Katelynn McKnight committed suicide after being confronted by Edmonton Creep Catchers president John Doep. Photos via Facebook.

An Edmonton woman who committed suicide weeks after a video of her was posted by the city's Creep Catchers branch has prompted criticism that the vigilante group is preying on the mentally ill.

As first reported by Global News, Katelynn McKnight, 27, was featured in a Creep Catchers video in which the group's leader John Doep confronted her about wanting to meet up with a 14-year-old girl.

In clips of the video, posted to Global's website, McKnight tells Doep, "My phone was stolen" upon being confronted by him. Creep Catchers posted the clip to YouTube on August 17. McKnight killed herself on September 7.

Creep Catchers describe themselves as vigilante child predator hunters, who pose as children or teenagers online and confront adults who express sexual interest in them. Branches have popped up across the country.

Read more: Creep Catchers Are Gaining Momentum After Busting A BC Mountie and Sheriff

A man who identified himself as a father figure to McKnight wrote on Facebook that McKnight had a brilliant but damaged mind and the emotional maturity of a child.

"She had attempted suicide many times before. She wanted out. So I took her in and gave her a home," he said.

"Once the Creep Catchers came walking up to my door her life became a living hell. The constant fear of what could happen to her, the damage to her reputation, the unbearable humiliation of being publicly labeled as a pedophile unable to leave the house for fear of being attacked was just one of the many things that pushed her over the edge."

In an interview with Global, McKnight's mother Cathy Dunn questioned Creep Catchers' vigilantism.

"How can you deal with people and assume that they are guilty, and create such a mental turmoil when you really don't have any proof?" she said.

Reached via Facebook Thursday, Doep refused to comment, aside from repeatedly saying "lol" and advising VICE to speak to his lawyer. In a Facebook post published Wednesday, Doep attacked Global's story, claiming the video of McKnight was made in April not August.

"To say that we 'target' anyone.....is ludicrous...we ALWAYS allow the potential predator the choice to even initiate the contact. We DO NOT target anyone other than those who prey on children," he wrote. However, a screenshot of an earlier post that appears to be from Doep's account shows him issuing a direct apology to McKnight.

"My actions have been reckless and misdirected. Forgive me as I too am a victim of abuse," he wrote. "You have my word that the video has been taken down and the chat logs deleted."

Doep refused to comment on the apology when questioned by VICE, except to say "I don't like how you approached the question."

A woman named RL Dakin, who says her mentally ill relative was harassed by Creep Catchers, has started a Facebook group that claims Creep Catchers are targeting people who are mentally ill and living with disabilities. McKnight got in touch with her through the group and said she'd spent her life in numerous adoptive homes and on the street, suffering from mental health issues, Dakin told VICE.

According to Dakin, McKnight said she'd been hospitalized in April for a suicide attempt and had only been out of hospital for a few days when she was confronted by Doep.

In an exchange between McKnight and Dakin on August 17, the day the Creep Catchers video was uploaded to YouTube, McKnight said she wanted to kill herself.

"Even if the video gets taken down, the damage is done... There is no recovery for me," she said, adding her death would be "a gesture that will hopefully bring about positive change and result in people to begin to question whether this is the right way to do things."

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One of the most enduring photos of Joe Cinque and Anu Singh, recreated for the film Joe Cinque's Consolation. Image supplied

In one of the few interviews she's given since she was found guilty of killing her boyfriend Joe Cinque in 1997, Anu Singh told News.com.au the makers of a new film about her mystifying crime never responded to her attempts to contact them. Sotiris Dounoukos, the director of Joe Cinque's Consolation, tells VICE that Anu never reached out to them. It's just another lie, another half-truth, another mystery to add to the pile that's built up since she killed Joe—drugging him with rohypnol and then forcibly injecting him with needle after needle of heroin as he slept, passed out, in the Canberra home they shared.

If you're to believe writer Helen Garner's 2004 account of Anu's trial, the 25-year-old law student was a master manipulator—privileged, highly strung, narcissistic. Anu invited her classmates over for "send off" dinner parties, informing everyone except Joe that she planned to kill herself, and take him with her. She bullied her dinner guests into not breathing a word, into lending her money, selling her heroin. Not once, but twice, after her first attempt to kill Joe failed.

Nearly two decades later, in a time of heightened awareness around mental health, Garner's judgement of Anu Singh reads as cutting. Sotiris Dounoukos' new film approaches her more softly, tackling the "why" but shifting the focus slightly, asking, "Why didn't anyone do anything to stop this young woman, who was clearly experiencing some sort of mental break?"

Dounoukos actually went to to university with Anu Singh. "I was in the same year of law school at the Australian National University with Anu Singh and many people who are mentioned through Helen 's account of what occurred," he says. "Even if you went to university with these people, the narrative is so extreme you ask yourself, 'How could this occur?' Even with what you might know about the individuals, we're talking about the execution of someone—a life being blacked off the face of the earth."

In Dounoukos' film, released in Australia on October 13, Anu's dinner guests aren't just witnesses on a stand in a courtroom—they are rounded characters, human beings who failed to act where many of us hope we would. I ask Dounoukos if, being so close to these horrible events, he ever wondered what he would've done if he was picked up by Anu and her friend Madhavi Rao, as they drove slowly around the streets of Canberra, looking for guests for their morbid dinner parties.

"I think one of the talents of Anu, and Madhavi, was the ability to try to select people that they could more-or-less control," he offers, explaining the girls picked up students who were from interstate, or overseas—people who didn't have strong ties. "These were students who were away from home, and perhaps it was easier for them to get caught up in their day-to-day lives. To not engage as much with what was happening in the lives of people around them in a very real way," Dounoukos says.

Madhavi Rao (left) and Anu Singh in Joe Cinque's Consolation. Image supplied

The bystander effect factors strongly into the why of Joe Cinque's death. It's a popular idea in social psychology—the phenomenon that the more people who witness someone in need of help, the less likely it is any of them will actually come to their aid. "One of the things the film is exploring is the distinction between spectatorship and being a witness," Dounoukos explains. "And the dangers when people remain spectators to the world around them; treating events like they're not involved."

"These people wanted to go to these dinner parties and their own inner-dialogue said, This has nothing to do with me. And yet the act of being spectators maintained Anu's momentum; it gave her an audience. To a narcissist, an audience is part of the air that they breathe."

But even after watching Dounoukos' film the question of whether Anu would've done what she did without an audience lingers. The young law student had convinced herself Joe, by all accounts a loving boyfriend, had poisoned her with the vomit-inducing cough medicine ipecac—she suffered delusions that some rare disease was eating her muscles. Anu told people she had to kill Joe to punish him for this. Others suggest Joe was finally fed up with Anu, and it was his deciding to leave her that tipped her over the edge.

Was she having a massive mental breakdown or did she know exactly what she was doing? Both Garner and Dounoukos come back to Anu Singh's triple zero call to get help for Joe around noon on October 26, 1997—the day after the second attempt.

"Could I get an ambulance please?... I had a person potentially overdose on heroin," she says. "Potentially overdose?" the dispatcher asks. "Well, he's vomiting everywhere blood... Is that a bad sign?" she questions. Singh had just spent the morning, and much of the night before, watching Joe Cinque's condition deteriorate—standing by the bed as his breathing slowed, and his lips turned blue. The 000 call stretched out for 20 minutes, while the dispatcher tried to get Anu to tell him where she lived. It's chaos and calculation in equal measure.

Originally charged with murder, Anu Singh was eventually found guilty of manslaughter. Expert witnesses at her trial pointed to evidence of borderline personality disorder to argue for diminished responsibility. For the death of Joe Cinque, she served only four years of a 10-year sentence. She got her PhD in jail, and published her thesis on female violent crime. Joe's family has never forgiven her.

The real Anu Singh and Joe Cinque, before his death. Image via YouTube

Back in 2004, three years after Singh was released, Helen Garner told 7.30 Anu's motives still baffle her. "I don't understand why she did it," said the veteran writer who'd spent months covering Anu's trial back in 1999. "I think empathy can take you only to a certain point." Anu Singh herself, thinking back on her crime 20 years later, also comes up short. "I don't understand, either... I was mentally unwell, and I still grapple with that. I still grapple with the whys," she told News.com.au. "I don't know. There's no rational explanation."

And Sotiris Dounoukos, even after making this film, still can't parse why former classmate did what she did, and why nobody stopped her. But he does qualify that whatever recovery has happened there, Anu's desire for control remains—he says she blocked every attempt by the film's producers to access evidence from the trial through freedom of information.

"She wouldn't allow any access to any of the evidence that she controls access to. She also chose not to participate in the writing of the book, after many attempts by Helen Garner to interview her," he says. "She also didn't want to speak at all during the trials as a witness. She remained silent at these critical times.

"Given Joe's voice had been extinguished by her... we wanted to avoid the introduction of her own take on what occurred in 1997 all these years later. She's had the time to reflect on it. But it's not a film about her reflection on that period, we're interested in what she did."

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This article originally appeared on VICE Germany

The Aftermaths is a series of portraits of my friends taken on their way home from the club, after one or more nights of partying. It's an attempt to capture their exhaustion and the purity that comes with it. It is in this moment, that I find something real to photograph, a way to get close from a distance.

My photography crosses many interests. More obviously, it deals with identity but my interest lies more in my connection to my sitters and their connection to me. As far as I'm concerned, portrait photography is about the distance we decide to cover to connect with each other, and the distance we decide to leave in between.

My friends are all remarkable individuals. They are brave enough to express themselves in a way that to the untrained mind could look vulnerable. I don't think I will ever tire of photographing them.

Some happy millennial-looking people at a Glamour/Facebook event at the Democratic National Convention. Photo by Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for Glamour

Young people should love Hillary Clinton. Really! Earlier this year, a USA Today/Rock the Vote poll of under-35s found that they wanted America to transition to clean energy; so does Clinton. In that poll, 82 percent of millennials wanted background checks for all gun sales; Clinton wants more background checks too. Clinton has promised to give tons of people debt-free college and let student debtors refinance their loans. And if all that isn't enough, she showed up on Broad City. What more could we want?

The answer from millennials is obviously "something else." Though she's winning the youth vote—41 percent of voters under 30 support her versus 23 percent for Donald Trump, according to the latest Reuters numbers—her numbers pale in comparison to Barack Obama, who secured over 60 percent of the under-30 vote in 2008. The issue isn't her opponent, as Trump is despised by young people across the political spectrum; they simply aren't ready for Hillary either, with substantial chunks supporting Libertarian Gary Johnson or Green Jill Stein.

That's why Clinton should take the advice of teen magazines everywhere: Be herself. That means keeping the policy but dropping the attempts to be cool. "Herself" is boring, nerdy, diligent, and kind of lame. She should embrace it.

This might seem contradictory, but Clinton has been trying to seem hip and cool for months, and it mostly hasn't worked. Her recent Between Two Ferns interview was stilted and weird, especially compared to Zach Galifianakis's interview with Obama, who clearly loves comedic chops-busting where Clinton merely tolerates it. The Broad City episode was funnier, but mostly because there was a pegging reference involved. At worst, Clinton's youth-outreach efforts have come off as naked pandering, like her op-ed for capital-M millennial outfit Mic, titled, no joke, "Here's What Millennials Have Taught Me."

