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We Asked Drag Artists at a Family-Friendly Festival if Drag's Gone Mainstream

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RuPaul, international drag champion and mastermind behind the hit American TV show that bears his name, recently said in an interview that drag "will never be mainstream." This weekend London plays host to a "family friendly" festival of contemporary drag, where The Glory – a queer cabaret-driven East End pub – collaborated with cultural behemoth the National Theatre. Together they're set to deliver three days of performance to the type of audience more likely to go for Saturday strolls by the Southbank than glitter their faces up for a night at Sink the Pink (perhaps to Ru's surprise).

With a collaboration on this scale, that's merging alternative culture with one of the most traditional theatre spaces, surely drag's crossed over. Rather than just take RuPaul's word for it, I headed down to the theatre to ask some of the Glory Days performers one question: has drag gone mainstream?

Edith Pilaf

I certainly think with shows like RuPaul's Drag Race, and with drag queens now getting more exposure, it's certainly going more mainstream, but I don't think that necessarily means its underground roots are being compromised. The sort of RuPaul brand of drag is very female impersonation-orientated and the fact that in east London there are women that are drag queens, means it doesn't necessarily have to be one gender pretending to be another – it's really incredible as it's become more about deconstructing gender as an idea.

A Man to Pet

Oh yes, it is definitely more mainstream than it used to be. I started ten years ago and there are more people doing it now, expressing it. It doesn't matter if you are a man or a woman either – I think everyone can express themselves a little bit better when they have some kind of outfit that changes who they are. Prosthetic boobs or a wig, it just gives you a different kind of character, and I think people are currently loving that.

Holestar

It's been mainstream for quite a few years now. Drag Race has changed the whole face of drag completely – everyone's doing it now.

VICE: RuPaul actually said drag could never go mainstream because it's so different.
Pffft, that bitch made it mainstream! And there is a place for drag in the mainstream, as transgender issues especially are changing a hell of a lot, becoming more prevalent and getting major press. I think the general public are becoming more accustomed to not living within gender binaries and the grey areas between. RuPaul is full of shit – go out there perform the shit out of it and change people's perceptions of the binaries by being fabulous.

Adam All

Yes I do think it's becoming more mainstream, but there are limits. As drag kings one of the major things we look at is breaking down those boundaries; if the boundaries weren't there then we wouldn't be able to break them. There will always be boundaries and there will always be things that need to be raised and talked about.

Baby Lame

I've already seen some little queens in the front row that are just like "I wanna put a dress on daddy, I wanna put a dress on!" So I think it looks like drag's going to take over the National. People are becoming more and more genderless so hopefully we won't even realise we're doing drag. That's what I hope it's going to be like.

Mzz Kimberley

It's an exciting time for drag because the general public are starting to see what it's is about; it's not just some men dressed up in women's clothes, going out and miming to records. They've learnt from RuPaul that just putting on makeup is an art form, being creative with the clothes, the dance routines. We don't just go out and get drunk at night time, sleep all day - no. We're not drinking, we're in dance classes, I'm in voice classes - acting classes, speech classes you name it.

Jonny Woo

Lily Savage was pretty mainstream, she was on breakfast TV, she was on Blankety Blank. That was drag going mainstream. What we're doing here with the National Theatre, I don't know if it's so much mainstream as bringing our art and our nonsense and our stupidity and being offered a platform to show it to people. And the National Theatre is acknowledging that.

What a ridiculous statement for RuPaul to make – his "Supermodel (You Better Work)" was a huge pop song. Is that mainstream? If not then what is? Crossdressing a man to a woman, gender politics aside, is still viewed by the mainstream as provocative, weird, difficult and entertaining – there is room for that in mainstream but I think that comes down to how that person behaves in the moment. The sexualised nature of performance can challenge people sometimes.

John Sizzle

It's having a renaissance since probably the 80s. I think the last time there was high-profile drag was Lily Savage during Blankety Blank and when she was doing the Royal Variety show and things like that. It's always been about hasn't it – Dame Edna and that.

Obviously there is a subversive side to it and we don't need to become so mainstream that it's completely acceptable, as it'll lose its power if it just becomes another thing that you see everyday. It has to be a bit darker and a bit naughty.


@theomcinnes

More on VICE:

The Rainbow 'Taches and Spiked Leotards of London's Drag Queens

What You Learn When You Ask Queens Why They Do Drag

Photos of the Fetish Pups and Rainbow Babies of London Pride


A Brief History of Prison Staff Having Relationships with Inmates

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In case you were wondering, if you send a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey to an inmate and also happen to be a nurse who worked in the prison where they're incarcerated, you could wind up banned. This week, 40-year-old nurse Kimberly Hinde picked up a one-year ban for misconduct in public office for doing as much. Of course it wasn't just the book that ended up costing Hinde her job but the fact she'd been found engaging in a relationship with the inmate in question, back in October 2013.

It seems Hinde isn't the only one: even the most cursory glance online can open up pages worth of stories featuring prison staff getting romantically involved with inmates—and often paying the price for it by ending up on the other side of the cell.

Power can be intoxicating in the right situations but what actually seems to be behind the ubiquity of these cases? In normal circumstances, a murderer doesn't seem that attractive a partner—we have a tendency to base our perceptions of people's personalities on their past behaviour, and as a recent Invisibilia podcast episode explored, that can often entail a quiet revulsion towards convicted violent criminals. It doesn't seem like the prime situation in which to feel turned on.

Elie Godsi, a consultant clinical psychologist and author of Violence and Society: Making Sense of Madness and Badness disagrees. "You've got to understand that people aren't murderers all the time, they do things under certain circumstances. They aren't always like that. So they won't see them in the circumstances under which they were violent."

Could that be the case for Anita Whittaker? The 53-year-old prison officer was sentenced to 15 months in jail last May after having an affair with an inmate incarcerated at HM Wormwood Scrubs in London. Whittaker was caught exchanging love letters and amorous texts with Kazadi Kongolo, 35, who'd been jailed in 1999 when he was found guilty of stabbing a teenager to death.

But Godsi also attributes some of this sort of attraction it to "forbidden fruit". "It's really about being excited or attracted by the fact that something is forbidden so it becomes their little secret, something only they know about and which no one else could possibly understand. A 'we love each other against all obstacles' kind of thing."

But what makes staff—guards, nurses—actually invest in these relationships? A lot of the effort is rooted in fantasy, according to Godsi. You can see his point. After all, these couples don't have to contend with the libido-wreckers that ordinary ones have to. They exist in what he calls a "suspended-reality environment, at one level."

He goes on: "You don't live with them, you don't watch them pick their nose, you don't watch them go to the toilet, you don't argue about who does the dishes. It's completely unreal. They're seeing each other in a very limited environment so they can be at their best because what they see of each other is limited."

It's a relationship formed in a completely different boundary-setting that can't survive in the real world. Almost invariably, it's going to end in tears

It's for this reason that Godsi's sceptical that these sorts of couples couldn't necessarily thrive in the 'real' world. That's not to say that all don't, though—just take this female prison guard who says she married an inmate convicted of second-degree manslaughter. They first got together in 2002, before getting married about three years later. That case feels more like an anomaly, as far as Godsi's concerned.

"When people come out and try and have a relationship, it's extremely unlikely it's going to be successful because the strains of being in the real world kicks in. It's a relationship formed in a completely different boundary-setting that can't survive in the real world. Almost invariably, it's going to end in tears."

Obviously, a skewed power dynamic can play its part too, and can often vary depending on the gender of those in the relationship. A 2012 Ministry of Justice study on the family backgrounds of 1,435 newly sentenced prisoners—of whom 1,303 were male—found that 24 percent had been in care at some point in their childhood.

The study also found that 41 percent of the convicts surveyed had observed violence at home while 29 percent had experienced abuse. For male inmates at least, that represents the opportunity for straight female officers to fill an emotional void, as per Godsi's reasoning. "A female prison officer may sense that and may want to make that better in a maternal way," he says. "They sense the vulnerabilities and distress and difficulties the inmate has. They want to mother them. They want to heal them. But I don't think they're setting themselves up as a saviour."

Perhaps that's why the majority of cases that hit the headlines more often than not seem to be female prison staff. Prisoner officer Dawn Sheard wasjailed for 10 months in May after being found to be sexually involved with an inmate while on duty, while in 2012, newspapers reported that prison officer Zanib Khan had juggled exchanging sexually charged calls and letters with four convicts.

WATCH: Jailed for Life for Minor Crimes – the UK's Forgotten Prisoners

For women inmates, though, the power imbalance can be fraught with feeling pressure to create a transactional relationship based on the inmate earning perks and privileges. An inmate speaking anonymously to the Guardian in 2009 said that she'd regularly perform blow jobs in exchange for 'rewards"—namely vodka and drugs. When asked if the relationship was consensual, she replied: "In a way, I suppose. I knew what I was doing; but I wouldn't have looked at him on the outside and only did it for the burn and the vodka. He was a bit arrogant and there were times when I fantasized about biting his cock off."

Another woman interviewed in the piece suggested that by not giving in to the staff's advances, she could scupper her chances of an being let out earlier. "It was part and parcel of prison life," she said. "If you are not going to buy into the approaches made by staff, you will not progress, you will not get the good jobs, or get on the courses that will help you get early release." Essentially, it's as Godsi says: "You can't give consent properly in a relationship where there's a power imbalance."

As for Hinde, she'll be able to return to nursing in a year's time but rest assured, there'll be more like her: high on power, fuelled by fantasy and in a complex emotional web that will endlessly make for red-top newspaper fodder.

@its_me_salma

More on VICE:

Why Do Female Prison Guards Keep Having Sex with Inmates?

How I Break Prison Rules to Keep in Touch with My Family

What British Prison Life Is Like When You're Filthy Rich

Writer's Block: Bangkok Graffiti Matures Amid Beef and Growing Pains

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Part of what makes writing graffiti an exciting challenge in the the US and Europe is the fact that it's illegal. The threat of arrest makes for pounding hearts and breathless adventures. It dictates how much time a graffiti writer will spend painting a spot and forces writers to make stylistic choices. It turns graffiti from a creative pastime into a lifestyle choice and it weeds out the weak. So what if you could paint graffiti on the side of a busy street in broad daylight without permission, and no one cared?

Following my visits to Seoul and Hong Kong, I traveled to Bangkok to learn more about the history and current state of its graffiti culture. During my stay, I met up with CHIP7, a New Jersey native and founder of the illustrious MAYHEM crew (which included, among others, the late SACE, a.k.a. Dash Snow). CHIP has Thai ancestry and has been living in Bangkok full time for several years. When we sat down for coffee in the bustling Siam Square area of Bangkok, he told me,"In Thailand they have an adjective—is it suay as art. It doesn't have that criminal element that it has in other places, where somebody's house got tagged or something. In America somebody would probably call the cops in two seconds. Here, you don't really see that kind of thing. When people see you painting, they usually give a thumbs up." While I heard rumors about plans for increased police enforcement, getting caught in the act, like other police encounters, is still likely to be resolved with a few baht, the local currency, rather than official consequences. Though I asked several writers and locals about graffiti's de jure legal status in Thailand, no one could confirm an answer, as it's handled differently on a case-by-case basis.

