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Why Stoners Should Want to Implement the New Weed Breathalyzer

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Image via Flickr user Einar Jørgen Haraldseid
 
Yesterday, Kayla Ruble of VICE News reported on the rapid progress of weed breathalyzer technology. It seems that as enforcement of the prohibition on marijuana slowly grinds to a halt, cops have to turn from hassling people just for having weed, to hassling people because they used it before they got behind the wheel. 
 
The thing is though, this is as it should be. If stoners know what’s good for them, they need to push for an accurate and sane field pot test to be implemented in all jurisdictions.
 
The test that’s making news this week, the Cannabix Breathalyzer, was invented by retired Canadian Mounty Kal Malhi, who complained to his local paper, The Province, that “Young people have no fear of driving after smoking.”
 
Noticing the lack of a practical solution to the problem, he developed his device at home in Vancouver. It’s similar in appearance and operation to an alcohol breathalyzer. In fact, it’s too similar. It should be green or something, but cops are notorious for having no design sense.
 
 
Image via Flickr user Komunews
 
But ugly or not, it offers a major benefit for stoners: It detects stoned drivers, not just drivers who have smoked weed lately. The Cannabix is only supposed to bust you if you've smoked in the past two hours.
 
Current field test kits for marijuana are garbage. They aren’t accurate, giving false negatives, and finding more positive results in new smokers than those with a high tolerance, according to the New York Times. Cops often turn to more sensitive tests for cannabinoids in urine, blood, and saliva.
 
“The [new] device will determine the THC levels, as opposed to cannabinoids which can stay in the system for 72 hours,” Rav Mlait, the CEO of West Point Resources which will license the product in North America, told VICE News. “That’s the problem with saliva testing.” Getting a DUI conviction when you haven’t smoked in three days is a drag to say the least. 
 
And as for the danger of stoned drivers, Eduardo Romano of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, told Times reporter Maggie Koerth-Baker that while that marijuana contributes to the risk of getting in a crash, “Its contribution is not as important as was expected.” Stoned drivers retain mental capacities drunk drivers lack, like short term memory and problem solving. Stoned drivers also underestimate their driving skill rather than overestimating it. Still, weed appears to cause roughly a twofold increase in your risk of a crash. You’re a danger, but not nearly as much of a danger as a drunk driver.
 
So what’s a responsible stoner to do about the looming threat of an accurate field test for stoned driving? Go with it. Make that tiny sacrifice and stop being stoned while driving, and at the same time, push for the field test to be refined even further. 
 
I seriously doubt stoner culture will go this way.
 
Writers like Paul Armentano and Mike Adams of High Times often rail against the threat of a breathalyzer. They understand the issue, and they’ve made some good points, but their argument most often comes down to the blood level vs. actual impairment distinction. If the claims Kal Malhi is making about the Cannabix are true, it gives them much less room to argue against the test.
 
Law enforcement’s newfound interest in field weed tests is going to get thousands of stoned drivers busted soon, particularly if laws are put in place to make THC tests compulsory. At the moment, drivers can simply not consent to a weed test in some places, like Los Angeles, but that may not be the case much longer.
 
Although it remains to be seen if it’s all it’s cracked up to be, the Cannabix breathalyzer seems more fair than existing tests. Stoners should push for thorough testing of its capabilities. They should also press for laws that take into account the difference in danger between drunk and stoned driving. 
Screencap from the NORML site 
 
NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, could take the lead. Currently, when breathalyzers are brought up, NORML issues a press release detailing what seems to be blanket opposition, citing the same 72-hour problem as High Times, and dragging out shop-worn graphs showing that increased marijuana use in recent years hasn’t resulted in a greater number of auto fatalities, which is beside the point.
 
They apparently don’t sense what it’s going to look like when MADD takes an interest in the issue, and starts waving signs at them with pictures of dead children on them. 
 
Alternatively, they could get out in front of the issue. Rather than campaigning against any and all breathalyzers, which is bound to look like they’re just running from accountability, they could push for the Cannabix, or some even-more-accurate descendant thereof. Rather than insist that they all drive better stoned, they could push for studies to prove that the impairment is relatively slight. Those would be moves that would bolster public opinion.
 
There’s another interest group out there that that fights tooth-and-nail against any new regulation, and responds to criticism by becoming paranoid and defensive: The NRA. As stoners’ political power increases, they should do everything they can to be nothing like them.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter


VICE Special: B.A.L.F. Is America's New Buddy Alien Life-Form

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Jamie Warren is a perennial VICE favorite. We published her first image in 2004, alongside a story called “An Ode to the Fat Friend,” and her work has been featured in almost every VICE photo issue since. In 2008, Aperture published a monograph of her work as part of their series Tiny Vices, curated by former VICE photo editor Tim Barber. Last month, Warren's second solo exhibition in New York opened at the Hole Gallery to rave reviews. What can we say—we’re proud of her.

So it is with particular enthusiasm that we present B.A.L.F., a twisted variety show starring Jaimie Warren and directed by Matt Roche. Co-written by Warren and Roche, the program was inspired in part by the 1980’s TV show Alf, but it patches together a lot of different, uniquely bizarre vignettes. These include a re-staging of the video for Lionel Richie’s “Hello,” a rendition of a weird scene from the movie Beaches, and a lot of other stuff that’s too freaky and sublime to put into words. “We started thinking about all the terrible things Alf does to the family in that show,” director Roche told us, “and we realized that without the campy theme music, it would all seem very weird.”

What happens when a wild and woolly lady from a distant world crashes into the lives of a typical suburban family? The results are mixed. Ripped from the headlines, it's B.A.L.F.

VICE News: The Battle for Iraq - Part 1

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Last week, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the extremist militant Sunni group—along with other Sunni militias and former Baathist party members—seized control of large parts of Iraq, including Mosul, the nation's second largest city. In many places, the Iraqi army barely put up a flight. Soldiers dropped their weapons and fled, whether because of fear, incompetence, or internal sabotage. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have become internally displaced after fleeing the fighting or the potential for potential Iraqi air strikes.

As ISIS and the other groups continued to fight their way to Baghdad, gruesome videos of brutal executions began to surface. Iraqi army units stationed near Baghdad, as well as Shiite militias, have pledged to not give up so easily. Many say the conflict was brewing for a while and that ISIS, along with some of the other groups, has had some semblance of control in Sunni areas for quite some time. They point to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki's increasingly sectarian polices and crackdowns on Sunnis as having provoked the events of the last week, and fear this could be the start of a devastating civil war.

In the north, Kurdish forces known as the peshmerga have used the opportunity to seize disputed areas, territories that the Kurds long felt belonged to them but the government was hesitant relinquish. An informal border now exists between ISIS dominated areas and Kurdish territory. There has only been sporadic clashing, as neither group seems determined to break the strange detente.

Harper Approving the Northern Gateway Pipeline Should Surprise No One

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Photo via Tomas Borsa and JP Marquis.
There were three options the Conservatives could have gone with on Tuesday in regards to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline: “yes,” “no,” or “umm, give us a bit more time to reflect.”

They unsurprisingly went with the first option, and approved the construction of the dual pipeline pending it meets 209 dubious conditions set out by the equally dubious National Energy Board—an organization that with every one of these familiar decisions further clarifies itself as a swindle, designed to look like a regulator that in actuality facilitates big oil and the Conservative’s energy ambitions.

If pushed through, Northern Gateway will see the transportation of over half a million-barrels-per day of diluted tar sands bitumen traverse the Rockies and cut through the heart of British Columbia, to finally funnel into Kitimat (where they’ve already voted against it) and onto 225 tankers a year headed precariously through fragile Pacific coast inlets and westbound to Asia.

Meanwhile, Enbridge is touting the economic benefits of the pipeline by throwing out numbers such as: $270 billion dollars towards Canada’s GDP over the next 30 years and $81 billion towards government coffers. Yet these debatable, astronomical revenue figures will still only create—their number—560 long-term jobs.

While plenty of good ol’ boy Albertans, multinational stakeholders, energy lobbyists, and Conservatives from China to Fort McMurray to Ottawa will have raised a few glasses Tuesday night, toasting the money they’ve dug out of the ground, BC’s notoriously strong environmental groups and First Nations were in attack mode Tuesday afternoon, and British Columbians were already taking to the streets of Vancouver. Some blocked downtown traffic, with the message that whatever greenlight the Conservatives have lit is merely symbolic; to put shovels in the ground will be an entirely different fight that’s not contained to lawyer’s offices and Parliament Hill, but brought to the lines of the proposed pipes themselves.

Tomas Borsa has been observing the Northern Gateway debate for years. Along with Jean-Philippe Marquis, their documentary and multimedia project Line in the Sand has brought them to the most potentially affected areas, and into contact with some of the more particularly active individuals along Northern Gateway’s proposed route. I got in touch with Tomas last night, and asked him about what he thought was in store for Northern Gateway resistance:

“At the most extreme end, industrial sabotage is a real possibility... by that I mean tree spikings. It could be targeting construction vehicles, it could be targeting pipeline infrastructure at critical weak points like pump stations. Throughout Canadian history, that’s certainly not unprecedented, if you think of Wiebo Ludwig. Even worse than that, the absolute worse case scenario as I can see this, and Grand Chief Stewart Phillip is the first person that I think said it on record, but this could spill over into an event in the vein of Oka or Ipperwash.

And this time of course, the difference is it’s not one or two First Nations caught off guard by a relatively benign development proposal… Personally, I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with people who have absolutely committed themselves to stopping this pipeline from going ahead. Even if it means dying.” 

Beyond environmental groups and First Nations, Enbridge and the Tories also face some serious opposition from the Provincial Government of BC itself. Somewhat contradictorily (as Christie Clark wants to push her own Liquefied Natural Gas pipelines through ASAP) on Tuesday afternoon BC’s Premier maintained being staunchly against the Enbridge pipelines being built at least as they’re currently planned.

Seeing as two-thirds of British Columbians oppose Northern Gateway, it’s an easy political choice for her to make. Although, with her energy sector background, it’s hard to believe that the adversarial face she’s putting forward is completely authentic. The five conditions BC have set as parameters for the Northern Gateway go-ahead will still be no walk in the woods for Enbridge to live up to.

What’s abundantly clear, after day one of the approval, is that neither Enbridge nor the federal government has done even the smallest amount of appropriate consultation with First Nations or other communities whose land lies along the route of the pipeline to simply go ahead with the project. And with opposition Liberal and NDP leaders Justin Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair both vowing they’d reverse the pipeline decision if elected, Stephen Harper is stuck with his head in the tar sands.

Hoping to deflect as much criticism from himself and his cabinet as possible, Harper will be relying on Enbridge, not the government, to convince Canadians that a pipeline is in the best interest of the country not only in the short term, but also for years to come. 560 permanent jobs, people! Come on!
 

