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Why Young Pentecostals Are Worshipping Jesus with Snakes

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Andrew Hamblin picks up a poisonous snake during a church service with Jamie Coots. Photo courtesy of Facebook 

It’s been one month since 22-year-old serpent handler Andrew Hamblin watched his mentor Jamie Coots die in his arms. Jamie, a third-generation snake-handling pastor and the star of the short-lived National Geographic reality show Snake Salvation, had been bitten by a four-foot rattlesnake during a service at his church, the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name, in Middlesboro, Kentucky. He had been bitten by his snakes eight times before and survived, but the ninth bite, which had severed an artery in his right hand, killed him quickly.

“I didn’t think it was going to hurt him because I had seen him bit there before,” said Andrew, describing the night that Jamie died. Andrew and Cody, Jamie’s son, followed the preacher into the church bathroom, where he told them that his face felt like it was burning.

“As I was moving behind him he said—and he didn’t have any fear in his voice, he didn’t sound like he was in pain—he said, ‘Lord come by,’” said Andrew. “And then he said, ‘Oh God no.’ I thought that odd, and when I unbuttoned his right shirt sleeve, he looked at me, he looked me right in the face, and he said, ‘Sweet Jesus.’ Just as calm, just as peaceful as you’d imagine.”

“Then he looked past me, and his eyes glazed over, they shut, and Jamie never spoke a word again. He never opened his eyes again. He started to slump, and I said, ‘Dad.’ And I knelt behind him, and when I did, I felt something wet, and his bowels had released, and he was dead. He took his last breath in my arms.”

Jamie’s death was a shock to the small, insular world of serpent-handling preachers, an obscure, but growing, sect of American Pentecostalism that practices the century-old tradition of worshipping with venomous snakes during church services. According to ABC News, an estimated 125 churches practice serpent handling in the United States, most of which are concentrated in rural Appalachia, although some are as far away as Canada. Known as signs following Pentecostals, these churches believe in a literal interpretation of a pair of verses from the end of the Bible’s Book of Mark, in which Jesus tells his apostles: “And these signs will follow those who believe: In my name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

 

And it’s not just snakes. Signs followers speak in tongues, handle fire, and drink a poisonous mixture of strychnine and water during church services. “They see these acts as obedience to God,” said Ralph Hood, a professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga, who has written extensively about the practice of serpent handling. “The motivation is belief in eternal life. Not simply the here and now. Hence to be obedient to God, even in such a risky behavior as handling, assures eternal salvation.”

Successful snake handling, or “victory,” Ralph added, “is an emotional and sometimes ecstatic experience of perfect obedience and assurance of the protection of the Holy Spirit. Even bites and death are proof of obedience and a holy life.”

It’s an extreme and—in most states—illegal kind of worship, one that lives on the far-out edges of Christianity, where life, death, and eternal salvation are indistinct, and greet you together when you walk into the church house. After initially gaining popularity in the early 20th century, serpent handling fell out of fashion with Pentecostals around the 1940s, after a rash of lethal snake bites during church services. (About 90 pastors have died from snake bites since 1900, according to Them That Believe.) Most states now have laws against using snakes in religious practices, not to mention laws against housing and transporting poisonous reptiles. But despite, or perhaps because of, this risk, serpent handling is experiencing a resurgence driven by a new generation of young, charismatic pastors like Andrew, who post snake-handling photos on Facebook and invite strangers—including the media—to come watch their services.

On Friday I spoke to Andrew on the phone from Tennessee, where he was nursing a snake bite wound he had gotten at an evangelist revival in Kentucky the night before, to talk about his relationship with Jamie and to try to understand why young men are risking their lives to pick up snakes in the name of Jesus.

