Unist'ot'en camp. Photos via Facebook.

A few weeks ago the National Energy Board of Canada conditionally approved Enbridge’s plan to build twin pipelines called the Northern Gateway in northern Alberta and British Columbia. It was a grotesquely unpopular decision, with environmental concerns so ubiquitous among residents of BC that even pro-tar sands political parties are against it. The pipelines would carry diluent chemicals and bitumen between coastal tankers and Alberta’s tar sands, increasing export opportunities while introducing the risk of a spill to the coast, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Bear rainforest, and some of the leastcontaminated fresh-water rivers in the world. But the plan’s final approval, seemingly inevitable under Canada’s oil-drunk federal government, could result in unprecedented conflict: A broad coalition of politicians, citizens, environmental groups and indigenous nations are prepared to block the project with their bodies as it inches towards the coast.

At the Unist’ot’en encampment in Wet’suwet’en territory, people are already living in cabins that were built to blockade the Northern Gateway. Along with most other indigenous nations in BC, who have never given up their lands to the Canadian state, those at Unist’ot’en camp believe that this project escalates a conflict that is centuries old—they equate the Northern Gateway with a violation of their sovereignty and the extension of colonial law into their unsurrendered territories.

It’s appropriate then that Northern Gateway’s most enthusiastic cheerleader, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, told the G20 in 2009 that Canada “has no history of colonialism.” In this historicidal remark, Harper denied the often horrific strategies used by settlers and corporations to force indigenous people from their lands over hundreds of years, policies which are the very foundation of our country. But these acts of violence and dispossession, which Harper seeks to erase from history, will only intensify if Enbridge’s Northern Gateway is approved. This is because Enbridge plans to build the Northern Gateway predominantly across unsurrendered indigenous lands.

“There are creative, subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle ways that the practices of colonialism are still carried out. And this is absolutely one of them,” Jess Housty argued. She is an elected councillor of Heiltsuk Nation in BC who gained support through her anti-Enbridge activism. Speaking on behalf of her nation, Housty told me that the Northern Gateway is “an issue of sovereignty. It’s the point where we’re saying enough is enough, too much has been taken away. This is our place, this is our territory, these are our resources. We have a responsibility to steward them and we’re saying no. It’s about asserting our right to govern ourselves and to act as a sovereign nation.” Fighting the Northern Gateway is a matter of getting “the authority of tribal law recognized” and seeing “how it can be enforced and honoured and respected as a law of the land and a law of this place that has never been ceded by its original owners,” Housty said.

This sovereignty that many indigenous nations claim along the pipeline route is established in BC’s history of land disputes, which is unique among the Canadian provinces in that it is largely unresolved. Hayden King, director of Ryerson University’s Centre for Indigenous Governance, explained: “In the history of the BC treaty process very few agreements have been made. The vast majority of territory in British Columbia is unceded, unsurrendered indigenous territory.” But according to King, there are “two competing and contrasting perspectives on what unceded land, unceded territory means when it comes to consultation, development, rights, and so on.”

At one pole are the original inhabitants of these territories who have never signed away their lands and believe that they have the right to self-govern. This perspective is promoted by broad alliances of indigenous nations in BC, such as the Yinka-Dene alliance of 130 nations who have banned the transportation of oil through their territories and waterways under tribal law. Speaking on behalf of the alliance, Chief Martin Louie of Nadleh Whut’en First Nation was confident that this indigenous law is enforceable, particularly because most people in BC are also opposed to Enbridge’s project. He explained that there are “a lot of people that stand to help us fight this fight, whether it’s going to be in court or on the land… All these years I grew up with people calling British Columbia beautiful. It’s not going to be that way with all these projects going through it, and a lot of people are behind us on this.”

Unist’ot’en spokesperson Freda Huson explained that in Wet’suwet’en territory the traditional, consensus-based system of governance is “still alive and well here, even though a lot of other First Nations have lost their system.” Under this system they have banned all pipelines and established a rule that those looking to pass through the territory must answer a series of questions: “Who are you? Where are you from? How long do you plan to stay if we let you in? Do you work for the industry or government that’s destroying our lands? How will your visit benefit my people?” The last question, Huson said, is the one that “industry has trouble answering.”

“We’ve written them several letters saying no to this project. Nothing they say or do will change our mind. Because the environmental concerns come before any money, and we’re not holding out just so we can get money from them. We don’t want their money. We want to keep our land for future generations,” Huson said.

But despite all this, Huson’s clan has repeatedly found that corporate surveyors are sneaking onto their land. In November of 2012 they issued a feather to a group of pipeline surveyors, which is “the last warning in our tradition that you’re trespassing when you haven’t even spoke to us and asked permission to be there. None of these companies have ever approached us.” Under historical Wet’suwet’en law, ignoring this warning and continuing to trespass is punishable by death.

“Does Canadian law respect that perspective? Not really,” Hayden King said.

Proponents of this pipeline, like Enbridge and the Canadian state, hold a radically different understanding of what it means for indigenous land to be unceded. Under Canadian law, King explained, these parties “have a duty to consult and accommodate” indigenous peoples when proposing new projects. However “Canadian law is still very fuzzy about what consultation entails” and this could involve anything from writing a letter to actually giving indigenous groups veto power over proposals. But ultimately, King explained, consultation “doesn’t mean that native people can say no to development if they oppose it… Canada assumes that it has ultimate jurisdiction over this territory.”

Sentries guard Unist'ot'en land from trespassers.

“We’re always going to have this disparity between the jurisdiction indigenous peoples believe they have when it comes to unsurrendered land and the jurisdiction that Canada believes it has over those unsurrendered lands… they’re just two separate ways of looking at the world. They’re incompatible,” King said.

But the incompatibility of these worldviews makes conflict inevitable. “We’ve seen over and over again how government, military, and police bulldoze indigenous people that are basically just trying to protect our lands,” Freda Huson said. “It’s actually them that instigate everything they try to turn it around via media… You’ve seen what happened across New Brunswick. It was a peaceful protest and they were macing the women and children.”

I asked Jess Housty of Heiltsuk Nation if she fears that the government will turn to violence to build the Northern Gateway when people along its route refuse to be moved. “I do not fear it but I anticipate it,” she said. But Housty would prefer a peaceful solution. “I have a firm belief that we need to resolve this by peaceful, logical means in any way we can. I believe that because that is what my elders have told me and that is what is consistent with my teachings as a Heiltsuk person. Having said that, if this continues to be escalated by the federal government, by the National Energy Board, by Enbridge and the proponents, there’s nothing that I won’t do to stop this pipeline and I know I won’t be alone in that. I say that with the spirit of my community behind me,” she explained.

At Unist’ot’en camp, where a much more militant strategy of land defence is already in place, Freda Huson believes the RCMP’s use of force is inevitable. “I believe they’ve been preparing for it because they opened a base for training in Prince George and they upped their training and security with the RCMP,” she said. Nonetheless, Huson remains confident that the pipeline will never be built. “If any of government or industry is listening, you don’t know what you’re up against.” Accordingly, the camp is currently investing in security equipment after several arsons occurred and a homemade bomb was set off in territory. The perpetuators of these acts are unknown, but Huson speculates that they could potentially be part of an RCMP dirty tricks campaign or that these acts may have been undertaken by corporate goons.

Enbridge’s spokesperson, Graham White, declined to comment on whether or not the company had consulted with the many indigenous communities that will be impacted by their project, or what they will do if communities along the route do not consent to its construction. “I really don’t see the point in me taking the time to provide any further comments,” he told me in an email. Mr. White might have been annoyed that I caught him in a lie the last time we spoke.

But in the case of the Northern Gateway, this process of consultation was undertaken by the National Energy Board’s Joint Review Panel. It was a process that may have fulfilled the government’s duty to consult, even though many nations refused to participate on the basis that they had no input into designing the process itself. “It’s a process that was not of our making as a community. It’s of course a process being imposed on us,” Jess Housty explained.

There was also a pervasive sense that the panel’s outcome was pre-determined and the hearings were just a public spectacle. “It’s not a meaningful consultation process if ‘no’ is not an acceptable end result. There was no way that this process was going to end in the Joint Review Panel recommending that cabinet reject this project and then cabinet rejects this project,” Housty said. This sentiment seems to be confirmed in the NEB’s final conclusion – after hearing 1,159 testimonies against the project and only two for it, from indigenous and non-indigenous groups alike, the NEB’s three person panel determined that “Canada and Canadians would be better off with the Enbridge Northern Gateway project than without it.”

But despite these criticisms, Housty’s nation decided that they would participate in this process and voice their concerns. For the arrival of the National Energy Board, Heiltsuk students organized a peaceful protest at the airport that included children, elders, and hereditary chiefs in traditional regalia. When the NEB panel arrived, Housty recalls, they “walked off the plane, bee lined to a waiting taxi, took a water taxi across to the next island where they were staying at a resort, and then issued a letter saying that they were cancelling our hearings because they felt that their security was being threatened. It took a day and a half of negotiations to get the hearings back on track and that was time that was never adequately made up.”

When the hearings finally went forward, many speakers were unable to deliver their prepared testimonies due to time constraints. Those elders who spoke, according to Housty, “were antagonized by the panel. We had elders who walked off the stand in protest because they refused to suffer being disrespected that way by people who had come into our territory and who were supposed to be unbiased.” She recalls “the atmosphere in the room… was of three very distracted people who were doing a duty but doing it in a very perfunctory way.” Ultimately, she feels that her community was denied “their right to express themselves. And that’s a lot of hurt and anger and disrespect that’s still stirring in this community.”

Yet, with so much anger growing throughout Canada’s northwest, the NEB’s decision can in no way be final.

“This pipeline will not be built,” Housty asserted. “I very firmly believe that the proponents of this pipeline underestimate the opposition to it. This is not just a First Nations issue; it’s not just an environmental issue. There is a huge and diverse constituency around this work, this advocacy work, this activism. The networks that have been built, the communities that have been built, are incredible and powerful and strong. These are people that are unlikely and often unlooked for allies that have never banded together as strongly as I’ve seen them band together here. It’s an incredible thing to watch.”

Initial reports said some books were literally burned which the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has subsequently denied. Photo via.

In the first few days of 2014, scientists, journalists, and environmentalists were horrified to discover that the Harper government had begun a process to close seven of the 11 of Canada’s world-renown Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries, citing a consolidation and digitizing effort as the reason. Reports immediately proliferated that the process was undertaken in careless haste, with the officials sent to gather and transfer the documents allegedly neglecting to take proper inventory of the centuries’ worth of documents containing vital information on environmental life, from aquatic ecosystems to water safety and polar research, with some documents reportedly dumped in landfills or burned, leading some scientists to refer to it as a ‘libricide.' 

