The media and medical reports aren't the only documentations of the revolutionary events in Ukraine these past four months. Local visual artists, both professional and amateur, have also been trying to capture, react to, and sometimes even influence the sudden social and political shifts they have witnessed and are still witnessing in their country. This has led to a wave of political cartoons, graffiti, stencils, and artworks in any other medium you can think of that can prove resistant to freezing temperatures.

Amid the chaos, there have even been street exhibitions, the most recent having taken place in the protest hub of Kiev's Independence Square—also known as the Maidan—and riot hotspot Hrushevskoho Street. Generaly speaking, you could find the drawings anywhere and everywhere—in the tents of activists, on the walls of nearby buildings, even on the city's Christmas tree. Almost as a rule, their subject is the AWOL (and perhaps former) president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych.

For the past few months I have been traveling to and from Kiev, reporting on the situation. It is during that time that I have assembled these photos of Ukrainian protest art.

See more of Sergei's work here.

Photo via

After thousands of Vancouver residents basically told their municipal government to chill the fuck out, a city park will now permanently be sporting a sign that reads: “Dude Chilling Park.”

It’s so official that you can even search it on Google Maps, where the pin drops accurately on Guelph Park, Vancouver. Last week, Vancouver Park Board Commissioner Sarah Blyth unveiled the city-approved sign alongside Dustin Bromley, its biggest fan and champion. Apparently fed up with Vancouver’s habit of shitting on anything fun, Dustin led the petition to get the sign back when it was removed in 2012.

Viktor Briestensky, the local artist behind the sign, was inspired by another art installation in the park, a wooden statue that, to Viktor, looks like a wooden dude, chilling. The sign first appeared in November 2012, innocently looking like a carbon copy of an official Vancouver Parks and Recreation sign, logo and all. It rechristened the previously boring Guelph Park to the much more awesome Dude Chilling Park, which angered the city’s more proper and uptight municipal councilors, who may or may not have had sticks up their asses from too much chilling in Guelph Park after they removed the original Dude sign.

Photo via

Apparently, since the park already had a name and since the sign was an artist’s installation and had not been approved by the city, it was seen as vandalism and promptly carted away. But, thankfully, Vancouver citizens have a much better sense of humour than their government and a petition was started by Dustin Bromley and presumably supported by other dudes (and dudettes) who just wanted to chill in the park. The cause was even supported by Jimmy Kimmel. 

What followed the petition was plenty of hilariously stilted political talk during which people like news anchors and municipal councilors tried multiple times to say the words, “Dude Chilling Park,” without cracking a smile. In the end the dudes prevailed, and last week the city returned the sign, albeit a slightly more weather-hardy version. According to Sarah Blyth, the original sign’s inherent cheeriness would not have made up for its shoddy construction and couldn’t contend with the city’s constant rain. This brings up questions about whether or not the sign is a piece of art anymore, but I’ll leave that debate to art nerds at large.

The fun, sadly, is not open-ended. Even though the sign is permanent, city officials have stopped short of actually renaming the park, which will remain Guelph Park, after the maiden name of Queen Victoria. 

May all the dudes who flock there find time to chill.  


@lindsrempel

BBQ brisket from Mueller's BBQ, in Texas. 

Few people would consider my job as a food writer to be a dangerous one, but I just found out that I might have a deadly meat allergy.

Here are a few meals that might kill me:

1. Corned beef and mustard on rye
2. Chili con carne
3. Cottage pie
4. Grilled gammon steak
5. Brisket
6. Philly cheesesteak

Although there’s always the real threat of contracting a norovirus or being hunted by a crazed chef I gave a bad review, I’m not exactly parachuting into forest fires or ice-road trucking on the work clock. But when I learned that I might have a fatal allergy to red meat, I started looking into safer career options. I can’t confirm that I have the allergy until August, when I can order the only available test for alpha-gal antibodies, a test that is not FDA-approved and is of undetermined value in actually diagnosing allergies to meat. Like a baseball player who loses his poise at the plate, I have suffered a loss of confidence as a food writer.

As I am penning this sentence, I could be eating a hot dog from a Copenhagen street cart or a steak pie at a pub somewhere in London. If I did, my throat might close up and hives spread across my face like acne in overdrive. I’d collapse unless I’m quick enough to pull out the EpiPen that I ought to carry everywhere, but I never do.

The beginning of my problems with animal protein began with a mouse. Or to be precise, a drug called cetuximab, which is made from mice. In 2005, a group of cancer patients taking the drug developed urticaria (hives), angioedema (swelling of the lips and tongue), and anaphylaxis (a deadly allergic reaction). The symptoms baffled doctors. But when the patients reported similar reactions to red meat, doctors finally got a clue. Blood tests revealed that the patients had antibodies for galactose-α-1,3-galactose, a.k.a. alpha-gal, a sugar found in the muscle tissue of non-primate mammals—including mice. The reason the patients had alpha-gal antibodies remained a mystery until researchers noticed that the medical histories of affected patients included stories about tick bites. Cetuximab allergies were distributed across the habitat of the lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum: Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri.

A Szechuan meat dish

Last summer, I was living alone in the Missouri woodlands, taking a break from New York City. After I had collected enough ticks to declare myself an arachnid preserve, I moved to Oxford, England, with my copy of Paula Wolfert’s Food of Morocco. One Friday, I bought a kilo of lamb shoulder and braised it with almonds and raisins, Tiznit-style, and I spent the next day shitting out my stomach lining. When my nausea and cramping improved, I diagnosed myself with food poisoning and went to bed dreaming of a proper English breakfast. By 4 AM, I woke up covered in hives, and my lips had swollen to Pamela Anderson proportions. I called the village doctor, who immediately dispatched an ambulance. After a tablet of an antihistamine (cetirizine), the hives disappeared. I suspected that I was allergic to almonds or mushrooms, or any number of other foods I had ingested. And so I carried on in a state of continuous low-grade terror that a mouthful of anything might be my last.

In January, I took an impromptu trip to Paris, a city stuffed with tree nuts and wild mushrooms. I ate veal head, six or seven almond croissants, raw oysters, clams, a handful of foraged blue foot mushrooms, and lamb heart, all washed down with cheap red wine. The morning of my scheduled departure, I woke up in the hostel, stumbled to the wash closet, and painted every available surface with a boiling slurry of half-digested baguette. Because of the volume and variety of the food that I had consumed, food poisoning seemed likely. I hiked to Gare du Nord, boarded Eurostar, connected at King’s Cross to Paddington, took First Great Western to Didcot Parkway (a mole on Britain’s beautiful ass), caught the 40-minute rail-replacement bus to Oxford (which was blasting Duran Duran and 80s pop music louder than my diabolical burps), and managed the walk back to my flat before I vomited. I woke at 4 AM with hives, surprised because, in the months between episodes, I had eaten almonds and mushrooms without problems. An American allergist hypothesized long-distance that I had an allergy to alpha-gal. It would explain the delayed reaction—the allergy takes three to six hours to begin—and the months without symptoms. For unknown reasons, the allergy depends on the type and cut of meat, portion size, and processing. Beef, pork, lamb, deer, and mice can trigger the allergy. In my case, I reacted most violently to lamb. 

While I could take this as a call to vegetarianism, I think I’m in a state of denial. Like detective stories, medical mysteries are exciting because they fulfill our need to figure it out and taste a blend of empathy and disgust. We feel compassion for the patients, even imagine the horrors of their suffering, but seek to distance ourselves. It could never happen to us. But when it does happen to you, the pleasure of the puzzle is connected to fear.

Yet I keep playing Russian roulette, knowing that one day I may end up cold and blue, eyes glazed open to the dark abyss. Pump my stomach and look for deer sausage, squirrel, and the remains of a nice prime rib still slathered in horseradish cream. In part, I keep eating meat because the danger has heightened the pleasure factor, like bareback sex, mainlining heroin, base jumping, or motorcycling sans helmet. In part, I eat meat to prove to myself that I am normal. But mostly, it is my love for my job and my passion for food that drives me toward death.

Follow Jason Bell on Twitter.

Illustration via Flickr user DonkeyHotey

Prisons are terrible, torturous places where people—who are usually poor and disproportionately of color—are subjected daily to crimes more horrific than the ones that probably sent them there. The vast majority of individuals behind bars are there for nonviolent drug and property offenses. Now, which is worse, do you think: Stealing a late-90s Honda or putting someone in a cage for years where we know they will be physically and emotionally abused? We ask whether criminals can be reformed, when we think of them as people at all, but maybe we should stop to consider whether the idea of prisons and jails can be rehabilitated in the wake of all the injustice they have wrought.

Perhaps the evils of incarceration outweigh the good. Maybe the goal shouldn’t be reform, as welcome as that may be, but something more radical: release.

That’s sort of what a federal court wants California to do. In 2009, it was ordered to improve conditions at its overcrowded prisons by freeing tens of thousands of inmates. The court didn’t buy California’s claim that it could improve conditions any other way, because the state had claimed that before and failed to deliver. The situation had gotten so bad that every week a prisoner was dying a preventable death because he or she didn’t have adequate health care; hundreds of mentally ill inmates continue to be stashed away in mind-destroying solitary confinement for no reason other than that they are mentally ill and authorities don’t know where else to put them.

