Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 2, 2025

The People Take Action


Listen to Greta speak before the launch of the Global Sumud Flotilla.

The People Take Action

by C. A. Matthews

I’m tired of people whining. It’s not that I don’t whine myself, because we all do from time to time, but some folks’ incessant whining about how terrible things are and how they can’t do anything about them drives me up the wall. If I were a protagonist in a 1940s movie, I’d take the whiners by the shoulders and shake them hard and then slap them across the face to make them stop whining.

I know. I’d get into a helluva big mess if I resorted to physical violence to get the whiners’ attention nowadays. So, I’m left with using only non-violent means, such as writing, to get them to snap out of their whining tirades. So, here goes.

Things are terrible in 2025, but you can do something about them beside whining. You can take action.

The following are examples of people from all over the world who didn’t sit and whine about how terrible things are. They’ve stood up and started moving. They know their actions could make them lose their livelihoods or get them hurt. They realize they could be risking their lives and their reputations by taking action, but they feel it’s worth it. The ends justify the means—and any cost to themselves personally.

First example: American IT workers were willing to risk losing their jobs, their careers and professional reputations in order to make a bold statement protesting Israel’s actions in Palestine and their company’s association with the genocidaires. This is the story of what four former employees of Microsoft did recently ...

Our second example of people taking action instead of whining is global in its importance. From People’s Dispatch:

In July 2025, a new international maritime initiative was launched: the Global Sumud Flotilla. It was formed by four major coalitions: the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the Maghreb Sumud Convoy, and the Southeast Asian Nusantara Sumud Initiative. The Global Sumud Flotilla is set to depart on August 31, 2025. Its goal is clear: to break Israel’s illegal blockade on Gaza, to deliver urgent humanitarian aid, and to expose the genocidal war waged on Palestinians.

The flotilla is composed of dozens of small civilian vessels carrying activists, parliamentarians, doctors, and trade unionists, alongside humanitarian cargo. More than 39 national delegations have pledged participation, making this the largest people-led maritime effort in solidarity with Gaza since the 2010 “Mavi Marmara”...

 

And be sure to register now for the webinar to learn how to become a part of the Lifeline for Palestine. https://lifelineforpalestine.com/

 

To read more about how and why we should take action (and not just sit around and whine)please copy or click on this link: 

https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com

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.

Subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack today. Power to the people!
 
 

 And also watch https://youtu.be/CtUGZXM_-Lc

 

This article is the 535th 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. 

Tuesday, August 5, 2025

Unlearning Hopelessness

 

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: 

https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com

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.

Subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack today. Power to the people!
 

 


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.

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Food: The Most Lethal Weapon

 


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: 

https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com

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.

Subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack today. Power to the people!
 



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.


Tuesday, July 22, 2025

The Revolution of the Mind

 


"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: 

https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com

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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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.


Tuesday, July 1, 2025

The Goal Is An Endless War

 


Not all the power and money, not all the weapons and propaganda on earth can any longer hide the wound that is Palestine. The wound through which the whole world, including Israel, bleeds. --Arundhati Roy

Random thoughts about the current state of the world while a cat sits on top of my head while I lie awake in bed during the dark hours before dawn. Happy "Independence" Day, USA. 

The Goal Is An Endless War (Not A Successful War)

By C.A. Matthews

Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange once said “The goal is an endless war, not a successful war.”

Whatever did Assange mean by that? Surely, the goal of warfare is to beat your opponent(s) and achieve the results you wanted when you began the fighting, right? Otherwise, what is the point of war? It can’t simply be about endless death and destruction and if-I-can’t-have-it-neither-can-you, can it?

The endlessness is what really gets to me. Who comes up with the concept of endless war? Only persons who see a need for endless growth and endless chaos would even consider endless war as beneficial—or possibly even necessary—to their side of the conflict.

Endless growth of the economy, endless chaos of competitors, endless hoarding of wealth, endless destruction of the environment and the Earth’s ecology… Hmm, all that sounds oddly familiar.

Could it be it’s capitalists who have behind all this endless warfare in the last hundred+ years? 