More than being told how great they are, however, millennials love authenticity. Today's version of "authentic" may be carefully posed and filtered, but one's carefully curated version of themselves at least in theory projects out aspects of one's inner self. (You are the kind of person who is close to nature and enjoys the physical exertion of a hike; you are the kind of person who is indulgent and pleasure-focused and eats a different-colored ice cream cone every day; you are very sophisticated, which is why your entire Instagram feed is a single color palette.)

She should stop trying to appeal to the kids by being cool, and instead be exactly who she is: A thoroughly un-hip middle-aged woman who is probably smarter than you and definitely smarter than her opponent.

This Hillary Clinton can do. She has been in the public eye for so much of her life, and shape-shifted to meet ever-changing expectations for women in politics, that she may not even know who she really is anymore. It doesn't matter. There's one through-line of her life she can double down on: She's a nerd. She should stop trying to appeal to the kids by being cool, and instead be exactly who she is: A thoroughly un-hip middle-aged woman who is probably smarter than you and definitely smarter than her opponent. She will think seriously about every decision she makes, who will make sure her solutions are workable rather than just exciting, and who will dig in and get stuff done. She is, at heart, Lisa Simpson. You wouldn't necessarily put Lisa on a T-shirt, but you'd definitely put her in the Oval Office before you'd elect Bart.

Wonky Hillary, of course, runs the risk of playing into another pop-culture stereotype, that of Tracy Flick: the ambitious, cutthroat know-it-all who sits in the front row and raises her hand a little too often. But this isn't the same world in which Clinton grew up, where highly educated women routinely faced unequal treatment at school, the derision of their male peers, and even constrained marital prospects. It's still an uphill battle for the smart girl, but there's a wider path than ever: Women outnumber men on college campuses, girls outperform boys in high school, and college-educated women are now more likely to get married than women without a degree. Young people are used to seeing smart girls and women dominate in the classroom and remain well-liked by their peers. Intelligence, and outright nerdiness, is far less of a liability than it used to be.

Democrats have been running away from the egghead stereotype for decades, while meanwhile the Republican Party's anti-intellectualism has bizarrely been an electoral boon. The American right has convinced much of the country that wanting to have a beer with someone is just as important as that someone being able to make complex, rational decisions, that being a straight talker who doesn't bow to political correctness is just as desirable as having an actual plan to run the country. That is a fundamentally stupid position, and Clinton should say so. The president doesn't need to be cool. We'd all be better off if our leader was more excited by the minutiae of policy and the detailed work of being a politician than by the public spectacle of an election. This is Clinton: She is bad at running for office but very good at holding it.

Clinton isn't as exciting a candidate as Trump. Nor is she as pure as a third-party candidate running not to win but to make a neat ideological point—supporting her lacks the idealistic sheen of being able to say, "Actually, I'm voting for Jill Stein." But no candidate has her intellect or her dedication to the boring work of governance. It may not be the most exhilarating campaign strategy, but to rope in young voters, it could be a winning one. Clinton should take a page from Trump's straight-talk strategy and tell it like it is: When it comes to the person who holds the nuclear codes, a know-it-all is infinitely better than a know-nothing.

Jill Filipovic is a journalist and author of the forthcoming The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness.

In this photo illustration, capsules of the herbal supplement Kratom are seen on May 10, 2016 in Miami, Florida. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

As opioid overdoses continue to skyrocket across America, many chronic pain patients and people with addiction are seeking safer ways to cope. Too bad the feds—with a broken system for scheduling drugs of all kinds—are standing in the way.

In August, the Drug Enforcement Administration refused to move marijuana out of its most restricted category of drugs, Schedule I. And at the tail-end of that month, the agency announced plans to add Kratom—a South Asian herbal remedy that is frequently used to treat both chronic pain and addiction—to the same list. The ban could start as early as September 30, and is expected to last at least two years.

Substances included in Schedule I are said to have both a high potential for abuse and "no currently accepted medical use," and sales and possession are illegal. While some medical research can still be conducted, the bureaucratic process involved is both expensive and time-consuming, creating a catch-22 that makes "no currently accepted medical use" a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"I don't know of any instance of them reversing themselves, "Jag Davies, director of communications strategy for the Drug Policy Alliance, told me of the government and scheduling decisions. Forty-five members of Congress have written the DEA and federal officials asking them to delay the move.

Meanwhile, data favoring both marijuana and Kratom as pain-relieving alternatives to drugs like Oxycontin and heroin continues to build. First, weed: The most recent study, published this month in the American Journal of Public Health, found a 50 percent reduction in the number of drivers aged 21 through 40 involved in fatal car accidents who tested positive for opioids in medical marijuana states. A 2014 study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, found a 25 percent reduction in the opioid overdose death rate in states that legalized medical marijuana between 1999 and 2010, a reduction that grew over the years after the state legalized. A Rand Corporation study bolstered the apparent link between greater marijuana access and reduced opioid-related deaths, while a study of Medicare claims found that spending on pain medication fell by $165.2 million in medical marijuana states.

There is much less data on Kratom, but its centuries-long history of use as a replacement for opium in South Asia is reassuring. In fact, it was banned by Thailand in 1943 because the government found that its use was cutting into opium tax revenues. A 2015 study of 293 Malaysian Kratom users found that their reliance on the drug did not interfere with their ability to function at work or at home. And while studies suggest the active ingredients in Kratom do act on the same opioid receptors associated with euphoria and pain relief affected by typical opioids and can cause physical withdrawal symptoms in chronic users, they seem to do so in a milder way.

Critically, Kratom doesn't seem to have the effect that is most likely to prove fatal in overdose: slowing respiration until it eventually stops entirely. When I spoke to Oliver Grundmann, clinical associate professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Florida and the author of a 2016 review of the toxicology of Kratom earlier this year, he said, "Direct Kratom overdoses from the life-threatening respiratory depression that usually occurs with opioid overdoses have not been reported." This strongly suggests that the drug does not pose anywhere near the danger associated with typical opioids.

While the DEA says there have been 15 deaths associated with Kratom in the past two years— and this in the context of millions of doses floating around the US—at least 14 of them occurred when the drug was taken in combination with other substances.

So why ban it now? Part of the blame, I think, falls on media coverage like that in the New York Times, which reported in January that some in Florida's rehab community felt legal Kratom was a threat to their recovery. The paper portrayed Kratom relapsers as innocent victims of sellers who, as one woman in recovery put it, are "preying on the weak and the broken." But this is disingenuous at best: Every abstinence program and 12-step group spells out clearly that non-prescribed (and sometimes, even prescribed!) mind and mood altering substances are forbidden.

The irony here is that a relapse that occurs with Kratom is far less likely to be deadly than one with street or prescription opioids, because of its reduced effect on breathing. Ingesting large amounts of Kratom is difficult itself: It causes nausea and vomiting so that if high doses were to be dangerous in other ways, it's hard to achieve them without throwing it all back up.

Kratom is also being used by some addicted people as a form of opioid maintenance, and unlike the two proven medications for that purpose—Suboxone and Methadone—it doesn't carry a well-established risk of overdose death if it gets into the wrong hands. Obviously, much more data is needed on long-term effects, but placing it into Schedule I will impede such efforts, not energize them.

Meanwhile, the CDC has also weighed in a less-than helpful manner, reporting that calls to poison centers related to Kratom increased from 26 in 2010 to 263 in 2015 and labeling it "an emerging public health threat." In contrast, however, there were nearly 29,000 deaths involving legal and illegal opioids in 2014 (the latest data available)— and poison centers received more than 40,000 calls related to opioids between January and the end of August 2016 alone. In that context, does it really make sense to ban the less dangerous stuff first?

Fundamentally, America's regulators seem incapable of placing risks in context. They see a "new" drug "threat" and determine that it should be banned—regardless of whether it might substitute for a far more dangerous substance. They don't understand that the tools we have for dealing with psychoactive substances are not fit for that purpose.

Take the scheduling system itself: It makes no sense to declare that a drug has no accepted medical use when it hasn't first been systematically studied. By law, the DEA's hands are tied in defining an "accepted medical use." The only medications that qualify are those that have passed through the FDA's approval process, according to spokesperson Rusty Payne.

"Until the FDA tells us that it's a medicine, it meets statutory criteria for Schedule I controlled substances," he told me of Kratom. This means herbal medicines like Kratom and marijuana, which are not patentable, will probably never be federally OK for pain relief because no one seems likely to spend the billions needed to try to get FDA approval. And there's also no legal regulatory pathway for introducing a new recreational drug, if sellers wanted to go that route.

Another problem is the fact that the DEA, the agency that's supposed to enforce drug prohibition, is also in charge of deciding which drugs should be banned. "The DEA somehow retained the right to make these determinations, even though what they are is a law enforcement body and not scientific researchers or physicians," says Caroline Acker, professor emeritus of history at Carnegie Mellon University, who has studied the history of drug laws.

"Bureaucracies, once created, want to survive," Acker adds, noting that this means that they will tend to try to expand their mission, no matter what. "The do have a conflict of interest in wanting that mission to live on even if it's shown to be counterproductive or harmful."

If we want to change that and actually reduce the death toll from the opioid crisis, we need to rethink our drug scheduling system entirely. For starters, the DEA's conflict of interest means it shouldn't be tasked with determining which drugs are banned—that job belongs to scientists, not cops. Second, science (and not historical racism) should be used to develop a more sensible way to determine which recreational drugs are allowed and which drugs are safe for medical use.

Human beings are going to continue to search for and experiment with chemical ways of getting high. We can either recognize this and come up with ways to regulate it based on a rational assessment of risk, or else continue with failed policies that can't even adapt to minimize harm.

Follow Maia Szalavitz on Twitter.

Photo by Mia Kirby

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

Warpaint recently released its third album, Heads Up, which is both really good and a bit of a surprise, given that the band has been subject to a few split rumors recently. When I call the group's multicolored-haired, enigmatic bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg, she is brushing her teeth. "Hello?" she murmurs, toothbrush in mouth. She's at home in LA, getting ready to walk her dog, a Labradoodle called Pluto.

How many people have been in love with you?
I don't know. I mean, shit, I'd like to think that all of the boyfriends that I've had have been in love with me. At least at a certain point in time. I'm going to go with six. Is that a lot? I don't know. I've been in love with all the boyfriends I've had. I don't stay in love with them, but I've been in love with them.

What was your worst phase?
In retrospect, I would say when I was a senior in high school. I never went to school, but I got away with it. I didn't really want to be living in Reno anymore, which is where I'm from. I was onto the next... I wasn't very in the moment. I didn't really enjoy myself, and I wish I would have.

What conspiracy theory do you believe?
There was an interesting thing that I heard about David Bowie not actually dying when they said that he died. So that he could sort of see what would happen when he died and see how people were affected, and he was in fact going to die like two or three days later.

