When 30,000 Ecuadorian villagers sued Chevron in 1993 for devastating the Amazon with 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater, the US-based oil giant’s reply was simple: "We will fight [the lawsuit] until hell freezes over,” said a representative. “And then fight it out on the ice."

After investigators documented what they call a "Rainforest Chernobyl"—17 million gallons of spilled crude oil, more than 1,000 open waste pits full of toxic waste polluting the drinking water, and thousands of victims of cancer and birth defects—it seemed justice was served for the villagers. In 2011, an Ecuadorian court ruled against Chevron and demanded the company pay $19 billion in restitution. Ecuador's Supreme Court later reduced the damages to $9.5 billion but upheld that ruling.

But on Tuesday, a U.S. court effectively overturned the ruling, which means Chevron has won the fight and hell, apparently, has frozen over. They’ve won using what activists say are dirty tactics, including filing a countersuit against the Ecuadorian villagers, claiming they had lied all along about the pollution caused to their properties as part of a shakedown scheme.

Chevron hired a legal team of more than 60 law firms and 2,000 legal professionals to argue that it's not the villagers who are the victims here—it's the corporation.

The villagers won in Ecuadorian court fraudulently, Chevron argued, because their lead attorney, Steven Donziger, used bribery and fabricated evidence. One of the primary claims is that a scientific report by an Ecuadorean court-appointed expert was created by activists. Donziger admits activists coordinated with the scientific firm, but argues that the science is entirely sound and denies any wrongdoing on this or any other of Chevron's charges. He says the lawsuit is "the most well-funded corporate retaliation campaign in history."

Because he was charged of fraudulence, Donziger is liable under the civil provisions of RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. It's the law designed to go after the mafia.

The company had sought $60 billion in damages against Donzinger in its RICO suit, saying that the pollution claims are a carefully orchestrated campaign by Donziger to get into Chevron's deep pockets. The claims for damages were eventually dropped. But this week Chevron won its RICO suit to evade payment. Now it will be even harder, if not impossible, for Donziger and the villagers to enforce the Ecuadorian's court's judgment against Chevron.

Environmental groups believe this ruling has far-reaching implications beyond the Amazon, though. They say it signals a new trend in how corporations silence their opposition. More than 44 of them—including the Sierra Club and 350.org—signed a letter opposing the lawsuit, calling it a "growing and serious threat to the ability of civil society to hold corporations accountable for their misdeeds around the world."

Paul Paz y Miño of Amazon Watch says this kind of tactic could be used by any industry to avoid accountability. Environmentalists and consumer groups don't have the money to fight a corporate army of attorneys. "If they don't have the resources to make that fight legally, they may have to just pick another campaign," he warns. "And it would end there."

Those fears appear to be warranted. Corporate attorneys are already saying this is "the new model for fighting back" for big business.

It's a new model that directly puts journalists at risk, as well. As part of its lawsuit, Chevron also fought to force documentary producer Joe Berlinger to turn over 600 hours of raw footage— a move opposed by the New York Times, ABC, CBS, and many other media outlets. The footage included what Berlinger saw in Ecuador: an ecosystem under assault. The tapes also included fly-on-the-wall recordings of strategy sessions with the legal team, and Chevron says it could help its case. But the media outlets warned that Chevron is bullying journalists.

Chevron also fought to get access to its critics’ personal information, including the IP addresses and identities of more than 100 email accounts of environmentalists and journalists.

Going after protesters, lawyers, and journalists as gangsters is particularly ironic considering that this is the same Chevron that hired the Nigerian military to violently shut down protests by unarmed fisherman and villagers in Nigeria, as exposed in an award-winning documentary by Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill.

The fight in this case is still not over. The coalition of groups involved say they'll keep pushing forward to hold Chevron accountable.

Han Shan, the US spokesman for the Ecuadorian villagers, says the focus is now on "enforcing their judgment in countries where they can receive a fair hearing."

Chevron and other corporations will only be emboldened, though. As the right-wing blog Hotair.com noted, "Is there any way at this point for Chevron to turn this around and drag Donziger [the lead attorney] and company, along with the Ecuador court actors, into a court someplace and drain every last cent out of them until they have to live under a bridge somewhere?"

Will Potter is a journalist and TED Fellow based in Washington, DC. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter.

Last year, we released Radioactive Man—a story about the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. As we approach the third anniversary of the disaster, VICE Japan returned to check on the cleanup process.

On November 18, 2013, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) began the risky process of removing the spent fuel assemblies from Fukushima Daiichi’s Unit 4 and transferring them to an on-site centralized storage location. As of February 10, 308 assemblies have been successfully transferred to their new home. That leaves 1,225 more assemblies of the total 1533 to remove by the end of year.

Moving the fuel assemblies at Fukushima Daiichi.

In normal circumstances, fuel removal is a relatively safe and routine process. In the case of Fukushima Daiichi, however, it's extremely hazardous. No one knows the extent to which the racks that currently house the assemblies were damaged during the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that occurred on March 11, three years ago.

Damaged racks could mean knocked-over assemblies, or assemblies leaning on other assemblies—even a routine method of extraction runs the risk of knocking them around and playing havoc with the inner fuel rods. A broken fuel rod could lead to a severe spike in radiation, similar to that seen immediately after the explosions at Daiichi.

Safecast, the group of hackers using DIY geiger counters and crowd-sourcing to produce the world’s most accurate radiation data map, are especially interested in monitoring changes in the dead zone immediately surrounding Daiichi during the removal process. The group made a name for themselves worldwide thanks to their incredibly successful mobile bGeigie Nano Geiger counter kits, which allowed anyone to contribute local radiation readings to a global map.

Nevertheless, measuring sudden changes in the area around Daiichi during the fuel-removal process calls for fixed, permanently placed counters in stable locations. This raises a number of problems. They need a stable source of power—a rarity in many of the devastated and abandoned areas around the Fukushima plant. They need to be in safe locations, unexposed to the weather or local wildlife—another rarity. Finally, and perhaps most difficult in the area, they need at least an intermittent human presence to keep an eye for any abnormalities or interference with the hardware.

On the morning of February 12, VICE headed to Tomioka, Fukushima—just six miles south of Daiichi—to meet up with Joe Moross of Safecast Japan and to introduce him to Naoto Matsumura, the virtually lone resident of Tomioka, who had agreed to help Safecast out by having a fixed counter installed on his house.

Matsumura’s house is no longer within the exclusion zone, which was shrunken earlier in 2013, but sits just on its border. The smaller exclusion zone hasn't done anything to change the area. "Ghost town" is still the most appropriate description.

As we approached the area—hopping off the busy Joban Expressway onto the less populated Route 6, which follows the coast north to Tomioka and past Daiichi itself—we experienced the unsettling process of a million news reports and photographs coming to life around us. First is the awareness that most of the buildings and businesses we passed—though intact—were completely deserted.

A little bit farther, we started to notice a few older buildings that didn’t quite survive the impact of the earthquake. Some had missing roof tiles; others had completely collapsed. We turned down a small shopping street that leads to the unused coastal train station of Tomioka, and we witnessed firsthand the complete devastation that the tsunami wrought. Nothing was spared.

Three years later, little had changed. Cars remained stranded on rail lines or upturned and scattered—houses that were ripped open still contained objects and remnants of normal life. It was overwhelmingly sad, and anyone who has the chance should see it for himself.

Two upturned cars at Tomioka Station

A small shrine, at Tomioka Station, left for those who died in the earthquake and tsunami

Interestingly, Tomioka was crawling with police vehicles, surprising because the town is no longer in the exclusion zone and therefore open to anyone wanting to see the devastation. Shortly after arriving in front of the station, no fewer than three police vehicles and six policemen rolled up. With that unique, feigned politeness peculiar to police, they began taking down details from our entire crew—business cards, numbers, home addresses, and anything else they could think of.

