The Land of the Greed and the Home of the Child-Haters

by C. A. Matthews

There’s nothing to be proud of living in a country that openly and unapologetically hates children. All children.

For those who are totally clueless (or pretending to be) the following articles will enlighten you. Once you’ve read them, you will no longer be able to claim ignorance of the genocide happening in Gaza and America’s involvement in it. You will understand why the rest of the world feels nothing but disgust whenever they spy the Star Spangled Banner waving in the breeze alongside an Israeli flag.

Ready to open your eyes and your mind? Here goes…

 (The article links can be found in the article on Substack.)

...You didn’t think I was going to leave out domestic child abuse/endangerment articles, did you? If the US government is willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on sending aid to Israel to bomb, burn, and maim Palestinian children (and then won’t even let them into the country for treatment), why wouldn’t it be willing to not spend any money at home to improve American kids’ health and educational opportunities?

Why wouldn’t the US government spend billions on hiring masked vigilantes under the guise of ICE to terrorize and rip families apart who are looking for asylum? Why wouldn’t the US government want to destroy the First Amendment and censor protests against these horrific American policies? It does these things because it can and it does get away with them.

And why? Because America hates children...

 

To read the rest of this article as well as an extra piece about a county commissioners' meeting I recently attended about divesting from Israeli bonds, please copy or click on this link: 

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This article is the 534th blog posting of The Revolution Continues. We began in June 2015, and we're still going strong. Please keep reading, sharing, and subscribing to help TRC continue for another ten years. 

You can make a donation at https://paypal.me/camatthews or Buy Me a Coffee or Ko-fi. Every little bit helps since this is my only source of income. Thank you. 

 

How Your Love's Affecting Our Reality?

by C.A. Matthews

Have you ever experienced an “earworm” or a “sticky tune”? An earworm is a song or melody (or part of one) that gets stuck in your mind that you can’t seem to shake for days on end. You keep hearing it over and over again during the quiet parts of your day. You’re not even sure how or why it happens, but somehow it does. There’s nothing you can do to shake it loose, either. I know—I’ve tried!

I was infected with an unusual ear worm this past week. It’s from the chorus of a pop hit from 1999 that I must have heard playing on my car radio recently. What makes this earworm even more unusual is that it’s not from a song that I particularly like. I’m not even a fan of the group that recorded it. In fact, I don’t think either one of my daughters were a fan of the group or the song back when. So why are these words repeating constantly in my head?

All you people, can't you see, can't you see
How your love's affecting our reality?
Every time we're down, you can make it right
And that makes you larger than life

Chorus from the 1999 Backstreet Boys’ song Larger Than Life, written by Brian Littrel, Kristian Lundin, and Max Martin.

The one line that really haunts me is Can’t you see how your love’s affecting our reality? Yeah, it’s part of a catchy lyric and tune, but there’s something about that question that keeps bugging me. I really want to know what the answer to it is. It’s driving me crazy.

How is your love affecting our reality?

According to the song lyrics, we can’t see it. We can’t actually see or know how our love (and this could mean anything from romantic love to neighborly love to compassion and empathy for all humankind and the earth itself) affects the reality of the universe itself. But the next lines show us that our love does indeed hold tremendous power: Every time we're down, you can make it right/And that makes you larger than life.

Deep stuff, huh?

All I can guess at this point is this earworm is the universe’s way of telling me that all is not lost. So, when it comes to how we can end the horrible genocide in Gaza, all is not lost, even if it looks like it is. I don’t know why I’ve come to this conclusion, but I feel it in my bones. Call it intuition or a gut instinct. Even when things seem down (or impossible) for us, we can make them right (or at least better). Perhaps that’s what makes us all larger than life—we have more power than we could possibly dream of.

We need to start using our power for good and to save lives. Right now.

A lot of Substack commentators embrace various creeds and belief systems and tell us to think positive, but I’m not going to assume anything I write here will change your mind. Others are much more persuasive and eloquent than I am. But I implore you to keep an open mind for just a little while longer...

 

To see where I'm coming from and how this could make the world a better place, please continue reading the rest of this article on Substack. Just copy or click on this link: 

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This article is the 533rd blog posting of The Revolution Continues. We began in June 2015, and we're still going strong. Please keep reading, sharing, and subscribing to help TRC continue for another ten years. 

You can make a donation at https://paypal.me/camatthews or Buy Me a Coffee or Ko-fi. Every little bit helps since this is my only source of income. Thank you.

How Can We Make Reparations to Palestine?

by C. A. Matthews

There will come a day when the genocidaires of Israel and its mostly Western allies will be forced to make reparations to the Palestinian people. Justice demands that fair and proper restitution be made to the victims of Israeli war crimes. But what will these reparations look like? How will they be enacted? Who will oversee the implementation of these reparations?