 

To find out more on the endless war and its monstrous goals, please continue reading the rest of this article on Substack. Just copy or click on this link: 

https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com

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 526th 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 at Buy Me a Coffee or at Ko-fi. Every little bit helps since this is my only source of income. Thank you.

 

Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Lessons Learned

 

Lessons Learned

by C.A. Matthews

Welcome to our tenth anniversary celebration of The Revolution Continues!

It’s been ten years this month since I agreed to become blog editor. TRC had another name originally, and it was posted on another social media platform, but it gradually transformed into what you’re reading today. That tentative first step kicked off a busy decade of writing, editing, reading, and researching how human beings manage to screw things up and try to put them back together again.

Ten whole years. Would I agree to do it all again, knowing what I do now? Hmm… Let me think about it.

Some folks place TRC under the category of “political science,” but I prefer think of it more as a study in anthropology, history, sociology, and psychology. People making life either harder or easier for themselves or others is what our time on this planet is all about, in my humble opinion. And it’s amazing just how many in power enjoy making life more difficult for others in order to “get ahead.”

It’s issues like these that trigger my spidey-sense gained from my background in psychology. Why do sociopaths get such satisfaction from the struggles and suffering of their fellow human beings? Can’t we simply learn to respect each others’ differences, and live and let live? Most days, apparently not.

And with that insight, I’ll share ten pearls of wisdom gathered over the last decade from fighting in the trenches of American politics and activism. I’m sure you’ve discovered most of these yourself. Feel free to comment on which one(s) has/have made the biggest impression on you.

Ten Tough Lessons Learned Over the Past Ten Years 

 

1. We must act as our own heroes.

Nobody is going to become our “savior” and save us from our failures as a nation or as a people or as a species. We must learn to save ourselves and do it over and over again. This is what the brave crew of the Madleen in the Freedom Flotilla are attempting. This is what the March to Gaza is all about.

Political heroes in particular are more than likely to let you down. Take for example Bernie Sanders. This blog began as The Bernie Blog in 2015 when a handful of enthusiastic “Berners” came together in hopes of spreading the word that democratic socialism could solve all of America’s problems. The only problem with that idea was that the corrupt system under which Americans elect their leaders and solve their society’s challenges didn’t want to have anything to do with people like Bernie or his followers. They particularly despised any philosophy of governance containing the word “socialism” in it as well.

More on that corrupt system in a moment. One day soon I promise to write more about the origin story of the TRC blog and how our relationship with Bernie changed. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of funny, scary, and very educational stories to tell about how we survived it all...

 

To learn the remaining nine lessons, please continue reading the rest of this article on Substack. Just copy or click on this link: 

https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com

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.

Subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack today. Power to the people!
 

 

This article is the 523rd 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 at Buy Me a Coffee or at Ko-fi. Every little bit helps since this is my only source of income. Thank you.

 

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Sleight of Hand

 

Sleight of Hand

by C.A. Matthews

Sleight of Hand (from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary online)

1a : a cleverly executed trick or deception b : a conjuring trick requiring manual dexterity 2 a : skill and dexterity in conjuring tricks b : adroitness in deception

Synonyms: legerdemain, fakery, front, scam, swindle, cheating, duplicity, chicanery, fraud, subterfuge, trickery, hoax, feint, dupery, skulduggery

I’m always amazed how easily adult human beings are taken in by the masters of sleight of hand. I don’t mean just professional magicians and jugglers, either. I mean some seem to believe every word that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth while simultaneously insisting they detest the man because he’s a big fat liar.

Now, that’s some Grade A legerdemain on Trump’s part! He not only fools his own followers and devotees, he fools his avowed enemies as well.

But why would anyone believe a person they claim to be a liar in the first place? Why get upset over toddler-like antics such as shouting matches and name-calling? And perhaps the biggest question, why do they spend so much time and energy whining about the antics of a big fat liar?

Could it be...could it really be so simple? Are Trump and company simply acting like magicians practicing sleight of hand tricks? His job for our true rulers (the billionaires/oligarchs) of our corrupt capitalist system is to keep us distracted from what’s really going on? You got to admit it, Trump does have the perfect qualifications for the job of Distractor-in-Chief.

