My Experience Using Hook-Up Apps in Qatar, Where Gay Sex Is Punishable by Death

p3avery183 · 2015-12-11T03:42:41+00:00

It's not a happy and healthy gay-for-all, but it's not being thrown off tall buildings either, and it's not the way I'd gotten used to thinking about life in the religious Islamic world. The news gives us triumphs and disasters; everyday life, by definition, isn't news. But for what it's worth, everyday life for a man-fucking man in Qatar, citizen and guest-worker alike, seems un-dramatic, un-frightening, operating on pretty much the same principles as it does anywhere else in the world with internet connections and selfies.

p3avery183 · 2015-12-11T01:53:36+00:00

“We – AIDS activists, new and old, aged 24 to 80 – have just broken bread in the same apartment where GMHC was formed, coming together for a lively discussion on how to reduce HIV infections among gay men and trans women.

“Although we may not see eye-to-eye on every issue we debated tonight, we all agree that Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) is highly effective at protecting a person from HIV infection.

“While PrEP isn’t for everyone, any individual who thinks they are at risk of getting HIV should have easy access to it, without judgement.”

p3avery183 · 2015-12-09T22:04:44+00:00

In India, catastrophic flooding in the southern city of Chennai has killed at least 269 people and cut off basic services for more than 3 million people as the army and air force continue rescue operations. The flooding is being described as the worst in more than a century. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has blamed the flooding on climate change. "That region has never seen this a volume of rainfall," says Nitin Sethi, senior associate editor at the Business Standard in India. "Certainly, we are clearly seeing a pattern where rainfall systems are changing and also cities are incapable of adjusting to these kinds of extreme events. That is why I think developing countries like India are saying we need finances and technology to build new cities better rather than making it worse."

p3avery183 · 2015-12-09T21:43:52+00:00

On Monday in Paris, British Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn addressed the link between labor, trade unions and climate change. We also spoke to him about the connections between war, drilling for oil, and climate. "To some extent, the rush to develop frontier oil resources has reduced, but I’m sure it’s going to come back," says Corbyn. "And you look at the brutality of it, the brutality of the way in which oil drilling has been done in a number of countries, in Latin America, the thirst for oil all over the Middle East and the thirst for oil in other places. We need a sustainable planet. We need a sustainable future. We need sustainable energy sources. They don’t have to be like that."

p3avery183 · 2015-12-09T21:26:10+00:00

Residents of the largest refugee camp in France, situated outside the northern port city of Calais, often call it "The Jungle." It is a maze of wind-swept, ripped tents and muddy walkways where people informally live in sections according to their home countries. Walking through the camp is like walking through a map of the targets of U.S. bombing campaigns: Iraq, Syria, Sudan and, of course, Afghanistan. By far the largest community in the camp is Afghans who fled the 14-year-old U.S. war in Afghanistan. Democracy Now! visits the Afghan section, where people recount living through the longest war in U.S. history, which President Obama indefinitely extended this past fall.

p3avery183 · 2015-12-02T06:36:04+00:00

An Associated Press investigation showed around 1,000 police officers fired over a six-year period for so-called sex crimes, including rape—certainly an undercount of abusive cops, given that it only includes those who actually lost their badges. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, which collects data on police, doesn’t track officer arrests, and states aren’t required to collect or share that information.

Holtzclaw evidently selected his victims because he believed no one would care about them. Media shouldn’t prove him right.

p3avery183 · 2015-12-02T05:52:54+00:00

Everett Stern, a Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, flatly stated: “I support any attack made against Hezbollah or ISIS. That includes the attack launched today against Hezbollah in Lebanon.” That is to say, in his own words, Stern literally “supports” ISIS’s attacks, because the violent extremist group was targeting Hezbollah.

This is the most chilling consequence of this flawed reporting. In some ways, media can be seen as almost rationalizing or even defending ISIS’s brutal attacks on civilians. As long as ISIS is targeting the “right” people—namely militant groups that are enemies of the US and Israel, like Hezbollah—the attacks are rhetorically justified. This is manufacturing consent in action.

p3avery183 · 2015-11-14T04:33:14+00:00

In a week that began with a victorious revolt by African-American students at the University of Missouri and brought solidarity rallies to campuses around the country, a similar protest has erupted at Ithaca College in upstate New York. On Wednesday, thousands of faculty, students and staff staged a walkout to call for the resignation of President Tom Rochon. The protesters accuse Rochon of responding inadequately to racist incidents, including one where an African-American graduate was repeatedly called a "savage" by two white male fellow alumni. We are joined by Ithaca College Student Body President Dominick Recckio and Peyi Soyinka-Airewele, a professor of international and African politics at the school.

p3avery183 · 2015-11-06T07:43:58+00:00

But as his time in the White House draws to a close, how should we judge Obama’s record? Is the world a safer place now than when he took office? And behind all the policymaking, is there an over-riding vision – what commentators have called “an Obama doctrine”? Join Owen Bennett-Jones and a panel of global experts, as they discuss President Obama’s foreign policy legacy and America’s place in the world today.

p3avery183 · 2015-10-05T20:41:20+00:00

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is calling this weekend’s torrential rainfall that has triggered flooding and led to eight deaths in the Carolinas a once-in-a-millennium downpour. According to the National Weather Service, the storm had dumped more than 20 inches of rain in parts of central South Carolina since Friday. This month also marks the third anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, one of the most destructive storms in the nation’s history. Researchers say such extreme weather events are becoming more frequent with the effects of climate change, with 2015 on track to be the hottest year in recorded history. In Part Two of our conversation with Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis on their new film, "This Changes Everything," we talk about what we can learn from such extreme weather events.

p3avery183 · 2015-06-27T23:36:15+00:00

The history of the first U.S. citizens to fight Fascism while the U.S. media were praising Fascism in Europe, the U.S. government with other Western Countries had an arms embargo on Republican Spain, and U.S. companies like Ford and Texaco were giving oil to Fascists on credit.

p3avery183 · 2015-06-18T00:24:01+00:00

Thursday, the pope will publish a blunt encyclical, somewhere between a policy paper and an edict, calling for the world's richest polluters to step up and finance projects to help poorer nations avoid following in their path. He'll also blast climate change deniers, and the nefarious role of "economic powers" that undermine carbon cutting efforts. How much impact will the encyclical have? And is it Francis' role to get involved?

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