Childhood's End

 

Childhood’s End: Three Years of Murdering, Maiming, Bombing, Starving, and Deporting Children

by C. A. Matthews

Some anniversaries aren’t worth celebrating, but they are worth noting.

I participated in a short interview with a local university sociology professor and his student this past week. One of the questions they asked me was: “How have you changed personally because of joining this (pro-Palestine) movement?”

Three years into the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people and what hasn’t changed me?

Things certainly aren’t going back to the way they were prior to October 7, 2023. Little did I—or anyone, really—know that we’d be observing a livestreamed genocide on our computing devices for three straight years, all the while observing nothing positive in our governments’ reactions to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians—and so many of them children—at the hands of the IDF. I don’t know how being exposed to such a lack of compassion, empathy, and concern for others on such an immense scale wouldn’t change a person’s outlook on life unless the person was already spiritually and morally dead inside.

Three years of knowing that your government doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the health, safety, and security of children in Gaza—or the West Bank or Lebanon or Iran or Cuba or Venezuela, for that matter.

Three years of watching these little ones die from preventable diseases because your “ally” Israel won’t allow sufficient food, medicines, medical supplies, or Doctors Without Borders from entering their open air prison.

Three years of realizing the horrors of children and adults trapped under tons of rubble having to have emergency amputations without anesthesia...

...Honestly, I don’t know anymore if it’s just me who has gone insane because I can’t stand knowing so many horrific details about what’s happening in the world, or it’s the rest of the world that is insane for allowing them to occur in the first place...

 

To read what else has brought about "childhood's end" in these past three years, please copy or click on the following link: 

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Chaos: The Preferred Pattern of Control

by C. A. Matthews

Sometimes life on Earth appears to be a chaotic mess. There is war and genocide here, there, and everywhere. There is discord and division around every corner. There seems to be no end in sight to global death and destruction. Nobody could possibly be in control of all this confusion.

But what if I told you there are a relatively few powerful and wealthy individuals (oligarchs) manipulating our current hellish timeline who thrive on chaos as a way to keep us under their control? Here’s an analogy to make my point clear.

Will the Hero Get There in Time?

You might have seen a scene in a film or a stage play where the hero is running upstream against the flow of traffic on a busy city sidewalk. There are literally people everywhere. The hero can barely breathe as he pushes his way through the crowd going in the opposite direction. And to make matters worse, he’s on the clock—can he get to the train station in time in order to stop the heroine from leaving town before he can tell her that he loves her? The stakes are high and the situation seems impossible. Maybe he should just give up and give in to fate and let the girl go?

But just when things seem to be at their most trying, there is a ray of sunshine. Our hero looks up and spies the heroine trying to fight her way toward him. Eventually they meet, kiss, and start their lives together. All the fighting, sweating, and swearing turned out to be worth it. They marry and live happily ever after. The end.

Now, to the untrained eye, all the chaos and the momentum of the crowd the hero is fighting against seem impossible to overcome, but the person who choreographed the scene knows better. All the pandemonium has been carefully planned out. The extras portraying crowd members have learned their “steps” or blocking well.

The extras are put into groups, and each group is directed how to act whenever they encounter the hero. “Jostle him, trip him up, block his view of the train station,” are the directions given. Behind the camera or curtains, multiple stage managers watch the action carefully and cue each group of extras as to the exact second (or beat of the song in a musical) they are to enter the street scene. More signals from the sidelines will tell the extras how fast or slow they are to make their way across the set.

There could be upward of a dozen or more extras groups in a film scene or only four or five on stage in a play or musical number—not the millions it seems to be. The chaos viewers think they see is anything but. To the trained eye, it is pure poetry in motion. And it is this “poetry of chaos” that the oligarchs who rule over us excel at.

The following are examples where this “poetry of chaos” has been used recently...

 

To read some current-event examples of this "poetry of chaos" and learn how to discern its pattern, please copy or click on the following link: 

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Weather As A Weapon

words and original photos by C.A. Matthews

By the fourth day of record high temperatures and tropical humidity, I was convinced that this unusual Midwestern heatwave was more than it appeared. I haven’t seen such record high temperatures linger for more than a day or two since I lived in the Southwest. I can’t recall anything like this amount of heat and humidity for days on end growing up in this part of the world. The weather suddenly seems very unnatural and deadly. Deliberately so.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist—the name the CIA devised to smear the reputations of those who early on thought the details surrounding JFK’s assassination seemed highly suspicious. I don’t believe in UFOs or flying saucers because, let’s face it, what intelligent alien species would want to land on this hellhole of a rock? No self-respecting alien would come to a planet where babies and children are forfeit if they come from the wrong indigenous ethnic group or are seen as “playthings” for the pedophile perverts in power.

Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not talking conspiracy theories here. I have some evidence to back up my opinion that global warming/climate change is happening because the perverse people in power find it’s a useful tool to keep us poor folks in our place. The weather works well as a weapon in their arsenal to fight foreign enemies, too...

During this heatwave, I wondered how much longer can I carry on like this. I’m not getting any younger. I’m not sure I’ll be able to take care of my garden in the future during a similar extreme heatwave, especially if they become regular events. Maybe it’s time to call it quits, sell my house and garden, and move on? Who really cares about the native plants I’ve encouraged to grow so they and their pollinators don’t become extinct? Who else but me and my spouse cares about the trees we’ve planted as a small attempt to restore some of the vast forests that used to cover this part of the world?

Now, take my experience and observations in my garden recently and multiply them times a thousand or even a million. What if every small land holder or backyard gardener in the US decided within the next few years that it’s impossible to keep growing their own fruit and vegetables in this extreme weather? What if they decided it’s not worth planting trees if they’re going to dry up due to not receiving our “typical” rainfall amounts?

Expand these ideas to include farmers on the few small family farms still remaining in the US. Do they continue to struggle to make a living in this hostile climate? Why not sell off their cows, pigs, goats, and chickens? Why not sell off their old tractor and move into the city and work at a Walmart? Suddenly there’s a lot of “unused land” on the market for Tech Bros to buy cheap so they can build more heat-producing, water-hogging AI data centers, isn’t there?

Without gardeners and small farmers “hogging” water for their crops and livestock, there’s much more water to be had for cooling AI data centers. I can hear the gears clicking in the greedy idiots’ heads in the Trump administration even now...

 

To learn more about how weather is being used against us by the powers-that-be, please copy or click on the following link: 

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This article is the 578th 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 at 1-800-379-2679.     

A Very Stinky Story

 

A Very Stinky Story (or “Operation Epstein Slurry”)

by C. A. Matthews

Once upon a time there was a big, big boat sailing across the wide, wide open seas. This big boat had a very special task. It was sailing halfway around the world to fight a war for “freedom and democracy” and, of course, to control others’ oil production in order to maintain a stable petrodollar as the world’s reserve currency.

It didn’t make a difference that the big, big boat—affectionately known as “Jerry” to its friends—really needed to go home and have some repairs done first. It didn’t matter that its young crew (average age only 19 years old) had been gone from their homes and families for almost a year. It didn’t matter that they needed some down time to recuperate between missions. Oh, no, no, no! A big Orange Man called “the president” told Jerry to sail halfway around the world and do as it was told. Now.

The true reason Jerry and its crew couldn’t rest and be with their families was because Orange Man was afraid of the Boss Man, the real ruler of the Orange Man’s country. Not everyone in the Orange Man’s country realized this, but Orange Man always did as he was told by the Boss Man. Boss Man threatened Orange Man that he had a great big briefcase full of naughty pictures and not-so-nice stories about Orange Man’s favorite activity of hurting little girls in very mean and very ugly ways. So, Orange Man always did as he was told to by Boss Man. It was safer that way.

Boss Man told Orange Man that he wanted Jerry—and his fellow big boat friend Abe—to sail to the ancient Land of Flying Carpets to fight a war for “freedom and democracy” right away. Boss Man was tired of this particular war being put off again and again. Boss Man reasoned that if his his tiny pretend country wasn’t at war all the time his own people might send him to jail because of some not-so-nice things he had done in office.

So Orange Man agreed and told Jerry and its crew to get going. It was time to do some killin’! (Killing is one of the bosses’ favorite activities.)

 

To find out if Jerry was able to complete his mission and what all the big, big boats got up to, please copy or click on the following link: 

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This article is the 560th 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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The System Deserves To Collapse

by C. A. Matthews

Teddy R. said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
Donald T. says, “Shout loudly ‘cuz I have a small prick!”

