Monday, July 31, 2017

What Anti-Pipeline Warriors Have Learned from Standing Rock

South Louisiana is mostly swamp or bayou, so when Cherri Foytlin wanted to share her disapproval with the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, she literally didn't have solid ground to stand on. Instead, she and other protest organizers built a floating prayer camp made of rafts.

"Historically, the swamp is where resistance has gathered," she told me. "Escaped slaves, indigenous communities escaping colonization. The swamp protects us, so of course this is where our camp would be—with the water."

The proposed pipeline she's fighting would be a 162-mile extension of an existing pipeline in Texas. If approved, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline would pass through 11 Louisiana parishes. Foytlin, a Diné and Cherokee mother of six, has been a prominent leader in the struggle against it.

Camp L'eau Est La Vie, French for "water is life," is constantly changing and growing, with new rafts or indigenous art pieces being added on. Foytlin tells me that she and other organizers are intentionally keeping many details about the camp secret—a lesson learned from watching Standing Rock, where outsiders flocked to the anti-pipeline camps after the battle against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) became a national cause.

"Our camp will never be a call for all because the swamp is a beautiful and unforgiving landscape that is also quite fragile," Foytlin says. "Which is not to say that we may not need folks to come out to support in other ways. I think the most effective thing about the DAPL struggle was the messaging—water is life—you can't get much more clear than that."

That slogan in English and also in Lakota ("Mni Wiconi") became the anthem of the NoDAPL movement. And though the Standing Rock camps have disbanded andthe DAPL is up and running (amid an ongoing legal challenge from the local Sioux tribe), the line is still being chanted on the front lines of protests across the country. Protesters are currently fighting against proposed pipelines running through at least a dozen states including Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Michigan. Many of these activists were inspired by and learned from Standing Rock, and organizers—many of whom were at Standing Rock—are asking what could have been done differently, and thinking about how to keep the momentum alive.


Watch the VICELAND documentary on Standing Rock:


Foytlin tells me her group thoroughly vets anyone who wants to join the floating L'eau Est La Vie camp, to protect it from infiltrators and spies. This was a concern among tribal leaders I spoke with during my time at Standing Rock last year, who anecdotally told me stories of people living at the camps whom they later discovered were connected in some way to the company building the pipeline. (That sort of infiltration was confirmed later in documents obtained by the Intercept.)

"There were a lot of things that didn't go right at Standing Rock," says Jane Kleeb, president of Bold Alliance, an organization that fights pipelines all over the US. "There were a lot of infiltrators who gave a peaceful protest negative connotations. And it (the movement) escalated so quickly that there weren't financial accountability systems put in place. People with no ties to the tribe were setting up fundraising pages and raising a lot of money from well-intentioned people, but with no accountability for that money."

The sheer size, she says, made it challenging—if not impossible—to put fundraising policies in place. (By some estimates there were as many as 10,000 people living at the four camps, according to what the camps' organizers said last year.)

But beyond the on-the-ground difficulties at Standing Rock, the camps inspired people across the country.

"There will never be another Standing Rock," Kleeb says. "Standing Rock took pipeline fighting to a whole other level and I think captured people's desires to really fight back on these pipelines even when they seem like a done deal."

Part of that momentum, Kleeb says, was fueled by celebrities like Mark Ruffalo and Shailene Woodley who came to the camps and publicized the cause. "There are pipeline fights happening all over the country right now, but they don't have the megaphone of some of the celebrities that got involved," she says.

Many non-indigenous people were drawn to the camps, she believes, not only for environmental reasons, but for the indigenous cause.

"People felt a deep, personal responsibility to act because of the complete disrespect that America had given to the Native American communities," she says. "I think that really spoke to the American spirit of trying to right a wrong."

Like Foytlin, Kleeb agrees that more people showing up doesn't necessarily strengthen a movement. In fact it can have the opposite effect. "I've made it clear when we're in meetings with other groups that we don't want them staging civil disobedience camps here," she says of fighting the Keystone XL pipeline in Nebraska. Much of the land belongs to farmers and ranchers that she wants to keep a good relationship with.

Of course, no one could have predicted that Standing Rock would grow to become home to thousands of supporters.

"People thought that it was going to be up for a month or that it was going to be 50 to 100 people," she says. "Things escalated so quickly that it became out of control. And then you had the added element of winter in North Dakota, which nobody was prepared for except the people who lived there, trying to tell people: You should go home."

While Kleeb agrees with the Standing Rock Sioux chairman's concern last year that the camps themselves could damage the water and land, she notes that that's now become a favored talking point by the oil companies. "In Nebraska at the public hearings with Keystone XL, (they) say that we really don't care about the land and look what we did in Standing Rock," she says.

"A lot of people got woke up by Standing Rock... And I want them to stay awake."
–Winona LaDuke

Standing Rock has even had an impact on anti-pipeline campaigns that predate it.

Winona LaDuke, an environmental leader and activist who lives and works on the White Earth reservation in Minnesota, has been at the forefront of the fight against the Enbridge pipeline there. "I have busted my ass fighting this corporation," she tells me, including traveling to the Enbridge offices in Canada. "They need to see my face," she says. At one of the public meetings Enbridge held recently, LaDuke tells me she said, "We were all at Standing Rock. Remember what we did?"

For her, and other tribes in the area, it's personal and it's been going on for a while. "When they decided that they were going to put a pipeline through the best wild rice lake on my reservation—I was minding my own business! I said, that's not going to happen. So I started organizing on that in 2013."

She spent time at Standing Rock last year, which she describes as a "Selma moment." "Everyone could see what was going down. The state of North Dakota decided to militarize that situation, people saw unarmed people on horses facing tanks." She saw the impact on people all over the world.

"A lot of people got woke up by Standing Rock," says LaDuke. "And I want them to stay awake."

But she also sees many aspects of that movement that could have been done differently.

"We're all learning from things that happened at Standing Rock," she says. "I learned a lot. To stay unified, keep your spiritual practice strong, be accepting of people. Because there are people that come from different practices, and in this movement, you need everybody."

Foytlin, Kleeb, and LaDuke are all quick to point out that these fights involve so much more than the physical act of demonstrating. These battles are being simultaneously fought in court, in public hearings, and in the offices of politicians. The Standing Rock battle is still far from over, after a federal judge ordered the US Army Corps of Engineers to do an environmental review. The Army Corps has already submitted briefs in favor of keeping oil flowing through the DAPL during the review period. Attorneys for the Standing Rock Sioux say they will file briefs August 7 asking for the oil flow to stop during the review process.

Foytlin and the other organizers against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline are reaching out to Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards to reverse his support of the pipeline or to demand an environmental impact study.

The Supreme Court of Canada recently ruled against an indigenous tribe and in favor of Enbridge, rejecting a challenge to the Line 9 pipeline. The replacement of the Line 3 pipeline into Minnesota, which LaDuke is fighting, is already underway. Dozens of other battles against other proposed pipelines across the country are at various stages. On Wednesday, state environmental authorities in West Virginia ordered construction to stop on the Rover Pipeline in places where permit violations were damaging streams.

"These struggles are not against pipelines more than at the surface level," says Foytlin. "What they really are, and this goes for all issues of environmental judgment, is a struggle for the moral character of our combined humanity. Where we collectively decide to put our priorities in this time will determine the direction of the natural world and the true legacy that we will or will not leave for those yet to come."

Cole Kazdin is a writer living in Los Angeles.



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Looks Like LA Will Host the Olympics in 2028

As long as it doesn't get swallowed up by the ocean, reduced to rubble by an earthquake, baked into a lifeless desert, or blown to smithereens by North Korea, it looks like Los Angeles will host the summer Olympics in 2028.

LA city officials reportedly struck a deal with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to host the games in 2028, according to the Los Angeles Times. The city had been jockeying with Paris for the 2024 games when—in a rare move earlier this month—the IOC announced it would tap the winning bids for both 2024 and 2028 in September.

Paris doggedly wanted 2024—in part so that the Olympics would fall on the 100-year anniversary of its last Summer Games, held in 1924—and LA had voiced its willingness to hold off until the tail end of the decade, the New York Times reports. When the IOC sweetened the deal for LA with promises of major financial incentives, the city pulled the trigger on 2028.

"LA 2024 and the Olympic Organizing Committee have worked out a deal for Los Angeles to host the 2028 Olympic Games," Caolinn Mejza, a spokeswoman for LA City Council President Herb Wesson, told CNN Money. "The LA City Council will hold an ad-hoc meeting on Friday to discuss accepting the deal."

Despite the many financial problems the Olympic Games have been known to cause in various host cities, LA's bid committee estimates it will be able to foot the estimated $5.3 billion cost for 2028 through ticket sales and sponsorships alone, the LA Times reports. The IOC has already pledged about $1.8 billion to LA's committee, and the city plans on hosting events in stadiums that already exist and housing fans in dorms at USC and UCLA. With the obvious payout of bringing tens of thousands of tourists to your city, and it's not hard to see why city officials were happy to settle with 2028.

