Across Mexico, millions of devout people are cutting ties with the Catholic Church and turning their faith toward the patron saint of outcasts and personification of death known as Santa Muerte. Many religious leaders believe that this new religious movement is causing more violence in the country's streets and leading to the devil possessing people's souls.

To understand the link between the cult of Santa Muerte and modern-day exorcisms, VICE travels to Mexico City to meet pastor Hugo Alverez, who conducts weekly exorcism ceremonies in his community, as well as people who believe they've been possessed.

Look at Stephen Maurice Graham's website, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram.

Halifax Police Chief Jean-Michel Blais. Photo via The Canadian Press

Activists in Halifax are unhappy after the chief of police suggested systematic racism within policing is not as bad in Canada as it is in the United States and claimed that "perception" has been created by social media.

"Racism isn't imported here," said El Jones, activist, professor, and the city's poet laureate. "It's not an American issue we're just adopting. It's organic here."

She was responding to comments made last week by Chief Jean-Michel Blais who, in a speech before the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, blamed the "Ferguson effect" for changing perceptions of cops in Canada.

"Even when US law enforcement has issues, we, in Canada, even here in Halifax, end up wearing them," Chief Blais told the crowd, arguing that those perceptions often have "no basis in fact."

"There are all these concerns that police officers are out there shooting people with the same regularity in Canada as in the States," he added in an interview with VICE News. "And that's not the case."

But according to Jones, that fact alone offers little insight into a "long history" of racism within the city's police force.

"Police brutality is not an event," Jones said. "It's a continuum, it's a constant presence in people's lives.

"Poverty is violence, over-policing is violence, mass incarceration is violence, and when you're a racialized person, you experience that constantly at the hand of the state," said Jones. "You can't discount that and say, well, there's no police shootings, therefore it's not an issue. We shouldn't need a large event, like a shooting, to draw attention to it."

Read more: Racial bias found in 'every stage' of Baltimore policing

African Nova Scotians make up just two percent of the province's population, but represent 14 percent of adult inmates in Nova Scotia, with that number climbing to 16 percent for young offenders, according to documents obtained by the province's NDP caucus.

And although Chief Blais argued the numbers prove the problem is not nearly as bad in Canada, there are no complete nation-wide statistics on deaths at the hands of police.

Last year, a VICE News investigation found it was impossible to determine how many people are shot and killed each year by cops in Canada overall, let alone get a racial breakdown of that data. While some forces publish statistics on use of force, they usually include little information about the number of deaths or injury, or the background of the victims.

Some numbers were available though — the RCMP, for example, told VICE News last August that 28 people had been shot and killed by officers between 2010 and 2014, with dozens more being injured. Over the same 4-year-period, the police watchdog in Ontario reported 39 fatal shootings in Ontario — 6 of those were in the 2014-2015 period. In B.C., 10 people were shot and killed between mid-2012 to mid-2015, though RCMP officers may have been behind some of those shootings.

Data from police forces in other provinces was significantly less accessible, with most directing VICE News to annual reports on their websites, which were inconsistent in what they disclosed.

According "The Counted," an initiative by the Guardian to track police shootings in the US, 800 people have been fatally shot by cops in the U.S. so far this year. The total last year was 1,146.

Nova Scotia has had experience with racism within its police force. In 2004, former Halifax police chief Frank Beazley apologized to professional heavyweight boxer Kirk Johnson, admitting that an officer "acted on a stereotype" against him, after a human rights inquiry ruled that he'd had been discriminated against in a 1998 incident when was pulled over and his car was seized by a cop.

In 1997, a black judge acquitted a black boy who was arrested by a white police officer for allegedly interfering with the arrest of another youth. In a historic ruling, the judge noted that "police officers had been known to mislead the court in the past, that they had been known to overreact particularly with non-white groups."

Halifax's strained relationship with its black population goes back more than a century. Next month, former residents and descendants of the Halifax community of Africville — a small community originally founded by black loyalists at the turn of the 20th century — are taking the city to the province's highest court, in hopes they'll be compensated for the land they lost when the community was demolished and its residents forcibly relocated. Homes, businesses, and a church were bulldozed as part of a process the city called "slum clearance."

And activists say there are still changes that need to be made.

In 2015, the Halifax police force defended the use of random street checks, claiming the stops are based on suspicion, not race, although no statistics breaking the data down by race were available.

Blais said he'd received a "biting' email from a university professor who wanted to know what the Halifax police were doing to protect black residents after Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were shot and killed in July — in Minnesota and Baton Rouge.

"The next day, five Dallas police officers were killed," he added in his speech. "I never answered the e-mail."

And while there's been no fatal shootings involving police in Halifax in the last nine years, high-profile cases in other cities, like that of Abdirahman Abdi in Ottawa and Andrew Loku in Toronto, have spurred a cross-country movement against police brutality.

Toronto's chapter of Black Lives Matter has been fighting for greater transparency of investigations into police shootings in Canada, as well as statistical breakdowns of victims by race—no concrete numbers are available as of right now for how many black people have died in interactions with Canadian cops, and attempts to collect them have only resulted in partial pictures.

Even in Halifax, where the police force was recently recognized for being more diverse than the community it serves, activists say issues like being profiled while driving and harassment of young black men persist in the city.

"I still don't feel like I'm reflected," Quentrel Provo, a Halifax-based anti-violence activist who has been pushing for officers to engage black communities while they're not in uniform.

"You have to earn that trust."

Blais acknowledges that more can be done to improve relations between police and Halifax's black residents.

Over the next 10 years the force's strategy will include more outreach and dialogue with civilians.

"People are being skeptical overall when it comes to government authority, so we have to explain things more, and we're ready to take on that challenge," he said.

"What I say to people is be skeptical, absolutely, just don't be cynical. Cynicism cuts off any rational discussion about the facts."

Warning: Spoilers ahead for episode five.

In just its fifth episode, "Nobody Beats the Biebs," Atlanta has proven that it is currently the best show to tackle both the big and small frustrations of race—all without ever losing its cool. In fact, "cool" might be Atlanta's most accurate descriptor; the series effortlessly oozes coolness throughout, whether it's the calm shooting that opened the pilot or last night's casual introduction of a black Justin Bieber. Atlanta has a chill vibe largely due to Earn's character who is more reactive than proactive: He watches things happen, he takes in the scene, he allows himself to be pushed and pulled by the events occurring around him. This gives Atlanta the space to breathe and explore deep topics calmly without coming off as preachy or desperate. Rather, it deals with racism matter-of-factly, never pretending that it doesn't exist or claiming to have an explicit solution to fix the world.

"Nobody Beats the Biebs" featured three vignettes of sorts, all of which could have been fleshed out to full episodes (but were cleverly condensed into one) and all of which dealt with the complexities of racism and microaggressions. The runner featured Darius with a simplistic (yet original) sitcom setup: He brings a poster of a dog target to the gun range and is met with complete disbelief and hatred from the other (white) shooters who balk at the idea of him firing at a dog ("My kid could be in here!") but who, ironically, don't see any issue with shooting a human target (even if, or especially if, that target happens to specifically depict someone that isn't white). It doesn't have to be spelled out that Darius likely would've been given a pass if he weren't black because Darius knows this, Atlanta knows this, and we know this. This plot also doubles as a clever send-up of the way that television and movie audiences seem to be totally desensitized to onscreen violence—or even, sometimes, cell phone videos ofreal violence—but will completely lose it when a fictional animal dies (see: Old Yeller and My Dog Skip). What's even smarter is that Atlanta doesn't linger on this storyline or blow it up for more than the few minutes it's featured within "Nobody Beats the Biebs." Atlanta knows when it has made its point (and it trusts its viewers to know this, too), and moves on.

Earn's storyline also depicts microaggressions when an agent (played by Jane Adams, who sells every inebriated or venomous line) mistakes him for "Alonzo" in an extended version of the "all black people look alike" stereotype. Like the majority of Atlanta, this mix-up is played for laughs as Earn ends up temporarily going along with it—after all, if someone's going to be racist, why not use that to bolster your career? It allows Earn an invite to mingle with some real agents, to network (sort of, he still doesn't have his own business cards), and to take advantage of the open bar. Until, of course, it backfires when it's revealed that "Alonzo" royally screwed over Adams, and she verbally attacks him, promising to make sure that he dies homeless. Joke's on her though: Technically, Earn is already homeless.

But the real centerpiece of "Nobody Beats the Biebs" is, of course, black Justin Bieber. It's such a bait-and-switch, a slyly brilliant way to parody everything from Justin Bieber's personality, to his endless apologies, to our own expectations. Any other show would have Bieber remain an off-screen presence with characters remarking on his actions or maybe a random shot of the back of "his" head covered in a baseball cap. Atlanta, however, flips the script, switching the race and casting a black actor/singer, Austin Crute, as Justin Bieber. It's done with little fanfare—no one even so much as makes a meta-joke about it—which just amplifies how well this works. It's done with little fanfare—no one even so much as makes a meta-joke about it—which just amplifies how well this works. By not drawing attention to the obvious difference, Atlanta plays it off as normal, inviting viewers to simply accept and believe these new circumstances instead of providing us with a big wink that breaks the fourth wall.

