Clever bureaucrats. Who knew?

There was an alarming lack of sustained outrage when it was revealed that CSEC, Canada’s NSA, was testing out a spying program on thousands of innocent Canadian air travellers. In response to this revelation, the Harper government insisted it’s legal to collect metadata on law-abiding citizens, in part because metadata isn’t actually very revealing. Why collect it then? Because it’s very useful at giving CSEC total information awareness to catch the terrori--okay, metadata is very revealing. Oops! But don’t worry, because everything is within the law.  

The laws in question stem from our collective, hasty over-reaction to 9/11. If you no longer think terrorism is an existential threat to Canada, CSEC’s authorization to collect very revealing data should concern you. At this moment, our spies are operating with so much power, and so little oversight, that if the government of the day determines it doesn’t like what you’re saying, you could find yourself under the figurative eye of Sauron. The potential for abuse is scary enough to have prompted an October 2013 lawsuit that will probably go all the way to the Supreme Court.

I spoke with Micheal Vonn, policy director at the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA), whose group partnered with digital rights group OpenMedia to launch the lawsuit. The suit directly challenges the legality of CSEC’s ability to collect a variety of data on Canadians. Under secret ministerial authorizations, CSEC is allowed to collect the content of Canadians’ communications with foreigners, as well as metadata about Canadians at home. One obvious problem with this is that the global nature of the Internet makes distinguishing foreign and domestic communiques very murky. The BCCLA contends that all this interception and collection goes against the Charter freedoms from unreasonable search and seizure and the Charter freedom of speech and expression.

But surely there’s oversight to prevent violations of charter rights? Vonn told me that contrary to the government’s claims, “CSEC oversight is so woefully inadequate that it’s the worst out of the so-called advanced democracies.” Here’s how it works: the minister of defense appoints one person to be CSEC commissioner. This person, with a few staff and a tiny budget, has to keep track of a $350 million agency built on secrecy. The commissioner gets to review redacted reports of CSEC activities, sometimes years after the fact. If you have a complaint, you can mail the commissioner a letter at P.O. box 1984. (Who said bureaucrats have no sense of humour?)  

That’s it. Unlike the US, Canada doesn’t even have a secret court like FISA where the agency has to go before getting a rubber stamp to trample on some civil liberties. Essentially, CSEC is operating with so little oversight as to be self-regulating. Are they doing a good job of it? Let’s consider CSEC’s misleading statements over the past few months about who exactly they’re spying on.

In December 2013, CSEC chief John Forster claimed that CSEC was not targeting Canadians or persons in Canada. The latest revelations about free airport wifi tracking have put that claim to rest. In their Clinton-esque response to that story, CSEC put out a release that basically admitted collecting the data, called it lawful, and changed the definition of “tracking” to one that defies common sense. As reporter Ryan Gallagher put it, “Again and again, officials have used narrowly defined words or jargon terms in a carefully crafted way in order to issue non-denial denials in which they appear to refute an allegation but on closer reading do not really refute it at all.”

According to Micheal Vonn, past CSEC commissioners have called for parliament to review terms like “collect, track, and foreign” to ask for clarity. This hasn’t happened. Given that CSEC keeps changing the meaning of these words in successive statements, it’s probably time for the current commissioner to repeat that call.  

If this sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve heard it before with the NSA. It turned out that quite a bit of what the NSA was doing was actually against the law. First, the NSA denied collecting information on Americans. When that was proven false, the NSA denied willfully collecting the information. When that was proven false, the NSA fessed up, but said the programs were all legal (based on totally reassuring secret court rulings). This is the stage we’ve reached in Canada.

CSEC is trotting out all the same lukewarm talking points and half-truths that the NSA served up to congress 6 months ago. Vonn predicts that if we follow the bouncing ball, it stands to reason that revelations about much broader-reaching surveillance programs have yet to come. For example, a close analysis of the airport-wifi documents revealed that CSEC was getting data from a “Special source,” a.k.a. corporate partner, just like the NSA with its backdoors into AT&T. This raises questions about just how complicit Canada’s telecom companies are in handing over our data.

Still no word on what, exactly, a "porn spy" is.

As this story continues to develop, certain pronouncements carry extra weight; one particular comment made in CSEC’s defence really stood out to embody why this whole issue matters. Prime Minister Harper’s stooge parliamentary secretary Paul Calandra went on the attack against journalist Glenn Greenwald, calling him a “porn spy” who has only been releasing Snowden documents to “[line] his Brazilian bank account.”

That a member of the government of Canada would resort to such a nonsensical ad hominem attack on a reporter is disgraceful and improper. Moreover, it proves exactly why we should be so worried about widespread surveillance on innocent people. The smear of “porn spy” on Mr Greenwald, has nothing to do with any argument over CSEC’s activities, and everything to do with undermining Greenwald in the public eye.

Calandra’s comment demonstrates a few things: the government takes an interest in your sexuality and it has no qualms about using dug-up dirt, jingoism, and other distractions to try to discredit you when you oppose its policies. If you ever plan to criticize government, I hope you’ve been behind seven proxies this whole time.

Civil liberties groups have argued that CSEC’s secret powers and laughable oversight make it ripe for abuse, and Vonn says that Calandra’s attack means the proof is now in the pudding. Even if you think you have nothing to hide, you really don’t know what the government will go after you for. Looking at recent stories about the Five Eyes’ interest in people’s porn viewing habits, GCHQ “dirty tricks” campaigns to discredit enemies of the state, and Calandra’s ridiculous slur, it’s hard not to see a pattern emerging with chilling implications for free speech in Canada.

Just how much information could CSEC dig up about the average person? Digital law expert Prof. Michael Geist wrote: "CSEC's surveillance activities of Internet communications in Canada are far more extensive than previously realized. Its trove of metadata ... provides enormous insight into the communications habits and activities of millions of Canadians...yet the full scope of activities remain largely secret.

Given those capabilities, assurances that metadata surveillance is less invasive than tracking the content of telephone calls or Internet usage ring hollow.

Improved oversight will help, but it won't solve these issues. The substantive law itself needs open debate and reform."

Canadians have shown a long-standing trust in their government to generally act in their interest. This has led to a bunch of good Canadian things, like medicare and old age security pensions. But as Vonn told me, even if we all believe in a strong national security apparatus, very few of us would choose for it to operate with no public knowledge, minimal oversight, and no accountability. Until Snowden blew his novelty-size whistle, 99% of Canadians didn’t even know that this was our situation.

For the sake of an informed electorate, let’s hope that the rights groups’ lawsuit against the federal government marks the beginning of a much larger debate and a lot more information about what’s going on at CSEC. In response to disclosure after disclosure in the news, we’ve effectively been told to shut up and trust the government—secret organizations will secretly obey secret laws to protect us from the bad guys and the foreigners. And the foreign journalists, and the hacktivists, and the music pirates. And you.

If it sounds far-fetched that innocent people would be swept up by metadata and bad things could happen to them, you should probably know that hundreds of innocent people have already been drone-bombed simply for being in proximity to a SIM card on an NSA-sanctioned kill list, while the agency indiscriminately sucks up data everywhere those same drones fly using specialized sensors.

Clearly, the accountability of the Five Eyes surveillance system is inadequate, and its all-consuming spy-powers have spun out of control. With leaked information from Snowden’s encrypted briefcase being published at an increasingly alarming rate, hopefully actions like BCCLA’s lawsuit will help wake up Canadians to the reality that there are several serious issues, pertaining to our individual liberties, that require immediate action. 


@chrismalmo

Photo by Jennifer Percy

Kyle Minor's short-story collection Praying Drunk came out Friday. I had seen the very positive reviews and the raves, so I stayed in bed to read it. When I got to the end of the second story, I was bawling. Not sort of softly choked up, or tearing a little. I was really sobbing.

I had been impressed—up until the uncontrollable tears—with Minor's style. He is so fearless and so natural. He takes his time telling stories. He doesn't follow any convention I know. But when he tore out my heart, I thought, Everyone has got to read this.

So I wrote to Minor and asked if he'd do a little interview, and he agreed. We talked about writing about religion and crossing racial divides, but he also told me his favorite joke. 

VICE: One thing that distinguishes your voice, for me, is that it is anti-minimalist, without being purple. I feel like you aren't afraid to unwind your stories at your own pace. How'd you come to that style?
Kyle Minor: I don't really think about writing in terms of minimalism or maximalism or slick or tight or purple, or any of the words people use to try to describe style in broad categories. I'm thinking, instead, about the question of who is speaking the story, and that's the choice from which all the other important choices—beginnings, endings, language, event, sentence-making—will rise. 

Most of the stories in Praying Drunk are coming from the point of view of a single speaker. I want to give as much of that speaker's consciousness as I can possibly deliver, so the reader can know with great clarity what it's like to be the person the speaker is, in the moment of great trouble the story means to offer. So everything is on the table—every bit of knowledge, personal history, special logic, prejudice, peccadillo.

And since all of that is being offered through unfolding time, the sentences begin to wind around themselves, the way thoughts do. I'm trying my best to find a container for the thoughts, and simple sentences will hardly ever get the job done in a situation like that. A situation like that seems more often to require the compound-complex sentence. 

I read somewhere that no one writes about religion. It's obvious why—it's unpopular. People think it's corny. How'd you come to write about religion?
Writing about religion isn't broadly unpopular. If you go to the bookstore, you'll see shelves and shelves of books about it, and they sell quite nicely. It's that writing about religion is unpopular with literary people who believe—perhaps because it is easy to live in an insulating liberal-ish bubble—that writing about religion is unsophisticated and, in some cases, beneath contempt. On the other hand, it's true that most of the books about religion that sell are books that also tell religious people the things they already think they know.

I think that Praying Drunk is the kind of book that is almost designed to alienate every popular audience, because it doesn't comfort any reader by saying that their preexisting story is good and right. To readers who scorn people unlucky enough to be born—as I was—into fundamentalist communities, the book says: Look. These are intelligent, three-dimensional human beings as full of want, need, and desire as you are, and whose lives to them are as important and meaningful as yours is to you.

And to people who live in those communities, the book offers the greatest offense, which is to say: There is probably a great dissonance, a great distance, between the story you have been telling yourself about your life and the more true—and probably darker—story that experience is revealing.

