Mossless in America is a new column featuring interviews with documentary photographers. The series is produced in partnership with Mossless magazine, an experimental photography publication run by Romke Hoogwaerts and Grace Leigh. Romke started Mossless in 2009 as a blog where he interviewed a different photographer every two days, and since 2012 Mossless magazine has produced two print issues, each dealing with a different type of photography.Mossless was featured prominently in the landmark 2012 exhibition Millennium Magazine at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and is supported by Printed Matter, Inc. Their forthcoming third issue, a major photographic volume on American documentary photography from the last ten years titled The United States (2003-2013), will be published this spring.

Riverfront, 2012

Curran Hatleberg was one of the first photographers who inspired us to search for more documentary-style photos for the third issue of our magazine. His pictures, taken on roadtrips across America, are honest and naturally ambiguous. Whether it's a woman with a black eye or a memorial stuck in a tree, Curran's images make the viewer question the larger, unseen circumstances around his photos.

In this column, we’ll be interviewing a bunch of photographers from the third issue of our magazine, Mossless. Like Curran, the other artists we've chosen shoot modern America, capturing the essence of what it's like to live in this country during this particularly difficult decade.

Mossless: Tell us a memorable story from your travels across America.
Curran Hatleberg: A while back I was sitting in an empty barroom looking out the entrance to a dirty street. The door was propped wide open, framing a perfect view of the foot traffic and cars streaming by in the night. I studied thousands of insects as they whirled and smashed into a streetlight. I watched a nervous, skinny woman flash her gold teeth, then drop an orange rind on the sidewalk. Then I saw a sedan meet a concrete pillar at 50 miles an hour. The car lurched up the pole with vicious agility, going completely vertical before landing upside down. The whole event appeared slow and graceful and very far away. I stared, inactive, for what felt like a very long time, trying to decide if what I saw had actually happened or not. Before I was aware of my movements I was on my knees, breathing hard at the driver's side window. Everything smelled like gas. Glass and debris were strewn everywhere like confetti. Looking inside, the driver had blood streaming down his face in squiggled paths and was laughing uncontrollably. With the help of another man, I dragged him by the arms out of the window and onto the grass. The driver writhed on the ground in spastic fits of energy. A crowd developed around him, unsure what to do. It all happened very fast, but I clearly remember standing up and seeing one of the car's tires spinning purposely, as if the road were still underneath it.

How much traveling have you done for your photography?
Thirty-one years' worth.

Your work is separated in two bodies: Dogwood and The Crowded Edge. What separates these series?
Both bodies of work are subsets of a larger unfinished project tied to route-less travel. Maybe they could be thought of as different chapters from the same bigger story; they both examine the same core idea, but from separate vantage points. The major difference is that The Crowded Edge is organized around a single event, while Dogwood is looser, revolving more around the way life advances, and how we get swept up and displaced from our own lives.

Laurie, 2010

Ambiguity is a very powerful element in many of your photos. In your interview with the Great Leap Sideways you elaborated on a photograph called “Denver, Tear,” providing a lot of emotional context. I’d like to hear the story behind “Laurie,” the red-haired girl with a bandage on her forehead. Can you tell us? Or is it better if we don’t know?
Ultimately supplying the backstory is problematic, because it can overpower the leaps of imagination a viewer can take all on their own. One of the things I like most about a photograph is that it’s silent, so the viewer’s personal invention and interpretation are invited to govern the meaning of a picture. For this reason I don’t want my pictures to assert what is happening, but rather suggest what might be happening. The best pictures depict a moment that is interesting precisely because of its lack of narrative clarity. They tempt us to believe a narrative structure while at the same time deliberately withholding that narrative, so the viewer's response can only be wonder.

What has surprised you most about the people you’ve met?
Probably the ability people have to be both predictable and entirely incalculable.

Curran Hattleberg is a Brooklyn-based photographer who has studied at the University of Colorado and the Yale School of Art. His work has been shown in galleries both nationally and internationally and is included in multiple collections. He currently teaches photography at the International Center of Photography and Norwalk Community College.

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Tony Blair's tenure as prime minister of the UK has been over for nearly seven years now, but some Britons are still extremely upset at him. One British poll from last year even found that a fifth of the country thinks that Blair and his partner in war George W. Bush should face trial for invading Iraq. So far, five people have attempted to place Tony Blair under citizen’s arrest—the fifth being my boyfriend Twiggy on Friday night. I decided to interview him to find out how it went.

VICE: You just placed Tony Blair under a citizen’s arrest—how do you feel?
Twiggy Garcia: I feel great. Lots of people have been contacting me to say well done. I’m still in disbelief that I got the opportunity to citizen’s arrest the former prime minister.

Was this a planned scheme? Did you wake up this morning knowing that you were going to try to arrest Tony Blair?
Not so much a plan, but it's something I have wanted to do for a few years. I had been waiting for the opportunity after seeing the website ArrestBlair.org, and it just so happened that we were in the same place at the same time. I believe Blair is responsible for the mass murder of Iraqi civilians after taking our country into an illegal war and breaking articles 31 and 51 of the UN charter, of which the UK is a signatory.

Where did you see him?
At a restaurant called Tramshed in Shoreditch—I was working at the bar. My heart rate increased when I found out he was in the building; there was a eerie presence, which some of the other staff noticed too. It wasn’t like any other night. I couldn’t believe he was there. His security people were sitting at the bar directly in front of me and I got nervous because I thought they overheard me say, “Should I citizen’s arrest him?”

Did you act on impulse or did you think about what you were going to do?
I thought about it for a while. I went on the ArrestBlair website to see how to perform a citizen’s arrest. Then I spoke to some of the other staff and they said I shouldn’t do it. I then phoned my friend Callum and told him my plan. He said, "Go for it," and that was all I needed to hear.

Twiggy Garcia.

What was he doing when you arrested him?
He was sitting at the head of a table upstairs in the restaurant with about eight other people eating dinner. I think he was out with his family and a few friends. I went over to him, put my hand on his shoulder, and said, “Mr Blair, this is a citizen's arrest for a crime against peace, namely your decision to launch an unprovoked war against Iraq. I am inviting you to accompany me to a police station to answer the charge.”

What was his reaction?
He said, “No, shouldn’t you be worried about Syria?” and I replied that I can only address things that are within my grasp at any one time. Then he asked me, “But don’t you agree that Saddam was a brutal dictator and he needed to be removed?” and I replied “Not by an illegal war.” Then he started talking about how lots of people died in the 1980s. I paraphrased Robin Cook’s resignation speech and asked why we needed to go to war to remove a power we put in place, and didn’t our government and the US provide Saddam with those weapons in the first place?

What did he have to say to that?
He kept changing the subject and talking about Syria. He said, “I think you should be more concerned about Syria, to be honest.” I explained to him again that I was placing him under a citizen’s arrest because he is a war criminal, and invited him again to accompany me to the police station to answer the charges.

I’m going to assume he politely declined. What happened next?
One of his sons got up and went to get the plainclothes security from downstairs. I decided to get out of there sharpish—I’ve had a few run-ins with the police in the past and it never ends well. They have no respect for the laws they are supposed to uphold. I quit my job [at the restaurant] there and then. I’d been planning to leave anyway. I haven’t spoken to my employers since. I feel a little bad… they were really nice.

Did Blair react in the way you expected him to react?
It all panned out pretty much how I thought it would, except that I didn’t expect him to start debating with me. I think he actually believed the lies that were coming out of his mouth. We all know that the humanitarian angle of the war was retrofitted after the decision to go to war when Blair and Bush failed to get UN Security Council approval.

What do you hope will come from the attempted arrests?
I hope that it will keep people from forgetting that he is a war criminal. I hope one day he faces his charges at the Hague. People seem to think that those laws only apply to Nazis and African warlords.

If you saw him again would you do anything differently?
I’d probably get someone to film it. I was scared to get my phone out in case it was confiscated by his bodyguards. The police have held my phone for five months before when I had done nothing illegal. They are shits.

@GeorgiaBronte

Could this iconic Toronto strip club soon include a municipally sanctioned brothel? via Flickr.

Technically prostitution was never illegal in Canada, but up until recently the majority of activities surrounding the sex trade were. Amongst other things, prostitutes were prohibited from offering their services in “a fixed indoor location,” aka a brothel. When Terri-Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott challenged this law and two others in front of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, all three laws were deemed unconstitutional. It was a massive step in changing the conditions in which sex workers conduct their activities, opening the door to a multitude of new setup possibilities for the industry. 

This new Supreme Court ruling introduces a host of new questions, particularly when it comes to opening brothels. For example: Where do we put these constitutionally-protected sex parlours? And who's allowed to run them? Municipal councillor Giorgio Mammoliti is showing support for an initiative to let Toronto strip club owners tack on brothels to their establishments. It's hard to take Mammoliti, who is one of Rob Ford's lone supporters in City Hall, seriously in the slightest. It seems, however, that he’s thought about a brothel partnership with the City long and hard (pun intended), as his involvement in the matter can be traced back to 2011.

Back then, Mammoliti saw the push for legalized prostitution as an opportunity waiting to be seized. He apparently thought, this looks like a neat way for the city to make money or something, and went ahead proposing a plan for an official, bounded red light district. Unfortunately Mammoliti’s idea was tragically flawed. In fact, his original suggestion was to confine legal brothels to Toronto Island; already home to a nude beach, amusement park, art centre, and a small community of hippie-ish people. Access is limited, and the idea of a sex work-island was just too much to handle for the constituents (because it didn't make any sense whatsoever) and so the initiative was canned. 

