This blog is not closing down and will return to normal output shortly.
The heart problem that put me into hospital after New Year was “paroxysmal atrial fibrillation”. This seems likely to have been the cause of the lack of energy I had complained was afflicting me towards the end of last year. It can be controlled by drugs and I was in hospital for six days while they got it controlled.
On discharge I was ordered to rest awhile, but had three speaking engagements I was determined to honour. On 23 January was the Sam Adams Award at the Oxford Union, including a live videolink with Julian Assange, and a debate there the next day on “The American Dream”. In the daytimes I researched Burnes documents in Worcester College Library. Then the next day I flew overnight to Accra, arrived the morning of the 26 January and that night did the Immortal Memory at the Burns Night for Accra Caledonian Society.
I had picked up a sore throat in Oxford which I put down to too much public speaking. But by Sunday morning in Accra I felt absolutely terrible, and have been in bed the last four days with a flu, quite possibly swine flu (certainly the nastiest flu I can ever recall). For someone recently out of hospital with heart problems, that has been a bit scarey.
This morning I feel human again. I have quite a lot of work I simply must do in Accra, as I have no other way to feed my family, and funds are very low. But I intend to be home again on the 5th, as I have an echocardiogram appointment on the 6th.
I do intend to have the blog fully functional again as soon as I can, and stop these bloody health bulletins. I apologise for giving so much personal detail but I feel a need to explain why the blog has been cold.
The Galloway letter states that he doesn’t support any Arab dictatorship (nb – he uses the present tense) and that he has spoken, written and broadcast against all Arab dictatorships (use of the perfect tense).
Iraq under Saddam Hussein ?
So?
Rummy shakes hands with Saddam
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
Bliar kisses Gaddafi
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JBMJZu_GTbc/TsTyLA-bNnI/AAAAAAAACAo/TvBCMpCxBJQ/s1600/gaddafi-blair_w.jpg
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
—United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld
LOL and ROTFLMAO
Whilst We’re on the subject of Iraq under Sadam
It wasn’t Sadam whom Deliberately Killed Half a million of his countries infants – The Monstrous Abright – ” yes we think the price was worth it ” An infanticde led by western Sanctions…Bastards KNEW who would suffer most.
It wasn’t Sadam whom Used banned D.U wmd’s on an Entire cities Population, resulting the destuction of almost the Entire city of Fallujah… Also Resulting in doctors warning women there Not to fall Pregnant. Sickening
It wasn’t Sadam whom decimated Iraq, turning the place into One of the hells on earth ( the west backed isrealis are doing the same in Palestine)
There were No WMD’S in Iraq…we Know this
Thank you Kom at 11.35 – I have been missing your forensic demolition skills.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Galloway#Iraq_and_Saddam_Hussein
Good Brian Fujisan and Clark.
I thought Galloway’s letter was erudite, eloquent and straight forward and exposed Cameron for the hollow sham that he is.
btw ITN tonight described Cameron as ‘one of Libya’s liberators’.
Medialens
Tom Bradby (ITV News) just described Cameron as…”One of Libya’s liberators”. Unbelievable!
~~
Re: Tom Bradby (ITV News)
From Wicki…
“Bradby became Royal Correspondent for ITV News, covering a number of key stories, including the Queen’s Jubilee year, as well as the deaths of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret. He went on to become ITV News’ UK editor, and then political editor. On 16 November 2010 he carried out the first official interview of Prince William and Catherine Middleton at St James’s Palace following the announcement of the couple’s engagement, reportedly having been specifically requested by the couple due to Bradby’s friendship with the Prince.[5] He subsequently attended William and Catherine’s wedding as a guest on 29 April 2011.[6]
Unusually for a political editor he views himself as apolitical, saying that he does not “have a coherent set of political views”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bradby
Reply from Presenter Alistair Stewart on Twitter: “So, what? Invader? Ask the people of Libya, post-Gadaffi”.
~~~
That is what we are up against. A compliant media.
Mary, Even by the Corporate Media standards. to Attempt to portray Agent C, as a hero of any sort over Libya. i almost CANT believe. it First the Guardian Lies the other day, and now this. EVERY western leader and cohorts that had their grubby hand in Libya are war criminals, When people on Craig’s Blog are Often on Other Alternative media sites ( Global Research, Medialens, ect, we find the horrifying, Harrowing, Truths, what the So called rebels were doing to whole families in Libya, had me in tears, Maybe not the first time since Rwanda.