I spent a lot of years avoiding these things as a subject, because it seemed to be somehow shameful and unsophisticated. But I don't think that stories about the lives of the people I came from, the people who were manipulated by power to back the George W. Bush regime and all its disasters could be any more timely.

We hear all this talk about the red states and the blue states and the great divide. Why aren't we having more of a conversation across these divides, and why aren't we trying to understand one another for five minutes instead of continuing to lob grenades back and forth? Literature has always been about the business of asking questions like these. 

One of your stories has a character, Kyle Minor, who is a minister for a brief period of time, and has a friendship with a black man named Tony, who thinks he is ostracized from the informal bible-study group because he is black and the others are racist.

The Kyle Minor character thinks it's not Tony's skin color, but the fact that Tony is always turning off the PlayStation games the other members enjoy and putting on Kung Fu movies. Then the Kyle Minor character changes his mind. That story encompasses so much and feels so hard won.

Could you talk about how you wrote it, where you were, and what you went through to get it onto the page?
I keep hearing writers of color say that race is a conversation that white people ought also to be having. Why aren't we? One answer, I think, is that as soon as white Americans engage that conversation, we run smack dab into our own unexamined and unarticulated culpabilities, and into the anger that rightly rises from our privilege—a privilege to which I'm sure I'm often blind, because all I can see is the other ways in which I don't feel privileged in our society.

When I was a young man, it was very difficult for me to cross this divide, because I came from the South. I was raised by people very much in the Southern tradition, who carried their own prejudices and woundednesses about race and class and about the local discomfort that came from—among other things—the first few years of the court-mandated integration of schools. It is very difficult to see more than three inches in front of your face, and to understand how systems work, and to develop the ability to reach out with empathy, to try to understand people who aren't you or your family.

For me, entering into intimate relationships with people who weren't white—a thing that didn't happen until my 20s—was a difficult and eye-opening experience, because I had to hear things that I did not want to hear. Things that I didn't at first welcome hearing. It turned out that these things were true to the experience of others, and I didn't have a way at first to understand them, because they weren't part of my experience. That's what I've hoped to show in my writing. I think that, as a country, these are things we must face and discuss more directly and enter into the dialogue that so many of us have been avoiding.

I know you are completing a book about short-story structure. What can you tell me about how to structure a short story? Do you use models, and if so are any of them useful?
I think that there are near-infinite ways to structure a short story, and in this book I tried to take as many of them for a drive as possible. This is a subject I like to think about, because I don't want every story I read or write to work the same way. I want the next structure to allow for a different kind of pleasure or surprise than the last structure did.

So in Praying Drunk, I wrote stories that work like digressive essays, a story that chases the cause-and-effect chain backwards through time, a story that was two-thirds set-up and one-third payoff, a story modeled after a four-part murder ballad, a story that was shaped like a single-movement lyric poem, a story in letters, a story in seven vignettes that added up to one larger biographical study, a story modeled on the conventions of magazine nature writing, a story proceeding entirely in dialogue, a story in two equal parts, and two stories in the form of the interview.

What was your writing schedule on the book?
I didn't really know, with this book, that I was writing a book. Some of the stories in Praying Drunk are older than some of the stories in In the Devil's Territory. Some of them began as poems. A few were originally published as essays. There are the remnants of several failed books represented in this book—memoirs, essays, story collections, a couple of novels. It wasn't until I wrote the Q&A sections that I began to see how these parts I had begun to collect—these fragments, these ruins, these fragile parts—were in conversation. Many of the stories retell others of the stories from different angles, in different forms.

I started thinking about the traveling preachers who came on Sunday nights when I was a small child and scared the shit out of us with their talk of demon possession and backwards messages in Beatles records. They reminded us that if the sky turned blood red, we should look to the east, because soon Christ would be arriving on a white horse and all the corpses would pop out of their graves, and if we weren't ready, then we'd be left behind among all the criminals to be chased through the mountains by the UN helicopters that were going to take us to the guillotine presided over by the Eastern European Anti-Christ.

These men spoke of a Great White Throne Judgment in which all the dead and all the living would be assembled for a great and embarrassing movie night, in which all our misdeeds would be screened in 16mm film in a giant amphitheater the size of the whole world until everyone had seen everything, and then the good people, the sheep, would be divided from the bad people, the goats. As Cake sang in that song which might as well stand in for my whole interior life as a child, "Sheep go to heaven / Goats go to hell."

But what of heaven? It doesn't seem so appealing. You get there, all the interesting people are gone, all the trouble is gone, and all there is to do is sing the same shitty songs you didn't like to sing them in church. You get crowns as reward for your good deeds on Earth, but you don't get to keep them. You have to throw them down at the feet of He Who Sits on the Throne. 

I figured, after a while, I'd get back to writing, and necessarily I'd be writing about the good/bad old days—when there was still interesting trouble, when there was still a future of possibility, when there were still the high stakes of aging and mortality, and when you still had some skin in the game. Since I'd have all eternity to do it, I'd probably keep grinding on the same stories, telling them over and over in different forms and genres, trying all the while to do the same thing I've been trying to do for more than ten years now, which is to do my best to figure out: What was all that? What did it mean? Why does it still matter so much to me?

That's what Praying Drunk is, I guess. That lonely man up there in awful, boring heaven, trying to get it all back again. Trying to do something with it, not letting the futility of the enterprise shut down the enterprise. My schedule was: I did that for ten years, and I didn't ever know what I was doing, but I kept trying every day, until the end.

What's your favorite joke? I read a letter by Paul Tough on Open Letters, and he said he had two favorite jokes: One was from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, when Jim Carrey comes out  of the bathroom at a big house party and shouts, "Do not go in there!"

The other was that he and his wife were staying at a friend's house. This friend was into alternative medicine, and they weren't. They saw a book on one of her shelves called Cinnamon: The Mystery Cure-All or Just a Spice? And they laughed themselves to death, imagining her reading the whole 400 pages, and then going, "Huh. Just a spice."

Do you have a joke like that, that's not necessarily the funniest, but that is the funniest to you, and stays with you?
For the last two years, I've spent a lot of time on the road—ten to 30 hours a week and sometimes more, and most of it driving. It can be very difficult to stay awake, especially when the drive stretches past eight or nine hours and into the dark. 

The only reason I'm still alive is because a fiction writer I know, Tony Tulathimutte, turned me on to the podcasts every standup comedian in America seems to be producing. There are a lot of good ones—Kevin Pollak, Pete Holmes, Jeff Garlin, Chris Hardwick—but the best, reliably, is Marc Maron's What the Fuck? podcast. A couple of months ago, his guest was Yakov Smirnoff, the Ukrainian comic who made his name in the late stages of the Cold War playing a cartoon version of himself, as a faux-naïf Soviet immigrant who good-naturedly misunderstood American idiom and customs, and who happily punctuated everything with "What a country!"

Maron got Smirnoff to tell his life's story, which I'd never heard before. It involved scarcity-era bread lines, suppressed Jewishness, the inevitable indignities that arise from multiple families sharing tiny apartments, and a two-year stint in the Soviet army, in which Smirnoff got out of artillery training by volunteering to paint portraits of Lenin and Stalin.

What Smirnoff really wanted was to be a stand-up comic, a dangerous aspiration in a totalitarian state. There was a Department of Jokes—a Department of Jokes!—which would censor your routine once a year, and if something seemed a little too pointed, you'd be summoned to explain your joke.

Smirnoff said, "You couldn't talk about government, politics, religion, and sex. The rest was fine. So animals were a big topic."

One joke went like this: A tiny little ant got married to a female elephant. After the wedding night, the elephant died. The little ant said: For only one night, I enjoyed myself, and now for the rest of my life, I have to dig this grave.

The Department of Jokes thought maybe the joke was about the Communist Party, a metaphor of some sort, and Smirnoff told them, "No, no, it's just an animal joke." 

Maron said, "You went in and defended that joke. You have such a limited palette to work with, and they call you on the carpet to defend this thing, and it's a victory that you get to do the Ant-Digging-the-Grave joke."

Smirnoff said, "Thank God. I'm allowed. I'm allowed; I'm alive; I'm not in prison for telling the ant and the elephant joke."

That's where the real humor is for me. Not in the one joke, the one punchline, but in what Tig Notaro calls the cosmic joke—the big joke with life-and-death stakes for which the little joke is simply a temporary diversion. The cosmic joke goes like this: We're all going to die. To the vast preponderance of other human beings, our individual lives are meaningless. To the vast universe, our lives are meaningless. Maybe our whole planet is meaningless.

Tanner Colby. Image via his web site

A great deal of the discourse about race in America can be broken down into two categories: (1) Boy, MLK sure was great, wasn’t he? and (2) Let’s point our fingers at how racist conservative whites can be. While MLK was great, and Republicans continue to say some awful shit (and advance a lot of shitty, racist policies), a lot of potentially interesting questions aren’t debated because we’re too busy shaming racists and extolling the Civil Rights Movement—questions like, Do the policies advocated by liberals actually help blacks?

Tanner Colby, the author of Some of My Best Friends Are Black, a book about the failure of racial integration in the US, says that the answer to that question is no. Though he’s an avowed liberal and voted for Obama, he found himself wondering why he didn’t have any black friends. This led him on a four-year-long rabbit hole of research and questioning the established narrative about busing, affirmative action, and other liberal policy standbys. In February, in honor of Black History Month, Tanner is writing a series of articles for Slate on how those policies have come up short. The first article deals with busing, and the second, which is up today, criticizes affirmative action.

“Fifty years after the March on Washington, America’s high school cafeterias are as racially divided as ever, income inequality is growing, and mass incarceration has hobbled an entire generation of young black men,” Tanner wrote in his first installment. “Do we really think this is entirely due to Republican obstruction? Or is it also possible that the party charged with taking black Americans to the Promised Land has been running around in circles?”

I called Tanner up to talk about his series and how liberals have failed black America.