Soon after, a widely disseminated photograph emerged displaying a dumpster at the Maurice Lamontage Institute in Mont-Joli Quebec, stuffed with hundreds of carelessly discarded historic books and documents. In Halifax, Kelly Wheelan-Eans, an environmental researcher with the Manitoban Wetlands told CBC News that he saved hundreds of documents that he found abandoned in an empty library. “It was really hard to figure out where to start because there was so many documents that you just went 'Oh my God,'” he said, disbelief palpable in his voice. “They just left this lying here?”

The incautious nature of the consolidation effort adds another alarming chapter to a Harper government that appears deadset on directing how scientific research is conducted in Canada. Last Sunday, CBC’s the Fifth Estate aired an investigation on how the Harper government has dealt with scientists over the past seven years. The doc illustrated a battle between an ideology driven administration and mostly apolitical scientists simply pursuing the facts gleaned from their research, and how it led many to be silenced and defunded. Scientists discussed being hamstrung and dissuaded from pursuing politically inconvenient facts, instances of research that didn't fit policy directives being curtailed or shut down completely; world-renown researchers who were summarily dismissed and barred from accessing their work; and programs monitoring food inspection, water quality and climate change being reduced. The federal government has dismissed over 2,000 scientists since 2008.

The government denies political objectives have anything to do with the decision to close the DFO libraries, citing $473,000 in savings and a lack of public interest as motivation for the decision.

Still, regardless of the incentives behind the recent cuts, it’s easy to see why on-lookers are viewing this politically suspicious decision with skepticism. Since taking office in 2006, the Harper government has governed with an iron-fist, establishing unprecedented barriers to information on the road to becoming the most secretive administration in Canadian history.

This type of fanatical secrecy comes with a host of problems for the public. “Harper’s government is different from previous administrations in the disdain it’s had for the media, and the obsession his government has with controlling the message,” said Dr. Jonathan Rose, an associate professor of Political Science at Queen’s University. “Ensuring that citizens have access to the right kind of information to make the proper decisions is integral, and if government is misleading in its communications, then the citizens are unable to do their democratic duty. It’s a problem because it inhibits the public’s decision-making process.”

As a whole, the Harper government has proven itself to be no friends of science. An editorial in the New York Times earlier this year excoriated Harper for a prolonged campaign in muzzling scientists. “The government of Canada—led by Stephen Harper—has made it harder and harder for publicly financed scientists to communicate with the public and with other scientists,” wrote Verlyn Klinkenborg. “Now the government is doing all it can to monitor and restrict the flow of scientific information, especially concerning research into climate change, fisheries and anything to do with the Alberta tar sands—source of the diluted bitumen that would flow through the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.” 

The cuts mean fewer scientists will be able to research the waters of the Canadian Basin. Photo via.

Much of this obfuscation is happening with little outrage from the general public, allowing the Harper government’s shadowy bureaucracy to become the new normal. And it’s not because Canadians are unaware of Harper’s cloak and dagger governing. In a poll conducted by Ipsos Reid for Postmedia and Global News earlier this year, two-thirds of Canadians stated they believed that “the Harper Conservatives are too secretive and have not kept their promise to govern according to high ethical standards.” 

While the Department of Fisheries and Oceans currently contains over 600,000 pieces of material, only 30,000 have been digitized. According to the Department of Fisheries website, they will be discarding duplicates and adding the rest online by request. They failed to mention anything about the books that will not be digitized due to copyright laws.

Keeping the public and press in the dark about what’s happening at the DFO is not without dangerous historical precedent, says Kelly Toughill, a journalism professor at King’s University in Halifax. “About 18 years ago the federal government ignored, then muzzled DFO scientists who were warning that cod was being over-fished in Newfoundland,” she wrote to me over email. “The result was the complete collapse of the cod fishery and the complete collapse of the economy of what was then Canada's poorest province.” 

In a 1995 piece that garnered him a National Newspaper Award, Canadian Press reporter Steve Thorne wrote of scientists at the DFO whose research was suppressed and neutered by the government in an eerily similar fashion to what many Canadian scientists are saying today. “Federal fisheries officials routinely destroy memos, minutes and other records to hide politically unpalatable science and thwart access-to-information requests,” he wrote. “[…] Officials at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans have even tried to discredit scientists whose findings don’t jibe with political agendas.”

Whether the recent cuts to the DFO were simply capitulations to budget concerns, driven by ideological objectives, or something in between is up for debate. What isn’t up for debate is how the Harper government has made the muddling and obsessive guarding of information an administrative mandate, leaving Canadians in the dark in a time when international government encroachments on our personal information are at an all-time high.

“The next several months will see a battle over people who want greater accountability and transparency and a government who will try to frame the election message one of fiscal responsibility,” said Dr. Rose. “And it’s up to the voters to decide which they find most persuasive.”


@jordanisjoso

Last night, there was an air of frustration at the crowded Community Board 3’s meeting in their offices on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The exasperating struggle between members centered around whether or not the contributions of the Beastie Boys—one of hip-hop’s most beloved and longest running acts—was significant enough to pass a street corner co-name. LeRoy McCarthy, who proposed that the corner of Rivington and Ludlow Streets in the Lower East Side be co-named “Beastie Boy Square,” presented the proposition that lead to nearly an hour and a half debate.

LeRoy, a film location scout and previous employee at Bad Boy Records, hopes to bring recognition to the hip-hop community in New York City, the epicenter of the worldwide cultural movement, by co-naming a street after an artist in each of the city’s five boroughs. 

“Since the time that hip-hop was founded in 1973, where is the recognition from New York City? It would be nice if the birthplace of hip-hop were to recognize this art form, which has given so much to the city, “ said LeRoy.

Co-naming simply means that a sign with an alternative name is placed underneath the already existing street name. More than 100 streets in the city are co-named each year, so it makes sense that at least one should honor such an movement as hip-hop—especially when a rock group like U2 has a co-named street and they aren’t even from the US, let alone New York City. Unlike U2, Michael "Mike D" Diamond, Adam "MCA" Yauch, and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz are New York natives. They came up on the Lower East Side, seeing shows at CBGB’s, recording at 171A, and writing songs in their apartment on Chrystie Street. Not to mention, it is almost impossible to listen to a Beastie Boys song without hearing at least one reference to the city. Their affinity for the culture and life in New York is clear. And beyond their music, they are philanthropists and activists who support human and animal rights.

“They heightened my awareness to political and social issues, they started out misogynists, but like anyone else, they grew up and started speaking out for women’s rights and Tibetan rights,” said Nessim Halioua, a Rivington Street resident who spoke in support of the co-name. “I [told myself], One day I am going to come to New York to see what Paul’s Boutique looks like. The Beastie Boys are why I [came to this city].”

But even with the history of the band so rooted in the community, board members still questioned if the group had enough involvement in the area to warrant the request.

During his presentation to the Community Board, LeRoy brought materials to support his claim that the Beastie Boys have had an impact on the area, the most obvious evidence being their 1989 album cover for Paul’s Boutique. The iconic photograph captured by Jeremy Shatan and seen by millions, offers a panoramic view of a pre-gentrified Ludlow Street, including the corner in question. The once gritty area of the city, now 24 years later and much more developed, is virtually unrecognizable. Hip-hop’s exact birthplace is attributed to 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the South Bronx in 1973, but the culturally diverse Lower East Side was an area that fostered the art of musicians, dancers, and graffiti artists of the time.

“Their connection to the Lower East Side is clear and obvious from the iconic Paul's Boutique and through the frequent lyrical references in their songs. Everyone knows the cover. I have friends who come from [around the world] and say, ‘Show me where the cover of Paul’s Boutique was taken,’” said Shannon Saks, a Rivington Street resident and strong supporter of the co-name.

One of the most confusing aspects of the board meeting was the member’s inability to come to an agreement on their own guidelines, like the one that states, “Individual prospective honorees must be deceased.” Some of the members felt Adam Yauch, who lost his battle to cancer in 2012, didn’t suffice. The member’s continued to dwell on what seemed like moot points throughout the evening, even suggesting that the remaining members of the group should attend the next meeting in support of their own co-name.

While many on the board were reserved about their opinions, Chad Marlow was outwardly supportive in moving forward with Beastie Boys Square, recognizing them as an influential aspect of hip-hop and New York history, while member David Crane felt they clearly did not meet the requirements.

In the end, David's biggest point of contention was the amount of signatures LeRoy gathered from the block’s residents. Although LeRoy fulfilled the requirement of 75 percent of residential and business support, the board was not thoroughly convinced that the community backed the co-name. The final verdict was for the decision was to be postponed until LeRoy gathered a yet to be determined number of signatures to win over the unsure members, which unfortunately appeared to be the majority of the board.

After an hour of sitting in the small and sweltering boardroom, listening to members deliberate their uncertainty, supporters of the co-name were severely disappointed with the meeting’s outcome.

“Throughout the lively discussion, it appeared that many of the board members present were completely unaware of the contribution and impact that the Beastie Boys have made, not only to the community within CB3, but to New York as a whole. Many of the board members' comments were off-point, irrelevant, and appeared to misconstrue and misinterpret the facts presented to them in support of the application,” said Shannon Saks.

This was not the first time that LeRoy faced opposition in his pursuit to co-name a street. In November of last year, his proposal to have the corner of St. James Place and Fulton Street named “Christopher Wallace Way” after the legendary rapper Biggie Smalls was shot down. Community Board members negated the late rappers honoring for reasons including his misogynistic lyrics, criminal activity, and obesity.

Although the community boards have questioned the impact of hip-hop artists LeRoy hopes to recognize, he plans on moving forward with his project.

“So far I have received overwhelming support from residents in the Ludlow and Rivington area. To go back there and generate more signatures can be done, so I am not going to be dissuaded,” said LeRoy.

Among the disappointments, there has been a success in the co-naming of the corner of 205th Street and Hollis Avenue in Queens to Run DMC/ Jay Master Jay Way in 2009. Leaving only four co-names to be approved, Wu-Tang Clan in Staten Island, Big Pun in the Bronx, Christopher Wallace in Brooklyn, and the Beastie Boys in the Lower East Side.

LeRoy is also hoping to expand his project outside of New York City, in order to pay homage to influential artists nationwide. He has requested a co-naming for Sylvia Robinson, the CEO of Sugar Hill Records and artist credited to “Rappers Delight” in Englewood, NJ as well as old school rapper Heavy D in Mount Vernon, NY.

