Finding the Good in the Bad

by C. A. Matthews

After a very painful week—personally painful because an old injury decided to play up and our senior cat passed away from a terminal illness—I didn’t feel like writing a weekly post. I just wanted to whine, cry, and complain, “Why me?” It’s understandable why I’m so sad and grouchy, but it doesn’t do much good for my overall attitude or help my readers. I want to enlighten and uplift others, and that doesn’t work if I don’t at least attempt to write a piece.

I searched for inspiration and found nothing until I opened up a daily email meditation. The short essay said there’s a little good in everything. Yeah, it said everything—meaning every situation and every person (and cat). You just have to look for it. Scanning my daily X and UpScrolled feeds didn’t reveal a heck of a lot of good in the world, but I decided to give it a go. I would look for the good behind some of the negative headlines this week.

So, here goes nothing—and everything at the same time.

On the US domestic front, several stories concerning the building of massive AI data centers caught my eye. There’s actually nothing new about data centers in the US. The US by far has more data centers than any other country on Earth. The thing about this topic that grabbed my attention was that the people of Utah, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, and New Jersey have taken notice of how data centers are growing ever larger and demanding more and more electricity, land, and water at the local community’s expense.

Data centers pollute the local water table and fill the surrounding air with light pollution (no stars, messes with bird/insect migrations), heat pollution (global warming anyone?), and destructive sound pollution. Yeah, data centers actually produce constant vibrations right below the sound threshold that can injure and kill both humans and animals. Data centers after they’re built don’t employ all that many local workers, either. Too many bad things about them just ain’t right...

So, what’s the good in this very bad situation? The good I find in it isn’t in the data centers themselves but in the reaction of ordinary people against the data centers. For the most part, they aren’t having them...

 

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Rest in Power, Elsie girl.

A lot of good can be found in a little senior kitty

 

This article is the 571st 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 eleven years. Thanks! 

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An Empire That Starves Its Citizens While Feeding Its War Machine

by C. A. Matthews

“The message could not be clearer: there is always money for bombs, borders, and war—but never enough for children, healthcare, or basic human dignity… No amount of flag‑draped propaganda can hide the simple, brutal math of an empire that starves its citizens while feeding its war machine.” --from Can’t Afford Daycare or Healthcare — But Hegseth Swears a $1.5 Trillion War Budget ‘Puts Taxpayers First’

It can’t be that simple, can it?

Why is it that the US empire doesn’t care whether ordinary Americans live or die? Why is it they don’t care that we can't afford to have children or own a home? When you think about it, it’s a million times more evil than simply being an empire that starves its citizens. It’s an empire that cares only about making huge profits from endless wars and genocides for its oligarchy, its billionaire rulers, rather than the health and welfare of its people.

There’s no real need to explain away recent comments coming from the White House. “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things,” Trump said. “We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care.” His words speak for themselves. (Quote taken from Trump says it’s ‘not possible’ for the U.S. to pay for Medicaid, Medicare and day care: ‘We’re fighting wars’)

War will always rank above healthcare, childcare, and environmental issues for the US empire—especially if these issues have anything to do with the poor and working classes. No real surprises there. 

But the thing that surprises and disgusts me the most is how so many Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that this type of callous behavior originated with Donald Trump. To them nothing bad like this ever happened before Trump entered the White House in 2017 and then again in 2025.

To jog your memory, watch this short video. Be sure to read the text on the screen while listening to the discussion in the background: The Façade of Democracy...

To learn one way you can help stop the US empire and its war machine, please copy or click on the following link: 

https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com

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This article is the 570th 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 eleven years. Thanks! 

Feel free to make a donation at our Paypal or Buy Me a Coffee or Ko-fi. Every little bit helps. Thank you.   

Conscientious objectors: Call the G.I. Rights Hotline at 1-877-447-4487 or the Center for Conscience & War: 1-800-379-2679. 

Apartheid Without Borders

Apartheid Without Borders

by C.A. Matthews 

ALARM! How on earth is possible that Israel is allowed to assault and seize vessels in international waters just off Greece/Europe? Besides what you can think of Apartheid Israel and its genocidal leaders, this should send shock waves across Europe. Apartheid without borders. —Francesca Albanese on X 

Novelist Philip K. Dick would be proud.

Here’s the scenario: You’re sailing your boat in international waters when a frigate full of commandos from a country over 1,000 km away starts shooting at you and demanding you surrender to them so they can beat you up, arrest you and dump your cargo of humanitarian aid into the sea, and all because feeding starving people is now illegal and that makes you a criminal, not the pirates who boarded you off the coast of yet another country whose coast guard looks the other way while these events unfold.

Philip K. Dick would have had a field day crafting a taut suspense novel around this idea on an innocent man doing a noble thing being persecuted by those in power who claim they are always right and anyone who says otherwise is a criminal—or possibly insane or both. Either way, the innocent man will be punished for his “crimes” against the status quo.

Alas, this story isn’t fiction. (And I doubt I could come up with such a convoluted and depressive plot.) Here’s what really happened. From Flotilla Activists Beaten and Shot at by IDF, With 34 Hospitalised in Greece:

Global Sumud Flotilla participants say they were punched, kicked, dragged across the floor with their hands tied, and shot at with real and rubber bullets on board an Israeli warship after they were kidnapped in international waters more than 500 nautical miles from Gaza.

While interception was violent for many, participants say the worst treatment came when they peacefully resisted moves to abduct organisers Thiago Avila and Saif Abukeshek, who are still detained.

34 wounded participants - including two Brits - have been taken to hospital in Crete, flotilla organisers said, with broken bones and other injuries...

 

To learn more about the Global Sumud Flotilla and why the world sat back and did nothing to help them from IDF pirates, please copy or click on the following link: 

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This article is the 569th 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 eleven years. Thanks! 

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Conscientious objectors: Call the G.I. Rights Hotline at 1-877-447-4487 or the Center for Conscience & War: 1-800-379-2679.