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YouTuber Vitaly posts bail after arrest for pranks in the Philippines, returned to immigration custody

YouTuber Vitaly posts bail after arrest for pranks in the Philippines, returned to immigration custody

Express Tribune8 hours ago

Russian-American YouTuber Vitaly Zdorovetskiy, known for his controversial prank content, has posted bail after being arrested in Pasay City for harassing Filipinos.
Despite being granted temporary liberty by the Taguig City Regional Trial Court Branch 153 on June 18, he remains under the custody of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) due to a pending deportation case.
Photo: BI
Zdorovetskiy, who faced charges of unjust vexation and other offences, was previously held by the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology from June 11. After the court allowed him to post bail, he was transferred back to the BI facility at Camp Bagong Diwa.
BI Commissioner Joel Anthony Viado confirmed that the vlogger will not be allowed to move freely and will remain in detention. "He will not be allowed to roam around as he is already seen as an undesirable alien," Viado stated. Although Zdorovetskiy filed for temporary liberty, promising to stay within Metro Manila and not evade deportation, his request does not exempt him from BI custody.
The vlogger was apprehended on April 2 following multiple public disturbances in Bonifacio Global City. In a now-viral Kick video titled 'Vitaly disturbing the peace in the Philippines,' he was seen impersonating a police officer, forcibly filming civilians, mocking a security guard with pop lyrics, and causing minor traffic incidents while driving a tricycle.
Deportation proceedings are on hold until his local legal issues are resolved and any sentence is served.

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YouTuber Vitaly posts bail after arrest for pranks in the Philippines, returned to immigration custody
YouTuber Vitaly posts bail after arrest for pranks in the Philippines, returned to immigration custody

Express Tribune

time8 hours ago

  • Express Tribune

YouTuber Vitaly posts bail after arrest for pranks in the Philippines, returned to immigration custody

Russian-American YouTuber Vitaly Zdorovetskiy, known for his controversial prank content, has posted bail after being arrested in Pasay City for harassing Filipinos. Despite being granted temporary liberty by the Taguig City Regional Trial Court Branch 153 on June 18, he remains under the custody of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) due to a pending deportation case. Photo: BI Zdorovetskiy, who faced charges of unjust vexation and other offences, was previously held by the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology from June 11. After the court allowed him to post bail, he was transferred back to the BI facility at Camp Bagong Diwa. BI Commissioner Joel Anthony Viado confirmed that the vlogger will not be allowed to move freely and will remain in detention. "He will not be allowed to roam around as he is already seen as an undesirable alien," Viado stated. Although Zdorovetskiy filed for temporary liberty, promising to stay within Metro Manila and not evade deportation, his request does not exempt him from BI custody. The vlogger was apprehended on April 2 following multiple public disturbances in Bonifacio Global City. In a now-viral Kick video titled 'Vitaly disturbing the peace in the Philippines,' he was seen impersonating a police officer, forcibly filming civilians, mocking a security guard with pop lyrics, and causing minor traffic incidents while driving a tricycle. Deportation proceedings are on hold until his local legal issues are resolved and any sentence is served.