In my case, they asked for information about my wife, my visa status—for which they demanded proof in the form of my Alien Registration Card—and even obtuse questions about what I had done in Japan in the seven years that I’ve lived here. As soon as another car of interested visitors turned up, they moved onto them.

We are still not sure what this was all about. The only answer we got was some rehearsed blurb about health and safety in the area.

We spoke to Moross a little at the station about the day’s project. He explained that, while he didn't assume that something was going to go wrong with the fuel-rod removal, the operation and the risks involved weren’t known well enough to the public. "We feel that a vacuum of information is more upsetting to people than even bad news."

This statement is in line with Safecast’s general initiative of creating a platform for transparent and relevant radiation data, the latest step in which was installing fixed counters close to the plant. "By having the monitoring in place," they said, "people can feel confident that if there is any change in the radiation situation, we will know in minutes."

Shortly after, Matsumura arrived in his tiny white utility truck. The first thing that hits you about the guy is his energy—immediately welcoming and unreserved. Our three vehicles traveled up the small lane that led from the town to Matsumura’s farm. It was slow going because we were traveling through some of the worst snow on record in the area. After getting lost once, Matsumura came back to find us and lead us back to his place.

Once all three parties were safely at the farm, Moross scouted a good location for the counter, settling on a disused house destroyed by the earthquake, adjacent to the building in which Matsumura currently lives. "Nobody cares about this house anymore," Matsumura laughed.

The wrecked house had, in fact, been the Matsumura family home prior to the earthquake and was still full of the remainders of normal family life—photographs, books, and a ruined TV. In last year’s Radioactive Man, Matsumura spoke of how his family had been turned away by other relatives and the full evacuation centers: "I had no choice but to stay behind."

Matsumura Zoo

In general, his farm seemed like a happy place, despite its isolation. It felt like a zoo. Sadly, one of his ostriches had recently died, but one of the famous birds still awaited visitors by the main gate, along with a dog and a pair of cats. While Moross got to working installing the counter, we spoke to Matsumura about the fuel removal.

"If they screw up, we’re all in big trouble. I imagine they’ll put the fuel in containers inside the pool and then pull those out. If they drop one of those and there’s a leak, then everyone here’ll be dead from radiation exposure."

He managed to say all this half-smiling, but he pointedly added that "it’s despicable." The good news was that, even having been in the zone for three years now, Matsumura firmly believed there has been no deterioration in his personal health—although he admitted he didn't know what could happen over the next 10 to 15 years. One of the dangers of a broken fuel rod at this point would be a very sudden release of krypton-85, a cancer-causing isotope in the local vicinity.

Matsumura is becoming something of a celebrity. On the day we visited his home, we were preceded by another crew and met a French journalist just as we were heading out. Matsumura even tentatively mentioned an invitation to Europe to give a talk about his experiences in the zone.

Of course, this was less than a month before the anniversary, so news crews were all over the area, scrambling to get their 3/11 stories. He has become adept at entertaining the foreign media and understands their interest in him. He also pointed out that the interest from the domestic media has been close to zero. When he wanted to hold a press conference, he had to do so by going through the AP and the Tokyo Foreign Correspondents' Club.

It was a similar situation for Moross, who was late meeting up with us because of a sudden request from the South China Morning Morning Post for a telephone interview. The previous day, a German television crew had followed him. Because information regarding Tepco’s operations is so thin on the ground, these two have become the unofficial spokesmen for life in the zone and for hard facts post-meltdown.

Eventually, after a lot of back and forth with the Tokyo Safecast office regarding the correct programming and GPS coordinates and other MIT-level stuff I didn't understand, the counter was up.

The counter equipped to Matsumura’s wrecked house consisted of an external sensor attached to the outside wall, a cable running from this to what Moross called "the brains," a control box that counts the radiation pulses, a router, a 3G modem, and a power supply. After a series of hand-offs between servers, the information arrived at Safecast, where it can then be graphed.

Because the information is sent in bursts of five-second intervals, any sudden changes in radiation levels—potentially caused by accidents during the removal of the fuel assemblies—will register almost immediately. The news will be accessible to the public long before it's announced by Tepco, or even the mainstream media.

At the end of the day, before saying our goodbyes, Matsumura made a joke about being able to keep an eye on Tepco. "I’ll tell them I’ve got a machine set up to monitor things," he said. "And that it was made by NASA."

Joe Moross and Naoto Matsumura

Screencap via.

Kawehnoke—coloquially known as “Cornwall Island”—sits in the middle of the St. Lawrence River at the intersecting waterway borders of Ontario to the north, Quebec to the east, and New York State to the south. The island, which on a modern map belongs to Ontario, is part of the Akwesasne Mohawk’s reserve lands that span both interprovincial and international borders.

While respecting, but not necessarily “seeing” borders, the Akwesasne have established schools, health care facilities, residences and administrative offices throughout their reserve lands that cross all three jurisdictions. As a result, for matters of daily life and to access essential services (such as health care and education, or to simply visit family on Kawehnoke) individuals are required to report to the Canada Border Services Agency’s Cornwall Port of Entry every time they travel to or from the island.

Here’s an example of how this works (which might be better conceptualized by a hockey coach on a white board with dry erase markers): Let’s say there’s a family emergency and an Akwesasne woman needs to pick her daughter up from school. She lives in New York State but the school is on Kawehnoke, which is Mohawk land under Ontario’s jurisdiction.

This requires the mother to drive north across the Three Nations Bridge and over the St. Lawrence to Ontario (passing the island her daughter’s school is on along the way), lining up and answering questions at the Cornwall port of entry, then backtracking south and halfway across the bridge to pick her daughter up on the island. Then she has to turn around and head back north to the Cornwall port of entry to be questioned again, and finally loop back south to cross the entire bridge again to get home.

If you’ve ever driven through a border then you’ve experienced the anxiety of how unpredictable wait times can be, how dick-headed border agents can be, and how much general stress a port of entry can add to your overall travel plans. Now imagine that the border doesn’t even legally apply to you, and yet you’re still forced to go through all of the bullshit it entails at least twice a day—just to go to work or take your kids to school.

To have to go through the strict, CBSA imposed process of clearing customs on a daily basis, adversely affects the freedom of mobility and quality of life of the Akwesasne community so much so that it borders on an abuse of their human rights. In addition to the economic and governance issues that arise when thousands of working hours in the year are lost, while individuals are forced to wait in line at the border, the most vulnerable in the community are the ones who tend to suffer the most.

Children who attend the school at Kawehnokehave to leave their homes in the early hours of the morning to wait on the bridge and clear customs before going to school. Not surprisingly—because having to answer to armed guards twice a day can be a little stressful—parents have reported that many children have become increasingly anxious and nervous. Health professionals in the community have described the effect this is having on Akwesasne children as a collective post-traumatic stress epidemic. 

Elderly members of the community who have medical appointments in Kawehnoke are also forced to wait on the bridge for as long as it takes to clear customs, and members of the community coming to visit chronically ill relatives at Kawhenhoke’s long-term care facility are often faced with terribly anxious wait times while they are waiting to report, rather than being by the sides of their loved ones. The Mohawk Council of Akwesasne has also received numerous confidential reports of children and elders accidentally relieving themselves in private vehicles or on school buses due to the long wait times at the Three Nations Bridge.

This is the reality of the Cornwall Port of Entry, and recent reports indicate that it can result in a discriminatory, humiliating, and abusive process. Tensions have been rising between the community and CBSA agents regarding their obligations to report, a process which over the past few years has become more and more arduous without any consultation or autonomy given to the people who actually have to go through it every single day. Which brings us to a particular event that took place recently, and is now the subject of a civil suit for false imprisonment leveled against the CBSA by the Mohawks of Akwesasne.