"I can look people in the eye and say this is a much stronger deal financially," LA mayor Eric Garcetti, who campaigned for the Olympics, told the LA Times.

Although both cities aren't officially hosting quite yet, the IOC announced Monday that it anticipates formally handing Paris and LA the hosting rights at its next meeting, slated for September in Lima, Peru. As long as local and state officials agree to green-light the Games by the time that meeting rolls around, which Garcetti told the LA Times won't be a problem, LA is set to host its third Olympic Games—should global warming not get to it first.

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The Green Bay Packers Are the NFL's Great Rural Anomaly

Uncovering My Family’s Secret Queer History

At times, Cecilia Aldarondo's documentary Memories of a Penitent Heart plays like a slideshow put together by a loving family. We see pictures of her uncle Miguel as a little boy in Puerto Rico during the 70s, then later as a struggling out gay actor in New York City. Some happy photos of him and his lover, then a handful of his time at a hospital, not long before he died at the height of the AIDS crisis.

Today, 30 years after Miguel's death, Aldarondo's film unearths Miguel's life, attempting to trace why his name had always carried the feeling of a dirty secret within their family.

According to Aldarondo's grandmother, Miguel spent the last hours of his life in that hospital room repenting for his sins and rebuking his homosexuality. Following his funeral, the family never got around to inviting Robert, Miguel's lover, into their collective grief. Memories of a Penitent Heart tracks down Robert (now a Franciscan monk) who attempts to fill in the gaps in Miguel's story. What emerges is a chronicle of a gay man who constantly wrestled, until his very last breath, with how to square his sexual desires with his religion, culture, and family obligations. Ahead of the film's premiere as part of PBS' POV series tonight, Aldarondo spoke to the importance of telling Miguel's story, at the intersection of Puerto Rican, queer and Catholic cultures, and why it remains so timely even in 2017.

VICE: How did this film come to be?
Cecilia Aldarondo: It's funny, because I wasn't even a filmmaker before I started making Memories of a Penitent Heart. But it all happened kind of serendipitously in that, in 2008, my mom was cleaning out her garage and came upon a cardboard box with canisters of 8mm film. She knew I was a film nerd; I was doing my Ph.D. at the time and studying film, but more from the theory and critical side, so she knew I was the family film aficionado. She said, "Hey I found these canisters, do you want them?" And I said, "Yes, absolutely." "Well, I'll make you a deal," she said. "If you can put them on DVD so I can see what's on them, you can do whatever you want with them." I don't think she knew what she was getting into at that point. Even I didn't know what I was getting into at that point.

But they were basically documenting my mother's adult years and adolescence in Puerto Rico, from the 1950s to the 70s. And as I was looking at these old, grainy and scratchy images, I saw my uncle, who died when I was really young. I was only six years old when he died, so I barely knew him. But he occupied this kind of mythical place in my family memory, because he died young—he was only 31. And he was also this talented actor and they cast him in these legendary terms. They talked about him as this talented guy whose life was cut too short; who was brilliant, funny, handsome, all these things. The more I thought about him, the more I started to remember his death and I had these visceral memories of his funeral. That was my first brush with dealing with death.

The more I thought about him and the more I thought about how my family talked about him, I just started to realize there was something awry in the family memory, as it were—a dark side to this story. I started to remember another side of the way people would talk about him, like out of the sides of their mouths, they would tell another story. He was gay (though that wasn't openly talked about). He had a partner who disappeared after he died. And I increasingly became troubled by the casual way my family kept asking, "Oh yeah, I wonder where he went?" So that was where the film was born from. It was a suspicion that something smelled wrong. It launched me into what eventually became a detective search, not just for my uncle's partner but also uncovering a whole other side of my uncle's life and death.

But it's not just a story about your uncle. It's also very much about your family, no?
I think of it as a kind of autopsy of a family in conflict. It's looking at the complex ways that different players in the family dynamic impacted my uncle when he was dying. Looking at what it means to be 31 and dying of AIDS as a gay man in New York City at the height of the AIDS crisis, but also what it means when your family doesn't approve of your partner. I think of this as a kind of cautionary tale. On one hand it's a very personal story, and something that happened in my life. But it's unfortunately a really common one that families went through, especially during the AIDS crisis, where a lot of long-simmering tensions or disapprovals came to the surface in really catastrophic ways as people were dying.



It's so clear the film is really interested in intersectionality. Was that always part of the project?

It's funny—when I was making the film and fundraising for it, I'd pitch it to different funders and supporters, and I would often get feedback like, "Oh, you're trying to do a lot. How is this a film that's about family and about religion and about cultural identity and homosexuality and the AIDS crisis?" I feel like everything orbits around Miguel, but in a way, no human being is a monolith. Yes, this is a story about Miguel as a gay man. But it's also a story about him as a Puerto Rican man, someone who came of age on a colony of the United States that has its own particular relationship to the Catholic Church, for example. Or particular gender roles. So I think of Miguel as this person through whom very complex cultural and political and social factors came together. It was very much a goal in the film to have it be very multilayered, where we focus on one theme or another. It's kind of like a tapestry.

There really is no way of talking about one aspect of his identity without the other. Have you felt audiences responding to that since you began showing the film?
You know, I think this follows the conversation we've been having about it and intersectionality. The film has been shown to a lot of diverse audiences. Just last month I was in Puerto Rico, where we had a two-week theatrical run. It's been shown primarily in LGBTQ film festivals. It's been shown to queer audiences, to AIDS survivors in a public health context. It's been shown to people who are actively religious or recovering religious. It's shown to family members of queer people. And this was a very big goal of the film: to offer access points for people from different life experiences. That's actually been really gratifying, to see audiences reacting that way. I've had long term survivors of AIDS or people who lost people many people to the crisis coming and saying that the film has enabled them to examine things in a new way for the first time in 20 years. And on the other side, I've had young queer Latinos who come and say, "This is happening to me right now!"

After the Pulse massacre in Orlando we did a benefit screening, because I'm from Orlando and we had a kind of intersectional panel of people. You know, when Pulse happened, the vast majority who died in the massacre were Puerto Rican. And they were people whose families didn't accept them now for being gay! Even though the film is historically-located, in a sense—it happened in 1987—it's been very important to me to see for how many people it's still very much a contemporary experience.

Follow Manuel Betancourt on Twitter.



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Sheriff Joe Is Now Officially Criminal Joe

Former sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, was found guilty Monday on criminal contempt charges linked to his controversial "immigration sweeps."

The 84-year-old lawman, who once styled himself as "America's toughest sheriff," could face up to six months behind bars. The verdict, which follows a decade-long legal showdown, also marks the demise of Arpaio, an outspoken Trump surrogate who recently lost his bid for a seventh term as sheriff of Arizona's most populous county.

The case stemmed from a 2007 class action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union that accused Arpaio of targeting and unlawfully detaining Latino residents suspected of being undocumented immigrants.

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The Firing of Anthony Scaramucci Is Nothing Short of Tragic

What can you say about Anthony Scaramucci, the Mooch, whose tenure as White House communications director was entertaining as it was brief? He was a professional. He was so eager to serve his country that he was calling reporters from day one. He was not trying to suck his own cock. And now he's gone, like a candle in the wind.

In ten short days, the Mooch made a name for himself in the administration, moving at high speeds to strategically sell the president's agenda to the public at large. He did so so successfully that he became a celebrity in his own right, a comet among the galaxy of stars that is the Trump White House. His moment in the spotlight came last Friday, when he ingeniously gave a interview to the New Yorker where he asserted that he was a selfless, devoted public servant. As a testament to his loyalty to the president, Scaramucci also noted that "what I want to do is I want to fucking kill all the leakers."

In that interview, he informed reporter Ryan Lizza that sadly, his colleague Reince Priebus had a mental health issues—a "fucking paranoid schizophrenic"—and would have to be let go. True to his word, the Mooch indeed engineered Priebus's resignation. When Scaramucci began his tenure, he said that Priebus was like a brother to him—and like a good brother, he ensured that the former chief of staff put his health above all else.

The Mooch is such a devoted public servant that he signed on to the White House amid a painful divorce initiated by his nine-month pregnant wife who couldn't stand what an anonymous source described as his "naked political ambition"—but that others might describe as loyalty to a greater cause. When Deidre Scaramucci gave birth to the couple's son last Monday, the then White House communications director was absent—in West Virginia to stand by Donald Trump—and reportedly texted her to say "Congratulations, I'll pray for our child."

Not only is he willing to congratulate the woman who is divorcing him, he is obviously a good Christian! A true American hero—a man who truly chooses country over self.

Now, the online trolls might be rejoicing in Scaramucci's misfortune—after all, he also sold his business to join the Trump administration—but he served his country ably and nobly, sacrificing everything for a job he did as best he could. Do not laugh at him. Don't even smile. Cry. Cry. Cry.

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New 'Game of Thrones' Script Allegedly Leaked After HBO Hack

HBO has been hit with a cyber attack that may have compromised up to 1.5 terabytes of the company's data—including episodes of some of the network's most popular shows, Entertainment Weekly reports.