Like most graff scenes in Asia, the Thai scene is still fairly young, but it has very distinctive roots. In part, its origins can be traced to the long-running practice by students of competing colleges to mark their territory with spray paint. "We call it institutional graffiti," explained COZ, a young Thai writer who picked up writing graffiti while studying abroad as a young teen and who has since made a name for himself as one of the most talented bombers in the region. "It looks like the LA cholo letters, but it's in Thai. They write their school names and then they beef with other schools." While these students are not graffiti writers, they introduced the use of graffiti tools in their city.

Graffiti from more developed scenes is another major influence in Bangkok, and COZ is not the only Thai artist who got turned on to it abroad. An older writer called CIDER, known for his piecing skills as much as his bubbly throw-ups, lived in California for several years in the 90s where he got connected with MSK, one of the most established graffiti crews in the US, joining the ranks of prominent members such as REVOK, SABER, and RIME, to name just a few. He returned to Thailand in the late 90s and influenced a new generation of graffiti writers who were already looking at American pop culture for inspiration.

"The graff scene really started when CIDER came back from SF," recalled COZ. "At the time, people started noticing it more—from skateboard magazines and music videos and whatnot." While a few, such as local artists CETRU and LOBATT, had been illegally painting cartoonish characters on the street, CIDER introduced the concept of primarily painting letter-based graffiti as it's done in the States. Said COZ, "He brought the modern graffiti back to Thailand and then it started developing."

Yet just as the Bangkok graff scene was starting to bloom, it suffered a serious setback about three years ago. What happened is so complicated and layered that the whole story could take up the length of a book, so we'll only provide the basic details. According to a variety of sources, Thai graff writers got swept up in beef between several warring factions of high-profile vandals from the US, some of whom had spent time in Bangkok. A few locals decided to take sides, and others got drawn into it by association. As a result, the graff scene in Bangkok became stifled by division, distrust, and tough-guy posturing that imitated the attitudes of American writers. The most visible outgrowth was that writers dissed each other's work all over the city. It was ugly, literally, and according to comments I heard from one writer who asked not to be mentioned by his name, it set back the scene by as much as five years.

Fortunately, as the dust gradually cleared over the last year or two, a distinct new crop of relatively young writers saw an opportunity to distinguish themselves with solid work. And while a few kids still play tough guys and war over imaginary turf and other beef, some young Thai writers—among them COZ, FLORE, BEKOS and ROMES—are followingin CIDER's path and painting graffiti that would look at home in New York's Lower East Side as much as on Bangkok's streets, where graffiti has become ubiquitous in the city's central shopping districts and along some of its canals.

As I discovered, painting missions in Bangkok are often more relaxed than in other places. One afternoon, I climbed aboard one of the boats that serve as an important transportation method on the city's many canals along with SADUE 907, another American transplant who now calls Bangkok home, in order to meet up with CHIP at a painting spot further out.

It was the middle of a heat wave, and a rain storm had temporarily cleared the air. We found CHIP and, armed with ice-cold cans of Thai beer, which we drank through straws, according to local custom, proceeded to a spot right on the canal. As the sun slowly set, CHIP and SADUE worked on their pieces, inviting curious glances from pedestrians and passing boats. CHIP painted his distinctive letter-based moniker, filled with wild colors and tricked out with spacey patterns and a tribute to the recently-deceased Prince.

Inspired as much by traditional Thai art as futuristic fantasyscapes conjured by his restless mind, CHIP's graffiti is a cultural hybrid that has become his trademark style in recent years, opening doors to other creative and commercial projects. He is currently working on a short live action film that will accompany a mixtape of music he composed, and he's also produced artwork for global brands such as Red Bull. That said, his ethos remains grounded in the illegal bombing sprees of his youth.

CHIP was positive overall about the prospects for Thai graff culture. As in other Asian countries, there is a temptation to turn short-lived graffiti careers into more lucrative endeavors. Nonetheless, he told me, "there are a lot of really talented artists here! All the temple murals, all this intricate stuff is quite ingrained in the culture, and it's part of the national identity." With time, the Thai graff scene has a unique opportunity to take advantage of lax law enforcement and inject color and creativity into the vibrant urban fabric of Bangkok, forging a distinct legacy in an increasingly internationalized outlaw culture.

See more photos from Ray's visit to Bangkok below.

Ray Mock is the founder of Carnage NYC and has been documenting graffiti in New York and around the world for ten years, publishing more than two dozen limited edition zines and books. Follow him on Instagram.

Photos of Happy Villagers Playing Polo with a Dead Goat

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK

My journey to the plains of Kyrgyzstan comes from a bit of an odd story. I read in the papers that Kazakhstan was scrapping its tourist visa fees and an unpopular, tedious sign-in process for foreigners, to try make the country more "tourist friendly." It didn't take much persuading for my friend Henry and I to book flights to Almaty via Istanbul.

I'd heard Kyrgyzstan was worth visiting and not impossible to get to from Almaty, so we spontaneously decided to give that a go too. We didn't have much knowledge at all of the local area, as we crossed the border from Kazakhstan to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. There is a proper "Soviet meets Silk Road" feel about the place, but we quickly realized we'd need to head out of the city to see more of the area's traditions.

After paying a fee to a fixer who spoke English, he took us out to the countryside and recommended two activities: Ulak Tartysh—more commonly known as dead goat polo—and Kyz Kumay, a game where a group of men on horses chase a woman, who can protect herself with a whip, from a "match-winning kiss."

There was a game of Ulak Tartysh taking place the following day, so we agreed a time and a place and met our fixer the next morning. We had no idea which direction we were heading in, but two and a half hours later we arrived at a small rural village in the Kyrgyz mountains.

The name "dead goat polo" seems to tell you just about everything you'd expect to see but I didn't really understand how you could format rules around a group of 20 guys on horses chasing a carcass. As I soon discovered, I was very wrong. There aren't just rules to Ulak Tartysh, there are full-on international championships that take place, mainly across central Asia and the Middle East. Countries like Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan play against each other in test matches to sell-out crowds.

The field we stood in was around the size of a cricket pitch, surrounded by mountains and sealed off with bulky rocks rather than a rope boundary. Spectators stood in a small watchtower made of scrap metal parts and worn-out tires functioned as 'goals' on the end of the pitch.

Once the 20-odd players arrived on horseback, they picked teams and put on the corresponding red or blue T-shirts before a group of about 13 arrived on a smaller horse, carrying the goat's carcass. Then things kicked off, with the men wrestling for possession of the dead goat before galloping down the field and chucking it in the tire goal. The horses sometimes lost control and ran off the field, right at us spectators, and the game came eventually to a premature end when one of the players fell off his horse and landed awkwardly on his hip. He was eventually OK, though. An occupational hazard.

See more of Stevie's photos from the Kyrgyz mountains below, and his other photography work on his website.

What It’s Like Being a Cop in One of Canada’s Far North First Nations

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Attawapiskat's Indigenous police force may go on strike soon. Photo by Nathan Denette, The Canadian Press

When bullets came flying at Cory Robert, a constable for Canada's largest First Nation police service, he says it took six hours to fly in backup to the remote reserve in northern Ontario where he served as a lone on-duty cop.

"I was working late one night, and got a call that someone was barricading and shooting around," he told VICE. Robert says he called in to the Nishnawbe-Aski Police command centre hundreds of kilometres away, and then headed to the scene alone in negative 25-degree weather. "He shot at me about five times... I was just outside, waiting. Basically my job was to make sure this guy didn't run from his house until support got there."

All cops have war stories, but unlike other Canadian cops, the ones serving far north First Nations work almost entirely alone, with few on-the-ground supports. Indigenous cops VICE spoke to said they work around the clock in poor and isolated communities, without the same equipment and resources as their non-Indigenous urban counterparts.

Robert says he's rarely had a partner during his time working for the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service, which covers policing for two-thirds of Ontario's north. He says he's taken emergency calls at all hours of the day and night, even when he's not supposed to be working.

"You're not on call, but because you're the only officer, the call comes in. You just grow accustomed to answering the radio," Robert said. "You learn to work through it. I'm not saying this is OK, but I've worked 36 hours straight."

"I'm up in Wunnumin Lake First Nation now, I'm working alone. I have no backup or anything," Senior Constable William Michalchuk told VICE. Michalchuk has seen his own share of out-of-control situations working in a community of 700 people, from youth suicides to fires caused by oil drum heating.

Cops VICE spoke to also described run-down buildings and outdated equipment. When Michalchuk first started with the force in 2003, his Wunnumin Lake First Nation detachment burned down in the first few months. "We converted a two-bedroom house into a police station. The two bedrooms were the holding cells, with no flushing toilets."

Michalchuk says the Wunnumin Lake station has since moved into a newer building, but even that is beginning to fall apart. "We're having issues with the foundations," he said. "They're starting to cave in."

Jay Storkson, president of the union local that represents the Ontario First Nation police force, says the tough conditions are the result of chronic underfunding from two levels of government, and go against some basic police standards. He says no non-Indigenous cops are made to answer calls involving guns, domestic violence or alcohol alone.

Storkson told VICE the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service has been asking for funding increases from both provincial and federal governments for about eight years. Storkson wants the government to step in with about $15 million to cover more backup officers. His police union recently voted unanimously in favour of a strike vote, and could walk off the job by the end of the summer.

So far, neither the provincial nor federal government has made a commitment to funding First Nation policing or send representation to union talks. Lauren Souch, a communications advisor for Ontario's ministry of community safety and correctional services, told VICE the ministry is continuing to monitor the situation, and has been in touch with the Nishawbe Aski Nation's grand chief. Dan Brien with the federal safety ministry said they were invited, but "won't be part of the conciliation."

Storkson said he's disappointed the government won't be coming to the bargaining table, and says the funding gap is part of a racist system that hurts Indigenous communities. He says his officers are paid 18 percent less than the Ontario Provincial Police, who do the same training and are given far better resources. "It's a government system. It's set up this way, and it can be fixed, but there's no will to fix it, in my opinion."

If the Nishawbe Aski Police walk out, part of the government's contingency plan would be to bring in the OPP, at a cost of about $90 million. "Why is that even an option?" asked Storkson. "They're entertaining spending almost $100 million, and all we're asking is for a 10 to 15 million dollar bump in our funding."

Officers VICE spoke to said the system seems "set up to fail." The Indigenous police force isn't able to give any special attention to issues like poverty, youth suicide or addiction, and the cops are left feeling helpless. "You can't drink the water in half of my communities, there's three, four families stacked up in houses. They basically created ghettos in the middle of the forest," Storkson said. "At some point it's going to break down. "

Storkson says he's seen rookie officers forced to cut down 10-year-old kids from ropes after they hanged themselves. "And when your call's done, there's no debrief—you go and look at a wall. There's nobody there to talk to," he said. Rashes of youth suicides have recently hit places like Fort Severn and Attawapiskat—both communities the Nishnawbe Aski Police cover.

In cases of a murder or assault, lone officers have to secure the scene, treat victims, arrest perpetrators. "It's like a tinder box—it's ready to explode when something like that happens," Storkson said. "The community's tight knit, everybody knows everybody and they're out right away, people are driving around with guns."

Michalchuk says that sometimes he's had to ask civilians to step in and help him in a tough situation. "When you're policing up north, if there's an incident or tragedy, most of the community shows up on the scene," he said.

"One year we had a break in at our detachment," recalled Michalchuk. He said someone had taken off with a carbine assault rifle and all the ammunition. "When I arrived I had no idea anything had happened until a community member asked me about a break-in. Sure enough, the gun was missing."