We’re still waiting for California to comply with the court order—Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, would rather send inmates to private prisons than release nonviolent offenders—but the idea that the only way to address the evil of prison is by putting fewer people in prison has been circulating for a while.

Activist Isaac Ontiveros is the communications director for Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization that seeks to stop mass incarceration by ending the system’s reliance on prisons altogether and by devising alternative, community-based methods of resolving conflict and delivering justice. He is a prison abolitionist who likens his organization’s work to the fight against another one of America’s peculiar institutions (incidentally, more black people are in American prisons than ever worked on American plantations).

I asked Isaac to explain himself, and he was kind enough to do so.

VICE: What does it mean to be a “prison abolitionist”?
Isaac Ontiveros: What we mean is that we want to end the whole system of mutually reinforcing relationships between surveillance, policing, the courts, and imprisonment that fuel, maintain, and expand social and economic inequity and institutional racism. So, not just prisons.

By “abolition,” we mean that we are interested in doing away with the system rather than finding ways to make it work better or for it to be kinder and gentler. We don’t see the prison-industrial complex as broken; we see it working very, very well at surveilling, policing, imprisoning, and killing exactly who it targets. As abolitionists, we work to diminish the scope and power of the prison-industrial complex while simultaneously increasing the ability of those communities targeted by it to be stronger, healthier, and more self-determined.

A sketch of Richard Mentor Johnson, the ninth vice president of the US, freeing a man from debtors' prison. Johnson was a 19th-century advocate of ending the practice of locking up people who couldn't pay their debts. Image via Wikimedia Commons

Why do you think imprisonment came to be the dominant means of delivering “justice” in America?
The US government, along with state and local governments, has always been involved one way or another in enforcing racial inequities—whether through social codes, laws and statutes, policing policies and practices, encouragement of vigilante violence, or outright domestic warfare against certain segments of the population. And poor people of color have borne the brunt of this violence—and, importantly, they’ve also been at the forefront in fighting back.

Think about the incredible political repression that goes on in this country; think about the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), unleashed against organizations like the Black Panther Party. Think of the massive cuts to social and health services, massive job loss, attacks on organized labor, and de facto permanent unemployment. Think of the war on drugs, the war on gangs, the war on terror. Think of the thousands of new offenses added to the criminal codes—the equivalent of one federal offense a week between 2000 and 2007. Think of the positively virulent anti-black racism that goes along with this. Think of the militarization of the US-Mexican border and immigrant detention. Think about even small towns having a SWAT team and zero-tolerance policing and of the largest prison-building project in world history in the state of California. Think about the disenfranchisement and dispossession of formerly imprisoned people. Think of the absolute pervasiveness of surveillance as well as media images that perpetuate some of the basest and most racist stereotypes imaginable of who is a criminal, or an undesirable, or a terrorist. And now think of the instability created by such violence and the need to control that instability—and the need to keep people from fighting back.

The US doesn’t actually imprison all that many violent people. Most of those behind bars committed nonviolent drug or property offenses. But what about the violent ones? Aren’t we better off having murderers and rapists off of the streets?
Well, I think an interesting part of that question is that even as the US has managed to lock up more people than any other country in the world, and has built probably the most massive and repressive policing, legal, and imprisonment system in history, we still tend to be pretty terrified in this country. This is not to say that violence—including sexual violence and murder—isn’t a real thing or a real fear. But I think in order to build up any hope of moving beyond the bleak situation we are in… we have to ask a few tough questions, and we have to change quite a few things. How do we relate to violence in our communities vis-à-vis the terrible violence that is wrought by the US government on a global scale, or by the prison-industrial complex domestically on a daily basis? How do we understand violence in relationship to the devastation caused by racism and economic inequity? How do we relate to sexual violence when we are inundated with horrendously misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic images? Our fears might be real, but our fears are also being produced and exploited. And then, of course, how do we think of anything else but prisons and police when we’ve be indoctrinated with this idea that all problems are solved by locking people up?

At the same time, violence is a very real concern, especially in the communities that are most impacted by the prison-industrial complex. I think we are better off if we can develop sustainable and transformative ways to confront, address, and intervene in situations of harm and violence. And the thing is, for the most part, especially in marginalized communities, people are already working to resolve conflict and address harm without using police or imprisonment all the time. And they are doing it around some egregious forms of harm, including murder and sexual violence. And sometimes some things work better than others. As an abolitionist, I am always interested in figuring out ways to address harm and violence that don’t rely on using the police.

A decommissioned jail in Stockton, Utah, that is now a historical site. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Sure, America may not be as violent as popularly imagined, but there is still a lot of violence in this country. What would a prison abolitionist do if they found out his next-door neighbor was a serial killer or rapist? In the absence of viable alternatives, I think I might call the cops. Is that wrong? Would it be better if I took justice into my own hands?
Rather than saying, “Is it wrong to call the cops?” I want us to ask, “Is there anything we can do besides call the cops?” I think the more we can ask ourselves that question, and ask it among our friends, families, coworkers, neighbors, organizations, etc., and try to ask it and answer it as imaginatively as possible before things escalate, the more we will be able to respond swiftly and thoughtfully during crises.

If you mean, “What could I do if an act of violence was being carried out in front of me?” I would do everything in my power to stop it—and if I were able, this would include drawing in, as quickly and as thoughtfully as possible, the help and support of others. And then, yes, as far as all the lessons we’ve been taught about what to do next, we are in a no-person’s land. But the fact of the matter is, people deal with these situations all the time—sometimes they use violence, sometimes they don’t; sometimes the person who does harm is banished from the family or the community, and sometimes they are drawn closer. I heard a story of an indigenous community where one person murdered another person. There was this long process by which it was agreed that the person who did the murder would essentially replace the person he killed as far as his social and economic responsibilities. Gacaca courts in Rwanda and conferencing circles among indigenous communities in Canada also teach us very useful lessons about the complex ways survivors of very serious violence have attempted to hold those who’ve done harm accountable.

I would challenge the notion that there is a one-size-fits-all solution to these types of situations. That’s the response that the prison-industrial complex has offered us, and that hasn’t worked—except to exacerbate the social instability that fuels the violence we see in our communities. I live in a neighborhood where people are killed from time to time, but it doesn’t help me to understand the person doing the killing to think of them as some monster or serial killer out of a movie. I hope my anger or fear or frustration about this type of violence would lead me to want to fight to change the context in which it occurs, so that it happens less and less in the first place.

Abolishing prisons seems like a pretty distant goal. What then is a prison abolitionist to do in the meantime?
Like any social change, it will take time and is something that requires taking decisive and strategic steps toward the world we want to see. We have a broad vision of a world without prisons, police, surveillance, and the inequities they defend, and as we takes steps toward that world, we understand better what the path forward is going to look like.

In Los Angeles, we work with other organizations and community members to fight back the expansion of the LA County Jail, which is the largest jail system in the world. We are working to do the same in San Francisco County. In New Orleans, we were able to win a cap on the number of people that can be locked up in the notorious Orleans Parish Prison—no small feat, given that Louisiana has the highest imprisonment rate in the US—so now the challenge is to get people out.

In Oakland, we won a fight against the racist policing policy known as a civil gang injunction, which under threat of arrest and imprisonment restricts the freedom of movement and association of individuals profiled as gang members—in the US, this has never been used against a white person—and now we are working in neighborhoods to develop ways people can take care of one another without using the police. In California as a whole we’ve been successful in winning massive cuts to the prison budget. We’ve also worked with prisoners and their loved ones and advocates to support three massive prison hunger strikes in protest of the state’s use of solitary confinement. We run a mail program and publish a newspaper that goes to thousands of prisoners throughout the US, aimed at working to develop our capacity as activists inside and outside prisons. All of our members are volunteers, and we do most of our work in coalition with the idea that we are think it is necessary to build a movement to both dismantle what keeps us down and to build up the world we believe is possible. At every turn, we try to put forward a vision of what we are for as strongly as we fight what we are against.

Working to improve the conditions faced by those behind bars seems like a good thing, but is there a fear it could make the current system more sustainable, injecting life into an unjust system?
This is a crucial challenge that doesn’t have an easy answer. The system we are up against is not fixed, and those who work as its strategists and technicians aren’t stupid—so it grows, changes, and adapts, and that includes accommodating and adjusting to reforms. Our organizing philosophy cautions us to try to not build up something that we have to knock down later. This is not easy, but is also part of any sustainable process of change. For example, ending solitary confinement doesn’t necessarily mean anyone gets to come home, but it does neutralize one of the main tools prison systems use to inhibit prisoner social and political organization. So organizing against that hopefully increases the capacity of imprisoned people (and those in the communities from which they come) to fight for further gains that might lead to more freedom.

Charles Davis is a writer and producer in Los Angeles. His work has been published by outlets including Al Jazeera, the New Inquiry, and Salon.