VICE: In your first piece, you joked that you recently celebrated your one-year anniversary as an "official participant in the National Conversation About Race.” How does it feel to be a white guy who discusses race in public?
Tanner Colby: Outside of social media, it’s been great. When I started writing the book, I knew how much I didn’t know, and I worked on the book for three and a half years before it came out. Even in instances where people disagree with me on the substance of what I’ve said, the response I’ve generally gotten is, “Well, this guy has done his homework and is a valuable contribution to the conversation, and we should hear him out.” That’s in contrast to the recent xoJane piece where this white girl wrote about her experience with a black girl in her yoga class, and it was just full of all kinds of meandering white guilt. The black media jumped all over it as being the worst of white privilege, and I haven’t really gotten any of that. I think that’s because I approached the topic by giving it the respect that it deserves instead of just being offhand about it.

Why do you think Republican critiques of race generally fail?
When Republicans talk about race, they never acknowledge their own role in fighting integration in the suburbs, in stopping housing integration, and things like Nixon’s Southern strategy—how they exploited fears of racial violence in ’68 and ’72 to win elections—again all through the Reagan years with the demonization of welfare queen. They never acknowledge their own failings and concede, “Look, we screwed this up but we want to start over with a genuine outreach to understand how racial politics work." They never say, “We believe conservative policies are what’s best for black America, and here’s why.” In order to do that, you have to first admit to black America, “We did this over the last 40 years during Nixon and Reagan, and we want to change.”

Are there any Republican critiques of Democrats on race that you think are valid?
There is a great deal of taking the black vote for granted on the Democratic side. The Democrats were right there passing all the big mandatory minimums and mass-incarceration policies, and yet every year they go back to the black community and talk about how they’re the best choice. A fair criticism is to say, “Hey, the Democrats are taking you guys for granted, and you really should be considering some other options.” But do Republicans say it that way? No, they come out with “You’re brainwashed on the liberal plantation.” So of course that shuts down any intelligent discussion about where black conservatives and moderates should go if they want to have a different opinion.

What's one way liberal busing policies, which moved black students into white schools and vice versa, didn't work out?
There was a lot of hubris on the left in the late 1960s and the early 70s. The same hubris that got us into Vietnam. When the goernment tried to say, “Alright, white students are going to bus over here and black students are going to bus over there,” human nature got in the way and people said, “No, we’re not.”

The best solution I saw to racial integration was in Kansas City, where you had this integrated neighborhood called the 49/63 neighborhood. They set out to create local policies that encouraged home ownership and protected property rights for black and white homeowners, and in doing so, they didn’t go from the top down and say, “This area is going to be black, this area is going to be white, we’re going to put so much low-income housing here, etc.” They created a zone that protected everyone’s private property rights—black or white.

The irony is, the technocrats from the school busing program at the departments of health, education, and welfare came down and said, “We’re going to take your kids and we’re going to bus them over here, we’re going to bus them over there, and this is how we’re going to rearrange everything.” And they wound up destroying the heart of the neighborhood. They had built an integrated school with a black principal that was about 30-percent black in this integrated neighborhood, and that school wound up being closed down because the neighborhood got depopulated and fell on hard times.

The problem with the Republican Party today is they’ve taken the notion of individual responsibility and they’ve turned it into “every man for himself,” which is a very libertarian idea, as opposed to the idea of individual responsibility—meaning I have a responsibility to look out at my neighborhood and my neighbors and take the initiative to deal with the race problem myself. To welcome new neighbors. To understand people and so on.

What should the government have done in regard to busing?
I think if you look back, America was so emotionally and intellectually stunted in that we were always going to screw it up. People really didn’t know what they were doing. All these ideas—affirmative action, school busing—they weren’t really well-conceived. People were just throwing all this stuff at the wall to see what would stick. So there was really no coherent strategy that went into it; they just sort of figured that out as they went along.

Busing could have worked if it was done right. It was more the misuse of busing that caused the problems. Busing dragnets just swept up black children and redistributed them to white schools because white schools had this mandate to produce X amount of black students. It wasn’t exactly what the black community wanted. The black community wanted choice and agency. And even if you think it’s a good idea to send a white student into a majority black school in the inner city, white people aren’t going to do it. Unless you’re going to outlaw private schools and moving, which is not going to happen. White people just opted out of the social contract as far as public education was concerned, and they haven’t come back.

Read Tanner’s Slate series here and follow him on Twitter

@HCheadle

1985

I got a gig taking pictures at a satanic hoedown in the San Fernando Valley of the Damned. All I have to do is stand upright and point and shoot. My friend Stephen does interviews, pays the tab, and parks the car. We go to a second-floor apartment and knock on the door. A warlock in a black cape ushers us into a two-bedroom apartment. About a dozen devil-disciples are hanging about, plotting the end of days. I’d take time to find out what their beliefs, are but faith-based belief is not based on anything I believe in. I’m sure they take themselves seriously and are perfectly nice and deserve the same respect as everyone else.

When we walk inside I’m reminded of a Pentecostal church in south Georgia where I photographed a preacher in the early 70s. A couple of weeks after I’d taken his portrait, delivering the print on a Wednesday evening, I walked into the sanctuary and witnessed a group of about 30 kooky Christians in the throes of holy fits. They were mumbling and yelling gobbledygook, rolling back their eyes and bouncing around like vibrators on a linoleum floor. At the time I thought it was funny, but over the years politics, ignorance, and fanaticism have stripped religion of its goofy fun, and now I just find it fucking scary.

At the little cult in the valley, I’ve got my camera out, and I’m taking a shot here and there. Young demonic proletarians looking for love connections with like-minded individuals mill about. In the living room, along with a curbside couch, a television with rabbit ears, and a fantasy painting on black velvet, the high priestess, an attractive woman who is older than the others, about my age, is gabbing with Stephen while he jots down notes.

In the bedroom/church-of-the-dark-arts, an altar is set up, and I photograph a guy in Dracula drag. He has a voodoo doll, which he stabs, mercilessly, with a hat pin. I take a couple of pictures and ask him whom the doll represents, and he tells me not to worry about it, because it’s not me, and I say if it were it wouldn’t be the first time. In the kitchen the sink is filled with dishes, and a cat's litter box needs to be emptied and replenished. Next to the fridge is a cute blond babe in a terrycloth bathrobe.

“Hey, how’s it going? Can I take your picture?"

“Yeah, sure. Cameras like me. That’s what everybody says.”

“I can see why; you’re pretty hot. Are you a Satanist?”

“I’m the human sacrifice.”

“Really? What a waste.”

“They don’t really sacrifice anybody—that’s not what they believe. It’s a mock sacrifice.”

“Are you going to get naked?”

“Yeah, but I like getting naked and showing off. I’m a model, so you know, it’s OK.”

“Yeah, I know, and what a coincidence: I just happen to be in the market for naked models who look exactly like you.”

“You’re kind of dirty, aren’t you? I can tell.”

“Yeah, well, maybe. Takes one to know one. Are you wearing anything under your robe? Maybe we can take a couple of pictures here before the hullabaloo starts.”

She opens her robe and gives me a flash. I focus, and behind me a guy comes into the room and ruins my good time. He has an unpleasant tone and volume. “What’s going on? You shouldn’t be talking to nobody, Janey.” He’s my size with pale blue psycho eyes. He’s dressed like Zorro without the hat and mask. He has a mole in the center of his forehead, like a blind third eye.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

“Who are you? Why are you bothering Janey?”

“He’s not bothering me.”

“I’m Scot. I’m taking pictures of the ceremony. The head priestess cleared everything; it’s all cool.”

“Not with me it’s not. I’m the sergeant of arms, and you need to leave Janey alone.”

“Sergeant of arms? Seriously?”

“Seriously—like I’m gonna kick your ass.”

“Hey, hey, there’s no need for that. I come in peace.”

“It time for you to go,” he says.

I flex and visualize banging my camera into the mole on his forehead, punctuating it with a James Bond–ish quip: Seems that hit the spot.

“Look, I’m sorry; you’re right. I’m just a visitor here, and this is your thing. I’m supposed to take pictures. I’m not looking for problems.”

“OK—you want to take your pictures, go ahead. But I don’t want you taking any of me, and you leave Janey alone.”

“He wasn’t bothering me.”

“I wasn’t bothering her, and if she’s going to be in the ceremony, I’m going to be taking her picture.”

“OK, but that’s it. And anyway, aren’t you kind of old to be hitting on Janey?”

“He wasn’t hitting on me.”

“Well, yeah, I was, actually. But from here on out it’s all business.”

The guy calls me an asshole, and somebody jingles some bells, and we all adjourn to the devil’s den. The ceremony, or ritual, goes on way too long. Satan is taking his time trying to get Jesus to lick his boots. It’s an intense crowd in the peanut gallery, but no one is rolling around on the floor. I stand in the back taking pictures and thinking about sex with Janey. Afterward Janey goes into the bathroom and comes back out a couple minutes later in tight jeans and a Ramones T-shirt. On our way out, Stephen hugs the high priestess goodbye, and Janey slips me her phone number. When I dial it a week later, a guy answers; I ask for Janey, and he says that she’s not home and he’s her father and asks if I would like to leave a message. I say, "No thanks, I’ll try again later," but I never do.

Scot's first book, Lowlife, was released last year, and his memoir, Curb Service, is out now. You can find more information on his website.

Something feminists should avoid, says the Internet. Photo via.

Hello again, lovely readers. It’s time to go through the lady business du jour. The stories that grabbed my attention this week were strangely polarizing. Women shouted, FUCK CAPITALISM, GROW YOUR PUBES! But they also shouted YOU CAN’T BE A FEMINIST WITH LIPSTICK ON! Really, we’re doing this now? Women’s bodies are policed enough without us doing it to ourselves.

In more serious news, more menz¹ have complained about ladies in their classrooms, and the notoriously patriarchal, largely unsympathetic justice system is actually being super awesome in some provinces, by ceasing to crack down on ladies in the sex work industry. So let’s get to it.

Photo via.

Women, can you please just stop going to school?

Dear Canadian women: The menz are too shy and religious to deal with us in their schools. We should all stop enrolling in post-secondary studies in order to assuage their embattled spirits. We need to go away and give the power to back to the men, who are increasingly sad because women are getting all the good jobs. We need to promote men’s rights! Breasts all around, periods, shrill laughter, hair tossing… we shouldn’t be inflicting all of this highly distracting feminine energy in the nation’s esteemed towers of academia.