Still, Michalchuk says he wants to continue working in the northern Ontario lakes he grew up in. "The geographical area is so beautiful, but the underfunding is tough on us," he said. "It's like a Third World country, we're given the bare essentials."

Storkson hopes the government will step in with more support before it gets to a walkout. "We're just looking for fair and ethical treatment like every other police service in Canada."

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

The VICE Morning Bulletin

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Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / Staff via Getty

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

US News

Pence Defends Trump over Khan Family Comments
Donald Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, has attempted to defuse the row between the Republican nominee and the family Humayun Khan, a fallen Army captain. In a statement posted on Facebook, Pence insisted, "Donald Trump and I believe that Captain Humayun Khan is an American hero."—ABC News

One Dead, Four Injured in Austin Shooting
A manhunt is underway in Austin, Texas, after a gunman opened fire on a crowded street late Sunday night, killing one person and wounding four others. Relatives identified the woman who was killed as 30-year-old Teqnika Moultrie. The suspected shooter is described as a man with long cornrows and a goatee, according to police.—USA Today

Uber to Sell China Business to Rival
Uber is to sell its China business to Didi Chuxing, the leading ride-hailing service in the country, after failing to compete with its rival for customers. The valuate of the combined business has been estimated at $35 billion, and investors in Uber China will receive a 20 percent stake in Didi Chuxing.—The Washington Post

Two Killed in Maryland Floods
Two people were killed and more than 100 had to be rescued after devastating flash floods in Maryland over the weekend. Baltimore County Police have identified the victims as Anthony Blevins, 38, and Jessica Watsula, 35. Their bodies were recovered in the Patapsco River after they were swept away by rushing water.—CBS News



International News

Taliban Targets Foreign Compound in Kabul
Three people were killed after Taliban fighters attacked a compound housing foreign contractors in the Afghan capital of Kabul. A truck bomb exploded at the entrance before two gunmen went inside. One police officer and both attackers were killed during a gun battle, according to police.—BBC News

Syrian Rebels Launch Offensive to Break Siege
Syrian rebel fighters have launched an assault on government troops in eastern Aleppo, aimed at breaking the siege. The UN estimates 300,000 people are trapped in the city with difficulty accessing food and medical supplies. Rebels and government forces have clashed along several fronts on the outskirts of the city.—Al Jazeera

Tokyo Elects First Female Governor
Former defense minister Yuriko Koike has been elected governor of Tokyo, the first female leader of the Japanese capital. Koike, an independent, received more than 2.9 million votes in Sunday's election, more than 1 million more than her nearest rival, backed by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.—CNN

Turkey Captures 11 Soldiers Involved in Coup Attempt
Turkish special forces have captured 11 fugitive soldiers who are suspected of being involved in a plan to seize President Tayyip Erdogan during last month's failed coup. The soldiers are part of a group accused of preparing an attack on a hotel in Marmaris where Erdogan was staying on the night of July 15.—Reuters



Jon Stewart. Photo via Flickr user Cliff

Everything Else

Beenie Man Cancels Show After Contracting Zika Virus
Beenie Man has revealed why he canceled his Saturday performance at Toronto's OVO Fest: The reggae star said he was denied a Canadian visa after contracting the Zika virus. He shared an Instagram photo of himself undergoing blood tests.—Rolling Stone

Miss Teen USA Keeps Crown Despite Racist Tweets
The Miss Universe Organization has insisted the new Miss Teen USA, Karlie Hay, will get to keep her crown despite criticism over tweets she once wrote using racist language. Hay admitted she used language she is "not proud of."—NBC News

Jon Stewart Returns with Animated Series
HBO has revealed that the former host of The Daily Show will begin releasing short-form videos and animations as early as September or October. Stewart's videos will comment on "what's happening during the day's news events."—Vanity Fair

Australian Troll Convicted of Online Abuse
Zane Alchin, the 25-year-old troll who made sexually explicit and threatening comments on Facebook, was convicted and put on a 12-month probation. His victim Paloma Brierley Newton called it a "huge win" for harassment campaigners.—VICE

French Muslims Attend Catholic Mass
Muslims across France attended Catholic mass on Sunday to show solidarity following the murder of a French priest by two teenagers. Anouar Kbibech, the head of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, called for "national unity."—VICE News

Niantic Shuts Down Pokémon Tracking App
Niantic, the studio behind Pokémon Go, has shut down tracking apps like Poké Radar that help players find the rarest of Pokémon. The tracking app maker said it will no longer be available out of desire to follow "Niantic and Nintendo's wishes."—Motherboard


How It Feels to Be a Dissident in Turkey After the Failed Military Coup

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Government supporters burn photos of Fethullah Gulen, who they believe organized the coup. Petros Giannakouris / AP

To plan a speedy political exile from Turkey today you need two things: a world map and the Wikipedia page on "visa entry requirements for Turkish citizens." If you get out a highlighter and start cross-referencing the two, you'll quickly see the bottom half of the map is more accessible than the top. If you can speak Spanish, the options are endless: almost every country in Latin America is happy to have you.

"It can't be that hard to learn, can it?" asked my friend, looking up Duolingo on the app store. We were sitting on a balcony in Istanbul, where we both live. From Taksim Square, just a few hundred meters away, came the sound of thousands of people singing the name of the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Since an attempted military coup took place last month, Turkey has been more divided than ever. Government supporters and others who took part in the huge public effort that helped stop the coup have flocked to squares across the country every day to revel in the survival of Turkey's democratically elected government.

But others, including government critics like my friend, are not celebrating. They're terrified they'll be caught up in the huge purges that the government has ordered since the coup was thwarted, which have so far seen over 60,000 people suspended from their jobs and over 18,000 arrested—including 17 prominent journalists.

Dozens of institutions linked to Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who is suspected of organizing the coup, have been closed down, and 50,000 passports have been canceled—a move the ruling AKP says is aimed at stopping plotters from fleeing the country. A three-month state of emergency has been declared and the government has begun to rule by decree.

Just a week after the coup, Amnesty International published a report containing evidence they say proves the torture and rape of suspected coup plotters in detention—claims the state has denied.

The most disturbing thing is that you can't figure out what will happen, you can't even make plans.

Though the government claims that they are only targeting supporters of Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in a Pennsylvania mansion, critics say the purges are a smokescreen for an attack on any critics of the government. Many liberals, terrified they'll be detained or banned from doing their jobs, are making plans to flee the country.

"This is the first time I've started thinking maybe I should leave," said Burcu, an academic living in Istanbul. "I suffer from the termination of freedom to work, speak, and even go abroad now. It's completely unstable. That is the most disturbing thing: that you can't figure out what will happen, that you can't even make plans."

After google imaging every country in south and central America, my friend eventually settled on Costa Rica. There are beaches and Americans there, he reasoned, and where you have beaches and Americans there will be work in bars. But others—especially academics—want to move somewhere they can find work in their field. For most, that means Western Europe or the US—neither of which are particularly keen on handing out visas to Turks.

"I wouldn't leave Turkey for just any country whatsoever. Hungary, Russia, and Belarus are no better. I would like to go to western Europe, possibly back to Britain," said Ali, a policy analyst at a think tank who did his master's degree in the UK. "I feel more at home there. July the 15 was a good reminder of why I'd really like to get out again. I used to criticize the government openly... but with the state of emergency and the suspension of the European Convention on Human Rights, I think the atmosphere is too intimidating."

It's a strange position to be in. On one hand, middle-class liberals in Istanbul aren't living in a war zone. Their life isn't in direct danger. But the fear of arrest and the pervasive, haunting feeling of being watched—having to constantly self-censor everything you say and write—is grinding. For most, though, it's not strong enough grounds to get political asylum in the West. They have to find another way out.

"I just feel disillusioned. I don't want to be this involved in politics," said Mert, an academic, sitting in a café on Istanbul's European side. "You can only fight so much. After a point you start thinking that living your life the way you want is a political statement in itself. It's ridiculous."

For many, the desire to leave is driven by a feeling that things are about to get a lot worse. On the night of the coup, almost 300 soldiers, civilians, and policemen died. F-16 jets bombed government buildings in Ankara, and attack helicopters strafed the streets with bullets, mowing down anyone in their way. On the Bosphorus bridge, where coup plotters had parked tanks to stop cars crossing to Europe from Asia, pro-government protesters allegedly beheaded a soldier.

Many of the army recruits who were on the streets on the night of the coup have since claimed they had no idea they were part of a plot to overthrow the government, and had been told they were taking part in a military exercise.

No one knows whether the president will use this period to reconcile with his critics, or use the state of emergency to make a grab for power. Such a move could trigger a second coup attempt, or even lead to civil war.

Ayhan couldn't wait to find out which way it would go. A few days after the failed coup, his name appeared on a list of journalists suspected of supporting the plotters—a claim he denies. He knew he had to get out.

Avoiding the airports for fear of detention, he managed to escape the country. "It's not safe," he said, from a secret location. "Whatever you write, they make a case against you. It's not possible for me to work any more. It's very difficult for those who believe in democracy and for liberals who side with the standards of the EU."

Back on the balcony in Istanbul, my friend was looking on Skyscanner for flights to Costa Rica. They were expensive—more than three times the average monthly Turkish wage. The Americans on the beaches would have to wait.

Some names have been changed to protect identities

Follow Louise Callaghan on Twitter.


Congratulations Niantic, You’ve Broken ‘Pokémon Go’

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Screencap of people enjoying 'Pokémon Go.' Good luck with that now, guys. Photo via YouTube

Unless you've been living on the moon for the past few weeks, you already know about Pokémon Go, the phenomenally successful mobile game from Niantic, made in partnership with The Pokémon Company. Using a combination of GPS tracking and augmented reality, Pokémon Go allows players to go hunting for Pokémon out in the real world. It's been a breakout success for its makers, but that's almost certainly all about to change, thanks to a very poor decision from Niantic.

When Pokémon Go launched in early July, it had an incredibly simple but functional tracking system in which nearby Pokémon would be displayed in the nearby section with a number of footprints underneath their picture. So if you saw a Charmander with one footprint beneath it, it meant you were within throwing distance of the little guy; while three footprints meant it was a fair old trek away. The only way to track down a Pokémon was to move in a direction and see if the footprint number dropped, indicating you were getting hotter. It wasn't the most elegant system on Earth and it could be bloody infuriating at times, but it was something at least.

Then came the three footprint bug which completely broke the system, showing three footprints for all Pokémon regardless of how far away they were. Dragonite on your radar? Good luck finding it, buddy. This could easily have been the end of Pokémon Go, especially with the rumors that the "bug" was in fact an intentional move by Niantic to reduce the load on their struggling servers.

But we're an enterprising species and when a hole in the market appears, you can bet your ass someone will fill it. Along came Pokévision, a browser-based system that allowed players to search their surrounding area for nearby Pokémon. None of this three footsteps crap was necessary: Pokévision could tell you the exact location of any Pokémon along with the amount of time left before it despawned. The game was saved and Pokémon trainers the world over could rejoice.

Was it cheating? Sure, I guess you could call it that. But in the absence of an official system it was all we had. Understandably, when asked what they thought of Pokévision, Niantic wasn't exactly thrilled. Speaking with Forbes, Niantic CEO John Hanke said:

"Yeah, I don't really like that. Not a fan. We have priorities right now but they might find in the future that those things may not work," he said. "People are only hurting themselves because it takes some fun out of the game. People are hacking around trying to take data out of our system and that's against our terms of service."