The biggest hindrance to American art is the inability to see anything outside our own walls. We’re proud of being a “melting pot,” but when it comes to culture not inherently American (Wendy’s, baseball, crime drama, pop music, fences), it’s hard to convince us that we should care. In literature, as opposed to other media, introducing work to a US audience requires translation, an undertaking that brings with it a bag of problems most profit-oriented American publishers won’t approach unless it’s a ready-made bonanza, like the books of Roberto Bolaño. Imagine, then, the continuum of masterworks we’re missing out on from every language we don’t speak.

In the introduction to Kim Hyesoon’s All The Garbage of the World, Unite!, translator Don Mee Choi recounts a great example of the type of problem translated works often run into. An American literary journal, after showing interest in one of Choi’s Korean-to-English translations of a Hyesoon poem, requested that the word “hole” be replaced with something else, on the grounds that “hole has negative connotations in our culture.” Choi had used the word in reminding her reader that, during the Korean War, 250,000 pounds of napalm were dropped by the American military each day, turning her country into a mass of holes where once there had been houses, mountains, rice fields. She told the magazine she “didn’t have time to think about it.”

Hyesoon is no stranger to stodgy literary types. At the time she began writing, classical forms in the hands of aristocratic men had long dominated Korean poetry. “I often felt as if my tongue were paralyzed,” Hyesoon has said. “For me the vast open field of the unknown and the prison existed simultaneously.” Over time, poetry in her country has slowly opened up with the rise of free verse, feminism, and activism.

Reading Hyesoon’s most recent translated work, Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream, one finds a swarming body of imagination and ideas, which, given the book's social context, could hardly be more rebellious. Any traditional mythos of “the woman” has been completely shattered into a body teeming with imagery that mutates from line to line, melding everyday roles such as mother and teacher into phantasmagoric collages of rats wearing black bras, a house with hands buried in chocolate cake, aspirin hatching into more aspirin. The limits of creativity here are so wide that very quickly we find we’ve fallen through the holes old wars blew open, into something like the endless dreams of millions dead.

Two Poems from Hyesoon’s Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream

"Blood Blooms"

It runs to avoid a streak of rain that follows like the needle of a sewing machine then

turns at the corner and pulls out red bricks from its body and builds a wall then

runs off with even more zeal when the street lamps come on prick-prick as they chase
after it    

listens carefully to the anxious cicadas slicing up the road then

when the windows of the building in the distance are lit up as I get cramps in my ankle

watches the red nostrils of a white cat spilling blood beneath the wall then

coagulates on the whitest white wall that’s like a bolt of cotton unrolled

when the needle enters the body and exits pulling out a tiny vein

the blood vessel swells then spurts unable to hold back one blossom two blossoms then

the thorns poke through every sweat pore ah it’s prickly ah it's prickly then

a tiny bird gets its head chomped by the white cat’s mouth
a tiny red heart in my hand flutters then says
The road ahead miles long is a field of roses
I got caught after running away, shedding a blood-filled stem
I’ve finally bloomed after a hundred years a thousand years
yet the red silk that I step on with a pair of white socks is a puddle of blood
I’m endlessly dizzy after a lifetime of transfusions and so
I wither around the corner
Spurting up red every single day makes me turn blue

—the roses were blooming
but they had spilt blood then left  

"All the Rats of the World, Unite!"

As I run towards the school gate, wet from the rain, I hear footsteps behind me tap tap tap
tap

Dearteacherdearteacherhowareyou?inmydreamlastnightItookaplanefromthe
cloudtothemoonthentotheratnation

The dark wet metallic mirror shatters beneath my feet and a pack of rats climbs all over
me

My wrist that myfathermymothermyteacher used to pull, the wrists cling on

and braid their long hair, the pack of rats climb up my pants like barbarians drenched in rain

Even while I’m running in rain a pair of rats mate. My male rat and my female rat copulate about twenty times a day, and if capable the male mates with other female rats. The female’s gestation period is 21 days. 8 or 10 rats are born from a single belly. Give birth then get pregnant then give birth then get pregnant. They give birth twelve times a year. Baby rats give birth to more baby rats, then give birth again, so then I’m able to give birth to myself 15000 times per year.

Black words are written on a white face, K H S scrawled faintly with a finger, my name
in black, the consonants and vowels splashed onto my face by a tail dipped in ink

The speeding bus splatters memories, a schoolgirl in a wet summer uniform lies down in
the bus and weeps. The rat hidden inside her skirt pregnant with a litter of ten, twenty rats
cries like a crazy cat

The smelly pigtails drenched in rain, the raging barbarians
I have enough holes in my body to sink the sky

Tails are attached to countless rain-splattering shoes 
The filthy garden beneath the black asphalt fills up with water

Hey kids, don’t gnaw on the wires, turn off the lights in the classroom

When I leave the basementsflocktogether. Storagesflocktogether. Shedsflocktogether. Womenintheshedswiththeirskirtsliftedflocktogether. Sewersflocktogether. Septictanksflocktogether. Garbagebinsflocktogether. Horsestablesflocktogether. Prisonsflocktogether. Disappearedwomenflocktogether. Lungs fly off like rats, intestines slip out like rats, tongues elongate like rats, chins fall out like rats, ears buzz like rats, muscles crumble like a pack of rats. Knees give out like rats and feet run off like rats.

A horde of rats runs spitting out blood after being wacked by a broom woven with streaks
of rain

I feel like crying so don’t look at me! I’m a teacher but inside why am I always a
pigtailed schoolgirl?

A rat as big as a house lifts and ignites a heart as small as an infant’s fingernail and runs
off

Buy Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream and other books that you should have on your shelf at actionbooks.org.

Follow Blake Butler on Twitter

Screencap via CNN on YouTube.

Last month in a piece about third-hand smoke being potentially deadly, I said banning e-cigarettes "would be a fucking stupid thing to do." Well the Los Angeles City Council is officially fucking stupid.

Like five states and the District of Columbia before it, Los Angeles has passed an ordiance banning the use of e-cigarettes anywhere you can't smoke regular cigarettes. The law just adds "oh, and also e-cigarettes" to existing bans on smoking in public. In Los Angeles, that means obvious places like your desk at work and in Starbucks, but also outdoor dining sections of restaurants, and at city-sponsored farmer's markets.

The ordinance is the handiwork of Councilman Mitch O'Farrell, whose rationale, according to David Zahniser and Marisa Gerber of the LA Times, was that he breathed a lot of secondhand smoke back when he was a waiter, so to hell with the evidence that e-cigarette vapor doesn't harm bystanders. Council President Herb Wesson was a big backer of O'Farrell's efforts, and told the Times, “I’m telling you, the high percentage of kids that smoke, smoke because it’s cool. And when you’re 15 you want to be cool,” and “I will not support anything—anything—that might attract one new smoker.” Mr. Wesson did not provide the testimony of any 15-year-olds who agreed that sucking fog out of a severed robot penis looks "cool."

Councilman Joe Buscaino attempted to exempt bars and other places where kids are not allowed. He said, "I don’t think they should be regulated exactly the same way. And I’ve heard from so many people, including my cousin Anthony, that they’ve stopped smoking from the help of e-cigarettes." In the end, he still voted for the ordinance anyway, and his exemption failed. In fact, the ordinance passed unanimously.

Screencap of Jeff Stier via YouTube user SunnyDayAmerica.

Jeff Stier, a lobbyist who made a name for himself opposing the iron regulatory fist of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York (where e-cigarette regulations already exist) showed up to voice his opposition to the ordinance. He spun a yarn about a hypothetical ex-smoker having a nicotine fit in a bar, forced out into the cold with the old school plant-and-paper smokers, who tempt him or her back into their diabolical fold. 

Elected officials like the Los Angeles City Council don't seem to hear the message about e-cigarettes helping people quit, despite people like former American Lung Association CEO Charles D. Connor coming out in favor of their use as a smoking cessation tool. They're doing a cost-benefit analysis in their heads. Voting no on this ordinance, and then having it turn out that e-cigarettes turn your lungs into raspberry jam would make them look horrible later, so they're taking a ban-first-and-ask-questions-later approach. As councilwoman Nury Martinez put it, "if this device turns out to be safe, then we can always undo the ordinance. But if this device proves not to be safe, we cannot undo the harm this will create on the public health.”

In perhaps an effort to upstage the LA City Council, Long Beach, the second biggest city in Los Angeles County, passed an even stricter ban on e-cigarettes Tuesday night. 

Ordinarily, new technologies don't have to be proven safe. They're just allowed until someone proves they're harmful. This hasn't been the case for e-cigs, despite their other major ingredient besides nicotine, propylene glycol, is the same stuff found in your garden variety smoke machine. If one can go to a concert and inhale this stuff with impunity, why not be able to vape too?

The precedent for this carcinogenic-until-proven-innocent doctrine is likely from the World Health Organization's official press release on the subject from last year. They say consumers should wait for word from a national regulatory body to find them safe and effective. The release came about a month after the UK's National Health Service concluded that e-cigarettes should be dispensed and regulated as medication for quitting smoking.

