'this time it's different', page-4

That rubbish needs to be shredded forever, i mean to say i think there are enough warnings about the economy out there already, isnt it time people look for solutions with a positive tone for here on in.
North in the 80's was crusading for AIDS to end the world, in the 90's it was Y2K bug and in 2000 he's ending civilization, as the article says when that fails he will take a couple years and find something else.
Found this article for you all
Anyway trade the trade for me
regards
rob







Before I dive in, I feel I should preface my remarks with a few caveats. First of all, I'm a software programmer, so I'm not a bona fide expert on any fields that are relevant to these topics. I don't have a PhD in economics or political science like some of the conspiracy theorists (and cab drivers) do, so perhaps I'm speaking from a viewpoint of some ignorance. I'll admit that. I'll also admit that I'm a bit sarcastic at times. But that's just me trying to turn something very bitter into something funny. It's how I cope. Remember, I'm just expressing my opinions here, and that's all.


Introduction

This essay got started because of Art Bell and Gary North. Bell had North on his show sometime in May 1998 talking about the Year 2000 (Y2K) crisis about to hit the world. This was the first time I had ever heard of Art Bell, and although I had been to North's site once before, I was pretty new to him too.

When I first heard the show, it hit me hard. I mean, here was a pretty rational-sounding moderator asking pretty rational-sounding questions, and he was becoming convinced. In the course of a couple of hours, he was turned from a skeptic to a believer, and so was I.

But I didn't take this all at face value. I started doing some digging. I wasn't looking for anything bad -- just some facts that would show whether North is on the level, and whether the downside potential of the Y2K situation was really as bad as he said. Unfortunately, it became like digging up an old outhouse: the deeper I dug, the more things started to stink.


Gary North: Not Who He Seems

Whenever I hear a doom-and-gloomer prophesying the End of the World As We Know It, I ask myself a few simple questions: Is he a nut? Does he really believe what he's saying? Does he have a hidden agenda? Is he selling something?

At first, my answers to these questions were No, Yes, I don't see one, and No. But as time went on, these answers eroded into some very unsavory ones. Let's go over them point by point:

* Is he a nut?

Dr. Gary North has a PhD in economics, and is very articulate on the air. He runs a web site with nearly 2000 links to articles and other sites dealing with various Y2K issues, and running something that size takes a clear head -- I know that firsthand. He's obviously intelligent, and he doesn't rant and rave and froth at the mouth. At least not in public, when lots of people are watching. But that doesn't mean anything one way or the other.

In the end, it really depends on your own point of view, and what you consider a "nut" to be. I have an essentially scientific view of life, so anyone who starts talking about astrology, Nostradamus, aliens living among us, etc., automatically goes into my "nut" category, because they're ready to believe things without sufficient proof. Likewise, anyone with a strong religious agenda makes me nervous. I don't dismiss them as "nuts" because by default I respect anyone's religious beliefs, but I do tend to steer clear of them: they're often very dangerous people.

So is Gary North a nut? I don't know, but I believe he is very scary and very dangerous. I'll expound on that a little later.

* Does he really believe what he's saying?

Yes and no. This answer ties in with the next one about his hidden agenda, so I'll just answer it here and provide more details there. Gary North believes -- and hopes -- with all his heart that there will be a major upheaval of our society and of the entire world's civilized societies. He discovered Y2K and found that it fit his vision perfectly. He didn't examine Y2K first with an open mind and then conclude that it would cause major havoc. He already believed that havoc was coming, and backed into Y2K as a way to explain it.

Bottom line, if Y2K weren't around, he would have found something else to predict an apocalypse. In the 80's, he said it would be AIDS. In the 90's, it's Y2K. And when civilization does not fall in 2000, he'll take a couple of years to regroup and find something else.

* Does he have a hidden agenda?

Yes, absolutely. At first I wasn't aware of it, because he stays fairly low-key about it during his radio appearances and at his web site, but he is attaching a huge Christian agenda to Y2K. And this explains a lot. It explains why he's so obsessed by it, and why he often seems to take a tone that relishes the idea of the coming (did I hear someone say second coming?) apocalypse.

This is so typical of the Christian right (and just about any other religious group, for that matter), taking a complex issue and attaching a religious significance to it. They did this with AIDS, for instance, saying it's God's way of punishing homosexuals. But wait, what about hemophiliacs? Um, uh, go away kid, ya bother me. What about the innocent children who have died of AIDS? Then they invoke the old standby, "the Lord moves in mysterious ways." Right.

Well, heck, people have been predicting the second coming since two weeks after Jesus died. It hasn't happened yet, and the odds that Y2K is going to bring it on are pretty damn slim. If God wanted a real apocalypse, I don't think he'd need to go through all the trouble of influencing the minds of thousands of programmers over a forty-year period, telling them that two-digit years are a good idea. Or of making sure the economics of mass storage were such that we would deem it too expensive to store four-digit years. I mean, if he created the sun and the stars, he clearly has nuclear capability, so why pussyfoot around? Or even simpler, just fling a big ol' asteroid at us. After all, he didn't need Y2K to deal with the dinosaurs.

Does Gary North have a hidden agenda? This is a quote directly from an email he sent in 1997:

Of course I want to see y2k bring down the system, all over the world. I have hoped for this all of my adult life.

