1. The Fucked-Up Male

2. Bush Regime Prepares for War in Pakistan

3. The Gamblers Bail Out the Casino

4. America's Next Ideological Thrust

5. A Mushroom Cloud over Wall Street

6. Wall Street Bailout: Let's Screw the Bosses

From Jo Swift

Are Men Being Emasculated?

In a world where men are getting pregnant and women are simulating penetrative sex and reporting "it's like touching God", it's tempting to join traditionalist woman crying, "Where have all the real men gone!"

"I know saving the males is an unlikely vocation for a 21st-century women," claims Kathleen Parker, leading campaigner and author on the subject.

In her book, Save The Males, she states: "Most men don't know they need saving; most woman consider the idea absurd.

"Yet for the past 30 years we have created a culture that is hostile towards males, contemptuous of masculinity and cynical about the delightful differences that make men irresistible, especially when something goes bump in the night."

And in a world where woman are embracing a model of female sexuality which confuses sexual power with personal power (imagining themselves as blow-up dolls from the world of pornography and strip clubs) for some, this argument is a no-brainer.

But what lies beneath the current sexual dance between the sexes? What, for example, has men shaving their heads and body hair and women objectifying themselves as toys for the boys?

As a sociological process, these behaviours -- women exploring their male aspect and men exploring their female aspect -- seems healthy enough.

Theorists on the human condition might vary on interpretation, but as an observation of evolving human consciousness these are exciting developments. The more woman know about their male aspect and vice versa, the better.

We've been experimenting with our sexuality for centuries despite moral dictates of family and church, but it's the graphic, almost brutal nature of the present power struggle that interests me.

While the idea of the modern man as a hairless metrosexual more interested in manicures than motors challenges my notions of a heterosexual man, I'm more interested in the state of play between the sexes in our hyper-sexualised, pornified culture.

As young girls are told that it's empowering to pursue men aggressively and young men are learning to lie back and take it, I wonder how these acts of aggressive connection affects the psyche.

Bush Regime Prepares for War in Pakistan

Approximately 20 kilometers from Islamabad lies Tarbella, the brigade headquarters of Pakistan's Special Operation Task Force (SOTF).

Recently, 300 American officials landed at this facility, with the official designation as a "training advisory group."

However, high-level contacts claim this is not as simple as a training program.

In the mid-1990s, during the government of Nawaz Sharif, a special US Central Intelligence Agency unit was based at the same facility, tasked with catching Osama bin Laden. They left after Pervez Musharraf came to power in a coup in 1999.

Now, the US has bought a huge plot of land at Tarbella, several square kilometers, according to sources directly handling the project.

Recently, 20 large containers arrived at the facility. They were handled by the Americans, who did not allow any Pakistani officials to inspect them.

Given the size of the containers, it is believed they contain special arms and ammunition and even tanks and armored vehicles - and certainly have nothing to do with any training program.

There is little doubt in the minds of those familiar with the American activities at Tarbella that preparations are being made for an all-out offensive in North-West Frontier Province against sanctuaries belonging to the Taliban and al-Qaeda led by bin Laden. Pakistani security sources maintain more American troops will arrive in the coming days.

In the crucial few weeks before the US presidential elections there is nothing the George W Bush administration would like more than a real smoking gun to justify the long years of its "war on terror".

In the crucial few weeks before the US presidential elections there is nothing the George W Bush administration would like more than a real smoking gun to justify the long years of its "war on terror".

The soldiers now based in Tarbella are on the trail. But so are the insurgents.

The Gamblers Bail Out the Casino

Why should American taxpayers give US Treasury Secretary "Hank" Paulson a blank check to bail out the shareholders of busted banks? Why should the Treasury turn itself into a toxic waste dump for their bad loans?

Why not let other banks join the unlamented Brothers Lehman in bankruptcy court, and start a new bank with taxpayers' money?

Or have the Treasury pay interest on delinquent mortgages, and make them whole? Even better, why not let the Chinese, or the Saudis or other foreign investors take control of failed American banks?

They've got the money, and they gladly would pay a premium for an inside seat at the American table.

None of the above will occur. America will give between US$700-$800 billion to the Treasury to buy any bank assets it wants, onany terms, with no possible legal recourse.

It is an invitation to abuse of power unparalleled in American history, in which ill-paid civil servants will set prices on the portfolios of the banking system with no oversight and no threat of legal penalty.

Why are the voices raised in protest so shrill and few? Why will Americans fall on their fountain-pens for their bankers?

If America is to adopt socialism, why not have socialism for the poor, rather than for the rich?

Why should American households that earn $50,000 a year subsidize Goldman Sachs partners who earn $5 million a year?

America's Next Ideological Thrust: Progressive Corporatism

The Paulson rescue plan is one chapter. But there will be others. Over the next few years, the U.S. will have to climb out from under mountainous piles of debt. Many predict a long, gray recession. The country will not turn to free-market supply-siders.