Last fall the FDA published a proposed rule to regulate e-cigarettes that is currently being reviewed by the White House Office of Budget and Management. The public has been waiting a few weeks now for the two organizations to release a proposal for regulation, but no one knows quite when it will happen or why they're dragging their feet. E-cigarettes being declared utterly harmless by the FDA isn't likely. You're sucking chemical gas into one of your body's air holes. We can all be adults though, and see that even if e-cigarettes aren't as medically unimpeachable as a handful of blueberries, vapor is still probably a hundred times better than breathing grandpa's Pall Malls. And for that we should let the office neckbeards use them while they code our websites.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

This story is from VICE News, our new news website. See more and sign up now at vicenews.com.

Even before the Crimean parliament voted unanimously today to ask Moscow for permission to become a part of Russia, Russian forces had all but completed the process of establishing a new reality on the ground in Crimea—that the region simply isn’t under the control of the central Ukrainian government in Kiev anymore. And so, barring a major military response by the Ukrainian Army or a massive Russian excursion into Eastern Ukraine, it looks like Putin’s endgame is about to unfold.

Many analysts have made mention of the Russian naval base at Sevastopol and how, as Russia’s main warm-water naval installation, it is of key importance to Russia. Negotiations with Ukraine over Russia's continuing operation of the base have gotten tense in the past, although a 2010 agreement gave Russia a lease until 2042.

Just to be safe, however, Russia has been quietly building a potential replacement at Novorossiysk, a commercial port a couple hundred miles east that has the notable distinction of actually being in Russia. It could house the Black Sea Fleet if Russia were to lose Sevastopol, and further expansion of naval facilities there could reduce or even eliminate Russian dependence on Crimea.

If the Russian Navy stays in Sevastopol, and Crimea stays in Ukraine, Ukraine would almost certainly be blocked from joining NATO. Ukraine has been trying to join for years to protect itself from… well, from this. But a country can’t join NATO if it has a foreign military base on its soil. So, if Russia stays in Sevastopol and Crimea stays in Ukraine, it means Ukraine can’t join NATO. This is a positive for Russia, because it makes it easier to lean on Ukraine in the future, especially if Kiev gets a little too buddy-buddy with Europe.

A Crimean vote on whether or not to join Russia is now scheduled for March 16. If Crimeans vote in favor of it, there’s a chance the region could become a “frozen territory,” typically the result of a cease-fire announcement during hostilities, which freezes boundaries to match areas of military control. Frozen countries are usually considered by much of the world to be under military occupation, and few such zones ever receive formal diplomatic recognition as independent states. This is what happened in the aftermath of the 2008 Russia-Georgia War, which gave birth to the Republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Those zones are recognized as countries by Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Nauru, Tuvalu, and no one else—aside, of course, from other frozen states.

The frozen-state scenario would put the West in a delicate position. If the West were to recognize Crimean independence, it would open the gates for a closer Ukraine-NATO relationship, thanks to Sevastopol no longer being an issue. But it would do so at the risk of ticking off Ukrainians by legitimizing Crimea’s secession. If the West were to make a stand and refuse to recognize what will inevitably be billed as Crimea's “legitimate democratic vote of determination” for independence, it would do so at the risk of putting a legal barrier between itself and Ukraine, thanks to Sevastopol still being an issue.

In addition, if the West recognizes Crimea, it creates a more complex situation regarding diplomatic recognition of all the other frozen territories that have been hatched out of Russian military intervention: Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Nagorno-Karabakh. This could serve to help usher in a new 21st Century form of conflict, in which moving a border via invasion is highly discouraged, but chipping off a chunk of a country in the name of self-determination is fairly acceptable. That debate will be very relevant as the international community decides how to move forward with ethnic separatists following the creation of new countries like East Timor and South Sudan.

When it comes down to it, the few diplomatic carrots that the West is willing to offer or withhold from Russia have only as much value as Putin is willing to assign them. His ability to not give a shit exceeds the West's capacity to do anything he gives a shit about. The fact is that Russia cares a lot more about Crimea than anybody else does—except for Ukraine.

And that's not to mention the two cards Putin has yet to play. The first: He could cripple the already fragile European economy. Europe is heavily dependent on Russian gas and oil to keep the lights on, and Putin can cut it off—about 40 percent of Europe’s oil and gas supply—with a phone call. The global economic consequences from that would be ugly.

The second: Efforts to get Bashar Assad to come to heel and to convince Iran to ditch its nuclear-weapons program are basically doomed without Putin’s help (though, to be fair, the prospects for both of these negotiations are pretty grim anyway). Without any Russian support, the US would probably have to chalk both efforts up as losses.

And so the question becomes whether the West cares more about a worldwide economic downturn, Syrian chemical weapons, and Iranian nukes—or about an historically prickly peninsula in the Black Sea full of people who, however misguidedly, sound like they'd rather be Russians anyway.

Many in the West have been making some grievous miscalculations in framing these events. Wonk chatter has been about preventing further escalation, reducing tensions, and providing an “off-ramp” allowing Putin to back down. Some talking heads have tried to stuff these events into a traditional nation-vs.-nation, Cold War mold. Others have tried to attribute the ineffectiveness of the Western response to the fact that Putin is insane. These approaches do little but make Westerners feel better about themselves.

The reality is that Crimea is all but a done deal. Putin saw something he wanted and an opportunity to take it. So he sent in troops and set about establishing that new reality on the ground. The bulk of negotiations in the coming days and weeks will involve Western officials trying to prove that Russia hasn’t gotten the better of them—the “compromise” reached will be almost exactly what Putin wanted all along, in the guise of a diplomatic victory preventing an armed conflict—so they can try to preserve Western credibility. They know they'll need it for the next crisis that comes along.

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Of the various group masturbation parties 30-year-old nudist Kyle Rudd has attended over the years, the biggest one drew a dozen-odd men, predominantly over 50. He was the third to arrive that night, and when he walked inside, the host and another guy were already naked. As the remainder of the guests sauntered in, conversation centered on things like work, how the week had been, and the bodies and penises on display. Rudd did most of his masturbating—a blend of group and solo—from the vantage point of the organizer’s couch and managed to ejaculate on himself three or four times in six hours. In the breaks between these bouts of industry, Rudd, a Melbourne-based arts-sector employee, spent his time socializing, drinking beer, and eating pizza.

While some men might prefer to spend their weekends watching the game or relaxing with the family, Rudd says he had a great time.

“I find genitals to be very erotic—ten out of ten,” he says. “For me, I think being exposed and on display is very erotic. It’s knowing that others are admiring your genitals as they mutually get off on it.”

For anybody entertaining the idea of attending a group masturbation party, the grassroots DIY scene is a fertile field of opportunity, according to Rudd.

“My participation is always privately organized groups through masturbation networking sites. They are pretty common. There’s definitely one big one every weekend that I could go to, and smaller groups. Even one-on-one ones are happening every day that I’m aware of.

“And we have online wanking groups too, where guys wank on group cam. I do this a few days a week.”

While a lot of these parties are one-off DIY affairs informally staged in homes, long-standing jerking institution Melbourne Wankers lays claim to being Australia’s only formally organized group masturbating “club” (it used to keep a database of members, but these days anybody can rock up), according to organizer Peter Benn. The club, known to play host to up to 100 men furiously masturbating at once, stages its parties at a sauna on the second and fourth Monday of every month. For the $20 admission fee, participants have access to a bar, towels, and lockers, and the lubricant of choice, grape-seed oil, is freely available in squeeze-pack form.

A military tarp and sheets blanket the floor of the main room, where dozens of men will unabashedly wax their dolphins together. These sheets go into an industrial washing machine to help simplify the cleanup job that follows the three-hour-long events.

"Having 30 guys in the room all at once is a pretty good number," Benn says, sitting cross-legged on an armchair in his bookish inner-city living room. “You generally get small groups of two guys, three guys, or four guys. You won’t get more than four or five, but as you play you’ll move from little group to little group. It’s much more chatty. Conversation is really important. The lights are up, the music is soft, and there’s a lot of oil on bodies, so it’s a very touchy-feely event. It’s a more intimate relationship between the men... It’s the feeling of being in a group and looking at other guys and talking to other guys, and it works because it’s all in the one room. Therefore you’re hearing everything, you’re seeing everything, and everybody’s a part of it.”

Group masturbation clubs emerged in the 1980s, when public fear of AIDS was in overdrive. They were conceived as environments where men could meet up to manually gratify one another without running the risks associated with penetrative sex. Several clubs such as the New York Jacks and San Francisco Jacks continue to thrive internationally (kindred clubs operate everywhere from France to Finland to Mexico) but getting a club off the ground and building traction is no easy feat.

Benn says a couple of men used to run a club out of their Canberra, Australia farmhouse every Thursday night, but the party ended when they sold the property a couple of years back. Another Sydney club folded after six months because of low numbers, and other attempts to start under-30s parties have failed dismally.

Yet Melbourne Wankers continues to pull men, so to speak.

“At a meeting the other night, there were three guys from Perth. It’s amazing how they find you; it’s just word of mouth,” says Benn.

Benn estimates two thirds of the participants at Melbourne Wankers are married. His book, The Versatile Husband, a so-called practical guide for men in heterosexual relationships who are interested in sex with other men, explores how these men make the decision to have sex with other men.