@ddner

VICE News: Chaos in Brazil: On the Ground at the World Cup - Part 1

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VICE News headed to the initial match of the World Cup games to be played in Rio de Janeiro, between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Argentina. As the game began, protesters marched towards the Maracanã stadium and gathered alongside football fans. But as the game heated up, so did the protests, and clashes between the police and demonstrators quickly follow.

VICE News was on the scene as one man on the street—allegedly an undercover policeman—accosted reporters, waved a pistol around, and fired several shots.

Can We Stop Rape Being Used As a Weapon of War?

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US Secretary of State John Kerry, British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Angelina Jolie at the Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict Summit. Image via Flickr user Foreign Office

After four years being passed through armed groups in the depths of the Congolese jungle, used as a sex slave and maid, 15-year-old Faida's rescuers finally came, but she didn't want to leave. "I was very scared at the beginning, but after a while I got used to it," she said. "I thought it was a normal situation."

That was four years ago. Last week Faida Kasi Lenbo, now a dressmaker and a campaigner for Save the Children, met Angelina Jolie and the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, at the London summit on Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict. "William Hague told me he would do his best to help abuse stop in my country," she said afterwards. "I hope they do what they have promised".

Hague and his US counterpart, Secretary of State John Kerry, were among 70 ministers who gathered in London to address this kind of horrible violence and launch an international protocol for bringing perpetrators to justice. The summit created "an army," Mr Hague said, "united with the common vision of ending warzone rape and sexual violence, and now it has been put together this army is not going to be disbanded."

Faida is now one of the voices rallying that army, but it has been a long and painful road for the 19-year-old from the DRC, where sexual violence is endemic in its decades-long conflict. In 2010, Margot Wallström, then the UN Special Representative on sexual violence in conflict, declared the country the "rape capital of the world," which is probably the absolute worst title for any country, ever. Since then, the number of reported sexual violence cases has climbed, according to UN data. 

Kidnapped at the age of 11 from her aunt's house, Faida watched as her abductors killed her three siblings, shooting two and stabbing the third. Hauled into the night, she found herself in the hands of a local militia or "Mai Mai," the personal slave of the commander who raped her and beat her regularly. 

"He used me, he gave me a lot of work to do, and he raped me," she said, describing how she was made to sleep in his bed. "He was over 50 years old."

He wasn't the only one. Once he tired of using her as his personal plaything, he passed her around to others, Faida said. Later she fell into the possession of different militia. Sold or captured in battle, she was used as a sex slave by no less than five groups during her four year captivity.

Faida Kasi Lenbo. Image courtesy of Save the Children

She feared for her life, she said. "I saw children being used like maids and servants, made to kill people, to steal."

"The day we released Faida, we released 17 girls," explained Murhabazi Namegabe, the director of the Congolese NGO BVES, who negotiated her freedom. "Faida was the most affected, the most traumatized. She said to me that she was mad. 'Where do you want to take me? I'm no longer a girl, I'm not a boy, and I no longer have any family.' She said 'I have been raped by battalions of people, so now where do you want to take me?' She was more in a rage than the commanders of the groups who had been using her."

Unsurprisingly, her rehabilitation has been difficult. She has received psychological treatment and education and trained as a seamstress. But like most of the girls the NGO works with, she has been "marked for life" by her ordeal. "The impact is permanent in psychological terms," Murhabazi said.

Social stigma complicates the process of reintegrating girls back into their communities. In Faida's case, the NGO has been unable to trace her parents. Eventually it tracked down an older sister, with whom she now lives in a house built by the NGO in the eastern city of Bukavu. But even that relationship proved difficult to re-establish, Murhabazi said. "Sometimes she didn't even know who her big sister was."

In the DRC, the conflict—stoked by a race for its mineral resources—has claimed some 6 million lives since 1996 and seen sexual violence systematically used as a weapon of war. According to the Enough Project, a US-based NGO, rape in warfare in the DRC “exists on a scale seen nowhere else."

At the summit, Zainab Bangura, Ms Wallström's successor, stressed that not letting perpetrators getting away with it was one of the keys to ending the crimes. "There will be no hiding place and no safe haven. Sooner or later, we will get you," she said. In the DRC, she added, the government was doing what it could but like in many conflict-ridden countries was being hampered by a lack of infrastructure.

The response? The United Nations has set up mobile courts, she explained. The initiative allows survivors to access justice in even the most remote of areas, according to the UN. Meanwhile, police, the judiciary and military are being trained in handling sexual violence cases. A dedicated police unit has been established and the UN has helped set up nine clinics offering not only medical assistance but a legal aid service to inform women of their rights and assist them in filing complaints. Over 700 UN-monitored cases were heard in 2011 and 2012, with a conviction rate of 60 percent. Those cases are just the start, however.

Securing evidence is always a problem, one that the international protocol for handling sexual violence cases is aimed at addressing. It provides a clear framework and guidance on things like interviewing survivors and collecting physical evidence. Britain and the US have also stepped up the amount of cash they're giving training initiatives for authorities in the prevention of and response to abuses.

While those commitments have been welcomed by NGOs and activists, they are very aware that there's a difference between making a framework that exists on only paper and actually applying it in real life. The final summit report noted that "good laws and international agreements in themselves are not enough if attitudes don't change." A key step towards making that shift was women's participation in decision-making, Mr Hague said, insisting that when it came to peace talks in conflicts, there was "no excuse" for excluding women from the negotiating table.

Murhabazi Namegabe, director of BVES. Image courtesy of Save the Children 

Back in the DRC, it is not just the country's array of militia groups who are accused of such abuses—members of the armed forces have also been implicated.

"Children are systematically recruited and used by all parties in the conflict," Murhabazi said. While the boys were used as child soldiers, the girls fell victim to what he called a "combat fetish"—fighters believe that having sexual relations with young girls "protects" them from the enemy.

His NGO had come across cases of girls as young as four who had been used sexually by commanders of armed groups, he said. Securing their release was a delicate and dangerous business. "Little girls like Faida, according to the terms they use in the field, they are 'the commander's food.' And taking girls away from the table of these war chiefs is a question of life and death."

"Sometimes armed groups try to kill us, sometimes we are imprisoned," he said. "Sometimes they tell us, 'We are going to free the children, but you are going to become fighters.' So it's very risky." The group would often leave without any children, but it would come back again and again, he continued. "We succeed, but it requires determination and exceptional courage, and from there we get this strength which allows us to do it." He has been imprisoned several times and had his life threatened. Currently, he is under military protection. 

Faida is still haunted by fear as a result of her years of trauma. "I try to forget it," she said, before adding, "I will never forget it." But was gratified last week to use her experience in the fight to stop the rape of women and children in the DRC and other conflict zones. "I feel very peaceful, and safe. I feel I am achieving something and am very proud."

@hannahkstrange

Happy Wednesday, Here's a Motown Tribute to Nickelback

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Happy Wednesday, Here's a Motown Tribute to Nickelback

I Worshipped Nature with England's Dancing Druids

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Photos by Theo Cottle

Hands up if you had a Wiccan phase as a teenager. Because I definitely did. My evenings were spent rubbing patchouli oil on green candles and I once went to something called “Witchfest” in Croydon, England, where I learned about the best type of wood to carve a wand out of.

I quit witchcraft long before I was old enough to join a coven (most only accept members who are over 18). My spells weren’t working, my mom was mad that I’d inadvertently set fire to the carpet with a charcoal incense block, and I didn't want to dress like a goth or a hippie, which felt like a prerequisite. But I do sometimes wonder what would have happened if I’d become a full-fledged pagan. Could I have developed healing powers? Would my wardrobe consist exclusively of crushed velvet? Would I own a bong shop by now?

Feeling nostalgic, I got in touch with a very kind, knowledgeable woman named Kala, who used to read my tarot cards. These days she describes herself as a seeker, but was trained as a witch and has written lots of books on the subject. I told her I wanted to brush up on Paganism, so she suggested I visit Glastonbury for the Beltane celebrations at the beginning of May. Marking the start of summer, Beltane is one of the largest festivals in the Pagan calendar. The way Kala described it, it sounded a lot like The Wicker Man, minus the ritualistic slaughter of Christians. I was sold.

After a 5 AM start, we met at the Chalice Well, a sacred hole in the ground. As we gathered on the hillside, a Buddhist monk, a druid, a Christian, and a Wiccan representing earth, air, fire, and water each invoked their different elements, saying the type of things you'd imagine they would. For example, “Today, we re-enact the dance of creation, feeling our connection with the Earth and calling on the energies of the universe.” It felt pretty nice that—for this one day in Glastonbury, at least—different religions can put aside their differences in the name of worshipping nature.

Following their speeches, the four representatives lit a bonfire—which represented creation—and asked three male volunteers to guide a maypole through a garland held by some female volunteers. It was probably the least subtle phallic reference I’d seen since the sledgehammer in the “Wrecking Ball” video. "Traditionally, Beltane was an excuse to get rat-arsed and have sex,” explained Kala.

As a red and white–ribboned maypole was set up beside us, we all took turns jumping over a fire, soundtracked by a bunch of people banging on drums. After everyone had had a little leap, it was time to head down to the Martyr’s Monument in the town center. There, just as the heavens began to open, we were introduced to this year's May Queen and Summer King, who led a procession through town in which everything from the trees to the local recycling van were hailed and blessed.

We stopped off at the White Spring Well and Temple, where a couple of women got naked and splashed about in the water. The crowd was mostly an assortment of hippies letting it all hang out, along with a minority of people like me standing around in our coats and not really knowing what to do with ourselves.

By early afternoon I'd had a nice chat with the Archdruid of Avalon, but hadn't had much luck speaking to any witches. Most of the people I met defined their spirituality in fairly wooly terms, describing themselves as nature worshippers or as belonging to “the religion of love.”

No witches meant no magic, just lots of women dressed as Maid Marian. I started to wonder if Beltane in Glastonbury is a bit like Christmas everywhere else—an excuse for a party, whether you believe in the legend or not.

As the procession reached Chalice Hill I finally spoke to a bona fide witch, Sandie, who explained that that the celebrations were started about nine years ago by two covens who wanted to take May Day back from the church. After the town's witches had taken a stand, the whole community got involved in celebrating the start of summer. On cue, the assembled crowd gathered as a group of four (all druids, as far as I could tell) created a sacred circle and erected the massive maypole that had been paraded through town. This ceremony felt a lot like the one that morning, only with slightly higher production values and a sword bearer thrown in for good measure.

Strip away the novelty aspect, and attending a Pagan ritual is a lot like attending any ceremony of a faith that you don't belong to. Just like if I'd been attending a mass, a lot of the rhetoric went over my head, and I was glad when the sacred circle was disbanded for more maypole dancing.

