By six on Monday evening, the diverse crowd assembled on the corner of Third Avenue and Seventh Street in Manhattan's East Village to demand a rent freeze was just about ready to explode.

New York City seemed to be on the verge of making history, as the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB), a majority of whose nine members were recently appointed by liberal mayor Bill de Blasio, were set to meet inside at Cooper Union's Great Hall. This was no ordinary meeting: At a press conference earlier that day, de Blasio had freshly indicated his support for a rent freeze, which would be the first time since the body was established in 1969 that rents in stabilized apartments didn't go up. Rent stabilization is New York's way of protecting housing for the lower and middle classes from the worst impulses of the market—if you live in a stabilized apartment your landlord can't raise your rent above a percentage set by the RGB each year, and generally your landlord has to renew your lease. This sort of housing is a precious commodity in our age of unbridled financial capitalism, and it's often the only way the non-rich can afford to live in gentrifying neighborhoods; 47 percent of NYC's total housing stock was rent-regulated in 2011.

The idea behind a rent freeze was pretty straightforward: It would protect the working poor and retired population from yet another painful hike in housing costs, a goal that happens to be of a piece with de Blasio's "tale of two cities" campaign mantra decrying the incredible wealth gap that's a fact of life in the 21st century. His comments on Monday indicated that mayor was finally ready to put his money where his mouth was.

"The facts are with us," one feisty organizer yelled to cries of agreement in the run-up to the vote. "The message is with us. The mayor is with us. We have the forces aligned. Today is our moment. Today is our time."

With de Blasio on board, it looked—if only for just a second—as if the activist left had the business establishment on the run in New York.

But renters got burned in the end, losing the key vote five to four. Instead of a freeze, renters will be faced with an increase of 1 percent for one-year leases and 2.75 percent for two-year leases—a reminder that de Blasio, who sold himself as a progressive trendsetter, is in fact a transactional politician with close ties to the real estate industry, and almost certainly not the radical change agent many of his supporters hoped for.

"I can't even imagine a rent freeze," a retired courier named Diane, who barely stays afloat in a rent-stabilized apartment in East Harlem, confided to me before the vote. When I mentioned that both de Blasio and Public Advocate Letitia James supported a freeze, she was quick to retort, "I don't think that the politicians are going to allow that. I think that they, uh—I don't know how to put it without sounding crass—that they're on the payroll of the real estate lobby."

Put plainly, New York is, and has always been, run by the rich. Even when progressives have power, they're seemingly terrified of wielding it. We saw this on a national level with Barack Obama in late 2008 and early 2009, when instead of taking on Wall Street in the wake of the global financial crisis he decided to coddle it, appointing a crew of former bankers like con artist Tim Geithner to set national economic policy. Likewise, de Blasio apparently had no stomach for a messy fight with New York City's real estate interests—or at least that's the only way I can make sense of his waiting until just hours before the vote to back the freeze he campaigned on, rather than leveraging his considerable base of supporters or, you know, explicitly telling the people he installed on the board to vote for it.

"It's the difference between the economic interests of the oligarchy that finances the Democratic Party and the interests of the people who vote for it," said Joel Kotkin, professor of urban development at Chapman University and author of the forthcoming book The New Class Conflict.

Ultimately, two of de Blasio's six appointees backed the rent hike. One, Sara Williams Willard, is a landlord—the industry gets a few seats at the table—and thus hardly a surprise. But the more conflicted was Steven Flax, vice president for community reinvestment at M&T Bank, who was supposed to be there representing the public. He was clearly in agony during the meeting and called the vote "a nightmare" while slamming the "disingenuous" process and explaining that his "intention was to push the conversation to the center-left position," apparently annoyed at having to go on record against a freeze. Flax nonetheless felt compelled to remind the pesky renters screaming at him from all sides, "It costs money to run buildings!”

In fact, the data assembled by RGB Chair and Seton Hall law professor Rachel D. Godsil shows that landlords who own rent-stabilized apartments spent just 60.5 percent of revenue on operating and maintenance costs in 2012, which suggests that they aren't exactly facing the poor house—unlike some of their tenants.

The Board is one of the few power levers that de Blasio can wield pretty much by himself. But instead of appointing rock-solid backers of a freeze, or leaning on Flax to vote for one, he appears to have gone soft, legitimizing many progressives' worst fears about the mayor, who has maintained close ties to powerful developers like Bruce Ratner over the years. (It was also hard not to notice that the RGB is lily-white while the crowd pleading for a freeze was mostly black and brown.)

To be sure, the rent hike the RGB ultimately approved is historically low. Presumably the emergence of de Blasio is what made that possible, and his supporters will point to the vote as a sign that change isn't easy. But recently-departed Mayor Michael Bloomberg's name was still the one being hissed by angry activists at the meeting, a testament to the left's failure (so far at least) to apply any pressure on de Blasio to keep his campaign promises. If he doesn't fear being held accountable by those who voted for him, de Blasio has little incentive to appoint unabashed champions of affordability—of which there were one or two, including Sheila Garcia, a fiery tenants organizer at Community Action for Safe Apartments—to key bodies like the RGB. He's too calculating to give up the goods without a fight.

So even if Monday was supposed to herald the start of something new in the city, for now, at least, de Blasio's New York looks like Bloomberg's—it's easy to find advocates speaking on behalf of policies that would benefit the poor, but harder to find people in power who agree with them.

"It's very disappointing," Park Slope City Councilman and "shadow speaker" Brad Lander told me immediately after the vote. "This was the year to do a freeze."

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

Next time you sit down to have a delicious lobster and you crack the crustacean’s shell and dip its bits in butter, think about how it got on your plate. I’m not speaking abstractly, but rather about the fishing community that caught it. Maine, home of the tastiest lobsters, also has some of the strictest rules and regulations regarding the capture of these clawed creatures. Lobstering is a family-held tradition passed down through generations and each successive wave learns the trade and secret fishing spots and soon inherits the ocean itself. The belief is that those families have the most at stake and are the most interested in keeping the business alive. However, the community has rarely been portrayed on film or in mainstream media. After visiting Maine and reading about the old-world mafia-law some of these lobstermen live by, Floyd Russ couldn’t resist making a film portraying both the beauty and brutality of the culture in A Piece of the Bottom.

The groups presented in this film verge on incestuous. Family is central to them and their old ideas and unwritten laws drive their livelihoods and the local economy. Full of embittered rivalry, this Maine-based fishing narrative paints a portrait of a community that seems out-of-time, surviving in an anarchistic world. Modern laws don’t hold weight with these crews. Unfortunately, for the Garrett Lisbon (JJ Condon), the young boy at the center of the story, his father Bernie (Sean Weil) has gone off the deep end. Bernie believes his own twisted sense of masculinity should be replicated and championed. He’s all this is what a real worker’s dick looks like and I’m going to beat you up, you pussy. Granted, this is a world of respect only being reciprocated when deserved, but his teenage son has the misfortune of being raised by a total dick bag, so life’s kind of tough for him. When a young drifter named Abe played wonderfully by Leo Fitzpatrick (Kids, The Wire) joins their crew as an extra hand, the father’s power trip goes to new levels of nastiness when his sanctimonious talk is questioned. There’s blood, fire, cursing, porn and guns—quite a few things you might not have associated with seafood. It takes fishing to a whole new level of excitement. The film is a vicious portrait of a greedy man whose attempts to pervert the storied traditions start a turf war where the youngest generation must confront the true price they’re willing to pay for lobster.

We’re excited to world premiere A Piece of the Bottom here and further down, check out my interview with the filmmaker Floyd Russ below.

VICE: How did A Piece of the Bottom come about? 
Floyd Russ: My best friends parents retired in Maine a couple years ago and I have another good friend from Maine who happened to live 10 minutes from there. We were like, Wow, it’s so gorgeous up there, we need to shoot something. We started thinking about what the plot would be and that it’s a huge lobster community. Besides lobster being my favorite food, I thought it was interesting that they’d never really been filmed before.

How do you go from a nice gorgeous setting with tasty lobsters to a mean-spirited story of bitter rivalry?
While researching we discovered there was a big shooting on Matinicus Island where one lobster boat owner—on open sea—shot his rival's lobster boat and killed one person and injured another and  went to jail for six months. It was like lobster mafia law, because it’s on this shitty little island, so that’s what we loosely based it on.

Do you think there is lobster mafia law?
Well, when we started telling locals about what our script was about and that we wanted to include this rivalry, every person we talked to was like, "Oh, I fucking hate the guy down the road.” They’ve gotten in bar fights, drawn guns and shit, but no one’s died in the stories we’ve personally heard. But definitely a lot of property damage, hundreds and thousands of dollars of it. There are intense family rivalries there. But coming up with a story and validating it with research was the most important thing.

Are the people nice? You make them out to be pretty mean.
Oh yeah, I mean once we committed to our lobster guy, he gave us a free boat—that’s the one we shot on—and he went out with us on the water. However, when we approached another guy to use his house for shooting who ended up being his rival, he told us to get off his property and he refused to work with us. These people are still hard-working, common sense people. I don’t think they’ll get to the point where they will be hurting or killing anyone unless it’s a really isolated and intense situation like what happened on that island.

Yeah, so they’re common sense, but they love property damage and playing pranks?
It’s not so much “pranks,” but they’ll cut lines. Lobster buoys are attached to traps and if you cut the line, you basically have ruined that trap. They can’t get them up anymore and they’re just left in the ocean. It’s shitty for everybody, but they still do that.

It’s shitty for the lobsters rotting in the cages too.
Well, our guy told us a story where he took a forklift and picked up a crate of a bunch of cement blocks and put it on another dude’s boat so that the guy’s boat was useless. That guy was then forced to get another pitchfork, bring it there, and unload it. It took him a couple days and cost him thousands. That’s a prank. It costs a lot of money to do it and it’s really expensive for the other guy. These guy’s live in the middle of nowhere, I mean they’re just a few hours away from Boston, but they don’t really go there. They just have a lot of time on their hands when they’re not working.

So what’s the lobster industry like out there? Are people having trouble working?
It’s crazy. It’s not unionized, not privatized. The entire lobster industry in Maine is mom and pop. The lobster licenses take around 10 to 20 years to get, so it’s all hereditary. Our guy had one son and two daughters and his son is already in line to get his lobster license. By the time he turns 21 he’ll have his lobster license. He will only get one because his dad has one. If you went there and tried to apply for one as an outsider, you probably wouldn’t even get in. There’s a cap amount of licenses and besides that, only a certain amount of fertile areas. If you try to step in on them, people would be like “what the fuck are you doing, I’ve been fishing here for 20 years.” Maybe you’d say, “You don’t own the water,” which they don’t technically, but that’s the unsaid law.

Your film is about that too—“owning” the water or, as your title says, a piece of the bottom.
It’s not a porno title. [Laughs]

Squatter’s rights! Squat her right.
Yeah, well the ocean is part of nature and I don’t think that should be owned by anybody. But at the same time, they have a right to make a living and it’s not like these guys are making millions of dollars. They’re middle class.