Jenny Lee, second from left, with the rest of Warpaint. Photo by Robin Lannenen

What would be your last meal?
Steak and some veggies and biscuits and gravy. And wait, hold on, I gotta throw in something sweet there. And a slice of ice cream cake. And a really nice glass of red wine.

If you won the lottery tomorrow, would you carry on doing what you're doing, or change jobs, or stop working?
I would still carry on what I was doing, but I probably wouldn't do it as much. I'd spend more time making music than I would traveling and touring. I'd be more stationary, wherever it was. I would leave Los Angeles, buy a few houses. I love Nashville, I love Austin, I love Utah, I love Tahoe where I grew up—places that are beautiful, filled with nature, not metropolitan, the antithesis of LA, New York, San Francisco.

If you were a wrestler, what song would you come into the ring to?
Some disco tune. Something a little soft but that gets you in the mood. I'm going to have to go with one of my favorite songs, which is "Promises" by Barbara Streisand and Barry Gibbs.

When in your life have you been truly overcome with fear?
When I was in high school, I had to do a play—I was terrified to get up and do it. I didn't even do it. I failed the class because that's how terrified I was to go up and perform in front of people. I had really crazy performance anxiety. I still kind of do. It's more the anticipation that sucks. The, Oh shit, what if I fuck up? That hasn't happened yet, so I've tricked myself into being like, Just be in the moment now when you get up there, relax and enjoy yourself and have fun, and I have to mantra that out to myself all the time.

Would you have sex with a robot?
Sure. Why not? I mean if it was capable, sure. Wow, I mean, if you were really itching for something and nothing else was possible and you were in a kinky mood, sure, why not?

In the past month, what is the latest you've slept in?
1 PM maybe. Even if I party the next night I just will not get very much sleep and then go to bed early that night. Waking up later is kind of sad, sort of depressing. I love waking up in the morning pretty early, starting my day. I feel inspired in the day, getting shit done. I don't like sleeping the day away because when you wake up and it's like 4 PM, there's something really depressing about that.

Photo by Mia Kirby

What film or TV show makes you cry?
One of my favorite movies, since I was seven, is Ghost. I always cry, every single time.

What's the grossest injury or illness you've ever had?
I got a concussion when I was ten. I got knocked off a horse; he threw me off. I still don't remember. I just came to, and I was in wires and on a fence and shit. I had a huge bump and was totally concussed.

If you had to give up sex or kissing, which would it be?
Well, you can do other things, so I would give up sex because kissing is just such a big part of foreplay.

Complete this sentence: The problem with young people today is...
This goes both ways, but I think they just have access to too many things. Going to the library or reading a book and not just going online and skimming things, and there's something to be said about that.

What memory from school stands out to you stronger than any other?
My first time falling in love. Or at least, thinking I was. At least being majorly infatuated. I just felt like he was so out of my league. The thing that's most memorable is the day that he recognized me and started flirting with me—it just made my whole life up to that point.

Follow Natalie Hughes on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany.

It's World Contraception Day, and of all the many appropriate ways to celebrate, using a few condoms is probably best. Condoms do not only offer safe sex; they can also be blown up as balloons, so they're clearly the most festive form of contraception. And if you think about it—really think about it—what is more festive than flavored condoms?

There's a retro feel/taste to flavored condoms: They're the kind you bought in the very early days of your sexual awakening, when you figured choosing flavored condoms over normal ones meant you were a fully formed, experienced, and adventurous sexual being. And you were hoping that that strawberry flavor would drown out the taste of cock you were a bit nervous and awkward about. But once you were 17 or 18 and sex started being actually fun, you soon forgot about them.

That might be a waste, though. Could smelling and tasting those flavored condoms again reawaken that wild and unbridled excitement you felt at 15 at just the idea of "sex"? To find out if it could work for us now, we decided to taste-test a few flavored condoms—blindfolded, with some relaxing tunes in the background. Though condoms are usually served at penis temperature, we tasted them at room temperature on phallic fruits and vegetables—which likely distorted our findings somewhat but was more appropriate in an office setting.

The Product: Green Mint (Fun Factory)

Taste Test: The dominant flavor is synthetic, not unlike licking a plastic picnic table. It leaves a very subtle minty aftertaste. As subtle as if we'd licked over the part of the picnic table, where someone stuck a chewing gum many months ago.

The Verdict: The condom may be a disappointment in terms of taste, but it makes up for it with plenty of fragrance. It reminded us of mojitos. If you add boiling water to the condom, the resulting brew actually tastes like peppermint tea. We would highly recommend that you bring the condom to a boil before use—or to get steamy in the sauna. 8/10

The Product: Marshmallow (ESP Enjoyable Safe Pleasure)

Taste Test: Strong, fruity sweetness relentless enough to resemble candy floss.

The Verdict: The pronounced floral, fragrant sweetness of this condom takes you by surprise. However, it lacks spice and character, which makes the flavor quite homogenous. It could be best likened to that of children's lip gloss. 7/10

The Product: Banana (Fun Factory)

Taste Test: It tastes like banana, for sure.

The Verdict: We'd prefer a little more sophistication; the perfume of this condom is about as subtle as toilet spray. Flavor-wise, it mimics a banana quite convincingly, but it's more banana-flavored jellybean, less fresh produce. A sexual adventure involving this condom would probably be like going down on a penis-size marshmallow in an over-perfumed toilet. 7/10

The Product: Raspberry (Secura Condoms)

Taste Test: Weak, nondescript flavor. It can be best likened to a piece of gum that has been chewed for a few days straight.

The Verdict: The flavor is a blend of rubber tires and kids' chewing gum. The test object's color is pale, which matches its weak taste. And it leaves a mineral aftertaste. 3/10

The Product: Peach/Orange (Secura Condoms)

Taste Test: This condom smells like the inside of a hookah lounge, and it tastes like those fizzy vitamin C tablets your grandma used to force on you.

The Verdict: At last, a condom to satisfy the gourmet palate! This flavor would be excellent for gummy bears too. Or cough sweets. Sadly, it vanished within half a minute. Ninety seconds in, we could no longer detect any flavor at all. The brevity of the gustatory experience lends credibility to our theory that these products are mainly aimed at teenagers, who are known to ejaculate within that timeframe. 8/10

The Product: Dark Chocolate (Fun Factory)

Taste Test: The flavor evokes vanilla air freshener in some teenage stoner's Vauxhall. The taste is rather unrefined, but it's the intensity of the aroma that made us feel like we are chewing an air freshener.

The Verdict: The cocoa flavor just did not meet our standards. Even with the visual aid of the condom's color, which is obviously meant to evoke chocolate, the brain refuses to imagine one is sucking on a chocolate bar. Perhaps this is a prudent safety measure against overly enthusiastic chocolate lovers with a pronounced bite reflex. The unfortunate result, however, was a taste akin to licking vanilla concentrate from a rubber hose. 4/10

The Product: Green Apple (Secura Condoms)

Taste Test: Neutral flavor, aroma reminiscent of fish and Hubba Bubba gum

The Verdict: The supposedly fruity flavor remained undetectable despite repeated sucking attempts. The rubber-like base flavor dominates and overwhelms not only the apple flavor, but everything else. The aromatic blend of fish and Hubba Bubba is unconvincing. We will not be recommending the manufacturer of this test object for a Michelin star. 2/10

This story appeared in the August issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

Though Polish photographer Magdalena Switek only began shooting in 2009, she has already become known for her distinctive style, a brooding, dreamlike mixture of street and documentary photography, all black-and-white. She often intermingles among these photos images of her daughter, showing her as she grows up, as Switek describes it, "her body balancing on the borderline between innocence and guilt, between unawareness and awareness."

Photos by Jake Lewis

It's 4 PM on an overcast Saturday afternoon, and I'm standing with about 200 protesters outside the Polish embassy in London. Most are dressed in black, symbolizing a "Black Protest" of mourning at the recent rollback on women's reproductive rights in Poland. The day before, the so-called No Abortion Law passed a key vote in Poland's parliament. If it is enacted, it will reverse the country's already restrictive abortion laws, making terminations illegal in almost all circumstances.

"We're mourning at the moment now in Poland," activist Paulina "Poli" Palian tells me. "This law is not only about abortion. The government and church want to take away the little sex education we have in schools. Morning after pill is going to be gone. It was already hell to get it. Now it will be abolished. No abortion for rape victims. No prenatal care. Women looking for abortions and those helping them could go to jail. This applies to women who have abortions outside Poland, too."

Looking around the crowd, I recognize faces from the day's earlier protest at the Irish embassy across town, organized by Repeal London. There, 77 women carried suitcases in silence to the embassy's front steps, a powerful visual representation of the number of women forced to travel from Ireland every week to seek terminations in the UK because of laws that are even more restrictive than Poland's.

Both protests are organized under the umbrella of the Global Repeal movement, coordinated by activist organization Scarlet Brigade. These, and other protests around the world, are taking place in solidarity with the largest ever March for Choice in Dublin.

Like their Irish counterparts, thousands of Polish women each year are forced to travel in secrecy to access abortion clinics in other countries, a phenomenon known as "abortion tourism." If the "No Abortion Law" is enacted, campaigners insist more women than ever will be forced to travel with procedures becoming more costly and dangerous.

When Poland joined the European Union in 2004, open borders meant women with the means to travel for terminations could do so much more easily. They began attending clinics in Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and elsewhere, with some going as far as the UK. Poland's Federation for Women and Family Planning estimate that of the 150,000 illegal abortions in Poland each year, 10 to 15 percent take place abroad.

Activist Magda Oljejor was 19 when she traveled to the UK for an abortion. "I had just started university in Poland and found out I was pregnant. I had no idea what the laws were back then. I went to the doctor. He didn't even want to speak to me about it. I was very scared. I wanted advice, but there was nothing but a cold, 'We don't do that.'"

"Fortunately, my mom was already here, so I knew I could come to her and she would help me. I was very ashamed of myself because that's how I was brought up, the good Catholic girl. I was ashamed of going to the doctor here and asking for help but actually what I found is there's no shame here. It's normal when you're very young and not ready—you do have that option, and no one is going to shame you."

"Polish women fear their family because everybody is so deeply Catholic," Oljejor says. "Even though women have an unspoken understanding—at a deeper level, they do believe in rights—but there is so much fear of the community. It's basically your family. I don't think they're scared of politicians or anything. But being shunned by your family, that sucks."

However, traveling for abortion is not an option open to all women. One protester we spoke to, who did not want to be named, described her illegal abortion experience as "traumatic." "I couldn't tell anyone for fear the authorities would find out and prosecute me. Only my boyfriend knew. As abortion is so expensive, I had to borrow money from a friend but couldn't tell them why. I left Poland shortly afterward because of the pressure."

The day before the protest I meet with one of its main organizers, Joanna Cielecka, in her central London home. As a writer, filmmaker, and campaigner, Cielecka has heard the stories of many Polish women who have been forced to seek illegal abortions. In 2004, she produced a theater show based on their experiences.

"Polish women mostly go to Germany because it's a Western country," she says. "All the doctors on the border know there is a surge of Polish women coming and having abortions there because it's safe."