Fast forward to December 2013, when the highest court of Canada confirmed the invalidation of the laws as they were originally formulated and gave legislators a year to come up with constitution-abiding rewrites. With the possibility of brothels randomly sprouting across the city, members of the Adult Entertainment Association of Canada figured it would be a good time to propose placing brothels in the hands of experienced and qualified establishments, i.e. strip clubs. As association director Tim Lambrinos explained, the idea isn’t to change the demand and turn strip clubs into brothels. The “enhanced experience” would take place in a separate part of the building, accessible through a different door. Also, the exotic dancers would not be those working as sex workers. The logic behind this is an extension of that behind the Supreme Court’s ruling, to keep the sex workers safe. In essence, the Adult Entertainment Association (AEA) is looking towards increasingly regulating prostitution by taking the women off the street and allowing them to work in a supervised environment. The advantage of relying on established strip clubs, as Mr Lambrinos puts it, is that they are already accustomed to working with law enforcement and health agencies to comply with existing regulations. Club owners are apparently known to give a great deal of importance to their employees’ safety and have their reputations to uphold, vis-à-vis the authorities.

Despite the Association’s good intentions, North American social norms and the stigma surrounding prostitution remain; plus, city-endorsed brothels likely appear despicable and just plain wrong to most of the city's conservative contingent. Even still, Mammoliti is sticking his neck out for brothels. Concerning the new proposal, he publicly stated that it was “worth our while listening to them” and in fact, attended the GTA strip club operators’ meeting at Niagara-On-The-Lake earlier this month, during which a partnership between the city and the clubs to establish the brothels was formally pitched. According to a source who was at the meeting, he agreed with the concept in principle, provided that a comprehensive study be conducted prior to implementing a pilot project. The study would be paid for by the Adult Entertainment Association and mandated to a consulting firm. Although not yet started, results are expected for July. The pilot project would be a yearlong trial period during which the mechanisms deemed fit by the study would be implemented and set into motion. Meanwhile, as the Association tries to align their cause with the cracked out bureaucracy at City Hall, the infamous Bunny Ranch brothel in Las Vegas has already announced their intention to open up one of their establishments in Toronto; so clearly, there's a power vacuum in Toronto for brothel superiority that the AEA is not interested in missing out on.

This type of partnership between the strip clubs and the city would have serious repercussions on the state of the sex industries and the sex workers’ conditions, that’s a given. What isn’t exactly clear is whether the potential benefits would trump the risk of organized exploitation on the part of these club owners. Yes, increased regulation ensuing from a partnership between the city and members of the Adult Entertainment Association could lead to a standardized, safer practice of sex work. However it could also severely limit the workers’ control on their activities and cripple their revenue. 

If you ask Valerie Scott, one of the three plaintiffs in the Bedford v. Canada case and legal coordinator of the Sex Professionals of Canada, handing over exclusive rights to strip club owners for operating legal brothels is anything but a good idea. To her knowledge, this “group of guys” have not consulted sex workers in the development of their new model, and she suspects it will prove itself inaccessible to working women. In her opinion, the licensing fees meant to create revenue for the city are likely to approach those of erotic massage parlors ($11,794.02), which would be anything but affordable to the average Canadian sex worker, who earns around $40,000 a year; and would be unable to open her own "practice" as it were. If this were to be the case, the club owners would have virtually unlimited power over the women, who would be left with limited control over their work and diminished revenue. In the worst case scenario, this would unleash a legal, pimping monopoly into the City of Toronto. Valerie suggests that a more independent model (where workers create their own safe space) is a better model. 

Mammoliti could not be reached in time for publication to respond to questions. Although he can be applauded for adopting a stance contrary to the prohibitionist approach most conservatives advocate for, given that no sex workers are being consulted about this potential partnership, Mammoliti's motives are clearly not as FTG (for the girls) as they may initially seem. The issue is complicated, a lot is at stake for the future of sex workers, and clearly there's a battle in the city for control of its forthcoming brothel development. The question now is should control be handed over to the AEA and the City post haste? Or is there a better solution that openly includes sex workers in the discussion?

@martcte

Earlier this month, a New Zealand anti-speeding commercial went viral, and for good reason—it is probably the most creative and effective ad for slowing the fuck down that has ever been made. But it is only the most recent standout commercial produced by the New Zealand Transport Agency and their ad agency, Clemenger/BBDO. Together, they have built a reputation for producing the best road safety PSAs in the world.

“Mistake” (2014)

This is the commercial that the internet has been collectively fanning out on for the last two weeks. I have never seen an ad that delivers a safe driving message with more resonance and power. If this thing doesn’t make you ease up on the old gas pedal, nothing will. The freeze frame motif is nothing new in advertising creativity, but using it in an anti-speeding PSA is brilliant. A spokesperson for the agency said this about the spot:

"This campaign aims to reframe the way people look at their speed when they're driving. We usually get to learn from our mistakes, but not when driving—the road is an exception. Even the smallest of mistakes on the road can cost us our life, or someone else's."

(Creative note: a similar spot was done in Thailand in 2007, but it is a far inferior and stupidly goofy ad.)

But the NZ Transport Agency doesn’t solely rely on shock tactics. Over the last few years their ads have perfectly matched the creativity to their targeted audiences. That’s a sign of a great client/ad agency relationship, which just never happens with government accounts. Never.

“Flying Objects” (2012)

This 2012 anti-speeding ad is less personal than “Mistake,” but still eye opening. The super slow-motion spot gives lead-footed drivers a physics lesson: bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, including the important stuff inside of us like the heart and brain. From the agency’s press note about the commercial:

“Vehicles are much safer than they used to be. Our roads are also continually upgraded and changed to make them safer for drivers. But while improvements are constant in these areas, there’s one weak link that will never be upgraded—the human body. The campaign…encourages the audience to consider aspects of a crash that they may not have considered before: that even with the best protection, you are still vulnerable.”

“Blazed” (2013)

The agency aired this long form ad last year on Māori Television. It is a perfect little two-minute play put on by three adorable Māori children who are having a hilarious discussion about whose dad is the funniest stoned driver. Their imitations are priceless. The ad gets the “don’t drive stoned” message across without banging you over the fucking head. The commercial should be reshot with American kids and aired in Colorado and Washington.

The children appear so natural in the scene because they are working with a professional director, Taika Waititi,whose Oscar-nominated short film, “Two Cars, One Night,” is also about New Zealand kids talking in cars. It’s only 11 minutes long; give it a watch.

“Shopkeepers” (2013)

“Shopkeepers” was released last August at the same time as “Blazed.” It’s a documentary-style commercial, alternating between interviews with actual small business owners and surveillance camera footage of “stoned” customers. While it is scripted, the writing makes it a winner—“What’s a grown man want 12 frosty pigs for?” What, indeed. Again, you are entertained while getting message.

The agency’s researchfor this stoned driving campaign found that around one-quarter of all New Zealand drivers and motorcyclists killed in accidents had cannabis in their system, and that cannabis was the second most common drug found in blood samples of deceased drivers (alcohol was number one).

“Legend” (2011)

This teen drinking and driving spot may be the best alcohol PSA ever produced. It’s far and away better than all of the preachy, out of touch, inaccurate, ineffective teen drinking and drug commercials the US government has wasted billions of dollars on over the years—commercials that were created by the best brains at the best American ad agencies, mind you.

It’s a simple, humorous ad set at a Māori teen party, executed perfectly. It talks to kids, not at them—“stop a mate from driving drunk” is the perfect strategy for teens. The commercial is helped greatly by the winning performance of the “hero.” “You know I can’t grab your ghost chips.” Wonderful.

Most people were first exposed to Michael C. Ruppert through the 2009 documentary, Collapse, directed by Chris Smith. Collapse was one of the scariest documentaries about our world and the fragile the state of our planet. It was also one of VICE's favorite films from the past ten years.

Michael was forced to leave the LAPD after claiming that the CIA was complicit in selling drugs across America, and he quickly became one of the most original and strident voices to talk about climate change, government corruption, and peak oil through his website, “From the Wilderness.”

Following the release of Collapse, Michael’s personal life underwent something of a collapse itself and he paid off all his debts, left behind all his friends, and moved with his dog Rags to Colorado, planning to commit suicide.

VICE caught up with Michael in the middle of the epic beauty of the Rocky Mountains at the end of last year. We found a man undergoing a spiritual rebirth—still passionate about the world and with a whole new set of apocalyptic issues to talk about.

Apocalypse, Man is an intimate portrait of a man convinced of the imminent collapse of the world, but with answers to how the human spirit can survive the impending apocalypse.

Apocalypse, Man is a feature-length documentary to be released over the next few weeks. 

Soundtrack by Sunn O))), Flaming Lips, Interpol, Michael C. Ruppert, and more.

Directed by Andy Capper.

A screenshot of the Wikileaks TPP docs.

In its latest under-reported truth spill, Wikileaks released a recent draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s (TPP) Environment chapter. The TPP is a 12-country trade agreement under secret negotiation led by the US that I covered for VICE Canada last week, thanks to its noxious effects on the internet. The TPP has also been widely criticized for its potential to increase inequality by depressing wages, making essential medicines more expensive for developing countries, and allowing corporations to sue states for regulations they don’t like, all as they continue to hurt the environment. But don’t worry, because all this comes in exchange for a projected 0.13% boost to our sweet, sweet GDP by 2025. Yes, that’s a rounding error, but the spice must flow.

As we’ve mentioned before, the draft text of the agreement has so far been unavailable to most elected politicians, but 500 “cleared stakeholders” from America’s largest companies and lobby groups do get to join the party and offer their suggestions on how the TPP can better increase their bottom lines trade opportunities. Many of the corporations who enjoy privileged access to classified negotiating texts and to TPP overlord Michael Froman’s office happen to be major campaign donors to Senators and Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. Depending on who you ask, this money trail is either a gosh-darned coincidence or a sign of a broken system.      