Fucking please. In case you missed it, last week a kid in Toronto made an attempt to launch a human rights complaint because he was too shy to face the women in his women and gender studies class. He entered the class, found it was full of women and no men, and refused to show up for any subsequent lessons. Ultimately, he failed, and so he complained to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal that his professor (a woman) failed him because he was a dude. This comes after a similar debacle in the fall, after a male student refused to work with women because his (unspecified) religion didn’t allow it.

To be blunt, this is the most utterly foolish and embarrassing “issue” I’ve heard of in quite some time. Social anxiety is real, it’s painful, and we probably all experience it in certain situations, like meeting the parents, or going to a party where we don’t know anyone. We should have compassion for those who have anxiety and help them to feel at ease. But, hello, Wongene Daniel Kim. How self-centred can you be? The ladies in your class have the right to an education, just like you do. In this case, they’re also paying ungodly amounts of money to be there, in class at U of T. They weren’t trying to hurt your feelings by being born with a vagina. And what’s more, you’ve probably now given the crazier among them fodder to launch a human rights complaint against you. If you were older and more experienced in this world, I would call you a proper misogynist. But you’re not, you’re just clueless.

Honestly, good luck.

Screencap via.

Bringing back the bush?

After American Apparel unleashed a hilariously austere-looking mannequin casually sporting the fluffiest bush imaginable, author Emer O’Toole is claiming 2014 is the year for women to reclaim their body hair. Specifically, their pubic hair.

O’Toole is working on the soon-to-be-released book Girls Will Be Girls. She told CBC Radio’s Q that vicious Brazilian waxes are actually a form of violence against women, and what’s more, that women who argue it’s their choice to remove their hair are mistaken. She’s asking us to re-examine our choices when it comes to our addictions to compulsive shaving, waxing, sugaring, threading, slathering on of stinky creams.

I have to admit, she’s right, of course. The choice to remove our body hair is actually made for us by the Internet, advertising, and the porn industry. For me, the choice was made by the many issues of Cosmo I devoured from about age ten onward, and by one of my first boyfriends in high school, who thought I was the most revolting/negligent human alive when he discovered I hadn’t shaved my public hair. I promptly got rid of it, and have continued to do so ever since. At first it was a matter of propriety—I felt it was rude and shameful to keep it. Later, in university, I realized that said boyfriend was full of shit, and grew it all back in a frenzy of feminist protest.

Sadly, it had been gone too long and just felt uncomfortable. It was easier to just keep removing it. I do let my armpit hair grow, though. It’s a fun and exciting weapon to use to shock conservative people. If one of them says something frustrating, all you have to do is just yawn and stretch your arms up. The response will be priceless. And if someone asks me why I don’t shave it (which they do all the time), I just say that I have other things to do with my time than groom my armpits. Works like a charm.

All awkward overshares of my personal grooming practices aside, I would recommend following O’Toole’s advice and just thinking about it—is it really your choice to remove all of your body hair, or even some of it? Might you feel more comfortable if you didn’t? Have more time? Less irritated skin?

Just think about it, and whatever answer you come to, do you. No subscribing to anyone’s “Natural is beautiful!” campaigns, or to demands from a man (or woman, or friend, or yourself) to go bare.

Honestly, when it comes to prescriptions for femininity, I think it’s time to listen to Drake: “Should I listen to everybody or myself…”

Screencap via.

Feminists don’t wear lipstick

I’m loathe to say it, but this past week has been an incredibly catty one amongst female journos in Canada (and those of us who judge them). Newly-minted celebrity journalist and Rob Ford crack reporter Robyn Doolittle was widely lambasted by just about everyone for having the audacity to sit atop a pile of newspapers and pose for Flare in heels and red lipstick.

Doolittle received angry emails from women who supposedly deemed her getup, in some way, undermined her work. Doolittle responded on Twitter, saying she chose to pose.

These supposedly angry feminists are trying to crucify Doolittle for wearing makeup and dressing in a ladylike fashion, saying it will undermine her work and damn her credibility. But they are hypocrites, because that, in fact, is exactly what they are doing by drawing so much attention to her appearance, rather than her work, and stoking that pointless discussion.

My friend and fellow writer Kasia Mychajlowycz wrote an open letter to Sinéad O’Connor in October after O’Connor wrote that incredibly infantilizing letter to Miley Cyrus. She wrote:

“I'm not getting into the ‘Is Sinead a feminist? Is Miley a feminist? Am I a feminist?’ thing because I don't wield the word like a club badge that can be revoked for non-orthodoxy.”

I agree wholeheartedly that the application of labels is a dangerous thing. But, feminists simply shouldn’t tell other women what they should wear. Patriarchy and capitalism tell women what they should wear, and these are the institutions we’re supposed to be fighting. Feminists are supposed to support one another’s choices, fight for those choices, and avoid letting petty differences get in the way of striving toward the common goal, which is social, political and environmental advancement of women—all women, even women in heels; with the end goal being equality between both genders, of course.

Judging women by their appearance only serves to feed patriarchy. Why should we have to dress like men in order to be powerful women? If those who criticize her look carefully enough, they’ll likely find their critiques come from a place of envy and insecurity. Criticizing another woman’s wardrobe isn’t especially progressive, feminist, or useful. And if you think another woman’s outfit can undermine your own power, you need to reclaim some of that power.

Perhaps we should all just shut up and wear what we like, and allow Doolittle to do the same.

Terri Jean Bradford, via Facebook.

One small step for the justice system

When the Supreme Court declared Canada’s laws surrounding sex work unconstitutional in December, sex workers were doubtful the new laws would serve them any better than the old ones. In fact, several sex workers told me there was still a high chance these laws would continue to enforce classist and racist policies. I had to agree with them.

But it looks like the provinces are actually loosening up on charges relating to sex work, and that’s a good thing, even though it’s a small step that should have been taken ages ago. The Canadian Press reported Saturday that B.C. is the latest province to stop prosecuting most prostitution-related offences, as the court deems the laws unconstitutional. B.C. is the most recent, but several provinces, including Ontario, Alberta, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador have already said that won’t prosecute prostitution-related offences struck down as unconstitutional.

Dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford, who is largely responsible for the Supreme Court decision, wrote a sort-of-hopeful blog post about it, but mostly, she just expresses words of warning:

“For now we are free and we activists must ensure that any new laws (and there should be none) are fair and don’t do the same damage as the old ones.”

¹ A popular misspelling used on the internet by especially sarcastic feminists, like the author.

All photos by Arthur Bondar and Oksana Yushko

Flying over Sochi, we saw a beautiful panorama of the region. The Olympic Games here have been a pet project of Vladimir Putin’s since their proposal, and the Russian government has done its all to make the venues and surrounding countryside some of the most memorable in Olympic history.

The drastic transformation of Sochi has not been without controversy. It was inevitable that the area would be heavily guarded and protected against terrorists, but the sheer quantity of checkpoints, police patrols, and special forces really surprised us. Meanwhile, the green gardens in the center of the city have partially given way to concrete plazas and glass skyscrapers. Many lambast the Russian government for these changes, while others truly believe that these developments will put this region and Russia in the right direction.

There is no single truth. The people who live here are optimists. They lived through four years of ear-splitting construction sites, infuriating traffic jams, and omnipresent “Pardon Our Dust” signs. Now, they believe they will reap the rewards of all that inconvenience. Foreigners who come here describe Sochi as a “nice city,” but we see how the mass media tell their own truths, depending on the nationalities of their audiences. Visiting shelters for stray dogs, talking with homosexuals, and examining the suffering environment, we hope that the government will seek solutions to the most recurrent issues in the headlines.

The only thing we can conclude for certain is that a city is its people, and Sochi’s people are much to its credit. As guests here, we have enjoyed a wealth of local hospitality and friendship.

And while we are not big sport fans, we hope those who saw the Games’ opening ceremony would remember the beautiful music by Sviridov and Tchaikovsky, would want to read Tolstoy, and would want to visit our Russia one day. 

This past week I attended the three-day 2014 Volcom Pipe Pro—a prestigious surfing contest that takes place at the Banzai Pipeline beach on Oahu’s gorgeous North Shore, in Hawaii.

Top surfers from around the world compete for an opportunity to qualify for the World Championship Tour—an annual series of 11 competitions held around the globe. What makes the competition so intense is the event’s main stage—the Pipeline, a.k.a. "Pipe." It is a sum of large oceanic humps self-imploding on a reef shelf so shallow that about one surfer loses his life here every year.

While it’s about the contest, the Volcom Pipe Pro has turned into a thriving culture: Women in the smallest of bikinis flirt with surfers for a chance to party at night in the Volcom house; after the rounds each day, competitors and spectators crash the Turtle Bay resort, where Blue Crush was filmed; and each morning, hangovers prevent no one from getting to Pipe at 7:00 AM to wait for surfers to paddle out. I was granted complete access to the Volcom’s infamous Pipe house, and I couldn’t have been more excited. This place is an institution on the North Shore. I had heard stories of how they had actual whistleblowers who would stay on guard to watch out for anyone doesn’t follow the pecking order. I toured the grounds and caught up with the top contenders. 

As soon as I stepped inside, I immediately discovered Alex Gray assessing the waves. The California native has been residing at the Volcom house throughout Hawaii’s winter surf season. I had casually met him the day before, and he immediately recognized me and greeted me with a high five. He has to be one of the most approachable people ever, so we chatted about the competition and the dangers of wiping out on the reef.

VICE: You have a tough heat coming up. How do you feel about having Kelly Slater in it?
Alex Gray: Oh, I’m so stoked! I mean, Kelly, in my opinion, is the greatest athlete of all time. Surfing just doesn’t have as much recognition or following as traditional sports. But anyway, to surf good Pipe with Kelly is a dream. I can’t wait.

Agreed. Are you nervous?
No, I’m happy that the forecast finally turned around and we get to see some proper Pipeline for this event. It’s what everybody comes here for, and this is great. It’s a good day to have a contest, and were all stoked that it’s running. To be out here with four guys instead of 80; it’s a treat really.

Tell me about taking a beating at Pipe. Do you always hit the reef when you wipeout?
The worst wipeouts at Pipe are the unexpected ones that come out of nowhere and there’s nothing you can do. At that point your giving it up to someone up above, and you hope for the best. There’s waves where I’m like, Oh, that guy died, but he comes up laughing. Then there are random wipeouts where it doesn’t look that bad, but a guy is limping up the beach with a broken leg.