“Men get isolated and don’t have touch in their lives. Touch is banned by everybody, and these men get more and more isolated in their marriage.

“They lose that intimacy that you have at the start of your marriage where you can’t keep your hands off each other. Ten years on, where has it gone?”

Many of the men identify as heterosexual, which makes perfect sense to sexologist Dr. Carol Queen, an advocate for the destigmatization of masturbation.

“One explanation would be that this is a guy who could also identify as bisexual but doesn't, maybe because he only has relationships with women, or maybe because he's never actually done sexual stuff with a cock but just likes to see them.

“The other way I can see it working is that he likes his own cock, and it's a sort of positive identification/fellow-feeling he experiences being around other cocks.”

In the book Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to the Extremes of Sexuality, Martha Cornog, one of the authors in the collection, highlights that group masturbation clubs have historically emphasized the importance of pleasure, fellowship, and the acceptance of human diversity. Men come to express exhibitionistic and voyeuristic tendencies, to experience the religious-like synergistic energy that evolves out of the group sex experience, and to enjoy camaraderie.

But public awareness of the scene is low. Rudd says only a couple of his friends know about his involvement with group masturbation parties. “Normal day-to-day (people) at work or with families do not know about this stuff," he says. "I think the general consensus would be negative or they would find it shocking.”

Benn concurs.

“It’s a subject matter that confronts you when you find out about it. People think, Fuck, that’s not for me. I’m not going down there. It’s so not for so many people.”

But the scene’s taboo status bodes well for its participants, adds Benn. “Because it’s so odd and unusual, it drifts along quietly in its own way, and that’s exactly what the married man and groups want.”
 

Been speaking to ordinary Russians about the situation in Ukraine. We are united in confusion http://t.co/Oc8n145SJo pic.twitter.com/MYNt7JUEda

— Gavin Haynes (@gavhaynes) March 6, 2014

In case you hadn’t noticed yet, the Russians are going to kill us all. If you are reading this, it probably means they haven’t killed us yet, but make no mistake—since Monday we have been teetering on the brink of World War III. One gun-cleaning error at a military base in Sevastopol, and the whole house of cards could come tumbling down by the weekend: the Russian flag fluttering not for the first time over the Reichstag, the "Song of the Volga Boatmen" blasting from Tannoys at Milan Central Station, war, apocalypse, death, and bad times.

Unfortunately, Vlad Putin is no longer in touch with reality. But even the most absolute of monarchs is still to some degree a servant of the people. Surely, if we could just get through to ordinary Russians, and convince them of the rightness of getting the hell out of Ukraine and not killing everyone, then they’d stop him, take to the streets, and all us Western liberals would be saved?

Click to enlarge

So, while David Cameron was busy serious-facing himself to Twitter ridicule, and the international community was failing to persuade a poxy Russian envoy to talk to Ukraine's new, Western-approved president, a translator and I spent an afternoon mashing our fists against the phone keypad, plugging unknown Russian phone numbers into our switchboard, in an attempt to get a message of peace through to the other side.

We wanted dialogue, peace, a collective consciousness of our common humanity. We got about 20 phones slammed down instantly, another ten who hung up at exactly the point in any conversation with an "unknown number" where you suspect someone might be about to try to sell you car insurance, and three or so who didn’t seem to be able to operate a mobile phone despite possessing one. In between those, we got through to a few Russians who were at least prepared to listen to our pleas, even if they had far more difficulty giving a flying fuck.

The first was a restaurant in the southeast of Moscow: Art Kafe. Seemed nice. A blini and chai kinda place. Judging by Street View, I imagined that it might make a nice Central Perk in a sitcom about hip Russian twenty-somethings.

Translations by Ksenia Vashchenko

Me: Hello. Am I talking with a real Russian?
Translator: Я говорю с реальным русском языке?
Real Russian Man: Da.
Translator: Yes.

Me: You’re sure of that?
Translator: Вы уверены?
Real Russian: Da.
Translator: Yes.

Me: Great. I bring a message of peace from the West.
Translator: Я принести послание мира из земли Тони Блэра.
Real Russian: Allo?

Me: We are from the West.
Translator: [“We are from the West. We are from a magazine. We would like to talk about the crisis in Ukraine?”]
Phone: [Click]

Clearly, this was going to be more difficult than we’d anticipated. What was with these Russians? The Russian people seemed, well, not exactly nice, but they had vocal cords, and that was a good start. So we dialed a library in St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg is hip. Librarians are soft, pudgy people with tote bags who have a lot of time on their hands to talk to randoms. Right?

Me: Hello. Sorry to trouble you. We are from a magazine, talking to people about Crimea…
Real Russian woman: Da.
Translator: Yes?

Me: So Crimea... We are wondering when Russians are going to get out of Ukraine. Because, to be frank, we were rather hoping they’d be gone by now…
Translator: She says she cannot speak on behalf of anyone. It is a question that gives her many thoughts, but she is at work now.

Me: Well perhaps you could possibly tell all the Russians that you know that you spoke to a man from the West, and despite all the propaganda, we are not all twisted heartless monsters.
Phone: [Click]

We tried a few random mobiles by jiggling the digits of real Russian numbers that our translator had pulled off her phone.

Photo by Michał Huniewicz

Me: Zdtravstvuytye.
Real Russian: Allo?
Translator: [“We are from a magazine. We would like to talk about the conflict in Ukraine?”]

Me: Hello. I bring a message of peace from our land. We would like to know what real Russians feel about Crimea.
Translator: She says she doesn’t know what’s going on in Ukraine.

Me: Doesn’t she? It’s very, very bad. I mean, it’s appalling. Which is why we would like ordinary Russians, if possible, to try to prevent World War III?
Translator: She says she doesn’t know anything about this.

Me: Do you think you could ask Mr. Putin to get his troops out of Ukraine?
Translator: She doesn’t understand the question.

Me: Perhaps you could—
Phone: [Click]

So it went. Russian after Russian refusing our olive branch, ignoring the hand of friendship with a brusque “nyet,” or a more fearful excuse about being "at work," or "in a hurry." Vlad had knobbled them. No doubt. We had begun to despair at the fecklessness of the common people. It was time to go all the way to the top. In most countries, this would mean the presidency. In Russia, however, their oligarchical model of government means that the tippermost-of-the-toppermost is actually the biggest oil company. Gazprom press office it was, then:

Me: Hello. Do you speak English?
Gazprom press officer: Yes.

Me: Amazing. Could you please tell us about Russia’s plans in Ukraine?
Gazprom press officer: Sorry, can you introduce yourself please?

Me: Yes. We’re calling from VICE magazine. We’re trying to get a Russian perspective on Ukraine and whether we’re all going to die.
Gazprom press officer: All news was out yesterday. For today we have no updates.

Me: Do you think Ed Miliband’s position on Ukraine is justified?
Gazprom press officer: Sir, I am not an official spokesman. I am only working in the press office.

Me: Can you put me on to a spokesman, then?
Gazprom press officer: Can you speak loudly in the tube? Because I cannot hear you.

Me: Sorry, in "the tube"?
Gazprom press officer: Because it’s noisy here and I cannot hear you.

Me: Is this better?
Gazprom press officer: I think so.

Me: OK. Right. So what about David Cameron? Do you think Russian people like him? Could they give him a chance, maybe? He has very soft skin.
Gazprom press officer: I’m sorry, but we can only talk about the situation with gas in Ukraine. Other information we don’t give out. We are not a political organization.

Me: OK. Well, is there going to be more gas in Ukraine tomorrow or less gas?
Gazprom press officer: I’m sorry, you didn’t ask your question about supplying gas. Otherwise not at all.

Me: But if there’s World War III, there’ll definitely be less gas.
Gazprom press officer: Well, you see, we don’t comment the situation also. We comment only about amount of gas. All your information you can find to news agencies.

Me: Or maybe… more?
Gazprom press officer: You are asking me prohibited questions. Thank you for your calling, goodbye.

Maybe Russia’s largest bank, the only slightly embarrassingly named Sberbank, would be able to offer us a firmer fix on whether Muscovite savers were even now withdrawing their last roubles as Putin set the seal on orders for his crack regiments to cross the border of a sovereign country and rain unholy fire down upon it in "self-defense," much like he already had in South Ossetia, etc, etc.

Me: Zdtravstvuytye. We’re just calling to check with Russian citizens about the situation in Ukraine. Does Sberbank have a line on that?
Translator: She asks if you have a concrete question.

Me: Yes. Right. Are you preparing for World War III down there?
Translator: She can’t express an opinion on that, because they only deal with questions on email.

Me: Perhaps you will be able to tell us whether the tyrant Putin will be overthrown soon?
Translator: She says they only deal with questions on email, so you cannot ask her anything specific.

Me: Well, in that case, I would like to send a message of peace from the West to the people of Russia, saying, "Please don’t kill us." We have a lot to live for here. I know we gripe about our lives a lot of the time, but actually it’s really great here. I mean, I have an iPhone 5 and I only earn a moderate salary. That’s something to be grateful for. So we would like to not be killed, if that is OK?
Translator: She says, "Yes, thank you, goodbye."