First off, he’s a failed businessman who makes used car salespersons look good. Secondly, he was the “star” of a TV reality show for several years, so he actually knows how to follow a script and improvise from a prompt. (You do realize that reality TV shows are all scripted, don’t you? I’ve met people who think everything they watch on TV reflects reality. Those who can think for themselves and practice critical thinking skills know how far from the truth that is.)

So, here you have Trump in his role as Distractor-in-Chief recently getting into a televised knockdown, drag out fight with Mr. Zelensky. All of a sudden people are crying and wringing their hands over how “rude and obnoxious” Donald Trump was to that “brave, honorable man” Volodymyr Zelensky.

Remember: Everything on television is not real—and neither is Mr. Zelensky...

 

To learn more about these "bad actors", please continue reading the rest of this article by copying or clicking on this Substack link: 

https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com

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.

Subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack today. Power to the people!

This article is the 510th 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 at Buy Me a Coffee or at Ko-fi. Every little bit helps since this is my only source of income. Thank you.

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

KISS: Keep It Simple, Sociopath

 

KISS: Keep It Simple, Sociopath

by C. A. Matthews

It’s been really hard keeping up with what’s been happening recently in Syria and the rest of the world. Then I remembered a wise old saying, and I sat down and started listing the facts, just the facts. Here they are as simple as I can explain them:

First off, the US and its Western allies once called the group now in charge of Syria “terrorists”, but now we’re calling them “moderates” and forgiving them for all the torture and extrajudicial killings that they did. Their leader, Muhammad Al-Jawlani, used to have a $10 million reward on his head for being a terrorist with an organization formerly known as Al Qaeda. (Never heard of them before, have you?) But now we’re supposed to ignore his past because he turned in his turban for a Western-styled suit…

Yeah, that’s it. It’s sort of like a woman becoming a virgin again after twenty years of marriage and several children.

Second thing, we’re told that this recent invasion of Syria is not a land grab. Pay no attention to the Israeli military (using American provided weapons) bombing Syria 480 times in 48 hours because (in their words) the “moderates are terrorists” and can’t control their own people to Israel’s satisfaction. (But Al-Jawlani wears a suit now—doesn’t that make everything all right?) 

 

To learn how the KISS Method helps explain what's happening in the world, please read the rest of this article by clicking on this Substack link: https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com. There you'll see related article and video links, all the graphics, and be able to leave comments. You can also subscribe and receive the weekly blog post in your email box. 

Subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack today! Power to the people!

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

The Moral IQ

 

The Moral IQ 

(The US isn’t in any position to lecture anyone about morality. It's time to kick the moral idiots out of office.)

by C.A. Matthews

“How can they do such a thing!” is a phrase I’ve heard more than once over the past twelve months, closely followed by “That’s insane! They’re acting like sociopaths! They’re immoral!”

I agree wholeheartedly. Israel’s genocide of Gazans, trapped in an open air prison, on what are basically made up excuses to steal their land and resources qualifies as insane, immoral, and sociopathic. But it’s happening now to the Palestinian people in both Gaza and the West Bank, and the evil is spreading into Lebanon with the blessings (and armaments) of the USA.

Americans can’t deny it. US tax payers are arming “The World’s Most Moral Army (TM)” with our tax dollars. We’re arming them in spite of Israeli soldiers videoing themselves committing war crimes such as looting and shooting innocent civilians and children in cold blood.

So how is it that Israel claims to have a “moral” army when its soldiers are anything but? How can the US claim to be moral when it has broken its own humanitarian laws that say it's unlawful to arm a country that is breaking those same humanitarian laws? How can what the US military is doing in the Middle East be considered moral when they don’t even live up to their own standards?

“Because we say it is,” is the typical reply given by US and Israeli government spokespersons. “We say our actions are moral, and you are mistaken if you think otherwise. We are superior in our wisdom.”

Do you believe them? I don’t...

 

Please read the rest of this article by clicking on this link to go to our Substack page: https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com  There you'll also see related article and video links, all the images, and be able to leave comments. You can subscribe to receive the weekly blog post in your email box as well. 

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Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Moving Mountains


Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. —Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 17:20

Moving Mountains

by C. A. Matthews

“How do we do this? How do we make things right?” a friend earnestly asked me the other day.