Atlanta knows when it has made its point (and it trusts its viewers to know this, too), and it moves on.

By not changing much about Bieber's personality—he's still wildin' out, an out-of-control mess who pisses in the corner and responds to a fan's "I love you, Justin!" with a curt "I know, bitch"—Atlanta turns into a surrealistic comedy, daring us to imagine what Justin Bieber would be like if he were actually black and not just often trying to be. It speaks volumes about white privilege and what the real Bieber can get away with. If a black singer pulled the same stunts as the real Bieber, he would never be calmly dismissed with a "He's just trying to figure it out" but instead would be dissected and destroyed across the internet. His poorly written apology song wouldn't fly and certainly wouldn't evoke an "Aw, shucks!" response from a room full of press.

What's remarkable about Atlanta is that it never explicitly lays this out on the table. It's just played straightforward, casually dropping viewers into this world where a rich, baby-faced black musician can get away with all the same ridiculous shit that a rich, baby-faced white musician can, and allowing us to live there for a half hour. At the end, there are no grand declarations or political statements. There's just black Bieber, crooning false apologies and dancing across a stage.

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On tonight's episode of Weediquette, host Krishna Andavolu takes a look at the structural roadblocks that underground cannabis growers and sellers face when trying to legitimize their business. Andavolu talked to us about what to expect in this episode; an edited and condensed version of his comments is below.

For this episode, "Going Legit," we follow former underground weed growers and sellers as they try to make the transition into the legal market. The story emerged from my personal experience reporting on the weed industry these last few years, and a recent survey's shocking statistic—specifically, that less (or fewer) than 1 percent of all US dispensaries are owned by African Americans. There's a gaping racial disparity in the weed industry happening right now, and at this key moment in the history of legalization, when people are planting their flags in what will become a multi-billion dollar industry, a lot of the original players are being cut out, which seems like an affront to the spirit of legalization.

What we found in following these growers and sellers who are people of color is that there are specific roadblocks to getting legal status: access to capital, and the exclusion of former felons from legitimate weed trade. Many states have statutes that bar people who have felonies from participating in legal weed economies. If you look at the legitimate weed market—who's investing in it and wants to get into it—it doesn't reflect the richness of cannabis culture, legal and otherwise. That's a shame, and it's something that should be identified and fought against.

We interviewed Desley Brooks, a councilwoman from Oakland who passed an affirmative action-like legislation through city council that would give dispensary licenses in areas that were over-prosecuted during the war on drugs. That effort is a corrective, but what's intriguing about this moment in the cannabis industry is that it offers a clear view of institutional racism—of the long-term effects of people being over-prosecuted for drugs, and of the lack of access to institutional capital that many African American and minority communities face.

We spent time with this one grower, Kingston, who has been operating in Atlanta for decades. He has amazing weed, but he's also a part of cannabis culture that isn't necessarily thought of as legitimate primarily because it's a black culture. That's fucked up, and if you try to view legalization as a counter to the racism that took place in the war on drugs, then it's failing in that sense. This episode is trying to point out that failure and highlight how people are fighting to correct it—how they're banding together and using the resources at their disposal.

The criminalization of cannabis has affected the black population in disproportionate and tragic ways, but people are really going out on a limb to correct those injustices. We talked to an Atlanta nightclub owner named Felix who's funding former black market weed growers and moving them to Oregon to start legitimate businesses—getting the licences, buying the property, and fronting the cost. It's a great business opportunity, and he's also seen the lack of opportunity for people in his community in this space.

People like Felix are exploring whether something can be done about this, as well as how to fight back against that institutional barrier. They put a lot on the line, and it's inspiring to see that. With regards to issues like these, you could say, "Oh, we're just talking about weed here"—but in talking about weed, we're also talking about some of the deepest problems we have as a society, and we're trying to follow the stories of people fighting back against these problems.

Follow Krishna Andavolu on Twitter.

You can catch Weediquette on VICELAND. Find out how to watch

Ottawa Sgt. Chris Hrnchiar seen in an image linked to his Facebook account.

After Somali Canadian Abdirahman Abdi died after being beaten by Ottawa police in late July, the Ottawa Police Association said it was "inappropriate" to suggest race was a factor. Here we are two months later and an Ottawa sergeant is being investigated for making blatantly racist comments on Facebook. And yet, local officials still refuse to call it out.

In the latest example of what minority groups have long said is a deep-seeded racism in policing, Facebook comments from the account of Ottawa Sgt. Chris Hrnchiar claimed the death of Inuit artist Annie Pootoogook was her own doing.

Pootoogook was found dead in the Rideau River Sept. 19 and although foul play was initially ruled out, homicide detectives are now investigating due to "suspicious elements."

In response to an Ottawa Citizen article about the case, Hrnchiar wrote, "of course this has nothing to do with missing and murdered Aboriginal women...it's not a murder case....could be a suicide, accidental, she got drunk and fell in the river and drowned who knows.....typically many Aboriginals have very short lifespans, talent or not."

He followed up with another comment that said, "Because much of the aboriginal population in Canada is just satisfied being alcohol or drug abusers, living in poor conditions etc.....they have to have the will to change, it's not society's fault."

Screenshots of the comments were published by APTN.

Ottawa police told VICE one of their officers is being investigated under a chief's complaint, but they did not confirm his name. He is currently still on the job. Both the Ottawa Police Association and a spokeswoman for Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson declined to comment on the investigation.

Read More: Halifax Police Chief Claims His Officers Are Feeling the "Ferguson Effect'

Ottawa lawyer Michael Spratt said it's unlikely Hrnchiar will be disciplined, considering that police accountability—through internal investigations or the Special Investigations Unit—is a joke.

"I'm highly dubious of the contention that anything will come of this from the very institution that is infected by this sort of systemic racism," he told VICE, noting the sergeant may receive some kind of superficial action, like a reassignment of duties.

"Power should exist to immediately stop paying these officers until the investigation is complete and a mechanism should be in place to re-examine every case this sergeant has been involved with that involves groups."

Annie Pootoogook was found dead in the Rideau River Sept. 19. Photo via Facebook

Spratt was highly critical of Mayor Watson for not speaking out on this issue. Watson was also criticized for his silence in the aftermath of Abdi's death—which revealed via video footage that he'd been laying on the sidewalk bleeding as police stood around.

"Any lack of comment and condemnation on this case demonstrates extreme cowardice on the mayor's part," Spratt said, and it should raise questions as to the mayor's relationship with police.

"You do not need to have an official inquiry to call this officer a racist and a stain on the badge and the community he is sworn to serve and protect."

Lorelei Williams, whose cousin Tanya Holyk was murdered by Robert Pickton and whose aunt has been missing since 1978, said the comments, while horrific, aren't surprising.

Police were racist in their handling of both her relative's cases, she said. When the family tried to file a missing person's report about Holyk, a Vancouver police clerk said she "is probably down in Mexico partying."

Read More: Dear White People, Reverse Racism Doesn't Exist

RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson has admitted there are racists in his police force and that has inflamed the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada.

"They need to change their views of our people, our women," said Williams, who works in the Vancouver Aboriginal Policing Community Centre, which fosters relationships between marginalized communities and police. "They're quick to label them as sex workers, drug addicts, runaways and drunks."

Williams said police should undergo cultural sensitivity training. She's concerned that the upcoming inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls lacks the teeth to hold cops accountable for how they investigate cases involving Indigenous people.

"There's so many of them across this country that are messing up all these cases and they're doing it to our women too. They're the ones who are being violent toward our women."

Spratt said the Ottawa incident exposes a tunnel vision that racist cops have when it comes to dealing with these cases. Had Pootoogook been a white, middle class woman, police likely would have thrown the full weight of their investigative powers behind the case from the start instead of ruling out foul play.

"This lays bare the problems with our state's police forces...and it makes clear what insiders have known and what members of those affected groups have known deep in themselves for a long time."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Photo via Facebook

The family of Jermaine Carby, who was shot and killed by police two years ago in Brampton, has filed a $12 million lawsuit on Wednesday, alleging that he was racially profiled.

Carby was fatally shot by a Peel police officer following a traffic stop in Brampton in 2014. Last year, the Special Investigations Unit, which probes deaths involving cops in Ontario, cleared Peel police of any criminal wrongdoing in the incident, finding that the officer who shot him was acting in self-defence.

But the incident was revisited in May in a coroner's inquest, during which many previously unknown details, like the names of the officers involved and why Carby was asked for his identification during the stop, were revealed to the public.

The statement of claim, which names the Peel Regional Police Services Board, Chief Jennifer Evans and seven Peel officers, alleges Carby was the subject of an "unlawful street check," which led to a confrontation that ended in his death.

Carby was racially profiled by a Peel officer Const. Jason Senechal "without any lawful basis, that he was involved in criminal activity," the lawsuit reads, adding that "Senechal was motivated by racial prejudice and stereotypes."

Carby was sitting in the passenger seat of his friend's car when they were pulled over by Senechal. The officer stopped the men because the car's license plate was falling off and its headlights weren't turned on, according to evidence presented during a coroner's inquest in May.

