Here is a report from Y2KNEWSWIRE that covers the lies and deceit that has pervaded the y2k scene over the past several months. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Y2KNEWSWIRE DECLARES Y2K COMPLIANCE CLAIMS TO BE THE GREATEST COVER-UP IN MODERN HISTORY / THIS ESSAY STAYS POSTED FOR ONE WEEK The game is up. This is the last Y2KNEWSWIRE.COM issue for a week. Why? Spurred on by our loyal readers, we've covered Y2K for nine months. We've countered the bogus arguments against preparedness, we've challenged the exaggerated claims of compliance, and we've stood up for the rights of Americans to get prepared. We petitioned the Senate to help save the banks, we issued four public safety alerts in an attempt to help reduce injuries and death associated with Y2K, and we've raised thousands of dollars to help the Disabled American Veterans get prepared for Y2K.

But the lies of compliance are starting to sound like a broken record. It's fast becoming redundant to inform you that your government is once again telling you a lie. And today, we came across an item that crosses the line from debate to insanity. A bank in Texas, Pacific Southwest Bank, has issued a brochure that outright claims preparedness information is a "scheme" perpetrated by con artists. That's right. In a brochure entitled, "Year 2000, Keeping your money safe from Year 2000 fraud," the bank lists four items under the heading, "Common schemes con artists use to swindle money." One of those items is, "Selling books or subscriptions to magazines that supposedly contain information on 'surviving' the 'crisis.'"

The bank is the Pacific Southwest Bank in Corpus Christi, Texas. http://pacificsouthwestbank2.com

This demonstrates our point: insanity is now rampant. Consider this: the same information that California urgently distributes to citizens for earthquake preparedness has now been called a scheme by this bank. You can bet the other banks aren't far behind. This bank, by the way, is apparently not yet Y2K-compliant. Their web site doesn't mention Y2K compliance at all. And their brochure only contains this tidbit: "...our Year 2000 planning is well underway... we are taking rigorous steps to address any problems and test our systems long before the new century arrives."

Another vague Y2K statement, piled on top of a fast-growing mountain of generalities. What does it say, really? Clearly, it indicates they aren't done with even the planning stage. They also aren't done with system testing. Remember, it is this apparently non-compliant bank that's urging you to not withdraw your cash.

But the main point here is much larger than that. Just as this bank brochure is calling preparedness information fraudulent, we the People have allowed our government officials and banking industry officials to stand firmly behind a wall of insanity and call it the truth. The people of this country have stood behind so many lies for so long that they've forgotten what truth really means. Truth is spin, truth is CNN, they think. Truth is whatever the President says. Or, worse yet, truth doesn't matter. Forget values, morality and logic. Abandon critical thinking skills, writing and mathematics. Teach emotional reaction, relative morality and relative truth. That's where we are in this country, and it is perhaps the scariest part of the problem now surrounding the Y2K issue.

WE'VE UNCOVERED ONE LIE AFTER, AND IT DOES MATTER Y2KNEWSWIRE.COM has described a multitude of cover-ups. We've shown how the Dept. of Defense lied about their compliance claims -- twice. We've shown how the Koskinen Miracle -- the near-instant compliance, testing and implementation of 92% of the federal government's critical systems -- is a factual impossibility. We've exposed the linguistic trickery of the Y2K "no big deal" crowd by compiling and publicizing the entire list of vague compliance statements.

Time and time again, it's the same thing: somebody says they made it, the press reports it, the public swallows it. We show it to be false, and only our regular readers -- and others frequenting the few truth-based Y2K Internet sites -- really get it. The rest of the public -- and especially those who aren't on the Internet -- are buying into the good news, oblivious to the truth. They're being herded into the greatest cover-up in the history of modern civilization; a cover-up where some unfortunate people are going to die. Make no mistake, Y2K will take some people with it. ...just from the failure of hospital gear, if nothing else. Anybody who says Y2K won't kill anybody is identifying themselves as disconnected from reality. Y2K will claims some lives. Count on it. Just one city's traffic lights system failure alone will probably result in multiple automobile fatalities.

The denial of reality is pervasive, and so is the continuing cover-up. Just this week, Gene Dodaro, assistant comptroller general for the GAO, explains how HCFA (which administers Medicare) exaggerated compliance: "For example...none of HCFA's [the Health Care and Financing Administration, which administers Medicare and Medicaid] 54 external mission-critical systems reported by the Department of Health and Human Services as compliant as of December 31, 1998, were Year 2000 ready, based on serious qualifications identified by the independent verification and validation contractor."

