Mediaboss Marketing

As Keene resident and libertarian activist Ian Freeman awaits trial on federal charges related to his bitcoin-exchange business, two of his alleged co-conspirators have signaled they will enter guilty pleas.

Renee and Andrew Spinella, both of Derry, are scheduled for change-of-plea hearings Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Concord. Their shift from not-guilty pleas to pleading guilty would mark the first time any of the six alleged co-conspirators have admitted wrongdoing.

Freeman, Colleen Fordham of Alstead, Aria DiMezzo of Keene and a Keene man who legally changed his name from Richard Paul to Nobody have all pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Prosecutors claim Freeman and his alleged co-conspirators violated federal law by running an unlicensed virtual currency-exchange business that handled more than $10 million in transactions over several years.

According to the government, Freeman and other co-defendants used personal bank accounts and accounts in the names of purported religious entities like the Shire Free Church, the Crypto Church of NH, the Church of the Invisible Hand and the Reformed Satanic Church to conceal the nature of their business while directing customers to falsely report that they were donating to churches or buying rare coins, not purchasing cryptocurrency.

The government arrested the six in March 2021. The FBI conducted several searches in Keene one day that month, including at 73-75 Leverett St. and at two properties on Route 101.

Those properties are linked to the libertarian activist group known locally as Free Keene, which has ties to some of the defendants. The Route 101 searches were at 661 Marlboro Road, at a business called Bitcoin Embassy N.H., and 659 Marlboro Road, which is owned by Shire Free Church Holdings LLC. The FBI also conducted an operation at a local convenience store, with an employee at the time telling The Sentinel agents removed a Bitcoin ATM.

Court records indicate the defendants trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 1.

All six alleged co-conspirators were charged with conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, and all but DiMezzo also face a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Renee Spinella additionally faces two charges of wire fraud and Andrew Spinella faces a single additional charge of wire fraud. Court documents do not indicate what charge or charges they are expected to plead guilty to.

Freeman also faces charges of operation of an unlicensed money-transmitting business, continuing financial-crimes enterprise, money laundering and six counts of wire fraud. The continuing financial-crimes enterprise charge carries a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence.

Unfortunately the way the federal government works is they do their best to intimidate people by stacking on as many charges as possible, Freeman said Saturday.

Freeman said he has not been allowed to talk to his co-defendants, but has heard that the prosecution threatened the Spinellas with additional charges to force them into a plea deal. The Sentinel has not been able to confirm this. Court documents do not indicate any additional charges. Renee Spinella was not immediately reachable by phone. Neither Andrew Spinella nor his attorney were immediately reachable Saturday for a request for comment.

Freeman said he does not expect that the Spinellas will cooperate with the government, despite the scheduled guilty plea.

Nobody here did anything wrong. These are victimless so-called crimes, he said. I expect they will not be cooperating with the state because we all believe the state is evil.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Georgiana L. MacDonald has previously alleged that hordes of cybercriminals bought virtual currency from Freeman in an effort to avoid detection by banks and government regulators.

The government also claims in court documents Freeman allowed an undercover agent to exchange around $20,000 in cash for bitcoin after the agent told him he was dealing drugs. Freemans lawyer, Mark Sisti, has previously told The Sentinel he doesnt know where the governments claim about an undercover agent is coming from. He said he has seen evidence of Freeman refusing to deal with criminals.

DiMezzo, also reached by phone Saturday, said the Spinellas have to do what is best for themselves even if that means entering a plea deal with the government.

In the libertarian philosophy as long as they are making the decision that is best for them the world is best served, DiMezzo said.

While she said she believes a jury will find no evidence of the alleged crimes, certainly, if they agree to be star witnesses to the prosecutors, that certainly will have an effect on other peoples cases.

But a guilty plea is not evidence of guilt, DiMezzo argued, claiming, as Freeman did, that the federal government stacks charges against defendants to bully them into pleas.

Its hard to accept a guilty plea as an actual confession of guilt in the modern court system, she said. Whether theyre guilty or not, [defendants] accept the deal to make the bigger threat go away.

Continue reading here:
Two expected to plead guilty in cryptocurrency case - Concord Monitor

Gina Lyu just finished her afternoon university class at the University of Toronto. It had been a long, tiring day. Standing by a downtown bus stop, she was waiting for the right bus to take her home and was fiddling with her phone to pass the time.

Lyu is a fourth-year international student from China who studies management. While she was engrossed in replying to a friends message about a weekend party, a man approached and turned to face her.

She lifted her eyes as he came closer and closer.