After initially questioning Carby's friend Acacio Barros, Senechal turned his attention to Carby, who reluctantly answered his questions, the lawsuit said. The officer ran Carby's name through the Canadian Police Information Centre, an RCMP database, and discovered that he had an outstanding warrant in British Columbia for breaching his probation, that he suffered from mental illness, that he'd previously attempted suicide and wanted to be shot by police, and that he had tried to disarm a police officer.

When Senechal came back to the car to question Carby about the warrants, Carby pulled out a knife, according to the SIU, and approached the officers, prompting Const. Ryan Reid, who had arrived on the scene after Senechal called for backup, to start shooting.

Reid testified at the inquest that Carby had become agitated, pulled the knife, and said, "Shoot me, shoot me." He fired his seven shots, hitting Carby three times.

Although witnesses testified at the coroner's inquest that they heard police shouting at Carby to "drop the knife," they couldn't agree on whether he was actually holding one.

Since Senechal was aware that Carby suffered from mental illness, he should've taken steps to de-escalate the situation and avoid a dangerous confrontation, said the statement of claim. Instead, he did the opposite by unlawfully demanding that he get out of the car and searching him, along with Reid.

Senechal and Reid provoked Carby into a "mental health crisis and violent confrontation," the lawsuit said.

While it wasn't clear at first why Senechal had asked Carby, a passenger in a car he'd pulled over, for his identification, the officer testified during the coroner's inquest that he was doing a "street check"—a practice that the lawsuit argues "disproportionately targets and affects racialized people, especially young Black men, including Mr. Carby."

The family also alleges that the SIU's investigation was corrupted when a Peel police officer decided to remove Carby's knife from the scene and arrested or detained his friend, who was the only non-police witness of what happened leading up to the shooting. The lawsuit alleges that the officers planted a knife at the scene and "conspired to fabricate evidence to justify the excessive force used against Mr. Carby."

No statement of defence has been filed, and the allegations have yet to be proven in court.

Spokesperson Sgt. Joshua Colley told VICE News that Peel Regional Police are unable to comment at this time, since the civil matter is before the courts.

Follow Tamara on Twitter.

(Illustration by Dan Evans, via)

Someone once told me I was a "classic self-saboteur". This was soon after I had moved to London. The summer before, I'd come down to intern at a magazine and secured a thin line of recurring freelance work there as a result – the dream for a hungry-for-it 21-year-old looking to break into the journalism game. But, one way or another, I fucked it up: got too cocky, got too sloppy, submitted work late and over word count, professional e-mails too jokey, too informal; I didn't recognise what I had was still, above all, an opportunity and not the real deal.

When they let me down they did it with a pulled punch – "we've stopped using freelancers now, a budget thing" – but I knew what was up. I'd fucked it. And nothing hurts in the same way as knowing you've fucked it. I thought of how I'd fucked it for months, years. I thought about how I'd fucked it when, aged 24 and eating plain pasta in my flat, entirely unemployed and staring down the barrel of having to move all the way back home, start over, start at nothing, I thought about how I'd fucked it and I cursed my dumb self. Nothing hurts like holding the hot coal of a memory like that in your hand. Nothing hurts like knowing the worst sleight ever done to you was done by you. Nothing hurts like having fucked it.

Sam Allardyce has fucked it.

§

On Tuesday night, Sam Allardyce was relieved of the England job by the association that gave it to him just 67 days before. He will maintain a 100 percent win record until the sun fizzles out of the sky. Sam Allardyce – or "England's Most Successful Manager", as I now insist he will be referred to as forever – was forced to leave the job he wanted most, the thing he wanted for all the world, because of a Telegraph sting into football corruption. Sam Allardyce's fatal mistake was that he was caught, sat in a curry house with a pint glass full of wine, telling a microrecorder all of his secrets.

Here, I am going to argue that this is the most Sam Allardyce thing that ever could have happened to Sam Allardyce. That Sam Allardyce could only ever die by his own sword. That the only monster powerful enough to slay Sam Allardyce was Sam Allardyce. I am going to lay the facts out in front of you like a spread. We are going to go through them carefully together. You are going to believe me.

1.

Before the thinkpiece cycle roared awake, the Daily Mail was already on it: "The council house boy who was doomed by his insatiable greed," the headline goes. "How wheeler-dealer Allardyce enjoys the trappings of his £10m fortune - including a Bentley and 'Big Sam's villa' on the Costa Blanca."

You already know how this piece reads before you've read it: the DM had trawled through Big Sam's past and found a council house upbringing, failed businesses, burnt fingers, flirtations with bankruptcy; they had assessed his net worth and deemed him unworthy of it, dropped the word "tawdry" in there two entire times, questioned his choice of car – a Bentley, bought from, gasp, a charity auction – to his holiday home – in, gasp, Benidorm – and damned him with light praise for marrying his wife, Lynne, and staying with her for decades. The implication is that Sam Allardyce doesn't know how to spend money the right way, because he wasn't born into it. The implication is that Sam Allardyce still has a core of the muck he came from running through him, and that's what drove him to try and earn £400,000 from a fictitious company two journalists suggested he consult for. Shake this article and hear it echo, "Do we REALLY need to pay this man £3 million a year?" Shake this article and hear it sing, "He doesn't deserve that, surely. He doesn't know how to spend it."

There's a whole discourse about this – class and wealth and privilege – that we won't get into because Big Sam did get defrauded in a Christmas hamper scam.

2.

In July, a man appeared in court in Essex charged with defrauding several West Ham players and the then-West Ham manager (one Samborino Allardici) out of somewhere near £50,000 with a Christmas hamper scam, which allegedly went like this: the accused rolled up to the West Ham training ground, put out a table of fancy crisps and chocolates, said he was taking orders for primo Christmas hampers then took everyone's card details and fucked off with them. No hampers arrived. Payments were allegedly taken. Andy Carroll got done for £10,500. Little Joey O'Brien got done for £750. Defender James Tomkins got rinsed for £30,000, somehow. And Sam Allardyce – The Boss, The Boss Man, Sammy Boss Bollocks – got done for £13,000. Which makes you wonder: how many Christmas hampers was Sam Allardyce planning on going through that year?

The accused, Stephen Ackerman, pleaded not guilty in March of this year, before denying six further counts of fraud in July. The judge then suspended the trial, which will re-start on the 24th of October,

3.

A possible answer: Joey Barton wrote in his autobiography that Sam Allardyce once ate 11 fried eggs in one sitting. Eleven. Sam Allardyce. Eleven fried eggs. Eleven. ELEVEN.

E L E V E N

4.

The reason Sam Allardyce didn't get the England job the first time round is essentially "Adventures in Sam Allardyce Having Fucked It: Part One". From his book:

I wanted to do a real knock-your-socks-off interview for the FA, so I put together a PowerPoint which looked at every single detail.

There was nothing missing. Nobody but nobody was going to beat it.

But then Brian Barwick, the chief executive, told me there were no PowerPoint facilities at the interview venue, so I had to print off hard copies for the panel.

So much for the progressive FA.
— Big Sam – My Autobiography by Big Sam, 2015

Essentially: if Big Sam had That Lad From Curry's Who Helps Him With His Printer with him, English football would have never had to endure Steve McClaren. They would have had to endure Big Sam Allardyce instead. Big Sam's Sliding Doors moment – and English football's itself – essentially pivoted on a Windows ME update someone forgot to install.

5.

You're not processing it properly: Eleven fried eggs. Like: imagine eating one fried egg, now. Close your eyes and think of it. Fried egg. White toast. Yellow butter. Lovely fried egg. Now another, maybe. One more, at a push. Four fried eggs and you're overdoing it. Four fried eggs and you're feeling it: not in your stomach, but in the front part of your entire body, your gut, your paunch, it's growing tight, it's growing full. But now you have to eat seven more fried eggs. This is it. This is what kills you. On your gravestone they will just print, "HE ATE 11 FRIED EGGS," then underneath just, "WHAT CAN YOU DO? WHEN SOMEONE WANTS TO DIE, THEY WANT TO DIE."

6.

Records state that Sam Allardyce has been known as "Big Sam" since the age of 16. Question: how big do you have to be to earn the title of "Big"? Science has yet to come up with an answer. Additional queries: how big do you have to be, in body and charisma, to earn it at the age of 16? You have to be Big. Monstrous. Huge. You have to be enormous.

7.

How do you think Big Sam's eyes go when he cries? I think: large and puffy, like fleshy grapefruit halves, so inflated he can't see, eyes like slits, pink slits, and if you were to take your hand and dry those tears – shh, Sammy, it's OK – you would find the face beneath your fingers soft, so soft, so much softer than you could have ever thought or known. Sadly we will never know the truth of this, because Big Sam crying is like the opening of a rare fragrant orchid, like a dormant volcano emitting a burst of smoke. Big Sam hasn't cried since he was a child, until yesterday, until he took up a leather sofa cushion and just screamed into it, screamed and sobbed, and he won't cry again for another 60 years. Big Sam cries like ice ages happen.

