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The Woman from the Calgary Stampede Threesome Reminds Us That Women Can Do Whatever They Want

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Alexis Frulling. Photo courtesy Maryjane Peters

More on the Stampede and sex:
The Messy Aftermath of the Stampede
We Went to a Calgary Stampede-Themed Voguing Party
This Is What It's Actually Like to Pay Your Way Through Uni with Sex Work

Alexis Frulling peels back the cling-wrap shroud of a cucumber and shoves the end of it into her mouth. Then, she chomps off the end of it in one massive bite, chews it, and, swallows it.

The scene takes place in a YouTube video Frulling made in the aftermath of a public threesome she had a little over a week ago. The threesome was filmed and put on the internet without her knowledge or consent. Why a threesome would have an aftermath of any sort is because women are still big ole dirty sluts for doing what they want with their bodies. Nobody, of course, pays any attention to the men for doing the same: rather, we expect it of them.

Frulling experienced the predictable backlash and name-calling online after the threesome video was posted. Her own video is addressed to both her lovers and haters, and addresses the threesome. It's called "Trampede (the original)" and already has well over a million views. She's clearly put some work into the video (which even has its own song about her). She sits on a porch with a huge glass of wine in the foreground, making jokes about the situation.

"I can't say I'm proud about it," she says in the video, referring to the threesome, "but I'm not ashamed."

Frulling is taking control of her own narrative. She made her Facebook profile into an open fan page, and it now has 14,000 likes. She created a YouTube channel, and made a Twitter account with a sincerely boss followers to following ratio (1,726 to a hilarious 41 as of Tuesday afternoon). But then, in a society that blames and shames women for sex acts but expects those same women to please men sexually, what choice does she have? Either she tells her own story or the internet tells it for her. The men involved have presumably disappeared back into their normal lives and clearly don't feel the same pressure to speak up for themselves. It's only Frulling who has to stand up for herself in this way, because she's the only one being shamed.

The sex she had was with two friends she'd hooked up with before, she told me over the phone. They were heading to the Wiz Khalifa show during the Stampede and making sexy jokes. They decided it would be funny to have a threesome. At first, she hesitated, but then decided to "just do what [she] want[s]." They went to a discrete downtown alley between industrial buildings. What they failed to account for was the person overlooking the scene from a second floor balcony who filmed the entire thing and felt the need to put it on Reddit.

She says police are still investigating, and that person might be charged. Posting intimate images of someone else without their consent is illegal in Canada, (although it's unclear how the public nature of this event would work in court), and with good cause. (See: Amanda Todd, Rehteah Parsons, cyber bullying). Frulling and the two men involved won't be facing charges, though public sex is illegal in Canada.

"We meant for this to be just between us and our friend group, but it all backfired," she explained. Someone outed Frulling when they connected the video image to her Instagram. Initially, she tried to get the evidence offline, but then she decided to own the story.

"I thought, 'This is fucking stupid. I'm not going to have all of these people hating on me.' So I was like, 'You know what, it was me.' So many people have done this before and just didn't get caught. This isn't fair. I don't see why I should get bashed for it when the guys don't get bashed for it."

Quick poll, then. Who amongst us hasn't: a) banged a friend; b) copulated outdoors; or c) had some form of group sex? Just because Frulling happened to do all three at once and got "caught in the act" doesn't mean it's any of our business. It's her business and her body, and she is bravely asserting that.

As this dude who makes videos in Calgary says, turnt-up threesomes are "what we hear happen at Stampede. It's just ten days of debauchery."

And yet, people are saying Frulling is not smart. Not wise. That she should have expected the video would wind up on the internet.

No. She should have expected someone might see her, but not that they'd videotape her and put the video up online, knowing full well it could either embarrass her or unleash a violent tirade of cyber bullying and slut-shaming against her.

Besides, the threesome is a thing many of us partake in or fantasize about. Some even say threesomes are on the rise. So why the vitriol? The truth is, most people who are up in arms about this are decidedly miserable about their sad, bonerless lives.

Rebecca Sullivan, the head of women's studies at the University of Calgary, says in an interview about the situation with Postmedia News:

"We shouldn't be discussing whether people should be doing this or not, we should be discussing why it's OK for everyone to be so abusive. To the abusers: 'What are you getting out of it, what are you achieving, and what is it about yourself that you like yourself as an abuser?'"

Happily, some women (AHEM Belle Knox; Kim Kardashian) have harnessed similar "outings" of a sexual nature and capitalized on them, using the incidents to brand themselves as they see fit. Frulling says she's scared this will impact her ability to find a "normal" job, but she plans to use this to her advantage. She plans to get into event planning and promotion, and she says she's considering doing sex tutorials online. (Raise your hand if you've ever had the misfortune of fucking someone who could use at least one tutorial!)

Frulling doesn't owe us wisdom, to be frank, or choices we agree with. She's a 20-year-old woman doing as she pleases. Just as we need to get over the way women speak, we also need to get over the way they pursue sexual conduct. Sexualized shaming and internet terrorism have stolen the lives of too many women, and we should all be well aware of these dangers by now.

"A lot of other girls are scared to stand up for themselves and say, 'Fuck that double standard,'" Frulling says. "Guys can do whatever the hell they want. We're all human and make our own decisions."

Frulling is saying that she won't be silenced. She won't let others tell her story. And she is not here to be erased.

Follow Sarah Ratchford on Twitter.


Why You Should Eat Cheese When Your A/C Breaks

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Why You Should Eat Cheese When Your A/C Breaks

The KKK Is Trying to Save Its Image with Community Service

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Photo via Wikimedia Commons

The Ku Klux Klan has a public image problem. You might assume it has something to do with the whole white supremacy and lynching black people thing, and you would be correct. While the Klan hasn't directly addressed that problematic aspect of their platform, they have tried to clean up their image in other ways—most notably, through community service.

Right now, a Georgia Court of Appeals is deciding whether or not the KKK should be allowed to participate in the state's Adopt-a-Highway program. The KKK petitioned to join the program in 2012, and after being rebuffed, they appealed, sending their case to court.

Surprisingly, this is not the first time the Klan has tried to participate in public service—and almost without exception, they are legally allowed to do so. Back in 1992, Nathan Robb—son of the KKK's national director, Thomas Robb—filed to adopt a one-stretch mile of US highway 65, near Harrison, Arkansas. The state rejected the application, but the ACLU took on their case and the state's decision was overturned in federal court. The "Klan Highway," as it became known, attracted significant amounts of trash, and when the Klan neglected to renew their application, the state quickly removed them from the program.

In 1998, the KKK petitioned to adopt a stretch of I-55 in Saint Louis. Again, the state initially denied their request, but was overturned in higher courts. Since there was nothing the state of Missouri could do to stop the KKK from participating in the program, they responded by naming a portion of the Klan's highway the Rosa Parks Highway.

Later on, when a Neo-Nazi group adopted part of a highway near Springfield, the state of Missouri pulled a similar trick, renaming a portion of the highway after Jewish theologian Rabbi Abrham Joshua Hertzel.

The reason the Klan pursues issues like this is simple: Adopting a highway is one of the only ways the group could possibly advertise. The media won't sell them ad space, and people aren't exactly clamoring to have the Klan sponsor their kickball team. That leaves public works and the perk of public works, name recognition. If the state fights it, even better.

Another way the Klan is trying to change their public image: passing out "Klandy."

It's a classic move for a criminals and criminal organizations. Al Capone routinely sponsored food drives and clothing giveaways to the poor. The Los Zetas cartel leaves gifts for the poor to celebrate the Epiphany holiday. Pablo Escobar was practically worshipped in Colombia for building low-income housing and building stadiums in his impoverished country.

Beginning in the Klan's salad days, they took a similar approach and handed out the turkeys like Nino Brown on Thanksgiving. Sociology professor Katherine Blee, who has written several books about women in the Klan, told NPR that in the 1920s, the Klan routinely "sponsored, in public, baseball teams, father-son outings, beautiful baby contests, weddings, baby christenings, junior leagues, road rallies, festivals."

The Klan, needing to remain close with local authorities, was particularly adept at shifting the focus off the racism and murder with public works projects. In his book One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth and Decline of the Ku Klux Klan, Thomas Pegram cites several instances of local chapters, or "klaverns," shilling out money for the ostensible public good, "in an effort to legitimize its credentials as a quasi-public organization."

A Klan-sponsored beautiful baby contest probably wouldn't garner too many entrants in 2015, but their current Adopt-a-Highway ploy fits perfectly into this mindset. Shift the focus to everything you're not. What's the Klan? Why, they're the people who clean up the roads. The newer, gentler, Ku Klux Klan. Why, they haven't lynched anyone since 1981!


Watch: The KKK is experiencing a rise in members in Mississippi, fueled by a new strategy that targets veterans just returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.


The community service attempts are probably also an effort to save the sad, dwindling membership of the group. Time has not been kind to the Klan. Once a mighty band of assholes that had more than 4 million members, the Klan now only counts between 5,000 and 8,000 members, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. In other words, the Klan is dying.

Private events like Klan ballgames and picnics might be permanently a thing of the past. But the government protects are for everyone. That's what made the Adopt-a-Highway program such an appealing in-road to publicly protected PR.

The KKK has a right to practice free speech as much as any other group, so they are usually protected in their attempts to participate in community service programs. Instead of outright banning them, local and state governments have to take other approaches to deny the KKK's attempt. These usually go one of two ways: either appealing to public safety, or arguing government signs aren't considered speech.

These people cleaning the highway do not belong to the KKK. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

In their 2012 denial of the Klan's highway cleanup application, the state of Georgia cited "potential social unrest, driver distraction, or interference with the flow of traffic." Arkansas' Department of Transportation denied a similar application from the Klan, saying a KKK sign would "be harmful to the public image of the Adopt-A-Highway Program and to the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department" while calling the KKK an "overtly and patently racially and religiously discriminatory organization."

In short, a group has to be pretty shitty to be denied the right to contribute free labor to the government. At the time KKK filed their application in Arkansas, 2,200 groups had previously applied to take care of the state's roadways. The KKK was the only group to receive a rejection.

After these inevitable rejections, the ACLU has famously defended the KKK. As Brenda L. Jones, the executive director of the ACLU-Eastern Missouri, explained: "Defending the rights of groups that the government tries to censor because of their viewpoints is at the heart of what the First Amendment and the ACLU stand for, even when the viewpoints are not popular."

With the current case before the Georgia court, it's all going to come down to one thing. As Georgia Assistant Attorney Brittany Bolton told CNN, "This case is about whether a state-designed, state-created sign, erected on a state highway, with the name Georgia in bold letters, constitutes the state's own speech."

