Welcome to the Donahue group. We're in our Christmas mode. Nobody's wearing jingle bells, but we do have a beautiful tree coming out of Mr. Risto's head, and it's a good time. It's actually gotten to be a very nice set right now, so I realized that during the taping of our first show, I neglected to introduce my fellow... Elves. Elves. Elves. Yeah. Mrs. Claus over here. Mrs. Claus. Oh, my. Oh, dear. Where do I go with that? Elf, Tom. Elf, Tom, and Elf, Kendra. Okay. Elf, Cal. Elf, Tom. Snoopy. Snoozy. You're at the North Pole. Dopey. Dopey, and I'm just playing grumpy, so we're doing fine. We're mixing our metaphors. We're mixing elves and dwarfs. There you go, so. The age is setting, and the stories are melding together. So we don't have to start this segment over. We're gonna continue to move forward. There's actually fairly serious business before the state. Remarkably, in my opinion, Governor Doyle is calling a special session of the legislature to convene December 11th. Cal, I asked you to kind of brief us on what it's all about. And... Well, the governor has finally called a special session on campaign financing, and that is something after he and the legislature being beat up by Common Cause and other public interest groups for the last year or so, because many people ran after the Jensen and Koala fiascos of the last session on reform. And everybody was seeming to say, well, when is the poof coming into pudding here? And finally, the governor has put forth a special session. The bill is basically the Ellis Bill that has been around for a number of years. And it does several things. One, it increases, emphasis is public financing, basically. We have had a public financing law in place. God, when did we debate that in the legislature? Probably in the 1970s, I think, 76. I even chaired the elections committee at that time and took a lot of heat for it. And it was a dollar check off voluntarily on your income tax. And basically, it became so ineffective financially that candidates didn't take public financing. And so, they turned to special interests. And we know that from Supreme Court races and governor's races and legislative races, that special interest money and shaking down special interests has become almost a full-time profession for some of these candidates and groups. And so, the call for public financing rejuvenation has been one that Common Cause, particularly, has championed. And the bill that's before the special session, the heart of it is to beef up the funding and make it viable so that candidates now will be able to plug back in. And it will raise the dollar check off to $5 or more. I think there's flexibility as what you can put into the fund. The big debate, of course, will be between the conservative Republican viewpoint, where many of the Republicans in assembly, particularly, have said, we don't believe in public financing. This is something that's unnecessary. Private interests, if they want to give money to candidates, that's fine. So there is that conservative viewpoint who will not take up this bill, don't want to take up this bill at all. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens in the assembly. Then there's another group of conservatives who say, we are willing to accept some type of public financing, but it's going to have to come as an additional tax on the person who checks it off or a reduction in their refund. Right now, the present, the bill that's been put forth and the way public financing has operated over the years is that you check it off, but it comes out at a general fund. It doesn't come off. Like the federal system. Yes. And the reason it's done that is that we're not trying to punish anybody or make it onerous on anybody to say, we ought to be financing these campaigns without special interest. The other thing that they're looking at is Supreme Court has ruled that without public financing, you can't have limits. The new limits will be much substantially increased, just looking at the common cause. Summary, $4 million for governors, $700,000 for attorney general, $150,000 limit for state Senate, $75,000 for state assembly. The old limits, I think, for $35,000 for the assembly and $50,000, I think, for the Senate. So you can see substantial increases. It tries, in some way, to get around the court ruling about that have legitimized and said there's nothing wrong with the independent expenditures. By saying that if you do get barraged as a candidate by the special interest, you will get additional money from the fund up to three times what your spending limit is. So in other words, $150,000 limit for a state senator three times that $4,450,000 could come your way if WMC or write the life or WEAC or whoever the special interest group comes on the scene and starts maligning your character and spending a lot of money in your district. I wish this would be, there would be a way we could get around the Supreme Court ruling because I think these independent expenditures are ones where we don't know where the money's coming from. It usually comes in last minute. It's a real game in character assassination and I really think there ought to be new ways of doing it. I don't know, this is a solution, but it is being suggested as one way. There's also provision in the special session bill saying that groups that want to participate in the public arena can give additional contributions. In other words, WMC or unions or whoever want to participate in funding their democracy, they can contribute to the campaign financing law and it make additional contributions which would then be monies available to candidates. All candidates, though. Yes, yes. So I think it's a package that's, because a lot of merit, there's more to it that I'm not gonna spend all the program going over the details, but it is something that has been sort of talked about for the last couple of years, since as I said, the scandals in Madison and it's good to see that now something's on the front burner. I think it'll pass the Senate, the state Senate because the Democrats do control it and they're gonna be loyal to the governor, but I think the assembly is gonna be, even though there's only a three-volt margin in this, by Republicans in the assembly, there is that split amongst Republicans about public financing in general, as well as how it is financed. And so that may indeed make this bill only a watered-down version of it when it comes out of the assembly and then going to a conference committee, how do you resolve that? But I commend the governor for doing this because if it goes down in flames, he can simply say, I did put forth, the culprits are such and such, these groups, they killed it, not me, I'm for it, and he has done his work in initiating the legislation. Well, I think it's a big package, it's certainly long overdue, and I particularly like the provision about if you are attacked by independent expenditure groups that you can get additional money to fight back. I was the treasurer for an assembly candidate a couple different times who took public financing because he really couldn't raise money any other way. And the rules were complex, the reporting requirements understandably were thorough as they should be when you're getting public money.   See, this is right for fun and games. I'm gonna be, I'm attacked, I need more money. And then, or if I need some more money, I send somebody out to attack me. I don't let people know that, but I send somebody out to attack me and say, I'm being attacked, I need more money. I mean, it's right for all kinds of abuses, at least that part of it where you say they request for more money, three times more money. My response would be that the system has been broken that is wrought with games today. Yep, I agree. All these candidates do from the Supreme Court, to the governor, to the legislature, is shake down special interest groups. And one of the provisions in the bill is at least there's no fundraising during the budget, which is the ultimate shake down, because that is a big thing. Oh, I did not know that. Yes. Well, now that's an important piece. Yes, it is. That's an important piece, I'd agree with that. It sounds like it will be eventually compromised. I mean, do you think any action will happen at all? Well, when the special session is called, this is, that's the legislature meets because the governor says you be there at 10 o'clock on such and such a date, and that bill is introduced, and the legislature must dispose of it. They can ship it off to committee and kill it, but they have to, something has to action with the bill has to be taken. And if the assembly decides to can it someplace in some committee, that's their decision, and they have made a decision to kill the bill. So the governor has gotten, they need to take some action because when they're in session, the chief clerk in each house reads the bill, says this is the hour, this is the session, and somebody's gotta do something about what, with this bill. It's been just introduced. Has anybody heard or do we have any sense of what reactions are among legislators? Well, I heard the leadership in the assembly echoed the long held position of the Republican caucus that they have trouble with the public financing aspect of it. And like I said, that is the caveat for some people who don't like public financing, as well as those who don't want it to be without an additional tax on the person who wants to participate. Maybe a compromise would be at least to try a vibrant and realistic public financing structure for Supreme Court races. I mean, I think that we have seen the justice system which should remain above political pandering and politics and all those other kinds of things really be demeaned in these terrible, terrible Supreme Court campaigns. And I mean, the Justice Ziggler is still, I mean, the sky is still falling in on her. Justice Butler, who's running for reelection, disclosed a $500 contribution, I think, from one of the attorneys who appeared in front of him, did it a little belatedly, at least according to the account that I read. And I mean, it can get to the point, you could have, and it has come close to this where issues come before the court, where the justices have all received contributions in one shape or another from the parties before them. And that's not cause for automatic disqualification.  