Illustration by Marta Parszeniew

Most progressive-minded people share an inherent belief that education should be free, a universal human right rather than the privilege of a wealthy few. For the left, it's an article of faith. This is the way we progress in life, enhancing our enjoyment of the great things that the world has to offer. It's how we live a more enlightened existence as a free and informed citizen in a participatory democracy. And it doesn't stop when you're turfed out of school. Forgive the sad old bastard cliché, but yes, I was the first from my family to go to college, a circumstance I shared with many of that punk generation. Like urchins in a candy shop, we swaggered around our campuses in those pre-AIDS days, fortified by the notion that we were pioneers, breaking the ossified class structure of the stuffy old UK.

The right wing have seldom held education in such high regard. Of course, it's natural that some elites aspire to excellence, but a universally educated population asking questions about the world we live in, and the ownership and control of its resources? Not what they had in mind. Their preference was, and remains, a dumb, compliant population easily brought to rage or fear by some menace flagged up through their mainstream media, which supposedly "threatens our way of life." It's little wonder that Donald Trump "loves the poorly educated."

Yet elites in western society could tolerate, even support the growth of universal education, as long as capitalism was buoyant, producing high rates of economic growth. And in Britain, following the post-war settlement of the welfare state, they did exactly this. We had the great nationalized industries of coal, steel, and rail, the NHS, and most of all, education reform. There was the growth of comprehensive education, a meritocratic idea that the schooling system shouldn't slavishly mirror the class structure, that there should simply be schools where kids went to learn, irrespective of wealth or status.

From this came the expansion of higher education. After the Second World War, most Local Education Authorities (LEAs) paid students' tuition fees and provided a maintenance grant for living costs. The 1962 Education Act made the state payment of fees and means-tested grants compulsory. I had my fees taken care of and was given a full grant, which was about two-thirds of what my dad made from a 35-hour working week. And I could get a summer job. Those hellish strike-ridden days of late-1970s Britain, in a full employment, high wage economy, with strong unions and good working conditions: yes please. In my youth, old people moaned and told us that we were lucky and had never had it so good. Only the most brain-dead are seriously making that contention to today's young people.

Student protesters at UCL. Photo Chris Bethell.

Now we're in decline from that high watermark of industrial capitalism. The former juggernaut is a decrepit and wheezy old banger, not quite on its last legs, but certainly no longer possessing the dynamism needed for sustained high levels of economic growth. When the attack on the post-war settlement came, the bad guys, those supporting wealth and privilege, won the class war and the battle of ideas. But the rhetoric of a property-owning democracy didn't last long, as the free market capitalism that was supposed to accompany it was supplanted by a more corporate, risk-aversive mutation. In Britain, New Labour not only accepted the main tenets of neoliberalism, but, just as Bill Clinton's administration had done before him in the USA, Gordon Brown listened to the bankers, ending the division between high street and investment banking, and paving the way for the 2008 crisis.

As with the economy, so too with higher education; Thatcher might have set up the Student Loans Company, but it was Blair's government who introduced tuition fees with the Teaching and Higher Education Act of 1998. This was followed by the draconian act of 2004, which increased fees from £1,000 . Since then, paid higher education has remained a political consensus in English politics (a Liberal Democrat pledge to abolish fees when in coalition partnership with the Conservatives was swiftly reneged upon), though not in Scotland, where remarkably, in the devolved parliament, the SNP administration still supports free tuition.

Cambridge University students protest against university top-up fees in 2004. Photo: Stefan Rousseau / PA Archive/Press Association Images

In 2014, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) predicted that world growth will slow to 2.7 percent between now and 2060. Some economists reckon that this is wildly optimistic, and quite a few speculate that it will be lower, but the one consensus in both the mid and long term is that growth is going to be slow.

For these four decades of stagnation to be consolidated, Europe and the USA each need to take in 50 million immigrants. Without them, the tax base shrinks to such an extent that countries simply go broke. Nothing in life is certain, but for the foreseeable future, logic suggests a stagnating western economy, dominated by low-paid, unfulfilling jobs in personal services.

So student loans and debts are not an incidental strategy. They represent the starting point of inducting people into a life package of debt-servitude, which includes mortgage and car loans. In more innocent and economically buoyant times, we used to call this credit. In the words of leading American-Canadian critic and social theorist, Henry Giroux: "Higher education is viewed by the apostles of market fundamentalism as a space for producing profits, educating a docile labor force, and a powerful institution for indoctrinating students into accepting the obedience demanded by the corporate order."

When the US media, such as the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, discuss student debt, it's from a neoliberal perspective, with the question being: how can politicians prevent the banks from losing money on these debts? The invariable answer: by tightening the screws on the debtors. The banks got the government to guarantee such loans, which gives politicians the leverage to contend that they must protect the taxpayer and make these shiftless students pay. Even if the taxpayers in question are often the parents of the indebted students.

Barack Obama's "socialism" is to blame for student loans. Photo via Wikimedia.

The Wall Street Journal recently described student loans as just another example of Obama's socialism. A fairly ludicrous contention, as the American state neither runs the education system nor provides its financing. As in the UK, tuition fees in the US have risen steeply over the last decade. The socialism is reserved for the banks who benefit from this and other scams, as they are deemed "too big to fail" by Anglo-American capitalism. For everybody actually in the education system, the story is one of privatization and financialization.

In response to the debt crisis, the UK has borrowed an American strategy: selling off student debts at a fraction of their value, to private companies like CarVal Investors and Erudio. The latter is a partner of Arrow Global, a specialist debt recovery firm which buys soured loans from banks and credit card companies. The CEO of this company was quoted as saying: "This is an important step towards delivering this year's financial goals and positioning the business for future growth." This means that a student's debt is more than just a business opportunity, it's the raison d'être of the companies the government awards these contracts to. In the USA, as in the UK, student debt is a major new growth area for banking revenues. With no student bankruptcy permitted, this is akin to a low risk revenue stream for the financial industry, and now second in size only to mortgage debt.

The system owns, and can monetize, the potential of students.

So now the system owns, and can monetize, the potential of students. The war on the poor is long won; welfare cuts are just grinding the defeated into the dust. Now the more insidious assault is on the middle-classes, as the one percent, represented by the government, bankers, and financial institutions, expropriate their wealth. And primarily, they do this through the system of higher education.

It's in the DNA of people from modest means to assert that education is the key to the good life. This is no longer the case, but you would never know that from a university prospectus, and its pictures of toothsome, smiling students lounging in cafeterias, hunched over a laptop in a library, playing sport, or clad in graduation gowns and hats, clutching their degrees. The laudable desire for knowledge and training is converted into propaganda for a corrupt higher education system that lures people onto courses (often of questionable use to the individual) and off the employment register, while perpetuating the assets-to-debt swapping regime. The scam is straightforward. Parents send their kid to college, either through savings, or now, as is more likely, through taking on debt themselves. The student then racks up more debt, well into their post-college working life. When the parents downsize, retire, or expire, what would have been an inheritance for the offspring then goes straight to the bank to pay off those debts.

Research commissioned by the Sutton Trust in 2014 tells us that most citizens will still be paying back loans from their student era into their 40s and 50s, and many will never clear these debts. So, putting that another way, if you accept the concept of student debt as the new social indenture, you are, in all probability, in a long-term, flatlining economy, signing up to be in indebted servitude all your life, simply through enrolling in college.

The view from the top of Millbank on the day it was stormed by angry students in 2010. Photo by Henry Langston.

Over the next three decades, the Office of Budget Responsibility estimates that the cost to the UK in paying off student debts will rocket to billions of pounds. They are projected to almost equal the entire higher education budget. Interest payments on outstanding loans will rise, bringing the cost to almost one percent of the GDP. In 2009, an Independent Higher Education Commission described the current fees-and-funding system as "unsustainable," leaving three-quarters of students unable to pay off loans.

More than 40 million Americans are stuck with some type of student debt. Altogether, they owe more than $1.3 trillion. Some 25 to 30 percent of graduate income goes to pay this off. When graduates have to pay such a high proportion of their wages to the banks, this causes debt deflation, resulting in shrinking markets and rising unemployment.

Paradoxically, the overwhelming debt many graduates face leaves them unable to wait for lucrative employment, and instead taking lower-paid jobs in order to stop their repayments and interest from ballooning further. As with the UK, debt's impact extends beyond the students themselves, burdening their families for decades. This threatens the ability of current and future generations to build the successful careers and businesses that contribute to growth, and to buy the houses, cars, and other goods needed to sustain a dynamic consumer economy. It delays young people leaving home and getting married, and older generations saving for their retirement, building tension and potential conflict within households.

Debt and depression have long been associated. Now a recent study at Northwestern University has uncovered debt's negative relationship with physical as well as mental health. "There had been a fairly strong and consistent link between debt and depression, debt and thoughts of suicide," Elizabeth Sweet, the study's lead author, explained in Time magazine. "But very little had been done to look at the impact on physical health." Following a group of young adults over a 15-year period, the study accessed 8,400 people's data on both personal debt and health. They focused on each individual's total debt except home mortgages, including student loans (which make up the greatest proportion of non-mortgage debt, especially for young people), credit cards, car loans, and medical or legal bills. People who owed more suffered higher levels of stress and depression and poorer overall health, particularly if the debt was more than the assets they owned (homes as assets and mortgages as debts were discounted from the equation). Those who subjectively judged their debts to exceed the value of their assets were also more likely to have higher blood pressure. This effect is significant, as even a small rise in blood pressure can strongly increase the risk of stroke and hypertension. Debt literally is a killer.

Student protesters in Birmingham in 2010. The Lib Dems backtracked on their promise to abolish fees when they went into coalition with the Tories. Photo David Jones / PA.

Debt destroys the carefree culture of being a student. At a time when people should be enjoying the beauty of irresponsibility before a lifetime of it, so many young people are now fearful and defeated, old before their time. Like generations past, they should be worrying about how they'll be able to adjust to a more structured life, not how they'll pay off the banker middle-man. I personally would never have gone to college, knowing that I'd leave under such a cloud of debt. I'd have done something much more rational and economically sensible, like dealt drugs.