Does that bother them? They could make more, but they choose to respect the water.
There are legal rules that Maine has which dictates certain things you can’t do and they’re keen to keep those rules in place. In the movie, there’s a scene where he has a female lobster and it has all of the eggs on it and the rule is that you need to throw it back into the water. Every lobstermen abides by that rule, because that’s a female that will bear other lobsters. There are a smaller percentage of female lobsters so they need to keep them alive and they mark them with a V in the tail so other lobstermen will know straightaway it’s a female. When we were filming, the fisherman refused to cut a V into a male and throw it back because that would mislead other fisherman. So, we had to wait until we caught one. It’s amazing how conscientious these dudes were because they smelled like shit and we were paying them with beer.

Do you think VICE commenters are going to conscientious towards your film or are they going to rail on your actor’s fishing techniques?
They’ll probably be like “that rope is not tied to anything.” Or on an early edit, people thought the kid and drifter were gay lovers because they have a lot of deep looks at each other.

They do boat into the sunset together…
Abe (Leo Fitzpatrick) is in a tough position, because he obviously owes the other crew a favor. Like the mother said, “you’re family, but not blood” and he’s told to kill the whole family. However, he feels for the kid because he’s being abused and shouldn’t be held victim because he’s the next generation. He thinks you don’t have to be like your parents. But like we said before, most of the time in that industry, you will turn because that’s how the culture works with getting the license and having the claim to the ocean. That’s a lot of shit to squeeze into 14 minutes.

Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as an art and film curator. He is a programmer at Tribeca Film Festival, Rooftop Films, and the Hamptons International Film Festival. He also self-publishes a super fancy mixed-media art serial called PRISM index.

Misra Records has a history of dropping hot new shit to celebrate Pride Month. Exactly one year ago, the label released a split pink vinyl with indie rockers Holopaw and Sleeping States. This time around, in the spirit of rainbow flags, tiny speedos, strap-ons, and everything else that is holy, they're dropping a remix of Holopaw’s “Dirty Boots (He Don’t) by Michael Johnson (Ape School and former Holopaw member). You remember  “Dirty Boots (He Don’t)”? We premiered the music video right here on VICE.com. That video was so hot, even the straight dudes in the office were popping biker-induced boners. Michael's remix of the original track, however, ups the ante with a smooth elixir of the drum machine and funky bass that gets the blood pumping to all the right places. Whether you’re gay, straight, bisexual, or even if you just love yourself (I see you, asexuals!) give the remix a listen and wave that sexually ambiguous flag proudly. 

Photo via Londontown.com

Last week I stumbled across news of the opening of a brand-new pub in Central London called Gabbi's Head. Described by the Evening Standard as "a beautiful pop-up pub for women, a haven of football and beauty," it's an oasis of traditional femininity where, for the next month only, women can watch the World Cup while getting spray-tanned and their nails and eyebrows done.

Everything that's not nailed down is pink, and the burgers are named after teams in the World Cup and beauty procedures such as "the Brazilian," so you can finally eat a meal thematically connected to a type of pubic wax.

All photos by Lily Rose Thomas

On the one hand, OBVIOUSLY the idea of Gabbi's Head seems like a reductive cliché—I mean, it's an all-pink pub. An all-pink pub with a website that suggests women might want to come and "ogle footballer's legs," watch the football without "laddy interruptions," drink "exclusive cocktails," and "get gorgeous."

But I had to admire the balls it took to launch this joint in the age of the Twitter feminist rage machine. The decor alone should have been enough to launch a billion op-eds, but actually, as far as I can see, the internet has been kind of quiet, even enthusiastic, about Gabbi's Head.

Maybe that's because even though it suggests that all women like to be addressed as "gals" and fantasize about spending time in Barbie's Dreamhouse, Gabbi's Head also acknowledges that women can be interested in football and beauty at the same time. Which might sound like it should be a given, but it's not.

When I was 12, I was obsessed with football. If I wasn't doing kick-ups in the garden, I'd be inside playing Euro 2000 on the Playstation, or collecting World Cup stickers and swapping them with the boys at school. All the girls I knew were starting to shave their legs, paint their nails, and put makeup on, but I was the tomboy with the bruised knees and grass-stained jeans until I was about 14, when I finally got on board with Impulse gold and Rimmel blue eyeshadow.

Back then, I felt pressured by other girls at school to choose between my beloved Zola shirt and a Miss Sixty crop top, but now, in a way, this weird football-beauty pub is telling me I can have both. It's sending out a message that football isn't exclusively for men and that it's perfectly acceptably to drink a cosmopolitan instead of a pint while you watch the game. And who doesn't enjoy a cosmo? So I headed out to pay Gabbi's Head a visit.

I chose to go to the pub on June 19, the day of the England–Uruguay match for the optimum girls-watching-the-football experience. Because it was my 23rd birthday, and I didn't want to spend it alone in a fuchsia room with laminate wood flooring, I brought reinforcements along in the form of a few female friends.

Men are welcome at the beauty pub, but I wasn't sure I felt comfortable dragging many guys I know to a place that serves Bellinis at halftime. It would be nice to pretend we're all impervious to the gender politics of a space, but colors have connotations, and when I asked some boys I know how they'd feel about drinking in a bright-pink pub, they laughed at the very idea of it.

Nonetheless, there were quite a few men drinking at the pink pub, like the guy above, whom I didn't speak to but assumed he was from the showbiz section of a tabloid newspaper.

If you're not the girliest of girls, the concept of a "beauty pub" might sound terrifying. I've been known to slap as much makeup on my face as someone wandering through the background of a Real Housewives episode, but "brow pods," "skincare stations," and "tanning booths" sound like things from a NASA training course to me. And something about having a spray tan in the same place that you're eating a burger reminds me of that time I went to the gym and a guy was eating cookies in the sauna.

That said, there is something incredibly practical about being able to have your eyebrows waxed at the same time as you watch a football match. Now that women are, you know, empowered enough to have jobs, we're generally quite busy, and anything that helps us multitask can only be a positive thing, right?

When I asked some of the girls whether they wished all pubs had the option of an instant makeover, they laughed. "Nah," said one. "It's fun for this, but it would be a bit weird at a normal pub, wouldn't it?" This seemed to be the consensus throughout the night, as one of my friends pointed out that "it didn't really feel like a proper pub without all the testosterone" before begging me not to include that because it "doesn't sound very feminist."

The atmosphere before the game was decidedly "hen-party chic": White wine was glugged from the bottle, a girl from Made in Chelsea was taking selfies with people in the corner, and everyone was eating nachos. Unfortunately, the room was too busy for anyone to make use of the pink dartboard, and the sight of the above custom-made foosball table being used as a booze graveyard made me feel sad inside.

When the match began the room started to buzz, but to my disappointment there was as much talk about how hot Suárez, Sterling, and Sturridge are as there was about England's standing in the tournament. Thankfully, Rooney's goal sent the crowd into a frenzy, restoring my faith that the girls were actually there for the beautiful game, rather than just the beauty products.

By this point, I was really starting to enjoy myself. It's not so much the eardrum-fracturing sound of men yelling at the TV that freaks me out about going to mannish pubs to watch the World Cup, but rather a slight anxiety that I don't really know what to shout at the screen myself. Sometimes, in a moment of reactionary panic, I'll yell something like "GET IT AWAY." I also ask loads of annoying questions, even though I used to play football myself:

"Who's that guy?"

"How do they choose how much extra time there is?"

"Why didn't that count?"

"Will there still be a game on Tuesday if we lose this one?"

It was really nice to watch the football surrounded by girls because they actually answered my questions. Also while I don't want to paint us as a load of gossiping medieval fishwives, during the boring bits we definitely talked about whom we were sleeping with.

When we eventually lost I was disappointed, but less so cause I'd got my makeup done for free. These girls were inconsolable, though:

After the game, as people began to disperse, tensions were running high and a fight broke out. Someone called someone else a "cow," and a third someone started crying. I wanted to see the fight as triumphant confirmation that women can care about football in the same irrationally passionate and violent way as men, and that the sport can make them just as rowdy about it after a few drinks, but really I kinda felt like I was back at an all-girls school, where we had no boys to show off to and so just fought with one another to create some entertainment for ourselves.

As I waded through broken glass and discarded makeup packaging, I left Gabbi's Head thinking that, although the concept was a little trashy, ultimately I liked what it stands for. It was kind of heartening to know that football and beauty can coexist in the same space, albeit a space that makes you feel like you're inside a giant cartoon vagina.

Follow Amelia Abraham on Twitter.

Click here for last week's episode.

Wondering how, exactly, disabled people enjoy music festivals might sound like an ignorant hypothetical at first, but have you ever actually been to an event like Bonnaroo? 

Even for those without any handicap, powering through this type of sensory overload still takes an immense amount of physical and mental commitment. For example, it's five times harder to shit thanks to long lines at janky Port-A-Potties, ten times harder to shower because you have to pay to wait for a chance at an ice-cold trickle, and a hundred times harder to sleep because well... you're a grown-up in a tent. Add in the crowded sea of sweaty youths, logistics—music festivals now require a degree in rocket science in order to see your ideal line-up perform on various stages spread across several acres—and of course, the yelling, touching, pushing, and squeezing that come with it.

So why are thousands of people willing to subject themselves to third-rate conditions to hear Skrillex's high-pitched scream from a spaceship 20 feet above his stage? Ostensibly, it's the music. But aside from the impressive cache of top-notch musicians they constantly manage to drag into Tennessee's backwoods, Bonnaroo has drugs, food, booze, and cushy music-festival camaraderie—in abundance.

After waching Holly, the amazing Wu-Tang sign-language interpreter, in person last year, I couldn't help wondering about the handicap experience on the farm. If deaf people come to feel the music, who else gives up the necessary luxuries of home for a long weekend of endless discomfort? As I chatted with Bonnaroo's head of accessibility, Laura Grunfeld, she told me, "People who come to festivals are fanatic fans, and so are people with disabilities." 

So as I made my way through "accessible camping" and Bonnaroo's other disability-friendly zones, it was surprisingly easy to find and chat with people who prove that events like these are most definitely not limited to the able-bodied. Among them, a girl with cerebral palsy who managed to destroy her wedding dress and successfully party with Brick Squad, a deaf hype man who might've invented the lyric video, and a guy who has absolutely no regrets about trekking through the mud to see Lionel Richie. 

Taryn is a Chattanooga native and eight-year Bonnaroo veteran with cerebral palsy.

VICE: How did you get that paint all over you?
Taryn Balwinski: This thing called Trash the Dress where you trash your wedding dress. I wore mine all day yesterday.

Were you recently married?
No, recently divorced—hence the trashing. I wasn’t going to bother selling the dress because I had to have it altered so it wouldn’t be dragging on the floor when I sit. I was like, It’s not going to work for anybody else.