I noticed you like a bit of poetry Mary, here’s one i wrote many years ago
Those born
with aims so Fierce
those thorns
of destruction pierce
And some may cry
as Holocaust’s return
But the world stands by
As Evil fires burn
Sadly Shaking heads
of MEN grown old
soldiers who bled
for a world grown Cold
We watch the piling death
as mighty leaders rant and rave
godless months of wasted breath –
Send people to the earth, in Vast, Mass graves
Hard heavy years
Like a Bloody and breathless, Afro sky
or Frozen ocean, of ward war tears
the pain has waned, we Voyeurs stand by
As Genocide is reapplied
Cruel sad world, of Fear and Hate
Worldly hearts have ossified
Stones Wont Bleed, for a Million’s Sure Fate
On the Rwandan Genocide……..Brian
That’s beautiful and very tragic. It reminded me of old Harry Patch’s words about war. He died at the great age of 111. He wanted no fuss for his funeral but it was turned into a miltary and state affair with Camilla turning up for it.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/128746
Thanks Brian. Goodnight.
Craig, good health to you too.
Having read carefully your recent health entry, it appears that your immune system is playing havoc with you. This needs to be approached holistically, i.e. at a mind-body level. Diet, sleep, possibly relaxation techniques, brisk-walking, swimming while your in the warmth of Ghana, Ayurvedic herbal medicines etc. There are many things, all of which are within easy grasp that can and indeed need to be done to turn the situation around positively radically. Adding 20 years to your life and improving the quality of your life by multiples through removing blockages of energy and balancing the mind-body, which is you.
Modern allopathic medicine is as great as it is deeply flawed because of its limited grasp of the whole. It has its strengths and it is important to evaluate the star of the heart but we are a collection of body parts and our consciousness which makes us whole. Often people like you who are averse to corruption of all forms in life and this world become more sensitive and therefore susceptible. Relying on modern medicine alone, which is corrupt, carries its risks.
If i can guide you further, and more specifically, you have my email and it would be a pleasure.
Be well!
I worry that Craig is travelling in planes quite often. I put this link up before on the long thread where it got buried.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/british-airways-pilots-killed-by-toxic-1559777
There are many other similar links.
The only times I have been really ill with bronchial infections was after two long journeys to South Africa where my stepson and family live. The first time I spent most of my fortnight there in bed and thought my number was up at one stage. I am normally very healthy and do not catch colds or flu. The second time after getting home I was off work for nearly a fortnight. It has put me off going out there again and they cannot afford to come here due to the high cost of the fare which used to be in the low £hundreds but which is now just over £1,000 or getting on for £2,000 in the peak season.
Villager, 1 Feb, 3:28 am, from the next thread:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/01/amelia-hill-is-a-dirty-liar/#comment-391536
Sorry, although your comment contains some balance, I feel that I had to supply a bit more:
Antibiotics also kill bacteria very effectively. I’ll cite en example from my own experience.
One December I developed a very painful abcess under a tooth (which I probably could have avoided, but I’m not perfect). I saw my dentist who said that the tooth should be extracted, but not until the infection in the abcess had been countered, so he prescribed antibiotics, but with Christmas coming he couldn’t give me an appointment until January.
The pain decreased dramatically one day after starting my course of antibiotics, but started to return shortly after I’d finished the course. Since my dentist couldn’t schedule another appointment, I saw a GP and asked for more antibiotics to “tide me over”. This GP wasn’t very experienced, insisted that I was having an alergic reaction to the antibiotics despite that never happening to me before, and prescribed anti-histamines.
I got worse; I was getting blood poisioning from the bacteria in the abcess. My arms and legs developed hard, hot, red patches and I could barely function. Between Christmas and New Year I contacted my dentist. He couldn’t fit in an appointment, but wrote out a prescription for more antibiotics which I collected from reception. A day after starting those the red patches were gone, I could think clearly again and I was back to having just a loose and sensitive tooth, which was extracted early in January.
That’s twice in a row that antibiotics demonstrated their effectiveness to me, plus the negative example of what happened without them. Blood poisioning can be fatal, and I’m very glad that I didn’t “Chuck away those antibiotics”.