Forthcoming episodes of Ballers and Room 104 are already online, along with what the hackers claim is a script from next week's episode of Game of Thrones. HBO confirmed the attack, and announced that it's working with law enforcement and private cybersecurity companies to prevent the world from binge-watching the entirety of winter on Westeros or whatever.

"There has been a cyber incident directed at the company which has resulted in some stolen proprietary information, including some of our programming," HBO's chairman and CEO Richard Plepler wrote in an email to employees. "Any intrusion of this nature is obviously disruptive, unsettling, and disturbing for all of us."

The hacker (or hackers) behind the attack seem to have been particularly focused on getting their hands on Game of Thrones, HBO's biggest hit series. There's a massive market for free, illegal episodes: Last week's season 7 premiere was pirated a colossal 90 million times, Business Insider reports.

"The greatest leak of cyber space era is happening," an anonymous email sent to EW on Sunday claimed, apparently regarding the hack. "Its [sic] HBO and Game of Thrones... HBO is falling."

Additionally, the network has faced criticism in recent weeks after announcing that GoT's creators—David Benioff and D.B. Weiss—will be developing a new show called Confederate about legal slavery in an alternate reality where the South won the Civil War. During Sunday night's episode, the creator of #OscarsSoWhite, April Reign, launched a new Twitter campaign aimed at HBO, asking users to tweet using #NoConfederate, CNN reports.

HBO is just the latest entertainment company to fall victim to a cyber attack. In April, hackers leaked several full episodes of Netflix's Orange Is the New Black, and another anonymous cyber-warrior threatened to drop Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales in May, though the reveal never materialized.

The worst attack—that is, until now—hit Sony in 2014, a 26-gigabyte dump that exposed sensitive personal information, internal communications, and dirt on high-profile celebrities, along with a ton of coveted content. The fact that the HBO hack could reveal up to 1,474 more gigs of sensitive data than were exposed at Sony is sure to be stoking some serious fears for HBO. Although the network won't confirm what has or has not been taken, Plepler seems to believe the media giant has things under control.

"The problem before us is unfortunately all too familiar in the world we now find ourselves a part of," he wrote in a company-wide email. "As has been the case with any challenge we have ever faced, I have absolutely no doubt that we will navigate our way through this successfully."

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

Disclaimer: VICE Media has two shows on HBO, VICE News Tonight and VICE



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Photos from the Largest Ballroom Competition in the World

Crossbow Killer Murdered Family Because Mom Was Going to Expose Him to Fiancee

This article originally appeared on VICE Canada.

Brett Ryan, the "fake beard bandit" bank robber turned "crossbow killer," has been sentenced to three concurrent life sentences in jail for murdering his mother and two brothers in Toronto, Canada last summer.

On Friday Ryan, 36, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for killing his brother, Christopher Ryan, 42, two counts of second-degree murder for killing his mom Susan, 66, and another brother, Alexander, 29, and the attempted murder of his brother Leigh, 38. The killings took place August 25, 2016.

According to an agreed statement of facts presented in court, Ryan said he was panicked because Susan had threatened to expose the fact that he was jobless to his fiancee, whom he was planning to wed in September. Ryan committed a string of bank robberies disguised as an elderly man a few years ago, which is how he got the "fake beard bandit" nickname. He ended up serving three years and nine months in jail after a 2009 guilty plea to those crimes.

The statement of facts said Ryan told his mom he'd been misleading his fiancee, by telling her he'd graduated from the University of Toronto and had a job when in fact, he was unemployed and hadn't completed his degree. He'd been fired from an IT firm in June once his criminal record was discovered. His mother told him to tell his fiancee the truth, and that if he did so, she would help him out financially.

"Brett Ryan was worried that if his fiancee discovered the web of lies, she'd call off the wedding," Justice John McMahon said Friday.

Ryan planted a crossbow in his mother's garage and on the day of the murders visited her Toronto home with the intention of convincing her to keep his secrets. Court documents say the resulting argument became heated, prompting Susan to call Christopher. When the pair went into the garage, Ryan stabbed his mother with a crossbow arrow and strangled her using a piece of nylon. When his oldest brother Christopher showed up, Ryan shot him in the back of the neck with the crossbow, killing him. After positioning the two bodies under a tarp in the garage, Ryan's brother Alexander arrived on the scene. The two brothers fought, and eventually, Ryan stabbed him to death with a crossbow arrow. When Leigh, Ryan's youngest brother who lived with Susan, came out and saw Ryan standing over Alexander, Ryan tried to kill him too, but he escaped to a neighbor's house and called 911.

To create an online footprint (and alibi), Ryan set up an iPhone, laptop, and iPad in his apartment, but he never ended up activating them.

In addition to the life sentences, Ryan will concurrently serve 10 years for attempted murder.

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'Gentleman,' Today's Comic by Bridget Meyne

Looks Like a Lot of Cops Love Trump's Endorsement of Police Brutality

When Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president almost exactly a year ago, he was tepidly praised for his ability to read off a teleprompter. Although the speech was angry, a little scary, and based almost entirely around the theme of "law and order," the then-candidate at least managed to stay on script. But now that he's the most powerful person in the world, it's a safe bet that an outrage cycle will ensue pretty much any time the man is presented with a microphone. And given Trump couldn't help but rant at literal boy scouts in West Virginia earlier this month, what chance did the native New Yorker have of not crossing any lines in a room full of Long Island cops last week?

Trump was in Brentwood, New York, on Friday to show support for the Suffolk County Police Department, which has been beleaguered by its fight against members of a murderous Central American gang called MS-13. Of course, the same department has also been haunted by its own legacy of corruption and brutality—former County Police Chief James Burke was sentenced to over three years in prison last fall for beating a suspect who stole his bag of sex toys. In what was apparently an attempt to raise morale, the president repeatedly called MS-13 members "animals." While obviously dehumanizing, this alone probably wouldn't have raised any red flags. However, in characteristically rambling fashion, the president also appeared to endorse police brutality, urging the officers to be "rough" and possibly inflict head trauma when putting suspects into squad cars.

"Please," he urged as some of the officers behind him laughed, "don't be too nice."

Over the weekend, prominent cops across America condemned the president's remarks as dangerous and counterproductive at a time when people of color remain uniquely vulnerable to (often lethal) police violence. Activists—as well as one Florida police spokesman whose response went viral—feared that decades of police reform were being undermined, while Blue Lives Matter types rolled their eyes over what they said was clearly a joke. But what about rank-and-file officers?

To find out, I combed online police forums. Although the most prominent digital cop hangout went defunct after a major security breach earlier this year, there's still Officer.com, as well as r/ProtectAndServe, a subreddit where users post their job titles and are warned that impersonating a cop is a crime. Both sites have registration requirements for posting, though as is always the case with anonymous forums, the identities of users could not be independently verified. Even so, the responses—which, to be fair, included a healthy dose of outrage—paint a dark picture of policing in America.

Here's a sampling of the reactions to Trump's latest pro-cop tirade.


Check out our explainer on your rights when filming police.


Officer Dot Com:

CCCSD:

Maybe it was just nice to hear someone state the obvious: these thugs are scum and don't belong in civilized nations nor should be coddled, like under Obama. Maybe law abiding citizens are sick and tired of all the rights given to rapists, murderers, pimps, thugs, and General ****tards.

I am. Good for POTUS.


Thumbs up.

Dinosaur32:

When I started, judges were instructed at the first sign of trouble to leave the bench. That way the Court Officers could handle the defendant correctly. After we were done the Correction Officers would add their lesson. For the rest of his case, the defendant would be a model, if somewhat battered, citizen. Today, hands on practices are practically unheard of, for fear of offending some group.

J2H:

America is a bunch of pussies. That's right I said it. As a whole we are soft and offended by everything

Shortyj:

I could really argue both sides to this issue. I agree with alot of ya'll saying how everyone these days is a bunch of whiny babies. Although I typically treat people how I would want to be treated. BUT if someone tries to get physical, its a whole other ball game. If ya'll cant already tell by my username, Im NOT a big person. And for that reason I will do WHATEVER it takes to make sure Im able to live to see tomorrow.

Grunt2LEO:

I am thankful for citizens who back the badge. But their opinion doesn't affect my common sense and procedures. I roll my eyes at citizens who second-guess my every move. Their opinion doesn't affect my common sense and procedures. See how that works? I understand why people don't like bad cops. I don't like them either. Bad cops make my job harder.