While abortion is illegal in Poland, apart from cases of rape or incest, danger to the mother's health, or an unviable fetus, there are no shortage of providers. "Abortion is really easily available. In every paper at the back, there are adverts for abortion. In every paper. It's a big business."

I ask if it is safe. "No, not at all. There are usually two kinds of procedures offered. First, the so-called chemical abortion. They just give you a pill or they insert a pill for stomach ulcers into the vagina to provoke a burning sensation. It often doesn't work, and you are referred to the more expensive surgical abortion. You're given an anesthetic, so you just wake up and it's done, but you don't know how it's been done. It's not even a proper surgery, just a room in somebody's home."

In the 2015, according to abortion statistics for UK and Wales, 25 women gave their home address as Poland. Experts suggest that the real number could be much higher, possibly in the thousands. Cielecka agrees: "Yes, definitely, absolutely. Especially now with so many Polish people being in Britain. It is very likely."

During our interview, Cielecka describes the inspiration she and other Polish campaigners have drawn from the Irish "Repeal the 8th" campaign, which fights to overturn Ireland's abortion ban. "It's all about solidarity. What the Repeal the 8th movement has done worldwide is motivate groups of people. Thanks to social media we are no longer separate. It helped gather us together and be stronger."

The next day she brings the protest to a close with the words: "People who say, 'What have Polish women got to do with Irish women?' just don't get it. It doesn't matter which country it is, if a woman is denied her rights, we won't stop protesting, marching, and fighting."

At a critical time for reproductive rights in Poland and Ireland, it sounds like the rallying cry women in both countries need.

More photos:

Still from 'Total Frat Movie'

Fraternities are at a strange crossroads in their history. On the one hand, the scandals of a few chapters from around the country have made the very word synonymous with hazing, sexual harassment, rape, white privilege, and racism. On the other, none of these PR nightmares seem to have put a dent in fraternity enrollment numbers. Pledging is actually up and, according to a 2014 Gallup-Purdue Survey, going Greek might even lead to more happiness and fulfillment in life well after graduation. Of course, as the survey relied on self-analysis, it's hard to say if that's actually true.

Either way, the North American Inter-Fraternity Council (NIC) appears to be worried that fraternities have a bad rap. They went so far as to identify "sophisticated public relations efforts to advance the 'fraternity' brand" as one of five key priorities in their "NIC 2.0" initiative. Duality of man is great in theory, but is there room within the modern frat brother to be both woke and a beer pong broham?

Two films that came out on Friday—Goat and Total Frat Movie—explored just that. With wildly disparate agendas, each film, a separate side of the same coin, portrays the yearning for purpose, camaraderie, and easy pussy that young American men seek out each semester. Both shine a light on the subculture—one through the rose-tinted glasses of its acolytes, the other from the perspective of an aghast voyeur. (Minor spoilers of both films to follow. You've been warned.)

I won't beat around the bush: Total Frat Movie is an abysmal film. A big-screen spin-off of the website TotalFratMove.com, Total Frat Movie is basically a pastiche of Animal House and Revenge of the Nerds, with plot points carried out by creatures that are more random Urban Dictionary phrase generators than three-dimensional characters. The protagonist, Charlie (Justin Deely), must shore up new pledges to save his beloved frat house from the evil rival frat, all while under the watchful eye of the Dean (Tom Green).

Viewers outside of Greek life might understandably perceive Total Frat Movie as parody, its heroes so blithely dropping platitudes that are neither profound nor funny. But no, this film is an earnest celebration of the "frat star" lifestyle, and the problematic landmines it keeps tripping over turn the otherwise hacky jokes into a broader concern about frat culture's place in modern society.

Still from 'Total Frat Movie'

There are many problems. First, there's the blinding whiteness of the Total Frat Movie cast. While this could just be a boneheaded casting oversight, the "Reagan Bush '84" tanks the boys wear might lead one to the conclusion that the decision was more intentional than that.

Related: Provocative Photos of a Female Artist Laying Down on Frat House Lawns

Then there's the outright misogyny. In the film, frat bros pour beer on the breasts of non-consenting female party guests, promise pledges harems of slutty sorority girls as if they were chattel, and recruit a Joe Francis type to film all the debauchery going on in the house. When the token nerd pledge reveals the science experiment he's been working on is a way to make co-eds ejaculate like a seltzer bottle, a bro asks why any girl would want to squirt. The test subject replies: "Because women shouldn't be the only ones forced to swallow." In other words, female sexuality is nothing more than a power play to the guys behind Total Frat Movie.

By contrast, Goat focuses on the horrors of "hell week," as told from the perspective of incoming freshman Brad (Ben Schnetzer) as he pledges the fraternity of his older brother (Nick Jonas). After a violent incident leaves Brad shook and traumatized, he turns to brotherhood of both blood and covenant to ensure he'll never find himself alone and scared again. He undergoes a torturous hazing period wherein frat brothers proudly compare their abuses to that of Guantánamo guards, but when a more grave tragedy hits the group, the upperclassmen have to focus less on brotherhood and more on protecting the booze-soaked fiefdom they've established for themselves.

Related: This American Bro: A Portrait of the Worst Guy Ever

With a script based on a memoir of the same title, and a release date during National Hazing Prevention Week, Goat announces its intentions of breaking up the party early on. Even as bros toss back brews in the early scenes, a storm cloud of dread hangs over the characters and the audience flinches with suspicion alongside the pledges at every frat bro pleasantry.

Still from 'Goat'

If Total Frat Movie is Tim Burton's Batman, Goat is The Dark Knight. Goat presents us with grimey, hip-hop-blaring house parties, Total Frat Movie's are aspirational Steve Aoki music videos. Goat gives us two acts worth of hazing, Total Frat Movie gives us a brief ice barrel challenge scene. Goat shocks with its characters' overt and casual homophobia—with "faggot" screamed out maybe more times than "fuck"—Total Frat Movie retreats to old-fashioned gym coach-style implied homophobia ("quit jerkin' each other off in there") for cheap laughs.

Fortunately, both films share deeper themes: trauma perpetuating trauma, an existential yearning for a meaningful life, and the desire to belong at any cost. But is all that Skull & Bones skullduggery worth the debasement of one's self and others required for entry? Will the networking opportunities frats provide outweigh the trauma and liver damage?

"All my life I wanted to party like a frat star," says Charlie at the beginning of Total Frat Movie. If only his film shared the same universe as Goat, so Nick Jonas could remind him "none of this even matters."

Follow Justin Caffier on Twitter.

Bob Schieffer between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney during the final 2012 debate Photo by Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images

Journalists like to think of ourselves as central to the political process, but in truth not many of us ever have much of a chance at influencing the course of a campaign. Investigative reporting is vital and can uncover important truths about candidates, and interviews with the candidates sometimes serve as windows into their personalities, but few of these stories break through and actually change voters' minds. Arguably, the only time a member of the press has real power during an election cycle is when he or she is sitting literally between the candidates moderating one of the debates.

Bob Schieffer knows this role well. The veteran and venerated CBS newsman has been a journalist for most of his 79 years and interviewed every president since Richard Nixon; in 2008, he was literally named a "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress. Along the way, he moderated presidential debates in 2004, 2008, and 2012. Even for him, it was a pretty heavy burden to shoulder.

The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates chooses the moderators at these events, but in order to stay above the political fray, it lets the moderators choose all the questions. This is a lot of responsibility—before the first debate he moderated, in 2004, Schieffer told me he had a nightmare where he ran out of things to ask George W. Bush and John Kerry even though there were 20 long minutes left in the debate. So like any good journalist he over-prepared, calling on think tank after think tank to briefed him on all the relevant subjects. For the last debate he moderated, between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, Schieffer had more than 300 questions ready to go—but once you're in the debate, he said, most of the questions are follow-ups anyway.

A moderator's follow-up questions—what they should be, and how aggressive they should be—have been at the center of a fairly heated debate in the media lately. Donald Trump's unique habit of making statements that are tossed-off jokes, half-cooked pieces of nonsense, or outright lies puts journalists interviewing him in a tricky spot: How much do you fact-check him and call him out when he says something verifiably untrue? During a debate, with practically the entire country watching, this responsibility is amped up—Hillary Clinton's campaign has already made it known it wants moderator Lester Holt to point out Trump's "lies."

Schieffer is of the opinion that in the best-case scenario, it's the other candidate who serves as the fact-checker. He's often compared the moderator's role to that of an "umpire," meaning it's not his place to insert himself into a debate. (Other former moderators agree.) He told me that you do have to be ready to fact-check if it's needed, but stressed that a moderator is all alone out there. A director may be speaking into the moderator's earpiece, but only to note how much time has elapsed and how many minutes each candidate has spoken for—there's no producer to feed you accurate information, as might happen during a regular interview. Saying a candidate is wrong about something—as moderator Candy Crowley did, controversially, to Romney in 2012—means going out on a limb.

Schieffer's umpire analogy is about more than just fact-checking. He compared the grousing about unfair questions that some candidates engage in (and was especially prevalent during last year's crowded GOP primary debates) to coaches "working the refs" in hopes of getting favorable calls later. When that happens, he said, you have to "laugh it off" and remind the angry candidate that the audience is there to watch them and that you, the moderator, aren't running for anything. "There's a lot of things you can say," Schieffer said.

As for what voters are watching for, Schieffer thinks that they "more or less know where each stands at this point"—the key thing is often the character of the candidates, which he says is more important in a presidential election, where voters want to know how a potential commander-in-chief reacts under pressure. That's part of the reason why the best questions from a moderator are "how" questions—how will Trump get those undocumented immigrants on the buses to deport them? How will Clinton pay for her ambitious tuition-free college plan? If a candidate can't handle those questions, that's a pretty big red flag.

Schieffer's one wish for this series of three debates is to get at least one where Trump and Clinton sit down at a table with the moderator, as Obama and John McCain did with Schieffer in 2008. That setting is more intimate and can serve as a check on the angriest rhetorical impulses. The 2008 campaign was very contentious, with plenty of negative ads, and as a result, "you could cut the tension with a knife," Schieffer said. There was a contrast between the two men up close too, with an "over-caffeinated" McCain facing off against Obama, who stared his opponent down, without taking notes, as the other man spoke. When he asked the candidates if they would repeat the claims their commercials had made about the other, both demurred, instead falling back on lines about it being a "tough campaign."

This campaign is even tougher, and Schieffer wonders if Trump and Clinton, who will be behind podiums, will even shake hands.

In the back-and-forth before the debate, Trump suggested that he'd prefer a format where there was no moderator. So I asked Schieffer why we need a moderator in the first place, and the reply was that without someone guiding the discussion, the two candidates would be too free to descend into a vindictive back-and-forth. "Can you imagine the Republican primary debates without a moderator?" Schieffer said. I could not.

So maybe the best analogy isn't a baseball umpire, who just stands around and occasionally calls balls and strikes, but a boxing referee, who is there to make sure all the blows are above the belt. I put that to Schieffer, and he paused.