Sarahlee Skidders—who happens to be confined to a wheelchair due to a 2007 car accident—was driving her customized vehicle through the Cornwall port of entry. For no apparent reason, Sarahlee was deemed highly suspicious and upon questioning by a border agent, was detained for “secondary inspection” at the customs office. Over the next five hours, CBSA agents essentially held Sarahlee hostage, using her as bait to get her boyfriend—who is suspected of cigarette smuggling—to turn himself in. During this time of false imprisonment, the claim alleges that CBSA agents intentionally inflicted mental and emotional suffering.

She was repeatedly asked if she was sure she couldn’t stand or walk, and forced to justify her use of a wheelchair. She was interrogated about her relationship with her boyfriend, their way of life, and falsely told she was facing charges of obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting—criminal offences that could land her in jail. The agents also told her they had been “watching her,” but that if she cooperated they would be able to drop the charges. When she asked if she needed a lawyer, they told her that would only be required if she was hiding something.

At one point, to keep her confined, a heavy chair was put in front of her so she couldn’t maneuver her wheelchair. She was told by CBSA agent Andrea Gladding that if she tried to leave the office she would be taken out of her wheelchair. Through text message, Sarahlee was eventually able to contact her family. When her mother and sister arrived they noticed that Sarahlee, who also suffers from type-1 diabetes, didn’t look well. She was denied a request for food and through her hours of detention was provided a single bottle of water. Jason Cole, Sarahlee’s boyfriend, turned himself in that afternoon and Sarahlee was subsequently released without any of the charges she’d been threatened with.

“There is a pattern at the port of entry in Cornwall of harassment, intimidation and unlawful detention, particularly of young Native people and the old”, said Sarahlee Skidder’s lawyer, Andrew Unger. “I have heard so many horror stories over the last couple of years it would blow your mind. This, in a way, is more vicious; they threatened to take her out of her wheelchair, put impediments in her path so she was cornered. They did not provide any sympathy.”

I got in touch with Andrew for his perspective on if the trauma that Sarahlee went through is indicative of a broader problem in regards to a CBSA port of entry whose agents are notorious for their brutal use of racial profiling, intimidation, and harassment.

“We are aware of many instances where CBSA officers in Cornwall unlawfully detain members of the community and regularly abuse their authority,” he told me by email. “We have heard many stories of people being detained for hours for no apparent reason and on spurious grounds—members of the community or their vehicles are often held for many hours waiting for a K9 team to come from Ottawa to search their vehicles and in the overwhelming majority of cases (99 plus percent) they are ultimately released with no charges. There also seems to be a pattern of targeting vulnerable members of the community (the young, the elderly, etc.).

We have looked at bringing several other cases including one where two young people (one of them a minor) were unlawfully stripped searched on suspicion of carrying drugs (nothing was found on them or in their vehicles). In my view, there are serious issues in terms of abuse of power/authority by officers at the Port of Entry in Cornwall—I have often characterized it as a ‘rogue’ Port of Entry because I can’t believe that such abuses happen so regularly at other Ports of Entry.”

To their credit—seeing as their outfit is also facing an inquest into why a woman being detained was found hanging in a shower stall—the CBSA responded to my questions but the answers were pretty vapid, so I guess I got what I expected out of law enforcement communications.

“This matter is before the courts, it would be inappropriate to comment at this time… All persons, including domestic travellers transiting the POE as they travel from Cornwall Island into the City of Cornwall via the North Span Bridge, are required to report directly to the CBSA… Our border service officers are the first line of defence at the border and are well positioned to combat the illicit smuggling of contraband by criminal organizations.”  That sort of thing. However, whether to deflect criticism or if it’s a legitimate concern, they did interestingly note that: “People smuggling by organized groups in the Cornwall area is an ongoing issue.”

In the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne’s press release regarding Sarahlee Skidders false imprisonment lawsuit, Chief Brian David is quoted as saying: “It is unfortunate that incidents of this nature have continued to occur at CBSA. At times we seem to be going in the right direction… just next month we are conducting cultural sensitivity training sessions with CBSA officers. However, basic human rights continue to be violated and we remain committed to defending our community members and demanding justice and change.”

Unfortunately, though I’m sure not every CBSA agent at the Cornwall port of entry is a numbskull, and it really must be an obscenely stressful work environment, I’m not so sure that cultural sensitivity training is going to cut it. While other jurisdictions and governments across the country are slowly making strides to respect and take indigenous peoples rights into account, this particular border seems to be moving backwards. Hopefully Sarahlee Skidders’ lawsuit and the publicity it may garner can help to expedite a necessary change in attitudes and procedures to alleviate the stresses that members of the Akwesasne community face on a daily basis at the Cornwall Port of Entry.

@ddner

Loretta Saunders, screencap via.

February's murder of Loretta Saunders, an aboriginal woman who was researching murdered and missing aboriginal women, is the final straw for Michèle Audette, the president of the Native Women's Association of Canada. Now Audette is calling for a public inquiry into the deaths and disappearances of aboriginal women, who have largely gone ignored.

“To be frank, when we told [the government] that the native women of Canada wanted to work with them to see what we can do together, they didn’t respect or take into consideration our expertise,” Audette said. “They laughed at us.”

According to Audette, the government is avoiding a public inquiry because it’s too expensive for taxpayers. And it's not for a lack of pressure. All of Canada's provincial premiers have called for an inquiry, and at the June 2013 General Assembly of the UN Human Rights Council, 11 countries, including the United States, Finland, and Iran expressed concern for the high number of murdered aboriginal women in Canada, before recommending a national plan of action.

Since 2000, Audette has noticed a disturbing pattern. As each year passes, the annual number of victims rises while their average age falls. While between 12 and 84 native women go missing or are murdered every year, Status of Women Canada—the government organization tasked with promoting "equality for women and their full participation in the economic, social, and democratic life of Canada"—spends its money elsewhere. In the last fiscal year, the department gave out 34 grants to programs targeting violence against women. Of those grants, two target violence against aboriginal women. Nine target “honour-based violence” or crimes committed due to “harmful cultural practices.” That means while $335,000 was spent on ending violence against aboriginal women, $1.7 million was spent on “honour crimes”—a problem that some experts say doesn’t exist at all.

"Honour killing" is the term given to crimes that occur to a person killed by a family member (or member of a similar social group), due to the belief that the victim brought dishonour or shame to their family through behaviours perceived to cross the family's religious or cultural boundaries, like refusing an arranged marriage, being a victim of rape or sexual assault, having relationships outside of the religion or marriage, homosexuality, or dressing in "revealing" clothing. The cases have dramatically captured the attention of the Canadian public, through well-documented incidents in Kingston, Toronto, and British Columbia. But according to the Minister of Status of Women Kellie Leitch, honour crimes are “very infrequent in our country.” She said there have been 13 of these murders since 2004 and called them “heinous crimes” that “need to be stopped.”

The executive director of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, Alia Hogben, said the very concept of an honour crime is a myth, and an offensive one at that.

“There haven’t been 13, there haven’t been 14, there haven’t been three,” she said. “There should be money poured into stopping violence against women and girls... however spending money on this one aspect of it is offensive and racist.”

Hogben said the media and government use the term arbitrarily in the murder cases of female victims who have a few things in common—they’re brown, they likely come from South Asia, and they’re probably Muslim.

The focus on “honour crimes” shows the government is being reactive to the media instead of bring proactive, she said. She mentioned the Shafia family trials—which found a husband, wife, and son guilty of four counts of first-degree murder—as an example of the issue “flaring up” in the media. The trial dragged on for four months between 2011 and 2012, dominating front pages and the top of news broadcasts. But if it’s not a real criminal charge, who decided these would be filed under honour killings? The media? The government?

“Who has gone back and decided that those are what they will be labeled as? I can go back to the 14th century and decide that every killing that happened in Timbuktu was an honour killing, and who’s going to contradict me? Here we’ve done the exact same thing,” she said.

