Quartz: In India, gay dating apps are both a safe haven and a target

With internet and smartphone penetration on the rise in India, the LGBTQ community is increasingly taking to online dating sites to mingle. Already, around 1.4% or 69,000 of the five million users of US gay dating app Grindr and nearly 3% or 92,000 users of German app Planet Romeo’s three million users are in India. [...]

In July 2015, a gay maritime engineer was reportedly lured into a trap through an online dating service. He was attacked and extorted by two men while he was in a hotel room in Mumbai with a man he had met on a dating app. The attackers stole his possessions and emptied his bank account, and threatened to press criminal charges for having sex with a man if he went to the police. [...]

However, app-makers say they have put checks and balances such as verifying user identities and limiting app permissions online. Grindr, for instance, now has discreet icons that let users camouflage the app on their phones. But since homosexuality largely remains a taboo in India, it can still be hard to convince someone you meet online to take the next logical step offline. Some new apps are now finding a fix for just that. [...]

Twenty-seven-year-old Ishaan Sethi launched an app called Delta this April. The platform brings together like-minded individuals who can establish any relationship—friends, romantic partners, mentor-mentee—with its “Connect” feature.

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Al Jazeera: Who will Kurds vote for in key Turkey elections?

For the first time, voters in Turkey will cast ballots on Sunday in simultaneous presidential and parliamentary polls. The process is in line with last year's constitutional changes that will transform the country's parliamentary system to an executive presidential one by granting the top office increased powers. [...]

Demirtas, along with several other former HDP members of parliament, has been in jail since November 2016, accused of having links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). His trial began in December last year and, if convicted, he faces up to 142 years in prison. Demirtas denies the charges. [...]

Opinion polls have suggested that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party might not achieve a parliamentary majority if the HDP manages to gain more than 10 percent of votes on Sunday, which is the unusually high threshold required for a party to enter the 600-seat assembly. [...]

Etyen Mahcupyan, a columnist and former adviser to the AK Party leader, said that secular voters might back the HDP at the ballot box to make sure that AK Party loses its majority in parliament - as it did in June 2015. [...]

"There is an increasingly widespread view that the HDP will surpass 10 percent of the votes. And this might decrease the number of the CHP voters changing their votes for the HDP," added Mahcupyan, who added that Kurds represent about 15 percent of the electorate in Turkey.

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openDemocracy: Russia’s cautious role in Syria

Endless debates can be had on Syria today, ranging from the US-Russian rivalry to the hunting of Kurdish fighters by Turkey or the Iranian paramilitary expansionism, along with sectarianism, terrorism and many more. However, one of the major conclusions this conflict brought to light is an unusual, more confident Russian participation in the Middle East – in fact, its first since the fall of the Soviet Union. [...]

Facing this chaotic or complex scenario, we cannot deny that Assad’s regime would not have lasted without the support of Lebanese Hezbollah, Iran and most importantly Russia. Russian strikes began overshadowing the Syrian skies in September 2015, as requested by the Syrian government and approved by the Russian parliament. The motto “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”, perfectly suits the Syrian issue when it comes to the US-Russian debates about it, at least up until the Trump administration, which presented more commonalities with Putin. [...]

Russia has been constantly avoiding direct engagement with the US in Syria, despite having casualties within its own military personnel amid domestic angers and concerns in Moscow by civil society and the families of the victims. If Russia does not have the confidence to directly retaliate against US attacks in a country where it has military agreements with the regime, then when will it ever? The Russian blind eye on the US involvement near its own military forces is another sign of Russian doubtful presence in Syria, and is similar to the US haphazard strikes just to boast their strength. [...]

If there is evidence that Russia avoids retaliation with the US in Syria, then there is also evidence that it is not – and likewise with the other arguments. In today’s Syria, key players created temporary alignments with players who are arguably the enemies of the former’s own allies based on common interests on the battlefield. Therefore it would be inaccurate to consider the conflict’s structure through the lenses of the officially announced alliances. As today’s enemy, can be tomorrow’s friend, and vice versa.

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Haaretz: New U.S.-Russia-Saudi Oil Alliance Could Also Have Implications for Israel and Iran

The two governments – also two of the world’s major energy producers – had reportedly agreed to “institutionalize” the relationship between Russia and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Does this include all the OPEC members who are meeting in Vienna on Friday? Almost certainly not.

OPEC exists in theory to ensure its members’ market share of the global energy market and to try and boost oil prices, ensuring their major source of income remains lucrative. But it depends on consensus and coordination between the members. And geopolitics can intrude – in this case, the deepening enmity between two of the major oil producers: the Saudis and Iran. [...]

Now, though, some nations – led by the Saudis and Russia – are calling for an increase in production. They are losing market share to U.S. shale oil producers and argue that, since demand is currently high, putting more oil on the market will not dramatically affect prices. They calculate that any dip in prices will be offset by the increase in production. [...]

A U.S.-Saudi-Russia axis could increase the Trump administration’s economic clout, especially when it is anticipating trade wars with Europe and China. It would also lock the United States into a new power partnership, separate from its traditional alliances in NATO and with the European Union, fulfilling Putin’s long-cherished dream of undermining the postwar Western alliances that prevailed over the Soviet Union. Now it seems he wants to undermine OPEC as well.

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Haaretz: The One Place Europe's anti-Semitic Far Right Is Confident of Winning the Jewish Vote

Last week, the German, Austrian and Italian ministers of the interior initiated an "axis" of states aiming at stopping immigration to Europe, confirming their commitment to an already thriving reactionary nationalistic trend in both eastern as well as western Europe. [...]

It was the Austrian Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, who after his short visit to Israel last week (re)coined the term "Axis" for the Berlin-Vienna-Rome anti-immigrant alliance, a term which even people with relatively crude historical antennae will recognize for its historical resonances.

That was straight after getting an enthusiastic "kosher certification" from Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thanks to Kurz's speech in Jerusalem, in which he admitted that Austrians were not only victims but also perpetrators during WWII. Seemingly, having paid his dues to the past, he felt free to move on with an ethnocentric policy without risk of an unfavorable reaction from Israel. [...]

We should not forget: Not long-ago Netanyahu supported Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s anti-Semitic anti-Soros campaign (because of Soros’ support for the Israeli "enemies" of Netanyahu) thus overruling the deep, explicit opposition of Hungary’s Jewish community to this campaign. [...]

Far right populist parties in Europe use their support for the current Israeli government policies to gain legitimacy, as they simultaneously restate their commitment to a racist and anti-democratic agenda that is in marked contrast to the founding values of the European Union.

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