Me: Do you have a reciprocal message of peace for me?
Translator: She says “Yes, of course. Thank you so much for your call, please find our email online and contact us. We will deal with your question.”

Me: That’s not quite what I—
Phone: [click]

It appeared that the culture gap was too broad for us to leap across. We might’ve gotten over the era when a simple pair of Levi’s would be enough to make any Russian sell you really high-quality no-messing sexual favors. But they still had a lot to learn about why the West is the awesomest place ever.

Last gasp… It was time to go for the doomsday weapon.

Ordinary Russian: Allo?

Me: GET OUT OF UKRAINE!
Phone: [click]

Sorry, guys. We tried. Pretty soon Vlad Putin will be laughing maniacally as he tumbles to earth astride a nuclear warhead. And it will all be the fault of the people who will only answer questions on email.

 Follow Gavin Haynes on Twitter.

All photos via the author.

On December 29th, 2013, Egypt’s military-backed government arrested a trio of Al Jazeera journalists, accusing them of operating a “terrorist media network."

Mohamed Fahmy, a Canadian, Peter Greste, an Australian, and Baher Mohamed, an Egyptian, were charged with collaborating with the Muslim Brotherhood to deliberately defame and discredit the Egyptian state. 

Affiliation or contact with the organization is now a crime, in spite of the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood’s political leader, the now ousted Mohamed Morsi, was elected Egypt’s president less than two years ago.

The Muslim Brotherhood “remains the single largest and best organized social and political force in Egypt,” wrote Peter Greste in a letter from Tora Prison. “How do you accurately and fairly report on Egypt’s ongoing political struggle without talking to everyone involved?” Greste asked.

In a move that was part of a global day of action, Al Jazeera’s Canada bureau organized a rally outside Toronto City Hall, Friday February 28th^, to call for the release of their comrades and send a message to the Canadian and Egyptian governments that “journalism is not a crime."

I packed my balaclava expecting a demonstration organized by a “terrorist media network” to be unruly, but the crowd consisted mostly of journalists trying to interview each other.

“They’ve put three of the better journalists in the world in jail just for being journalists,” said Daniel Lak.  Lak is Al Jazeera’s Canada correspondent, he’s previously worked with BBC Asia and Europe for 25 years and is insulted by the allegations against his colleagues. "Broadcasting false news? We don’t do that. Our colleagues in CNN, BBC, ABC, and CBC don’t do that."

Al Jazeera endured a lot of dangerous criticism while building its credibility as a global news source. In 2001 a U.S. missile hit Al Jazeera’s Afghanistan office in Kabul. In 2003 another US missile struck Al Jazeera’s Iraq office in Baghdad, killing one reporter and wounding another.  A leaked transcript of a 2004 meeting between George W. Bush and Tony Blair revealed Bush planned to bomb Al Jazeera International headquarters in Qatar."

“Particularly among conservatives in North America, including here in Canada, there’s an ignorance about what Al Jazeera stands for in the developing world," said Tony Burman, the former Director of Al Jazeera English, who now teaches journalism at Ryerson University. “The relative silence from the Canadian government has the potential of imperiling the security and safety of Mohamed Fahmy."

It's another epic international failure that we’ve come to expect from the Conservative Stephen Harper government. Canada has not joined the United Nations, US and Australian governments calling for the journalists’ release. 

The most recent example of the Canadian government dragging its diplomatic heels with Egypt was the arrest of John Greyson and Tarek Loubani in Cairo. Greyson and Loubani were freed after 51 days of detention. 

Margaret Wente’s column "Freed Canadians are radical grandstanders’ in the Globe and Mail labeled Greyson and Loubani “hardcore anti-Israel activists” who “should have known what they were getting into."   

What didn’t help was that Loubani, an emergency physician, had been treating bullet wounds of anti-government protestors in Cairo, while Greyson, a gay filmmaker, caught the action on camera.  Greyson and Loubani were travelling through Cairo on their way to deliver medical supplies to a hospital in Gaza.  Canada's reluctant support came following intense pressure from the public, boosted with a petition signed by celebrities, including Sarah Polley, Ben Affleck, Charlize Theron, and Robert De Niro.

CBC Radio's Jian Ghomeshi in the crowd.

In an e-mail to VICE in late January, Mohamed Fahmy’s brother Sherif wrote, "This case is prolonging for a reason none of us is aware of, but what we do know is that the more time this case takes, the more dangerous it gets.”

“It's not right. It's not fair. It's something that affects all journalists,” stated CBC news anchor Peter Mansbridge in a Canadian Journalists for Free Expression press release. Mansbridge was notably absent at the rally; he may have been busy getting paid to speak at an oil industry banquet, but who can say for sure?

“What we want to hear is a public statement from our Foreign Minister in Ottawa,” said Al Jazeera’s Jet Belgraver. “This could happen to any one of us, so I think its important we get together and we all raise our voice."

Mohammed Fahmy, who has reported for the New York Times and CNN had been with Al Jazeera for only three months when he got arrested.  Fahmy is being held in solitary confinement in a cell without sunlight but with plenty of insects.

Fahmy is facing 15 years in prison. His family wants him home much sooner.

Does Canada? 


@lifeortheatre

Photo via Flickr user Harsh Agrawal

Are you bored of monogamy? Do you just have an uncontrollable urge to have sex with someone other than the person you sleep next to every night? If so, I have some excellent news: A matchmaking service is offering husbands and wives seeking a fling the opportunity to shit all over their marriage vows in the most secretive and expensive way possible.

In fact, UK-based Infidelities—a "discreet one to one private client personal and bespoke introduction service for men and women who are in a committed relationship but seek an affair"—has been around since at least 2009, but David, the 70-year-old founder of Infidelities (who didn't want to disclose his real last name as he thought it might damage his other businesses), hadn't done any press about the site until I met with him recently in the lounge of the Ritz hotel in London.

When I arrived, David was taking a break between meeting clients, who he told me are generally pretty well-off. He mentioned that they're occasionally related to famous people and said that he once arranged an affair for the sister of a well-known author. “When she gave me her name, it was quite an unusual surname,” he said. “Later, I picked up a book from the library, and it had the same surname as the woman I’d met that morning.”

Besides that vague snippet, the rest of David’s consultations, understandably, are strictly confidential. He also refuses to discuss how much he charges, saying it’s a matter for him and his clients.

He would tell me about how he started this business, however. Having run mainstream dating services for the past 15 years—and corporate networking services before that—David took the next logical step and branched out into arranging affairs for married people about five years ago. “I thought, There’s a niche market here—why not develop it?” he told me. “It was kind of on a whim, really.”

David divides his time between East Anglia, where he lives, and meeting clients in fancy hotels in London. He told me that he enjoys walking, cycling, classical music, reading and cooking, and said he helps as many as 50 people a year have affairs. Understandably, he strongly rejects the idea that cheating is always bad for a relationship—he even got angry when I said the word cheating and forbade me from using it again.

“I never use the word cheating,” he said with disdain. “It’s just common currency. It’s a conspiracy of a certain middle-class, middle-England Protestantism. If you go to France, I’m sure they don’t call it cheating. It’s the wrong description; it’s much more nuanced than that. There are so many different reasons why people want to have a relationship outside their marriage.”

Continuing, he launched into what I believe could be an entirely original conspiracy theory. “This whole idea of cheating—it’s all a con; it’s helping the divorce industry,” he said. “The lawyers make a lot of money out of divorce. People all have different reasons why they want to do certain things; it doesn’t just come under the category of cheating.”

One example he drew my attention to was of a woman whose husband was ill and could no longer perform sexually. With the husband’s consent, the wife consulted with David and he arranged an affair for her.

Another case involved a wife who was much younger than her husband and wanted to experience sex with a man more her age. This time, the husband didn’t know about the affair, which David said was usually the case. He still insisted his service is doing more good than harm.

David is married himself and told me his views on marriage stem from reading a lot. One book, which he cites on his website, appears to have been slightly more inspiring to him than others: When Good People Have Affairs, a self-help book by therapist Mira Kirshenbaum that was targeted at people who think of themselves as moral, upstanding individuals but want to have sex with someone they aren't married to.

The book was released in 2008 and attracted so much controversy that one opinion piece in the Scotsman had the author describing how she wanted to fly across the Atlantic and “[hunt] her down and [beat] her with my bare fists, turning all my hurt of being cheated on in the past into powerful blows.”

David insisted to me that Infidelities is strictly about business and is in no way a political or moral statement. “It’s not philosophical,” he said. “I’m not looking to have a fight—I’m running it as a business. I’m making a living, and that’s bread on the table for my wife and family.”

He told me that he doesn’t understand why a marriage should fall apart based on one little case of infidelity. “You’ve built a house, a family,” he said. “You’ve worked hard together. You’ve built the financial stability. Is an affair a reason to knock down the whole house of cards? [My clients] have no inclination to set up a home with this new person.”

In that case, I asked him, why don’t these people—especially the men—just visit a prostitute?

“We do want a relationship where we want someone we have a rapport with, who we can talk to,” he replied. “Men especially are much more into casual relationships—as many as possible without any commitment. Women aren't looking for multiple partners in the main; they want some sort of commitment.”