The TPP text includes binding enforcement measures for countries that don’t fall in line with harsh US-influenced copyright rules. It would erode privacy rights and normalize outsized penalties for people accused of piracy. Regular people can expect more creeping criminalization and monitoring of their everyday lives. By contrast, the whole Environment chapter has no teeth. Full of words and phrases like “may,” “appropriate,” and “shall make best efforts,” it reads like Exxon’s corporate social responsibility handbook. Corporate interests are doing their best to ensure the TPP adds zero incentive for countries to punish or discourage environmental “misconduct.”

If we take the TPP as it’s written, climate change and the lawless pillaging of Pacific fish stocks are considerably less important than cracking down on anyone caught sharing an mp3 of Flo Rida’s latest club banger. With big business at the helm, this insanity is a feature of the secret treaty process, not a bug.

If this were 2002, we might expect upstanding global citizen Canada to oppose evil American proposals to greedily destroy the environment for the sake of profits. This wouldn’t seem like a big departure from the script so far, given that Canada was sensibly pushing back against some of the harsh copyright rules and enforcement mechanisms Uncle Sam is hoping to include in the agreement. Spoiler alert: 12 years have passed, and things have gotten a lot less eco-friendly up north.

Thanks to Wikileaks’ documents, it’s evident that a Bush-era agreement is constraining the Americans from being the badass environmental villain even if they wanted to. The May 2007 agreement was a deal between George W. Bush and a Democratic Congress to always negotiate for binding environmental protections in future trade agreements. This means that the Americans are going it alone in pushing for anything that has a remote chance of protecting the environment. They’re not really trying too hard though, and as they retreat to even weaker language, commentators have called the whole chapter a PR greenwashing exercise.

This leaves the door open for the new Canada (who now wins fossil awards for throwing a wrench into international climate change negotiations) to continue kicking ass in the only war we’re currently winning—the war on the environment.

Canadians reacted with little surprise when the Harper government landed its latest blow in its eight year smackdown of inconvenient science and facts. In this case, the government ordered the closure of “seven [out] of the 11 of Canada’s world-renowned Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries, citing a consolidation and digitizing effort as the reason.” Observers were appalled to discover that most of the libraries’ contents were being unceremoniously thrown out into dumpsters, resulting in a massive loss of data and knowledge. The government countered that taxpayers would now save around $500,000 a year.

At the same time, the government moved quietly to kick the DFO while it’s down by transferring its responsibility to protect fish and their habitat along pipeline routes to the much more pro-industry National Energy Board. What’s the concern here? After a public input process where the majority of people sounded off against the project, the Board recently ignored the rabble and recommended that Cabinet approve the Northern Gateway Pipeline. You can guess how adept they’ll be at listening to fish.

The list of examples like these is already too long to print and growing by the day, and it’s representative of the context in which Canadian negotiators are working on the TPP. In all likelihood, they have been tasked thusly: don’t accept any binding environmental rules in this agreement.

Canada is in very good (bad?) company in this regard; every country except the US is rejecting even the weakest accountability for environmental protection in the TPP. Even then, according to Wikileaks, “with the exception of fisheries, trade in 'environmental' goods and the disputed inclusion of other multilateral agreements, the Chapter appears to function as a public relations exercise.”

Here’s a picture of the kind of hard-nosed language the TPP has in mind for protecting the environment:

“Where a submission [from the public or another country] asserts that a Party [country] is failing to effectively enforce its environmental laws and following the provision of the written response by that Party, any other Party may request that the Committee discuss that submission and written response with a view to further understanding the matter raised in the submission and, as appropriate, to consider whether the matter could benefit from cooperative activities.”

Photo via.

If “considering whether the matter could benefit from cooperative activities” doesn’t sound to you like a strong enough deterrent to recklessly polluting our one and only home planet, congratulations! You’re probably someone who just might give a shit about protecting endangered species, banning cruel shark finning, ensuring aboriginal harvesting rights, and punishing trade-seeking violations of existing environmental treaties. By most accounts, you are not the Canadian government, who is apparently okay with this gutless language.

Let’s take a look at another juicy morsel of the leak that illustrates the half-hearted, superficial nature of the TPP’s environment chapter:

“...where private sector entities or non-governmental organizations develop voluntary mechanisms for the promotion of products based on their environmental qualities, each Party should encourage those entities and organizations to develop such mechanisms that among other things:

a.  are truthful, not misleading and take into account scientific and technical information;

b. where applicable and available, are based on relevant international standards, recommendations or guidelines, and best practices;

c. promote competition and innovation; and

d. do not treat a product less favorably on the basis of origin.”

The quote above is about encouraging science-based standards to inform people about the environmental merits of products they buy. But when we unpack the text, it’s clear to see that conditions a) and d) cannot reasonably coexist with each other for a great many finished products. If country A sets lower environmental and labour standards than country B, the TPP is asking people not to care about the way a product is made in either country. Without binding enforcement for trade partners to hold each other to account, this is just asking for a good old race to the bottom to attract investment.

Let’s take the example of a low-carbon fuel standard, something very near and dear to the Canadian government’s heart. If tar sands oil causes three to five times as many greenhouse gas emissions during its production as conventional oil, but both kinds can be refined and put in your gas tank, do you have a right to know about the origins of the oil? Under the TPP, the Harper government could argue that consumers shouldn’t be able to make an informed choice, even though the “scientific and technical information” says the oils are vastly different. Of course, like every other part of the chapter, this section is voluntary and non-binding, so at least the idiocy is contained.  

Another big threat to the environment lurks in this deal. The investor-state provisions elsewhere in the TPP have already been shown to let corporations sue countries over regulations they don’t like or that threaten a vague definition of future profits. Apart from chilling future regulation, this sucks because Canada has already paid out hundreds of millions in legal fees and settlements awarded from a similar provision of NAFTA.The comically tarnished silver lining here is that we’re less likely to face these quasi-legal battles in the future thanks to the government’s weakening of environmental protections over the last eight years. Canadian mining companies, already generously helping themselves to lawsuits against Latin American countries over regulations, will probably be pretty thrilled about it all, though.      

So, what’s the bottom line of all this? The PR-driven farce exposed by Wikileaks shows that the TPP won’t lead to improvements in environmental protection.Given its self-description as a 21st-century deal, 21st-century voters can’t accept aspirational platitudes and token gestures. With the global environmental negotiation process already stalled and weakened, the TPP’s toothless lip service strengthens the hand of do-nothing administrations to blame everyone else for a worsening environmental crisis.

After having seen two leaked chapters, it’s no wonder that so much secrecy surrounds the TPP: unelected negotiators and lobbyists are barely even trying to balance out its rapacious corporate agenda with the public interest.

Why would any normally sensible national leader sign their citizens up for this multinational experiment in corporatocracy? The public-facing answer, as always, is that we need to because of “today’s tough economic reality.” Governments around the globe play this tired old tune to justify a litany of other unpopular policies. With the TPP, the Fortune 500 seem to be ensuring that the music will play for a few more decades before a much tougher ecological reality leaves our grandchildren wishing that 10% unemployment was their largest concern.

If this all sounds idealist, keep in mind that nobody expects a trade deal to single handedly solve pressing environmental issues. But at the moment the TPP is nothing more than proof of the old adage: if you can’t be part of the solution, there’s good money to be made being part of the problem.  

Somewhere on a ranch in Texas, George W. Bush is laughing to the point of tears.
 

@chrismalmo

Image via

I went to Shanghai with the idea that I might casually get laid. My loser low confidence—at bars, parties; any hook-up situation with which pensive celibates are obsessed—would finally be reprieved because I would be among “my people,” or so my racist preoccupation went. Call it an ethnological test: to figure out, once and for all, if it was actually race, or just my grim public demeanor that kept most women at bay.

The main reason for my trip, lest the reader think I am a complete douche, was to visit my grandmother while she was still lucid. But yes, there was indeed a gross, underlying part of me that wanted—even felt entitled to—docile Chinese ass. I might be a horrible person.

My plan for getting that ass was unclear, desolate, yet unwavering. Every morning I rode the metro to a random stop at one of the 300 stations spanning over 300 miles. I was partial to the 10 line, as it went to the French Concession, a district named after the invoked imperialists, who, like the British, left their bougie mark on this "Gateway to the East." Districts like the French Concession and Xīntiāndì ("new heaven and Earth") are rather "white," from the faux-European Lost Generation-ish cafes, to the designer boutiques bracing mannequins up as idols. Chinese in ethnicity, but ultimately American, I perversely patronized establishments made to look American, read aggravating postmodern literature written by white men, ate imported cheese from Europe, and wondered if I might feel less empty at a Buddhist temple, to which I later went, vapid and curious.

***

The term "Shanghaiing" originated on the docks in the 19th century, where civilians were often tricked into forced labor aboard American merchant ships, usually heading to Shanghai. In 1842, after the First Opium War, Shanghai was designated as a treaty port, to which the British, French, and US came to trade. It soon became the respective landing and launching ports for Europeans with a penchant for exoticism, as well as disillusioned Chinese who wanted a little Western decadence. Enter corruption, bribery, prostitution, drugs, organized crime, and other follies. Then, in 1949, with the Cultural Revolution, Mao seized control of the city, disabling its economy. Shanghai remained under something of a shadow throughout the next few decades, until the early 90s when things loosened up with notable economic reform, which spawned massive development.

