The Written Word
for January 2, 2000

Well, New Year’s has come and gone and here we are in the last year of the 20^th century and on our way into a new millennium starting January 1, 2001. What has amused me about all this is that so many millions of people were taken in by the gigantic fraud. I’m not going to dignify the nonsense that those who said this year was the millennium year with any arguments because it’s so elementary. There was no year 0, to have had one would have been the oxymoron of the ages and that therefore simple arithmetic tells you that to have 2000 years you must complete every second of year 2000. Moreover the authority on all subjects of time is the Greenwich Observatory and they, in their website and public releases were telling all who would listen that the new millennium stars January 1 next year.

But what I think ought to have us all thinking a bit is the billions of dollars that were taken out of our pockets to help huge media conglomerates and large governments ply their trade – in the former case making money and in the latter spending money that doesn’t belong to it. And doing it under false pretences.

All governments and all media outlets knew full well that this was not the millennium year. To assume that Rupert Murdoch, Tony Blair and company actually believed that you could accomplish 2000 years in only 1999 assumes that they believe in fairies, Santa Claus and the Great Pumpkin. No, they just didn’t want to wait and run the obvious risk that others would cheerfully lie to their people and customers and get there first. Besides, as Hitler taught us, it is easier to get away with the big lie than the little one. So there we had CNN day after day preaching about the Millennium and then doing 100 hours consecutively on the non subject knowing full well they were living a barefaced lie.

I will say this about Canada. It wasted fewer tax dollars than most though I suspect that when the bills are all paid many millions will have been paid in their latest bread and circuses effort.

If I were a Brit, however, I would really be howling. They have inner cities full of homeless. They have huge waiting lists for surgery largely caused by lack of beds because long term care patients occupying acute care beds. In short they have huge social problems and not the money to pay for their cure. Yet Tony Blair and his government spent one billion dollars on a millennium Dome at Greenwich. Moreover they permitted a huge eyesore of a Giant Ferris Wheel to spoil the atmosphere in Westminster.

Where the hell are our priorities in this world? First off, we celebrate the wrong year even assuming that it is dated from Christ’s birth. But even that was wrong as it’s generally conceded that he was born in 4 BC. Secondly, it is only a Christian calendar and not even the calendar used by all Christians. Thirdly, in a world replete with hunger, homeless and those suffering from enormous natural catastrophes in the past few years, we spend billions of dollars on a world wide frolic.

If it is true that whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad, we can’t have long to go.