"As liberty consists only in being subject to no man's will, and nothing denotes a slave but dependence on the will of another; if there be no other law in a kingdom than the will of a prince, there is no such thing as liberty." -Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government.

John Milton, in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates:

"And surely they that shall boast, as we doe, to be a free Nation, and not have in themselves the power to remove, or to abolish any government supreme, or
subordinat, with the government it self upon urgent causes, may please their fancy with a ridiculous and painted freedom, fit to coz'n babies; but are indeed under tyranny and servitude; as wanting that power, which is the root and sourse of all liberty, to dispose and oeconomize in the Land which God hath giv'n them, as Maisters of Family in their own house and free inheritance. Without which natural and essential power of a free Nation, though bearing high their heads, they can in due esteem be thought no better than slaves and vassals born, to the tenure and occupation of another inheriting Lord. Whose government, though not illegal, or intolerable, hangs over them as a Lordly scourge, not as a free government; and therefore to be abrogated."

Historian Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism:

"If and only if you live under such a self-governing system will your rulers be deprived of any discretionary powers of coercion, and in consequence deprived of any tyrannical capacity to reduce you and your fellow-citizens to a condition of dependence on their goodwill, and hence to the status of slaves."

"As Sidney makes clear, it is the mere possibility of your being subjected with impunity to arbitrary coercion, not the fact of your being coerced, that takes away your liberty and reduces you to the condition of a slave."

Prediction for inauguration

Jan. 20:

During Barack Obama's inaugural address, his soaring oratory causes a woman to faint into the person behind her, leading to the other 4 million people on the Mall going down like dominos.

--The Washington Post.

Fairness doctrine based on scarcity of fact

Good column by George Will.

Empathy deficit?

According to the U.S. government, total charitable contributions in the United States amounted to over $240 billion in 2005. That didn't include volunteer work. which was estimated to include 44 percent of Americans producing a dollar value of $240 billion.

But apparently it's not "enough."

President-Elect Barack Obama's has asserted that America suffers from an "empathy deficit." This, in part apparently, because CEOs make so much more money that most in his listening audience, per one of his comments. In such statements, Obama ascribes to the liberal tenet of faith that our bloated, inefficient, corrupt and bankrupt government (as opposed to individuals acting privately) is the solution to nearly all problems.

The government article noted that "The stereotype many Europeans hold of Americans as uncharitable towards the poor is wrong, according to a scholar who has studied the link between faith, charity and politics for many years."

Ironically, givers are skeptical of government, particularly government efforts to redistribute income, according to this State Department article. "The poorest and richest households give the most as a percentage of income. Non-givers, according to [David] Brooks, tend to be young, unreligious, unmarried males who believe government should redistribute income."

Meanwhile, we the obnoxii, should not be surprised by greater government moves into the egalitarian/welfarism realms. And these supposedly will usher in the "New Birth of Freedom" a la Obama.

It's taken many decades for us to arrive at the current state of the union. And it's been a bi-partisan slide downhill. ). It calls to mind the informative neo-Roman characterization of living in a condition of politically-instituted/politically-sustained dependence on others as equal to a loss of civil liberties, tantamount to slavery, and the defining mark of tyranny.

Quentin Skinner, in Liberty Before Liberalism: "The concept of slavery is initially discussed in the Digest under the rubric De statu hominis, where we are told that the most fundamental distinction within the law of persons is between those who are free and those who are slaves. The concept of liberty is always defined in the Digest by contrast with the condition of slavery, while the predicament of the slave is defined as that of 'someone who, contrary to nature, is made into the property of someone else.'...[slavery is the] predicament of anyone who depends on the will -or, as we say, on the goodwill -of someone else."

Sallust in the Bellum Catilinae refers to the "obnoxii" who live " in subservience to" the powerful.

Per Tacitus -those who live at the mercy of others are exposed to harm. A condition of dependence is linked to forfeiture of liberty.

Skinner on Livy -"the posession of libertas, the ability 'to stand upright by means of one's own strength without depending on the will of anyone else.'"

Micro-chipping AIDS patients -not surprising

I wasn't surprised by this story, "Indonesian AIDS patients face microchip monitoring", since years ago I had been contacted on a similar topic by mischievous short-seller and art dealer Timothy J. Miles. (Miles was later outed publicly in Forbes and elsewhere as the real identity of "Nick Tracy", proprietor of the defunct Our-Street.com).