“As Dead Prez said, “this is bigger than hip-hop.” This is about respect for the culture that hip-hop has created. Since [it first began] with the Sugar Hill Gang, it has gone around the world and back. And this was without any support from New York City,” said LeRoy.

@EricaEuse

Ever since our very First Annual Fiction Issue, back in 2006, Akhil Sharma has been one of our "great white whales." We have been trying to publish his work since he released his debut novel, An Obedient Father. In short, An Obedient Father is a story about a young girl in India and her father, a civil servant, who rapes her. But the book's great surprise, astonishment even, is how he managed to add a humurous aspect to it. For example, the book opens with a description of a government function in India where one clerk is asked to demonstrate his martial arts skill and he obliges by attacking a sign, with a volley of punches and kicks.

But Akhil's next novel is more personal, more brilliant, more tender, more sad, more hard-won, and more honest. If you're the betting type, put money on it: National Book Award, Pulitzer, and the Book Critic Circle-thingy. Akhil's in the running for a hat trick. I gave him a call to talk about his new novel.

VICE: Can you tell me the basic premise behind your new novel?
Akhil Sharma: It's about my brother Anup and how we dealt with his accident in the swimming pool, which created a cascade of problems like seizures and pneumonia. Once Anup's situation stabilized, my family decided to take him from the nursing home and bring him to the house and take care of him themselves. Now that we were away from institutions, we felt that we needed to try all sorts of crackpot ways to get my brother to wake up—wake up as if he were asleep, instead of destroyed. We did this partially because the hospital and nursing home had refused to let us try these cures and loyalty seemed to require that we try everything. We also did this because my mother continued to hope that Anup would recover. 

All the people who came to wake my brother were nuts. Most of them were ordinary people: dentists, engineers, candy shop owners. They would do such things as shout at my brother or try to make him drink water as he lay flat on his back. I am not sure what the reasoning was. These were people who claimed that God had appeared to them in a dream and said that they should go wake my brother. I was 12 then and even as a child I knew these were vain people, that it was vanity that made them want to perform a miracle. I also remember that when these people visited us, I felt proud that my family was so important that strangers would come visit.

I still feel twisted up talking about this. Everything I described was funny and ridiculous and yet there was so much love in what my mother was doing. Also, I recognized this love and I did not want her to act on it because I knew that what she was doing by letting these people in our house was crazy and I wanted my mother to be sane and realistic.

What do your parents think of the book?
Neither of my parents have read the book. Honestly, I don't want them to read it. I think the book makes them appear rather irresponsible and I don't want them to be hurt by this representation. When we are sad and tormented, we often do things which are not the best for us and our loved ones in the long run. I think showing what my family was like might make them feel hurt or embarrassed and they might not see how much I love them.

Is there a portrayal of alcoholism in the novel?
Yes. Alcoholism and drug addiction is a serious problem within the Indian community and it's something that we don't talk about. Often, when confronted with it, we Indians try to excommunicate the addict and his or her family. We say that alcoholics are not really Indians. It is like how Jews claim that alcoholism isn't a big problem within the Jewish community. Another effect of alcoholism is that the family of the addict withdraws from the community due to shame. At one point, the novel had another hundred pages or so of a plot involving the father trying to work with Indian alcoholics and get them sober.

Akhil Sharma's second novel, Family Life, will be published in April by Knopf. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for an excerpt of Akhil's work in the March issue of VICE.

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BUTTLOADS OF PAIN

ILLEGAL ASS ENHANCEMENTS MAY BE AMERICA’S NEXT HEALTH EPIDEMIC

By Wilbert L. Cooper

Ms. Banks, a dancer at the King of Diamonds strip club, showing off her massive, illegally injected ass in a backstage dressing room. All photos by Ben Rosenzweig

The horror that befell Oscarina Busse’s backside began in July 2009. The 35-year-old Floridian felt a dull but persistent itch deep in the meat of her buttocks, one that was impossible to scratch.

It wasn’t long before Oscarina noticed that her butt was changing colors—first turning purple, like a throbbing finger that had been wrapped too tightly with string, and then a cadaverous gray. From there, things got much worse. Her flesh started to crust and painfully peel off until, a few months later, the whole mess collapsed like a badly baked cake. The cheeks of her ass drooped down, loaded with a stew of poisonous goop that collected around her lower buttocks. What had once stood high and felt supple to the touch had become hot and hard and stinging. Oscarina’s derrière had transformed so much that it no longer looked like it was part of a human’s body; her five-year-old daughter mistook her fluid-filled cheeks for a poopy diaper, calling it a “full Pamper.”

Like thousands of women across the globe and increasingly in the US, Oscarina was suffering from the side effects of a black-market butt injection. Because of its clandestine nature, it’s impossible to quantify exactly how many people in the US are illegally getting their butts pumped up like a pair of Reeboks. But the number is definitely growing; due to the proliferation of reported disfiguring cases like Oscarina’s and even deaths, law-enforcement officials and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons view black-market butt injections as a burgeoning epidemic in the US.

The crude inflation procedure consists of shooting a liquid substance such as silicone or mineral oil directly into a client’s butt cheeks and hips through a syringe. There is no substance that is safe to inject into your body to create more volume, not even medical-grade silicone, but these black-market “butt doctors” have, according to victims, allegedly used harsh substances like concrete and the industrial silicone sold at hardware stores in their procedures. After the injections, the exterior flesh wounds are sometimes closed with Super Glue to prevent the toxic slop from leaking out.

Anyone with a basic understanding of health and medicine knows that pumping someone’s body full of free-flowing substances like silicone is extremely dangerous. Hence it has been illegal to inject fluids like silicone into the body for cosmetic purposes since the late 60s, so these butt-pumping procedures are typically performed by back-alley quacks—rogue nut jobs with suitcases full of dirty needles and flasks full of muck. These procedures can trigger a strong autoimmune response as the body attempts to expel the foreign substance, resulting in inflammatory reactions such as polyps, boils, skin discoloration, and even necrosis. These substances have also been known to migrate through the body and fuse themselves to organs, or enter into the bloodstream, spreading infection throughout the body and causing septic shock—which can lead to the amputation of infected body parts or, in the worst cases, death.

In October, I met Oscarina at the beauty salon she owns in Coral Gables, Florida, to better understand why someone would inject their butt with toxic chemicals. She wore a form-fitting pantssuit, high heels that cackled against the salon’s linoleum floor, and a citrusy perfume that permeated the room as she paced back and forth from the shampoo bowls to her styling chair. Surprisingly, her butt seemed high and round. It looked pretty good, especially considering that only a few years ago her haunches had mutated into a distorted heap of poisoned flesh and immense pain.

Oscarina is lucky. She’s one of the few women who, after realizing something was very wrong with her new ass, managed to find a doctor who was willing to surgically remove the substances from her body and rebuild her butt, possibly saving her life in the process. She told me that the whole ordeal is something she feels gravely foolish about now, considering she was blessed with a shapely Dominican figure. But in south Florida, where gargantuan asses plop down every boardwalk and beach each minute of the day, just having a “nice butt” isn’t good enough for many. “No one [here] is ever happy with their body,” the beautician said to me sheepishly. “It wasn’t because I didn’t have it. I just wanted it to be better.”

Although it’s illegal to cram someone’s can full of mysterious substances, finding a butt doctor in the United States is like buying drugs; you just have to know a guy who knows a guy. These hookups happen through word of mouth, as well as via forums and social media sites. In Miami, America’s epicenter for clandestine butt surgery, it’s as easy as walking into a beauty spa where, among the massages, aromatherapy, and saunas, customers can allegedly order a bevy of illegal silicone butt shots off a secret menu.

So that’s exactly what Oscarina did, ordering her first set of injections at the beginning of the summer in 2002 for about $3,000. She wouldn’t tell me who had administered the procedure, but did admit that her clients recommended a certain spa in the area. She did it with the hope of getting her body in shape for bathing-suit season. She described to me the feeling of a syringe piercing deep into her butt and excreting as much as 600cc of industrial silicone simply as “filling,” as if her butt were a water balloon stretched over the nozzle of a garden hose.

It’s important to point out that there are legal butt-enhancing procedures. The FDA deems both implants and fat transfer—where fat is liposuctioned from areas like the patient’s stomach and transferred to his or her fanny—to be safe when conducted by a board-certified plastic surgeon. However, many women choose the black-market procedure to save money. Legal implants and fat transfers can cost up to $10,000 more than their illicit counterparts. For Oscarina, on the other hand, it was more about the shorter recovery time for injections than their lower cost. Fat transfer and butt implants require weeks of recuperation, and the final results don’t settle in for months. Injections result in a new rear end almost instantaneously, as if you’d put your backside in a butt microwave.

“The recuperation was very easy,” Oscarina explained. “I went to work right away. I just had to get a massage with the shots because, otherwise, it wouldn’t settle properly.”

It wasn’t until she decided to undergo another pumping procedure performed by a different spa in 2009 that everything went, quite literally, to shit. “I got the shots,” she told me as she ran a tail comb through the frizzy hair of a teenage girl, “and six months later my butt turned purple. The product had eaten off my muscle, and my skin peeled like an onion.”

It’s impossible to know what the problem might have been the second time around—it could have been the reaction between the new shots and the first round, or perhaps the new shots featured a lower grade of silicone that infected Oscarina’s ass. What we do know is that months after the second round of injections, Oscarina started to lose control of her body. But she was too embarrassed to talk to a doctor, even though her ass was rotting off.

Dr. Constantino Mendieta leans on his McLaren sports car—one of his many automobiles—in front of his massive Pinecrest, Florida, home.

It wasn’t until the winter that Oscarina finally shared her plight with anyone. Unable to bear the discomfort caused by her rapidly worsening deformity, she told me that she opened up to a client at her salon. She abruptly stopped doing the client’s hair and asked the woman to come look at her bare ass in the back room. Minutes later, under hot fluorescent lights, Oscarina pulled up her dress. In the vanity mirror, her painful secret was revealed in her client’s expression.

“When I saw her face, I knew it was terrible,” Oscarina said to me, staring off into the direction of the private room. It was at that moment that she knew she had to swallow her pride and seek real help.

Due to the challenge of reversing such a botched and unsanctioned operation and the resulting potential for legal liability, many doctors will not help a patient like Oscarina. Injected silicone can be corrosive and can easily migrate throughout the body. When it breaks down, which can happen in a matter of hours or over the course of several years, it becomes almost impossible to completely identify or locate. According to a comprehensive history of silicone injections in the US edited by Harvard Law professor Peter Barton Hutt, 555cc of silicone can break apart into 30 billion small globules once inside the body, and each of those 30 billion pieces has the potential to cause an infectious reaction. In other words, getting this stuff in your butt is easy—but to take it out involves getting carved up like a doner kebab.