I expect that antibiotics can “create more toxins in the body” – many substances do, but of course the body has methods of expelling toxins. But the bacteria in the abcess were creating toxins faster than my body could dispose of them. Antibiotics worked alongside my body’s own systems and helped me until the cause could be dealt with.
However, there are real problems associated with antibiotics, particularly that bacteria are developing resistance to them.
Antibiotics reduce the load on parts of what gets called “the immune system”. This is why entire herds of farm animals are routinely dosed with antibiotics; the energy that the animals save by getting support in their fight against bacteria enables greater milk yeilds or faster weight gain. But, of course, this effectively sets up an “evolutionary laboratory” in which bacteria can develop resistance to antibiotics. As usual, commercial systems sacrifice long-term good for short-term profit.
…..
You also stated “This is a purely herbal preparation”. I’m not sure if you intended this as some sory of guarantee of safety, but a lot of advocates of “alternative” treatments do so. Therefore, I remind you that many of the most powerful toxins are produced by plants and animals. Arachnids are notorious for their well developed armoury of toxic substances. There are all the snake venoms, of course. And plants such as digitalis and deadly nighshade, and all the toxic fungii. And in the micro realm we have botulism, salmonella, etc. etc. Nature “invented” chemical weapons long before humans did.
“This is why entire herds of farm animals are routinely dosed with antibiotics;”
Now illegal under EU law, still do it in America.
Villager, I also have trouble with this:
I don’t think that you meant to imply that the entire field of modern medicine is corrupt, nor that the entire field of “alternative” medicine is free from corruption. However, many alternative medicine advocates do propose exactly that, and your statement above could be read that way.
There is both corruption and integrity in both fields, though its type tends to be polarised. The alternative field seems to suffer from more personal, individual corruption, whereas the establishment field suffers from well documented corporate (i.e. systemic) corruption, particularly in drug testing / approval, and to a lesser degree (I think) in research in general.
If you’ve read Craig’s Murder in Samarkand, you’ll know about the acupuncturist who recommended that Craig indulge a bit of paedophilia, and then plunged a very long needle into his chest. Craig subsequently suffered from many small blood clots in his lungs.
Fred, 1 Feb, 2:09 pm: thanks. Is that practice now entirely prohibited in Europe? Are there loopholes? Does it still continue due to inadequate enforcement?
Whatever, it shows the need for global enforcement. How many bacterium in a single animal? Let’s say that the European regulations have cut the practice by half. That still leaves trillions of bacteria still trying their survival abilities against the handful of antibiotics, and it only takes one single bacterium to survive and multiply; cutting the practice by half seems pretty insignificant. The new strain will soon find its way back to Europe.
“Is that practice now entirely prohibited in Europe? Are there loopholes? Does it still continue due to inadequate enforcement?”
Been banned since 2006 I believe, in pigs before that. On large farms in Britain I would say getting hold of the antibiotics unnoticed would be difficult and they would face a hefty fine if caught. I suspect a few dairy farmers may well give calves a non therapeutic dose soon after birth as a preventative measure, they’re usually sold on at a week old and they want to sell them healthy.
As for the rest of Europe, some governments turn a blind eye to these things, they don’t like upsetting their farmers, they have to eat.
Clark
1 Feb, 2013 – 1:03 pm
Villager, 1 Feb, 3:28 am, from the next thread:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/01/amelia-hill-is-a-dirty-liar/#comment-391536
Sorry, although your comment contains some balance, I feel that I had to supply a bit more:
“This is a purely herbal preparation, fast acting, healing and enduring without any side-effects. Chuck away those antibiotics–in the end they only create more toxins in the body, weaken your immune system and weaken you.” [My emphasis]
Antibiotics also kill bacteria very effectively. I’ll cite en example from my own experience.
—-
Clark thank you for your response and for bringing it into the right thread, as this is where Julian had popped-in. And my message was specifically addressed to him in the context of the very limited information about his health kicking around the media.