The schizophrenic nature of the city may be a microcosm of China at large. Impoverished families with one haggard chicken to their name sell rice cakes at 20 cents a pop next to couture boutiques stocked with $30,000 handbags. Farmers sit on construction rubble selling vegetables. Fresh tofu at the market will run you a dollar, while a glass of OJ at a new high-rise hotel is priced like a single malt whisky. A bowl of ramen is a fraction of a slice of pizza from Pizza Hut or Papa John's. Even the Buddhists have gotten into the market. Monks, ostensibly sans desire, sell incense at a 1200% markup, and outside the temple cripples in formidable contraptions chase you down for change. Empires and revolutions come and go, but the genius of free-market capitalism lives on.

The German or Japanese tourist in America may pay a handful for a ticket to Disney World, but in Asia and South America, where past imperialisms seem to rumble from beneath the soil, the American tourist is economic prey. The virginal sacrificial lamb.

To be Shanghaied now points to Western naivety, which is essentially political solipsism, the notion of being immune to the rest of the world via one's First World birthright. I did not think these people—or my people, or whatever—would go through what they did for my money. In short: I simply did not think.

***

A Shanghai teahouse. Photo via

Short of a roaming data plan, I stood outside the metro looking at a guidebook. Two attractive girls approached me and asked if I would take a picture of them. They posed in front of a random high-rise whose promise in elevation was diminished by the thick ass smog. Saying “cheese” evolved into cheesey chatter, a quick soft hand on my shoulder, then to questions about what I was doing later on. Was this how people got laid? I unabashedly said I was doing nothing, which could have also applied to my autobiography.

They invited me to tea. I envisioned my penis ensconced, like a cold newborn, into their dark wet folds. These were my people. I would move here and be happy.

Between our respective broken versions of the other's language, we talked about where I lived, and what I did for a living. I told them stories of my life in the States (Měiguó, or "Beautiful Country") and they giggled in the misguided fantasy that life is better there.

What did my parents do? How much money did we have? Was I married? Amicable curiosity became awkward—faux pas one could attribute to cultural differences—then finally glib and intrusive questions.

Did I know something was up? Probably. Did I respect myself enough to care? No.

The prettier lead negotiator sat closer, while the more modest-looking one lowered her gaze. Economics begins with the face, the global commodity of self-worth. The menu said 45¥ ($7.44) for what appeared as a flight of teas. We drank shot-size cups of tea—from floral whites, to light greens, to murky reds, then finally gritty blacks—while my companions told ancient tales of the moon, of dragons and princesses, of tigers and ghosts, moving their arms in long graceful arcs. I had a stiffy. Leaves tied in a ball bloomed at the bottom of scalding water. Steam rose into an apparition of a scam.

Turns out it was 45¥ for each tea, so multiply our nine-tea flight by the three of us, then add a $40 dollar can of tea I bought for the pretty one, who pouted into her empty wallet. I'll spare you the currency rate conversion: it came to about $240 USD. I meekly handed the hostess the crisp bills my mother had given me for the week. I felt like a sucker. The girls could see something in my face, a look that had a warm reservoir behind it.

***

At dinner, the fish we were about to eat rested its face on the side of the pot and stared back at me. "All that trouble for some tea," I told my mother. She looked at me and shook her head. "Those girls work for the tea shop," she said, her disbelief paramount. "Their commission was probably 30 percent." My grandmother laughed. The maid laughed. The fish's mouth seemed to form a smile.

After saying goodbye to the girls with platonic pats on the back, my face immersed in, almost protected by, the homogeneity on the train, I knew I had been conned, but just for the tea, not the commission. Part of me was oddly enlivened that these girls were willing to go through such a hairy scam just to have premium tea with me. Sure, I paid for it, as I should have. I was the man. I may have even been flattered.

That night in bed I searched “Shanghai scams” on Wikipedia, which confirmed that the girls worked for—or at least received a flat rate from—the teahouses for each dupe they brought in. I was just a guy on the street who looked stupid enough. To them: a white guy, a tourist, a dumbshit.

Other Shanghai scams involve unwitting men ordering rounds of drinks at bars—their discretion softened by alcohol and loneliness—while cute girls drink apple juice veiled as whisky, water as gin. Incapacitate your victim. Similar transactions happen at fancy restaurants or the opera. Worse are the art receptions and auctions. As the urban legend goes, some have woken up without a kidney, or worse, dead. I quickly checked my back for a scar that perhaps I hadn't noticed at first. It was smooth, untouched. They did not lay a hand on my body, for which I felt lucky. Sure, it would have been nice to have "gotten lucky," but I didn't want to use up all my complaints just yet. After all, I was coming back home.

@chen_village

Photos by Meredith Jenks

There has been lots of talk on the internet lately about Haribo sugarfree gummy bears and how they make you make shit like a madman. According to these detailed Amazon reviews, just a handful of the bears can cause an immediate evacuation of the gastrointestinal tract. There are 53 pages of reviews on Amazon, each one topping the last with a story of gummy-fueled diarrhea nightmares. "Gastric exorcism at 30,000 feet," a reviewer named I Like Cheese wrote. "Don't use the bathroom on a Delta flight. That stench is from me, seven years ago."

I'm no avid Amazon shopper or reader of online reviews, but I've scanned my share and have never seen anything close to the kind of in-depth reporting that's found on the Haribo sugarfree gummy bear Amazon reviews page. The metaphors are akin to something the poet John Donne would have written with after a particularly stinging shit.

"Gastric exorcism?" "Liquid razorblades?" I wasn't buying it. This whole thing seemed like a stupid internet hoax—an excuse for people to pen elaborate fictions about their somewhat irregular but ultimately harmless gummy bear-induced shits. The reporter in me knew what had to be done. I bought a few pounds of the day-glo bears at a candy store in Manhattan and found myself in the VICE offices late last Saturday night, shoving handfuls in my mouth, determined to find out the truth.

I camped out on a leather couch in the lobby. Leather seemed easiest to hose down if I didn't make it to the bathroom in time. The bears were still cold from being outside and the first few were tough on the jaw. Once they warmed up, the texture was everything we've come to expect from the good people at Haribo. The flavor was amazing, too. Lycasin, the sugar substitute that's supposed to be the source of the colonic unrest, tastes amazing. Splenda and other artificial sugars have nothing on Lycasin, aside from the alleged diarrhea part.

7:25 PM - One of the Amazon reviews mentioned that they had only eaten 20 gummies before their bowels exploded, so I figured that would be a safe threshold dose. I hooked down a handful. The first half hour felt close to that anxious period right after dropping acid, when you're killing time and waiting for it to hit.

I snuck a few more bears as I waited. They really are tasty.

8 PM - A half hour in, I started feeling weird. I han't eaten gummy bears since I was 12, and I figured that I would have felt the same after eating any fist-sized glob of gelatin. Meredith—the photographer who encouraged VICE to test these gummies in the first place (thanks, Meredith!)—brought over a trash bin. I started spitting out thick, red loogies. A few times I felt like yakking up the gummy bears, but I forced myself to keep them inside. If those bears wanted out, they'd have to find another way.

8:21 PM - Something felt wrong. Very wrong. But the bears were too good to quit. I kept eating. 

8:40 PM - Gassy. An adamant voice in the back of my head kept telling me, "Slow and steady. Push things out too fast and you might let more slip than you want to."

9:02 PM - Shooting pains had begun. But after two hours of eating the bears, I still hadn't made a mad dash to the bathroom. Maybe my theory was right. Maybe all the Haribo diarrhea emergency stories were exaggerated internet fiction. Another bonsai kitten hoax.

How mistaken I was!

9:15 PM - There's a movie called Devil's Due in theaters right now. In its trailer, there's a quick shot of a woman napping on a couch as something starts to force its way up from inside her belly. I felt like this was happening to me. The bears were gnawing at my stomach lining. I started to think this dumb stunt could actually cause serious damage.

9:30 PM - The office's night security guard walked by a few times to check on me and Meredith. By this point, I'd lost my ability to communicate clearly. My sentences came out fractured and punctuated with groans. The guard didn't seem particularly surprised that this was happening.

10:12 PM - A friend of mine asked if he could swing by and check on me. I stood up for the first time in an hour and gravity started to take hold. I just about let loose of everything I had inside me as I opened the door to let him in the office.

10:26 PM - The beginning of the end. The bears opened my lower pod bay door and a gummy hell sprang forth. I made it to the toilet, just barely. My watery shit looked like a blend of bile and egg flower soup.

With all attempts at modesty destroyed, I allowed Meredith and my buddy to follow me into the bathroom. He shied away, but Meredith came in like a pro, knowing what kind of massacre she was walking into.

10:47 PM - Exhausted and drained of all liquid, I hobbled home, but the need to shit out all my water weight hadn't gone away. It took every ounce of my being not to shit my pants on the corner of Manhattan and Norman Avenues in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. My rectum put on a star performance.

11 PM - I crawled into bed, shaking and dehydrated. At least I got to the bottom of the Haribo mystery. I ate the bears so the world wouldn't have to. I fell asleep with a noble sense of self-importance—and the faint smell of fruity shit clinging to my clothes.

11:49 PM - I dreamed a gentle dream. A well-groomed older gentleman led me by the hand down a long corridor. "The bathroom is right this way, sir," he said. "We keep this one for only our most important guests."

He stopped and pushed open a door, revealing the most magnificent and ornate bathroom I had ever seen. He smiled and nodded and quietly shut the door behind me, leaving me alone, and—

11:51 PM - I tore myself out of bed and ran towards the toilet, vomiting out of my asshole. Whatever happened in the VICE office was nothing compared to this. I dug my iPhone from the pocket of the pants bunched around my ankles, and fired up the voice recorder.

Be warned: the audio I caught is not for the faint of heart.

3:10 AM - I crawled back into bed after shitting for hours. I was a shell of a man, fingers pruned from dehydration. The wreckage I left in the bathroom was too much for my weak body to deal with. I left it for a roommate to clean up.