As the sun came out, I accepted that I probably wasn't going to experience any kind of epiphany at Beltane, but I am glad it exists. The mystery and magic that had first attracted me to witchcraft as a teenager was in short supply, but what I had found – lots of British eccentrics marking the changing of seasons – seems like a more sustainable basis for spirituality.

It's obviously easy to be dismissive of anyone wearing a cloak, but a community coming together to celebrate nature is probably about as innocuous as religion is likely to get in 2014. And a part of me hopes that long after global warming has left all our major cities underwater, this lot will still be gathered on a hill somewhere worshipping the old Gods in their own naked, dancey way.

Follow Joe Stone and Theo Cottle on Twitter.


The View from Unist’ot’en: A Camp that Stands Firmly in the Path of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline

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The entrance to the Unist'ot'en camp, which is on unsurrended First Nations land, is protected from unwanted outsiders. All photos by the author.
Michael Toledano is reporting directly from the Unist’ot’en encampment, which sits directly in the line of Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline route. His dispatches are exclusive to VICE Canada.

The federal government's approval of Enbridge's Northern Gateway is an invitation to conflict—a test of Canada's will to inflict violence upon the environment and indigenous peoples who have, throughout much of the project’s proposed route, never surrendered their lands.

Given Enbridge's abhorrent safety record—an average of 73 hydrocarbon spills per year—the enormous risks associated with the project should come as little surprise. Twin pipelines must bore through land-slide prone mountains, cross six major watersheds and 1,210 tributaries, pass through the Great Bear Rainforest and load oil into super-tankers that will navigate the Hecate Straight—the fourth most dangerous waterway in the world, according to Environment Canada. The route, Northern Gateway’s website proudly explains, spans 1,177 “rational and respectful kilometers.”

The National Energy Board’s initial approval of the project argued that, without spilling, “the project would cause adverse environmental effects… on a number of valued ecosystem components. These include the atmospheric environment, rare plants, rare ecological communities, old-growth forests, soils, wetlands, woodland caribou, grizzly bears, terrestrial birds, amphibians, freshwater fish and fish habitat, surface and groundwater resources, marine mammals, marine fish and fish habitat, marine water and sediment quality, marine vegetation, and marine birds.” With such broad risks, the NEB made the solemn promise to critics that these effects would not be “significant” and that a large oil spill is “unlikely.”



This cabin stands in the path of the Northern Gateway pipeline.
Yet, a more real promise has been made by First Nations across BC. “This pipeline will not be built” has become a common adage for indigenous nations and coalitions like the Yinke-Dene alliance or the Coastal First Nations, who have banned oil pipelines and tankers from their territories under laws that are much older than Canada. Nowhere is this promise more strongly articulated than at the Unist'ot'en encampment, in the mountains of interior BC, where I type this in a cabin that was built specifically to blockade the Northern Gateway pipeline corridor.

The cabin is home to Freda Huson, Unist’ot’en camp’s leader, and her husband Toghestiy—a hereditary chief of a neighboring clan. With rumours of an impending court injunction against the camp, a trespass order, or an RCMP raid, the couple barely blink when reached with news of Enbridge’s approval. There can be no two ways about it. “We’re not going anywhere,” Toghestiy says.

“This is not just the blockade, it’s our home… they can’t put a court injunction on our home,” said Freda.



A road through the mountains in Witsuwit'en territory.
A hundred feet away from me is the Morice River, called Widzin Kwah by the Witsuwit’en people. A gushing waterway, pure enough to drink from, it is the lifeblood of the Unist'ot'en camp and one of the last unpolluted waterways in the region. Widzin Kwah is a testament to what the Northern Gateway puts at risk—a key feature of the vast, beautiful, and mountainous territory that has given life to the Witsuwit’en people since time immemorial. Seven species of wild salmon still thrive in the river, though elsewhere they are endangered.

Nearby, the only bridge into this territory is blockaded, open only to those who gain consent from the camp. To build the Northern Gateway, Enbridge must cross this bridge—though they are banned from doing so under Witsuwit’en law. A veritable border crossing, the bridge is an entry point into an unsurrendered nation. It is a point where free, prior, and informed consent—a right enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—is ardently enforced.

Those looking to enter the territories must first answer a series of questions: “Who are you? Where are you from? How long do you plan to stay if we let you in? Do you work for the industry or government that’s destroying our lands? How will your visit benefit my people?” Under these criteria, Enbridge, and other pipeline companies, are banned outright.

The Canadian government believes this is Crown land, but they lack documentation to prove it—the Witsuwit’en, and most other BC First Nations, never signed treaties relinquishing title or land rights. And while Canadian courts have recognized that these territories are unsurrendered, in the landmark Delgamuukw-Gisdaywa v. the Queen case, the federal government does not—as they continue to issue permits, without consultation, on lands of indigenous jurisdiction.

Led by a prime minister who makes historically ignorant claims such as, “Canada also has no history of colonialism,” the nation continues this centuries-old process in plain sight. Crossing the bridge into Unist’ot’en camp would mean extending Canada’s authority into an unsurrendered indigenous nation with its own laws and system of governance. It would require the use of force. To the Witsuwit’en, it would be an act of war.



Freda Huson, Unist’ot’en camp’s leader, and her husband Toghestiy.
“This war is far from being over. We’re going to win this one and we’re going to win it decisively,” said Toghestiy. “I can say that with 100 percent confidence.”

This confidence saturates the encampment. Volunteers labour tirelessly to erect gardens and structures, directly in the paths of several pipeline routes that they say will flourish for decades to come. There is a sense that, if and when the government makes its move, indigenous people and their allies will flock here in the thousands to defend the land. Already, volunteers have visited the camp from around the world. Similarly, just hours after the Northern Gateway’s approval, a group of Tahltan, a nearby First Nation that has blocked coal extraction and seized work sites in their territories, arrived to support the encampment.

“No province or no federal government has say on what happens to these lands, and yet they still issue permits, and think that their permits are valid. Our law supersedes any law outside of our territory,” Huson said. “They can try and do whatever they want and bring any kind of paper here. It’s good as firestarter to me.”

“The decision makers are the ones that have always occupied these lands… They always have and they always will. And it’s our responsibility to make sure we keep that alive,” Toghestiy said. “This isn’t just a fight about pipelines. This is a fight about indigenous sovereignty, our sovereignty.”

When Enbridge arrives, “they’ll be considered trespassers. And we’ll enforce Witsuwit’en law against any trespassers. If you bring any equipment in here, you’re going to be walking out. You try to bring any forces, we’re more skilled in the wilderness than they are. We’re not afraid of the Harper government, we’re not afraid of anybody that’s going to try and forcefully put their project through our territory when we’ve already said no. And our numbers are quite high, right across Canada,” Huson said.



Barbed wire lines a road through the Unist'ot'en camp.
Just last week, the government demonstrated its intent to use force on the anti-pipeline movement. Vancouver police, with guns drawn, raided the home of a group of anti-pipeline activists. Police seized computers, phones, books, posters, cameras, screen-printing equipment, banners, and black flags from the home, all under the pretense of alleged graffiti. Some of the activists are known for organizing solidarity marches for Unist’ot’en camp and other indigenous land defenders.

“This was obviously a tactic of intimidation,” one of the activists told me. “They are trying to send the message that effective anti-pipeline resistance will be met with the barrel of a gun.”

Yet, it seems unlikely that intimidation tactics will affect the Unist’ot’en camp. Freda and Toghestiy say they are tailed continually by undercover officers, which Toghestiy considers an “expensive form of amusement.” Earlier this year they found a camera hidden in the bush, poised to photograph everyone who enters or leaves the camp. During my stay, helicopters have made frequent flights over the camp, clinging to the proposed pipeline routes.

Unidentifiable aircrafts make jerky movements over the camp most nights. These fly too close to be satellites, yet they do not look our sound like planes or helicopters. Some campers believe these are drones, not unlike those used to watch indigenous protesters in Tyendinaga.

There are rumours that the Enbridge Northern Gateway, without being required to go through a new approval process, may be rerouted to Prince Rupert to avoid Unist’ot’en Camp. The new route, still, lacks consent from First Nations along the line. Allies since long before colonization, the Witsuwit’en have pledged to help the Gitxsan First Nation fight Enbridge if the project attempts to pass through their territories to the north.

And while mainstream media outlets, like the CBC, have reported that construction on the Northern Gateway may only begin after it passes through many more regulatory hurdles, it is likely that construction has already begun. At the proposed end-point of the Northern Gateway—Kitimat, BC—Chevron is clear-cutting forests for a pipeline corridor that could be leased by Enbridge, and will otherwise be used to carry fracked gas. They too will need to force their way through Unist’ot’en’s bridge.

And yet, Unist’ot’en does not flinch.

“There are prophecies all over that talk about, not just this fight, but the fight for humanity. Not just the fight for the biosphere, but the fight for humanity—because it’s humans that are going to die from these foolish mistakes,” Toghestiy said. “There are prophecies all over, including ours, that talk about our people winning, and winning in a decisive manner. We’re prepared to fulfil those prophecies. We’re prepared to stand on the front lines and begin that responsibility that we have that’s inherent in all our indigenous bloods. And that’s a pretty powerful statement, and it’s a pretty powerful prophecy. And it’s something we’re going to do.”

@m_tol

Titcoin Is a Brand New Cryptocurrency for Porn Purchases

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The world's first porn industry-targeted cryptocurrency. Image via Titcoin.
With over 275 cryptocurrencies currently trading on the market and new ones popping up seemingly every week, it can be hard to keep track of which ones are scams and which ones are simply just doomed to fail. By now, you must be acquainted with some of the more mainstream coins such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and one of our personal favorites, Dogecoin. But the cryptocurrency world is about to get a proverbial boob job, thanks to the arrival of Titcoin, the first porn industry-targeted cryptocurrency. Hailing from the minds of marketing, startup, and finance wizards, Edward Mansfield, Richard Allen and a third gentleman who prefers to remain anonymous (ala Satoshi Nakamoto), Titcoin is designed to easily facilitate payment for your daily fap sessions.

On June 21st, people who sign up early for a Titcoin wallet will be able to get first dibs at mining what will eventually be 69 million Titcoins (why not have fun with this?) three hours before the official launch at noon that day. Evidently, the incentive to get in on Titcoin is already very real.

Anyway, I called up one of the co-founders, Edward, to talk about why Titcoins are the tits and their fake viral video that jokingly advertised Titcoin as a barter system based on flashing.

