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(feel free to mail this page) PLEASE PRINT OUT THIS PAGE. These forums are here to help you come to grips emotionally with four words: "If the banks fail. . . ." These four words summarize the second-worst threat of y2k. (The worst threat is the failure of the power grids.) It is this threat that people refuse to face emotionally. They interpret everything they hear about y2k in terms of four other words: "Banks must not fail." Banking must not fail because people do not want it to fail. They refuse to face up to the enormous y2k problem because they are committed emotionally to the survival of fractional reserve banking. Instead of buying silver coins, they dream of silver bullets. People are in denial. The vast majority will stay in denial until they cannot escape the worst consequences of the Millennium Bug. These forums are designed to move you out of denial and into defensive action. Until you know that there is hope -- and for a while and for a few, there is still hope -- you are unlikely to accept the truth of the evidence I have placed in the links section of this Web site. On these forums, you have access to practical, life-saving information that few people on earth think is important today, but which hundreds of millions of them will wish they had by the middle of the year 2000. As the year 2000 draws closer, the price of taking effective action will rise. Your ability to take action will fall. Here, you'll be able to find out information on durable consumer goods for personal use and barter, tools and equipment that will help you maintain a comfortable lifestyle in a crisis, small businesses that will still be profitable after the banks close, relocating, nonhybrid gardening, and food storage. I will add more forums when there is sufficient demand. There are professional forums that are closed to all except members of these professions: physicians, pastors, and reporters. On these you may be open about problems you are having now (e.g., reporters trying to get the truth) or those which you expect will begin in 1999, and what you should do to prepare yourself. You may feel alone at first, but as the year 2000 approaches, these forums will get more crowded. Why do you need access to these forums? I have argued repeatedly that the #1 threat of the Year 2000 Problem is a breakdown in the division of labor. This is especially devastating when we are speaking of the intellectual division of labor. These forums are designed to enable us to take advantage of the intellectual division of labor for as long as the Internet stays up and the phone companies allow us to access the Web. Let's not kid ourselves about our vulnerability. If electrical power shuts off in your region, you're fried. If it shuts off nationally, the nation is finished. If the banks go down, it will be almost as bad. But maybe they both will survive. Maybe the phone companies, water companies, and all the other dominoes that keep us going will somehow muddle through. But even if they do, the stock market surely will take a major hit. Y2K is not some peripheral item in the capital markets. If it can be fixed at all, it cannot be fixed cheaply. Corporate earnings will soon be chewed up by the Millennium Bug. Dominoes. We live in the shadow of giant dominoes. We might call our interdependent world the Valley of the Shadow of Dominoes. You can't fully trust any of them. Any one of them could fall and crush you. These forums are here to let you share your concerns and your specialized information with others. You should try to share encouragement, too. Because we don't know whether you're a Mr., Mrs., Miss, or Ms., I am hereby awarding every participant on this site an honorary doctorate in thinkology. The scarecrow earned one, and so have you. H. L. Mencken used to put "Dr." in front of politicians' names. If you refer to a third party who posted something on a forum on this site -- "So and So said this" -- refer to him/her as follows: (1) first name and last name; or (2) "Dr. [last name]." Last names are too harsh; first names are too cutesy; so, we are all doctors here. I want to reaffirm my operating assumption about Y2K: the New World Order didn't do it. An anonymous group of mainframe computer programmers did it a generation ago, and neither they nor their code-challenged employers recognized the threat to modern society that this decision posed. The New World Order crowd is about to get a harsh dose of reality. If the banks go down, and if central governments go down, their power game is over. Again. (On this point, see Genesis 11:1-9 and Daniel 2:44-45.) THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF THESE FORUMS Ten rules govern these forums. If you will follow them, I invite you to participate: 1. "You can't beat something with nothing." This means that you are to avoid telling others what won't work unless you tell them what may work. It's better to have a bad plan than no plan. A bad plan can be revised. If you can help someone revise a bad plan, great. But you are not doing anyone any good if you deter others from following some plan. 2. "If you say, 'I know,' be sure that you know from experience." This means that you are not to disparage a product or organization unless you can say, "I've tried it personally, and here is what happened." If you have read something good or bad about some product, say exactly where and when it was published. 