And we do need to remember that people running for judicial offices may not, cannot, and do not ask for money, personally. That's school choice. If you've got a judge who probably favors school choice versus a judge, possible Supreme Court who might not, we act, maybe contribute, they don't want school choice. So they contribute to this judge, this judge can't vote on it, he has to recuse himself. And then the judge who got money for, because they kind of favor school choice, they have to recuse themselves. I mean, where do you stop? Yeah, well, where you stop is you say, at least in this particular part of the political spectrum, we can afford to have public financing, we can afford to have campaign limits, and we can afford to keep this system as pure as possible and out of the really nasty political arena. I mean, there just don't seem to be the limits that there used to be. And that is carrying over into these judicial races. Race between Chief Justice Abrahamson and Sharon Rose. You may not remember, I sure do, it was real, real, real unpleasant. The race between Clifford and Ziegler was very, very unpleasant. I'm trying to think, there have been a couple in between Justice Wilcox, got a huge amount of improper support from charter school organizations outside the state. And I'm sure he did not have any personal knowledge of these various violations and so forth, but that was very tough for him and tough for the court. This has gotta stop. And even if it's in a compromised position where you don't have this kind of thing going on, where you at least would have some sort of rules and financing, and just Supreme Court Races. Yeah, I'm not asking for the sun, the moon and the stars, just a Supreme Court Race. I don't know, to me it makes sense. I think it's going to be in the law with a proposal that Cal's talking about. If people don't check off the $1, $2, $5, and as I understand, and maybe I read it wrong in the summary to Cal, people actually will have an opportunity to check off on a partisan basis, is that? In other words, I can put $5 to the Democratic side or $5 to the Republican side. But the point being is that if people don't do that, and I know we don't have time here to go into this public integrity endowment, which is a way for people, organizations, as you were talking about, to put more money into the pot, if that money isn't sufficient to fund this, then it is going to come out of general revenues. And I think that's what's going to be difficult for Joe Blow to get their head around, I think, is that for the first time, tax dollars are going to be financing private politicians, and that's something we're not used to, and it's going to take. It's going to say when the monies were insufficient, the candidates were prorated. Right. The pot just got, my hapless candidate, just got a little tiny amount of money. He was supposed to get $37,000, and I think he got $17,000. I think that's going to be a real mental obstacle for lots of folks is to really understand that if you're unhappy with the current arrangement, and it seems like large people are in the general sense that they don't feel politicians are being responsive to them and their needs and in their lives and connecting with the average folks, whatever that might mean, and the bridge will cross that river too, accepting the fact that my hard earned tax dollars are going to be part of them anyway, are going to be going not only to universities and schools and bridges and highways, but to pay for elections. That's going to be a travel for a lot of folks, I think, a real journey for them. And that's why I think ultimately there'll be a discussion and a debate, but I don't know how far or how much this bill's going to be passed. But I do think the proper beginning is to at least say that, at least for judges elections, because even if there is an impropriety, even if judges don't really vote or decide cases based upon their campaign contributions, a lot of people think they are. And I think there is a certain double standard when you start looking at the way, because Ziggler's been down this road, I think the bar for her has been laid up a little higher than say Justice Wilcox, who nobody really much, there wasn't much yelling and complaining about Wilcox.  And I think that's really very, very, it's a bizarre sort of standards and it's going to cause real trouble. It's going to make the court look like the legislature or the governor for that matter. And we don't want that to happen. No. At least not with our legal system, which is a pretty swell system. Justice Ziggler is now disclosing all campaign contributions. I think that's an excellent step. Not that those things are not accessible, but to take the step of actually letting the public know in a proactive way who you're getting your money from is, one, I think was a smart PR step for her. But two, just from an ethical perspective, I think it's an excellent idea. And I give her credit for trying to salvage something out of this very difficult time for her. And didn't we, I think we talked in one show that she's going to work, she had to contribute so much money to her own campaign that essentially she will work six out of 10 years just to come even to the, the job won't start paying until she's well into the second half of her term. So, things got to change as far as I'm concerned. It'll be interesting. Well, you never get your money back from the presidency, so. There you go. Well, what some candidates have done is, they give the money to their campaign, but it's an understanding that's a loan. And then they, through the budget years and whatever they shake down all these special interest groups to raise their 60,000 and whatever they lent the campaign and the check has written back to them to reimburse them for. Absolutely. Which is something that smells too. Yeah. Although I think candidates who make loans always do hope that one way or another that they'll get repaid, but in any event. We are now at the juncture where the cable bill, the infamous cable bill has been passed in both houses of the legislature soon to be signed by the governor. We're gonna have a really nice farewell show here.  Shall we be as the young folks on the Titanic and stand on the bow of the ship as it slowly sinks down? I don't know if that will necessarily happen, but that's been a very interesting process, kind of fast-tracked. and it'll remain to be seen how all of this plays out. Well, I think it was a good victory for the opponents of the bill, which were companies that are not the cable franchise, the people in place now, and the AT&T's of the world who want to enter the arena. There were substantial contributions made, and I think they bought goodwill in the legislature and the bill passed. I think from people I have talked to with fewer amendments than they thought would occur. And as a result, they were somewhat surprised that the fact that the legislature amended the bill so little even after very heavily being lobbied by people who are, for example, in the community television area and other people who had concerns about the way the existing operations are and whether they ought to be continued. I didn't get a sense that the local municipalities, the mayors and common councils across the state, you didn't hear their voice, maybe it was there, maybe the lobbying was going on in Madison because they stand to lose us a flow of money that their budgets rely on. So I would think that mayors and common councils across the state would have really been a much more vocal, much more visible discussion in this debate. I was really surprised about that. And I don't think most people understand that. Yeah, I may save a couple of bucks here in my cable bill or whatever it might be, but what's going to happen to my property taxes when those funds now flow someplace other than to the local communities as they negotiate local contracts with whoever's going to be providing their services? For example, the money that comes to the city of Sheboygan is about $400,000, as I understand it, from cable fees, about a third of which comes to produce the show and the many other fine shows that are on TV8 and other cable stations. So $200,000 will be lost to the city in terms of revenues depending on how all of this flows. And so that will be interesting. I did check the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign's website because they have all the financial records online sorted by industry. And so you could see that the candidates and legislators, rather, who were in favor of the bill received about six times more money from AT&T-associated lobbyists than legislators who did not. And so there was really quite a disparity there. So I think this probably was one of the better bills that money could pay for. I don't know, but it'll be interesting to see, number one, just how it works and if it does deliver all the promises that have been made and then second, how it affects this station and this wonderful TV show. I mean, we're gonna be nominated for an Emmy one of these days, I keep thinking, right? Right? Best comedy. Best comedy show. Yes, the best disjointed reality show. Best disjointed reality comedy show in the universe, but in any event. It really will be interesting to see what'll happen because I think a lot of people do watch, at least some of the time, shows like this or they watch their local school boards or they watch their local common councils and their county board meetings and they get at least a general sense of what is going on and when that, if this plays out where cable companies can provide services without having to worry about these types of things, it'll be interesting to see how well-involved and informed people are going to be about local government and even for that matter, state government because there's been some discussion about putting the state government on local access cable channels also so people can see the Senate and Assembly at work just like we watch C-SPAN on our national channels. And that's terribly exciting. Well. It can be, particularly