“After going to consultations with doctors, their reactions made me think I was going to die,” Oscarina said. “I had this painful problem and nobody would touch me.”

Finally, after searching and searching for a doctor who would be willing to help her remove the silicone from her butt and speaking to a few more trusted friends, one of Oscarina’s clients who had been through a similar experience recommended Dr. Constantino Mendieta. The doctor agreed to fix her ass and, by her reckoning, saved her life.

“When I saw him,” Oscarina told me, “I saw the glory.”

The illegally injected butts of King of Diamonds dancers Seven (left) and Amore (right). One day, these bubble butts could be the source of severe health issues for these women.

The same week that I met Oscarina, I visited Dr. Mendieta at his practice in Miami’s affluent Coconut Grove neighborhood—a tan, stucco building with the words PLASTIC SURGERY inscribed on its façade. Dr. Mendieta is one of America’s top plastic surgeons, a sculptor of buttocks on par with Michelangelo whose book on butts, The Art of Gluteal Sculpting, was published in 2011. Unsurprisingly, the butt business has been very good to him. In the driveway sat his revved-up Maserati, which he told me is his beater for his work commute. When he’s not saving people’s asses, he whips around in a McLaren sports car.

“The buttock today is what the boobs were in the 60s,” Dr. Mendieta told me inside his office. His face looked like a Clark Kent mask, his skin pulled back at his temples, and he wore a royal-blue, custom-made admiral coat of fine Valentino silk. “But butts are better. When you look at breasts, you have to look at a face. There is no room to fantasize. But when you turn it around, there is no face anymore. You’re free to put whatever face you want on that booty.”

Even if Dr. Mendieta’s explanation was a little creepy, he is absolutely correct about the growth in popularity of butt augmentation among Americans. The number of legal butt procedures in the US increased by 176 percent between 2000 and 2012, exploding into a $26 million industry. Dr. Mendieta has been happily riding the crest of this ass wave. Ten years ago, 20 percent of his practice was the buttocks. Today, it’s 90 percent.

And while Dr. Mendieta would prefer to focus on molding new posteriors, more and more he’s been finding himself reconstructing the buttocks of women who’ve received black-market injections.

“There’s no question that I’ve been performing these reconstructive procedures at an increasing rate,” he said. He explained that he’s fixed about 30 illegally injected asses in his career, and five in 2013 alone. “People are coming to me from all over the world, mainly the United States. It’s endemic in South America, Miami, and New York, and some in LA. But Miami is a bigger hub for this stuff. My feeling is that I will see even a higher number in the future, because it can take five to ten years for the injections to react.”

Florida law-enforcement officials agree with Dr. Mendieta that cases such as Oscarina’s are an increasing problem. Detective Bryan Tutler of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, who led the 2012 investigation of Oneal Ron Morris, one of the nation’s most notorious ass quacks, told me, “These things just started. If you go back three or four years, no one had ever heard of this. And now they’ve really picked up. Pretty soon, I don’t think that any law-enforcement agency is going to be able to hide from investigating these kinds of crimes.”

Which leaves Dr. Mendieta squarely on the front lines in the battle over illegal butt tampering—a battle that keeps getting worse. Of all the victims of illegal butt injections he’s operated on, he said that Oscarina’s was one of the most severe cases he’d ever seen.

“I had to cut a great deal of flesh out with the silicone,” he said, “because it had impregnated her tissue. We pulled out a pound and a half of pure, rock-hard substance from each cheek.”

The task of removing the damaged tissue and reconstructing Oscarina’s ass was such an undertaking that it had to be broken up into two operations. The $6,000 she spent on her butt injections no longer seems like a bargain; she estimates that it has cost her nearly $70,000 and counting to get her butt back into shape, and Oscarina still hasn’t undergone the second procedure in which the remaining impregnated tissue will be removed and her cheeks will be further fine-tuned. The truly sad thing is that she’s one of the lucky ones. There’s only one Dr. Constantino Mendieta, but who knows how many Oscarinas are out there suffering?

These images provided by Dr. Mendieta show complications from botched butt injections very similar to Oscarina Busse’s. You can see the discoloration throughout the buttock and the distorted shape. Like Oscarina’s, this butt was hard to the touch.

The use of silicone injections to increase the size of one’s assets is nothing new. The practice dates back to World War II, a hundred years after the synthetic compound was invented and a decade or so after it became commercially viable to mass produce. During the war, the US military used silicone to insulate electrical transformers. It was on the docks of Yokahama Harbor in Japan that American Army quartermasters first started noticing the relationship between their transformer insulation fluid disappearing and the increasing bust size of the local hookers. Although crude and certainly not medical grade, it was an ostensibly better option for Japanese sex professionals who up until that point had been pumping up their chests with paraffin and Vaseline.

American physicians started to take note of silicone as a breast augmenter. The practice of injecting silicone directly into the breasts spread throughout America in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, perpetrated by cosmeticians and plastic surgeons. Widely used by female entertainers, sex workers, and everyday women in the US—including Nancy Reagan­—and it took some time before the horror stories of botched boob jobs bubbled to the surface of middle-class America. Over the years, many of these women suffered silicone cysts, collapsed nipples, and painful, rock-hard breasts.

In 1965, the FDA made it illegal for doctors without a special experimental permit to perform silicone injections—however, plastic surgeons kept pumping under the assumption that if they purchased the silicone made in their home state, they were operating outside the FDA’s jurisdiction. This continued until the practice started to fall out of favor in the late 60s and 70s due to countless horror stories and increasing regulations—states like Nevada and California made injections illegal in 1975, and several others followed suit.

With legal injections off the table, plastic surgeons turned to silicone implants, which were thought to be safer because the silicone was contained in an inert elastomer shell. However, due to studies linking implants to serious health issues, the FDA put implant manufacturers under a voluntary moratorium in 1992. In 2006 the FDA reapproved silicone-gel-filled implants, and they’ve since made a huge comeback, comprising 72 percent of all breast-augmentation procedures in the US in 2012. It was during the past two decades—when the country was engaged in a nationwide dialogue on the risks and benefits of implants—that silicone-injection procedures moved into the seedy underground.

Above all, it was the transgender community that really pioneered the backroom butt-injection scene in the 1980s and 90s. For a male transitioning to a female at that time, it was a ridiculous notion to think that insurance would foot the bill for procedures that made their outside look the way they felt on the inside. The black market was the go-to place for these types of augmentations because it was considerably cheaper. Also, at the time, the fat-transfer method had yet to be developed. To get the results that were desired—round, feminine butts—injections were the preferred option for many in the transgender community. After some of these women made their transitions, they turned around and became butt doctors themselves, using the injection technique that they’d utilized on their own bodies first.

Since then, the practice has moved from the margins toward the mainstream. One of the poster children for the horrible effects of silicone pumping is a woman from Los Angeles named Apryl Michelle Brown, whose lower legs and arms were amputated after her body went septic due to complications from silicone injections she received in 2004. Another high-profile victim was a 20-year-old woman named Claudia Seye Aderotimi. In 2011, she traveled from London to Philadelphia to get butt shots from Padge Victoria Windslowe, a transgender lady known in some circles as the “Black Madam.” Claudia was an aspiring dancer, looking to enhance her figure so she could make it in the hip-hop music-video scene. She died of a pulmonary embolism almost immediately after injections of industrial-grade silicone entered her bloodstream and traveled to her liver, lungs, and brain.

The phenomenon of butt pumping has even crept into popular culture. Every time Kim Kardashian or Jennifer Lopez wears a swimsuit, tabloids and gossip websites furiously debate whether their bodacious butts are the result of an intense squat regimen or ass injections. Former stripper and hip-hop model Vanity Wonder, who boasts ample 34-23-45 curves, wrote a book about her addiction to illegal butt shots and the 16-plus times she had her butt pumped up. Nicki Minaj, who is known for her huge rump almost as much as for her platinum-selling albums, has commented on the phenomenon of injections and admitted, albeit facetiously, that she’s had them done. In her guest verse on the remix of Big Sean’s “Dance (A$$),” Nicki raps: “Kiss my ass and my anus, ’cause it’s finally famous / And it’s finally soft, yeah, it’s finally solved! / I don’t know, man, guess them ass shots wore off!”

Mug shots of Oneal Ron Morris, a.k.a. the Duchess, illustrate her transition. “She had the perfect body,” a friend said. “But she took it too far.” Photos provided by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office

If you’d heard about ladies ballooning their asses with illegal injections before reading this story, it’s probably because of a transgender booty “doctor” named Oneal Ron Morris, who is also known as the Duchess. In 2011, the Duchess’s grotesque visage and distorted bodily proportions appeared all over major websites and local Florida newspapers when she was arrested in Miami-Dade County for practicing medicine without a license and causing bodily harm, providing a harrowing window into the twisted world of black-market plastic surgery. The Duchess’s butt was so outrageously big, she looked like a Koopa Troopa wearing a wig.

But besides the Duchess’s horrendous appearance, what caught the public consciousness was that it was reported that she was pumping substances like Fix-a-Flat and cement into the butts of her clients before sealing them off with Super Glue. Although the allegations that the Duchess used such especially horrifying substances have never been confirmed, we do know that many of her clients suffered mutilating side effects related to her injections, and at least one allegedly died as a result.

The Duchess is currently serving a 366-day sentence in Florida state prison and facing a manslaughter charge—all for injection-related offenses—so she wasn’t available for interviews when I visited Florida. But I did interview a man named Corey Eubanks whom local law enforcement accused of being her assistant—a charge he continues to deny. Corey ultimately pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of culpable negligence, stemming from the Duchess’s performing a butt-injection procedure at his home in Hollywood, Florida. When I interviewed him, he was still on probation.

I met Corey outside a Fort Lauderdale plastic-surgery clinic called Body Care. This peculiar location was selected for Corey’s convenience—the 42-year-old was planning to get some fat suctioned from his lower abdomen later that afternoon. Corey, with dreads stretching down to the small of his back and striking pistachio-colored contacts lenses, is no stranger to body augmentation. In addition to being a charismatic, all-around hustler—alternating work as a tax consultant, personal trainer, and stylist—he’s a walking billboard for the Duchess’s butt injections, which he claims to have only had performed on him once. According to Corey, over the years his pumped-up rear end has inspired at least 25 people to get butt shots from the Duchess. (For the record, he said that, while he’s referred people to the Duchess, he’s never received payment for doing so.) Everyone, apparently, really wants his ass.