In the past, the courts have sided with the Klan. But with public revulsion over racist iconography like the Confederate flag and hooded Klansmen reaching new heights, the Klan's winning streak on First Amendment issues might be coming to a close.

Follow Jacob Harper on Twitter.

Right Deadly: Why I Broke Up with Booze in the Binge-Fuelled Maritimes

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Julia at 16 at an all-ages show in Saint John. Photo courtesy Sam Blue

Tyler* was intoxicating, from my perspective: tall, tattooed, brilliantly volatile, and madly obsessed with me. He moved in six months after we met. Our reckless, Bonnie-and-Clyde view of ourselves was strengthened by an MO of partying every night, then holding each other through exquisitely painful hangovers. We jokingly called ourselves Team Codependency.

Our fights were catastrophic: theatrical screaming chased with sweet, sweet forgiveness. When I tentatively mentioned quitting drinking, he tutted me.

"Don't you think that's too extreme?"

*

One morning, Tyler disappeared. Of all his depressive bouts, this was the worst yet. Sitting on a bar patio with a girlfriend, I described various means by which I'd kill him when he turned up.

I didn't have to kill him. Tyler had already committed suicide. They found his body in a park; he'd overdosed on vodka and morphine. The cop told me he'd looked like he was sleeping.

I swore to quit drinking. A final fuck you to cap off years of addictive conflict.

*

My love affair with alcohol predated Tyler. As a little girl in the small, East Coast city of Saint John, New Brunswick, I watched fascinated as my dad's too-loud laughter gave way to self-pity, delusions, seizures. It's a family tradition, sang Hank Williams Jr. on the radio.

When I was 14, I sampled each bottle under the kitchen sink until I fell down, elated. My pulse throbbed in my temples when I gasped back to life. Still, the sense of complete freedom I'd felt, just before the black curtain annihilated everything, was magic. Time travel.

*

When I was 16, I'd hitch a ride to meet my first real boyfriend, with whom I enjoyed a deep, MDMA-fuelled soul connection. Booze smoothed the comedown. After these hazy weekends, I'd feel like everything would be perfect—in about ten minutes. As long as I had another drink first.

Dad died suddenly as I wrapped up high school. I felt more morbid and misunderstood than ever. At 17, I moved to New Brunswick's sleepy university capital, Fredericton.

That perfect moment I waited for never seemed to arrive.

*

The author at 26, drunk and channeling Morrissey. Photo courtesy Kate Wright

My academic career was stellar, but everything else was marred by drinking-related idiocy: waking up beside a stranger with no memory of why I was naked, losing wallets, three phones, a 300-page notebook with a year's worth of writing and a nearly completed script for a graphic novel. Blacking out at a prof's house. Sleeping through my graduation with a hangover.

None of this struck me as that big a deal. Aside from the far North, drinking culture on the East Coast is the most hardcore in Canada. Newfoundland and Labrador holds the national record with 31.4 percent of students admitting to binge drinking in the previous month in a 2012 survey. Twenty percent of New Brunswickers exceeded the guidelines for chronic booze consumption between 2009-2012; and more than half of Cape Bretoners, 51 percent of Nova Scotia students, and 27 percent of Prince Edward Islanders reported getting smashed within the past month.

Being pretty, young, and apologetic after messy nights also got me a pass. Men were particularly happy to assist me in drinking well past my limits. But some friends looked increasingly freaked as I chugged pints; others stopped talking to me for reasons my drunk brain failed to record. Help wasn't forthcoming when I attempted to reconstruct events.

"You were really wasted. Whatever. We've all been there."

After Tyler, I didn't want to be there anymore. I stuck with the vow to get sober. I took up running. I wrote about everything.

But even amid the congratulations, some relationships cooled. I tried to camouflage my teetotalism by smoking weed and drinking near-beer. But everyone knew I wasn't really at the party anymore.

"You're still on that kick? You're 20-what?" slurred a dad-like acquaintance after I'd been sober for over a year.

"You're seriously gonna live by absolutes?"

*

One day shy of two years sober, I went to Saint John's big Canada Day bash. The Bay of Fundy tide was as high as it gets, and confetti and smoke floated over a sea of flushed faces. A male friend did precisely what I would have done, once: he cajoled me to live a little.

"Here. If you drink it, so be it." He turned, leaving his beer in my hand.

No one was looking. I cautiously downed a few sips, then the rest.

I had deliberately torched two years of sobriety, literally hours before the big day I'd boxed off on the calendar and set in an app on my phone. But no sirens went off. No divine hand reached down and smacked me. No one high-fived me and welcomed me back either.

I'd assumed if I had one drink—well, I don't know what I thought would happen. But it wasn't like that. I simply had a beer. Despite the anticlimax, I wanted more.

I left, confused.

*

The memory loss was suddenly back, with a twist. I couldn't remember why I was supposed to care about not drinking. Next time, I thought, I won't stop at one. I scrolled Facebook, brooding.

A notification popped up from Jeff. Smart guy, killer taste in books. I remembered that time after a party, before he'd moved to Montreal, when he hurled his phone, again and again, on the sidewalk.

"I can do anything to it and it won't break!"

Then the phone smashed apart.

He'd also quit two years ago. We'd sent a few congratulatory messages back and forth about it. We made plans to hang while he was in the 'hood.

"Want to drink tonight?" That's what I asked when he arrived, trying to sound like I was joking (I wasn't). He declined. I instantly felt evil for suggesting it, pouring out the tale of my lame Canada Day flirtation with the bottle.

"Wanna know what worked for me?" he asked.

*

Julia at age 15, looking deceptively wholesome. Photo courtesy Andrew Hodge

The sunset was apocalyptic and bloody as we arrived at the A.A. meeting. We were the youngest people there by two decades.

"I've spilled more dope than most of these clowns out there on the streets have sold!" one guy declared. That was funny. But the stories were also tragic: my son also became an alcoholic. I got hooked on oxy. I went to jail.

I felt awkward among these grizzled, old dudes. But as we drove back, the red sun extinguishing itself in the sea, I felt good again about being sober.

Alcoholism, like all addictions, is a solitary thing. Which is ironic considering my drinking was fuelled by a desire for connection.

But while it was SO EXCITING and I was SO IN LOVE and I could forget ALL MY PROBLEMS when I was drunk, just past that euphoria I felt irritated and cheated. Because my fantastic buzz couldn't actually be shared. Not really. It was lonely.

The deeply uncool nature of A.A. made me feel better precisely because it was so awkward. It embraced awkwardness. It was real, honest—even about the worst and most embarrassing shit.

Maybe that, not sobriety, is really the opposite of addiction.

*Name has been changed

Follow Julia Wright on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Someone Finally Solved That Problem Where Your Cat's Asshole Doesn't Have Jewelry on It

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Read: We Asked a Cat Expert if Your Cat Could Kill You

The worst things about cat ownership are probably (a) combing through a shit-filled sandbox every day, and (b) wrecked furniture from all the scratching. Way down the list of downsides is every cat's mildly annoying tendency to stick its anus right in its owner's face. That's the problem the people at Twinkle Tush have decided to solve.

By way of gilding the lily, however, they've also made their product a style piece, turning what looks to be a rhinestone in a round setting into an anal decoration. That sets Twinkle Tush apart from its more austere, Etsy-based competitor, Rear Gear, which appears to make its cat buttflaps out of card stock.

In either case, it looks like the secret recipe is a loose-fitting elastic ring holding the decoration onto the base of the tail, allowing it to, theoretically, open up like a bomb bay door when the cat poops.

But it doesn't look like everyday wear for your cat. The band that holds it onto the tail appears to be on the flimsy side. Even in the video created by the inventors themselves, at one point Twinkle Tush slips down to the middle of the tail, exposing the cat's asterisk asshole in all its obscene nudity once more.

According to the Twinkle Tush site, it's a novelty item for special occasions, such as when you throw a "respectable cocktail party at your home, only to have your feline family member come out and proudly display their uncovered rear."

The good people at TT are obviously in on the joke, but not taking their invention too seriously could be undercutting their profits. In light of the well-documented willingness of the rich to blow literally thousands of dollars on bullshit pet products like a crystal-studded Swarovski cat flap, the butthole might just be a new spot on cats for shoving money into.

Why not get Damien Hirst to design a safe way to encrust a cat's ass with blue diamonds? And why stop there? Cats grow some serious dingleberries. Why trim them off when you can stud them with rubies?

In the meantime, Twinkle Tush is available at Cat Crib for the low low price of $5.99.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Obama Says He Can't Revoke Cosby's Medal of Freedom, but Drugging Women for Sex Is Rape

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The US Navy already found a "mechanism" to revoke Cosby's status as honorary chief petty officer.

Read: There's a 'Cosby Show' Episode Where He Makes Women Horny and Docile with Magical Barbecue Sauce

President Obama said Wednesday that there is "no precedent" or "mechanism" to revoke Bill Cosby's Presidential Medal of Freedom in light of allegations of sexual assault by dozens of women.

Cosby was honored with the Medal of Freedom—America's highest civilian honor by George W. Bush in 2002, but the recent scandal has rallied some Democratic members of Congress to call for the medal to be rescinded. The group Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment has also launched an online petition asking the administration to revoke the award.

But while Obama said the White House has no way to strip Cosby of the Presidential Medal, it sure sounded like he wants to.

"I will say this," Obama told reporters, "if you give a woman—or a man, for that matter—without his or her knowledge a drug, and then have sex with that person without consent, that's rape. And I think this country, any civilized country, should have no tolerance for rape."

He would not comment directly on the continuing legal action against Cosby.

Join the One Percent with This Handy Guide

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Just needs a dash of foie gras. Photo via Flickr user Pictures of Money

Do you want to be part of the one percent, earning more than the peons below you and doing little, if anything, of consequence? Did you read that question and scoff, who wouldn't?! Boats, babes, hunting lesser humans for sport—what's not to love? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, the Ottawa Citizen has just the how-to for you.

William Watson is a professor of economics at McGill, and he's prepared a handy summary based on this study of who typically inhabits the top one percent of the economic hierarchy in Canada. The results will astound and amaze even you, an avid student of the upper-upper-upper class.

"First, be male," Watson writes. "Eight of 10 one-per-centers are, though that's down from more than nine of 10 in 1981 and presumably will continue to fall." Whew! Sounds like women have this pretty much sewn up, give or take several decades of progress with no setbacks. And trans people? Well... maybe someone is looking into those numbers.

"Beyond that: work hard. One-per-centers work 45.8 hours a week on average, with almost 40 per cent working more than 50 hours a week. For many, their job is their life. That's not necessarily a condemnation. They often have very interesting jobs that also pay well, a double gift. But they don't get a lot of down time."