when we're making speeches and we know the camera's on us. Scott Jensen, the DA in Dane County has picked himself up, brushed himself off and he's gonna start all over again. He says with a new trial for Mr. Jensen, it is my understanding that the Attorney General decided not to appeal that. And it will be interesting to see how that plays out. I wonder if Chacwala is saying, gee, maybe I should have been played it a little bit more. I don't know. I mean, there's talk now that rather than going through a trial that could be much longer because that judge at that time, anytime Jensen's defense and Jensen himself would say, well, everybody's doing it. I would like to bring in people who also have done this to show that I was not the only perpetrator here. The judge says that's not relevant. Shout them up and sort of maybe compress the trial. If they can bring in truckloads of people who said, yeah, I did the same thing. I shook down people, I did it on state time and I used state phones and all those type of things. Is this gonna be a long trial? And now is the DA gonna say, I gotta run it. I got the Dane County DA's office. Should I plea bargain now with Jensen and all of a sudden the deal that's wrought is a good one for Jensen, I don't know. Can you imagine getting that subpoena, having the process server at the door, hi, you've been invited to testify at this trial to the illegal activity that you engaged in, just like Mr. Jensen. But unless I'm misunderstood and please disabuse me if I'm wrong, the appeal, the appellate courts overturning of that or ordering a new trial was based upon the judge's instructions to the jury being erroneous. So that judge in theory could run the very same trial, make the same kind of rulings along the things that you're suggesting. Cal, as long as he just or she changes her instructions of the jury at the end, I mean, that was the offending piece there, right? Well, and part of it was that the instructions were in operation of the trial that he could not, he was always silenced and when he said, I'd like to bring in someone else who did this. Or I think Jensen wasn't corrected by the judge when he would start going off on these things. And well, so-and-so down the hall was making the calls at the same time I was, and with the idea that I wasn't the only guy, I was part of the whole atmosphere of how things ran in state government at that time. And the judge would say, well, that's not relevant. You can't say that, you know. And I think part of the appeal court judge says, well, you can't shut him up for that. He could raise to say that if he wants to. Sure, and typically the jury instructions, particularly in a big case like this, you would have thought that those would have been, there's always a jury instruction conference at the end of the trial, but you have to imagine that there was a whole lot of work on those issues prior to the trial. And something called emotion and limine, which, if granted, prohibits one party from saying or presenting a theory of the case or whatever. So the jury instructions, I think, are pretty tied to the testimony that's allowed. Yeah, and because it's an element of the case and it's a part, jury instruction tells you what elements the district attorney has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. So it's my sense the judge all along, and this was just, this was wrong. But I mean, typically in a big case, that's how that would get played out. So I don't know what the plea deal was. Jensen was convicted of three felonies, I guess, and a misdemeanor. So maybe not, maybe just something a little less serious. I can't remember what Quallo was convicted of or what he pled to. I can't remember. But, I mean, he spent nine months in jail. Yes, well, and he was convicted of felon, I believe, I think he lost his license, correct? Well, I think it'll be an interesting defense strategy to say, well, everybody else was doing these things that looked deeply suspicious and corrupt, so let me off. Yeah, I know juries are gonna do what juries are gonna do, and you just don't know at any given time. Well, that was this, I think, the whole intent of when we wanted to get into this, but I don't know, that might play well with a jury of saying all these politicians are all corrupt, you know? They're all dirty. The parks in and all in their house, you know? Well, I, if there's life. I better not be in that jury, because I'll say guilty and I'll just bring on the next one.  Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. I would certainly advise any incline of mine who has been subpoenaed to plead the Fifth Amendment, but in any event, we have very little time left. Let's celebrate Madison and the state of Wisconsin, again, being in the forefront of stem cell research, new stem cells, viable cells being developed from human skin. We get away from the embryo debate, which was certainly, was not a good thing for the state in terms of advancing its research and economic interests in stem cells, but again, I think Wisconsin needs to celebrate, number one, being a leader. Number two, it needs to capitalize from an economic perspective. Sort of the Silicon Valley of the stem cell, Valley of the country. We need to keep it here in Wisconsin, I think. And one thing we could do, the little promotion here that the Wisconsin Academy, of which we're both involved in the Sciences, Arts, and Letters, will be sponsoring one of the UW researchers speaking at B-Library in May of 08 to talk about stem cells. So I'm sure we'll get right from the horse's mouth what research gains they have made. Excellent, a fine way to stop. We here from the Donahue Group send our wishes for a happy holiday season, and I was gonna make everybody sing, but I guess we won't do that. Thanks, and we'll see you in the new year. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"]


Welcome to George H. Smith's Excursions into Libertarian Thought, a production of Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute, narrated by James Foster. Freedom, Rights, and Political Philosophy, Part Five I began this series of essays with the intent of providing historical background that will aid our understanding of the rights-based conception of freedom as found in the writings of John Locke and many other classical liberals and libertarians. Some of my discussions, however, may seem to have wandered off topic, so this essay will refocus our attention on some key theoretical issues and examine them in a bit more detail. What you are about to read is both a summary and an elaboration of some of my earlier discussions. For the sake of convenience, but at the risk of oversimplification, I shall dub the two kinds of freedom discussed here, the Lockean and the Hobbesian. In the Lockean tradition, freedom was commonly viewed as a state of affairs that exists between two or more persons. Freedom, in other words, pertains to an interpersonal relationship. A given relationship is regarded as free to the extent that no one, including a government, violates the rights of anyone else. It was this conception of freedom that led to John Locke's claim that the purpose of law is to preserve and enlarge freedom, not to abolish or diminish it. A social relationship is described as free if all parties in that relationship can exercise their equal and reciprocal rights without coercive interference by others. According to this approach, it is possible in theory to have a political state of perfect freedom. This would consist of a society whose government is strictly limited to the protection and enforcement of individual rights. To the extent that the powers of government are limited in this fashion, we are said to have a free society. This conception of freedom has been assailed for being value-laden. A correct definition of freedom, we are told, should be value-free, so as not to prejudice the outcome of political debates. At this point, critics of a rights-based notion of freedom typically resurrect the conception of freedom defended by Thomas Hobbes, Robert Filmer, Jeremy Bentham, and other philosophers who argued that all laws, including laws that prohibit murder, theft, and other criminal acts, necessarily restrict freedom. Freedom, properly conceived, should mean the freedom to do whatever one wishes to do without the coercive interference of others. According to the Hobbesian conception, if a law prohibits rape, then we should say that the potential rapist is not free to rape because his action has been restrained by coercive laws. Of course, the coercive act of rape would itself interfere with the freedom of the victim, and to the extent that a woman resists her attacker, she is also restraining his freedom to rape. Moreover, if the rapist attempts to overcome the resistance of his victim, then he is restraining her freedom to resist, and should she continue to resist, then she is restraining the freedom of the rapist to overcome her resistance, and so on, until we find ourselves enmeshed in an endless network of conflicting freedoms. This Hobbesian conception of freedom focuses on individual actors within a social relationship, not on the nature of the relationship as a whole. A Lockean would analyze the rape scenario in a much different manner than I have just described. The rapist, in using force against his victim, has introduced physical force or the threat of force into a relationship where it did not previously exist. At that point in time, beginning with the initiation of force, a coercive state of affairs is said to exist between two people, and that state of affairs will continue to exist until the threat of rape is removed. Thus, if the victim successfully uses force to repel her attacker, her use of force ends, at least temporarily, the coercive state of affairs that was generated by the rapist. This marks the essential difference between force used offensively and force used defensively. The defensive use of force can terminate a coercive state of affairs. This, I think, is a reasonable interpretation of Locke's conception of social freedom. My account is also consistent with subsequent classical liberals, such as Immanuel Kant and Herbert Spencer, who explicitly formulated principles