X-Message-Number: 17540 From: Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 04:01:28 EDT Subject: Grotesque Shortsightedness Robert Ettinger writes: >Cynically speaking, the Detroit area should be >relatively safe from Arab/Moslem terrorism, because it has a high >concentration of those people. As for other types of terrorist, the list >keeps expanding, which makes it both better and worse--more nuts, but more >diffused. This has to be one of the most grotesquely shortsighted, insensitive, and inappropriate statements ever made on Cryonet. That's really saying something. As someone who has spent extensive time in the Middle East visiting numerous Islamic states and territories, and being allowed access to infrastructure there that few in the West ever see, I can tell you that what has happened on the US Eastern Seaboard this Tuesday last is no fluke. Further, it will not be un-repeated without global conflict to resolve the very fundamental differences between two systems of value and fundamental ways of viewing reality. I have had Iftar with all classes of people during Ramadan; breaking bread and sharing thoughts with many, many Muslims. I met and came to like several Middle Eastern Islamic families and individuals. (I make the distinction here between Islam and "Arabs" because some were non-Arabs; Nubians and Persians). I was the person who first conceptualized and implemented fire/blast vault protection for cryopatients, and the person who put forth the idea of underground concrete silos for secure storage of patient dewars; which Paul Wakfer and Mark Connaughton of CryoSpan so brilliantly implemented. As guest of the entire critical care community of Israel I had the opportunity to see and meet large numbers of people in all walks of life and to spend a great deal of time with the Israeli people. I have walked the streets of Palestine, Jerusalem, Jericho, Bethlehem and countless other areas including Palestinian and Israeli settlements on the West Bank and Gaza. I was given a warm reception to my scientific presentations on behalf of 21st Century Medicine and I was shown hospitality by the medical elite of Israel which I shall never forget. If the probable cause of the current reign of terror turns out to be palpable reality; that the source was from elements motivated by Islamic "extremists" (something of any oxymoron for anyone who has spent serious time in the geopolitical Islamic world) then no cryonics organization is safe anywhere. Furthermore, however far from the teeming metropoli of the world that you position your patients or facilities you will find that your transportation, communication, defense, finances, and access even to safe food, water, and breathing air can be evaporated in a heartbeat. All the cryonics organizations will be very lucky indeed if none of their members remote from them did not and does not die during this period of complete paralysis of air transportation; a critical element to reaching, retrieving and treating their respective members across the United States and across the globe. This paralysis was achieved using low cost application of our best technology against us in a way that awes me. Given the perpetrators goals, the cost to benefit ratio is beyond my full comprehension at this time. It is ironic that I have just finished A. Scott Berg's excellent biography of Charles A. Lindbergh and was midway in my reading of Lindbergh's wartime diaries when this attack occurred. Lindbergh was a prescient man who would not have blinked an eye at the attack which occurred on 9/11/01 (911). If current probable cause turns into reasonable certainty, then it will be abundantly clear to me who the enemy is. And no, don't think it's Osama bin Laden or any one bogey man held up for the expedience of the moment; it is deeper, far deeper. And any political surgeon who emerges from the theater of war after a lumpectomy and tells you "Don't worry, we got it all," is either a fool, a dupe, or a traitor to the civilization that underpins cryonics. Make no mistake, the charge Tuesday is but a small debit against a very large account of Islamic hate as a result of US support of Israel and of capitalism and freedom as we understand it. If this is the "first war of the 21st century" then it is far from over. Any cryonics organization will be very lucky indeed to have access to liquid nitrogen, let alone the energy and engineering skills required to obviate its use at the end of such a war. Cryonicists are peculiarly susceptible to the belief that technology will protect them from all terrible outcomes and they seem not to learn or want to the lesson that Vietnam had to teach the US. When Lindbergh overflew most of the world mapping routes for Pan Am he was deeply shaken by observing the "skeletons" of once great and sophisticated civilizations from the air (I have had the same experience). He was not optimistic about the future of our civilization unless it changed radically in its belief that technology alone was sufficient to its survival. Without a moral center he felt certain that technology would the source of the destruction of Western Civilization. Short-sighted self interest, over-optimism, and moral expediency were the real enemies he was concerned about. I believe in this he was right. Shame, shame, shame for the words quoted above. Cynicism does not even begin to describe them and no lapse of judgment will ever excuse them. Mike Darwin Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17540