Friday, June 30, 2017

'Tragic Fest,' Todays Comic by Akvile Magicdust

No, Brad Pitt Did Not Confirm Hollywood Is a Child Sex Ring

Multiple People Shot Inside New York City Hospital

Multiple people were shot by a gunman in one of the Bronx's largest hospitals Friday, with preliminary reports indicating that the shooter was once an employee of the hospital.

An NYPD spokesperson told Vice News that they are not yet publicly identifying the shooter, but confirmed that there was only one shooter and he has died. Authorities also told the AP he killed at least one person before killing himself.

The shooter, who was reportedly carrying a rifle, began shooting around 2:50 PM and barricaded himself inside the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital.

Continue reading on VICE News.



from vice http://ift.tt/2svszrg
via cheap web hosting

Texas Court Puts Same-Sex Couples' Spousal Benefits at Risk

In a decision condemned by LGBTQ advocates, Texas's Supreme Court ruled Friday that same-sex couples don't have same guarantees when it comes to spousal benefits as their hetero counterparts, the Austin American-Statesman reports.

The 9–0 decision by an all-Republican bench reversed an earlier ruling at a lower court granting life insurance and health insurance benefits to spouses of gay and lesbian city employees. Now the question to reaffirm or strip away those spousal benefits will back to a court in Houston. City officials could appeal straight to the US Supreme Court, or take the case to trial.

The decision comes just after the two-year anniversary of Obergefell vs. Hodges, the US Supreme Court decision that gave gay and lesbian couples across the country the right to marry. But the Texas court said that that didn't mean that the issue was settled.

"The Supreme Court held… that the Constitution requires states to license and recognize same-sex marriages to the same extent that they license and recognize opposite-sex marriages, but it did not hold that states must provide the same publicly funded benefits to all married persons," Justice Jeff Boyd wrote in a decision for the court. The "reach and ramifications" of the Supreme Court's landmark decision is up to state courts, he added.

LGBTQ advocates contend that in granting gay couples the right to marry, the Supreme Court effectively ruled same-sex partnerships and their hetero counterparts should be treated equally.

"The Texas Supreme Court's decision this morning is a warning shot to all LGBTQ Americans that the war on marriage equality is ever-evolving," Sarah Kate Ellis, president of the advocacy group GLAAD, said in a statement. "Anti-LGBTQ activists will do anything possible to discriminate against our families."

LGBTQ city employees will continue to receive spousal benefits as long as the Texas case is being litigated.

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.



from vice http://ift.tt/2saFzmU
via cheap web hosting

'Pillbug Goes to the Bar,' Today's Comic by Allison Conway

A Look Back at the Healthcare Bills Killed by Republicans

Republicans' absurd excuse for a healthcare reform plan is in trouble. Again. Despite initial claims that he could muster 50 votes to pass it by the end of the week, on Tuesday Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shelved the bill until after the upcoming July 4 recess, seeking yet more time to get his caucus together. This endless saga of infighting and false starts, not to mention the plan's unpopularity, may explain why on Friday morning President Donald Trump rage-tweeted that Republicans should just repeal Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, then come up with a new approach.

That strategy, known as "repeal and delay" has already been floated at least three times in this Congress alone. In fact, before Republicans settled on their current healthcare strategy, there were already several diverse plans on the table. As the Senate bill languishes, it's worth looking back at those alternatives to understand the debates we could have been having for the past few months and why we wound up (and are probably stuck) with the steaming shit pile we have now.

Hundreds of bills dealing with healthcare have been submitted for consideration in the current Congress. Many of them propose simple tweaks, like expanding the use of healthcare savings accounts (HSAs), a longstanding Republican idea intended to help people sock money away, ideally mostly tax-free, to pay for future healthcare costs. But there hasn't been a lot of appetite for marginal changes. When we talk about alternative plans, we're talking about those that would completely overturn the ACA framework rather than jigger with it a bit.

Republicans launched their healthcare campaign on January 3, the first day of Congress, when Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi initiated the reconciliation process currently being used to pass this major legislation with a simple majority vote. That motion passed on January 12, but we didn't get the first inklings of an official bill from House Republican leadership until mid-February. The first draft of that chamber's ultimate product, the American Health Care Act, came out March 6.

But there were options circulating before then. On January 23, Republican senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Susan Collins of Maine introduced the Patient Freedom Act of 2017. Based on a 2015 bill, this moderate proposal called for states to individually choose whether to keep the ACA, scrap it and transfer their uninsured to high-deductible plans bolstered by federally-augmented HSAs, or opt out of any type of federal support. The plan sought to maintain the status quo where it worked, offer a conservative-aligned universal coverage scheme elsewhere, and leave ultra-conservatives the option of totally abandoning state-supported healthcare.

Two days later, relentlessly anti-government Kentucky Senator Rand Paul proposed his Obamacare Replacement Act, later mirrored in the House by Freedom Caucus heavy Mark Sanford of South Carolina. This proposal would have mostly ripped up the ACA, offering just minimal protections for pre-existing conditions so long as people maintained continuous coverage. It would have offered annual tax credits for deposits made into HSAs, which could be used for more procedures and to pay premiums, and allowed tax deductions for private insurance. It would have also expanded the bodies that could offer insurance and legalized sales across state lines. Yet it said oddly little about the ACA's taxes or Medicaid expansion, major points of contention for conservative ideologues duking it out over the current bill.

In February, Republican Representative David Roe of Tennessee brought his American Health Care Reform Act of 2017 to the House, essentially acting on behalf of the Republican Study Committee, the slightly less conservative alternative to the Freedom Caucus. Similar to proposals from 2013 and 2015, it called for a repeal of the ACA even more comprehensive than that in Paul's bill, but mirrored many of his other post-ACA tweaks and systems.

In March we got a couple straggler proposals: House Republican Pete Sessions of Texas offered up the comically named World's Greatest Healthcare Plan of 2017, a rehash of a 2016 proposal that remixed many of the conservative talking points of the previous two plans. House Republican Darrell Issa of California's Access to Insurance for All Act axed the ACA and opened the insurance options available to federal employees across state lines to all Americans.


Watch: The Minority Report future is here


Only the Cassidy-Collins and Paul plans garnered real, sustained media scrutiny, and that was mostly because they were the first salvos of the Congressional season. Even these bills weren't dissected deeply, though. Their legislative language was vague and incomplete, and whatever their virtues they never had the backing of leadership.

As healthcare policy wonk Len Nichols explained to me, healthcare is so complicated that "nothing registers until it's repeated by leadership in their media talking points, multiple times."

All of these bills were serious, said Nichols, in the sense that they advanced ideas their authors felt deeply about. Simultaneously though, argued Michael Cannon, a health policy expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, they weren't serious proposals because they didn't seek to become the basis for the tightly controlled leadership process that gave us the bills that actually could pass. These test balloons were clearly and outwardly attempts to kick a slow process into gear and make sure Republican leadership knew where various factions stood, which ideas they valued.

"They are all signaling exercises," said Cannon. "Of course, those can morph into 'serious proposals'" if leadership decides to adopt and flesh out those broad ideas.

A moderate proposal like the Cassidy-Collins bill, said Nichols, kept too much of the ACA to have any place in leadership-led negotiations, currently seek to move towards the center from the right. A bill like Paul's probably played some role in shaping current legislation. But more important than any policy idea was the fact that using reconciliation limits what can go in a bill. Selling insurance across state lines, for instance, a policy Trump himself supports, is out, as are small but key elements in most of the alternative Republican healthcare plans floated this year.

Republicans could pass any bill they wanted if they could garner 60 votes, rather than the 50 needed for reconciliation bills. But McConnell and company evidently figure that no Democrat would sign on to a bill gutting the signature legislative accomplishment of the Obama era, as all of the existing Republican proposals do to some extent, even the Cassidy-Collins bill.

"So we got what we got," said Nichols. "And McConnell is trying hard to square a circle."

If McConnell totally fumbles the Senate healthcare bill and no other Republican alternatives emerge, one other plan floating around the senate might gain steam: House Democrat John Conyers of Michigan's Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, which would cover all uninsured Americans by building out Medicare beyond the ACA expansion. Conyers has advanced some version of this bill every year since 2003. But Bernie Sanders, who plans to submit an equivalent for consideration in the Senate this year, gave the idea a boost with his presidential campaign. It doesn't have official leadership backing, but the proposal could rise to prominence as part of the Democratic platform in 2018 or 2020.