When I first laid my eyes on Corey out in front of the stucco-walled clinic amid looming palm trees and sweaty joggers, all I could think about was what would happen to Corey if he fell into the Atlantic Ocean. Would those balloons in his tight-fitted workout pants float, or would they sink him to the ocean floor like an anvil? Corey wasn’t shy about the junk in his trunk. It only took a few minutes after making his acquaintance before he invited me to give it a touch.

“Go ahead,” he said in a motherly drawl that made it seem like he was offering me a cheesy biscuit at dinner instead of a chance to feel his highly touted tush. He lifted up the back of his shirt and arched his spine, while turning his head in my direction and fixed his phony eyes on me. I moved in hesitantly, leading with just my index finger as if I were about to gently touch a single key on a piano. As I pressed into his skin, my finger did not sink into the booty as I expected. Instead, it bent back a little at the knuckle. His butt had no give. It felt like a boulder wrapped in football leather.

Corey said he paid the Duchess $1,100 to inflate his butt almost a decade ago, but their relationship goes back further than that. Corey met the Duchess when he still went by his birth name, during the summer of 1994 at the now defunct gay club the Waterfront. It wasn’t until after the Duchess made his transition into a her that she became known for giving butt shots, likely using the same underground techniques that were used on her own body.

Corey Eubanks isn’t the slightest bit bashful about his illegal butt shots and the body they gave him. Here he is showing off his hams in a super low-cut wrestling leotard at Collins Park on Miami Beach.

“Five people I knew at that time had it done by Duchess,” Corey said. “One of the girls was like a board. She had it done and she got a little bump back there. My friend let me know who did those five people and that made me think, Maybe I could just do it on the top? I wanted my thighs to look thick in shorts and I wanted a butt that looked good.”

Corey told me that the Duchess performed the procedure on him nearly a decade ago. His backside is considered a true ass-terpiece in a town like Miami, where, as a result of competition between thousands of people who will never be happy with the way they look, the distended results of unhealthy decisions are interpreted as hallmarks of modern beauty. To get the masterwork at the top of Corey’s legs, he believes he had no other option.

“The reason people back then wasn’t going to a place like this,” he said, looking behind him at the plastic-surgery office where he was getting lipo in just an hour, “was because we didn’t have fat transfer. All they had was a pad they’d put in your butt. It looked fake. No one wanted that compared to the butt-shot look. Plus, you didn’t hear about ridiculous episodes or death. I didn’t know anybody who that had happened to.”

Of course, things change. As Dr. Mendieta had told me, it can take years for the dreadful side effects of butt injections to rise to the surface. Corey, as confident as he is about his butt, is certainly not in the clear. Any day he could wake up with polyps or lesions or ulcers on his backside. Even if they don’t cause him any direct medical harm in the future, butt injections have already almost landed him in prison.

“It’s messed up if somebody’s stuff goes wrong,” Corey said, when I asked him about his and the Duchess’s legal troubles. “But what if it goes right? What is Duchess, then? A god?”

Just then, a blond woman dressed in scrubs poked her head outside of the front door of Body Care to call upon Corey. It was time for his lipo, a procedure that would require him to be off his feet for days, take a cocktail of medications, and wear a girdle so that after they cut him open and sucked out his fat, his stomach fluids would leak from the wounds. Before he went in, I asked him if, like the Duchess, he too was addicted to body modification.

“Addiction was never an issue for me,” he said. “This is the last one. After this I’m going to stick to eating good and working out.”

King of Diamonds dancer Seven was proud of her illegal injections. She explained, “When I first got it, it was heavy. I wasn’t used to walking, because I had silicone in my butt. But after a month of massaging and moving it, it became me very quickly. Then it was all love.”

On one of my last nights in Miami, I visited a notorious strip club called the King of Diamonds. Thanks to shout-outs from rappers like Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, and Drake, the club has become world-famous for the gargantuan butts of its dancers. After seeing the aftermath of Oscarina’s injections and learning about the intricacies of pumping from an insider like Corey, I wanted to see the actual product in action.

At the club, I found myself gawking through a flurry of green dollar bills at the immense hams on a sweet, redbone girl—known to clubgoers as Seven—as she writhed up and down a chrome pole that seemed to extend into the heavens. The bass thumped so loud on Rick Ross’s “Uoeno,” the flesh of her ass rippled with every kick drum like that cup of water in Jurassic Park. And for the pièce de résistance, during the last moments of her set, Seven wrapped her meaty, greased-up cheeks around the chrome beanstalk and slid them down to the floor like molasses dripping down the stem of a fork. As the song switched and the barker called another lady hauling a wide load up to the stage, a kid in a bow tie hustled in to sweep up Seven’s freshly fallen dollar bills into a plastic pail already overflowing with dirty money.

At any other strip club in any other town, Seven’s butt would have been touted as the eighth wonder of the world. They would have brought in the Army Corps of Engineers to study the structural fortitude of that butt and how it ended up on such a small frame. But in Miami, at the King of Diamonds, it was just one teardrop in an ocean of ass. The secret to her behind was no secret at all. Like so many girls in Miami and across America, she’d made a Faustian pact with beauty a year and a half ago.

After her rousing set, I met Seven in a tawdry private office in the back of the club decorated like something out of a blaxploitation adaption of Scarface. She was giddy to talk about her illegal injections and how they had changed her life. To hear her tell it, getting her butt pumped was one of the best decisions she’d ever made.

“I got my butt done on a Tuesday,” she said. “I came back to work on a Friday and made triple the amount it cost in one night. My money went from regular stripper to superior stripper.”

I asked her if I could see it up close. In an instant, she turned, crouched, spread her cheeks, and shook her ass down to the floor. It occurred to me in that delirious moment that maybe her ass was one giant metaphor for Miami—perhaps even all of America, maybe even the human soul itself. Seven’s shapely bottom was gorgeous and alluring on the outside, but underneath lurked something dark and noxious.

My fears were confirmed when she stood up and let me give it a squeeze. It looked like heaven, but it felt like I was groping a gravestone.

@WilbertLCooper

A neknominater drinks a beer while riding his motorcycle.

In Australia, hardly anyone has "just a few drinks.” In 2008, prime minister Kevin Rudd launched a $53 million campaign to tackle what he called a “binge drinking epidemic,” but the country's brutal boozing habits have continued to this day. In recent years, a series of alcohol-fueled tragedies in Sydney have put the nations drinking culture in a grisly light. But even that hasn't been enough to change the culture—Australians seemingly just can’t give up on getting shitfaced.

So it's probably unsurprising that young Australians have come up with creative ways to get wasted and tell the internet that they're getting wasted, which is what "neknominations" are all about. In its simplest form, a neknomination is the act of necking (chugging) a beer and nominating someone to match your feat. And just as the one-up mentality made the selfie olympics a thing, social media has fueled some ridiculous neknominations and encouraged people (mostly young people, for obvious reasons) across the globe to participate. The center of the neknomination culutre—or whatever—is the Best Neknominate Video's (sic) Facebook page, which has amassed over 175,000 followers since January 7 and posts bizarre videos that are an inspiration to creative drunk everywhere. I caught up with the man behind the page, Jay Anthony, to find out how this all came about.

A neknominater casually snorkeling in a fish tank.

VICE: Who created neknomination?
Jay Anthony: A group of guys in Scotch college in Western Australia. One of them skulled a beer and said to his mate, “You’re next." It became a trend, and then when my page went up it kind of snowballed. It moved through Australia, then New Zealand, and now it's even gaining traction in Europe.

What led you to make the page?
It already had some momentum in my circles. I realized it was pretty catchy, so I wanted to make a place to share the most innovative videos. I’ve got a fairly large amount of social media contacts, which helped get things rolling. I made it clear on the page that I’m against any video that exhibits animal cruelty, drunk driving, and violence. I wanted to create a platform where neknominaters can congregate.

What are some of the weirder videos you've seen?
I saw a video of this one guy who skulled a beer upside down from inside a toiletbowl. And not that I condone it, but there’s this one Welsh dude who bit a baby chicken's head off. There’s an abundance of weirdness to chose from.

A neknominater finally putting his GoPro thingy to use.

From what I've read, it seems like the fad is receiving some attention from the authorities.
That’s correct. There was one guy who was driving and skulling a beer. He got some attention from the local police, and surprise surprise, he got arrested. Then there’s one which was uploaded today that made it onto the local news—in involves two guys, a Ferrari, and a helicopter. I believe the aviation authorities are looking to suspend the bloke's license.

The timing has been implausibly ironic since prime minister Tony Abbot has been addressing the national threat of alcohol. Do you think binge drinking is a greater threat in Australia than the rest of the world?
No. We may have a slightly higher percentage of binge drinkers, and it probably does need to be addressed a little better. But people get white-girl wasted all over the world. It’s a threat wherever you go. Also, the drinking culture in Australia is pretty unique. I mean, the media labelled our ex-prime minister Bob Hawke as a legend when he skulled a beer at a cricket match. Of course we’re going to vibe with a new drinking game!

How do you feel about the negative media coverage?
I understand where they’re coming from. They need to sell stories. Ultimately though, we’re trying to keep it relatively responsible. If we can cut down on the dangerous content then the media will lay off our backs a bit.

Planking killed at least one person, and that was pretty much just lying down flat somewhere. I feel like there’s more room for error in neknominations.
We obviously never ever want that to happen. I want to emphasize the safety factor—the people that died from planking did it from irresponsible heights. I didn’t start this movement, but I encourage responsible neknominations. Innovation should be the driving force.

Where do you see things going from here? Are we looking at neknom apparel? Licensing? Customized liquor?
In due time. The official website is coming in a day or two—it’s called bestneknoms.com. We’re also speaking with sponsors at the moment to hook up our best videos with prizes, which gives those posting a bigger incentive.

Chaudhry Aslam at a press conference on January, 2013 (Photo: ppiimages/Demotix)

Early on January 9, police stormed the Manghopir neighborhood of Karachi, Pakistan. The area is known to be a Taliban hideout, and the cops were there targeting suspected militants. After a gun battle, three men were transported to hospital, where they were pronounced dead on arrival.

The operation was similar to hundreds of others coordinated by Chaudhry Aslam, often referred to as Pakistan’s toughest cop. But this one would be his last. Aslam was killed hours later when a car packed with some 440 pounds of explosives slammed into his convoy, blowing up his bullet-proof vehicle, destroying nearby buildings and killing Aslam and two other officers. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack.

"Aslam was involved in killing Taliban prisoners in cells in Karachi and was on the top of our hit-list," a TTP spokesman said.