Now, more than 50 hours certainly does sound like a lot of work to me, although what do I know about being successful? I'm a journalist, and I studied history in school. But if they really do have interesting jobs, working for your entire life is probably not so bad. So what kind of fascinating careers are these overworked men dedicating their lives to? Are they professional spelunkers? Indiana Joneses? Maybe they're social workers and teachers, putting in too many hours but knowing they're making the world a better place each day?

"The two industries that provide the most members of the one per cent are business services, at 19.2 per cent of the total, and health and social services, at 13.3 per cent. Finance and insurance are third (at 11 per cent). ... What will you do? Manage."

Sounds great! Who wouldn't want to spend half his life working a completely superfluous job sending memos in "business services"? If for some reason that inscrutable name doesn't inspire you to (economic) greatness, Watson notes that the financial industry is growing quickly in Canada, so you can get in on the ground floor of a rapacious industry that almost destroyed the global economy less than ten years ago. Fun!

A lesser academic—someone from the humanities, probably, who never learned the true value of a dollar—might have used this information to examine why middle-aged men working in unnecessary pencil-pushing jobs occupy so many spots in the upper echelons of the economy. That hypothetical person might have used their space in the national capital's paper of record to discuss some of the reasons women and people of colour so rarely make it to the top; though it's unmentioned in both Watson's column and the study, as of 2010 visible minorities were barely ten percent of the Canadian one percent, whereas they made up 20 percent of the general population (and on average earn far less than white Canadians).

People with jobs of actual import might be another avenue of inquiry: why does our economic system reward "management" and predatory industries like finance over, say, farming or providing affordable housing to those who need it? But not Watson, because that kind of thinking is for people who don't have their eyes on the prize. "The prize" here being, as it always is, more money.

So, yes. There are some important qualifiers for entering the one percent, which you still definitely want to do even though if we all got into the one percent it wouldn't be "one percent" of the population. Arguably, the entire concept of "the one percent" is predicated on the existence of a less fortunate 99 percent, meaning that striving for that vaunted status is kind of a shitty way to approach life. But we have no time to worry about the pernicious qualities of capitalism, such as that it requires a struggling majority of people so that a sliver of the population can dine on unfertilized fish eggs and watch a team of precarious labourers bring the yacht ashore! We must continue on our quest to reach The One Percent, with Watson serving as our helpful travel guide.

Lest he be accused of giving us all false hope by starting us on this quest, Watson gently reminds us of the fickle nature of hyper-capitalism. Even though his advice is rock solid today, and there's no need to question the nature of "the one percent," everything can change in an instant and William Watson is in no way liable for any actions you take after reading his column.

"Finally, realize the world changes. As the stock prospectuses say, 'Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.' What 2011 required may be quite different from what will be needed in 2031."

Wise words, William Watson. Words we would all do well to live by.

Follow Tannara Yelland on Twitter.

Protests Erupt in Athens Ahead of Greek Bailout Vote

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More on the Greek crisis:

Austerity Is Devastating Mental Health in Greece
What Greece's 'No' Referendum Vote Means for Europe
Greece Has a Long History of Debt and Bankruptcy

Protests erupted in the center of Athens Wednesday, as the Greek parliament was set to vote on a $96 billion deal negotiated by the Greek government and its European lenders before a midnight deadline. About 2,000 policemen stood by as demonstrators—including labor groups, anarchists, Communist Party members, and youth organizers for the ruling Syriza party—converged on Syntagma Square, calling for lawmakers to reject harsh new austerity measures included in the bailout package.

Rioting broke out around 9 PM, when protesters started throwing stones and petrol bombs toward the police forces. The police officers responded with stun grenades, tear gas, and chemicals, in some cases beating demonstrators back with clubs. A local TV news van was set on fire. Later, a group of protesters fanned out into nearby streets, attacking parked cars and vandalizing bus stations, banks, and ATMs. Meanwhile, police continued to unleash chemicals on the riots, and members of the DELTA Police force were seen hitting protesters, and even a passerby. According to law enforcement, more than 50 people were detained during the clashes.

UPDATE 8:09 PM EDT: According to The New York Times, the bailout passed early on Thursday morning. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras supported the $94 billion deal, despite its similarities to the austerity plan rejected by voters last week.


We Spoke to the Man Who Wants to Marry a Burrito

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We Spoke to the Man Who Wants to Marry a Burrito

VICE Vs Video Games: Wild Open Spaces: A Visual Guide to the World of ‘The Witcher 3’

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Hanged Man's Tree. All screencaps courtesy of the author

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

It's not enough for a video game just to be big anymore. Scale isn't as impressive as it used to be: Now it's detail and variety that define the best virtual worlds. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, a sweeping fantasy RPG by CD Projekt RED, is a great example of this. Its world is vast, but also rich with fine, handcrafted detail. From bustling, metropolitan cities like Novigrad to the rocky, wind-battered coastlines of Skellige, it's one of the prettiest, most transporting imaginary places in games.

Based on the books of Polish fantasy author Andrzej Sapkowski, the fictional history, politics, and culture of his stories, as well as Slavic folklore, permeate every corner of the game world, which gives it a rich, believable texture. Load up your in-game map and you'll find it dotted with question marks that represent unexplored locations—an enticing invitation to get on your horse, ignore the quest at hand, and explore. Here are just a few of the places you'll discover.

Tor Gvalch'ca

This ancient elfin tower sits at the highest point of Undvik, a small island located east of Skellige's main island, Ard Skellig. To reach it you have to cross a natural bridge of volcanic rock, which offers stunning views of the surrounding archipelago.

Hanged Man's Tree

Overlooking the village of Mulbrydale in northern Velen, this giant tree is a grim reminder of the cruelty of war. The corpses of deserters and criminals, faces obscured by execution hoods, hang from its gnarled branches, swaying in the breeze.

Kaer Morhen

Nestled among the misty mountains of Kaedwen, this towering stone fortress was once a school for witchers and an impenetrable stronghold, but has since become a crumbling, neglected ruin. Series hero Geralt, a powerful witcher, grew up here.

Novigrad

With 13 districts and a population of around 30,000, Novigrad is the largest city in The Witcher 3. Landmarks include Grand Picket, a large Eternal Fire temple that dominates the skyline, and the world-famous Passiflora brothel.



Related: 'Nest of Giants,' where we meet Iceland's strongest men

Also check out: 'Mexico's Land of Sorcerers'


Crow's Perch

This walled village is located in the heart of Velen. It's the seat of the Bloody Baron, the region's ruler, and is only accessible via a rickety wooden bridge. A red keep built at the top of the hill offers a grand view of the surrounding countryside.

Downwarren

The world of The Witcher 3 is littered with small villages and settlements populated by farmers and peasants. Downwarren is a modest, but picturesque, example. It can be found near Crookback Bog in the No Man's Land region of Velen.

Freya's Garden

This garden was built by the people of Hindarsfjall in honor of Freya, the goddess of fertility, love, and beauty. It used to be filled with thousands of colorful flowers, but is now sadly abandoned, overgrown, and tangled with vines.

Eldberg Lighthouse

This is the northernmost lighthouse on Ard Skellig, built by the followers of Jarl Skjordal. Its keeper, Mikkjal, has attracted the ire of a powerful spirit called a Penitent, making it a dangerous place for travelers—but not witchers.

White Orchard

A prosperous village, famous for its orchards. Its name comes from the white flowers that bloom in spring. After the prologue, this is the first, and smallest, area you visit in The Witcher 3, but there's still a lot to explore, including a forest and a haunted cemetery.

Kaer Trolde Harbour

One of the busiest harbors in Skellige and the port of Kaer Trolde, a fortress established by Crach an Craite, the Jarl of Ard Skellig. Goods from all over the world are traded here, despite the meddling of a local Water Hag.

Yngvar's Fang

This is the name given to the highest mountain peak of An Skellig, one of the Skellige archipelago's biggest islands. It's named after the mythical bear Yngvar who, according to legend, was defeated by a local hero named Tyr.

Crookback Bog

This expanse of wetland in Velen is ruled by a coven of powerful witches known as the Ladies of the Wood. It's a dense, wooded landscape filled with monsters, but in the center is a small village populated by a group of orphaned children.

Meanwhile, over on Munchies: Americans Now Consider Literally Anything a 'Snack'

Oxenfurt

Located south of Novigrad, this city is home to the famous University of Oxenfurt. Its narrow streets are lined with workshops, studios, taverns, and stalls, and it's the favorite city of Geralt's closest friend, the bard Dandelion.

Giants' Toes

This unusual rock formation on the northern shores of Ard Skellig is a quirk of nature, but the islanders believe they're the remains of giants punished by an angry god and turned into stone. Pirates often set up camp under its natural arches.

Marlin Coast

This abandoned fishing village lies on the northern shores of Undvik. Fishermen used to catch marlin here, but more recently the Nilfgaardian Empire used it as a military camp. From here you can see Tor Gvalch'ca looming in the distance.

Follow Andy Kelly on Twitter, and visit his website dedicated to showcasing the fantastical beauty in video games, Other Places.


VICE Vs Video Games: ‘E.T.’ Boiled My Blood: Testing the Stressfulness of the World’s Worst Video Game

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A detail from the cover art to 'E.T. the Extra Terrestrial'

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"May god have mercy on the souls that bought this game for more than nine cents," reads a GameFaqs user review of the infamous E.T. the Extra Terrestrial for the Atari 2600. The review dates from 2000, and I can assure you that the intervening years have been just as cruel. This article ranks it as the worst video game of all time. GamesRadar+ puts it at two, with only the irredeemably broken Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing bumping it from the "top" slot.

I missed E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (or simply E.T. for short) the first time around. My initial foray into the world of video games was courtesy of the 2600's younger sibling, the 520ST, which my dad bought for our household in the late 1980s. We had stockpiles of games: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Sensible Soccer, Ikari Warriors, Lemmings, Pushover – even recounting a mere sliver of the extensive list in text form stirs wonderful impressions of nostalgia.

The early 1990s saw me graduate to the NES and the Master System, then the Mega Drive and the SNES. I've been playing games ever since, and now write about them professionally. My point? I've played a shit-ton of games over the years, but to my shame had never played one of the most discussed games in existence.

E.T. for the Atari 2600 is widely recognised as the biggest commercial failure of any video game in the medium's history. With anticipation at fever pitch pre-release (movie to video game conversions were few and far between in those days), Atari reportedly manufactured five million game cartridges. They only sold 1.5 million copies, though, and E.T. also bombed critically. Atari thereafter suffered one of its worst financial years to date – a return galvanised by a coinciding, and equally disappointing, 2600 Pac-Man port.