A search of a database of 338 Canadian publications showed the term “honour killing” was used 360 times since 2010, most often in 2012. The phrases “murdered aboriginal woman” and “murdered aboriginal women” were only used a combined 162 times in the same period. The murders and disappearances of native women get about 27 times less print news coverage than those of white women, according to a January article in the Toronto Star.

Minister Leitch noted that there is no such thing as an “honour killing” in the Canadian Criminal Code, but she said the term does exist in another government document: the guide for new citizens. The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship section of Discover Canada states, “Canada’s openness and generosity does not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, ‘honour killings,’ female genital mutilation, forced marriage or other gender-based violence.” Leitch said she is proud her government has taken a strong public stand.

“This high moral ground we’re taking with immigrants, why doesn’t it extend to our own aboriginal women?” Hogben asked. “We call them our First Nations, and it’s true.” Even using Leitch’s numbers on so-called “honour killings,” her department spent five times more money on that issue than it did on murdered aboriginal women last year—a problem somewhere between eight and 58 times larger. No exact numbers are known because Statistics Canada doesn’t collect ethnicity of murder victims. So even activists fighting to draw attention to the high number of murdered native women can’t say for certain how high that number really is.

In fact, there aren’t many concrete numbers available about any type of violence against women in this country. There hasn’t been a national survey on the issue in 20 years, according to Kate McInturff, a researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, who wrote a 2013 study called The Gap in the Gender Gap: Violence Against Women in Canada.

“The data that does exist tells us three things very clearly: this problem is big, it comes at a high cost, and we are making little or no progress in putting a stop to it,” McInturff says in her study.

When it was pointed out to Leitch that Status of Women’s funding is disproportionate to the actual violence that happens, she said there was, in fact, a national plan on violence against women. She also said there are various other departments, such as Public Safety and Aboriginal Affairs, that also work on native women’s safety. Leitch noted a $25-million commitment made in the most recent federal budget to decrease violence against native women over five years. She said that “women should be very pleased with” her government’s focus on safe communities.

McInturff laughed at the suggestion that a national action plan exists. “There isn’t one,” she said. “I can say definitively that there is not.”

At the time of publication, Leitch’s media team had not returned repeated follow-up requests for more information or a copy of the aforementioned plan. Her communications team said many of the questions had to be answered by either the RCMP or Justice Canada. Neither department returned a request for comment, though a Public Safety Canada spokesman J.P. Duval called back on their behalf. He said the questions would have to be answered by the department responsible—Status of Women Canada.

So without a public inquiry or overarching plan on violence against women that anyone has actually seen, what is the government doing? Back to the recent $25-million promise: it was made in 2010 and renewed again this year. Leitch said the funds will support a national police centre for missing persons and DNA tracking to identify missing and murdered individuals. What difference will DNA tracking make? How will this make native women safer? These are the questions that Status of Women wants the RCMP and Justice Canada to answer, and the RCMP and Justice Canada want Public Safety to answer, and Public Safety wants Status of Women to answer.

Both Audette and McInturff pointed out that the missing persons database includes all Canadians. Some of these missing people just “happen to be aboriginal and happen to be women,” said McInturff. So to call it an investment in missing aboriginal women is a misnomer. Audette called the $25 million, “another slap in our face." Adding, “it is already money committed for family violence, and they just took the same money. It’s nothing new. Nothing new, they just add the title."

The investment is really just $5 million a year, $4 million of which will go to the RCMP. But the Mounties aren’t exactly famous for their helpful response to the families of missing indigenous women. “With all respect to the RCMP, I’m not sure that’s where I would put 80 percent of my money,” said McInturff.

McInturff included a breakdown of the $25-million investment made in 2010 in her report. It estimated the federal government’s total spending on violence against women at under $80 million a year, or $2.77 per capita. This doesn’t come close to solving the problem of gender-based violence, which costs the country roughly $9-billion a year in lost productivity and healthcare costs, she estimates.

“What we’re doing financially, politically, and policy-wise isn’t lowering rates of violence and that’s what we need to do,” she said. The government’s own measures show a very slight decrease in partner abuse and no improvement in sexual assault at all over the last decade, she said. The money isn’t working. It’s not enough and it’s given to the wrong people. Money invested in police services will only help the small minority of victims who report violence to the police, McInturff pointed out.

“The violence that is ever reported to the police is factional. So investing a lot of money in police responses is investing a lot of money in ten percent of the problem. It’s not going to reach the 90 percent of people that never report,” McInturff said, suggesting where the money might be better spent. “It’s not going to people who provide services, it’s not going to indigenous rights organizations, it’s not going to women’s organizations. Very little of it is actually going to the places most likely to address the problem,” she said.

Hopefully the sad irony of Saunders’ highly publicized murder will change that. “For the first time we’re having national attention,” Audette said, and the government “can’t stay quiet this time. They just can’t.”
 

@waitwhichemma

Photo via.

I’ve been sexually assaulted many times. More times than I can remember—if I’m being honest. I’m volunteering this information because, over the years, I’ve learned that it wasn’t my fault.

Too many people would argue the opposite.

On International Women’s Day, many women I know tend to celebrate. We clink martini glasses, and celebrate our status as women, our unique and varied powers, and the social and political advancements women have made.

This year, International Women’s Day comes in the midst of a debate, irate on both sides, about whether or not rape culture exists. It does exist, in Canada, right now, where one in four women  is raped. 

Culture is defined as “the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society.” How ironic that people argue there is no rape culture when our justice system often fails to take sexual assault cases seriously, and anyway, maybe women shouldn’t get drunk if they plan to not get raped.

These very people are rape culture.  

Rape culture blames those who are raped and sexually assaulted, and systematizes the violence against them. And that is widely reflected on our TVs, on the internet, and in music.

Women who have made real social change always say we don’t protest enough anymore, that it’s like we’ve given up. This year, I believe, those of us who acknowledge that rape culture is a thing need to stand up, on International Women’s Day, and say so. Publicly.

News organizations tiptoe around their discussions of some groups. Rarely will an editor publish an overtly homophobic or racist piece. But sexism is accepted, and many of its elements are often lauded as a reasonable argument.

This happened again this past week when Margaret Wente of The Globe and Mail and Barbara Kay of the National Post both proclaimed that rape culture does not exist.

Why? Who are they trying to protect?

They’re not trying to protect little girls, that’s for sure. I was sexually assaulted as a little girl in middle school by a group of older boys, who were in high school at the time. I was sexually assaulted, more than once, on a school bus full of kids. Later, I was sexually assaulted in a forest when no one else was around—except for me, and a couple of boys.

I was sexually assaulted in high school—again by an older neighbourhood kid who I thought was my friend. And again, this was in a group. It was at a playground. We were totally sober except for a lone joint, floating between the three of us. Oh, and I was wearing long pants, in case you were wondering, Ms. Wente. Not that my outfit actually matters, because women should not be held responsible for crimes committed against them.

I was sexually assaulted a number of times later, too, as a young woman, both when I was out partying, and when I was completely sober. To bring alcohol consumption into the equation as a defining characteristic of the incident is an argument often used in order to place blame on the person who is raped. It is a hateful, ignorant tactic. Consensual sex is consensual sex. If there is no consent, it is rape.

I have never reported any of the times I was sexually assaulted to police, because I thought what happened was normal. That is rape culture. I wrote my master’s thesis  on the justice system’s response to sexual assault allegations, and I walked around for a year being fully obsessed with the details. I spoke about it to all of my close friends and women I love, and the majority of those women have also been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted. Too many of them have either brushed it off as being their fault, or not worth pursuing; because of apologists like Wente.

Wente claims she knows best without doing her journalistic due diligence or, you know, having a human heart. She writes about sexual assaults on campus, and the growing mobilization to stop them: “Is there a double standard here? Indeed there is. Men are treated as potential rapists, and women as their helpless victims (or, in current parlance, “survivors”). If two young people get hammered and have drunken sex, he is responsible for his behaviour, but she’s not responsible for hers.”