But for now at least, no alternative healthcare reform plan has any space to flourish, not with the constraints Republican leadership has placed on itself.The best we can hope is that McConnell continues to fumble, and Republicans for the sake of national wellbeing and of resolving their helathcare mess wind up negotiating a bipartisan bill that stabilizes the ACA marketplaces.

"I fear though," said Nichols, that "if McConnell fails, Trump will sabotage the marketplaces and Republicans will be even more scorched-earth on tax cuts, immigration," and other policies moving forward.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.



from vice http://ift.tt/2usVrSq
via cheap web hosting

The EPA Is Holding a Color War to Challenge Climate Science

EPA chief Scott Pruitt will launch an initiative to challenge accepted climate science using "red team, blue team" exercises developed by the military to identify weak points in his agency's field operations.

Pruitt hopes to recruit scientists who are skeptical of the role of greenhouse gases in global warming to provide a critique of mainstream reports on climate change, E&E News reports.

The idea isn't new—in March, a panel of skeptical climate scientists, called on to testify by Republican senators, advocated for the creation of "red team" to challenge the validity of the widely accepted conclusion that humans are contributing to the warming of the earth.

Continue reading on VICE News.



from vice http://ift.tt/2tyukJn
via cheap web hosting

Killing Hitler Isn't as Easy as It Sounds

In November of 1939, an ordinary German named Georg Elser tried and failed to kill Adolf Hitler with a homemade explosive device in Munich. That failed attempt, as well as the motivations behind it, are the subject of 13 Minutes, the latest film by Oliver Hirschbiegel. You might recognize the German director's name from Downfall, a 2004 drama that depicted Hitler's final days. It was nominated for an Oscar, but is mostly remembered for the climactic scene of Hitler totally losing his shit as he realizes that he's screwed, which became the source of a fount of early memes.

We talked to Hirschbiegel about why he decided to make another film about Hitler, how he feels about the Downfall memes, and what he thinks about the debate on killing baby Hitler (really).

VICE: Why did you decide to make this film?
Oliver Hirschbiegel: I was fascinated by this character, because he was always a bit of a riddle to me. He's not political, he's not the follower of an ideology, he grew up in a religious background but he's not a religious man. What he does comes from an inner conviction that he feels something has to be done—that it's all going to end in disaster, and if nobody else does something, he has to. There's not that many examples of that in history. He's nearly clairvoyant—it's a time when [the Nazis] have attacked Poland, but they haven't declared war on the rest of the world.

It's astonishing that he saw clearly what was coming, when the rest of the world was still impressed with Hitler. It's often forgotten that, until at least 1936 or 1937, Hitler was the most charismatic, powerful figure in politics. At the Olympic games in Berlin, everybody raised their arms to greet Hitler—even the Americans, because Hitler gave work to the people and rebuilt the economy. Everybody was in awe.

Is there something instructive to be found in the film as far as current-day political issues are concerned?
The world was very different when I was shooting the film, and it's always tricky to use historical material to tell people what to think and do. I leave gaps for the audience to come up with their own interpretations. I don't like films with a message. I treat my audience as intelligent beings and give them a chance to put one and one together.

Given the success and widespread recognition of Downfall, why did you want to return to this subject matter?
I didn't. It's a very unpleasant subject. I guess I just couldn't resist the challenge to go back to the beginning and show how Nazism slowly creeps into all corners of society—not just in the big city, but in the countryside. Georg is a fascinating character. I identify with him because I have the same beliefs—I never understood the concept of borders, and I was always a curious person believing in freedom of speech. I never understood the concept of racism or anti-Semitism. It's a totally alien world to me, and it is to him too.

Is Georg's story well-known in Germany?
Now it is. That's one of the achievements I'm proud of. Elser did not get the recognition he deserved for decades. It took twenty years until he and his people were properly recognized as resistance fighters. The whole system back then was built on the concept of obedience. You obeyed the orders of your superiors, and anybody who didn't was a traitor.

When the Kent State massacre took place in the US, it took the general public a while to acknowledge that the protesters were victims. Do you think that there's something about humanity that causes us to have delayed recognition when revolution's actually taking place?
It's one thing to recognize it and another to actually do something. In a repressive system, even just refusing to become a member of the party causes great harm unto your loved ones. Before you know it, your children aren't allowed at school anymore and you're cut off subsidies. Actually doing something in the offensive is taking a great risk, and you need a lot of courage to see it through.

I have the highest respect for somebody like Edward Snowden, who knowingly did what he did because he had to. He felt there was something so wrong and nobody was doing anything about it, so he willingly put his whole life at stake. He knows he will never see his parents or loved ones again, but he sees it through. I admire him tremendously. He's not a political person—it comes from his innermost conviction, just like Elser.

In America last year, there was this very brief national conversation surrounding the question, "If you had the chance to go back in time and kill Hitler when he was a baby, would you?" Some of our presidential candidates weighed in on it.
Oh.

When you hear that, what is your reaction?
That's rather shocking. The idea to kill a baby in itself is so absurd that I wouldn't know how to answer. The way I grew up, my belief is that no human being has the right to take another human being's life—and that continues with all the other human rights. Torture's out of the question. We don't have the right to do something with one of ours that we would not even do to an animal.

Now, if you go into a situation where there's a tyrant who causes an obvious threat to possibly thousands of your own people and other people, that's tyrant slaying. It's still killing a person, but it's for the sake of saving many other lives. As the Bible says, it's just. I would personally still have a big problem with killing somebody, though.

Do you believe in God?
Yes, but I'm not religious. I believe there is an entity, a force in the universe everywhere around the world that writes destiny—that looks after us. My belief is closer to shamanism, you know? Ancient wisdom is what I believe in, and that quickly leads to common sense. It's surprising how often common sense is a great help when it comes to conflict in the world. Stay curious, stay awake, don't stay in your bubble, look to the other side. What's this person's reason? Why is he angry at you? What drives him to do that? What can you do to make him stop and think about it? The minute you talk about something, you start a process that most likely prevents aggression. That's all common sense.

Downfall had a very strange second life on the Internet.
I'm proud of that. There's not a single scene ever been mocked up that many times, ever since we released the film. Basically all of them are tremendously funny—lots of creativity goes in there. Just think of Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator. What's the best weapon to fight that kind of repression and joylessness? Laughter. The minute you laugh, you're in a good way, right?

Do you have a favorite Downfall meme?
There were so many, but I loved one that was rather recent, when what's his name—for Christ's sake, the now Foreign Minister of the Brits. The key guy supporting Brexit.

Nigel Farage?
Nope, the other guy.

Boris Johnson?
Boris Johnson! Thank you very much. Ah, Christ, my brain. If you want to have a good laugh, go on the internet and check out that mockup. It's brilliant. Everything they say there, as ridiculous as it is, it happened like that. He's losing it, yelling, "What?! We won? We were never supposed to win! What the fuck is going on!" It's so funny and so true at the same time.

Follow Larry Fitzmaurice on Twitter.



from vice http://ift.tt/2saiBwj
via cheap web hosting

Aubrey Plaza Is Here to Fuck Up Your Summer

Aubrey Plaza is an even hotter terror than a sticky, hundred-degree day. In August, she'll become your creepiest Instagram stalker in Matt Spicer's Ingrid Goes West—but first, she plays medieval nun Fernanda in Jeff Baena's The Little Hours, which comes out Friday. Doesn't sound so terrifying, you say? What if I told you she plays a violent, sex-crazed nun who liberally throws around the F-word?

Plaza, who also produced the film, stars alongside Alison Brie and Kate Micucci as sisters who have an increasingly hard time sticking to their vows. All hell breaks loose when a handsome deaf-mute manservant (Dave Franco) arrives to their convent after fleeing a death sentence for sleeping with his lord's wife. Horniness spikes, and temptation becomes too unbearable to resist.