of equal freedom. All such writers were thinking of freedom in terms of a social relationship, a state of affairs that exists over time, not merely in terms of individuals and individual acts considered in isolation from their broader social context. That this idea of freedom involves value concepts such as rights and justice was understood and freely admitted by most liberals. Consider the following remarks, 1826, by the French liberal Victor Cozum. The business of this state is to cause justice to be respected by force. The state does not take into consideration the infinite variety of human elements. It does not embrace the whole man. It regards him only in his relationship to the idea of the just and the unjust. Then surries all duties and all legal rights. The only legal right is that of being respected in the peaceful exercise of liberty. The only duty, or at least the first of all, is to respect the liberty of others. Justice is nothing more than this. Justice is the maintenance of reciprocal liberty. The state does not restrain liberty, as some aver. It develops and secures it. The Lockean conception of freedom need not involve value judgments. It, like the Hobbesian conception can, in some cases, be analyzed in a purely descriptive manner. Consider this scenario. Mr. Jones walks up to a complete stranger and punches him in the face, after which he attempts to beat the stranger to death. According to the Hobbesian conception, Mr. Jones is exercising his freedom to murder in this situation by restraining and ultimately abolishing the freedom of the stranger. In other words, one party in this relationship is free, whereas the other is not free. In contrast, a Lockean would focus on the relationship that exists after Mr. Jones through his first punch. By initiating force, Mr. Jones generated a coercive state of affairs relative to the stranger. A coercive relationship stands in contrast to a voluntary relationship. A voluntary state of affairs is said to exist when no coercion is used by anyone in the relationship. The Lockean need not introduce value concepts in describing my scenario. He may describe the relationship between Mr. Jones and the stranger as coercive without injecting value judgments into his account. He may even say that Mr. Jones initiated the coercive relationship without necessarily condemning Mr. Jones, whether explicitly or implicitly, by appealing to the rights of the stranger. We are here dealing with a simple relationship in which we can directly observe which person generated the coercive relationship by using physical force. But things become more complicated in situations like the following. Mr. Jones walks into a house, picks up a television, and walks out with it. Now consider the question, was any coercion involved in the action taken by Mr. Jones? We cannot answer that question without additional information, such as, does Mr. Jones own the television set? If not, if the television belongs to someone else, then did Mr. Jones take the television with the permission of the owner? As we move beyond overt acts of violence against individuals to actions that involve external goods, we cannot even identify a coercive relationship without knowledge of the relevant property rights. To own something is to have the rightful power to use and dispose of it. Thus, if the television belongs to someone else and if Mr. Jones takes it without the owner's permission, then the owner no longer has the power to use and dispose of his property as he sees fit. Such freedom has been denied him by Mr. Jones. In depriving the owner of his freedom to use and dispose of his television, Mr. Jones has generated a coercive relationship between himself and the owner. Mr. Jones, by exercising physical control over property that does not belong to him without permission of the owner, prevents the owner from exercising the same control. This generates a coercive state of affairs between Mr. Jones and the owner, a relationship that will continue to exist until and unless the owner regains physical control over his own property or perhaps the equivalent in value. This is a bare bones example. I have not considered what happens if, say, Mr. Jones destroys the television because such possibilities are not relevant to my basic point. My example merely illustrates the need to specify property titles when we move beyond a simple relationship between two people to a more complex relationship that involves external goods. If this third element is introduced, we will be unable even to identify the presence of coercion, much less pinpoint who initiated the coercion, without taking property titles, who owns what, into account. I am here dealing with a complicated set of interrelated problems that would take a book to address satisfactorily. Again, however, it is unnecessary to take theoretical detours given that I merely wish to indicate, first, the role that property rights play in the Lockean notion of freedom, and second, the theoretical value of the Lockean conception in developing a full-blown theory of rights and freedom. In my next essay, I shall return to some of the historical thinking that contributed to the view that freedom signifies a state of affairs, a relationship between two or more people in which coercion is absent. There are some significant considerations here, such as the common practice of contrasting freedom with slavery. Slavery pertains to a state of affairs that exists over time, not merely to a single incident, and freedom, its opposite, was commonly viewed in the same manner. Similarly, philosophers often spoke of a state of nature, a state of war, and a state of peace. As Locke put it, he who makes an attempt to enslave me thereby puts himself into a state of war with me, and to enslave me is to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom. Before providing additional historical background, I wish to reiterate a point I have made before. I am not arguing that the Lockean conception of freedom is the only true or admissible conception, or that the Hobbesian conception has no legitimate role in political philosophy. Rather, I simply wish to rebut the common argument that the Hobbesian conception is somehow superior to the Lockean because the former is supposedly value free, whereas the latter is value laden. If Locke and other liberals employed a rights-based notion of freedom, this is because they were engaged in debates about rights and rightful powers, as exemplified in the idea of sovereignty. Even Hobbes, in his defense of absolute state sovereignty, hitched a theory of rights to his conception of freedom. Liberal opponents of absolutism, in their defense of self-sovereignty, merely followed suit. It is surely not a philosophic sin to engage one's adversaries on the self-same ground on which they stand, especially if that common ground is essential to the discipline known as political philosophy.


EA wants me to like them so bad, bro.  Let's just say that. Kim Clinton, huge W. You guys know that, at least from my opinion. I think it's so sick. And I just learned that they added Megatron, the superstar KO. I still gotta like, you know, actually get him. This reminds me of the Yanis video all over again when I sat here and drafted for 40 minutes to get Yanis a few years ago. And he was so bad. So I hope it's out like that. This could be, though, the first legendary player in superstar KO. I don't actually know if he's a legendary. I just kind of assume he could be an ultra rare, but I'm very excited to see it. We're gonna need some offense picks to get him or we're gonna have to rob him from an opponent. We get three ultra rares right here. I'm gonna go with Aaron Donald and hopefully they give me an offense pick. I might just try and draft for a while. If I don't get him after, you know, half an hour, I'll just hop into a game, see if we can pick him off of somebody. Let's just keep going after it. Stepping digs, damn. That's a hot start. I could have two insane wide receivers. And our other offensive pick, Megatron, Megatron. He's not in there. Derwin James, okay, defensive pick. Jaylin Ramsey, also defensive pick. Oh my God. Oh my God. I've only been doing this for like two minutes. I got him already. The first legendary, he's got double me. Oh my God. Dude, I thought that was gonna take forever. Let's go. Let's get it. We got Jaylin Ramsey, rare. I have an ultra rare too on this team, Derwin James and then legendary Calvin Johnson offense. We are playing as Dot City too. I have a lot of passing plays. I never plays Dot City, but I figured since we're gonna be passing just to Megatron, let's do it. Also a huge shout out to the best mobile game in the world for sponsoring today's video. It's Raid Shadow Legends. Boy, it's like I got something crazy exciting for talking about Raid today. I'm always talking about the crazy champions. They look badass. The graphics are incredible. They all have unique abilities and then you can upgrade them, get them weapons and armor and take them into battle. Well, I've got 21 ancient shards right here. Now these can have a rare and epic or even a legendary champion in them. We're opening 10 more shards right here. Let's see if we can get another epic. All I need is at least one. I got it. We got one epic too. Hey, I will take two. We got Seneshaw from the Banner Lords and Epic Defense Champion and the Excruciator, oh my God. This is the coolest champion I've ever seen. What a pull. We do have one summon left and we get another epic champion, Jerojin. This guy looks like a tank.  I think Jerojin's gonna be the best. I'm gonna upgrade him right now. He's got tons of HP. Now we're gonna fight a boss, the Ice Golem with our brand new champion. Let's see it, Jerojin. Let's go, baby. What a beast. I think Jizo's gonna be able to take him out here. One, two, and he's down. Let's go, dude. That was awesome. And if you wanna see all the rest of the awesome stuff that Raid has to offer, you're gonna have to check it out for yourself. They released a huge Doom Tower update with two new bosses, Esternix the Dark Faye, and Bommal the Dreadhorn. You gotta see him for yourself. There's also a special event called Super Raids. You have the chance to double up your rewards, which is huge for new players so you gotta start playing right now. So if you wanna get a huge head start in Raid, all you have to do is hit the link in the top of the description or scan my QR code, and you'll get an Epic Hero Chanaru, amazing in the Doom Tower, 200k Silver, one XP boost, one energy refill, and one Ancient Shard so you can summon an awesome champion as soon as you get in game. All this treasure will be waiting for you in the top right of your screen at this chest icon right here. Check it out, boys. Raid, thank you as always for sponsoring. Enjoy the rest of the video. To be stacked, KO, baby. Let's get it, game on.  