We are so enmeshed in this global economic system, and our role as debtor nation, it becomes very difficult to see how we extract ourselves from it. Politicians, if not compromised by the lobby system, tend to be creatures of the present rather than visionaries; they are governed by the election cycle and the next set of polls. There is little currency for any of them in reminding their electorate of the bigger inconvenient truth, namely that we have to prepare for a world without paid work or profits.

I was the first from my family to go to college, a circumstance I shared with many of that punk generation. Like urchins in a sweet shop, we swaggered around our campuses, fortified by the notion that we were pioneers, breaking the class structure.

However, these are testing times for the established order. When a system is failing, people will take action, primarily out of desperation as no other course seems to present itself. In the US, Debt Collective—a remnant of the Occupy Wall Street movement—has helped thousands of debtors organize and go on strike, refusing to pay back over $182 million in student debt.

In the UK, the IFS report found that almost three-quarters of English college graduates will have at least some of their loan written off. In other words, the banks know that their own system doesn't even work. Of course, that won't stop them from continuing with it.

But the greatest threat to debt culture hasn't manifested yet, though it's surely on the cards at some point: that young people will simply do the arithmetic, and decide, en masse, not to go to college. For middle-class or ambitious working-class kids, it seems counterintuitive to tell their parents: I don't want to go to college. But what was once a rite-of-passage, a great social chapter in a person's life, has come to be a process by which the bank seizes both their parent's assets and their own future ones. The logic is sound: if a shit, low-paying job in a tanking economy is the best option anyway, at least leave me (what's left of) the equity on your house. Yes, this late capitalist dystopia is very far from Thatcher's 'property owning democracy.' I often wonder whether she would be delighted that the elites are creaming it off, or saddened that the modest aspirations of the petty bourgeoisie and skilled workers, which she encouraged, are now being crushed.

It's possible that a decline in student enrollment will render university campuses derelict, littering the green belt like abandoned ghost malls.

All this points to a future where more people will be educated through the network. A Wikipedia of free higher education, working on the principles of the Open University, must surely be about to come of age as a mass phenomenon. Learners don't need university bureaucracies, now reduced to meek tools of government, banks, and other corporate sponsors, offering a proscribed and limited (and in most cases vocationally useless) educational experiences. In the future, probably only engineering, science medicine, and fine art will be taught in traditional physical college locations. Already some of the grand old Victorian university buildings in UK cities have been sold off for apartments and hotels, replaced by cheaper, more functional constructions in greenfield sites. This is as much about the financial pressures on these institutions as it is about modernization. And it's possible that a decline in student enrollment will render many big, expensive university campuses derelict, littering the green belt like abandoned 'ghost malls.' Of course, the very oldest and most prestigious universities will survive, as the wealthy parents of those students are not paying for 'education' as such, but for access to the influential network of the ruling elite.

For people who worry about missing out on the social side through having their college experience online and in study groups, they should remember that Europe's railways, Ibiza, Miami beach, and India aren't going anywhere. We will still be allowed to have adventures, as well as just study, in our networked peer groups. Call me a deluded optimist, but I'll never lose faith in young people's ability to find ways to get drunk and fuck around. And if people are looking for an authoritative institution to vent their spleen on; don't worry, the banks and their political message boys will still be there, though hopefully with a greatly declining influence over our lives.

Irvine's fee for this piece has been donated to The Junction, the-junction.org. His new book The Blade Artist is out now published by Penguin.

Photo courtesy of Roger Mapp

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

The nightclub ecstasy dealer is becoming an endangered species. The average pill-taker tends to buy drugs from friends or acquaintances rather than a dodgy-looking guy who won't make quite enough eye contact in a club. The low cost of ecstasy also means that organized criminal networks mostly stick to supplying pills to dealers and doing home and street deliveries. The nightclub circuit just isn't worth the risk anymore.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was a different story. In addition to selling at clubs in their own backyards, crews from major cities would travel to venues in smaller towns to capitalize on the spread of rave culture. Drum'n'bass MC Carl Thomas AKA MC Flux was a member of a network from Croydon who flooded Brighton with E.

His group contained an unlikely mix of black guys and extreme right-wingers, which eventually made the police mistakenly label his drum 'n bass collective Inta Natty as an organized crime group with links to neo-Nazis Combat 18. I got in touch with Carl to find out the inside workings of a nightclub ecstasy network, the darker side of the early d'n'b scene, and how a black dude ended up rubbing shoulders with neo-Nazis.

VICE: So how did you first start selling ecstasy?
MC Flux: It was one of our younger lot, a white kid, who first jumped on the bandwagon. Some people who attended the raves would see five black geezers and think "these lot look the type to get pills from." This meant we could wait until people approached us, then point them in the direction of the white kid. Within a few months, he was cleaning up.

Why did you travel to Brighton rather than just doing your thing in London?
In 1989, when Maggie Thatcher was clamping down on acid house and the outdoor events, we started going down to Brighton to dance and drop a pill. A lad I knew from football saw the potential for our young lot to serve up a pill.

Did you come up against much resistance from the local Brighton dealers?
We had resistance from the football firm, because they knew we were Palace . It was nothing compared to the dog-eat-dog scene in London at the time, though.

Inta Natty, the drum 'n' bass collective that you were part of, was labeled by the police as an international crime syndicate with links to kidnapping, money laundering, and neo-Nazi group Combat 18. What was the deal?
That came from a British Transport Police detective. Someone had told a certain individual that I was coming for him over a debt, so he dreamed up a story about a football hooligan drug supplier being on his case to try and save his bacon. I was actually in prison at the time! The BTP then investigated everyone around me. The Combat 18 thing was related to the guy I knew from football. He had controversial views, but was very honest, so I liked him.

MC Flux, on the far left, back in his E days. Photo courtesy of Roger Mapp

When you say "controversial," do you mean racist?
Today, people would be like, 'Yeah, it's racist,' but if you're white and I'm black and you really want to wind me up, you're going to say, 'You black cunt.' That's not cos you're racist—if I had one leg, you'd have called me a one-legged cunt. In this day and age, they'll say, 'You made a racist comment. You're racist,' but that's not how I see it.

Anyway, he introduced me to someone who was high up in Combat 18. I was in a crew of black guys, hung around with a crew of white guys, was in a football firm and knew extreme right-wing people, which the police couldn't get their heads around. They thought all the crews I was involved with were part of one big network.

I've heard a fair few football firms back then contained a mix of black guys and extreme right-wingers.
That's true. If you're an acceptable geezer and can hold up your hands, people in the firm will see it, and it won't matter what color you are.

You ended up doing a prison sentence for intent to supply. What happened there?
That was in 1995, a lot later. I was caught by the security at a rave. I wasn't in a good mindset due to cocaine abuse, and foolishly held up a bag containing wraps of gear and pills in full view of everyone. In court, they said I was serving up, which wasn't entirely true. Someone I knew asked me for some of my gear, and I obliged.

You're now a reformed character, and are involved in anti-drug and anti-crime workshops. Why the change?
I started seeing news stories about the consequences of ecstasy. Also, as prices went down, the quality was lost, and taking pills became Russian roulette. I'm in my late 40s, so justifying or condemning young people's choice of recreational stimulant would be hypocritical, but you have to educate them about the risks.

While in Channings Wood prison, I met an officer called William Barret, who really helped me as well. He said, 'You're not like these other cats I see coming in and out of prison. You've got a lot to offer. Work on yourself.' I took his advice, did a lot of courses, and made a decision to change.

MC Flux now, with DJ Pete Nice in the background. Photo: Chris Deller.

Nowadays, I'm employed by Lewisham Council, and do some work in Liverpool, the Wirral, and Knowsley, trying to steer young people away from crime. I also work with an organization called CELLS, which delivers anti-gang workshops. Kids will listen to someone who has been there and done it. I'm enjoying doing something positive. I'm lucky to still be alive and surrounded by people I love who have supported me through thick and thin. I hope by doing the work I do now, I can give something back.

Thanks for talking to me, MC Flux.

You can read more about MC Flux's exploits in his autobiography Dirty.

Follow Nick on Twitter.

Photo via DEA

It's been a long while since most of us have contemplated the objectively not chill effects of bath salts.

While criminal elements in the rest of Canada have moved on to newer, more deadly substances like fentanyl or its 100-times-stronger cousin W-18, a couple in Pictou County was caught holding 2012's favourite drug/meme this weekend.

RCMP found the powdered psychosis following a Friday afternoon traffic stop in Linacy, Nova Scotia. The cops executed a search warrant, seizing weed, a restricted firearm and ammunition along with the bath salts. A 24-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman were arrested "without incident" and charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking.

A few months ago police told CBC the designer stimulant science types call methylenedioxypyrovalerone is making "a bit of a resurgence" in the area. "We're receiving information that it's for sale on the streets again," RCMP Corporal David Lilly told CBC at the time. Those comments followed the arrest of a 34-year-old dude in nearby Stellarton, who had already faced charges related to bath salts twice in six months. Back in 2013, when confused hysteria over naked face eating was still fresh, Pictou County was the site of the largest bath salts bust in the country.

RCMP Constable Tammy Lobb told VICE the Pictou County bath salts resurgence is ongoing.

On the bright side, the rural county doesn't seem to have discovered krokodil, meow meow or flakka yet.

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Photo by David Doubilet via Getty

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With an estimated 1.7 million new cancer diagnoses every year in the US, and outbreaks of malaria, Ebola and Zika rocking populations around the world, scientists are on a constant search for new compounds that might kill the cancer cells and microbes that threaten human life. Over the past two decades, they've turned increasingly to one important place: coral reefs.