Did you organize the event?
Yeah. I have this website called ConcertHopper.com, so I sponsored the event and got the word out through that. I also run this Facebook page called Forever Bonnaroo, so I advertised it on there, and this one girl was really excited about it—really gung ho. Her boyfriend emailed the Forever Bonnaroo page and was like, "I want to propose to my girlfriend at your event because she is so excited about it."

How’d it go down?
Meetups are kind of hard at Bonnaroo because it’s difficult to get everyone together, so it was originally going to be five girls, but it ended up just being me and her. We were throwing paint on each other at the fountain and cutting the dresses and everyone was walking up and asking, “What’re you guys doing?” We were throwing paint on them too. Then her fiancé got down on one knee, and we’re all like, "Turn around! Turn around!" She finally turned around and had this look of shock on her face. She started backing up saying, "Oh my god!" and kissed him and everything. Everyone was going nuts and giving her hugs.

I saw your post about being on stage with Waka Flocka Flame. How’d that happen?
I do street team for Track 29, the venue he was playing. My little sister, the girl who was in the picture with me, she’s actually a big Waka Flocka fan, so I got me and her some tickets. We were in the front row dancing when someone from his entourage came up to us and asked if we wanted to come up on stage.

What was is like?
It was interesting. He was all hugging on me and talking about me being his friend.

My little sister just jumped up there and started dancing like she was used to it, and I was like, Uh, awkward. I didn’t know what was going on! It was one of those memories that me and my little sister are going to be telling her kids and our grandkids when we’re older. It was crazy.

Who are you most excited to see here?
Kanye. He is my future ex-husband.

You’ll have to separate him and Kim first.
That’ll play itself out.

Mark is deaf and from Detroit, Michigan.

Ten years at Bonnaroo, huh? You must be a big music fan.
Mark Levin: Yeah, I’m actually a musician myself. I perform and tour with a deaf hip-hop artist named Sean Forbes. I’m the guitarist, and I also hype and sign behind him. We’re deaf musicians, and we’re making a successful living like this—there’s nothing you can’t do.

What’s the deaf experience like at a nightclub?
It’s all about feeling. What most hearing people don’t understand when it comes to music is that you guys rely so heavily on your ears, but good music just doesn’t sound good, it feels good—the vibrations. You’re grooving in front of that speaker, and some music’s going, and you’re dancing, and you don’t know why. It’s because music feels good. You get so used to listening that you’re not actually feeling it.

It’s interesting that you work with a rapper because you’d think rap music in particular is mostly about the lyrics.
The deaf rap community has grown. I’m this guitarist in the background like, Where’s my spotlight? The deaf music community is very, very small, and I only know maybe three other deaf musicians. One kid is an England transplant living in Seattle now, another is an older gentleman, and there’s a deaf band called Beethoven’s Nightmare.

How do you make music accessible to the deaf?
I work with a nonprofit called D-PAN [Deaf Professional Arts Network], and we make word videos. They call it “cool captioning,” but I like to call it “phonetic captioning.” Sean’s first video was “I’m Deaf,” and the words pop out almost phonetically while he’s rapping. We’re always innovating, trying to stay one step ahead of everybody. Now you see lyrics videos all over the Internet.

Did you start the trend?
I don’t know when the artists picked up on it—I think the first time I’d ever seen a mainstream artist do that was Hype Williams’s video for Kanye’s “All of the Lights.” Personally I was really upset when that happened, because I had just met with a music executive to try to pitch our project. I showed him this, never seeing it anywhere else, and then next thing you know, two months later, Hype Williams comes out with “All of the Lights.” It was like, Did they jack that from us? Even so, it’s just really cool to see artists almost unknowingly bring that in.

Any other ways?
On my last tour with Sean we built a platform that you hook into the soundboard, and it vibrates to the rhythm of the music. It’s kind of like a subwoofer, but with very, very clean vibrations. It’s not like when you stand in front of a speaker and you get a whole mix. These things are made specifically to vibrate, like when you go to a movie theater and the chair rumbles. We make the music, and you’re feeling it. You’re seeing the the music.

Daniel, at his third Bonnaroo. He's from Alabama and has cerebal palsy.

What’d your favorite kind of music?
Daniel Nasca: I like soulful, bluesy music. We just saw Sam Smith. He was so good. I have a thing for Janelle Monáe. I’m waiting to see Elton John and Lionel Richie, though. One guy goes to me and asks, "Who are you here to see?" I told him Lionel Richie. He’s like, "What the fuck, man?" I was like, "What?" He was like, "Who goes to see Lionel Richie?" I was like, "This guy, right here."

How are the bathrooms for you?
The worst bathrooms at Bonnaroo are the accessible bathrooms.

No way. Why?
I don’t think they empty them out as much because there are not as many people using them, but it’s still that much crap piled on top of each other. Also, because they keep them locked, someone’s got to come and unlock them to empty them.

That lock is a gift and a curse.
Yes. It’s always open for us, but it’s always shitty too.

Baher Mohamed, Mohamed Fahmy and Peter Greste at a court appearance on the 1st of June

The moment the judge announced that the three Al Jazeera journalists would spend the next seven years or more in jail, an audible gasp was heard throughout the courtroom.

The mother and fiancée of Mohamed Fahmy, the Canadian-Egyptian producer, begun to cry. As they, and other relatives of the accused tried to make their way across the courtroom to the caged dock whether defendants were held, police held them back.

Visibly frustrated, Mohamed's brother Adel stormed from the courtroom. "Everything is corrupted," he said. "We had hope in the judicial system, now we know there is no hope."

Everyone knew that lately, Egyptian judges have been prone to extreme and barely explicable decisions, including throwing mass death sentences around like confetti, but when you have seen a farce happen in front of you—and that is what this trial with its guilty verdict was—it's still surprising.

The three journalists were convicted on the charge that they conspired with members of the Muslim Brotherhood "to gather media materials, manipulate them, and produce fabricated scenes of events in Egypt and broadcast them... in order to assist the terrorist Brotherhood group in achieving its aims," according to a statement by the Public Prosecutor.

The award-winning journalists Peter Greste and Mohamed Fahmy, who have previously worked for the BBC and CNN respectively, were given seven years. Their colleague, producer Baher Mohamed received ten years: the extra three were for the possession of "ammunition," a spent bullet casing collected from the ground after a demonstration, Al Jazeera said.

In the cage alongside them were six other defendants who were accused of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood and conspiring with Al Jazeera. Two of them—oddly, including Anas Beltagy, the son of senior Brotherhood leader Mohammed Beltagy—were acquitted. The others, along with 11 defendants tried in absentia, got ten years in jail.

Before they were dragged from the caged dock, the six non-journalists begun to sing a traditional Brotherhood song, "My brother, you are free behind bars," a relic of the group's decades-long journey through the prisons and police stations of Egypt.

It seemed in the summer of 2012 that that journey might have come to an end, as the group's candidate Mohamed Morsi ascended to the presidency of Egypt. But a year later, a military coup led by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is now the country's elected president, sent them tumbling from power, and into the clutches of Egypt's police and judges once more.

There is no evidence that the journalists support the Brotherhood. Indeed, Fahmy not only marched against Morsi on June 30 last year, the day of mass demonstrations that sealed his fate. He also joined demonstrations on July 26 to "authorize" Sisi to deal with "terrorism," which meant, mostly, the Brotherhood. Now he himself has become swept up in the very same tide of anti-Brotherhood, pro-security state sentiment which was inaugurated on those days.

The journalists have become pawns in a regional conflict which pits the Muslim Brotherhood and its political ally Qatar against the other Gulf monarchies, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and other anti-Brotherhood forces, including the Egyptian establishment.

“The verdict provides further evidence that Egyptian authorities will stop at nothing in the ruthless campaign to crush anyone who challenges the official narrative, regardless of how questionable the evidence against them is,” said Philip Luther of Amnesty International.

The evidence, such as it was, was pretty questionable.

In a British court, prosecuting lawyers have to present a "skeleton" argument which explains how the evidence and testimony they introduce is supposed to support a guilty verdict. In Egypt, there is no such requirement, and pieces of "evidence"—mostly photographs and video seized from the journalists' studio when it was raided—were introduced in most cases without any clear idea of what they had to do with allegations of a terrorist conspiracy.

The court saw videos of galloping horses and sheep, and a vintage photograph of a man holding a gun. It watched a video of a press conference held in Nairobi, where Greste was formerly based. The press conference was an English, but the judge doesn't speak English and did not have a translator.

In a session on May 22, a music video by the Australian singer Gotye was played. For much of the trial, the judge sported sunglasses.

The crux of the prosecution's case ought to have been that video material was fabricated by the defendants. On the 1st of June defence lawyer Khaled Abu Bakr asked the head of a technical committee which the court asked to examine the contents of the team's hard drives, whether he was aware of any specific video which had been manipulated in order to give a false or misleading impression. He said that he was not.

The poor quality of the prosecution's case, and the release of fellow Al Jazeera journalist Abdullah al-Shamy on health grounds on Wednesday last week, raised the hopes of the journalists and their families. Al-Shamy had been imprisoned without charge for more than ten months, and had been on hunger strike for more than four months.

In order to bolster popular opinion against the journalists, a video tape of the arrest of two of them during a raid on their studio in central Cairo hotel on December 29 was played on national television, set to music from Hollywood superhero movie Thor: the Dark World.

The verdict today was a blow to the hopes of the journalists and their families, and to press freedom and free expression in Egypt. But because this trial has been so well covered, it has also been a glimpse into the weird and capricious world of the Egyptian courts, a system which for many people determines not only whether they walk free or spend years of their life in cramped cells with only an hour a day for exercise, but whether they live or die.

Follow Tom Dale on Twitter.

Photo by Anthony Cronin

The results of a survey dubbed the Good Country Index were released yesterday. Weirdly, Ireland was officially named the best country in the world, ahead of Finland in 2nd, Britain in 7th and the United States in 21st. The survey, which drew on a wide range of data from the UN and other international organizations, claims to measure what each country on Earth has contributed to the good of humanity—and, conversely, what it has taken away. Iraq, Vietnam and Libya comprised the bottom three.

Anyone living in Ireland, as I am, could be forgiven for asking the question What The Fuck? In 2014, the country bears more resemblance to a flailing amateur boxer than a world heavyweight champion, throwing desperate punches with a glazed look in the eyes which suggests Ireland already knows it's beaten. Meanwhile, the spectators, of which I'm one, sit by yawning and getting pissed.

Harsh? Not really. Let's look at reality. Let's also allow first that Ireland has contributed a shitload to humanity—James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, good affordable whiskey—and that, despite its flaws, I'm choosing to live here because I love it. Okay?

In 2001 Ireland's unemployment rate was 3.7 percent, the lowest it's ever been. This came with the country's property bubble, which saw hundreds of thousands of people working in construction, building houses to be sold—along with existing ones—at inflated prices, making everyone rich. The banks were offering cheap credit, so people built and bought more houses—it seemed a no-brainer—and all this fell in line with people spending more money elsewhere. Businesses, high on profits, could expand and take on more staff, paying them more as well. Everyone was happy.