The Little Hours has already faced vehement opposition from the Catholic League for obvious reasons, but this not-quite historically accurate picture actually draws from Biblical research more than you'd expect. We spoke to Plaza about producing as well as starring in the film, going back to her Catholic roots, becoming a weed nun, and using blood as makeup.

VICE: I was keeping a physical tally of how many times you say "fuck" in this movie—I completely lost count. Do you know how many you say?
Aubrey Plaza: No, I have no idea! I'm sure it's a lot.

You produced this as well. What was that like?
A lot of anticipating disasters and putting out fires. It was a very organic, natural role for me to take on.

Where was it shot?
In these little towns throughout Tuscany. We were eating and drinking wine, over and over again. It was like weird adult camp. We'd shoot for so many hours and then we'd find these little restaurants and have awesome food. It was a really hard shoot, but we made the most of it.

Tell me about the research you did. I know you read the Bible for it…
I did read the Bible—from the beginning.

Really?
No [Laughs]. I mostly just got through Genesis—but I did a lot of research on prayer services. I was tasked with coming up with all the chapel services in the film. The movie is improvised, so we weren't gonna make John C. Reilly come up with that stuff. It was interesting, because I got to go back to my Catholic roots and remember prayer and stuff like that.

You come from a Catholic background?
Yeah, I do. It's kind of cool to go back there, surprisingly.

I know that the Catholic League was very mad about this movie. Did you hear of anyone else being offended?
I haven't, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. The Catholic League hasn't seen the movie. They've only seen the trailer. They might love it. It's not really an indictment on Catholicism or the Catholic Church. It's an adaptation of a historical text that's been around for 800 years.

You could take them to the movies tomorrow and see if they like it.
I will. I'm going to see the Pope after this. We can do a Q&A at the Arclight in Hollywood.

Does that kind of outrage excite you before a movie comes out?
I don't think so. I don't ever want to do anything that causes outrage. I think it's an interesting dialogue that is happening, but it's missing the point of the movie. It's entertainment. Jeff [Baena] didn't set out to make any kind of political statement or religious statement. It's a little silly.

Why did you want to play this role?
I was really excited by the concept. I thought shooting a period piece that's a comedy sounded really fun, and it's really rare to come across a movie like that that's getting made right now. Not many people are spending money on movies this wild—and, yeah, playing a nun is a dream come true. I love playing anything that's different that I haven't done before.

Do you have a favorite devilish nun from a movie?
Honestly, no. I love Whoopi [Goldberg] but I wouldn't say she's devilish.

Your character draws blood to use as blush. Have you ever used blood as make-up before?
I… have not?

There was some hesitation there.
I don't think I have.

You've never tried using your bloody nose as lipstick?
No! That sounds terrifying.

Alison Brie and Dave Franco are married, what was it like for all of you to go to town with Dave with his wife on set?
I mean, we're all adults, and we're playing characters, so we don't really think about it like that.

I saw that you hung out the with the weed nuns, which I didn't even know was a thing. Did you yourself end up becoming a weed nun?
I am in the process. My time is limited, but I would really like to explore that. I like the lifestyle that they lead. I don't think I can do it full-time, but there were talks of me becoming an honorary nun.

They did mention chastity as one of their vows, which is interesting since they're not real nuns.
They privatize their sexuality, which means they don't flaunt it. But they can do whatever they want.

There's a bit of witchcraft involved here, too. Did you do a lot of research on that?
Yes, I did a lot of research on fertility rituals, summer solstice, summer fertility rites, paganism. I read up on that. A lot. It was really cool.

Are you a witch?
I can't answer that question.

Follow Kristen Yoonsoo Kim on Twitter.



from vice http://ift.tt/2tthHPs
via cheap web hosting

A Short History of the Movement to Establish a Sovereign LGBTQ State

In Australia's capital city, Canberra, a familiar flag hangs in the lobby of the Department of Finance: the rainbow banner first devised in the late 70s by the late San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker. It's likely most visitors to the government building recognize it as the six-striped symbol of LGBTQ pride—save for one conservative lawmaker, who sees it as the icon of a "hostile nation."

This February, Australian Senator Eric Abetz went on an obscure tangent during a finance hearing—questioning the criteria by which department officials select the flags to display in their foyer.

Abetz had an agenda, one that appeared to have little to do with flags. As other Western democracies increasingly legalize gay marriage, Australia still languishes due to political foot-dragging, in spite of polling that indicates more than 60 percent of Australian voters support marriage equality. An outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage, Abetz suggested that the flags of anti-gay groups like the Marriage Alliance should also hang alongside the rainbow flag, which he described as an activist symbol of a "political campaign." However, it was the bizarre comment he made next that scored headlines.

"By way of some slight humor on this issue, this particular flag, you will realize, is the flag of the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands," said Abetz, smirking as he shuffled a stack of papers. "It's the flag of a hostile nation—if we are to believe them—having declared war on Australia."

The senator was referring to a ragtag troupe of radical gay activists who, in June 2004, claimed an archipelago of tiny uninhabited islands as their newly formed kingdom—a vast, 300,000-square-mile external territory of Australia that's just off the coast of Queensland.

Led by their emperor, Dale Parker Anderson, they set out on a ship dubbed the "Gayflower" and sailed for 200 nautical miles to the Coral Sea Islands Territory. Upon landfall, Anderson and his comrades planted the rainbow flag, their chosen national emblem, on tiny Cato Island, where they set up a post office, erected a monument and selected Gloria Gaynor's "I Am What I Am" as the national anthem. The kingdom's economy relies on its sole industry: selling collectable stamps.

By September, the fledgling kingdom had declared war on Australia for its failure to recognize same-sex marriage.

No citizen of the kingdom inhabits its territory. And it has no formal recognition from the United Nations or any country on earth. Even so, the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom may in fact represent the first territorial claim of sovereignty by an LGBTQ group for an independent gay nation.

It'd be easy to write this seemingly absurd independence movement off as a creative brand of direct-action protest—a silly stunt to garner press for the cause. But when taken out of the context of Australian politics, the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom stands as one quirky example of what some have termed "queer nationalism." As UCLA Political Science professor Brian Walker wrote in a 1996 paper about the phenomenon, it's the notion that the LGBTQ community forms a distinct people, separate from religious- and ethnic-based nationalisms, due to their shared culture, history and common traits.

It's a diffuse concept that has not received much serious consideration, save for a few academics and historians. Yet it's a line of thought that has existed in LGBTQ liberation since its earliest days, manifesting in everything from a radical proposal to take over a California county to lesbian-only communes to little-known groups presently lobbying for an independent gay state.

And as longstanding tension within the LGBTQ community between social assimilation and separatism—that is, the debate over whether queer people should try to blend in with the rest of society or reject society outright—continues to churn, the roots and history of queer nationalism seem as relevant as ever.

One of the cornerstone examples of a queer nationalist state is known informally as Stonewall Nation, a 1970 plan to establish a separatist gay community in Alpine County, a mountainous and rural corner of northern California, which, at the time, had 384 registered voters.

Activist Don Jackson argued that it'd only take 400 gays and lesbians relocating to constitute an electoral majority, eventually leading to gay control of every elected office in local government. "I imagine a place where gay people can be free," Jackson said at a 1969 gay liberation conference in Berkeley. "It would mean a gay government, a gay civil service, a county welfare department which made public assistance payments to the refugees of persecution and prejudice."

Proposed mere months after the Stonewall uprising in New York City, the idea of taking over Alpine County initially received tepid support. Historian Lillian Faderman, author of the comprehensive gay liberation overview The Gay Revolution, told me that some supporters genuinely yearned for a sort of gay nation within a nation; others saw it as a press ploy to demonstrate that the gay and lesbian movement had teeth.

"Straight people in the 1970s were very upset about the notion that gay people could take over a town and just establish their own government there," Fadermen told me. "Who knew where they might do it next!"

After the Los Angeles chapter of the Gay Liberation Front, a radical queer protest group, released their detailed plan to take over Alpine County in a press release, newspapers across the US ran the story. But the plan eventually fizzled, in large part due to increased scrutiny that followed the media coverage, which stoked fear among Alpine County residents. The idea also garnered little support within the LGBTQ community itself.