Organisms that live in and around reefs play an integral, often understated, role in drug development. Though reefs cover less than one percent of the earth's surface, they are home to 25 percent of all ocean species, many of which have helped scientists crack some of the toughest medical puzzles: sea sponges were used to develop the breakthrough HIV drug AZT; mollusks called sea hares in the Indian Ocean have lent their compounds to treatments for breast and prostate cancers; toxins from cone snails have become prototypes for painkillers. Scientists in Sydney are doing promising research on coral algae to treat malaria. Last December, the FDA approved Yondelis, a cancer-fighting drug made from a compound originally isolated from a sea squirt, a small tubular marine animal that is part of the reef community. And while coral's disease-fighting resume is a bit shorter than the organisms that call it home, its role in medicine is not negligible. Made of calcium carbonate and porous in nature, it has an unusual similarity to the human skeleton and has served as a blueprint for bone graft implants.

All this promise is tempered by the very real fact that we're currently in the midst of one of the longest coral bleaching events in history—one that is destroying our opportunity to find cures for the world's most challenging and economically taxing diseases. Thanks to rising water temperature and its negative effects on the algae that keeps coral alive, reefs that were once buzzing metropolises of kaleidoscopic sea life are currently the ocean's cemeteries, stretching out for miles and miles like a pale white skeleton. New findings released this week revealed that the Great Barrier Reef is getting hit the hardest, with 93 percent of its coral bleached in total.

Compounds derived from the ocean are approximately seven times more likely to make it into drug form , William Gerwick, professor of oceanography and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of San Diego, told VICE. There are currently 13 approved drugs for various cancers, chronic pain, the common cold, and diabetes that came from or were inspired by marine life—a number that doesn't seem particularly impressive until you consider that the field of marine pharmacology is only about 20 years old. "The literature estimates that researchers go through an average of 15,000 compounds to find one that will go through the drug testing process and reach clinical use," Gerwick said. But when it comes to marine life, it's one drug for every 2,000 compounds—a much better bet.

The staggering number and range of species in the ocean is one reason for this success, but what makes marine compounds particularly effective for drug development is how they've evolved. "Part of why coral reefs have such potential is because all of that diversity makes for tough competition," David Kline, a coral reef researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told VICE. "It's hard to survive in a reef, so a lot of organisms have had to develop really nasty venoms and poisons that are especially potent in chemical form and end up being the source of a lot of drugs."

Compounds and extracts aside, the genomes of reef-based organisms also offer medical insights for humans—algae and sponges, for instance, have complex DNA that is remarkably similar to ours. "We don't see many things like cancer in these organisms, so once we find out what genes control this, maybe we can unlock similar genes in humans and potentially put a halt to life-threatening diseases," Jose Lopez, an oceanography researcher at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, told VICE. He is part of the Global Invertebrate Genome Alliance, a research community whose goal is to sequence the genomes of thousands of organisms including reef creatures like sponges, mollusks, and jellyfish. "We may not come up with a product or chemical when we study them, but we can learn how cell structure works, or how to escape disease from their genetic code." Lopez thinks it is also possible to apply novel marine behaviors, like regeneration, to the human body. "Maybe we could regenerate our limbs if we had the right sequence from animals who do it, like starfish," he said.

That is, of course, if coral bleaching doesn't wipe out the creatures he hopes to investigate. "If the coral dies, the reef dies, and it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reconstruct a whole reef. Not knowing about the sequences of the organisms or not even knowing they exist would essentially mean editing in the dark."

Gerwick, who studies the medical application of algae and cyanobacteria in cancer, inflammation, and tropical diseases, worries about future outbreaks. "Diseases mutate over time, and new ones like Zika and Ebola are emerging every year," he said. "It's not like we're done once we address just what's happening now; this is an ongoing and increasing effort, and marine organisms can help us address the changing landscape of disease, provided we don't lose them."

Lopez says the proof of bleaching's severity is strikingly obvious. "What's unsettling is the fact that we're losing organisms that have been around for billions of years and have evolved to survive—that has to be a red flag that something bad is happening."

Crumbling reef ecosystems will impact the study of known species, but there's potentially even more loss in the unknown: The field of marine medicine is still so untapped that it could take many years to continue to explore it. "I worry we'll lose potential treatments before we even have a chance to study them," Kline said. "Keeping coral healthy means we have the possibility of finding the next cure for cancer or AIDS in a sponge or mollusk. We won't know if it's gone."

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

US News

• Obama to Send 250 Troops to Syria
  President Barack Obama has announced that he plans to send 250 US troops to Syria to work with forces fighting Islamic State militants. It brings the number of special operations troops inside Syria to 300, and reflects the Obama administration's confidence in the "counterterrorism" mission.—Reuters
• Cruz and Kasich Make Anti-Trump Deal
  Senator Ted Cruz released a statement Sunday night announcing a collaboration with Senator John Kasich for the forthcoming primaries. Cruz will devote his resources to winning Indiana and allow Kasich to focus on Oregon and New Mexico. Trump took to Twitter to dismiss the plan as "DESPERATION!"—NBC News
• Weed-Growing Operation Found at Murder Scenes
  Officials said marijuana "operations" were discovered at the homes where eight family members were shot to death in Piketon, Ohio on Friday. The state's Attorney General Mike DeWine said the killings were "a pre-planned execution" of eight people, between the ages of 16 to 44, at four different homes in the small town.—CNN
• Clinton Rejects Koch Brother Endorsement
  Billionaire conservative donor Charles Koch said it was "possible" that he would support Hillary Clinton over one of the Republican presidential candidates. Clinton has responded on Twitter by saying: "Not interested in endorsements from people who deny climate science and try to make it harder for people to vote."—ABC News

International News

• Saudi-Led Coalition Kills 800 in Yemen
  More than 800 al-Qaeda militants were killed in an offensive by Yemeni government forces in the port city of Mukalla, backed by Arab coalition airsstrikes, according to a statement by the Saudi-led coalition. Government forces have now recaptured Mukalla, which was considered a jihadist stronghold.—AFP
• Mexican Government Blocked Truth into Missing Students
  A panel of experts investigating the disappearance of 43 students in 2014 says the Mexican government blocked attempts to find the truth. Experts commissioned by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights argue that official government conclusions on the case rely on flimsy evidence.—VICE News
• Egyptian President Threatens Protestors
  Egypt's President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has urged citizens to defend the state ahead of planned anti-government protests today. Sisi warned that security officials would deal firmly with protestors and said there were "evil" forces conspiring against his government.—Al Jazeera
• Kurdish PKK Ready to Escalate Violence
  Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Cemil Bayik has said the militant group is ready to escalate conflict "not only in Kurdistan, but in the rest of Turkey as well." He accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of being responsible for "escalating this war."—BBC News

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Everything Else

• Beyonce Pushes Tidal Up the App Charts
  Beyonce's Lemonade has helped Jay-Z's streaming service Tidal become the third-most downloaded free app in the US. Lemonade is rumoured to also hit iTunes today.—Quartz
• New Orleans to Give Prince Second-Line Send-Off
  Prince will be celebrated in traditional New Orleans fashion with a second-line marching band parade in the city this afternoon. The planned release of doves has been canceled at the urging of PETA, however.—The Time Picayune
• NASA Plans to Explore Icy Moon Oceans
  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has proposed that robots could burrow down past the surface of icy moons to explore subsurface oceans, like the ones thought to be present on moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn.—Motherboard
• Anti-Racist Protestors Outnumber White Supremacists at Rally
  Anti-racist protestors outnumbered white supremacists by 10 to 1 as they disrupted a rally at Georgia's Stone Mountain, the site where the Ku Klux Klan was reborn in 1915. At least nine protestors were arrested in a scuffle near the state park's entrance.—VICE News

Done with reading for today? That's fine—instead, watch our new documentary about a teenager who's trying to fight climate change by suing the government.

San Francisco's AT&T Park. Photo via Flickr user jcookfisher

This article appeared in the April issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

Every spring, for the decade I've spent writing and caring too much about baseball (and for many years before), a great performance of reason occurs across Major League Baseball. Front offices fill out rosters through an efficient process of human resources arbitrage, built on thousands of points of narrowly sliced data. Mostly, they're in pursuit of the "perfect hunch." The game doesn't listen to reason.

Through the years, in that same pursuit, I've seen cities around the country spending public money to build stadiums for sports teams, even though it's almost always bad business. Here are some stats on a few:

6: The number of teams that ditched Florida, home to many teams' spring training programs, between 2003 and 2010. Arizona has gifted sweetheart subsidies and publicly funded stadiums for MLB teams to get them to leave the Sunshine State.

8 or 9: The number of Arizona cities found to have lost money with spring training facilities, according to a 2013 study.

$81 million: The value of a bond that Fort Myers, Florida, floated to construct a new stadium for the Red Sox when they asked for new facilities in 2010. The city's taxpayers had paid for a stadium to be built 18 years earlier.

$500 million: The amount that Miami-Dade County borrowed to cover its part of the $634 million stadium and parking complex built for the Miami Marlins' regular season, which opened in 2012. By the time the county pays off those bonds, in 2048, it will have paid $2.4 billion.

16: The number of times the Red Sox played at the new multimillion-dollar stadium.

All this spending isn't reasonable, at the preseason scale or even for the big league games, but if you're being reasonable about sports, you're doing it wrong. After all, there is nothing reasonable about entrusting some fraction of your emotional well-being to beefy strangers chasing a ball, but we do it anyway.

This article appeared in the April issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

Shortly after Maura Bastarache and Semih Oray married in July 2015, they filed an application for permanent residency with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Oray, a Turkish citizen, had come to the United States on a student visa to attend a university in Boston, but now that he was married to Bastarache, an American citizen, he could apply for a green card, making him eligible to receive federal funding for school.

The paperwork alone was, as Bastarache put it, "a nightmare." They waded through six separate immigration forms and rounded up their tax returns, birth certificates, and marriage license. Then in March, after months of back and forth with immigration officials, Oray was told he'd been approved for a green card. USCIS sent notice that they'd mailed the green card on March 16, and it was scheduled to arrive by March 19.