In late 1983, a sizeable portion of the unsellable, and therefore ultimately useless, E.T. cartridges were said to have been buried in a Mexican landfill site – a fact confirmed last year following a site excavation ordered by Microsoft as part of its Atari: Game Over documentary, whereby thousands of cartridges were uncovered some three decades on.

The GameFaqs review continues: "There is absolutely no point in playing this game unless you need a good laugh."

I like a laugh, I do, but having heard that E.T. for the 2600 is one the most broken and frustrating games ever made, I had my doubts that it was capable of eliciting fun on any level. Quite the contrary, in fact, the Let's Plays and reviews I'd researched were pretty clear this game was shambles: "Is it an awful game? Definitely," decried one YouTuber. "The game is fucking impossible to follow without the manual," said another. "E.T. is stressful as hell."

Fuck, Cinemassacre's Angry Video Game Nerd series released a feature-length movie based on how badly the ill-fated 2600 title drove the titular character up the wall.

But it couldn't be that bad, could it? How could a video game evoke such high levels of stress?

I decided to give E.T. a go for myself. To best gauge how I handled the overall experience, I hooked myself up to a blood pressure and heart monitor, recorded the readings before and after playing, and presented them to my GP thereafter. In light of the comments above, I decided to embark on two playthroughs: one completely blind, and another while following a YouTube walkthrough. I allowed a 60-minute interval between each test.

Article continues, with spoilers, after this video...


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PLAYTHROUGH 1 (BLIND)

Blood pressure at start: 99/72
Heart rate at start: 97 beats per minute (BPM)

Okay, so here comes E.T. being lowered from above in a pink, elevator-like structure – what I assume is so supposed to represent his spaceship. There's a lot of green in the landing area and what looks like trees. Various arrows flash on and off on the pink UI bar above the main screen as I move E.T. and... Oh. I fall down a ditch that I don't think I had any way of identifying. Hmm, bit irritating.

After wandering aimlessly from one end of the chasm to the next, I finally discover hitting the spacebar extends my alien hero's neck which, of course, makes me rise to the surface. I attempt to move upwards and fall straight into the same hole. What the fuck? This happens another three times before I discover I'm required to move left after surfacing—any other direction puts me straight back into the hole for some reason. Seconds later I've fallen into another pit and I'm sadly able to confirm there's no way of telegraphing these plunges. Fuck this.

The blue UI bar at the foot of the main screen has a timer which counts down from 9999, falling with my every move—which, coincidentally, is mostly falling. I wonder to myself what'll happen at zero. When I'm not stumbling down invisible holes every other fucking minute, two strange NPCs pop in and out of the screen: one wearing a trench coat, who looks like a flasher; the other a blue baseball cap and a white nighty. Whenever the latter catches up with me I'm carried off to what looks like a temple. The flasher simply bounces off me before heading in the opposite direction. Weird on both counts.

I spend the next 20 minutes wandering around aimlessly, spying the odd collectable here and there with little idea of its purpose, and falling into pits more often than walking above ground until the counter winds down. I then appear to die, falling over before a kid floats from beyond the main screen—presumably Elliott—and (unfortunately) revives me. A life down, I can start again until I've expended all four. Bloody hell, this is tiring.

I decide to stop after just two lives because I really have no idea what I'm doing. As the YouTuber noted above says, it does seem "fucking impossible without the manual." I've really not enjoyed my time with E.T. so far at all, but perhaps this will change with some direction.

Blood pressure at end: 103/74
Heart rate at end: 99 BPM

Look at this thing. Once upon a time, this was Christmas. Ruined.

PLAYTHROUGH 2 (WITH WALKTHROUGH)

Blood pressure at start: 98/71
Heart rate at start: 96 BPM

With assistance, I finally learn the premise of the game: E.T. has been abandoned by his spacecraft on planet Earth and is searching for three missing parts of a phone to call home. The mysterious icons at the top of the screen are prompts E.T. will act out if I do the neck extension thing—so if the prompt is an arrow, E.T. will teleport to that screen, if it's a phone he'll attempt to call home etc. I also discover that the flasher is in fact an FBI agent, and the guy in the nighty is actually a scientist in a white coat; the temple he keeps returning me to is his laboratory.

Right, so, grab these phone parts then and get out. Easier said than done it seems, as the phone pieces are located exclusively in the fucking googol of invisible ditches. Stumbling down them by accident when I was blissfully unaware was bad enough, but now I need to actively make my way into each hole to locate the only thing that's going to help me beat the game? Come on!

To make thing slightly easier, I can collect nine Reese's Pieces—signified by black dots on-screen—before calling Elliott from a marked location and he'll bring me one phone piece at a time to save me the hassle of searching. Nice one. But it turns out that when the FBI guy bounces off me, he's actually stealing my Reese's Pieces! Oh, and he'll take any phone parts you might already have to boot. To think, an extraterrestrial from a foreign planet arrives on Earth and the FBI's sole concern is swiping mobile phones and sugary goods from the interstellar immigrant.

I spend the next half an hour or so finally getting the three parts together. I call the spaceship and then have a limited time to locate the launch pad on the forest screen where I first landed. But I can't find it! I panic. I fumble around. I run out of time. It's game over.

I'm speechless.

It turns out, should you manage to successfully find the launch pad, that the game offers another two identical levels before calling it quits and you've beat it. This is something I'll never discover for myself. I now don't give a shit if E.T. gets home or not.

Blood pressure at end: 109/76
Heart rate at end: 100 BPM

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"Blood pressure fluctuations throughout the day are completely normal," explains Dr. Stewart McMenemin, my general practitioner. During a routine check-up I mention my post-E.T. blood pressure results, but I decide to at first withhold mentioning video games at all.

He continues: "What you have to understand is that there are good fluctuations and bad ones. Your results are within the recommended systolic and diastolic range for a healthy adult male your age, so ultimately there's nothing to worry about. That's not to say you shouldn't keep an eye on future readings—it's important to stay on top of things if you have any reservations or feel ill following or whilst engaging in certain activities."

Dr. McMenemin goes on to explain that pursuits such as high-endurance sport can vastly alter blood pressure. Sexual intercourse is another activity capable of spiking readings, and even bouts of laughter can see blood pressure jump as many as ten to 15 points in a healthy person with normal heart function.

"Where and when did you record these readings?" he asks.

"Actually, I was playing a video game," I reply.

"Ah, I see. Well, video games can be similar to sports but on a lesser scale, given that you're actively engaging something. How it makes you react can impact your blood pressure, certainly. The jump here, your last reading, though, is perhaps a little higher than you might expect given the activity. Try to take breaks if you find yourself getting worked up whilst sitting in front of the computer. But again, [the reading] is well within the recommended range."

I explain to my doctor that I was actually playing a video game conversion of the revered whimsical 80s movie E.T., and he laughs. We both laugh, albeit me through gritted teeth. The thought of those perilous pits, I'm sure, is ramping up my blood pressure as we speak.

"I can't believe a game about E.T. would have you worried," he says, after I explain how stressful the experience was for me. Is he mocking me? "There must be worse video games out there than that, surely?"

He's wrong. Granted, I had my doubts at first. But he's wrong. Don't believe me? See for yourself. Good luck getting home.

@deaco2000

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Punk Documentary 'The Decline of Western Civilization' Gets the Rerelease It Deserves

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Americans have long been afraid, disgusted, and confused by teenage punks and the music they listen to. The film and television industry has exploited this dynamic for decades, often to absurd results. Nowhere was this more evident than in the 1980s. Whether it's the infamous "Next Stop: Nowhere" episode of medical-investigation drama Quincy, M.E. that's based off sensationalistic punk-rock tropes (drug-taking nihilists who just need a little push to murder people) or the second Police Academy movie, featuring a gang of violent punks and metalheads led by Zed McGlunk played by Bobcat Goldthwait, people with mohawks and weird piercings who liked loud and fast music were seen as either aggressive criminals or misguided kids, desperate for attention.

"There was a shift in general human behavior, what the teenagers were doing," director Penelope Spheeris told me recently over the phone of her iconic documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, which depicted a much more nuanced view of those loud music-loving kids. Thirty-five years after its initial release, Spheeris's quintessential film is finally getting the box set rerelease it deserves along with the other two fantastic documentaries in the series (all titled TDOWC). Featuring interviews and performances with some of 1980s LA's most iconic punk bands, including Fear, Black Flag (on their second singer, Ron Reyes), X, and most notably the Germs. Spheeris managed to capture the bands and the scene in all their raw and gritty glory without being exploitative or sensationalist. It serves today as one of the best visual documents of the American punk scene that scared the hell out of most of America.

Director Penelope Spheeris and Eyeball

The first film was a springboard for her to explore American punk and metal culture like no other director has done before or since. The second Decline famously looks at the burgeoning metal scene in the middle of the 80s, and the third finds the director less interested in bands so much as in the dead-end kids who gravitated towards punk rock in the late-1990s. The idea came to her while she was driving down Melrose and saw a group of teens walking in formation, much like the group of punks in her first studio film, 1984's Suburbia. "I wanted to know them," she told me. "I wanted to understand where they were coming from."

Suburbia—which in my estimation is one of the best teen-rebellion films alongside 1979's The Warriors and Over the Edge—and the first Decline are the strongest of her films. This is probably because they're essentially siblings, created out of necessity, since Spheeris said she couldn't get distributors for Decline, but also because she'd found something she connected with. "I wrote Suburbia because it's a narrative piece about the same subject matter I'm so enthralled with."

But when you consider her filmography from those two films and onward, a pattern emerges. From Suburbia she moved on to the Charlie Sheen-starring teen murder spree movie The Boys Next Door, then to 1987's Dudes, possibly the greatest if only punk-rock Western revenge flick starring Jon Cryer a year removed from his most famous role as Duckie in Pretty in Pink. No commercial hits among them, but in that small timespan, Spheeris made a slew of films where society's rejects were, instead, the main characters. These characters weren't put under a microscope. Instead they are shown in their natural habitats, allowed to do and say what they want, like swim around on a float in the pool spitting vodka at your mother like Chris Holmes of W.A.S.P. does in Decline Part II: The Metal Years. Her films were all mostly underground hits, and then in 1992, she rounded it all out by directing the film adaptation of Wayne's World. Her first big commercial hit was both a blessing and a curse.

"I could not make another movie that had any substance to it," the director said of her post-Wayne's career. The film based off the Saturday Night Live skit went on to be her biggest earner by a long shot, raking in $121.6 million at the box office.