VICE: The first time I had heard of Titcoin was the fake spec ad that was made for a contest to become Pornhub’s Creative Director. That video made it seem as if Titcoin was just a way for girls to pay for things by flashing their tits. That’s not actually how your currency works, but would it ever be possible for me to use for Titcoin in that way in the near future?
Edward: Anything is possible. It’s funny because it’s tongue and cheek and it’s meant not to be reality at the same time. I don’t think we would advocate for flashing your tits. That market already exists to some level.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure if a girl flashes her tits at the bar she’s gonna wind up getting a free drink anyway.
That’s pretty safe to say. Titcoin is mainly an idea that we came up with because we wanted to be very business minded. Sometimes we feel a bit uncomfortable talking about this matter because we’re not trying to promote pornography per se. We’re trying to promote a currency that is a conduit for that. We are walking that thin line. We are not really pornographers, we are basically business guys who are bringing in a currency which caters to a specific audience.

I must say Titcoin is a very catchy name. Was it a no-brainer for you to name it that way?
Yes, Titcoin was a no brainer. Just to give you an idea of what happened in the beginning, it was just myself and one of our partners chatting about digital currency as a whole. We’re at a bar, and somehow we start thinking about what if there was an industry targeted currency, not one that was generic and covers a wide spectrum but something that was very specific. The adult entertainment industry quickly came to mind. I think within seconds we thought of Titcoin as sort of the perfect name. Everyone knows what Bitcoin is and Titcoin has a very similar spelling. It’s really to capitalize on the branding.

OK, now onto serious business. What am I going to be able to buy once I mine a fat stack of Titcoins?
Digital currency is pretty much like cash—you can’t really control what people do with cash. The partners that we are targeting are primarily online websites that have subscription based services where you pay monthly fees for content. But there are other e-commerce sites that may benefit as well, mostly those that sell toys or adult packaged products. But we also have a lot of entertainers who have contacted us. One in particular, he’s a friend of a friend.I don’t want to give you his name because he’s actually one of the famous pornstars out there. He’s very interested in being a partner as well. Having his name on this would definitely skyrocket the notoriety of Titcoin.

How would having this mysterious person’s name attached to Titcoin help you?
It would bring things into the mainstream and help legitimize the currency. I think legitimizing the currency is the most important component in creating value in the long run. This person that we are talking to, his name is big enough that the average person will know who he is without being someone who buys porn all the time.



Edward (left), anonymous finance guy (middle), Richard (right)
Have you been contacted by other entertainers?
We have been contacted by a lot of performers who do webcam streaming. They’re particularly interested in Titcoin as a way to get “donations” from their viewers. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with how it works. It’s like when you go to a strip club and you throw dollars at the strippers, but online instead of throwing dollar bills you could throw digital currency at performers on the webcam. Viewers would pay to watch, but they could also throw Titcoins at performers.

That sounds great! Now, when it comes to who is going to be accepting Titcoins, are we talking big sites like Brazzers, Pornhub, etc?
Yes, largely. But the ones that have reached out to us are generally some of the smaller, fringe websites, which are more than welcome to join us. We have been talking to a few of the really big players in the industry. We have talked to Brazzers at some point. In fact, we were talking to them before they started accepting Bitcoins. We kind of feel like we nudged them in that direction. But some of the other ones we are talking to are very suspicious of digital currency as a whole. It’s not surprising. These types of industries are very technologically advanced when it comes to media content and video streaming. But I feel that when it comes to the financial aspect of subscription based services, they tend to be a little bit gun-shy.

What’s going to make Titcoin stand out from the other cryptocurrencies, aside from having a catchy name and a sexy logo?
I don’t think we see ourselves as competitors to Bitcoin per se. The way that we see it is that it gives users various payment options, like using Visa, MasterCard, or Amex. In the future, if we can imagine a world where digital currency is more mainstream, you might have a Bitcoin account with your spouse. You may not want them to see you purchasing products or subscriptions on adult sites, because perhaps this is something you’d rather keep to yourself. So having an industry-specific coin has certain advantages for consumers when they want to keep things a bit more private than they would with a Bitcoin account. Fundamentally there is no significant difference, it’s all in the branding.


@smvoyer

Convicted Felon Dinesh D'Souza Is Still Hustling Old White People

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Speaking at last year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

Dinesh D’Souza, the nation's leading incendiary conservative documentarian, has resurfaced after what can only be described a series of unfortunate events. The trouble began with his 2012 ouster as president of King’s College in Manhattan, in the wake of a bombshell report in the evangelical Christian magazine WORLD, which alleged D'Souza had carried on an extramarital affair with a (much) younger woman. The Board of Trustees summarily terminated his employment, and the former Reagan administration official has since devoted himself more single-mindedly to ginning up anxiety amongst aging white folk, as highlighted by his immensely profitable anti-Obama book and movie campaign. The conspiracy-laden propaganda film 2016: Obama’s America is now the second highest-grossing US documentary of all time, D’Souza boasted before a cabal of admirers in New York City on Tuesday night (exact estimates vary, but the film is definitely up there).

A massive hit among the Tea Party crowd, 2016 savaged Obama at his existential core, charging that the president’s entire life and career pursuits have been constructed with the burning desire to destroy America from within. This attack provided much of the thinking that undergirded certain strains of GOP invective during the last presidential campaign: Mitt Romney himself promulgated the “D’Souza doctrine” in his critique of Obama’s tenure, and just this week, Dick Cheney has been accused of doing the same in his fierce denunciation of Obama’s response to the current crisis in Iraq.

D’Souza was in town to preside over the premiere of his follow-up project, America: Imagine the World Without Her. The movie, unsurprisingly, is once again largely centered on Dinesh the man, and features extended close-up shots of him performing uniquely American activities such as visiting Mount Rushmore, patrolling the Mexican border, and eating a hot dog in Times Square. His sheer megalomania, at this point, appears unparalleled among the conservative media ecosphere—other firebreathing pundits and talk radio-circuit journalists certainly brandish inflated egos, but D’Souza stands pretty much alone in relentlessly offering himself as the product.

The almost entirely white, middle aged-to-elderly crowd received the film with ebullience, but many later despaired it would not find a wider audience among the general public. It probably can't hurt that federal prosecutors indicted D’Souza for campaign finance fraud in January. At the time, Matt Drudge—arguably still among the most influential shapers of media discourse in the country—immediately pounced, tweeting his theory that D’Souza and friends were victims of a wildly persecutorial Obama administration (the tweet has since been deleted). D’Souza later pleaded guilty to one count of violating campaign finance laws.

I assumed D’Souza would avoid mention of the whole legal imbroglio, but instead it was explicitly discussed in the movie. Fox News clips of well-known anchors covering his indictment were shown during a portion of the film about Obama’s alleged obsession with silencing right-wing critics. I had an opportunity to speak with Dinesh after the screening, and asked if he was alluding to the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which brought the charges, engaging in selective prosecution. “I don’t allude to it,” D'Souza told me. “I’m alluding to a broader point, which is the Obama administration uses the government against its critics. I say nothing about my case.”

Indeed, D’Souza the narrator need not have said anything about the case, because top-flight conservative media personalities did it for him. “I play news reports from Megyn Kelly and [Sean] Hannity talking on the subject,” D’Souza told me.

Here you can start to see how a typical interaction with D’Souza almost inevitably disintegrates into incoherence. Initially, D’Souza said that he did not allege “selective punishment” on the part of the US attorney’s office. Fine. But less than a minute later, in the very same conversation, he told me the following: “I said from the beginning I did exceed the campaign finance limit, and my defense had to do with intent and selective prosecution.” D’Souza then somehow goes on to deny that showing TV reports on the indictment could lead viewers to suspect that the Obama administration of targeting its antagonists for criminal punishment. “That’s a conclusion that people can draw if they want to,” D’Souza said. “I don’t draw it in the movie.”

Um, OK. The amount of pure bullshit that D’Souza can serve up has no apparent limit. To that extent, he is consistently impressive. But in fostering fear, paranoia, xenophobia, and conspiracism among the population, the man also does tangible harm. The central premise of the wildly successful 2016 doc was that America’s downfall was imminent should Obama win re-election that year. Well, Obama won re-election, and everything in America is still basically as it was two years ago—the good and the bad—which would seem to cast doubt on D’Souza’s thesis. Perhaps this helps explain why D’Souza opted for a film that resembles a “a love letter to America,” as one emotional movie premiere attendee put it during the question and answer session.

I tried to clarify with D’Souza what exactly he was claiming about selective prosecution. “In the movie I argue that I’m a prominent critic of Obama,” he told me. “I know for a fact that he was personally distressed by 2016—he railed against me personally on his website, Barack Obama dot com. So I’m a prominent, outspoken critic of him, and one can take that wherever you want.”

At this point a D'Souza handler intervened to cut short our dialogue, which was a shame. But despite his mendacity and criminal record, D’Souza can rest easy knowing that 1,000 theaters will be showing his new film when it opens July 4th weekend. The checks, one suspects, will keep rolling right on in.

Follow Michael Tracey on Twitter.

VICE Shorts: A Piece of the Bottom - Trailer

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With over 3500 miles of coastline, Maine is America's biggest ocean frontier. Here, self-regulated lobstermen struggle to hang on to their way of life—even if it means fighting to the death for their piece of the bottom.

How an FBI Informant Helped Orchestrate the Hack of an FBI Contractor

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How an FBI Informant Helped Orchestrate the Hack of an FBI Contractor

Thanks to the Vancouver School Board, it’s a Lot Easier to Be a Transsexual Student on the West Coast

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Image via Creative Commons.
The LGBTQ community is making strides on the west coast this week. On June 15, the mayor of Edmonton presented a 12-year-old transgendered boy with his new and hard-fought-for birth certificate. The new birth certificate recognizes the minor, Wren Kauffman, as a male and not the female that he was physically born as.

Then, on Monday, the Vancouver School Board (VSB) finally voted for a new transgender policy that allows students to choose a name that best represents their gender identity. They have also enacted a policy for single-stall, genderless washrooms. On top of that, the VSB has introduced gender-neutral pronouns: xe (third person), xem (plural), and xyr (possessive) for students who do not identify with traditional gender roles.

This policy is ultimately an extension of the 2004 ACB policy that promises students a safe learning environment regardless of sexual orientation or gender placement (or uncertainty thereof).

It’s been a long, necessary path that has unsurprisingly been met with controversy.

VICE spoke with Toni Roberts, a gender studies expert and sociology professor at Mount Allison University, who sees this decision as a necessary step towards inclusion: “Letting people understand and figure out their own identity is great. In a liberal democracy, we should have choices, now we’re coming up with a solution that is not perfect but it is progressive.”

Roberts likes the direction that the VSB has taken, but recognizes that there’s a lack of knowledge, understanding, and acceptance for those that don’t fit into one specific, biological gender—especially amongst the opposition.

While there was some VSB trustee resistance that made itself clear during an open debate, the board overwhelmingly voted to protect students and reduce discrimination.