And so they waited. And waited. When March 19 came and went without a green card in the mailbox, they waited some more. Eventually, Oray called the local post office, who offered the possibility that it was "lost in the mail." And when he called an immigration officer to figure out what to do next, he was told, to his dismay, that this sort of thing happens all the time.

Mail problems are far from the only flaws in the immigration system in the United States. The sheer amount of paperwork is taxing on immigration officers, who have to pass applications between various agencies, and the processing time is slow, which can delay legal immigration status. Those delays have real consequences: People are forced to leave their jobs and leave the country. Oray, for example, was told it could take up to nine months to process his application for a replacement green card, which would be too late to apply for federal financial aid this year. For the six million people who apply for immigration benefits every year, a litany of confusing forms and an archaic processing system stand between them and legal status in America.

When one of those pieces of paper gets lost (as they do, frequently), finding it is like "looking for a needle in a pile of needles," according to William Stock, a Philadelphia-based attorney with Klasko Immigration Law Partners LLP and the president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "The only difference between preparing applications today from when I started 22 years ago is that we used a typewriter back then."

But that system is finally starting to improve, after a decades-long effort to modernize the immigration system in the US.

Related: How Mexican Immigrants Are Using Burner Phones to Evade Border Patrol

The first serious effort to digitize started in 2006, when USCIS began developing a new, shiny all-electronic immigration system. The system, which would come to be called ELIS, was created with the help of IBM and was meant to modernize a process that had for decades been stuck in the dark ages.

When ELIS rolled out in 2012, it was a spectacular failure. Six years and $1.7 billion had amounted to three electronic forms, two of which had to be scrapped because they were so glitchy. The number of lost green cards, like Oray's, actually increased after the ELIS system was deployed, and the new electronic forms—which didn't include features like a functional search bar—took twice as long to process as the old-fashioned paper version, according to a Department of Homeland Security report.

Watch on Vice News: Immigrant America: The High Cost of Deporting Parents

The government has had technology disasters before (think about all the problems with healthcare.gov). That's partly because most governmental software is built using what's called a "waterfall" approach, where developers make a list of everything the system needs to do, build it, test it, and release it as one big package. That process works pretty well if you're, say, building a helicopter, but not so much when you're building software for an agency whose needs are constantly changing, according to Eric Hysen, the executive director of the United States Digital Service.

Hysen, formerly a software engineer at Google, was one of the founding members of the Digital Service, a White House project designed to help federal agencies improve their technology. He and his team were called in to evaluate the immigration system in 2014, after USCIS had already made the decision to scrap the old, faulty system. (A spokesperson for USCIS declined to comment on the problems with the past system, but redirected me to Hysen, whose team has been instrumental in facilitating the technological upgrades.) The first major decision by USCIS was shifting from the "waterfall" approach of software development to the "agile" model, which means creating pieces of software in small increments, then testing and releasing it as it's built.

The initial step in rebuilding a digital system is translating the paper forms into electronic versions. So far, only two forms are available electronically, but about a quarter of the roughly 100 immigration forms are now processed digitally on the back end.

But Hysen says the real goal is to "reimagine the immigration experience" beyond just digitizing forms. A few years ago, USCIS hired Ideo, a Bay Area design consulting firm, to dream up a more accessible immigration system. That led to my.uscis.gov, which lets immigrants view their status and spells out in plain English what they need to do to apply for a new benefit. Though the site is still fairly new, the idea is to make the immigration system as user-friendly as TurboTax has for taxes.

Screenshot from my.uscis.gov

Those systems could go a long way for people who can't afford to spend thousands of dollars on an immigration attorney on top of pricey immigration fees. Daniel Acevedo, who handled his wife's green card application in 2014, said a system like this would've saved them time, money, and stress. "Toward the very end of the process, I was having issues with a few pages and the National Visa Center kept returning it," he told me. He'd mail packages of paperwork to the NVC, and months later, they'd send it back telling him he'd filled the form out wrong. "We were scared the application was going to get rejected." Eventually, they buckled and paid for an immigration attorney to review the paperwork.

"We live in a time when the world is getting so much smaller," said Acevedo. "And if you want to be with someone from a different country, it shouldn't be that hard." (His wife eventually got her green card.)

Hysen said USCIS will continue to improve and adapt its technology based on the needs of immigration agencies and immigrants alike. Eventually, immigrants will be able to upload scanned documents (like birth certificates) rather than sending them through the mail and access electronic immigration forms on smart phones and tablets.

And although the new system has been slow to roll out, the bits and pieces that are online seem functional—efficient, even. Oray, whose green card has still not materialized, recently used the online I-90 form to request a replacement. "It was a lot easier, faster, and much more user-friendly," said Bastarache, his wife, who is an IT manager, "especially considering we're in 2016, not 1990."

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

The globally recognized Burj-al-Arab hotel, a building that would definitely be riffed on in a GTA game. Photo by Cuny Guillaume, via Wikipedia

Grand Theft Auto has long been parodying the American Dream, with games set in fictional versions of New York (GTA IV), Miami (Vice City), and Los Angeles (V), plus the San Francisco and Las Vegas analogues seen in GTA: San Andreas. Rockstar's infamous series has previously visited London though, suggesting that while its makers are publicly adamant that it'll always be set stateside, GTA could yet travel to new destinations, exploring the unknown to avoid becoming repetitive.

And when that move comes, to abandon America—perhaps for a single game; perhaps for the long-term future—there's one city that stands out above all others as the perfect candidate: Dubai.

The pearl-diving backwater turned Las Vegas of the Middle East has all the hallmarks of a classic GTA game: fast cars, iconic architecture, and audacious criminal activity. Hell, it even has jetpacks. It's a gloriously tacky and grotesquely decadent world of paradoxes that would make the perfect fodder for Rockstar's singular brand of social satire.

A New Type of Sandbox

Picture yourself skydiving from the world's tallest building on a warm Arabian night, taking in the dazzling kaleidoscope of neon lights from the many high rises below as you soar towards the earth. Imagine landing your chopper on the helipad of a seven-star offshore hotel, before being escorted to the opulent penthouse suite that's been rewarded to you for completing a main mission for some corrupt tycoon. Visualize your protagonist sipping champagne on a luxury yacht as he takes it for a spin up the Persian Gulf, past ludicrous man-made islands shaped like palm trees.

Dubai is a city that is either vulgar or impressive depending on your perspective, but there is no denying it has a unique visual style that would translate well to a video game—particularly an open world experience like GTA. But what if you feel like taking a break from the hustle and bustle of city life?

GTA V let players explore the wilderness beyond the city of Los Santos, putting them in a world so rich in nature that it even inspired an Attenborough-style wildlife documentary. A game set in Dubai could offer the same sense of escapism, thanks to the city's proximity to one of the most untamed lands on earth, the Arabian Desert. Anyone who has ever been out to the deserts of the UAE will know the opportunities they boast for adrenaline junkies and thrill-seekers. Think quad biking, think dirt biking, think tearing up epic sand dunes in your 4x4 and you get the idea.

And perhaps, more romantically, the desert could also provide the opportunity to take a glimpse into Bedouin life. Maybe one of the game's story arcs could introduce you to the nomadic tribes who've inhabited this land for centuries, long before oil turned it into the billionaire's playground it is today. Their ancient way of life could certainly provide for some unique minigames—camel racing and falconry, anyone?

And, if nothing else, the desert could provide that most annoying (but necessary) of open-world game staples: the "edge-of-map-barrier." Wander too deep into the sands and your jeep runs out of fuel, your camel dies of thirst or your protagonist gets swept into oblivion by an approaching sandstorm.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's film, 'Big Cats of the Gulf'

Plenty of Job Opportunities

Crime is the lifeblood of any GTA and, as glossy a place as Dubai is from the outside looking in, it also possesses a darker side within which you might expect to build your criminal empire. Much like its bombastic construction projects, the illegal activity that takes place in Dubai is headline grabbing and theatrical. There's no shortage of material here with which to inspire Rockstar's creative leads.

You want drug deals? Here's a story about a gang that was busted for smuggling a whopping 30 kilos of heroin into the country. Heists? Look no further than when a pair of Audi A8s smashed through the glass doors of a shopping center, their drivers stealing $3.4 million of jewelry in under three minutes.

You want assassinations? How about the slaying of a Chechen warlord with a golden gun. Or Mossad's meticulously planned hit on a Hamas operative in a Dubai hotel that featured assassins dressed in tennis shorts and false moustaches. If the latter doesn't sound like something that a Niko Bellic-type character would get roped into being a part of, then I don't know what does.

And if you're foolhardy enough to think Dubai's police will struggle to give chase once you've committed brazen crimes like these, bear in mind their squad of vehicles includes a Lamborghini Aventador, a Bugatti Veyron, and a BMW i8 (see the video below for the evidence).

Letting Your Hair Down

Criminals need their down time, and what you spend yours doing between missions is as important to the GTA experience as the main story. Many of us have sunk hours into trying to become the best darts player Steinway Beer Garden has ever seen, or thrashing the yummy mummies of Vespucci Beach in a game of tennis. And Dubai is a city that takes fun seriously, with tourism playing a key role in its economy, assuring the potential for a wide variety of leisure activities to enjoy.

Take water sports, for example. One of the emirate's biggest attractions is its coastline, so it would be safe to assume that surfing, sailing, paragliding, scuba diving, and powerboat racing could all feature. If the outside world's feeling a little too close for comfort, those looking for cooler climates could hit the slopes of an indoor ski dome—there's one in the Mall of the Emirates, over 22,000 square meters covered in real snow all year round.

GTA players might be disappointed that there's no jetpack in V—so far, at least. But while the pretend LA can't deliver such thrills, the real-life Dubai certainly does—check the video above. Okay, it's not the sort of activity just anyone can join in with—but since when is your average GTA protagonist going to let their "average Joe" status stand in the way of doing something completely extraordinary?

