The government’s paid shill, NHPR, manages to conflate all. the. things. incorrectly. here. [Go figure.]
Some initial thoughts on the targeting by the Deep State of #bitcoin and #crypto activists in the Free State:
The SEC’s case against LBRY and the FBI’s case against Keene Bitcoin ATM operators have nothing to do with each other, other than the undeniable fact that Big Gov is now shamelessly targeting peaceful political dissidents who are participants of the Free State Project, where I serve on the board. You can read more about how you can #HelpLBRYSaveCrypto HERE.
Free Staters subscribe to the ethical stance of the “nonaggression principle,” applied equally to all human interactions (i.e. “the government” doesn’t get a free pass to bully you against your will). Free Staters are determined to lead the way to a better future by dismantling corrupt and immoral crony structures through entrepreneurial human action.
We have a big PR battle ahead of us, and it is going to be all hands on deck to make sure our friends and neighbors in the Free State understand the following:
In NH, just as numerous states have nullified cannabis laws over the past decade, crypto transactions are exempt from federal money transmitters laws. See: https://www.jdsupra.com/…/new-hampshire-exempts…/
In NH, based on my current understanding of past similar situations, either the local NH law enforcement was not authorized to act with federal agents, or the entire case must be done in NH courts. (See: https://www.aclu.org/…/federal-immigration-officials…)
Bitcoin and other crypto currencies were designed in part to hedge against inflation caused by flagrant monetary expansion. If you don’t understand this sentence, you cannot be a juror on these cases. Jury nullification, thanks to past work by free staters, is alive and well in NH.
LBRY’s Odysee is a censor-proof platform. This must terrify our actively censoring Big (Bad) Bros and provides an unseemly motivation for their actions.
Ian Freeman and I don’t always see eye-to-eye but he is a peaceful man, and it is an insult to say he is a “danger to the community.” I’m glad to hear the bail refusal will be appealed. Side note: When did “innocent until proven guilty” go away? How can it be lawful to add things like “no alcohol” or “no phones” to bail conditions? We have so much stuff to fix, grr!
In order for these cases to have any legs, you’d need to apply the same “logic” to other institutions. Has a US bank or Paypal or Facebook never been used for a “romance scam” before? How is it the responsibility of the ATM operator to manage that? Doesn’t every US dollar note have traces of cocaine of it? Can we lock the Fed Gov up for that?
Clearly, this targeted federal government overreach is directed against leaders in the crypto industry because #crypto offers the most significant option to peacefully replace the most corrupt structures in the world in favor of decentralized power… in the hands of the people, for realz!
And it starts with what happens with these cases in the Free State of NH. Stay tuned…
free state project
From a 2012 interview in GQ… Not to date myself, but I’ve been doing this “Free State of NH” thing for a good long while… and now I need YOU! Interested in helping to build the coolest little independent state in the North x North East?
Come to the 18th Annual Porcupine Freedom Festival to learn more about the thousands of #bitcoin and #crypto early adopters building a consent-based society based on self-ownership. PorcFest XVIII tix for folks like comedian Dave Smith, Tom Woods are only $50 right now, get yours today.
Read the whole interview at GQ.
The Free State is THAT “Cool Little Planet,” And PorcFest is YOUR Landing Pad
If you’re a #LIBERTARIAN, you should come to PorcFest 2021 (XVIII) because we’re about to enter into Totalitarian Empire Time, and the Free State of NH is well-positioned to become that one “cool little planet where everyone stops to trade, fix their space ship, and hire a mercenary.” You know the one, that free market, low-key spot where everyone gets along because they don’t give a shit beyond *trading* for what they want!
If you’re putting a village together for PorcFest (which is sort of the mini-version of this planet) please, invite me to speak to your peeps. I have a lot to say! Buy your $50 tickets for Dave Smith, Tom Woods, Dr Naomi Wolf, Matt Kibbe and more today! Get them soon, because we’ve sold a record amount of tickets and we may have to cap attendance! You. Have. Been. Warned.
A bit about me and my skills and 25+ years of experience as an author, activist, and attorney. My mantra is #LiveFreeAndThrive! My subjects:
* Independence/secession/”Yankee Hong Kong”
* ReOpen/ReBuild NH activities/critic of lockdown and Covid response
* Free State Project: I have been actively involved since I first organized PorcFest in 2009 and am the only person to have done it x3 including in 2020 like a mofo libertarian HERO!!! , I was the president from 2010-2016, got Edward Snowden, triggered the move, and now serve as Chair of the board
* Police accountability/qualified immunity, including a deep understanding of NH’s secret Laurie’s List, I’m an active and outspoken critic of police militarization, incl. BEARCATS, police radio encryption, drones, and unlawful surveillance cameras (lost my 2019 lawsuit, boo!)