I'm not going to bounce someone's head off the roof, door, hood or trunk of my car while they are in custody. Plain and simple. If they are the scum of the earth, they will get theirs eventually. I don't want their residual scum left somewhere on my car. And in the age of bodycams, cell phone cameras and (tinfoil hat in place) Big Brother watching via satellite, an excessive force conviction isn't something I can afford. Plus, beating a cuffed perp just isn't sportsmanlike.

foodnerd:

I agree about the main point, that police shouldn't routinely slam heads while stuffing non-tried suspects into their patrol cars. However, I don't give one-eighth of a moldy turd if some sorry POS who beat and raped a 10-year-old accidentally bumps the column/roof at full velocity a few times on his way in, kisses the protective cage during a dozen brake-checks at 60 mph (sorry, Iowa; I know you were unfairly jammed up over that false allegation!), or if a careless officer accidentally parks alongside a cliff with a 200-foot drop off outside the rear door.

r/ProtectAndServe:

EshinX:

This does not help us. At all. This will only serve to rile people up against legitimate uses of force. Trump is a fucking moron.

SteelCrossx:

I was wondering if I was the only one that saw a bunch of people politely laughing for the guy because he's the president.

DiscordianStooge:

So here's the deal. If you invite Trump to speak at your organization, he's going to say at least one shitty thing. It's the presidential way. So if you invite him and put a crowd around him, that crowd will find themselves applauding something like Trump talking about yacht orgies to boy scouts. It's just inevitable, and you'll have to be ready for the PR backlash when your people are clapping and the president of the US randomly announces a new program to help boy scouts become PUAs, because it occurs to him.

In the end, you don't get to be shocked if you invite the president to speak and he goes ape-shit crazy. It is a known probable outcome.

Specter1033:

There are some very isolated and some very few instances of true police corruption and brutality in the US police forces. No one is saying there isn't. I think that with respect to what Trump was trying to convey, he was talking to a group of people who are routinely shot at and assaulted by one of the most notorious gangs in the world and attempting to put very crude humor in to the mix to appeal to them. I don't think anyone found it funny though but I also don't think it's something that is a big a deal as people are making it out to be, and I'm not even a Trump supporter by any stretch of the imagination. It really doesn't matter what the guy says at this point. Anything he says is gonna be taken out of context and someone is going to be offended by it.

monkeiboi:

I think most cops take it as poor taste in humor. Of course were not taking it as carte blanche to exercise misconduct or misuse of force during arrest procedures. And I seriously doubt, hard as it is to believe, that President Trump wants cops to start roughing up arrestees for no reason all across the nation.

As I mentioned in another comment, This is Trump trying to "fit in", trying to use inappropriate humor to get people to feel chummy towards him.

biohazardforlunch:

MAGA 2020 bitches!

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Scaramucci Is Out After Ten Days

Just ten days after becoming White House communications director, hedge funder Anthony Scaramucci has been removed from his position.

President Donald Trump made the decision at the behest of his new chief of staff, John Kelly, who took office Monday morning, the New York Times reports. Although Scaramucci had previously reported directly to the president, Kelly reportedly made clear this morning that he was now the gatekeeper to the Oval Office.

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment, and it is unclear what role, if any, Scaramucci will have inside the White House going forward. His replacement has not been announced.

Continue reading on VICE News.



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America Is Being Run by Zaphod Beeblebrox

To really understand our president, you should delve into the biographies written about him that explore his insecurities, his inferiority complex, and his drive. You should thumb through the best magazine profiles that contemporaneously documented his rise, fall, and rise again. You should read the stories about his rallies, how he inspired and entertained (though maybe not in that order) his legions of fans. Consider the long arc of economic decline that has hit some of the communities that voted for him after backing Barack Obama. Watch his speeches.

Or you could take a shortcut and read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a 38-year-old sci-fi parody novel that predicts Trump with improbable accuracy. Trump is many things, but mostly (as has been pointed out before) he's Zaphod Beeblebrox.

To explain for the uninitiated: The Guide started out as a BBC radio miniseries in the late 70s, was adapted by creator Douglas Adams into five novels (and a sixth written after his premature death in 2001 by Eoin Colfer), and also became a TV show and a 2005 Hollywood movie that, for the record, is… fine. In any incarnation, the Guide follows a befuddled and homeless earthling named Arthur Dent as he tries to navigate a universe filled with hyperintelligent but depressed androids, sentient mattresses, multiple dimensions, extremely bad customer service, and so on and so forth.

The series is beloved and, for all its absurdity, predicted several bits of modern technology with spooky prescience. The Guide the series is named after, for instance, sounds a lot like Wikipedia, and Adams actually started a Wikipedia precursor called h2g2 in 1999. It still exists and is more fun and rather more British than Wikipedia (check out this old entry about buying a rail ticket in India).

The Guide's main character is Arthur, but the real stars are the odd aliens he runs into while roaming unhappily around the universe(s) after the Earth is destroyed, including the two-headed Zaphod Beeblebrox. I'll let Adams describe him: "adventurer, ex-hippie, good-timer, (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch." He is a jerk to Arthur, a terrible partner to his girlfriend Trillian, and relentlessly self-obsessed. He's also president of the galaxy.

Adams doesn't muck about with how Beeblebrox became president (and he only stays president long enough to steal a spaceship), but the impression is that everyone was shocked by the whole affair, not least Zaphod. "I freewheel a lot. I get an idea to do something, and, hey, why not, I do it. I reckon I'll become President of the Galaxy, and it just happens, it's easy," he says at one point. "It's like having a Galacticredit card which keeps on working though you never send off the checks."


Watch: Inside China's edible bug industry


Zaphod has very, very few of those self-aware moments. He's a narcissist who, maddeningly, is actually quite a big deal. When captured by his enemies, he's plugged into a torture device that reveals to its victims their actual place in the universe (the resulting sense of insignificance drives people insane). But in Zaphod's case, it just shows him that he is actually the most important person in the universe—which of course he already knew.

If that sounds like Trump, how about this?

Of of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so — but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous.

Matching the famous and powerful to fictional analogues is a fun parlor game, but these connections can color how we view someone like Trump. Imagining him as a dictator, a sadistic bully along the lines of Biff Tannen in Back to the Future Part II, leads us to think of him in terms of how his personality might make America a crueler, coarser place. If he's an echo of Willie Stark from All the King's Men (a character based on real-life Louisiana demagogue Huey Long), he's an overt threat to the republic.

But if Trump is Zaphod, he's something a bit less threatening: a grifter, skilled at manipulating people, improbably lucky, but in way over his head. If Trump is Zaphod, he's mostly a distraction.

"The job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it," writes Adams. "The qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character."

The media and public have some decent reasons for being fascinated by Trump. He does wield actual power, particularly when it comes to foreign policy. But for all the rallies and rants, he's been startlingly absent on major issues. Healthcare policy is being driven by Republicans in Congress, generals have more discretion than ever when it comes to fighting wars, Jared Kushner is doing everything, and Trump's specific pledges on things like infrastructure and tax reform have gone so far totally unfulfilled.

Trump's most impactful moves so far have been to give power to the most extreme right-wingers in government. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reviving the most absurd parts of the war on drugs; Kris Kobach, the man investigating "voter fraud," is widely regarded as the nation's foremost practitioner of voter suppression. The EPA has been captured by the industries it's supposed to police; the State Department is in shambles.

Then there are the advisers seemingly cashing in on their proximity to Trump—billionaire Carl Icahn apparently pushed Trump to change a biofuel regulation in a way that would benefit a refinery he owned; Kushner's family was caught two months ago selling investment opportunities in China by implying giving money to the Kushners would result in visas.

If Trump distracts from those things by tweeting or ridiculously delaying saying that he was committed to NATO's mutual defense pact, it may not be a conscious thing. He sometimes doesn't appear to have any more idea of what he's doing than Zaphod Beeblebrox did. (And Beeblebrox got that way because he gave himself a lobotomy… long story.) But that doesn't mean he's not very, very good at his job—which is at this point less about running the country than keeping it very befuddled and entertained.

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Cops Say Thieves Stole $590K of iPhones in Daring Highway Robbery

Last week, five Romanian men were arrested in the Netherlands after Dutch police found $590,000 worth of stolen iPhones in their possession. But rather than try to smuggle the devices by strapping them to their bodies, the men are suspected of committing a much more impressive heist—copping the smartphones from the back of a moving truck, the Associated Press reports.

According to the BBC, police believe the gang tailgated a truck loaded with iPhones as it was careening down a highway in the Netherlands. Allegedly, their SUV pulled up right behind the truck, and one member climbed out of the car's sunroof and onto the back. After breaking into the truck, the thief then reportedly took hundreds of devices and passed them back to an accomplice who was riding out of the sunroof, before scampering back to safety—all while both vehicles were moving.

Dutch news agency ED drew up a diagram of the alleged incident, and Gizmodo reports that the local press refers to the intricate trick as the "Romanian method." This specific kind of truck heist actually dates back a few years; video released by the Romanian police in 2012 captured thieves attempting to carry out the same dangerous procedure to no avail.

But last week's theft is the first time Dutch police believe the brazen "Romanian method" was pulled off successfully, according to the BBC.

"The truck was taking its freight from A to B and did not stop. Even so [the phones] were gone," Dutch police spokesman Ed Kraszewski said. "So it must have happened that way. And now we finally have the evidence, with the van and the loot."