8.

My theory is that Sam Allardyce is Tulisa. Tulisa: set up by subtle undercover journalist manipulation, sold a fanciful lie, entrapped over a series of meetings into saying just the right thing to be crucified with, in just the wrong sort of accent. Big Sam: all of the above, except with a pint of wine on the go. Big Sam is Tulisa if Tulisa said "ey up" and was capable of eating a steak bake in two-and-a-half tactical bites. Big Sam is Tulisa if Tulisa hated pop-punk so much it became a squad joke. Big Sam is Tulisa after 11 fried eggs, 12 fried eggs. (I think my fear is that 11 fried eggs is not actually "Big Sam fried egg capacity", just the moment he decided it was best to stop, i.e. we do not know the true figure of fried eggs Sam Allardyce can possibly eat.) Big Sam and Tulisa have the exact same thing in common: what they did wasn't so unknown in the industry, it was just that they did it. Big Sam and Tulisa have the exact same thing in common: they were the ones who got caught.

If you look across the footballing world, not many have come out to lambast Big Sam for his alleged indiscretions: a couple of grey-looking men in FA-branded suits, maybe, a bombastic journalist or two, Alan Shearer. This could well be because Big Sam is a Proper Footballing Man and breaking rank to call him out on something could be like committing sporting seppuku: for all its glamour and steroid-pumped Sky coverage, football is still a relatively beef-free sport – most of the personal sniping goes on post-career, within the pages of an autobiography. The other reason for the silence could just be: everyone is skimming cream from the milk, everyone has An Arrangement, everyone has a Favoured Agent or Knows A Guy, and nobody wants to put the boot in on Big Sam in case eyes turn on them. In that case, again, Big Sam's fatal error was getting caught doing what everyone else is doing.

9.

This is something bigger, though: this is the only way Big Sam could have lost the England job. Big Sam got the England job by being the most English manager currently available: a get-on-with-it attitude mixed with one-nil-will-do pragmatism and a what's-a-raumdeuter-and-can-Kevin-Nolan-play-it-? hyper-football cynicism. Big Sam is cutting edge enough – read about his days at Bolton and the sports science revolution he bought in there – but you also really get the impression he gives entire training sessions that start with, "Right, lads: today we're doing 'how to kick the fuck out of Robinho'." That makes him the perfect manager to lead the England team through three more tournaments worth of hope followed by failure. That he doesn't get to do it because he fucked it – that he boasted too loudly about bungs over a curry – is the absolute peak of Big Samism.

10.

It's also the peak of modern English football. This is so English football: new manager, new hope, quiet rumblings of "no it'll actually be good this time" and "new generation coming through" and "scrappy 1-0 win" and "what squad selection headaches face Big Sam now" and "what to do with Rooney?" then, 67 days later, a hard reset and some acrimony. The next manager is either Pardew or Howe or Bruce. The current manager is human-cup-of-Horlick's Gareth Southgate. Look at that and know Big Sam was the best choice. Look at that and know Big Sam has been robbed. Look at that and know the real losers are Big Sam, who fucked it, and then English football for the next ten years.

11.

Eleven eggs, man. Eleven.

@joelgolby

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This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands

Chatroulette, the chat website that hooks up random people around the world via their webcams, was started in 2009 and enjoyed its glory days in 2010. Around that time, it boasted millions of registered users, more than half a million unique visitors a day and around 35 thousand users online at any given moment. New York Magazine wondered if Chatroulette was "the future of the internet", and website The Frisky called it "the Holy Grail of all internet fun".

And indeed, getting a girl at a house party to ask some guy on the other side of the world to show his genitals, and subsequently have all your friends jump into the frame to yell 'Surprise!' was pretty fun – but it also got old pretty quickly. It only took a couple of years for people to stop talking about the 'future of the internet' altogether.

If you ask me, Chatroulette was one of the shortest-lived internet crazes of the last decade. However, the 921 people that are online as I write this might feel differently – so I decided to ask them why in the world they're still on Chatroulette in 2016.

On Chatroulette, you can replace the partner you've been matched to with one push of the button. Predictably, the recurring theme of my quest for answers was that I kept being skipped by half-naked men, who were probably looking for women. Women are actually hard to find on Chatroulette so presumably these men are constantly skipping each other, only to run into each other again about an hour later. And skip each other again.

For some reason, the guy above didn't immediately skip me but instead started drawing a phallus on the screen with "9 inch" written next to it before he'd even said hello. He said the reason that he was on Chatroulette was that he'd been blocked from a similar website for showing his penis, so now he just stuck to drawing it on screen. He also claimed he was "looking for pussy" and since I didn't really have one on hand, this was another conversation that ended abruptly.

The second person that didn't immediately skip me was Nabila from France. "U suck like 'journalist'," she said during our chat. "Love those quotation marks around the word journalist," I thought. I do often feel more like a 'journalist' than a journalist – so maybe Nabila was my soulmate?

Nabila is actually an unemployed pharmacy assistant and too broke to travel, so she turned to Chatroulette for company and conversation. We played a game of noughts and crosses with the drawing app but that's as far as our friendship went.

A little while later, I ended up in a Moroccan living room. A woman was walking back and forth between the kitchen and living room, carrying some pots and pans. After about five minutes of this, the man in the background sat down in front of the webcam to talk to me. He said he has been on Chatroulette daily for the past six years and that he finds it "useless".

All over the world, there are people trying to develop robotic dogs that can walk on their hind legs; or applying to become a contestant on The Bachelor; or tweezing their chin hairs – my point is, there are a lot of activities that can be deemed 'useless' in this life. But logging onto Chatroulette every day for six years – that's in an entirely different league.

This Lebanese guy said he uses Chatroulette "to meet different cultures" and "report people who masturbate". He wants to rid Chatroulette of public nudity, and calls himself "an idealist".

"People here have a rotten mind," he said. "I don't show my dick to everyone. I prefer doing that on Skype."

Throughout my day on Chatroulette, I met a number of people saying they were on there because they wanted to make friends – like this man from Iraq. What struck me the most during our chat was that he said he didn't have a lot of friends – and when I asked him why not, he said goodbye and left.

How can a man, who is so friendly that he makes the effort to say goodbye before he exits a private chatroom with a complete stranger, not have any friends? What kind of pain was he trying to hide by leaving so hastily?

The fact that everyone kept skipping me began to get me a little down, so I called in my colleague Lisa – who is in possession of a vagina – to help. Before long, she was chatting with a naked guy who was looking for casual sex.

He said he has never actually managed to get any on Chatroulette, but that that doesn't bother him. When I accidentally walked through the frame, he exited the chat. Lisa also left because she "really needed to get some lunch".

After I spent another 10 minutes being skipped in a loop by half-naked male bodies and billowing crotches in sweatpants, I got blocked. I'd been reported so often by my fellow Chatroulette users who apparently found my behaviour inappropriate, that I wasn't allowed to come back for 24 hours.

Turns out, it is bad form to ask people on Chatroulette why they do what they do, and you're better off just keeping your mouth shut. Or pitch your own tent in a pair of sweats and lie down in front of the webcam.

Babies are expensive. All photos by author.

It's the day before you get paid and one of the longest days of the month. Since your last paycheque, you've spent all or most of what you earned on bills and daily expenses before the next cheque even arrives in your bank account. If your paycheque were to be delayed, you wouldn't be able to make ends meet.

This is the life of someone living paycheque to paycheque, and it's a reality for more people than you think.

According to a Canadian Payroll Association (CPA) survey released this month, nearly half of all Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque. The survey's findings also indicate that four out of 10 Canadians spend all or more of their paycheques when they get them.

While these are high numbers, at the end of the day, they aren't all that surprising. We've all watched our bank accounts slowly diminish to three or two-figure numbers in between paycheques. When rent, bills and groceries take away a huge portion of your pay, most people are left with a pretty sad amount left for other expenses, and barely any for leisure.

This may sound a lot like the life of a broke university student, but it's hardly just students living paycheque to paycheque. Our tendency to shy away from talking about money has left us assuming anyone who has a steady job is living comfortably and continually tucking money away for retirement. We assume that people who don't seem like they're struggling are financially stable.

But seeing that half of our country is living on the financial edge, we spoke with some Canadians who were willing to share what it's really like to live paycheque to paycheque.

"I would never have been able to talk in front of people if I hadn't been a skinhead," says Gavin Watson, smoking a roll-up in a cloudy beer garden just outside London. Now wearing a dark trench coat and flat cap instead of boots and braces, he is friendly, quite intense and extremely into playing Dark Souls on the Playstation.

You'll know Gavin for his photo book Skins & Punks – which contains exactly what it sounds like it'll contain: lots of photos of skins and punks in the 1970s and 80s. Gavin's also worked in music and fashion, and published two other photography books – neither of which he owns any copies of, due to being very "non-paternal" about his work, and just giving it all away.

He's launching his fourth book soon – We Were Here 79-89, a collection of hand-picked candid photographs from his youth growing up as a skinhead – which is why we're here in this pub garden, talking about work, life and the past.