Yikes. How long can you hold your breath?
We did this breath-holding class, and I got to four and a half minutes, but sitting here right now I could probably only hold it for 45 seconds.

How is the scene here at Pipe? I’ve noticed there are quite a few girls.
North Shore is the new 24/7 spring break. It’s funny to talk to the old dogs. They’re like, "20 years ago there was one girl here, and we were all sword fighting!" Now there are girls everywhere. They are all starting their own bikini lines to see who can make the smallest one. Then they walk up and down the beach with them on.

I am not a surfer competing in the event; I might as well be the guy Rollerblading with a golden retriever while wearing a bicycle helmet.
Yeah, but if you could rent a baby and wear a speedo and Rollerblade, you’d get so many chicks over here.

Shortly after the interview, Olamana Eleogram, pictured above, emerged from his quarter-final heat with a broken leg. Hailing from the neighboring island of Maui, the young Hawaiian is no stranger to Pipeline, but he took a beating on the reef. I later found out that he needs surgery to place pins in his leg. All I could think was, Luckily it wasn’t his head.

I continued to roam the house by myself, and I ran into Mitch Coleborn, who is commonly described as a “free surfer” but has recently gained recognition for his competitive edge.

VICE: Didn’t you almost make the world tour recently?
Mitch Coleborn: Yeah. So last year I ended up 33rd, but you have to make the top 32, so I missed out by one spot. That sucks, but I’m getting amped again for this year and doing the QS again.

At least you still have a high seed.
Yeah, for most of these events I'll have a top seed.

These are your digs for the contest?
This is my little zone, yeah. I stick to my side; couple boards there, some downstairs. It’s funny: Zeik [Mitch’s roommate] just a got girlfriend, so I pretty much have the whole room to myself.

What do you do besides surf? Any hobbies?
A little bit of golf here and there. Mainly just at home with the boys, having a few beers. Um, yeah, that’s about it: just cruise. I also run a sunglass company with a couple friends, Kai Neville and Dion Agius.

What’s it called?
Epokhe. So a bit of sunglasses on the side, but they handle all the biz stuff and let me surf.

So what’s next? Any projects you’re working on?
Yeah, Kai has a new movie coming out, so I’ll be doing a bunch of filming for that. Volcom has a new movie coming out, and I got a ton of trips planned and also a bunch of events.

Thanks a lot. I’ll be rooting for you.

Crusing the backyard was Jay Adams, a skateboarding legend best known from the documentary film, Dog Town and Z-Boys.

VICE: So what do you think about the contest so far?
Jay Adams: Greatest show on earth!

Whens the last time you surfed Pipe?
A couple days ago. It was a little bit smaller than this, though.

It’s insane that you are still charging Pipe. It’s a young guy's wave.
I just turned 53 a couple days ago. It is a young guy's wave, but there are smaller days when it’s fun [laughs].

It’s great to see you’re doing well.
Yeah. Three years sober and going to church.

Awesome. Who you rooting for to win this event?
Mason [Ho] and [Kelly] Slater—the old guy and young guy. Yeah!

I met Mason Ho at Turtle Bay later that night. The 25-year-old North Shore native is only five feet eight, but his personality will leave you thinking he’s at least a foot taller. I saw him sucking face with a modelesque Amazonian-looking woman while simultaneously high-fiving everyone who walked by. After the award ceremony, I was able to trade a few words with Mason.

VICE: Congrat's on making the finals. Have you spoken with your dad and uncle yet? [Both are former professional surfers.]
Mason Ho: No, I haven’t yet.

What do you think they are going to say about your result?
They are going to be genuinely happy for me, but I’ll be looking right down into them and know that they will be thinking, You should have won!

What is Coco [Mason’s sister, also a professional surfer] going to say?
Coco will be really proud of me. She only wants good for me, like all the time, even when she’s being a little… sister to me.

So what’s the plan for tonight?
Keep that camera on, and you’ll find out.

Mason and Kelly Slater met in the final. It was Kelly who took home the win, which wasn’t a huge surprise. 

Follow Andrew on Instagram @andymysto for more photos from the Volcom Pipe Pro.

Photo via.

Breaking news from Rasdorf, Germany: Late last month, this farming village of some 1,500 souls was literally shocked when a shed housing 90 cows spontaneously burst into flames that singed the shed’s roof and the hide of one unlucky beast (who was later treated for burns). The culprit was no arsonist, but rather the hundreds of liters of potent methane gas produced inside of the cows’ guts and emitted via their burping and flatulence. The gas had built up insde the shed and was ignited by a spark of static electricity. 

The idea of a shed full of flammable cow farts is both disgusting and hilarious, but the problem of livestock methane production is actually far more insidious. Every year, the roughly 3.6 billion ruminants on this planet—that’s cows, goats, sheep, and oxen that chew cud—emit 80 million metric tons of gas. Each day, a cow relieves itself of about 500 liters (or 132 gallons) of methane, roughly the same amount of pollution that a car produces in the same amount of time. Although methane is a destructive greenhouse gas that contributes disproportionately to climate change—its effect on the atmosphere is 21 times greater than CO2’s—few people know about this serious problem. 

“It just hasn’t been talked about much,” said William J. Ripple, a professor at Oregon State’s College of Forestry. “I think most of the attention tends to be on fossil fuels and the carbon dioxide they create.” 

Last month, Ripple and five co-authors published a paper in Nature Journal titled “Ruminants, Climate Change, and Climate Policy,” in which they wrote that livestock production is the greatest source of man-made methane. Their proposed solution is vegetarianism, or at least a big reduction in the amount of beef, lamb, and goat that we eat. 

If humans could lessen their appetite for ruminant meat, the authors write, a drop in methane production wouldn’t be the only benefit: If we had fewer grazing animals, then we’d need less land dedicated to feeding them. Currently, the sole purpose of 26 percent of the terrestrial surface of the planet is to feed grazers. Freeing up that land would allow the regrowth of the forests and diverse habitats that were cleared to create livestock pastures, and this would have a drastic impact on climate-warming effects, since trees absorb carbon dioxide (as much as 48 pounds of it per tree per year). A reduction in meat consumption would mean less methane and less carbon dioxide.  

But asking people to cut down on their meat consumption is a “tall order,” Ripple admitted. Our appetite for flesh is growing along with our population. Each year, 25 million domestic ruminants are added to the planet. So it makes sense that the majority of methane-reduction strategies being developed today try to skirt the eat-less-meat message.

In 2003, New Zealand proposed a “fart tax” that would have collected about $300 per farmer per year to be used for methane-reduction research. The proposal was so widely reviled that nearly half of all of the country’s farmers signed a petition against it. About 400 of the farmers physically blocked the capital at Wellington, and plans for the tax stalled soon afterward. In 2009, a Wales-based biotech firm produced a garlic-based feed additive called Mootral that seemed to reduce cows’ methane output, but that product was discontinued in 2012 when one of its primary shareholders moved to the US. And in Australia, CSIRO Livestock Industries is working on a vaccine that combats the microorganisms responsible for the methane production: creatures that dwell deep inside livestock guts and aid in digestion, releasing methane as a chemical by-product of their work. 

Despite international efforts, researchers haven't figured out a reliable solution. 

“As far as a magic bullet, so far I haven’t seen one,” Ripple said. 

Ripple believes that cutting down on ruminant meat could appeal to people who are worried about a warming planet but aren’t sure about what steps to take as individuals beyond buying hybrid cars or driving less often. 

“There are a lot of people out there who are concerned about climate change and don’t know what they can do about it,” he said. “Eating less meat is one of those things they can do.” It’s prime time for all of us all to become vegetarians. To effect change, Ripple suggests putting the methane issue on the UN’s climate change agenda, educating the scientific community about methane emissions, and creating financial incentives for meat-producing corporations to develop meat analogs and substitutes. 

But on an individual level, it might be effective to think of that smelly shed in Germany the next time you go for a bite of beef. That’s probably enough to put you off your feed. 

@Lochina186

As you've probably heard by now, Shia LaBeouf—actor, director, and mirror to our tortured souls—is doing a piece of performance art in Los Angeles. 

The exhibition/performance/whatever is called #IAMSORRY and is being held at 7354 Beverly Boulevard until Sunday.

I headed down to check it out. 

I arrived expecting a huge line, but there was none—just one other guy and a security guard. The guard told me that I was the 75th person to see the exhibit, and that I had to go in alone, "because we don't want anyone else to ruin your experience."

After about five minutes of waiting, the security guard gave me the once-over with a metal detector and allowed me inside. 

I ended up in a room with a bunch of objects laid out on a table. I managed to sneak a photo.

There was a ukulele, a bottle of Jack Daniels, a bowl containing print-outs of mean tweets about Shia, a bowl of Hershey's Kisses, a bottle of Brut cologne, a copy of The Death-Ray by Daniel Clowes, an Optimus Prime action figure, some pliers, and a whip. 

A woman told me to choose an object. I picked up the bowl of mean tweets about Shia. 

A copy of the press release for whatever this thing is. 

Bowl in hand, the woman led me through a curtain and into a small room.

Shia was sitting at a small wooden table in the center of the space. He was wearing a suit and the "I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE" bag that he had on his head in Berlin.

The woman left, and it was just me and Shia. I didn't sneak a photo of him, out of respect for his art (just kidding: I chickened out).

I sat down opposite him. As far as I could tell, I wasn't being filmed, and nobody was listening in.

After sitting there for a few seconds as Shia stared at me in silence, I said, "So you're not gonna talk, huh?" He didn't respond.

I looked at his hands; I looked at his eyes. I felt a little bit embarrassed, both for Shia and myself. 

I took one of the tweets out of the bowl and read it. It said something about Shia's being an "insufferable twat." 

I looked back into his eyes and noticed that the bag was soggy underneath the eyeholes. Without thinking about it, I asked, "Is the mask like that because you've been crying?" Shia said nothing. I internally scolded myself for indulging him. 

I decided just to sit and stare into his eyes and wait until they told me my time was up. After doing this for a couple of boring, awkward minutes, I realized that maybe I didn't have a time limit. I decided to show myself out.

Right before I got up to leave, I pulled one of the mean tweets out of the bowl and read it aloud to him. It said, "The apotheosis of trying too hard," which was fitting.