6 AM - My girlfriend woke up to get ready for work. She wandered into the bathroom, took one look inside, and stomped back to our bed. "We're never getting our security deposit back," she said.

A school project put together by one of the survivors of the St. Anne's Residential School.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has ruled that the Federal Government disclose thousands of police documents concerning the torture of native children at St. Anne’s residential School in Fort Albany, Ontario. The infamous school—where children as young as six were disciplined in an electric chair—is, at least to this date, perhaps the most egregious example of the abuses inflicted upon children who were forced into the residential school system. The government has been withholding transcripts and documents related to an Ontario Provincial Police investigation that looked into these abuses when a group of former students got together and filed their complaints in the early 90s. The Harper government and Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Vaillancourt has cited “privacy concerns” (whose privacy?) as reason not to produce the documents, although it appears they may simply want to avoid the possibility of having to pay any compensation to the aging survivors. 

In his ruling last Tuesday, Justice Paul Perell ripped into the government for their shrewd and insensitive behaviour in dealing with victims of abuse—showing once again that just as they’re unwilling to comply with their obligations in regards to land treaties—they’re unwilling to comply with their obligations to engage in the truth and reconciliation process with any spirit of openness, authenticity, or healing. 

“It is to the disgrace and shame of the religious organizations and Canada, that the children who attended Indian Residential Schools were the victims of brutal mistreatment,” writes Justice Perell in his decision. “Based on its unduly narrow interpretation of its obligations, Canada has not adequately complied with its disclosure obligations with respect to the St. Anne’s narrative… If truth and reconciliation is to be achieved, if it is to be a genuine expression of Canada’s request for forgiveness for failing our aboriginal people so profoundly, the justice of the system for the compensation for the victims must be protected.”

Fay Brunning has been representing former students of St. Anne’s. She believes Justice Perell’s decision to be a landmark in this country’s process of truth and reconciliation. It is one that “comes down hard” on the government’s lack of cooperation while opening the right doors for other victims moving forward.

“I feel like he came down with a real cornerstone decision here for us that completely reinforces the terms of this agreement and puts this thing back on the rails… All their arguments he found were misdirected, as were all the excuses they tried to come up with as to why they buried these documents… So he’s really come down and established that yes, the court’s got jurisdiction, yes it’s going to supervise, yes, if people have problems you can come to the court.”

Last week I called Fay—who’s very relieved about the decision—to get a better sense of what’s next for the victims of the St. Anne’s Residential School.

VICE: First of all, congratulations on the ruling. Have you spoken with any of the victims? How are they feeling about it?
Fay: Oh yeah, I’ve got lots of emails. They’re so relieved, because they felt it was important that the truth be brought forward. There have been 22, 23 years of history of trying to bring forward the pervasive and widespread abuse at St. Anne’s to the justice system. It started in 1992; they had a health conference in St. Albany that led to going to the police. So overall, people are very relieved and very proud to have participated. It took a lot of courage for me to say to people: ‘Can you give me your evidence? Will you give me your evidence? Will you help me by giving me your case to take it forward before the judge to show the judge why this makes a difference?’

It’s really important that firstly, Canada understands what they went through, but secondly, that they end up realizing that other Canadians are horrified and they verify that what happened to them as children was wrong. And in particular here, that the court has said that their rights have been violated and it was wrong.

Moving forward, what does this mean for survivors of abuse at not just St. Anne’s, but for surviving victims of abuse at residential schools across Canada?
It’s really important because let’s say, in another example, two of the nuns who were convicted at St. Anne’s for physical abuse of children—one of them for forcing children to eat their own vomit—she worked across James Bay in Fort George at the catholic school there, both the nuns did. So to the same degree that there was non-disclosure about these two convicted nuns at St. Anne’s, well guess what? [There are] ten-to-one odds they abused kids over at the other school too. So I bet you the perpetrator reports about those two nuns are equally deficient at the other schools they worked at. So then people who went to Fort George and didn’t really understand how bad this woman was or they had no more information, their claims may be impacted and that’s why the judge has left it completely open and said: ‘If there’s going to have to be re-hearings, I am going to exercise my extraordinary jurisdiction and that’s going to happen.’

The government could have asked the court to clarify these matters instead of just hiding the documents and hoping nobody ever revealed it. Overall there’s been non-compliance by the federal government in terms of failing to disclose about St. Anne’s… clearly this is one of the most egregious examples of widespread physical and sexual abuse over all of these children but we don’t know where else it trickles out. For instance, in a Manitoba residential school, there was a supervisor who in 2005 was convicted of sexually abusing a number of boys; well, he had worked at a number of other residential schools, and if the federal government has the transcripts and it has all the information about all these convicted—or even if not convicted but there were full trials, even if you had an acquittal—those contain allegations of sexual and physical abuse against that perpetrator.

Many survivors are now elderly. Do you think one of the reasons that the government wanted to keep this under lock and key is that they were just waiting for these people to die off so they wouldn’t have to deal with it?
Could be. I think they wanted to avoid paying. Can you imagine any Canadian, for example, you go to court and you’re civilly suing somebody for having sexually abused your child and you find out that the perpetrator has been criminally convicted already of having sexually abused another child? And then to try and argue that those transcripts and that conviction is not relevant? I mean, it blows your mind. It really blows your mind. And that’s what the federal government has done, they’re arguing that these are completely irrelevant. Really?

That the federal government made it this difficult for justice to be achieved in the first place is in itself an abuse. They are a government that claims to be staunchly against the physical and sexual abuse of children, so why draw out a lengthy court battle deliberately hiding the truth in regards to victims of such abuse? It’s hard not to see a double standard. If this were a group of Anglo-Saxon children who had been raped and electrocuted at a boarding school in the 60s and were seeking compensation, would the government withhold evidence from them?

This government has a one-track-mind when it comes to its relationship with Canada’s aboriginal communities that isn’t based on reconciliation, but purely based on economics. This attitude that shuns healing, forgiveness, and compensation for questionable promises of resource driven prosperity, won’t do them any favours in bridging the necessary divides that may be required for the permission to build pipelines through aboriginal lands.
 

@ddner

In Episode two, Michael C. Ruppert talks fracking, police militarization, and Occupy. Then he has a jam session with his bandmate, Doug Lewis, and his singing dog, Squishy.

All photos by Aubrey Edwards

No one invited the Prancing Elites to dance at the basketball game. They are not part of the halftime show taking place at center court. Their names are not listed in the program. Their outfits do not match either team’s motif.

The six young men sit at the end of a low-slung set of blond wooden bleachers—one in the front row, three on the next tier, and two at the top. Their posture is charm-school perfect, their hands resting on knees clasped close together. Each is dressed in a crisp green-and-white athletic shirt, cut short at the sleeves and midriff, with the dance team’s fierce dragon logo emblazoned on the chest. They wear shiny orange booty shorts, gleaming translucent tights, and matching looks of cool nonchalance, as if they can hardly count the number of times they’ve sat waiting to dance at a game like this.

For Kentrell Collins, the young man in the front row, this is literally the case. He's been dancing with the Prancing Elites for nine of his 26 years, and he’s spent more afternoons and evenings than he can recall poised in public places around Mobile, Alabama—a high school football or basketball game, a fashion or hair show, a party or club—prepared to unspool himself in a stylish flourish for anyone to watch.

The cadre of beautiful boys fidgets, glancing around at each other as if clarifying some last-minute minutia with nonverbal signals as DJ Jubilee blares through the loundspeakers: "Get it ready, get it ready, get it ready ready. Get it ready, get it ready, get it ready ready. I said giiiirl don’t you do that. I said boyyyy don’t you do that."

On what seems like an indiscriminate beat, Collins springs up with a coy tilt of his head to the left and a pop of his hip to the right, his palms extended before he begins to whirl his arms around and move his body as if it were comprised of singular, contiguous parts, each with its own elaborate series of precise gesticulations that meshes with the others to form a fluid, gyrating whole. The mastery and sass with which he dances clashes with the pedestrian setting—as the other members of the troupe arise in synchronous display, bringing the performance to an abrupt crescendo, a little girl in a puffy pink coat runs obliviously in front of them, at whom Collins casts a sidelong glance. There’s nothing other than dancing he’d rather be doing, but even in the short YouTube video that captures this moment, Collins’ eagerness to move beyond Mobile seems apparent.

Unexpectedly, Shaquille O’Neal may be Collin's ticket to stardom—or at least out of the Deep South. Now, Shaq is a tough person to impress. I met him once at a book signing in New Orleans for his autobiography, Shaq Uncut, and as I loitered in line with the throng of fans, I was struck by how utterly underwhelmed he seemed. This is a man who’s not only one of the greatest basketball players of all time, but such a tremendous athlete (and ego) that he starred in a television show for which he challenged other premier athletes to competitions in their own sport. In 2012, he earned a doctorate in education and told reporters he planned to go to law school next. His Twitter feed is relentlessly entertaining and followed by millions, and one day last June he tweeted "SHAQTIN A FOOL PRESENTS. THESE DUDES B JAMMIN" with a link to this video of the Elites. It spread wildly through cyberspace, surfacing on such disparate sites as Perez Hilton and Fox Sports. After seven years of posting videos online that rarely reached beyond pockets of black gay communities in the South, the dance troupe’s social media inboxes began to swell with requests for interviews and shows, as well as enthusiastic well-wishing from new admirers across the globe.