Firstly, youwouldn’t know “current parlance” if it smacked you in the face, Margaret Wente. And guess what? RAPE and DRUNK SEX are not the same thing. Why are you apologizing for rapists? Who are you trying to defend? Who are you trying to serve?

She continues: “The belief that universities are hotbeds of sexual violence is fuelled by inflated statistics that are widely repeated as the gospel truth.”How dare you write that sentence, Margaret Wente? You have a major responsibility as a columnist at Canada’s national paper. Yet you cite U.S. stats, which you skew to serve your own argument, rather than ones from Statistics Canada which are readily available to you.

You write that the “widespread claim” that one in five female students is sexually assaulted comes from the American Campus Sexual Assault Study, which surveys more than 5,000 women. You write that the study “stretches the definition of assault to the breaking point,” that the “majority of incidents it records involved alcohol.”

You also totally miss the point: you say the majority of women who reported incidents of sexual assault did not believe they had been raped, “even in cases that involved penetration.” That is because people like you shout at them from all sides that they were not raped, or if they were, that they should have known better. Also, FYI, there are more kinds of sexual assault than rape, and rape culture perpetuates all forms of sexual violence, all of which can be equally harmful to the person who is assaulted.

A horrifying 91 percent of sexual assaults are not reported to police. Aka, only one in ten is reported, and reflected in statistics. The numbers we do have, which are reported to police, say one in four Canadian women is sexually assaulted at some point in her lifetime, and that a woman is raped every 17 minutes. Police-reported stats are all we have to go on, and that is unfortunate. Women feel shame, they feel fear, and they know, in many cases, the justice system will not take them seriously.

Wente’s final, vile graph: “The manufacture of ‘rape culture’ is a triumph of ideology over substance. It has inflated a serious but uncommon threat into a crime wave… As for those armies of would-be rapists lurking in every shadow—they’re your sons, your grandsons, your nephews and your brothers. I used to think the war on men was an exaggeration. I don’t think so any more.”

You think one in four is “uncommon?” Yeah, rapists are, most often, people’s sons, grandsons nephews and brothers. But the people being raped are usually your daughters, granddaughters, nieces and sisters. And this is no “war on men.” What it should be, though, is a war on rapists.

For clarity: I say “most often” and “usually” because it’s not only women and girls who are sexually assaulted. That is most often the case, but trans* folk, boys, men and people of other genders and ages are sexually assaulted, too, which is also the fault of rape culture. Rapists are the ones at fault, but our society condones it, allows it. We have Globe and Mail columnists saying it’s all NBD and perpetuating all of the rape myths, at the same time as dudes at the University of Ottawa are reeling from their entire hockey team being suspended for an alleged gang sexual assault on a woman. This was just after four student politicians resigned after they were caught in some “sexy talk” about sexually assaulting the student president.

This is a shameful time for Canada.

And what kind of antiquated garble does Kay, the Post columnist, have to spew onto this pile of garbage? “The fact is that “rape culture” is a form of popular mania like so many others before it. It does not exist. Or if it does, nobody has yet brought forward evidence of it.”Isn’t that nice?

When I was sexually assaulted, almost every time, I thought it was completely normal, or that I shouldn’t have been alone with a boy. And even though what was being done to me was terrifying, and I knew I had less physical power in the situation, I felt mildly flattered by the attention because I thought it was so normal. I thought men were supposed to be sexually aggressive, or they just didn’t like you. This, all of this, is rape culture.

And I didn’t think women should be passive in sex. I just didn’t know what sex was supposed to look like, what was normal and what wasn’t. I was an 11 year old virgin. I didn’t know how to stand up for myself. And a 12 year old virgin. And a 13-year-old virgin.

You get the picture.  

Young girls often do not know that unwanted grabbing and touching of their bodies—their breasts, their asses, their genitals—is sexual assault. They see these interactions take place on at least two screens each day as normalized, even desirable behaviour.

I’m not embarrassed about my experiences with sexual assault being out there. I know that anyone can read this, and I hope they do. Especially the kids, now men in their late twenties and thirties, who thought my body was their property, and the wretchedly ignorant individuals who claim rape culture is not a thing.

I remained silent about all of the times I was inappropriately touched and groped because our society does not make it clear that this is especially wrong.

And for the record, I am not a “victim.” Neither are other people who are sexually assaulted. The victims are the people who abuse. They’re victims of a society that does not care for women.

The only people who should be ashamed about sex crimes are rapists, and people who make such ignorant, cruel statements as, “there is no such thing as rape culture.” You are cruel people because you are only thinking of your own interests—and you need to stop and consider other human beings before you open your mouth.

I don’t feel ashamed in the slightest. I feel shame for the people who touched my body, uninvited, and I feel shame for the many people who tell them that behaviour is okay, whether that message is delivered directly, or indirectly.

I know many people do feel shame when they are sexually assaulted, and I am not trying to shame them, in turn not saying they should “just get over it” and adopt my stance of refusing that shame. It’s a totally normal feeling, completely valid, it needs to be dealt with and lived through, and I send love to them. But the only people who should be ashamed are those who say there is no rape culture, or those who perpetuate that statement through their actions, or lack thereof.

Sexual assault makes many people feel worthless, as though their body is a tool to be used by another as they please. To say that rape culture does not exist is to deny those experiences, or to say that they do not matter to you.

To those who know that rape culture exists: please do not stay silent. Say something. We need to stand up, point our fingers at Wente and others like her, and say: “No. You will not tell us that rape is our fault, and you will not tell us that rape is not a systemic problem in our society.”

If you disagree with her and others like her, whether you’re a woman or a man or any other gender, whether you’ve been sexually assaulted or not, I believe you should find a way to make that clear. Because we need to protest not only rape culture, but lack of affordable childcare, affordable housing, adequate transit, laws being created to police sex work, and the general misogyny that still persists like second hand smoke on our society at large. There are protests going on in cities across the country, from Vancouver, to Halifax to Toronto—all of Canada, really. If there’s nothing you find compelling where you live, write to your local councilor or MPP (if you’re not sure how to navigate that, email me and I’ll help). Even just post something on Facebook or write a letter to the editor, or a helpful comment on an article—anything is better than all of us remaining silent.

And if you think that there is no such thing as rape culture? I mean this very sincerely, putting all sarcasm aside: I hope that it doesn’t take the rape of a woman you love to change your mind. Because that probability is high.

After Newsweek purported to unmask the legendary creator of Bitcoin, after journalists embarked on an absurd, live-tweeted car chase to get face time with the man, and after the 64-year-old San Bernadino resident named Dorian S. Nakamoto denied any involvement, a popular reaction was a dumb joke: "I am Satoshi Nakamoto." 

The Romeike family goes on the Glenn Beck show, which is not normally an immigrant-friendly place. Screenshot via YouTube

The key to getting asylum in the United States is to be white, socially conservative, and really into Jesus—or at least that’s the lesson imparted by the US government’s decision not to deport a family running away from Germany’s educational system. And conservatives—the same sort who complain about immigrants destroying our culture, insofar as we have one—couldn’t be happier.

Devout Christians Uwe and Hannelore Romeike came to the US in 2008 because they wanted to keep their kids out of school, for religious reasons. Although Germany allows children to attend faith-based schools, those schools must comply with German educational standards—and apparently none of them were devout enough for the Romeikes, who moved to Tennessee after being hit with thousands of dollars in fines by the German government for homeschooling their kids.

“Like the Pilgrims, they fled their homeland yearning for a place where they could be free,” wrote Todd Starnes, a bigot who appears on Fox News, in a recent article on the plight of the Romeikes that gives the unfortunate impression they’re here to spread disease, slaughter the natives, and steal their land. The family of nine’s case has been taken up by all the usual right-wing suspects, from Breitbart to TownHall to the Blaze, Glenn Beck’s bullshit "news" service. The family and its supporters say the German state has no right to indoctrinate their children and to dictate what they can and cannot learn; that right belongs to mom and dad.