For a truly modern twist, perhaps you could try your hand at a bit of drone racing? Dubai held the first World Drone Prix back in March 2016. And of course, if you're a traditionalist who would rather race cars (this is Grand Theft Auto, after all), there'd always be the opportunity to do that. Just try not to total your Ferrari like this guy did.

New Material

Rockstar uses the cities of GTA to hold a mirror up to American society—albeit a distorted one that accentuates the worst that human nature has to offer. And if the minds behind future installments want some new themes to tackle, they need look no further than Dubai.

Conservative Islamic values are upheld amidst a backdrop of capitalism and debauchery while obscenely lavish hotels are built upon the labors of exploited workers imported from the subcontinent. This is a world rich with contradictions for Rockstar to criticize, parody, and poke fun at, while providing enough substance and entertainment to keep players immersed and engrossed.

And it's not like Rockstar couldn't tie a story—or several of them—set in Dubai to the lore they've already laid down in previous GTAs. The Ballad of Gay Tony starred Yusuf Amir, a playboy real estate developer with a penchant for tiger pants, stolen APCs, and golden guns. Dubai is his place of birth, and as he made it out of Gay Tony alive, there's no reason why he couldn't play a part in a new Middle Eastern adventure. Then again, compared to some of the very real stories that have come out of Dubai, Yusuf sounds relatively tame—so perhaps Rockstar would have its work cut out to twist the already strange reality of one of the wealthiest and wildest places on Earth.

Follow Chris Creegan on Twitter.

Bun B is a Houston-based MC, activist, and Rice University lecturer, who makes up one half of the legendary rap duo UGK that's credited with pioneering the sound of Southern hip-hop. He's also VICE's political correspondent, covering the strange and bloody cage match that is the Republican presidential campaign.

After weeks on the road covering campaign speeches and heated rallies, Bun B explains what would happen if none of the Republican candidates gets the majority of state delegates to win the presidential nomination and breaks down the process behind a contested convention.

Photo by Christopher Furlong via Getty

The first time Sandra* was pregnant and unable to find relief from her extreme morning sickness, she stumped every doctor in her path. "Hyperemesis is no joke," she told VICE, referring to hyperemesis gravidarum, a rare but serious form of morning sickness diagnosed in an average of 60,000 pregnancies each year in the United States. The condition is far more severe than normal morning sickness, causing dehydration, weight loss, headaches, fainting, and extreme fatigue, and is often a threat to the life of the fetus and even the mother if left untreated.

"We threw everything but the kitchen sink at it," Sandra said, "and I was still met with, 'well, abortion is an option'—until I found cannabis."

Sandra lived in Texas, where medical marijuana was not legal, and so she hid her usage from her obstetrician, getting it from illegal sources, constantly worrying that she would be reported.

As more and more states loosen marijuana restrictions (24 have now legalized medical use), an increasing number of women are opening up about pot for morning sickness. Facebook groups like NORML Women's Alliance and Moms for Marijuana International are two of the sites leading the discussion; the latter has gained 544 new followers just in the past week, and a quick Google search turns up scores of pregnant tokers asking for legal advice. But getting high while pregnant is still far from a medically acceptable treatment option. The American Congress of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG) has put pressure on its members as well as governing bodies to classify marijuana alongside alcohol and tobacco as dangerous substances for use during pregnancy, citing insufficient data regarding its effects.

Meanwhile, a review published this month in the medical journal BMJ Open linked marijuana use in pregnancy with low-birthweight babies and placement in the neonatal intensive care unit after birth. While the researchers indicate that pregnant women should abstain from marijuana usage, they also acknowledge that most study subjects also smoked cigarettes and consumed alcohol, which makes isolating the effects of marijuana impossible.

But unlike cigarettes and alcohol, there is clear medicinal value in marijuana. And mainstream treatments for extreme morning sickness, like Zofran, are poorly studied and could be linked to side effects for the fetus, including heart defects. Originally intended for chemotherapy patients seeking relief from extreme nausea, Zofran has become a popular treatment for morning sickness in spite of not having FDA approval for this purpose. Given this reality, some pregnant women feel marijuana is their best option.

Kelly in Kansas, who is currently seven months pregnant, has been warned by her doctor that Child Protective Services (CPS) might take her baby at birth because Medicaid requires she be tested for drugs. (At present, there is no legal cannabis usage in Kansas.) Kelly has been upfront about her usage, and has continued to test positive for marijuana and negative for all other illegal drugs, but she worries that her honesty might cost her custody of her baby. Kansas law requires CPS be notified of positive drug tests, and repeat positives can result in the removal of children. Like Sandra, though, Kelly felt she had little other option: Before she tried marijuana, she was unable to eat or drink.

"I was extremely reluctant to try it," Kelly told VICE, "but one day I was headed to the ER and a friend said, 'Take one hit of this. If it doesn't help, I'll pay you $100 and never ask you to try again.' I said fuck it, and tried. I avoided the ER for a week thanks to that one bowl. I will consume any form of THC offered. I've vaped, dabbed, eaten, smoked. And afterward, I notice my baby moves. My baby is happy. She gets food and water after I smoke."

Of the six obstetricians approached for this story, none felt comfortable being named, and most were unwilling to comment on using marijuana to treat morning sickness. One in particular who specializes in hyperemesis gravidarum said that she would need to "visit the studies for more information" as she had never before considered using marijuana for treatment, despite practicing in a state where it's legal.

In response to queries about treating HG with marijuana, an ACOG spokesperson sent a statement by email from Joseph R. Wax, MD, Vice Chair of ACOG's Committee on Obstetric Practice: "Our number one priority as ob-gyns is a safe outcome for mother and baby. Although we still need more research on the topic, the data we do have raises concerns regarding negative effects of marijuana on the growing fetus, and, because of this, we recommend that women not use marijuana during pregnancy."

Twelve of the 15 women interviewed for this piece who used marijuana to treat their HG felt it had played an important role in their health. Some credited it with saving their lives and that of their babies. But there are women for whom smoking marijuana did not help. Stella from Tennessee had great success with it in her first pregnancy, but lamented that "it didn't work for my second baby. The smell of it, even if it wasn't being smoked, made me sick. I lost him," she said, adding that HG was likely a factor in her miscarriage.

Laura from Cambridge, England, used pot pre-pregnancy as a means of controlling her IBS symptoms. When she developed HG in pregnancy, she tried smoking marijuana and became violently ill almost immediately. "Honestly, it magnified the nausea so much for me," she told VICE. "One go was enough to tell me my body did not want weed in it with a baby on board."

But the majority of women VICE spoke to with extreme morning sickness found relief in pot. After being diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, Addy, a stay-at-home parent from Massachusetts, found herself reluctantly trying marijuana as a treatment. "I dabbled with pot in my teens, but I didn't like the way it made me feel, so I hadn't used it in quite some time before becoming pregnant," she told VICE.

Unable to keep any food or water down, Addy gave marijuana a try. She smoked it and felt instant relief. "My husband would encourage me to use more often because he'd get to see a glimpse of the person I was before pregnancy," she said. "Hyperemesis gravidarum had turned me into a shell of the person I used to be. With marijuana, I could converse. I was able to laugh and smile. Without marijuana, I couldn't do much more than sleep and vomit."

Medicinal marijuana is legal in Massachusetts, but that doesn't mean a pregnant woman can find a pot-friendly OB/GYN there. While states with looser restrictions don't explicitly forbid marijuana usage for pregnancy, doctors are hesitant to go against ACOG, which provides board certification. As a result, obtaining a medical marijuana card from an actual obstetrician is rare.

Not long after giving birth to to a healthy baby boy, Sandra from Texas moved to California and was pregnant for a second time. "I started off with the notion that I would again use cannabis, but from the get go , and I would not get so desperately sick," she said.

This time, Sandra was in no danger of police involvement, since medical marijuana was legal in her new home state. In an unusual move, her OB/GYN even supported her in obtaining a cannabis card. She carried her pregnancy to full term at 40 weeks, never once requiring a visit to the emergency room for IV fluids and medication, as she had multiple times in her first pregnancy.

Sandra's doctor was happy that she chose a more natural course of treatment and avoided Zofran and other antiemetics. But he was nonetheless unwilling to have his name associated with this story, as were his colleagues at the cannabis-friendly clinic she went to. Until the larger medical community is more accepting of the idea that marijuana might sometimes help a pregnant women's health, it seems, doctors are hesitant to admit their involvement, despite some being willing to treat individual cases. As one commented, "I don't need the angry hate mail surrounding this issue."

*The subjects in this story asked to be identified by pseudonyms to protect their privacy.

There's a scene in Bob's Burgers where Tina, the series's stressed-out, hormonal 14-year-old, is driving a car in a parking lot for the first time. There's only one parked car in sight, but as she swerves slowly back and forth, groaning with anxiety the entire time, it becomes clear that she's going to hit it. "TINA FOR THE LOVE OF GOD TURN AWAY OR STOP!" her father Bob yells, seconds before impact.

Anyone who's been following the Republican primary campaign probably feels like Bob at this point. Over the course of the last several months a Donald Trump victory has gone from being a punchline to a real danger to an inevitability. On Sunday, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, the only remaining non-Trump candidates, announced that they would coordinate their efforts to stop the real estate mogul. The candidates won't be telling their supporters to strategically change their votes, but their operations will focus their money and ground games on whichever states they have a shot of stealing from Trump—that's Indiana for Cruz, and Oregon and New Mexico for Kasich.

It's a last-ditch strategy to deny Trump the delegates he needs to win the nomination on the first ballot at the Republican convention, and like most last-ditch strategies, like Bob screaming at his frightened daughter, it seems destined to fail.