When I met the Elites a month later in Mobile for a picnic of Foosackly’s chicken, they were going over highlights and hijinx from a trip to Los Angeles from which they had returned the previous day. Producers of the Fox daytime talk show The Real had seen the video Shaq tweeted and flew the group out to perform live on the show, and they put the Elites up for an all-expenses-paid week-long stay. The Elites spent their days meeting with television executives, including reps from production companies owned by Tyra Banks and Dick Clark. As a student, a server, a customer service representative, a part-time dance instructor, and a hotel maid, respectively, the boys from Mobile succumbed to the expected foibles during their trip to Tinseltown—forgetting table manners while dining in sight of producers from America’s Next Top Model, having difficulty believing that $5,000 per-reality TV episode isn’t that much money, trying to open their own car doors despite their hired driver’s rebuffs. But as they told it, the trip was a success. All five were glowing, elated and exhausted and excited, their prettiness and youth and charm showing strong through their jet lag, a condition several of them had never before experienced, this trip being their first time on an airplane.

The style of dance the Prancing Elites perform is called j-setting, after the dance squad for Mississippi’s historically black Jackson State University, the Prancing Jaycettes. In 1970, the Jaycettes discarded their batons to free their limbs for new maneuvers—a somewhat radical development in the South, where baton-twirling majorettes had been a hallmark of college halftime shows for two decades. By the 1990s, the style had caught on at other Southern schools—Shaquille O’Neal almost certainly would have seen it during his time as a student at Louisiana State University—and a smattering of men had joined the ladies dancing on the fields and courts. Gay boys at the games were struck by the way the moves looked executed by male bodies and they began to adapt them for the club. Groups of young men honed routines to bring into the nightlife, dominating dance floors from Baton Rouge to Raleigh, the lead-and-follow format of j-setting allowing entire raucous parties to partake.

If the Prancing Elites feel at home dancing fabulously in the bleachers, it’s because they’ve been relegated there from the outset. Each had yearned to join his high school dance squad, to skip and sashay alongside the marching band at games and parades. But the dance squads did not admit men. Timothy Smith, who on the day of the picnic wore a knock-out black skirt, white blouse, and three-inch pumps, told me each of the to-be Elites was left to be "the little sideline person who’d just look and be like, 'Oh, I wish that was me there.'

"I was actually in the marching band at William B. Williamson High School," Smith said. "I played trombone for four years. My tenth-grade year, I got real close with the dance girls and they were like, ‘You should try out.’ But I was like, ‘Y’all, no. They ain’t going to let me on, try out, or get on the dance team.’ It used to hurt me so bad, because I wanted to just dance and have fun and perform, but they wouldn’t allow it. So I just stayed on the sidelines, and I would dance in the stands with a couple of my girlfriends."

High school, home, work—each of the Elites has danced through a minefield of hurt. Smith was fired from his job at a hotel for taking time off to go to Los Angeles by a supervisor he said had long been eager to rid the maid staff of its single homosexual. Collins faced physical abuse from his family.

"My brother used to try to fight me because I’m gay," he said. "There was one particular time I remember distinctly: I was staying with him and I had to go dance somewhere, and he literally tried to restrain me from going."

But success has a funny way of validating a person’s pursuits. As Collins, Smith, and I talked over coffee after the picnic, Collins received a text message that made him put down his phone and begin to weep. It was from the brother who had tried to fight him, and from the log in his smart phone, one could see it was the first message Collins had ever received from him:

"im proud of u lil bra kept doing ur thang with ur group love u from my family".

"I would’ve never thought that," Collins said, after a moment. "Because, growing up, they hated it. But I think they see that it’s something that I’m passionate about, and now they’re like, ‘He’s doing what he wants to do. I’m going to support him.’ I never would have thought that. Just to get that message … that’s all I’ve been waiting on."

The Deep South can be selectively tolerant—the Alabama heat prompts the Elites to practice after dark in the high school parking lot that has recently served as their studio. Any congregation of black men blaring music in an unsanctioned space in Mobile is bound to attract the attention of the police, but from the very first time the cops arrived, Collins said they have simply sat and watched, seeming half beffudled, half impressed.

This holiday season, the Elites encountered mixed feedback after organizers invited them to dance in the Christmas parade in Semmes, Alabama, population 3,115. They strutted the street in sexy Santa-inspired costumes behind two standard bearers flying the Elites’ banner and in front of a fortuitously matching fire truck. They were greeted with jeers and whining, and white parents told reporters afterward they should have been warned before accidentally exposing their children to such filth. The uproar prompted officials in Mobile to pull the Elites from the city’s annual New Year’s MoonPie Over Mobile parade—it was the first time the Elites had been invited—but the story catapulted the dancers' name once again through cyberspace. The buzz reached Huffington Post and ABC News and was enough to help the boys successfully fulfill a $15,000 Kickstarter campaign. Instead of dancing in the New Year’s parade, the Elites partnered with a local website to conduct a dance-crawl of sorts that night throughout downtown Mobile. It was met with more fanfare than their hometown has ever shown them before.

In November, the Elites auditioned for America’s Got Talent, continuing their pursuit in the long, illustrious Southern tradition that forces black artists to look elsewhere for recognition and support. Just as many jazz musicians from New Orleans have, throughout history, played to packed concert halls across Europe and returned home to book gigs in smoky bars, the Elites face a distinct ceiling in Mobile and are looking to opportunities on the coasts. Alabama is a long way from a widespread embrace of any gay black art. But Collins said he thinks it’s precisely the elements that are met with resistance and repression in the South that will make the Prancing Elites a hit on a national scale. 

"We’re so rebellious to what society wants that the world loves everything we do, regardless of this society here," he said. "Because the world is much bigger than Alabama."


@nathancmartin

King.com, the company responsible for developing the closest thing to online crack, Candy Crush, has now trademarked the word “candy." This means that no other mobile games are allowed to have the word “Candy” in their name, because the giant corporation fears their billion dollar industry will be devastated.

Now, King.com can force other companies to get rid of their games completely if that word is also in their title. Escapist Magazine reports that King filed for this trademark back in February of 2013, and almost a year later it was approved (on January 15, 2014 to be exact). I imagine all the tech bros of King.com chugging some sort of beer flavored like banana bread upon hearing this joyous news. Escapist writes, “Benny Hsu, the maker of All Candy Casino Slots - Jewels Craze Connect: Big Blast Mania Land, told Gamezebo that he was asked under no uncertain terms to pull his game from the App Store.” According to Hsu, King paralegal Sophie Hallstrom, told him, “Your use of CANDY SLOTS in your app icon uses our CANDY trademark exactly, for identical goods, which amounts to trademark infringement and is likely to lead to consumer confusion and damage to our brand. The addition of only the descriptive term 'SLOTS' does nothing to lessen the likelihood of confusion."

Look, I'm all about brands, you feel me? I happen to have my own personal brand that I am very protective of. If I saw another short, chubby, Jewish girl hovering over half a slice of pizza she spotted on the sidewalk while asking her Twitter followers if she should eat it or not, I would definitely want to take legal action for personal brand infringement. However, I can't prove that she is deliberately jocking my style. It could just happen to be a coincidence, or maybe she had been wanting to eat sidewalk pizza way before me and I had no idea. As lawyer Martin Schwimmer puts it, “Suggestive marks are protectable, but the problem is that third parties can claim that they thought up their mark on their own.” So as valid as this trademark may be, enforcing it on other parties can often be tricky.

Schwimmer also recommends that smaller game developers like Hsu, if and when they do get hounded by Sophie Hallstrom, seek legal help from a trademark professional before admitting defeat. But, as Escapist writes, “many indie developers don't have the resources for that kind of legal fight, nor can they look to Apple for help; the letter he received regarding the 'Candy Slots' infringement came by way of Apple's legal department.” Hsu says that all he can do now is change the name of his game.

King undoubtedly has a giant upper hand in this situation, but it's not like these games can no longer be candy-themed. They just can't have the word “candy” in the title. I thought “Candy Land” would have to be something like “Confectionery Land” or “Gumdrop Island” or maybe just “Diabetes," but this really just relates to mobile games, so I think Hasbro is in the clear. I'm not sure why candy is such a popular theme for games either. I understand why children would want to play a game with lollipop people and chocolate rivers or whatever, but adults really need to refine their taste. It's bad enough we compulsively play these games. Let's at least do it with some dignity. Wouldn't the game “Tofu Salad Scramble” be just as fun?

Of course, it's not as if  generic words being trademarked is uncommon. There are a lot of products used in everyday life that most of us have no clue is named after one particular brand. For instance, did you know that Q-Tip is a trademarked word, and its inventor originally called them “Baby Gays”? A lot of us tend to call all cotton swabs Q-Tips, thus turning the Q-Tip into a genericized trademark. The brand becomes so synonymous with the product that we go on thinking that's actually what the product is called. The same thing happened to Rollerblades, the Escalator, and the Zipper. However, the difference here is that King did not invent the word “candy." They simply decided that they should own it.

The practice of riffing on intellectual property in order to capitalize on trends is not uncommon. The Asylum, the low-budget movie studio behind Sharknado made their mark in the mockbuster business—creating ripoffs of major films. If you've been fooled by titles like Transmorphers, American Battleship, Snakes on a Train, The DiVinci Treasure, and Almighty Thor, then you understand how precarious the trademarking game is (also, you might be a moron). These companies do have to struggle with bottom-feeders trying to make a dime off their hard work, but it's still bizarre that now one companies controls who gets to use candy in their mobile games. Still, I would support someone filing for the word “King, forcing Burger King to change their name to "Burger Male Ruler of an Independent State, a Position Usually Inherited by Birth." That would make me laugh.

@JustAboutGlad

The deceptively friendly poster regarding the dosage change. Photo via.

Methadone is about to get ten times stronger in BC. But many patients still don’t know the change is coming, and advocates worry this will lead to overdoses and deaths.

