X-Message-Number: 24619
References: <>
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: Oil Crisis: Cryonics Orgs Leave US Now!
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 11:18:28 +1000

Catching up on cryonet, I see Mark Plus's alarms that oil shortages may 
inhibit civilian travel in the US. Granted it should cost 3 times as 
much to fly now than it does, if oil were priced realistically. But a 
few thousand extra in a life-threatening emergency won't trouble 
non-US-resident cryonicists yet.

It may be, however, with changing supply and demand, oil will cost 10 
times as much in 10 years. US infrastructure is totally oil dependent. 
The US can't afford those prices even printing petrodollars. If the 
present administration is returned, equivalent hydrogen infrastructure 
won't be installed in time. In a real crunch the US could collapse into 
squalor and depression ...

Except we Americans are belligerent and ruthless, armed to the teeth, 
certain of our manifest destiny. We'll mount an invasion on 
oil-producing lands to make last year's interference in Iraq seem like 
charity. We'll annex Venezuela by land and the whole middle east using 
Iraq and Israel as bases. We'll let "deputy" Australia do the same in 
Timor while puppet Britain runs interference with the EU.

It'd be a war of liberation in the neocon mode, but bigger. We'll prop 
up brutal dictators in all target nations, mount media campaigns 
against 'em, then the mines get laid, the bombs dropped, the innocents 
slaughtered, and Halliburton wins no-contest reconstruction contracts. 
Everybody happy ...

Except for the domestic element of the neocon agenda. With the return 
of indentured slavery - the necessary draft of the poor - all manner of 
civil liberties must be curtailed. Justified by Orwellian wars against 
terror, drugs, and medical/social preferences, enforced by a one-party 
judiciary, cheered on by monopolized media, all the dissenters and 
oddballs will get rounded up and tossed to the ever growing network of 
American gulags.

Now, you don't think transhumanists are oddballs? Don't you think that 
just registering your email address with cryonet red-flagged you on a 
Total Information Awareness watchlist? The FBI is now visiting people 
just because they wear anti-Bush T-shirts. The Secret Service is 
manhandling protesters into "free speech zones". Freedom of travel is 
restricted for outspoken liberals - even liberal senators. You think 
they're not watching your every move too? What good your proximity to a 
cryonics facility when you're imprisoned in a 6x8 oubliette?

Unless Kerry wins, it's time for transhumanists to make plans to get 
the hell out of the US before the boom comes down.

Where to go? Well, if things pan out like this, the whole Northern 
Hemisphere is going to hell. So head south. Most cryonicists have 
sufficient skills and money to qualify for immigration to Australia. 
The trouble is there are no orgs here. Sympathetic legislators, social 
stability, diversified media, minimal religious fundamentalism, no 
threat of war, lots of room ... but no orgs yet.

A few Australians have made noises about starting orgs in the lucky 
country, but they none seem real yet. It would make more sense for the 
existing orgs - Alcor, CI, Venturists, Extropians, and the rest - to 
pool forces and move here en masse. Beautiful land is cheap just 
outside most major cities. Tweed shire, it seems to this Tweed 
resident, would be an optimal choice.

"The secret of a long life is knowing when it's time to go" -- Michelle 
Shocked.

Peter Merel.

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=24619