VICE: Why do you end up giving all your books away?
Gavin Watson: It's better to be in someone else's house than mine, isn't it? I know what the photographs look like and an artwork is never complete if there's no one else seeing it – that's why I give it away. I have to talk about the photos, but it's the observer's job to make up their mind on what the image means to them. I've done my job – I've taken the photographs, people like them and they're out there. There are so many labels immediately attached to my imagery, which is why I very rarely describe what's going on, even though I get slagged off for not doing it.

"Why is there no explanation?" people ask. Mate, you know where skinheads came from. Look at that picture and make a fucking story up in your head. Where's that little kid gone? Where's he going next? Where he's been? That's the joy of photography to me. You might need to know the basics – this was taken in High Wycombe in 1982 – but if you want, "This is Neville, son of an Irish priest, the skinheads came from blah, blah..." then no. That's not what I do. That's other people's job.

Plus, at this point, this was just you taking photos of your mates, right?
Yeah, until I was 28 those were just pictures of my mates – I thought I had about 60 images that were worth anything. My life was living in London, trying to make something of myself, whether it be acting or photographing, just trying to find my way. The skinhead thing was just a past thing that was in a box somewhere – until in 1994, when it exploded again. Before, there was just this "youth culture" box in Camera Press – a warehouse that looked like something straight out of Indiana Jones. I'd go out, photograph my mates, do a couple of prints and put them in that box. I'd get £50 here, £50 there for the pictures – I didn't think much of it. Back then, they ended up getting printed somewhere in Zimbabwe or ending up in right-wing publications about skinheads gone mental. I fucking hated that. It wasn't about that. I ended up having almost 100 photos in that box. But back then, skinheads were still everywhere and they were considered valueless, really, unless you were doing an editorial about them.

Talking about right-wing publications – that was always an issue for the skinhead movement, wasn't it?
The skinhead movement was such a universal thing, and the right-wing skinheads are just as much part of the subculture as the black rudeboys from Jamaica. They're all part of it now – part of the fabric of the culture. You can never go away from the roots, though: it comes from the mix of black and white. That must drive the right-wing skinheads nuts.

The Yanks were the ones who started defining everything and pigeonholing it. That wasn't a skinhead thing – not where the roots come from anyway. I think the Mexican working-class get it and the Indonesian working-class get it – they understand that skinhead is away from any labels; you stand on your own, and whoever wants to judge you, judges you. That was the joy about being a skinhead, the misconstruction. People trying to take something that was basically uniting blacks and whites together – especially in the 80s with The Specials and Madness, the whole two-tone movement – and destroy that by shipping in some weird Nazis that came out of fucking nowhere.

It's politics. These kids are singing about freeing Nelson Mandela, then all of a sudden there's 30 vicious, horrible skinhead Nazis that live in King's Cross and smash up every left-wing gig – that's a bit odd, isn't it? All of a sudden, everyone's saying skinheads are Nazis. They were manipulated. If you're an angry, murderous fucker, you'll use any excuse for it.

The media making shit up just made it stronger for me – until I was 23 and went raving, then I thought: 'I don't have to prove myself to anybody.'

How did you go from being a skin to raving?
Adventure drew me to rave culture, and it was an age thing – 23 wasn't 23 like it is now, where these fuckers still think they're teenagers, just going off to college. Also, rave was a lot less defined than skins, so it wasn't as easily demonised. It was sports clothes and indistinguishable long hair, letting the differences go. It was one of the most powerful ideas ever. Also, because there are no hooks – there's no Twiggy, no Rolling Stones – everything was faceless, so it came, went and changed everything, but it's not looked upon with the same fondness as the 60s because it didn't breed that level of labels and attachments that the mainstream media might've got a hold of. Rave was like a dam bursting, washing away a lot of attitudes. It was zeitgeist – raving and the Berlin Wall. That was all fine until 9/11. I remember raving and thinking, 'If the world carries on like this, man, we're going to have a good time.' Ten years later, we can't have none of that.

What was the importance of subculture for you?
It was there for me through those years of becoming a man, because there was no guidance. There were no role models – they had gone. Your dad was so grim and in such a fucking dead end that you couldn't look up to him and say, "I want to be like you." There were no initiation processes.

When you're young, all the creatives are in the art group or are a bit fucked up at home – half of those are going to become the skins, the punks, the hippies. Not the stiffs who can do the exams and do it properly that felt like they were doing the right thing – the kids in subcultures are the ones that deep down inside thought, 'There's something wrong with this: fuck off, you don't get it.' Anger has so much energy that it can build empires – it's passion. If I didn't channel at least some of it into art, I'd be fucking dead.

At the time, young men were ruthless and directionless, and when you're like that, you grasp onto things like pride. Pride is natural, but it can be manipulated and guided, especially if you're just 16 and full of testosterone and anger. If you've had a pretty hard time of it in society, either living with your parents or in a children's home, you'll attract things and then end up fighting the same person that you are. Full of anger but with a different fucking hat on. I mean, we've got 100 years of psychology to make us this way, man – this stuff isn't magic. You'd think we were still stuck in the 1950s with the way the mainstream media reports on these things.

People want the demons so they can continue in control. I was demonised – the world the mainstream media wrote about, my photographs prove them wrong, don't they? I wasn't paid to do them and that's why they're real. Now, if they weren't, and The Observer came in, we'd be stood all against the wall looking angry. But no – we're happy, we're laughing. We were kids.

Thanks, Gavin.

@bijubelinky

Gavin is currently raising money to publish We Were Here 79-89. Donate to the Kickstarter here.

More on VICE:

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

Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

US News

Obama Thinks the 9/11 Bill Is a 'Dangerous' Mistake
President Obama said Congress has made a "mistake" by overriding his veto and passing a bill that allows families to sue Saudi Arabia over the 9/11 attacks. He said the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism legislation would set a "dangerous precedent," inviting people overseas to sue the US government.—The New York Times

Elections Databases Hacked in Ten States
A total of about ten states across the US have had their election databases probed or breached by hackers, according to law enforcement officials, a higher number than previously thought. Although the group or groups responsible have not been revealed, government officials believe Russia is trying to influence the US election.—CBS News

Teachers Praised for Saving Lives at School Shooting
A teacher and two young students were injured when a 14-year-old allegedly opened fire at a South Carolina elementary school Wednesday afternoon. Teachers have been praised for putting the school in lockdown so quickly and preventing the shooter from getting inside classrooms. The suspect's father was later found dead in his home.—NBC News

California Ends Statute of Limitations for Rape Cases
California governor Jerry Brown has signed a bill to end the statute of limitations for rape. The measure, inspired by the rape accusations against Bill Cosby, undoes a current law that prevents prosecution if the incident happened more than ten years ago. It takes effect January 2017, but will not work retroactively, so it will not be a factor in the case against Cosby.—Reuters

International News

Six Killed As Airstrikes Hit Two Aleppo Hospitals
At least six people were killed in airstrikes on two hospitals in rebel-controlled Aleppo, the city being bombarded by Syrian and Russian forces. One warplane targeted both hospitals, according to the Syrian American Medical Society. UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon warned that any attack on a medical facility was a war crime.—Al Jazeera

Fifteen Rescued, 32 Still Missing in China Landslide
Rescuers have pulled 15 people alive from a landslide in Sucun in China's eastern Zhejiang Province. But 32 people are still missing there and in another village nearby, after heavy rains from Typhoon Megi triggered two major landslides in the province on Wednesday.—Reuters

Sudanese Government Accused of Using Chemical Weapons
Dozens of children in Darfur have allegedly been killed by chemical weapons dropped on them by the Sudanese government, according to Amnesty International. At least 200 people are estimated to have been killed by the banned weapons this year as conflict between the Sudanese government and rebels in Darfur continues.—BBC News

Everything Else

Pepe the Frog Meme Declared Symbol of Hate
The cartoon Pepe the Frog meme has been added to the Anti-Defamation League's list of hate symbols. The ADL's CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt said "racists and haters" had "taken a popular internet meme and twisted it."—CNN

More Internet Searches for Alicia Machado Than Kim Kardashian
Google searches for former Miss Universe Alicia Machado spiked 5,380 percent since Hillary Clinton name-checked her at the first debate because Donald Trump called her "Miss Piggy." More people have searched for Machado than Kim Kardashian since Monday night.—Buzzfeed News

Alec Baldwin Cast as Trump on 'SNL'
Alec Baldwin will debut his Donald Trump impression on Saturday Night Live this weekend, a role he is expected to play for the entire season. Earlier this year, Baldwin called Trump "the first candidate made of hate."—The Hollywood Reporter

The Planet Has Already Passed the Carbon Tipping Point
Human beings have pushed atmospheric carbon levels past 400 parts per million, a dreaded tipping point feared by climate scientists. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography said we won't see levels fall below 400 parts per million "ever again."—Motherboard

US Teen Birth Rate Falls to Record Low
The teen birth rate in the US fell for a seventh year in a row in 2015, hitting a record low, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC credited less teen sex, better birth control use, and more education.—VICE News

Majority of Tinder Users Are Looking for Love
A new study published by the University of Sydney's Dr. Mitchell Hobbs shows Tinder users are interested in finding love. A survey found 72 percent of the app's users were looking for monogamous relationships.—VICE

Iranian-Canadian professor Homa Hoodfar smiles as she arrives in Montreal. The retired anthropology professor spent nearly four months in prison in Iran. Photo by CP/Ryan Remiorz

More than 100 days since Homa Hoodfar was first detained and held in an Iranian prison, the Montreal university professor is now home.