But in 2014 the unemployment rate lies at 11.8. What happened was the banks—undermined by the global financial crisis—could no longer afford to keep the cheap credit going, and the property bubble burst. People lost their jobs, businesses went under and anyone who had drunk the Kool-Aid and bought houses (everyone, basically) got caught holding a debt grenade when the banks, who had been relieved of their own debt by a complicit government, came calling with bailiffs and a very large dog. Essentially, the shit sandwich we were forced to swallow would appear on the menu as: Pay your debts twice.

Our reaction to the economy's collapse reveals deep flaws in the Irish psyche. Firstly, there have been no protests of note, nor riots. The political awareness of what happened and what is continuing to happen is virtually zero. People have lost their jobs, houses and friends and family members to emigration, every budget in our social services is being slashed to ribbons, and future generations are being buried beneath mountains of debt from which they'll never escape. But the prescription here seems to be inaction, moaning about expenses and some vague tabloid waffle, blaming the Polish for abusing social programs when most of them have long since gone home.

What very few want to admit is that we've the mentality of a beaten wife. We've almost been put in the ground by inflated property prices yet, secretly, all we're hoping for is another fucking bubble. It doesn't matter what sort of delusion and corruption has to take place for this to happen. We're willing to turn a blind eye, again, if it means a return to the glory days of the mid-2000s and another excuse not to confront the bald reality—which is, if you want a sustainable first-world economy, you actually have to make stuff (which we still don't seem interested in doing).

In its past, Ireland has overcome the British Empire, the Great Famine and decades of recessions far worse than this. Yet what helped us overcome these things was a fight and tenacity that we now seem to lack. The property bubble made us soft. We lived high on the hog for ten years and gained a sense of entitlement that now even the empty bedrooms of our children can't seem to shake. We're like a snake—St. Patrick reference!—who, having swallowed a sheep, basked in the glow of his meal, only for another snake to come along and eat him. It pains me to say it, but this generation of Irish people will never protest anything.

But what about our younger people, those too young to have really experienced the bubble? Like I said, many of them have gone, are going or are trying to go. Whether spurred on by university debt or just an unwillingness to waste their lives rattling around their hometowns on a permanent roundabout of JobBridge gigs—part of Ireland's alternative welfare system—they don't have the time to fight. Every year 90,000 people leave Ireland, most of them young. And the remaining ones? They don't have the will. Disenfranchised, demotivated, they struggle to keep their heads above water and some sense of self-esteem intact as they're funneled here and there by aforementioned government programs in the vague hope that—one day—it'll all end.

And yet for those of us still here, Ireland isn't always a nightmare. The natural beauty of our landscape is undeniable in any economy and the people, no matter our shortcomings, are generally sympathetic to suffering, creating communities that help sustain us. Though some have slipped through the net – sadly, Ireland has Europe's second highest rate of suicide—most pubs in the country, for all our negative stereotypes about drinking, offer adults the opportunity to bitch, moan and have someone listen. Is this perfect? No. Is it Irish? Yes.

So, in light of this, I'd say the Good Country Index is flawed. Ireland definitely isn't the best country in the world because, regardless of what it's giving to the good of humanity, it certainly isn't giving all that much to its citizens. What Ireland should be giving to humanity instead—more than culture, science and technology, etc.—is a lesson: If you somehow get rich having done nothing to earn it, don't fuck it up.

Follow James Nolan on Twitter

hitchBOT photo via Instagram.
On July 27 a little robot with a beer cooler torso wrapped in solar panels, water noodle arms, and big wellington boots on its feet, plans to hitchhike solo from Halifax to Victoria. It can even consult Wikipedia to make sure it has plenty of material to keep its new friends entertained on the road.

If you’re not already familiar, hitchBOT is a collaborative, conceptual art project involving elements of interaction design, mechatronics, software semantics, new media, modern philosophy, and a whole slew of high-tech and social research fields that I didn’t really know existed or had proper names.

Mashing all of them into a rudimentary, Canadian kind of R2D2—set to head west alone and into the great unknown—the piece is both the object and the journey. hitchBOT has been roughly designed to discover if a lonesome hitchhiking robot can flip a common 21^st century question on it’s head, and ask not if humans can trust technology… but if technology can really trust humans.

hitchBOT’s quest will be remotely supported by a team of 10 researchers—ranging from mechatronics engineers, to philosophers, to social media minders—who will be remotely following and troubleshooting what solvable technical issues may arise. According to a press release on the hitchBOT website, it uses its "AI and User Interface design, including speech recognition and processing, and 3G and WiFi connectivity [to] know its exact location and can plan its journey from there."

The initial idea of sending a robot into the wild on a hitchhiking Canadian odyssey, though, was conceived by David Smith, Assistant Professor of Communications Studies at McMaster University, along with Frauke Zeller, an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at Ryerson. Both brains have keen research interests in human-computer/human-robot interaction. Not surprisingly, they’ve grown quite attached to this little autonomous being. Having nurtured it to a state where it can essentially fly the coop, I got the sense that it’ll kind of be like watching their teenager awkwardly stroll off into the sunset with a massive backpack hugging their shoulders.

“We’ve been teaching hitchBOT everything. We came up with the identity of hitchBOT—so what kind of hobbies should hitchBOT have and the name and everything,” Frauke told me via conference call (communications technology!) “And so we’ve been helping hitchBOT with everything at the moment, to tweet, to build a Facebook website. Everything we do is about hitchBOT, so of course we’re emotionally attached to it, it’s very dear to us.”

“We often send bots into situations of danger,” Smith says. “Where you wouldn’t want to put a human being. And it’s conceptually interesting that we’re sending a bot to hitchhike. Many of the concerns that people would have if their sons or daughters or best friends were hitting the road with their thumb out are the same concerns that people are expressing about the bot.”

My pal Mischa O’Hoski is a seasoned vet of the road. Throughout his late teens and 20s, he’s thumbed everywhere in Canada from Toronto to Inuvik, has been down to Mexico, all across the USA, and over the ocean to hitch rides through Mediterranean Europe.

One story he told that's always stuck with me was about getting picked up by the Vancouver ferry docks:

“So I’m sitting in the car with this guy, and he says, ‘I pay people to do crazy things.’ And it turns out all the crazy things had to do with men taking their pants off. He offered him 50 bucks to let me blow him and also promised me a trip to Australia.”

To some that choice may have been a no brainer, but Mischa declined and understandably felt a bit rattled.

Given that hitchBOT doesn’t have the capability to pleasure anyone on the road, I asked Mischa if the robot’s ability to chatter on from Wikipedia could help its odds of getting across the country. Mischa’s technique, when getting from point A to point B, is apparently not about filling the air with conversation:

“I just shut the fuck up and look out the window. It’ll get kicked out of every car if it just rattles on. Speak if spoken to. If not, shut the fuck up. But then again if it gets a ride with any truckers they’ll be talking about all kinds of crazy shit. I had this one trucker pick me up in Northern BC like right around Fort Nelson and all he wanted to fucking talk about was physics. And I hadn’t slept in a while and I kept passing out, and he kept going, ‘Nope, don’t fall asleep on me there buddy, I gotta tell you all about physics and shit’ And I was so fucking bored, like pinching myself to stay awake and listening to this guy talk about the bending of light in the universe. So hopefully the robot gets that guy. It can just Wikipedia physics and blow his mind.”

Since Mischa has seen parts of Canada most people will never encounter, I asked him what awesome tucked away spots hitchBOT should try and experience. His answer was definitive: “Kitwanga.”

“It’s this little, tiny town in BC that’s at the bottom of the Cassiar Highway. They have this campsite there that’s right at the side of the road that you can stay at for free and you can see the mountains and it’s really pleasant. And no one goes up the Cassiar Highway—save for like five cars a day. So if it ever goes up there it should stay there because it’s going to be waiting around for days.”

With so much uncertainly surrounding the success of hitchBOT’s mission, I asked Mischa if he thought the journey would end up working out: 

"I don’t know. I see two things happenings. What I’d like to see happen and what I thought would be the coolest thing is if people just brought it on its way for a short amount of time and then just dropped it off, and everyone just behaved like it was a cool thing to do… It would bring a sense of community within Canada that everyone helped the thing out. And that’s why I like hitchhiking because it renews your faith in humanity when people are just willing to help you for no reason. But I can also very easily picture someone saying, ‘Hey look, it’s that fucking robot!’ and then just smashing it with a baseball bat or something.”

Good luck out there, hitchBOT. 

@ddner

A stall on the Malioboro – a shopping street in Yogyakarta.

If while on a study-abroad trip to Indonesia you stumble across an image of the Führer, don't be surprised. Tourist stalls all over the country sell posters of Adolf Hitler, neatly displayed in between images of Kurt Cobain and European soccer teams. The swastika is also everywhere—on walls, cups, ashtrays, and T-shirts—and it's not the Buddhist kind. The strangest thing about this phenomenon however, is that the people selling and sporting the Nazi paraphernalia often aren't confused, right-wing extremists like these guys, but average locals who often have no idea who Hitler was.

To find out why so much merchandise carrying Nazi symbolism is sold on the streets of Indonesia, I got in touch with Dr. Wahid, a History Professor at the Gadjah Mada University of Yogyakarta in Java.

A 10-year old Indonesian, wearing a Nazi T-shirt.

According to Dr. Wahid, the people of Indonesia are anything but anti-Semitic: “The knowledge the people here have about Hitler comes from American films; there’s not much more to it. Contrary to their European peers, Indonesian students hardly receive any history lessons on World War II. They know nothing about the persecution of Jews, for example. They see Hitler as a revolutionary, similar to Che Guevara, not as someone who is responsible for the death of millions of Jews. Of course they condemn him for his deeds—if they are aware of them—but they’re attracted to emblems of Nazi Germany because they’ve become acquainted with these symbols through punk and hard rock videos. In their view, these symbols are a representation of rebellion.”

This unawareness does not come as a surprise to Gene Netto, an English teacher from Jakarata. He once noticed that a student of his had put a swastika sticker on his mobile phone. “He had no idea what it stands for. I sat him down to explain who the Nazis were, and what they’ve done. After that, the boy immediately threw away the sticker.”

Hitler graffiti in Semarang, old VOC fortress Kota Lama (photo by Kyra Dirkssen)

The thing is, that between 1967 and 1998, Indonesia lived under the authoritarian regime of President Suharto. It goes without saying that the standard school curriculum was also under the regime's control: “Students were only taught stories about the glory and grandeur of Indonesia as a country,” Wahid says. "The Ministry of Education prohibited teachers from educating students on international genocide, political violence, or racial conflicts. Most students graduated without ever having heard of the Holocaust."

However, it's likely that my surprise at all this, is basically Western arrogance. The reality is that the Indonesians' ignorance of Hitler can basically be explained by what was going on in the country during World War II: After the Japanese oppressors (who occupied the country from 1942 until 1945) left, the Netherlands swooped in trying to seize control. That all ended when the Republic of Indonesia became independent, in 1949. Wahid explained, “Every history lesson that focused on the specific period, emphasised the independence of Indonesia. Nobody bothered with the persecution of the Jews.”