And yet there is something that can be said about Wayne's World fitting perfectly into her oeuvre, because, really, what are Wayne and Garth but a couple of dumb metalheads just hanging out in their suburban Chicago basement? They're basically the kinds of people that worship at the altar of the bands Spheeris features in the second Decline film.

Still of Faster Pussycat from 'The Decline of Western Civilization Part II'

If you put all of those films together, it becomes quite clear that Spheeris has few contemporaries when it comes to telling stories of fucked-up and misunderstood youth. When I mention that her films serve as sort of the flip side to the sunnier and goofier versions of 80s teenage life served up by fellow directors John Hughes and Amy Heckerling, Spheeris tells me that even though she's fond of both directors, films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Sixteen Candles were probably closer to the teenage experiences Hughes and Heckerling had.

"I wish I would have had a more balanced living situation, but I didn't," she explained. "I had a very tumultuous one." Spheeris admitted her upbringing was "chaotic and violent," much like the lives of many of her characters, both the real ones in the Decline films as well as the fictitious ones in her other works. It's probably why Spheeris is to movies about young people with bleak futures what Hughes is to pictures about suburban teenage malaise. Yet Spheehris is hardly considered one of the defining directors of her time.

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Being a teen is tough for everyone. There are lots of complex emotions you're grappling with. Adulthood is looming and it's almost impossible to prepare. Toss in a healthy batch of sex and drugs into the mix, and those of us that make it through those years should feel lucky. Hughes understood this, and the reason his films have become the gold standard for teen cinema is because he gave his young characters considerable nuance. There was buildup to Molly Ringwald's Sam running out of the gym and crying over Jake Ryan at the high school dance in Sixteen Candles. We get to understand why John Bender is the way he is in The Breakfast Club. He isn't simply a rebel without a cause—his home life is terrible, full of abuse and neglect, and he's a product of it. He's one of the most unforgettable characters from the writer and director who redefined the teen film because we know his backstory and feel sympathy for him. But really he's a minority among the Ferris Buellers and rich preppies who are usually depicted onscreen.

Which is why Spheehris's films are so valuable: They're filled with the John Benders of the world, both real and fictional. There's Darby Crash of the Germs. Watching the first Decline, you can't help but feel he's doomed. A few months before the film's premiere, he intentionally overdosed on heroin at the age of 22. And then there are the kids in the T. R. (The Rejected) house in Suburbia, a group of punks who all have their own horror stories. They aren't in a picturesque cul-de-sac, but living in an abandoned home together in a forgotten part of Los Angeles where you're more likely to see one of the stray dogs that we see mauling a toddler at the start of the film than you do other humans.

Still of Lizzy Borden from 'The Decline of Western Civilization: Part II'

With Dudes, one of the great underrated films of decade that deserves its own rerelease, the film goes from punk buddy road comedy to something resembling Easy Rider, after rednecks (led by Decline 1 alumni Lee Ving of Fear) kill one of the punks (played by Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who is also in Suburbia). What follows is one of the strangest 80s revenge films, where Dudes is just Jon Cryer and Daniel Roebuck out to avenge their friend. Spheehris excelled in making films about outsiders, the likes of which other filmmakers refused to take seriously.

Spheehris is the quintessential punk and metal movie director of the 1980s, but like Hughes, the 1990s phase of her career concentrated on family-friendly film adaptations of The Beverley Hillbillies and The Little Rascals, as well as the second buddy comedy starring Chris Farley and David Spade, Black Sheep.

"I sold out in a lot of other ways... I sold my soul to the devil with the other movies," Spheeris says of her big Hollywood films. Of course, you have to do what you have to do, and films featuring Keith Morris of Circle Jerks screaming into a microphone aren't exactly cash crops. But the Decline movies, she says, those were made out of love, especially the third, which she put out as the follow-up to Black Sheep, which pulled in $32 million at the box office. The Decline of Western Civilization Part III, in comparison, never made it to wide release despite positive reviews from critics who saw it at various film festivals. But now, with the complete Decline series available for the first time, and the director saying she's open to giving Suburbia and Dudes the same treatment, the great chronicler of messed-up youth doing whatever it takes to get by in a fucked-up world will reach a whole new audience.

The box set The Decline of Western Civilization Collection is out now from Shout Factory.

Follow Jason on Twitter.

After the Killing Fields: America's Cambodian Diaspora

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Sunny Vaahn, 25, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon, holds the refugee identification card of his family members. The photograph has taken upon their initial entry into a refugee camp after their arduous trek across the Thai border following the end of Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia. They family made the trek because they were told that there was food on the other side of the border.

This article appears in the Photo Issue 2015

Photos by Pete Pin / Magnum Photos

PETE PIN

In the 1980s, nearly 150,000 Cambodian refugees resettled in America, primarily in communities struggling with poverty and inner-city violence. Cambodian Diaspora is and ongoing project that examines the refugee-resettlement experience across generations in Cambodian-American communities. Three decades after the Killing Fields, the shadows of genocide can still be felt in the diaspora in America, manifesting across generations through a fragmentation of family narratives and a profound silence about its aftermath. Many Cambodians who lived through the genocide remain silent because they do not know how to speak about what they lived through, and also because they often do not speak the same language as their Cambodian-American children. The silence is exacerbated by intergenerational trauma—elders having survived the Killing Fields and their American children having survived the dangers of the inner city.

The Bronx, August 2011. Om Savaeth, 58, in the backyard of the Vaahn family home


From left to right, Joshua Vatthnavong 11, Joey Vatthnavong, 16, and Sanet Kek, 28, fish without poles at Ferry Point in the Bronx. "This is the way my father fished when he arrived to America," said Joey. Bronx New York, July 2011.

Three generations of the Duong family look at old family photos and documents from the refugee camps in the living room of their Bronx apartment, September 2011.

Football trophies accumulated by Sovann Ith, 23. The Bronx is a multi-racial community; Cambodian youth in the Fordham area played league football for 'racial respect' in the neighborhood.

Cambodian Buddhist temple in the Bronx, New York, which was collectively founded and financed in 1982 by community members shortly after their arrival in America. There is little engagement by the youth in temple activities, and many elders fears the eventual disappearance of the temples after the passing of the first generation.

Thon Khoun, 47, cooks in the kitchen of her Bronx apartment. Mrs. Khoun immigrated as a refugee in 1985 and is a single mother of four. Like many Cambodian refugees, she speaks no English and her children are incapable of speaking Khmer. Bronx, New York, October 2011.

Sovann Ith, 23, sits alongside his grandmother Somaly Ith, 83, in the living room of their Bronx apartment. The complex was once predominantly Cambodian but is now home to just five families. September, 2011.


Civics and English classroom at St Ritas Refugee Center in the Bronx, where many Cambodian refugees first received english lessons upon their arrival in the states. While most Cambodians received english instruction, many were still unable to learn the language given the high rates of illiteracy in their native tongue and the unique circumstances of their displacement. October 2011Thanna Son, 15, and Moleca Mich, 19, in traditional Cambodian dress. Moleca Mich, who graduated Salutatorian in high school, is currently a junio in college. Like many Cambodians of her generation, she is incapable of speaking Khmer.

Chhan Hui, 59, with her grandchildren, Keinna Lawrence 2, and Shania Brown 6, in the living room of their Bronx apartment. Ms. Hui immigrated to the states in 1982 and, along with a sister, is the only survivor of her immediate family. Like many Cambodian American children, her grandchildren are interracial.

Siki Im's New York State of Mind

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Menswear designer Siki Im was fascinated by the culture of New York City long before he set foot in the five boroughs. The fashion designer grew up in Germany listening to legendary New York artists like the Wu-Tang Clan, John Coltrane, and Quicksand. Unfortunately, when he finally moved to the city that never sleeps, it was in the midst of its post-9/11 malaise. But he still found inspiration in its fertile streetwear culture, then led by brands like Alife and the slim, rocker-inspired looks of Cloak. His interest in fashion was also spurned by the diverse people he met in the city's outer boroughs, who wore styles that mixed their immigrant roots with American culture—taxi drivers who paired Middle Eastern tunics with bomber jackets.

Siki may have come to America to work as an architect, but it wasn't long before the avid reader of magazines like the Face and i-D (which is now owned by VICE) put down the drafting tools and started designing clothes. First, he worked for the iconic New York brand Helmut Lang (after Lang's departure), then for fashion vampire Karl Lagerfeld. When he finally struck out on his own with his debut collection for spring/summer 2010, he immediately captured the awe of the menswear world. Inspired by the Lord of the Flies, the first Siki Im collection signified a break with longstanding traditions in American menswear. Formal, meticulously-tailored blazers were styled without shirts. Long white tunic shirts were worn like dresses. And different interpretations of skirts and hyper-extended vests were presented as style staples. The collection established the fashion vocabulary of the designer's eponymous brand that has since gone on to launch a successful diffusion line, Den Im, and be a finalist for the CFDA Woolmark Prize and a winner of the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Fashion.

On Friday, the designer will be showing his latest crop of designs as part of the first ever New York Fashion Week: Men's. It's hard to say what he's got up his sleeve this time around considering his previous collections are based on everything from the Arab Spring to the crash of Wall Street. To get you stoked for the newest looks coming from Siki, I sat down the him in a quaint coffee shop in downtown Manhattan to get his take on the future of New York City menswear and his insight into the way disparate aspects of our culture impact the shit we wear. Here's what he had to say.


Siki Im's Spring/Summer 2015 Collection

VICE: What direction do you think New York menswear is going in right now?
Siki Im: I grew up being into graffiti skateboarding, so I come from street. I started doing street style in my third season in a designer context, with sweatpants and drop-crotch joggers and baggy T-shirts. Now we see that street luxury thing is huge. You see kids wearing less jeans and more of that stuff, which is cool. But all trends come and go. So that street thing is going to die soon. Before it was Americana and now it's this. What comes afterwards is hopefully what I'm going to show in my next collection.

Can you give us a hint as to where you think it's moving?
Trends always start the same way. It's a pyramid. They start from the top and get bigger, wider. Now it's gotten too big and mainstream. The top will wear something else that's going to be less street, but definitely more casual.


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So we're not going to reverse and start wearing tailored suits and stuff?
No, not in my opinion. You're going to wear suits, but a different type of suit. It will be more casual. It's not going to be fully structured. Of course, you will have that for special occasions, but not in general. Look, it's the same thing with skinny pants and then big pants. Big pants and then skinny pants. We're so funny, us humans. We ebb and flow. We're never happy.

Do you think that this is the first time that men's fashion is having that kind of a cycle?
I don't think it has ever been quite like this. You could see a little bit of it before, but men have not always been so fashionable. It has changed so much in the last few years because people can see more trends. Because of that, the trends come and go even faster. You see it more clearly than before. There are more menswear magazines, more menswear products, more men's beauty products, and on the streets of America, more stylish men, which is super cool.

