1. Misogynist Words Like Cunt & Pussy

2. Financial Crisis: Clutching at Straws

3. Pakistan’s President Plays Double Game

4. Marriott Hotel Symbolizes US/Zionist Imperialism

4. Bye, Bye Capitalist Pie

5. The Curtain Comes Down on Wall Street Era

Emily's Agony Column [Source]

Dear Emily,

Since I was a kid, I've always thought there was something wrong with my vagina. I think it's because my pubic hair started growing when I was in 2nd grade.

I obsess over going to the gynecologist, and she always tells me I'm perfectly normal. I don't feel normal, I feel uncomfortably detached from my vagina. Do other girls feel this way? - Cordelia

You're not alone, Cordelia. Many women struggle with the feeling that they are not connected with their bodies or their sexuality because puritanical values permeated our society, repressing sexuality.

We live in an age of sexism, homophobia, heterosexism and a host of other -ism's that can make sex and sexuality feel dirty and even frightening. We are constantly bombarded with messages about sexuality-through family, religion, school, media, etc.

No wonder so many women feel uncomfortable about their own bodies. Derogatory words like "cunt" and "pussy" make women ashamed of their vagina.

We are told to worship the form of the penis, but have no room to explore the beauty of our own special vagina.

Loving our bodies has been a constant struggle for women, only recently becoming easier to deal with.

People devote their lives to helping women better understand their bodies, yet people still want to belittle the conversation about women's sexuality.

Even if you think your vagina is weird, there is no standard of beauty for vaginas-they are all different which makes them so special!

Your vagina may have developed earlier and you may think it looks abnormal, but it's not.

Especially if your gynecologist tells you everything is okay, trust them. Your vagina is great-you just need to take some time to get to know­ it better.

To start, find a comfortable space, not just physcially, but mentally-a place where you can be open to new things.

Also, be patient. Just because you don't have a strong relationship with your vagina doesn't mean that you can't develop one, but it won't happen overnight.

Give yourself room to feel the emotions and sensations that come with reconnecting with your body.

The best way to understand your vagina is to masturbate. However, your path to masturbation will be a process of self-discovery. There are some other steps you need to take before you take the leap.

First, use a mirror and spend time looking at different parts of your vagina. Don't be disgusted by your body.

It's the only one you get and it's super fabulous, so let yourself love it the way it deserves to be loved.

Do this until you start to remember what you look like down there. Get to know the in's and out's of your special place.

Once you feel comfortable looking at your vagina, move on to understanding it through touch. The "Our Bodies, Ourselves" website details a great self-guided tour of the vagina.

Find it at here under the section titled "sexual anatomy, reproduction, and the menstrual cycle".

In a safe space, close your eyes and touch the different parts of your vagina. How does it feel? What kind of sensations do you notice? How do you react?

Be present with yourself and aware of your experiences. Once you take the time to understand the way your vagina looks and feels, you will begin to feel more connected, mind and body.

Remember, you lead your life. You choose your sexual destiny. If you don't get to know your vagina, it will be hard for anyone else to get to know it.

Knowing the beauty of your body allows you to share it with your partner. If you're excited about your sexiness, they'll be too.

If you need help along the way, there are countless books and websites about women's sexuality and celebrating the vagina.

If you're blocked mentally, talk to someone, like a counselor, to figure out what's preventing you from embracing your sexuality.

You have to be healthy and happy in mind, body and spirit before you can truly love the beautiful flower that is your vagina.

Financial Crisis: Clutching at Straws

On Friday morning, Senator Christopher Dodd, the head of the Senate Banking Committee, was interviewed on ABC's “Good Morning America.”

Dodd revealed that just hours earlier at an emergency meeting convened by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, lawmakers were told that "We’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system.”

Dodd added somberly, that in his three decades of serving in public office, he had "never heard language like this.”

The system is at the breaking point, and despite Wall Street's elation from the proposed $1 trillion dollar bailout to remove toxic mortgage-backed debt from banks balance sheets, the market is still correcting in what has become a vicious downward cycle.

This cycle will persist until the bad debts are accounted for and written off for or until the exhausted dollar-system collapses altogether. Either way, the volatility and violent dislocations will continue for the foreseeable future.

Taxpayers will pay for the lawless system which men like "industry rep" Henry Paulson put in place. That's deregulation in a nutshell; a system that allows Wall Street banksters to create credit out of thin air and then run weeping to Congress when their swindles backfire.

Inflating the currency, printing more money, and increasing the deficits won't help. The bad debts have to be accounted for and liquidated.