"Hopefully it won't come to actual fisticuffs," he said.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

No one really "wins" or "loses" a presidential debate. These arguments take place onstage, but also in the minds of the millions of voters watching, and there's no expert on any cable news panel anywhere who can say what will stick. On Monday, did Donald Trump come off as a rambling moron with a bad case of hay fever, or a bold alternative to decades of lousy leadership in DC? Was Hillary Clinton a model of composure, or smug and overly rehearsed? And what in God's name are undecided voters undecided about, after all this?

In the aftermath, the media scrambles to answer these questions, because we've got TV channels and websites to fill with speculation, and debating the debate is a tradition as time-honored as any in American politics. But definitive judgements on debates are only made in hindsight—once we know who wins an election, we'll go back and cherry-pick the worst Clinton or Trump gaffes as signs the loser was losing. For now, however, we're lost in the fog of electioneering.

All we can do is look back on a night of hectic back-and-forthing and try to decipher what went on. So here are some of the most important moments of the debate translated into plain English (quotes are taken from the Washington Post transcript):

Moderator Lester Holt: "At the start of each segment, I will ask the same lead-off question to both candidates, and they will each have up to two minutes to respond. From that point until the end of the segment, we'll have an open discussion."

Translation: "I am going to ask a question, one or both of the candidates will ignore it, and then they will get into a heated argument that will go way over the allotted time. But we will get to see them talk to each other, at least."

Trump: "Our jobs are fleeing the country. They're going to Mexico. They're going to many other countries. You look at what China is doing to our country in terms of making our product. They're devaluing their currency, and there's nobody in our government to fight them. And we have a very good fight. And we have a winning fight. Because they're using our country as a piggy bank to rebuild China, and many other countries are doing the same thing."

Translation: "This is my whole campaign right here: Other countries are screwing us over, and our government is letting them—they're ganging up on you, the (white) American worker. I don't have anything else to tell you, even if this debate is going to go on for another 80 minutes."

Clinton: "You know, Donald was very fortunate in his life, and that's all to his benefit.He started his business with $14 million, borrowed from his father, and he really believes that the more you help wealthy people, the better off we'll be and that everything will work out from there."

Translation: "It always makes Trump so, so mad when people bring up his father's wealth, and even angrier when people use hard numbers. Ha ha."

Trump: "Now, in all fairness to Secretary Clinton—yes, is that OK? Good. I want you to be very happy. It's very important to me."

Translation: "Fuck you."

Clinton: "Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it's real."

Trump: "I did not. I did not. I do not say that."

Translation: "I want this tweet to become very popular:

Trump:"And by the way, my tax cut is the biggest since Ronald Reagan. I'm very proud of it. It will create tremendous numbers of new jobs. But regulations, you are going to regulate these businesses out of existence."

Translation: "I am a Republican."

Clinton: "What I have proposed would be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy, because they have made all the gains in the economy. And I think it's time that the wealthy and corporations paid their fair share to support this country."

Translation: "I am a Democrat."

Clinton: "You know, I made a mistake using a private email... And if I had to do it over again, I would, obviously, do it differently. But I'm not going to make any excuses. It was a mistake, and I take responsibility for that."

Translation: "Is this, finally, the right answer to any question about my email? Is this what you vultures want to hear? Fine. Whatever gets us through to the next thing."

Trump: "The other thing, I'm extremely underleveraged. The report that said $650—which, by the way, a lot of friends of mine that know my business say, boy, that's really not a lot of money. It's not a lot of money relative to what I had.

"The buildings that were in question, they said in the same report, which was—actually, it wasn't even a bad story, to be honest with you, but the buildings are worth $3.9 billion. And the $650 isn't even on that. But it's not $650. It's much less than that."

Translation: "I am annoyed that I have to explain my real estate dealings to you plebs, but I'm also sort of bad at judging what people even understand about my business or have read, so my answer is pretty opaque and confusing. I'm also maybe getting tired, and I have this cold, but look—the point is that I am rich and not about to go bankrupt again, OK?"

Trump: "We have a situation where we have our inner cities, African Americans, Hispanics are living in hell because it's so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot."

Translation: "Do I know how racist this sort of talk is?"

Trump: "We have gangs roaming the street. And in many cases, they're illegally here, illegal immigrants. And they have guns. And they shoot people. And we have to be very strong. And we have to be very vigilant."

Translation: "I guess I do know how racist this is, but I don't care. I'm talking to white people right now."

Trump:

Translation: This one is pretty self-evident.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

Best guess for what's going on here is Donald Trump is attempting to charm voters with a Muppet impression during Monday night's debate. (ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

The first presidential debate took place during primetime on America's eastern seaboard, but in London, where I watched it, it was the dead of night. It was an event meant for the witching hour—moderator Lester Holt may as well have stage-whispered "something wicked this way comes" as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump took the stage—but it ended up being a particularly banal kind of witching hour.

Here were the forces of hell unleashed in a place that looked like a suburban conference center. The ground beneath our feet was crumbling but the backdrop remained Prozac blue, and one of the hell creatures had a bad case of the snuffles. This is what everyone's afraid of? A confused man telling people how good his ten-year-old son is with computers?

We British have always liked to think we have a particularly informed take on American elections. The "special relationship," a shared language, and an understanding of the importance of getting your dick out for Harambe are just some of the things that have us believing we get American politics in a way that our European neighbors don't.

I'll make no claims there, but having worked on two hour-long documentaries about Donald Trump this year, I've spent more time thinking about the Great Orange Fear than is healthy. There he is, telling me that "a lot of people are saying" he's a really terrific guy, and that "by the way," Crooked Hillary founded ISIS with Barack Obama. There he is, floating before me, pulling his two trademark hand gestures: the one where he makes an "O" with his thumb and index finger and the one where he does a sign with his thumb and index finger. (He did the second one a lot on Monday night, which for me was Tuesday morning.) Trump is the loud-mouthed illusion of democracy. If you look at him for too long, he will haunt the shit out of you. You will dream about him, though it is the last thing you want to do.

The Trump on the debate stage was the same Trump that's appeared on countless other stages for the past year and a bit. Anyone who's sat through his rallies will have heard Trump say the things he said last night. His friend who says Mexico is the eighth wonder of the world, China, trade deals and the political hacks who negotiate them, Hillary Clinton's emails, being friends with Sean Hannity, knocking the hell out of ISIS and making America great again. That's politics, though. You repeat the same shit ad nauseam and hope that some of it sticks. Hillary was repeating the same lines as well, though it was hard to tell because it turns out that her "deadpan" performance on Between Two Ferns is actually just her regular performance.

But this is politics in a time of crisis, politics in the darkness of the night, not the light of primetime. This is politics played by the most dangerous presidential candidate the United States has known and a deeply compromised, deeply uninspiring representative of a ruling class that has failed not just America but the world. Trump had, by all traditional markers, a lousy debate performance, incoherent at times and far too quick to take offense. But he didn't get here by hitting any of the traditional markers, and when Hillary Clinton repeated her obviously rehearsed "trumped-up trickle-down economics" line and smiled at nobody, it was like watching a robot take pleasure performing a function its maker had come to feel deeply unsure of.

Both candidates did something like what was expected of them. Trump played the outsider ready to tear down the DC Establishment. Clinton played the grown-up politician.

Trump paid deference to the occasion by making a big deal out of calling his opponent "Secretary Clinton" rather than "Crooked Hillary." But before too long, his performance began to more closely resemble that of his rallies. He interrupted Clinton time and again; he used phrases like "very against police judge," he worked the hell out of his hand gestures, and he ranted about what a special "temperament" he has. Trump feels most at home loudly telling anyone who'll listen about how great he is. That shtick works when he's in front of crowds who already love him, but it's not clear if it's enough to win over those mythical undecided voters.

Here's the problem for Clinton: When Trump talks about the damage free trade deals have done and the problems faced by working- and middle-class communities across America (and indeed the world), he strikes on something that people not only feel, but something that is backed up by statistics. When he denounced the damage done by NAFTA, it was one of the few things that Clinton had no good response to.

The jobs have picked up and gone to the places where the labor is cheapest. Trump knows this—his companies have benefitted from it, after all. He may be totally insincere when he says he'll do something about it and his existing plan to do something about it may be terrible, but Clinton represents an Establishment that has failed and Trump—the self-proclaimed billionaire, the man with the hair—has looked into the eyes of the people and bellowed, "I am your voice."

I'm a long, long ways from Long Island, but in the darkest point of the night, it is that voice that echoes. On this side of the Atlantic, we know that voice because it sounds an awful lot like Brexit. It is the voice that offers easy, fabricated solutions to chronic problems. It is the voice that speaks to the people who have been left behind and the people with ice in their hearts. But it is also the voice that says, "I am not responsible for the problems you face. You have been let down, and I will make everything better. I will make everything great. I will make you happy." That voice is powerful, wherever it is heard.

Outside my window, one of the world's capitals is crawling into life. Creatures are arising from the depths. The shape of the trees is something to behold. It does not seem like a world ruled by reasons that make sense. If our rulers have ruled us badly, we will pay the price, not them. Trump is that price—that balance due—and right now, despite all the Twitter zingers, I can't help but feel like this rough beast has come slouching out of our computer and television screens to punish us, his hour come round at last.

Follow Oscar Rickett on Twitter.

Harry Sperl with his Hamburger Harley. All photos by the author

Hamburger Harry Sperl is one of Daytona Beach's more eccentric residents. During Bike Week, Daytona's annual motorcycle rally, you can find him riding down Main Street in his custom-made Hamburger Harley. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. His 2,500 square foot home, a few blocks from the ocean, is a shrine to all things hamburger related: Big Boy statues, pieces of McDonald's playgrounds, hamburger light fixtures, hamburger toys, hamburger posters, a hamburger water bed. He even owns the blue AMC Pacer used as a delivery car in the movie Good Burger. He bought it from a private seller over a decade ago for $1,000, with the intention to restore it, but today it sits under a tarp, rotting away in the Florida weather.

Sperl has been building this collection for the past 29 years. The Guinness Book of World Records cataloged Harry's collection as having 3,724 pieces of hamburger memorabilia, earning him the record for owning the most hamburger-related items. Even with that number, though, Sperl told me the people from Guinness missed roughly 6,000 thousand items in storage.

This all started around 1987. Sperl, who trades novelties, collectibles, and souvenirs as a full-time job, was setting up a photo for the sale of a 1950s car-hop tray. So he purchased a toy soda, fries, and five hamburgers. The hamburgers ended up on his office desk. "A friend stops by and looks at the hamburgers and says, 'You are nuts, are you collecting hamburgers?'" Sperl told me. He had simply replied, "No, but maybe I should." And that was it.

In his first year of collecting, he says he accumulated 92 different hamburger items. At first, it was mostly small things—hamburger salt-and-pepper shakers, hamburger candles, hamburger dog toys, hamburger cookie jars. He would scour yard sales, flea markets, and anywhere else he could find hamburger-related items for his collection. When eBay came along, he started using the internet to amass much of what makes up his collection today.