* First Amendment/free speech, including winning my 2014 landmark and well-cited 1st Circuit First Amendment case affirming the right to film police encounters in public, Gericke vs. Begin et al
* Right-to-Know/NH Open Government, incl. court cases like Brady, Fenniman, Keene 5, etc. Suggested getting redacted Laurie’s List printed in the newspaper for Sunshine Week 2021
* “Art as Activism,” including teaching writing skills (I have an MFA in creative writing in addition to my law degree) and my book The Ecstatic Pessimist (which everyone should buy on Amazon!!! It includes 13 essays about my NH activism and the FSP)
* Politics and running for NH Senate x3 as an unabashed Free Stater and getting 45% in 2020, see Carla Gericke for New Hampshire
* “Liberty as a Lifestyle,” so how to improve your health, diet, fasting, keto, yoga, sleep, cooking from scratch, and my own transformation including losing and keeping off 65 lbs and living alcohol-free.
Learn more: https://www.carlagericke.com/about/
Wow, a baker’s dozen (and a hat trick)! This memory popped up in my FB feed this morning, so I wanted to share. I started working with the Free State Project in 2008 as a volunteer producer of the Porcupine Freedom Festival, and started serving as President to the Board in 2011. I now serve as Chairman of the Free State Project board, and have personally organized PorcFest three times.
I have been arrested for my activism, won a landmark 1st Amendment case affirming the right to film police encounters, written op-eds and LTEs to persuade my neighbors to give liberty a chance, testified on bills, organized scores of rallies against endless wars, against police militarization, against our slow and steady slide into enslavement.
I have been called names and vilified by the progressive left, even though we share many concerns, and I have been marginalized by the obedient NHGOP establishment. Despite this, I have now run for NH Senate three times because no one else is willing to go up against the self-proclaimed “lion of the senate.” In 2020, I got 45% against this 82 year old, 12-term incumbent dude, which, considering there’s an investigation pending on a local 6% election fraud spread, means my time will come…
My time will come because I am supported by tens of thousands of liberty-loving, liberty-LIVING friends and fellow Free Staters. Tick-tock, ladies and gentlemen to a real FREE STATE, tick-tock…
I’m excited to announce we’ll be putting together an “FSP Museum and Welcome Center,” upstairs in the Media Room at PorcFest XVIII. I want YOU to help me make the showing SHINY!
Have a favorite photo, whether it’s a community gathering or a protest, let me know! Have a favorite memory, like that time we were banned from NASCAR, to that time we got bumped from CNN, to having Edward Snowden speak at Liberty Forum, let me know!
I’ll be setting up a Google folder where we can gather the intel, and then hopefully a few folks will volunteer to help me put together a great showing. Please and thanks.
Dear Elon,
Without wanting to come across as too “boil-your-bunny-on-a-stovetop,” I’m a big fan. We share a common story. I too am from South Africa. I too was relegated to boarding school (Pretoria Girl’s High) and finished high school at 16. I too emigrated to America after winning a Green Card in the Lottery and worked as in-house counsel at Apple and Logitech. I too am a crypto and Bitcoin enthusiast (I bought my first BTC for $6 and was the second person in the world to use the first bitcoin ATM, imagined and built right here in Manchester, the capitol of the Free State of New Hampshire). I too have big dreams (but I’m bad at math :P), and see what we are building in New Hampshire as complementary, sort of a base station of thinkers, for YOUR dreams.
Now, let’s dispel with the most confusing part first. The Free State Project in America has nothing to do with “Die Vrystaat” in South Africa. Yes, I admit, it’s kinda confusing–you should see my Google Alerts!
The Free State Project is a movement of thousands of individualists living in and moving to New Hampshire in order to build a Free State, a new, truly consent-driven society, based on voluntary exchange, free markets, and individual freedom.
We are the most successful mass-migration movement for liberty since the closing of the American frontier. We are apple-pie baking anarchists, hippies and hipsters with guns, farmers with the internet, sustainable food freedom fighters, and techies with big aspirations.
The Free State Project is a 501c3 educational nonprofit. We host a summer festival, the Porcupine Freedom Festival, AKA “PorcFest,” which attracts up to 2,000 attendees to the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire. The 18th Annual Porcupine Freedom Festival will take place from June 21-27, 2021, and we would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it if you popped in! Come land a helicopter on the field!
At PorcFest, entrepreneurs run “free trade zones” where you can buy homemade ice-cream, bacon weaves, grass fed beef, BBQ, CBD products, and other goodies. Vendors accept gold, silver, barter, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, with FRNs being the least favorite mode of exchange. We encourage children to “free-range,” and to put their best entrepreneurial efforts forward. One year, a nine-year-old sold a beer to an NPR reporter. You know, it’s like that.