I’ve pondered these questions and came up with an outline of what all should be covered in a reparations plan. I believe reparations should be made to the Palestinian people in the following categories:

1. Financial-Material Reparations

2. Cultural-Historical-Educational Reparations

3. Political-Judicial Reparations

4. Spiritual-Physical Reparations

Israel will have to make reparations to Lebanon, Syria, and Iran in addition to Gaza and the West Bank. In this article, I’m concentrating on reparations to be made to the Palestinian people, although this outline could be used as a pattern to help develop a reparations plan for other peoples Israel and its allies have committed war crimes against.

Financial-Material Reparations

Financial-material reparations are the most obvious ones that Israel and its allies will need to make. All buildings Israel has destroyed in its genocide of Gaza, as well as in its attempt to takeover the West Bank, must be repaired or replaced. This includes public edifices such as hospitals, schools, universities, churches, mosques, and community centers. It will also include restoring parks, beaches, tourist attractions, museums, theaters, and other public gathering places. Bridges, roads, port facilities, utilities, water treatment plants, power plants, and any other infrastructure damaged or destroyed will also need to be repaired or rebuilt and paid for by the war criminals.

Private homes, apartment buildings, business offices, shopping areas, and individual stores or kiosks must also be repaired or rebuilt in a timely manner. And because Israelis have deprived Palestinians of their livelihoods and homes, they would need to make good on the income Palestinians have lost during the commission of their war crimes. Israelis must continue to repay all Palestinians lost income during this period of rebuilding Gaza and the destroyed and stolen homes and villages of the West Bank.

I know what’s going through your head at this point: How will the state of Israel be able to afford the restoration of all the buildings and infrastructure it has destroyed? How will it afford to give financial support to the Palestinian families it has harmed? Who will be the workers to fulfill this plan?

I will discuss the worker situation later, but for now notice that I added “and allies” at the start when I mentioned who all have committed war crimes against the Palestinian people. Israel won’t be the only country that will be making good on these reparations. All of Israel’s allies that have provided funding, bombs, jets, tanks, munitions, mercenaries, military support and surveillance, etc., to attack Gaza will need to make restitution as well. No country that aided or abetted Israel’s war crimes gets to walk free under this reparations plan. All who are guilty will pay to restore the damages their activities and support of the state of Israel have caused. No exceptions...

 

To learn more about my reparations plan, please continue reading the rest of this article on Substack. Just copy or click on this link: 

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This article is the 532nd blog posting of The Revolution Continues. We began in June 2015, and we're still going strong. Please keep reading, sharing, and subscribing to help TRC continue for another ten years. 

You can make a donation at https://paypal.me/camatthews or Buy Me a Coffee or Ko-fi. Every little bit helps since this is my only source of income. Thank you.

 

A most creative way to protest Trump's recent visit to Scotland.

Unlearning Hopelessness

by C.A. Matthews

Seen on X: https://x.com/aashisjo/status/1947314052016824491

@DrNeenaJha Seriously what do we do?? We’ve protested, boycotted, campaigned, donated, written articles, pressured our government & institutions

@aashisjo What do we do? We organize real action, not performances. We disrupt the empire by refusing to work. We do not ask them to stop, we force them to stop.

 

While I was pruning back the dying raspberry canes in our organic garden, I contemplated just how hopeless the task was. The monsoon rains dumps this season had encouraged more raspberry canes and briers to grow than usual, then further rains drowned half of them with the excessive water around their roots. The out-of-control new brier growth was choking some of the older fruit bearing ones.

Why bother? I thought. I should give up now and avoid any more scrapes and scratches.

But I didn’t give up. I kept on until the task was finished. Why? Because I happen to like eating raspberries. I helped plant the first small canes in our garden, and they’d graciously had fed me (and others) over the years. So, I gritted my teeth and kept pruning. I vowed not to give up on them, especially when they needed my help the most.

Gardening is very much like fighting the unjust system we live in. Sometimes things go well, but most of the time it’s chaos and all hands-to-the-pumps—or pruning shears. Raspberries and other living things can be as unpredictable as the powers-that-be who control and punish us whenever we deviate from their plans. But we can’t give up on fighting back against the oligarchs no matter how tough things get. We’ve got to keep on hacking through the jungle and prune those briers. We’ve got fruit to harvest.

There’s been a lot of talk among psychologists and therapists about learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is when we believe we cannot change painful circumstances, so we stop trying and just endure what’s happening. 