Are you Asian? the man asked, looking Lyu up and down.

He looked directly into her eyes. I thought Asian girls were super young and beautiful.

It was not the first time that Lyu heard of cases of racism and bias being thrown around in Canada. But it was the first time that she had been reduced to a race herself.

Yellow fever is an uncomfortable and at times scary phenomenon that some Asian women (and men) experience when they are approached by others in a sexual manner because of their race. Though it is not well documented, some journalists and academics have explored the issue, which appears to be on the rise in Canada.

I stiffened at the sound of his oppressive and targeted words. My brain froze at that time. I didnt even know what to do, Lyu said in Mandarin over a coffee.

It was the most helpless moment for me, Lyu said in a video interview with the Toronto Observer. He was my fathers age, and he tried to touch me, and I ducked. The only lucky thing was that it was in the afternoon, and not at night.

In fact, the sexual and physical assault didnt happen to me, but I still felt sick, and the feeling lasts a long time.

Asian women (and men) are the target of individuals who only focus on Asian traits in this context.

To some extent, this is not only a problem in terms of dating and relationships. As in Lyus case, at times strangers make Asian victims feel unsafe.

Some scholars who study this phenomenon have argued that yellow fever cannot be considered the equivalent to other (sexual) preferences, Xiaobei Chen, a professor of sociology and associate chair at Carleton University, said in a phone interview.

Instead, it must be understood as desires that are at least partly shaped by racist constructions of Asian women.

WATCH | Observer reporter Chudi Xu explains yellow fever:

A report from the Stop AAPI Hate Coalition, a U.S. nonprofit organization that stands against racism, found that in 2020 and 2021, women in the United States reported hate incidents 2.3 times more than men (68 per cent).

A report conducted by the Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter (CCNC Toronto) found that a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, there had been 1,150 cases of racist attacks in Canada. Asian women were the victims in nearly 60 per cent of all reported cases.

Some of the victims, like Lyu, didnt call the police after their encounters, so the actual figures could be even higher.

The pandemic has triggered a new wave of violence, followed by the social movement #StopAsianHate which began in March 2021. That month, a man in Atlanta, Ga., went on a shooting spree that killed eight people, including six Asian women.

In the aftermath of the Atlanta shooting for days the police and the media described the incident as caused by sexual addiction rather than seeing it as a hate crime against Asian woman, said Chen, the sociology professor.

It is a very blatant example of how the media, even in the context of horrific tragedy still play a role in perpetuating that discourse.

Students such as Lyu experience not only physical endangerment from individuals who claim to have preferences, but also long-lasting psychological damage.

Many people are trying to address yellow fever on social media. One TikTokker who calls herself haileyych is trying to counter it by showing examples. One of her videos tells the audience that it is time to admit that what individuals claim as preferences are thinly veiled racist attacks.

In one Facebook group, Libertarian Guys With Asian Wives, about half of the posts promote having an Asian wife and emphasize the benefits of marrying one.

I think it is kind of weird to have racial preferences when dating, the YouTuber Celiac Attack said in a reaction video after he browsed the Facebook groups posts. He read out a comment in one of his videos: Why do you keep pointing out your wife is Asian if you arent some kind of fetishist though? Why isnt she just your wife?

WATCH | Celiac Attack takes on Libertarian Guys with Asian Wives:

Asian women have long been viewed as supple and submissive. Several studies on Hollywood movies probed how they hypersexualize Asian women and desexualize Asian men.

In a recent interview with CBC News, film scholar Celine Parreas Shimizu described how movies, such as Madame Chrysanthme (1887) and Madame Butterfly (1904), planted the seeds of the trend of servile submissives, suffering, diminutive Asian women in early mass culture.

Its something many Asian women actively want to change, including Chen, the sociology professor.

I think for Asian women, we should define ourselves and narrate our own story, rather than be defined by others, she said. It is a lifelong process.

After the encounter at the bus stop, Lyu opened the Uber app and hailed a ride so she could leave as soon as she could. During the ride, she began processing what just happened to her. She began to shake.

When asked how she would respond if she had the chance to go through it all over again, she said, I would fight back. And take a picture of him to remind my other friends.