On the Main Stage, where you would appear, experts talk about their passions: what makes them tick, what matters to them, why? Across the campground, smaller “villages” offer workshops and informal talks on anything and everything: politics, homeschooling, cryptocurrencies, off-the-grid living, civil disobedience, energy policy, farming, etc. There are also nightly bonfires, music and bands, dance parties, daily hikes and ‘shrooming. As one attending professor put it, “PorcFest is Burning Man for rational people.”
I’m the former president and current chairman of the Free State Project, and an author, activist, and attorney. I’m confident you would have a remarkable and memorable experience with us, and we would be thrilled to have you. Past speakers at our events have included Edward Snowden (via video in 2016), John Stossel, Naomi Wolf, Ron Paul, Roger Ver, Rick Falkvinge, and more. Having you attend would, well, frankly, blow my mind, but it would also help elevate our mission and attract more like-minded, brilliant people to our cause. We are building it, but we need more people to come!
We “Vrystaaters” are pioneers and mad dreamers, but ultimately, pragmatists who are voting with our feet to build a better future without so much government meddling into every aspect of our lives–we are building our very own Wild, Wild East while we wait for you to colonize Mars. Come see for yourself!
I can be reached at cgericke@freestateproject.org or on my cell at 917-607-4353. I hope to hear from you.
Thanks for your precious time!
Sincerely,
Carla Gericke
More about the Free State Project: https://www.fsp.org
More about PorcFest: https://www.PorcFest.com
More about me: https://www.carlagericke.com/about/ and on Wikipedia
Opening line: “My name is Carla Gericke, and when I grow up, I want to be a disco ball!”
Zinger: “New Hampshire may be cold, but it’s still warmer than Mars.” (Free Staters <3 you, Elon Musk! Please come be my bestie! Or, at least, come to PorcFest–fondly referred to as “Burning Man for rational people!”)
Ending: “We don’t have to change the world, we just have to “Keep NH Awesome!”
Reason Magazine’s editor-at-large, Nick Gillespie, called my book, The Ecstatic Pessimist: Stories of Hope (Mostly) “a fantastic package of writings.” Buy your copy from Amazon, download for free on Kindle, or order your personalized paperback directly from me. Please support my efforts by buying my book, thanks!
“Liberty lives in New Hampshire!” Donate to the Free State Project!
When Your Hairdresser Is Worried About Wheelbarrows of Cash, It’s Time to Move Home to the Free State of New Hampshire
Usually at Starbucks, my order of two coconut lattes and two sous vide egg bites costs $19.84, which I remember because it always tickles my anti-authoritarian fancy. Today, that same order was $20.93. That’s a 5% increase.
I was returning home from my hairdresser, let’s call her “J,” who, as a mom supporting 2 young kids, has been struggling during the government-induced lockdown, because, like most hairdressers, she makes the bulk of her income from events like proms and weddings. I noticed her prices had, understandably, also increased.
While J was cutting my hair, we chatted, muffled and repeating ourselves through government-mandated face coverings (mine might have been a loosely draped silk scarf).
J: “You should hear what clients have been saying in that chair.”
Me: “Folks finally over it, or they still think this crap is good?”
“So over it! People just want their lives back! Seems like more and more clients are questioning the whole narrative. How dangerous they claimed it was. Whether any of this was even necessary. I just got back from Florida, no one is wearing a mask!”
We chat on, she mentions “money printing” and “inflation” and “a wheelbarrow of money” to pay for stuff. Now, mind you, J is an ordinary working mom, not some monetary supply guru. I mention a true crime series about the Hotel Cecil in downtown LA., because I was struck when the narrator said, “It cost a million dollars in 1924 to build. That was a lot of money in those days.”
Me: “Why does no one stop and question WHY money was ‘worth more’ in the past? Or wonder, when magazine articles say things like ‘in 1980 dollars,’ what that actually means? Why don’t more people wonder, ‘What happened? Why is my money worth less now? Where did the value go?'”
J: “What do you think happens next?”
Me: “I hope it’s not a dollar collapse, but it’s hard to imagine what else is coming with this extra $4+ TRILLION in debt and counting. This past year, the feds have put close to the amount of all previous money in circulation, in circulation. It’s not sustainable. My best guess is it’s not going to end well for us, the little guy.”
Inflation is an invisible tax on us all courtesy of the US Federal Reserve colluding with a corrupt, immoral federal government driving us deeper and deeper into unimaginable debt and decline. Over this year, you will notice prices eking up, then possibly even skyrocketing. Know this: your government is ACTIVELY MAKING YOU POORER WHILE PURPORTING TO “CARE.”
America is bankrupt. Withdraw your consent.