So it's just a general evolution?
Look at Apple products. They taught us to be more aware and design-conscious. Mainstream music is better. TV shows are now amazing. The standard is just better. In a way, we're more cultivated and cultured because we have all the information and we can get it so easily without doing much. Now we can compare our deli coffee and the artisanal coffee and complain about it and write shitty reviews. Now everyone has their own opinion.

Do you think all this makes it easier for creative people, or is it harder?
Everyone is a creative person, a photographer, a DJ, a designer, a stylist... On one hand, it's beautiful. The world is flat. On the other hand, it's more competitive and you just have to be better. That's good because you don't want to be lazy and be stuck. It makes me more ambitious to be better and I'm still learning.


Siki Im's Fall/Winter 2014 Collection

You always have big ideas behind your work. Can you tell me what you're thinking about right now?
Social media, and how it influences us physically and socially. That's what interests me. Obviously this is maybe less important than what's going on in Afghanistan or in the Ukraine or whatever, but that's what is influencing me on a personal level.

What are your thoughts on social media?
Let's say a knife could be very violent, but it could also be very important to cut your bread. I think that's the same thing with social media. It can be helpful, but it can also control you and take over your life. I'm a little bit conservative, so it took me a while. Our Instagram just started a year ago, and the reason why I was persuaded from my team is because it's a nice thing to emotionally connect with our fans and customers and people who follow us. We put a lot of energy in our collections like research and studies and it gets lost in the shows. So I have an opportunity with Instagram to show what inspires me.


Siki Im's Fall/Winter 2015 Collection

Talking about Instagram, I was wondering what you think about the movement in fashion towards designers being more approachable and less elite?
I think we're all human, we're all vulnerable and have insecurities. As designers, we're very insecure. That's why we design and dream and are super nerds. All of a sudden we get attention. That attention can't be more important than your creativity and your drive at what you're supposed to do in life, you vocation. That's when I think it's dangerous.

So we're having this men's fashion week. What are your thoughts on that?
It's been in talks for some time. I think it's amazing what CFDA did to not only own the calendar, but to separate women's and men's, and put men's first in the same calendar as women's. We've always [been] secondary. Women's is a bigger business, and it's more interesting and more fun. And men's was always like the little stepchild. In other cities, it's not like that.

Siki Im's band, Jvlivs/Erving

Do you think it will impact how people show or what they will show?
I hope so. I'm sure my peers will use it to be more creative and more fun. I really hope it's going to be a very strong globally competitive fashion week. So we are not a stepchild to Paris menswear or something. Paris should look up to us.

You've been so innovative in changing the silhouette and the shapes of menswear. Do you feel pressure to keep pushing that forward?
That's funny. All of the shit I do, it's not new. It's just me observing New York City—and I don't mean the Lower East Side. I mean Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island. That's the beauty of New York—not what the downtown kids wear. I just take it and use my experience growing up in Germany as an immigrant. That's where all the silhouettes come from. I realize now more designers have a similar silhouettes, which is great. So for me it's time to do something new, which means maybe doing the opposite. You know, the ebb and flow. I want to push not just the envelope, I also want to push myself. I want to see what I can learn. If I only do what makes me comfortable, then I should just live in Wisconsin or something. I'm grateful that I have the freedom to challenge myself, and to get excited for new things. That's my job. And hopefully, I can inspire other people with that.

Follow Wilbert on Twitter.

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Helly Luv Is Kicking ISIS's Ass with Pop Music

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Fuck you, ISIS. All stills via Helly Luv's YouTube channel

I've been trying to Skype with Kurdish pop star Helly Luv for the past 30 minutes. Both of our internet connections are shit, but one of us is hiding out in her pajamas in a New York City apartment, and the other is hiding out from ISIS somewhere in Kurdistan. While the world's political leaders bash their heads together trying to figure out a strategy of combatting ISIS, Helly Luv is hitting them straight where it hurts with badass lyrics, striking imagery, and some serious fighting talk.

The 26-year-old Kurdish pop sensation is as political as she is entertaining. Her hair is currently bright Rihanna-red, her face striking and contoured. If she's afraid of the threats leveled against her, she doesn't show it.

Helly Luv is on ISIS's radar for her newest music video for the song "Revolution," which features her cat-walking down a war zone in shiny gold pumps, rallying organized troops of young men, and staring defiantly into the barrel of several guns. The mix between pop and politics is a crucial part of who Helly Luv is as an artist and an individual. Days after she was born, Helly Luv and her mother were forced to flee Iran for Turkey, where they lived homeless for several years before finding their way to Finland as refugees. At the age of 18, she came to LA on her own, where she was eventually discovered. Now, she's returned to the Middle East to create music and videos that combat terrorism through messages of unity, pride, and peace. Her "Revolution" video was shot about three kilometers away from the front line separating ISIS militants and the Kurdish Peshmerga troops. VICE spoke to Helly about growing up a Kurdish refugee, finding fame, and fighting Islamic groups with her music.

VICE: You have a huge fan base in the Middle East and around Europe right now. But are you also pissing off a lot of hardcore Muslims?
Helly Luv: I get this every day from critics from the religion side saying that I'm doing something wrong and "You shouldn't be doing this because you're a woman, you should behave." But if you come here and you look and you see the young generation, that's where I get my courage from. Those are the same teens who are looking up to artists like Beyonce or Rihanna. They understand and appreciate the work I'm doing. Growing up, I didn't have a Kurdish pop artist to look up to, I only had American artists. I was looking up to Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, but I didn't have anybody on my Kurdish side. Seeing all of these messages coming from Kurdish, or any Middle Eastern, girls and boys makes me really happy. It makes me feel like I'm doing something important.

Tell me about your upbringing.
I was born in Iran in '88, during the Persian Gulf War. I was literally born in the middle of war; my mother didn't give birth to me in a hospital. We were in Urmia and the day after I was born they wrapped me in blankets and they put my mom on a horse and we traveled for months in the mountains, to go all the way to the Turkish border. We paid a guy to smuggle us across the border; it was very dangerous and a horrible time.

When we got to Turkey, they didn't accept us in the refugee camp right away because there were hundreds of thousands of Kurds running away from Saddam Hussein's soldiers, so when we first got to Turkey we were homeless on the streets. After that, we finally got to the refugee camp and we stayed there for about nine months. Luckily after nine months we got accepted to Finland, where we were the first Kurdish immigrants to enter Finland. I basically spent my whole childhood in Finland.

How was growing up in Finland?
Growing up in Finland was really rough for me because we were the first Kurdish immigrants. My childhood was very racist. In school, I was the only girl who had black hair and dark eyes and everybody had blue eyes and blonde hair. I got bullied a lot, so I found my escape through music. I got accepted into a famous music school and I took vocal lessons, piano lessons, dancing, acting, art lessons. Music became that escape and freedom for me. When I was 16 and 17, I worked as a waitress and dance teacher so I could finally go to LA. When I was 18, I packed my bags, I booked my ticket, and I went with my big suitcase and this huge dream to Los Angeles, all by myself.

How did you adjust to living in LA?
The struggles were not what I thought! I thought, I'll just go to Los Angeles and everything will be fine, but reality hit me fast and I realized that it's not an easy city, especially if you don't know anyone. I had a little apartment that I found on Craigslist and it was nothing like the pictures! I was pissed off because I was supposed to have a Jacuzzi and everything, but it was nothing like in the pictures and the place smelled like somebody died there. There were roaches all over and I didn't have electricity for two or three weeks. The landlord would blackmail me for more money. The biggest problem was that he kept bringing hookers to my apartment, which was really disturbing.

I was really young and I didn't have anybody in Los Angeles and I couldn't call my parents because they would have made me come back right away. With all of this, I got myself into trouble. I lost a lot of money because of the landlord and I ended up buying those $1 salty crackers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner just to fill myself. I think anyone who moves to LA to follow their dream has a similar story!

What happened? How did everything change?
I was walking into record labels randomly just trying to find somebody, and I realized that in LA you're going to get eaten by wolves if you don't know what you're doing or where you're going. I saw the evil part of the industry soon and I met a lot of producers who offered me big deals but it was like, "If you do this... then we will do this." You know? And I just didn't want that. I was sure that my dream was over and that I would have to go back to Finland.

I understand that's it's fun to go out to the club, but while you're in the club with your friends, there are millions of people dying and suffering.

It was two weeks before my flight and I received a message from Los da Mystro and The Dream. I got discovered by them on MySpace—back then Myspace was really poppin'—and I had some videos singing and dancing and they called me and were like, "Who are you and where did you come from?" I told them my whole story and they were shocked! They asked me to sing on the phone so I did my audition on the phone, I sang Whitney Houston's "I Have Nothing," because that was a perfect song for that moment. The first thing they said was, "Helly, pack your bags. We're flying you to New York City tomorrow." So at 18 years old, I signed a deal with them and you know, you don't become an artist in one night. It took me many years to really develop as an artist and get my English right because I still had the Finnish accent.

"Risk It All" was your first single. What inspired it?
In 2013 I met Gawain. I was looking for something that had that Middle Eastern sound. "Risk It All" was inspired by what was going on with Kurdistan because in 2013, Kurdistan was very close to independence. This was before ISIS. I wanted to create a song that would represent and celebrate the freedom of the Kurds because, as you know, we Kurds have a long, horrible, bloody history. "Risk It All" is a celebration of that, risking everything for a dream, and the dream for Kurds is obviously independence. "Risk It All" is also personal, it's also risking everything for my dreams.

It's sad that they can't accept me like they accept the modern Middle East. They accept all of the new buildings and malls but they're not accepting of modern people.

Around the same time, in 2013, I was also asked to do a movie with Bahman Ghobadi. He's a Cannes winning film director, and he asked me to do a female lead role in his movie, Mardan. The world premiere was at the Toronto Film Festival. After that, I did Two Songs of Kurdistan that was more of a documentary movie about my life and about how everything happened after "Risk It All" because, obviously the song was something that nobody over here had seen before. It was very different. I was dancing with a lion in a small skirt, and right after that I got attacked by radical Islamic groups sending me death threats and I had to hide for about two months. It was a very difficult time in my life. I couldn't go anywhere, I was just stuck inside. But a lot of people stood up for me and I became very known in one night because of "'Risk It All." It was definitely a success for me.