It's Dot City versus Dot City. So kind of an even matchup here. So let's look at these abilities. He's got Double Me activated, outside apprentice, second win, reach for it, grab and go, mid and elite, deep out elite, and match up Nightmare. Good Lord. Oh, I say we just give him a deep one and go up. Oh. Double Me is you win aggressive catches in single coverage, not double coverage. Let's just get him in open space. He has grab and go, which gives him, after a rat catch, you get human joystick. That's the best way to describe it. So we're just gonna throw here, do the rat catch and then use our, ah, I'm bad. Uh-oh. That's single coverage. Let's go Megatron. Let's go, baby. Whoa. What is he doing on defense? Did Megatron just outrun him? This is a pretty much guaranteed touchdown. I think he tried to run with him and then he just kind of gave up. Oh wait, shoot. Herbert, go Herbert. No, no. You better catch him. Herbert gets tackled from behind. We have to stop him here. Or I'm gonna lose Megatron already. Reinforcement, he runs the ball. Weird. Oh, RB is open. Oh no. Oh yes. Yes. Go up. Yes. Let's go. We're playing this out. We still got a shot for Megatron. Buddha Baker's saving us because we're bad. All right, tug of war. We're starting with the ball and we have legendary Megatron. I feel pretty good about it. Hopefully this will just take him off the scent a little bit. I'm just going to Megatron, baby. Get there. What a window. And he aggro's it. He could throw A here. He could have thrown A here, but we sacked him. Let's go. Let's try to slant on Goddard. The slant on Goddard should hopefully take the user except there is no user. He's in single coverage. You know he's gonna catch it. And he's in with a truck. That is game. Let's go. I love this. Six and O. We start out with a win. Already better than Yanis.  Yo, dude. We get Patrick Mahomes ultra rare on top of having Megatron. It's GG. It's gonna motion across. I think this is a screen, no? It is. Oh, he elects not to throw it. Very good call by him because I was going to pick six that in a heartbeat. Unfakeable lumberjack in flat zone K.O. I've never ran a cut stick tackle before I don't think. Oh, oh. I thought for sure I picked that off. How do you cut stick tackle? I think you go down like that. Let's try out lumberjack. Let's do the cut stick, maybe. Oh, damn it. I cut stick with the wrong person. I was a cut stick with Ramsey. He might go RB here. Oh, it's not there. Why is open? Why is open? Why is open? Big hit. I'm gonna blitz out the middle and German James. Let's just lock it up, buddy. Oh, RB is fast. Oh my God, Ebron.  I'm gonna be so depressed if he somehow finds a way to like squeak this out.  What? What? My depression is kicking in right now. Oh, okay. Okay, okay. A QB sneak. I did not see it coming, but we're all over it. Now we just gotta score. And at the very least, we'll play another overtime game. We can also just put it away. Let's try and roll out to the right side and throw this post. I wanna give it a shot. All right, we got time. Go, buddy. Go get it, Megatron. Oh my God. That was so deep. Are you kidding? How does Bazooka Mahomes overthrows? Kind of depressing. All right, let's go back on the hunt to get him again. Megatron was amazing for the time I got to use him. I think I got a little greedy there, trying to heave it up when there's no reason I needed to be doing that. Hello, Mac, demon. I might play this one out, see if I can rob somebody's Megatron, you know? Chris Jones again. If I get all defense, yeah, because I have a really good chance of stealing somebody's Megatron. Let somebody else do the work of drafting, you know? Darren Waller, never use Darren Waller. Let's do it. Let's play it out. See if we can rob somebody. Wait, who is that? Is that Megatron? Wait, I think he has Megatron, bro. Dude, I swear to God.  I just realized something. Chris Jones, he has Megatron number one, so we have to win this game so we can steal it. That's so awesome. First game we go into. I just realized, though, Chris Jones' ability doesn't work anymore. So he's kind of pointless to have him. Actually, he's just completely pointless because he does nothing. He just wants to beam it up to Megatron again. Uh, I have no idea why he tried to just stop and go his own pass. That made no sense. We just gotta get on Megatron third and 10. He could throw a lot here. Wow, Dak is really struggling. Fourth and 10, I could get the ball right here and get my boy back. Gotta cover Megatron. I'm on him. I'm on him.  No! He caught that. Oh, that was it, bro. That was it right there. He's got a corner route out of Megatron that he could still throw. Yup. Come on! It's for that exact reason that I want Megatron. For exactly what he just did, I want him. Oh, take that ship back. Let's go. User lurk with Kalil Mack. We just gotta score and get our two points. And that Megatron is mine. We'll go with a lead dive to Kami Akes. He has Jamal Adams and Bobby Wagner.  Great block, great block. Ooh, Akers, let's go. Yup. Great move by Kami Akers. He's still on his feet. His double avalanches here in the middle. I have to be so careful running this ball, except our blocking is so good that it's not mattering right now. Let's keep it up, boys. This is all for you, Megatron.  Let's see if this is there. Yup, maybe. Yes, sir. No, thank you. No, thank you, Jamal Adams. You're not avalanche hitting me. And there's Kami Akers, so open. We get one, we get a juke. Kami Akers, up to the three. We gotta put this game away, baby. Let's go with the lead dive. We've been getting great yards on it every single time. He probably expects it, but it's not the question, baby. The question is, can you stop it? Now, do you expect it?  If we can get this right now, Megatron is already ours. I wanna throw the slant here. Let's see if it's open. I don't wanna pre-determine, but I really wanna throw it. Ah! No, wait a second. He could take that back.  I wonder if he wins. I hadn't, I should've just ran the ball again. Just running the ball so efficiently. And I lose no Megatron. Okay. My home is again, okay. Ramsey's just looking like our last Megatron team. I knew it. Bro, it's the same exact Megatron team I had last time, and we get him back. I'm not fighting anyone for Megatron. I'm just getting him on my team, and we're gonna go for it out right now. Let's get it. He's got Lamar Jackson, and wait a second. Oh my God, somehow KJ Wright ended up on Tyler Lockett. Now they're asking if we want. Oh, are you running this ball, sir? I'd love to see it. Yup, yup, yup. Come on. Dot city with the run clamp.  I could play that game. I could definitely play that game.  What do you think you're doing? All right, let's just go Megatron underneath here. He might try and follow, but I don't, I mean, that's not that realistic. Bop! You know he's getting through. That's a big boy. We're gonna get Megatron the post-corner on an island by himself over there. Let's see how this goes. It's gotta be damn near a touchdown. He's gonna try and user it and watch. It's gonna get him. It got him! It got him like it was a post. That's so awesome. And why not, baby? Jet touch pass to Megatron to two point this off. And if we don't get it, I'll play O2 with this guy. I'm so fine with that. Let's go Megatron. Get through it, baby! Ah! He lit him up, but it wasn't enough. We are going into overtime. I think he just got lucky on that first play. Let's just adjust and let's get the W. All right, first of three plays, he's gonna roll out. Why is this still open?  Definitely gonna follow Megatron, so we can just hit Beckham most likely. Ooh, let's just try it, baby. Why not? Why? I'm so much mad at my life and I have never seen that. Oh my God! Am I recording? I better be recording. He's pissed, bro. He's gotta be the maddest person of all time. I would be livid. It's an offensive pick. Let's take Camara. I've hardly used him at all. All right, second and 10. Let's see what he wants to go with here. Uh-oh, A is wide open. I hope he does not see that. Throws it a little late here and we're gonna get the interception with Fuller. Toss me some blocks, baby. Ooh!  So why don't I just send Megatron deep and do the same shit we've been doing game after game which is just do this. Oh, he's a user D lineman. It's literally just Megatron go deep and let's pray, buddy.  I don't even need to aggro it. I can literally just catch and run. Oh my God. Oh my God. So many good options. Two, we got run stuff for Levante David. Avalanche, Bobby Wagner. I think we gotta go Bobby Wagner. Avalanche is just busted, dude. Downhill hits six, force fumbles. If you're running at the right back and you hit second, he fumbles. Oh no, Brandon cooks. Why are you so fast?  Why are you so slow? Everybody was out of position there. It could be a run. I don't expect it to be. No one has been successful with the run yet. And he throws to nothing. Wait a second. It's possible. Oh yeah, he's pretty aware of what we're doing here. Uh-oh, uh-oh, no way. Gilmore came across. That was a great play. I'll take my out. I got a lot of playing with Megatron and I got the back flip catch. Like I've never seen that in my whole life. That was the glitchiest thing that's probably ever happened to me. EA. I know what you're trying to do but you're still greedy. All right, you're still greedy? Trash company and you don't fix this game ever. Although, keep doing stuff for me. I love it. Yeah boys, thank you for watching. As always, another banger in the books. I'll see you tomorrow with Wheel of Mud. I love you boys. Peace.


