After years of testifying for liberty at the New Hampshire state house on his own dime, Free Keene blogger Darryl W Perry launched Liberty Lobby LLC last year to accept financial support from others for his mission. This year, Liberty Lobby has kicked off it’s state house testimony season, with Darryl appearing at multiple hearings and delivering a principled message of liberty to the state representatives, every issue, every time.
Here are videos of Darryl and other libertarians testifying before various committees on different bills in Week #1 of the Liberty Lobby series:
HB 249 – Repealing the prohibition on “Ballot Selfies”:
Surprisingly late to the table, the social engineers over in the Keene school district have joined 6 other NH school districts in presenting a policy addressing the needs of transgender and gender nonconforming students. Transgender is defined as a person whose gender identity is different from their gender assigned at birth. The policy recognizes the privacy of transgender students as well as sets protections against possible harassment.
No doubt these protections are meaningful. But they are unnecessary. NH law already protects against discrimination based on sexual orientation and I don’t believe there is a public school out there that doesn’t already have some sort of anti-bullying policy in place.
Those two points aside, the policy gets a bit more controversial in its statement concerning restroom accessibility: “A student shall have the right to access the restroom or locker room that corresponds to the gender identity consistently asserted at school.” So in other words, boys who identify as girls would have the right to use both the girls bathrooms and locker rooms and vice versa. The policy also permits transgender students to participate in competitive sports in a manner consistent with their gender identity.
Undoubtedly, this move by NH schools and many others across the country is fueled by the Obama administration’s directives in May 2016 forcing schools to allow students to use the bathroom of the gender that they identify with or lose federal funding under Title IX; thus proving how easily the federal government manipulates the political climate in our country not by force of law, but force by checkbook. (more…)
David Brooks at the Monitor did a detailed writeup which included him visiting Area 23 to take photos and interview A23 owner Kirk McNeil. It’s a good piece, but whoever wrote the headline got it wrong. NH is not the leader in BVMs for the nation, but we do outperform all of the rest of New England combined.
School budget going up. Again • Pedestrian crosswalks and signage out of control in Keene • Boss targeted for firing New Year Baby’s dad • Robin Hood wins free speech case, loses in court of public opinion • http://CitizenCain.org
Just a few weeks after Portsmouth activists installed a Bitcoin Vending Machine, a fifth NH-based BVM has launched, this one in Concord! Area 23, a bar at 254 N State St (Unit H in the Smokestack Center) is the location of NH’s newest BVM. Area 23 is a newer establishment, having opened its doors in 2015 and it’s been accepting bitcoin from customers as payment from day one.
Longtime Concord liberty activist Kirk McNeil is Area 23’s proprietor. Longtime readers of Free Keene may remember him for making headlines for legalizing nanobreweries in New Hampshire. Kirk said in an interview for Free Keene, “I’m happy to have a location where people can access and utilize alternative currencies and exchange methods.”
Entrepreneur and newer mover David Jurist purchased the Lamassu brand BVM, approached Kirk before anyone else and offered him the opportunity to host the unit at Area 23, given it was already a liberty-and-bitcoin friendly establishment. David told me, “it’s exciting that the capital city of New Hampshire finally has a Bitcoin Vending Machine”. I agree. It’s also timely as one of the state representatives on the “Commission to Study Cryptocurrency” has followed through on her promise to file a bill this year that will ensure bitcoin users do not need to register as “money transmitters”. (more…)
This week I had the pleasure of being invited to participate in a panel discussion about voluntaryism on YouTube channel, “No More 2 Party System“. Host Jeff Justice had several voluntarists on his show to talk about what voluntaryism is, including Tatiana Moroz and Jeffrey Phillips. I was able to join the discussion about an hour in due to my studio being occupied by Free Talk Live when they started at 9pm Eastern.
My optimistic message of migrating to NH with the highest concentration of liberty activists in the world stood in stark contrast to the other guests’ opinions. The others were all spread out in other places with no real hope for liberty in their lifetimes. Their positions were understandably critical of getting involved in the system (they don’t know that the system can actually be changed here in NH). Some panelists supported just trying to run away from the state or improve one’s own individual wealth and happiness where they are. (more…)
I received a call from a friend in Keene yesterday. His friend’s computer had been hit by “ransomware”. Ransomware is malware that supposedly encrypts the hard drive of the victim, then demands payment in bitcoin in order to unlock the files. The malicious software in today’s incident was demanding a payment of 1.9 bitcoin and at the time of this writing, one bitcoin is selling for over $1,000 USD, so the ransomware was demanding about $2,000 worth of bitcoin. Damn. This is not the way you want to introduce someone to the amazing world of Bitcoin.
Having heard that I was someone who might know a thing or two about bitcoin, they reached out to me. My first question was, do you have backups of your important files? He said that his backup procedure had been broken for a while, so he didn’t have one. This is the number one thing you can do to avoid paying ransom. If you have a backup (preferably one on-site and one off-site), then you can just format the computer and reinstall everything fresh.
They were in a hurry as there were mission critical files on the infected computer, so I told them I could help them turn some cash into bitcoin since the Keene Bitcoin Vending Machine at Route 101 Local Goods is closed on Mondays. However, I cautioned that they still have to trust unknown hackers to actually do as they say and unlock the files once the payment is made. (Turns out, they did decrypt the files about ten hours after he paid the ransom.) I then did some digging online for solutions to avoid paying the extortion.
Turns out, paying the ransom or formatting the computer aren’t the only two options, according to some of my even-more-techy friends in the New Hampshire bitcoin community. The most promising options are ransomware decryptors. Kapersky Labs, along with Intel and others, have a website set up with instructions and downloadable files to attempt to unencrypt your files. Another handy site, “ID Ransomware” will assist you in determining which specific ransomware you’re dealing with. (more…)