A fair point, if not for the fact that the in-game system for tracking Pokémon was completely fucked. These weren't empty words either, as just three days after this interview was published, on July 31, Pokévision was shut down.

Read on Motherboard: Have We Reached Peak 'Pokémon Go'?

So now Pokémon Go has no viable tracking app and players have to just wander around aimlessly and hope they bump into something worth catching. Fantastic move Niantic, you've blown it. It's perfectly understandable that you don't approve of Pokévision, but at least get your own solution working before you shut them down. We don't even have any sort of time frame as to when the tracking system will be fixed. The latest update actually removed the footprints altogether, presumably to reduce frustration from confused players, a move which suggests that the fix isn't coming any time soon. Without any reliable way to find the Pokémon they're looking for, the majority of high-level players now have very little reason to play. Some are demanding refunds as their plans for in-app purchases have now been altered.

We've all read the stories claiming that Pokémon Go is nothing more than a momentary craze, a flash in the pan destined to burn out after a month or two, so the developers should be doing everything in their power to prove them wrong, surely. By shutting down Pokévision, Niantic has destroyed the game's momentum, something very precious to its ongoing success. It's likely, given the user base of over 75 million players worldwide, that Go will survive this rather significant bump; but it's a stupid move that will do nothing but alienate a large portion of the hardcore fanbase while simultaneously making the game less inviting to newcomers.

Follow Ian Stokes on Twitter.

Read more gaming articles on VICE here, and follow VICE Gaming on Twitter at @VICEGaming.


How Majority Muslim Countries Are Handling HIV Infections

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Despite strict rules against promiscuity, homosexuality, drug use, and sex work, the Islamic world is nevertheless—and perhaps as a result—facing up to a growing HIV problem.

When the HIV epidemic hit in the 1980s, governments in the Islamic world declared their countries were immune from the "Western" virus because of religious and cultural values shunning pre-marital sex while encouraging faithfulness. They were partly correct; this way of life resulted in a very low HIV prevalence. For years, many Muslim leaders denied the existence of HIV within their borders, until they could no longer.

In most parts of the world HIV infections and deaths from AIDS have been falling, even in southern and eastern Africa, where more than half of the global HIV population lives. New drugs to prevent infection and lessen the impact of the virus on the body have blunted its impact.

Yet in the conservative, Muslim-majority regions of North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, new HIV infections have been on the rise since 2001. The latest figures show that, despite the availability of antiretroviral drugs, the region is one of two global hotspots (the other is Eastern Europe) where new HIV infections and deaths from AIDS are increasing. Damningly, in the Middle East and North Africa, the proportion of people living with HIV who are receiving lifesaving antiretroviral treatment is the lowest in the world.

So how are religion, culture, and politics in the region helping, or hindering, efforts to deal with what could become—especially in the face of war and upheaval—an HIV epidemic?

A couple of weeks ago I went to the 21st International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, the scene 16 years ago of a major turnaround in the way HIV was tackled in Africa. At the conference there was a session dedicated to how Islamic communities were dealing with rising HIV. The panel consisted of experts from around the Muslim world, including Wafaa Jlassi, a woman living with HIV in Tunisia. Her story was pretty shocking.

She found out she had HIV after her husband died. A post-mortem discovered he had died from AIDS, so she was tested and found to have the virus. Her husband's family wrongly presumed, because she was a woman, that she had passed the infection onto him. The local police told all her neighbors she has the "disease." She was thrown out of her family home. Only by the skin of her teeth did she manage to keep custody of her two daughters. The sudden impact of losing her husband, being told she had HIV, and being treated like dirt by her community left her close to suicide.

Speaking in French, she told the conference of her native Tunisia: "I'm scared of the society I live in, where homosexuals live in fear of the law; where women lose their jobs because of their HIV status, and people with HIV are refused medicine," said Jlassi, who now works for a charity helping to raise awareness of HIV in the country. "We need to stop this ignorance and suffering."

Tunisia is one of the region's less conservative societies. In Saudi Arabia, for example, homosexuality can be punishable by death, which is not the ideal start to dealing with HIV. In Iraq, a country enmeshed in bloody conflict and where HIV positive people are murdered, Amir Ashour of gay rights organization Iraqueer says the country pretends HIV does not exist.

The reality is that, from Marrakesh and Mogadishu to Dubai and Karachi, stigma and discrimination against people with HIV—especially sex workers, gay men, and drug addicts—is a problem. Prejudice against those with HIV and vulnerable groups exists the world over, from developing countries to the UK: one of Nigel Farage's 2015 election pledges was to ban people with HIV entering the country. It wasn't that long ago that the virus was being labeled by British tabloids as the "gay plague." But the dominance of traditional, conservative attitudes in societies across North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia has created a significant barrier to dealing with HIV.

In the region, a positive HIV test is far from being a private matter. Police often report HIV+ people to their neighbors. Patients risk being branded with their HIV status for life. Amir Ashour tells me that in Iraq "the bad practices are usually committed by doctors, clinics, and hospitals. Like outing persons living with HIV to the government, which puts the lives of those individuals at great danger."

Rita Wahab, of Middle East-based HIV organization MENA Rosa described having HIV in the region as a double bind: "Those who are at greatest risk of infection are also engaged in practices, such as sex work or same-sex relations, that are condemned by religious doctrine, social norms, and the law. This wide-ranging stigma and discrimination further fuels the epidemic by driving those living with HIV and those most at risk of infection away from testing and disclosure, making HIV prevention and treatment increasingly difficult."

This deep-rooted prejudice is highly tangible: it can directly be the cause of destitution, lack of healthcare, violence, and death. As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon warned back in 2008: "Stigma helps make AIDS the silent killer, because people fear the social disgrace of speaking about it. Stigma is the chief reason why the AIDS epidemic continues to devastate societies around the world."

Beneath the umbrella of the Islamic world, amid the undercurrent of prejudice, there are marked disparities in the way the virus is being tackled. In North African countries such as Morocco, governments have set up extensive programs to prevent and treat HIV. In Iran and Pakistan, spiraling HIV infections caused by high levels of injecting drug use have been confronted head on by governments.

"A country's politics, its culture and the mentality of the policymakers can have a stronger impact on policy than religion. In some Muslim countries the religious leaders are more open minded than the politicians," says Iranian Kamiar Alaei, a human rights expert at the State University of New York.

With his brother Arash, a physician, Kamiar set up Iran's first HIV clinic in the late 1990s, establishing a network of needle exchanges primarily aimed at stemming the spread of the virus through intravenous heroin use. Swimming against the tide in a conservative society such as Iran can get you in trouble. The Alaei brothers were jailed for three years between 2008 and 2011 for "attempting to overthrow the Islamic regime" just because they attended a few HIV conferences in the US. Now, Iran's HIV treatment service is not perfect—in fact, the very people supposed to be helping patients discriminate against them—but for a country where homosexuality is punishable by death, it's progress.

For most governments in the Islamic world, public health pragmatism has trumped religious doctrine, the outlawing of homosexuality, and public prejudice. Governments have responded to the rising tide of HIV by stepping up the distribution of condoms, clean needles, and treatment for drug addiction and for those with HIV. Much of this is implemented with the help of foreign NGOs, which is also a convenient way for conservative regimes to avoid being seen as helping the "unworthy" by a less than sympathetic public.

A 2013 survey in Pakistan—which, like Iran, has had to tackle an HIV epidemic fueled largely by drug use—found only two percent of people said homosexuality was "acceptable." In Qatar, a country which deported a foreign journalist working for Al Jazeera after secretly testing him for HIV, only five percent of young men and two percent of young women expressed tolerance for people with the virus. Across the border in Saudi Arabia, a survey found three quarters of college students believed people with HIV or AIDS should be "isolated from the public."

In Sudan, which has the second highest HIV+ population in the region after Iran, HIV is tackled at arms length. The Sudanese government is happy to give the silent nod, opening the back door to allow foreign NGOs to work inside their country, without being seen to sanction what could be seen as an irreligious health intervention.

In Turkey, the only Muslim country where legalized homosexuality is enshrined in law, President Recep Erdogan flexed his anti-gay muscles in June by banning Istanbul's Gay Pride in a flurry of water cannons and plastic bullets. But behind the reactionary veil, officials have reacted quickly to an HIV epidemic that has seen a 900 percent rise in new infections in under a decade, from 180 in 2005 to 1,800 in 2014. Unlike many Muslim countries, the country's 10,000 HIV+ population now has access to life-saving antiretroviral drugs to boost their immune systems. Consequently, the number of people dying of AIDS in Turkey has fallen dramatically.

So what do imams say about HIV? In Morocco there is one imam known as the "Imam of AIDS" because he helps people with HIV. But not all imams are as HIV-friendly. When asked at the conference in Durban why some encouraged hate crimes against people with HIV, Mohammed Abou Zaid, an imam and one of Lebanon's senior court judges, said there were two types of religious leader. One who thinks they are superior to other men, who claim to represent the divine, the one truth. Or the other who serves the people, who accepts he is a fallible human being. "The second man, he has better understanding of the role of religion in our lives," said Abou Zaid. "But if you find the first imam, please get away from him—he's very dangerous; more dangerous than the HIV virus."

Abou Zaid said that, in his view, Islam should be an agent for change in attitudes to HIV. "It all started when I met a transgender Muslim woman who said her father had thrown her out aged 14. He did not accept her at home. He closed his door to her. I was moved. I said to her, 'Maybe your father has closed the door, but I'm sure God will never ever close his door.' God created us, God loves us, his doors always stay open. If I'm related to God and I claim I'm a religious figure, I should also open my doors, and my heart and mind."

In the UK, which has around 100,000 people living with HIV, the number of new HIV infections each year has fallen by 25 percent since 2005. NAZ, a charity in London, helps around 60 Muslims in the UK with HIV and has trained over 50 imams in the capital on how to address sexual health and HIV at mosques. Muslim service coordinator Khaiser Khan tells me clients can feel ostracized from their families and their religion. But, he says, although it can take time, people are usually able to tell their family and do not feel they have to turn away from their faith.

Tariq, an accountant from Berkshire, used partying, drugs, alcohol, clubbing, and sex as a form of escapism because he was secretly gay. He found out he was HIV+ in 2008 and locked himself in his room for two days. He went for help at NAZ, told his sister and ended up helping to train a group of ten imams to deal with the issue. "It's about dealing with the shame of being gay, of being a Muslim with HIV, understanding what's happening to you, and recovering from it," says Tariq.

As younger generations of Muslims become more Westernized, the old cultural mores that have historically kept the HIV problem in check are gradually evaporating. However tempting otherwise, perhaps it is time for religious leaders to step into the breach, and follow the example of people like Abou Zaid, to become the public face in the fight against HIV and against the stigma and ignorance that is driving its rise in the Islamic world.

Follow Max Daly on Twitter.


People Told Us Their Guiltiest Secrets

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"I've made a huge mistake." Will Arnett as GOB Bluth. Photo via Fox.

Guilt can be a good compass, one that keeps you on track of something resembling and upstanding, moral life. If you've done a shitty thing to someone—be it subtle or outrageous, big or small—you should carry a some guilt around about it. If not, you're a sociopath. And that's not a good thing. That in mind, we asked from friends and co-workers things they've done in the past that they still feel guilty over, their biggest guiltiest secrets. The people that said they didn't have any are the ones we now avoid.