While Jackson never realized a gay-majority Alpine, his plan shares a separatist logic with other radical LGBTQ projects that have proceeded it. Faderman, who has written more than a half-dozen books on lesbian feminism, draws a connecting line to lesbian communes in the 1970s.

These loosely affiliated movements were rooted in a utopian notion known as "lesbian nation," a term coined by Village Voice writer Jill Johnston in her book of the same name. An archetypal cultural critic, Johnston argued the only way to effectively survive the patriarchy was for lesbians to cut themselves off from men and free themselves from all male-dominated institutions—i.e, capitalist society at large. An immediate way to put theory into practice was to establish women-only, lesbian-only communes. Thousands of women hit the road.

"I think many lesbian feminists came from a personal history of radicalism in the 60s; some of them were a part of the hippie communes," said Faderman. 'The idea for lesbian-only communes soon spread all over the country—there were lesbian feminist communes in the mountains, the forests, everywhere that lesbian feminists felt that they could get away from the patriarchy and start over again."

Communes weren't only found in remote, rural areas, Faderman explained. One of the earliest urban communes was a cluster of adjoining apartments in Washington, DC known as The Furies Collective. Though short-lived, it served as a sort of cocoon to a resolute band of young women who would go on to work as academics, artists, documentarians and in other influential positions in their communities. While fewer than twenty women lived there, they collectively published a newspaper, The Furies, which was distributed nationally and helped popularize the separatist ideals of rejecting mainstream society.

And while The Furies focused narrowly on the wellbeing of the Ls, leaving the GBTQs out of their utopian vision, Faderman sees common threads between the commune movement and Stonewall Nation, direct-action groups like Queer Nation in the 90s, and even recent political protests at pride parades this year across the US.

"With the 1970s impulse to separate, it seemed to radical people that it wasn't enough to have a piece of the pie when the whole pie was rotten," said Faderman. "I think that's always been behind these radical movements—to make a protest of assimilation in mainstream society. I think the same thing is true with radicals today who see pride parades as overtaken by corporations and police forces."

Radicals often saw separatism as a necessity, something crucial for the survival of LGBTQ people. You can see this reasoning in the way activists framed the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom's declaration of independence from Australia. Much of their website is a trove of silly curiosities and factoids, including a biography claiming the emperor is distantly related to all of Europe's major royal houses. But the declaration of independence itself is a largely sobering survey of atrocities gay people still endure around the world. "In countries where we have lived for centuries, we are still cried down as strangers," it reads. "In the world as it is now and for an indefinite period … I think we shall not be left in peace."

Of course, a desire for separatism, broadly speaking, and a desire for an independent queer state are not one and the same. A separatist ideology might underpin contemporary radical activism in the LGBTQ community, though maybe only the tiniest sliver of those activists might be aware of a nationalist movement. But it's a lingering hunch that LGBTQ people might never fully transcend discrimination and prejudice that keeps the far-fetched dream of an independent queer nation alive in the minds of a few.

Though the Coral Sea Islands may never be the place. Despite seldom activity on the kingdom's Facebook page, activists haven't made any progress toward settlement or international recognition in the past decade. Instead, they've mostly made headlines.

"The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom experiment failed for various reasons, but it deserves credit for reviving interest in gay nationalism," Viktor Zimmermann told me. As the Cologne, Germany-based executive officer of the Gay Homeland Foundation, which he describes as a "think tank" for queer nationalism, he's made headlines of his own for promoting the idea of an independent gay state.

What precisely would such a state look like? Zimmermann paints with broad strokes, drawing comparisons to ideas in early Zionism: An independent nation might offer citizenship to LGBTQ people everywhere, he suggests. It'd be a territory that could welcome refugees from countries where their lives are threatened. A utopia a la Jackson's Alpine, but on an even grander, more ambitious scale.

But Zimmermann acknowledges that his cause has its share of challenges. "The project of the gay state is mostly unknown in the gay community worldwide," he said. "Interestingly, since acceptance of gay people has increased, there is much less internalized homophobia among young people, thus also more readiness to see the positive potential of the project."

He recognizes that the viability of any such campaign depends on awareness building, which is the present focus of the foundation.

Thankfully, there's a proven PR method in the queer nationalist's bag of tricks: board the Gayflower, blast Gloria Gaynor and sail straight into the Sunday pages while belting out the words of the anthem: "Why not try to see things from a different angle?"

Follow Jon Shadel on Twitter.



from vice http://ift.tt/2u7Dae6
via cheap web hosting

Could Ketamine Cure Addiction?

The tube was full of translucent solution. It coiled into Timmy's arm, shimmering in the fluorescent lights of the hospital. There was nothing to feel at first, except a lightheadedness—probably nerves, Timmy reasoned.

Five minutes passed. Ten. Then, faint nausea began pooling at the base of Timmy's throat. He was becoming lighter. Just 15 minutes ago, he'd felt tethered to his rigid frame. Now his body coalesced with the world around it. He was leaking through his papier-mache skin. Adrift from his body, he began floating up and over it, like water on mercury.

"It's this strange thing of feeling in your body, but not in your body at the same time," he said, as the researchers around him took notes.

Timmy had taken ketamine before at parties, where getting into the "K-hole"—a state of intense dissociation—was the point.

The difference this time was that Timmy was in a hospital, not at a party. And the ketamine in his veins was there to help him stop drinking—by weakening his memories of the pleasure he associates with alcohol. Timmy was one of 90 hazardous drinkers participating in the first-ever human study to see if it can help them cut down their drinking.


WATCH: The Eternal K-Hole of the Spotless Mind


It's the subject of Eternal K-Hole of the Spotless Mind, VICE's new film, which you can watch above. The results of the study are not yet known—the University College London (UCL) team are currently analyzing the data they collected.

However, the experiment builds on years of research that shows that ketamine has a unique potential to weaken memories safely. And if researchers are successful, they will likely not only impact the way we treat addiction, PTSD, and phobias, but will also end a global search for a forgetting pill: A drug that can safely target unwanted memories, and weaken them forever.

This search started 17 years ago, when a team of Canadian researchers—led by Karim Nader—conducted a now famous experiment.

They conditioned rats to associate a tone with a shock. The rats froze whenever the tone was played because they remembered that it was associated with pain. A "fear memory" had been created.

Next, the researchers gave the rats a drug called anisomycin, which inhibits protein synthesis. When this was administered six hours after playing the tone, it had no effect on the rats. But when the researchers gave the drug soon after playing the tone, the rats seemed to forget the association. Playing the tone no longer scared them.

The research suggested that each time a memory is recalled, it enters a "labile" period—a fragile state where it can be altered or weakened. Protein synthesis is required so that memories can be packed away properly—or stabilized—but the anisomycin was preventing this.

Nader's research had huge implications. If this drug could weaken fear memories, then why not other memories? Researchers could foresee potential clinical applications in PTSD, phobias, and addiction. Except there was one problem: anisomycin is toxic in humans.

Around the same time, ketamine's effects on memory were being studied by a team of researchers at UCL, led by professor Helen Valerie Curran. They had published papers from April of 2000 onwards that showed that ketamine had a profound impact on short and long-term memory.

"It's a bit like opening up a Word document on your computer, making a lot of changes and then—instead of re-saving it—pulling the plug, so that you might potentially lose the file completely."

Dr. Ravi Das was part of a different team of researchers in UCL's psychopharmacology unit who wondered whether this effect could be used to target specific memories. "Memories are essentially networks of connections in your brain, and the strength between those connections are determined by [the NMDA] receptor," said Das.

The researchers theorized that blocking the NMDA receptor when a memory is recalled could block the cellular processes that are required for that memory to be re-stabilized. Ketamine happened to be very good at blocking that receptor.

"It's a bit like opening up a Word document on your computer, making a lot of changes and then—instead of re-saving it—pulling the plug, so that you might potentially lose the file completely. That's the kind of thing we're trying to do by giving ketamine straight after destabilizing people's drinking memories."

Memory is the driving force of addiction because it reminds us of the pleasure that we associate with a drug.

"Your brain's really well adapted to learning about rewards," said Dr. Das. "Addictive drugs like alcohol activate the reward centers in your brain, so when you have a drink, for instance, your brain's learning about all the things in the environment that are associated with that drink and that rewarding effect."