After the decision came down, two members of the school board, Sophia Woo and Ken Denike, were kicked out of the Non-Partisan Association caucus (NPA) after organizing their own press conference opposing the policy. At this rogue presser, Sophia and Ken argued that the VSB’s decision could negatively impact the real estate market and the percentage of international students coming to study in Vancouver (they represent, currently, less than one percent of enrollment).

The NPA responded by expelling Sophia and Ken, explaining that their decision “was necessary given that the two have chosen to follow their own course in various matters without consulting with the other members of Caucus. The Caucus has concluded that Denike and Woo do not share the same level of sensitivity and understanding of the LGBTQ+ community.”

They were the only board members to oppose the new policy.

According to the VSB’s chair Patti Bacchus, the decision to make their school board more trans-friendly was a “no brainer.” In a conversation with VICE, she went on to say, “I couldn’t believe there was opposition. The point of the policy was to make the ACB clear and consistent.”

Meanwhile, parents (led by the Chinese-Christian community) are upset that the school board could impact their “traditional family values” without their consent while lashing out at those who demonize their argument as “religious or homophobic.”  

But now that the vote has passed, it’s not likely to be reversed. Bacchus is regretful that it wasn’t unanimous, but says she is backed by “overwhelming support” from the public. She went on to say that she’s “very proud to be part of a committee that includes and supports every student by creating an environment where everyone can thrive and feel safe.”

Roberts agrees, and believes having this kind of gender awareness built into a Kindergarten to grade 12 (K-12) curriculum will help us value gender differently. “We’re on the road to equality according to liberal feminists,” he says. “They would argue that we need to value genders the same… I don’t know why we need to know a person’s gender. It’s all part of a heteronormative culture.”

The VSB should be applauded for creating such a positive environment despite the opposition of a few parents and board members. “It’s a step in the right direction but we need to be able to express and understand beyond trans, inter-sexed, two-spirited and so on,” Roberts explains. “I embrace it, in fact, but I think we can go further. One step at a time as they say.”


@jesskenwood

The 2015 NBA All-Star Flop Challenge

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NEW YORK – NBA Commissioner Adam Silver inaugurates the first ever NBA Flop Challenge at this year’s NBA All-Star Saturday at the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn. The event features six of the preeminent floppers from around the league. Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, and Chris Bosh represent the Heat, while J.R. Smith, Reggie Evans, and Manu Ginobili represent the Knicks, Kings, and Spurs, respectively. The competition consists of a single round with each contestant given one chance to flop. Props are encouraged. The competition will be judged by an esteemed panel selected for their expertise in the art of flopping: Vlade Divac, Tonya Harding, and recording artist Drake. The winner will receive a $15,000 gift certificate to Guitar Palace, which they’ll donate to the charity of their choice.

Flop 1: CHRIS BOSH [assisted by the White Stripes and Chris Bosh’s children]

[Bosh comes to the floor in Miami Heat colored camo, complete with chin-strapped helmet, artillery belt, and gas mask. He taunts the crowd by standing and staring slack-jawed with the ball in the center of the court, where he will plan to launch the shot that initiates his flop.]

DRAKE: Damn, looks like my close friend CB4 is about to bust out a hellish three ball, right? Chris has been absolutely killing the triple this year. Maniacal.

VLADE: I am liking to see him shoot three. He shoot very good and will win game for Miami Florida and his country frequent.

[From under the goal, Jack White emerges, carrying Bosh’s two young children, one in each arm. Each of the children is carrying a plastic AK-47, also painted Miami camo. Jack White looks wasted. He staggers toward Bosh.]

TONYA: Is that guy dead? He’s wearing more makeup than I am.

DRAKE: Absolutely hilarious, Tonya. My dude White Stripes Guy makes sick ass beats, though. I’ll be pulling up on a freestyle with him real soon. Don’t sleep.

[Bosh sets up against Jack White’s body, pushing back to gather room to shoot. As he makes his moves, Jack White stands completely still, looking straight up into the ceiling rafters. He seems to be crying. It is unclear if Bosh is aware of the direction of the basket amidst his juking.]

DRAKE: Sick, dude! Sick!

[As Bosh wheels out to launch his shot, his children run toward him with their weapons, firing at their daddy and giggling. Bosh takes several imaginary gut shots and flails his arms, losing the ball and falling toward his children. Once he hits the ground, he writhes and holds his stomach. His children pile on top of him and begin tickling him, while Bosh tries not to smile. Fake blood packets spill out and cover them all in Miami Heat colored blood. Meg White, dressed up as referee Joey Crawford, runs onto the court and raises Bosh’s arm out of the pile of limbs like a wrestling referee as the crowd cheers in ecstasy.]

DRAKE: Guys, that’s an and-one, without question! I told you from the start my guy goes hard.

VLADE: He will receive three shots for penalty times to help his team to victory of contest.

TONYA: [makes a barf noise]

Flop 2: DWYANE WADE [assisted by Chris Bosh]

[Wade brings out the still-bloodied Chris Bosh and positions him just under the free throw line. Bosh slaps the floor twice, shouts, and gets into a defensive stance. Wade starts dribbling toward Bosh, tries to eurostep around him, but Bosh swipes at the ball, hitting Wade in the face.]

DRAKE:Oh, wow, he actually fouled him!

[Wade is sent sprawling toward the baseline. Just before he hits the ground invisible wires under his jersey lift him above the court. He glides around the stadium, strips naked, and starts doing somersaults. Pat Riley opens fire on him with a t-shirt cannon. Before Riley can hit him, Wade is lifted into the rafters feet-first and now apparently unconscious. Bosh runs around the court collecting the t-shirts.]

DRAKE: D. Wade told me to tell you guys Jesus Christ is our lord and savior.

VLADE: His face look like pregnant frog.

TONYA: Lutz, double lutz, toe loop, triple axel… Oksana… Oksana… [barf noise]

Flop 3: MANU GINOBILI [Assisted by Gregg Popovich and Pitbull]

[Manu is pushed out onto the court in a wheelchair by his coach, Gregg Popovich, who is dressed in a Darth Vader costume. Manu’s arms and legs are all in casts, unsigned. Beneath the basket stands Pitbull, wearing a Russell Westbrook jersey, standing with his arms down at his sides. Popovich rolls Manu up the court toward Pitbull, gathering enough speed that by the time he reaches the free throw line he lets go, and allows Manu to fly forward in his chair, straight into Pitbull, who is mic’d up into the PA system. Upon impact, he utters “Dah” so loud it shakes the room, shatters the backboard, slicing Manu’s skin into ribbons underneath it. Manu, in his chair and casts, manages to fall out face first onto the court, hitting so hard at full dead weight he knocks himself out and can’t stand up. Danny Green comes on court and bricks two free throws in his stead.]   

DRAKE: I really don’t like this one, man. Not really my thing, really. Pitbull is a sellout. And who’s the bald guy?

VLADE: You are wearing the Spurs short pants. And I am enjoy Pitbull.

TONYA: [to Drake] You’re a pussy, dude.

Flop 4: J.R. SMITH

[The PA announcer calls Smith’s name but he doesn’t appear on the court. A picture begins to circulate on Twitter of Smith’s body shirtless, facedown in a pool of blood. There is no caption. They show the picture on the jumbotron.]

TONYA: [whispering] Phenomenal…

VLADE: Huh?

DRAKE: Shout out J.R. Smith.

VLADE: Yes.

DRAKE: RiRi is a good girl though.

Flop 5: REGGIE EVANS [Assisted by the United States Military]

[Evans walks onto the court wearing a throwback Vlade Divac Kings jersey. The jumbotron shows Vlade at the judges’ table smiling and clapping. Evans walks to the free throw line and puts his hands over his crotch as if he’s going to take a charge. On the opposite end of the court, a service door opens and a Hummer emerges. It’s driven by a veteran who’s acknowledged on the jumbotron. The crowd cheers. The Hummer idles the length of the court. Just before it hits Evans, he lays down and allows the car to roll over him. After the car passes, Evans is no longer on the floor. The car stops just short of the stanchion. Evans gets out of the driver’s seat wearing a leather Tweety Bird jacket and waves to the crowd. They cheer wildly. Vlade boos. The veteran is nowhere to be found.]

DRAKE: So freaking good. He should be on the Wizards, for real.

TONYA: Is that a joke?

DRAKE: No.

VLADE: [boos]

Flop 6: LEBRON JAMES [Assisted by Barack Obama]

[The lights in the arena go down low. Beer vendors wearing white frocks emerge along the aisles bearing candelabras. An announcement is made for the spectators to reach under their seats and find the Miami Heat colored Bible that has been placed their for their participation. Barack Obama walks onto the court in a pink spotlight, wearing a priest’s garb. He motions for the house to quiet down.]

DRAKE: [whispering] This is intense.

TONYA: [makes a barf noise]

[Obama raises up his arms. From out of the darkness, a procession of seven referees emerges carrying a bone white casket lined with gold. They carry the casket out into the paint and set it down before Obama, moving back to line the baseline with their heads bowed and whistles in their mouths.]

OBAMA: It is a sad day for the NBA, my friends. Our mutual friend LeBron James has passed away in his sleep. He dreamed so hard of coming out to flop for you, but his human body could not contain his will.

[Drake is sobbing. Divac claps with both hands loud, then realizes he’s the only one and stops. Harding is text messaging.]

[The casket is opened, revealing LeBron James’s body, draped in swaddling cloth like a mummy. His black headband has been replaced with a crown of thorns formed from hundreds of Nike swooshes. He is holding a basketball. A close up of his face is on every jumbotron. The crowd is silent. Together, the referees all raise their arms. They blow their whistles in unison and pantomime slowly the charge-calling signal, aiming their hands in all directions, at the audience, the world.]

DRAKE: [still sobbing] I quit music, you guys. I’ll never rap again. Not ever ever.

VLADE: Who will taking his free shot if he is die?

[LeBron’s eyes open. He rises from the coffin and raises his arms, shining in great light. He moves to stand at the foul line. The crowd goes wild.]

DRAKE: [screaming] I love you, King James! I love your iPhone application! I dream about you when I rest!

VLADE: [doing a slow clap] I am very liking to see homie doing well again to breathe and smile inside his life. I will rewatch again tonight his moves on ESPN three hundred time.

TONYA: [makes the jack off gesture, rolling her eyes]

JUDGE’S RESULTS

VLADE: I am liking all of the competitors. They are all try hard to do their good job and I am liking how they put their spirit into fighting to win for team. If I am force to make vote for winner, I will say I like every. I am learning from each man new element to incorporate into the flop strategy I apply versus my many friends who come to compete for me in struggle at Serbian Recreation Center Male Basket League. I congratulations to you all.