LITERALLY THE SHITTIEST THING EVER

In eighth grade, everyone was trying to be the class clown. There was a construction site outside our middle school, so one day after class, I walked over to the site and set a port-a-potty on fire with a Zippo that I stole from my older brother. The town smelled like shit for hours and it made the news, but I was never questioned about the incident. To this day, my parents still have no clue that I was the one who set it on fire.

GRAND THEFT AUTO

When I was 19 years old, I had a crappy job at a gas station and an even crappier boss—he was handsy and just kind of a dick overall. After I decided I couldn't take it anymore, I skimmed almost a grand from the safe and framed him for it. I found a different job, and he didn't get into serious trouble (just an audit).

CLITORIOUS B.I.G.

I was a Boy Scout who went to summer camp every year. In eighth grade, I brought Rolling Stone's 2004 summer preview issue to camp—the one that featured Jessica Alba on the cover in jorts and a high-cut top. A sixth grade Scout saw me reading it and screamed, " HAS PORN!" I explained to the adults that it wasn't, so I was in the clear—but I was still mad.

One day, we were all sitting around shooting the shit when someone mentioned the clitoris. The same kid asked, "What's a clitoris?" I replied, "It's that little thing between your tongue and the roof of your mouth." He bought it, and before long he was showing everyone his "clitoris." On the last day of camp, he tried to show one of the female counselors his "clitoris"—God bless her, she explained the truth to him.

NOT-SO-SWEET REVENGE

In primary school, my three friends and I had an exclusive clique on the school bus. We wanted to get back at a girl who was rude to us, so we took Play-Doh, repackaged it in a purple Starburst wrapper, and gave it to her. She ate it. I still feel so bad.

THE BB GUNSLINGER

I grew up in the foothills of California between Yosemite and Fresno. For my 11th birthday I got my first (and last) BB gun. Playdates were few and far between in the mountains, so I spent a lot of time outside with my BB gun. My sisters and I had a feud with the neighbors' kids across the road, who weren't as well off as my family (my father was a pastor). One time, they were playing outside and one of the boys began to taunt me: "I bet you can't shoot that trash can, fatty!" I shot the trash can. "Bet you can't shoot the lid," he said. I aimed at the lid, fired, and hit him in his stomach instead. I'd say it was an accident, but it probably wasn't.

Later, a deputy sheriff knocked on our door. My dad called me over and asked what happened; I lied and said that I saw them throwing rocks, they called me names, and I returned to the backyard. My lie was good enough for the deputy, since it came from a pastor's kid and trumped the four poor kids that saw me do it.

WE ALL (TAKE) PAUL DOWN

I suppose we can call him Paul (that's not his real name, so feel free to refer to him however you like). I went to high school with him, and he was one of those subtle bullies, the type who would brag about his sexual escapades in front of the class and then ask you about yours, knowing full well you had no boasting to do. He was also wealthy, and drove a red Mustang convertible. He and his four buddies idolized that guy who wrote I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and they referred to themselves as "local legends." Outside of the group, they were universally despised, but no one ever said anything to them. Paul, of course, was the leader.

Toward the end of my senior year, in late May, the administration decided it would be a good idea to give us a district-wide writing sample. The people in charge intended it as a way to measure our success, but they underestimated, with graduation looming, how little we gave a fuck. We had about a week notice before we had to sit down and draft a persuasive essay about school uniforms or whatever, and during those few days, my three friends and I promised one another that, regardless of the prompt, we would all somehow make it about Paul.

I had English first period, and when I saw the question was about the ethical implications of locker searches, I immediately sensedthingsmight get out of hand. By the end of the afternoon, news of our idea to focus on Paul had spread (we all bragged about it incessantly), and in total, more than 150 people had written about him. Multiple people accused him of being a drug lord, arguing he kept class A narcotics stashed in his locker. Some simply asserted how much they didn't like him. Others penned long pieces about how cool he was. At one point, I spotted his best friend sprinting down the hallway, shouting at strangers to "write about Paul."

A couple days later, I spotted a downtrodden-looking Paul. Word had gotten back to him that he'd been raked over the coals in many of the writing samples. He looked sad. So sad, in fact, that I wanted to cop to starting the whole thing, and apologize to him. I didn't. I still feel very bad about it. So if it's worth anything Paul—you know who you are—I'm sorry.

Follow Lauren Duca on Twitter.


Lessons People Learned from Their Bad First Tattoos

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Rosie Evans and Sam Layzell in MVL Tattoo. Photos by Paul Jones

A lot of people get their first tattoo at a fairly young age. This—no matter what you scream at your parents the day after your sixteenth birthday—is not the best idea. Think about the other stuff you did as a teenager. Think about whether or not you would, as an adult, tape a 2 liter bottle of cider to each hand and not have them un-taped until you've finished the both of them. Consider: Would you still attach a wallet to your person with a ball-bearing chain?

Same goes for tattoos: Aren't you glad, in retrospect, that you never got that hand-drawn portrait of Tom DeLonge permanently scarred into your skin forever? Or that really earnest quote about all the hardship you'd already endured as a private school student?

Tattooist couple Sam Layzell and Rosie Evans run a cosy little studio in Leeds called MVL Tattoo. They're fully acquainted with the common pitfalls of the first tattoo as they're often asked to cover up unfortunate decisions. "Do your research," says Evans while tattooing a rat climbing up a skull onto a client's left arm. "Make sure you really know the person you're getting your first tattoo from. You should be well aware of the kind of stuff they do and their competence level beforehand. Seeing some of their healed tattoos also wouldn't be a bad idea."

Layzell nods his head in agreement. "Yeah, I wouldn't be afraid to travel for the tattoo you want. If you really like someone's work but they live on the other side of the country, it isn't too hard to get a ticket. It's better to go to a person who does work that you know you like, rather than trying to get your local guy to emulate it."

"I wouldn't advise drawing a design yourself and taking it in to get done," says Evans when I ask about some of the likely causes of regrettable first tattoos. "That's like going to a dentist, having done half the job already. Allow the artist to work on the design for you because a good picture on paper will not always look good on the skin."

Both Evans and Layzell agree—shockingly—that getting a new tattoo while on vacation with your friends almost never ends well, and not just because you're likely to be shitfaced when you're choosing the design. "A lot of the big no-nos when it comes to tattoo aftercare involve things you will encounter while you're on holiday," Evans explains. "You're likely to be submerged in water in the pool or the sea, be exposed to the sun, and you might find it hard to keep it clean in beach or clubbing environments."

So there a bit of wisdom from the experts, but I was also interested to hear from some people who'd disappointed their moms at a very young age, and find out the lessons they learned from getting their first tattoos.

MACCA, 26

It was my friend Greg's fault. We were both 18 and drinking during the day in Blackpool. We decided to have a nap before we went out. I woke up with my hand over my face and straight away noticed that I had the word "STEAMER" on my wrist, but it just looked like someone had written it in normal handwriting with a biro—it wasn't even straight.

I tried rubbing it off then realized what I'd done. I didn't remember a thing. So I woke Greg up and he remembered and started laughing—he had exactly the same tattoo. He spent the next month at home with a sweatband on so his mom couldn't see it.

I suppose the lesson I learnt is: don't do it pissed, think about what you're doing and don't get anything big that can't be covered.


CEZ, 23

When I was 18 we were chilling in an abandoned orphanage. We had some spray paint and someone sprayed that design on the wall. Being 18 we thought it was hilarious, and we all started drawing that image—a guy bending over with his balls out—everywhere. We got drunk one night and I said, "I'll just get it tattooed," and I did. It's really funny, but I've got a daughter now. I can't have that on me any longer.

My advice would be: think about it more, I guess. And if you think of an idea, put your research into the right artist who will be able to do it.


*PAUL, 27

I'm from a suburb that has practically no crime at all. There was a running joke with my friends where we would jokingly tell people that we were in a hardcore street gang called the "Greenie Posse." We'd always argue about who had "top boy" status in the group. Apparently this is really funny when you're in your mid-teens.

Anyway, here are the events that led to me having an uzi tattooed on my chest: we were all going to Bolton one day because my friend was getting a tattoo. On the bus journey we were taking the mick, talking about how funny it would be if we all got gang tattoos. Then it was like, "Well, if I got the tattoo I'd definitely be Greenie's top boy." So I was like, "Why not?" That was years ago now and I don't regret it, but I'm not glad I've got it either. I couldn't go to the beach and feel comfortable taking my top off.

Joke tats are only funny for a certain amount of time. It soon wears off and then, instead of making a joke, you become the joke. A joke you're not in on. I mean, imagine if I got randomly sent down now—I'd be fucked; they'd think I was actually a gang member.


BECKY, 27

I originally drew the design myself; a really simple black outline of a heart, which I wanted on my wrist. That was definitely the done thing in the emo epidemic of 2007. At the time I was 19 and was hanging around this tattoo shop quite a lot because I was seeing the body piercer there. I guess I was influenced by being there with people that were all covered in tattoos; I decided I had to get one.

When I took the design in they said, "We'll just spruce it up" to make it a bit better. I agreed. But when I returned a week later it had turned into a shaded, full-color black and red design. I basically went with it because I was young and stupid and surrounded by these cool people with heaps of tattoos. I clearly wanted to be part of the gang.

I've had six sessions of laser now and it feels like being stabbed with a hot needle and being burned with oil at the same time. It's nearly gone. If you're going to get a tattoo, stick with what you really, really want and don't let other people influence you to change it or make it bigger.

*name changed at the request of the subject

Follow Simon Doherty on Twitter.

'The Night Of' Shows Us More Ways the Criminal Justice System Traps People

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Photo courtesy of HBO

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

The Night Of is not a show about justice—it's a show about the justice system, and the difference between the two has never been more apparent than during last night's episode, "The Art of War." The facts of the murder continue to fall into the background, and instead we watch Naz (Riz Ahmed) as he navigates the life of a jail inmate awaiting trial.

At this point, halfway through the eight-part miniseries, we still don't know whether Naz killed Andrea during the titular night—based on everything we know about him it seems unlikely—but guilty or not, he's still stuck in Rikers, and his parents are still hounded by the press; everyone is trapped in the middle of a nightmarish story.

The central choice of the episode is Naz's decision about whether to plead guilty to manslaughter and end that story at a single stroke. Everyone who knows anything about the law tells him to take the deal: his imperious, high-profile lawyer Alison Crowe ("We're way past 'I didn't do it,' Naz," she tells him); Freddy, the terrifying inmate who runs Rikers; even John Stone (played by John Turturro), who is still investigating the case even though Naz's parents fired him. The only one who tells him not to plead guilty is Crowe's young associate, Chandra (Amara Karan), who tells him not to say he committed the crime if he didn't.

On Daily VICE: Eric Garner's Daughter Opens Up About Her Activism and Vision for Police Reform:

We're made to understand that this is an enormously idealistic bit of advice, the sort only a fairly green lawyer would give. Courtrooms aren't concerned with the truth; they're arenas where two competing sets of facts do battle. Naz has few facts on his side—he looks guiltier than OJ Simpson did when he was arrested, and Naz doesn't have the money to buy the best lawyers in the world; after his plea, Crowe (Glenne Headly) informs his family that her services are no longer free. Fifteen years is a long time, but less long than the rest of Naz's life—he'd be around 35 when he got out, Stone reminds him, and "I'd kill to be 35 again."