Saleswoman holding an image of Hitler: “No, I haven’t a clue who that is,” she said.

Wahid thinks that the rise of the internet has been a blessing for the Indonesian youth. “Not that long ago we were controled by the government, but now that the internet has become a common tool, everyone has free access to information. I’ve noticed the current generation of students has a much more realistic view of the world outside Indonesia, compared to previous generations.”

On the face of it, Dapper Cadaver looks like any other windowless storefront underneath the landing pattern of Burbank Airport, just outside LA. Its sign advertises "Props Rentals, Sales, Halloween," and something called "Casualty Simulation." Google Maps helpfully tags it "Death Related," and "Horror Movie," in case that's what you're shopping for.

If it's not Halloween, the people regularly shopping for "Casualty Simulation" are the prop masters of your favorite movies and TV shows. Sure, as a high-paid art director, you could make your own corpses from scratch, and many do. But when there's a shop that offers medically realistic dead bodies, not just of humans, but of all creatures great and small, you may as well go retail.

Law and Order is a frequent shopper, as were Breaking Bad and Dexter. Think Game of Thrones' top shelf gore is too classy to be store-bought? Think again. The severed heads of certain major GOT characters were custom orders.

The place does booming business around Halloween, when the cheesier plastic skulls and zombie costumes go like hotcakes. But on an average weekday, like the day I visited, the vibe is of a place just doing business as usual, stacking up torsos and severed limbs on the floor to complete a large order, and adding the requisite blood and guts to a modified corpse. For ease of shopping, containers are helpfully labeled things like "Rental Skulls," and "Child Bones."

While shopping for a film project of my own, I photographed the highlights.

See more of Nate Miller's work here

Photos by Levi Mandel

Samantha went to YouTube and clicked Make a Video Response.

“Hi,” she said after the countdown, making sure her copy of Masters of Despair: The Big Book of Philosophy was open to the quote by Schopenhauer about how ending your own life “can be compared to waking up after a horrible nightmare.”

“It’s me... I dissolved 40 Ambien into this bottle of Jack Daniel’s. In a few minutes I’m walking into the ocean. Don’t bother looking for me. It’s high tide. Fourteen-foot waves… Like anyone gives a fuck about me anyway.”

Then she clicked Upload.

She was still debating whether to wear her amazing vintage peacoat, because San Francisco nights were freezing cold, when she heard a noise and felt something wet over her nose and mouth.

“What the fuck?” she was saying, as everything went dark. How had she managed to drown without going to the beach?

The detective who showed up at 5 AM was not much older-looking than Samantha’s friends. (Not that Samantha ever hung out with clean-cut guys like this. Why should she when there were still heroin addicts in bands who needed a doormat?)

“Policy is to wait 24 hours,” Officer Stratton said. “A lot of times a kid’ll show up. Did you check her computer history? Her Facebook status?”

“No,” said Jen, feeling stupid about how she hadn’t wanted to violate her daughter’s privacy.

“Mind if I have a look?” said Officer Stratton, opening Samantha’s laptop. The first thing he saw was a YouTube announcement that a video had been successfully uploaded.

When Samantha woke up she was lying on her side in the back of a van that smelled like body odor and cigarettes. Was she really tied up and blindfolded? She was!

“Well, Conrad, that went pretty well,” a deep, flat male voice said.

“I think I slipped a disk lifting her. My lower back is on fire,” replied Conrad, whose voice was more nasal and gravelly. “She’s a big load for a short chick.”

“Fuck you. I’m only one pound over the right weight for my height,” Samantha yelled.

“Let me out of here.”

“Relax, Samantha,” Conrad said. “You’re going home as soon as your mom hands over some cash.”

The van made a sharp right turn and then stopped. “Welcome to your new temporary headquarters,” Tyson said as he slid open the van’s door. Samantha felt herself being lifted clumsily, like an overstuffed bag of wet leaves.

A few steps more and Samantha was being lowered, headfirst. When the scarf slid off her eyes, Samantha stared at her captors for the first time. They were both kind of middle-aged, though younger than her parents. That meant they were… what? Thirty? Thirty-five? Tyson was almost cute, but his eyes were too narrow. He got points for being buff, then lost them for those oily bangs. She hated the way he dressed: a short-sleeved pale-blue polyester shirt and Dockers. He looks like someone who works at Best Buy, she thought, not realizing that Tyson had gotten laid off from there earlier in the week.

Conrad was the same age as Tyson but shorter and heavier. He had a day’s growth of beard on his several chins and short, dark hair shaved up the back and longer on the top. He’d recently decided to cut it like that in hopes of increasing his chances of being hired as a school-bus driver. Now he was just one more bus-driver wannabe with an unfortunate haircut.

“It’s 2 AM,” Conrad said. “Let’s go make the call.”

“We’re going to lock you in here, Samantha,” said Tyson, making a gag out of a bandanna the way he’d seen guys do in movies. “We’ll be back after we call your mommy. Try not to miss us too much.”

“Huck Eu,” Samantha said.

“Very nice talk,” Tyson said as the two men backed out of the room. Samantha heard a key turn.

The plan was to make the important first contact with Samantha’s mom on a cheap phone that they would discard, so Tyson parked the van in an almost empty lot behind an all-night market. Then the two men crawled into the back.

Tyson had written down Jen’s cell number the week before, when he’d delivered her new dishwasher.

“Hello, Jen,” Conrad said quietly into the phone. “We have Samantha. She’s fine. I’m calling to tell you how you can get her back, unharmed.”

“Is this some kind of a sick joke?” said Jen, sounding drained.

“So judgmental!” he said. “I assure you everything can be solved with a simple transaction.”

Conrad is good at this, Tyson thought, pleased he’d agreed to let his partner do the talking. Conrad was better with words. He knew to say “transaction.”

“Here. I’ll show you judgmental,” said Jen, hanging up.

Conrad stared at Tyson.

“Fucker hung up on me!” Conrad said, pushing Redial. This had to work. One stupid night of extreme partying, and now the two men owed money to some psycho with a machete tattooed on his cheek. Conrad could barely remember doing all the coke they were supposed to sell. Now they needed to pay this guy like yesterday.

“I am going to give you one more chance,” said Conrad, calling a second time.

“To do what, you fucking douche bag?” Jen said. “My daughter killed herself last night, you piece of shit. Sorry to ruin your hilarious prank.”

“What’s going on?” said Tyson, talking through his teeth as he chewed on his thumbnail.

“She said Samantha killed herself last night. Then she hung up. What the fuck is that?”

“I don’t know. But we better get rid of this goddamn phone,” Tyson said, pushing the small Nokia into the center of a jar full of dill-pickle slices before pitching the whole thing into a massive green dumpster.

On the drive back to the house, Conrad turned on the news. Sure enough, audio from Samantha’s YouTube video was playing on every newscast.

“Holy shit,” Tyson said. “We better take her back and split.”

“Take her back?” Conrad said. “She’s not a pair of pants. We can’t return her. We need to make this work if we want to keep our heads attached to our necks.”

“No one’s going to pay us ransom. They all think she’s dead,” said Tyson, his heart beating so fast he was hyperventilating.

“We just have to prove she’s still alive,” Conrad replied. “We have her make a call… or even better, another YouTube video.”

“Which they’ll trace to our computer.”

“So we smash it up and scatter the pieces on our way out of town.”

“What if she won’t cooperate?” Tyson said.

“Ever heard of Stockholm syndrome? We make her love us. I bet she’s hungry. Let’s buy her some doughnuts.”

It was 6 AM when Conrad and Tyson pulled into the driveway of the small rented house in Walnut Creek where Samantha was locked in a back bedroom. By then her YouTube video was in heavy rotation. Media platforms only invented that day were already running it.

“Got you some doughnuts, Samantha,” said Conrad, trying out a benign smile as he entered carrying a grease-stained pink bakery box. He couldn’t help noticing how small and vulnerable she looked, tied up on that faded old couch.

“Because I’m a fat pig?” were Samantha’s first words as she sat up. “Get the fat chick some doughnuts, right? No thanks.”

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Tyson said.

“We figured you were hungry,” said Conrad, grabbing an iced plain. “We’re nice to you. You be nice to us. We need you to make a sequel to your popular YouTube video because your mother and everyone thinks you’re dead.”

“When you say ‘popular’…” said Samantha. “How many hits has it gotten?”

Conrad checked YouTube on his phone. “You have 200 comments. And 176,000 hits.”

As Samantha thought about this, a smile crept over her face. “Decent for only a few hours,” Samantha said. “Can you read me the comments?”

Conrad sighed. “Okay. First one says, ‘OMG. I cnt blve this. SOB.’ I don’t know if that’s son of a bitch or the word sob. Next one says, ‘Sometimes you don’t realize how much you care about a person until something like this happens. I wish I would have gotten to know you better, Samantha.’”

“Who’s that from?” Samantha asked.

“It just says Raven2004EVER,” Conrad said.

“Wow,” she said. “Taylor Parkhurst. He never acted like he knew I was alive. Who else wrote?”

“I’m not going to stand here reading 200 comments,” Conrad said. “Let’s go into the other room.”

“No way,” she said, stretching her arms out horizontally, crucifixion-style. “Go ahead and kill me. Like I give a fuck, okay?”

“Now what?” Tyson said as he followed Conrad into the kitchen.

“I’ll hold the gun on her. You push her in front of the computer, and I’ll click on the camera. We just need to show her mother she’s alive.”

Samantha was curled up on the threadbare sofa when the two men returned.

“Get up,” Conrad said. And when she didn’t budge, Tyson grabbed her under her arms and yanked her to her feet. “Listen when we talk to you,” he told her.

“You sound like my mother,” said Samantha, who was starting to find this funny. “Aren’t you going to tell me to get the hair out of my eyes?”

“Walk!” said Tyson, pushing her toward the door.

The room with the computer was identical to the other room except for a plastic desk.

“Oh my God,” said Samantha, signing in to her YouTube account. “I got 25 more comments since you last checked. Turner Leventhal wrote me a poem. Unreal.”

“Samantha, all we need you to say is, ‘Mom. Give them what they want so I can come home,’” said Conrad, watching her scroll through the comments.

“No way,” she said. “You think I want to go back there?”

“Then sit and look miserable,” said Conrad, reaching over to click Record. At that same moment Samantha slumped forward, her head on the desk.

Conrad quickly turned off the computer.

“Sit up!” shouted Tyson, nudging the gun into Samantha’s back.

“Shoot me,” she said.

“Come on! Don’t be like that!” Conrad said. “You don’t even have to talk. I’ll do a voice-over, and after we get the money, Tyson will shoot you.”

“Me? No way,” Tyson said. “There was never any discussion of killing someone! What’s the deal with you, Samantha? Why do you want to die? Don’t you know God put each of us here to make a special contribution?”