In the days since his death, Aslam has been lauded as a "Taliban-hunter," a brave and resourceful police officer who stood up to terrorists when no one else would. But his methods were controversial—particularly his reputation for extrajudicial killings. These so-called "fake encounters," in which police stage an assault on their targets so they can kill them and circumvent the justice system by claiming self-defence, are a popular practice across South Asia, and Aslam was frequently accused of encouraging or condoning the method.

"His legacy is a reflection of the challenges of law enforcement in Pakistan," said Huma Yusuf, global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Centre for Scholars. "He is being hailed as a hero and an exceptional police officer. But it’s well known that his main success came from [the] extrajudicial killings of many of the militants he caught. That raises questions about why he was forced to resort to these tactics. It’s an indictment of Pakistan’s overall lack of counter-terror police and its weak, corrupt criminal justice system."

The aftermath of the attack on Aslam's convoy (Photo: ppiimages/Demotix)

Aslam had been the target of up to ten assassination attempts since joining the police force in 1987. Before becoming head of Karachi’s counter-terrorism operations in 2010, he had taken on the city’s infamous mafias and criminal gangs, and was one of the officers who endured a bloody police and army operation to bring Karachi under control in the 1990s, when the city was consumed by street battles between different ethnic groups.

"He became the reason I joined the force, because he represented the ability of the police to do good, to help the helpless," Omar Shahid Hamid, a former policeman and friend of Aslam’s, wrote in the Express Tribune newspaper.

In recent years, Aslam had become particularly well known for his relentless pursuit of extremist militants. The TTP alone had tried to assassinate him at least three times, and in 2011 the group detonated a massive bomb outside Aslam’s house in Karachi. He emerged unscathed, helping to clear the debris and rescue the injured. "I will bury the attackers right here," he told TV cameras in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, pointing at the enormous bomb crater outside his house. "I didn’t know the terrorists were such cowards. Why don’t they attack me in the open?"

In a country where many politicians and public figures are afraid to speak out against the Taliban and other extremist groups, Aslam’s belligerent attitude earned him a folk hero status. When I met him in December of 2012, he was dressed, as usual, in a white salwar kameez (Pakistan’s national dress) and a flashy watch. He chain-smoked and carried a Glock pistol. "My religion tells me that everyone must die in the end," he told me. "So I fear nothing. I have seen too much to be afraid."

Footage from outside Aslam's home after it was bombed in 2011

Karachi is a sprawling city with a population of more than 20 million people, and it is wracked by political and ethnic violence, with criminal gangs continuing to vie for control of the city amid the threat of Islamist militancy. Partly attracted by Karachi's lawlessness, extremists like the Taliban have set up bases in the city. Coping with this complex and dangerous web of crime is a police force just 40,000 strong, which given the circumstances really isn't a lot, considering New York City almost as many police officers for its 8.3 million residents.

Aslam, however, was an important psychological force rallying the city’s police against those odds. "He was an inspiration who epitomised bravery and public service," another Karachi policeman, who wished to remain anonymous, told me. "We will not be cowed. Instead, we will fight harder against the terrorists to honor his memory."

Still, in many of the tributes pouring in for Aslam, there is an unmistakable note of fear; if someone so fearless, forthright, and apparently indestructible can be killed, then nobody is safe. Killing the head of counter-terrorism operations in Pakistan’s biggest city—particularly one who was so symbolically important in the fight against terror—is undoubtedly a publicity coup for the TTP.

And so it remains to be seen what impact Aslam’s death will have on policing. Successive Pakistani governments, the intelligence community, and police have yet to form a coherent anti-terror policy; Karachi’s criminal underworld retains close ties to powerful politicians; and police forces nationwide remain chronically underfunded and understaffed. If Aslam is to have a lasting legacy, it should not be "martyrdom", it should be an examination of the factors that led to his rise, and to his death.

@samirashackle

Our friend Theo Cottle was the one who sparked our "Your Town Is a Paradise" obsession with his awesome set of pictures from Bristol.

Now he's back, demanding that you all take some time out from whatever your tedious job is and visit Berlin, where people like to give the finger to innocent dead birds. Seriously, we think it would make for a delightful vacation.

Wanna boost tourism in your town? Send your pictures to us at ukphotoblog@vice.com.

A composite sketch of who the Fars News Agency believes is actually running the United States. Image by Matt Smith-Johnson.

Last summer I met Paul Hellyer at his cottage in Muskoka. Mr. Hellyer used to be Canada’s Minister of Defence in the wild and swingin’ sixties, and has since become the world’s foremost advocate for an addictive conspiracy theory that claims the United States is run by a shadow government of alien forces that have been visiting and controlling human society ever since we developed the atomic bomb; because as you should know, all of the cosmos is connected, and horrendously reckless events like blowing up a large portion of Japan affect all of our planetary brethren.

Anyway, news broke earlier this week through the Fars News Agency (an Iranian media outlet that the Washington Post describes as “semi-official”) that Edward Snowden provided documents to Russia’s Federal Security Services (FSB) which provide “’incontrovertible proof’ that an ‘alien/extraterrestrial intelligence agenda’ is driving US domestic and international policy” in a snappy news item titled: “Snowden Documents Proving ‘US-Alien-Hitler’ Link Stun Russia.”

If you’re not familiar with the Fars News Agency, in 2013 they erroneously reported that a 27-year old scientist from Iran had invented a time machine, and in 2012 they mistakenly ran a story from The Onion that satirically claimed most rural Americans would rather vote for Iranian leader Ahmadinejad than Obama. So their record is a tad on the unreliable side. And yet this news item has been picked up by the likes of Foreign Policy, Forbes, the Washington Post, and The Huffington Post UK—according to a Google News search for “Snowden Nazi Aliens.”

Apparently Fars News is getting its information from WhatDoesItMean.com, a crackpot news site that looks like it was designed in the bowels of Geocities headquarters sometime in the late 1990s. A visit to WhatDoesItMean’s homepage on Wednesday morning presented explosive news items like an Obama plot to “destroy” Duck Dynasty, a claim that all Obamacare signup info has been snatched by a Russian hacker, and a supposed warning from Russia that a US-China-Japan Pacific war is weeks away.

Their report about America’s alliance with secretive space aliens, entitled “Snowden Documents Proving “US-Alien-Hitler” Link Stuns Russia” insists that a species of aliens called the Tall Whites—which Paul Hellyer previously detailed for Motherboard during our visit—is secretly running the United States, and that PRISM and other NSA spy tools like it have simply been designed to continue to conceal the extraterrestrial presence on Earth in order to further their goal of enslaving humanity. WhatDoesItMean, and by extension, Fars News Agency in Iran, claims that these Tall Whites previously worked alongside the Nazis to help them build submarines; though as Max Fisher pointed out in the Washington Post, “It does not explain why aliens with access to interstellar travel built subs that were so grossly incapable against the British navy, or why all-powerful extraterrestrials were unable to help the Nazis resist an invasion by Allied forces that are mere cavemen relative to their own technology. So far, these are pretty unimpressive aliens.”

From what I’ve heard about the Tall White conspiracy, they strongly resemble Eastern European models with very light features. One story Paul Hellyer told me described a day in which the Tall Whites left their military stronghold in Nevada to go shopping, undetected, dressed as nuns in Las Vegas. They’re so human-like that, apparently, no one screamed: “Oh my God those are Nazi sympathizing aliens!” while they picked out dresses. Believable, right? I thought so too.

While this is an incredibly entertaining story to follow and report on, it is somewhat concerning that these kinds of conspiracies have legs in one of the world’s most volatile societies that also happens to be aiming to develop a nuclear arsenal. As Michael Peck wrote in Forbes: “This is almost a funny story, until one remembers that Iran is a moderately powerful nation of 76 million people, with a possible nuclear arsenal, relatively large conventional military power, extensive terrorist capabilities through its intelligence agencies and Hezbollah, and a fundamentalist government that could easily engage in hostilities against the U.S.”

Hopefully this Nazi-Alien shadow government conspiracy doesn’t develop into any sort of geopolitical hysteria that can cause severe damage; and I suppose if anything it’s proof of the deep level of paranoia and mistrust many people on this crazy planet have towards the United States. Unfortunately, Paul Hellyer was unavailable to comment in time for this story, but if the former Minister of Defence provides VICE Canada with any further information we’ll be sure to report back.

@patrickmcguire

When Russian President Vladimir Putin banned gay "propaganda" last June, Russia's LGBT community went from being a stigmatized fringe group to full-blown enemies of the state. Homophobia becoming legislation means it’s now not only accepted in Russia but actively encouraged, which has led to a depressing rise in homophobic attacks and murders.

The main aim of the law, which essentially bans any public display of homosexuality, is to prevent minors from getting the impression that being gay is normal. Which means that, if you’re young and gay in Putin’s Russia, you’re ostracized and cut off from any kind of legal support network.

We traveled to Russia ahead of February's Sochi Winter Olympics to investigate the effects of the country's state-sanctioned homophobia.

For further information on some of the issues raised, please visit www.stonewall.org.uk/international.

It's not easy to interview an international fugitive. After encrypted emails, phone calls from unknown numbers, last minute travel plans changed—in multiple countries—I eventually found myself sitting across from Sea Shepherd's Captain Paul Watson sharing vegan lemon chicken and Szechuan noodles and talking about desert islands like nothing could be more normal. 

For 15 months, the internationally-known environmentalist and star of the Animal Planet reality show Whale Wars has been on the run. He fled Germany in July, 2012, because he was facing extradition to Costa Rica, where he was wanted on charges related to a confrontation with shark-finners on the high seas in Guatemalan waters. Watson says he could never get a fair trial there, and his life could be at risk, so he took to the sea.

The anonymous volunteers who helped him called it "Operation Unknown." Some started calling it "Operation Where's Waldo."

While Watson was on the run, Sea Shepherd's crew had to prepare for their latest campaign against Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean. The future of Watson, and the organization, was unknown, but there was no use worrying about all that, Watson said: "I don't do stress."

Watson is known for his speeches, and if there's one upside of running for your life it's the accumulation of new stories. There was the time in Tonga when he and his crew traded canned goods with villagers for fresh produce, and then got lured into a free lunch with Mormons. Or when they steered a Zodiac toward a small island for a camping trip, but didn't see a rock wall hidden by waves, flipped, and almost drowned.

There were coconuts. "So many coconuts," he said. And killer wasps: When they attacked Watson, he bolted into the jungle and got lost.

On another Pacific island they experimented with kava, a traditional drink with pyschoactive properties. It didn't work. "It's like trying to drink sawdust that has been filtered through a gym sock," Watson said.

In my attempts to arrange an interview, I had hoped for a rendezvous at sea, or at least some coconuts. But I finally caught up with him in Seattle at one of his favorite restaurants, Bamboo Garden.