My point assumes that the standard anti-biotics have been tried, yet there is/was a persistent ‘raking cough’. I am in no way suggesting that anti-biotics are useless, just that they tend to be over-prescribed in this country as in the West generally. Most coughs, however stubborn and persistent, do not require antibacterial agents. So when i said ” in the end they only create more toxins in the body, weaken your immune system and weaken you.”, i mean in the end after having taken course-after-course and the darned thing is still there, that would be an occasion to chuck away the antibiotics. Although my perspective is that herbal Ayurveda medicines can be tried as a first line of treatment unless there are clear symptoms of the presence of unwanted bacteria or a test result confirming that. Unwanted or prolonged use of antibiotics can indeed as i said “create more toxins in the body” exacerbated by their side-effects and one’s lifestyle (eg a lack of exercise and fresh air). In case Julian’s case unfortunately, it can be safely assumed that his is not a holistic lifestyle confined as he is. That is one reason i believe that the treatment he is receiving from the British Govt is downright inhumane. A common side-effect of antibiotics is diarrhoea and at a minimum it is bound to effect the proper functioning of the digestive system, compounding the level of toxins in the body and slowing down the process of their expulsion.
I take some issue with Ayurveda being termed as an alternative medicine but rather like beauty, it is in the eyes of the beholder. Man is moving farther and farther away from not just from Nature but also from his own essential nature. I also have some issue with Ayurveda and all other medical branches being clubbed together as alternative. I believe in complementary/integrative medicine and don’t feel the need to club all non-allopathic treatments as ‘alternative’. I have often heard people confusing Ayurveda with homeopathy for example which couldn’t be farther from the truth. I am not going to try to sell Ayurveda to anyone but speaking from personal experience in the awareness of holistic living, i would recommend that you or anyone interested in holistic health day-to-day gets a look into it. Rather like yoga (but a set of exercises), i predict it will be the next Big Thing to happen in the health arena, in the deep sense of the word. The Online Resource section of the following website is a good place to start.
http://ayurveda.com/online_resource/index.html
WRT my statement that this is a “purely herbal preparation” i mean it as distinct from certain natural remedies which may also contain metals and/or minerals. Secondly to emphasise that the (inherent) chemicals one is ingesting are from a herbal/natural source and not synthetically made. But then so are, for the most part, cocaine, heroin and marijuana, we know that.
Villager, thanks for that, it really does make your position and recommendations much clearer. I agree entirely that antibiotics have tended to be over-prescribed, though I have got the impression in the last few years that general practitioners have been more careful with them; I’ve seen posters pointing out that antibiotics do not treat viral infections, and awareness of this fact seems to be spreading.
I think that it is very valuable that you posted this clarification. Medicine has become yet another propaganda battleground, and in that context I hope you can see how your original comment could have been interpreted. I get very upset by those people who claim that, in the field of modern medicine, all doctors, medical staff, and the entire body of researchers, are involved in an immense conspiracy to kill patients so long as it makes money; it is a very hurtful slur against people who have dedicated their lives to trying to help people, and it serves only to polarise the issue and muddle peoples’ minds.
Similarly, but from the “opposite” perspective, I entirely accept your point about lumping all other types of treatment under the umbrella term of “alternative”. I’m sorry that I did so, but I know nothing of Ayurveda. Grief, what a minefield; there aren’t even broadly agreed terms with which to discuss the matter! For instance, the label “allopathic”, as I understand it, is a term from homoeopathy, to distinguish “treating like with like” from “treating like with opposite”, and is obviously too narrow to apply to “modern” medicine with, for instance, its use of vaccines.
Here’s to a wiser, more inclusive future, eh?
Hope you get well soon, Craig.
Clark, you’re very welcome and yes we ‘modern’ humans are going to have to wisen up. Very few people are in tune with themselves, resulting everything from aggression to conflicts to dis-ease.
We don’t know who we are and don’t know how to read or listen to our bodies, which is one cliche which is not a cliche and yet since people don’t really understand what it means lapses back to being a cliche. I say listen to your body, your self first before running off to go listen to a doctor. We want somebody to spoon feed us and to tell us all will be well–just as long as you take these pills for xyz diagnoses which themselves are mere labels and prevent us from a holistic mind-body understanding of quite what is going on inside. X is told he has IBS and Y is told he has migraines and off they go happy that the ‘syndrome’ has been understood when in fact it hasn’t. The patient in turn becomes a card carrying member of the IBS society and blames the factors on their genes or external aspects thereby absolving all self-responsibility to understand the roots and make changes, and then huddles and commiserates with other such ‘afflicted’. The whole world you see is busy blaming factors external to them for all their problems, in every sphere, including health. The first tendency is blame a bug, not the fact that one isn’t eating or exercising properly or drinking in excess and so on and so forth.