VICE: What made you want to pick up a snake in church?
Andrew Hamblin: I didn’t grow up in a serpent-handling church. I grew up in a Baptist church. We spoke in tongues, we danced, we sung, and we believed in the Holy Ghost, but we didn’t take up serpents. Then I saw it on TV one time, in a documentary, and I started getting books and watching videos—I wanted to know what makes these people tick. They were just like we were at my grandpa’s church, but they took up serpents, they handled fire, they drunk the deadly thing. I wanted to know if this was real or not. So when I was 17 years old, I convinced some people to take me to Jamie’s church, and he went into a box and pulled two rattlers out, and you could just feel the power of God in that church house. I said then, “This has to be real.” And I prayed and I fasted, and finally, a year to the day later, the Lord moved on me and let me do it, he let me handle them. And I’ve been doing it ever since.  

What does it feel like to handle snakes?
It’s an indescribable feeling to feel the power of God move on somebody to take up a serpent. I’ve seen the sick healed, I’ve seen devils pass out of people, I’ve seen miracles, I’ve seen unexplainable things happen—I’ve seen all sorts of things that God has done through people. It’s a way of life. We live this every day. We live close to God.

Do you think serpent handling is misunderstood?
I want the world to understand that we’re not crazy. We don’t tell people you have to handle snakes or if you’re not a Christian, you’re going to hell.

You were charged last year for violating Tennessee’s law against possesing Class 1 wildlife. Do you think the state government should lift its ban on serpent handling?
With the government, I can understand a law being there saying that you can’t endanger children. We don’t allow children to handle serpents. You have to be 18 or older—I’ve got five children, and I would never put them in harm’s way with snakes. I’d like for there to be some kind of law saying that in religious ceremonies consenting adults can do this as part of our religious beliefs and our religious practice. The government basically tells us that we can have our religious beliefs, but not our religious practice. It’s just not right.

A lot of people say, “Well, you’re endangering yourself. We’re protecting you from yourself.”  I endanger myself if I go get in a vehicle! I’ve got more of a likely chance of getting killed on the highway in my vehicle than I am of dying from a serpent bite. I’m the kind of man that believes that when you die, that was how God wanted you to die. I might die of cancer. I might get in a vehicle and get killed.

What kind of snakes have you handled?
The Lord has let me handle various species of snakes. The Lord has let me handle puff adders, boon vipers, eastern and western diamondbacks, the list goes on. I’ve seen cobras handled. We believe the Lord can handle any venomous snake.

Have you ever been bitten?
I have. I’ve been bitten three times.

What exactly does it mean to take up serpents? Are you looking for proof of God?
No. Now this is a big stereotype. It’s a sign to the nonbeliever of God’s power. Now, the only way you take up serpents, you don’t do it by faith. You don’t pick it up and say, “Oh, God! Don’t let this snake bite me please!”  That would be just ignorant. That’d be like stepping out in front of a train and saying, “Ok God, if you’re real, let this train derail and not hit me.”  That would be stupid. We take up serpents through and by the anointing of God. It has to be the Lord who moves on us and instructs us, “Hey, get this serpent out, do this, and put it back up.” And that’s the way it works. The anointing will instruct you and take care of you. And actually you have to have faith in believing that God could let you do it. But the anointing and the Holy Ghost, the instruction of the Holy Ghost, is what teaches you to do it.

When the Lord does move on you and you do get bitten, is that also part of God’s plan?
When God moves on you, there are only one or two reasons that you are going to get bitten. One is that to get bitten and not suffer, and that’s a sign to the people for some reason. That was like me last night—I got bit, and I didn’t feel a whole thing. We had three people get saved last night, gave their hearts to God. Now on the way home, I fainted, and my finger’s a little sore this morning, but other than that, I am just fine. The second reason would be that it would be your appointed time to die that day. I believe that we all have an appointed time to die, whether it be by cancer, by snake bite, by car wreck, or by plane crash.

