The Digger

Jazz Jennings, teenage transgender superstar,  turns to the camera : “To all of the kids out there who are hearing this book for the first time, I just want to say that you can be like Jazz … stay true to who you are no matter what, then one day things will get better, and you will be able to live your life as your true and authentic self.” She opens up the first page of her children’s picture book,  I Am Jazz ,  and begins: “for as long as I can remember my favourite colour has been pink …” Jennings is a media sensation. Since the age of six, she has been publicly identified as a transgender child. Her family featured in a hit American TV show, which followed her transition process, and this success has led to modelling gigs, an autobiography, and a lookalike children’s doll. She is also the founder of a company that manufactures mermaid tails made of rubber: a  video  of Jennings swimming in a pool wearing one of these tails is her most popular YouTube uplo...

Time for something completely different... Been a fan of Gil Scott-Heron since 1972, give or take a year.  Ended up listening to this tonight.  Way too many of the issues mentioned in this song are still relevant today. The Times, They Have Not Been Changing Enough...

Thanks to James for contributing this article! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ October 16, 2019 " Information Clearing House " -     For many years now I have focused a considerable amount of analysis  on the subject of Syria , with an emphasis on the country's importance to the global elites as a kind of geopolitical detonator; the first domino in a chain of dominoes that could lead to a war involving international powers. I believe this war will develop on multiple fronts, most importantly on the economic front, but it could very well turn into a shooting war involving numerous actors. Syria is so important, in fact, that the establishment has been careful to smother all discussion about what is really going on there in a fog of propaganda. And make no mistake, BOTH Republicans and Democrats as well as eastern and western governments are participating in the lies and misdirection.  Obviously, the first and most important lie is a multi-sided one,...

Here’s one big reason that America is driving itself batshit crazy: the explosion of computerized records, emails, inter-office memos, Twitter trails, Facebook memorabilia, iPhone videos, YouTubes, recorded conversations, and the vast alternative universe of storage capacity for all this stuff makes it seem possible to constantly go back and reconstruct reality. All it has really done is amplified the potential for political mischief to suicide level. It’s a major unanticipated consequence of the digital “revolution.” It has gotten us stuck looking backward at events, obsessively replaying them, while working overtime to spin them favorably for one team or the other, at the expense of actually living in real time and dealing with reality as it unspools with us. If life were a ballgame, we’d only be watching jumbotron replays while failing to pay attention to the action on the field. Before all this, history was left largely to historians, who curated it from a range of views for c...

OCTOBER 17,2019 |  Dear Friends, Greetings from the desk of the  Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research . Quito’s streets tremble between aspiration and repression; the smell of tear gas and the shouts for freedom reverberating in equal measure from one part of the city to another. President Lenín Moreno’s State of Emergency (October 3) and Curfew (October 12) give the men with guns more authority, but – despite hundreds of injured protestors and at least five dead – the violence has not broken the enthusiasm on the streets. The protests continue. Moreno’s options will soon run out. The oligarchy and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – with a wink from the White House – might ask him to resign. They like their comprador to be credible. On 13 October, Moreno had to promise to withdraw Decree 833. Pressure from the streets, from the United Nations, and from the Ecuadorian Episcopal Conference forced him to the table, where a televised discussion ...