The clink of a glass, the sight of a beer, and all the associated sensory stimuli are memory associations that drive cravings—a powerful motivational response that can be hard to resist.

"What we're trying to do is break down those memory links between things in the environment that trigger cravings and that kind of automatic use of drugs. So we think that by destabilizing people's memories and giving them ketamine, we might be able to weaken them."

Loosening the grip that triggers have over users presents another interesting possibility: People with hazardous drinking patterns may be able to return to moderate levels of drinking, rather than abstaining completely.

In the film, Timmy returns to drinking after several weeks of abstinence, but he is drinking far less than before.

"I think whether people go for moderation or abstinence really depends on the individual," said Dr. Das. "Some people need to be completely abstinent. Other people will be able to handle moderation."

The experiment could provide "a helping hand by reducing those triggered urges so people can regain control, and for some that will be drinking less; for others that will be not drinking."

Follow Ben Bryant on Twitter.



from vice http://ift.tt/2suPJhG
via cheap web hosting

People's Most Horrific Subway Stories in Six Words

The subway system in New York is currently broken—a "state of emergency," in fact. Delays and overcrowding have become commonplace (not to mention sex crimes), ravens are disemboweling live pigeons on the platforms, and the guy in charge of the whole system is in hiding. (This runaway bus is the state of the MTA right now, basically.) Because of all this recent trouble, it's easy to forget: the subway has always been a hellhole. And not just in New York. If you've ridden the subway anywhere, chances are you've seen some shit go down underground. Everyone has a horror story—an inevitability when you cram people together in a tunnel at all hours of the day and night. As such, we asked friends and co-workers to sum up the most horrible, stomach churning nightmares they've encountered on the subway in six words.

"Man drops pants, poop blasts window." - Lauren, 25

"Pissed on myself at Canal Street." - Larry, 29

"All mine are about strangers' dicks." - Pilot, 29

"Saw man die on third rail." - Eve, 23

"Saw my first penis, was 12." - Eve, 23

"Goth fights nurse over spilled coffee." - Eve, 23

"Got robbed, had complete mental breakdown." - Eve, 23

"Train hit guy, he didn't die." - Alex, 27

"Second Avenue, man pees on rat." - Peter, 22

"Half-naked teens brawled in aisle." - Harry, 30

"Lifted my shirt licked my nipple." - Jonathan, 30

"Hasidic man made 'eat pussy' sign." - Lia, 26

"Girl eating syrupy Pancakes with hands." - Brian, 43

"Woman painting nails, huge polish headache." - Tara, 23

"Heard man raving about past murders." - Alison, 32


"Dropped her sweatpants, took a crap." - Mike, 36

"Squeaky dirty rats scampering on tracks." - Leah, 34

"Ball of hair whipping around platform." - Keith, 24

"Dude hocked a loogie on floor." - Jill, 32

"Hot. Baby wailing. Puke on steps." - Kate, 31

"Passed out bum had pissed himself." - Kyle, 29

"Some nasty asshole exposed his penis." - Jess, 27

"Whipped out dick. Peed in bottle." - Kelly, 26

"Lady left dirty diaper on seat." - Marc, 26

"Two people fucking. We all saw." - Melanie, 35

"Used tampon rolling around floor." - Pete, 28

"Train delayed. Missed best friend's wedding." - Brooke, 36

"Full on fight between school children." - Brie, 34

"Rancid lo mein splattered on floor." - Noah, 23

"Blood on several seats. Period? Stabbing?" - Jenna, 31

"Several snot rockets onto train tracks." - Val, 36

"Fake nails in a small pile." - Beth, 31

"Awkward handjob on packed subway car." - Darcy, 29

"A dirty wig on the floor." - Chloe, 25

"Platform flooded. Dirty needles washed up." - Oliver, 25

"Drunk guy barfing Jagerbombs and burrito." - Andrea, 32

"Transphobe sees me, boards another car." - Marissa, 25

"Guy got stabbed in the ear." - Arlene, 65

"People who bring their snakes. WTF?" - Annie, 30

"Vomited after drinking red Gatorade." - Jessica, 35

"Got stuck in a closing door." - Mary, 28

"Waited two hours for L train." - Joey, 32

"Saw a girl fall onto tracks." - Nora, 30

"Used condom on seat. I gagged." - Penelope, 26

"Old man wearing shorts. Saw balls." - Lauren, 33

Follow Anna Goldfarb on Twitter.



from vice http://ift.tt/2sZNwhq
via cheap web hosting

That Time the Kid Mero's Friend Took Too Much Xanax on New Year's Eve

On Thursday, VICELAND aired a new episode of PARTY LEGENDS—a show that collects celebrities' unforgettable party stories and animates them with the help of gifted young artists. This week we heard some wild stories from the ATL Twins, Prince Markie Dee, Chilli from TLC, and VICELAND's own Kid Mero.

We've recapped our favorite parts of Mero's story—where VICELAND host detailed a particularly stressful New Years Eve—for your viewing pleasure in GIFs below.

"Yo, what's up? This is Kid Mero, the Human Do-Rag Flap, the Dominican Don Dada. My whole shit started on New Year's Eve. I was trying to avoid a friend of mine—you know you always have that friend in your crew who's always doing too much? I'm trying to avoid this guy named Mase on the way to my actual destination, which is my girl's apartment."

"I hit a bodega to get some material, and my man who I was trying to avoid is at the bodega. So I see him, and he's like 'Yo, what you go going on tonight, bro?' I was like, 'Yo, I'm about to go meet up with this girl. You know what I'm saying? Like, just chill shit.'"

"And he's like, 'Yo, everybody's curbing my calls. Nobody wants to hang out with me.'"

"This is fucked up. It's New Year's Eve. I was like, 'All right, bro. You can come hang out with me. This girl's cool. I think she has a roommate. Maybe she'll like you or whatever.'"

"I would like to preface this by saying that this dude Mase turns into the Green Goblin whenever he ingests Xanax bars. So I told him—very explicitly—'Yo, I'll chill with you tonight, my guy. We can do whatever you want. Just no Xanax.' He's like, 'Yo, no doubt, my nigga. I got you.'"

"We get in the car, and what is in this guy's cup holder but a giant, unlabeled bottle of fucking Xanax bars, which he immediately starts to throw down his gullet."

"This guy drives wild erratically to this girl's apartment and parks all funny on the street. We get upstairs, and I already see that the drugs are taking their hold on him. We walk into the apartment, and immediately my homegirl's roommate looks at him and I could tell that she's saying, like, Yo, this dude, like, yo, good looking. You know, whatever."

"Over the course of the night, this dude just keeps getting more and more aggressive and gangster, while the girls are getting more and more, like, sexually aggressive."

"We leave the party, along with a couple of other party denizens and get into an elevator. There's a very popular game in the hood that we play called 'corners' where if you get into an elevator, everybody gets into a corner. If there's no corner, you stand in the middle, and people just punch you until you get to your destination. We get into the elevator and the Xanax magician yells, 'corners!'"

"My hood instinct is to immediately hit a corner, my homegirl moved to hit a corner, the other dudes in the elevator knew to hit a corner, but Mase's girl did not know to hit a corner."

"And therefore, got punched in the chest with the force of 16 hurricanes by Mase himself."

"Now I know what Steph Curry felt like, because my man blew a 3-1 lead in the finals. That girl was all ready to go. And he decided, instead, to punch her right in the mammary gland and fuck up his whole night."

"This ended up working out for me, because we left the party, and my man just disappeared into a Xanax mist. So we went and got the $5 snack box and the Kid Mero went back to the apartment and got a double blow job.

Ladies and gentlemen, Happy New Year."

You can catch PARTY LEGENDS Thursdays at 10:00 PM on VICELAND. Find out how to watch here.



from vice http://ift.tt/2usqAWi
via cheap web hosting

Cop Who Made ‘Black People Have Met Their Match’ Video Suspended

A Boston police officer has been suspended for six months without pay for making a racist video and sharing it with his buddies on the force, the Boston Globe reports.

William B. Evans, the city's police commissioner, announced the decision to suspend Joseph DeAngelo Jr. on Thursday. He's been on leave since June 15, when he first admitted to making the video.