Cops reportedly found the $590,000 worth of iPhones scattered around the suspects' hotel room in the Netherlands, before locating the SUV they used nearby. According to local police, the gang is also responsible for 17 similar truck heists in the area, Gizmodo reports.

All five men are scheduled to appear in front of a judge on Tuesday, and convicted or not, they might want to think about leaving a life of crime for work as Hollywood stunt doubles.



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Transitioning Forced Me to Get Some New Friends

She was a conservative Christian woman I met in college, a kindhearted and generous person. But she also argued openly on social media that advocating for certain pronouns was as absurd as asking to be called "Her Majesty."

So when I came out as a man, I wasn't really surprised to lose that friendship.

Although my other close friends have largely been supportive, I sometimes get the impression that they too see my request for certain pronouns as an imposition. Especially in light of the fact I'm ambivalent about taking testosterone, and still have feminine mannerisms. I'm patient with their misgendering, but it reinforces the self-doubt within me, and the sadness and discomfort it brings.

Gender shapes social dynamics, even between the closest of platonic friends. Kira, a 29-year-old trans woman, says she feels pressure to comfort her female friends when they feel guilty for misgendering her. One of her friends even began crying after accidentally using Kira's birth name in the school newspaper. "Cis people don't realize that they even center themselves in their desperate need to be apologetic," she says.

Kira has also noticed that her girlfriends share more spontaneous physical affection with each other than they do with her. "It's an uncomfortable conversation to have," she says. "You should hug me more, I notice that you don't hug me as much as you hug our other friends...' I can't say that.

"I wonder if passing more as a woman would unlock some new level of friendship where they would let their guard down around me," she adds. "But I know it doesn't work like that."

Kira says she feels most able to be her authentic self—goofy, vulnerable, and frank—in the online community she has built with a group of fellow trans women. "Trans women, especially trans women of color, pay the steepest social cost for being ourselves," Kira says. "We're often reduced to stories of hardship rather than being introduced as whole and complex human beings. Sometimes I want to talk about gender, but a lot of the time I just want to talk about video games."

Samantha, a trans woman in her late 50s, and the first US schoolteacher to come out as transgender created a male persona when she was a teen in order to survive and fit in. It involved studying and imitating what her male friends did. When she finally transitioned, she was able to let go of this dissociative alter ego. But her male friends didn't respond well.

"Most of them couldn't handle it, and to use a term [transgender] that didn't exist back then, they ghosted me," she says. "My social needs then shifted to a desire for close female friendships, since I really have nothing in common with cis men."

Roger, a trans man, says the more he passes as a man, the more straight cis male friends he gets. He says this may also be because his partner is a straight cis woman, and they present as a straight couple. "Men now view me as a candidate for potential friendship, whereas women tend to assume I wouldn't want to do the types of things they might like to do, which isn't necessarily true," Roger says. "I grew up with three sisters, and mostly, I still relate to people the same way as before. [For example], I recently went and got manicures and pedicures with a close female friend."

Roger says this newfound camaraderie with other men has been healing. Before he transitioned, he had a certain stereotypical idea of what it meant to be a man. But now, he knows guys are also attuned emotional beings. "I do question, though, whether being read as a straight [biological] male opens up [the] door for male friendships."

WATCH: VICE meets a trans Mormon activist



Personally, I've always related better to women, and remain mystified by male friendship. I'm glad my friends still feel comfortable hugging me and having heart-to-hearts. But every time a friend misgenders me, I'm reminded of the effort it takes them to see my insides. I'm reminded that my communication style, according to the binary most people subscribe to, is misaligned with my gender and my body.

But even I misgender trans people—in fact, I even misgender myself, in my own head. Society is grappling with new paradigms and in a sense, we're all learning, trans and cis alike: We are learning to love ourselves; to see ourselves as natural, even beautiful, rather than pathological and broken. And we are teaching cis allies how to support us in that process.

Ultimately, having a body is like sitting in the pilot seat inside the head of a giant robot. The robot's make and model do not ultimately tell you that much about its pilot. So, regardless of how trans people appear, it's important for our friends to believe us when we tell them who we are. It's important for cis people to love the person they are getting to know just as much as the person they thought they knew.

*Names have been changed to protect anonymity.



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The First Teaser for Darren Aronofsky's New Thriller Looks Terrifying

On Monday, Paramount Pictures offered up a first look at Darren Aronofsky's latest psychological thriller mother!, and though it's hard to parse out exactly what the hell it's about, it's already guaranteed to be terrifying.

Aronofsky is a master of messing with his viewers' heads. The Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan director is known for creating hyper-disturbing movies that rely less on cheap thrills and more on the stunning inner workings of his characters' minds, usually mired in the darkest chapters of their lives. As eerie voices swirl around Jennifer Lawrence in the 30-second teaser for mother!, it looks like Aronofsky's latest project is bound to follow suit.

mother!, which stars Lawrence alongside Javier Bardem, Westworld's Ed Harris, and Michelle Pfeiffer, traces the arrival of a few "uninvited guests" at a couple's home, "disrupting their tranquil existence," according to Paramount. The teaser doesn't offer much else—mostly, we hear snatches of its stars screaming at each other—before we see a patchwork of explosive, disconnected scenes after Lawrence shouts "murderer!"

Bardem won an Oscar for his bone-chilling portrayal of the villain in No Country for Old Men, and tends to wind up playing characters that are downright evil—from Reiner in The Counselor to James Bond's foil in Skyfall. Though Lawrence is better known for her roles in blockbusters like Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, and the Hunger Games series, she proved she could tackle thrillers with the Oscar-nominated Winter's Bone back in 2010.

Hopefully we'll get to see more of what this frightening foursome gets up to when the full trailer drops on August 8. Until then, watch a teaser for mother! above.

Darren Aronofsky's mother! hits theaters on Friday, September 15.



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What It Was Like to Work at a Russian Gulag

In October 1935, Ivan Chistyakov was judged "insufficiently proletarian" and expelled from the Communist Party in Josef Stalin's Russia. Suffice it to say this was not a positive development for the young engineer's budding career. In a real-life Orwellian nightmare, the 30-something urbanite was then shipped off to the Baikal Amur Corrective Labor Camp (BAM) in Siberia to work as a guard without any real justification—other than the fact that he was a bit too clever. As he put it in his diary, "How smoothly it happened. They just called me in and sent me off. Party members have the Party Committee, the factory management, and the trade union to intercede… For the rest of us, nobody puts in a word."

In the new book The Day Will Pass Away: The Diary of a Gulag Prison Guard 1935-1936, the long-dead Chistyakov muses about daily life in one of history's most notorious prison worlds. The text, translated from the Russian's surviving diaries by PEN Literature in Translation award winner Arch Tait, offers firsthand details of the harsh conditions both inmates and guards faced in what amounted to a vast frozen wasteland. Surrounded by hordes of criminals, undesirables, and rebels who questioned the status quo, Chistyakov did everything he could to remain sane. But after a stint in what felt a bit like hell, he was arrested in 1937, when Stalin's purges were at their height. He was eventually sent to the front as Hitler's troops advanced in Operation Barbarossa in 1941, where he was killed.

VICE chatted with Tait to find out what it was like translating an 80-year-old diary, the plight of inmates versus that of the people guarding them, and what bearing this dark era has on modern Russia.

Here's what he had to say.

VICE: Going through Chistyakov's writings, did you feel like you were discovering something for the first time? How remarkable of a find was this, really?
Arch Tait: I read Ivan's diary first, and only later saw a notebook from a year earlier, with his hunter's tales. That was like upgrading from a two- to a three-dimensional image. Here he was, a year earlier, living the life of an ordinary citizen of the USSR in his own habitat. An added bonus was the discovery of his vividly colored and amusing illustrations, particularly in that earlier notebook.

As a translator, if you can't meet your author, you're listening carefully for their voice, trying to work out the kind of person you're dealing with, what their values are. That second notebook revealed Ivan as a quick-witted, rather crotchety bachelor who liked playing practical jokes on those around him. The diary is a remarkably forthright record of his thoughts. He holds back only on the topic of his friends and family.


Watch Desus and Mero break down Megyn Kelly's interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.


What emerged as you dug in past the surface-level mythology of the gulag?
That this is the reality of trying to literally build a utopia. Reality very soon gives the lie to theory and increasing brutality is needed to suppress that increasingly obvious fact. "So far," Ivan comments, "the life we live is purely theoretical. It is whatever they say it is in the newspapers. If you try talking out loud about the real state of affairs you'll be in big trouble." And he soon is, when the wife of a "political adviser" lets slip that she and her husband have been discussing the contents of his supposedly private diary. "Oh, boy,'" Ivan reflects, "this diary is going to provide a lot of evidence."

Within six months of his arriving, we read, "I took out my pistol and put it against my throat. It would be so easy to press the trigger and then … feel nothing."

