[PHOTO] DeLoreans of St. Patrick's Day

[LINK] "Meet the Gaybros"

J. Bryan Lowder's recent article in Slate about Reddit community gaybros, populated by self-defined masculine gay men with decidedly masculine (heteronormative?) interests who feel rejected by a GLBT culture that doesn't respect their interests.

It’s a snowy Saturday night in Boston, and the bros are moving in pack formation. As we trudge through the fresh powder toward South End, the 10 or so guys I’m walking with jostle and joke their way forward through the frigid air, bouncing with that particular surge of giddy energy you sometimes get when you’re hanging out with people you have never met in real life.

As members of Gaybros—a Reddit-based community for gay guys with traditionally manly interests like sports, hunting, and beer—the large majority of their bonding takes place through comment threads under topics like “Ron Swanson vs. James Bond” and “My Gay Card Has Been Revoked.” But in cities like Boston, New York, L.A., Toronto, and even London, they try to regularly “meet-up” at a local restaurant or bar, exchanging Reddit’s upvotes and downvotes for proper handshakes and side-hugs. These “IRL” encounters can, understandably, feel awkward at first, as this one did when we had all gathered for dinner earlier in the evening at a crowded Italian cafeteria. Much of the conversation revolved around how the so-called bartender had asked if seltzer was a spirit. But bros being bros, the group made the best of their over-salted pasta and soda-fountain tap water, and we were quickly on our way to a more dependable source of alcohol.

“Where are we going again?” I ask, dodging drifts and shivering from under-preparedness. “To Fritz!” someone I’m too cold to look toward explains, referencing the city’s premiere gay sports bar. Once past the middle-aged bouncer’s baritone “evening, gentlemen,” I could see why. If the Gaybro’s mission statement is “a place for guys to get together and talk about, well, guy stuff. Sports, video games, military issues, grilling, gear, working out, gadgets, tech, TV, movies, and more,” Fritz is their ideal arena. The decor is classic pub, all dark woods and vintage trophies, but with a decidedly gay twist: Look even briefly at the house-made baseball and football player posters decorating the walls, and more than sportsmanlike appreciation for the athletic male form quickly becomes apparent.

There are, as Lowder notes, obvious issues with this. Is it actually true that gay culture doesn't privilege masculinity, especially masculinity in a heterosexual mold?

When Buzzfeed interviewed the group’s founder, Alex Deluca, on the occasion of their one-year anniversary this past January, the comments section immediately filled with screeds about “masculine privilege” and “femmephobia” within the gay community. (I may have scrawled something to this effect on Facebook myself the day the story broke.)

Deluca, 23, spoke in the Q-and-A about his dismay at encountering a “very narrow definition of what it means to be gay” in mainstream culture, one that apparently doesn’t make room for guys with interests like “video games, paintball, and sports.” “I created Gaybros to provide a space for these guys,” he said. “[A place for them] to gather and talk about shared interests and to break down stereotypes and promote the idea that you could be a gay man and still be exactly who you've always been.”

Eli Fox, a commenter from New Orleans, captured the general complaint of those who took issue with Deluca’s treating the gay “stereotype” like an unwanted cardboard box: “This is such bullshit and just perpetuates the idea that femininity is fake or that people put it on […] He makes it sound like masculine gay guys are somehow OPPRESSED. No, they're the most desired, because masculine traits are prized in the gay male community just like practically every other social group […] Masc guys aren't the ones who need to spend time promoting some agenda of masculinity and "regular guy" culture crap. Society has already done that for them.”

Still more to the point, Lowder's arguments later that gay culture is fragmented, even self-identifying gays not sharing in a single interpretation of what it is to be gay, are on the money. IMHO.

[LINK] "Big question mark over what Cyprus can do to escape crisis"

The Christian Science Monitor's Robert Marquand writes at length about the latest developments in the Cypriot phase of the Eurozone crisis.

Cyprus is today looking at a “Plan B” to save itself from a catastrophic banking default, though it appears that hopes for an immediate loan from Moscow, explored by Cypriot officials today, will not be forthcoming.

Lawmakers in Nicosia on Tuesday decided against a highly controversial proposed levy on private bank depositor holdings that would impose a nearly 10 percent “levy” or “tax” on private bank deposits in order to secure an EU bailout.

The possibility of private bank accounts being targeted by a government brought enormous world attention in recent days.

The Los Angeles Times today called the tax an “expropriation” of funds in a piece that warns the Cypriot situation could trigger a larger crisis for the euro.

Now Cyprus still needs to find some $8 billion or find itself in default. It would be the first eurozone member to do so. Cypriot banks are already closed and may remain so this week until a solution is found, causing at the minimum, anger among citizens.

The tiny island represents all of 0.2 percent of the mighty eurozone economy. But its need for a bailout and its personae as a huge offshore shelter for Russian oligarchs – brings speculation that a default will act as a wrench tossed in the mechanism of the EU economy, just as talk of the “eurocrisis” was quieting down.

Today a visit to Moscow by the Cypriot finance minister for a possible bailout of $2 billion to $8 billion, yielded no offers according to Reuters. </blockquote.

[LINK] "Global Wealthy Question Tax Havens After Cyprus"

If, as CNBC's Robert Frank suggests, tax havens around the world are going to start shaking as the Cyprus meltdown continues, I'd call this a good thing. Taking use of loopholes in the globalized financial system to evade a nation-state's taxes doesn't strike me as something viable in the long run, not economically and not politically (as we're seeing now).

Wealth travels wherever wealth is treated best. And for decades, Russian wealth was treated well in Cyprus. The tiny island-state has long been the largest destination for Russian capital and largest direct investor in Russia.

According to Global Financial Integrity, the financial-watchdog group, Russians invested $199.7 billion in Cyprus in 2011, while Cyprus sent $128.8 billion into Russia. That's about five times the annual GDP of Cyprus.

[. . .]

The sudden tax on depositors in Cyprus is causing the very wealthy to wonder if other favorite havens are also at risk, reports CNBC's Robert Frank.While Cyprus is a unique case, the bail-out terms have sent a shudder through the world of wealth management and the multi-trillion dollar world of offshoring.

According to the Tax Justice Network, at least $21 trillion in private financial wealth was owned by wealthy individuals through tax havens in 2010. That's equal to the size of the economies of the United States and Japan combined.

That number is growing rapidly, according to John Christensen, director of the Tax Justice Network.

"Right now, wealth is cascading offshore," he said. "There's no question that it's accelerating. Wealth is concentrating in the hands of a tiny elite. And that elite is moving money offshore at a faster rate than we've ever seen."

He added that rising tax rates in many countries – from the United States to France and Britain – have driven more of the wealthy to seek shelters.