The Romeikes’ escape from the tyranny of public education was facilitated by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which helped them fight to stay in America. At first, the family was granted asylum by a state court on the grounds that the Romeikes were fleeing “persecution,” but that ruling was soon overturned—a decision upheld by a federal court—after an appeal from the federal government, which conservatives have taken to mean that Barack Obama personally intervened, as he does in all judicial actions involving white Christians. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court refused to hear the family’s appeal, which left supporters fearing the worst: deportation. Of course, they would already have been shipped off had the family been from Mexico, whose citizens are regularly denied asylum and quickly deported even though they are fleeing poverty and drug-war violence instead of the teaching of evolution.

In 2012, the last year for which the Department of Justice has figures, 9,206 Mexican citizens requested asylum in the US, but only 126 had that request granted, meaning 99 percent of applications were rejected. Citizens of Honduras, which in the wake of a US-condoned military coup now enjoys the highest murder rate in the world, had their asylum applications rejected 93 percent of the time. Statistically, you’re better off requesting asylum if you’re German—though, obviously, very few Germans feel the need to escape to the US.

Despite these statistics—and even though Obama has deported 2 million people since taking office, more than any other president—the conservative narrative is that he’s waging a war on white people, especially the God-fearing variety who want to keep their children away from the liberal dogma found at public schools. All those asylum-seeking Latinos sent packing by America’s first president of color? Inconvenient at best and certainly not worthy of a media campaign, unless maybe they’re from Cuba and fled to Miami in search of a small business loan. Conservatives generally prefer their pilgrims as white as freshly bleached linen.

“Had this administration been waiting at Plymouth Rock, they would’ve told the pilgrims to go back home,” HSLDA chairman Michael Farris told Fox’s Starnes, a thought that is actually quite lovely. An America where genocidal fundamentalists were told to get the hell out and go back to the horrors of Western Europe? Sign me up for that alternate reality.

“I think this is part of the Obama administration’s overall campaign to crush religious freedom in this country,” said Farris. He meant the freedom of Christians, naturally, not any of the lesser religions that godless liberals seem to love. “I have little doubt that if this family had been of some other faith”—wink-wink, nudge-nudge—“that the decision [to grant asylum] never would have been appealed in the first place,” he said. “They would have let this family stay”—with they of course meaning Barack Hussein Obama and stay meaning institute sharia.

Perhaps it’s not fair to say the Romeikes only became a conservative cause célèbre because they are white Christians, though conservatives haven’t exactly earned the benefit of the doubt and do seem to be ignoring all those brown Catholics from Central and South America. Regardless, the family’s religious beliefs are supposed to be a very important factor in our determining whether or not they are worthy of Christian charity.

“Please, Mr. President, have mercy on this Christian family,” wrote Starnes. He went on to contrast the pasty white Romeikes with the “nearly 12 million illegal immigrants” who, unlike these good Germans, don’t “want to live here legally.” Because they actually prefer the constant fear of deportation, you know?

The funny thing is, for all the talk of its waging a war on Christianity and the white majority—God, if only—in the end the Obama administration listened to people like Starnes and chose to let the family stay, with the Department of Homeland Security ultimately giving them “indefinite deferred status,” meaning they can effectively stay here forever, even though they weren’t granted asylum. This very special treatment didn’t earn the White House any credit, though: “This is an incredible victory that can only be credited to our Almighty God,” said Farris in a statement proclaiming the good news.

And it was good news. The Romeikes should be able to live where they feel most welcome, and if that’s Tennessee and not Germany, they should be allowed to stay there. They should also probably have a right to homeschool their children—it can’t be that much different from sending them to school in rural Tennesee—but let’s not pretend that’s so much about liberty versus tyranny as much as it’s about determining who gets to control what ideas the Romeikes' children are taught, at least up until the moment they discover Google.

The real problem with this case is that the compassion these nine Germans were shown by the far right sure as hell ain’t shown to the millions of families in much greater need of a new home in America: people escaping generational poverty and terrifying cycles of violence that Uncle Sam often had a hand in creating. It would be nice if, say, a couple hours from now, conservatives could still remember what they said about Uwe and Hannelore Romeike when Omar and Emilia Rodriguez cross the border in search of a better life for their kids.

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.

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STYLIST: ANNETTE LAMOTHE-RAMOS

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BigDawger Anne Marie Harpen performs at CPAC, the annual kingmaking conference for right-wing Republicans.

Wednesday marked the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual marquee summit of the far right where thousands of Tea Party activists get together to plot Hillary Clinton's destruction and anoint a new group of Fox News contributors. The conference is still warming up, but already Chris Christie has wormed himself back into the good graces of the Republican base, Mitch McConnell has waved an ancient rifle around on stage, and Paul Ryan has informed us that poor kids don't actually want a "free lunch." 

But CPAC is a lot more than just guys in bad ties talking about God, guns, and socialism. It is a celebration of conservative culture—a chance for College Republicans and think-tank interns to drink free booze and swap ObamaCare horror stories away from the judgmental eyes of their liberal peers. And for the first time this year, all that revelry is set to live music, courtesy of something called the BigDawg Music Mafia. 

Founded in 2010, BigDawg Music Mafia bills itself as a sort of creative talent agency for conservative and libertarian artists who have been boxed out of the mainstream media. It's part of a burgeoning cottage industry of right-wing production companies, radio stations, and publishing houses that has emerged to shelter Republican voters from liberal cultural hegemony. "Culture is upstream of politics—you can't change how people vote until you change their hearts and minds," said BigDawg cofounder Lisa Mei, loosely quoting the late conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart, who was famously obsessed with the liberal media. "We're trying to break stereotypes of conservatives as just doing country music and Christian rock—we've got rappers; we've got heavy metal groups." 

To give you a sense of this new Tea Party music scene, here is a sampling of the BigDawgers jamming out at the Gaylord Convention Center this week. To those uninitiated in the conservative movement, these artists will tell you everything you need to know about the various Republican sects and fringes that gather for the yearly CPAC jamboree. 

Michaelantonio 

This guy's website describes him as "an Adonis with Tiger Blood" and includes a one-hour montage of his clips—interspersed with menacing pictures of Barney Frank and other liberals—so naturally my curiosity was piqued. And I wasn't disappointed. It turns out Michaelantonio—a lifelong conservative and onetime gondolier at the Venetian hotel—is actually sort of famous among the Tea Party crowd, thanks to his music video "It's Time for You to Go," part of which was shot at a Las Vegas Tax Day rally in 2010. 

The song, he said, was originally written about his divorce. But it turns out he feels the same way about Obama as he did about his ex-wife. So he changed around a couple of words, and voilà: "It's Time for You to Go: The Tea Party Anthem." 

Anne Marie Harpen

Everything about Anne Marie Harpen demands respect. She played that CPAC Exhibit Hall like it's a packed house at the Bitter End, warming up the crowd with Motown covers before launching into political ballads about Jesus, debt, and despair. She's like the Joan Baez of the Tea Party, except that she probably makes much better cookies. All of her songs are pretty haunting, but "Walk the Streets in Anger" was definitely the crowd favorite. 

She is also wearing the whitest sneakers I have ever seen—seriously, the only way you can achieve that kind of cleanliness must be with a nightly toothbrush scrubbing. 

Lisa Mei 

A retired Air Force Senior Master Sergeant, Mei is the leader of the BigDawg Music Mafia (BigDawg, her cofounder, is out of the picture now, Mei says). So far, Mei has spent most of CPAC manning the BigDawg Music Radio booth, but she did hop on stage to perform some of her own songs Thursday. Although Mei promises that there is more to conservative music than Jesus and guitars, her songs are just that, including a dog-whistle abortion ditty called "What Would You Do?"