TONYA: [mouth is full of cookies she has produced from out of her leotard]

DRAKE: Damn… this shit is too real… Makes my whole entire heart hurt… I’m tripping out to this…

[Drake covers his eyes and counts backwards from 1,000. While counting down he raises his arms high in the air and pretends to freestyle, as if before a crowd of thousands, quenching his thirst with swigs of Sprite between the silent verses of his sick new verse straight off the dome about loneliness. When he opens his eyes again the stadium is empty—Vlade and Tonya and all contestants have disappeared. The lights are low and several janitors are cleaning up the mess around Drake, paying him no attention. He gives a random janitor a hundy to turn the center spotlight back on and bring him out a live mic.]

DRAKE: [hands still raised, on the mic] Guys, this has been real as hell. I never saw a game get changed like this before tonight. I feel like the king of virgin pussy to find myself the last man standing in this competition of my peers. Or not my peers, but dudes I’m all about and head over heels in love with. I’m high as fuck and so in love, and truly so so honored to accept this award on behalf of all the hardest flop boys out there. This one’s for y’all. And hey, never forget my realest message: always Drink Sprite, guys.

[Drake pumps his fists and blows kisses to the absent audience. He mimes being dressed with leis and sashes of award. He holds an imaginary trophy above his head and shrieks in joy as the janitors continue their silent work around him.]

Your 2015 NBA All-Star Flop Challenge Champion: Drake


The California Prison System Is Cracking Down on “Obscene” Political Publications

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San Quentin prison in Marin County, California. Photo via Flickr user Andrew Reid Wildman, Artist, Writer, Photographer

In February 2013 a group of inmates in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison called for a statewide hunger strike to protest the widespread and sometimes capricious use of special housing units (SHUs, a burreaucratic term for solitary confinement). Germinated in a small collective that included representatives from four different gangs, the call quickly spread throughout the state's lockups, and on July 8, 30,000 men in 25 prisons refused their meals, attracting national and international media attention. At the end of the two-month protest the state legislature promised to hold hearings to look into the use of SHUs, and some reforms have resulted, including a “step-down” program that may hasten some inmates’ transfers out of solitary.

The strike represented a feat of communication that defeated barriers of concrete, steel, and distance, and it had relied, in part, on the newspapers, magazines, and prison newsletters that had spread the word about the protest.

“The access to the media—from mainstream newspapers to more prison-specific publications—empowered these prisoners to strike,” said Oakland attorney Anne Weills, who represents a group of prisoners suing the state for keeping them in solitary for over a decade. “It gave them a sense of individual and collective empowerment.”

But Weills wasn’t the only person who noticed how the prisoners’ use of the media had facilitated a stunning denunciation of SHUs. The prison authorities also took note—and now the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is proposing a ban on publications that address prison concerns under the guise of clamping down on “obscene materials.”

In California prisons, “obscene materials” has traditionally referred to a fairly narrow realm of images and written material, including photos or drawings of nude people or sexual penetration and pornography involving minors. Since the CDCR first adopted these prohibitions in 1995, there have been no updates, modifications, or additions to the list of contraband publications—until now. In April, the CDCR announced that it would change the rules to prohibit any publication that has an association with a “Security Threat Group” (STG, the new term of art for gang) or any material that might “indicate an association with groups that are oppositional to authority and society.”

In an interview, Captain Joe Stein, the chief of CDCR’s Standardized Procedures Unit in the Divisions of Adult Institutions, described this rule change as being necessary to prevent any “disruptions” to prison routines.

“Obviously the intent of that statement is to simply reference disruptive groups—groups that come together for a purpose, that are disruptive to the operation of a prison, like breaking the law or drug trafficking,” he said. “That sentence was used to minimize disruptions—of groups getting together, work stoppages, that sort of thing.”

Would hunger strikes be considered “disruptive” behavior?

“Oh, absolutely. Each participant that initiated that were validated STG members.”

In fact, the prisoners had gone on the hunger strike partly to protest against the onerous, frequently arbitrary designation of “validated STG member.” The label can be applied to an inmate based on scant scraps of evidence such as a doodle that resembles a “gang symbol” in a cell, a conversation with a gang member, or even posession of the wrong book.

Mary Ratcliff, the editor of the San Francisco Bay View Black National Newspaper, a 38-year-old monthly that focuses on black issues and reported extensively on the hunger strike, told me that men branded as being part of STGs frequently contribute to prison publications.

“Every single paper we’ve published since I’ve been editor for the last 22 years has had an article written by a man who is technically an ‘STG’ member,” she said. Indeed, her paper saw a sharp uptick in prison subscriptions just before last year's hunger strike from a new demographic, Latino men—an indicator of the unity the protest had generated among prisoners across racial lines.

The SF Bay View's ability to reach people both inside and outside prison makes it a particularly potent tool of communication for inmates entombed in solitary, and the paper frequently features articles that expose or criticize CDCR policies. As a result, it could easily wind up on the CDCR’s list of disapproved publications, as could other prison-centric outlets like Solitary Watch, the Coalition for Prisoners’ Rights newsletter, and California Prison Focus.

But any publication could be vulnerable to censure under the new rules. According to Stein, if a prison deems a particular issue of a magazine to contain a single “disruptive” article it can ban the single “obscene” issue from all prisons; if a publication contains disruptive content for 12 consecutive months it will be disallowed permanently.

The CDCR has been collecting public comments since it announced the changes, and activists are continuing to fight against these new policies—this week SF Bay View's legal counsel submitted a letter to CDCR that details how the proposed regulations' violated the constitutional rights of prisoners and publishers.

But ultimately the CDCR can do what it wants. “It’s a pro forma issue,” said Weills. “CDCR has a particularly distinctive status from California legislature; they have a superstructure to the state.” It appears the public comments period has little other function than to maintain a veneer of democratic debate.

When I asked Stein if he expects a fight from the public and prisoners’ families at the public comments hearing, he replied, “We’re giving more than we’re taking away here,” referring to the fact that the new regulations relax the prohibitions against textual descriptions of carnal activity. Inmates won’t be able to read articles protesting the deplorable conditions of the prisons they live in, but they will be able to read all the erotica they can get their hands on.

“We are essentially allowing books like Fifty Shades of Grey,” Stein said. “Inmates are going to be happier with that.”

Charlotte Silver is an independent journalist in San Francisco. Follow her on Twitter.

Former Swimmer Debra Denithorne-Grodensky on Sexual Abuse in Women's Sports

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Former Swimmer Debra Denithorne-Grodensky on Sexual Abuse in Women's Sports

The GOP’s Biggest Donor Is Trying to Stop Florida from Legalizing Weed

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Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is bankrolling opposition to Florida's proposed medical marijuana amendment. Image via Wikimedia Commons

One of the most remarkable aspects of the marijuana movement has been the lack of an organized challenge from anti-drug crusaders. After decades of militarized DEA raids, skyrocketing prison populations, and moralistic warnings about hippies and gateway drugs, marijuana-reform advocates have come flooding back from political exile basically unopposed, ushering in a new era of taxed-and-regulated weed sales in Colorado and Washington and pushing through measures to legalize medical marijuana in 20 other states. As the Drug War’s Iron Curtain has fallen, prohibition hardliners have so far been silent, putting up surprisingly feeble resistance to the generational shift in public opinions about pot.

But in Florida, a donation from one of the Republican Party’s most powerful megadonors has signaled that legalization opponents might be ready to pick up the fight. According to campaign finance reports filed last week, gambling mogul Sheldon Adelson has spent $2.5 million to defeat a constitutional amendment to legalize medical marijuana in Florida. The donation accounts for nearly all of the $2.7 million raised by the Drug Free Florida Committee, a marijuana opposition group started by GOP donor Mel Sembler, a Bush-era Drug Warrior who used to run a chain of teen rehab black sites best known for raping, kidnapping, and torturing clients

Sarah Bascom, a spokesperson for the Drug Free Florida Committee, said she could not say why Adelson had made the donation, but that “we are grateful for his support.” While Bascom would not comment on how the organization plans to use the funds, she did say that the group believes the amendment is vulnerable and plans to keep raising money “to educate people on what the amendment really is, and what it is not.”

Political strategists on both sides of the marijuana issue say they are perplexed by Adelson’s donation, which appears to be his first contribution to an anti-marijuana group. While he is the GOP’s most generous donor—he spent an estimated $150 million on Republican campaigns in 2012 alone—his political agenda has been singularly focused on protecting his gambling interests and pushing a hardline, pro-Israel foreign policy. (Sembler is also an octogenarian Israel hawk and the two men are apparently friends.) But Adelson, the CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp., and the eighth-richest man alive, isn’t known for being a prude or a prohibitionist. In fact, a medical research foundation founded by Adelson and his wife in Tel Aviv recently published a study that found marijuana could potentially ease symptoms of MS and other inflammatory diseases.

Nevertheless, Adelson’s donation to Drug Free Florida is the biggest contribution yet to marijuana opponents, raising the stakes in the growing political battle over weed policy. Until now, most of the big marijuana money has gone toward the pro-legalization side, with progressive billionaires like George Soros, University of Phoenix founder John Sperling, and the late Progressive Insurance chairman Peter Lewis spending millions of dollars to bankroll a national marijuana movement. Lewis alone donated at least $40 million to legalization initiatives, and his family led the successful campaign to get full legalization on the ballot in Oregon this year. In Florida, trial lawyer John Morgan, a supporter of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist, has donated most of the $3.1 million raised so far to support Amendment 2.

By comparison, prohibitionists have raised almost no money. In Washington, for example, pro-pot groups spent more than $6 million to back the 2012 legalization initiative; opponents raised just $15,995. In Colorado, anti-drug groups backed by Sembler managed to raise $577,410, but were still outspent 4-to-1 by legalization activists. “Generally, there has not been a whole lot of moneyed opposition to these initiatives,” said Ben Pollara, campaign manager at United For Care, the Florida drug reform group leading the medical marijuana amendment campaign. “There are not a lot of business or ideological interests that are against this issue. It’s just not controversial for most people.”

In Florida, though, the opposition is more muscular and organized, bringing together the dour cross-section of concerned parents, law enforcement officers, and Drug War neocons that united against marijuana in the last century, but has been mostly irrelevant in recent state ballot campaigns. Marijuana activists concede that these anti-pot campaigns could be problematic in the Amendment 2 fight, forcing groups like United for Change to spend more money on TV ads and increase fundraising efforts in the lead up to this fall’s vote.

“When they spend millions of dollars spreading misinformation about marijuana and exaggerating its harms, it’s certainly possible that it could have a negative effect,” said Mason Tvert, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project. “But most Americans have been hearing this misinformation for a long time, and most Americans are starting to see through it. Hopefully they won’t be fooled by new efforts to scare people.”

Recent polls have shown overwhelming support for medical marijuana legalization across Florida, and across voter demographics. A survey released by Public Policy Polling last week found that about 66 percent of voters would vote for Amendment 2. Even Republican voters were split on the issue, with 44 percent saying they would vote for the legalization. “The numbers show this cruising to pass in the fall,” said Rick Wilson, a Florida-based Republican strategist. “It would take an awful lot more than $2 million to change that.”

