“If one takes care of the means, the ends will take care of itself.” You may recognize this quote from The Voluntaryist where it reinforces a discourse of non-political, non-violent strategies. Yet it is equally applicable to all facets of one’s life, including health. Because if you’re not feeling good, not too much else matters. That’s the purpose of this post — to share a bit of information (that is, some means) that can bring about an improved quality of life.
I am now 38. Not an-old timer, but not the youngest cat around. Like yourself, I’ve had my share of bumps and injuries along the way. While most of them were temporary, one problem has been with me a while and will be something I deal with until I move on from this reality: back pain. Perhaps you, too, have been similarly afflicted. If so, I encourage you to check out Stuart McGill and Esther Gokhale.
Before I delve deeper into these two individuals and what they offer, let me share a bit of background on why I was motivated to find them.
She’s a principled Libertarian who hosts a weekday afternoon talk show on LRN.FM named “The Call to Freedom“. She’s on the show daily from 4-7pm including the 5pm “Crypto Hour” which features her expertise on the subject of cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. (You can watch it via the LRN.FM Twitch channel or listen at LRN.FM.)
The last-minute filing was thanks to the Libertarian Party of NH re-attaining major party ballot access on the level of the republicans and democrats for the first time in over two decades. That means that the party executive committee has the ability to appoint a slate of candidates to fill any races for which no one had yet filed or won enough write-in votes in the primary election. Parties have one week from the primary date to file such a slate.
It’s an interesting approach and throws a surprise libertarian challenger into a long-stale county sheriff’s race that has been a re-match for several terms between incumbent democrat Eli Rivera and longtime republican challenger Earl Nelson.
Aria DiMezzo, LPNH Chairman Chip Spangler, and Robert Call outside the NH Secretary of State’s Office
DiMezzo claims she’s going to be doing real campaigning and has already launched her campaign website which includes her opinions on ending the entire war on drugs. She admits to being a former opiate addict which means she’s got an insight into the world of drug addiction and the insane War on Drugs not shared by her republican and democrat competitiors. As she points out in her essay,
“Each addict has their own unique reason that they turned to drugs as an escape, and the only way to help any of them, if they decide they want help, will be individually and personally. There is no easy, convenient, one-size-fits-all answer. The folly of simplistic solutions like “Arrest them!” is that it allows us to feel like we are doing something about the problem, but we aren’t–at least, not anything beyond exacerbating it.”
DiMezzo, on her campaign site, also calls for the immediate release of peaceful, “victimless criminals”. She tells me she’s more than happy to do media interviews and appear at any local events to which she is invited. It’s refreshing to finally have a principled freedom-advocating candidate for which to vote in the upcoming Sheriff election this November 6th.
Robert Call and Aria DiMezzo standing outside the state house in Concord.
In addition to the surprise appointment of their first-ever candidate for Sheriff in Cheshire County, Keene’s Ward Four (Cheshire District Seven) has also received a libertarian challenger to democrat newbie Sparky Von Plinsky in the form of former Keene mayoral candidate Robert Call. Call is a free sofware advocate and programmer who lives in Keene. Curiously, his democrat challenger Von Plinsky is a former NSA agent. It should be an interesting race!
That gives the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire more candidates on the general election ballot in Keene than the Republican party who could only scrounge up one candidate for just the Ward 5 election. In order to help keep major party ballot access status, the libertarian candidate for Governor, Jilletta Jarvis must receive at least 4% of the vote. If you’re tired of government ruling your life and always growing more expensive and more demanding, you finally have a choice. You can vote for the multiple libertarian candidates that will be on your ballot in the general election on November 6th. Remember, if you’ve never voted before, New Hampshire allows same-day voter registration. Here’s a City of Keene webpage with information about where you should go to vote.
Stay tuned here to Free Keene for interesting libertarian campaign news.
MPD patrolman Ryan Olsen prepares to assault software programmer and father Jeremy Kauffman.
Originally streamed to his social media profile live, Jeremy Kauffman of LBRY.io has been arrested for “Disorderly Conduct” by a Manchester police officer for simply trying to leave his home. The Manchester police state descended on Kauffman’s neighborhood to conduct a homicide investigation in a home at 332 Hanover St., which is apparently near where Kauffman lives. Apparently this included preventing all the neighbors from simply leaving their own properties, a lot like being locked down in a prison by the guards.
Kauffman, a respected software engineer and entrepreneur currently CEO and founder of the decentralized blockchain-based media protocol called LBRY.io recorded the threats and eventual attack by Manchester Police’s patrolman Ryan Olsen on his smartphone. In the approx two minute video, Kauffman is in his driveway and explains to the viewer that he is being kept in his property against his will by the arbitrary detention by MPD. He is not told he’s a suspect in the homicide investigation but is being prevented from leaving to pick up his son.
