openDemocracy: How Irish anti-abortion activists are drawing on Brexit and Trump campaigns to influence referendum (2 May 2018)

Transatlantic links between anti-choice groups remain strong and US activists are framing Ireland’s referendum as a major symbolic fight. Social media is emerging as a key battleground, with foreign and Irish anti-abortion and ‘alt-right’ activists targeting voters with Facebook ads.

Irish anti-choice groups have also enlisted some of the same American and British companies and individuals that used controversial data-mining and targeting techniques to campaign for Donald Trump and Brexit – including senior Vote Leave figures and a company that built Trump’s America First app and previously worked for the US National Rifle Association. [...]

Borwick is also a former consultant at Cambridge Analytica – the company financed by Trump-supporting billionaire Robert Mercer, and “put together” by Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who once served as Cambridge Analytica’s vice president. [...]

Ireland’s Pro Life Campaign also hired a digital company, uCampaign, which previously worked with the Trump and Vote Leave campaigns. Past clients include an Australian anti-marriage equality organisation and the US National Rifle Association (NRA).  

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Haaretz: Lebanon's LGBT Scene Still Vibrant Despite Recent Crackdown

Because this is Lebanon, where homosexuality and dressing as the opposite gender are against the law, he sat in the back of his mother’s car with darkened windows, a scarf over his head, for the drive from his home just outside Beirut to the club. [...]

Because this is Lebanon, where homosexuality and dressing as the opposite gender are against the law, he sat in the back of his mother’s car with darkened windows, a scarf over his head, for the drive from his home just outside Beirut to the club.

But there is a constant dance between authorities and the community over lines and limits. Last week, it appeared to be a step too far when Pride celebrations were held in Beirut. The widely advertised events came just before the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. After a few events were held, including the drag ball, authorities reacted. [...]

Since 2005, activists have commemorated the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia on May 17, mostly with protests, readings, workshops and cultural events. But the exuberant, highly public approach of the Pride celebrations seems to have drawn authorities’ ire, said Azzi. Last year, there was an attempt to hold a Pride Week, the first ever in an Arab city, but authorities forced some of its events to be called off, including a street parade.[...]

Law 534, which criminalizes homosexuality as an “act against nature” remains on the books despite efforts to abolish it. At least 76 people were arrested under it in 2016. But more and more often prosecutors release those arrested rather than sending them to court. Four times in past years, courts have refused to apply Law 534, giving defense lawyers a basis to have cases thrown out. 

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Haaretz: Saudi Arabia Once Wrote Off Iraq as a Win for Iran. But Now, the Saudi Crown Prince Is Advancing on Baghdad

In their competition for regional supremacy, Iran has gained the upper hand over Saudi Arabia in their proxy wars in Syria and Yemen. Yet in Iraq, Tehran seems to have been wrong-footed – for the time being – by Riyadh’s charm offensive to woo Shia leaders and to frustrate Iran’s attempts to consolidate its influence over the fractured country. [...]

In the past year, under the leadership of Mohammad bin Salman, commonly known as MBS, Riyadh has stepped up its engagement with Shia-majority Iraq. The elections - in which Baghdad’s geopolitical orientation was a key consideration among the leading contenders - was a key impetus for this accelerated engagement. Indeed, rumors that MBS himself would pay a pre-election visit to Baghdad had provoked alarm in Iran and amongst Iranian-backed Iraqi politicians.

Sadr’s electoral success could open the way for further Saudi engagement. His Sairoon ("Marching Towards Reform") coalition, an unlikely combination of reformed Shia militants, communists, secular and civil society groups, won 54 seats in the ballot – the highest number – but still fell well short of a majority. [...]

While the Saudis would have preferred the Western-orientated Abadi to have won outright (his coalition was third with 42 seats) Sadr’s election victory is a favorable result, notwithstanding his unwavering distrust of America. [...]

Abadi twice visited Riyadh in 2017, but it was Sadr’s trip last July that really underlined the Crown Prince’s desire to send out an olive branch to Iraq’s Shia heartlands. There, many regard Saudi Arabia as a sponsor of Sunni extremism during Iraq’s years of ethnic turmoil, and are no doubt concerned about Saudi persecution of its own Shia minority.

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Broadly: Oral Sex and the Alarming Rise of HPV-Related Throat Cancer in Men

The leading cause of tonsil cancer is tobacco use, but Bolnick, who is married with two kids, didn't smoke. His doctor told him that his cancer was caused by human papilloma virus, or HPV. It was only three years earlier that Maura Gillison, now a professor of internal medicine at Ohio State, published the results of a seven-year-long population study that discovered people with head and neck cancer were 15 times more likely to be infected with HPV in their mouths or throats than those without. [...]

HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the US—there are more than 100 types, though not all cause health problems. But today, more and more people, predominantly men, are being diagnosed with oral HPV-related cancer. That's not surprising, since a recent report from the CDC found that between 2011 and 2014, more men (6.8 percent) than women (1.2 percent) had high-risk oral HPV, or a strain of HPV known to cause cancer. Within 20 years, health experts expect the majority of head and neck cancers to be caused by HPV-positive carcinomas instead of smoking and alcohol, and by 2020, the rates of HPV-related oropharyngeal (area encompassing the throat, tonsils, and back of the tongue)cancer will surpass those of cervical cancer. [...]