Still from 'Independence Day'

We can't claim to know what will happen if space aliens land on Earth, but the screenwriters of alien invasion movies have gamed out the possible scenarios for us. On one hand, you have the Independence Day scenario: They try to exterminate us for whatever reason. And I hate to break it to you, but if a civilization is advanced enough to find us and blast us with photon torpedoes, no Will Smith-plus-computer-virus heroics are probably going to save us, and we're all going to die.

The second scenario is a bit like upcoming science-fiction film Arrival : UFOs show up, but until someone can figure out how to communicate with them, no one will have any clue whether the extraterrestrials are saying "Give us all your phosphorus before we blast you with our super laser," or, "Here's a quick and easy recipe for unlimited energy." Guessing wrong means interstellar war.

In either situation, as the leader of Earth's only superpower, the president of the United States will have a lot of responsibility should aliens land. He or she will either be leading the (again, probably doomed) fight against the extraterrestrials a la Bill Pullman in Independence Day or working on brokering a billion-year peace deal with the people of Squidulon-5 or whatever. Those are the highest possible stakes—either human slaves in the Saharan phosphorus mines will be cursing your name in 2528, or you will be remembered as the greatest and most important diplomat in Earth's 4.5 billion year history.

The chance of us making first contact with aliens between 2016 and 2020 is remote, but if we did, who would you want in the Oval Office? To figure it out, I reached out to some of the best minds in the world of extraterrestrial research. These experts—three researchers in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) field and one UFOlogist—gave me some pretty interesting answers. Sometimes they were pretty vague, but it doesn't sound like any of them are eager to Make Earth Great Again.

Dan Werthimer, Chief SETI Scientist at the UC Berkeley Department of Astronomy

VICE: Does it make sense to raise the issue of what to do about an alien landing in the presidential election?
Dan Werthhimer: I think people should start thinking about the consequences of communicating with other civilizations. There are potentially great outcomes: We could learn a lot, and there are potentially bad outcomes. We could learn about technologies that would be good for weapons, or something like that. So it would be good to start thinking about how the world is going to deal with this and who should speak for Earth—and if we should reply, who's going to reply, and how do we draft that sort of message. It's good to think about that ahead of time, because it could be chaos if we ever find a signal.

Is one major candidate better in your opinion?
I think makes a lot of off-the-cuff remarks, many of which he later says, "Oh that was a joke," but that's the kind of thing that could get us in a war, or a nuclear war or something. Especially when you're coming into contact with different cultures, or even different civilizations, you need to be careful about what you say, and how it could be misconstrued. We need to go about these things much more carefully than Trump does with that stuff.

What could go wrong if Trump is in office and aliens show up?
It's likely the first civilization we contact will be way more advanced than we are. We cannot contact them now if they're primitive civilizations—or if they're still bacteria or trees. It's unlikely that we'll discover a civilization that's just discovered radio like we have—we've only had radio for 100 years. The more likely scenario is we discover civilizations that are billions of years old that have been talking to one another. You get on the galactic internet and learn about the thousands of other civilizations that can talk to one another—or billions. Our sun is 5 billion years old, and some stars are 10 billion years old. So you can imagine very advanced civilizations.

You want to go about these things carefully and put your best foot forward—there can be dangers. If these civilizations are way more advanced, then presumably they'll have technology that is way more advanced than ours. Hopefully they'll learn to live together in peace—I grew up in the 60s, and I thought everybody was a flower child, and we were all gonna live together happily. But that might be naïve! There could be the Borg out there or something. So you don't want somebody like Trump shooting off his mouth, and people misunderstanding what he intended. I can imagine during the Cuban Missile Crisis if Trump had been our president. He could have obliterated the planet by mistake with nuclear weapons.

Andrew Siemion, Director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center

VICE: What qualities do we want in a president if aliens land?
Andrew Siemion: I think imagining what might happen if a civilization were to visit Earth would be difficult to predict, and I think all the declared candidates have their pros and cons. I don't know that I would venture a particular person on a declared ticket to be my favorite. Suffice to say that they all have pros and cons, depending what another civilization might be like.

But what do you know about the candidates on this issue?
I do know that Hillary has expressed some interest in the topic, and that's very heartening. But I think, again, it's very difficult to predict what another civilization might be like. And it's hard to predict what kind of leader would be best suited to deal with such a situation—but my hope would be that were we to actually make contact with another civilization that it would be a unifying moment for the whole world. Not just for the United States, but for the whole world, and we could all come together to address that challenge, or revel in that discovery, whether we're Democrats or Republicans or other.

Are you saying hostility is a very real possibility?
It's very difficult to predict what another intelligent species in the galaxy, or indeed in the universe, might be like. Some people think technological developments and altruism are kind of tied together, and the more technologically advanced a species becomes the more altruistic or friendly it becomes. We don't really have any good evidence for that. In fact, we kind of have evidence to the contrary. So it's really hard for us to predict what another civilization might be like. At SETI, we're just trying to listen for signals. We're not expressly trying to make contact per se, at least overtly.

Preston Dennett, UFO Investigator and Author

VICE: Which candidate should be president of the United States if aliens land?
Preston Dennett: Ha! That's an interesting question. I would pick Hillary because she's had more foreign policy experience. She has also been photographed carrying a book about UFOs, and her husband has read UFOs Over Roswell, so I'm guessing she knows about UFOs.

Paul Horowitz, Experimental Astrophysics at Harvard

VICE: Which candidate should be president of the United States if aliens land?
Paul Horowitz: That's such a no-brainer!

Why?
Well, I'd want one, someone of statesman-like, upstanding character—like Walter Cronkite, or —it's obvious.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Critics say the NYPD's civil asset forfeiture policies incentivize officers to seize property and make getting it back extremely difficult. Photo By Raymond Boyd/Getty Images)

More than four months have passed since intruders came into Ana Ortiz's apartment and robbed her of over $2,600 in cash she needed to pay rent. Her life has been upended as a result: She faces eviction from her South Bronx home of 25 years, and she fears that her frequent trips to housing court might cost her her job as a hospital secretary, which could put her and her three children on the street. A few weeks into the school year, she still doesn't know how she's going to pay for her son's college textbooks or daughter's school uniform.

"People knock on my door, and I'm still scared," Ortiz (whose name has been altered to protect her privacy) told me over the phone. "If I leave the apartment, I don't know what to expect. I don't want them targeting both of my sons or my daughter or myself."

The people who took her money weren't criminals, but officers with the New York City Police Department. According to the Bronx Defenders, a legal aid group assisting Ortiz with her case, the cops entered the apartment to arrest one of Ortiz's son's friends for violating his parole and instead arrested her son after he demanded to see a warrant (he eventually pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct). Their reason for taking the cash was—well, they've never actually said why they took the cash, and the NYPD did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But under New York City's opaque and arbitrary civil forfeiture system, seizing money from a woman not accused of a crime is a perfectly legal thing to do.

Popularized in the 1980s, civil forfeiture was presented as a bold weapon in the war on drugs, a means of depriving kingpins of their profits in cases where they couldn't be charged with a crime. Police departments across the country engage in the practice. But over time, bad laws, worse incentives, and zero oversight have combined to create a legal gray area that is ripe for abuse. Though activists have been pushing back against the process in the last couple of years as it's come under increasing scrutiny, cases like Ortiz's are still far too common, and the fundamental problems with civil forfeiture remain.

The first rule of civil forfeiture is that you don't need to be convicted or even charged with a crime to have your stuff seized. Since these are civil cases, you're also not entitled to a lawyer if you can't afford one. And if the police claim your possessions are related to a crime, the burden of proof is on you to prove otherwise. In New York, even if the money or property is eventually deemed innocent, you're on your own navigating the city's property retrieval apparatus, which is governed by rules so convoluted that even experts struggle to understand it—the Legal Aid Society describes it as a "confusing patchwork of omissions and misleading and overruled provisions." According to Kenneth Crouch, a legal advocate with the Bronx Defenders, the vast majority of claimants simply give up on their possessions.

"It's one thing for people to go through a byzantine process to get their property back," Crouch told VICE. "It's another thing for people to get discouraged and not even attempt to get their property back. And the vast majority of claimants get discouraged, for whatever reason, and don't get their stuff."

Ortiz's case perfectly illustrates how weighted the system is against ordinary people who have had their property seized. According to the Bronx Defenders, the NYPD missed the deadline for filing a civil forfeiture action (a normal requirement in these cases), then—after months of ignoring her messages—falsely claimed her demands were invalid without a district attorney's release. With help from the Bronx Defenders, Ortiz was able to get the NYPD to agree to return her cash last month. Yet she still hasn't received the money and is understandably skeptical she'll ever see it.