The twisting nature of the legal system is evident in the story told by Calvin (Ashley Thomas), Naz's apparent guide to Rikers, an inmate who appears at his side and does some audience-friendly "here's what you should do to survive behind bars" exposition. According to Calvin, he's in jail because he went looking for his niece's killer, who got set free thanks to the judge in his case giving improper jury instructions. This got him so upset he went out to kill the man—but shot a busboy instead. We like to tell ourselves narratives end with things being set right in some way, a just equilibrium being restored, but that's not what usually happens, whether you're in court or on the street.


We're made to understand that courtrooms aren't concerned with the truth; they're arenas where two competing sets of facts do battle.

Naz, babe in the woods that he is, refuses to say he committed a crime he didn't commit. One curious thing about the show's protagonist is that he's never given any sort of friendly confidant to whom he could explain feelings, thus allowing the audience to gain only some insight into his interiority. Instead, we're doled out details about him sparingly, through his frightened, darting eyes, the way he pauses when he's deciding whether to trust someone. Maybe he's taciturn by nature, but he's certainly not made more talkative by his precarious situation. That said, Naz seems to be operating on an instinctual basis—he doesn't like Crowe, so he resists her pushy advice to plead guilty; and he is similarly wary about allying himself with the predatory Freddy. Putting yourself in prison by lying about killing someone just seems wrong, even if it might be the smart thing to do, so he refuses the plea at the last minute. The audience, just as naïve as Naz, can't help but feel proud of him. (Not that the show ever really convinces you he's going to take the 15 years—that would presumably make the show's last four episodes pretty dull.)

Beyond the major themes, the episode contains plenty of the grubby details of life that The Night Of is so good at portraying, especially when it comes to Stone. (If you don't like scenes that send the show off on tangents sometimes, you won't like the show. Full stop.) The defense attorney insists that the light stay on when he has sex with a prostitute he represented; he visits more doctors to get rid of his eczema, which has now turned his feet bloody and scabbed; he goes through the shady business of acquiring Andrea's records from a rehab clinic, which he then flips to Chandra for a profit. We also get more of Freddy, played by Michael K. Williams, who is the sort of prison philosopher-king who responds to an encroachment on his cellphone-renting monopoly by beating the offending inmate to a pulp.

Freddy seems menacing, but so does everyone else—even Calvin, the nice jail guide, reveals himself to be unhinged when he throws a scalding hot-water/baby-oil combination on Naz. Out of options, Naz approaches the only authority that can help him: Freddy himself, sitting silently and smoking in his luxurious cell. The Night Of has made a habit of ending on cliffhangers, so this is where the show leaves us this week. It's easy to guess what's going to happen to Naz's attacker, and it's likely not going to be any approximation of justice, legal or otherwise.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

Finally, an After-School Club for Satanists

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After-school clubs are a time-honored tradition in America. Outdoorsy types go to scout meetings, nerds have their chess clubs, jocks play sports, and young Christians have the Good News Club, designed to "evangelize boys and girls with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ."

But what about the Satanist kids? Where are they supposed to go?

The Satanic Temple answered that question on Monday with an announcement about its new program, the After School Satan Club (ASSC). The Temple is hoping to launch ASSC chapters in nine school districts in which the Good News Club operates this year, with the ultimate goal of operating an ASSC in every school where the Good News Club has a presence, according to its spokesperson and co-founder, Doug Mesner.

Religious clubs like the Good News Club—and, the Satanic Temple hopes, ASSC—are allowed to operate in public schools thanks to Good News Club v. Milford Central School, a 2001 court case which found that any school that allows secular clubs to use its facilities must also allow religious clubs the same privilege. As of 2011, the Good News Club said it was operating in 3,560 public schools.


Images courtesy the Satanic Temple

"Unlike the Child Evangelism Fellowship [the parent organization of the Good News Club], which openly seeks to convert children to their religious view through fear of eternal suffering, we don't believe in imposing our religious opinion," Mesner told VICE. "The After School Satan Club curriculum has been constructed by professionals who have prior experience with running secular educational kids groups. All educational lessons promote a rationalist, scientific, non-superstitious worldview."

The Satanic Temple has become known over the past few years for its dogged pursuit of religious equality. The argument that the group use for their projects—creating a gigantic bronze statue of Baphomet for the lawn of the Oklahoma State House, opening city council meetings with Satanic incantations, distributing coloring books featuring the dark lord to schools across the country—is a simple one hinging on the desire to ensure no single religion receives preferential treatment from the government.

"The After School Satan Clubs were conceived to answer for the need to have a counter-balance to evangelical after-school clubs that are currently proselytizing to children in public schools across the nation," Mesner said. "We have modeled our intrusion into public schools directly off of the precedent set by the Good News Clubs and the Liberty Counsel, and we refuse to have our after school clubs held to any different standards than those imposed upon the Good News Clubs."

The Satanic Temple sent out letters to school districts on Monday outlining their plan for the ASSC, as well as requesting a booth to promote the club at back-to-school nights. And despite the club's name, Mesner says kids who want to attend don't need to worship the devil. "After School Satan Clubs are conducted by Satanists in accordance with our values, but participating children are neither required to identify as Satanists, nor will we ask that they, at any point, do so."

The clubs are hoping to meet once per month, and a signed parental letter of consent will be required for every student who wishes to participate. Like many after-school clubs, the Satanic Temple's meetups will feature literature and science lessons, art, creative thinking exercises, and snacks, according to the announcement letter. The men and women running the programs all have a background in education, and the Temple is performing criminal background checks on any adult who would like to get involved.

Since its inception, the Satanic Temple has inspired knee-jerk reactions of outrage from the Christian right and frequently been derided as trolls and jokey stuntmen, yet many of their campaigns have had real results. In addition to getting the statue of the Ten Commandments on the Oklahoma State House lawn removed, the group has provided women seeking abortions with a religious exemption designed to allow them to skip any state-mandated reading materials that contain false or misleading information, as well as the 72-hour wait time some states require. (The Temple filed a lawsuit against the state of Missouri after one of its members was forced to comply with the 72-hour wait time despite her religious beliefs.) It has also launched projects aimed at protecting children from corporeal punishment (still legal in 19 states), and ensured that government buildings open their spaces up to wicked snake installations around the holidays in addition to nativity scenes. They also turned the founder of the Westboro baptist church's dead mom gay.

It's too early to tell what effect, if any, the After School Satan Club will have on the Good News Club or the broader issue of religious representation in public schools. In an ideal world, the Temple would like to see all religious clubs removed from public schools, including their own. "If the Good News Clubs were no longer in schools, our presence would no longer be needed," Mesner said. But until that happens they hope to remind parents and kids alike that wherever god exists in public institutions, Satan isn't far away.

Follow Jonathan Smith on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to the 2016 Election: The Best and Worst Bootleg Campaign Swag of 2016

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All photos by Pete Voelker

Every modern day event offers an array of swag for its attendees to purchase, and the 2016 political conventions were no different. While there was official merchandise available inside the security gates, there was also a sea of options available on the streets of Cleveland and Philadelphia last month: Everything from handmade originals to parodies of campaign logos, and even rip-offs of "official merchandise" were being hawked everywhere convention-goers looked.

In Philadelphia, Lynette Bibbee could be found near City Hall, hawking sweet-smelling "Bernie" cookies in an effort to pay for her travel back to Washington state. In Cleveland, a few brave souls were bipartisan with their merchandise, selling not only Donald Trump paraphernalia, but also Bernie Sanders-themed merch as well. Others were more creative with their wares, selling T-shirts memorializing Muhammad Ali, Prince, and newly-crowned NBA champions, the Cleveland Cavaliers, alongside the more standard Trump fare.

At least two of the vendors I spoke to said they'd received cease and desist letters from Trump's campaign—but they didn't seem to have any plans to comply.

These New Startups Are Aiming to Fix the Sharing Economy’s Discrimination Problem

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Illustration by Kitron Neuschatz

Last month, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky announced that his company was hiring former US Attorney General Eric Holder "to help craft a world-class anti-discrimination policy." Holder, as part of the assembly of a team of anti-discrimination heavy hitters from the ACLU, Harvard, and more, is intended to help the company combat implicit and explicit user bias on its platform. It's a response to the viral #AirbnbWhileBlack movement, in which thousands of African Americans shared on social media experiences of last minute cancellations and ignored requests while using the platform.

While the hirings do represent a form of progress, it's likely that sharing economy discrimination happens in spite of these platforms, not because of them. Earlier this year, a Harvard Business School study found that Airbnb guests with names of African American origin were 16% less likely to receive a response from hosts, raising concerns as to whether implicit bias is baked into the platform itself.

A new class of sharing economy platforms, created by and for POC and LGBTQ travelers, is betting that's the case. The new sites aim to combat the problem by catering to the needs of minority customers in a way that sharing economy giants can't. By offering opportunities for users to connect with travelers like them beyond the transactional host-guest relationship, they're creating communities of users who are sensitive to the needs of those unserved by established players like Airbnb.

Rohan Gilkes created Innclusive, a short-term rental platform launching this month, in response to #airbnbwhileblack and the discrimination of marginalized people on other platforms. He aims to create a community where users can "travel with respect, dignity, and love, regardless of race, sexual orientation, connect with these powerful people who can get policy passed or delay legislation."

Gillkes says the Innclusive platform will include algorithms and processes that identify and flag practices of implicit bias—hosts are not shown user profiles until after they approve a stay, for example, which preempts the possibility they can reject applicants based on appearance, and the system will track metrics like average cancellations to ensure hosts are accommodating users fairly. The end result, he hopes, will be an improved short term rental experience for people of all racial, ethnic, and sexual backgrounds.

"This is not just a race issue," he said. "The entire thing is a mess."

San Francisco resident DiMarco McGhee agrees. McGhee, who is gay and black, failed to receive responses from Airbnb hosts three consecutive times. "After the third time, I just decided to book hotels and stop using the service," he said. "It's been a lot less stressful. It's less home-y, but it's nice to be treated like a person."

Gilkes's platform is partially modeled after Misterbnb, the largest and most fleshed-out gay short term rental company. Misterbnb offers a slew of features which specifically cater to a gay customer base, from an extensive list of gay events to integration with Scruff, a gay dating app, for users to list and find rooms using their dating profile. Gay-ville, an LGBTQ-focused travel community established in 2011, shows mutual Facebook friends between users and hosts (" a very small big gay community," as their website notes), and also offers gay-focused events calendars and maps of "gayborhoods" to help guests connect with their community. Demand for the companies speaks to the idea that marginalized peoples travel differently, with different sets of needs.

The purchasing power of the LGBTQ community (known as the pink dollar) is currently $917 billion, and quickly approaching $1 trillion. The black dollar hovers a bit over $1 trillion. Established travel chains, from Southwest Airlines to Hilton and Marriott, are jumping on the queer bandwagon in response. Each have initiatives meant to directly appeal to LGBTQ customers, particularly during Pride, which vary in scope from advertising campaigns emphasizing equality to diversity initiatives and gay-focused travel itineraries and packages.

HE Travel, a gay travel agency based out of Key West, has been creating vacation packages for gays and lesbians under different corporate names for 40 years. Marketing director Zachary Moses uses three primary metrics to gauge the LGBTQ-friendliness of potential destinations: the existence of non-discrimination policies and diversity training, an overall "welcoming feel," and whether they offer a local gay community with which visitors can connect.

The latter is perhaps least considered by major travel chains looking to court LGBTQ customers, who need more than promotional brochures and Out magazine subscriptions in order to feel comfortable. Sensitivity to the material realities of traveling while LGBTQ, Native, Asian, Latinx, Black or more is easier when one's hosts are themselves intimately familiar with those realities—perhaps the primary factor behind Misterbnb's success.