Buck Allen

It's easy to spot Buck Allen, mostly because he looks and sounds exactly like a guy whose name is Buck Allen. I find him decked out in full cowboy uniform, flirting with College Republican girls and passing out CDS of his latest EP, Buck Allen: The Life & Times. Buck spent five years in Iraq as an emergency medical technician, and most of his songs are about that, with titles like "Stand Up for Freedom," "Made in Iraq," and the intriguing "I Need Too Go to Rehab [sic]". 

Politically, Buck told me that he is "100 percent about self-sustainability," which makes sense because he is also a farmer. "In life you need to produce something," he said. "If you're just a consumer, that's not sustainable. Sooner or later it's not going to work out." 

Anna and John

A married duo from Northern California, Anna and John Mix are Evangelical worship leaders, and their music is mostly about God, love, and eternal salvation. They are also disconcertingly nice, with an assured calmness of people who regularly raise the roof to Jesus. And while the Mixes are obviously the "traditional values" type of conservative, John claimed that their music is not political, but rather an"uplifting" alternative to most of the iniquity and sin that's out there now. "It's about loving your neighbor, letting everybody be free to be who they are," he said. I asked if that included gay people. "Yes, even gay people deserve freedom," he told me. "Do I agree with that lifestyle? No. But I think they have a right to have their lifestyle." 

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For this week's Mahal, I cruised around the streets of New York with Dro FE, a Texan rapper who recently released a free self-titled EP exploring his childhood in the Rio Grande Valley. In between skating and checking out Symbol, his Lower East Side pop-up shop, we chatted about his music and life on the border of Mexico and Texas. 

VICE: Why did you name your last album The Last American Migo?
Dro FE: I named it that as a statement. “Look at me,” [I was saying]. “This is a real migo. This is how I look act and sound.”

What's it like living in the Rio Grande Valley?
It's a place where you can see the poorest of the poor living in a shack, and then one block over, there's a brick mansion with Lambos and pools. The amount of government authorities patrolling the area has increased to the point where all you see are drones and helicopters patrolling the air space at night. 

You're a Texan, but you spend a lot of time in New York City. What's your connection to the city?  
I have my flagship store for my brands Symbol and Narco Wave in the LES at 17 Essex Street. This city has showed me mad love.

What's the concept for Symbol and Narco Wave?
Narco Wave was actually the name of my first EP, and it developed into its own brand and movement—it's like a wave of drugs. Symbol is a brand for the people. We use it to express certain views that we feel are important. 

Do Texans and New Yorkers view your work differently?
Both areas are completely different, but both are supportive. I'm saying real shit from real experiences, so real people fuck with it—plus the concept is new, and the records are based on a real point of view. I think that's why people all over America have been receptive to it.

Follow Taji Ameen on Twitter. 

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year y’all! The one day that acts to provide women a hassle-free space to occupy and chill without pandering to the normative patriarchy that seeps into our everyday lives. A day that instills a much-needed sense of power and righteous frenzy (and probably visions of frothing menstrual blood like our very own “just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water”) for confounded dudes everywhere.

And confounded dudes are everywhere.

There’s a real ominous hesitation when writing a piece like this because of the looming, noxious cloud that comes in the form of the knee-jerk, responsive aggression in our mainly male commenters. This isn’t a disclaimer, I’m aware of the skew embedded in the VICE audience, I work here. It’s more of an appeal to suspend your thinking for a second to expand beyond the preliminary reaction of othering an experience, just because it isn’t, and has never been, your own. If you could do that for a moment here—or for the day in question—then that would be tight.

Rape culture as a term has been used a lot in the media this week, following the accusations leveled against the University of Ottawa’s hockey team. Rape culture as a thing? Well that has been around for-fucking-ever. That’s why I couldn’t turn a blind eye to the apparent blind eyes that have been vocalizing their very real dismay at this term entering their lives.

Ignorance is scary. It’s scary because it can take so many forms and ignorance, at its core, is unapologetic and thereby immune to reasoning. Ignorance as a motivator is by far the most terrifying, because it so quickly can lead to outright aggression while serving as a binding agent to groups of people too afraid to address their own lack of knowledge. The ignorant choose to willfully ignore and rationalize that not knowing something, and not caring to know, is a shield that can be wielded at pretty much anything.

Image via Facebook.

Vocalizing that you don’t understand something, if in fact you do not understand something, seems like a no-brainer. It automatically opens up a willing dialogue and means to a feel-good end for everybody, even if you don’t end up agreeing. But of course that all hinges on whether or not you’re speaking to assholes. Vocalizing that you don’t understand something as paramount and all-encompassing as rape culture might seem overwhelming if you really don’t know, but it seems fucking baffling when it’s existence in our culture is everywhere and reinforced daily.

Image via Facebook.

Rape culture is: reporting rape victims as being “impaired” when they were drugged, rape culture is rape justifiable as a form of punishment, where so little is thought of the victim that they are then nearly thrown overboard from a cruise ship after being raped, like they were disposable. Rape culture is the continual and relentless affront on First Nations women, rape culture is when it takes a more “white looking” indigenous woman turning up at the side of the highway to only begin to address the nearly 600 missing aboriginal women in a mere two decades.

Image via Twitter.

Rape culture is sentencing that isn’t concurrent with the crime, and the obliviousness of those doling out the sentences. Rape culture is a judge citing a 14-year-old rape victim as being "probably as much in control of the situation as was the [49-year-old] defendant.” Rape culture is the continual willful ignorance of the hierarchy of power against victims in cases like Steubenville, Maryville, FSU and let’s not excuse ourselves, U of O.

Rape culture is the willful ignorance of the victim hierarchy in which homeless women are deemed disposable—and the narrative that sex workers can’t be raped, when we need a “top court” to decide whether or not poking holes in condoms is sexual assault (hint: IT IS). Rape culture is when perpetrators of rape culture threaten to sue their target for straight-up calling them out for being perpetrators of rape culture. If you haven’t caught on by now, rape culture, in many ways, is just “our culture”, and therein lies the problem with such dangerous obliviousness.

So I guess if you want to “subscribe” to rape culture you just need to open a fucking newspaper once in your life—or if that seems difficult then go on the internet and google “rape”. And if a rape convention is more up your alley, then heck, why not try walking alone down any street most likely at night (but not always, conventions take place in broad daylight in public places, too!) and if you don’t enjoy your time at the convention be prepared to be told it was probably because you were unfamiliar with your own neighbourhood, or your shoes weren’t right for running away, or there was too much crap in your purse weighing you down. Even if you just stay home, chances are good the rape convention will come to you.

The notion that rape culture is perpetrated only by the most nefarious in our society is damaging and dumb—and to feign idiocy because an issue is complex to you is the biggest cop-out of all. Feeling powerless because you don’t understand something can be easily remedied, but feeling powerless because those in positions of power don’t feel your situation deems remedy, or even recognizes it as a situation at all, is to exist, at best, as an afterthought.

Group mentality works both ways, and can be a great form to give agency to people who feel they have none, but it can just as quickly turn and refute basic comprehension and become an aggressor. Aggression is a conversation-ender, aggression is violence, even in something that seems as innocuous as clicking “Like” on something that you should have reconsidered, but your ego compelled you to continue.

Put simply: Men who don’t understand rape culture have a responsibility to give it a fucking shot, and I promise that when you do honestly attempt to give it a willful try, you’re not going be met with provocation. Rape culture is a big fucking convention, filled with a lot of loud-mouths foaming at each other under spotlights pointed at themselves—they’re not gonna notice if you leave the room. Even if one day (please) it’s just one chump in there listening to his own tiresome garbage, self-congratulating so hard he circle-jerks himself aloft and into the heavens, he’ll never know you left.

@wtevs

As Russians stream into Crimea to help wrestle it away from Ukraine, an unlikely group of Serbian war veterans—who have experience fighting in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo—are turning up at the checkpoints too. VICE News reporter Simon Ostrovsky follows Russian troops as they continue their occupation of Ukrainian military bases, and learns about unidentified men in masks attacking journalists reporting on the situation in the peninsula.

