X-Message-Number: 17560
From: 
Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 10:01:25 EDT
Subject: Platt/Lemler/Skrecky

On the one hand, I like to avoid tedium and repetition; on the other hand, 
some people only remember the last thing they hear or read. As a compromise, 
I'll make a few more brief comments.

1. Like most habitual liars, Platt usually leaves himself a loophole or two 
and includes a grain of truth. But the essence is as follows.

On the Visser affair: Yes, we (Alcor and CI; the Chamberlains, Steve Bridge, 
Hugh Hixon, and the numerous other Alcor observers and participants, as well 
as myself) misjudged the Visser evidence, in retrospect. In saying I believe 
it was not a bad decision, based on what we thought we knew at the time, I am 
stating what appears to me to be a simple truth. In almost every decision of 
every kind, someone is going to be shown wrong after the fact--and that is 
sometimes the one who was right before the fact. (And I repeat that Alcor 
people, including the Chamberlains, were actively promoting ADDITIONAL 
agreements with the Vissers for months after the first demonstration, taking 
initiatives beyond CI's. I don't say this was wrong--just that Platt chooses 
to ignore whatever doesn't suit his spin.)

On Visser damage vs. CryoCare damage. Platt lists CryoCare's virtues--but he 
characteristically changes the subject. My contention was not that CryoCare 
had no virtues, but that it had obvious defects, and that it caused more 
losses to Alcor and to Cryonics than did the Visser affair. Alcor lost 
members when CryoCare was formed, and never got them all back. Some people 
dropped out of cryonics altogether when CryoCare folded. The "damage" done to 
cryonics by the Visser affair, as far as I know, is completely undocumented 
and entirely speculative--I don't know of a single person who left, or failed 
to join, because of the Visser affair. 

Another word about obvious bad judgment concerning CryoSpan, which--except 
for a brief time when CI had an agreement with CryoCare--was the only 
CryoCare storage provider. CryoSpan spend a lot of money and work in making 
its installation earthquake resistant. But a storage facility in an area at 
high risk for earthquakes is not much more secure just because of 
improvements in construction. In a major disaster, with roads closed and 
bridges down and fires everywhere and utility lines broken and populations 
being evacuated, the facility has only a small chance of protecting its 
patients. We cannot protect 100% against everything, and all improvements 
should be considered, but BALANCE is the name of the game. CryoCare and 
CryoSpan ignored this balance.

Speaking of questionable judgment, the "Timeship" business puzzles me. A 
facility costing hundreds of millions of dollars and housing thousands of 
patients? I am not privy to their plans or the status of their finances, but 
it sounds loony. Kent and company have a very mixed record--brilliant success 
in the vitamin business, a  wonderful achievement in saving Saul's life when 
it was threatened by a tumor, patents and progress in cryobiological areas, 
blunders relating to CryoCare, lots of internal turmoil. 

2. Lemler says he cannot and will not muzzle Platt because there is a freedom 
of speech issue. 

Nonsense--an obvious evasion and irrelevancy. The question is not whether 
Platt has a legal or moral right to spew whatever he wishes, but whether 
Alcor's right hand can ignore what the left hand is doing. If Platt is 
Alcor's creature, in whatever degree or context, then Platt's assets and 
liabilities will both rub off on Alcor. If Lemler is willling to accept the 
potential sacrifice of good will for the sake of Platt's services, and 
unwilling to put any pressure on Platt, then that is his decision.

3. Doug Skrecky apparently has swallowed the crap about Israel's actions in 
self defense being "racist" etc. 

Israel (and Jewish residents of the area long before the modern state 
existed) has been the target of concerted , continuous, and unrelenting 
aggression, aimed at eliminating the state and the people. Israel's defensive 
and sometimes preemptive actions have been much more restrained than just 
about any other country's. 

In WWII we killed large numbers of German and Japanese civilians as part of 
the war effort, even though America was never subject to direct or immediate 
threat. Most Americans approved then, and still do. Even under the existing 
condition of war (declared war, in the case of most of the Arab countries), 
Israel's Arab citizens enjoy much more in rights and safety than Jewish 
residents of Moslem countries. There were at least as many Jewish refugees 
from Arab countries as Arab refugees from Israel, and for asymmetric reasons. 

No, Arabs and Moslems are not monolithic, including many factions and a 
spectrum of opinion. No, not all terrorists are Arabs or Moslems. No, not all 
Arab or Moslem governments approve of terrorism, even unofficially. Does that 
mean it is wrong to use "racial profiling" in security precautions? Of course 
not. Facts are facts, and Arabs and Moslems loom disproportionately large in 
the terrorist scheme of things. 

Is the motivation of criminals understandable? Of course. Most commonly, in 
the words of WEST SIDE STORY, "We're depraved because we're deprived." 
Deprived or not, a criminal is a criminal. We can choose what degree of 
compassion or mercy to show, and we can try to balance rehabilitation and 
deterrence against punishment and sequestration, but if we hope to survive as 
a civilization, or even as individuals, we must defend ourselves, regardless 
of the motivations of the perpetrators.

Robert Ettinger

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