The Paulson strategy is to create another ocean of red ink while refusing to face the underlying problem head-on. This just further exacerbates the consumer-led recession which economists know is already setting in everywhere across the country.

Demand is down and consumer spending is off due to falling home equity, job losses, and tighter lending standards at the banks. The broader economy does not need the added downward pressure from higher taxes, bigger deficits, or inflation.

Paulson's plan is a band-aid approach to a sucking chest wound. The debts are enormous and the pain will be substantial, but the problem cannot be resolved by crushing the middle class or destroying the currency.

The malfunctioning of the markets and the freeze-over in the banking system are the outcome of a massive credit unwind instigated by trillions of dollars of low interest credit from the Federal Reserve which was magnified many times over via complex derivatives contracts and extreme leveraging by speculative investment bankers.

This has generated the biggest equity bubble in history. That bubble is now set for a "hard-landing" which is the predictable result of an unsupervised marketplace where individual players are allowed to create as much credit as they choose.

If Paulson is not removed and his rescue plan scrapped altogether; the dollar will lose its position as the world's reserve currency and the US government will face a historic funding crisis as foreign sources of capital dry up. That will thrust the country into a hyper-inflationary depression.

Pakistan’s Presiden Plays Double Game

The blast at the Marriott Hotel came just hours after Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari addressed a joint session of the country’s parliament pledging to free Pakistan from “the shackles of terrorism”.

Since taking office earlier this month, Zardari has been engaged in a delicate balancing act—on the one hand, bowing to US demands for a crackdown on Islamist militants in the FATA, and, on the other, attempting to placate popular anger over what is seen as a proxy war on behalf of the US.

Shahid Kamal, for instance, told the New York Times that he was sick of the wave of bombings in the country.

“This is a reaction to what is going on in FATA" - the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, he said.

“We have been implementing a reckless and careless policy for a number of years. What’s happening in FATA is that Pakistanis are killing Pakistanis.”

Anti-American hostility has grown following a marked escalation of US attacks inside Pakistani territory this month, including the first publicly acknowledged ground operation by US Special Forces on September 3.

The raid, which killed at least 20 civilians, provoked a sharp reaction from Pakistani army General Ashfaq Kayani who warned that further incursions would be resisted.

Following reports of Pakistani troops firing on US soldiers attempting a second cross border raid, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen made a sudden visit to Islamabad last week to patch of relations.

Acutely sensitive to opposition inside the Pakistani military and the broader public to the US attacks, Zardari told parliament on Saturday:

“We will not tolerate the violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity by any power in the name of combatting terrorism”.

The statement was one of the few moments in a lengthy, vague address that prompted universal applause, with legislators thumping their desks to show their approval.

Zardari is well aware that he cannot afford to be branded as a puppet for Washington, like his predecessor—the military strongman General Pervez Musharraf.

Zardari, however, appears to be playing a double game—publicly posturing as a defender of Pakistani sovereignty, while privately accommodating to US demands for a stepped-up war in the FATA region.

Following the Marriott Hotel bombing, Interior Ministry official Rehman Malik emphatically rejected a US offer to send FBI agents to assist in the investigation, saying: “We don’t need help; we reject it”.

At the same time, however, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Pakistani government and military quietly reassured Admiral Mullen last week that delayed plans for sending dozens of US military advisors to Pakistan to provide counterinsurgency training would go ahead.

Pakistan Bombing: Marriott Hotel Symbolizes US/Zionist Imperialism

On Oct. 28, 2004, the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad suffered some damage to its lobby, as a bomb went off inside the hotel. Fifteen persons were injured, including an American diplomat.

On Jan. 26, 2007, an alleged suicide bomber and a private security guard, who stopped him for questioning, were killed when the terrorist blew himself up in the parking lot of the hotel.

In the third attack directly targeting the hotel at Islamabad yesterday, 60 persons--including some foreigners--were reported to have been killed when a truck bomber carrying about a ton of explosives blew the truck up when he was stopped for questioning at the gate by the security guards.

The explosion, which destroyed part of the hotel, causing a major fire, took place on a day when physical security in Islamabad was very tight since only a few hours before the explosion President Asif Ali Zardari addressed a joint session of the two houses of the Parliament.

The Parliament House, the Presidency, the Prime Minister's House, offices of ministers, the judges' colony and the housing colony of some of the staff of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) are located near the hotel.

Hotels and restaurants with perceived Jewish ownership have been among the favorite targets of Al-Qaeda and pro-Al-Qaeda organizations.