The gem of his collection is his 1987 Harley Davidson Sportster, which was converted into a three-wheel bike with a fiberglass shell, designed and painted by a small team of what he calls his "hamburger helpers" to replicate a giant cheeseburger on wheels. He bought the bike in 1993 and spent two years and roughly $100,000 turning it into what it is today. Since it hit the road in 1995, the hamburger Harley been featured on television programs like The Jenny Jones Show, and in a commercial for Fruitopia, a fruit drink from the 90s.

Sperl was born in Germany, but moved to Florida in 1983 and became an American citizen shortly thereafter. To him, hamburgers are a symbol of patriotism—an ode to everything he loves about his adopted country: "friendly people, good food, American automobiles and motorcycles, the American way of life." The hamburger, to him, was the pinnacle of America.

"It's an American icon," he told me. "When you think of Germany, you think of beer and the autobahn. When you think of the United States of America, you think about hamburgers."

He used to eat hamburgers all the time, but due to his cholesterol, he had to cut back. Now, he eats a hamburger once a week or so. He says the best ones in Daytona Beach are at the Charlie Horse Restaurant, the Brickyard, Grind Gastropub, and Pirana Grill.

The delivery car from 'Good Burger,' sitting outside Sperl's house in Daytona Beach

Aside from maybe the occasional animal rights activist feeling mocked, Sperl's trove of hamburgers bring joy to people, and that's a big part of the reason why he has continued to grow the collection. He tells me the greatest feeling is seeing a child's face light up as he rides by them on what seems like a floating cheeseburger. He loves the expression of happiness and disbelief that many people show when they see his home. To Sperl, it's a wonderful feeling, and it reaffirms why he established his collection in the first place—it's all in good fun.

Currently, Sperl's collection is private, which means you can only see it if he extends an invitation himself. But eventually, he'd like to sell the entire collection to someone who will display it to the public in a museum-type format or in conjunction with a larger museum as an exhibit. Sperl feels someone else has the resources to put this collection to better use and elicit more joyous feelings from people than he ever could with it. He wants the public to have a chance at appreciating what he has built, but he just doesn't have the means to make that a reality, and hopes someone else who shares his vision is out there to see it through.

For now, though, Hamburger Harry Sperl remains the burger king.

Vice President Gedeone on his Brut Mobile (Ugly car). All photos by Mattia Micheli

This article originally appeared on VICE Italy

Piobbico is a tiny village located in the eastern Italian region Marche, that sits between the Apennine Mountains and the Adriatic Sea. I got there on the first Sunday of September, because that's where this year's Festival of the Ugly took place. Hundreds of people gather in this tiny village annually, in order to elect the next president of the World Association of Ugly People.

Founded in 1879, and later promoted as a marriage agency for the town's single women, the club has more recently assumed a rather playful and sometimes satirical tone. It has also grown into a global association that boasts 25 offices and more than 30,000 members around the world, whose aim is to fight the cult of beauty in modern society.

"Our organisation is about not taking oneself too seriously and fighting against the notion of beauty as a purely aesthetic quality," current president Gianni Aluigi explained. "It is obvious that our members aren't 'ugly' in the classic sense. Maybe they aren't beautiful but we just joke about that."

President Gianni Aluigi at the festival's annual parade in Piobbico

Gianni went on: "What we do is try to get around as much as possible to hold meetings and listen to the hundreds of people, who write to us about the fact that they cannot find a mate. We do our best to reassure them, though that's not always possible. A couple of days ago, for example, a 60-year-old lady wrote me a letter laying out exactly how much she earns, and describing the properties she owns and asking me to find her a partner. Obviously, there isn't much I can do in this case."

"But the fact that this club exists, and the ever-growing number of our members shows that we are slowly succeeding in combating prejudice," he said, with a hint of pride in his voice. "And when I say prejudice, I mean all kinds of prejudice. Not just the one that has to do with physical appearance, but prejudice against homosexuals, immigrants, Muslims... any minority in the world."

Photographer Mattia Micheli and I spent two days among the "ugly people" of Piobbico. Here are some photos from that weekend.

The author, considering the question: can Wetherspoons hotels revitalise the domestic British tourist trade?

Little known fact: Wetherspoons own and operate over 40 hotels in the UK. I say "little known" because I – a proper Wetherspoons head; a man whose blood runs worryingly thick with the chain's £3 pints – did not know that Spoons owned and operated 40 hotels in the UK until I read a recent issue of the chain's monthly magazine, The Wetherspoon News, cover to cover.

The first branch – The Shrewsbury Hotel, in Shrewsbury – opened almost 20 years ago, and the pub chain's been at it ever since, taking over old buildings, laying down one of their signature carpets and putting a "JD" over the door. Apparently every hotel offers unlimited free WiFi and a place to sleep, drink and eat from £39 a night.

Thanks to super cheap air travel (it's literally cheaper to fly from Edinburgh to Malaga than get a train from London to Brighton) interest in the Great British Holiday continues to slump. According to Visit England, in 2014 there was a 9 percent fall in domestic tourism and a £90 million decrease in the amount of money spent on caravan and camping holidays. Just today, in fact, it was revealed that those under 50 have cut spending on tourism by 5 percent over the past five years.

So could Wetherspoons hotels be the remedy Visit England is almost certainly searching for? If people knew they could pay £39 a night at The Royal Hop Pole in Tewkesbury, would they choose that over a £51 flight to Krakow and three nights in a hostel surrounded by braying stag lads trying to murder each other with alcohol? I couldn't say "yes" definitively. But yes. Definitively yes.

So in the true spirit of Brexit – something Spoons owner Tim Martin lost millions in after campaigning to leave the EU – I decided to get the word out and see if I could revive Britain's dying tourist trade. So off I went to The King's Head Hotel in Beccles, Suffolk, to enjoy a two night stay in which I would solely live, eat and sleep Wetherspoons.

I arrived on a scorching September afternoon, checked in and put my bags down. That brief amount of movement was thirsty work, so I cooled off with a nice £3 Guinness.

Here was an aspect of the British vs. overseas holiday I was a little worried about, because everybody knows the absolute best bit of any trip is drinking a pint really quickly in an airport Spoons before your flight and then trying to stifle the vomit rising quickly to your throat. But the great news is: you don't even need to fly to do that! You can just go to a Wetherspoons hotel and down a thick, creamy Guinness as fast as you possibly can!

British holiday: 1; Overseas holiday: 1.

After this, I had a wander around the place to see what kind of fun activities I could get up to on my weekend mini-break. Problem with this particular place was that it was incredibly hard to navigate and I kept getting lost in the winding corridors. Which was thirsty work.

Luckily, once I made it to the main pub area to re-hydrate, I found there were plenty of activities to keep me entertained. Your other classic weekend break locations – Amsterdam, Paris, Zante – might have weed shops, patisseries and inadvisable bungee jump opportunities, but here I had: food, cheap drink, pub quiz machines, cheap drink, lots of time to stare into the abyss, food, fruit machines and more cheap drink.

So in celebration of Wetherspoons founder and Vote Leave campaigner Tim Martin gambling away lots of his money on Brexit, I too gambled away my money, on the fruit machines. I lost five quid – so two pints and some chips – and finally felt like I was fully living la vida Spoons. Which, in this case, translated to: a slightly deflated sense of loss.

READ: Meet the Woman Trying to Visit Every Wetherspoons in the UK

But hey, I wasn't about to let some tenuous political commentary ruin my holiday. Not when there are pints of Magners cider available for literally £2. TWO POUNDS! You can get pissed on a tenner! You can find an excuse to add some Jagerbombs to your round and suddenly realise it's 11PM and that you've been drinking all day and that it's probably a good idea to give it a rest before your liver starts bleeding loads!

And that's one great thing about Wethersoons hotels: if it is your wont, you can spend hours getting shitfaced for a very small amount of money, and your bed is just a short trundle away. So off I went, for a little rest.

RISE AND SHINE, YOU'RE LIVING IN A WETHERSPOONS! NOW CLEANSE YOURSELF WHILE DRINKING A PINT OF GUINNESS THAT ONLY COSTS £3.05 THAT YOU CAN PURCHASE FROM NINE IN THE MORNING.

And another glorious day it was. Especially because I already had a good buzz going by half 10 in the morning.

I spent the first half of the day wandering around the beer garden, talking to people and trying to work out who exactly the target audience is for Spoons' chain of hotels. Turns out there's not really any rhyme or reason; guests there were as varied as they are at any other hotel.

There was a rowdy hen-do already pissed by 11AM, a few sullen men cradling pints and a load of elderly people having a lovely time eating food and drinking drink and doing your general pub stuff.

As the day wore on, it seemed the staycation gods were smiling down upon me, so to test how that other big holiday necessity – tanning – fared at the Spoons hotel, I hit the car park of The King's Head Hotel to catch some rays, bringing a pint of Kronenbourg with me for that continental touch ; )

Turns out the sun has the same effect on me in Beccles as it does anywhere in the world: my skin goes tight and red and I start to feel sick.

British holiday: 2; Overseas holiday: 2.

I'm not sure if you've ever tried to drink alcohol from the moment you wake up to the moment you lay your head down to rest, but without stuff like "food" or "water" or "cocaine" to level you out, it can be a little tricky. Luckily that night was "Curry Night", which meant I could get a huge curry and a red wine for about £7.

Can you do that in the cafes and bars of Strasbourg or Milan? I don't think so.

British holiday: 3; Overseas holiday: 2.

The pub was pretty lively by this point. There were some actual young people there, with their trainers and their backwards caps, and I thought I'd ingratiate myself among my peers by boasting about how I'd been drinking all day. Turns out nobody in the known universe is capable of being impressed by a stranger with beer breath bragging about how many pints he's drunk, so it didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped. It was time for bed.

RISE AND SHINE, YOU'RE LIVING IN A WETHERSPOONS. NOW NURSE YOUR HANGOVER AND SHAME WHILE EATING A 1,500-CALORIE FRY-UP WITH A PINT OF KRONENBOURG THAT ONLY COSTS £6.99 IN TOTAL THAT YOU CAN PURCHASE FROM NINE IN THE MORNING.

I have to admit, by day three, close to spending 48 hours in the Wetherspoons hotel, the magic and initial excitement had somewhat worn off. My stomach was starting to solidify into one giant hardened intestinal tract, and I think I must have begun to smell like the very carpet I walked upon, i.e. spilt sambuca shots and stale Magners.

I longed for freedom, to escape and know what it was like on the outside, where music was allowed to be played publicly and the TV wasn't constantly stuck on BBC News. Let me free, J.D; let my spirit soar.

So could Spoons hotels be the cure to a decline in domestic British tourism? If my detailed scientific score-card is anything to go by – with British holidays coming out on top, thanks to the wonders of Wetherspoons and its cheap booze and comfy rooms and very affordable curry – yes. Yes it could.

@williamwasteman

All photos by Frederick Paxton for VICE

Taylor's morning routine is usually interrupted by the sight of a sailor furiously masturbating, usually as she is on her way to the shower.

"She do it the same time every day," she says, drawing on a cigarette. "One leg be hanging out with the curtain open."

"At this point I'm just... do whatever you do, you know what I'm saying?"