“You try reading Nietzsche and Schopenhauer while you’re living with your mother,” Samantha said. “Give me one good reason why I want to live.”

Tyson looked at Conrad.

“I got this,” Conrad said, with a wink. “Watch me work.”

“I don’t know if you can see how pretty this place is. There’s a sweet little creek behind those trees. And when the club hits the ball just so… it’s the greatest feeling,” Conrad said. He was showing Samantha the video he’d posted of his golf swing. So eager was he to showcase his skills, he’d hired a guy with an HD camera and a tripod.

“You’re seriously offering me golf as a reason to live?” Samantha said.

“It can be if you give it a chance. My favorite green is ten minutes from here. Tell you what… Let’s go over there. I’ll unlock your handcuffs, and…”

“Save your energy,” she said.

“Okay, I agree with you about golf, but come on! NASCAR?” Tyson said. “Look at those damn cars!”

Tyson was excited that he’d found a clip of the race he’d attended last weekend.

“Seriously,” he said. “I’m buying us tickets to Daytona!”

“To watch cars drive in a circle?” Samantha said. “You know, it’s actually you guys who should be thinking about committing suicide.”

“Your turn,” Tyson said to Conrad.

“You’ve never heard of Ultra Miami?” Conrad asked as he typed those words into YouTube and began scrolling through the dozens of videos people had posted. “Check out what a blast they’re all having—dancing, waving their arms! Look at those sexy costumes! Diplo’s playing and Afrojack!”

“You take a molly and you totally feel those bass notes right in your spine!” Tyson said.

“Do I look like someone who wants to hang with guys who have topless girls boogying on their shoulders?” Samantha said.

Conrad bit his lip as Tyson quickly pulled up a page of local listings.

“You a Star Wars fan? There’s a marathon,” he said, scrolling. “Big laser show at the planetarium. Bon Jovi is playing. Ever go to the Renaissance Faire? This year they got miniature trains.”

“They’re taping an episode of Wheel of Fortune at five o’clock in San Jose,” Conrad said.

“Hey! I googled ‘reasons to live,’” said Tyson, reading from his phone. “One and two kinda suck, but… reason number four… Old people get discounts!”

Samantha stared at him.

“Got it!” Tyson said, typing furiously into a search engine.

“What is that?” Samantha said, showing interest.

“A baby ocelot with a baby goat. You ever see the baby slow loris with the tiny parasol?” Tyson asked.

“Oh my God!” she said.

“Check out baby sugar gliders! Look at those eyes. Check out ‘Little Cow.’ He follows this lady everywhere.”

“That baby porcupine might be my favorite thing ever!” Samantha said. “Those noises he makes! I love them!”

“Wait’ll you hear the baby fox.”

“I want all of them!”

“Bingo! There’s your reason to live!” Tyson said. “To rescue orphaned baby everythings! You need to start an animal sanctuary!”

“Exactly!” Conrad said. “You can help save baby animals. Just like we’re going to do when we get your mother’s money.”

“You’re giving the ransom money to a fund for baby animals?” Samantha asked.

“You didn’t know that about us?” Conrad said.

“You can’t possibly think I’m buying that.”

“You can’t possibly think we’re dumb enough to commit a federal offense without a good reason,” Conrad said. “We’re ecoterrorists. You’re helping us save the planet.”

“Whoa,” she said. “Say that on the video, and I’m in.”

“Mom, please pay these guys so I can come home,” said Samantha, staring into the camera. “The money is going to rescue baby animals. I’ll always be grateful. This experience has opened my eyes.”

“Aw, you didn’t have to say that,” Tyson said as Samantha clicked Upload.

“It’s probably Stockholm syndrome,” Samantha said, “but those baby animal videos… I honestly felt something. Like I never do when my mom rattles on about facial fillers and ‘Who Wore It Best.’”

“Wow. This might be the first nice thing I’ve ever done for anyone,” Conrad said.

“You sold me all that pot for half price,” Tyson replied.

“It was super weak. And don’t forget—that’s how we got mixed up with Mr. Machete Face.”

“Since we’re all being honest here, I have a confession,” Tyson added. “Samantha, Conrad is lying about donating the ransom. But I can see how deeply this is affecting you, so I want you to know I’ll personally make sure we do donate money in your name to any animal charity you want.”

“You never know when to stop talking,” said Conrad, rolling his eyes. “Let’s go make that call.”

“Should we tie her up?” Tyson said.

“So not necessary,” Samantha said as the two men locked her in the bedroom again.

While Conrad and Tyson were driving back to the parking lot to make their follow-up call, Samantha broke the bedroom window with her boot. It was too high for her to crawl through but not so high that her screams for help went unheard. Three different neighbors called 911.

At midnight, as Samantha’s second video went viral, Officer Stratton was sitting beside Jen, listening to Conrad detail his ransom demands on a headset.

At the same moment Tyson submerged the phone they’d used into the center of a jar of sauerkraut, a seven-man SWAT team arrived at the rented house in Walnut Creek where Samantha was being held captive.

Twenty minutes later, Conrad and Tyson were arrested as they parked their van in the driveway. Tyson was carrying the bottle of Skinnygirl Sangria he’d bought for Samantha to celebrate.

Back home after her ordeal, Samantha found herself in the midst of a high-saturation publicity storm. Everyone wanted to know about her readjustment to life after this trauma. Kids at school were in awe of her, impressed as they had never been before.

Best of all, she’d lost six pounds during the ordeal.

“Being kidnapped sucks,” Samantha said to Oprah, “but in a way it was a gift. It changed me from a selfish kid to someone with perspective and priorities.”

By the time the show aired, Samantha was shopping a book proposal called The Gift of Kidnapping about becoming a life-embracing special person. It quickly launched a bidding war that netted her a $1.7 million advance.

A few weeks later she bought the abandoned farm she intended to transform into an animal sanctuary.

Conrad and Tyson were convicted of kidnapping, despite their lawyer’s attempts to reframe their behavior as a suicide intervention. But because of the favorable comments made by Samantha, they began to attract followers.

This gave Conrad the idea to create an online course about abduction as a form of therapy. By the time he was paroled, the audio books for “Kind-napping” were available on Amazon.

Sick of being manipulated by Conrad and determined to understand his own frightening descent into crime, Tyson spent his time in prison reading philosophy, especially Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Unsure of what to do when he was paroled, he moved in with his mother. The following day he went into town and came home with “To gain anything we have longed for is only to discover how vain and empty it is. —A. Schopenhauer” tattooed on his back. A week later, he dissolved the 40 Ambien he’d found on his mother’s dresser into a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. And as he drifted off to unconsciousness, the last thing that occurred to him was, Damn, I forgot to make my YouTube video.

Merrill Markoe was the first head writer for The David Letterman Show.

On a road sign in Calais—the closest French town to England—just next to the ferry port, a struggle for space is unfolding. “Fight the border!” “Fuck privilege,” says graffiti on one half of the sign. “Love the borders, your rights, your country,” says the other.

It’s a contest being fought right across Europe’s borders, as the number of migrants trying, and in many cases failing, to reach make homes in the continent rises. Meanwhile, increasingly popular xenophobic political movements agitate to keep them out. On Rue de Moscou, just five minute’s from the ferry terminal that takes you from France to Britain, it’s clear which side is winning.        

“We are tired of life,” said John Abdullah, a 40-year-old migrant from Kunar in Afghanistan. “We want human rights. We want the British and French governments to think about us, but nobody cares.”

If the British and French governments continue to ignore and harass them, they have vowed to take their own lives. “We have decided—all 25 of us—that if they do not listen, we will kill ourselves,” Abdullah said. “We will go to the high street, throw petrol and set ourselves on fire.”

Abdullah was sitting in a large tent with ten other men, migrants from Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Pakistan. An activist from Finland is checking their blood pressure. Nothing but water, occasionally mixed with a bit of salt, has passed their lips since June 12, when they started a hunger strike. Many are too tired to speak, but none appear willing to stop.

“We will not eat food until the British and French authorities sort out our problems,” said Ahmad Khan, a former journalist from Afghanistan and a spokesman for the migrants on hunger strike. “We feel tired, dizzy and weak; most of us have stomach and back pains. But we will carry on until we get a positive answer.”

John Abdullah, 40, from Afghanistan, pictured left, sat with another migrant

They are in limbo, unable to reach Britain without risking their lives and denied even the most basic living standards by the French authorities. Last month, on May 28, French CRS riot-police violently evicted around 700 migrants from a makeshift camp in Calais, citing an outbreak of scabies as justification for their dispersal. Since then, dissent has built up, with hundreds of men occupying an empty courtyard used as a food distribution center by the aid group Salam, and a small group refusing to eat.

Their demands are simple. Those that wish to travel across the channel want legal status in Britain. Those that wish to remain in France want legal status here. And in the meantime, the hundreds of migrants in limbo want safe accommodation and an end to police brutality.

“We don’t want benefits, we want to be citizens,” Khan said. “We have energy and education, we want to be able to work and contribute to society. I left Afghanistan in 2008 because I faced many dangers. I hoped when I got here I would be able to live as a human being, to rebuild my life and future. But I am still struggling.”

Occupations and hunger strikes have been a routine part of migrant life in Calais since the closure of Sangatte, a camp set up by the French Red Cross, in 2002. Not only does the French state provide no emergency accommodation for migrants, it refuses to acknowledge as legitimate any other shelter that might be erected.

Usually when a camp or squat is evicted, the migrants take their bags, leave the area, and move to the streets, playing cat and mouse with a notoriously awful police force. But currently, things are different.

“Last month’s eviction was announced in advance,” said Philippe Wannesson, a blogger at Passeurs d’hospitalités and a local activist. “That meant the group had time to get together and decide to occupy the place. Assemblies were held and decisions made in groups with representatives. There was hope that with such large numbers of organised people, another eviction would be difficult.”

Many more have joined since the occupation began. Tents, tattered suitcases, and sleeping bags now litter the courtyard in an area once part of the harbour. Some are involved in the politics of occupation; others are just looking for a safe place to stay. Most, like Assad Khan, a refugee from Peshawar, are waiting for a chance to go to England, where they believe they will find a better life.

“I’ve been here for ten days, but I’ve been travelling for two and half years,” he said. "We are trying to get to England because we heard it is good, you can have a nice life and find work. We will try and go through on a truck soon.”

Migrants playing cricket in Calais

Assad was playing cricket outside of the camp. It’s Sunday afternoon, and with no trucks on the road, the atmosphere is relaxed.

On Monday, the struggle will start again. UK immigration law makes safe, legal travel almost impossible for Assad and the other migrants. Without a visa they cannot afford, and unable to claim asylum from abroad, they are forced to enter the country illegally, risking everything in or under the trucks that cross the channel. Nor is this the only danger the migrants face. Even in large, organized numbers, violence from both the police and public is common. Earlier in February an Iranian man was shot in one of Calais’ many lonely parking lots.

