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President Donald Trump on Monday pardoned Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who was convicted and sentenced to prison on corruption charges surrounding his time in office.

“It was a sort of a terrible injustice,” Trump said. “They just were after him. They go after a lot of people. These are bad people, the other side.”

Of note, those corruption charges stemmed from Blagojevich very openly trying to sell Obama's vacant US Senate seat in Illinois after the 2008 election.

This group seems sus. Prove me wrong.

This is not an endorsement of this group.

Just the opposite. Posting this now before I do a deep dive on who and what this group is about. Will update later.

Carlos Álvarez-Aranyos is the guy behind this. A 2017 article tells a very amazing story of this uber-successful adventurer entreprenuer.

Curiously, Radical Artist's Agency out of Arvado, CO, has a short resume for a "Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos".

The posted site makes it sound like this American Opposition place was behind the Feb 5 protests ... but that was 50501, right?

Interestingly, r/50501 seems on board, but without any mod commentary there.

I have no idea how one could find this out.

An "unannounced demonstration" by Nazis ends when upstanding citizens push past police, steal a Nazi flag, and set it on fire. The Nazis leave, and the resisters are not arrested.

These people were just going about their day, and it was important to enough people to stop and get directly involved. They took on risks of bodily harm and arrest. I'm willing to bet that none of them were "prepared" for the confrontation.

Just so everyone knows where he is more precisely. Wouldn't want him to get lost.

Over/under on whether there will be clashes in the parking lot?

If you have some spare bandwidth, and a little compute, this is a way that you can help Internet Archive. There are a number of different "projects" to focus on, including "US Government."

Make sure to check all the FAQ stuff there, especially "Can I use whatever internet ..., because you should not be using a VPN, or public internet, or TOR, or a few other things. Because of that, this won't be for everyone, but I'm sure there are some who could help keep things from going in the memory hole.

What I mean by "gatekeeping resistance" is commentary along the lines of "that suggestion is useless, you have to do what I think you should do," or "that just makes you feel better, it has no effect."

Why we're not going to do that here is because resistance is better with all efforts, great and small, from all kinds of people. While any individual bit of small resistance is unlikely to have a great impact all by itself, the cumulative effects of many over time can. Those effects are about gumming up the cogs of fascism in action, but they're also about giving some hope to the quiet bystanders who need to keep their heads down right now.

As always, we're in this for the long haul. Nothing is going to "get back to normal" any time soon, and even when it does, that "normal" isn't going to look anything like what we're accustomed to. We're all finding our way, and if that means doing very small things today to get into a new mindset, so be it. And of course, if you've done something "large," you shouldn't be talking about it here anyway. If it gets into the news, then get someone to post an article about it. Maybe that will mean this place appears a bit milquetoast on the surface. Fine. Let it be the tip of the iceberg.

Last note - I have not "strongly moderated" here, and I have no plans to. When I have something to say "as a moderator," I put on the "ModeratorHat". I'll continue to do so. Whether that hat is on or off, disagreement is welcome and encouraged, and disagreement is never a "punishable offense." "Being a dick about it" might be, but not the disagreement itself.

Have fun storming the castle!

Tonight, Tuesday Feb 4, 5p ET. US Department of the Treasury. If you can be there tonight in DC, or at any other federal Treasury office, do it.

Plymouth is a ghost town and the de jure capital of the island of Montserrat, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom located in the Leeward Island chain of the Lesser Antilles, West Indies.

In the last two weeks, a lot of things have happened which are making a lot of people a lot of scared, and justifiably so. I'm not pretending that my personal situation is more dire than anyone else's. While some of the things going on do directly threaten my family, they're still currently at arm's length.

Someone was talking to me tonight about being scared, and I had some thoughts that might be useful.

Fear is what makes you focus and pay attention, and react to immediate threats. Humans evolved in an environment which is far more immediately dangerous than what we enjoy today. I think that fear is simply part of being human, and that when our brains don't get to experience dangers, we have to compensate for a lack of fear.

Now that there are "real" things to be afraid of, and we're so conditioned by personal experience to not be afraid, and we're still compensating for not being afraid ... while being afraid ... well, that's disorienting.

What I have done, what seems to be working for me, goes back to why I started this place here to begin with. Don't be worried, be prepared.

Worry is one thing, fear is another, of course. For me, I am adding Don't be afraid, pay attention and act accordingly. Again, I think that fear is what makes us focus and pay attention. Once you're paying attention, then you can better assess what the actual danger level is, and what your response (if any) should be.

This can be practiced in everyday situations. Example: I was driving the other day, and found myself at a stoplight. Cars in front of me, next to me, behind me. A curb and a steep slope down to my right. I didn't have an exit path for my car; if something "stupid" had happened at that moment, I would have had to abandon my car and take off on foot.

I wasn't afraid in that moment, but it came into my head to "look for an exit." What would it be? It would be running. I estimated that the likelihood that I would need to hoof it before the light changed was insignificant, but I was just a little more prepared than I was moments before.

I feel better thinking about fear as an important and necessary aspect of being human, and instead of trying to avoid it entirely, feeding little pieces to my brain consistently, and then consuming that fear with attention and planning.

Again, there are plenty more people in plenty more dire circumstances than I'm in right now, and I'm not trying to portray myself as some kind of superhero. But I'm finding that this way of addressing my own fears seems to be working for me, and if it works for me, it might work for someone else, too. We're all going to need a lot of endurance, and figuring out how to keep fear from taking away from that is a good thing.