3. "Everyone intelligent enough to locate one of these forums must be assumed to have some information of value to others." This means that the other person must have his space on the soapbox. What he says this time may be as stupid as pig dribble, but next time he may have some gem of an idea that will literally save your life. Don't drive him off the forum with your inflamed rhetoric. If you really want to blast him, type this: PDTT. This stands for "Pig Dribble This Time." 4. "If you don't want anyone to know what you own or who you are, use an assumed name and an untraceble e-mail address." Use the ANONYMOUS E-MAIL feature. I have included a link to a company that provides a free e-mail service. You can use an assumed name. Only you can access your mailbox. I use this service. I have several assumed names that I use on these forums, so that I can offer my opinions without getting flooded with e-mail asking me more questions. My view will simply be one more opinion among many. Privacy is a Constitutional right in the United States. It is also a highly respected asset on the Web. I suspect the motives of anyone who suggests that there is something suspicious about the right of privacy. 5. "If you write it on one of the open forums, Gary North may use it in a special report." I have very sharp subscribers. Why shouldn't I use their best ideas in a report? Why shouldn't I use this site to find out what people are interested in? If I'm going to offer this site for free, why shouldn't it become a source of useful and usable information for me? (The bad news is this: after 1999, maybe nobody will be able to send me any money for my ideas and special reports. That's life!) 6. "If you write on a closed forum, use your real name and guard your language." The closed forums are closed to outsiders, but you should still not say anything you'd be ashamed of later. On these forums, your peers may wish to check you out, to make sure you're really a professional in the field. So, I require the use of real names. 7. "All new discussion topics or threads must begin with a question, not a statement." Statements are appropriate for responses to questions. I do not permit the posting of unsolicited opinions on this site. I have put up these forums so that people can get help, not so that they can give everyone an unsolicited piece of their minds. There are plenty of other forums on the Web for posting unsolicited opinions and deliberately stirring up controversy. Y2K is already too controversial. These are primarily help forums, not primarily soap boxes. In short, please confine your preaching to answers. 8. "Questions regarding firearms are to be sent directly by e-mail to the moderator of the forum on 'Inventory and Barter Items.' " I am a strong supporter on Second Amendment liberties. But this forum is designed to get questions answered in public that are hard to get answered on any other forum. This forum has a specific focus: the Millennium Bug. The issue of the right to keep and bear arms is a more general topic in the United States. Also, because state laws differ regarding gun ownership, I do not want to expose this site to a shut-down because of postings that might inadvertently recommend the violation of one of these laws. Critics will be looking for excuses to shut down this Web site. I don't want to give them any ammunition (to coin a phrase). 9. "Trust, but verify." President Reagan's rule in dealing with the Soviet Union is a good one for all Web forums. You should assume that people who post things on these forums are sufficiently motivated by the fear of a collapse that they are not trying to deceive you. But they may themselves be deceived. Or they may be trying to recruit you. Or they may be trying to sell you something. That is what forums are for. Forewarned is forearmed. 10. "If you offer anything for sale on this site, it comes with a 30-day, money-back guarantee." I have no objection to selling. I like the old slogan, "Nothing good happens until there's a sale." But if you sell it to someone on one of these forums, and it displeases the buyer, he has a way to complain. The customer is ALWAYS right on these forums -- the person who paid the legal tender. I will kick you off if you do not abide by the 30-day rule. This is not a commercial site, but I do not object to commerce, if that commerce is part of a message that informs other people. But be aware that people who visit this site are sophisticated, skeptical people who are not likely to be motivated by either fluff or hype. Provide good information free, and a few people may send you money for more information or tools to implement your free information. Web forums are not good places for hard selling. Also, if you offer something for sale, don't use a Hotmail (anonymous) e-mail address. If you do, the moderator will remove the posting. Anonymity is fine for everyone on the open forums except sellers. Unless you intend to offer something for sale, use the ANONYMOUS E-MAIL feature. You do want people to contact you if they have information you can use. If you ask a question, you want answers. Also, you want privacy. This feature gives you both. It's a few minutes extra work at the beginning, but what a great service! Don't get clever with names: Lone Ranger, Bullfrog Jones, Adam Smith, Art Gallery, Pattie Melt, etc. People are leery of overly clever people, especially when their lives are at stake. If you post notices on discussion forums other than this site, use a different name for each forum. This way, you can tell where the letter-writer got your name. For a list of local y2k preparedness organizations, posted by the Cassandra Project, click here. INSTRUCTIONS: The goal of these forums is simple: to locate accurate, practical information as fast as possible. These forums are not to become philosophical debate centers. They are here to help you take effective action. NOTE: The dates in front of each forum are for ordering the sequence of the forums on the page. These dates have nothing to do with actual postings. Sorry: it's a quirk of the site's software.
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