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

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