This “just enduring” behavior describes the actions of the majority of humankind in the year 2025, in my opinion. We are enduring, but we’re not growing and producing fruit that will feed ourselves and others now and in the future. We’ve thrown in the towel along with our gardening secateurs, and because of that choice to give up, our circumstances will not change for the better.

Some psychologists believe that it’s actually learned hopelessness or a hopeless depression that keeps us from fighting back against painful circumstances. It’s easy to understand why and how depression sets in. Have you ever scrolled through your social media stream to check out the headlines or look at the memes?

No wonder it's called doomscrolling! 

While the odds of us succeeding in our goals to make the world a better place for all may be astronomical, we can at least try to fight the corrupt system and make some things better, right? The challenge is that we’ve heard too many horror stories and learned from others how hopeless the fight has become for them. We start to believe that it’s hopeless to even try and change things...

 

To learn more about how to unlearn hopelessness and keep up the fight against the corrupt status quo, please continue reading the rest of this article on Substack. Just copy or click on this link: 

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This article is the 531st blog posting of The Revolution Continues. We began in June 2015, and we're still going strong. Please keep reading, sharing, and subscribing to help TRC continue for another ten years. 

You can make a donation at https://paypal.me/camatthews or Buy Me a Coffee or Ko-fi. Every little bit helps since this is my only source of income. Thank you.

 

Food: The Most Lethal Weapon

by C.A. Matthews

Our early morning emergency protest proved challenging. When I arrived, I discovered the entire street in front of the building where our Congresswoman’s district office is located in the process of being torn up. There were drainage pipes being replaced along with concrete mixers and gravel trucks and graders galore. Once I figured out where to park and how to cross the construction area to get to the front door, I found my fellow protesters already hard at work banging loudly on their pots and pans.

The noisy demonstration was to draw attention to the mass starvation of the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel has killed 20.7% of Gaza's population in the past 22 months, or approximately 434,000 people by some estimates.

I don’t hold out much hope for any positive actions coming from our representative, Marcy Kaptur, a conservative Democrat fully in the zy0nists’ pockets. Perhaps we could guilt her into doing something right in Congress for a change. Marcy almost lost her last election, so the longest-serving Congresswoman really should be more cognizant of pleasing her voters, right?

After several minutes of clanking pots together and chanting, “Stop starving Gaza!” a woman in a catering uniform wheeled a cart full of pastries, fruit trays, and large coffee flasks into the building. How ironic! Here we were protesting against the deliberate withholding of food to the people of Gaza, instigated by the US government’s GHF faux humanitarian program, and the occupants of perhaps Congresswoman Kaptur’s office upstairs were about to stuff their faces full of delicious goodies in celebration for a job well done. For me, this cruel comparison of using food as both a means to hurt some and as a means to reward others is an image that will never be forgotten.

A few days later, I joined in a protest march through the University of Toledo where an outdoor arts show was being held on the main mall. The deer-in-the-headlight stares we received from onlookers were more than plentiful. You’d think these very well-heeled folks buying expensive art weren’t aware of the genocide happening in Gaza and that the US was playing a big part in it.

One art hawker even pulled out an American flag and started waving it and shouting angrily at our lack of patriotism as we repeatedly marched past his booth. None of these art-lovers looked like they’d ever missed a meal in their lives—and a few looked like they’d eaten more than enough for two or three persons in their lifetimes.

When it comes down to it, food is the most lethal weapon. Withhold it—and your enemies weaken and starve to death. Lavish it upon them—and your enemies could become your allies or at least less hostile to you, as long as you keep feeding them. Food is the ultimate way to control human beings, forcing them to respond the way you want them to with a minimum of effort. Other than depriving people of oxygen, there’s probably not a control substance in the known universe that’s quite so versatile.

Now you know the real secret behind the starving of millions of Palestinians. Starvation might take a bit longer to accomplish its goal than simply bombing cities, villages, and bodies into rubble, but it’s a relatively simple thing to do. What’s happening currently in Gaza is called a forced famine as it is man-made and not due to natural causes. And withholding food is much cheaper than building or buying bombs, jets, tanks, and other weapons—a win-win situation for aggressors...

 

To learn more about how and where food has been used as a weapon, both in the past and present-day, please continue reading the rest of this article on Substack. Just copy or click on this link: 

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This article is the 530th blog posting of The Revolution Continues. We began in June 2015, and we're still going strong. Please keep reading, sharing, and subscribing to help TRC continue for another ten years. 

You can make a donation at https://paypal.me/camatthews or Buy Me a Coffee or Ko-fi. Every little bit helps since this is my only source of income. Thank you.

 

"The revolution will not be televised because the first revolution happens inside your mind." —Gil Scott-Heron 

From Merriam-Webster online:

Revolution: a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something : a change of paradigm. From the Latin revolvere meaning “to revolve or roll back.”