As I left the room, I thanked him. Shia nodded at me.

I let myself out through another curtain, and then a security guy led me outside through a back door.

When I got out, I saw that the line had grown to about ten people.

As I walked back to my car, I tried to figure out why Shia was doing this. Is he trolling? Is he genuinely trying to make some kind of statement about celebrity or something? Is he reverse-engineering the whole thing to make himself look less stupid over the whole plagiarism thing? Or is he just doing it so that people like me will write about him? After a few seconds of letting these thoughts swirl around my head, I remembered that, mostly, I just don't care. 

@JLCT

Tableaux Vivants bra

PHOTOS BY RICHARD KERN
STYLIST: MIYAKO BELLIZZI

Creative Director: Annette Lamothe-Ramos
Photo Assistant: Colin Sussingham
Stylist Assistant: Lyndsea Lamarr
Makeup: James Boehmer at Nars
Makeup Assistant: Jenny Smith at Nars
Hair: Thanos Samaras at L’Atelier NYC
Models: Akitsune Takemsura, Bobby Viteri, Christelle De Castro, Claire Christerson, Ehren at NEXT, Marcel Castenmiller at DNA, Mike Bailey Gates, Sarah Grace Powell

Nike sports bra

Tess Giberson jacket, Shadowplaynyc dress, A-Morir sunglasses, Arielle de Pinto necklace

Starter jacket, Unif top, Joyrich pants, Timberland boots, vintage bandana and watch, Gypsy Sport cap, Nixon headphones

Issey Miyake jacket, 6397 jumpsuit, Hanes tank, model’s own earrings

Ammerman Schlösberg dress, Parkchoonmoo tank dress, Won Hundred knit dress, Mordekai choker chain, vintage ring

Koonhor top, Camilla and Marc skirt, American Apparel thigh-highs, Tableaux Vivants headpiece, Cheap Monday necklace, vintage belt, Arielle de Pinto bracelet, Lady Grey ring, Hadria ring

Issey Miyake top, Won Hundred shorts, H0les sunglasses, vintage chain

K]Joyrich sweater, Gypsy Warrior dress, vintage jewelry

Luar Zepol top and pants

Photo by E.Hanazaki Photography/Getty Images

In December, the University of Michigan released the results of a survey that, among other things, asked Middle Easterners what style of dress was appropriate for women to wear in public. Participants were invited to choose between various styles of Muslim head coverings, like burqas, chadors, and niqabs. The results showed that people from conservative nations like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan generally favored the face-concealing niqab, while most Egyptians, Tunisians, Turks, and Iraqis preferred traditional hijabs, which cover the hair and leave the face exposed.

These results aren’t particularly surprising, and neither is the fact that Middle Eastern women and men largely shared the same preferences. Though some Westerners associate Muslim religious head coverings with the oppression of women, many Muslim women view the hijab—a blanket term used to denote any form of traditional head covering—as a source of empowerment. During the Arab Spring–inspired protests against Hosni Mubarak, some Egyptian women wore hijabs to protest a ban against headscarves on state television.

According to Shereen El Feki, a researcher and the author of Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World, many young Muslim women cover themselves to gain more independence from their parents. “They feel that their parents think these girls are good Muslim girls, therefore they don’t exercise as much vigilance and the girls get more latitude in their lives,” she told me. “They may get to travel, they may get to move around, and they have more mobility.”

Another common misconception about head coverings is that it is always worn as a statement of extreme religious modesty. “The women wearing hijab who I spoke to for my book have just as much sexual desire,” said Shereen. “Women put on hijab for a variety of reasons, not just to desexualize themselves.”

In her book, Shereen describes young Egyptian women who regularly cover their hair, necks, and shoulders, yet walk down the streets of downtown Cairo in stiletto heels, makeup, and tight jeans. “They’re like fantastical birds-of-paradise arrangements,” she told me. “On one hand, they’re trying to conform to what was the increasingly conservative climate. On the other, they’re young women, so they want to be attractive to men.”

The hijab certainly doesn’t protect women from sexual harassment. A UN survey that made the rounds on the internet last summer said that 99 percent of Egyptian women experience some form of sexual harassment, though most of them cover their heads.

Thanks to longstanding cultural and religious traditions, sex is rarely discussed in many Middle Eastern countries, even between married couples. In spite of this, Arab women have found creative ways to signal their desires to their husbands. Lingerie shops throughout the region sell all kinds of lacey and racy items and Syria in particular is known for outrageous intimate apparel. The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie, a 2008 book by Malu Halasa, describes fur-lined panties and underwear that come equipped with fake flowers and birds. According to Halassa, shops continue to sell lingerie in Damascus despite the turmoil and conflict there.

In more conservative Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, niqabs are popular in public forums, but in private it’s another story. Weddings are sometimes segregated by gender, which leaves the women free to wear extravagant gowns with plunging necklines. “Women from the Gulf are some of the best customers of haute couture,” said Shereen. Their wedding parties are showrooms of beautiful potential brides, clad in the latest fashions for their friends—among them the mothers of would-be suitors.

When dress codes are loosened in these situations, security is tightened. Shereen told me that photos are prohibited at such parties, and guests are required to check their phones at the door to protect the women’s privacy. “It’s a very complex dichotomy between the public and private,” she told me. “It’s night and day in many cases.”

@notsovanilla

Screencap via

Last week, a woman in Colorado posted a Facebook photo of a puppy drinking milk from her breast. The picture sparked an internet backlash, and she soon became a flavor-of-the-week celebrity on local Colorado news. By that time she had become reclusive and had started telling a slightly more heroic version of the puppy breast-feeding story. Her story is becoming inconsistent and never made sense in the first place. I hate to break it to you, but the lady who breast-fed her puppies might actually be an attention-starved lunatic.

Initially, she posted this on Facebook:

Screencap via

The post included the text: "Yep I'm breast feeding all 5 pups. Some may think its [sic] gross. They are 4 DAYS old. Their mother was killed. And I am happy to be able to provide them wit [sic] something better than formula for pups.” So there it is; she breastfed them because she had a low opinion of formula for pups, and she doesn't give a shit what you think. 

Yet there's a documentation gap here. She said people started calling her out online for her so-called crime against the natural order of things, but she's anonymous, and her Facebook account is apparently private, so I can't read the cyber bullies' words. If they were anything like the people who commented on the KRDO local news website, they sounded like this:

• "What is the world coming to? I read this and it literally made me sick."
• "I wish i could read where someone saved a baby from abortion. I'd much rather news report on that but it wont happen."
• "Sorry but that dog would just have to die. I would try to take to a vet but no way in hell would i let a animal do that to me."
• "Any person not perverted would be sick by this crappy trashy woman."

Screencap of the anonymous lady on TV, via

The TV news report in question featured a completely changed version of the story. Now it had become her last resort, and she was only feeding one, not all five. The one who needed breast milk was the runt of the litter and was refusing to drink puppy formula. She told the reporter, "Literally what clicked in my head was like, put him on you, just pray to God he will take something and not die.” She continued, “I never thought I would ever do that; it was taboo to me as well.” 

She's convinced her heroic actions saved the puppy. "I did the right thing. I can’t let their criticism bring me down when I did something right and I’ve seen the results. That dog is alive because I took that initiative,” she said. The happy, healthy puppy is named Tubbs.

Perhaps she had read extensively on the subject and knew that, according to an often reprinted essay by medical historian Samuel Radbill, native North American peoples have a rich tradition of letting dogs drink their breast milk when the food supply is low, and that, according to the British tabloid Closer, a woman in California fed her puppy breast milk much more openly in 2012.

If she'd done that much research, she would also know that a human nipple is harder to suckle from than a bottle nipple, and that human milk comes out with particular difficulty. If she'd googled it, she would have seen that puppies will suck on just about anything, but if they don't have the strength, an eyedropper will let you squeeze the liquid out without the puppy's having to put forth the effort.

So maybe—just maybe—she let the puppy suck on her nipple for the hell of it, and maybe she put the photo on Facebook to troll her friends and it worked too well. Maybe all this business about saving a puppy's life is just a bunch of backpedaling after people lost their shit at her.

Letting a baby animal drink the wrong kind of milk is far from perfect. A vet told KRDO: "I don't think it's a big deal, but for them to grow appropriately, I think it would be important for them to get on a canine formula." The following picture of a cat letting a bunch of baby squirrels drink her breast milk is cute and everything....

Screencap via

The only thing wrong is that they, like Tubbs, aren't getting proper nutrition.

@MikeLeePearl

Matthew Hogg enjoying a glass of water with a friend

Imagine if your body produced its own alcohol – pretty great, right? You'd always have a buzz on, meaning you'd be one up on most people in the confidence stakes, and you'd never have to dip your hands into your pockets at the bar or make the journey to the off-licence when you wanted to get shit-faced. On the other hand, you'd presumably end up drunk in inappropriate situations and be hungover ALL THE TIME, despite the fact that you never even touched a bottle. 

Well, "auto-brewery syndrome" – where excesses of yeast trapped in the small intestine create pure alcohol that gets absorbed directly into the bloodstream – does exist. Sadly, the symptoms seem to resemble that second scenario far more than the first.

Matthew Hogg has been a sufferer of the syndrome for almost 20 years. Every time he eats sugar or carbohydrates, his body converts them into ethanol and he ends up either tipsy or hungover. I gave him a call to chat about what it's like being a walking human brewery.  

Matthew ill in bed as a child, before his syndrome was diagnosed

VICE: Hi Matthew. When did you first realise that your gut creates its own alcohol?
Matthew Hogg: I suffered from digestive upsets throughout my childhood. I was initially diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome, but in my mid-to-late teens I experienced a severe worsening of symptoms, like bloating and gas after meals – so much so that I could feel the bubbling of fermentation occurring in my lower abdomen. More worryingly, I developed new, quite frightening symptoms. I would feel intoxicated, as well as a long list of whole-body symptoms, including chronic fatigue, muscular aches and pains, chronic headaches, mental impairment, mood disturbances and so on.

Did you feel hungover afterwards?
Yeah, by my late teens I was experiencing severe alcoholic hangovers that would usually be at their worst the morning after eating a high carbohydrate meal. I'd get pounding headaches, severe nausea, occasional vomiting, dehydration, dry mouth, cold sweats and shaky hands. It was as if I'd been out the previous night and drunk the bar dry, but I hadn't consumed any alcohol.