Okay, so I just finished watching the Alex Ryder TV series the first season anyhow Which actually came out in June in the United Kingdom, but for whatever reason it wasn't available in the US until November 13th so I'm not sure why they did that, but anyways, I just finished watching it and It's not as bad as I was thinking it would be you know based on the trailer I thought it looked like absolute garbage and I was not interested at all But you know because I run this channel. I was like, okay fine I'll watch it see what I have to say about it, and I will say that it's not a bad show It is a decent action spy thriller drama type thing But it's not a very good adaptation of Alex Ryder. This is the introduction song. It's not very good But it's not too long So it's gonna be very difficult to talk about this in any sort of detail without massive spoilers So I'm just gonna do huge blanket spoiler warning for both the book series and the show Or well not too much the book series, but a little bit and massive for the show though And if you want my spoiler-free thoughts, basically, it's a decent show has some good acting some decent storylines Good action scenes as well. Those are pretty fun, but it's more inspired by Alex Ryder than it is based on it so those are my thoughts from now on massive show spoilers and Major spoilers for the first two books minor spoilers for the books after that now when I say that the series is a bad adaptation I'm mostly talking about one specific thing because you see the characters are Pretty similar to how they were in the books Like they might be expanded a little bit or tweaked a little bit But they do still have the same core personality and all that and the plotline as well It follows the same Shell of the story, let's say like a lot of the details are changed But the overall direction that it goes in and a lot of the big events are the same Like if you've ever seen the walking dead TV show and you've read the comics and so you can compare it those two like Yeah, the shell of the story is the same in the show But they change a lot of things and Alex Ryder does something very similar here So when I say that it's a bad adaptation. I mostly mean that in terms of tone Because you see Alex Ryder is actually very easy to explain. It's just James Bond for children and James Bond is pretty silly at times you know people people tend to forget that because the modern ones ever since the Daniel Craig Casino Royale, which came out like 15 years ago now People tend to forget that they weren't always that serious They used to be pretty goofy like that's why they had gadgets that were like exploding pens and stuff And Alex Ryder is also pretty silly at times and that's okay because it does get Really dark at a few points like mostly it's silly because really MI6 would never trust a 14-year-old to go and do this sort of espionage like that there's just no way they would ever think that was a good idea because it wouldn't be a good idea and So it's really only dark at a few points and those are admittedly some of the best parts of the series But that's not really the point the show is dark all the way through and Sometimes that works. In fact, I would say that like if you just look at the show on its own Yeah, the dark tone works pretty well for the most part but it's just it's not Alex Ryder at that point because You have to just kind of embrace the silliness like the villain's plan in this like it skips over Stormbreaker Just just so you know like it it completely cuts that out I guess they just thought the movie was that bad, but it skips straight to point blank and the villain's plan in that is to Clone himself and then kidnap the sons of a bunch of rich people Surgically alter his clones to look like those those sons and then replace them so that they can take over the world That's pretty fucking silly no matter how you try to spin it but the show just Tries to make it serious and it does not work at all like it does It just does not work with that dark tone It feels off and there's a complete disconnect there And we also lose out on some of the more fun bits of the series like the gadgets You know in in the books Smithers always showed up He was he was basically just the cue of the books He would always show up and he give Alex some weird gadgets that he would use like look Alex It looks like a CD player, but it's actually a buzz saw I'm not making that up by the way in the point blank book He did actually have a CD player that doubled as a buzz saw or look It's an earring or it looks like an earring, but it's actually a grenade again Not making that up that was really in there or look it's a pen but if you turn it upside down the woman's clothes fall off and you can see her tits like you know that sort of stuff and That was fun, but Smithers is still in the show and so he winds up being a little bit useless and I'm gonna go on a spoiler-filled rant here. So if you want to skip that just skip until my hand is down, but Basically in the show Smithers is a normal sized black guy Whereas in the books he was a really really fat white guy and I don't really care that they changed his race like that's not a big deal, but We do lose out on possibly the best joke in the entire series because again He's a really really fat guy throughout the entire series and then in the last book Him and Alex wind up getting chased by some bad guys They managed to escape and the whole time Alex is thinking wow He actually moves pretty fast for someone that size and then at the end Smithers is like well, I can't work for my six anymore I'm just gonna have to disappear and then he peels off the fat suit that he'd been wearing the entire time He's actually just a normal sized skinny dude, and he was also Irish for some reason like That's a funny joke. Okay. He had he had us fooled and Alex fooled the entire series That's a really funny joke and we missed out on that So that's my small rant out of the way But in addition the villain winds up looking kind of dumb because of the dark tone like not only is his plan really dumb but in the book he was Pretty clearly a white supremacist. They didn't spend much time on it though Like his name is dr. Hugo grief and he was a scientist that worked for the apartheid South African government And at one or two points he did mention people like Adolf Hitler as being great men So it was clear there was clearly some subtext there that yeah, the dude was a white supremacist But it was subtle because it didn't really tie into anything. You know, he was just a crazy villain We didn't need to know that much more beyond that whereas in the show Hugo grief Like he literally makes the passcode to his door 1889 because that's the year Adolf Hitler was born. It sounded like one person deciding the fate of millions of people Who lives and who dies makes sense faster. It's the year Hitler was born That's his code. I promise you and he literally quotes Adolf Hitler and other Nazis at several points and talks about how the strong have to rule over the weak and like Any subtlety just goes out the window and it makes him seem Ironically like more of a cartoony villain even though they were trying to make him more realistic and more serious It just completely fails the plot here while again, it's not bad It does try to be overarching, you know, cuz one thing I was really worried about when they First announced the show and said that they were skipping over Stormbreaker was I wasn't sure how they were going to tie in all the stuff about like Alex's uncle Ian dying and Alex being recruited by MI 6 and him Being forced to go to point blank and do the stuff for them I was wondering how they were gonna tie all that together and I think they do a decent job of that and then also in the show Well, they try again, they try to make it overarching They try to add more elements from the other books because if you haven't read them the books are all pretty episodic They stand alone pretty well Like you can pick up any one of them and even if you haven't read the others You can still generally pick up on most of the important information and I think that works Okay, like I am interested in seeing where they go with this in later seasons But stuff like Yassin Grogorovich and Scorpia do actually play a role in this early season Even though they had nothing to do with Hugo grief in the in the book Like they were just something that was introduced later. So I'm not sure how I feel about Them trying to make some sort of big bad with this. Maybe it'll work. Maybe it won't but whatever the case It's not really an Alex Ryder adaptation at that point It's just kind of something that's inspired by Alex Ryder But I do want to reiterate that despite all my issues with this as an adaptation. I think it's a decent show So in the interest of fairness, let's talk about some of the good stuff here I really like how they expanded on a lot of the characters like Alex in particular They got a really good actor to play him and he actually looks like a teenager too by the way like Okay, in the original Stormbreaker movie He was played by Alex Petty for who was like 17 at the time of filming, but he looks like he's fucking 25 So it just it doesn't really work whereas in this they got someone who is in his 20s But he actually looks like he could be around 15 or 16. So it works better But that said they also show him actually more in his uncle because they didn't spend much time on that in the books Like, you know, this is the guy that raised him. This is his father figure and it's just kind of Oh, he's dead at the beginning of the first book and then They don't dwell on it that much So it makes Alex come across as kind of cold and inhuman Which I think might be on purpose because again James Bond But nonetheless it it does feel a little weird But we also see Alex go through a lot of