Keene Recognized as Top Bitcoin City by FoodTruckOperator.com

Isabelle Rose, owner Bon Vivant - Gourmet Street Food

Isabelle Rose, owner Bon Vivant – Gourmet Street Food

In the summer of 2016, Isabelle Rose launched her Keene, NH food truck, “Bon Vivant Gourmet Street Foods”, serving delicious Vietnamese food. From the beginning she was accepting Bitcoin! Though she’s closed for the winter and planning to open a sit-down restaurant next, Food Truck Operator, a food truck industry website, has published a piece featuring Isabelle.

It’s great publicity for her and for Keene, which the article calls, “one of the most pro-bitcoin communities in the U.S., if not the world.”

The article also focuses on Keene-based beverage truck operator Doug Hildreth, who says he’ll be accepting cryptocurrency at his truck, “320Nitro”, when he reopens in 2018. You can read the full story here at FoodTruckOperator.com.

Democrat-turned-Libertarian State Rep Speaks at Keene State College

State Representative Joseph Stallcop made headlines and history earlier this year when he became the second state rep this year to flip parties to the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire. He was elected to the Keene seat as a Democrat in 2016.

Earlier this fall, Stallcop was invited to give a presentation at Keene State College during a larger event where multiple speakers were on campus. I was able to attend and record video, which includes his presentation and the questions afterward:

Ron Paul Signs the Shire Society Declaration! Yes, THAT Ron Paul.

Ron Paul Signs the Shire Society Declaration

Ron Paul Signs the Shire Society Declaration

In 2010, dozens of libertarians, voluntaryists, and anarchists attending the Porcupine Freedom Festival put their signatures on the original Shire Society Declaration. The Declaration, since signed thousands of times online and in real life by people from across the globe, is a personal declaration of independence from the horrible idea of “the state”. You can read and sign the Shire Society Declaration here and for more history on its creation, see here.

Since the original two hemp paper Declarations quickly filled up with signatures, the artist who did the calligraphy, the Muslim Agorist aka Davi Barker created a bunch of smaller hemp paper replicas. Former Keene activist El Stone brought one of them to the Nexus conference in Colorado in late September 2017, where libertarian presidential candidate and all-around-hero to liberty Ron Paul was slated to speak.

Derrick Slopey and Ron Paul at the Nexus Conference

Derrick Slopey and Ron Paul at the Nexus Conference

According to witness and photographer Derrick Slopey, it all happened fast as Ron exited the stage. Stone was able to get his attention, unfurled the Declaration and asked if he’d sign it. Ron said, “Sure, I agree with all of this” and added his signature.

The copy of the Declaration was the same Declaration that others at the conference had been signing, including Roger Ver aka “Bitcoin Jesus”. However, you can’t see any other signatures in the photos below besides Ron Paul’s as Stone is super-protective of the privacy of the signers on his declaration.

Kudos to Ron Paul for the amazing endorsement! Also thanks to Stone for being the one to ask him and Derrick for the photos. When we created it, I don’t think anyone imagined Ron Paul would join the Shire Society. What an awesome surprise and amazing validation for the Shire Society Declaration!

Many Shire Society members are moving to New Hampshire to concentrate libertarian action in one spot. You can connect with others already here and those planning to move on the Shire Forum.

Here are pics of Ron’s signature on the document: (more…)

Keene Mosque Now Open, Holds First Prayer of Jummah

More than a dozen attended the initial Prayer of Jummah

More than a dozen attended the initial Prayer of Jummah

Masha’Allah! It’s been months in the making and there have been some interesting bumps in the road, but the initial renovations are complete and New Hampshire’s first full-time mosque is now open!

The doors were finally opened at 659 Marlboro Rd in Keene to the Masjid al Latiff and Interfaith Community Center (MALIC Center) this Friday afternoon for Prayer of Jummah, Islam’s congregational Friday prayer. As the first full-time Masjid in NH, the MALIC Center is open for all five prayers per day including Fajr (dawn), Zuhr (midday), Asr (afternoon), Maghrib (sunset), and Isha (night).

For those unfamiliar with the Quran, in one memorable part Muhammad successfully negotiated with God, at Moses’ insistence, the number of daily prayers from fifty down to five.

Should they wish to pray at the Keene Masjid, Muslims of all denominations are welcome, so long as they remain at peace towards the others.  In addition, non-Muslims are welcome to attend.  All attendees will be required to remove their shoes before entering the Masjid.  Prayer times adjust based on the sun throughout the year and will be updated on the Masjid’s facebook page and also on a poster on-site.