DeAngelo told investigators the video—shot like a movie trailer—was meant to be a joke, but it doesn't sound all that funny. According to the Globe, the words "in the fight between good and evil comes an unlikely pair" flash across the screen before the first shot: a still of Officer Dennis Leahy and his dog, who has one leg in a cast.

Deangelo Jr. tags the would-be film's heroes as "an inept cop" and a "a dog with a limp" before going on to reveal the ostensible villains. The next shot is a photo of several black women, overlaid with these words: "Black people have met their match."

Commissioner Evans told the Globe Deangelo Jr. sent the "trailer" to a couple cops and a handful of his other buddies. Word got around to the department, which mounted an investigation revealing that Leahy didn't know he was being recorded, and wasn't complicit in making the video. DeAngelo, however, admitted that what he did was decidedly fucked up.

"I offer a deep and sincere apology for the thoughtless, childish, insensitive, and offensive racial references contained in [the] video," he wrote in an open letter. "We all make mistakes in life... I made a big one."

CBS Boston reports DeAngelo patrols Roxbury, a Boston neighborhood whose population is about 55 percent black, according to the 2010 census.

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.



from vice http://ift.tt/2suKX3N
via cheap web hosting

Women Share the Worst Opening Lines They’ve Gotten on Tinder

Trump's Vulgarity Is Not the Problem

Welcome to Evesplaining, politics writer Eve Peyser's column about why everyone else is wrong and she's right.

Every time liberals lose their shit over Trump's vulgarity of the week, I wonder if there's anything to the often-overhyped notion that the president's childish antics are a "distraction" from the real issues, whatever those are. The fact that Trump is spending his days feuding with morning show hosts and whining about the "fake media" is bad, obviously, but it's not what ultimately makes him such a lousy president.

After Trump's latest Twitter meltdown—launching a misogynist attack against Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski—Preet Bharara, the US attorney that Trump fired in March after previously promises to keep him on, took to the social network to share his take, which, as it turns out, is the pinnacle how a prominent Resistance leaders miss the point.

Bharara's stance is one often taken by opposition figures who want to appear to be above the fray. This isn't about partisanship, they intone nobly. It's about civility and norms, the foundation of our democracy.

This sounds nice, but ignores the human lives affected by the GOP dogma Trump is spending his presidency advancing. As Fusion's Hamilton Nolan recently wrote, "Civility seems like a pressing matter when you already have everything else you require." If the Medicaid cut that Trump and his Republican allies have endorsed will directly affect your life, his tweets about someone's plastic surgery might not be your primary concern.

Of course, Trump's distinctly unpresidential nature is as embarrassing as it is vile and entertaining—an annoyance, a constant reminder of what an immature sexist prick he is—and it could very well be hazardous to our national security.

But imagine a president who was just as uncouth as Trump but embraced a set of actually populist positions: universal health insurance, a minimum wage hike, and an increase in infrastructure spending paid for by taxes on the wealthy. Would his boorish behavior still be a problem? Sure, but the whole charade wouldn't be nearly as sinister.

The indecency, dishonesty, volatile temperament, and shamelessness Bharara is so peeved by certainly contribute to America seeming more unhinged by the month. But the fundamental problem with Trump is that he is a Republican, and is governing as such. Trump's flamboyant heartlessness, his pure rage, is exacerbated by him belonging to a party that aims to sabotage social services, cut taxes for rich, deregulate the economy, and build up the military at the expense of all other government functions. And really, what's more vulgar than that?

Follow Eve Peyser on Twitter.



from vice http://ift.tt/2u7boOW
via cheap web hosting

Why I'll Be Skipping Pride This Year

NASA Swears They Aren't Hiding Slave Children on Mars

Alex Jones—the bellowing conspiracy dynamo who sometimes plays an animated bellowing conspiracy dynamo—dropped some heavy knowledge on his Infowars viewers Thursday, as his guest claimed that NASA is secretly colonizing Mars with kidnapped child slaves, MediaMatters reports.

Jones invited ex-CIA Trump fan Robert David Steele onto Thursday's program, and the pair launched into a wholly rational discourse on the existence of illicit Martian slave youths.

"This may strike your listeners as way out, but we actually believe that there is a colony on Mars that is populated by children who were kidnapped and sent into space on a 20-year ride," Steele says.

Jones doesn't miss a beat.

"I know that 90 percent of the NASA missions are secret and I've been told by high level NASA engineers that you have no idea, there is so much stuff going on," Jones responds. "I don't know about Mars bases, but I know they've created massive, thousands of different types of chimeras that are alien lifeforms on this earth now."

Jones may throw the word "chimera" around more casually than Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible 2, but Steele's conspiracy theory is pretty flimsy even for Infowars. Nevertheless, NASA felt it necessary to set down their beakers of rocket fuel or whatever and clear the air on the issue. As one might expect, the agency clarified that there is not, in fact, a space child slave colony on Mars. We haven't managed to put space-adults there yet, much less space-kids.

"There are no humans on Mars," NASA spokesman Guy Webster told the Daily Beast on Thursday, presumably releasing an exhausted sigh while pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "There are active rovers on Mars. There was a rumor going around last week that there weren't—there are. But there are no humans."

Huh. Seems a little suspicious. Isn't that exactly what you'd say if an angry internet buffoon inadvertently stumbled across your dastardly space plot?

Watch the entire batshit Infowars segment above and marvel at the fact that a major government agency felt obligated to respond.



from vice http://ift.tt/2sZaTYv
via cheap web hosting

Children for Sale: The Trafficking Ring Selling Babies from the Slums to Rich Couples

A vast underground network of traffickers has made a living convincing poor mothers in Bulgaria to sell their infants to rich Greek couples. From the courts, to the slums, to the NGOs fighting to put an end to the practice, VICE Greece took a deep dive into how the trafficking ring functions—and the toll it takes on both the mothers and their children.

from vice http://ift.tt/2sZedmN
via cheap web hosting

Need a Lawyer? Trump Wants to Make it Harder if You're Poor

When Collin Tierney walked into a job fair for law school students interested in defending suspected criminals in 2011, he was shocked by what he saw. At table after table, prospective and recent grads were lined up in the dozens for interviews at public defender offices across the country. The lawyers sent to chat with prospective employees weren't prepared for the massive amount of interest, but if they had been paying attention to the calendar, they might have known better.

In 2007, around the time these nascent lawyers were considering whether to go to law school, Congress instituted the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. That made law school incredibly affordable by forgiving student loans hanging over students who worked in public service for at least ten years.

Tierney was astounded.

"These offices had no idea what to do with the amount of people that were suddenly applying for jobs," he told me. "You had editors in chiefs of prestigious law journals, you had people that worked in federal government and corporate positions before law school... applying. People at the top of their class, and you had a lot of people like me who made a very conscious decision to go to law school to become a public defender. That large group didn't exist before 2007."

Tierney is now a public defender in Minneapolis, and still paying off his $240,000 in law school debt through the PSLF program.


Check out the trailer for the new segment of VICE on HBO about America's public defender crisis, airing Friday, June 30, at 7:30 and 11 PM.


But the program that bolstered the public defender job market—and ever so slightly helped tip the scales towards defense in a criminal justice system that overwhelmingly privileges prosecution—is in danger. In his proposed budget, President Trump has called for the elimination of the debt forgiveness program for anyone taking out loans past July 1, 2018. This spells trouble in the eyes of advocates and experts across the country.

"Public Service Loan Forgiveness has leveled the playing field for graduates with expensive educations so that highly qualified professionals can do work that's in the public interest in spite of the persistently low salaries in many of those fields," said Heather Jarvis, an expert on America's student debt crisis. "It's really critical for providing constitutionally required services, like public defense, to have people with appropriate levels of education, and the cost of education has skyrocketed and doesn't seem to be slowing in that trend."

Even beyond the immediate impact it has on law students, public defender offices nationwide say the cut would winnow a job pool that has steadily grown in size and diversity over the past decade, with public defense emerging as a career choice available to a broad swath of Americans. It would also limit the amount of new lawyers that those offices could hire, as they've come to rely on the loan program to keep salaries relatively low, compared at least to jobs in corporate law.