The NYPD doesn't account for how much money or property is seized each year, but a city council budget line item for "unclaimed cash and property sale" totaled $7 million in 2015. That money is supposed to go to the city's general fund, though, as Gothamist reported in 2014, it often ends up in the NYPD pension fund.

"The current 'system' is 100 percent incentive with zero risk to law enforcement," Bill Bryan, an attorney with the Brooklyn Defender Service, wrote to me in an email. "It definitely encourages policing for profit."

New York City councilman Ritchie Torres is fighting to bring a shred of transparency to the city's forfeiture practices. Last year, the Bronx Democrat introduced a bill that would require yearly disclosures from the police department on the value and frequency of their seizures. At a city council meeting last Thursday, the NYPD assistant deputy commissioner, Robert Messner, spoke out against the bill, claiming that such data was beyond the scope of their record-keeping technology. According to him, counting "over half a million invoices each year" would likely "lead to system crashes."

In a phone call following the hearing, Torres called the NYPD's testimony "so absurd that it's not even worth taking seriously." He said there is no conceivable justification for withholding the data, but noted that logic "never seems to be a stumbling block for obstruction by the NYPD." Despite opposition from the NYPD, Councilman Torres is confident that some form of his bill, which has the support of 37 of the Council's 51 members, will eventually pass, citing nationwide "momentum for criminal justice reform in general and civil forfeiture reform in particular."

In 2016 alone, around 50 bills limiting civil forfeiture were proposed in at least 22 states, according to the Center for Public Integrity, though reform efforts have encountered difficulties. An Oklahoma bill was stalled by a legislator who reportedly was looking to curry favor with law enforcement groups; in New Mexico, a lawsuit claims that the authorities are ignoring the state's recently passed anti-forfeiture law. Earlier this year, the Justice Department quietly revived the "Equitable Sharing Program," which gives police departments the option to bypass local and state laws by pursuing forfeiture cases at the federal level. Under the equitable sharing loophole, police may keep up to 80 percent of any assets they seize.

In the future, the Justice Department may shutter the program in the face of pressure. And some reform measures—like one bill set to pass in California—would effectively close that federal loophole. Right now, though, as Torres points out, "the bar is very low." In order to evaluate the purpose and efficacy of asset forfeiture, it's first necessary to know how much stuff the police are seizing. This seems uncontroversial, yet law enforcement officials across the country have fiercely opposed even the most basic transparency measures.

For Ana Ortiz, whose sense of security and faith in the justice system may never return, the bar is even lower. Right now, she just wants her rent money back.

Update: An earlier version of this story misspelled Kenneth Crouch's name.

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Photo by Katrin Braga, makeup by Kelseyanna Fitzpatrick, styling by Rhi Blossom

Every good turn up starts with a struggle and there's no way I'm going to enter a party/festival with anything less than an AA (all access) wristband. My parents did not baptize me in the sacred Ganges River and flee to America during the India-Pakistan partition for me to be treated like a mere peasant in GA (general admission). I strongly believe we accept the level of VIP we deserve, so being a delusional THOT has been extremely instrumental in my success in getting backstage.

Being VIP isn't all fun and games. You need to study. You need to live, breathe, and sleep like a VIP.

Step 1: Study the Lineup

Who's on the lineup for the club/festival? Pick one person on the line-up whose guest list you are going to say you're on. Make sure you know everything about them; how they look, where they're from, their day to day manager's name, their tour manager's name, booking agent, photographer's name, etc. Be prepared for anything. Study at least two or three people on the lineup in case one of them falls through

Guestlist Life Hack: Make sure the person is famous, but not too famous. If it's a festival lineup, don't pick anyone who is from the city the festival is in as their guestlist will be too full, don't pick anyone who is really thotty like Diplo (unless you are me in 2011), and don't pick anyone who is a loner and doesn't interact with fans on social media.

Step 2: The Look

For me, it's not that hard, because I look famous as fuck and luckily I believe my own lies, and so does everyone else. I like to go big and bold. Daring patterns or bright colours, look expensive, but not like you're trying to look expensive. Bring sunglasses and a hoodie, just in case you need to fake hide from the papz and fans. And for lack of a better word, just don't fucking look basic.

Step 3: Pull Up

As you pull up to the venue, really get into character, put on your hoodie, sunglasses, and whatever you need to do to really feel yourself and play the part of a VIP. If you're at a festival, there will be a lot of security around, so make sure they know you're important. Ask a few security people where the artist's entrance is as you duck and cover your face so no "fans" catch a glimpse of you and immediately bombard you for photo requests.

Step 4: Moment of Truth

Revelation 21:21, finessing your way through the pearly white gates of guestlist. Will you have to repent for your scamming ways in GA or receive forgiveness for your sins in AA? As you approach the guestlist gods, be confident. Don't show any hesitation.

Me: I'm on the guestlist
Them: Whose guestlist are you on?

Me: *shows ID* (insert irrelevant EDM DJ's name here)
Them: Don't see you here.
Me: Hmm, that's strange (insert tour manager's name), said I should be good. Could you text him? I think there must be a mistake. *Stand looking disappointed, but not angry*

(Be cooperative and patient, but look slightly agitated like it's their mistake)

Them: Give me one second.
Me: You could also call (someone from the company who's throwing the festival's name), I asked really last-minute for guestlist because I thought I'd be out of town for a show, but it got cancelled.
Them: I'm so sorry about that, you should be good. *Hands you VIP wristband*
Me: Wait, I'm sorry, I was supposed to receive an all-access pass.
Them: It actually doesn't say that here.
Me: Well, I should have all-access.
Them: Sorry, I can only give you VIP.

OK. So in this scenario, if you don't receive all-access, it's OK, for now. But don't settle for just VIP or a media pass; there's not many times in my life that I will reference Meek Mill, because of the giant L he took from Drake, but in this case I will make an exception, "It's levels to dis shit."

It's ok to walk in with a VIP wristband, but do not accept it as your eternal fate. VIP is an abbreviation for "very important person," but your goal is to be the most important person. As you walk around the venue, scope out the AA entrance, but don't make any hasty decisions you will regret or that will get you kicked out, from personal experience getting kicked out is not that fun, but I will say, in hindsight, it makes for a good story and as a real journalist, I'll do anything for a good story, even get kicked out of the best country ever! Usually the security inside the venue isn't very smart or doesn't give a fuck. Walk up to the AA entrance and just flash any kind of random pass/come prepared with a fake laminated pass that says "Artist" on it and walk in like you are in a rush, hiding from fans and about to play on the mainstage. You can even go the extra mile and ask some random people to come up to you and pretend they want to take pictures with you, but make sure the security is looking, for the scam to be successful. And if all else fails, if you are not below sexual favours, neither am I.

If you can't execute these four easy steps flawlessly, you are probably incompetent and deserve to be a muggle in GA. But listen guys, don't feel discouraged if you don't immediately get escorted into AA like I usually do when I pull up, after all I am the finesse goddess and I wouldn't expect anyone to live up to my legendaryness.

Follow Chippy Nonstop on Twitter.

Professor Jordan Peterson. Screenshot via YouTube

A University of Toronto (UofT) psychology professor is facing heat after a YouTube video of him criticizing gender-based anti-harassment legislation was posted to his social media this week.

Here's Justin Trudeau with Emma Watson for some reason. Photo via Facebook.

Thousands of companies will soon be required to report how many women work in the upper echelons of their business, if the Trudeau government gets its way.

New legislation tabled in Parliament on Wednesday updates several federal acts that govern federally-regulated corporations and cooperatives. Amongst the changes, which are intended to extend corporate democracy and bring regulation into the digital era, is a requirement that all corporations must begin reporting "information respecting diversity among the directors and among the members of senior management."

The new requirement will mean that any publicly traded company that falls under federal law will have to tell shareholders how many women work on its senior level.

Corporations will also be required to draw up diversity plans. If they refuse, they'll be required to provide an explanation to the federal government.

Read More: Trudeau Pretty Chill About China

Canada, at present, is woefully behind in advancing gender parity in the business world. By one calculation, women in Canada held less than 10 percent of Canada's highest-paying corporate jobs. Another 2014 report found that just 20 percent of board seats in Canada were held by women.

But Trudeau's solution isn't quite as aggressive as one idea adopted by his party.

A resolution passed at the Liberal Party 2016 policy convention called on the Liberal government to adopt already-proposed legislation that would require every board of directors to be made up of at least 40 percent women—though the legislation would have given corporations a grace period to get to that number.

Even if it's not quite that strong, the new initiative falls in line with the Trudeau mission to close the gender pay gap, and increase female visibility in business and politics. That campaign, beginning with Trudeau's decision to appoint a gender-balanced cabinet—capping the move with his now-famous "Because it's 2015" line—has also led the prime minister to push other countries to boost their humanitarian spending with a specific eye to pushing women's rights abroad.

The bill only applies to publicly traded companies and, as one spokesperson in Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains explained to VICE News, there will be no definition of "diversity" in the bill. He expects that regulations will be drawn up requiring corporations to disclose, at least, the gender breakdown on their boards. The government expects that corporations may volunteer to publish even more information about race, disability, sexual orientation, and other classes.