The Revolution of the Mind

by C.A. Matthews

It’s odd, but you can tell that many Americans feel uncomfortable using the world revolution with one notable exception: They will say “the American Revolution” when referring to the conflict the white colonists fought to gain their independence from Great Britain.

Advertisers frequently use the description term revolutionary when selling merchandise, everything from dish soap to feminine hygiene products, but even they hesitate to use the word revolution by itself in their ad copy.

Why all this fear and trepidation over a perfectly useful word? What dark, sinister secondary meaning does revolution hold for so many? How can we reclaim revolution and its healing power?

As you can tell by looking at the masthead above, revolution holds no threat to our peace of mind here at The Revolution Continues. In fact, as the years progress, the word has become almost a mantra of sorts for your truly. Whenever something hideous occurs in the world—say a livestreamed genocide of innocents, particularly children—I often find myself saying under my breath repeatedly: This will all come to an end, come the revolution…

I’m reassuring myself that one day there will be a great change of paradigm and the billionaires and their lackeys who persecute us now will be gone and the world will revolve around the workers of the world instead. Our needs and wishes to live in peace and harmony will reign then, not the oligarchs’ greed and selfishness. It’s an optimistic take on what seems a pessimistic era in our civilization’s history, but one must do what one must do to get out of bed and not cry all day long. Nothing changes that way.

If the revolution won’t be televised, will it be livestreamed instead? Open up your social media apps and tell me that the revolution isn’t being livestreamed now. Things are changing radically in front of our eyes in real time. Immigrants and their supporters are fighting against ICE. Protesters are going to jail simply for saying, “I don’t support genocide,” in the UK. The world is revolving around a different narrative than the one the powers-that-be want us to believe. Many of us in the working classes aren’t buying into the lies and excuses of the richest 1% anymore.

To borrow an old expression, “The cat’s out of the bag,” and that kitty is hissing and scratching to prevent itself from being stuffed back inside, kept in the dark, and thrown into the river to drown as the oligarchs are tempted to do to us who don’t do or think as we’re told...

 

To  learn more about how the narrative is being questioned, please continue reading the rest of this article on Substack. Just copy or click on this link: 

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Still of Gil Scott-Heron taken from youtu.be/1Iklff1pNWY

This article is the 529th blog posting of The Revolution Continues. We began in June 2015, and we're still going strong. Please keep reading, sharing, and subscribing to help TRC continue for another ten years. 

You can make a donation at https://paypal.me/camatthews or Buy Me a Coffee or Ko-fi. Every little bit helps since this is my only source of income. Thank you.

 

Francesca Albanese: Boldly Speaking Truth To Corporate Power

by C.A. Matthews

Serving as the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Territories of Palestine is a tough job, and Francesca Albanese knew when she took on the position that she was bound to make her share of enemies. However, the vile things coming out of the mouths of genocide-enabler Donald Trump and his boyfriend, genocide-instigator Benjamin Netanyahu, about Albanese’s recent work reporting on the economic conditions of the genocide in Gaza are unbelievable.

Even US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had to get in on the feces-slinging by “sanctioning” her for standing up for the Palestinian people’s human rights. He posted on X:

Secretary Marco Rubio @SecRubio

Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt @IntlCrimCourt action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.

Rubio, a former “human rights attorney”, is coming down heavy on a fellow human rights attorney? Is this a Monty Python sketch or am I just dreaming? If it is a dream, it’s a nightmare, that’s for certain.

Will Francesca Albanese suffer personally from US sanctions simply for doing her job? I hope not...

...In spite of the pressures and threats from bullies such as Trump and Rubio, Ms. Albanese carries on. She even calmly explained why she’s under fire for exposing state and corporate complicity in Israel's genocide:

It's a sign the system is cracking; it is punching back. But it will only win if we are scared, if we stop standing with one another.

Good advice. We need to stand with each other and not let the bullies shut us down.

The system is cracking, but it’s possibly not quite the system most imagine...

 

To find out what kind of system Francesca Albanese is really taking on (and just how dangerous it is), please continue reading the rest of this article on Substack. Just copy or click on this link: 

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There you'll see related article and video links, all the graphics, and be able to leave comments. You can become a free or paid subscriber and receive weekly posts in your email box, along with occasional special articles just for paid subscribers, too.

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This article is the 528th blog posting of The Revolution Continues. We began in June 2015, and we're still going strong. Please keep reading, sharing, and subscribing to help TRC continue for another ten years. 

You can make a donation at https://paypal.me/camatthews or Buy Me a Coffee or Ko-fi. Every little bit helps since this is my only source of income. Thank you.