As our interview came to an end, an elderly man wearing a long coat entered the lounge and started milling around as though looking for somebody. David excused himself, and I left him to it.

Follow Michael Allen on Twitter.

The Iron Hundred pay tribute to fallen fellow protesters. All photos by the author

The protesters who occcupied Kiev's Independence Square may have deposed hated president Viktor Yanukovych, but they don't believe that the fight is over. In particular, the “Iron Hundred” (or Zalizna Sotnia), the self-­declared elite of Euromaidan’s volunteer defense force, are still ready to battle Yanukovych supporters or even the Russians if need be.

Members of the Iron Hundred were involved with the protests since the very first clashes on Hrushevskoho Street in January. “We were all in different squads, but we recognized each other by face,” a young fighter told me. “Eventually we veterans came together in this unit. Some of our comrades were killed from February 18 to 20, and a few more are still missing.”

Kiev was in mourning when I joined the Iron Hundred on their way to pay their respects to the fallen. Just about every spot where protesters had fallen in the fight against government forces was covered by flowers, candles, religious icons, and pictures of the dead, who have been dubbed the “Heavenly Hundred.” At one of site on Hrushevskoho Street that saw some of the fiercest battles, a woman broke into a distraught rant: “Where were all of you when these kids got killed? What were all of you doing?” She was met with an awkward silence. A few girls in the crowd tried to fight back tears. The squad leader, a man named Sergei, prayed with his men. They laid flowers down and moved on to the next site.

One of the many memorials to fallen Euromaidan protesters

The mood in Kiev in the days immediately after Yanukovych fled was not the post-revolution party that you might expect. If anything, the atmosphere had become more tense and somber. The revolutionary pop rock playing from radios was gone, replaced by broadcasts from Parliament on the latest votes and ministerial appointments. Few faces in the crowd seemed happy with the results. For many activists, the changes amounted to a reshuffling of participants in a system that should be completely purged.

I met with the Iron Hundred when they had just returned from the city of Dnipropetrovsk, where they had been on a mission with an outfit called AutoSich. “It’s kind of like Automaidan [a group of drivers involved in the Euromaidan protests], but more radical,” the young fighter said. “We managed to make some contacts with local militants who will join us in our fight.” 

The Iron Hundred have lately been riding in columns of cars to combat the titushki—thugs, originally hired by the Yanukovych regime to beat up and terrorize protesters, who have now gone freelance. “They’re not even following their original orders anymore and have joined forces with local gangsters,” Sergei said. “Just terrorizing people, robbing, and looting. Though Yanukovych’s government has fallen apart, they are still paid by some [pro-Russian] Party of Regions members of parliament—and possibly Russia, but we can’t confirm this yet.”

Many law-enforcement officers have neglected their duties since Yanukovych fled the country, allowing these bandits to roam the eastern cities of Ukraine. “Maybe Odessa is next,” Sergei speculated. “We don’t know where we’re going for sure yet, but we’ll be where we’re needed most.”

A masked member of the Iron Hundred

The Iron Hundred’s banner is the red-and-­black flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a paramilitary force that fought against the Soviet Union during World War II. The flag has generated controversy—Russian state media has seized on the association to brand Euromaidan as a neo­-Nazi uprising, since the UPA collaborated with Nazi Germany at times. (They also fought against the Germans and anyone else who stood in the way of Ukrainian nationalism.)

Sergei said that the Euromaidan’s Iron Hundred adopted the name of a legendary UPA squad that was never defeated. “Even when the UPA was losing in 1949, they fought their way through the Russians, Poles, Slovaks, and Hungarians into western Germany and were eventually taken in by the Americans,” he said. Despite this sense of nationalism uniting them, the Iron Hundred has divided itself into two separate squads. “They brought in all these new guys from Lviv, and many of us didn’t feel like being the Iron Hundred of Lviv," Sergei told me. "So we split up, and now we share the same floor here in the City Hall.”

Sergei showed me around the other floors of Kiev’s occupied City Hall. Swastikas and other right­-wing imagery had been erased from the walls, except on the seventh floor, where the Right Sector, credited with giving Yanukovych the ultimatum on February 21 that is said to have prompted his flight the following day, has set up shop. A giant swastika and the number 1488 (which is associated with white supremacy) adorned their area. “We don’t talk with the Right Sector anymore at all,” Sergei said. “We just can’t agree on our ideas. They are too radical.”

Sergei explained that the Iron Hundred isn't politically unified; its members support varying parties. He is a supporter of Yulia Tymoshenko, who was embraced by the Euromaidan movement after being released from prison, where she spent three years. “Some say she is also corrupt, but her party (Fatherland) has a good program for economic, political, and social reform,” he said. “I think she can bring change to our country.”

Another memorial to a protester killed in the violence

Later, we stood outside City Hall, and Sergei pointed to a collection box with a sign that read, “for weapons.” According to Sergei, they are trying to raise some serious firepower. “Many young guys here are ready to fight. I too want to fight. The Ukrainian people are strong and brave, and we have a long history of guerrilla warfare.” I personally witnessed how resistance fighters charged up the hill on Instytutska Street on February 20—the deadliest day of Euromaidan—into a rain of shotgun pellets and sniper fire, against which their metal shields were about as useful as cardboard. It didn’t prevent them from recovering ground that in previous days had been lost to Berkut special forces and building new, bigger barricades while still under fire.

With a Russian occupation of Crimea currently underway, the thought of a civil war doesn’t seem far-­fetched. “Throughout our history, we have always been fighting for independence,” Sergei said. “Now we might have to fight again.” If Russian forces persist in invading Ukraine, these fighters could end up in many situations in which they would be outnumbered and outgunned.

Katya

Amid the posturing and talk of war stood Katya, who was helping the Iron Hundred and other Euromaidan activists as a medic. Although she sounded tough when talking or joking with the others, the violence had clearly taken its toll on her. The 19-year-old student joined the movement during the earliest protests, in November. Since then, she’s seen many people shot, wounded, and killed. A man saved her life and lost his eye as a result. “I was crying for hours after that,” she recalled. “I can’t sleep at home, because when I close my eyes I keep seeing the dead people.”

She tries to spend as much time as she can in Independence Square, because it’s where she feels most comfortable. “I’ve missed my exams, but hopefully I can retake them sometime,” she said. She was not alone among those who have suffered from the violence. Some of the fighters in the Iron Hundred looked barely out of their teens, but exhaustion was visible on their faces. Like Katya, they occupy a space between their previous lives and the post-revolutionary Ukraine they want to see develop. Talking to them, it became clear to me that the revolution is far from over.

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In part three of Ed's Epicly Later'd, Ed looks back what was arguably the peak of his skate career—when he dropped out of high school to conquer Europe in 1990, landing the covers of Thrasher and Transworld in the process. He also tells the story of how he met his wife, Deanna, and what led him to leave New Deal to start a new company with Mike Vallely.

For more info on the 1990 Münster Contest, check this out.

Professional skateboarding has a lot of downtime. Injury, rainy days, hangovers—all are valid reasons for a skater not to do his or her job on a given day. So most people in this profession have hobbies to make their lives of leisure a bit more fulfilling when they are off their boards. Leo Romero is no exception, and he has started a band with his bros called Travesura.

I’ve loved the quick-witted, sharp-tongued Leo ever since 2003, when he told me he’d never had a hand job. Since that interview 11 years ago, he has become one of the gnarliest, most respected skateboarders in history, and I imagine he has received many hand jobs. His band recently dropped its first EP (which you can download for free), so I decided to interview him for the 100th time in our long friendship to find out about becoming a rock star, fights, groupies, and folk-music mosh pits.

VICE: When did you decide to become a rock star, Leo?
Leo Romero: I haven’t really decided to be a rock star, but I started playing in front of people a few years ago just by going to open-mic nights.

Were you nervous at all? You’ve skated demos in front of large groups of people, but this is a whole different monster. The first time I tried stand-up I had to go in the bathroom and puke before I took the stage.
I was at first, but I tried to psyche myself up by thinking of it like a demo. But it’s definitely not. It’s way more personal than a demo. So I just got drunk the first couple times. There were little butterflies in my stomach at first, but it got easier. Sometimes you get too drunk and think you sound awesome, but you’re just shit-faced and sound like crap.

Photos by Grant Hatfield

How does playing music differ from skating?
There are a lot of similarities in it, actually. Like you mentioned, I’ve skated demos in front of a lot of people. You’ve seen guys kill a demo and have a great day, and you’ve seen them bomb a demo. That’s how it is performing live. I like that because I can relate to that feeling of, OK, today fucking sucks. I’ll try again tomorrow. Playing music is the same way—if it’s a shitty night you just say, “Fuck it, there’s nothing I can do. I’ll restart tomorrow.”

Do you smash guitars like boards? Is that part of your act?
No. I never smash them because I really enjoy my instruments. I just beat them up a little bit when I’m playing.

Have you ever pulled a Thrasher King of the Road move and smashed other people’s guitars?
No, because that’s kind of fucked up. People enjoy their instruments. That would be fucking lame to do something like that to somebody.