In the middle of the courtyard, Adam-Joesph Gabriel, a 45-year-old from South Sudan was busy chalking his story into the ground.

“At 1.30 AM on Thursday morning I was shot walking up the road with some friends,” he told me. “First I was shot in the hand, then in the back. I spent four days in hospital. I thank God I am still alive and thank my friends who came to visit me when I was ill.”

Since leaving South Sudan in 1996, Gabriel has had a tour of Europe: two years in Turkey cleaning cars, two years in Athens searching for work, then on to Milan, and now finally, France.

“This is my last destination,” he said with a West-Coast cap on his head and an unexpected but charming American accent. “I am not going to England, it is too dangerous crossing. I have friends that have died trying it, others with broken legs. So I have asked for asylum here where I hope to get work, be a French citizen and have a good life.”

Gabriel’s journey looks like it will end well. Last week he found a flat to move into, and the French police have now caught the man that shot him, a security guard in his early 20s. Before he goes, he wants to leave a mark. “I don’t want my story to end,” he said as he finished the colorful mural and dusted off his hands, “I want to be remembered.”

Back in the tent there is little room for positivity. The UK has shown no sign it will listen to the migrants, let alone help them. On Wednesday the local prefecture in Calais announced at a press conference that the migrants would have to leave the area they have occupied. Since then, no contact has been made. 

For Abdullah, Khan, and the other migrants refusing food, and now threatening self-immolation, time is running out.

The British government faces the imminent prospect of 25 men burning themselves on its doorstep because of the way it enforces its borders. At the same time a discussion about the importance of “British values,” mutual respect, tolerance, rule of law and individual liberty, is in progress. Trying telling that to the migrants in Calais.

Follow Philip Kleinfeld on Twitter.

Todd Levitt (center, in sunglasses), who does not take kindly to jokes about him online, singing a karaoke version of "Sweet Caroline" with some Central Michigan University students. Screenshot via YouTube

If you or I found someone making fun of us on Twitter, we might laugh or have a moment of brief rage before moving on with our lives; if we were feeling particularly pissed off we might send the jokester a message telling him to knock it off. We would almost definitely not tweet about how the person making fun of us should “grab some Vaseline” because we were going to send him to prison, then sue him for damages in excess of $25,000. That is because we are not, and will never be, Todd Levitt.

Levitt is an attorney who’s a well-known character on the campus of Central Michigan University, where until May the CMU alum taught a popular marketing class. His various social media accounts portray him as a self-promoting bro’s bro who sings karaoke in college bars, films himself nodding along to “Bad to the Bone” in his car, and loved it when a website compared him to Saul Goodman, the sleazy lawyer character on Breaking Bad.

By all accounts, he was much chummier with the college's kids than most teachers are. The self-proclaimed “badass lawyer” defended numerous students against DUIs and other drug-and-alcohol related charges, served as the academic adviser to a frat he later provided with legal counsel when it faced accusations of sexual harassment, gave kids free car rides one Valentine’s Day, and even filmed a pilot for a reality TV show called In Todd We Trust.

Earlier this year Levitt got even more attention for himself when he defended Rachel Harrison, a CMU student who threatened a cop with a knife and was eventually sentenced in May to six months behind bars. That case was pretty big news in the sleepy college town of Mount Pleasant, said Ben Solis, the editor-in-chief of CMU’s student newspaper CM Life—and the paper got criticized by at least one reader for giving Levitt additional publicity.

“I remember having someone ask my why were reporting on him again,” Solis said.

The response to the articles about Levitt on the CM Life website show what sorts of emotions the lawyer stirs up in those who know him. “Todd is a very nice person who gives a lot of free advice to students and to anyone. He has a young soul and is super fun to be around and goes far out of his way to help a lot of people,” reads one comment on the story about his reality show.

“This clown is literally the joke of Mt. Pleasant. As a CMU alum, he is a total EMBARASSMENT! He tries so hard for attention,” wrote another anonymous reader. “Perhaps national attention on Mr. ‘I Wear My Sunglasses At Night’ will help students realized how pathetic a married man their parents’ age hanging out & drinking with college kids all the time really is,” wrote a third.

Not surprisingly, Levitt doesn’t listen to the haters. “I was a nontraditional adjunct professor with students fighting to get a seat,” Levitt told me in an email exchange. “Jealous professors have wanted me out for years.”

It’s that spirit of jealousy, Levitt claims, that led Zach Felton, an IT worker at CMU, to start up Todd Levitt 2.0, a parody Twitter account that publicly mocked the fratty lawyer, with references to weed, binge-drinking, and Levitt’s alleged love of partying.

Partying = Defense clients Defense clients = Income If I endorse partying, will my income grow? It's like a ponzi scheme for lawyers!

— Todd Levitt 2.0 (@levittlawyer) April 17, 2014

One of the tweets that so enraged Levitt.

As of this writing the account had a scant 130 followers and only 72 tweets, but it’s mere existence prompted Levitt to publicly freak out, saying over a series of since-deleted tweets that the “CMU profs and their loser kid who works in IT”  would need to “grab some Vaseline where I”m sending them.”

“Who did you think you were fucking with? You have no idea who I am,” Levitt wrote at one point during his rant.

I asked Levitt if he had any regrets about his aggressive response to the parody account. “No comment,” he replied. (He shut down his Twitter account in response to Felton’s tweets, according to his complaint.)

He wasn’t all talk, however as he’s now suing Felton for damages in excess of $25,000 and claiming that the parody caused him to lose clients. Levitt “received dozens of phone calls from concerned clients, potential clients, and parents who were all distressed” that Levitt was actually tweeting about getting high and boozing it up, according to his lawsut, which also claims that Levitt was “told by two potential clients” that they wouldn’t hire him because they thought Felton’s tweets were an “accurate representation of (Levitt’s) character.”

Levitt—who told me he was “raised by a single mother, no father, no child support. I never forgot where I came from,”—certainly has his admirers, and they agree that the attorney is a victim of a concerted campaign that goes beyond mere mockery.

“The tweets posted about Todd were defaming to both his character and his business,” CMU student Tyler Webb said in a lengthy email extolling the attorney’s virtues. “The account was made with malicious intent, no doubt in my mind.”

Some of Levitt's now-deleted tweets.

Levitt claims that this intent goes beyond Felton, whose father teaches at CMU’s business school. “We believe there are numerous individuals who participated that teach at CMU,” he told me. “Through the court process we hope to expose these individuals from the top down.”

Though Levitt is brashly outspoken about nearly everything, he wouldn’t tell me why he’s no longer employed by the university, though Felton’s attorney, Gordon Bloem, said that Levitt had quit his part-time teaching gig before the parody account was even created. The lawsuit implies but doesn’t specifically state, that as a result of Felton’s tweets, “(Levitt) could not continue as adjunct professor.”

Even though he isn’t working at CMU anymore—and even though he is suing one of its employees in a lawsuit that seems bizarre, to say the least—Levitt told me he still cares deeply about the school’s students.

“If you took the time to know me you would learn that all I do is try to help people be it students with careers or assisting clients and parents thru the legal system,” he emailed me. “People look to me to represent their voice and fight for justice. That's who I am and will always be. I'm not just a litigator I'm an Advocator brother.”

He added, “Peace out.”

Follow Justin Glawe on Twitter.

These guys are the worst. Photo via tigersoftinder.com

Animal rights advocates don't traditionally have any beef with dating apps like Tinder and OKCupid, but so many bros have been recklessly taking selfies with tigers lately that New York State Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal felt compelled to act. She's managed to get a bill prohibiting close contact with big cats through both houses of the historically dysfunctional state legislature in Albany, which is no small feat. But is this a serious animal rights or safety issue? How many selfies are we talking about here, and are we sure the tigers don't like being props in dudes' online quests to get laid? I called Rosenthal up to get the nitty-gritty on one of the more bizarre government prohibitions in recent memory.

VICE: For those of us who were unaware of this problem, what exactly is going on with tigers in New York State?
Linda Rosenthal: This takes place in lots of states where there are roadside zoos or traveling exhibits of animals—people pay to pose with big cats, bears, monkeys, reptiles... that goes on in the summer months particularly. And it's not safe for the human beings who choose to pose with these animals because live animals are unpredictable. They can be trained, but that doesn't mean they aren't one day going to take a swipe at you.

It can also lead to bad situations for the animals. Obviously baby animals are cuter, right? Not obviously, but, I guess, babies are cuter than adults usually. But once they get bigger and harder to maintain, they get released and it's dangerous for them. They're held in cages to go from venue to venue. It's not good for either side. It's dangerous for the humans. So this bill would not allow these big cats to be part of the traveling menageries.

What does all of this have to do with selfies?
This selfies thing is something that the [New York] Post brought up. I don't use those websites so I'm not familiar with them, but they said men pose with big cats to post an alluring photo on Tinder and other websites. So they injected that meaning into the bill.

But that's not what you were after?
No! This has nothing to do with that. For all I know they're photoshopped, who knows? But they were trying to be snarky about the bill when in fact the bill is a serious bill about animals and human beings and protection of both classes.

How many tigers are we talking here?
It's hard to keep track. The FDA is in charge of licensing, and they're barely able to make meat that we buy safe. They are understaffed and overworked and I bet they don't have much enforcement when it comes to these traveling zoos. So I thought it best to just propose a state law that would address the issue.

How many attacks or incidents have there been—or is this largely to avoid future disaster? 
There have been a number, but this is a situation that could suddenly lead to trouble. Rather than risk trouble happening, this is a preventive measure.

How did this first get on your radar?
Because I do so much animal legislation, I work with different [advocacy] groups. This is one I worked on with the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Any guesses as to why big cat pics are so popular on dating websites?
I don't know that men posing with wild tigers or lions is that alluring. It could actually make them look kind of foolish. But maybe it appeals to people? Who knows. This bill had nothing to do with intefering with their activities.

The act the law actually prohibits is essentially the act of posing or getting up close, though, right?
Direct contact, yes. So that means physical contact or proximity where physical contact is possible. It's really for their own safety as well as the safety of the animals. When young animals become part of these traveling zoos they're usually separated from their mothers so they can get used to being around humans, and they often die bcecause they're traveling all the time... they should be with their mother. They often get declawed and undergo training in a futile attempt to make them "safe." But they're never safe becuase they're wild. And they often grow too big for handling and then they're dumped. I mean, Sigfried and Roy, they were around those tigers for years, then that tiger lost it! So I'm sorry if this bill interferes with people's ability to pose with big cats in order to find dates. But that's really not my concern.

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

Photo of Denver International Airport security checkpoint by Flickr user dan paluska

On Tuesday afternoon, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced a rare victory in the ongoing legal fight against the authoritarian excesses of the war on terror: A federal judge in Portland, Oregon, ruled that the insanely convoluted process by which people can get off of the no-fly list is unconstitutional and “wholly ineffective” to boot.

