Letter From Ian – The State and the Devil

I’ve been writing FreeKeene.com founder Ian Freeman back and forth at the Merrimack County Spiritual Retreat for the last few weeks.  I recently sent him a letter with pictures of the Fraternal Order of Police logo and a picture of Lucifer’s circle.  I pointed out to Ian that they are so similar one cannot help but wonder if the state is itself satanic.

 

The FOP is definitely masonic…  and the masons themselves cannot deny they have a rank called “The Knight of the Brazen Serpent.”    Sounds satanic to me.

Here is Ian’s letter back to me.  He gave me permission to transcribe it for you all to read.

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If you can keep your head…

In a recent post here on Free Keene, Mr. Penguin wrote, “…here is what we’re going to do. We’re going to write Ian Freeman at every opportunity.” I just made such an opportunity. My letter to Ian is in the mail. I thought I’d share it here in the hope that it nudges others to also carve out a little time to send him some love.

Ian,

I hope this letter finds you with peace of mind. I think about you often and send positive vibes.

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Writing To Caged Activist Ian Freeman At The Merrimack County Spiritual Retreat

Ian Giving Speech On The History Of The FBI's Attack On Free Staters

Ian Giving Speech On The History Of The FBI’s Attack On Free Staters

First of all, if you haven’t read my write-up on the history of the FBI’s attack on liberty in New Hampshire and how one agents serious grudge has resulted in millions of dollars wasted and 3 targeted attacks on one man Ian Freeman, his radio show Free Talk Live, and ultimately the Free State Project’s libertarian migration movement check that out first, and then come back here when you are done. Also, check out TheCrypto6.com for video coverage, how to access links to articles, news coverage, and Free Talk Live coverage of the case, documentaries, and more.

Now I’m imagining you are here because you want to know how you can write to Ian Freeman. His current status is he’s being held at the Merrimack County Spiritual Retreat until at least his next court appearance where the defense and prosecutor will hash out what restitution will be stolen from Ian Freeman and… presumably others given that Ian has taken a vow of poverty and retains few possessions let alone any valuables. To be clear, most people don’t know this as Ian is a very humble individual and I’ve NEVER heard him speak about this semi-private decision publicly. However I feel this is as good a time as any to point this out given his current situation. (more…)

The Crypto6: Ian Freeman Sentenced To 8 Years On Paperwork Violation For Selling Bitcoin & The Inside Story Of What Actually Happened

Around ~250 supporters turned out for Ian’s sentencing hearing between day 1 & 2 with some amount of overlap

Sadly many folks with an ulterior motive and those otherwise misinformed keep repeating the lies of the prosecution and mainstream media. I’m going to try and straighten out fact from fiction as the one person whose quite literally stood next to Ian Freeman and watched each and every little aspect since before the arrests in 2021 over the dastardly crime of not getting a permission slip to sell bitcoin. Let me start at the beginning though with some history lessons about the origins of the Shire Free Church and and the governments effort to squash the Free State Project as this case was never really about Ian selling Bitcoin or scammers as the prosecution would like you to believe.

Ian has been a key participant in the Free State Project and larger migration movement of libertarians to New Hampshire. The Free State Project aims to concentrate libertarians and like-minded individuals in New Hampshire for the purposes of securing liberty in our lifetime.

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Aria’s Prison Blog #2: Being Trans in Federal Prison

My good friend and the High Priestess of the Reformed Satanic Church of Keene, Aria DiMezzo, is through her first month of her 18 month federal prison sentence for the victimless “crime” of selling bitcoin without a government permission slip. You can find out how to write her letters, send her books, or money for her commissary on her blog post here. This week, she sent me the following blog from the Devens, MA federal prison camp, as originally posted to her website, AriaDiMezzo.com:

No one dislikes the government more than I do (although some may equal my disgust with the institution), but even so it would be silly and unfair to accuse the BOP (Bureau of Prisons) of being anti-trans, in exactly the same way that it would be absurd to accuse the rain of malice because it erodes the hills. The water does not hold enmity toward the dirt; the rain only does what it does, and there are simply effects to that. In actuality, the treatment of the BOP in regard to trans people is both a stark contrast and an alarming analog to the conversion therapy camps that were more common in the 90s; by holding none of the enmity and sharing none of the intentions of the “pray the gay away” camps, the BOP is more subtle in its erasure of trans identity, but this doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Just as the rain does not try to destroy the hillside, and is merely a result of weather patterns much greater in scope than a mound of dirt, so is the assault on transgener identity only an effect of a larger phenomenon: a widespread tendency to glance at a newborn’s genitals and map out large sections of their life for them, and then becoming irate and hostile at the suggest that an infant’s gentials may not be the best way of grouping adults into relationships, friend circles, or prisons.