Nor will it turn to left-wing populists. It will turn to the safe heads from the investment banks. For Republicans, people like Paulson.

For Democrats, the guiding lights will be those establishment figures who advised Barack Obama last week — including Volcker, Robert Rubin and Warren Buffett.

These time-tested advisers, or more precisely, their acolytes, are going to make the health and survival of the financial markets their first order of business, because without that stability, the entire economy will be in danger. Beyond that, they will embrace a certain sort of governing approach.

The government will be much more active in economic management (pleasing a certain sort of establishment Democrat).

Government activism will provide support to corporations, banks and business and will be used to shore up the stable conditions they need to thrive (pleasing a certain sort of establishment Republican).

Tax revenues from business activities will pay for progressive but business-friendly causes — investments in green technology, health care reform, infrastructure spending, education reform and scientific research.If you wanted to devise a name for this approach, you might pick the phrase economist Arnold Kling has used: Progressive Corporatism.

We’re not entering a phase in which government stands back and lets the chips fall. We’re not entering an era when the government pounds the powerful on behalf of the people.

We’re entering an era of the educated establishment, in which government acts to create a stable — and often oligarchic — framework for capitalist endeavor.

After a liberal era and then a conservative era, we’re getting a glimpse of what comes next.

A Mushroom Cloud over Wall Street

The Fed and Treasury have decided to backstop the entire global financial system (foreign banks can access the Fed's facilities, too!) with paper money which is rapidly losing its value. Watch the greenback tumble tomorrow in currency trading.

Congress is getting steamrolled and the American people are getting snookered. Consumer confidence--already at historic lows--is headed for the wood-chipper feet-first. Something has got to give.

One minute everything is hunky-dory; the subprime meltdown is "contained" and "the fundamentals of our economy are strong".(Paulson)

And, less than a week later, congress is forced to surrender their constitutionally-mandated right to oversee spending in order to forestall economic Armageddon.

Which is it? Or is the real objective just to keep the country on an emotional teeter-totter long enough for all state-power to be subsumed by the Wall Street Politburo?

No one knows what will happen next. We are in uncharted waters. And no one knows what the political landscape will look like after the dust settles from this outrageous power grab.

According to Paulson, things are so dire, the entire nation will be reduced to smoldering rubble and twisted iron. But can we trust him this time after his long litany of lies?

Isn't it about time to send the cockroaches scuttling back to their hideouts and bring in the cleaning crew to hose the whole place down? It sounds like a job for Ralph Nader, a man of vision and unshakable integrity.

Give Ralph a badge and let him deploy his Raiders to Wall Street armed with bullwhips and tasers. Let them post a guard in every CEOs and CFOs office and every boardroom on the Street---and if even one decimal is accidentally moved to the right or left on the corporate ledger; clap them in leg-irons and drag them off squealing to Guantanamo. That's how you clean up Wall Street!

Don't let the prospect of a national crisis trick you into giving up your freedom, America. The people behind this scam are the same landsharks and flim-flam men who polluted the global marketplace with their snake oil and toxic sludge.

These are the fraudsters who manufactured the crisis to begin with. This is just the latest installment of the Shock Doctrine; engineer a crisis, and then, steal whatever is left behind. Same sh**, different day. Be resolute. Don't budge.

Our economic foundations may be crumbling, but or determination is not. This is our country, not Goldman Sach's.

The people who destroyed America must be held to account. Their time is coming. Justice first.

Wall Street Bailout: Let's Screw the Bosses

Democrats want to rein in rich exit packages and reclaim millions paid to bosses who piled up toxic mortgage assets. But it's easier said than done.

As Congress and the Bush Administration negotiate over the terms of a financial rescue bill, Democrats on Capitol Hill are drafting language designed to rein in executive compensation, in particular controversial severance packages at foundering companies.

And for politicians concerned about the growing backlash on Main Street over what many see as a bailout of Wall Street fat cats, executive pay is a ripe target.

After all, average total pay for a CEO at one of the 500 biggest companies last year was $12.8 million, double what it was a decade ago.

But compensation attorneys and experts say many of the restrictions could prove tough to enforce.

Executive pay was shaping up as one of a few remaining sticking points as Congress and the Republican Administration hurried to put a deal together amid further stock market declines on Sept. 22.

In several areas the players were nearing accord, with Administration officials reportedly accepting some congressional oversight and relief for homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages—key provisions for Democrats.

Legislative language circulating on Capitol Hill on Monday afternoon also included mechanisms that would give the government ownership stakes in companies benefiting from the bailout, to make up for losses the government might incur.

Senate Democrats revived a provision that would allow judges to modify the terms of mortgages in bankruptcy proceedings, much as other debts can be adjusted. But the financial-services industry is strongly opposed to the provision and some predicted it would not garner sufficient support in the House.