The basic problem for what's become known as the #NeverTrump crowd is that they're running out of chances to beat the billionaire who has become the Republican Establishment's version of the Antichrist. Tuesday's batch of primaries includes Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island, states where Trump has polled above 50 percent—even if all the voters who prefer Kasich or Cruz lined up behind one or the other, Trump would likely carry those primaries. (All these poll numbers come from RealClearPolitics averages.) In Pennsylvania, also voting Tuesday, Trump is polling at around 46 percent, but it's too late to get all of Cruz's backers to line up behind Kasich or vice-versa. Trump is going to pad his lead in delegates this week, and he already has almost 300 more than second-place Cruz. There are more Trump victories on the horizon too—he's polling at 46 percent in California, the largest prize in terms of delegates left, and he will likely take New Jersey's winner-take-all primary too.

Watch Bun B Explain the Mechanics of the Republican Nomination Process:

Currently, neither Cruz nor Kasich can actually win enough delegates to get the nomination the usual way. At this point, their only hope is to stop Trump from getting 1,237 delegates, the magic number that would make him the automatic winner. If Trump has a plurality of delegates but fewer than 1,237, the Republican National Convention will become a battle between campaigns and party officials to secure delegates who will be freed from having to cast ballots based on their states' voters' preferences. The Cruz campaign has been clever about making sure as many delegates as possible would support him in that kind of second-ballot contest. But that kind of victory would seem shady to many voters—Trump's simple, intuitive argument will be that he won the most ballots and the most delegates, so why should someone else get the nomination based on his ability to work a "rigged" system? Trump's not wrong to point out that these sorts of hail Mary strategies are panicked and vaguely undemocratic, not to mention unprecedented in contemporary politics.

What's really sad is that had the non-Trump campaigns had plenty of chances to stop him. The lack of an early Establishment favorite led to a dozen candidates crowding Iowa's first-in-the-nation primary, and infighting between now-defunct contenders like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio meant the GOP wasn't training its guns on Trump. And the many winner-take-all primaries meant that though Trump rarely won majorities, he kept walking away with chunks of delegates. He took all of South Carolina's 50 delegates despite getting only 32 percent of the vote; in Florida, he got all 99 delegates with 45 percent of the vote; in Illinois, he scored 54 out of 69 delegates with less than 40 percent. Had Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich managed to enter into a #NeverTrump alliance months ago, when those contests were live, they could have shut Trump down.

But they didn't, and so the Republican Party, a sizable percentage of which not only doesn't want Trump as its standard bearer, but actively and vocally loathes him, is stuck with the short-fingered vulgarian. Their best-case scenario now involves stopping Trump in Indiana, slowing him down in California, then stealing the nomination from him at a convention, which would result in all of Trump's very vocal supporters denouncing the GOP and maybe even rioting, as Trump himself suggested last month.

Even if they did manage to wrest the nomination from Trump, they'd be left with Cruz, who is more predictable than the Donald, but equally extreme, and possibly even more hated by his fellow politicians. It's taken a long time, and there were plenty of chances to turn away, but at this point it seems impossible for the Republicans to avoid a car crash.

Illustration by Sam Taylor

This is the VICE Interview. Each week we ask a different famous and/or interesting person the same set of questions in a bid to peek deep into their psyche.

Louis Theroux is Britain's answer to Michael Moore or Werner Herzog, managing to be awkward, kind, and probing, all at the same time.

On Sunday, Theroux's latest documentary, Drinking to Oblivion, took a decidedly sobering look at the lives of British alcoholics. It marks the start of a busy year for Theroux, who has another documentary about brain injury coming next month, before he releases his first feature film My Scientology Movie later this year—a film which has already angered Scientologists so much they've responded with their own documentary about Theroux.

Which conspiracy theories do you believe?
I'm not a natural conspiracy theory believer. I tend to be a bit of a skeptic. I don't believe that aliens have visited Earth, or that alien life has been covered up by the US government. I think we landed on the moon. However, I do believe that the key decisions are made by an oligarchic semi-clique of powerful people. I believe in vested interests and a group looking after itself. I've been really struck recently that the American political system is not really a democracy. But that's not a conspiracy theory is it? It's fact.

What film or TV show makes you cry?
Very rarely would that happen. There's no TV show on a regular basis that does. In real life I cry, but not often. I'll tell you one thing that made me cry: it's a bit embarrassing to admit, but I was being interviewed on a Dutch TV show and they showed me a clip of my program about parents of children with autism. There's a scene where a mom is seen trying to deal with her kid's behavior and I started talking about it and in the act of talking I was aware I had that weird wobbly-voice almost-crying thing. I hadn't felt emotional in that way at the time of filming, but by being removed from it and watching it back I was really quite upset.

What would be your last meal?
I've thought about that one before. If you're on death row, they do put themselves out to accommodate the request, as I understand. It probably varies from state to state, but within maybe ten miles or so they'll go and get it from the place you request. I really like good New York-style pizza. Good, not gourmet. I got a taste for it while being there. There's a place in Brooklyn famous for it and often has long lines of people going up to it. I'll probably ask that they got me some pizza from there.

If you won the lottery tomorrow, would you carry on with what you're doing, change jobs, or stop working?
I feel about my work the way some people feel about their vacation. Not to say I don't get stressed, because I do, but I feel taken out of my normal life and exposed to a different world. There's a departure from the norm that is refreshing. With vacations, I get stressed about hotels and flights and all that stuff. I don't worry about any of that when I'm on location because I have the luxury of not being the producer or director of my programs, just the presenter. It's probably a bit infantilizing but I basically just get to be the child and I like it.

What's the most disgusting injury or illness you've ever had?
At Christmas, I don't know how or why, I got something called orchitis. Basically, one of my testicles swelled up to two or three times its normal size and it was extremely painful. Due to a bit of a mix-up, I ended up going to three different NHS hospitals, and at each one someone had to examine the feel of my "ball." I was very aware that they might know who I was. And I was aware that they might know I was aware that they might know who I was. Yet you've just got to do it; clearly the alternative is not getting critical medical attention. Anyway, I took antibiotics and it did go down after three or four days, but it was pretty embarrassing. I mention it because maybe as men we feel a little embarrassed about talking about our testicles when it comes to health. Perhaps we need to get a little more comfortable with saying the word testicles.

Something which was disgusting was when I did a documentary on female bodybuilders, and one of the male fans got me to roll around in the wood on his property after being boxed to death by some muscly women. "Yeah, roll around, roll around!" he yelled. I did about three or four takes. I later discovered that there was poison ivy all over the place, and I got sores on the vast proportion of my body. I remember the sores was so purulent that I would sort of drip discharge onto my desk as I was attempting to write an article. It was horrible. I suddenly realized that everyone in America would know if they had poison ivy on their land and became convinced he did it on purpose. It was almost sort of a psychopathic act for that guy to do that.

Photo by Carl Wilson

When in your life have you been truly overcome with fear?
I remember as a kid, I was at the bus stop showing off to some friends and some other kids came by and I mouthed to one of them: "What are you looking at?" They wandered off and my friends got on their bus. I was waiting for the 37 when the other kids came back and then was totally overcome by fear. I don't think it even got physical. Maybe it did. Possibly he punched me. I was going, "It's nothing, nothing, nothing, I'm so sorry."

I was a worrywart as a child. I have a very good recollection of my childhood and I can remember before I could read, I became worried that I'd never be able to read. And thinking that when you grow up you have to pay taxes and I didn't know how. Worrying about things that I really had no reason to be worrying about. I do still worry a lot. I have to sort of consciously dig my way out of it.

Complete the sentence: The problem with young people today is...
...they're young and I'm not and they remind me that I'm not. I feel so old. I see them having fun and think maybe I didn't have enough fun when I was younger. I've got no choice in the matter of getting old.

What's the closest you've come to having a stalker?
When I was at school I got a Valentine's card from a girl who was in the year above, or maybe even two years above. I didn't know who she was, I just knew she was a bit older. I was only about 15 at the time. Inside the card itself there was a poem which was very macabre and it talked about the temptation of the razor's edge, veiled references to suicide—and as much as I was love-starved and wanted to have a girlfriend, even at that age knew there was something about it sending danger signs. I didn't even want to know who it was from. I just sort of put it out of my mind.

What was your worst phase?
I think I'm in it now. You wouldn't know while you're in it, that's the whole point, isn't it? That's the illusory nature of progress. But when I was 15/16, it wasn't great. I had been an OK-looking, outgoing boy and then puberty hit relatively late and it just took me. My nose got really big more or less overnight, my hair and skin got oily and physically I became a bit of a mess. I'm still basically dealing with the fallout from that.

What picture of you, that's been taken this year, do you think you look nicest in?
In one of the publicity photos for Drinking to Oblivion, I'm in Brighton with a contributor called Joe and Joe's a good-looking guy. The pair of us are like world-weary detectives on an ITV drama. It looks like a reboot of Dalziel and Pascoe. We've got that craggy, 'I'm not taking any nonsense' look. Also because the documentary is on a serious subject, I don't have to smile in the publicity photos. When I smile my cheeks pop out and I look like a squirrel or a chipmunk. I definitely look better if I'm not smiling.

The nice picture

Would you have sex with a robot?
I think I'd have a bit of a problem with it. Have you seen Ex Machina? Especially since I'm married, I just think it would be too creepy. It's maybe another way we've lost intimacy and ways of expressing closeness. It could be alien and ultimately unsatisfying.

Do you think drink or drugs can make you happy?
Definitely, but only for short periods. If I have a few margaritas, especially the way I make them at home, I am happier. But it's like you've taken it out of the tank and it's not there the next day. You've depleted your reserves of serotonin. I'm in favor of legalizing cannabis. I don't think that's controversial to say, is it? In America it's more or less legal in various places. I'm less keen on the idea of hard drugs.

What's the nicest thing you own?
I live in London, but my wife and I have a house in LA that we lived in for a couple of years. She grew up in a hot climate and liked the idea of living abroad somewhere warmer. But I don't really own any frivolous things. You know what, I definitely think I should get some. I'm going to.