Ayurveda provides a framework to understand oneself and for most is as good a place to start to ask Who Am I?
Why am i so aggressive? Why am i so abusive? Why do i feel out of whack? Why am i so egotistic?
At the risk of going out on a limb i would observe that you could take more care of your sleep and its timings. An old adage: An hour of sleep before midnight is worth two after. Its linked to our circadian rhythms.
Watch the birds how they promptly follow the sunset to sleep. Having come full circle, now that is being in tune with Nature with a capital N and in tune with their own essential nature which is part of all that. No, we have set ourselves apart from Nature and as ‘modern’ man think we are above it. Indeed, we are ravaging the environment; our minds/consciousness are/is a mess. An impartial alien observer would observe that we are on a path to destruction. Other wise this blog would be redundant. We get lost in the details–just look at the the silly, childish bickering that goes on here. People will argue that the devil is in the detail. I would posit but the Angels are in the Big Picture. And a healthy Society begins with a healthy mind and a healthy body.
As K said “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
I would also propose that self-study is an elementally important part of sane and healthy living. You may want to check him out at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti
and
http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/video.php
Hope you’ve won the challenge thrown by your computer and haven’t been ZOOKD.
Universal Blessings!
PS as for corruption in modern medicine, check this out as a taster. Another conversation, another time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlaxoSmithKline#Controversies
What this thread needs is a sound track.
http://www.graven-images.org.uk/temp/detritus.mp3
Villager, that Wikipedia link is quite a list, eh? Every example of corruption listed is driven by the profit motive, so I would ascribe the corruption to corporatism rather than “modern medicine”. Specifically corporatism, as the corporate structure bypasses personal morals, replacing any individuals that don’t serve the corporate objective of profit maximisation.
http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2012/702-bad-pharma-bad-journalism.html
And a small example from my own reflections:
http://www.killick1.plus.com/corporate-behaviour.html
A corporation uses people rather like a body manipulates cells, but in terms of value-judgements, we regard these as opposites; when cells break the body’s rules and multiply for their own reproduction we call it cancer. The next level of scale up we see corporations trying to grow without limit damaging Earth’s ecosystem, thus themselves acting like cancer at that level.
I’m not sure that it’s possible to be well adjusted within our dysfunctional modern system, or at least, not if we’re trying to fix it, rather like a body that produces “symptoms” as it struggles to correct some life-threatening condition. Yes, us humans bicker over the details, frantically firing brief messages at each other across the Internet like neurons in the brain of someone trying to solve an urgent, complex and alarming problem.
Isn’t it odd how so many huge problems and great opportunities all seem to be converging towards some climax or cataclysm? Population increase, energy supply, the ability to manipulate energy including that from which we ourselves are formed, all the religions and ideologies overlapping and producing both conflict and synthesis…
I’d go on but, unusually, I think I can get to sleep quite early tonight, thanks to a long and energetic walk (due to the thickness of the mud), concurrent with a conversation that seemed to have somewhat addressed some long-standing issues. Tomorrow I’ll continue with building my “new” computer (actually ten year old “junk” which will run community-written Free (GPL) Software just fine). In the mean time, Fred, I can’t play your .mp3, but thanks for linking to it, and I’ve saved it to play when I can.
Thanks for your kind wishes which I return; best wishes and hope to you and everyone.
@ Villager, 7.41pm – Hear, hear. I too believe that a lot of our dis-ease and dysfunction is because we externalise the causes of our unhappiness and fail to understand the proper boundaries between self/other, and which side of them responsibility truly lies.
All the best with your health issues Craig, please try to take things as easy as is humanly possible for a man such as yourself.
Exactly, Arbed. Response means answer. And we are busy looking for answers outside when the answer is within. We want “Society” to provide us with all our answers, just sort it out for ‘me’.
To me, responsibility=answer + ability= my ability to answer/respond.
Only then can you and I and the other build a healthy Society, for it IS We who have built this sick society. Change comes from within; it must start from me. I can go and march with a million other people and protest and it will have zero effect, unless each of us changes at a profound fundamental level.
This is where my admiration for Assange comes in. He is a different man, his world view is part of who he is, not something contrived. His approach, personal risk and sacrifice is having an impact on our collective consciousness. He is rejected and criticised for the same reason by people and ‘forces’ who are opposed to change. Who are blasé about war and organised murder. These are people who are very well adjusted to a sick society imho.