Currently, the only way to safeguard from developing any HPV-positive cancer—whether it's oral, cervical, penile, or anal—is to be vaccinated. But the vaccine only works for people who have not been exposed to the virus yet, and about 14 million people become infected with some form of it each year. That's why the age requirements are fairly young: The CDC recommends the HPV vaccine for young women at age 11 or 12, through 26, and for young men through 21.

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Politico: Italy’s president scotches populist governing alliance

After the two populist parties refused to compromise on their choice of 81-year-old economist Paolo Savona for the ministry, Italy’s prime minister-designate — a little-known lawyer called Giuseppe Conte — said on Sunday he had told the president he was rejecting the mandate to form a new government. [...]

“Membership of the euro is a fundamental choice for the future of our country and our young people,” said the president, adding that since euro membership had not been part of the election campaign, it could not be questioned by the appointment of a Cabinet minister without holding a proper public debate. [...]

But even if Mattarella gives Cottarelli a mandate to form a government, he will face an uphill battle. Even though the two main opposition parties, Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the center-left Democratic Party, have already said they would support a government sponsored by Mattarella, that may not be enough for such a government to survive a confidence vote in parliament.

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Politico: Ireland brings abortion out of the shadows

The overwhelming victory for the abortion rights campaign, which comes three years after voters backed legalizing same-sex marriage, marks the “culmination of a quiet revolution,” said Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who campaigned to overturn the ban.

The result reflects deep disillusionment with Catholic institutions and church influence on the government that follows years of scandals over abuse and the incarceration of women. It also indicates that Ireland can no longer be held up as the Catholic bastion it once was, a blow for the Vatican months before Pope Francis is due to visit the country in August.

The turnout — 64 percent — was unusually high for an Irish referendum, delivering the biggest mandate for a proposal since the Good Friday Agreement. Only one of Ireland’s 40 constituencies, Donegal, saw a majority vote against repeal. [...]

As many as 10 Irish women a day currently cross the Irish Sea for abortions, according to figures from the U.K.’s National Health Service, and an estimated three to five women a day take abortion pills obtained illegally online. [...]

In a poll conducted by Behaviour & Attitudes for RTÉ, around 72 percent of women voted to repeal and nearly 66 percent of men. The Yes vote was 72 percent in urban areas and 63 percent in rural sections.

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Quartz: Macron is making another big play for Africa, this time for its startups

Unlike Britain, the other major colonizer of Africa, France’s post-colonial ties have remained firm, through major upheaval and economic change. In recent years those ties have started to fray around the edges, with the increasingly tense debate around the CFA, the two common currencies of West and Central Africa, which are still guaranteed by the French treasury and pegged to the euro.

Enter president Emmanuel Macron. At 39, he became the youngest-ever president of the French republic, he’s widely credited with revitalizing France and elements of French self-belief. As the first president born after the majority of Francophone Africa gained independence, he’s made clear time and again he believes African countries can find their own way without paternalistic European leadership, though he’s also had missteps in getting that point across. [...]

His stated interested in Africa was clear to see at Vivatech, this year where he toured the packed exhibition hall in Paris and made a point of visiting the Africa stands with Rwandan president Paul Kagame, taking selfies with African entrepreneurs.

On the main stage Macron said the French development agency (AFD) will be backing a new $76 million (€65 million) digital project that will offer funding for African startups. “African startups have energy but the big providers of development aid and financiers have not adapted to that. We ourselves are too slow, too hesitant,” he said, speaking on stage switching between French and English.

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Aeon: Want to feel unique? Believe in the reptile people

There are, of course, differences in the plausibility of any one conspiracy theory. In a 2013 poll, every second United States citizen questioned seemed convinced that there was some larger conspiracy at work in the assassination of the president John F Kennedy in 1963, while “only” 4% endorsed the notion that “shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining power.” (Still a somewhat unnerving 12 million people.)

Despite these differences, one of the most robust findings in the research on conspiracy theories is that there is a commonality to conspiracy theorists, even if the theories themselves are different. For instance, people who believe in the shape-shifting reptilian are much more likely also to doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald acted as a lone wolf. Indeed, those who believe that Osama bin Laden was dead before the Navy Seals shot him are also more likely to consider it plausible that bin Laden is still alive.

This has led many researchers to conclude that the agreement with specific conspiracy theories is not so much dependent on the specific topic, but is rather the manifestation of a more general worldview. The “conspiracist ideation,” “monological belief system,” or “conspiracy mentality” can be thought of as the general extent to which people see the world as governed by hidden, sinister forces. [...]

What this observation suggests is that adopting a conspiracy belief doesn’t always have to be mere compensation for a lack of control but can be instrumental in its own way. Belief in conspiracies can serve to set oneself apart from the ignorant masses—a self-serving boast about one’s exclusive knowledge. Adherence to conspiracy theory might not always be the result of some perceived lack of control, but rather a deep-seated need for uniqueness. My research team and I tested this gut hypothesis empirically through a series of studies.

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