Jesus, that sounds terrible. So when were you actually diagnosed with auto-brewery syndrome?
Eventually I was referred to a specialist in London, the late Dr Keith Eaton. His test confirmed that my gut was producing large amounts of ethanol from yeast, as well as significant amounts of other alcohols associated with the metabolism of various bacteria. Dr Eaton diagnosed me with auto-brewery syndrome, and this diagnosis has been confirmed by other medical doctors specialising in unusual and unrecognised chronic illnesses.

What kind of impact has it had on your life?
It's had a huge and devastating impact on my life. Up until the age of 16, I was a straight-A student and found academic work enjoyable and rewarding. I was also a keen athlete and sportsman, and had a great social life. As the auto-brewery syndrome began to assert itself, all of this changed. I found myself struggling badly at school when, in my mind, I knew I shouldn’t be having any problem. I also had to quit sports because I'd feel exhausted after a gentle run, and found myself struggling to get up in the mornings. I felt frightened, not knowing what was happening to me, as well as frustrated and angry that I was unable to function at the high level I was used to. My social life suffered badly and I felt alone and detached from my friends and lacked the energy and motivation to be a part of things.

So what did you do next? 
I managed to scrape into Sheffield University at 18 to study for a computer science degree. But in the end, it didn’t matter, as living away from home, studying and socialising at the same time was just too much for my poisoned body and mind. I lasted less than two semesters. I got home and looked for jobs, but found them to be too much for me, so conceded that I would have to apply for disability benefits. I wouldn't have been granted them using auto-brewery syndrome as a diagnosis, due to lack of governmental and medical recognition. But, by this time, I'd also amassed IBS, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression and anxiety as diagnoses, so my claim was granted.

When was that?
I lived on disability and family support from 1999 until 2008, when a website dedicated to information about poorly understood chronic illnesses that I set up – The Environmental Illness Resource – began to produce an adequate income through advertising and I registered as self-employed. That period of self-sufficiency only lasted until 2012, however, and I'm now supported by my parents and my wonderful girlfriend Mandy, who I now live with. I continue to run The Environmental Illness Resource as best I can because the information that it provides helps a great many people in a similar situation to myself.

What would you be doing if you weren't afflicted with auto-brewery syndrome? 
I had ambitions to be an academic, professional athlete, scientist, engineer or an airline pilot. As it stands, I'm approaching 35 years old and spend my days at home, with every day being a struggle – though I do my best to stay positive and maintain friendships, and believe that I will one day regain my health. All I want is a chance to make a living, have a family and enjoy socialising and hobbies.

How often do you feel drunk or hungover? Is it an everyday thing?
If I were to eat a normal diet containing grains, fruits and processed foods with added sugar, I would experience the symptoms I have described every day, but I've learned to adapt my diet to minimise the fermentation in my gut. For many years I’ve eaten something close to a Stone Age diet, which is based on meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Despite this, the underlying cause of the condition has not been successfully treated, so I still suffer chronic symptoms, including fatigue, aches and pains, exercise and stress intolerance and cognitive dysfunction, just not the symptoms of an acute severe hangover.

I imagine this could be the last thing you'd want to do, but have you ever eaten a load of sugary foods to get drunk for recreational reasons? 
Honestly, there are times in social situations – or when nothing else is available, if I’m away from home – that I've either been forced to or chosen to eat sugary and starchy foods. But, as a rule, I prefer to stick to the low-carb diet because the negative consequences outweigh the momentary pleasure. It's always been the case that I feel more hungover than drunk as a result of auto-brewery syndrome, so although people may assume this condition is a cheap way to get drunk for recreational purposes, that’s unfortunately not the reality.

But you can get drunk by eating sugar and carbs, right?
Yes. There were many times, throughout my later high school years in particular, when I felt moments of drunkenness without having consumed any alcohol. I'd describe them as periods rather than moments, actually, as they lasted for a few hours at a time. These periods of intoxication always followed a meal and, after a few hours – which is a typical time period for digestion and absorption – the effects would wear off and I would feel normal consciousness return.

My overriding memory of this time is feeling frustrated that my brain wasn't functioning at the level I was used to. I looked at equations in my favourite science classes and knew I should have no problem understanding and solving them, but they now looked like gibberish. There were times when I also acted out of character. I was generally everyone’s friend at school – a social butterfly. But there were instances when I upset people with uncharacteristic behaviour akin to a drunk who stirs up trouble or lets things slip that they wouldn't have when sober. 

That doesn't sound like fun. How do people typically react when you tell them that your body produces its own alcohol? 
Reactions vary widely, from stubborn disbelief to support from those who can imagine what it must be like to have the condition. I'm lucky that I'm still in touch with many of my closest friends from my high school days, and they're as understanding as they can be without experiencing the condition themselves.

Does the fact that so few people have heard of your condition make it harder to deal with?
Absolutely. And I’m constantly reading messages from visitors to my website who suffer from the condition, saying that their doctor, boss, co-workers – and even friends, family and partners – just don’t understand. People just think we're making this condition up a lot of the time.

What's your advice to other people who suffer from auto-brewery syndrome?
I would like to let your readers who think they might have auto-brewery syndrome know that there are effective treatments out there, especially if the condition is recognised early. It was completely unknown when I became ill, and I spent the first ten years doing all of the wrong things as a teenager and making the situation many times worse and more difficult to recover from. I hope my story helps people recognise this condition in themselves or their loved ones, and that they seek help and advice as soon as possible.

Thanks, Matthew.

More stories about getting drunk:

NekNominate Is Not Darwin's Fault

Ten Shitty Alternatives to Drinking Yourself to Death

The VICE Euro 2012 Drinking Competition! 

Government spies, investigating people the same way you would research a prospective OKCupid date.

This past weekend, I read a stack of heavily-redacted documents that are pissing off privacy advocates here in British Columbia—and to be honest I was a little disappointed. The docs reveal the RCMP and CSIS are mildly capable Facebook creepers who share earnest security reports about environmentalists giving away (gasp) hot chocolate.

The BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) is pissed because it says the government illegally collected information about lawful protesters, and shared that info with oil companies. Last week they filed two formal complaints arguing the RCMP and CSIS violated aboriginal and environmental groups’ rights to freely associate and assemble during public hearings for the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.

With many paragraphs and pages blacked out, the remaining passages mostly describe “open source” intel pulled from social media feeds, but also reference other undisclosed sources. Groups like Idle No More, Leadnow, ForestEthics and Dogwood Initiative were all “monitored” over several months in Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna, and Prince Rupert.

“On the last day of the hearings, they plan to distribute hot chocolate to the group before embarking on a door-to-door campaign,” reads one email from police in Victoria, describing an event organized by Dogwood Initiative. “It appears to be informative and peaceful.”

Another threat assessment describes a storytelling workshop in a Kelowna church basement. Organizers say the brief required more than an internet connection: “We know from the documents they had some way of gathering what happened in that meeting,” says Will Horter, Dogwood’s executive director. “Either it was bugged, there was a paid informant or undercover staff attended. There’s no other way to have the details available, and all three of those scenarios are ridiculous, anti-democratic and, we believe, illegal.”

The BCCLA alleges the “systematic intelligence gathering” also violates the CSIS Act. “The law that gives authority to CSIS makes clear that the agency cannot investigate, monitor, collect information or spy on ‘lawful advocacy, protest or dissent,’” reads the CSIS complaint. “The documents released make clear that, in the opinion of the government, the organizations being spied upon did not constitute such a threat.”

The documents were originally released through Access to Information (ATI) law and published by the Vancouver Observer back in November. Since then, the lead watchdog that oversees CSIS spies registered as an Enbridge lobbyist. Chuck Strahl was forced to step down as chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) following the ensuing conflict of interest scandal.

Strahl’s name doesn’t appear in the email chain, but a few anonymous industry buddies do. An email providing “situational awareness” to “stakeholders” casually copies a dozen redacted @transcanada.com, @cnrl.com, @kindermorgan.com and @enbridge.com emails. A separate ATI by the Guardian also found Enbridge sponsored a lunch meeting between spies and resource companies. Because, jobs?

Lawyers for the advocacy group filed their complaint directly to SIRC, whose remaining members still have ties to the oil patch. The letter calls for an independent investigation into security monitoring practices. CSIS has responded with a generic denial: “CSIS investigates—and advises government on—threats to national security, and that does not include peaceful protest and dissent.”

The RCMP had a similar non-response response. “The RCMP will not comment on this matter,” reads an emailed statement. “We take all public complaints seriously, and will fully cooperate with the [Commission for Public Complaints] if necessary.”

The RCMP is tasked with maintaining public safety at the hearings, and is at the very least not subject to the CSIS Act. However, the sweeping self-described mandate to “monitor all aspects of the anti-petroleum industry movement” is unlawfully meant to “chill” dissent, according to Horter.

“I’m certain it has a chilling affect on some people, which feeds a growing trend toward cynicism,” Horter says. “But for other people it outrages them so much, it actually fuels a climate of protest and opposition.”

It occurred to me, while chatting with Horter, that Enbridge probably has enough money kicking around to pay for its own private intel—especially given that these reports have revealed our government is spying on events as innocuous as the "all-native basketball tournament" in Prince Rupert; an event that’s sponsored by the TransCanada energy corporation.

“It shows how absurd this thing is—how much taxpayer money is being wasted,” he replies. “It’s a complete abuse of power.”


@sarahberms

Rangers in the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, Kenya. Photos by Johnnie Shand Kydd

Night falls, and on a hilltop the team of armed men hunker down so that their silhouettes don't stand out against the moonlight. Infrared goggles have been issued and radio communications established with the two-man units patrolling through the surrounding bush. Their orders are clear: At the first sign of an incursion, they are to mobilize their vehicles, congregate on the danger zone, take the fight to those assaulting their land, and strike against them hard.

They have the necessary weaponry. Each man has been issued a top-of-the-line automatic rifle, in most cases the German Heckler & Koch G3. Along with the goggles, they have the latest webbing and medical equipment, including bandages, designed for the US military, to stem the bleeding from gunshot wounds.