The result would likely be way fewer public defenders, just as the Trump administration steers the Department of Justice back toward a Reefer Madness approach to drug crimes.

"What we would see if this program is eliminated in terms of recruitment of public defenders is that the demographics would really start to shift, and impact the abilities of these offices to really help the communities they serve," said Radhika Singh Miller, the director of the Civil Legal Aid Initiative at the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA). Singh Miller previously worked for Equal Justice Works, which organizes the job fair that Tierney attended, and saw firsthand the impact that the PSLF has had on interest in public defense.

According to a 2015 report commissioned by the NLADA, 70 percent of public defenders surveyed took or remained employed at their job because of the federal loan forgiveness program. The program has worked to staff almost entire offices in cities where defenders' low salaries don't come close to matching the cost of living, like in Brooklyn, New York.

At Brooklyn Defender Services, both Nabila Taj and Talia Peleg, two graduates of CUNY Law School, take advantage of the PSLF program to provide immigrant defense. Neither of them would have been able to afford to live in the city and work their jobs if it wasn't for the program, they said.

"If I were not in this program, I would be paying about one-third of my salary into loans, and I would probably only be able to afford rent and maybe dinner once a week," Taj told me. "Currently I pay $200 a month, as opposed to $1,000, and that's a huge difference when I'm taking home $63,000 a year, before taxes."

Peleg, through her work, has been able to win important victories for immigrants detained in New York City, and the case of one client she represented was the basis for a second circuit federal court case where it was decided that immigrants in New York couldn't be held longer than six months without a bail hearing.

"You would see a huge change in applicants without this program," said Peleg, the daughter of immigrants herself. "Lawyering shouldn't be only for the wealthy, and social justice movement lawyering needs to come from within the community. This proposal would absolutely make this career a non-starter."

According to her, many of the lawyers who worked on the second circuit case were able to become lawyers because of the PSLF.

If you ask public defenders, and especially immigration lawyers, the Trump administration is pursuing a two-pronged attack against due process: While enforcement is increased and alternatives to incarceration de-prioritized, the already marginal amounts of funding (at least in comparison to prosecutor's offices) available to public defenders could dry up overnight. This would also impact lawyers working on non-immigration civil cases, like those involved in consumer protection.

Spencer Watson, a rising third-year at Berkeley Law School, is interning this summer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That's the brainchild of US Senator Elizabeth Warren, and the agency that has been in the cross-hairs of conservative legislators as much as any other since its establishment in 2011. Watson, who was raised in a single-parent household, is using the PSLF to go into public interest law. Before law school, he worked as a credit counselor.

"The one-two punch, in going after the ability of folks to access reasonable capital, reasonable debt, reasonable credit, and also cutting the ability of the government to fill that space with loans—you're going to see a lot of bad loans made," Watson told me. "What's even more tragic than ending the program, is that the people that would now be shunted out are the people who have already been left out for so long. We need those perspectives, we need those views. We need them in government and positions of power."

Trump's budget proposals have already faced stiff bipartisan resistance in the Senate, especially the proposal to phase out the PSLF. But even the Obama administration tried to place caps on the loan program, recognizing that its popularity would begin to cost the government a lot of revenue once loans began to qualify for forgiveness (that tab, coincidentally, starts being paid this year, by a federal government more intent on cutting costs than ever). Still, advocates of the program say that's no reason to phase it out all together—unless you think poor people do just fine in America's criminal justice system without real help.

"The impact of cuts to this program in terms of adequate representation would be dramatic," Singh Miller said. "Caseloads would increase, experienced lawyers would leave, social workers would be cut, it would become that much harder for clients to get the defense they deserve."

Of course, given the general tenor of the Trump administration when it comes to the rule of law, it's fair to wonder if that's exactly what they have in mind.

Follow Max Rivlin-Nadler on Twitter.



from vice http://ift.tt/2sZ9WQb
via cheap web hosting

Eerie Scenes from Death Valley's Hottest Town

The History Behind New York City’s Crumbling Subway

In early 2019 the L train in New York City will shut down for 15 months to repair damage caused during Hurricane Sandy. Leading up to the closure, VICE will be providing relevant updates and proposals, as well as profiles of community members and businesses along the affected route in a series we're calling Tunnel Vision. Read more about the project here .

To many transit observers, the meltdown of New York City's subways—and Thursday's announcement by Governor Cuomo that the system is in a "state of emergency"—was only a matter of time. Here's a century-old system, bearing the brunt of millions of passengers every day, that, for decades, went underinvested in by elected officials. Time has taken its toll, and now, to fix it entirely, experts say the entire rapid transit system—the most used in the Western world—would need to go offline.

That is why the L train shutdown, which VICE has been tracking since April, is a microcosm of a larger issue: when Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the Canarsie Tunnel, it also exposed the fact that the tunnel hadn't been properly maintained in years. And knowing that history is integral to understanding what this shutdown tells us about the larger state of New York's infrastructure, and how it got this way. That, at least, is Clifton Hood's argument.

"Since the early 1920s, the subway system has been beset by chronic financial woes, and there's never been a satisfactory political solution to it," he told me. "And boy, that sure seems borne out in the last couple of years, too."

Hood is a history professor and the author of 722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York . A renowned voice on New York's transit past, he seemed like the perfect person to ask, essentially, the question that's been on a lot of New Yorkers' minds lately: what the hell happened?

The subway system was originally built and operated by two private companies: the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT). The first contracts with the city—known as Contract #1, in 1904, and #2, in 1907—included 28 stations between City Hall and 145th Street, as well as extensions to Atlantic and Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn. And nearly the minute these subways opened, they exploded with people, and crowding.

"Turns out the subways made a lot of money, and were wildly more popular than anyone anticipated. So the decision was made: let's greatly expand the system," Hood said. "We can reach many quarters of the city, and we can make a lot of money doing it… And let's bring these two companies in, and have them compete with one another. At the same time, let's use the subway system to deconcentrate the population from Manhattan, and move them out to Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx."

Thus, what were known as the Dual Contracts—Contracts #3 and #4, in 1913—were born, coordinated between the city, IRT, and the newly formed Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT). The deal, worth $366 million then, led to the above ground subway lines in the outer boroughs, and the refurbishment and expansion of those that already existed, well into the rural pastures of Queens, the industrial sectors of Brooklyn, and the growing immigrant communities of the Bronx. Most of the subway system that exists today comes from the Dual Contracts, including the L.

The L train, or what would become it, began operating in 1924 on an old steam-powered railway track after the Canarsie Tunnel was constructed underneath the East River. The "14th Street-Eastern District Line" was given the number 16, and ran from Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, to Williamsburg, then known as Brooklyn's "Eastern District."

In 1928, it connected to an existing aboveground train in Canarsie, and, three years later, an extension to Eighth Avenue was added, creating the 10.3-mile-long line we know today. And the impact was felt immediately. "It certainly leads to the expansion of these communities," Hood said. "Nobody expected Williamsburg to be what it is today, but it sure leads to the growth of Canarsie and places like that."

What these subways would to do to the city writ large, he added, can hardly be understated; they gave life to the hustle and bustle that the city's economy is fueled by, and New York has never been the same since. "It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that, and you can use the L as an example of this, that it leads to the making of a modern metropolis," he told me. "The city of the five boroughs—or, at least, the four boroughs—gets connected socially and economically the way the consolidation of the city in 1898 had done it politically."

Finalized by the purchase of BMT in 1940, the city would eventually acquire the subway system, fusing the two private companies' networks into one, overarching web of trains. When numbers were dropped in 1967, the 16 line became the LL—the second L for "local"—and then just the L, in 1985.

The rest is history. As mentioned on this site, the L's ridership skyrocketed in the aughts, as Manhattanites clamored for cheaper digs and gentrified spaces in Brooklyn. A $443 million fleet of subway cars introduced in 2002 were unable to meet demand by 2006, and new cars had to be ordered soon after. A years-long computerized revamping of the L train's signal system—a digital transition that is still not finished systemwide—was completed in 2012, and led to the line's countdown clocks, which were some of the first seen in New York City's underground.