Misterbnb CEO Matthieu Jost built his platform after a ruined vacation in Barcelona where an Airbnb host treated him and his partner with disdain. What distinguishes his clients from those of Airbnb, he says, is their desire to "connect with community when traveling," which is what led the platform to include gay city guides, gay events calendars and the aforementioned Facebook mutual friend indicator.

After all, any travel—whatever your identity—should be about having fun and meeting new people. And it's easier to do both when one's safety and security are assured.

"If we do our part, we can advance humanity," said Gilkes. Through travel accommodations that take race and sexuality into consideration, Gilkes envisions the world "not as a place where we segregate, but a place where we travel with dignity."

Kim Tran is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Ethnic and Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at UC Berkeley. Find more of her work on her website.


The Sordid Ways Death-Penalty States Obtain Execution Drugs

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The view a condemned inmate would have from a table inside the death chamber at a lethal injection facility in San Quentin, California. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)

This piece was published in partnership with the Influence.

One afternoon, Donnie Calhoun, owner of Calhoun Compounding Pharmacy in Anniston, Alabama—"Compounding for Life's Problems"—came back from a meeting to find a strange request from the Alabama Department of Corrections. The girl who'd answered the phone had written their question down on a notepad: Did he want to make a lethal injection drug that would be used to carry out an execution?

"I went, what? They do this?" Calhoun recalled. He called them back and let them know that he would not make a drug that could be used to kill. "For me, as a health-care professional, I want to help people live longer. The last thing I want to do is to help someone die," he told me.

Other sterile compounding pharmacists in the state were similarly unenthused about requests to help Alabama execute its death row inmates. Of the nearly 30 compounding pharmacies contacted by the state, all refused, according to court records. "Of course, we said absolutely not," says one of the owners of Eagle Pharmacy in Hoover, Alabama. "It's something no one wants to do, and it's quite understandable."

Another pharmacist in Virginia adds that someone from the attorney general's office recently popped into his store and asked about lethal injection drugs. "No one will do it," he says. "Maybe you should try executing them with heroin," the pharmacist wise-cracked about a drug that's a whole lot easier to obtain in the state of Virginia.

Life is getting increasingly complicated for officials in states intent on carrying out the death penalty.

For the past few years, executions have been hindered by an unlikely obstacle: the moral compass of the pharmaceutical industry—or, more precisely, Pharma's concern over bad PR.

This is especially evident in Europe, where there's widespread opposition to the US death penalty. The EU, which bans capital punishment, also prohibits the sale of drugs for lethal executions in America, so pharmaceutical companies that do business in Europe have to actively take steps to ensure their products aren't used in American executions. Many large companies not only refuse to make drugs for lethal injection but make their distributors sign contracts forbidding them from selling drugs to US departments of correction. Many have written US states asking that they don't use drugs they already have in stock.

Of course, that hardly guarantees that their product won't end up in a syringe in an execution chamber: States tend to ignore their requests that their medicine isn't used to kill.

Documents obtained by the Influence show that two of the substances in Virginia's stash of execution drugs—rocuronium bromide to induce paralysis and potassium chloride to stop the heart—were manufactured by Mylan and APP Pharmaceuticals respectively. Both companies have European branches and have denounced the use of their drugs in executions.

There are clear incentives for doing this: In 2014, Mylan lost $70 million when a German investor pulled out, after it was discovered Alabama was using Mylan-produced rocuronium bromide to put prisoners to death. The drug was part of a previously untested execution cocktail, according to NBC News.

In October 2015, Mylan published a statement decrying the use of its drugs for capital punishment:

"Recently Mylan received information indicating that a department of corrections in the US purchased Mylan's rocuronium bromide product from a wholesaler for possible use outside of the labeling or applicable standard of care. Mylan takes very seriously the possibility its product may have been diverted for a use that is inconsistent with its approved labeling or applicable standards of care."

Mylan confirms to the Influence that the Department of Corrections it wrote in 2015—asking that its drugs only be used for approved medicinal purposes, not death—was the one in Virginia.

"Mylan takes seriously the possibility that one of its products may have been diverted for a use that is inconsistent with its approved labeling," the company wrote in 2015. "We appreciate that the Department of Corrections may purchase Mylan products for therapeutic purposes. Nevertheless, we would request your assurances that the Department of Corrections has not acquired Mylan's rocuronium bromide or any other Mylan product for a purpose inconsistent with their approved labeling and applicable standards of care, and that it will not do so in the future."

And yet here are Mylan's drugs, still sitting in Virginia's execution arsenal as of this June:

Screen Shot 2016-07-29 at 8.35.21 PM

Rocuronium Bromide produced by Mylan

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Potassium Chloride produced by APP Pharmaceuticals was also in Virginia's stash as of this June.

"Pharmaceutical companies have never wanted medicines they make to save and improve the lives of patients used in executions designed to end the lives of prisoners," says Maya Foa, director of the death penalty team at the criminal justice advocacy organization Reprieve. "They have taken concrete steps to prevent this by implementing rigorous distribution controls to prevent sales of these medicines to Departments of Corrections for use in lethal injection executions. States like Virginia should respect the wishes and interests of the industry and stop the misuse of medicines in executions."

More documents obtained by the Influence indicate the wholesaler that sold Mylan's drugs to the state of Virginia before the company put contractual controls in place was Cardinal Health—a large drug distributor based in North Carolina.

There's no evidence that Cardinal Health has sold drugs to Department of Corrections since the companies instituted their controls. It's a sign that the public pressure campaigns of groups like Reprieve will continue to diminish the drug supply as the drugs in stock expire.

Alfredo Prieto was killed by the state of Virginia on October 1, 2015. The Virginia Department of Corrections confirms that he was executed using Mylan's rocuronium bromide and APP's potassium chloride. The latter drug has effects likened to "being burned alive from the inside," if the prisoner is not fully sedated.

The potassium chloride from APP expired this June, according the the Virginia Department of Corrections. But the Mylan-produced rocuronium bromide is good until 2017.

Somehow, using pharmaceutical companies' drugs despite their protests isn't even the sketchiest way states have gone about conducting lethal injections.

A few years ago, Texas, Arizona and Nebraska paid $80,000 to a businessman to obtain the sedative sodium thiopental from India. That plan went awry when the FDA confiscated the drugs in 2015—turns out, you're not allowed to order large quantities of powerful barbiturates from foreign countries via mail.

When a Nebraska official asked the vendor for a refund, he (obviously) declined, pointing out that he'd met his end of the bargain. The FDA is likely still warehousing them, Chris McDaniel reported for Buzzfeed.

The shady sources of drugs and the secrecy surrounding execution protocols have had nightmarish outcomes. In 2010, the state of Arizona likely used an expired batch of sodium thiopental from overseas to sedate Jeffrey Landrigan before administering the paralytic, as Liliana Segura reported at the Intercept.

Because the sedative forming the first part of the execution-drug trio had likely expired, Landrigan was probably fully conscious when the second drug paralyzed him, and when the third drug stopped his heart. His eyes were open when he died.

Neither does using a US pharmacy to obtain execution drugs guarantee that things will be handled professionally.

In 2014, the Apothecary Shoppe, a compounding pharmacy in Tulsa, Oklahoma—"Because your prescription matters"—was revealed as the source for lethal injection drugs used in three Missouri executions.

A year later, regulators inspecting the pharmacy found over one thousand code violations—including questionable sterilization practices and drug potency, Buzzfeed reported. The Apothecary Shoppe had also fudged the expiration dates on its drugs.

As Buzzfeed pointed out, years before, Missouri's death row inmates had expressed their concerns that products made by compounding pharmacies didn't "meet the requirements for identity, purity, potency, efficacy, and safety that pharmaceuticals under FDA regulation must meet."

The state dismissed such concerns.

" allegation does not make plausible claim that Missouri's execution procedure is sure or very likely to cause serious illness or needless suffering and give rise to sufficiently imminent dangers," the state wrote, arguing that their lawsuit should be dismissed.

Even turning to seemingly well-run compounding pharmacies hasn't been working so well for death-penalty states lately.

It's bad business strategy for a pharmacy to wade into the deeply divisive issue of lethal injections. Set against the potential awful publicity, the financial incentives offered by death-penalty states are not particularly tempting.

Several pharmacists in death penalty states who spoke with the Influence said they would not make drugs for executions, either for ethical reasons—even one who supports the death penalty said he couldn't bring himself to make the drugs, not even for a good fee—or because it's too controversial. The International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists (IACP), the largest trade group of compounding pharmacists, has advised members not to make the drugs.

"No no no," one pharmacist in Virginia said. "I would not want to. In a word, no."

So over the past few years, more and more death-penalty states have tried a new tack: passing gag orders that keep the identity of the manufacturer and parts of the execution protocol secret, in the hopes that if they can guarantee total anonymity, they'll find more takers.

The latest state to pass a secrecy law is Virginia—the law went into effect this month. A spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Corrections tells the Influence the state has begun its clandestine search for more execution drugs.

There are seven people on death row in Virginia. Two of them were scheduled to die this year, but their executions have been temporarily stayed.

Ricky Gray is on death row for taking part in a robbery spree for which he and his accomplice were convicted of killing seven people, including two children. Ivan Teleguz, a Ukrainian national, was convicted of having his ex-girlfriend murdered—but there are major holes in the state's case against him, including key witnesses admitting they lied in exchange for a deal from prosecutors.

Whether and how Gray and Teleguz are killed may come down to a strange compromise struck between pro-death penalty lawmakers and Virginia Governor Terry McAullife.

In late 2015, state lawmakers introduced a bill to bring back the electric chair, so that executions could proceed even if the state ran out of execution drugs. The bill passed the House and Senate. But when the law landed on Gov. Terry McAuliffe's desk, he made it clear it would not pass.

"I personally find it reprehensible," McAuliffe said at the time. "We take human beings, we strap them in a chair and then we flood their bodies with 1,800 volts of electricity, subjecting them to unspeakable pain until they die."

He proposed an alternative: Instead of going back to the electric chair, the state would acquire drugs from sterile compounding pharmacies—but through the passage of a state secrecy clause that would protect the identities of the pharmacies.

"These manufacturers will not do business in Virginia if their identities are to be revealed," McAuliffe said at the time, according to the Washington Post. McAuliffe made it clear that if his secrecy amendment didn't pass, he would end executions in the state rather than resort to the chair.

McAuliffe's compromise effectively ensured the death penalty would continue—even though he could have stopped it.

"I am pleased the Governor agrees that the death penalty must remain available in order to preserve the full measure of justice," Del. Jackson Miller (R-Manassas), the electric chair bill's sponsor, told local news sources.

Rep. Scott Surovell (D), who helped lead the charge against both the electric chair bill and McAullife's secrecy clause, tells the Influence he was deeply disappointed by the governor's move.

"Our governor purports to be against capital punishment. He kept it alive in Virginia instead of imposing a moratorium like other governors have done," he says. "Nothing good happens in secret. I don't think the government should do anything in secret—especially kill a human being."

This October 9, 2014, file photo shows the gurney in the the execution chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)

The warden of Oklahoma State Penitentiary sat in front of a grand jury, attempting to explain how the state accidentally used the wrong drug to kill Charles Warner in 2015—and how nobody even noticed.

"I assumed that what the pharmacist provided was that we needed. So in my mind, that potassium acetate must have been the same thing as potassium chloride," the warden testified.