Pointing out that Florida has some of the most expensive media markets in the country, Wilson added that the Adelson donation amounts to “seed money, at best—it’s not going to be able to actually change the way people think about this issue.”

But Adelson’s foray into the marijuana wars is also a sign that the legalization movement has transformed into a professional Campaign Issue, one that political strategists can use to drive voter turnout, partisan attacks, and Big Money donations. The $2.5 million donation has turned the Amendment 2 campaign into a proxy battle in Florida’s gubernatorial election, pitting Democratic candidate Charlie Crist and his pro-pot supporters against Republican lawmakers who claim the issue is just a ploy to turn out liberal voters in November. And unlike in Colorado and Washington, where Democratic governors largely stayed out of legalization campaigns, Florida politicians have been forced to take sides, laying out new political fault lines that could reverberate in other states.

“This out-of-state financial assistance from a long-time Republican political player is further evidence that leaders of both political party persuasions understand the stakes involved,” said Paul Armentano, deputy director for NORML, which supports marijuana reforms. “Florida is a bell-weather state and passage of marijuana law reform, for the first time, in the southeastern United States would likely have sweeping national ramifications.” 

The Derailment of the the SEC Part V: Why a Respected Law Firm Allegedly Risked Breaking the Law by Representing a Rogue Billionaire Banker

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R. Allen Stanford—the billionaire fraudster and cricket enthusiast—with some cricket players in 2008. Photo by Brian Smith/Corbis Outline

A former Securities and Exchange Commission official and his law firm sought millions of dollars in new legal business in 2006 from financier R. Allen Stanford—during the same period of time the law firm had agreed to defend Stanford before the SEC, despite warnings from the SEC’s ethics counsel that any such representation would be illegal.

Stanford lavished lucrative legal business on former SEC enforcement officer Spencer C. Barasch and the Houston law firm of Andrews Kurth, where Barasch is a partner, to persuade them to defend him before the SEC. Initially, in 2005, Barasch and Andrews Kurth turned Stanford down when he asked them to represent him before the SEC, telling him that to do so would violate federal conflict-of-interest laws. In 2006, however, Barasch ignored the legal prohibition and agreed to do so anyway.

Confidential Andrews Kurth billing records show that in 2006, while Stanford was pressing Barasch and Andrews Kurth to defend him before the SEC, Stanford hired the law firm to represent him on seven other legal matters, adding an eighth in 2007. In addition, according to a former Andrews Kurth employee, Barasch told his fellow partners that they stood to earn as much as $2 million a year for defending Stanford before the SEC. Previously, Stanford had been only a relatively modest client for the law firm. Barasch and Andrews Kurth declined to comment for this story.

As the former chief enforcement officer of the SEC’s Fort Worth regional office, Barasch had overseen the agency’s monitoring of Stanford’s bank and brokerages. Between 1998 and 2005, Barasch had personally quashed six separate investigations of Stanford, according to government records. Officials at the SEC finally approved its first formal investigation of Stanford exactly one day after Barasch left the agency; examiners whom Barasch had stymied for years acted knowing they might succeed once he was gone. In 2009, the SEC and Justice Department would charge Stanford with masterminding a $7 billion Ponzi scheme, the second-largest in American history.

It was because of Barasch’s Stanford-related work at the SEC that Stanford wanted to hire Barasch so badly, according to interviews and records. Barasch had inside information on what had worked in the past to persuade his colleagues to shut down earlier investigations of Stanford. Barasch even boasted to one of Stanford’s top deputies about his access and influence with former colleagues he might be able to persuade once again, now from the outside, not to investigate the billionaire financier. Stanford was determined to do whatever he could to get Barasch “on board asap,” he wrote in an email to two of his deputies.

The 2006 SEC investigation would go on to reveal that Stanford’s international banking empire was one built on a foundation of financial fraud, deception, and bribery. It would take more than a decade after SEC examiners first uncovered evidence that he was engaged in a Ponzi scheme for Stanford to face criminal charges brought by a federal grand jury and the SEC. Stanford would be convicted by a federal jury in June 2012 and sentenced to a 110-year term in federal prison.

The new information in this story—that Stanford awarded Andrews Kurth with eight new legal representations while trying to persuade them to defend him before the SEC—provides the first explanation of why Barasch and Andrews Kurth would risk violating the law—and the consequences of doing so. A former employee of the firm told me that the prospect of lucrative legal work played a role in persuading some of the firm’s partners to ignore the law, and Andrews Kurth’s billing records, confidential emails, and other documents appear to partially confirm this.

In 2012, Barasch paid a $50,000 fine to settle civil charges brought by the United States Department of Justice that he had violated federal conflict-of-interest laws by representing Stanford at Andrews Kurth. The SEC also banned him for a year from appearing before the commission. Federal law prohibits former SEC officials from representing anyone as a private attorney if they played a substantial or material role in overseeing the individual’s actions while in government. Barasch did not have to admit any wrongdoing when he settled with both the Justice Department and the SEC.

In settling, the Justice Department agreed to close out a far more serious criminal investigation of Barasch, a decision that largely relied on testimony Barasch had given to federal authorities in which he claimed to have totally forgotten that he had done Stanford-related work at the SEC when he agreed to represent the banker before the agency.

A recent story I wrote for VICE, however, raises questions as to whether Barasch had lied to federal investigators in a successful effort to escape criminal charges. The story disclosed that Dennis Ryan, a partner of Barasch’s at Andrews Kurth, testified last month in a civil lawsuit that Barasch had openly expressed reservations about representing Stanford in 2005. Ryan testified that Barasch had told him that any representation of Stanford might be illegal because of the Stanford-related work he had overseen at the SEC. Ryan also gave testimony alleging that Barasch had expressed much of the same concerns only days later, in a conference call with him and Mauricio Alvarado, the general counsel of Stanford’s now defunct bank. Current and former federal investigators who were involved in the earlier investigations of Barasch and Stanford told me that they believe this new information should lead the Justice Department and SEC to reopen their investigation of Barasch, or open a new one.

Stanford today is one of the most notorious financial criminals of our era, but back when Andrews Kurth wanted him as a client, he was a respected international banker, financier, and billionaire. Rumors would percolate up from time to time that he was involved in a Ponzi scheme or money laundering, but they would always fade away. Former employees, disgruntled investors, and whistle-blowers were silenced through a concerted campaign of intimidation. Stanford also spent millions of dollars on lobbyists and made campaign contributions to buy influence with US politicians in order to kill legislation that would lead to stricter regulation of offshore banks like his own.

Stanford ran his Ponzi scheme through his Stanford International Bank, located in the Caribbean island nation of Antigua, far away from prying US regulators and disgruntled investors, where he paid bribes to the country’s top banking regulator and other senior officials. But Stanford sold the majority of his phony securities from his US brokerages, headquartered in Houston.

Stanford was a “potential gold mine,” a former Andrews Kurth employee told me. “Every law firm in Houston wanted him as a client. AK [Andrews Kurth] really wanted in.” This same person rhetorically asked and then answered their own question: “Why would a lawyer so brazenly violate the law? You were going to make millions of dollars.”

Stanford first attempted to retain Barasch to represent him before the SEC in June 2005, less than three months after Barasch had left the agency. But according to agency records, the SEC’s then ethics counsel, Rick Connor, told Barasch that he faced a lifetime ban on representing Stanford before the SEC because of his earlier involvement at the SEC with so many Stanford-related matters. Connor bluntly warned Barasch that any representation by Barasch of Stanford before the SEC would be illegal.

After Ryan and Barasch informed Stanford and Alvarado that they could not represent Stanford’s bank before the SEC, Stanford—a man rarely denied any privilege whatsoever—angrily emailed Alvarado on July 2, 2005: “This is bs and I want to know why the SEC would/could conflict him out.”

But Ryan and Barasch weren’t done. They seized on the opportunity of locking in Stanford as a client for other business.

Twelve days later, on July 14, 2005, Ryan and Barasch emailed each other about their prospects.

“Have you been out of town?” Ryan asked Barasch.

Barasch emailed back, describing what he was up to, before commenting: “We need to follow up with Stanford Group. Let me know when you are heading to Houston so we can put on a full-court press.”

Ryan responded a short time later: “Yes. Every time I turn on ESPN I see Stanford Financial’s commercial.”

On October 18, 2005, Ryan emailed Barasch to schedule a phone call with Alvarado to discuss the prospect of new legal business from Stanford: “Does the evening of Monday, November 14 work for you? If so, let’s call Maricio this afternoon.”

People fill out paperwork in the lobby of Stanford Financial Group's offices in Houston, Texas, on February 17, 2009, the same day Stanford was charged with massive financial fraud. Photo by Craig Hartley/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Examiners with the SEC’s Fort Worth office first warned that Stanford was likely running a massive Ponzi scheme in 1998, but Barasch refused to open a formal investigation at that time. Year after year, the examiners came back with more dire warnings; each time Barasch overruled their judgments and refused to authorize any probe of Stanford. Barasch told the SEC’s inspector general that he closed down these investigations because he did not believe the SEC had proper jurisdiction to investigate and it would be difficult to obtain the necessary records from overseas.

As I recently reported for VICE, the last time Barasch quashed an investigation of Stanford was in 2005, during his final days at the SEC—when he had already agreed to join Andrews Kurth as an equity partner. Federal law enforcement authorities and outside legal experts told me that Barasch almost certainly violated federal conflict-of-interest laws in that instance as well, because Barasch stopped the probe of Stanford while he was going to work for a law firm of which Stanford was a client.

Federal conflict-of-interest law prohibits a government employee from participating “personally and substantially” in an official capacity in any “particular matter” that would have a direct and predictable effect on the employee’s financial interests or on the financial interests of a “person or organization with whom he is negotiating or has any arrangement concerning prospective employment.”

The law enforcement officials involved in earlier probes of Stanford and Barasch told me that this new potential violation of federal conflict-of-interest laws was far more serious than those aired in the 2012 investigation that Barasch paid a $50,000 fine to settle.

Stanford’s aggressive efforts to retain Barasch to defend him before the SEC underscore the importance of these conflict-of-interest laws, said John P. Freeman, a professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina School of Law who has taught legal ethics for more than 30 years. According to Freeman, “Barasch was so valuable to Stanford for the same reasons his representation of the billionaire was so damaging to the public interest.

“A fair inference for people to make is that Barasch was effective in selling Stanford’s story at the SEC. He was an advocate for shutting down investigations of Stanford while in the government,” Freeman said. “Upon leaving the government, Barasch was then well armed with the knowledge of who the decision makers are, which way they lean, what arguments will resonate with them… He is going to know which buttons to push. He knows what their biases are. He knows this information from the inside.”