For those of you not familiar with drug dependency treatment, methadone is a highly regulated, strong narcotic used to treat addiction to opiates, like heroin, Oxycontin, and Fentanyl. Methadone’s effectiveness is based on the principle of “opiate substitution,” that allows addicts to reduce their symptoms of withdrawal—a hell that can include restlessness, cold sweats, anxiety, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle spasms, bone pain, increased blood pressure, speeding heart rate, depression, and even suicide.

Each day, methadone patients go to the pharmacy and drink a Tang-like substance of methadone crystals dissolved in orange liquid, under the watchful eye of the pharmacist. The look and taste of the product gives rise to its street name “juice.” For every 1mg / mL of methadone, there’s 10mL of liquid.

On February 1^st, that all changes. The pharmacist will measure out cherry-flavoured syrup that comes pre-mixed directly from the pharmaceutical company. The new medicine, branded as “Methadose,” will supposedly discourage street use by being harder to cook and inject. The product also has higher levels of sucrose, which will sting when the user shoots up, according to the BC Centre for Disease Control. Some harm reduction advocates are skeptical.

What experts appear to be most concerned about, however, is that Methadose is concocted from a 10 mg of methadone to 10 mL of liquid ratio; which means that the dose is ten times more concentrated than regular methadone. So, a methadone user who would normally drink 200mL, will only be taking a concentrated dose of only 20mL as of February 1. If they were to take their usual volume of the medicine, they’d be consuming a frightening and most likely fatal dose.

The problem is that not everybody knows about this change to the methadone program, and the consequences could be deadly.

The College of Pharmacists of BC has cautioned that there is “a greater impact as a result of measurement error.” Which is to say that any small mistake by the pharmacist who is pouring the dose, or the doctor who is prescribing it, will have ten times the effect. For street users, where methadone users don’t know what they’re buying, the risk is even greater. Plus, Methadose resembles children’s medication, which could also lead to some tragic accidents.  

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC, which administers the prescribing of methadone, has warned of a “public safety risk until all stakeholders are informed.” Given that Methadose will be released in less than two weeks, advocates and community workers are racing to get the word out.

Patients Losing Patience

I was invited to sit in on a meeting of methadone users, just after news of the methadone program changes started hitting the media. At times, the meeting broke down into chaos, as people spoke over one another—voices raised in concern and frustration.

During the smoke break, people passed around posters that had just come out: “Think before you drink,” they warned. These were jointly released by the College of Physicians and Surgeons, College of Pharmacists and Ministry of Health along with a press release about the coming changes. 

This move to stronger methadone has put up “the biggest red flag” for Laura Shaver, who chaired the meeting and is president of the BC Association of People on Methadone (BCAPOM).

Laura is a methadone patient herself. She spends her days frenetically campaigning for methadone patients and can command order in the noisiest of meetings. Laura is angry that methadone patients have so little agency in their own treatment.

She says that “methadone to an addict is the same as insulin is to a diabetic,” yet users are “stigmatized and controlled” so much they call methadone “liquid handcuffs.” The sudden switchover to Methadose without consultation is just another example of the powerlessness of patients.

Shaver is also worried about overdoses and deaths.

At the end of the meeting, the group had a moment of silence for friends and family that have died from overdoses and drug-related causes. I thought about the many friends I’d lost this way. I don’t want to be attending any more funerals, especially when methadone overdoses are easily preventable with a little information.

On the streets of the Downtown Eastside (DTES), juice is not hard to find for sale on the black market.

DTES resident Jeff Louden knows all about this. He’s been on methadone for nine years, but has been an opiate user for much longer. He’s articulate about harm reduction strategies and drug enforcement policy in Vancouver. He worries that people buying methadone on the street won’t know about the new, stronger juice. And even if they do hear about it, “nobody will believe you, because everybody who sells drugs or methadone has got stronger product as a selling point.” In fact, Jeff says, when rumors or warnings go around, some drug users actively seek it out.

 
Louden worries about what will happen when the more potent form of treatment hits the streets. Photo by Garth Mullins.

The Back Door of the Pharmacy

Jeff says that many pharmacists in the DTES are corrupt, watering down patients’ juice and illegally selling off the remainder. Jeff knows both ends of this scam. He’s received diluted, ineffective medication over the counter, and bought methadone powder illegally, from the back door of the pharmacy.

Jeff warns that when the new methadone is introduced, some patients may be getting a non-diluted, accurate dose for the first time. This sudden bump up from a watered-down dose to the full thing can also cause overdose.

The problem with methadone is that an overdose may occur up to seven hours after ingestion, which means that someone might be far from help before they know there’s a problem. During an OD, a victim’s eyes will grow heavy, they’ll nod out, respiration and pulse will slow and then their heart will stop.

I’ve had several conversations with the various authorities in charge of the medication. They say this change is part of an effort to make methadone harder to divert. Time will tell if crooked pharmacists adopt new scams to sell Methadose out the back door.

I’ve seen this approach before, where health authorities try to control the behavior of drug users by altering their medication. When I lived in the UK, the National Health Service changed standard morphine pills into green, jelly, Easter egg-looking things that were supposed to be impossible to inject. People tried anyway. Injection drug users were injured—some lost limbs. 

I spoke to an addictions specialist about this. Methadone prescribing doctors are a small community in BC—only around 150, so she preferred not to be identified.

At the crowded clinic where she works, people sit in the lobby, waiting their turn to take piss tests, a requirement of the methadone program. The doctor gave me a document sent to her by the College of Physicians and Surgeons. It advises methadone-prescribing doctors to “consider providing patients who may be at risk of overdose with Naloxone.” When someone overdoses, a shot of Naloxone, also known as Narcan, can bring them back in an hurry, provided it is administered in time.

The doctor was “floored” by the notion that the switch to Methadose is so risky that doctors are being advised to send patients home with overdose intervention medication.

Back at the methadone meeting, many people commented that the just-released warning posters from the health authorities were an “eleventh hour” effort, doubting the information would get to everyone in time. Drug users and methadone patients are not always easy to reach and this may be a case of too little to late.


@garthmullins

Image by Alex Cook.

I, like all exiles, live in the aftermath of my own life; but unlike other exiles, I have to go back every day on the subway train. It's a painful path. I was the king of Avenue C in the East Village neighborhood of NYC, the chief glutton-in-charge of a block I hoped never to leave; now I'm just another ashen-faced Brooklyn zombie, trudging around and trying to see the brighter side of things. You all know how much I loved the East Village; I was in a VICE video in which I was almost visibly delirious with happiness. Now I live somewhere in Crown Heights, on a cold and squalid block, subsisting on Zebra Cakes and quarter waters, an old bum with matted hair and dead, sad eyes. But I had my hour in paradise. 

What a difference. It's even worse than I thought. When I lived in the East Village, I had so many good restaurants around me that I didn't know where to eat first. You may remember my Munchies video. I went to 11B, Barbone, and Hearth. I could make a Munchies video every day for a month and never return to the same sandwich twice. I bought the city's best ham at the East Village Meat Market, and the country's best hamburger at the Brindle Room (the first dense and porky, the second all crust and dry-aged piquancy.) When it came to pizza, I was likewise living a glutton's dream: I had the quintessential New York slice joint in 11B, and the best of all: Roman pizzas in Gnocco, and la vera pizza Napolitana at Motorino—if by some freak you chose to go there instead of Gnocco. Were this not enough, you could get the—always underrated!— Nicoletta pizza, or even the Convivio lasagna delivered to your house for seventeen dollars. I had Hearth. I was, after a lifetime as a tourist, within walking distance of Katz's. Think of that. Katz's. Katz's! I was on easy terms with the guy behind the counter at the Gem Spa, and the guy behind the counter at the Stage, and there were five different places vying to sell me pierogis.

And then, one day, it was all gone.

I don't believe that anyone moves to Brooklyn who can avoid it; and my current condition hasn't done anything to change my mind. My rent is a third of what it was, but my life is one-sixth as good. People don't pay that rent in the East Village because they like to pay high rent. They pay it because that's what they have to do. Neither they nor I give a shit whether the neighborhood has any character or not. Rockets Redglare has been dead for years. So what? If what we have over here in Crown Heights is character, give me vanilla. I said earlier that I was subsisting on Zebra Cakes. Even that is an exaggeration. I can't always find Zebra Cakes! Little Debbie would be a step up from the stuff they have in our bodegas; at KFC, they keep the chicken behind bulletproof glass.

The one exception to all this, of course, is one of the many mini-neighborhoods, oases of collegiate cool, that genteel types like me gravitate towards and cause to coalesce. In this case, Franklin Avenue is a boulevard of twee boutiques and several restaurants, at least two or three of which are surprisingly fine. Early on in this dismal misadventure, I found myself sitting at the bar at Mayfield's with Mr. Recipe, the frightening "spice guru" from my Munchies video. We ate some delicate and crispy fried clams, followed by a corned beef tongue on toast and a duck confit salad. "This isn't so bad," I said, too enthusiastically. There was a brief moment when this strip seemed enough to keep my mood up. There was a high-minded pizzeria in the Paulie G mold in Rosco's; a good-enough pasta house, Cent'Anni; a gourmet store with a better class of cookies; and of course, all the meat patties a man could want. 

But it was no use. A restaurant like Mayfield's is good enough to hold its own in an actual good restaurant neighborhood, such as the one I was cast out from. But—and this is what the Brooklynite apologists never mention— in the good neighborhoods, it is one of 15 such restaurants. I lived in the East Village on and off for ten years and never made it to Jack's Luxury Oyster Bar. I lived five minutes from The Redhead and six minutes from Bobwhite, and live to consume fried chicken. Neither place saw me more than three or four times a year. Veselka—Veselka!—was my third hamburger option. I have now been to Mayfield's five times and its menu is becoming as well known to me as the inside of my refrigerator. 