Got that? Zero systems compliant. Yet all 54 were claimed as being so. This is just one example. You can bet it's widespread. We estimate that perhaps only one federal agency is actually compliant at this time, and that's an optimistic estimate. When reality strikes, the spin is going to collapse, revealing an historic web of lies, deceit, public spin and the protection of a so-called "good economy."

GAME OVER We have decided that it's time to call the game. Time's up. If you're reading this, and you're convinced the cover-up is real, you've conquered the spin. You're a rare beacon of awareness in an ocean of hype. But you're surrounded by ignorant people, as you probably already noticed. These are people who are capable of understanding, but who refuse to even attempt it. They are the same people who excuse politicians for lying and who are still knee-deep in the long side of the stock market. These are the people who believe mainstream news without question. If it's on CNN, it must be true. If NATO says it, it must be real. ("We bombed a convoy of innocent civilians, but it was the Serb's fault. They put them there.") C'mon folks! These people have sold their souls in exchange for a bottom line profit. "Lie to me," they say, "But don't crash the stock market. My retirement's in there." They'll accept anything and everything -- including insanity -- as long as it doesn't rock the boat.

Unfortunately, these people are going to pay the heaviest price, in both personal and financial terms, when Y2K hits. Y2KNEWSWIRE.COM is still predicting a massive economic strike, coupled with damaging disruptions in all the major infrastructure. Banks are going to have glitches, the power industry is going to have glitches, and telecommunications will certainly have some, too. We're not predicting an outright collapse of any of these, but rather a series of severe disruptions that are going to noticeably harm this economy and drive unemployment to numbers we haven't seen for decades. Global Y2K failures will hammer earnings of U.S. companies, and by the Summer of 2000, our own stock market will have dropped sharply. It might even come back down to sane levels. (Face it, anybody paying 200 times earnings for a high-flying Internet company that doesn't expect to turn a profit next year is not thinking rationally. This is a bandwagon game, and the game is just about up. The populace has been conned on a grand scale... yet again.)

We're also predicting at least one major terrorist event in the United States. Terrorists, we think, will take advantage of Y2K to launch their attacks. They want revenge on the United States -- a country now seen as an out-of-control bully by the independent nations of the world. And even with the FBI now stating that the possibility of terrorism is high, the government once again encourages no preparedness. There's not even the mention of free gas masks. Israel, by the way, purchased and distributed gas masks to its citizens during the Gulf War. See: http://www.foxnews.com/js_index.sml?content=/news/wires2/0415/n_ap_0415_141.sml

THIS TOPS THE LIST OF INSANE HISTORICAL COVER-UPS At some point in the future, this entire Y2K episode will be called the greatest single demonstration of insanity by a so-called advanced civilization. Not insanity on the alarmist side, mind you, but on the cover-up side. Historians will ask how an intelligent society could have so completely covered up such an important issue while ridiculing common sense personal contingency advice. They will wonder how the denial was so widespread in much the same way history books now peer in awe at the fact that so many German citizens in the late 1930's were swept into the Nazi movement to support a genocidal maniac.

And yes, the comparison is valid. The Y2K cover-up will be the most significant event of this decade, just as World War II was the most significant event of the 1940's. Hitler's regime, in fact, was based on a clever combination of media manipulation, staged events and public spin. Sound familiar? It should. He possessed super-human skills of rhetoric and persuasion. He convinced nearly the entire civilian population to stand by and do nothing while the military exterminated tens of millions of victims in a diabolical quest for power. And now, the United States public is being told to do nothing, too, while the greatest technological disaster in recent history inches closer by the day. Don't prepare and don't worry. We've got you covered. Or perhaps a better phrase is: we've got you covered-UP. It is clearly the worst parts of history being replayed here. Populations make the same mistakes over and over, especially when they're blinded by stock market greed.

That's the danger of a cover-up. When the media goes along with the lies of politicians and refuses to ask hard questions, it propagates a dangerous fiction. That fiction, given the right circumstances, can have a terrible impact on the lives of billions of people. And we're facing precisely the same thing right now. The fight for truth concerning Y2K is, indeed, an information war. And right now, the bad guys are winning. They've urged you not to prepare and now they're labeling preparedness information "fraudulent." Anybody who offers to sell you preparedness information is a con artist, they say. The press, caught sleeping at the news desk yet again, has almost universally refused to ask for even a shred of proof of compliance. They've reprinted the positive-spin press releases of organizations like NERC without asking a single tough question, such as, "How many times did you privately practice this drill before the public demonstration?" Or, "Would you submit to a surprise drill?"

BLAME THE PEOPLE
Meanwhile, the argument that the public is at fault here continues. It's beyond comprehension, really. And full of holes. Remember, contained in the argument that enough people simply preparing for a disaster can crash the banks and ruin the economy is the admission that our entire system really isn't that strong after all. Think about it. If 10% of the people taking out a modest supply of cash can crash the banks, was the system all that strong to begin with? As Gary North once put it during an interview with Art Bell, "If two old geysers on a late night talk radio can crash the banking system, how good of a system was it to begin with?"

