Hate-speech is now mainstream....

I honestly don't think American leftists realise how far the US has moved toward fascism.

The Right has shifted public discourse so far toward hate-speech, with the full cooperation and approval of the corporate media, that Ann Coulter's latest episode of verbal diarrhea has gone all but uncriticised by most people.

Were a public figure as well-known as Ann Coulter to pull such a stunt as this where I now live, not only would public opinion widely condemn her homophobia--yes, even in Catholic Ireland!-- but she'd probably also find herself facing slander charges, if not worse.

Andrew Sullivan is finally starting to get it.

(H/T to Shakespeare's Sister (comment thread) and Crooks & Liars.)

We are everywhere...!

When I give presentations on transgenderism, I start by telling audiences that we have been found in every time and every culture for which there are detailed historical records.

And for more proof of that:

A previously unpublished letter by Richard Wagner to a firm of Milanese couturiers offers the intriguing possibility that the great composer was, in fact, a cross-dresser.

The letter is published for the first time today in the inaugural edition of the Wagner Journal. In it, the composer of the Ring des Nibelungen details the cut of an outfit, ostensibly intended for his wife, Cosima.

Requesting "something graceful for evenings at home" he continues: "The bodice will have a high collar, with a lace jabot and ribbons; close-fitting sleeves; the dress trimmed with puffed flounces - of the same satin material - no basque at the front (the dress must be very wide and have a train) but a rich bustle with a bow at the back, like the one at the front) ..."

Complete story here.

The almighty dollar always trumps politics....

Trust a capitalist to put profits before politics or ideals. (I've posted the entire Irish Times February 23rd article here, as it's a subscription-only site.)

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are using their Irish-based subsidiaries to ship product to Iran and skirt US trade sanctions with the pariah state.

The two cola giants are shipping concentrate from their Irish operations to Iran, where it is then bottled for sale.

A loophole in the sanctions allows American companies to ship certain foodstuffs to Iran by using overseas subsidiaries.

This means Coca-Cola and PepsiCo can sidestep the trade sanctions, while also benefiting from Ireland 12.5 per cent corporation tax rate.

Reliable statistics for the size of the soft drinks market in Iran are not available. Some reports, however, suggest that it could be worth as much as $1 billion annually. In 2006 Iranians drank an average 95 bottles of soft drink, which is expected to rise to 120 by 2010.

PepsiCo confirmed that it has shipped concentrate from Ireland to Iran since 2002. "This is perfectly lawful," said Dick Detwiler, senior vice president for pubic affairs at PepsiCo International. "The products of dozens of companies in America are sold in that market."

PepsiCo, which has manufacturing operations in Cork, employs about 400 people in Ireland and has invested more than €200 million here in the past five years, according to Mr Detwiler.

"Ireland is one of our larger concentrate facilities," Mr Detwiler said.

Coca-Cola, which has had manufacturing facilities in Ireland since 1974, would not confirm that its Irish subsidiary ships cola concentrate to Iran. "Our Irish concentrate facility exports to customers on six continents," said Charles Sutlive, a senior communications executive at the Atlanta-based multinational.

Informed sources, however, confirmed that Ireland is being used by Coca-Cola to ship concentrate to Iran. This is bottled in Iran by a local company called Khoshgovar, which also produces its own brands of cola and is thought to control about 50 per cent of the soft drinks market there.

Khoshgovar also licences Fanta, Sprite and Dasani water from Coca-Cola, although it is not clear if all of this is sourced from Ireland.

Relations between Iran and the US have been frosty since the 1979 Islamist revolution, which saw the Shah overthrown. That resulted in Coca-Cola and PepsiCo leaving the market and trade sanctions being put in place.

These were eased in the early 1990s, with the result that Coca-Cola and PepsiCo gradually built up relationships with local producers again.

A tightening of sanctions under president Bill Clinton's administration and the current stand-off between Washington and Tehran over uranium enrichment has since made it difficult for US corporations to do business in the country.

Neither brand is popular with conservative clerics in Iran and hardliners often appear on television to denounce both Coke and Pepsi. This has not stopped trendy, young Iranians from consuming the American brands in large numbers.

"Coke is ubiquitous in Iran," said John Teeling, an Irish entrepreneur who controls a company called Persian Gold and is a frequent visitor to Iran. "You see people drinking it everywhere."

Complete story here.

Eliminationist sentiment, anyone...?

Over the past few days, I got into a discussion with a couple of commenters at Effect Measure. What really surprised me about the way this played out was that the focus of Effect Measure is mostly bird flu, and posts are written by public health officials or employees using pseudonyms so they can speak frankly without jeopardizing their jobs. The blog seems to attract a pretty middle-of-the-road readership.

The post I responded to was actually about Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories. Instead of being deluged with hate mail accusing the blogger of anti-Semitism, however, the comment thread took off in a discussion of undocumented Mexican workers in America.