It is simple, when a patient complains of a cough, for a doctor to prescribe some cough syrup, but nearly no doctor would do this, because it is myopic and narrow to treat a sympton rather than the underlying illness that causes the symptom. By treating only the cough, a doctor could easily miss the pneumonia, lung cancer, or asthma that is causing the patient to cough. Similarly, there is a Buddhist story where the Buddha is traveling with students when one of them is shot by an arrow, and begs the Buddha to pursue the attacker, so they might be held to account. The Enlightened One responds that he could do that, or he could remove the arrow and dress the wound, but he obviously could not do both. Similarly, shaking our fists angrily at the torrents or clouds that produce them has a tremendous opportunity cost and is a waste of emotional energy; instead, we could devote our time and efforts to halting the erosion, and then preventing it from recurring.

The issue at hand is not that the BOP maliciously denies transgender healthcare, because it doesn’t; the BOP fails to provide adequate care to transgender inmates, but it is because the society behind the prison industrial complex routinely fails the transgender population, largely due to apathy, although there is occasionally malice shown to these people who declare themselves to fall into the cracks of the social construct of gender, which, in the estimation of the bigoted, is sufficient for “everyone else,” and thus must work for all. It is the equivalent of telling a person who is cold to remove their coat because the speaker isn’t chilly, so how could anyone else be?

Even under the best of circumstances, being transgender is difficult. Transgender people already know in their hearts that they will never be indistinguishable from a cisgender person, but there are plenty of people who enjoy reminding trans people of that anyway, to say nothing of the myriad of minor, incidental, and accidental ways in which this is made clear to a trans person. No one ever said, “I’m going to make my life easier by dressing as the opposite sex,” because, despite bigoted claims to the contrary, such a monumental step serves only to make one’s life more challenging, at least for the foreseeable future, when it is less readily apparent that a person is trans at all.

Everyone has struggles, though, and it would be inaccurate to suggest that this is unique to trans people, or that the hardships of a trans person are unduly difficult. Rather than somehow being “worse” than the challenges other people faced, the tragedy of the trans plight lies in how utterly and easily preventable–and harmlessly so!–the difficulties are. In prison or larger society, it brings no risk or hurdles to anyone else for a person of any characteristics to present themselves as they need to in order to look in a mirror and be reasonably happy with the reflection.

The existence of transgender people, without a doubt, creates challenges for society that it is not equipped to handle, but putting trans women into a men’s prison and trans men into a women’s prison should be regarded at least as catastrophic to the involved people as placing trans men into a men’s prison and trans women into a women’s prison is regarded by those who have run out of real problems to deal with and so instead spend their time seeking trivialities about which they can be upset.

For more than a month, I have been waiting on basic items, not necessarily to reaffirm or bolster my identity as much to simply maintain it against the unrelenting, subtle forces that exist within a men’s prison to oppress, deny, and erase all non-masculine traits, with men’s prison obviously being the peaks of testosterone and toxic masculinit: emotions are not expressed, oether than anger. Imagine trying to maintain femininity in an environment entirely ruled by testosterone, much less attempting to enhance one’s feminine side such that behavior more closely matches the interior. Even if I had every resources that I’ve collected over the last decade in my life as a trans woman, simply existing as myself would be a challenge; with those resources denied me by policy, and with the meager substitutes taking now more than a month to reach me, the task is utterly impossible.

This shouldn’t be taken as necessarily the fault of the BOP, just as rain is not really to blame for the erosion of soil; rather, that it is this way is a reflection of social values. Though society increasingly recognizes the rights and needs of transgender individuals, the government always lags behind, and then always fails to actually meet the needs that are recognized–someone with a malignant growth will have to wait months to have it addressed, because the prison industrial complex is not equipped to act with grace and compassion. Given that this is the case, perhaps our first goal should be to not have the largest prison population on the planet, and, in so doing, we would lessen the hardship unnecessarily placed on all people, transgender or not, and that could only ever be a positive thing for us all.