Bank officials are telling you that nothing can harm your account. It's 100% safe, fully insured, rock-solid. But then they blame Y2K alarmists for potentially contributing to a collapse of the banks. Well which is it? Are banks rock-solid or are they teetering on the verge of the fractional reserve banking cliff, ready to topple with the slightest movement of cash?

TRUST US, WE'RE COMPLIANT You're also being instructed to believe in the myth of compliance. Compliance can't be seen directly, of course. People simply appear out of the back room and say, "We made it! Trust us!" Usually, there's no proof offered, and the programmers are still on the staff, by the way. Can you trust these claims?

Stop laughing. You know the answer. Of course you can't. It's like asking Saddam Hussein if he stopped his bioweapons research program. If you don't verify it, you can't believe the answer you get. This is the administration of deceit, after all. This is an administration that spins the meaning of the word "is." If you're still holding out for the truth on Y2K, you're going to be disappointed. You'll never get it from anybody in an official position. Each one has a job to do, and part of that job is minimizing any negative Y2K news.

If you can't see the truth by now, you'll never see it. But if you recognize it now, if you understand what's actually being done here and how it's being accomplished, you know we're in a lot deeper trouble than we're being led to believe. Yes, Y2K is worse than you're being told. It's so bad, in fact, that the only "solution" is a cover-up. It's like the movie, "Armageddon." When NASA learns the asteroid is heading for the planet, they don't go public with it. Why bother? If it hits, everybody is dead anyway.

Y2K isn't as bad as an asteroid the size of Texas, of course, but the strategy is the same: why tell people? ...it's going to be horrendous anyway. Washington officials probably believe, in their heart, they're preventing panic. They think that depriving the public of the truth about Y2K is the only way to prevent the breakdown of social order. They're wrong, of course. People can responsibly handle moderately bad news if it's offered far enough in advance. They can prepare to live for a month or two on their own supplies of food and water. That is, if they're given the chance to learn the truth.

But they're not being given that chance... and they won't be. We consider this cover-up to be a crime against humanity. It will impact -- and harm -- the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the planet. This is a premeditated cover-up, and we're asking you, reading this today, to print this out and keep a physical copy for your records. There will be a Congressional investigation when all this is over, they will want to find out who covered this up. And we want this essay to be on the public record. This is only April. We have plenty of time to actually help people if the cover-up is immediately halted. We can save lives here, and we can save the public trust. We have written Koskinen directly -- last December -- and asked him to stop the cover-up. We received no reply.

THE MOMENT OF TRUTH HAS ARRIVED
So this is it. The moment of truth for you personally. Have you been convinced to do nothing by officials of the most dishonest administration in United States history? Have you been scared by bank officials who suggest the odds of you getting robbed by individual criminals is greater than the odds of being robbed by a 1%-based fractional-reserve banking system? Or have you actually opened your eyes? Can you see behind the spin... Can you understand the motivations behind the attack on the preparedness industry? Can you see why this government absolutely, positively must maintain a good-news face in order to continue propping the stock market to higher and higher levels of irrationality?

See, Y2K isn't only about computers. It's about political power. It's about a good economy, a bottom-line profit in the banking industry, the next election. It's about everything except saving your life. That part is up to you.

WE'RE NOT THE ONLY ONES FED UP WITH THE DECEPTION Read David Eddy's recent essay on the Westergaard site. He seems just as flabbergasted as we are:

http://y2ktimebomb.com/Techcorner/DE/de9915.htm

We leave you with the sign-off message from Larry Sangers, one of the Internet's well-known Y2K commentators. He's leaving the industry. Here's what he has to say (our bolding):

I can make a few little comments about news reporting, however. First, I am extremely disappointed at the obvious Y2K information cover-up that's been going on. This is one (but only one) reason why my stint as Y2K news summarizer has generally lowered my already none-too-stellar estimate of the honesty of most people. (Along these lines, I recommend David O'Daniel Eddy's column, linked below.) Second, unlike some others, events of recent months have not made me more optimistic than I was when I first began summarizing the news. The main reason for this is that it's just obvious that we aren't being told the full story. To some extent this is not the fault of reporters; no doubt organization talking heads are making the job of investigating the actual, hard, detailed facts about the Y2K status of different governments, companies, industries, etc., very difficult. But to some extent, no doubt it is their fault, or the fault of their editors (I am sure that some news organizations, such as Ziff-Davis, have an editorial policy against much "bad news").

Obviously I could say more, but I'll just leave it at that.

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