Stop believing in the myth. Stop believing their criminal bullshit. Start thinking for yourself. Turn off your TV, especially the “news”! Start putting your extra cash into crypto, and hard metals like gold, silver, and lead. If you can, buy a gun and learn to shoot. Start cooking your meals from scratch. Get healthy. Like real health: where you have clarity of mind, energy, and the stamina to help others. Learn new things. Curiosity is the antidote to statism. Tell a friend what you know. I helped turn on J to some of these ideas through years of chit-chat in that chair.
As more people grasp the truth through their own experiences (after all, the sky didn’t fall), we can build better lives free from government overreach. I am building a community based on my values, that includes looking people in the eye and making your word count. So… If you are a free stater not living in New Hampshire, get your butt home! It’s time to #MakeYourMove in order to #LiveFreeAndThrive! We’re waiting to welcome YOU soon with your very own “Passport to Freedom!”*
*Want to know more? Move!
Oldie but goodie! Back in 2016, The Economist said “shock-troops” were coming… Don’t know why liberty should be “shocking” unless you are so quelled that you like your life with a hulking side of Big Bad Bro totalitarianism, but thousands of “allies” have indeed moved to the Free State to join thousands of liberty lovers already here because “Liberty Lives in New Hampshire!” #MakeYourMove #LiveFreeAndThrive
Live Free, or Try: NH’s Free State Project Reaches Critical Mass
“AFTER successful careers in engineering, Dan and Carol McGuire could have pursued retirements of highbrow ease—the couple’s interests range from American history to collecting modern art. Instead they moved across the country from Washington state in response to an essay by a young libertarian, Jason Sorens, arguing that if enough believers in limited government moved to a single state (ideally one with a small population and a “live and let live” ethos), they could exert real influence.
That essay spawned the “Free State Project” (FSP), whose early members voted to make New Hampshire their testbed. This was a nod to the state’s modest scale, its culture of Yankee self-reliance and low taxes, and its unusually accessible political system, starting with the state’s House of Representatives, whose 400 members answer to a few thousand constituents each, and are paid $100 a year. The FSP devised a pledge for activists to sign, by which they agreed to move to New Hampshire if 19,999 other libertarians made the same commitment. Once that critical mass was reached, FSP members pledged to make their own trek within five years. The FSP announced on February 3rd that the 20,000 target has been reached.
In the past decade 2,000 pioneers could not wait and moved anyway. A total of about 40 Free Staters have been elected to New Hampshire’s statehouse at various points, among them the McGuires, husband-and-wife Republican legislators who represent overlapping districts. Free Staters have helped to legalise gay marriage and ease rules on everything from home schooling to selling unpasteurised milk.
Some wins were easy. A repeal of all state knife laws passed in 2010: Mr McGuire shows off a now-legal switch-blade that can be opened with one hand, noting that such knives are handy tools for paramedics. Mrs McGuire is proud of a law making it simpler for farmers to slaughter their own chickens and rabbits. The couple credit Free Staters with making New Hampshire juries more aware of their right to throw out cases that seem to offend natural justice, under the centuries-old principle of nullification. Future battles loom over school choice and over using public money to send children to private schools.
Free Staters are yet to overcome national partisan divisions. In 2015 New Hampshire’s Democratic governor vetoed a law making it legal to carry a gun without a licence, backed by conservatives of all stripes, some of them libertarians. Interviewed at her suggestion in a smoke-filled Manchester cigar bar, the FSP’s president, Carla Gericke, stresses that some Free Staters have run for office as Democrats (though they are a small minority). One Democratic Free Stater is currently trying to legalise prostitution. Others are moved by internet privacy and alternative currencies such as bitcoin.
Ms Gericke would like to see New Hampshire become a “mix between Alaska and Amsterdam on personal freedoms, and Hong Kong on economic freedoms”. That is a stretch. As a fine place to live New Hampshire attracts lots of newcomers, many of them more conventional than the FSP’s shock-troops. Still, Ms Gericke hopes that are allies on the way. Pledge-signers have e-mailed to say that their homes are on the market, she says. New Hampshire boasts a property firm founded by a Free Stater (and former member of the state House) to help project members move. It is called Porcupine Real Estate, after a favourite libertarian animal, honoured as a beast which is dangerous only when attacked.”
Source: “Live Free, or Try” at The Economist.
“Carla Gericke of the Free State Project updates us on what’s happening in New Hampshire and gives us ideas for how liberty-lovers can support each other and keep each other sane during these difficult, even insane, times.”
UPDATE 2/11/21: If you think my claims about totalitarianism is far-fetched, check this out: “In Ep. 1829 we did together last week, someone asked in the comments, ‘What was the source for the ‘no increased death rate for 2020′ in NH? Just glancing at the CDC data shows a 10% YoY increase between ’19 and ’20, but maybe NH’s own data is different.’ Four times now, FOUR TIMES, I have added the source link only to have it disappear moments later! #JustSayNoToBigBadBro”. HERE is the source material (compiled by my husband, Louis Calitz, using the data made available by the state).