On board the USS Harry S. Truman, routine is everything. It's 10PM, which means Taylor is in the smoking area, a claustrophobic red-lit corridor on the edge of the boat that is atmospherically somewhere between Berghain and Burger King. 18-25 year-olds lean against the humming metalwork sipping sodas, the tinny beat of Chance the Rapper on somebody's phone punctuated at seven-minute intervals by the 150dB shriek of an F/18 taking off. Everyone here has their own rhythm.

Taylor finishes her 12-hour shift. She eats. She smokes. She returns to bed. She wakes to the half-mute pant of her roommate, leg swaying in her line of sight.

"It's the pretty girls," she says. "All the pretty-ass girls who come out my berthing, they the nastiest ones."

VICE visited the aircraft carrier for three days over summer. To understand life on board is to understand what it's like to be a beat in a giant metal musical with a choreography that diffuses down ten floors from the flight deck to the vessel's fat nuclear heart.

The Truman began its deployment on 26th of November last year, and by the time it finished in July, the Islamic State had lost half of its Iraqi and a fifth of its Syrian territory. Between December and our arrival in June, planes had flown 2000 separate sorties and dropped a record-breaking 1598 pieces of ordinance . America is winning the war. But we arrive the weekend after the mass shooting in Orlando gay club Pulse, which was initially claimed by the proto-state, and there is a tangible sense of unease that has spread right up to the flight tower, where Bret Batchelder, the commander of the harrier, is explaining why the Truman's tour has been extended a month.

"I'm not sure that there are more targets, but there are continuous targets," he says. "The fight is taking a while and I can't put a timeline on how long it might take."

Batchelder gazes down at the flight deck, 20 metres below, where the mechanical ballet of the F/18s is underway.

"Have you looked out the window?" he says. "In about one minute you're going to see those two airplanes up there get fired up and shot off the cap. "

The deck whirrs into life like a cuckoo clock. Hatches open and close.

"Here we go right now, they're getting ready. There is nothing like this in the world."

Men and women in brightly coloured jerseys cluster around the poised jets, their fist pumps, squats and lunges giving it the feel of a baseball field.

"It's an incredible team," says Batchelder. "There are 6000 members in this team. If you put it in the football analogy if the left guard misses his block, you know it's a three-yard loss and you're looking at second and 13. Here it's 6000 left guards and everybody's got to do their job to make the whole team successful, and it's incredibly inspiring and motivating to be a part of that."

It's a pristine operation. But it's also a long way from home. And the question of the role America's military plays in curbing the domestic threat of terrorism is on everyone's mind.

"The way we prevent from happening domestically in the United States or any other allied partners is to get at the root of it and eliminate the hate that the radical terrorists are perpetrating," says Batchelder.

"I think we defeat the homegrown terrorists by destroying the people that inspired them, okay?"

Not everyone on board agrees. Ethan is an ABE, meaning he launches planes from the flight deck. During a busy day, he can work 16-20 hours in blistering heat. Ethan enjoys the work and is pretty cool about the hours, although he misses his daughter.

"We may be able to destroy over here, but we're not going to be able to take them out in the States," says Ethan.

"There's really not a short answer for what you can't control. You won't be able to stop it. If somebody wants to do it they're going to do it."

"Do you think it's a gun control issue?" I ask.

"No, I love my guns! I'm a proud gun-owner myself. I have a lot. I have nine handguns, two shotguns, four 45s, one 90mm, one .38, two .40s and a .44."

Ethan spends the little free time he has working out. There are gyms everywhere. In the Hangar Bay, between the jets and the mechanics, men and women squat, press, heave, everyone slick with oil or sweat. Some of the hulks barrelling down the corridors are so big you're forced back into alcoves like you're playing Donkey Kong. Space is a rare commodity, and any scrap contains a treadmill or a bench press. The Truman abhors a vacuum.

The pilots enjoy a slightly upgraded lifestyle. Those who place themselves in harm's way on the frontline in Syria are rewarded with a few perks, including the Ready Rooms –a briefing area for each squadron where they can drop by to drink coffee, play Xbox (Fifa is usually the choice) and watch films.

Every pilot has a "call sign" or nickname as part of their ritualised initiation into the squadron, and when we visit the Wallbangers, it's "Zipples" who happens to be on duty, brewing coffee and playing Old Dominion on the stereo.

Zipples earned his call sign from the way he anxiously tweaks the pectoral zips on his flight suit. He's in charge of the evening film.

"I was thinking about Pearl Harbor," he says.

Do you ever watch Top Gun?

"Occasionally, just to laugh at it. There's a lot that's wrong, just wrong."

Zipples is a Hawkeye pilot, which means he flies surveillance missions in the area. I ask if he's been keeping an eye on the Russian frigate shadowing the Truman on the horizon. The zips oscillate wildly.

"Just checking out the area," he says.

Nighttime on the boat is signalled with a sudden transition to red lighting that bathes the metal skeleton in a soft pink light. As the sailors diffuse to their berths, the carrier seems to expand in every direction, the pink flanges of the empty corridors stretching like an infinite mirror lengthways along the boat, the great iridescent innards of the Truman sprawled out as far as the eye can see. A strange metallic stench pools in the corridors, like stale water or tissue fluid. Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the clanking labyrinth, is a prismatic shrine to 33rd US president Harry S Truman, who coined the "Give 'Em Hell" slogan that adorns battle flags all over the boat.

At this time the smoking area is packed, and we are talking about sex.

"Honestly, I don't think a lot of people do it here," says Sara. "I know people that have and they usually get caught."

"Josh does it all the time."

"Yeah, but Josh is a shitbag. I'm smart and I'm not gonna do that shit."

Stacking thousands of young people in cramped conditions for eight months in any other context would probably result in a rapacious and unforgiving sexual hunger games; a rutting mass of oil-stained excessively toned gym bunnies working off months of sexual frustration. But get caught here and the penalties are severe. It begins with a trip to see the captain and ends with half-pay for the month, and a red band on your arm. And it's not really the kind of place where everyone is looking to get laid.

" treat you kind of like a guy," says Renae, 21. "And then you get to a port and you're like, wait a minute, I'm a girl."

Even so, some people manage it. There is only one point at which our press liaison prevents us from taking a photo, and that is when we stumble on a bucket of condoms in the medical room ("You can't take a picture of that," she says, whisking them away).

The frustrations of life on board sometimes express themselves in other ways. Late at night, the evening before we leave, we meet two glazed sailors stuck on the night shift.

"You get numb to the boat," says Michael. "You don't even feel time anymore."

" it was June 6th and I didn't even realise it was June 6th. I thought it was still the 1st. Especially at night when you never see daylight. It's weird."

They're on nights because they're being penalised. One swore at a superior; the other got into a fight.

"A lot of people lose their shit out here," he says.

Medical professionals and ordained pastors on board offer assessments, workshops and advice for sailors dealing with mental health issues and the stress of deployment, and there is a noticeable culture of looking out for each other. But you sense that everyone develops their own ways of coping with the tensions of deployment. Sara is a 23-year-old parachute packer with a total of seven stuffed animals on in her berth posted from her mum back in West Virginia. She recommends carrying two packets of cigarettes at all times, running up and down the ladders ("If you do it slow it's more tiring"), and learning not to fight the boat.

"It's like your mum. It rolls you to sleep and feeds you. It gives you balance," she says. And if you can find balance in this strange cocktail of Stockholm syndrome and ritualised purposefulness, you'll probably be OK.

"I love it here," says Sara. "I don't want to do it again, but I love it."

*Some names have been changed

@benbryant / @freddiepaxton

More photos:

Peshmerga soldiers show off their weaponry on the frontline near Kirkuk, Iraq. Photos by the author

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At an outpost near the town of Tuz Khurmatu, Iraq, a dozen or so members of the Badr Organization, an Iran-backed Shiite militia fighting the Islamic State, seat themselves on the floor and begin to eat lunch. They dip bread into a meat stew poured over hot mounds of rice, then sip from cups of Kurdish ayran, a watery, yogurt-like drink swimming with white chunks.

When the men are finished, they light slim Iraqi cigarettes and smoke them over small glasses of dark, sweet tea. The subject of the upcoming 2016 United States presidential election is raised, a topic that, unsurprisingly, has sparked some interest among the Badr fighters. The Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) or Hashd al-Shaabi, an umbrella group of Iraqi Shiite militias to which the Badr Organization belongs, are ideologically opposed to the United States, which considers some of its leaders to be terrorists. But the PMF's fight against ISIS has called for a tenuous quasi-alliance with American forces providing military assistance to the Iraqi army and other enemies of the notorious terrorist group.

One round, mustachioed captain offers his thoughts on a certain former reality TV star and presidential candidate.

"I can tell from Trump's words that there is something wrong with him," he says with a chuckle. "He says he will not allow Muslims in the US, and he will bring an army to conquer Iraq. I do not think a person who says this is an appropriate candidate. It is illogical.

"If the Americans have any reason, they will not vote for Trump," the captain continues. "But if he wins and says he will come to Iraq by force—well, he can try it. The Americans left agreements. Let Trump come without any agreements and see what will happen. We would love to welcome him to Iraq."

It's unlikely that the Badr fighters, whom I visited earlier this month, watched the first debate between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton on Monday. Middle Eastern militiamen aren't usually that plugged into domestic American politics, and there isn't all that much time for livestreaming on the front lines of the war with ISIS. But as their discussion suggests, the outcome will almost certainly affect the lives of the Muslims fighting ISIS in a tangible way—even if the various militant groups engaged in the struggle are reacting rather differently. After all, with the help of Iran, the militia is in the midst of battling ISIS forces in Iraq alongside the Iraqi army and the Peshmerga, the fighting force of the Kurdish Regional Government—both of which are being assisted and trained by the United States.

Trump has roundly attacked the Obama administration's approach to fighting ISIS and doubled down on his strategic criticism at Monday's debate. At one point, the moderator, Lester Holt, raised the question of how the candidates would approach the issues of terrorism and ISIS.

"Trump is a fool, and those who follow him are bigger fools."—an officer with the Badr Organization fighting ISIS in Iraq

"We're working with our friends in the Middle East, many of which, as you know, are Muslim majority nations," Clinton said. "Donald has consistently insulted Muslims abroad, Muslims at home, when we need to be cooperating with Muslim nations and with the American Muslim community. They're on the front lines."

Trump's long, semi-coherent response included at least one item that would be of special interest to the Badr fighters in Iraq.

"I think we have to get NATO to go into the Middle East with us, in addition to surrounding nations, and we have to knock the hell out of ISIS, and we have to do it fast," he said.

In conjunction with past rhetoric about seizing Iraq's oil as spoils of war, these oblique hints of another Western invasion of the country are raising eyebrows in the Badr Organization—as is the candidate's Islamophobic political rhetoric.

"I have heard that Daesh supports Trump," a lanky younger fighter says when I visit. "What is in Daesh's interests besides creating antagonism between Muslims and Americans? That is the aim of Daesh, to divide ethnicities and religions. Their strategy and Donald Trump's strategy are the same."