Trump's war on the undocumented
Trump's war on the undocumented

Express Tribune

time9 hours ago

  • Express Tribune

Trump's war on the undocumented

It begins in the dead of night – ICE agents raiding factories, restaurants and farms, while families sleep unaware as the state flexes its full disciplinary muscle, reviving the ghosts of America's exclusionary past with a vengeance that is unmistakably contemporary. What Donald Trump hails as 'the largest deportation operation in American history' is unfolding as a dark and sweeping expansion of state machinery – an iron-fisted blend of ICE raids, sprawling detention centres and legal shortcuts dug up from the dustiest corners of America's statute books to shore up both physical and social borders. Framed as the fulfilment of his campaign vows, Trump's vision for a 'new America' rests on what Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito terms 'immunitas': the sovereign's feverish attempt to insulate itself from perceived contamination. In the Trumpian worldview, the 'disposable labour' extracted from nations long ravaged by US foreign policy is now being cast aside like a used tool – mercilessly and by design. Even some of Trump's allies are starting to shift in their seats. Joe Rogan, one of his most prominent supporters, recently sounded an alarm: 'We've got to be careful that we don't become monsters while we're fighting monsters.' However, the warnings from the populist leader's base remain steeped in the same obscene necropolitical logic that draws lines between the human and the subhuman – the 'monsters'. The protests now erupting across the US are not new but mark a renewed moment of convergence between immigration enforcement and a long, bloody history of racialised labour control. From the Chinese Exclusion Act to ICE's post-9/11 rise, the American state has always policed its borders by criminalising racialised 'others' while exploiting their labour. The Trump-era raids echo the worksite crackdowns of the 1980s and Obama's courthouse arrests. However, with 80-strong factory raids, convoys blocking roads and National Guard troops deployed without state consent, this is a new escalation. There is no new crisis driving the ongoing assault but an old political trick: manufacture the spectacle of invasion to fuel nationalist panic and weaponise it against workers and dissent. Across the country, working-class communities – immigrant and non-immigrant alike – have taken to the streets. From handcuffed migrants to student walkouts, from union banners to handmade placards reading 'Mi familia, no se separa,' the resistance is multi-generational and deeply grounded. The border wars and the street wars have converged. For many, the raids are not just about immigration. They reject the logics of neoliberal 'security', challenging the premise that human life can be reduced to economic cost or to statistics in a detention ledger. In Washington, a different story is being told. The Trump administration, flanked by DHS officials and amplified by mainstream networks, insists this is a crackdown on 'criminals'. Protestors are dismissed as 'lawless mobs'. Trump, in his typical red meat rhetoric, even declared that Los Angeles had been 'invaded and occupied' and vowed to 'liberate' it. Attorney General Ashley Bell pledged to prosecute protestors aggressively. However, immigrant communities, organisers and rights activists see through the smoke, contending that the real criminals are those tearing families apart to prop up a neoliberal system that depends on cheap, precarious and deportable labour. Undocumented migrants have long formed a surplus army for US capitalism, hyper-exploitable because their fear makes them compliant. Seen through this lens, border enforcement is a farce dressed as a national security issue. It's about preserving racial capitalism, disciplining people of colour and preserving profit margins. The 'rule-of-law' narrative is thus inverted: the deeper violence lies not in protest, but in decades of war, trade policy and austerity that drive migration. Colonial Legacies and Necropolitics The domestic clashes cannot be understood without their global and historical context. The US border is not a neutral line. It is a colonial scar. From Indigenous dispossession to wars in Mexico and the Caribbean, the very idea of the border was forged in empire. Migrants fleeing violence and poverty in Central America or the Caribbean are not 'invaders', they are survivors of systems created, in part, by US policy. Their displacement is the aftershock of coups, land grabs and extractive economics. As protesters take to the streets with Mexican and Black flags, slogans like 'Here we stay' invoke historical truth: these cities were built by the very people now being hunted. Through the lens of Frantz Fanon, one sees how the immigrant becomes a 'zone of non-being', excluded from rights so the state can justify violence and deprived of the 'right to have all rights'. Fanon's psychology of the oppressed reveals that the migrant is demonised in discourse precisely to justify state violence. Indeed, as Fanon noted, the social order locks 'white people into whiteness, Black people into blackness'. The point is both theoretical and practical: immigrants exist outside the democratic community in the state's eyes, made 'other' so their rights are negotiable. Under such logic, US immigration policy embodies what Achille Mbembe has called necropolitics: the power to define who may live and who must die or suffer. Migrants in detention centres are literally at the mercy of a system designed to wear them down psychologically and physically. Reports of children in cages, or men packed into vans with little water, reveal a state's willingness to inflict slow violence. One organiser reported that 'intimidation and terror' – the kind seen in San Diego's restaurant raids – is now routine. The state is not just locking people up to fight crime. It is managing poverty while disciplining surplus lives. That's the essence of what Loïc Wacquant calls 'prisonfare'. Immigration raids slot neatly into this logic: not just law enforcement, but a pipeline into the detention-industrial complex. While the discourse on criminal justice reform grows louder, migrants remain outside its moral perimeter – detained without charges, deported without explanation, excluded from rights others are beginning to reclaim. By the Numbers Trump's ambition is staggering: one million deportations in his first year. The US currently houses around 13 million undocumented immigrants—roughly 4% of its population. Nearly 80% have lived in the US for over a decade, many with US-born children. In 2022, undocumented immigrants contributed $69 billion in taxes. And yet, they are being targeted en masse. ICE has just 6,000 officers, but Trump has expanded its powers, enlisted other federal agencies like the IRS, and reopened detention facilities. He has even floated reactivating Alcatraz. Legal protections are being stripped. Trump has fired immigration judges, expanded expedited removals and invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans without hearings. Some were sent not to Venezuela, but to a supermax prison in El Salvador. Justifications included tattoos, nationality and assumed gang affiliation – no due process, no evidence. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for migrants from Venezuela, Haiti and Afghanistan is also on the chopping block. Collateral arrests and raids in schools, churches, and hospitals are back. Even programs like Project Homecoming, which offer $1,000 to 'voluntarily' return, function as soft coercion. One calculation found that 72,000 people were deported in Trump's first 98 days, roughly 737 per day, nearly double the daily average under Biden. What remains, then, is a moral and political question: who belongs, and on what terms? If the answer depends on citizenship, productivity or compliance, then millions will remain outside the circle of rights. In the mainstream imagination, human rights are often tethered to the sanctity of citizenship. However, as Hannah Arendt famously warned, the stateless are those who have lost the 'right to have rights'. If rights are contingent upon national membership, then what remains for the undocumented, the displaced, the 'others' at the border of recognition? What happens next is uncertain. The administration has vowed to intensify its programme of detentions and deportations. But activists report that every raid is now met with instant organising by union halls, churches and community centres. Grassroots patrols spot ICE vehicles in advance, legal teams mobilise at courthouses and protest waves continue. Even as the White House drums up images of chaos, those on the ground insist their cause is orderly and just. In the words of a young organiser at a Philly vigil, this is more than crisis management – it is a moment of international morality: 'We're fighting for the working class, for immigrants, for our freedom. We won't back down.'