Is there this whole added stress because you have to constantly hide all the time?
Of course it feels unfair, but most people like and understand me. Only some people want to stone me to death. It's sad. It's sad that they can't accept me and they can't accept it like they accept the modern Middle East. They accept all of the new buildings and malls but they're not accepting modern people, and the modern things that come with this. I feel that it's unfair. It's really sad. Because I have all of these young people looking up to me, I'm really doing this for them. People are afraid to do what I'm doing, and I understand that because it's a huge risk, and you really sacrifice everything for this. And I have sacrificed. My normal life is gone; I cannot go outside without having security around me. It's really weird.

The world wasn't hearing Kurdistan's voice and the struggle and the pain we were going through with ISIS. Every day men and women got up and took any kind of weapon they had and went to fight against the enemy.

What happened after "Risk It All"?
After that, I did a lot of charity work. I closed down the world's second worst zoo, in Kurdistan. I was supposed to do another song, but ISIS attacked the borders of Kurdistan for the first time last June. Back then I was doing humanitarian work for the refugees, but I felt like it wasn't enough, I felt like the world wasn't hearing about Kurdistan's voice and the struggle and the pain we were going through with ISIS. Every day men and women just got up and took any kind of weapon they had and went on the battlefield to fight against the enemy. The enemy had these strong and powerful weapons and we didn't have anything. They went there because they were so brave and they wanted to protect their country and that inspired me so much. I wanted to do a song about this and really get the world to hear about what was going on here.

"Revolution" is not only the story of Kurds, it's the story of us all because ISIS is not just the enemy of Kurds, they're the enemy of the whole world. It's our own responsibility to come together, unite, and fight against them. If we don't, then tomorrow they will expand, they will get more powerful. I went to Los Angeles and I created "Revolution" with the same producer and the same staff who did "Risk It All," and it was the most difficult song to record; I was basically crying the whole time. Violence and terrorism is everywhere. Yesterday, it was in Germany, before that it was Tunis, and before that it was Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

I feel privileged to be attacked by ISIS because it means the message is as strong as their weapons and their violence.

What does ISIS have to say about your music?
They're very powerful, especially their social media, so my motivation was to make a song that was even more powerful. Obviously it's working, because they're pissed off. A lot of people ask me how it feels to have death threats, but I try to not focus on it and focus on the good parts of my journey. In a way, I feel privileged to be attacked by ISIS because it means the message is as strong as their weapons and their violence.

What is something you want people to know about you?
My message is enough for me. If there's no me tomorrow, then I will be so honored that people got my message out. I think these things are very important to talk about. I could do a song about poppin' in the club and all that stuff but I think it's so useless. I understand that's it's fun to go out to the club but again, while you're in the club with your friends, there are millions of people dying and suffering. You can't be ignorant and just close your eyes from that, as long as there are people dying and suffering from terror and violence, you're also responsible for it.

Where do you see yourself in the next year?
If I'm alive [laughs], my dream is to tour a lot and spread my message. I want to do more humanitarian work; that's my passion, I want to do so much more. Obviously, because I'm a pop artist, I also want to finish my album. There's another big project that I'm working on, but it's still a secret. Let's say it's about the same subjects I've worked on. Mostly, I'm making sure that my butt is alive!

Follow Helly Luv and Rula on Twitter.


The Blobby Boys & Friends: Fashion Cat Gets Right with God

Undocumented Immigrants Are Hiding in Churches to Avoid Deportation

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Sulma Franco's black spike heels clanked down the corridor of the Texas church building, as she lead me to her room, the one she's been living in for weeks, ever since US immigrations officials told her she was definitely, without question or further recourse, going to be deported. Her red-tinted mane fell down the shoulders of a white suit jacket, and she glanced back, hesitating through her thick eye makeup—"You can only stay a moment. My girlfriend is visiting and she's very shy," she said Spanish. "Please don't ask her any questions."

Franco, a 32-year-old undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, is used to greeting visitors in the lobby of the Austin First Universalist Unitarian Church, the place that has been her home and sanctuary since June. But she brings few people back to her new bedroom, a converted classroom tucked back on the property. I assured her I'd only stay a minute, and she cautiously lead me inside.

Because of the deportation order, Franco cannot leave the church grounds. She's been in the US since 2009, when she petitioned for political asylum on the grounds that she had faced persecution for her sexual orientation in her home country. She lost the case in 2012, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials ordered her to be removed from the US that July. She contested the decision, and remained in the country as the process dragged on for nearly two years. Then, in February, she lost her final appeal, and the government ordered her to turn herself in last month for deportation.

But US immigration policy prevents agents from raiding houses of worship, except when individuals pose a security risk. So on June 11, the day Franco was supposed to report to the ICE office, she moved from her apartment in Austin to the nearby Unitarian church, where she has lived since.

Her room there is colorful, with a tall shelf of psychology books and novels and a dresser with an open album of DVDs on top. Members of the church's congregation donated the furniture when Franco moved in, and a local student group came in to build a shower. When I entered, Franco's girlfriend was sitting stoically on the bed watching "The L Word" dubbed in Spanish on a flatscreen TV. She rose to kiss Franco hello. Franco softened, and asked if I wanted something to eat, offering up refried beans and baked chicken from the apartment's small dining area.

"I feel locked up here, but I'll stay as long as I have to," she told me. "At least here, I can be free to love whom I want."

Her case is part of a resurgent sanctuary movement in the US known as Sanctuary2014, a coalition of faith groups and immigration advocates looking for new ways to prevent what they see as unjust deportations of undocumented migrants by the US government. The idea, said Reverend Noel Andersen, an immigration activist andone of the group's lead organizers, is to protect individuals from immediate deportation, giving them more time to fight their cases in court. In the past year, 24 congregations have signed on as sanctuaries, according to the Sanctuary2014 website, and the group has won six of its cases so far.

"For us, this is a way to use the pulpit as a way to lift up the stories and the voices of the people most impacted by broken policies," said Andersen. "The Bible teaches to welcome the stranger and the sanctuary movement takes that prophetic hospitality to another level."

Sulma Franco in the makeshift bedroom she can't leave. Photo by author

The coalition began its efforts last May, after Daniel Neyoy Ruiz, an undocumented Mexican immigrant living in Tucson, Arizona, was given an order for deportation following a routine traffic stop for a leaky tail pipe. Although Ruiz had no criminal record, a court refused his lawyer's request for a one-year stay of deportation. So Tucson's Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson granted him sanctuary—after one month, the court granted Ruiz the stay.

The case represented a major victory for the sanctuary movement, said Anderson, and inspired other churches to offer themselves up as sanctuaries to individuals who face deportation, but who ICE has deemed eligible for prosecutorial discretion. That policy, implemented in 2011, shifts ICE's focus away from deporting individuals who have no criminal record and familial ties in the states, stating that the agency should consider an individual's "ties to the home country and conditions in the home country" and "ties and contributions to the community."

The new wave of church activism is in many ways a revival of the Sanctuary Movement that took hold in the US during the 1980 in response to a wave of migrants fleeing civil strife in Central America. Although Congress had passed the Refugee Act in 1980, setting a uniform process for granting asylum to victims of persecution in their home countries, then-President Ronald Reagan declined to extend the protection to the thousands of Central American migrants crossing the border into the US. Churches started harboring immigrants who would otherwise have faced deportation, and though immigration agents did not raid churches, some faith leaders who participated were arrested for allegedly helping smuggle illegal immigrants into the country.

The decade-long struggle eventually prompted policy reform , with Congress agree to grant many Central American migrants Central Temporary Protected Status that allowed them to remain in the country. And in recent years, churches have been granted additional protections in providing sanctuary. Since 2011, ICE has explicitly mandated that agents should not enter churches or schools to remove individuals, unless those individuals pose a security threat. Andersen said that so far, no agents have violated that policy, and that none of the faith leaders involved in the current sanctuary movement have been arrested for helping undocumented migrants.


Want more? Watch The Business of Life: What's the Price of US Citizenship?


According to Anderson, Franco is the first known lesbian asylum seeker to take sanctuary in a US church, and her case represents a new focus on expanding protection for LGBT migrantsexpanding protection for LGBT migrants, many of whom, like Franco, have escaped persecution and abuse in their home countries.

Chris Jimmerson, an assistant minister at Austin's First Universalist Unitarian Church, said that the church's leadership felt particularly compelled to take Franco in because of her sexual orientation, deciding immediately to provide her with sanctuary after being approached by the Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition about her case last month.

"All three of our ministers here are gay," Jimmerson told me in an interview. "If Sulma were to be deported she's afraid she would lose her life. LGBT rights aren't respected in Guatemala."

Sitting in his office on a recent Sunday, still wearing his blue robes from the morning service, Jimmerson, a former immigration rights activist with American Gateways, said that the congregation was also willing to "take a risk" by hosting Franco—although he added that he doesn't expect ICE agents to come banging down the church's door.

"This was great for the church. Our mission says, 'we gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice,' and folks really feel like we're living out our mission now," he said. "She can go anywhere she wants on the grounds. We want her to feel like she's part of the community, not in detention."

To that end, Franco has started giving Spanish lessons to churchgoers. At a special immigration hosted by the church earlier this month, she told her story to the congregation, recounting the abuse she suffered as a child, her years as a student activist for LGBT rights at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala City, and her eventual escape to the US, where she was captured by immigration officials and sent to a detention center soon after crossing the border into Texas.

Related: Transgender Immigrants Still Face Rampant Abuse in US Detention Centers

As we talked in her apartment, Franco continued this story. She tells me that she was released from detention after four months, after ICE determined she had a "credible fear" of returning to her home country. She settled in San Antonio, eventually relocating to Austin after meeting her girlfriend there. (The girlfriend asked not to be named because she is also undocumented.)

"We've been together for five years, and I admire her. She's a very hard worker," Franco said, adding that before the deportation order, the couple had hoped to start a food truck. "We've always worked together and risen above together."

As Franco built her life in Texas, she fought an uphill battle to remain in the US. She claims her lawyer wasn't able to obtain critical evidence from her family, and then failed to inform her when the request for asylum was denied (VICE could not confirm this account.) She's now looking for a new lawyer, and plans to keep fighting to stay in the US permanently.

But ICE spokesperson Carl Rusnok told me that Franco's case has run its course in immigration court. "Sulma Franco, a national of Guatemala, has been afforded full due process and exhausted all legal options," he said in an email. He confirmed that a federal immigration judge ordered Franco removed to Guatemala in July 2012, and that a subsequent appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals was dismissed in November 2013; the 9 th Circuit Court of Appeals declined a petition to review Franco's case this February.

Still, Franco and her advocates haven't given up hope."She's had complications with her case, but we're contacting lawyers currently on her behalf," said Austin immigration activist Mizraim Belman, who is leading a deportation defense team that is providing aid to Franco and other undocumented immigrants. "She feared for her life in Guatemala, and continues to fear for her life if she must return."