According to Chris Harmer, a retired naval commander and strategic expert, Trump's rhetoric does, in fact, sometimes seem to bolster the ISIS mythology here.

"The most radical Islamists and jihadists look at Donald Trump as an absolutely undeserved gift," he explains. "You've got a guy who lives down to and thoroughly embraces every negative or false stereotype about America. People say, 'The Americans are here to take your oil.' Well, Donald Trump just said, Let's go take their oil."

The six-year-old son of a Hashd al-Shaabi fighter poses with a pistol near Tuz Khurmatu, Iraq. "Our sons are ready to fight as soon as they can hold a gun," his father said.

Of course, not everyone embroiled in the fight against ISIS is opposed to the idea of another American invasion—or even a Trump presidency. When I raise it with him, one brigadier-general in the Kurdish Peshmerga talks about the GOP nominee with hopeful admiration.

"I think Iraq should be invaded again," the general says. "It's already been invaded by terrorism. There is no government here, just a bunch of different groups. We need democracy, and if America will invade and give us democracy, I support that... I know Hillary is against ISIS and friendly with the Kurds, but she's soft in politics... If Trump is elected, he will not be soft with the Arabs, or on Islamic governments like Iran, because they are the monsters in the regions."

The general's comments are less incongruous when viewed through the lens of the Peshmerga's current predicament. Caught between America and Iran, both of which support them to some extent, the Kurds are fighting ISIS with one eye fixed on garnering whatever support they can for an independent nation. An American invasion would almost certainly make the Peshmerga even more valuable as a US ally, increasing the likelihood of a Kurdish state being carved from conquered Iraqi land when the dust settles.

"We're at the front of a great identity-based war in the Middle East that makes it very difficult for these different local military or quasi-military organizations to all pull together completely," says Larry Goodson, professor of Middle East Studies at the US Army War College. "They're not always going to see ISIL as the only enemy or even necessarily the most important enemy."

At a Peshmerga outpost on the front line near Kirkuk, a fighter clad in green camo peers through binoculars at an abandoned factory less than a mile away.

"That's where Daesh is hiding," he says. "They send cars to us sometimes. The drivers try to blow themselves up and take as many of us with them as possible."

A Peshmerga fighter talks to his girlfriend on the phone at the front line near Kirkuk. "He's in love," one of the other fighters remarked.

He points to a charred metal shell not far from the outpost. "That's where the last suicide car exploded," he says. "The Americans hit it with an airstrike, so it didn't kill anyone."

Asked if he worries that the results of the upcoming election might change the nature of US support on the ground, the fighter shakes his head confidently. "Why would it matter who wins?" he asks. "ISIS are terrorists fighting against America, and the Kurds are fighting ISIS here in Iraq as the representatives of America, so whichever candidate wins will certainly help us."

Likewise, some Hashd al-Shaabi leaders and fighters are dubious a Trump win would change the game on the ground. In his office at a headquarters near the village of Bashir, Abdul-Hussein Mohamed, second-in-command of the Badr Organization's forces in the area, is circumspect when asked about the American election.

"There are two powers ruling the US, the Democrats and Republicans, but they are just empty slogans," he says. "America has only one system, but the American people don't have a voice in it. Democracy is a lie in America... We hope that a good government will come to power that does not... help other countries only for its own interests. But I think we will just see more of the same, no matter who wins."

And then there are the fighters cheering on the catastrophic impact they believe a Trump presidency might have on American ambitions, both domestically and in the Middle East. At the Badr Organization outpost near Tuz Khurmatu, an officer who's mostly been quiet during my visit suddenly offers his take.

"Trump is a fool, and those who follow him are bigger fools," he begins dismissively, before pausing for a moment. The other fighters must respect him, because they wait for him to finish his thought.

"But he might be useful for us," the fighter says finally, with a small, triumphant smile. "I look at him, and I see the end of America."

Follow Sulome Anderson on Twitter, and check out her new book The Hostage's Daughter, dropping Tuesday, October 4, here.

Gary Johnson at a campaign event in Indiana. Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images

I really want to like Gary Johnson. I voted for the Libertarian presidential candidate in 2012 because I was disenchanted by Barack Obama's drone strikes and continuation of the drone wars. Johnson walked around in a T-shirt with a peace sign on it and talked about legalizing marijuana and cutting military spending, and unlike many third-party candidates had actual experience, as the former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico. When many conservatives say they want to get government off of your back what they really mean is "we want to get government off the backs of rich white people." Johnson, on the other hand, identified specific cruelties the US government was inflicting at home and abroad, and promised to end them. Sign me up!

Johnson is running again in 2016 and is getting even more attention than he did the last time, thanks mostly to the disdain many voters have for both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. He's been polling between 5 and 10 percent nationally, far above the 1 percent of the vote he got in 2012 but short of the 15 percent he'd need to get into one of the final two presidential debates. Even if he never hits that threshold, it's clear Johnson is the most legitimate third-party candidate in a generation. His running mate, William Weld, is another former Republican governor; there have been calls to get him into the debates from across the political spectrum; he's even received multiple newspaper endorsements, which is impressive even if those papers were just looking for a way not to back Trump.

So I really mean it when I say that it's such a shame that Johnson keeps fucking up.

His latest blunder came during a Wednesday interview on MSNBC, after host Chris Matthews* asked him to name a foreign leader he respected. Johnson came up embarrassingly empty, hopelessly forgetting the name of "the former president of Mexico." He couldn't even mask his brain fart by going into a spiel about, say, how there are no leaders who would do what he would do as president. Instead, he said he was having an "Aleppo moment," reminding viewers that, oh yeah, a supposedly serious presidential candidate didn't recognize the name of the city at the center of the most famous civil war in the world.

Even Matt Welch of Reason, as dyed-in-the-wool a Libertarian as you'll find, wasn't defending Johnson's performance. "As a communicator, he is uneven, goofy around the edges, and prone to the occasional WTF moment," Welch admitted in a Thursday-morning chiding of the candidate.

Everyone running for president has the occasional gaffe, but the ones that hurt the most are those that confirm some negative narrative about you. For Johnson—for any third-party challenger—the narrative he has to overcome is that he's unserious, better about dreaming vague dreams than the actual business of governing. "Libertarians and other marginalized groups have a weird man's burden in which they are frequently held to even higher standards than the two-party dolts who actually hold power," Welch wrote. But having a basic knowledge of foreign policy isn't a "higher standard"; it's a requirement for the job of president.

Earlier this week, Johnson held a press conference before the first presidential debate. The first question was aggressive but fair: Given your confusion about Aleppo, how would you handle some of the detailed foreign policy questions that any debate moderator would ask? In response, Johnson seemingly got pissed off, standing up and denouncing the whole premise of the question as well as America's interventionist foreign policy: "I would be angry that people would be calling me out on names, geographic locations, names of foreign leaders, when the underlying policy has thousands of people dying, and that is unacceptable!"

It's frustrating that the two candidates on the debate stage Monday were the hawkish Hillary Clinton and Donald "Take the Oil" Trump, and it would be nice to have a candidate arguing against both of them on the subject. But to argue foreign policy you have to know foreign policy. Johnson has repeatedly called out Trump, but the idea that it's not important to understand the specifics of geopolitics is inching dangerously close to the Trumpist idea that expertise doesn't matter.

But Johnson's habit of coming off as amateurish isn't limited to questions of foreign policy. During a friendly Fox News town hall held last month, Johnson—flanked by VP candidate Weld—was asked whether he supported anti-discrimination laws that prohibited Christian bakers from refusing to sell cakes to gay weddings.

"I think that supporting discrimination is the wrong thing to do," Johnson replied.

"The Muslim entrepreneur must sell pork?" host John Stossel asked.

"You don't have to sell pork!" Weld interjected, which is the correct answer—in America, you can sell any legal product you want, you just can't choose not to sell to someone because you're prejudiced. That's not just a Libertarian view. It's a fairly simple legal concept.

Johnson, though, just made things more confusing: "Well, you're talking about potentially opening up discrimination that, in my opinion, maybe businesses discriminate against, a quarter of businesses discriminate against Muslims, because 'let's just be safe.'"

Being anti-discrimination is good, but this answer is a mess. At once Johnson is ignoring the question, contradicting his running mate, and botching the chance to explain how the freedoms of businesses intersect to the freedoms of individuals.

Maybe the problem there is that, strangely for a Libertarian, Johnson doesn't seem to have thought a lot about religious liberties. Earlier this year, he surprisingly supported a French-style ban on Muslim headgear, which was so obviously un-Libertarian (not to mention anti–First Amendment) that he was roundly denounced by his supporters and had to embarrassingly reverse himself. It was just another hiccup in a campaign that can't afford them.

"I have to get smarter," Johnson told an interviewer after his Aleppo fuck-up, which may not be the most presidential thing he's ever said, but it's true. I may not agree with him on everything these days—his single-minded devotion to a consumption tax strikes me as regressive—but his anti-tax, anti-war, anti–drug war, pro–criminal justice reform, anti-discrimination views are a potentially potent cocktail of policies. They deserve a candidate who seems like he could actually serve as president.

Update: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Chris Wallace interviewed Johnson. In fact it was Chris Matthews.

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Yes, that's salmon trying to punch Daddy Canada in the face. Photo via Facebook.

A group of First Nations plans to launch a slew of legal challenges against the federal government over its approval of the Petronas liquefied natural gas (LNG) project near Prince Rupert, BC.

Calling Justin Trudeau "an outright liar," Donnie Wesley, the highest ranking hereditary chief of Gitwilgyoots tribe, which has jurisdiction over Lelu Island where the LNG terminal would be built, said the project's approval on Tuesdaywas "a slap in the face."

Wesley told VICE News the federal decision "totally ignored" peer-reviewed, independent science submitted to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency that showed the project would seriously harm the salmon in the Skeena River, the second-largest salmon bearing river in BC, and a significant body of water for First Nations along the river.

"We don't have a tentative date, but it will be within the 30-day where we're going to go with this."

Wesley's tribe, along with other First Nation groups and west coast non-profit SkeenaWild, have met with lawyers and are fundraising to apply for judicial review of the decision.

A GoFundMe campaign launched yesterday in support of their legal challenge has raised $3,000 in 19 hours—but Greg Knox, executive director of SkeenaWild, says his group has already raised about $50,000 toward its legal fund, with more fundraising events planned.

"Aboriginal groups and SkeenaWild have been preparing to launch a series of legal actions, and are prepared to go all the way," the fundraiser states.

"The Skeena Corridor Nations, a powerful group of hereditary leaders from Gitanyow, Lax Kw'alaams, Wet'suwet'en, Gitxsan, Takla, Lake Babine and Haida, are exploring all political and legal options for protecting the Skeena for the long-term."

"We've been preparing for the last year," Knox said. "Our lawyers are currently preparing to file for judicial reviews."

There will be multiple legal actions, he said, ranging from First Nations appeals over lack of consultation to judicial reviews of the CEAA report that found the project "is likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects." The government concluded those adverse effects "are justified in the circumstances," and applied 190 conditions to allow the project to go forward.