Not one of my better attempts at writing poetry, but it came to me late at night. I just couldn’t forget it.

There’s so much truth in my short poem. It gives the real reason behind why the US is trying to start a war with Iran. It’s all because “Donald T. and his Board of Perverts and Genocidal Maniacs” are doing their best to cover up their heinous crimes, only a few of which have been exposed in this latest Epstein file dump.

What better way for the “Epstein class” to make the public forget all about their peccadilloes than by starting a war and risking nuclear Armageddon? You gotta admit it would create a gigantic smokescreen…

What child trafficking? What rape and torture parties? What genocide of the Palestinian people? What stolen oil and kidnapped president from Venezuela? Who’s blockading Cuba? Warehouses are being turned into ICE mega-prisons? What are you talking about? We’re at war with Iran now—that’s what’s important. That’s all that matters now.

It’s that easy. Besides, nobody of any real consequence will be at risk of being hurt or killed when we go to war with Iran alongside our “closest ally” in order to help them create Greater Israel. Nobody of consequence. Sure, some poor kids suckered into serving in the US armed forces and masses of Iranian civilians could be hurt or killed, but they’re of no consequence whatsoever when compared to superior individuals like Donald, Bibi, and their friends of the Epstein class...

 

To learn more about why it's time to tear down the corrupt system, please copy or click on the following link: 

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This article is the 559th 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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V Is For Venezuela...

I was in the middle of writing an “annotated freestyle poem” when I heard about Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife’s kidnapping. The news sent my head spinning. I asked our resident armchair historian his opinion of what was going on, what we could learn from history, and where it might be going. Here’s his take on the developing story in Latin America.

Venezuela: The New Sudetenland

By Coast Watcher

I feel like a German who saw WW2 coming and couldn’t do anything.

So wrote a friend on Saturday when the news broke of Venezuelan President Maduro and his wife’s abduction from their home. Their subsequent transportation to New York City to be processed for alleged crimes unfolded over the next few hours, during which social media lit up like a Christmas tree.

Few posts by ordinary citizens and commentators praised America’s actions. Those that did were probably AI generated trolls and bots. Musk’s Grok is particularly asinine in condemning President Maduro with a spiel straight out of Trump’s playbook.

Most Western governments issued statements supporting President Maduro’s “arrest,” although reading between the lines there’s a sense of shock and disbelief that such a thing could have happened. For anyone with knowledge of history, there are few precedents. We’re in uncharted territory, but that territory is looking increasingly similar to the years leading up to World War 2.

The post World War 1 (WW1) seismic shift that moved the boundaries of Europe took huge populations and resources of various kinds from the Central Powers and either transferred them to the victors’ control or set them up as independent polities. The former Austro-Hungarian Empire was shattered as its disparate ethnic peoples went their own ways. Latent or oppressed nationalism surged into life, leading to the creation of new states such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.

Control of coal deposits was crucial to the post-war revival of the global economy. France and Belgium demanded the Saar-Warndt Basin in compensation for the destruction of their mines by Germany during the war. Germany needed to retain the coalfields to fuel its own industrial recovery so it could pay the war reparations demanded by the Entente Powers. Wrangling over the coalfields delayed economic revival by years and caused a great deal of hardship to ordinary people during some harsh winters.

American President Woodrow Wilson’s cherished dream of a League of Nations bringing perpetual peace to the world got off to a rocky start...

To learn more about the history of US empire PLUS read my poem entitled How Many Babies Have To Freeze Before...,  please copy or click on the following link: 

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Democrats feel the same way as Trump about Maduro. Go figure!

 

This article is the 552nd 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. 

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Pirates of the Capitalist Caribbean

by C. A. Matthews

Yo-ho-ho, me mateys! Come one, come all to this not-so-new movie sensation! It’s Pirates of the Capitalist Caribbean!

Starring Donnie Drip and Marco Ruin-It-All, with cameo performances by J.D. (Juvenile Delinquent) Vice, Pete Hogsbreath, Pam N. Bondage, and a special appearance by B.B. Satans-Yahoo.