Follow Simon Ostrovsky on Twitter.

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How much would you spend on prison food?

In Elko County, Nevada, inmates won’t be able to decide. On February 5, the County Commission approved a proposal from Sheriff Jim Pitts, who oversees the county jail, to charge inmates for meals. When inmates are freed, they will be forced to pay a cumulative fee for the meals they ate at the clink. In 2012, Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez announced a plan to charge inmates small fees or co-payments for medical care, but this is the first time a similar policy has been introduced for food. 

Jim claims his plan will allow taxpayer money to be reallocated to fund education and other services in Elko County.

“If I collect $20 a day, that’s $20 less the taxpayer has to come up with,” Jim told me. “I could get up here and say, ‘I’m going to save the taxpayer $4 million a year.’ Realistically, your taxes won’t go down $4 million a year, but that money can be used in other places. I might be able to keep people out of my jail if we get them educated.”

Jim said he has a $3 million annual budget for the small jail. The prison only has 120 beds, but the prison is often overpopulated. According to Jim's calculations, one inmate's three daily meals—a hot breakfast and two cold sandwiches—costs $6.87 total. On March 3, the jail began instituting the new policy, although inmates had already responded negatively to the proposal weeks before it was initiated. And they weren't the only ones.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada has publicly condemned Jim’s plan as a violation of constitutional rights.

“Food is one of the basic necessities of life,” Staci Pratt, the legal director of Nevada’s ACLU, told me. “It is considered cruel and unusual punishment to deny anyone access to food.”

In an email, Tod Story, the executive director of Nevada’s ACLU, said, “We’ll be watching closely to see if they actually implement the plan.” On February 28, he sent a letter to Jim and the County Commission discussing his concerns.

From Jim’s point of view, the functioning of the jail’s food service is not going to change. Financial considerations will not be made until an individual’s prison term finishes—the plan is basically a forced credit system except instead of being forced to pay a credit card in full, inmates are being forced to pay for shitty food. 

“My whole purpose of this is that my computer system will keep them on record as owing us money,” Jim said. “The next time [repeat offenders] come in and they have money, I’m going to take it.”

Jim said he doesn’t care about the ACLU's opinion because the County Commission has supported his decision.

“It was their choice to commit a crime, and now they should pay for their meals while they’re serving their time,” Elko County Commissioner Grant Gerber told me. “We’re looking out for the taxpayer. We’re not looking out for the criminal.”

Grant suggested that it might be a good idea to start charging inmates for housing accommodations as well. He continually bucked the notion that inmates are forced to remain in jail, instead repeating that they chose to be there. 

“[The ACLU] is wrong,” Grant said. “I’m an attorney; they’re wrong lots of times. They need to raise money, so they’re making complaints to get their name in the paper.”

Neither Grant nor Jim took into account the plan’s long-term effects on inmates’ pocketbooks and quality of life. It’s a misconception that the plan will preclude some inmates from eating, but the new rule will likely become a financial burden for inmates once they leave jail. 

Former convicts are more likely to develop bad credit, because they are often forced to pay agencies, like probation departments, upon release, according to a report released by the Council of State Governments in 2007. Faced with the unwinnable scenario of paying a large sum for jail meals, Elko County inmates are clearly not getting a fair shake, but that hasn't stopped people from supporting the plan or seeing it as a sales pitch for living in Elko County. 

“It’s a fair system,” Grant said. “You should move to Elko County, so your taxes will be a little bit less.”

Follow Gideon Resnick on Twitter.

Photo of the author by Ellen Stagg

I’ve been a sex worker for about seven years. During this period, I have mostly worked as a dominatrix, and my approach has always been the same—I've thought, I’m always going to be me, and you’re always going to love it.

I have taken pride in my ability to learn new tricks, like attaching garter belts to stockings and applying a perfect cat-eye while in a cab rushing from school to an appointment with a client. Playing femme allowed me to do the things I truly loved about being pro-BDSM, like spanking the shit out of men who deserved it.  I was happy to talk in my Laura Palmer voice—giggling and making concessions to people with different politics than me—but I refused to lose weight or shave my legs. With these rules, domming was extremely lucrative and fun for a very long time, but I recently finished graduate school and turned 31. This means I’m a senior citizen in sex worker years, so last fall when a friend invited me to work at a “massage salon” in Midtown Manhattan (a.k.a. a place where dudes pay for handjobs from pretty ladies), I figured, What the hell? I’ll try my hand at that!

I thought giving handies would be similar to acting out kinky fantasies, but from day one, I didn’t mesh with the handjob scene, which operates throughout most of Midtown. If you’ve walked around Midtown, you’ve probably looked at the apartments above the bars and bistros and thought, Who the fuck lives there? Well, nobody lives there. Most midtown apartments are handjob parlors.

Each parlor has its own unique style. At the place I worked—let’s call it Slumberpartyville—the pretense was that we were a bunch of girlie girls hanging out in an apartment watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and doing our hair. If you wanted to come over and hang out with us, you simply needed to bring a small donation that would make it affordable for us to lay around looking hot. We would probably make out with each other if we were bored, but what we really liked was cock. If you’d bring your dick over—along with your tribute—we would love to play with your balls, laugh at your stupid jokes, and pamper your muscles, skin, and lymphatic system that you don’t take good care of.

Each session worked the same way. I greeted the client at the apartment door wearing makeup and lingerie. I put on Portishead, feigned enthusiasm about the client's job and hobbies, sidestepped everything he said that offended me, touched his dick, and pretended I loved when he violently sucked on my nipples. (Although the sessions were highly physical, I was expected to somehow never break a sweat.) After teasing and touching him until he orgasmed, I gave him a full body scrub with warm water, peppermint soap, and loofah gloves. I smiled demurely while he put his clothes on, told him I hoped to see him again, and then pretended to ignore the wad of bills he left next to the iPod stereo.

I soon began to think of my job as being the facilitator of adult males' naptimes. After one client came in my hand, he looked at me and then said, “I met my newborn nephew the other day. When I looked into his eyes when his mom was holding him, he looked so pure—so happy and completely innocent and alive, with no responsibility—and I was like, That baby has got it made.”

After a few months of giving handies and loofah scrubs for six hours several times a week, I felt confident about my handjob skills.  I made decent money and got along with my co-workers. It definitely wasn't as creative or fulfilling as working as a dominatrix, but it also wasn't as time consuming—it was as if I'd gone from being a freelancer to working for an agency.

After working at the parlor for a few weeks, I realized the managers monitored clients’ discussions on message boards. Within about four months, the clients started posting that I was too “alternative” for Slumberpartyville, which meant they thought I was too curvy, had too many tattoos, or was too obviously queer to love dick despite my excellent handjob skills. I understand I am not everyone's ideal partner, but I know from my experiences that I have everything it takes to show a client a great time.

Based on these complaints, Slumberpartyville fired me.

I thought this was ridiculous. The managers constructed their business around message boards—that’s like a blog deciding what content to publish based on trolls’ comments. Of the hundreds of satisfied customers I've sent on their way over the years, I've concluded that entitled handjob clients may have the narrowest ideas about female beauty.

In my early 20s, when I first started working as a pro-domme, I was open to being malleable, and I was fucking good at it. I can still see my 24-year-old self—a baby with a quicker metabolism, longer hair, and less tattoos referencing 70s science fiction—riding my bike home with $3,000 hidden in my sneakers and an adrenaline rush of power coursing through me.

I thought I would be this girl forever, but I now realize I was naive. For the first time, I am considering retiring from sex work. It makes me sad, but I’ve realized that my perception of myself as a sexy superhero was as much of a fantasy as the fantasy men had about me. The glamor of sex work affects sex workers as much as it affects clients. When I was 24, I was comfortable pretending I was someone I wasn’t—I pretended to be someone else all the time. Giving handjobs professionally taught me I’m no longer good at pretending.

Follow Tina Horn on Twitter.