Dr. Ahmad Alabaddi delivers the inaugural khutbah (sermon) at the MALIC Center.

Dr. Ahmad Alabaddi delivers the inaugural khutbah (sermon) at the MALIC Center.

At Friday’s Jummah, the khutbah (sermon) was given by Dr.
Ahmad Alabaddi, a local dentist. Dr. Alabaddi expressed much gratitude for the new location and opportunity:

“I can’t explain how much happiness, in my heart, and for our community. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala (The most glorified, the most high.) sent us brother Will and the people who gave us this very generous gift… This is all qadar. It’s fate from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala. I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this facility. I will mention something that might make some of you mad, but I have to say it… Most of the donation for this facility came from a non-Muslim. We respect that. We thank them very much and we will extend our hands, our hearts, our arms out for them if they need any help. And this is what Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala and Islam told us and indicated to us what to do. I mean, we have to treat everyone in a nice way, Muslims and non-Muslims. (Muhammad) is a big example of that. He never mistreated anyone regardless of his religion, beliefs, color, race, or whatsoever. And this is what Islam is about.”

You can see the full sermon in this cell phone video of the Jummah posted to the MALIC Center facebook page. (more…)

An Open Letter to Crypto-Wealthy Libertarians, Voluntarists, and Anarchists

Manchester, NH Bitcoin Meetup

Manchester, NH Bitcoin Meetup – The world’s longest-running.

With $1 trillion market cap for all cryptocurrency on the horizon, it’s pretty clear a bunch of voluntarist/anarchists/libertarians have access to unprecedented wealth – if not now, very soon.

If achieving liberty in your lifetime is important to you and you have now found yourself with, or will very soon (if the prices keep rising) have access to more wealth than you have ever had access to, or could have imagined having, now is the time that you should seriously consider a couple of options:

Start planning your move to New Hampshire, ASAP, to join the largest concentration of liberty-minded people on earth. Many of whom are very active and having success in changing the status quo both inside and outside the system. The state is still a state, but for what it’s worth, NH’s state this year exempted crypto-only business from money transmitter statutes. Crypto-libertarians were the ones moving this legislation forward. (New Hampshire has a bunch of principled libertarians in its state house, unlike other states.)

More liberty-minded people like you have moved to New Hampshire than anywhere else in the world.

More liberty-minded people like you have moved to New Hampshire than anywhere else in the world.

Lots of things were already made possible just by bringing libertarians together to the same geographic area in real life, (as has been happening here for well over a decade) but now thanks to crypto, the game is set to change big time in the next five years. Besides the obvious ability to better fund political campaigns and other inside-the-system action, once the total crypto market cap goes up another 10x or 100x, outright buying existing mainstream media (TV, radio, print) should be possible, in addition to funding an army of attorneys to help crush the state in their own courts. I’m sure you can think of some cool possibilities that concentrating crypto-wealthy libertarian activists together can achieve!

Thousands have already moved and are thousands more are planning to move. Here are 101 reasons why you should: (more…)

NHCLU Files Motion Challenging Border Patrol Checkpoints!

Border Patrol in Derby Line, VT

Border Patrol Agents Hassle Us Over Recording Video of their Checkpoint

Good news! The privacy-invading internal border patrol checkpoints that appeared in New Hampshire’s North Country this summer have been challenged in court by the NH Civil Liberties Union!

From their press release:

As stated in the ACLU-NH’s motion, during these border patrol checkpoints, the Woodstock Police Department (“WPD”) and the New Hampshire State Police separately worked in concert with United States Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) to circumvent the independent protections provided by the New Hampshire Constitution against dog-sniff searches in the absence of a warrant or reasonable suspicion. Specifically, federal CBP agents used dog-sniff searches in situations where New Hampshire law enforcement would have been barred from conducting similar searches. Resulting evidence from these federal searches was then turned over to state law enforcement for drug prosecutions. (more…)

Full Video of First-Ever Free State Blockchain Conference

Darryl W Perry addresses the crowd during the conference.

Darryl W Perry addresses the crowd during the conference.

This year’s first-ever Free State Blockchain Digital Assets Conference in Portsmouth, NH was a smashing success. If you missed it, check out Derrick J’s recap of the event here.

Video of the conference has now been posted, and while the quality could be better, it’s better to have it than not. Of special note is the presentation from Keene-area cryptocurrency business-owner Chris Rietmann (2:02:50) and Free Keene‘s Darryl W Perry on a panel discussion about the future of blockchain (4:47:00).

Looking forward to next year’s conference!