Follow Justin Ling on Twitter.

Photos via Winnipeg police

The Winnipeg police department has confirmed that the 1,477 blotter tabs they seized at a hotel earlier this month contains carfentanil—the synthetic opioid far more powerful than fentanyl that's used to tranquilize large animals such as elephants and moose.

It's the first time the drug, so potent that even the equivalent of a grain of salt can be fatal, has been found in the city, which has recently seen a rash of opioid-related overdoses. A 37-year-old Winnipeg man has been charged with a number of drug crimes stemming from the seizure and is still being held in custody.

"It's scary stuff and we're concerned," Danny Smyth, the city's deputy police chief, told reporters on Thursday. He was flanked by the medical officer for the city's health authority and Arlene Last-Kolb, a Winnipeg mother who lost her son to a fentanyl overdose in 2014.

According to numbers provided exclusively to VICE News by the Winnipeg Police, fentanyl seizures in the city have risen since 2013. There was one seizure that year and the following year. The force had eight fentanyl seizures in 2015, and seven so far this year.

Smyth added that the blotter tablets that had carfentanil infused onto them are similar to the way LSD used to be distributed.

"We're notifying our emergency rooms, our fire and paramedic services that they need to be watching for this because of how toxic is it," Dr. Joss Reimer said. She said she's worried that the doses of the opioid-overdose antidote available in naloxone kits isn't high enough to reverse the effects of carfentanil.

Reimer warned anyone using drugs in the city to "stick with what you're using, don't try new stuff, and don't mix."

While there hasn't been any reported overdose deaths caused by carfentanil yet in Canada, the drug has been linked to hundreds of deaths across the United States over the last year. Ohio has been hit especially hard, with the Drug Enforcement Administration recording at least eight deaths near Cincinnati associated with carfentanil-laced drugs.

Two Ohio residents were charged last week with distributing carfentanil-laced heroin.

Last month, Canadian border agents seized a package at a Vancouver mailing centre that contained 1 kg of carfentanil, enough to produce 50 million doses, that was bound for Calgary. A Calgary man is currently facing two criminal charges.

"This recent bust of carfentanil will save many lives," said Last-Kolb, whose son was 24 years old when he died from a fentanyl overdose. She called on the government to make naloxone kits more widely available, and to increase resources for people addicted to opioids, as well as for their families.

"My son could be alive today if he had been able to have naloxone with him," she said. "Drugs are not what they used to be."

She also said she would like to see Good Samaritan laws implemented that provide amnesty from criminal charges for people who call the police to report a drug overdose. The people her son was with the night he died were too scared to call the police immediately, she said.

Follow Rachel Browne on Twitter.

All photos by Hayley Stewart

After I make my way into the entrance of one of the smallest comic conventions I've ever been to—in the city of London, Ontario, no less—I look around in search of the tell-tale wigs and frilly, lace-adorned dresses of the women I'm supposed to meet today. After ten minutes of wandering around the booths of comics, figurines, and mousepads with anime titties, I figure out where they must be hiding: the washroom. In a public bathroom that would otherwise look less than magical stand a handful of young women dressed in pastels chatting excitedly, helping each other with their elaborate outfits, and putting on eye makeup in a mirror that spans the entire width of the wall.

Yes, you might've heard the term "lolita" before. Probably from a little book by author Vladimir Nabokov that explored a sexual relationship between a man and his 12-year-old step-daughter. But anyway, what I'm doing today has nothing to do with that perverse novel. The lolitas I'm hanging with are part of a subculture that centres around a Japanese fashion that rose to popularity in the 90s.

By those outside the community, lolitas are most commonly compared to porcelain dolls, but in reality, their style is more nuanced. Their fashion—they don't use the word "costume"—is influenced by the Victorian and Edwardian periods, and it comes in three main styles including sweet, gothic, and classic. Those dedicated to the fashion spend anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars on imported dresses from Asia, which can sometimes rack up massive customs fees. But there's an entire culture dedicated to being into lolita fashion—and within it, communities in Western society that have flourished. Such is the case with the Southern Ontario Lolitas, a group that counts over 500 members and the smaller, tight-knit London Ontario Lolitas, which I'm hanging with today.

And no, it's not sexual. If anything, it's the opposite.

Oasis (left) and Jenna (right)

As I squeeze myself into a corner of the counter behind the last sink in the bathroom feeling extremely basic in my street clothes and set my voice recorder on a trash can, I let London's lolitas air their grievances at the misconceptions that continually plague their community.

"They did pick a horrible name for this fashion—the Japanese thought the word was cute, girly, and feminine," explains a lolita named Oasis (her real name) as she examines her outfit in the mirror: a pastel green dress with roses on it accompanied by a basket and faux flowers.

"We've actually had people come up to us and be like, 'You're the reason we have pedophiles,'" Shalane says as she puts the final touches on her kimono look. "They'll come up, , and go 'Hey, what's under there?'"

The bizarre sexualization the lolitas described couldn't be further from their actual values. If possible, they prefer knees not to show while wearing their outfits—or "coords" (short for coordinates) as they call them—and a common motto in the community is "Modest is hottest." Regardless, lolitas like Oasis and Shalane are used to the extra attention from strangers on the street, including being followed and people trying to take their photographs.

Though some lolitas—called "lifestyle" lolitas—wear their adorable outfits out in public daily, the women I'm hanging with usually only wear them for special occasions like meetups (like apple picking, going to the aquarium, or going for sushi), today they are donning their "coords" for a fashion show and tea party.

Valentina (left) and Enith (right)

As the ladies finish their final looks in front of the washroom mirror, they make their way out onto the convention floor and head backstage.

Backstage, a new member wearing a classic look named Enith, who came to Canada by way of Panama as an international student, tells me what attracts her to the fashion. "When you wear lolita, you're wearing it for you: for you to feel feminine, for you to feel elegant... This is a society where women's fashion is made to appeal to men; that's really sad." Enith shows me her coord, which includes a striped, light brown and cream dress and burgundy thigh-highs, explaining why she chose each piece in detail before she must line up for the fashion show.

After, Meagan, one of the admins and founding members of the London Ontario Lolita group, finishes announcing the lolitas on stage and doing a Q&A with the audience, I catch up with her behind the curtain to discuss how the London Ontario Lolitas came to be.

Meagan (left) and Heather (right)

"My girlfriend Sophia was one of the people who started this community what it is today," Meagan, 20, tells me. "Everyone who joins our community is classified as a part of a family; we always look out for each other, treat everyone with the utmost respect." Meagan says that they also try to keep everything kid-friendly, especially since some of their members have young children.

But at times, they have had serious issues. After an incident on the way to a meetup over the summer at Ripley's Aquarium in Toronto, they had to ban a new member after she yelled a racial slur at a black security guard.

"She almost got arrested," Meagan said. "I know she had mental health issues, and I had a talk with her after. I explained to her that she is more than welcome to wear the fashion... But in the community, we can't have an incident like that happen because it will put the public eye on us."

Though the community has a strict no-drama policy IRL and online, cattiness and shade about other people's outfits can cause strife amongst members. Meagan and other admins are in charge of dealing with the drama that arises in their Facebook group of about 60 members.Victoria, who is an admin and has been with the community for about three years, sometimes mediates in Facebook group chats between members.

"Usually it goes well, but if it can't be resolved, we just ask that they be civil with each other," she says. Despite the occasional drama, she says, many in the community consider each other best friends.But sometimes outside the safety of their Facebook groups, cyberbullying can occur.

Milky Swan

Milky Swan, a 28-year-old lolita and teacher's aide by day, invited me into her apartment in London to see her impressive collection of 14 dresses and numerous accessories, which were situated in a strangely pristine area of a room her pet bird and her boyfriend's PC gaming area occupy. We sat down and talked about the cyberbullying she has had to endure online.

"A lot of lolitas can be really nasty online," Milky Swan tells me as her calico cat nuzzles up against us. She mentions the Livejournal Behind the Bows, where lolitas will post other lolitas' photos and drag them while hiding behind anonymity. Calling someone an "ita"—the lolita term for "noob," essentially, is one of the most common, but she says she has seen a lot worse. Once, she even had a photo of her in her non-lolita clothing critiqued by a hater.

But just before 8 PM on a Friday, when other 20-somethings might be getting ready to go out to the club, London's lolita community has come together in a side room at their local Comic-Con for a tea party. There's no drama here as the ladies—and even a couple of men, or "brolitas" as they're called—mingle and put triangle-shaped finger sandwiches and pink macaroons on their plates. They spend the next couple of hours sitting at round tables covered in white tablecloths colouring paper dolls, chatting, and giggling as J-pop fills the room.

After spending the entire day amongst London Ontario's lolita community, I've had my fill of kawaii and am ready to go home, but as the photographer and I are about to close the door on the magical tea party, Victoria says to us, "You have to come back again; next time we'll dress you up!"

Follow Allison Tierney on Twitter. See the rest of the images on Hayley Stewart's website.