends, and then consider: Does your family's and community's Mayflower have enough supplies on board to weather any storms that Providence allows to come our way?

This, my friend, is not a rhetorical question. You cannot eat ideas, but the Pilgrims learned how corn and simple food could keep them alive. You can still buy rice and beans and other staples at Sam's or many other stores. People can still make basic contingency plans for heat and water and economic downturns. Are you willing to completely trust your continual prosperity into the hands of "everything is ok" Bill Clinton?

This historical reminder is not meant to be negative or pessimistic by the way. It is based on what REALLY happened to the Pilgrims, and the REAL risks our world faces due to our pride and our foolish over-dependence on technological support/survival systems. It is certainly not a prediction of any sort either, but why has the media and our govt. all of a sudden made sport of the time-honored and tested Boy Scout motto: "Be prepared"?

Yes, we should trust in Providence, but also learn from the lessons of what Providence has allowed to happen in the past. I hope for smooth sailing, but please let us not have the attitude that we are guaranteed that right by the Lord. It is up to Him, and He deserves thanks whether we experience want or plenty.

Walter Skold The Lazarus Foundation

Y2K -- The New World Disorder By Chris Gilbey November 11, 1999 copyright Westergard As we get closer to the millennial rollover I seem to be getting calls from a lot of people who have read press stories that say that essentially the Y2K problem is fixed -- or if it hasn't been fixed yet it is close to being fixed.

The people who call want to know whether I think that they should still take steps to put aside water, food, medicine etc. They read the same stories in the press that we are all reading these days. These are the ones that say the banks will all be working so you don't need to take your money out; the water will be on, so you don't need to store water; the power will be on, so you don't need a generator. The irony is that the people who call are not sure what to believe anymore. Nor should they. They want someone else to make a decision for them -- to tell them whether to prepare or not.

My response has been the same for some time now. Don't prepare for Y2K as if for a hurricane, and don't prepare for the end of the world as we know it. Instead prepare for every kind of uncertainty. All kinds of things could happen (or not happen) at any time in a world where there is too much belief in the perfection of technology. Y2K is still the wake up call. It is there to alert us to an over-reliance on the perfection of technology combined with an under commitment to budgets that can provide perfection.

Decision making with regard to IT expenditure is the same in both big and small companies. Everyone wants all the options, but no one wants to pay. It's like buying a car and wanting a Rolls Royce but having a Daewoo budget. When you travel faster and the driving conditions become rougher, you will find out pretty quickly the reason that you should have taken the optional air bags and ABS breaking system.

And all the while we are accelerating. E-commerce and on-line transactions are like driving off the freeway and onto a racetrack. And we are still told that Y2K is a bump in the road.

We can keep on going faster, but if we are serious about speed, let's wake up to the vulnerabilities. Preparation for Y2K is now an absolute imperative, not just for the beginning of the New Year, but for the whole year ahead and probably beyond that too.

We are not alone.

The Y2K problem that remains is this: We live in a global economy. People travel. Money travels. Goods travel. We are not alone. We treat international travel now in the same way that we used to treat commuting a decade or so ago. It doesn't really matter what is happening on the ground in my country. It's what is happening somewhere else that counts. When we have the U.S. State Department suggesting to its staff in many countries that they return home, don't you think that it may be time to start taking this thing seriously? This is not about planes falling out of the sky. This is not about meltdown. It is about economic and social rust -- something that can not be avoided, but which, with effort can be fixed. At this point in time I still don't see that kind of coordinated response.

You know, personally, I don't think that Y2K will mark the end of the world as we know it at all. But equally, I don't think for one minute that Y2K will be business as usual either. That is why I think it is absolutely imperative that we keep preparing for Y2K, now and throughout the New Year. At the end of 2000, I am sure that we will have a better idea of how we should prepare for 2001.

Forget talk of a New World Order. Time to prepare for the beginning of New World Disorder.

------------- Y2K Contradictions Mike Adams November 17, 1999

(Part Three of a Five-Part Series)

Those who argue that Y2K is "no big deal" base their arguments on a vast array of contradictions, logic gaps and self-deluding definitions. These contradictions, while not always obvious at first, are easy to spot when you know what you're looking for. For example, consider the contradictions in the belief systems of individuals I call "Y2K Deniers."