When he merely walks down his driveway to investigate what is happening near his own home, Kauffman is threatened by officer Olsen who tells him to “go back that way” and when Kauffman asks on what law he’s basing his orders, Olsen says “I’m not gonna tell you again.” When pressed to cite the statute, Olsen pulls out the old police catch-all, “Disorderly Conduct“. Seconds later, Olsen leaves his post across the street, shouting at Kauffman, then manhandles him after telling him repeatedly to “walk back please”. Please? Is this a request or an order?
Olsen arrests Kauffman, charging him with a “Class A” misdemeanor version of “Disorderly Conduct”, which means Kauffman will be facing down up to a year in jail for his heroic non-cooperation with the oppressive Manchester police state. He was released on PR bail pending arraignment in Manchester District Court.
Despite the awful arrest by the terrible Manchester cops – the worst gang in the state – it was refreshing to see some courageous activist video by a Manchester area activist. Kudos to Jeremy for doing a great job standing up for his freedom to travel and proving that when the police state comes down, we’re all just in a big open air general population prison cell. If only we had more activists like him. May his example inspire others to stand up to the police state. Freedom was never won by begging.
Related news: Keene Cop Block has just released our new updated-for-2018 know-your-rights flyer! It’s a simple rundown of individual rights when dealing with the police. It is intended for distribution across New Hampshire, but may also be useful to other areas. It’s informative and keeps-it-simple. 2018 Edition: Front Side / Back Side. I’ve handed out several hundred of these in just the last two weeks around Keene State College and the students really appreciate the information.
Stay tuned here to Free Keene for developments in this case.
Liberdon is the Libertarian/Voluntarist Server running Mastodon
There has been a lot of controversy recently over social media websites like Twitter swinging their ban hammer on personalities with opinions they don’t like. As a libertarian, I believe in property rights and so Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and the like should certainly be free to ban people for whatever reason they want. I also believe in the free market’s potential reactions to bad decisions by business owners, which include boycott and competition.
Thankfully, the competition has arrived! Mastodon is a decentralized social media replacement for Twitter and it does an excellent job. I recently joined the “Liberdon” server intended for libertarians and voluntarists. Not only is Mastodon decentralized, in that anyone who wants to can run a server, but it’s also “federated”. Federated means your server can be connected to all the other Mastodon servers, that is so long as the other servers want to be connected to you. Each server sets its own rules for which other servers they’ll federate with. So if the NAZIs or Communists start a server, no one has to link up to them – the market decides instead of a centralized corporation like Twitter. However, even if no other servers federate with, say Chris Cantwell‘s server (I don’t think he has one – just as an example), he can still run his server and hate-filled bigots and racists can join it and talk to each other. Of course, each server can be controlled and its policy set by its administrator, so intra-server censorship is still possible (most servers prohibit spam, for instance), but given you are free to start your own server and set your own policy, you can’t be censored if you start your own platform.
If you are a liberty-minded person, protect yourself from censorship and join Liberdon and the “fediverse” today! If If you aren’t liberty-minded, but want to get a Mastodon account, you can start by picking a server and signing up wherever you feel most welcome. Visit Mastodon.social for their offical site.
Thanks to Darryl W Perry for putting together his ongoing Candidate Spotlight series. This five minute speech will be airing on Cheshire TV, the local cable access channel until the 2018 election. Here’s an HD version with the correct campaign website (http://ianfreeman.nhliberty.info) on-screen. I misrecalled the URL when we were recording.
As part of my near-zero budget campaign for NH Senate district 10, I’ve been posting my responses to various candidate surveys and questionnaires. Here are the latest ones I received this week.
First up, the Marijuana Policy Project’s survey, where I had to answer no to one of their questions about supporting regulation and taxation of cannabis. That’s because I’m against government control of cannabis in any way. I understand MPP is trying to lobby politicians and that’s why they propose such schemes to them. As a principled libertarian, while I’d vote for a tax-and-regulate bill if it were the only way to end prohibition, I don’t support taxes or regulations. I only support freedom, which means ending drug prohibition across the board and letting people grow, sell, possess, smoke, and distribute cannabis without annoying and restrictive government licenses.
Next, it’s the NH Right to Life survey. Abortion is an issue that libertarians have strong disagreements with each other over. While all real libertarians are against aggressive force against other humans, none of them agree at which point a fetus becomes a human. I choose the side that as long as the fetus is dependent on the mother’s connection to survive, it is a part of her and she can decide what to do with it, which will likely not make me popular with the anti-abortion group. That said, I do respect their right to protest and express their opinion. The correct libertarian position on abortion is that the government should neither prohibit or pay for them.