To an outside observer, these men look like a front-line army unit. In fact they are wildlife rangers, ones tasked with the crucial job of protecting the endangered species housed amid the fertile beauty of central Kenya’s Lewa Wildlife Conservancy.

"We are fighting a war—a long war—against people who are organized and are growing in number, year by year and day by day," the men’s commander, Edward Ndiritu, tells me. "The poachers have started hitting every conservancy, every park. If we don’t act, these animals die."

A battle is being fought across Africa with ever-increasing brutality—one between those who seek to protect the continent’s wildlife and those who seek to hunt them to feed the seemingly insatiable global demand, not least in Asia, for endangered animal parts.

At the heart of this conflict is money, particularly the vast sums that can be made from trading in elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn. The emergence of an affluent middle class in countries like China and Vietnam—who still see these items as aspirational or medicinal—has driven prices to dizzying heights.

Ivory often trades at the same price per ounce as gold. Rhino horn is more than twice that. With such sums available, the profits to be reaped have attracted a whole new type of player into exotic animal hunting: criminal gangs who normally specialize in the trade of illegal drugs, human trafficking, or weapons.

A wildlife ranger demonstrating the weaponry used to defend animals against poachers in Kenya’s Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

The AK-47 is the poacher's weapon of choice. In Uganda, a helicopter was allegedly used to mow down some 22 elephants from the air. There have also been reports of explosives and fragmentation bullets. Basically, all the most effective instruments of murder are being deployed to feed a global trade now estimated to be worth up to $19 billion annually.

It's not just criminals getting involved; some of the world’s most disreputable military groups are also joining the hunt. Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army poaches extensively in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Al Shabaab, the Somalian al Qaeda offshoot behind last year's massacre at Nairobi’s Westgate mall, is so linked to the trade that one study of the organization described ivory as being its "white jihad."

The resulting upswing in the number of animals being slaughtered is stark. The South African government has just revealed that some 1,004 rhino were killed in the country during 2013, up from only 13 in 2007. It's estimated that around 25,000 elephants are being poached for their ivory every year—an average of one every 20 minutes.

The night before I set out with Edward Ndiritu and his men, I had gone on patrol with another unit of poacher hunters, this time from the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, located maybe 30 miles from Lewa. We quietly worked our way through the undergrowth, checking the perimeter fence for any sign of damage. There had been reports from their intelligence agents in the surrounding villages that a poaching raid was being planned. Everyone was combat-ready.

"A report came in on the radio that the poachers were active," Ol Pejeta unit leader Jackson Kamunya told me, speaking about his most recent operation. "We mobilized the helicopter. It meant we got there ahead of them so we could set our ambush. We could see them, all armed. Then everyone started shooting."

The strain this constant danger imposes on those on the ground is immense. Paul Nderito has been an armed patrolman at Ol Pejeta for two years. "Always I think I might die every day," he told me. "For the first few months I had nightmares every time I slept. But we have no choice. The animals are innocents. They do not know what they are carrying. They’re innocent like children, and so, like children, we must protect them."

An elephant slaughtered for its ivory

On February 13, at a London conference hosted by David Cameron and supported by Prince Charles, the world will be gathering to address what it can do to help combat the global poaching crisis. Some 50 world leaders are scheduled to attend, including many from across Africa, as well as from the Asian countries where the main consumers of ivory and rhino horn can be found. It's already being described as the "Kyoto of conservation."

Too often in the past the anti-poaching fight has been thwarted by weak laws, along with a lack of effective enforcement and inadequate penalties handed to perpetrators. The event will provide a unique opportunity to try to stem the trade and save the species being targeted.

That is why the newspapers I own—the Independent, i, Independent on Sunday, and Evening Standard—are campaigning to ensure an international plan of action is adopted to crack down on the global illegal wildlife trade. Over Christmas, our readers donated hundreds of thousands of pounds for conservationists working in the field to support anti-poaching teams like those I saw in action at Lewa and Ol Pejeta.

The reality according to present projections is that if action is not taken—urgently—there will no longer be enough rhinos left to support a sustainable gene pool. Elephants face extinction in the wild within two decades. The time for action is running out.

On one of my last days in East Africa, an official from the Kenyan Wildlife Service took me to see the grisly reality of the poachers’ work. He showed me what remained of an elephant carcass after it had been slaughtered for its ivory. The body had been butchered—the animal’s head sliced half off so that the tusks could be pulled from its skull.

"Every piece of ivory sold is an elephant that has been killed," he said as we stared down at what had recently been one of the world’s great living mammals. "We cannot stop this by ourselves. We need help."

Let us all hope they get it.

Evgeny Lebedev is the owner of the Independent titles and the London Evening Standard. Follow him on Twitter: @mrevgenylebedev

For more information about the Independent’s elephant appeal and how to get involved, go to the campaign's homepage.

This week on the VICE Podcast, Reihan Salam sits down with David Epstein, senior writer at Sports Illustrated and author of The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance. David and Reihan chat about the ways that human biological diversity impacts athletic ability, and how this understanding could affect the future of elite sports. 

Confused old people are discussing these. Photo via.

The past few weeks have not been so rosy for Bitcoin. The virtual currency’s oldest exchange, MtGox—originally a platform for trading Magic the Gathering Cards (MtGox = Magic the Gathering Online Exchange)—froze all withdrawals of Bitcoin or US dollars leaving their site, blaming an ancient bug in the Bitcoin code, that has caused rampant speculation in the community over whether they’re insolvent, resulting in a massive dip in Bitcoin’s value. This bad news landed right around the same time that Apple barred the Blockchain.info online Bitcoin wallet from iOS, in a move pre-empting the rumoured creation of their own electronic currency. Most recently however, news broke that the Canadian government’s latest federal budget includes oblique plans to crackdown on the online currency.

Citing its supposed usage in the nefarious world of terrorist financing and money laundering for organized crime, the government pronounced its suspicious position on cryptocurrency with increasing skepticism. Under its “Strengthening Canada’s Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Regime” section, the feds outline how it’s paramount for Canada’s financial security regime to address “(the) emerging risks, including virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, that threaten Canada’s international leadership in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.” The government came to these new measures on digital currency after a Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce undertook a five-year review of the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act. That is to say some very old people somehow discussed internet money, confusedly.

If you look at the existing regulations that the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) uses to ensure that financial institutions aren’t helping the bad guys launder their filthy, filthy money, you’ll see that the main recommendation is to always ID the customer. FINTRAC wants to know who is using financial institutions and for what purposes. It’s possible that the language to regulate Bitcoin in this new federal budget is simply stating that Bitcoin exchanges—that allow people to transfer Canadian or US dollars into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies—need to maintain strong records of their customers.

In reality, the two major Bitcoin exchanges that already operate in Canada—Virtex and Vault of Satoshi—already require users to go through strict identity verification processes wherein proof of address and government photo ID must be submitted before Bitcoin can be bought, sold, or traded. Given the relative newness of Bitcoin, this may just be the federal government catching up to an already burgeoning financial market.

Even more interesting than FINTRAC’s sudden awareness of BItcoin is the federal government’s plan to give the money-tracking organization a boatload of cash to improve their analytics system, which ostensibly tracks the money connected national security threats, and will cost $10.5 million over five years. This lump sum opens up some new questions, like: What sorts of tracking are these systems capable of? And are they monitoring ledgers for patterns that will identify Bitcoin users against their will? It’s unclear if this money will go specifically towards tracking Canada’s Bitcoin market; but one could hazard a guess that it’s certainly part of the plan.

In the context of law enforcement, this is the opening salvo and the first real policy statement on the federal government’s apparent mistrust of Bitcoin and other digital currencies. FINTRAC tracks transactions around the world and reports security threats to the Finance Minister and Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). Increasing their electronic tracking abilities is a curious development, and it will be interesting to see if the country’s major Bitcoin exchanges adopt stricter policies as a result of any forthcoming government crackdown, or if the government will just beef up its money surveillance systems in private.

It’s a bit troubling that the government has invoked the “terrorist” boogeyman by placing their Bitcoin announcement under the section of the budget meant to “strengthen” Canada’s “Anti-Terrorist Financing Regime,” given how the T-word has been a government favourite to justify things like CSEC spying, or law enforcement spending. Flaherty and the Ministry of Finance may be undertaking the first stage of a challenge on Bitcoin in what could become a more government wide policy—paired with a general wariness towards the growing cryptocurrency phenomenon. The CRA already said Bitcoins will be taxed, while Canadian banks have inferred their fear, likely borne out of a threat to their controls and lucrative banking fees on transactions, which Bitcoin eliminates. At the moment no real strategies exist to track pseudonymous Bitcoin users. The old fashioned way of waiting for a regular Joe tax evader to buy a Lamborghini is likely the only real way CRA can catch tax evasion via Bitcoin. Unless that is, the RCMP, CSEC, or FINTRAC, are given sharper cyber-policing teeth to watch the cryptocurrency market.

While we wait and see what the government is planning to do about the quickly growing Bitcoin market, some journalists are calling Canada the possible Silicon Valley of Bitcoin for its rapid development of tech-entrepreneurs who are creating new products around the innovative cryptocurrency market. That’s why we reached out to Rodolfo Novak, the founder of Coinkite, an online cryptocurrency wallet service (they call it a cryptobank) that also is selling specialized debit machines that take Coinkite debit cards—charged with Bitcoin or Litecoin—to merchants across the country. He pointed out the very real danger of over-regulating a market that is providing an enormous growth opportunity for Canadian entrepreneurs: “Legislation can be good, but it's hard to imagine the Federal Government getting this right without very good research and involvement of Canadian Bitcoin related business in the process. it would be a shame if Canada's early lead in Bitcoin was hobbled by a lobbying effort disguised as "'the terrorists are coming.'”

There’s no denying Bitcoin has some seedy applications: In December an assassination market for political figures emerged online with Bitcoin the preferred method of payment for would-be assassins (along with another darker Hitman Network), not to mention Silk Road. Everything from drug and gun running to prostitution has taken advantage of the online currency, yet before its emergence regular ol’ Canadian government-issued funny-money was the preferred method of payment in the underworld. The reality is Bitcoin is being used for everything fiat currencies were used for good or bad, it’s the loss of control that scares governments and banks. 


@patrickmcguire & @bmakuch