suffering and he feels a lot more determined because he feels like okay This is me completing my uncle's final mission, which was the case in Stormbreaker But they don't really spend that much time on it No, not even in the book, which I always thought was a little weird like in this it feels like he's saying okay I'm completing my uncle's work and that's my way of saying goodbye. So I did really like that and they also spend time developing his friends and his relationship with them like Jack, you know, she in the books was more of a plot point or a Character, I don't I don't even know a good word for her But she wasn't really a character in her own right and so no spoilers some stuff that happens in the last book Between her and Alex which is supposed to be like really emotionally devastating just doesn't quite hit the way It's supposed to at least not for me But now she is an actual character and even if she's not the most amazing or most well-developed character She's actually there and Alex's friend Tom is also in this and gets a weird amount of screen time especially it just he looks a lot like Michael Jones too, which is distracting but Whatever whatever that's not a big deal. He gets a lot of screen time and we do see Alex and him be friends So what they were definitely going for is that they were trying to make Alex feel like an actual teenager as opposed to some blank slate Spy ultra badass, which he kind of is at times in the books like not always But kind of and they also spend a lot of time on his love life, which I just hated like that's one of the only Parts of the show I just absolutely hated was they spend a lot of time on his love life So while I do appreciate that they expanded his character a lot It's not always a good thing And then there's other characters that get some expansion to like Alan Blunt does have some personality to him Ian Ryder his uncle does Get a little bit of development because think about it in the books How much do we really know about him other than he was a spy for MI6? Like we we don't know much at all Yasin Grigorovich strangely enough does get a little bit of actual character development in this which I was not expecting at all And people like Mrs. Jones and other people that work at MI6 really drive home the point that What they're doing Forcing a teenager to go into these dangerous situations and risk his life and get hurt is Pretty fucked up like in the books. They do talk about that But not until much later on in the series and they really do hammer at home there Whereas in this there there's kind of like yeah, this is pretty bad, right? And they're like well, we we don't really have a choice So we just got to help and prepare and wish them the best I also really liked most of the action scenes like there's a couple that are way too short and a little bit I guess subdued would be a good word But there are some others that are just a lot of fun Like there are two fight scenes in particular that I really liked because in this show when someone gets hit It looks like it hurts, you know like in most movies and TV shows and stuff people can get hit a million times and just Walk it off like they're not hurt at all. Whereas in this people will get hit in the head And even if they're still conscious, they'll be like woozy and barely able to stand and stuff And so I liked that it did give it a little bit more of a realistic flair and that was fun And I especially liked the snowboard scene as well It wasn't quite as good as it was in the book But those of you who have read it know what I'm talking about that was that was a lot of fun And there should have been a little bit more gunfire and explosions type stuff in this but I get it There were budgetary constraints.  There's like I mentioned There's a lot of focus on Alex's love life, which I hated There's also Okay, so for those who haven't read the book this is all about Alex pretending to be a rich guy's son so that he can get sent off to some like boarding school for troubled teens way off in the French Alps and part of his Preparing to be undercover is that he's pretending to be this guy named Alex friend who is the son of this Billionaire who owns like food manufacturing and part of that is that he lives at his mansion for a couple of days with the billionaire and his family and his daughter Fiona her and Alex just hate each other in the books and They hate each other in the show too, but they also felt the need to add a scene where Alex is getting really horny over her and it It feels weird Especially because she's supposed to be about his age, but she looks like she's in her 20s. So it's it It just feels a little odd to get him to watch him get horny over his fake sister But I guess it's not that big a deal And then there's a bit where the characters hack into the main bad guys computer and change some of the passwords for like Door key codes and stuff and then they come back much later after they've already been found out and the pass codes have not changed at all And so just stuff like that, you know and one thing that again I it just makes it not an Alex writer adaptation is that Alex makes friends with all the other kids at the boarding school or not all of them but a couple other kids at the boarding school and then he enlists them to help with his spy stuff and they do and Like it's not even that they're bad characters or anything It's just it doesn't really feel like James Bond for kids at that point. It feels like just your standard Kids try to escape evil school type story, which I read probably 10 trillion billion of those when I was a kid and In fact Alex writer was one of the things that I read when I was getting tired of those so I Don't like that. They did that at all. It feels weird, but you know again overall thoughts Decent show really really is a decent show. There's a lot of solid performances in there some fun action scenes The storyline isn't bad It's just not really an Alex writer show Huge huge huge thanks to everybody who watched this far and especially to my patrons whose names are here and my $10 up guys are Oppo Savalainen Ava tumor brother Santotis Christopher Quinten Deanna Day him Mbis Emily Miller Evan Stigal Joel Karkat Kitsune Madison Lewis Bennett nature boy NB star Reeze e-Rowla sad martigan tobacco crow tombini vacuous Silas and they victims You are all really great because without you well quite frankly I wouldn't be able to do this and if you want your name up here And if you want stuff like early access to my videos then consider becoming a patron You know it's all it takes a dollar a month And if you can't do that then just sharing this video around liking on it commenting on it You know all that stuff that helps too. Anyways, thanks for watching. See you next time. Bye


Aaron with the way this team has been rolling when you get to the bottom of the nine tie score seeing who you have coming up in the Order do you just expect that you guys are coming away with the win? Well, I mean you certainly feel good about that, right? But the rays can really pitch to and and they bring another guy in that's You look up at the board and he's doing a lot of really good things.


What's going on everyone? Sam here with late in sports cards, ripping two boxes for Chang-S. We've got one, 22-23 topsy-way for club competitions, Merlin-Chrome soccer hobby, one, 2023, Bowman-Chrome baseball hobby. Let me do a little quick dust here. We'll start with Merlin. Start with Merlin. Merlin's good stuff, man. And then we'll get going on to Bowman-Chrome hobby. Simul-Iling Jr. Refractor Rookie for Juventus. That is Marcus Rashford. Lime-Green Shimmer, Marcus Rashford again to 350. For Man United. Makalo Moudric. Nancy Beat West End, Dan Wagon. Roy Keane, Aegis Alchemy. Chris Smalling to Refractor. What'd you say? Yeah, true, true. There's Benjamin Sesco. That's like the worst part for me is because like I have to work that day too. Green Luca Moudric. Nice one there. Riyama Drid to 99. William Saliba, Refractor Arsenal. That is Frank Ricard on the Merlin Masters. Only one personal after this, just Drew. That'll do it if nobody else orders, but if not, we can get it done too. Nice, copy, Mano. For Man United, Rookie Otto. Congrats on that, Shang. Nice one there, buddy. Refractor is Nayef Aguirre for West Ham. Refractor Eduardo Kamavinga. That's wild, dude. He's so good. Zavi Simons, Aindhoven. Oh, does he? Oh, that's cool. Jesus. Matias Suley, Juventus. Nice, the 299, Erling Holland. Rose Goldschimmer, congrats there, Shang. Nice one, buddy. Vintage Merlin of Samuel Erling Jr. for Juventus. Very nice. This solid box over there, or overall right there. You also have a 23 Bowman Chrome baseball hobby. Green shimmer, Javier Rivas, the 99. Face auto, Marcus Lee, Sang. Marcus Lee, dude. He did impact. That's how I know you're tired. You can't even take the stick. Boba Chet, the 499. That's great. Oh, yeah. At the end of the night, you know. That is Ronald Lacuna, Iconic, and a manual. What's that? Coffee's wore off. Yeah, oh, yeah. Astros wore off. Axel Amiris. Has some Kierstad, Jordan Lawler. Not really. I like, if I'm going to do some sort of coffee, I always have Karim in it. I like cinnamon in it. I like cinnamon in my coffee, yeah. There's Javier Rivas, the 75. Orange, yellow, vaporwave. I like the same with when I do chai. I love cinnamon and chai. Are you a chai fan or not? Henry Ramos, the 499. Nice one there for the Royals. It's really good when you do like just like a, look at the Keurig, Riley Greene. I want one of them to give me an injury. Vargas. Two shots. Yeah, there you go. Christian McCarrow, Ascensions. Nice one there. Kunya. I know you're talking about though, but I don't know what it's called either. Cheerio, Magenta Vapor 2199. That'll do it for your break there, Cheng. Thanks again for the support, buddy. Get them right out to you, my man.