In my numerous discussions with individuals following this belief system, I've found they share two common traits: first, they are anti-doomsday believers, meaning they automatically discount any prediction of "bad times." Second, they display unwavering belief in the "authorities." Those authorities might be scientists, politicians, company leaders, reporters on CNN and so on. But Deniers entirely miss the fact that these beliefs are contradictory. This contradiction can be easily demonstrated in the following way.

Suppose I told a Y2K Denier that some non-mainstream inventors had created a solid-state technology device that produces "free" energy. The Y2K Denier will usually snort something similar to, "Right. If there was anything to that, today's scientists would already know it." In this way, the Y2K Denier essentially claims that today's scientists embody the apex of energy science. Mankind will apparently never rise above the burning of fossil fuels.

I reply, "So you're saying that when we run out of fossil fuels in about forty years, civilization will collapse due to lack of energy?" The Y2K Denier, now invoking his "no-doomsday" beliefs, will crack back, "No, dummy. Of course they'll come up with something else before then!"

Such contradictions are common with Y2K Deniers. Take the missed-deadline contradiction, for example. In early 1998, Y2K Deniers agreed with the White House that everybody would be 100% Y2K-compliant by, at the latest, December 31, 1998. That would leave "a full year for testing."

If you were to ask a Y2K Denier, in 1998, about this testing period, he would usually reply, "Yes, the full year for testing ensures that we have plenty of time to get everything right. This full year guarantees we'll have no Y2K problems."

But when the deadline was universally missed - and when the March, June and September 1999 deadlines were subsequently missed - the Deniers changed their explanation. "A full year of testing isn't necessary at all," they now say. "All we need is a full month."

Other contradictions abound. For example, the original explanation that "Companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on Y2K remediation; therefore, it will be fixed" soon gave way to the reality that companies had grossly underestimated the costs of their Y2K repairs. Thus, the Y2K dollar appropriations, by themselves, were indications that the organizations in question did not really have an understanding of the magnitude of these projects.

Here's another contradiction held by Y2K Deniers: "Companies will fix Y2K because it is in their interests to do so." This logic attempts to equate intentions with results. But then those same Deniers claim that small organizations are the only ones that will fail to reach full compliance. I wonder: why is it that, according to Y2K Deniers, this apparent law of the universe called "desired intentions always lead to desired results" only applies to Fortune 500 firms and not to sole proprietorships? This is as absurd as saying gravity only affects rich people. If it's a natural law of the universe, it should be - by definition - universal.

As it turns out, there is no such universal law. This explanation by Y2K Deniers is merely another convenient contradiction designed to explain away their faulty belief system and deflect blame from large companies and organizations.

Here's yet another contradiction: if large organizations are the only ones who will be compliant, why are they the primary stockpilers of backup supplies?

The pharmaceutical industry, for example, is admittedly stockpiling large quantities of drugs while simultaneously urging the public not to. Electric utility companies are stockpiling mountains of fuel (coal) while telling the public not to. And police departments around the country are buying up record numbers of shotguns while telling the public they won't need guns for Y2K. In every case, it's the same contradiction: "We need this stuff for Y2K, but you don't."

Bank regulators play the contradiction game, too. Federal regulators say 98 percent of U.S. banks are "Y2K ready" but won't identify the 2 percent that aren't. That's like saying, "Everybody is ready but anybody might not be." It's like playing Russian Roulette with your deposits.

Just the term "Y2K ready" is a contradiction, by the way. The phrase - which implies a state of full compliance - actually means the systems are not fully compliant. "Y2K ready" means an organization believes it is able to handle the inevitable failures that will occur. "Y2K ready" means having some kind of contingency plan that theoretically will allow the organization to continue conducting business. "Y2K ready" really means "we are not fully compliant with the Year 2000." Otherwise, they would use the phrase "Y2K compliant."

Y2K publicity efforts are filled with inherent contradictions. Take the North American Electric Reliability Council's "Y2K drills," for example. These drills were heralded as some kind of "industry-wide" test of the Y2K compliance of electric utilities. That was the public explanation, and that's what the press reported. But upon closer inspection, it turns out the drill didn't test electrical generation or distribution in any form whatsoever! In fact, this drill tested nothing but the backup communications systems of electric utilities. In some facilities, this was nothing more complex than a couple of guys chatting on walkie talkies. They say, "Can you hear me?" "Yes, I can hear you!" "Good, tell NERC we're Y2K ready!"