Freeman sees Barasch’s conduct as a textbook study illustrating why conflict-of-interest laws are crucial to the regulation of the financial industry, how their violation causes harm to the public interest, and why the government should enforce them more aggressively.

“If you are working for the government, you are working for the people,” he said. “You should be keeping an eye out for the best interest of the people—not currying favor with those who might offer you employment down the road. You should not be developing a nest of inside information that becomes a commodity to someone not entitled to it.”

The Stanford Financial Group headquarters in Houston in 2006. Photo by Craig Hartley/Bloomberg News

In 2006, as the SEC sharply intensified its pursuit of Stanford, the billionaire bribed Antigua’s then chief banking regulator, Leroy King, to turn a blind eye to Stanford’s illegal activities, the Justice Department alleged in an indictment it brought against King in 2009. When the SEC wrote to King in 2006 seeking his assistance in its probe of Stanford, King instead leaked the confidential correspondence to Stanford.

Stanford now felt endangered like never before, according to leaked documents and interviews, and he was more determined than ever to have Barasch and Andrews Kurth in his corner. “The former sec [D]allas lawyer we spoke about in [S]t [C]roix. Get him on board asap,” Stanford emailed Alvarado and James Davis, the chief financial officer of the Stanford International Bank, on September 29, 2006.

Alvarado emailed back an hour later: “I have already spoken to Spencer Barasch. I have scheduled a meeting for next Tuesday in Miami in the afternoon.”

And Barasch in turn emailed Alvarado later that same day: “Thanks for the call this morning—I look forward to the opportunity to be of service to Stanford going forward. I will await instructions about where and when to meet in Miami on [T]uesday…”

By agreeing to defend Stanford, Barasch was simply ignoring federal conflict-of-interest laws and the SEC’s admonitions to him a year earlier that he faced a lifetime ban on representing Stanford.

Setting the stage for persuading Andrews Kurth and Barasch to represent him before the SEC, Stanford hired the firm to represent him in three new legal matters in March 2005, according to Andrews Kurth’s confidential billing records. In August 2006, Stanford retained the firm for two more matters, and that September he added two more. In late September, Barasch finally gave in and began doing legal work for Stanford to defend him from the SEC.

The former Andrews Kurth employee who cooperated for this article told me that the new income eventually persuaded Barasch and perhaps others at the firm to sidestep the law: “They like the billable hours. They wanted to keep that money flowing. Stanford clearly knew which buttons to push.”

A short time after speaking with Alvarado, Barasch flew to Miami to meet with him. He also scheduled a trip to Antigua to meet with Stanford and began to bill Stanford for his legal work.

Barasch’s representation of Stanford would be short-lived, however. When he called two former colleagues seeking information about the status of the case, one of them questioned the propriety and legality of Barasch’s representing Stanford before the agency, according to internal SEC records and interviews. The second former colleague Barasch spoke to told the SEC’s ethics counsel, Connor, what Barasch was up to, and Connor sternly warned Barasch for the second time in two years that such a representation would be illegal. Barasch resigned from the case.

Though Andrews Kurth never made the $2 million a year for defending Stanford before the SEC that Barasch had allegedly bragged about, the firm profited mightily from its eight other legal representations of Stanford.

Andrews Kurth by “no means got rich off Stanford,” the former Andrews Kurth employee told me, “but they did quite well. In fact, really, really well.”

Asked by the SEC inspector general in 2010 why he had been so determined to represent Stanford, Barasch candidly responded, “Every lawyer in Texas and beyond is going to get rich over this case. OK? And I hated being on the sidelines.”

Editing by Rocco Castoro, Harry Cheadle, and Rory Tolan

Cops Raided Albania's Cannabis Capital Yesterday

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An anonymous guest worker trimming the buds from the marijuana plants, getting the product ready for export. Photo by Telnis Skuqi

Yesterday, a police force of over 500 officers stormed Lazarat, an outlaw Albanian mountainside town that produces around 900 tons of cannabis every year. A fierce firefight ensued. People having weapons is not unusual throughout Albania, but Lazarat’s residents are particularly well-armed. As the police tried to seize a warehouse belonging to a local drug baron on the outskirts of the town, they came under fire from rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and heavy machine guns, and had to pull back. The police are currently holding their positions outside of town, awaiting further orders.

I visited Lazarat only a few weeks before the police raid, when growing season had just begun. Farmers had plowed and harrowed the fields, and the surrounding hills were dotted with light-blue plastic barrels. My local fixer who had witnessed several previous growing seasons informed me that the barrels were filled with seeds. Although no one I spoke to was expecting the approaching police raid, the atmosphere was tense.

The residents kept an eye on me from the moment I entered the city. The last time my local contact tried to bring a foreign reporter to Lazarat they were hounded out of the city under threats of death. I picked up my phone to snap a picture of the fields surrounding the town and a woman sweeping a nearby terrace instantly dropped her broom. "No, no! Are you out of your mind?” she shouted.

View of Lazarat, a small town about 150 km (100 miles) south of the capital Tirana. Photo by Axel Kronholm

"Me and my family can get in trouble, and so can you if you don’t stop asking questions,” said a young woman from a family of weed farmers when I asked for an interview. Most of the city’s 7,000 inhabitants are believed to take part in the cultivation of marijuana in one way or another, so they have good reason to be wary of outsiders with cameras. It was hard to get anyone to talk.

While many of those growing cannabis are regular farmers, criminal organizations control the trade and transport of the product out of Lazarat and into the EU, where most of the profit is generated.

From studying aerial photos of the city, the Italian financial police, Guardia di Finanza, estimates its annual production to be around 900 tons of marijuana, with a total market value of 4.5 billion euros (£3.6 billion). That’s about 50 percent the GDP of Albania.

Lazarat has been producing pot since the early 1990s. Ever since the demise of Enver Hoxha’s harsh communist rule, the black market has flourished under Albania’s political turbulence. Lately, crackdowns on drug cultivation in Greece have also contributed to an increased production in Albania, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, EMCDDA.

By the end of the summer, Lazarat and the surrounding hills are covered in weed plants. This photo is from last years growing season, that in total yielded about 900 tons of cannabis. Photo by Telnis Skuqi

When it’s harvest time, starting in the middle of August, guest workers are brought in to handle the workload. Every morning a group of people hang about, just outside the city limits, waiting to be picked up by a van or a tractor trailer bringing them to the weed fields.

I got hold of two women who have worked in the fields of Lazarat several times. They didn’t want to give me their names, but said they got paid as much as 20 or 30 euros ($27-40) for an eight hour day. That’s actually a pretty decent wage, considering workers in Albania have an average monthly salary of less than 400 euros (~$435).

I met one of the women, a 41-year-old, as she was tending a hotel garden in Lazarat’s neighbouring city, Gjirokastra. That's her main job, but she has harvested cannabis in Lazarat many times with her son. "It’s heavy work. Last summer I got a headache and became dizzy from handling all the cannabis," she said. "The smell was so strong, the feeling was similar to smoking it.”

The other woman, a 32-year-old textile worker, said the police visited the plantations several times while she was working there. "They had a look around but did nothing. They don’t care, and even if they did, they could hardly do anything about it," she said. "If I can’t find any other work this summer, I will probably go back to Lazarat again."

Fatmir Bilbili, chairman of Lazarat municipal council. Photo by Axel Kronholm

In a rooftop café in Lazarat’s local government building, the chairman of the municipal council drank coffee and smoked cigarettes with his friends. Dressed in a black jacket over a yellow buttoned shirt, Fatmir Bilbili seemed surprised when a foreigner turned up. After a while, I managed to talk him into agreeing to an interview. He got up with a sigh, and led us into his office—a small, somewhat messy room with light-blue concrete walls. On his desk there was a calendar, completely empty of notes, and the sports section of a newspaper.

"Lazarat is long forgotten by the government. They offer us nothing and we don’t see any investments coming our way” he said, explaining that people have turned to drug cultivation in order to sustain themselves and their families.

But, he claims, this year there is no cannabis being grown in Lazarat. "Yeah, we don’t have that problem anymore. Nowadays people grow vegetables and such instead,” he said. But standing on the steps of the building, only a few strides from his office, I could see more of the neatly harrowed fields and light-blue seed barrels.

The criminal gangs use any method available to get the product out of the country: cars, boats and airplanes have been used in the past. Here, a donkey is used to carry a shipment of weed out of Lazarat. Photo by Telnis Skuqi

In a US State Department report from last year on international drug trade, Albania is described as a transit country for drug trafficking into Europe. Italy is the main destination for the cannabis produced in this part of Albania, according to the EU drug monitor EMCDDA. In their 2012 report, Albania is described as a "significant but often overlooked source of cannabis products used on some European markets."

Albania is not only the most corrupt country in Europe—it’s also one of the poorest. It’s fairly easy to understand the temptation of growing a profitable crop like cannabis for people in the rural and underdeveloped parts of the country.

Recently, a debate on legalization has sprouted in Albania. The issue got a lot of attention in March when Mark Crawford, president of the American Chamber of Commerce, said in an interview with Albanian television that the country should legalize and tax marijuana. It would bring much needed revenue to the state and deflate the illegal economy, Crawford explained. But Albania does not yet seem ready for such a reform: there are no political parties that support legalization, and according to opinion polls, neither do the vast majority of the Albanian people. 

Fatmir Bilbili trotted back to his friends in the café. I hopped in my car, hoping to find more people to speak to. As I drove into the city, a brown Mercedes appeared behind us, following every turn we take. ”Problem,” said my fixer, glancing anxiously at the rear view mirror. Then another Mercedes appeared, this time a white one, and quickly overtook us. The driver looked absolutely furious. Gesturing wildly with his hand through the open window he forced us to pull over.

"Who the fuck are you? What are you doing here?" he shouted as our cars came to a halt next to each other. He saw me taking photographs, he said. I explained that I am a journalist, but told him that I hadn't taken any pictures. After a minute or so of heated discussion he decided to let us go, but insisted on escorting us out of Lazarat and didn't turn back until we were well outside the city limits.

Later that day I bumped into Gentian Mullai, the deputy chief of police of the nearby town of Gjirokastra, at a roadside café. I took the opportunity to ask him about the situation in Lazarat.

"What situation?" he asked, giving me a quizzical smile.

"The weed production," I said.

"What production? I was there today with two of my colleagues. Everything was under control, we saw nothing out of the ordinary,” he said with a wide smile, before turning on his heel and walking away.

Political parties in Albania regularly accuse each other of being corrupt and mixed up in the drug trade. None of its governments have proved able, or even willing, to seriously combat it. The authorities have launched raids against Lazarat before, without achieving any lasting change. Maybe yesterday's raid was a genuine change of direction, but it's probably too early to say.

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