I was shocked when one commenter suggested offering Mexican undocumented workers a choice between returning to Mexico, or a rope. I know anti-immigrant wingnuts express such ugly sentiments, but judging from previous comment threads, Effect Measure doesn't attract the far Right fringe. So I found myself wondering it that sort of eliminationist thinking has now infected the more middle-of-the-road Rightists.

I was even more shocked when no one commented on his comment, especially the moderator. One person from Canada even said he was glad to see Americans "arguing in such an enlightened manner"!

So I responded. And you should see the response to my response.

It’s all here:

Pretty scary stuff, especially considering that these people might represent the more “moderate elements” of the Republican Party.

(Anna Politkovskaya)
Despotism in Russia...

This two-part article in today's Guardian details the critical part played by the Russian media in the evolution of the modern Russian oligarchy. Americans, whose own media is evolving into a corporate-controlled, sports-and-celebrity-obsessed government lapdog would do well to read it in its entirety.

Regarding the lack of official censorship:

...'It's a magic process now,' Anna Kachkaeva, who broadcasts a weekly interview show on Radio Liberty, told me. Kachkaeva, who is also the head of the television department at Moscow State University, went on: 'There is no censorship - it's much more advanced. I would call it a system of contacts and agreements between the Kremlin and the heads of television networks. There is no need to start every day with instructions. It is all done with winks and nods. They meet at the end of the week, and the problem, for TV and even in the printed press, is that self-censorship is worse than any other kind. Journalists know - they can feel - what is allowed and what is not.'

Gee, she could be describing the New York Times and ABC News.

The article also explores the brutal assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, one of 13 journalists murdered in Russia in the seven years since Putin came to power.

The Putin government has made a clever calculation: a few newspapers, with tiny elite audiences, can publish highly critical investigations and editorials as long as that reporting and criticism stays absolutely disconnected from television. (And as long as their reporters keep out of Chechnya.) Anna Politkovskaya began writing about the war in 1999, after the rules of press freedom changed, and she violated those rules every time she went to work. Not long before her death she wrote, 'I will not go into the ... joys of the path I have chosen - the poisoning, the arrests, the threats in letters and over the internet, the telephoned death threats, the weekly summons to the prosecutor general's office to sign statements about practically every article I write (the first question being, "How and where did you obtain this information?"). Of course I don't like the constant derisive articles about me that appear in other newspapers and on websites presenting me as the madwoman of Moscow. I find it disgusting to live this way. I would like a bit more understanding.' The fact that Novaya Gazeta [Politkovskaya's paper] continued to exist says more about the paper's minimal impact than about its openness.

Politkovskaya didn't only write truthfully about the Chechnyan war, but about the modern Russian state, where economic stability has become everything.

Putin, who has called the break-up of the Soviet Union 'the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century', clearly agrees. Sick of the queues, the empty shops and the false promises of Soviet life, Russians looked first to the west - and particularly to the United States - to provide an economic model. What followed was an epic disaster: the sell-off of the state's most valuable assets made a few dozen people obscenely rich, but the lives of millions of others became far worse. The healthcare system fell apart, and so did many of the social services networks. Russia became the first industrial country ever to experience a sustained fall in life expectancy. Russian males born today can, on average, expect to live to the age of 59, dying younger than if they were born in Pakistan or Bangladesh. It is not surprising, then, that by the time Putin became president most Russians were only too happy to exchange the ideas of free speech and intellectual freedom for the concrete desires of owning a home and a car and possessing a bank account. They also wanted to feel that somebody was in control of their country.

In today's Russia, as Politkovskaya wrote, stability is everything and damn the cost. Gorbachev and Yeltsin are seen by an overwhelming majority as historical disasters who provoked decline, collapse, chaos and humiliation before the triumphal west. The opportunities created in those years, the liberation from totalitarianism, have been forgotten. 'Yes, stability has come to Russia,' Politkovskaya wrote. 'It is a monstrous stability under which nobody seeks justice in courts that flaunt their subservience and partisanship. Nobody in his or her right mind seeks protection from the institutions entrusted with maintaining law and order, because they are totally corrupt. Lynch law is the order of the day, both in people's minds and in their actions. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.'

Of particular interest to me, an opponent of Shell's corrupt agreement with the Irish government to exploit the Corrib gas field in Ireland's west despite staunch opposition on the part of local residents, is the following paragraph.

The Kremlin recently provided a particularly audacious example of how it sees its role as an 'energy superpower': Royal Dutch Shell, which had invested billions of dollars to develop the world's largest oil-and-gas field, Sakhalin II, in the Russian far east, was forced by the government to sell its controlling stake in the project. The company had endured a year of regulatory harassment - including ludicrous threats that the pipeline would not meet Russia's environmental standards. The moment Shell surrendered to Gazprom, however, those environmental concerns vanished. And what was Shell's response after its holding in the project was reduced from 55 to 25 per cent? 'Thank you very much for your support,' the company's chief executive, Jeroen van der Veer, told Putin at a meeting three weeks ago. 'This was a historic occasion.'

Complete story here.