Follow Meredith Hoffman on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: This Security Video Shows El Chapo Making His Prison Break

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More on the escape of 'El Chapo':

Everything We Know About the Mexican Drug Lord Who Escaped This Weekend

We Visited the End of the Tunnel Where 'El Chapo' Made His Brazen Jailbreak

'I Am the Person Who Handed Over El Chapo': A VICE News Exclusive

Last Saturday, the 5'5" Mexican drug lord known as "El Chapo" slipped into a tunnel and embarrassed the hell out of President Enrique Peña Nieto. Joaquín Guzmán Loera broken out of prison before, in 2001, and the Mexican leader had publicly sworn that the most feared drug lord since Pablo Escobar would never see the light of day again.

Adding insult to injury, Loera's method of escape seemed to be straight out of Inspector Gadget or Wacky Races. Not only was the tunnel he followed to freedom both ventilated and lit—there was reportedly a motorbike inside that may have eliminated the need for the notorious criminal to even walk. (Other accounts suggest the motorcycle—which was housed on some kind of rail system—was used by El Chapo's minions to haul soil out as the tunnel was constructed, and that he simply strolled out on foot.)

Further illustrating the ridiculousness is a new video just released by the Mexican government last night. It shows the exact moment that El Chapo took the plunge, as well as what the inside of the tunnel looks like.

Even by the standards of a guy who's known for smuggling drugs underground, this one is pretty jaw-dropping just from an engineering perspective. And while we know now what the finished product looks like via the video, we're still waiting to find out the most interesting part of the whole vanishing act: how El Chapo essentially commissioned a huge public works project without anyone noticing.

"In previous tunnels designed for the Sinaloa cartel, pulley systems were used to remove dirt and transport the merchandise," Malcolm Beith, the author of The Last Narco: The Hunt for El Chapo, the World's Most Wanted Drug Lord, told me.

"I can imagine this was the same system used in this case. Another theory I have—and it's just a theory—is that Chapo's people may have taken advantage of undergoing construction in the immediate vicinity of the prison to build the tunnels. Effectively, a smokescreen."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Iran Nuclear Deal Sparks Joy, Criticism, and Cautious Optimism

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Iran Nuclear Deal Sparks Joy, Criticism, and Cautious Optimism

Blondie's Chris Stein Shares His Favorite Artist/Magicians

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Vali Myers. 'Moby Dick' (1972–74)

Back in May, I did an interview with Nick Gazin for VICE about my associations with the late Swiss artist and Alien visionary H. R. Giger. This brought up something I had been thinking about in relation to Giger, which was the theme of the artist/magician. That is, people who identified to varying degrees with the world of magic or magick, or otherwise identified themselves as magicians and used some aspect of traditional art to help link their inner visions to an external reality.

Since my days of dealing with transcendent chemicals, I have always had a fascination with internal patterns and archetypes. A lot of these forms are the province of both psychology and ceremonial magic. In voodoo or voudon, the aspects of the human personality are represented by the different spirits or "Loa." The Loa are each associated with a specific glyph (graphic design, sigil) or "Veve." If you're curious, please see the best book on voodoo, Maya Deren's Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. In fact, Deren herself could be on the list here, I'm now realizing.

As far as the relation between magic and rock music, my old colleague Gary (Valentine) Lachman covers some of this ground in his recent book Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World.

The following list of my favorite artist/magicians is just a simple primer, since magic is a large and nebulous topic. Please, people who know about this stuff, don't face-palm yourselves to death for my lack of detail. This is just a scratch on the surface made for those who aren't yet familiar. I generally say I am an optimistic person, and optimism and "visualizing" one's goals and desires are closely linked. So maybe, in that small extent, I have always been a practitioner, too.

Anyway, here we go:

H. R. Giger in the early 80s. Photo by the author

H. R. Giger (19402014)

Giger's graphics emanated from his dreams and visionary states, and from what I got to see of him, he lived the life of a magician—a combination of asceticism and sensuality. He was meticulous, and his work was subject to a rigid self-imposed perfectionism. The elements of a drawing were so specific for him, it was as if they were parts of a formula. I'm sure he dipped into universal archetypal symbols, which is one reason why Alien resonates with everyone, and why his images are so oddly familiar and foreign at the same time.

'Promethea' #9 by Alan Moore

Alan Moore (b. 1953)

Moore is a writer and self-proclaimed magician. He is well-known for his various comic and graphic story lines: Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and so on. Moore was also inspired by early-life psychedelic experiences. His great series Promethea, drawn by our buddy J. H. Williams III, is the story of a female superhero who exists on several dimensions and whose task is to deliver the apocalypse. In it, Moore and J. H. reference Austin Spare and the history of Western magic. Moore's new novel, Jerusalem, is supposed to arrive at around a million words and be published next spring.

Austin Osman Spare. Portrait of Aleister Crowley

Austin Osman Spare (18861956)

Spare is a fascinating character. I used to frequent an occult bookshop on West 19th Street in New York City called the Magickal Childe. The bookstore, which closed in 1999, and its owner Herman Slater are worthy of note—the store is described on Herman's Wikipedia page as "a major focal point of the neopagan community in the 1970s and well into the 1990s." Pretty cute.

Anyway it was there, in I guess the late 70s, that I first started seeing cheaply done pamphlet versions of Spare's works. The first I saw was Earth Inferno (1905). Initially I was knocked out by his calligraphy, which works with sigils and "automatic" drawings. Spare remained pretty obscure for years. It was the internet that brought him a wider appreciation. (In spite of his obscurity, I understand that Jimmy Page assembled over the years a fantastic collection of major Spare pieces.) Spare was something of a child prodigy but soon enough developed an interest in theosophy, the writings of Madame Blavatsky, and so on. He also claimed to have been involved in his youth with an older woman, a Mrs. Patterson, who was descended from the Salem witches. She seduced him and taught him some magic. (It's debatable whether or not she actually existed.)

Austin Osman Spare. Portrait of Aleister Crowley

Spare was also briefly involved with Crowley but came to disdain the ceremonial magicians of his time as phonies. He developed his own personal magical philosophy referred to by some as Zos Kia Cultus, an early form of chaos magic. (One of my favorite books on chaos magic is Peter J. Carroll's Liber Null & Psychonaut, which heavily references and explains Spare's Zos Kia ethos.) Spare lived in London and was bombed out of his home during the war. I've seen Spare's graphic ability compared to Dürer's. His work was fantastic, but he is still relatively unknown. He was busy with spirits and materializations until his death.

If you're interested, there is a really epic biography by Phil Baker called Austin Osman Spare: The Life & Legend of London's Lost Artist. I can't recommend it enough. It's a real labor of love.

Aleister Crowley. 'The Sun (Auto Portrait)' (1920)

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)

In spite of his major stamp on the history of magick, and with apologies to the Thelemites, his graphic work is pretty weak compared with the others mentioned here.

His work borders on trends in "outsider" art, and that makes me digress here into the case of:

Henry Darger. Detail from 'Untitled (Idyllic Landscape with Children).' At the American Folk Art Museum

Henry Darger (18921973)

Darger only fits in here in as a fringe player since in all probability he didn't identify himself as a magician. But he created a vast pantheon dedicated to a personal internal world wherein he obviously dwelt while shunning society. In addition to his drawings of an endless war that involved children fighting evil authoritarian overlords, he wrote about weather conditions, storms that must have mirrored his tumultuous internal states.

Rosaleen Norton. 'Lucifer and the Goat of Mendes'

Rosaleen Norton (1917–1979)

Norton, one of my favorites, was an Australian artist and occultist. I recall going to Australia in the mid 70s for the first time and feeling I was in a sort of time warp back to perhaps the late 50s or early 60s. So I can only imagine the controversy over Norton's images of demons and sexuality that arose there in the actual 40s and 50s. She was dubbed the "Witch of Kings Cross" by the media. In 1949–50, a gallery that she was showing in was raided by police who confiscated several of her paintings as being obscene. Norton was actually tried but won the case and was awarded four pounds as compensation by the police. I think I actually ran into her work on one of our early Australian jaunts. We used to stay at the old Sebel Townhouse in Sydney, which was very close to Kings Cross. The hotel had a great vibe (it's gone now), and I heard the story of a man staying in an upper room for several months accompanied by a goat. There was a super funky little shop on the corner of the block that sold big reproductions of her paintings. I still have some of them.

Vali Myers. Photo by Eva Collins. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

Vali Myers (1930–2003)

I was really really lucky to have known Vali for a time in the 80s and 90s. Vali was an visionary Australian artist and dancer. She left Australia early on and moved to Paris where she lived on the Left Bank in the intense 1950s. Her associations are numerous. One of my favorites is with Tennessee Williams, who based characters in his play Orpheus Descending (later filmed as The Fugitive Kind with Brando) on Vali. One of the play's leads, Val Xavier (Brando in the film) is, I'm sure, based on her as well as the character of Carol, played by Joanne Woodward, in the film.

Here is a description of Carol from an old 50s playbill production of Orpheus:

When I was a kid in the 60s, I saw flyers around the village for a film called Vali, the Witch of Positano, and I was fascinated by her image. At that time I was just starting to be a fan of Kenneth Anger's films (Anger should also be on the list), and Vali reminded me of characters seen in his Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. Eventually, she began staying at the Chelsea Hotel in the city. Since she knew everyone, it was only a matter of time until I ran into her in the street and said hello. She invited me over to her hotel room without any hesitation, and we remained friends until her death.

Vali's artwork was, like Giger's, very precise, and she would spend sometimes years on a single, detailed drawing. I know she was drawing from dream and trance states as well as creating a visual universe that she inhabited. Vali told me she had known Rosaleen Norton. Vali stayed away from Australia for many years, but when she finally returned, she was embraced there. I hadn't seen her for several years since her return to Australia, but finally I spoke to her while she was in a Melbourne hospital, near the end. When I asked how she was doing, she said, "I'm fine, love—except for dying." She had heard I was about to become a dad and was very pleased with that. Our younger daughter is named Vali.


Watch Blondie Appear on Legendary NYC Public Access Show 'TV Party':


So this was a short list of some of my favorite artist/magicians. Great art is both an external object and internal dialogue. These people have all helped to forge paths into dimensions that are not what humanity deals with on a daily basis. For me, these realities surround us. We just sometimes need a bit of guidance in seeing or getting to them. On here could also be Bill Burroughs, Bosch, Goya, maybe Francis Bacon, etc. I'd urge you to make your own lists and keep searching for magic.

Chris Stein was a founding member and guitarist in Blondie. For more of his art, check out his Instagram.

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