So hi guys, welcome to the course on Python Cyber Security. I'm Hanin and with me is Boyan and we are from Daman High School. Yes, so moving on to the next slide. So this will be the link that you guys can use to have access to all our codes that we will be using in the course. What are the possible cyber attacks, right? So one of which will be malware and then malware is a shorthand for malicious software which typically consists of code developed by cyber attackers designed to cause extensive damage to data and systems to gain unauthorised access to a network. So there are actually various cyber attacks possible and this was only one of them. The others would be SQL injection and phishing, yes. So which leads us to the main topic of cyber security. Why is cyber security? So cyber security is the protection of networks, devices and data from unauthorised access or criminal use and the practice of ensuring confidentiality, integrity and availability of information. So why must we protect ourselves from cyber security? All our data currently are stored online because of the prevalent users of the internet and then we store basically everything online because of convenience, right? So that's why it's important to ensure that we are safe on the cyberspace. So how do we protect ourselves from cyber attacks then? So ethical hacking is one of the ways where we can protect ourselves. Basically it's hacking performed by company or individuals to help identify potential threats on a computer or network. So moving on to the main gis of our course today, we're teaching you guys four different methods of how we can protect ourselves on the web. Namely, there are pod scanner, encryption, input data validation and key logger. So now we'll pass the time on to Boyan to explain more. So we'll be starting off with pod scanners. So pod scanning in Python is essentially just sending client request to each different pod of a specified IP address to check if that pod is open. So it's just like how a burglar, before going to burglar a house, he will actually go to the house and check if the door or the windows were open so that he can get in more easily. So in this case in Python, we'll be using sockets to send the client request to each of the pod in the IP address. So we'll start with a demonstration. Okay, so I will use IDLE for this. Okay, so first, yeah, we will import everything from socket module. So first we'll import everything from the socket module. Then next we'll import time so that we can know how long our program can run. So we'll start first with defining a start time, which is the current time of which when the time the program starts. Then we'll start with a run condition of the normal if name is equals to main. So first we'll ask the user for a target input IP address. Then next we will be changing the target given by the host to an IPv4 address through the get host by name function. And then next we'll be just printing a line to tell the user that the scan is starting. Okay, so next we'll be starting a follow-up of 50 to 60. The slides show 50 to 500 but because in this case we have a limited time and 50 to 500 will be too long, we'll just do 50 to 60. So first we'll initialise a socket with AFiNet and SocStream. Yeah, then we'll use the socket to connect to the IP address and the current port, which is specified in the follow-up. Yeah, then next we'll check if the connection is, if it's equals to zero, that means the connection has went through and thus the port is actually open. So we can print that the port number, this port is open. Yeah, then else that means the port is not open because we have gotten a message so we can tell the user that this port is closed. So next we'll close the socket so that in the next follow-up we can connect to the same IP address but in another port. Then lastly we will print out the time taken for this whole program to run which is essentially the time at the end of the program minus of the start time. Okay, then we will run this program. Yeah, and then the host to be scanned is... Yeah, so we will be scanning a test server by Nmap which is the scanme.map.org with the IP address of <IP_ADDRESS>. Yeah, so it's starting to scan on the host. This can take a while as sockets are very, very slow. Yeah, so currently as you can see it's been quite a while and it has only sensed that two ports are closed. Okay, so we'll let it run in the background and then we will move to the next part which would be encryption in Python. So encryption in Python for encryption in Python we'll be using the hashlib module and we'll be teaching you how to encrypt your text string with a very widely used algorithm called SHA256. So we'll start with a demonstration. So first we'll create a new file on the idle so first we'll import hashlib then next we'll ask the user for an input and then we'll be defining result as the encryption of the SHA256 in the hashlib module. So we'll initialise it with a text.encode which encodes the string, which is text. And then we'll print out the result.hex digest which is the encrypted string with the SHA256 because printing result will only return a SHA256 object. So we will save it and run it. So we can try Hello World. As you can see, this is like the encrypted string through the SHA256 algorithm and you can see the previous program so the program stopped prematurely because we started running the encryption but it has scanned that from port 50 to port 58 of the test server for NMAT all these eight ports are closed. So now that we are done with port scanning and encryption we will be moving on to the next part which would be our input data validation. So I'm sure all of you have written programs before and that you have been asking users for their input and sometimes users may decide to input data that it's not what you want and this may cause errors in your program and result in your program stopping. So in this case, we'll be using the try and accept in Python where the try block let's us test a block of code for errors and the accept block let's us handle the error. So we'll be demonstrating how to use it. First, we'll start with a while true so that we can continuously ask the user for input if it does not accept it and then we'll start with a try and we will attempt to make the input of the user of their age into an integer. Next, we will do an accept value error because that is the error that occurs when something that is not a number is put into int. Then we'll print an error message and after that we will tell the program to continue running after there is a value error. So for the next condition we'll be using an if else to check if the age is a negative number. So if age is less or equals to zero we will also print out an error message. Then after this we will continue. We will tell the program to continue. Then else, this means that it has passed both conditions and we are ready to exit the loop and put in a break. So now that we have exited the while loop we will do our last check condition so if age is more or equals to 21 we can then we can tell the user that they are eligible to vote in Singapore and else we will tell the user that they are not. Okay, we will attempt to run this. So first we will try to input with a character A. So as you can see, it says that sorry I didn't understand that which means that it's the first condition, the try and accept condition that it did not fulfill and it outputted the error message. We could also try with a colon. It will output the same thing as the program is unable to make this string into an integer. So we can try now with a negative number of negative one. So this does not fulfill the second condition in the if else task it will still return another of the second error message. So now we can try 10 years old which means that this will not fulfill the last error message. Now we will run the program again to we will run the program again to with trying age 21 to show that they are eligible to vote with this input. Okay, so we will be, we are done with this part and we will be moving on to the last part of our workshop which is the keylogger. So first we will need all of you who are going to attempt this to pip install pyput. Yes, pip install pyput. Yes, has everyone succeeded in pip installing? Okay, sure. Okay, we shall walk around and see if anyone needs help. Does anyone need help? Oh no, it's spelled wrongly.  Okay, we shall now proceed on. So keyloggers can be used to allow, you can use it to run it in the background and see if anyone decides to use your laptop or devices without you knowing and you'll also be able to see what they have been attempting to look for on your devices without you knowing. So now we'll open a new file and start. So firstly, we will from pyput.keyboard import the key and listener. Next, we'll import the logging so that we can actually write to a file. Then we'll set the dog directory. So in this case, the log directory would be the directory that this file is currently in. So we'll be using the directory that our Python file currently is in as you can see is on the top of the save file. So you all should not be copying ours. You all should be saving it where you want to save it. Please key in the correct directory in a place where you can actually find the final output file. Yes, so for now, this is our directory. Is everyone done with keying in your own directories? Okay, then we'll move on with setting the configurations for our logging. So first, it will be logging.basic.config. We will be setting the file name to be equals to our log directory and then we will name our output text file to be keylog.txt. So the log directory will be where this text file will be saved in. Then next, we'll be setting the logging level to be logging debug so that we can actually read. Then lastly, the format would be of as time and message. If any of you cannot follow us, you all can go online to the Google Drive and you all can refer to the code there. So next, we'll be defining a function called onPress with the import of key which would be which would be detected when you press on the key on your keyboard. So we'll do a logging.info, shrink key which would actually let logging record the stroke of your key. Then lastly, we'll do the run. We'll make it run through with listener and set the condition of the function being true to itself. OnPress equals to onPress and name this as listener and then we'll make it join all the output from the keyboard together to write to the text file. Okay, we shall run this now. So it's currently running. Then we shall just open up a node pad file and then we shall just type random characters in there like hello world. So now that we have this then we shall go into the file and we shall go into the file directory where our program is stored. As you can see, there's a keylog.txt inside there and when we open it we can see that here this is what we have typed after the program has started running. So as you can see we have searched for node pad. We have typed in the hello world. So this can continue to run in the background and record all keystrokes that you have typed. So... Ya. So does anyone need help? Okay, sure. Y'all can refer to the drive but we can always... It's in the slides. So we shall show you the slides. The... Slides is at this sling. Yes, so this is where the slides is at. Y'all can access this drive to access our workshop video, our slides and all the program code. Sure. Y'all need any assistance? The O is the big one and zero is the small one. Yes. Y'all need any assistance in typing in the link? Okay, so for the benefit we shall copy it and go to TinyURL and make your lives much easier. Okay, so the TinyURL is tinyurl.com slash qp44s34. So has everyone managed to access the slides? Okay, so... Y'all still need the code for the keylogger or are you all able to view it for yourselves? Okay, go to the code. Ya, so this is the code for the keylogger. So since this is the last part of our workshop Y'all can actually try out different ideas and also the different parts of our workshop in different contexts like maybe the input data validation not in the age context but maybe in some other context like asking them to input their email. Ya. So does anyone need help in doing this? We shall come and help y'all. Is there any way that y'all can trigger an event to happen if let's say y'all press the A key of a click just by using a button? I think then if you are going to want that to trigger then I think when you read in the key at like I don't know I think it's at the string key there I think you can compare because let's go to the keylog. So as you can see each okay so as you can see in here each has a similar format so if you are able to compare this last string here to let's say equals equals A then you should be able to add in a specific event that occurs. Ya it depends on what you want to do that if you find how to do it I'm sure you can do it in Python you can do everything in Python so does anyone have any more questions if not that's all we have yes thank you