Perhaps the greatest contradictions appear when we examine the differences between companies' public relations statements and their federally filed SEC reports. For a real-world example of this, let's look at Texaco. On its corporate web site, Texaco says, "When people at Texaco discuss the rollover to the Year 2000, the message is always the same: at Texaco, it's going to be business as usual."

But Texaco's SEC statements paint a very different picture. In Texaco's most recent SEC filing, we learn that "Y2K failures, if not corrected on a timely basis or otherwise mitigated by our contingency plans, could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, liquidity and overall financial condition. Factors that could affect our ability to be Year 2000 compliant by the end of 1999 include: the failure of our customers, suppliers, governmental entities and others to achieve compliance and the inaccuracy of certifications received from them; our inability to identify and remediate every possible problem; and a shortage of necessary programmers, hardware and software."

This text, of course, doesn't appear anywhere in the more publicly available Texaco Year 2000 Disclosure. Texaco isn't alone in this strategy, however. It's the same story throughout corporate America: the public statements explain that Y2K is no big deal while the federally mandated SEC disclosures point out that Y2K could, in fact, bankrupt the company. So which statement should we believe?

(A rare exception to this is NIKE, which states, right on its web site, news that most companies wouldn't dare publish: "A substantial majority of our significant suppliers and customers have not responded to our surveys, have not provided assurance of their Year 2000 readiness, or have not responded with sufficient detail for us to determine their Year 2000 readiness.")

The White House, of course, encourages this Y2K contradiction game by complimenting contingency plans of businesses while ridiculing the contingency plans of individuals. Through some twisted invocation of selective logic that has yet to be questioned by a single journalist in the popular press, the White House congratulates businesses, industry and government departments for stockpiling supplies while insisting that individuals who pursue the same Y2K risk-reduction strategy are wackos and extremists.

What's good for the People, it appears, is no longer good for the country. And by all means, unless you want to be called an "extremist," be sure that you take absolutely no action whatsoever to prepare for Y2K.

On January 20, 1961, President Kennedy challenged Americans to "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country."

Thirty-eight years later, Clinton's politically correct Y2K version sounds like this: "Ask not what Y2K will do to you, but ask what you ought not to do for your country."

-- Walter Skold (wsvnsk2@juno.com), November 22, 1999

Answers

Thanks for posting this, Walter.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), November 22, 1999.

..in the providence of God, they landed in Plymouth and survived and then thrived -- actually the Native Americans saved their asses, which is why we have thanksgiving now, with all its north american food items (turkey, sweet potatoes etc.).
but history is written by the victors.

-- Dan G (thepcguru@hotmail.com), November 23, 1999.

" Y2K is still the wake up call. It is there to alert us to an over-reliance on the perfection of technology combined with an under commitment to budgets that can provide perfection."

Great quote. Thanks Walter, and Thansgiving blessings to you as well.

-- Deborah (infowars@yahoo.com), November 23, 1999.

Walter, are you connected with Lazarus, who is channeled by Jacques (forgot last name)?

Or is there another Lazarus Foundation? I am very interested to hear what Lazarus has to say about Y2K, if it is the same one I am thinking of...

-- Sara Nealy (keithn@aloha.net), November 23, 1999.

Dan G, I meant to add something about Squanto, but it would have been longer than what I wanted. His story, and how he did, in the Providence of God, save their asses, is a truly fascinating one.

I forget if it was Squanto or Massasoit, but one of them, upon first entering the Pilgrim settelement, said in perfect English "Do you have any beer?"

No channeling going on at Lazarus. We are a very small X'n non-profit who try to challenge and inspire people to care more about the world's poor. No web site. Small potatoes.

Speaking of potatoes. Got 150 lbs today for 30$. A great y2k food (if you have the heat and oil to cook them).

-- Walter Skold (wsvnsk2@juno.com), November 23, 1999.

Thank you, Walter for a most thoughtful and timely piece. It is refreshing after so much garbage that has been posted recently.

And...Squanto and others may have saved the Pilgrims (did do so), but Providence sent them where Squanto and his people were located, and gave them the good hearts to help these newcomers. Thanks to Squanto and to God!

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), November 23, 1999.

Thanks, Walter. To the top--deserves a wider readership. God bless you and yours.

-- Spidey (free@last.Amen), November 23, 1999.

Pilgrims ran out of BEER. Plymouth Rock was a BEER run!! LOL!!

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), November 24, 1999.