Read more from the Observer:

Related

Read more here:
How 'yellow fever' is affecting Asian women in North America - The Toronto Observer

Libertarian: Handouts Goosed Inflation

Four Federal Reserve economists cite DCs pandemic-related cash handouts to explain why US inflation has been much worse than other nations since early 2021, reports Reasons Eric Boehm. Uncle Sams fiscal support measures ... may have contributed to this divergence, the economists write. Few other nations handed out cash directly to citizens as America did, notes Boehm. And the big blow came in 2021, when Team Biden pushed through a round of $1,400 checks as part of the American Rescue Plan, including for people who werent even poor. All that cash is now chasing the same number of goods. Thats a recipe for inflation straight out of any economics textbook.

When I think about Americas wide-open southern border with Mexico and the utter lawlessness such chaos represents a record two million illegal immigrants streaming in last year and thousands more every day I consider the politics, John Kass writes at John Kass News. More than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdose last year, most of them young, most were victims of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids smuggled over the southern border. Heres how it works: China makes fentanyl. Banks and the Mexican drug cartels make fortunes pushing the synthetic opioid across our wide-open Southern border, using border crossers as their mules. And American young people die, without much reaction from the American political class or the media that protects that class.

The United States southern border isnt just shared with Mexico its shared with the world, observes Jesse Hardman at the Los Angeles Times. While working along the border, Ive met migrants from Afghanistan, Syria, China, Eritrea and many more countries. If theres trouble anywhere on the globe, residents from that region will soon be arriving at the US-Mexico border. People fleeing human rights abuses, poverty and war say they see the US as a place they can get work and be relatively safe. Indeed, in the four months before Russia invaded Ukraine, US Customs and Border Protection nabbed about 6,400 Russians and more than 1,000 Ukrainians. People travel across the world through deadly terrain and under horrible conditions to a border they likely wont be allowed to legally cross because its their last hope.

Elon Musks move to buy $2.64 billion in Twitter stock and become the largest individual stakeholder appears based in his libertarian values as they pertain to free speech, argues Joe Concha at The Hill. And in that space free speech is the whole ballgame especially since social media, including most notably Twitter, not only dismissed ... but censored the Hunter Biden laptop story. Twitter employees fear Musk may inflict damage to the companys culture, but that culture has freely embraced censorship while shunning due process, so if Musk is a threat to that, its a good thing. Two-thirds of Americans say [social medias] had a mostly negative impact on the country, and one big aspect of that is the assault on free speech.

The New York Times Bret Stephens slams the Boston Athletic Associations move to ban Russian and Belarusian residents from this years Boston Marathon. The BAA declined to say what responsibility the banned athletes have for the policies of their government, and whether exceptions would be made for runners who made public statements denouncing the invasion of Ukraine. Yet we know not all Russians and Belarusians support their leaders a point the BAA should seek to honor, not ignore. And: To reduce citizens of a state to an identity with the politics of their government is ... a gift to people like Putin. Americans are supposed to believe in openness, competition and fair play. ... It would be nice to see the BAA celebrate those ideals.

Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

Originally posted here:
Handouts goosed inflation and other commentary - New York Post

Four Internets: Data, Geopolitics, and The Governance of Cyberspace By Kieron O'Hara and Wendy Hall Oxford University Press 342 pages ISBN: 978-0-19-752368-1 22.99

The early days of the internet were marked by cognitive dissonance expansive enough to include both the belief that the emerging social cyberspace could not be controlled by governments and the belief that it was constantly under threat of becoming fragmented.

Twenty-five years on, concerns about fragmentation -- the 'splinternet' -- continue, but most would admit that the Great Firewall of China, along with shutdowns in various countries during times of protest, has proved conclusively that a determined government can indeed exercise a great deal of control if it wants to.

Meanwhile, those who remember the internet's beginnings wax nostalgic about the days when it was 'open', 'free', and 'decentralised' -- qualities they hope to recapture via Web3 (which many argue is already highly centralised).

The big American technology companies dominate these discussions as much as they dominate most people's daily online lives, as if the job would be complete after answering "What's to be done about Facebook?". The opposition in such public debates is generally the EU, which has done more to curb the power of big technology companies than any other authority.

In Four Internets: Data, Geopolitics, and The Governance of Cyberspace, University of Southampton academics Kieron O'Hara and Wendy Hall argue that this framing is too simple. Instead, as the title suggests, they take a broader international perspective to find four internet governance paradigms in play.

These are: the open internet (which the authors connect with San Francisco); the 'bourgeois Brussels' internet that the EU is trying to regulate into being via legislation such as the Digital Services Act; the commercial ('DC') internet; and the paternalistic internet of countries like China, who want to control what their citizens can access.