What if they sound super shitty?
Then that just means we’re going to sound way cooler.

Are you a better skater or musician?
I’d say I’m a better skater. Then again I am getting older so I could just be saying that to toot my own horn.

Are you a better musician than Jereme Rogers is a rapper?
I don’t know. He’s pretty fucking cool.

You’re a liar. How would you describe the band and your sound?
Every song sounds crazy and different. Some are a lot folkier than others and some are rockier, but it’s a rock/folk/blues type band.

You said in an interview that the three musicians you would have most liked to tour with were Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis—three of my favorites. Are they big influences on your sound?
Yeah. I would say Johnny Cash, for sure. I wouldn’t say I sound anything like that, but I’ve written songs in that vein. Elvis didn’t write shit, but he killed. Everyone who plays music wants to be Elvis no matter who the fuck they are.

Are you working on becoming a pill addict in the tradition of Elvis and Johnny Cash?
No, not at all. I think I might be getting a little too old for that shit. I mean, I don’t think you’re ever too old; I just think you can cause some serious damage if you start doing it late.

Good. I was going to warn against it. I can tell you from experience it makes you very constipated, and I think your scrawny ass would look silly with a potbelly full of impacted feces.
Yeah. I think I’ll pass on that, as cool as it sounds.

Who gets more groupies? Leo Romero the pro skater or Leo Romero the musician?
Neither, actually. The guy who gets all the ladies is the drummer, Mark Moros. I think that’s usually the case in every band. Drummers are the crazy ones fucking shit up and doing chicks. Mark gets drunk and starts acting the fool. We went to a bar after the first show I ever played with him, and he pissed on the bar. When they tossed him he said, “What the fuck? We just nailed a show down the street! Fuck you!” The bouncer was so confused, like, “You just played a show somewhere else? Who cares?”

I don’t have any groupie stories about myself, but my friend Eric Evans licked a girl’s butthole on the staircase once. She was leaving the show and he was like, “Can I go down on you real quick before you leave?” She bent over, pulled her underwear to the side, and he went to brown town.

Are there lots of fights at your shows?
There aren’t fights, but there are mosh pits.

Folk-music mosh pits? What are those like?
Fucking crazy, man. They go off with a bunch of our friends. Sometimes it’s a mosh pit, and sometimes it’s like a wresting match. I’m a big wrestling fan, and a lot of our friends are big wrestling fans. Sometimes when we’re playing it’s like WrestleMania—people getting pinned and choke-slammed and shit. It’s pretty rad.

Your dad was never a big fan of your skateboarding. Is he a bigger fan of your music?
I don’t think he likes our music, but I think he’s mellowed out and respects the fact that I like doing it.

Where can people buy your EP?
You can download the EP for free. And if you go to our shows we give out CDs for free.

Free? How the hell are you going to make any money like that?
First we have to get ourselves out there; then we make the money. I’m going around to record stores and asking if they’d mind giving out our CD, and they’re like, “Well, let me give it a listen first.” It’s like I’m on flow again.

Dude! You’re Leo Romero. You gotta walk in those record stores with your pants off and your dick out!
Into a record store that knows nothing about skateboarding? I’ll try that.

Be like, “Do you know who the fuck I am?”
“No, sir. Get the fuck out of my store.”

“And put some pants on!” So is this your retirement plan? After skateboarding, do you plan on being a professional folk singer?
It’s funny, because I was at a show in San Diego and some kid was like, “Hey, dog. You still skate, fool?” I was like, “Fuck. How long ago did Made [Emerica video] come out? That was only a few months ago.” It’s funny, because I’m obviously still skateboarding and I’m actually filming for the full-length Toy Machine video now. All I do is play music and skateboard.

A lot of skateboarders are also talented musicians. Who are some of your favorites?
I like Ray Barbee and Josh Harmony a lot. I like the way they play. When you watch someone play and they’re boring, you can’t get into them. It’s like watching a tech guy skate a demo, like, “He’s good, but he’s fucking boring.” You watch someone like Ray Barbee play, and he’s always nailing it. But Josh Harmony is my favorite because he’s a singer-songwriter.

Who is the most boring skateboarder out today?
I don’t know, man. Probably me if people are asking me if I still skate.

Download the Travesura album for free here.

For show dates go to travesuramusic.com/

More stupid can be found at Chrisnieratko.com or @Nieratko.

Barcelona Metro photo courtesy of Wiki Commons

Over the past few weeks, protesters in Barcelona have united against yet another public-transport fare increase. Using the slogan "Stop Pujades" (Stop Increases) and supported by a bunch of other organizations—including the Barcelona Metropolitan Transport workers themselves—demonstrators have blocked several metro, bus, and commuter train stops in the hope that authorities will revert to the pre-increase prices.

But is Barcelona's—and any other city's—public transport system even worth protesting over? Is there an alternative, more socially beneficial model we should switch to? Or should we just screw the subways?

To shed some light on the situation, I spoke to writer and sociologist Jorge Moruno, who has written about the issues surrounding the current protests and cofounded a couple of student and activist movements.

Protests against fare increases for Barcelona's public transport

VICE: Hi, Jorge. So do you think we should all boycott the subways?
Jorge Moruno: That involves certain risks that must be taken into consideration. It can be done individually or as a collective, in a more politically organized way. If Rosa Parks hadn’t refused to give up her seat, for example, the civil rights movement would probably not have been unleashed in the way it was. I’m not comparing these situations; I’m just trying to apply the political logic of civil disobedience—what is legal isn't necessarily legitimate. Democracy isn't a petrified animal. It's always on the move.

Yeah. But there's good reason to jump the turnstiles, right?
The disparity between wages, income, and ticket fares is distressing. There are so many people out of work or with low-paying jobs who need to use public transport to commute, meet other people, or go job-hunting. And access to mobility is a basic requirement; otherwise we're risking social exclusion.

There's no legitimacy in not being able to move about the city or in having to spend the little money one has on it. Collective disobedience to condemn the situation contributes to laying the foundations of a future right. Law is not democracy’s lynchpin, but the other way around: democracy is the foundation of law.

So what's the solution? Taking control of public transport away from the authorities?
The use of civil disobedience to ensure collective access to mobility is precisely about making sure transport remains public and unrestricted. "Public" implies everyone can have access to it. There is a paradox here, because we tend—they make us tend—to think that a civic stand is to pay your ticket regardless of your social situation.

Those who never travel in a crammed underground subway car or who cut back on public services and social rights are the same ones who tell us to pay as many fare increases as needed. It doesn't take a revolutionary to consider the right to rebel a popular right. It was even foreseen by John Locke, the father of classical liberalism, and it's stated in the Declaration of Human Rights. It’s just common sense.

So how could this updated mode of transport be financed?
As Lester Freamon said in The Wire: "You have to track the money trail." Although employment is scarce and precarious, money doesn’t evaporate; it just changes hands. The number of millionaires in Spain rose by 5.4 percent between 2011 and 2013. When wages and tax-funded contributions go down, when debt takes up all the wealth, and when there's a demand for privatization, public money ends up in a few private pockets.

A tax reform is necessary so that those who have more pay more taxes. Tax evasion must be done away with, and the process that's leading us into economic underdevelopment must be reversed.

A couple of posters for the Stop Pujades protests (via)

The cost of using public transport keeps rising, but do you think there's any link between the increased fares and the cost of running the services? 
We'll be told that these ticket fare increases won't cover the cost of public transport and that state subsidies are needed. With all the debt involved, perhaps it would be more rational to argue that we don’t need to have the world’s second largest high-speed railway system, while the local network—used by millions of people yearly—has suffered substantial cutbacks. Public transport, like water, health care, energy, or education, can’t be a business. The aim should be to maximize society’s well-being, rather than benefitting themselves. It's a fundamental right that we are paying for with our taxes.

Do you think a free public transport would be beneficial to the economy?
Firstly, we should ask whose economy it would be beneficial to. Economics is politics—its rules aren't natural. The core of the issue isn't about public transport being free, but the ethical and political conviction that people’s needs and well-being must be placed above all else, ensuring their access to public transport. A better-living society with no fear of tomorrow is a healthier, more innovative, smarter one.

Do you know of any examples where free public transport has worked?
In Tallinn, Estonia, public transport has become a free service through the elimination of direct payment and by funding it solely through taxes and state subsidies. Another prime example is Freiburg, Germany—a model that allows accessible and ecologic mobility. They promote the use of public transport, and monthly tickets for all commuters working in the industrial area are entirely or partially financed by their employers.

But mobility isn't just limited to transport. A global change is needed in public and urban policies, in the production model, in democratic culture, and in the tax model. Speaking of public transport means speaking about a whole model of coexistence.

How do you interpret the protests against fare hikes in Barcelona?
They are yet another sign of the general impoverishment of the population, barring them from their rights as citizens. Managing to stop the increase of transport fares or the privatization of public health services—these are all expressions of the same democratic aspiration: the defence of life against the dictatorship of financial servitude. These struggles develop a democratic popular unity against the political project of the rich and powerful, who are trying to enforce the rule of debt and austerity.

Thanks, Jorge.