I had just bombarded her with facts about what’s actually happening in Palestine and Lebanon. I told her the latest death toll estimate in Gaza—approximately 200,000+—and emphasized that it was probably on the low side since so many are still missing under the rubble and so many have been shredded by bombs into unrecognizable bits. I could tell that she was distressed at the news, but I told it to her anyway. I felt like she really needed to know.

After I got home, I regretted overwhelming my friend with so much information at once. She probably hadn’t been following the genocide in Gaza over the past year as closely as I had. She probably gets her information from mainstream media sources, not independent journalists like I do.

Hearing too much bad news at once can be quite a shock to the system. I owe her a big apology. I’ll try to make it up to her somehow, but how? I can’t change the statistics or the stories of whole families being wiped out in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon, can I?

How do we make things right?

This haunting question echoes in my mind...

 

Please read the rest of this article by clicking on this link to go to our Substack page: https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com  There you'll also see related article and video links, all the images, and be able to leave comments. You can subscribe to receive the weekly blog post in your email box as well. 

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Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Connect The Dots…

 


So much suffering that never should have happened all because Palestinians were never given equal rights and were dehumanized. Wars for oil during a climate crisis. --White Rabbit 2587 on X

Connect The Dots… or Wars For Oil During A Climate Crisis

by C.A. Matthews 

227 Dead from Hurricane Helene (109 in North Carolina alone)

118,908+ Palestinians dead in the Genocide of Gaza by Israeli Forces (5.4% of the total population, estimated by 99 US doctors who have been to Gaza in the past year. Other estimates are over 200,000+ dead.)

2000+ Lebanese dead by Israeli Forces

$725 promised to Hurricane Helene victims by FEMA

$20 billion + promised to Israel to continue its bombing campaigns of Gaza, West Bank, and Lebanon

2024 will probably be the “Hottest Year on Record” beating 2023, the current record holder.

The list of top ten countries with the most petroleum reserves:

1. Venezuela 2. Saudi Arabia 3. Iran 4. Canada 5. Iraq 6. United Arab Emirates 7. Kuwait 8. Russia 9. United States 10. Libya

The list of countries that US and/or NATO-align countries have had or are currently picking a fight with in order to gain control of petroleum reserves: Venezuela, Russia, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen

122 trillion cubic foot of natural gas along with an estimated at 1.7 billion barrels of oil are located off the coast of Gaza. This resource legally belongs to the Palestinian people, not Israel.

The US Military is one of the biggest polluters in the world with a huge carbon footprint. In 2017, the US military used 269,230 barrels of oil a day and emitted more than 25,000 kilotons of carbon dioxide by burning those fuels.

What have these seemingly random facts or “listicles” got to do with each other? Read them again and see if you can’t connect the dots.

Can you guess what was behind the strength and destruction of Hurricane Helene (and as of this writing, Hurricane Milton)? What if I told you that the Gulf of Mexico is super hot this year, hotter than it’s ever been in recorded history. The heat of the gulf’s water fueled Helene’s strength, causing it (and now Milton’s strength) to jump from a Category 1 to a Category 4 hurricane in less than a day. The rapidly heating Earth will continue to increase the flooding, tornadoes, and assorted storm damage.

The climate crisis—or more accurately the climate catastrophe—is doing more than making your air conditioner work overtime. It’s causing droughts, floods, and killer storms like Hurricane Helene. The burning of fossil fuels is making things worse by adding to the “greenhouse gas effect” that is heating up our planet. Humanity needs to kick the oil habit—and fast—if we want to even begin to turn things around and save our children’s futures.

Now do some more connect-the-dots...

 

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Tuesday, August 13, 2024

Scratch The Surface

 

Scratch The Surface

by C.A. Matthews

We watched a mystery program recently where the antique dealer sleuth was asked to solve the puzzle of what happened to an older woman’s inheritance that supposedly was “right in front of her.” As the old woman sat leaning on her cane, the sleuth asked if she could see the cane. The sleuth took a nail file and scratched the head of the cane, flaking off some of the paint covering it. Hidden under several layers of paint was a solid gold ornament—the woman’s inheritance. The sleuth had cracked the puzzle. Scratching the surface revealed a treasure.

If only everything was as golden underneath its surface!