By 1935, the Soviet system was perfecting the art of adverse selection, the ability to weed out those insufficiently uncritical and servile, one of whom is Ivan Chistyakov. Once in the Gulag, he is accused, after standing in for the company commander, of an "inappropriately convivial approach to work," which is seen as being due to his non-proletarian ("petty bourgeois") social antecedents. One of his frustrations is that the camp supervisors seem to know only how to intimidate, criticize and curse. They "periodically squawk like ventriloquists" dummies: "Reprimand! Under arrest!! Punishment cell!!! How can I take orders from people like that?"

The initial arrival and transition period was obviously crazy for him, in part because he seems to realize many of his wards don't belong there.
Ivan finds he has considerable respect for the hardcore social undesirables. The women form gangs with thieves' rules and customs. For them, the brigade leader is their godmother. "Momma rules everything and everyone. Momma beats or pardons, decides who gets work, feeds them or leaves them to go hungry. Momma is in charge. Men keep to themselves or, occasionally, pair up."

Men gamble at cards and, if they lose, their forfeit is to say something filthy to the guards, or to hack off a finger or a hand in front of everyone.

Ivan is a long way from Moscow. He mentions in passing, "Someone got killed, someone else got killed. In 3 Platoon a bear ripped the scalp off a hunter and smashed up his rifle. They bayoneted it." Guards, too, get killed. "In our unit, if someone gets murdered, they file a report and that's that. You chose to come here, so what more do you expect?"

He describes the attitude towards killing: "We went out into the taiga looking for escapees and found scattered corpses. Who killed them? When? Nobody has any idea who these people were. If someone gets on your nerves and you take a shot at them, you just leave them where they fell. If someone finds them, fine. If they don't, they're dead anyway."

How did Ivan being such a reluctant part of the Soviet state color his time there?
Someone asked Ivan, "What are you, a well-educated man, doing serving as a platoon commander in the armed guards?" His response was, "Search me. Someone has a nasty sense of humor?" He was evidently a manager in an engineering factory in Moscow, a keen sportsman and hunter, and loved the theater and cinema. He found the cultural offerings in Zavitaya [where the gulag was locate] profoundly depressing, and his enthusiasm for painting, sketching and photography were seen by his superiors as confirming that he was indeed a bourgeois class enemy. "The guards are beginning to disgust me," he wrote. "They're certainly sentient. Animals with a brain. Well, animals anyway. But they have no interest in anything, they're idiots. Blockheads. They're stoned out of their minds at night, five nights a week, for months, years."

His personal comedown from a more sophisticated life in the city was obviously hard. But Ivan also seems to pepper in digs at the brutality thrust on inmates.
Ivan is fairly reticent about his day-to-day work, but gets sent out in dire conditions to hunt for escapees. "We have been sent juveniles," he reports. "Louse-ridden, dirty, without warm clothing. There is no bathhouse because we cannot go sixty rubles over budget, which would work out at one kopek a head. There is talk of the need to prevent escapes. They look for causes, use guns, but fail to see that they themselves are the cause, that escapes are a result of their slothfulness, or their red tape, or just plain sabotage. People are barefoot and inadequately dressed even though there is enough of everything in the stores."

Despite periodic lamentations, one criticism of the text is the relatively short shrift Ivan gives inmates as opposed to people like himself. Does it bother you?
For me, the most absorbing aspect of the diary is the portrait it gives of Ivan Petrovich Chistyakov, a man unfortunate enough to have lived in interesting times. Its last entry is written a year before Stalin's major purges began in 1937. On arrival, Ivan immediately confronts a reality very different from what the propaganda had prepared him for. He turns up at the headquarters of the NKVD's [secret police] Armed Guards Unit to find [men lying] on their beds, smoking. Two are grappling, rolling around locked together, one with his legs in the air, laughing, squealing. Another laments his lot with a wheezing accordion, bawling, "We are not afraid of work, we just ain't gonna do it."'

At first, although shocked by the transition from his reasonably comfortable life in Moscow to the wretched conditions in Siberia, he feels some pride in the project of building a strategically important second track of the Trans-Siberian Railways further to the north of China. Soon, however, he's protesting that "the era of War Communism is over and the Cheka [secret police] should have changed. Stalin has said, 'A greater concern for people should be shown in full measure.' But here? Here I'd be reluctant to even imagine Stalin's words might be applied.'

Ivan is like a caged bird.: "There is another world abroad. I know it exists, but I can't get there. I want to work at my real profession, study, keep up with metals technology and try it out in practice. Live among educated people, go to the theater and cinema, to lectures and museums and exhibitions. I want to sketch. Ride a motorbike, and then perhaps sell it and buy one of those catapult-launched gliders and fly."

Within six months of his arriving, we read, "I took out my pistol and put it against my throat. It would be so easy to press the trigger and then … feel nothing."

Besides being a window into a bygone era of suffering, does the text actually have any bearing on contemporary Russian culture?
The current Russian regime seems keens to rehabilitate the Stalin period as somehow normal Russian history. Chistyakov, an educated man with an artistic temperament, testifies to the human unacceptability of what was being done at that time. He describes dawn breaking: "The light grows no brighter but, in an instant, from behind the hill, the fireball of the sun emerges, warm, radiant and greeted by an outburst of song from the dawn chorus. Morning has broken. The day begins, and with it all the vileness."

After four months in Siberia, Chistyakov wrote a poem:

The only thing we really want/Is the right to a good night's sleep,/And perhaps a day off to call our own/Although actually what we really want/Is to shuck off BAM and get back home.

Learn more about Ivan Chistyakov's diaries, out August 8, here.

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Everything Is Happening All at Once on 'Game of Thrones'

Does She Miss Me Terribly?

Pity the nation, pity the kingdom, pity the smallfolk, pity the poor camerapeople who have to crabwalk down the tiny causeways of County Derry that stand in for Dragonstone, where Tyrion (Peter Dinklange) leads Jon Snow (Kit Harington) in the opening scenes of "The Queen's Justice." During this latest installment in the characters-learn-the-plot-of-Game-of-Thrones season of Game of Thrones, our lead characters meet each other, war is declared, the battle comes down, and piss and poop jokes are no longer the order of the day.

But we're still treated to the spectacle of vacationing Onion Knight Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham) recalling "palm trees and butterflies" as his new liege is received before the court of Daenerys (Emilia Clarke). Tyrion's reunion with Jon is awfully nice, as he even spares a thought for his one-time bride, Sansa, asking, "Does she miss me terribly?" and goes on to answer the question for himself. "A long and bloody tale," he says, "To be honest, I was drunk for most of it." But we were not. We've waited lo these many seasons to see the top-billed stars and destined lords of the realm regard one another in the balmy environs of the Khaleesi's throne room. And what do we get?

We get Melisandre (Carice van Housten), of all people, saying the name of the saga of which we are all so beholden. "I have brought ice and fire together," she says, and then for more postmodern points, spoils the ending opposite Lord Varys (Conleth Hill): "I have to die in the strange country. Same as you." Jon Snow then comes into the presence of Daenerys, whose litany of titles—mother of dragons, the unburnt, breaker of chains, and so on—feel slightly embarrassing opposite the other star of the show, who has much less to his name (at least on paper). But Jon Snow and Daenerys do have a certain something between them—the thud of inevitability, the clang of denouement, the click of a thousand slash-fiction sites shutting down at once.

And so it goes, as Jon Snow brings Daenerys up to date regarding the White Walkers at the gates. Daenerys beseeches the King in the North to join her in defiance of Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), and Tyrion and Jon take the air and discuss better times, back when much of the cast was dead instead of most. All this cloak flapping! "You look a lot better at brooding than I do," remarks Tyrion, "You make me feel like I'm failing at brooding over failing," and goes on to add, basically, "I am the son and heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar. I am the son and heir of nothing in particular." This battle between sulks (or "grumkins and snarks," Jon has it) briefly concluded, the two agree to join forces, more or less, though Jon is right about one thing. "Don't go south," he says, knowing better than the show's creators that the lines between Mason and Dixon are real, "And here I am, a Northern fool."

But even fools need something to show for their fancy educations upstate. For Jon Snow, it's the dragonglass beneath Daenerys's fortress he wants. In a nice scene advising Daenerys, Tyrion's all for it, saying, "Give him something by giving him nothing," which works nicely as a tagline for this season, where immense satisfaction comes from watching onscreen what any Northern fool would have seen coming a mile away.

Every Possible Series of Events

At Winterfell, Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) notices something that she doesn't like: The new suits of armor being outfitted for the men of the North aren't accessorized with leather. Her increasingly deadlocked Svengali, Petyr Baelish (Aidan Gillen), also notices something he doesn't like: Sansa's ongoing independence. His counsel is, if you've been paying attention, a bit of a recap. "Every possible series of events is happening all at once…Everything that happens will be something you've seen before."

But surely even Littlefinger didn't see Bran's (Isaac Hempstead Wright) arrival back at Winterfell coming—or the fact that the dude looks (yikes) way older than last we saw the young seer, or that his tutelage under the Three-Eyed Raven has left him less than impressed with more earthly concerns. He's a bit of a jerk, really, and he proves his psychic powers by intimating knowledge of his sister's brutal rape at the hands of the pretender Ramsay Bolton. Surely there's a better family memory to invoke at this critical juncture. A weird silence or an awkward fart on a road trip?