North is what is known as a Christian Reconstructionist, an extreme form of post-millennial, Calvinistic Protestantism. Here's his definition of Christian Reconstructionism from something he wrote almost 15 years ago ("Backward Christian Soldiers? An Action Manual For Christian Reconstruction" -- Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984): Christian Reconstructionism is a recently articulated philosophy which argues that it is the moral obligation of Christians to recapture every institution for Jesus Christ. It proclaims "the crown rights of King Jesus." The means by which this task might be accomplished -- a few CR's are not convinced that it can be -- is biblical law. This is the "tool of dominion." We have been assigned a dominion covenant -- a God-given assignment to men to conquer in His name (Gen 1:23; 9:1-7). The founders of the movement have combined four basic Christian beliefs into one overarching system: 1) biblical law, 2) optimistic eschatology, 3) predestination (providence), and 4) presuppositional apologetics (philosophical defense of the faith).

Y2K is just the latest thing that North has attached himself to. It's a great, logical way to explain what he's already believed and hoped for, for a long time. For instance, he's been a survivalist since the sixties. Here's an excerpt from his January '98 newsletter: Many newcomers (post-1980) to Christian Reconstruction do not know the early history of the movement. For the record, I was an investor in the rural retreat set up by R. J. Rushdoony in 1965-66. So were my parents. So were dozens of other families. The property was located near San Luis Obispo, California. The investors were people who had bought gold and silver based on Mr. Rushdoony's recommendation (and mine). The project collapsed, as communes tend to do, in a nasty split. No one ever actually moved there. It was at the time of this survival center that he wrote his booklet, Preparation for the Future, in which he out- lined his hard-money, survivalist views. Mr. Rushdoony now lives on the top of a hill in the gold mining country of California. Would-be urban survivalists would salivate over his set-up. He went there in 1976 to get away from Los Angeles. He asked me to go there, too. I didn't. I went to Lynden, Washington -- still a safe place.

In short, the two founders of Christian Reconstruction preached survivalism and eventual social collapse even before there was a Christian Reconstruction paradigm -- before The Institutes of Biblical Law. Mr. Lindsey's sweeping statement about what Christian Reconstruction teaches on personal re- location is uninformed historically. He was not present at the creation of this movement, and he obviously knows little of its early history. R. J. Rushdoony got me into survivalism. He has been far more consistent geographically in pursuing his vision than I have been. I have now escalated my efforts to catch up with him on this point. I suggest you do the same. Soon.

Wait a minute. This is from his newsletter? He has a newsletter? You bet. And that leads us to the last question...

* Is he selling something?

Don't be fooled by his free web site, and his attempts to say that he's doing all this to save lives. He's doing this to make money. And he's been in it for the money from the very beginning.

Some friends of mine recently received a 32-page direct mail piece, and they were kind enough to give it to me. I was truly astonished at what I had found, and it was one of the primary motivators to get me to write this page.

The mailer was advertising "The Remnant Review", Gary North's newsletter. At first I thought it was a Y2K newsletter he started recently when he discovered Y2K, but no, he's been doing this for 22 years! And now for a mere $129, I could receive 12 "valuable" issues and join the ranks of his followers.

This guy is slick, man. He's a real smart operator: he has a huge machine in place, busily extracting money from people with his newsletter, while at the same time, he operates his free web site and can claim that he's doing it for the good of mankind. Bull!

Let's look at the numbers. Here's an email he sent a while back. It shocked the hell out of me when I read it.

To: Charles Reuben
From: Gary North
Subject: Re: BS


At 01:19 PM 7/17/97 -0500, you wrote:
>> . I figured you out months ago: a real estate salesman with
>>scientific pretentions..
>> ,,,,,,,,,

>Wrong. That is about as accurate as your so-called "analysis" of the
>Year 2000 Date Change problem or your use of the term "Economic Historian".
>Charlie Reuben,

Wrong as I may be, I'm mailing out 250,000 pieces a month with my scenario.
Meanwhile, you're showing guys property to buy. I think my version will
win out. And i didn't capitalize oine pejorative phrase.

Yourdon has bought my 90% of my analysis and is now publishing a survival
book on it.

http://www.yourdon.com/books/fallback/fallbackhome.html

He is America's one of the world's senior programmers: two dozen books on
the topic.

I don't need your approval. I've got his. He is clearly using one of my
direct-mail ad pieces on his Web page summary of why the Great Depression
is coming. How do I know? I made an error that he reprints -- a kind of
water mark. It was a minor error, but it was mine, all mine.

Think of it, though: 250,000 pieces a month. Month after month. My
version, not yours.

Enjoy!

Never mind the bitterness, pride, hatred, and contempt he betrays in that short message. The point is, North is sending out 250,000 pieces a month. Multiply that by $129 a year, and you get THIRTY-TWO MILLION DOLLARS! Okay, maybe as an author and not a publisher, he's just getting 15% of that. But that's still $4.8 million. Per year, folks. Okay, let's assume he's only making one-tenth that amount. That's still $480,000 a year. I don't know about you, but that's a hell of a lot more than I make. So please don't tell me he doesn't have a vested interest in Y2K. (And this is just the newsletter I know about. I've heard he has others, plus books, pamphlets, etc.)

This guy is cashing in big-time, and he's doing it on the backs of the people he claims he's trying to help. And guess what? When Y2K blows over, and everything's still intact, that newsletter will still be around. Sure, he'll lose some subscribers, but he'll find another cause to scare people with. Maybe it'll be "The Coming Crisis in Human Cloning: How It's Going To Destroy Our Economy". Or maybe he'll hop on board the "Russia is going to nuke the US" conspiracy theory.