You ask me if I have a different opinion of Brooklyn. The answer is yes. Brooklyn is even worse than I remembered it, particularly in its vast untamed stretches— the Canarsies and Brownsvilles and Bath Beaches that actually constitute the greater majority of the borough. And as for your Bedford Avenues and Smith Streets, you can have them. My life has now been bifurcated: I live half the time amid the very summit of cookery in the 212 most nights, and spend my days with blackened frozen fingers, gnawing on oxtails and off-brand snack cakes in the streets. It has been a long fall. But if nothing else, it did, at least, confirm just how right my prejudices were. 

Brooklyn is the worst. 

@OzerskyTV

Image by Cei Willis

Amy Harmon isn't stupid. When the NYT correspondent wrote a feature explaining that a Hawaiian campaign to ban GM crops was about as scientific as the plot of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, she probably expected a bit of blowback. Probably the kindest thing you can say about anti-GM protesters is that they rarely allow their ignorance to restrain their outraged righteousness. So an article that, in the words of one blogger, “shows what happens when you actually look for facts instead of being a dumbshit activist with an agenda who rejects the facts in favor of a political worldview,” was not going to make its way through the idiotsphere unscathed.

Even so, the response from campaign group Food Democracy was remarkable. They chose to Photoshop Harmon’s head onto the body of a woman in a leopard-skin swimsuit, strolling hand-in-hand with the CEO of biotech corporation Monsanto on a tropical beach. It was sexist, childish, and a demonstration that if you put the most sophisticated tools in the world in the hands of idiots you will still end up with garbage. “Evil bitchweed” and variations of “cunt” were among the gentler comments left beneath it on their Facebook page—others talked darkly of force-feeding crops to her family.

Another Amy, Amy Wallace, encountered similar levels of vitriol from the anti-vaccine movement after writing about the non-existent link between vaccines and autism. As Wallace recounted this weekend, “In online comments and over email, I was called a prostitute and the C-word. JB Handley, a critic of childhood vaccination … sent me an essay titled, 'Paul Offit Rapes (intellectually) Amy Wallace and Wired Magazine'. In it, he implied that my subject had slipped me a date-rape drug.”

Male journalists writing about controversial subjects get plenty of abuse, too—an irked Christian once suggested I should be decapitated—but as Wallace remarked, the sexualized, "you’re a whore" tone taken with women seems rather different, and the levels of abuse in a typical case reach far greater heights.

One of the great myths about online abuse is that it’s pretty much the same for men and women. Recent research by writer Meg Baber found that men believe, on average, that they receive about the same level of abuse and harassment online as women do. In reality, there is no evidence to support this, and a growing amount that suggests women receive far more.

In a recent, notorious case, a male Reddit user created a fake OKCupid profile posing as a woman, and lasted two hours before the creepy messages frightened him away.

While there’s a lack of large-scale research in this area, the studies that have been done have produced similar results—researchers at the University of Maryland, for example, found that female usernames in chat rooms received an average of 163 malicious private messages per day, against just half a dozen for men. They were overwhelmingly targeted by male, human users (rather than bots) and often sexually explicit.

Support group Working to Halt Online Abuse receives three times as many complaints from women as men; while Pew Research surveys suggest 42 percent of women who sign up to online dating services receive bothersome messages compared to 17 percent of men. Pew also found that 5 percent of women have been put in physical danger by incidents online.

A second great myth is that this is a question of "trolling." That word has been so abused by commentators in recent years that it now means everything from being argumentative to sending death threats. Coupled with the fact that—as Helen Lewis pointed out recently—much of the abuse leveled at women is simply unquotable in newspapers or on pre-watershed TV, we have a situation where most of the people expressing an opinion on online abuse have no real clue what it’s actually like.

In reality, we’re talking about straightforward abuse. Amanda Hess recently provided a sample:

“To Alyssa Royse, a sex and relationships blogger, for saying that she hated The Dark Knight: “you are clearly retarded, i hope someone shoots then rapes you.” To Kathy Sierra, a technology writer, for blogging about software, coding and design: “i hope someone slits your throat and cums down your gob.” To Lindy West, a writer at the women’s website Jezebel, for critiquing a comedian’s rape joke: “I just want to rape her with a traffic cone.” To Rebecca Watson, an atheist commentator, for blogging about sexism in the skeptic community: “If I lived in Boston I’d put a bullet in your brain.” To Catherine Mayer, a journalist at TIME Magazine, for no particular reason: “A BOMB HAS BEEN PLACED OUTSIDE YOUR HOME. IT WILL GO OFF AT EXACTLY 10:47 PM ON A TIMER AND TRIGGER DESTROYING EVERYTHING.”

Then there’s Caroline Criado-Perez, who committed the crime of suggesting it would be nice if more women could feature on Britain’s bank notes: “I remember the man who told me I’d never track him down, only feel his cock while he was raping me,” she told Helen Lewis; “the man who told me he would pistol-whip me over and over until I lost consciousness, while my children watched and then burn my flesh; the man who told me he had a sniper rifle aimed directly at my head and did I have any last words, fugly piece of shit? I remember the man who told me to put both hands on his cock and stroke it till he came on my eyeballs or he would slit my throat; the man who told me I would be dead and gone that night, and that I should kiss my pussy goodbye, as a group of them would 'break it irreparably'; the man who told me a group of them would mutilate my genitals with scissors and set my house on fire while I begged to die.”

Many pages have been written about the social and legal aspects of this problem, but there has been far less discussion about how this relates to public health, or technology. The people doing this are not generally among life’s winners. They are typically younger men, often with some form of mental health issue, looking for attention or some sense of self-worth through notoriety.

Some are clearly obsessive. One individual, a London-based man calling himself "ElevatorGate," has created an online archive of more than 15,000 Storify posts, watching his targets—mostly women—all day, and meticulously documenting their online conversations. In the last few years he has created dozens of accounts on Twitter, Storify and WordPress, at one point even blogging in support of the convicted rapist and ex-pro soccer player Ched Evans, pointing readers to an internet forum where his victim was named.

Over time, a community of misfits and misogynists rallied to his cause, constructing a sort of childish fantasy around his pseudonym—he became a "brave hero," challenging the dark forces of women. What resulted, as in so many cases of long-term abuse, was a self-reinforcing cycle of attention seeking and approval. And then something changed: what started as an irritation (I was originally one of his targets) became increasingly pitiful. Here was a grown man with the entire world at his fingertips, yet cruelly unable to interact with it in any constructive way; lost in his own fantasy, flinging rude words at women he had never met.

Until now, the focus has been very much on the victims of internet abuse, but nagging questions remain unanswered—to what extent are the abusers also victims? Are there some people for whom social media just isn’t healthy? Indeed, are there entire communities of people essentially reinforcing and enabling each others’ problems in a collective downward spiral?

And then there’s the technology, the complex web of services and APIs layered on top of the World Wide Web. Abuse against women online has been endemic since the early days of the internet, but it’s only really come to mainstream attention in the era of Twitter. In part, this is because online conversation is far more central to our culture now, but it’s also a result of new features and innovations in online services. Twitter abuse is far more visible, and more easily directed at high-profile individuals, than misogyny in an AOL chat room. It’s also more likely to escalate, thanks to the brevity of messages and the capacity for anyone to wade into any conversation, bringing their followers with them.

Many of these services seem almost designed for stalkers. In 2014, anyone with basic computer skills can create an anonymous email account, use that to generate accounts on WordPress, Twitter, Storify and other services and generate abusive content on an industrial scale. More sophisticated abusers can employ simple scripting or services like If This Then That to automate elements of their workflow, or route their activities through Tor.

Once you reframe abuse as a technological problem, you realize just how little services like Twitter have actually done to protect their users. Contrary to popular belief, it is impossible to block someone on Twitter—all you can do is block particular accounts. There are no levels of privacy between "protected account" and "totally open to everyone." Worse, Twitter doesn’t scale—people with tens of thousands of followers face an unmanageable cacophony of feedback, while those targeted by a mob have little option but to retreat until the storm dies down.

You might say that Twitter doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. It’s just one service, and if people don’t like it they can go elsewhere. The same could be said about chat rooms. And if you don’t like the comments on your blog posts, well, you can switch them off. That misses the point, though. No one public space is particularly important in itself, and if one is closed, it isn’t some existential threat to modern democracy; but when the same people keep being driven out of more and more spaces, at some point we need to take a stand.

This should matter to Twitter and other online services for commercial reasons too, because history has shown what happens to services that fail to create a pleasant environment for their users. Back in 2005, the Pew Internet and American Life Project discovered that participation in online chats and discussion groups had fallen by more than a third in the space of a few years. The dramatic decline was almost entirely due to women leaving the services; which “coincided with increased awareness of and sensitivity to worrisome behavior in chat rooms.“ Already, people are taking conversations they would have had on Twitter to other forums, citing near-hysterical responses to even the mildest of topics. It wouldn’t take much to turn the site into a modern-day AltaVista.

@mjrobbins

Belfast, the city where I rest my head, is the home of the joyrider and the petrol bomb. It's a place where rioting has its very own season. It was once the terrorism capital of the world. Belfast can be beautiful, but this beauty is unfortunately shrouded in occasional moments of madness that come in the form of bomb attacks, protests, and tensions between Catholic and Protestant communities.

Here is a basic photo summary of what Belfast really looks like—not what those stupid tourist videos will tell you.

Follow Conall on Instagram: @cocobongo666

Does your town or city qualify for paradise status? Feel free to send us your pitches. Don't be shy.