You can quibble with these designations; the open internet needed many other locations for its creation besides San Francisco, but the libertarian Californian ideology dominated forward thinking in that period. And where I, as an American, see Big Tech as creatures of libertarian San Francisco, it's in Washington DC that their vast lobbying funds are being spent. Without DC's favourable policies, the commercial internet would not exist in its present form. O'Hara and Hall are, in other words, talking policy and ethos, not literally about who created which technologies or corporations.

Much of the book outlines the benefits and challenges deriving from each of these four approaches. Each provokes one or more policy questions for the authors to consider in the light of the four paradigms, and emerging technologies that may change the picture. A few examples: how to maintain quality in open systems; how to foster competition against the technology giants; whether a sovereign internet is possible; and when personal data should cross borders. None of these issues are easy to solve, and authors don't pretend to do so.

"This is not a book about saving the world," O'Hara and Hall write. Instead, it's an attempt to provide the background and understanding to help the rest of us find workable compromises that take the best from each of these approaches. Compromise will be essential, because the authors' four internets are not particularly compatible.

RECENT AND RELATED CONTENT

Brazil bans Telegram over unresponsiveness around tackling disinformation

OMB's Zero Trust strategy: Government gets good

Cybersecurity 101: Protect your privacy from hackers, spies, and the government

Chinese tech companies must undergo government cyber review to list overseas

Chinese government declares all cryptocurrency transactions illegal

Read more book reviews

See original here:
Four Internets, book review: Possible internet futures, and how to reconcile them - ZDNet

On this Monday's Reason Roundtable, with Katherine Mangu-Ward out, Matt Welch, Peter Suderman, Nick Gillespie, and special guest Fiona Harrigan discuss the latest on the war in Ukraine and the ongoing Disney "groomer" panic.

1:37: Ukraine update: What the U.S. should and shouldn't do in Ukraine

19:27: The great "groomer" debate.

38:01: Weekly Listener Question: "Can a tent be too big? I understand the definition of libertarianism is fluid, but there has to be limits to that. Any time someone tries to nail down a few ideas, it's always countered with them saying "no true Scotsman fallacy" or "libertarianism is the goal, but we need to be pragmatic in the short term". All of this, however, is a convoluted way for me to say the LP of NH, the Mises Caucus, and last week's Roundtable emailer are not libertarian and should stop using the word. DeSantinistas, Trumpers, pro-Putin trad cons, and all right-wing reactionaries need to be disavowed and loudly."

This week's links:

"The Case for Pursuing the Issue of Russian War Crimes in Ukraine - Even Though Putin is Highly Unlikely to Ever be Tried and Punished" by Ilya Somin

"From Iraq to Ukraine, the American Press Loves a War" by Fiona Harrigan

"Ukraine Crisis: U.S. Must Use Restraint" by Nick Gillespie

"'Equity,' 'Multiculturalism,' and 'Racial Prejudice,' Among Concepts That Could Be Banned in Schools by Wisconsin Bill" by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

"40 Years of Free Minds and Free Markets" by Brian Doherty

"Goodnight, Moonshot" by Matt Welch

Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Today's sponsor:

Tired of feeling like someone's always watching you on the internet? Maybe advertisers know a bit too much about you, or you're concerned about the privacy of your identity. Using incognito mode won't solve the problem either. IPVanish VPN is here to protect your right to privacy and help you stay anonymous online.

IPVanish helps you safely browse the internet without exposing your private details to third parties, such as hackers, your ISP, or advertisers.

You can use IPVanish on unlimited devices without sacrificing on speed: your computers, tablets, phoneseven devices like your Firestick when you're streaming media. When you use IPVanish, all of your data is encrypted. This means that your private details, passwords, communications, browsing history, and more will be completely shielded from falling into the wrong hands. Even your physical location will be hidden. IPVanish makes you virtually invisible online. It's that simple.

Whether I'm at home or in public, I don't go online anymore without using IPVanish. IPVanish is offering an incredible 70 percent off their yearly plan for our listeners with a 30-day money-back guarantee. That's just like getting 9 months for free.

IPVanish is super easy to use. All you have to do is tap one button, and you're instantly protected. You won't even know it's on. Stop sharing with the world everything you watch, everything you search for, and everything you buy. Take your privacy back today with the brand rated 4.6 out of 5 on Trustpilot.

Go to IPVANISH.com/roundtable and use promotional code ROUNDTABLE to claim your 70 percent savings. That's I-P-V-A-N-I-S-H.com/roundtable.

Audio production by Ian Keyser

Assistant production by Hunt Beaty and Adam Czarnecki

Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

Here is the original post:
The Real War in Ukraine and the Culture War in Florida - Reason