In Pirates of the Capitalist Caribbean, you’ll find the story of a rich boy growing ever richer by pirating Venezuelan oil tankers daring to sail the seas along the Spanish Main while he simultaneously enacts a daring real estate grab in the Middle East with the help of a genocidal M.I.T. graduate.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry (mostly), but worse of all, you’ll kiss hundreds of billions of US tax payers’ dollars good-bye in a vain attempt to shore up the fading petrodollar by denying BRICS nations the ability to do business in their own currencies—all the while funding and arming one of the worst genocides of all time.

Pirates of the Capitalist Caribbean is an economic thrill-a-minute ride with a “will-he-or-won’t-he?” vibe as you witness the witless Donnie spill his frijoles by threatening to download his idea of “democracy” onto a socialist republic that is infinitely more democratic than his own...

 

To learn more about what we all can do to take on the profiteering pirates, read the rest of this post by copying or clicking on the following link: 

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This article is the 549th 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. 

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The Winning Team

It’s been a long and stressful week. Rain and pain have been my personal challenges. I know I have nothing really to complain about when compared to the hell others are enduring in places such as Gaza or Sudan. Still, you have to wonder what life would be like if it wasn’t always an uphill climb or an endless fight against the forces of darkness with no light at the end of the tunnel. What would it be like if, just this once, we could be members of “the winning team”?

The Winning Team

a poem by C. A. Matthews

When life is tough and you want to scream
It’s best to join the winning team.
When genocide isn’t all it seems
Know that’s because of the winning team.
The winning team makes all the rules
And those who ignore them are the fools.
Since those that have deserve the rest
Their demands are sacrosanct and blessed—
By God. It’s because of their skewed worldview
That innocent people’s lives have been screwed.
But who cares? Life on top is pure cream
Because you’ve joined the winning team.

 When fossil fuels are getting lean
It’s time to join the winning team.
Those with wanted oil are evil regimes
That must be destroyed by the winning team.
The winning team always knows what’s best.
Others’ self-determination is put to the test.
Colonizers may come and then they’ll go
But don’t resist your betters—that’s a big no-no!
Any lame excuse can start a resource war—
Don’t you what “false flags” are really for?
The devastating results are seldom seen
Through Western eyes. 

The mass media’s on the winning team.

To read the rest of the poem and find out who are this week's "winners and "losers", please copy or click on the following link: 

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This article is the 544th 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.

To find out more about the Uniting for Peace resolution that President Petro proposed at the UN, watch this video webinar: https://www.youtube.com/live/5q-8pqiofPY  

  

In a sane and compassionate world, would American veterans be imprisoned and tortured (and ignored by their own government) for attempting to deliver food and medicines to starving people? First, a press conference for returned Global Sumud Flotilla hero Phil Tottenham, then a look a current events and how they tie together...

Read more about Phil's experience on this week's Substack post. Also, coming soon to Toledo, To Kill A War Machine, a UK documentary about Palestine Action. Details on Substack.

In a Sane and Compassionate World…

by C.A. Matthews

In a sane and compassionate world… one wouldn’t expect a Nobel Peace Prize winner to be actively working against her own people’s peace and her nation’s sovereignty. One wouldn’t expect a Nobel Peace winner to cooperate with a foreign plot to overthrow a popularly-elected president or cheer on an imperialist power happily bombing the boats of poor fishermen off her country’s coast in a lame attempt to steal what is the world’s largest reserve of oil. What’s world peace got to do with the massive petroleum reserves off the coast of Venezuela anyway?

But this is 2025, and if Donald Trump can’t win a peace prize for funding a genocide in Gaza one day while pretending to set up a permanent ceasefire there the next, then Maria Corina Machado is the Nobel committee’s next best choice. Because everybody loves a class traitor and opportunist like Maria, don’t they?

Read about Maria and her “peace making” at https://www.codepink.org/nobel_peace_prize_peace_has_lost_its_meaning

Sane? Compassionate? You decide.

In a sane and compassionate society… one wouldn’t have to spend billions of dollars on an outlandish propaganda campaign in order to convince the majority of the public that mass murdering innocent civilians (especially women and children) is “okay.” But this is 2025, and the apartheid state of Israel is paying upwards of $7,000 per post (not per day, week, or month but per post) to high-flying online influencers to convince their followers that the genocide of Palestinians is the best thing to happen since TikTok was invented...

 

To read the rest of the article and see how these current events tie together (along with photos from the press conference) please copy or click on the following link: 

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This article is the 541st 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. 

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