If you were a wrestler, what song would you come into the ring to?
"100 Miles and Runnin'" by N.W.A.. I like old-school rap and hip-hop. The only thing I don't like much is metal.

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Maester Aemon, elder brother to Aegon "Egg" Targaryen of Dunk and Egg non-fame. Photo courtesy of HBO

Season six of Game of Thrones is the beginning of the end. Although HBO would be thrilled to see the show bring them subscribers galore into perpetuity, show creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss have made it clear that they are not going to extend this show forever. Including the ten episodes of the current season, which premiered last night, there are 23 hours left (which might, to be fair, take us three years to reach). George R. R. Martin has long promised us it will be "bittersweet" at best, which seems his way of saying it's going to be brutal, not that that's any departure from the first five seasons of the show, where at any point you may be flayed, skull-crushed, or crossbowed on the john.

So even as the new season takes us in exciting new directions—a shift from war among kings to looming conflicts among queens (Cersei, Daenerys, Sansa, Margaery Tyrell, and Ellaria Sand)—and we brace for the death of any likeable character on the show, there's reason to be optimistic about future stories drawing from the rich history of Westeros and Essos. There have been no meaningful discussions about spin-offs yet, but in a recent interview, George R. R. Martin came up with an idea, saying, "The most natural follow-up would be an adaptation of my Dunk and Egg stories."

This is a great plan. The novellas are short chivalric romances that offer neat little stories against the wide backdrop of the history of Westeros. They deploy familiar storytelling elements, are filled with excellent action set pieces, and center around two fun characters. In fact, the humor in the first episode of last night's season premiere displays the promise of lighter, less self-aggrandizing fare, set in this world. The banter between the Onion Knight Ser Davos and Aliser Thorne, Jon Snow's murderer, in which Davos orders mutton in the middle of a tense negotiation, reminded me of everything I liked about the character. Similarly, the Dothraki debate on "what is the best in life" ends far too soon. The show needs humor to offset the portentous threats and prophecies. In Dunk and Egg, such light banter would accompany the jousts, duels, romance, feasts, and even that most deadly of Westerosi traditions—a wedding.

These stories follow the adventures and education of Ser Duncan the Tall—"Dunk"—and the young Prince Aegon Targaryen—"Egg." Fans of the show first heard of Egg when Maester Aemon revealed his identity as a Targaryen to Jon Snow at the end of the first season. (Aemon was Aegon's elder brother. Aemon refused the throne and joined the Night's Watch to avoid any potential conflict over the throne.) In the books, both Dunk and Egg show up from time to time in references to the many rebellions and wars over the Iron Throne. The first novella, The Hedge Knight, follows Duncan, an orphan from Flea Bottom in King's Landing who became a squire to an itinerant, low-status knight. It opens as he buries his former master, takes his armor, and heads to a nearby tournament to make his fortune. On the way, he acquires a stable boy as his squire, and together the big teenager and slender boy wander through the tournament and festival grounds replete with princes and lords, whores and armorers, and a particularly comely puppeteer. There's fighting and politics, a nasty Targaryen embracing his inner Joffrey, and a trial by combat. In the end, Dunk and Egg reject offers of comfortable life in a castle, and instead head off to their next adventure. Dunk thinks that through this travel, he can teach Egg to be a good prince who treats people honorably.

The second book, The Sworn Sword, finds the pair in service to a very poor local knight who runs afoul of the richer neighbor, the Red Widow. Here, the story turns on questions of history and loyalty. What does it mean to be truly loyal to one's liege lord? In the third book, The Mystery Knight, another tournament beckons, this one replete with secret identities, the economics of tournament gambling, and a dragon's egg. Martin has said that he's mapped out six to 12 more stories detailing the adventures of the pair as they head towards their destiny. Egg will become King Aegon V and Dunk will be his Lord Commander of the King's Guard. Not bad for an orphan from Flea Bottom.

The novellas are not especially original, but as I said about Star Wars last winter, originality is highly overrated. They conform to expectations in precisely the ways that A Song of Ice and Fire does not. Martin famously launched into his series with the desire to avoid rags-to-riches clichés, but rather created elite powerful families and slammed them into internecine conflict. Martin gave us a classic hero, Ned Stark—then killed him. Martin gave us an elder son to avenge his father's death, Rob Stark, and then offed him, too. In contrast, Dunk comes from poverty and rises to great heights through both the strength of his arms and his good character, a story you've heard plenty of times before. The first novella especially, like the Heath Ledger movie A Knight's Tale, both play around the rich cultural legacy of chivalric romance.

Egg's trajectory, meanwhile, kept reminding me of Wart in The Sword in the Stone, book one of T. H. White's classic retelling of the King Arthur myth, in which Merlin teaches the future king to be a good person and ruler. Thanks to his education, Arthur became a good and just king. Similarly, thanks to his time as Egg, Aegon did everything possible to make his kingdom more just, especially for the peasantry. He even allowed his children to marry for love, rather than for politics.

Alas, like Camelot, it's all going to end in fire. Both Martin and White are, in fact, extremely interested in the corrupting nature of power (as were plenty of medieval writers of romance). When power derives from force of arms and status of birth, inequality and injustice necessarily increase. That's why, like last night's episode, each of the novellas begin with dead bodies: Dunk's master, random criminals, accused traitors in the books; Jon Snow and Myrcella Baratheon (Jamie's and Cersei's poisoned daughter) in the show. Students of Westerosi history will know that Aegon was a good king. For his efforts, his lords rebelled to protect their power over the peasantry, his good children abandoned their duties for love, and he was left with only the "mad king" Aerys to succeed him. In Westeros, death wins, regardless of good intent. After all, as the meme says, "What part of valar morghulis (everybody dies) did you not understand?

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Photo by Miguel Rosan/Getty Images

For many African Americans, recent allegations of child molestation against Afrika Bambaataa are deeply unsettling, and not just because they suggest abuse of the lives and bodies of innocent children. The accusations also represent an attack on a hero of the black community, a man generally regarded as a godfather of hip-hop culture. Compared with the Bill Cosby rape saga, there are real differences in scale of the alleged crimes on one hand, and the nature of the celebrity's star power on the other, but it's fair to say some of the same alarm bells are going off in black communities across America.

It should come as no surprise that the social malaise of sexual abuse is colorblind, even if white males are more likely to be perpetrators of sexual assault. Famed Hollywood figures Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, and Bryan Singer have been the subject of disturbing accusations of child sexual abuse over the years, but as Molly Lambert recently wrote for MTV News, "Bambaataa's position is more tenuous... because he is not protected financially or insulated from the backlash" in the way many white men are.

As a survivor of child sexual abuse myself, which began at the age of 13 at the hands of a trusted member of the clergy, the accusations against Bambaataa are less shocking to me than the fact that our society continues to ignore the prevalence of child molestation. And there appears to be a willful blindness, in particular, when that abuse targets young boys.

At issue in the allegations against Bambaataa is the statute of limitations in New York State. Despite its reputation as a center of liberal progressive politics, New York has the dubious distinction of having one of the most restrictive limitations on child sexual abuse—on par with that of Mississippi and Alabama. Victims can only sue until they reach the age of 23, and children who allege abuse in public institutions, like schools or foster care, are forced to file an "intent to sue" within 90 days of the original incident.

Ronald Savage, the New York native who was the first to bring claims of sexual assault against Bambaataa earlier this month—at least three others have since come forward—is sharing his story, in part, to bring attention to the statute and boost efforts to overturn it.

"I think the statute of limitations is unfair for victims," Savage told the Daily News. "It took me all of these years to speak about this. I was embarrassed. I was ashamed."

Given the psychological and emotional toll—and time—it takes for a child to admit to being abused, the restrictive statute seems to this survivor like a prima facie case of a law doing more to protect the perpetrator than the victim.

Bambaataa's accusers also seem to offer some insight into the suffering, in silence, of young black boys who are molested, raped, or sexually exploited. That image is not one with which American society in general, or the African American community in particular, has been forced to contend with any frequency.

Our media generally frames victims of sexual abuse as white and female. And the national discourse on the subject of molestation and rape is largely within a heteronormative paradigm. The concept of male-on-male child sexual abuse is seen as something that rarely happens; when it does, the perpetrator is often dismissed as a sexually deviant recluse.

The idea of mainstream, straight-identified men—prominent, successful ones, even—molesting young boys is still deemed an anomaly. That misconception may prove all the more confounding for young black boys in a society in which role models are hard to come by.

In 2013, Rutgers University research found that young black boys—regardless of sexual orientation—feel tremendous pressure to grow up and become strong black men who are "armored to battle racism and social barriers with a veneer of hyper-masculinity." The pressure to be tough, in control, and emotionally stoic is heightened, and in a society that has often rendered African American males invisible—that is, reduced to stereotypes and caricatures—it becomes increasingly burdensome for them to admit to being violated in the most intimate and intense ways fathomable.

Savage's tears, as he described to a New York tabloid his struggles with suicidal thoughts and an inability to maintain intimate relationships, seem to me a legitimate glimpse into emotional scars that never heal.

Q-Tip and Afrika Bambaataa on November 11, 2011, in New York City. (Photo by Johnny Nunez/WireImage)

For his part, Bambaataa's attorney released a statement to Rolling Stone, insisting the allegations represent a "reckless disregard for the truth" and are being made by "a lesser-known person seeking publicity." Savage has since responded that he is not looking for a financial settlement, but instead seeks relief from the dark secrets that have haunted him. Another (so far anonymous) accuser bolstered Savage's claims when he told the same paper, "I know what Ronald Savage is saying is true because did it to me."

Another young man, Hassan Campbell, called Bambaataa "a pervert" and remembers being abused as early as 12 years old. For Campbell, the hip-hop icon served as a father figure before the abuse began.

This is the sad truth at the heart of these allegations: Afrika Bambaataa's legendary stature in the community meant people trusted him—a trust he had earned, but it appears may have also betrayed.

