The ultimate digital-based police state may be right around the corner, and they will attempt to use the so-called “immigration crisis” to introduce the demonic technology. Of course, this being the United States, the mechanism that will allow The Man to track everyone, all of the time, is being actively marketed by a corporation. Scott Silverman, Chairman of the Board of VeriChip Corporation, has been regaling Fox News and every politician he can find to consider placing his company’s microchips under the skin of immigrants. The device is about the size of large grain of rice. It can be easily bonded with human flesh and injected into the body. The chip requires no batteries and can last for the lifetime of its human host. It can transmit, not just the location of the human subject, but any information desired about that person.

This microchip has been around for decades, keeping track of animals for scientific purposes. But human beings – well, that’s a much bigger market, and here’s where mad scientists and mad political pirates and racists come together in common cause. The Microchip King, chairman Silverman, proposes that legal immigrants and guest workers accept the chip in their bodies, so that they can electronically prove that they are authorized to be in the United States. In the strange and twisted logic employed by corporate criminals and those who represent them in government, implanted microchips do the immigrants a favor. It shows they are innocent of the crime of border crossing. The information on the chip will prove they have not overstayed their guest worker status, or have walked away from the job they were supposed to be working. Turn that logic around, and every brown man and woman that does not have a microchip implant, is suspect.

Those of us who are Black know where this logic leads. If the electronic implants are good enough for legal immigrants, then certainly they are appropriate for American citizens who pass through the criminal justice system. In no time at all, a heavy chunk of the Black male population would be wired – beeping. Corporate chairman Silverman smiles as he makes his sales pitch. Behind that smile is a nightmare for every targeted group in the United States – and, eventually, everyone who does not have an implanted chip to vouch for his or her legality or previous activities. It will all be transmitted through your own body. No escape, but not necessarily any pardon, either. It’s all up to the guys who decide the Big Picture – who should have the right to exist in this society.

In such a situation, the words in Ernest Hemingway’s novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls are worth thinking about. “Send not to know for whom the chip beeps. It beeps for thee." For Radio BC, I’m Glen Ford.

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