Bone and Dust

At King's Landing, lusty Joker-looking pirate Euron leads his prisoners down the streets to the cheers of Cersei's constituents. But who are these people? It wasn't so long ago that they warmed to the charity of her rival, Margaery Tyrell, or that they joined the Sparrows in applauding the humiliation of their queen during her march of shame, and now they are doing what so many Oaklanders have lamented and cheering the raiders at their gates? Cersei taunts her captives, Tyene (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers) and Ellaria Sand (Indira Varma) before murdering the former via girl-on-girl. I'm not kidding. This show is known for its sexposition, but this may be the first full-on sexecution, as Cersei plants a poisonous kiss on Tyene, just like the one with which the Sand Snake poisoned princess Myrcella. "To bone and dust," Cersei says, and, like all of those who meet this fate, I never thought it would end this way. But I always really hoped.

Game of Thrones' female fanbase have long lobbied for a peen-count to match our many breasts, but we at least get some Kingslayer buttocks in our face as Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) beds his sister. Cersei, now that she's queen, refuses to disguise her incest even before such a menace as her student loan collector from the Iron Bank of Braavos (Mark Gatiss). Good to see him again. Cersei begs off, promising to finance her excesses through pillage, which is not a column that usually exists on late rent notices. But in times of great upheaval, we are all borrowers living on unstable tenancy.

Give Me Ten Good Men

There's more ingratitude in Oldtown, where Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen), miraculously cured of his nasty Greyscale infection, spares a certain, reserved thanks for Samwell Tarly (John Bradley-West), while extolling his absent Khaleesi: "I owe her my life. Her, and you." Yeah, no sweat you poor dear slave-trader, it's not like I literally picked off your infectious scabs one by one. Fair dinkum to you, and your dragon army. Not that curing an incurable disease means more to Sam than the proper construction of Ikea furniture. How did he do it? "I read the book and followed the instruction." As a reward, he is not expelled for his extracurricular interests.

The episode's remaining minutes are given up to a pair of pyrrhic conquests. First, Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) conquers Casterly Rock through its sewers, only to fall victim to one of the classic blunders. The first is not to get involved in a land war in Asia, but the second and only slightly less well-known is this: Never to lay siege to a suspiciously undefended island with no natural resources when death is on the line (and if you are not one of the five top-billed stars of the series you are on). And finally, alas, we say a fond farewell to Lady Olenna Tyrell, last of her name, played by Diana Rigg, who sadly is in no position to take back her job as hostess of Mystery now that she has run her course on Game of Thrones. There is no actress I could possibly miss more.

"And now the rains weep o'er our halls," she says, just before Jaime offers her the fatal glass of wine (and before she saucily confesses to the murder of his inbred son Joffrey). "A failure of imagination," she says, but it's nothing of the kind. The avenger of her family, the murderess of a regent, the best line delivery in the Seven Kingdoms, the Queen of Thorns. Cheers, Dame Diana. "There are always lessons in failures," Jaime mutters, humble in his hollow victory over The Reach. Her rejoinder is classic: "Yes. You must be very wise by now."



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Inside China's Bug-Eating Industry

On this episode of 'VICE INTL,' host Joshua Frank treks to China's Yunnan Province, the epicenter of the country's edible insect industry. Though outsiders look down on consuming what most of the world regards as pests, Yunnan's residents view bugs as a delicacy. To find out why, Josh meets up with some experts and tours a wasp farm, cooks up some grub worms, and feasts on more than 13 different types of insects.

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We Talked to Sherilyn Fenn About Playing Audrey Horne from 'Twin Peaks'

Robert Longo: Men, Monsters, and Museums

Thieves Stole a Solid-Gold Replica of Neil Armstrong's Lunar Module

A hyper-rare gold replica of the lunar module that brought Neil Armstrong to the moon has been stolen from the astronaut's namesake museum in Ohio, NPR reports.

According to police in Wapakoneta, Ohio, thieves snuck into the city's Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum just before midnight on Friday, setting off a burglar alarm. When the cops arrived, they discovered someone had broken in and made off with the solid-gold, 18-karat model.

Armstrong received the replica as a gift in Paris in 1969, a few months after his trip to the Moon. A local newspaper called Le Figaro commissioned Cartier to make three of the 5-inch tall, 4.5-inch wide models of NASA's Lunar Excursion Module—the landing vehicle from which Armstrong took his "giant leap for mankind." The paper gifted the models to all three astronauts aboard the mission—Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins—and Cartier hasn't made another one since, according to the jeweler's website.

Since opening in 1972, the museum has been home to a slew of Armstrong memorabilia, including the Gemini VIII spacecraft he piloted back in 1966, two of his spacesuits, and a moon rock from the Apollo 11 mission. Although that little moon chunk could've been a lucrative steal, the solid-gold replica might be easier to sell off. Thieves could prospectively melt it down into smaller, nondescript chunks, and sell them off individually.

"This piece is very rare," the police wrote in a statement. "A value of such an item cannot be determined."

We do have a rough gauge of how much the yellow and white gold replica might be worth, though. At a 2003 auction, Cartier bought the model it made for Collins back for $56,000, according to Barron's. Still—considering a bag of moon dust Armstrong used to collect lunar samples sold for $1.8 million earlier this month—it could be worth much more.

The Wapakoneta Police Department, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and the FBI are currently investigating the heist, and haven't named any suspects. The museum closed its doors Saturday afternoon—police said the scene was "still being processed" at the time—but reopened to visitors on Sunday.

"The truth is that you can't steal from a museum," the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum wrote on Facebook Saturday. "Museums care for and exhibit items on behalf of you, the public. Theft from a museum is a theft from all of us."

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.



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'Twin Peaks' Is Testing Our Patience

The VICE Morning Bulletin

US News

US Military Flexes Warplanes After North Korean Missile Test
After another ballistic missile test by North Korea, the US military sent two B-1 bombers on exercises over South Korea Sunday, and also tested the THAAD anti-missile defense system off the coast of Alaska. Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the UN, said the US was "done talking" about North Korea, rejecting the idea of more Security Council meetings or resolutions over Pyongyang's missile program. Haley said a new resolution would be "of no value."––The Independent / Reuters

Majority of Americans Believe Trump Presidency Is 'Chaos'
President Trump's administration has been described as "chaos" by 52 percent of Americans in a CBS News Nation Tracker poll released Sunday. Only 15 percent of those polled described the Trump administration as "great." The proportion of people who identify as strong supporters of Trump is down from 22 percent to 18 percent.––CBS News

Eight Injured When Van Strikes Bystanders on Los Angeles Sidewalk
At least eight people were injured after a van careened into a group of pedestrians on a sidewalk in Los Angeles Sunday. Police have arrested a driver suspected of running a red light and causing thecrash. One 44-year-old victim was reportedly in critical condition.––Los Angeles Times

Nashville Mayor's Son Dies in Apparent Drug Overdose
Nashville Mayor Megan Barry's 22-year-old son died Saturday night of an apparent drug overdose in a suburb of Denver, Colorado. "We cannot begin to describe the pain and heartbreak that comes with losing our only child," Barry and her husband Bruce said in a statement.––USA Today

International News

Russia to Force Out 755 US Diplomatic Staff
Vladimir Putin said 755 US diplomats and support staff in Russia will be booted from embassies and consulates across the country in response to a new set of US sanctions. "I thought it was the time to show that we're not going to leave it without an answer," Putin said. The US State Department described the move as a "regrettable and uncalled for act."––VICE News

ISIS Attacks Iraqi Embassy in Afghanistan
Gunmen entered and attacked the Iraqi embassy compound in the Afghan capital of Kabul Monday after a suicide bombing at the security gates. ISIS declared responsibility for the attack in a statement broadcast by its news agency, claiming seven security guards were killed.––Reuters

At Least Ten Killed as Venezuelan President Claims Referendum Victory
Ten people were killed in Venezuela over the weekend amid a controversial referendum on a new constituent assembly. President Nicolas Maduro's government claimed victory Sunday night, saying the votes of more than eight million people sanctioned the establishment of a new assembly to bypass opposition in the National Assembly. An independent estimate pegged the figure at closer to 3.6 million.–VICE News/The Guardian

Indian Coastguard Seizes Almost $550 Million Worth of Heroin
India's coastguard agency has claimed the country's biggest-ever drug bust after finding 3,300 pounds of heroin believed to be worth roughly $550 million. The stash was discovered on a boat in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Gujarat.––BBC News

Everything Else

Angelina Jolie Rejects Casting Exercise Criticism
Angelina Jolie has rejected accusations she exploited Cambodian children by pretending to give them money in a casting game for her movie First They Killed My Father. "Every measure was taken to ensure the safety, comfort, and well-being of the children," Jolie said of the "pretend exercise."––USA Today

