cj#698> Patriots and the Year 2000 Bug

1997-07-31

Richard Moore

 Bcc: xx

Dear cj,

This posting is relevant to our thread about reaching out to groups with
whom "we" have serious disagreements, in an effort to overcome elite
divide-and-conquer tactics.   Incidentally - I've been receiving
interesting communications from organizations in Australia and New Zealand
in this regard, which I'll report on later.

The gentleman below (xx) has been sending me messages describing the
infamous "Year 2000" bug.  He is a computer consultant helping financial
institutions fix their software, and his professional estimate is that the
millions of lines of code that drive the computer/chip/nerve-cells of our
society (from bank accounts to 747s to VCRs) simply cannot all be fixed.
He forsees unimaginable chaos.

He went on to characterize this situation as an OPPORTUNITY for The People
to take over the country - an enlightened and well-organized network of
Patriot Cells will swoop from the hills into the vacuum, so to speak, and
bring us a new age of decentralized society and the end of government
control over our lives.

Such an imaginary scenario is out of touch with reality on so many
dimensions that one hardly knows where to begin to respond.  I recall being
in Kauai a couple years back, helping my parents clean up after the Iniki
Hurricane.  We were in a situation of mild chaos, with foodstores closed,
refrigerators, lights and water not working, roofs blown away, etc.

FEMA and troops came in with helicopters, water trucks, tents, tarps,
humvees, MREs (Meals-Ready-to-Eat) and compensation claim-forms.  They were
welcomed like heroes; they served meals three times a day; and their Tent
City became the friendly community center where people went down to see
their friends and get cheered up from the daily travail.  No one was
thinking about the "evils of federal government" that month on that island
- everyone was damn glad to see the boys in olive drab, and "Welcome GIs"
signs went up everywhere.  The lads carried anti-looting M16s the first
couple days, but weapons were never seen after that.

The point here is that crisis is a time when people are grateful for the
organization that government represents.  When infrastructures fail,
nothing is more welcome than the sight of an army-truck convoy keeping the
supplies coming in and contact open with the outside world (and reassurance
that there IS an outside world).  This is not a time when popular support
would be available to armed insurrectionists.  Not even close.

My initial response to xx, below, was along different lines, looking at the
phenomenon of militia/Patriot organizations, and considering what kind of
plans the feds MUST have in place to deal with them.

Obviously my argumentative stance toward xx can hardly be expected to make
an ally of him in particular.  My intention in the dialog is to understand
his attitudes and what thinking is behind them, on the assumption that he
is representative of others.  I find his willingness to engage in
constructive debate most educational.

---

Let me just restate for the record that there is only one way out of our
political mess, and that is MASSIVE GRASS-ROOTS PEACEFUL NON-SECRET
POLITICAL ORGANIZATION, based on CROSS-CONSTITUENCY COALITION, and aimed at
NOTHING LESS THAN A BOTTOM-UP DEMOCRATIC RENAISSANCE, and the ASSERTION OF
POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY OVER NATIONAL ASSETS, ECONOMIC AFFAIRS, AND GOVERNMENT.


It's not that this is my favorite "movement", or that it promises the
brightest future, or that it is easiest to implement - it is simply the
ONLY THING that can make any difference at all.  Recycling Coors cans will
not save the environment; Greenpeace (god love them) will not save the
whale nor stop clearcutting; shopping at Oxfam will not end Third-World
exploitation; and militias will most certainly not bring about a
revolution.

To pursue only narrow "solutions" is to be a sheep following one of the
officially designated guide dogs.  It makes us part of the problem, not
part of the solution.


Regards,
rkm


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To: xx
From: •••@••.••• (Richard K. Moore)
Subject: RE: pre-organized and cellular


>Mac hardware and operating systems are a (qualified) okay.
>However, custom and shrink-wrapped software, and their respective
>data files could be susceptible to lapses committed by the
>vendor/author.
>  Check them ALL!


Dear xx,

Thanks - it's a TINY BIT comforting to know my Mac MIGHT be safe, but what
good will it do me when the power goes off, Internet goes down, etc?

How do I test - just set the system clock ahead and try to open & create
documents in each application?

There is ONE "silver bullet" re this problem: the world might end by OTHER
means FIRST (accidental engineered virus?  financial collapse?  massive
plutonium spill?...)

---

>  A *PRE-ORGANIZED*, Militia/Patriot-style (cellular)
>organization could effectively deploy, USAwide, at the instant of
>drop of the Martial Law "boot." Even the US Military can't be
>everywhere at once! They're scattered throughout the world on
>UN/NATO missions. It's difficult to impose anything when resources
>are so deployed. No?
>
>  SMALL, anti-repressive, "cell units" could effectively _secure,
>reinforce and maintain_ LOCAL operation of (off the top of my
>head...):  [list of infrastructure elements]


Thank you for being so explicit about your strategizing on this issue.
Your emphasis on "pre-organized" deserves all caps - I agree that would be
essential for any kind of ordering force to exert itself in the way you
imagine - otherwise you just have a lot of small groups with guns, who
would find it difficult to communicate and ogranize themselves effectively
after the fact, with infrastructures in chaos.  Without pre-organization,
factionalism would develop, which would lead to a more general climate of
distrust and disunity, and ultimately chaos, warlord behavior, etc.