Crypto Six Trial: Full Transcripts + Case Update

Federal Church Concord

Federal District Church Court

One of the biggest frustrations with the federal court system is the fact that recording hearings in any form is completely forbidden, and has been since 1946. No audio, no video, no photographs can be taken. Only pen/pencil and paper are allowed. We tried to get the judge to provide at least an online/phone audio feed as the federal civil courts had done since COVID. The courtroom is wired for sound and video at least since COVID, but alas, we were not successful in our request.

Free Keene blogger Chris Waid did an amazing job taking and transcribing notes every day and those were posted here, but no one sitting in the audience can capture all that is said. Thankfully, the court does offer an official record, which of course one must pay for. Since I plan to appeal my ridiculous convictions for victimless “crimes” regarding selling bitcoin, we have to have the full transcripts. Now we do and I’m legally able to share them publicly.

To make them easier to search and copy, I’ve put them all through Optical Character Recognition, so you can easily select blocks of text you might want to use for whatever purpose. Certainly there are many ridiculous moments that were hopefully somewhat captured by text, though obviously you don’t have the benefit of the witness’ facial expressions. Hopefully someday cameras will be allowed into federal courts, but for now full transcripts months later are the best we can do.

You can download all the trial transcripts in PDF form here as a ZIP file. It also includes the following index as a TXT file, showing the witnesses called on each day. Each PDF also has its own index up front showing the witnesses and pages on which their direct, cross, and any redirect examinations of them took place. Each day usually has two files, one for morning and one for afternoon. You can click each individually below if you don’t want to download them all at once in the ZIP file. (Depending on your browser, you may need to right click and save as to get the download working.)

Day 1 PM – Opening Statements
Day 2 AM – PROSECUTION – Alexandra Comolli
Day 2 PM – Alexandra Comolli, Theodore Vlahakis
Day 3 AM – Theodore Vlahakis, Kathryn Thibault, Kevin McCusker, Derek Feather
Day 3 PM – Christopher Rietmann, Colleen Fordham
Day 4 AM – Hope Cherry, Bruce Sweet, Pavel Prilotsky
Day 4 PM – Pavel Prilotsky, Renee Spinella
Day 5 AM – Dustin Wong, Nicholas Nathans, James Rossell, Patrick Brown, Harold Jones
Day 5 PM – Harold Jones, Melanie Neighbors, Karla Cino
Day 6 AM – Kendall McBrearty
Day 6 PM – Dannela Varel, Kendall McBrearty
Day 7 AM – Kendall McBrearty, Rebecca Ault, Kate Eyerman, Nancy Triestram
Day 7 PM – Nancy Triestram, Diane Cacace, Thomas Connolly, Colleen Ranahan
Day 8 AM – Renee Spinella
Day 9 AM – DEFENSE – Keith Murphy, Max Santonastaso, Edward Forster, Adam Mosher, Dael Chapman, Carolynn Urbanski, Melinda Cambiar, Ian Freeman
Day 9 PM – Ian Freeman
Day 10 AM – Mohammed Ali, Paul Niwa, Closing Arguments
Day 10 PM – Jury Instructions
Day 11 – Verdict

The latest on the case is both sides are currently arguing over the motion to dismiss that my attorney, Mark Sisti, made during the trial at both the close of prosecution and at the end of the defense. Presuming the judge does not throw out all eight counts, we will move to sentencing that is currently set for August 17th, though there is a good chance that will be delayed yet again. Should you wish to write the judge on my behalf, you can find instructions and an address here.

Meanwhile, my co-defendant Aria DiMezzo is in a federal prison camp in Devens, MA serving an 18-month sentence for the completely victimless paperwork violation of operating a “money transmitting business” without a government permission slip. Sadly, but understandably – it’s scary to face down a dozen charges in front of government-biased juries – she took a plea to the charge despite the statutes not mentioning cryptocurrency in any way and despite the fact that bitcoin is never “transmitted” at all, by the government’s own definition of “transmitting”. Unfortunately one cannot appeal a plea deal under most circumstances, so she’ll have to serve some as-yet-undetermined amount of the 18-month sentence. However, you can help her make the time go faster by writing her letters, sending books, or money for commissary. Instructions are here at AriaDiMezzo.com.

As always, stay tuned here to Free Keene or Free Talk Live for the latest.