Aside from that, though, general maintenance of the system's infrastructure—the tracks, the tunnels, the technology—wasn't as much of a priority to elected officials who wanted to cut ribbons, Hood said; a reality that even Governor Andrew Cuomo admitted recently. The desire for the public sector to think and build big with mass transit died after the New Deal. Not to mention the fact that subways are very costly public goods, and, at that time, people were leaving the city en masse for a burgeoning suburbia. Building highways seemed more prevalent than building new subway lines.

With the city unable to pay for it anymore, Albany took over the subway system in 1968, forming the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which now oversees two commuter lines (the Metro-North and Long Island Rail Roads), the buses, and nine bridges and tunnels, making it the largest public transit authority in the country. As time passed, the price tag for fixing the subways grew, and the MTA's capital budget just couldn't keep pace. Now, even estimates of $100 billion—which on Thursday is what Governor Cuomo pledged to devote to the project—to bring everything up to a state of good repair might be low-balling it.

So of course, it caught up to us, with the recent epidemic of subway delays and closures being a symptom of that problem. Other world capitals, like London and Tokyo, continue to build new lines and update their systems in a timely manner, while New York has fallen largely behind. This is, perhaps, the most telling tale of this country's infrastructure issue: what does it say about America when her most important financial and cultural capital can barely move?

"The fundamental problem has been, where is the political will and wherewithal to do that? It's the money, stupid," Hood told me. "New York is a booming city, with the economy going great guns, and the population increasing, and it's becoming even more of a nexus of immigration. And we're stuck with this crumbling subway system that is absolutely essential to the city's existence, and that is fundamentally a political problem."

Now, Hood continued, the battle over New York City's mass transit woes has been one of attrition, where officials must choose between what are essentially all bad outcomes to keep this age-old system afloat. The L train shutdown is a victim of that decision, and just how much longer that balancing act can hold may be a question that history cannot answer.

"The notion that we have to make choices is just ingrained in our thinking," he said. "It's interesting: a lot of the coverage in the New York Times has been, 'Well, maybe we did make a mistake by building the Second Avenue Subway, the 7 train extension, and the East River Access, and maybe we should've put more money in maintaining the signals."

"But you can also add, why not do everything? Isn't all of this important for the lifeblood of the largest and most important city in the country?"

Follow John Surico on Twitter.



from vice http://ift.tt/2txSdRo
via cheap web hosting

The Third Season of 'Rick & Morty' Drops Next Month

On Thursday night, Rick and Morty co-creators and comedic demigods Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland held a surprise livestream on Adult Swim.

Unfortunately, we didn't get a new episode or a live brawl, but the livestream offered up something just as good—a premiere date for the long-awaited third season, only a mere month away. Harmon and Roiland are going to show us what they got starting on July 30.

Season two wrapped back in the fall of 2015, and it's taken an excruciatingly long time for Harmon and Roiland to finish up this latest one. But judging by what they've put out so far, season three is worth the wait.

We already got to see the stellar first episode, thanks to that surprise April Fool's Day release. And from the look of Thursday's trailer, the rest of the third season will be just as brain-bleedingly wonderful. There's Pickle Rick, some Mad Max: Fury Road desert action, Morty choking a guy out with one humongous arm, and more dopplegangers than the new season of Twin Peaks.

"Welcome to the darkest year of our adventures," Rick tells Morty in the trailer. And welcome to a very schwifty summer, everybody. Wubalubadubdub!

Watch the full trailer above, and catch the season three debut July 30 on Adult Swim.



from vice http://ift.tt/2u6QVd0
via cheap web hosting

The VICE Morning Bulletin

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

Trump Commission Wants to Publish Voter Details
President Trump's Commission on Election Integrity has asked all 50 states for sensitive information on registered voters, including partial Social Security numbers, as part of an investigation into alleged voter fraud. In a letter obtained by VICE News, the commission states the information will be made public. Officials from multiple states, including California and Virginia, have said they will refuse the request.—VICE News

Travel Ban Now Includes Fiancés as Close Family Member
The US State Department has changed the definition of "close" family member for new visa restrictions to include fiancés. Only visa applicants from six Muslim-majority countries with a parent, spouse, sibling (or step-sibling), son, daughter, son-in-law, or daughter-in-law in the US were considered eligible under the travel ban that came into effect Thursday night. But an anonymous official said "fiancés would now be included as close family members."—Reuters

US Reaches $1.4 Billion Weapons Deal with Taiwan
The US State Department has approved a $1.4 billion arms deal with Taiwan. According to one official, the sale of weapons to Taiwan includes torpedoes, missile components, and a radar system. The deal is expected to piss off China, since it considers Taiwan part of its own territory under the longstanding "One China" policy observed by most world powers.—NBC News

House Passes Two Anti-Immigration Bills
The House of Representatives passed two bills Thursday aimed at curbing illegal immigration. One, sometimes known as "Kate's Law," would impose harsher penalties for migrants convicted of crimes who attempt to re-enter the US illegally. The "No Sanctuary for Criminals Act" would block federal grants for cities refusing to comply with deportation enforcement. Apparently satisfied with the outcomes, President Trump tweeted: "MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!"—Washington Post

International News

Germany Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage
The German Parliament voted to legalize same-sex marriage Friday, with 393 lawmakers in support and 226 against. The law gives gay couples the right to marry and adopt children. Although socially conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel voted against the measure, the landmark moment came after she decided not to block it earlier this week.—BBC News

Iraqi Troops Recapture Symbolic ISIS Stronghold in Mosul
Iraqi government forces have seized Mosul's Grand al-Nuri Mosque, where ISIS proclaimed a caliphate three years ago. ISIS fighters remain in some neighborhoods in the Old City, but Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the capture of the ruined mosque marked the end of ISIS' "state of falsehood."—Reuters

French Police Arrest Man Who Attempted Mosque Attack
French cops have arrested a man who tried to drive a car into a crowd outside a mosque in Paris. After trying unsuccessfully to ram through a set of barriers, the driver sped off, crashed, and fled before being captured at his home. No one was injured. The man reportedly said he was wanted revenge for ISIS-linked terrorist attacks in Paris.—The Guardian

Austrian Government Given Permission to Seize Hitler's House
Austria's Constitutional Court has ruled that the government is entitled to seize the former home of Adolf Hitler. It follows a long-running legal battle in which the owner of the house in Braunau am Inn, where Hitler was born, refused to sell. The government now plans to remodel the building and allow a charity working with disabled people to use it.—AP

Everything Else

JAY-Z Drops '4:44' and First Album Visual
JAY-Z has released his 13th studio album, 4:44, on his streaming service Tidal. The album's first visual has also been released, an animated video for new track The Story of O.J., directed by Mark Romanek and Hov.—Vibe

Venus Williams 'At Fault' in Fatal Car Crash Incident
Police in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, say Venus Williams was "at fault" in a car crash that led to the death of a 78-year-old man earlier this month. A police report states witnesses claimed to have seen Williams run a red light colliding with a car carrying 78-year-old Jerome Barson, who died two weeks later. She has not been charged, but the crash is still under investigation.—VICE Sports

The Doors Reps Send Jenners Cease-and-Desist Letter
The Doors' management has dispatched a cease-and-desist letter to Kendall and Kylie Jenner over the pair's T-shirt line that features their faces over images of rock and rap icons. The Notorious B.I.G.'s mother has excoriated the sisters over the $125 T-shirts.—Rolling Stone

Tyler, The Creator Releases Two New Tracks
Tyler, The Creator has put out new songs for the first time since dropping 2015's Cherry Bomb. A$AP Rocky features on "Who Dat Boy," which also comes with a new video, while Frank Ocean features on "911/Mr. Lonely."—Noisey

Chelsea Manning Set to Debut Art Exhibition
Chelsea Manning will open her first art exhibition at the Fridman Gallery in New York in August. The joint show with Heather Dewey-Hagborg will feature self-portraits built from cheek swabs and clips of hair Manning mailed from prison.—i-D

Kraftwerk Bike to Appear in Tour de France
German company Canyon has unveiled a limited-edition bike dedicated to electronic legends Kraftwerk. Only 21 Kraftwerk bikes have been made, and they will be sold to the public for $11,000 each. Cyclist Tony Martin will ride one, at least for a sec, at this year's Tour de France.—Thump



from vice http://ift.tt/2soxdMR
via cheap web hosting