Al-Qaeda had also targeted the Hilton Hotel in Sharm-el-Sheikh in 2005 and the Jewish-owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa in 2002.

Pro-Al-Qaeda jihadi radicals had targeted French submarine construction engineers staying in the Sheraton Hotel of Karachi in May 2002.

Apart from perceived Jewish ownership, another reason for the targeting of the Marriott hotels in Jakarta and Islamabad is the fact that Western embassies in these capitals often use these hotels to accommodate their staff and visiting officials.

They also hire a large number of rooms in the hotels for temporarily locating some of their offices until permanent accommodation is found.

Bye, Bye American Pie as Capitalism Comes a Cropper

Unbridled capitalism outlived its communist rival for exactly 17 years.

Political histories, with their clear before-and-after dates, are so much neater to write about than their rather more tortuous economic cousins.

On December 21st, 1991, the representatives of all member republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, with the exception of Georgia, signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, dismembering the USSR. Just five days later, on St Stephen's Day 1991, the Supreme Soviet dissolved both itself and the country it had once ruled.

One of the two great political and economic theories of the 20th century, Soviet communism, ceased to exist.

The year 2008 will enter our history books as the year when the rival 20th century theory of unbridled capitalism passed away. As this demise is an economic one, we lack an equivalent before-and-after date.

Perhaps historians with a sense of symmetry will select December 26th, 2008? Such a selection would allow us to write that unbridled capitalism outlived its communist rival for exactly 17 years.

Over recent weeks the Republican administration of George Bush, which can reasonably be described as the national government that most zealously believed in the mantra of unfettered capitalism, has carried out the greatest wave of nationalisations our modern world has seen.

Blind faith in the ability of markets to regulate themselves, and in the infallibility of complex mathematical formulae to dilute and spread the risk element of investments has brought the US financial system to its knees.

There is more than an element of delicious irony in the fact that the trumpet of doom first sounded from Paris when BNP Parisbas announced in August 2007 that its highly qualified staff could not put a price on the US asset-backed bonds it held.

The US, with a lot of help from the rest of the planet, will eventually sort out its financial mess and its inherent inventiveness will relaunch its economy.

It will, however, be a version of the mixed economic model the rest of us have long come to accept as a reasonable compromise.

Economic commentator Nouriel Roubini of New York University, also known as Dr Doom, sums it up: "Zealots of any religion are always pests that cause havoc with their inflexible fanaticism - but they usually don't run the biggest economy in the world."

This time they did and they ran it into the ground.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley Bring Down Curtain on Wall Street Era

The Wall Street that shaped the financial world for two decades ended last night, when Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley concluded there is no future in remaining investment banks now that investors have determined the model is broken.

The Federal Reserve's approval of their bid to become banks ends the ascendancy of the securities firms, 75 years after Congress separated them from deposit-taking lenders, and caps weeks of chaos that sent Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. into bankruptcy and led to the rushed sale of Merrill Lynch & Co. to Bank of America Corp.

``The decision marks the end of Wall Street as we have known it,'' said William Isaac, a former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. ``It's too bad.''

Goldman, whose alumni include Henry Paulson, the Treasury Secretary presiding over a $700 billion bank bailout, and Morgan Stanley, a product of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act that cleaved investment and commercial banks, insisted they didn't need to change course, even as their shares plunged and their borrowing costs soared last week.

By then, it was too late. As financial markets gyrated -- the Dow Jones Industrial Average whipsawed 1,000 points in the week's last two days -- and clients defected, executives at the two firms concluded they had no choice.

The Federal Reserve Board met at 9 p.m. yesterday and considered applications delivered that day, said Michelle Smith, a spokeswoman for the central bank. The decision was unanimous, she said.

``There's blood in the water in the industry and the sharks are circling,'' Peter Kovalski, who helps oversee about $10 billion at Alpine Woods Capital Investors LLC, said at the end of last week.

``It all comes down to perception and the current trust within the community.''

Wall Street hasn't had such a shakeup since the 1980s, when firms including Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns Cos. went public and London's financial markets were altered forever with the so-called Big Bang reforms implemented in 1986. Bear Stearns disappeared in March, when it was bought by JPMorgan Chase & Co.The announcement paves the way for the two New York-based firms, both of which will now be regulated by the Fed, to build their deposit base, potentially through acquisitions.

That will allow them to rely more heavily on deposits from retail customers instead of using borrowed money -- the leverage that led to the undoing of Bear Stearns and Lehman