MTV to Make Moonman Prize Gender Neutral
MTV's president Chris McCarthy said the prize given out at the Video Music Awards will be changed from a Moonman to a gender neutral Moon Person. "It could be a man, it could be a woman, it could be transgender, it could be nonconformist," he said––The New York Times

'Dunkirk' Hangs On at Box Office No.1 Spot
Christopher Nolan's WWII movie Dunkirk remains at No.1 at the North American box office, taking $28.1 million in its second week to push its domestic total past $100 million. The Emoji Movie, in second place, pulled in $25.7 million.––The Hollywood Reporter

The Strokes Not Recording with Rick Rubin (Yet), Guitarist Says
The Strokes' guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr., has been forced to quash a rumor started by his own father that the band is recording a new album with Rick Rubin. "Forgive Albert Sr he got prematurely excited," he tweeted. "A lot of unknowns and nothing worth speaking about at this time."––Noisey

Barcelona Festival Evacuated After Fire on Stage
A fire on the main stage at the UNITE With Tomorrowland dance festival in Barcelona caused more than 22,000 festival-goers to be evacuated. Organizers blamed the blaze on a "technical malfunction" in a Facebook post, and no injuries were initially reported.––Noisey



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Putin to Kick Out 755 US Diplomatic Staff in Revenge for Sanctions

Vladimir Putin confirmed Sunday that 755 US diplomatic staff would have to leave by September 1, as the Kremlin hit back at new sanctions passed by Congress last week. The Russian president justified the move by saying that relations with Washington were deteriorating, and added that Moscow was considering possible further measures.

Putin revealed the extent of the cuts Sunday, having initially announced the decision to retaliate Friday. The order leaves the US mission with 455 staff in Russia, the exact same number the Kremlin has in the US.


According to a 2013 government report, the US mission in Russia—which includes an embassy in Moscow and consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, and Vladivostok—employed 1,279 staff. However, only 301 of those were US "direct-hire" staff, with the rest local support employees.

Continue reading on VICE News.



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Sunday, July 30, 2017

Blame Oil's Decline for the Middle East's Latest Conflict

Seven years ago, I attended an International Energy Forum (IEF) meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with some of the region's most senior diplomats.

There were several topics of conversation, but the one that caught my attention involved a simple graph in which the IEF predicted that natural gas would become the world's dominant "bridge fuel" on the way to a renewable energy over the next 50 years. That was great news for Qatar and Iran—which share the world's largest natural gas field in the Persian Gulf—but absolutely disastrous for Saudi Arabia. Because while Saudi Arabia has natural gas, 90 percent of its export economy is based on the sale of one commodity: oil.

The country's infrastructure is based on exporting oil. And its power in the world, including its historic power to run embargoes, is based almost entirely on oil being the world's dominant energy source. From that perspective, it's no surprise that the displacement of Saudi oil by Qatari and Iranian natural gas is causing many of the tensions in the Middle East today.

When the current state of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932, natural gas was barely used as a fuel and represented a tiny fraction of the world's energy mix. For decades, when Saudis would extract natural gas while drilling for oil, they'd burn it off rather than sell it. However, today natural gas represents over 24 percent of the world's energy mix.

The battle between oil and natural gas is a major reason that Saudi Arabia recently cut off all diplomatic relations with Qatar. Hawks in Saudi Arabia hope that by threatening Qatar, as well as Qatar and Iran's natural gas shipping routes in the Bab Al Mandeb Strait (BAM) and the Red Sea, they can extend the dominance of Saudi oil over natural gas in the world.

In other words, the central conflict in the Middle East today is not about religious differences between Sunnis and Shias. It is about money and the future of energy.


Watch: Nevada's liquor lobby wants legal weed to play by its rules


Natural gas is not a sexy energy source. Because it is a fossil fuel, it still produces some pollution, albeit far less than oil or coal. Burning natural gas produces about 25 percent less carbon dioxide than oil and 50 percent less than coal. Additionally, in terms of other pollutants (sulfur dioxide, particulates, etc.) natural gas produces ten to 2,000 times less pollution than oil and coal. Though some worry that natural gas–related methane leaks make the fuel problematic, demand for LNG is likely to continue to increase, particularly in Europe, where a dozens of LNG-facilities have already been built.

The EU is the largest importer of natural gas in the world, and demand is going up due to European concerns about Russian military expansion, as well as the sudden decline of several oil and natural gas fields in the EU.

The importance of Qatari and Iranian natural gas to Europe has increased significantly over the last two years. In 2015, natural gas exports to Europe increased by nearly 20 percent. This February, Iran announced that it had doubled its daily shipments of natural gas to Europe to 2.8 million barrels of LNG per day, partially due to a reduction in sanctions. New LNG facilities, alongside massive renewable energy projects, made possible by huge subsidies for wind and solar farms in the EU, have significantly reduced European reliance on Saudi oil. These trends, combined with fracking in the US and gigantic renewable energy projects in China, have further pushed down the value of Saudi oil exports.

So what can the Saudis do? In terms of stopping the growth of renewables, not much, other than convincing the US to abandon the Paris Agreement, which Trump did shortly after his visit to the country.

Fracking in the US is also extremely difficult for Saudi hawks to stop. However, both American frackers and Saudi benefit from higher oil prices and the removal of competition (i.e. Qatar and Iran) for the European energy market.

Thus, from the perspective of Saudi hawks, the best strategy to boost the current value of Saudi oil would be to substantially reduce the flow of natural gas from Qatar and Iran to Europe, if not to the rest of the world. In order to significantly reduce natural gas exports to Europe, the Saudi hawks have three options:

  • Expand their naval forces or war in Yemen in order to disrupt or control the Bab Al Mandeb Strait (BAM) and/or chokepoints in the Red Sea, through which Qatar and Iran ship nearly all their natural gas to Europe;
  • Launch or threaten attacks on Qatar until natural gas extraction in the Persian Gulf is significantly reduced or redirected and sold to Saudi Arabia at a discount;
  • Increase the cost of shipping Qatari LNG to Europe by convincing the UAE to place a port embargo on Qatari/LNG vessels and/or by convincing the Egyptians to block or levy high taxes on Qatari/LNG vessels through the Suez.

Currently, hawks in Saudi Arabia are opting for the third option via a port embargo in the UAE. However, unless the Egyptians cut off the Suez Canal, it is unlikely that such an embargo will be sufficient to raise Qatari LNG shipping costs to a level where Saudi oil will regain its predominance, especially given Qatari plans (announced a month before the Saudi blockade) to vastly increase natural gas production by removing drilling restrictions.

If oil prices and the Saudi economy declines further, it is possible that Saudi hawks may take more drastic measures. We've already seen a major PR campaign against Qatar by Saudi media as part of rising tensions between the two Gulf countries. All Qatari media, including Al Jazeera, has been blocked in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. (Saudi's excuse for the ban was that Qatar's leader made a positive comment about Iran which he probably did not make.)

As soon as Qatar's news sites were shut down, Al Arabiya, a Saudi government-controlled media outlet, unleashed a flood of anti-Qatari articles with catchy titles like "Hezbollah and Qatar - a story of forbidden love." Shortly thereafter, Saudi Arabia and its oil-producing allies cut off all relations with Qatar, all Qataris were ordered to leave both Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, and expressing sympathy for Qatar on social media was made into a crime. Given the timing, coordination, and size of the Saudi PR and diplomatic assault on Qatar, it seems highly likely that, as David Hearst (veteran Middle East reporter for the Guardian) put it, these events have been planned by Saudi hawks for quite a while.

Meanwhile, food security concerns among Qatar's population have increased, with grocery stores initially flooded with customers, due to a Saudi blockade. As such concerns increase, so does the risk of a military escalation, especially since Qatar has recently announced its intention to increase natural gas production by 30 percent.

If the region moves toward direct conflict, Turkey will likely stand with Qatar, since the country has a substantial interest in running pipelines from Qatar's gas reserves in the future as well as relatively strong historical ties.

When the current showdown began, Saudi Arabia and its allies issued a list of 13 demands on Qatar (i.e. shut down Al Jazeera, remove a Turkish military base, pay reparations, etc.) that were virtually impossible for Qatar to meet. Then, shortly after Turkey began sending troops to Qatar and its president began preparations for a diplomatic trip to the region, Saudi Arabia and its allies appeared to reduce their list of 13 demands to "six broad principles," suggesting that they were, perhaps, unwilling to risk a direct conflict with Turkey. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has also been calling for a lifting of the anti-Qatar blockade.

But on Sunday, Saudi Arabia returned to demanding that its list be obeyed and accused Qatar of having made a "declaration of war" by demanding that the Hajj pilgrimage be internationalized. (Confusing matters still further, there's been no evidence that Qatar made such a demand.)

Should the Saudi economy decline much further, it is unclear what will happen next. Sometimes, economic desperation can lead to reforms. Other times, it can lead to war. Hopefully, we'll get the former rather than the latter.

Ryan Riegg is an attorney and consultant with Aion Associates, and the founder of the Lawyerence of Arabia writing group.



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