If you scratch the surface of the current crop of duopoly candidates for the White House, you probably won’t like what you find underneath. It’s about as far from gold as you can get!

There’s no secret to the shallowness of Donald Trump. The whole world experienced his narcissism in his first time in office, so is there any need to rehash it? After his recent experiences in court, nobody—and I mean nobody—really wants to see what’s underneath the Trumpster Fire’s surface. We’re all agreed: It ain’t pretty.

The same could be said of Kamala “The Cackler” Harris. Harris has been compared to former president Barack Obama who in a recent biography was described as being “hollow at its core” or an empty vessel. That means there’s essentially nothing underneath those insane giggles and grins of Harris. There’s no guiding principles or firmly held beliefs. She’s held together by a willingness to do whatever the oligarchs want her to do. Mark my words, what billionaires want Harris to do for them isn’t going to be of help to any of us ordinary folks...

 

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Tuesday, July 2, 2024

Celebrate The Win

 


Celebrate The Win

by C.A. Matthews

Julian Assange’s release from Belmarsh Prison was all anyone could talk about online for days this past week. It was definitely good news worth sharing, no doubt about it. Seeing the video of him hugging his father and his wife at the airport after his plane at long last landed in Australia brought tears to my eyes. An evil and corrupt system had keep Julian and his family unnecessarily apart for years. They deserved to be happily reunited.

But then the complaints on various social media platforms started flooding in.

“Why did Assange accept this ass-backwards plea deal? Why didn’t he insist on a full pardon? He should have gone to trial and fought the bastards and demanded reparations for time and income lost while they unlawfully locked him up. He didn’t do anything wrong, and they tortured him by placing him in solitary confinement. He was simply practicing journalism.”

My answer to those complaints are, “Yes, Assange didn’t do anything wrong, and he deserves recompense. So does his family. But the bastards who did this—and still do this to many others unlawfully detained—weren’t about to let him go and say, “We’re sorry. Here’s a few million bucks to make up for all the torture and smearing of your good name.”

Remember these bastards are in possession of nuclear weapons and professional hit men called CIA agents. They waterboarded people and locked them up without trial (and still do) at Guantanamo Bay. They regularly overturn elected leaders in countries worldwide. (They probably attempted—and failed—to overturn the leadership of Bolivia this past week.) What makes you think they wouldn’t squash an individual, no matter how famous or iconic as Julian Assange, like an ant to get what they want out of him or in order to cast a chilling shadow upon journalism and freedom of the press?

 

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Tuesday, June 25, 2024

The Exercise Of Imagination

 

“The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary.”

—Ursula K. LeGuin

The Exercise of Imagination

by C.A. Matthews

My husband has a new hobby. Every evening he turns on the local newscast to view the weather forecast so we know how much watering our garden will need the next day. Lately he waits until the national newscast comes on. This is when his cathartic yelling at the screen begins.

“What the…? It’s not a war, asshole. The children of Gaza are being murdered. It’s a goddamn genocide. Say the word, you stupid bastard!”

Mercifully, the six o’clock newscast runs only about sixteen minutes or else he’d be permanently hoarse. I timed the commercials one night, and discovered the half hour is made up of mostly commercials for Big Pharma. That gives you some idea who their target audience is—older Americans with deep pockets who love popping pills.

National newscasts really don’t provide news as much as they give out headlines. Their headlines tend to be predictable propaganda soundbites courtesy of the Ministry of Truth or the government propaganda machine. The news readers with their Hollywood-movie-star looks aren’t trying to impart factual information as much as they’re trying to persuade and provoke emotions, such as hatred and animosity toward those whom the oligarchy wants us to hate. They want us to despise and fear others so much that we’d be willing to go to war with them and die—or at least we’re okay with our children or grandchildren dying for the cause.

After watching several national newscasts, the emotional manipulation became bleedin’ obvious (as my British husband says). Do the regular consumers of mainstream (legacy) media realize they’re being manipulated to believe and feel a certain way in the first place? (See last week’s post about who does the manipulating and why.) What do they really get out of it? Do they actually enjoy being lied to? Do the lies reinforce their deep-seated prejudices and feed their wildest fears, making them fat and content in their hatred? Is warmongering propaganda a source of entertainment for them?

 

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