Bambaataa, 59, was born Kevin Donovan and grew up in the Bronx River Projects. He became a successful gang leader, but he famously sought a new path after a trip to Africa as a young man. That began with changing his name and disavowing a life of crime and violence, after which he turned to music and DJing—forming what is now the Universal Zulu Nation (UZN). His 1982 song "Planet Rock" and the 1986 album of the same name remain seminal works in the foundation of modern-day hip-hop music and culture. UZN has branches worldwide, spreading not only hip-hop musically, but also messages of empowerment, non-violence, community, and support for the rights of indigenous peoples.

Such is the dilemma for victims of powerful men: In the mind of a child, it is almost impossible to comprehend, let alone confront, the duality of being outwardly good while committing unconscionable evil.

Black Sexual Abuse Survivors (BSAS) is an online support network that allows victims and survivors to share their stories. Dwight, a 36-year-old musician living in Florida and active in the group's online forum, told me about his experience in light of the accusations against Bambaataa. Though he did not feel comfortable sharing his last name, he claims he was molested by a well-known minister in Philadelphia and Delaware, beginning when he was 11 years old. Dwight says state officials initially pursued charges when he was 15, but that the case was dropped for lack of physical evidence.

"As a musician, I have always admired Afrika Bambaataa, but when I read stories like those of the men accusing him, I see myself. I believe in my heart they are telling the truth, because as a survivor, I am finally telling my own."

Meanwhile, the truth remains elusive. Following the initial allegations, Bambaatta has doubled down on his assertion that the claims are false and suggested they're part of a larger plot against him. But due to the restrictive statute of limitations, no criminal trial is possible to bring evidence or discovery that might unveil what happened so many years ago. Perhaps, for this reason, we as a society must ask if the law is designed to protect the innocence of children or the deviance of perpetrators.

As Toni Morrison famously wrote, referring to the violent rape of a young black girl in The Bluest Eye, "We acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live. We are wrong, of course, but it doesn't matter. It's too late... much, much, much too late."

Edward Wyckoff Williams is a television producer, correspondent, and writer living in New York City. Follow him on Twitter.

Danny Wolfe, pictured above, founded one of the most notorious street gangs in Canada. Photo via RCMP

Danny Wolfe was only 12 years old when he co-founded the Indian Posse with his brother Richard in 1988.

The Palmyra Arch in Trafalgar Square. Picture by: Frank Augstein / AP/Press Association Images

I went to look at the recreation of Palmyra's Arch of Triumph in Trafalgar Square in London just in time to see the whole thing being disassembled. As I stood behind the wire barricades with a couple of other mildly interested spectators, a crane mounted on a flatbed truck slowly winched off each of the model's 3D-modeled, machine-cut blocks and carted them away.

In a few days, it'll re-appear, as if by magic, in Dubai and then New York. Which is kind of fitting: the real arch stood for 2,000 years in Syria before being blown up by Isis militants, and the 2:3 replica in London performed a similarly miniature re-enactment of its story: put up by some pompous local ruler, gawped at briefly, and then taken apart.

Like most pieces of public art, the recreated arch is clearly well-meaning, but it's also a total political and aesthetic failure. Its creators, the Institute for Digital Archaeology, will eagerly prattle on about the advanced imaging technology used to recreate the building from photographs, but the fact is that it looks absolutely nothing like the original. The marble is smooth, bright, and plasticky; it looks as much like a Roman ruin as the Disneyland castle looks like an actual medieval fortress. Under the yellowing light of a springtime afternoon in the barbaric northern reaches of the old empire, the whole thing glows a kind of gaudy Barbie-skin orange.

It's tacky, and shamelessly so, like an Italian restaurant trying to recreate the feel of the Campidoglio with lots of stone-effect paint and plastic ivy. And some of this fakery is clearly a conscious decision; it is historical reconstruction as performed by Jeff Koons. Stones that were chipped and frayed in the original, jutting out or worn away, eroded to slivers, mottled with 20 centuries of dirt and decay, are here as straight and regular as Lego. One could argue that they're trying to recreate the arch in a perfect state, before any of its destruction, as a kind of eternal image—but the missing blocks above the keystone are absent here too, a swollen void, the uneasy gap between recreation and re-imagination. With its 2:3 scale the model feels tiny and toylike, sanitized, domesticated. It's been torn out of its geographical and historical context, pulled away from the structures that surrounded it and presented to us as a good opportunity for a selfie. It's an archway to nowhere.

But it might be best not to get too hung up on comparisons to the original. The arch is a piece of Baudrillardian sorcery: a copy of a copy of a copy. A real, physical object, recreated from weightless digital photographs, which themselves captured something entirely artificial. The ruins at Palmyra didn't really stand in desolate solemnity for 2,000 years until Isis came along to blow it up; until the late-1920s, most of the structures had long been toppled and buried, with the village of Tadmur built on its site and modern huts jutting against fractured colonnades. In 1929 the French Mandatory authorities razed the village, relocating it to the contemporary city of Tadmur, and started stacking the old stones on top of each other again. It's not excusing Isis' vandalism to point out that what they destroyed was less than a century old; or that the weird, cartoonish recreation in London, in its attempt to realistically copy a simulacrum, was doomed from the start.

You might think I'm being snobbish or pedantic here, unfairly rounding on a memorial to the very real tragedy going on in Syria, and you might be right. But it's still interesting to note that in all the column inches devoted to this brief monument, almost nobody has stopped to ask the first question that's usually asked of new works of art: is it any good?

And no, it's not good.

But that's not the point, is it? We didn't erect a model of a Syrian ruin in Trafalgar Square because it might look nice; it's there because it's supposed to mean something. This isn't far from what Theodor Adorno meant when he talked about the "fetish-character" in music, the way that scraps and phrases of great classical pieces are isolated from their context in the work itself, atomized and commodified, so that they can come to stand for "high culture," a chimera that in practice wasn't much more than a crutch for the ego, a way of looking down at other people who don't fetishize the grand signifiers of art. The actual content and quality of the thing is subordinated to an imposed set of social meanings. But what did the Palmyra arch, recreated in London, actually mean?

Related: Watch 'The Wolf of the West End'

Really, it's quite hard to tell. It's supposed to be a protest against the ongoing cultural vandalism in Iraq and Syria, which is fair enough. But putting it in London seems a little smug, not to mention hypocritical. The message is that Iraqis and Syrians can't be trusted to take care of their own artifacts, that we in the west are still the guardians of universal culture. In other words, it's a form of looting—we've stolen a piece of Syrian history, copied it, and tried to make it our own.

This is nothing new. Walk along Northumberland Avenue, from the fake arch down to the river Thames, turn left, and eventually you'll come across Cleopatra's Needle—an actual ancient Egyptian obelisk, 3,500 years old, dug up from Alexandria and shipped halfway across the world, all because some Victorian imperialists decided that they quite fancied plonking it down in their capital. (Incredibly, a recent opinion piece in the Evening Standard used the arch to praise the incredible foresight of the "enterprising, acquisitive Victorians" in shamelessly stealing great works of art from around the world.)

While Isis' outright destruction of big historic sites tends to be what makes headlines, what the group usually does with priceless historical artifacts is sell them. They percolate through Syria's northern border and the global black market, until they end up in the world's great antiquities markets—one of which happens to be London. Nobody really knows how many blood artifacts have ended up in the city—it could be dozens, it could be thousands. But before we start patting ourselves on the back for appreciating world history, it might be a good idea to look at our own country's role in its destruction.

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Video via the 'MAURY' Facebook account. Thumbnail photo of Cruz via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

Read: Ted Cruz Once Fought to Keep Dildos Illegal in Texas

When 21-year-old Searcy Hayes appeared on The Maury Povich Show late last week, it was to face cheating allegations from her boyfriend, Freddie Green. After proving that Green was indeed the father of her three-month-old son, Hayes walked away to focus on her family—only to find out after the episode aired that the internet had dubbed her the spitting image of anti-dildo presidential hopeful Ted Cruz.

Now, she's taken the potentially devastating comparison and capitalized on it by accepting $10,000 to star in a six-minute sex tape for porn site xHamster.

xHamster spokesman Mike Kulich told the Huffington Post that the site chose Hayes because she is clearly an overnight viral superstar. "I think a lot of xHamster viewers really wanted to see her in action," he said.

Hayes's boyfriend, Green, will join her in the tape, and he said that the two didn't mull too hard over the decision to accept the $10,000 offer. "We want to buy a truck, pay off our house, and we might get married," he told HuffPo. "I never had anyone say, 'Here's $10,000! Go make a sex tape.'"

Hayes says she'd never heard of Ted Cruz before her brush with internet fame and doesn't believe she looks like him. "The eyes are different," she tells Maury in this explosive Facebook video follow-up. "He's got a bigger nose than I do."

Birdhouse team member Clint Walker talks about the team's back-to-back KOTR wins

King of the Road is an institution in skateboarding. Started by Thrasher magazine in 2003, it's a demented, roving adventure that follows various skate teams across the country as they compete to accomplish a set list of tasks, some of which carry great risk of bodily harm, and others that don't involve skateboarding at all (but still might carry great risk of bodily harm).

VICELAND has teamed up with Thrasher for the latest season, which will feature the Birdhouse, Chocolate, and Toy Machine teams hauling ass across America, throwing their bodies and whatever dignity they might have had into the wind for a chance to become the reigning King of the Road.

Birdhouse is this year's defending champion, having won the competition in 2014 and 2013. Its current lineup features some of the biggest names in the game, like Aaron "Jaws" Homoki, Ben Raybourn, and Clint Walker, who will do whatever's necessary to win their third KOTR crown. Give the videos above and below a watch and get to know the gentlemen hoping for a hat trick this year, and keep an eye out for introductory videos for the Chocolate and Toy Machine teams coming soon.

KING OF THE ROAD premieres Thursday, April 28 on VICELAND at 11 PM ET/PT. Until then, watch the documentary following the last ten years of the competition.