A few days before, he found out Interpol's "Red Notice" had been dropped. He was no longer wanted. He came ashore in California, and alerted customs. Watson expected to be stopped and interrogated, but the only question from customs officers was how they could get some Sea Shepherd T-shirts.

Watson was laughing, and his crew said it's the happiest they have ever seen him. He told me about reuniting with his daughter and 18-month-old-grandaughter, who he last saw when she was a month old, and he was glowing. At one point during dinner, a couple of fans at another table excitedly said "Hi Paul Watson!" and waved. For a few moments, it felt like this incognito adventure was over.

Then we stepped outside. There was a new black pickup truck in the parking lot, covered with Sea Shepherd logos. I jokingly asked him, "Which car is yours?" He stopped at the edge of the lot, and started the truck's engine with a remote control. "I got that to make sure there isn't a car bomb," he said flatly.

Watson's fugitive days may have ended, but this fight is far from over.

The U.S. chapter of the Sea Shepard Conservation Society, as his group of sailors who harass illegal whaling boats is officially known, has been mired in a legal battle with Japanese whalers since March of 2012. Despite harrowing video showing the whalers attempting to crush the Sea Shepherd's Bob Barker between two much larger ships, the whalers say they are the victims of "extremists" and filed an injunction in U.S. court to stop them.

In a ruling for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Alex Kozinski agreed and said “you don't need a peg leg or an eye patch” to be a pirate. Now Sea Shepherd and its board of directors are trying to prove that they haven't violated that injunction with their protests.

"Our support base doesn't come from the 'left' or the 'right.' We're in front," Watson says. "The injunction is an attempt to destroy [our grassroots] support."

Animal Planet has pulled back on its popular Whale Wars program, and scaled the series down to a two-hour feature this year.

Watson has been forced to step down from the helm he occupied for 35 years. Much of the court proceedings, which seek over $2 million in penalties, have been focused on whether or not he actually has pulled back from the whaling campaign. On one emotional day in court, his daughter Lani Blazier testified about his decision with tears in her eyes: "This is a man who gave up pretty much my entire childhood to do what he is doing... The fact that he's doing this now shows he's not taking these charges lightly."

The legal fight has forced Sea Shepherd to decentralize and regroup. "This is a global movement," Sea Shepherd Captain Alex Cornelissen tells me, listing off names of chapters: Austria, Switzerland, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, South Africa, the list goes on and on. "They're sprouting up everywhere."

Right now Sea Shepherd volunteers—sans Captain Watson—are chasing the whalers out of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. But as they grow more effective, the backlash from the Japanese is only going to intensify. A fundraising plea said that "the courtroom battles... are a fight for the very soul of Sea Shepherd."

"The future hides in the fog, the present endures," Watson wrote in a poem he recently posted to Facebook.

"But at these times I let the wind set the course, knowing that the ship will carry on as it may."

Will Potter is a journalist and TED Fellow based in Washington DC. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter.

Levi's T-shirt, American Apparel shorts

PHOTOS BY MARTIN FENGEL

STYLIST: NINA BYTTEBIER

Left: Supremebeing T-shirt, adidas Originals sweatband, G-Shock watch, Crust shorts, Right: Supremebeing T-shirt, Crust shorts

Left: American Apparel underwear, Right: Billabong T-shirt

Left: Crust shorts, Vans shoes, adidas Originals socks, Right: American Apparel shorts, KangaROOS shoes, American Apparel sock

Supremebeing T-shirt, adidas Originals sweatband

Left: American Apparel Socks, Circa shoes

Palladium boots

In the second part of Theotis’ Epicly Later’d, he discusses turning pro during the 2011 Transworld Awards, dealing with a Baker-imposed ‘skate video curfew’, and giving back to his family and fans.

Head on over to Green Label to check out an interview with Patrick O'Dell about Theotis Beasley.

Abu Waheeb, leader of ISIS forces in Anbar, inside a government building in Ramadi, Iraq.

Late last month, the Iraqi cities of Ramadi and Fallujah fell to tribal militants linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a homegrown franchise of al Qaeda.

After taking the cities, the militants—who are understood to be locals of Anbar, the Sunni province where both Ramadi and Fallujah are located—hoisted black al Qaeda flags over government buildings and police stations. Their assault followed the Shiite-led government ignoring Sunni protests for reforms that would put them on par with their Shiite countrymen, and came just days after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered security forces to clear a Sunni protest camp amid claims that it had become an ISIS headquarters.

In response to the takeover of Fallujah and the militants' partial control of Ramadi, Maliki forged a deal with some of Anbar’s prominent tribal leaders and sheikhs, convincing them to work with the Iraqi army to secure the two cities. Ahmed Abu Reesha, a Sunni tribal chief aligned with Maliki, claimed on Saturday that these pro-government tribes have reclaimed most of Ramadi and said that the "next battle will be in Fallujah."

"Ramadi, in many respects, has been far less significant in terms of actual presence of ISIS," said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. "But, in Fallujah, the situation is far more complicated, because tribes appear to be split down the middle. Some are linked with ISIS and the other half have decided to side with the security forces."

Iraqi army humvees set on fire by ISIS forces in Anbar.

To make matters worse, Islamist militants in Fallujah have occupied houses in the city's Hay al-Askari neighborhood, forcing homeowners to flee to avoid being caught in the crossfire. According to statements by the Iraqi Red Crescent, more than 13,000 families have left Fallujah since the crisis began two weeks ago, with most seeking shelter in schools and other public buildings, or in the houses of relatives in neighboring villages.

On Sunday, the Iraqi army was attacked near Hay al-Askari, resulting in a clash that left three militants dead, and the area is still under militant control, with locals aware that a second assault on Fallujah by Abu Reesha's pro-government coalition is imminent. So the city isn't exactly an ideal place to be, but some residents have had to start returning anyway because they have no other choice.

"I have run out of money," said Muzher Abd Al Hameed, a 38-year-old father of three and a longtime resident of Fallujah. "I can’t afford to not work for an extended period. At the same time, I heard good news—that there was calm and no clashes—and that encouraged me. This is despite the fact that I decided to return regardless of whether the situation is good or bad, because I really don’t have another choice.”

Then, of course, there are those who physically can't return because they have nowhere to return to. "The families who tried to go back to [Hay al-Askari] had their houses occupied by militants," said Umm Nour, who is hosting six families from the neighborhood at her home in Amreeyat al Fallujah, a village 20 miles away from Fallujah. "The families told them to take care of their houses. They couldn’t kick them out. The militants promised to only use the living room, bedroom. and bathroom, and that they won’t touch anything else in the house."

The wreckage of an army vehicle in Fallujah.

The militancy in Ramadi and Fallujah is, in part, a response to Iraq's process of de-Ba'athification, the post-2003 purge of high ranking Sunnis from government, along with most of Saddam Hussein’s army. Under Maliki’s government, the de-Ba'athification law has also been used as a tool to exclude Sunni candidates it disapproves of from the political process, as well as to imprison individuals for little or no reason.

Just prior to Fallujah's fall, Maliki had ordered the arrest of Ahmed Al Alwani, a Sunni member of Parliament from Anbar who's been very public about his anti-government stance. Clashes during his arrest led to the death of his brother and several bodyguards, enraging Sunni tribes.

And Alwani's arrest was just the latest in a string of recent anti-Sunni actions by Iraq’s government. Shortly after the withdrawal of US troops from the country, an arrest warrant was issued for Sunni vice president Tareq al Hashemi, accusing him of running death squads. Now living in Turkey, he has been sentenced to death in absentia. In March last year, as demonstrations for reforms began to take shape, Sunni finance minister Rafi al Issawi resigned from his post after security forces arrested one of his body guards on suspicion of terrorism-related operations. And shortly after, Sunni agricultural minister Izz al Din Dawla resigned after Swat forces shot at Sunni protesters in Hawija, a village near Kirkuk.

"I think the sectarian card gets overplayed somewhat, although it's still important," said Lister. "Sunni tribes have long been angry with Maliki for having left Anbar behind and preventing Sunni tribes and ministers from holding as much power. But, at the same time, a larger issue is at stake here, which is the control of their territory and an extremist group [the militants linked with ISIS] that, in the past, has treated their civilians in a particularly negative way. Some tribes see Maliki as the lessor of two evils, while other tribes see it the other way around."

Iraqi special forces fighting ISIS rebels in Fallujah.

Fallujah’s crisis comes ahead of upcoming elections in Iraq, in which the premier has expressed plans for a third term in office. “By attacking now, Maliki has galvanized the support of rank-and-file Iraqi Shiites," said Feisal Istrabadi, the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East at Indiana University-Bloomington. "Prior to his launching this operation, he was the object of much criticism from within the Shia coalition for his mishandling of a number of issues, including his increasingly authoritarian tendencies," continued Istabadi, who was deputy permanent representative of Iraq to the UN from 2004 to 2010. "The operation in Anbar wholly silenced all these critics. In the absence of something going catastrophically wrong in the next three months, Maliki will be decisively re-elected."

So while the operation will help Maliki’s election prospects, it seems unlikely that it will be more than a short-term fix. Anbar, with its vast desert terrain, is a difficult territory to manage, so it will remain a safe haven for insurgents in the absence of meaningful reforms, national reconciliation, or the kind of government spending that would avert locals from extremism.

Ammar al Hakim, a prominent Shiite politician who leads the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, suggested on Saturday that Iraq's central government should allocate $4 billion in infrastructure investment that will lead to job creation. He also suggested the central government allocate a separate amount that will go towards tribal sheikhs and leaders to fight insurgents and maintain stability and security.

It’s seems like a good idea, but it's just a shame that the suggestions are being made in response to a conflict that has already started; maybe it would have been better if the Shiite leadership had just tried to avert the whole showdown in the first place.

Image by Courtney Nicholas

This is, more or less, how I imagined the genesis of The Wolf of Wall Street went down:

Marty and Leo wanted to work together again, of course; they have a great track record stretching back to Gangs of New York. When their relationship began it was mutually beneficial but they were coming from different directions: they were both talents, but at the time Scorsese was the critically overlooked doyen of crime films and scholar of cinema history, while Leo was the former critical darling whose entire identity was eclipsed by his Beatle-sized, world-dominating fame. Scorsese could get his decades old dream project made and Leo could work with his directing hero. Gangs was not the best of their outings, but at least it brought them together, and their films got better, culminating in the long due triumph of The Departed. By the time the duo got to Wolf I’m sure they were as in synch as the ATL Twins as far as how they worked and the kind of material they wanted to explore.