Miles, who relayed that he was once an advisor to Florida company Applied Digital Solutions, maker of the "Verichip" microchip for humans, had engaged in a "gotcha" email set-up with ADS honchos. Posing as security consultant for an African country, Miles pitched ADS on selling officials of this country chips to forcibly implant -with the help of the, gulp, military - in AIDS patients and prisoners. In addition, he wanted lots of personal data on the chips.

You can read the "sting" email exchange he sent me (he adopted yet another identity for publication, that of a human rights activist). It's archived here.

Flashback: Former Bush HHS Sec Tommy Thompson joined the board of ADS in 2005. Then came reporting that he would get himself implanted.

Photos from the $Moneytown$ party @ Dahlak on U Street. $Moneytown$ features DJs who play 'old school' funk and soul, including rare finds and unreleased vinyl.

Dahlak is an Eritrean restaurant with an entrepreneurial outlook -at night they remove most of the tables and convert themselves into a small nightclub, promoting interesting and original music. I'm glad to see they're attracting an enthusiastic crowd.

Last summer: Emmanuel forecasts legislative agenda

Click here to get some clues.

"During a forum hosted by National Journal at this summer's Democratic National Convention, Rep. Rahm Emanuel listed a series of legislative changes that he said would be easiest to pass if Barack Obama became president. As Obama's new chief of staff, Emanuel's laundry list of priorities might offer some insight into how the first 100 days of the new administration will unfold.

Atlantic Media Company Political Director Ronald Brownstein moderated the event and started by asking Emanuel to explain why an Obama administration would choose to cooperate with Republicans, given that his party was likely to win strong control of Congress."

Voting for Lonesome Rhodes

Hero worship is an easier path than truth. So says Marc Fisher in this interesting column. I don't agree with every point of Fisher's, but the gist of his article is an important observation.

Excerpt: "Lonesome Rhodes is a great American character, a work of fiction, from the movie voters most need to see in these last hours before we elect a president.

'A Face in the Crowd,' a 1957 masterpiece by Elia Kazan, is ... a movie about right now, about a moment when fear and insecurity do battle with pride and aspiration, a time when we know we're being lied to yet feel so comforted when people tell us everything's going to be just fine.

Despite the fact that both candidates for president got where they are by breaking the mold in their own parties, despite the fact that Americans chose these two men because they seemed like the least traditional, least phony choices in the lot, there is, in the end, no candidate who is leveling with the people. "

"Where will we find justice?"

From a colleague:

"My law school course in Equity was taught by an 80-year-old professor emeritus who graduated from the Naval Academy and he knew my name. Once when discussing an environmental case in which the judge was struggling to find a solution he asked, rhetorically, 'Where is a remedy if not in the courts?' I raised my hand. 'Well, sir, if there is no remedy in the courts, the remedy is in the streets.' Shocked, he paused. Then he said, 'I guess you're right.'

Sadly, the media will not be on the side of laissez faire and the sheeple will not take to the streets to defend freedom. More and more I am convinced that Ayn Rand did not succeed with Atlas Shrugged. The race to the bottom has reached the point of no return. The only solution is to accelerate the inevitable. Perhaps it's time to shrug."

I've been very busy -and absent from these pages. Here's the latest cover of TNI -on the credit crisis.

About our website: We've got a new one in the works, and currently the magazine section of our publisher (The Atlas Society) is unfortunately not functioning. So, to read this cover story -please go here.

I've switched duties from managing editor to acting executive editor. The next issue is well underway and I'm enjoying the work.

Also -for those who may have missed the announcement, we have gone quarterly. The new strategy will include a new and extensive focus on the web. The work on the web should begin within 2 months. Many of the interactive modules we'll be using are already built (thanks you yours truly, who worked with a studio to get them designed according to our specs).

Another bogus news story on chip implants

Reuters goofs here when they report that Mexican kidnapping victims who have been implanted with a chip can be tracked via satellite. This is a common error made in news reports on the RFID chips -that they can be tracked via GPS. In fact, later in the story the article says the "Xega" chips are similar to Verichips, while the Xega website displays actual Verichips . Verichips can only be read by a reader located a few feet away. Technically, with enough portal readers, you could "track" implantees a la Minority Report, but that's different from saying they can now be tracked via GPS.