Are we together on this, so far?

But effective pre-organization of armed cells, on a scale which could make
a difference, simply cannot be carried out without being heavily
infiltrated by whatever intelligence services consider such matters to be
within their purview (BATF?  Army?  FBI? all of the above and more?)

I would, quite honestly, expect the leadership cadre itself to be most
heavily infiltrated, but even if that weren't the case, the overall
membership, siting, arms caches, and tactics (all the pre-organization
stuff) would be known by the feds from the time the movement was far enough
along to play any noticable role.

Do you doubt this?

After the Oklahoma bombing, I thought one of the most telling comments I
heard was from a former FBI official, who in some public forum announced
that the FBI has NO informants in the militia movement.  If he had said
there were SOME informants, but that they unfortunately hadn't heard of the
bombing plans (perhaps because McVeigh was a lone wolf), then I might have
believed him.  But when he says there are NO informants, then he's clearly
lying.

What could possibly be of more direct interest to the FBI than groups of
armed folks who openly say they oppose the federal government?  For such
groups to be TOTALLY ignored by FBI investigators is simply unthinkable.
That would be like the CIA ignoring an Iraqi missile battery in Cuba - and
I don't exaggerate.  And any investigation would obviously employ
informants as one of the standard methods of intelligence gathering.  Hence
he was making a big fib - why?

You aren't one of these people who thinks FBI agents go around in blue
suits and grey sedans are you?  Those are the UNIFORMED troops, not the
undercover ops.  The comprehensive surveillance, if not the cooption, of
the militia movement is a certainty, even already.  ASSUME lines are
tapped; ASSUME the radically Patriot geezer who runs the popular arms shop
has a hidden video camera at the counter and in the parking lot.  Do not
think lack of current suppression implies lack of current attention.

If push ever comes to shove - if a situation ever looms in which a militia
network were about to go operational (undertake intiative by force) - then
the military response would be preemptive and thourough.  The intelligence
gathered would be translated directly into a decisive strategic response.

Waco was not the relevant military precedent to this scenario - Waco was a
POLITICAL field-test, not a MILITARY one.  Waco experimented with what kind
of propaganda campaign gets what kind of public response when you
incinerate a building full of innocent civilians.  What was learned is that
a very shallow cover story can be very successfully sold to almost
everyone, and the rest can be dismissed as conspiracy buffs.  As with all
Madison-Avenue-style efforts, later media handling would learn from
experience and be more effective next time around.

Notice, for example, the progression of media-handling expertise in the
sequence of invasions: Grenada, Panama, Iraq.  It was like watching the
incremental growth in Spielberg spectaculars, from hit to bigger hit.
Which brings us to the relevant MILITARY precedent re/ the suppression of
any militia network.

What you would see is pretty much what you saw in Panama.  A carefully
orchestrated set of simultaneous surprise midnight raids of overwhelming
force.  We're not talking about BATF agents sneaking through the forest
with M16s and 4x4's, we're talking about night-vision helicopter gunships,
fighter-bombers, airborne battalions, the whole nine yards, all coming in
with all guns blazing, and with target coordinates accurately programmed
in.

On television you'd be seeing reports of murdered federal agents, their
widows and children, and mention of a limited, measured response - "no
details yet available, for security reasons".

Whole sections of states would be heavily occupied, under curfew, with all
outgoing communications cut off, and people being systemtically rounded up.
Much of the core membership, along with their caches, families, and close
neighbors, would be vaporized in the first ten minutes of Operation Patriot
Storm.

What I'm describing is simply the publicly-known state-of-the-art of
handling such situations.  It's all been tested.  Did you see "Panama
Deception"?   It's much more relevant than "Rules of Engagement".

---

>Even the US Military can't be
>>everywhere at once! They're scattered throughout the world on
>>UN/NATO missions. It's difficult to impose anything when resources
>>are so deployed. No?

This is VERY naive - comparable to someone who says there IS NO Year-2000
problem.  VERY FEW U.S. troops are involved in UN or NATO operations.  The
available forces are much greater than would be needed for this kind of
domestic suppression - it's pretty much the old case of the fly vs the
jackhammer.

---

They will re-validate the necessary weapons & communications systems in
time for 2000.  That would in fact be their highest priority - ESPECIALLY
if the year-2000 consequences continue to bode so ill as you describe.


rkm

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Posted by Richard K. Moore - •••@••.••• - PO Box 26   Wexford, Ireland
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