So, while Gangs was not their best outing, it led to The Departed winning several Academy Awards, including Best Director. (An aside: Did the .44 magnum/pussy cameo in Taxi Driver keep him from getting the Oscar until he was 64?) And I’m positive that with this long-anticipated repairing, they got their money. A superhero-sized budget, because they’re Leo and Marty, and their films do well both financially and critically, so if you’re a dude with some money to burn from stocks or oil or computers or wherever you’ve made your pile, why wouldn’t you want to get a piece of that game? So, they have the dough and they can do anything they damn well please because the money is independent and fuck it, they’re Leo and Marty and who the hell is going to tell them, “no?” This combo shits out Golden Globes like they’re going out of style (maybe they are? Heh heh) and people go to their dark, masculine dramas in the same numbers that they go to see dudes in tights with big Ss and bats on them. If they want to show Leo doing cocaine bullets out of a faceless girl’s ass, fuck it; if they want a ten minute Quaalude sequence (the best part of the film, funny as hell!), fuck it; and if they want their scumbag protagonists to go largely unpunished… FUCK IT, THAT’S LIFE.

Using the book, written by The Wolf himself, Jordan Belfour, Leo and Marty (it’s important to note that both are credited as producers this time around) set out to critique Wall Street and the culture of greed. To give unchecked capitalism a good butt fucking and, like Spring Breakers before it, show how grotesque the American Dream can be when it is misused and abused. And, also similar to those involved in Spring Breakers, they were going to have a damn good time doing it. And by “they,” I mean the characters and the filmmakers and the crew.

I can imagine the pre-production conversations and meeting. They’re both liberal dudes, so they say to themselves, Let's show how ugly things can get in the world of the one-percenters—a scathing depiction of a bunch of douchebags who irresponsibly and unremorsefully took money from hard-working citizens. And then we show what the money was wasted on: drugs, women, and games. Our heroes are our villains in this piece, just like real life. There are no winners, but there are tyrants... Do you really want to be a tyrant? OK, that’s it, but we really need to go far, too far; we are going to show every outrageous thing these guys did.

It is because of the decisions made in this line of thought that this is a truly modern story, one in which we strangely like and hate the characters all at the same time. Again, just like real life. We love them because they are played by Leo and Jonah Hill, who are at their finest and funniest. They seem like fun guys to be around, regardless of the various misdeeds they may be involved in, like DeNiro and Pesci in Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and Casino before them. And just like those movies we get the Yin and Yang of Scorsese’s most successful universes—although in this case it is more like the Yang and Yang, with the boys playing only slight but still-distinct variations on the same species of scumbag.

Then there’s reason we like them, the reason the audience can relate to it as a grandiose fantasy that they can just barely touch: because, in the end, even though they don’t play by the rules, they win. Audiences like winners, even if he or she is ultimately a bad person, because it gives them an excuse to justify their own behaviors without having to confide in someone about it. It’s one of America’s ultimate cultural traits, hence Werner Herzog’s thoughts about Los Angeles being the epitome of an “American” city largely uninfluenced by European culture or aesthetics. Just look at The Jew of Malta, American Psycho, The Godfather, Scarface, Blood Meridian, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, or Goodfellas. The tension is caused in these movies, many of which have a long-cresting tension that is relieved within a few, tightly packed scenes. As much as we like the characters in these films, and as much as want to go on the ride with them, the backdrop is too close to home. Scorsese fixates on the villains of real life, and real-life villains have families and step in dog shit and eat pasta and do all these other things that you also do.  

When a movie critiques capitalistic greed though the filter of the mob (The Godfather, Goodfellas), it is much easier to go along with the characters because they are not of our real world, or are at least on its extreme fringes. In the case of The Wolf of Wall Street, these villians—these “guys”—are the ones that helped push us into the Great Recession. It has effected just about everyone, or at least someone you know.

Getting back to those initial questions that they had to answer in pre-production, chief among them is how it would end: Should we punish the Wolf for all the money he took from others, and for how outrageously he wasted it? Or should we let him off easy, as he was let off in life, to enlarge our critique to include a system that bails out such scum even when they do so much obvious harm?

They went with the latter option, and it leaves one with a strange sentiment at the end of the film, which I’m sure was intentional. We can look at the bigger picture and see that, of course, Scorsese and DiCaprio are being ironic when they end it the way they do, but it still leaves the sour aftertaste of having a fast one pulled on you, primarily because there is no emotional comeuppance transgressed through the fates of the principal characters. Which is not me saying that I wanted or expected one, I’m just expressing my awareness of the lack of emotion felt for the characters and where they might end up down the road.

A house of crime, technically. Photo via.

Over the past year, I’ve noticed a conspicuous increase in the number of op-eds in Canadian newspapers calling for the privatization of alcohol sales in Ontario. For those who have never had the pleasure of living in Midwestern America’s yarmulke, this would allow for beer, wine, and spirits to be sold in grocery, specialty, and corner stores. Like most Canadians, Ontarians must purchase their inebriates through stores run by a government-controlled liquor board. Those stores, known to the kids as "the LCBO," has transferred $13.7 billion dollars to the Ontario government (excluding taxes) over the last 10 years, and employed 3,366 Ontarians on a permanent, full-time basis who can make up to $52,000 per year with pension benefits.

Proponents of private alcohol sales are sure to note the convenience, increased access to foreign distributors, and competitive pricing that would result following de-monopolization. Opponents tend to fall into three camps: prohibitionists who are terrified Ontario will turn into a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah of underage binge drinking and drunk driving, along with left-leaners who favour bureaucracy and crave an economy driven by the public sector, and then there’s the people who think that abolishing the LCBO will lead to a smaller selection of booze due to smaller shelf space in corner stores. Some industry insiders are convinced privitazation is around the corner and there's nothing to fear. In an interview with the Globe & Mail last October, the Vice President of Operations at Mac's, Tom Moher, argued against charges that convenience stores are less likely than the government to properly police liquor sales. "In a study completed in 2011, the Beer Stores, LCBO and convenience stores were checked on the sale of age-restricted products, and when it came to that study, the pass rate for the LCBO was in the mid 70s. It was in the low to mid 80s for the Beer Store," he said. "Convenience stores across the province actually scored in the low 90s."

If you happen to fall on the opposing side, it turns out any stance you take to support the LCBO is legally moot—because publicly run alcohol vending is technically illegal. According to a paper published by Toronto lawyer Ian Blue in 2009, the “Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act,” which enabled the formation of Provincial Liquor Boards almost a century ago, is entirely unconstitutional. Ian’s article “On the Rocks” was initially published in Advocates Quarterly and serves as a worthy substitute for Ambien for those of us who never studied Canadian Constitutional Law. As the paper was penned for a legal academic audience with a highly esoteric knowledge of constitutional nuances, it isn’t any surprise its implications failed to reach the mainstream public.

As somebody who finds the LCBO, and most of Ontario’s liquor laws for that matter, to be austere and a hangover from Upper Canada’s rigidly protestant beginnings, the prospect of de-monopolization is a welcome development. But, if Blue’s findings are true and have been verified by peers and academics (they have), then why has nothing happened and why is no one taking steps to make de-monopolization a reality? Well, that’s why I sat down with Ian on a recent visit to Toronto to get to the bottom of why, almost four years later, Provincial Liquor Boards are as incumbent as ever.

VICE: You claim the LCBO and other public liquor monopolies like it are illegal. How can that be?
Ian Blue: Because its monopoly is based solely on an unconstitutional federal law, the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act (IILA) passed almost 90 years ago. The law is unconstitutional because it violates section 121 of the Constitution Act, 1867 that requires items of growth, produce, and manufacture to be admitted free from one province into another. A law that requires breweries, wineries, and distillers to sell their products to the LCBO is clearly contrary to that principle.

Wait, so if I buy booze in Ontario and bring it to Quebec I’m technically breaking the law?
You’re only allowed to take two bottles of wine, one bottle of booze, or a dozen beers, and that has only been since the 2012 amendment. Any more than that and you’re breaking the law.

How was your article received? Why haven’t I heard anything about it from anyone but you?
No law review article is ever commented on a great deal. When it was published, the National Post asked me to do an Op Ed piece, which I did. There were no letters about it. Sun TV interviewed me about it a couple of times. I received about ten e-mails from lawyers who read it, most of which agreed. Government constitutional lawyers are all aware of it and I have been told and have seen that they view it with some disquiet.

Why has nobody formally presented this argument to the government and petitioned them make open alcohol sales legal?
Dan Albas, an M.P. from BC, used my argument to obtain an amendment to the IILA to allow individuals to carry a limited amount of liquor across provincial borders. Big Wineries and breweries like the present system because it gives them free distribution. Small breweries and wineries are afraid to challenge the system for fear of being delisted in LCBO stores.

From a legal perspective, what needs to happen before Ontarians can legally buy beer and wine at the corner store?
The IILA must fall or provincial governments must be sufficiently concerned that it will fall  before they will agree to a deal with retailers.  In order for the IILA to fall, there must be a final court order declaring it unconstitutional, which would require someone to challenge it in court.

Illicit behaviour at Maple Leaf Gardens. Photo via.

If someone were to challenge the ILLA, is the government likely to put up a big fight?
You bet. For the government of Ontario and any other province, this will be a hill to die on. It’s not about money because studies show that the government would increase tax revenues if beer and wine were sold by private stores. It can’t be about social responsibility because the Alcohol & Gaming Board of Ontario can create safeguards just as it does today. It's about control. The LCBO, for one, is a huge public sector employer and generates a lot of revenue for the province. De-monopolization threatens that contro and, in the government's mind, has uncertain implications. Change is a scary thing for big governments. 

Is the government more likely to declare the IILA unconstitutional or to amend the constitution to allow Provincial Liquor Monopolies?
It would be the courts, not the government, who would declare the IILA unconstitutional. As for amending the constitution, this would never happen. Canada’s formula for amending the Constitution requires consent of seven provinces having at least 50% of the Canadian population. Each province would want something in return so the Federal government would not be even interested in trying.

Aside from the end consumer, who stands to benefit the most from private liquor sales? Who stands to lose the most?
Obviously the winners will include retailers, smaller wineries across Canada, artisanal Breweries, and foreign wineries as they can ship to restaurants and liquor stores directly without having to go through the LCBO warehouse system with its attendant costs. The losers will be members of the LCBO locals of the CUPE, wine connoisseurs like me who love Vintages, and of course the LCBO grandees.

As somebody who just wants to be able to buy an Old E at his corner store, what can I do to help?
Give this issue as much publicity as you can in all social media! The government is likely to put up less of a fight in defending the IILA if public opinion is strongly against it.