Clark, i hear what you are saying but i won’t be fooled by the corporate veil. There are people behind and of course within these companies. The same holds true within the power structures of Government but i won’t call it Government’ism. I reject every ‘ism–they are redundant to me. So i will call it directly corruption. The etymology of corruption includes ‘unhealthy’.
There are bribes involved in the form of bonuses, contracts with ‘researchers’ (sometimes happy to give you the answer required0, twisted influence over Govt etc etc.
More later and keep up the walking, as brisk as your body’s natural response. Have a good day!
Villager, I agree that there is personal-scale corruption. What I’m arguing is that structure escapes adequate inspection. As humans, our tendency is to examine at the scale of individuals, and, dare I say it, our human arrogance tricks us into thinking ourselves more important than we really are. So we tend to miss the importance of large-scale structure.
So let’s say that all humanity embark on spiritual self-improvement. Some achieve selflessness faster than others, but the proportion of selfish individuals shows a consistent downward trend. Good.
But what of the corporations and other such structures? Which individuals are they going to select? Which individuals can they safely select, considering that the corporations are locked in evolutionary competition with each other?
Say that Corp A selects a spiritually advanced board of directors who put human welfare and responsible environmental practices ahead of profit, whereas Corp B continues to behave like your example of GlaxoSmithKline. Corp B will “grow” at the expense of Corp A – where “grow” refers to the very limited realm of making more money, which is the environment in which these entities compete. Maybe Corp B will beat Corp A so thoroughly that Corp A can be subsumed, i.e. bought; this does seem to happen a lot, we routinely see the number of competing entities getting smaller, and the surviving entities themselves each getting bigger.
How small does the pool of spiritually unadvanced pool of individuals have to become before the corporations can no longer find the sort of decision-makers they need in order to survive in their brutal environment?
To put it another way, personal corruption is to corporations as a nutrient like iron is to the mammalian body – it’s necessary, but each body only requires a little bit which it directs to the critical locations within itself. Trying to reduce corporate corruption by eliminating personal corruption would be like trying to limit a population of mammals by making iron unavailable.
The effective way of countering corporate corruption is by transparency, accountability and regulation. Those should be functions of governments, but governments have been subverted by corporate influence.
And that is why Wikileaks is so important, and why the corporate media is working so hard to discredit Assange.
Continued from N_’s comment:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/01/amelia-hill-is-a-dirty-liar/comment-page-3/#comment-392097
Pole shifts: I think that humanity should make appropriate preparation.
The swelling of Sol to a red giant: That’s a long way off, and the Milky Way is due to collide with the Andromeda galaxy before then. Probably there won’t be humans that far in the future, but if there are, they should be well equipped to just get out of the way, if they want to.
Martin Rees and his “Billions of years”: Well, he could be right. There have been many mass extinctions on Earth. About 2.4 billion years ago, so it’s reckoned, photosynthesis really took off and flooded Earth’s atmosphere with oxygen. At the time, this was a deadly poison to most organisms, and a mass extinction probably occurred.
I know that there’s a lot of extinction going on right now, but if humans cook up uncontrollable, genetically engineered organisms or maybe self-replicating nano-machines (is there any difference?), then yes, the effects upon Earth could continue until the whole planet gets roasted in billions of years time. I do think that Rees might be a bit nuts, but that doesn’t mean he’s necessarily wrong about this.
Where would I draw the line? Which line? My idea of “progress” is that it is cumulative. Just changing things is not progress, if your new stuff destroys or makes impossible your former stuff. I don’t use Twitter, but others are welcome to as far as I’m concerned. I want technology that doesn’t destroy the natural environment, because I like the natural environment, and because that would be change as opposed progress. If people want to develop retroviruses that enable them to modify their entire DNA and thereby change sex or grow wings, that’s fine by me so long as it isn’t compulsory.
So it seems that you’d like to reduce the possibilities available in the future, whereas I’d like to increase them.
Hello! Who is here clearing spam?
“The swelling of Sol to a red giant: That’s a long way off, and the Milky Way is due to collide with the Andromeda galaxy before then. Probably there won’t be humans that far in the future, but if there are, they should be well equipped to just get out of the way, if they want to.”
All a long way off. But the Arctic could well be ice free in summer in as little as five years and some say it is the canary in the coal mine.
The bastards can’t wait to start drilling for oil there.