Chris Brown pleads not guilty
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Express Tribune

time16 hours ago

  • Express Tribune

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American R&B singer Chris Brown on Friday pleaded not guilty in a UK court to a charge stemming from an alleged London nightclub brawl in 2023, reported AFP. Brown, 36, in a navy blue three-piece suit and tie and wearing glasses, stood in the dock as the charge was put to him, replying: "Not guilty, ma'am." The singer, who is on £5 million ($6.7 million) bail, made no comment as he arrived earlier to find a large group of photographers gathered outside the central London court. He spoke only during the hearing to confirm his name and date of birth and enter his plea to the charge of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent. He smiled and waved to fans in the public gallery as he left. A five to seven-day long trial was fixed to start on October 26, 2026. Currently on the UK leg of an international tour, Brown spent nearly a week in jail last month before being released on bail. Police arrested the star at a five-star hotel in the northwestern city of Manchester hours after reportedly flying in by private jet. Under the terms of his bail, he will forfeit the £5 million guarantee if he fails to return for court proceedings. Judge Tony Baumgartner gave him the green light to continue his scheduled tour, which began on June 8 in Amsterdam. The singer, who had a troubled relationship with Barbadian singer Rihanna, is next due to perform in London on Saturday ahead of dates in Manchester, Birmingham, Dublin and Glasgow. The tour will continue in France and Portugal in early July before a string of concerts in the US, wrapping up in Memphis in the US in October. Brown is charged in relation to an assault in which the victim was allegedly struck several times with a bottle before being pursued, punched and kicked. The alleged incident took place at the exclusive private member's club Tape in Hanover Square in London on February 19, 2023 while Brown was touring in the UK. Grammy winner Other bail terms include that he should surrender his passport if he is not travelling. He is also required to live at a specific address known to the court and is not permitted to visit the nightclub where the alleged assault took place or contact the alleged victim, Abraham Diah. Shortly after being released from prison in May, Brown posted an Instagram story referencing his Breezybowl tour. "From the cage to the stage. Breezybowl," he posted. Akinlolu also entered a not guilty plea to the same charge of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent. Both men are also jointly charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm. They will enter pleas to that charge on July 11, the court was told. Brown also faces a third charge of having an offensive weapon, a bottle, in public. The Grammy-winning singer is known for mid-2000s hits such as Kiss, Kiss. He rose from a local church choir in Virginia to sudden fame with his rich R&B voice and later rap. 'History of Violence' In January, Brown filed a $500 million lawsuit against Warner Bros Discovery and producers of the documentary Chris Brown: A History of Violence, accusing them of defamation and knowingly spreading false information about him. Filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, the lawsuit targetted Warner Bros Discovery and Ample Entertainment, the production company behind the documentary that aired in October. The film chronicled Brown's history of legal troubles and abuse allegations, including a claim by a woman who alleged the singer drugged and assaulted her during a 2020 yacht party reportedly hosted by music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs. According to Rolling Stone, Brown claims the documentary presented him as a "serial rapist and sexual abuser," despite no sex-related convictions and evidence that the allegations in question had been discredited. The suit alleges the producers acted "in pursuit of likes, clicks, downloads and dollars," ignoring journalistic standards and promoting "false information" despite being provided proof to the contrary. "To put it simply, this case is about the media putting their own profits over the truth," the filing reads. It further asserts that the Jane Doe referenced in the film had previously been "discredited" and accused of being an "aggressor" in past incidents. A spokesperson for Warner Bros Discovery responded to the lawsuit, saying: "We stand behind the production and will vigorously defend ourselves against this lawsuit." While the documentary revisits many of these incidents, the lawsuit argues it goes beyond public record and ventures into "malicious and defamatory territory."

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