While reporters should really start doing their homework on this issue -they've been making the same error for 7 years -the parent company of Verichip, Florida's Applied Digital Solutions, was instrumental in spreading the so far false notion that their chips can be tracked via GPS. They first announced that capability was part of the patent for one of their implants in 1999 and 2000. At an investor event in November 2000 in Manhattan (which I attended) they displayed live GPS tracking of a prototype on a large overhead screen. Later they revisited the notion by stating that they were again working on a GPS-trackable implant, while at various other times they have vehemently denied the idea.

The company itself has engendered controversy by:
* Stating that a McKinsey & Co. market research report estimated a $70 billion market in the U.S. alone for the chip
* Suggesting the implant replace green cards.
* Suggesting it be used for prisoners and parolees.

Some amusing side effects:
* Protesting the chip made odd bedfellows of the Black Radical Congress, ACLU, electronic privacy advocates and the "mark of the beast" gang.
* Gartner analysts began listing GPS implants as an "emerging technology."

Some not-so-funny stuff:
* A friend of mine who used to do classified undercover work for the US ('nuff said), says he was involved in the testing of GPS implants on FBI agents back in 1995. However, these implants were larger in size and attached to 10 inches of coated antenna wire. Backup was available in form of AWACS planes and briefcase monitors which could be carried into subways, etc. That testing was done here in the Springfield mall area. The intial results were impressive. "There was nothing they could do to get away," he said. However, in real life applications, the results were mixed -sometimes perfect tracking, sometimes inexplicable drops of signal. In any event, he opposed any commerical entity offering kidnapping protection, as he said no civilian should be trusted with handling that data. The CIA makes its agents with access to such data take regular polygraph tests for example. No civilian entity could have such high standards, in his opinion.

References:

*One of my many articles on GPS implants

*Nathan Cochrane, then-deputy IT editor for Australia's The Age and Syndey Morning Herald, refers to my WND reporting on the chip in this Politechbot posting:

Excerpt:

"WorldNetDaily (WND) broke the Digital Angel story. Its reporter was subsequently castigated by the company, allegedly for twisting a spokesman's words, but it appears the news service was on the money all along. WND has done
an excellent job of tracking this implant tracking company's machinations."

Why no outage?

As the government socks taxpayers with bearing the consequences of the reckless behavior of more financial entities, the Wall St. Journal asks, "Why no outrage?" Indeed, why?

"America's 21st-century financial victims make no protest against the Federal Reserve's policy of showering dollars on the people who would seem to need them least."

In his book 1936 book, Under the Axe of Fascism, historian Gaetano Salvemini explained that fascism makes taxpayers responsible to private enterprise, because "the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social."

Idiots fiddle while Rome burns

A good summary, via my colleague Gene Holloway.

"The collection of ne'er do wells, clueless dolts, political hacks, and oh,
let's just be blunt and call them what they are -- total Idiots -- expands into an ever larger circle.

While the Republic burns due to the unsavory combination of incompetence, ideological rigidity, and crony capitalism, the fools and assclowns seem ever more determined to avoid any personal responsibility for the damages they have wrought. Instead, they flail about blindly, blaming everything and everyone -- except their own horrific negligence.

This is financial incompetence writ on a scale far grander than anything seen for centuries."

Read the rest.

Settling back in...took this today. (Can you spot the cat?)

Chloe the Cat, aka Scourge of the Shrews, is happy to see me, but suffering from temporary separation anxiety (she starts squeaking and meowing every time I disappear around a corner...) (The shrews aren't so happy she's back outside again.)

Home, sweet, home. Driving up my driveway in Virginia.

While I was @ Powell's I chilled out a few times in the coffee shop -where you can take your books and browse while having a snack. I love this place!

I got into Portland before noon. My flight out was @10:30 pm... and I spent the entire day @ Powell's Books -a wonderful bookstore that is 4 stories high and takes up a whole city block. Used and out-of-print books sit side-by-side next to new titles. I love it.

I had most of what I bought shipped back to me -and took four books on the plane.