"My body is on fire," were Warner's last words, uttered after he was administered midazolam, the first drug in the lethal cocktail.

If ever a compelling argument were needed for why execution procedures should have far more scrutiny and transparency—rather than more secrecy—Oklahoma's most recent executions provide it. A damning 106-page jury report released this May found failure at almost every step of the process—as well as a decent amount of attempted cover-up—in both the execution of Charles Warner and the attempted execution of Richard Glossip later that year.

And those failures came after the state had tried to reform its execution protocol in response to the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in 2014, who appeared to writhe in pain and even attempt to get up from the gurney multiple times after being administered the sedative midazolam.

It took 43 minutes for Lockett to die.

According to court filings, officials at the Corrections Department settled on using midazolam as the sedative in part with the aid of a cursory online search when they couldn't find any pentobarbital, the officially sanctioned drug.

As they discovered, midazolam takes much longer to work than pentobarbital.

"I did have a discussion with our medical director at the time and he said, 'Yeah Midazolam probably when administered will, will render sedation.' And that's all he would say," said the former general counsel for the corrections department who was involved in Lockett's execution, according to the report. "Then, you know, I did my own research, I looked on-line, you know. Went past the key Wiki leaks, Wiki leaks or whatever it is, and I did find out that when administered, Midazolam would administer, would render a person unconscious. That's what we needed ... So we thought it was okay."

After the political fallout from Lockett's botched execution, the state was forced to investigate and reform its execution processes before going through with the executions of Charles Warner and Richard Glossip.

VICE News asked people around the world how they feel about killing criminals.

This time, Oklahoma Department of Corrections obtained the drugs for Warner and Glossip's executions by making a list of pharmacists and calling them up.

First, the officials asked for pentobarbital. The first pharmacist on their list refused to make execution drugs. Others said yes, but that they couldn't get the drug.

So the Department of Corrections switched its drug protocol and went back down its list of pharmacists, until they found one who agreed to provide midazolam, rocuronium bromide and potassium chloride.

That pharmacist accidentally ordered potassium chloride in a more diluted form than was needed. Seemingly in a rush to correct his mistake, he tried ordering potassium chloride again. But when he tried to pick the drug from a wholesaler's website, he accidentally clicked potassium acetate, a far less common drug.

The pharmacist, whose identity remains confidential, tried to explain his error to the grand jury: "... in my head I was not thinking potassium chloride, because I was looking at it, going, it's potassium. As I said, pharmacy brain versus probably a law brain, I guess. I don't know."

He was paid $869.85 in cash for his work.

On the day of Charles Warner's execution, January 15, 2015, a Department of Corrections employee picked up the drugs from the pharmacy and drove them back to the prison, where no one noticed that the third drug was wrong—even though the Warden wrote down the words potassium acetate on the execution drug form.

They photographed the drugs. The IV team made syringes of each drug, and still, no one noticed that the drug meant to stop his heart was the wrong one.

Asked how the team could have failed to notice, the IV team leader replied, "That's a great question. And I don't know that I can absolutely answer that."

Although admitting "the buck stops with me," his explanation for not noticing was that he was so nervous about getting the right concentrations of each drug—a mighty important task, given the horrors of botched executions when the inmate hadn't been adequately sedated.

He continued, "...the concentration of this drug is much more concentrated than what we normally use ... So—and I'm not very good at math in my head. So I had to really think about the concentration of that. Am I—is this right?"

He described feeling anxious about getting the dosage right and performing the execution. "Somehow in my—again, my mind is going, 30 minutes from now you're going to be in that room starting IVs on some guy that is not going to like you very much. And you've got—and all eyes are on you, in effect," he said.

The final drug was easy compared to the other two, so it seems he let his attention flag a little bit:

It was three vials; boom, boom, boom. It just took a minute and we drew them up, we were done. It was the easiest of the three. In terms that we didn't have to focus on dilutions and concentrations. We just had to draw them up and they were done. And somehow that glaring word, acetate—I don't know, ma'am. I just totally dropped the ball, is all I can say.

On September 30, a prison employee made another trip to the same pharmacy—this time to pick up drugs for the execution of Richard Glossip.

Glossip's case had attracted international attention. This was in part because of his strong claim of innocence—he was sentenced to die because a 19-year-old meth user who beat a motel owner to death claimed Glossip had put him up to it—and in part because Glossip challenged Oklahoma's drug protocol all the way to the Supreme Court, claiming that midazalom was not a strong enough sedative to prevent him from experiencing pain. The Supreme Court voted 5-4 that states could continue using that drug protocol.

"Google it," the Governor's General Counsel told the attorney general's office, which wanted to halt the execution.

On the day that Richard Glossip was supposed to die, the warden noticed that the third drug in the drug cocktail they were about to prepare was potassium acetate, not potassium chloride. The warden opted to keep quiet about this realization. Later, they were asked why in front of the Grand Jury.

"When I seen it, I thought it was the same thing," the Warden testified. "And I reflected on the way that we had done it previously with the accountabilities to ensure—I didn't know—when the drugs were brought down, I didn't know the pharmacist that we use or the pharmacy. I didn't know who ordered the drugs. That's not part of my job duty. I didn't know it hadn't been looked at, I assumed it had been. I assumed that what the pharmacist provided was that we needed. So in my mind, that potassium acetate must have been the same thing as potassium chloride."

So the IV team members proceeded to draw up the syringes. At that point one of them also noticed the drug discrepancy and alerted prison authorities.

Over the next few hours, as Richard Glossip awaited his execution, state officials debated whether to proceed with the killing or to stop it. Governor Mary Fallin's General Counsel pushed to go ahead with the execution after the doctor and pharmacist both said potassium acetate and potassium chloride were medically interchangeable.

"Google it," the Governor's General Counsel told the attorney general's office, which wanted to halt the execution.

After all, it would look bad if they stopped the execution, he pointed out to the attorney general—because then the public would find out that they had executed Charles Warner using the wrong drug.

As the clock ticked, the attorney general swayed Governor Fallin to grant a last minute delay that would spare Richard Glossip's life—for now. Glossip remains on death row.

The state issued a press release explaining that the executions had been temporarily paused while the Governor's office, Department of Corrections and the attorney general's office addressed legal issues surrounding their drug protocol: "Executions will resume once those issues have been addressed to the satisfaction of all three parties."

The Oklahoma Grand Jury concludes its report by listing the circumstances that led to this series of blunders.

It's hard to find qualified physicians willing to take part in an execution these days, they point out. Pharmaceutical companies have clamped down on the use of their products in lethal injection. And it's hard to find pharmacists willing to make the drugs instead.

Their solution? Switching to "nitrogen hypoxia"—death by suffocation with poison gas.

"Both Doctor A and Professor A testified executions carried out by nitrogen hypoxia would be humane," the report's authors write, "and as nitrogen is the most abundant element in our atmosphere, the components for execution via nitrogen hypoxia would be easy and inexpensive to obtain."

This article was originally published by the Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow the Influence on Facebook or Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Donald Trump Is Now Anti-Porn, Apparently

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Photo of Trump erotica via Amazon

Keeping true to the Republican Party's draconian platform, internet safety advocacy group Enough Is Enough announced Monday that Donald Trump has signed a pledge that would crack down on pornography's "harmful public health impact," the New York Post reports.

The pledge promises that, if elected, Trump will "give serious consideration to appointing a Presidential Commission to examine the harmful public health impact of internet pornography on youth, families, and the American culture." It also calls for stricter laws to help prevent sex trafficking and the sexual exploitation of young children.

This anti-porn stance is a bit of a change for Trump, who once graced the cover of Playboy. He isn't exactly well-known as a bastion of sexual morality, either—the guy bragged about sleeping with married women in Art of the Deal and has said more than a few questionable things about young women over the years, including Paris Hilton and his own daughter.

The pledge announcement also comes the same day that the New York Post published some racy photos of 25-year-old Melania Trump posing back in her modeling days, but Trump apparently doesn't think those topless pics pose a risk to the public's health.

"They're a celebration of the human body as art, and nothing to be embarrassed about with the photos," Trump spokesman Jason Miller said of the photos on CNN Monday. "She's a beautiful woman."

Read: Porn Is Destroying America, Says GOP

VICE INTL: Tracking Down Serbia's Danube River Pirates

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On this episode of VICE INTL, VICE Serbia explores how pirates on Serbia's leg of the Danube River engage in illegal trade with international boat crews. Pirates often make deals with the crews to offload oil, ores, and fertilizer to sell later on the black market, which can often result in violence between rival pirate gangs. As a result, Serbia has been blacklisted by a number of international companies because of its rampant piracy.

VICE Serbia heads out on the water with the Smederevo river patrol to find out how easy it is for pirates to engage in illegal trade on the Danube, and tracks down some active pirates to find out more about the underground business.

Leslie's Diary Comics: 'Airplane Meditation,' Today's Comic by Leslie Stein

Hollywood Keeps Hiring White Men to Do an Asian's Job

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Last week, Legendary Pictures released the trailer for The Great Wall, a new film about the Great Wall of China... starring Matt Damon. The plot appears to revolve around Damon's character, a white male protagonist, saving the Chinese people from the mythical doom that lurks beyond the wall.

It shouldn't be shocking that yet another "white man saves foreigners" Hollywood story is pissing people off. We've been through this before (Gran Torino, City of Joy, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), not to mention all the examples of white people starring in films about Asian culture (Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, Emma Stone in Aloha, Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell, and on and on). Just scroll through Twitter, and you'll find hundreds of people expressing their frustration—including Taiwanese American actress Constance Wu, who wrote: "We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that only a white man can save the world... When you consistently make movies like this, you ARE saying that."

While The Great Wall has secured Chinese director Zhang Yimou and the majority of the actors are Chinese, the six credited writers are all white American men. And in the trailer, even though there are plenty of Asian faces in the background, the only voice we hear is Damon's. It's not just about representation—it's about white people writing, starring in, and claiming stories about Asian culture.

In the wake of The Great Wall, Chinese Singaporean writer J. Y. Yang is hoping to flip the script. Yang is writing an alt-history novel centering on a Chinese Joan of Arc–type heroine saving white people—which she says is directly in response to the whitewashing of Asian culture in films like The Great Wall.I talked with Yang about her novel, representations of Asian culture in popular media, and why it's so important to let Asian people star in their own stories.

Matt Damon in 'The Great Wall' trailer

VICE: Tell me a little bit about your background.
J. Y. Yang: I'm a Chinese Singaporean currently doing my master's in creative writing. I've been writing fiction professionally since 2014, and I just sold two novellas for the first time earlier this year. I write mostly sci-fi and fantasy.

How did you come up with the idea of writing a book with a storyline that's the opposite of The Great Wall?
I found out about the upcoming Matt Damon film through a friend who's Malaysian Chinese, and I assumed at first that he was a sidekick, which already made me sad. The Great Wall is one of China's great achievements! Then I watched the trailer, and it felt like a cloud of anger rolled over me, and I wanted to do something about this. Then it hit me: I should write a historical fiction out of spite.

What about the trailer made you the most upset?
I think a lot of people were really excited about the prospect of a monster film about the Great Wall of China; then they found out about the casting, the screenwriters, and the plot summary. It's such an old story trope: A white person demonstrating superiority over Asians. I've been annoyed by this centering of white narratives for many years, and there's the context of Hollywood being a racist industry with whitewashing as well.

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