The no-fly list (which is part of a larger thing called the Terrorist Screening Database, or TSDB) is a way for the government to keep off of commercial flights those dastardly, probably foreign fiends whom the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) determines to be “known or suspected to be, or has been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of or related to, terrorism or terrorist activities." There are a lot of these people, according to the government—as many as 21,000 in 2012, including 500 US citizens—and if you are on the list you won’t be able to fly in or out of the United States on a commercial airline.

There are all sorts of civil-liberties reasons to despise the no-fly list, the most obvious one being that there’s no way to find out if you’re on it until you’re told that you can’t fly—and even then you might be on some other kind of secret banning-you-from-travel list. If you suspect you are on the list you may not know why and you can’t find out, though it could be a case of an FBI agent checking the wrong box on a form. Your only option is to write the Department of Homeland Security to say, essentially, “I think I might be on the no-fly list. If I am, can I please not be on it anymore?” The bureaucratic terrorist-fighting wheels then turn as the government agencies that may or may not have you under surveillance confer and figure out if they have the wrong box checked somewhere. Then you’re told that your review has been completed—except you still don’t know whether you’re on the watch list. You can have a court look into the matter if you like, but even then you’ll be entirely in the dark as to what your status is.

“At no point during the judicial-review process does the government provide the petitioner with confirmation as to whether the petitioner is on the No-Fly List, set out the reasons for including petitioner's name on the List, or identify any information or evidence relied on to maintain the petitioner's name on the List,” US District Judge Anna Brown noted in her ruling.

The absurdity implicit in all of this—are there really 20,000 terrorists out there so dangerous that they can’t fly on an international flight, and does every scrap of information about them have to be so closely guarded?—led the ACLU to sue the government on behalf of 13 US citizens, including four veterans, who are on the no-fly list. (Or at least they think they're on the no-fly list, since it’s usually impossible to know for sure, though some of them were told they were on the list by airline employees or the FBI.) And Brown agreed with the ACLU that the government was essentially denying the plaintiffs’ right to international travel without due process, a violation of the Fifth Amendment.

The government went into its usual routine when any of its agencies’ secretive security and surveillance practices are questioned: It claimed that a more transparent appeal process would threaten national security and force it to reveal classified information. In other words: Trust us, let us do what we want, or else the terrorists will win.

That argument works sometimes—yesterday another judge in the same courthouse ruled that it’s legal to wiretap a US citizen without a warrant in certain circumstances—but it didn’t hold up here, possibly because of the hardships suffered by the no-fly listers who sued the government. One, Steve Washburn, wasn’t allowed to return home to New Mexico from Ireland in 2010 and eventually had to fly to Mexico and cross the border to the US on foot. Another, Ibraheim Mashal, is a Marine veteran who wasn’t even allowed to board domestic flights and has missed family events and lost clients for his dog-training business as a result.

The judge noted that the government agencies involved did have a legitimate interest in defending the country from terrorism, but that has to be balanced against the rights of the people caught up in the web of the War on Terror with no way to disentangle themselves, and the plaintiffs were clearly mistreated by the system.

“Without proper notice and an opportunity to be heard, an individual could be doomed to indefinite placement on the No-Fly List,” wrote Brown.

The judge didn’t suggest specific changes that should be made but told the government that it would need to come up with reforms to sort out these Fifth Amendment concerns. Though the Feds can appeal Brown’s decision, they will likely have to provide more information to people who want to know why they can’t get on planes. That’s good news for the activists who have been pushing back against these draconian policies for years, and better news for the plaintiffs, who will finally be able to see what evidence their government has against them.

“Finally I will be able to challenge whatever incorrect information the government has been using to stigmatize me and keep me from flying,” Sheik Mohammed Abdirahman Kariye, a plaintiff who lives in Portland, Oregon, said in a statement provided by the ACLU. “I have been prevented by the government from traveling to visit my family members and fulfill religious obligations for years, and it has had a devastating impact on all of us. After all this time, I look forward to a fair process that allows me to clear my name in court.”

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

Photos by Grey Hutton

The image of the gay cop has been fetishized to death over the last few decades. Tom of Finland, Village People, George Michael, and so many others have done their darndest to cement the homo cop—complete with oiled-up baton and leather pants—into the public psyche. But it's a safe bet that none of those guys ever went to one of the European Gay Police Association's conferences.

The association, founded in 2004, has so far held seven conferences in a number of different European cities. Last week the most recent one took place in Berlin, with more than 200 cops from 13 countries in attendance. Over the course of three days the talks and seminars focused largely on topics like hate crime in Germany and the integration of homosexuals into public service.

Police officers are largely anonymous figures. In matching uniforms, complete with the occasional helmet covering their faces, losing one's identity in order to better uphold the law seems like part of the job description. But a trip to this gay cop convention allowed a glimpse into the private lives of these men and women.

We spoke to some of the friendly faces we met while there.

Carly Andrews, England

VICE: What is being a gay policewoman in the UK like?

Carly Andrews: I have been in the force for about six years, but I think the big gay-rights groups had done most of the work before I started working for the police. There was a time where it was frowned upon to talk about sexual orientation in the force, but they've been fighting really hard for gay rights for the last 30 to 40 years and achieved a lot.

Have you always been accepted by your colleagues?

When I started working with the Surrey Police Department, I was welcomed with open arms. They even encouraged me to go to conferences like this one, so that I have the chance to educate myself about gay rights and support other gays within the force.

Had you already "come out" before joining the force?

Before I started working with the police, I had a job in public administration, and I can remember someone making a homophobic joke on my first day. From that day on, it was clear to me that no one ought to know that I had a girlfriend. I felt terrible that I didn´t speak up for myself. When I started with the police, I wanted to treat this matter differently. I wanted to deal with it better and without secrecy about my partner. I wanted to refer to her as my girlfriend.

How do you react if you witness a hate crime? Is this something that affects you more than your heterosexual colleagues?

Of course all the things you can relate to can and will affect you a certain way. For example if a lesbian woman is being verbally insulted on the street, I can relate to that. I also experience things like this, but I hardly ever report it, which I actually should. You just get used to negative comments.

Josef Hosp, Austria

VICE: What is being a gay police officer in Austria like?
Josef Hosp: I worked for Customs for 24 years before I started with the police. Since 1991, I have been out as a gay man, and I have experienced a lot of bullying ever since. People tried to talk negatively about the way I live my life or even oppress me because of that, but I have always made sure to keep going, and now I hold an executive position. For my younger colleagues, the situation has definitely improved. It used to be much worse.

When did you start?
I started in 1981 with Customs and came out in 1984. I wanted to make a statement with my coming out.

What was that like?
Pretty bad. My outing actually took place at a seminar class. The day after, I was called into the organizers' office. They were very adamant about me not speaking about homosexual matters within the seminar. They said that if I continued doing so they couldn’t guarantee that I would pass the classes. Next, my roommate decided to move out of the room we shared, because he was too worried about him being thought of as gay. After the seminar I went back to my department, where a bunch of my colleagues decided not to go out in the field with me anymore. I then got a "promotion," but it only entailed working from my desk. I am a person who has always loved to be outside and in contact with people, so I was pretty disappointed.

How do you react to hate crimes and homophobic attacks?
My perception is definitely different from that of heterosexuals. I have experienced stuff like that myself. I was held at gunpoint once.

When you were out privately?
Yeah, I was out as a gay man. I think this is the reason why I have a personal approach to things like that. Every form of abuse hurts, even if it's just verbal and you don't show it.

Cayhun Oguz, Germany

VICE: What is being a gay police officer in Germany like?
Cayhun Oguz: Well, in my department it's no different from what it is like for heterosexual people. Your sexuality really doesn’t matter when you are on duty. I also outed myself relatively quickly. Of course there are negative examples, but apart from people staying out of my way because they don’t like it very much, I have never experienced any negativity.

So you "came out" before you joined the force, right?
That’s correct. I had a boyfriend at that time. At some point people eventually work it out—especially if you keep bringing the same guy to work functions. Obviously I won’t lay out my private life to everyone, but I will introduce my boyfriend to those who want to know about him.

How did your family react? Did they have any issues with your sexuality?
In the beginning they did. No one in my family has been gay—at least as far as we know. Of course the fact that I am attracted to men has definitely been a transition for me, as well as for my parents, and they needed time and some distance to process it at first. But they eventually got used to it.

Were you worried about joining the force because you have a migrant's background and are gay?
No. I am happy to have a high level of self-esteem, and everything that I do, I do it 100 percent. I wanted to be a policeman, went through training, passed, and got hired. That's something that isn’t to be judged by others. To me, it is important to hold myself to a certain standard and fulfill the requirements society and my department have set for me.

T. & B., Belgium

VICE: What's life like for a gay police officer in Belgium?
T: I've never had any kind of problems with it. All my colleagues were very supportive when I came out. They were very interested in what it's like to live your life as a gay man and wanted to know a lot of details—especially the women. But yeah, they were mostly very curious and supportive.

B: I also haven’t had any problems. It's accepted, but it shouldn’t be shown too publicly.

Are you guys partners?
T: No, we are not. We work in different units and have different bosses.

Were you openly gay before you joined the force?
B: I came out after I joined. Some of my colleagues had been talking about it already. Raising questions like "Is he gay, or is he straight?" But when I had the courage to say it out loud it wasn’t, a problem at all.

T: I was already out when I was in police training. I have never been the person who seeks attention by saying, “Hey, here I am, and I'm gay!” I just did my thing, and after a couple of weeks some of my colleagues came up to me and asked whether I was gay. I thought, They’ve manned up and had the balls to ask me, so I’ll give them an honest answer.

B: To be honest, I was a little bit scared before I went into the process of being admitted to police school. I did wonder whether homosexuality and policing could go together. Looking back, my worries turned out to be unnecessary.

Ann Griessbach-Baerns, Germany

VICE: What is being a lesbian and a cop in Berlin like?
Ann Griessbach-Baerns: I haven’t had any kind of problems coming out. It wasn't a problem for my colleagues, either.  

How did you come out in front of your colleagues?
I started police training when I was 16. That was the age where you are not exactly sure about it—well, you are, actually, but you don’t walk around telling everyone.

You can start police training at 16?
Yeah. So I basically grew into both, I guess. The older you get, the more openly and normally you talk about it.

And this works out well?
It does. I'm not in the minority. We have a lot of gay people in our department. If we’re talking about a minority, the only thing I can say is that we have almost outnumbered heterosexuals. Almost half of the department is gay!

Where is your department?
I am an instructor at the State Police School.

How do you react to homophobic violence? Do you think you experience it differently from a heterosexual colleague?
I wouldn’t say so. But I do think that because of my background I can spot and question some criminal acts better or in a different way. I can raise awareness among colleagues in the department and also within the State Police School. I can show whether the crime has a homophobic background or not.

How do you assess the homophobic violence in Berlin in general?
I do know the statistics, but you want me to answer the question from a private angle... Of course I think that people have to be educated about it a lot more than they are currently. The victims should be encouraged to file a report if they experience any form of homophobic abuse. So I definitely think that homophobic violence in Berlin is still a hot topic.