You were close to Jamie Coots, and you were there the night that he died. Does his death make you scared to take up snakes?
I was very close to him. He was just like a daddy to me. I always had him. And I don’t have him no more. I’m by myself now. It made me grow up a lot. After losing him, I realized, Jamie’s not around. I’ve got to do things on my own. It has not made me scared or nothin’—because the word of God is still real, and it’s still right. It’ll never change, and I’ll never stop doing it—I’ll always take up serpents. If that’s the way God sees fit for me [to die], that’s fine. I don’t want to die by snake bite. I don’t want to die in a car wreck. I want to die when I’m 109 years old.

Do you think serpent handling is becoming more popular?
It has. After the TV show, my church exploded. I run between 85 and 100 people every service—full-time members, people that pay their tithes. We run just a good-size church now. God really blessed my church. I see our ministry going, one day, maybe worldwide. Maybe having churches set up all throughout the country. People taking up serpents, and praying for people, and seeing the sick healed, and just showing this world that there is a realness in God.

Follow Grace Wyler on Twitter.


The Confusing Crimea Situation Is About to Get Clearer or Uglier

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The Confusing Crimea Situation Is About to Get Clearer or Uglier

Weediquette: T. Kid the Landlord

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Camac Street in Philadelphia, where T. Kid was a landlord. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

My family never cared much for homeownership until my mom saw an opportunity to buy a cheap house on Camac Street in North Philadelphia. We made a deal that she would handle the down payment and I would live in the house and rent out the other rooms. For me, it meant living for free as long as there were housemates covering the mortgage. I had never been a landlord before, but I knew I’d always be able to find college students to fill the rooms and keep the rent money flowing.

For starters, I would avoid having homies living with me. I wanted the house to be a professional operation, and I knew having my buddies there would inevitably turn the apartment into a party pad. My first set of craigslist housemates was a flight attendant, who was away most of the time, and an incredibly annoying kid named Jack, who played jazz guitar so beautifully that he could make you cry. Jack’s musical talent didn’t outweigh his personality defects, and my buddy Marv soon replaced him. Being a couple of 20-something dudes, Marv and I couldn’t maintain a level of cleanliness acceptable to the flight attendant. Upon returning home from one of her long trips and finding the aftermath of our homemade falafel in the kitchen, she announced that she was moving out—she made the announcement via a scented note left on the coffee table. My friend Paulito replaced her. In less than a year, I had failed to maintain the house as a professional operation. Thanks to the presence of my friends, the house became a palace of blunts and value brand soda.

Two years of raucous behavior ensued. The house took a bit of a beating, but with a couple weeks of mild rehab, it was back to its original splendor. Of course, once it was habitable again, I moved out. Before I left Philly to bounce around for a while, I signed a lease with three Vietnamese girls who were finishing college. They were responsible, clean, and had parents to cosign, so I assumed I had landed good tenants, but they didn’t seem to have the most glowing impression of me. It’s doubtful they had ever had a landlord so young, or one who wore patterned sweatpants and beanies as frequently as I did. They also balked when I told them I didn’t mind if they smoked weed in the house. Their doubts about my abilities as a landlord didn’t matter because I would soon be miles away. They would only have to deal with my handyman, Angelo, who looked the part far more than I did.

While I traveled up and down the east coast, I didn’t hear a peep from my new tenants. They paid the rent on time every month, and I didn’t hear any issues from Angelo. It was the only time that being a landlord wasn't stressful—this lasted until my mom called to tell me that one of the Vietnamese girls had skipped out on the others. I called them for details, and they sounded panicked. They were worried that they wouldn’t be able to make the rent and that we’d kick them out of the house. My mom came up with an altruistic solution: The rent on the house was $1,500 a month, and she said they could pay an even grand in rent for two months. That gave them plenty of time to find a replacement and start paying us full rent again. A $1,000 payment was barely enough to cover the mortgage—we would have to break even and lose a little on maintenance until they found someone.

By the time the girls’ two months were up, I was through with my travels and wound up back in Philly. I visited the house and found that the girls were loving having the house to themselves and didn’t seem to be in a rush to find another housemate. I was perplexed. “You guys have been paying a fraction of the rent for a little while now. Any luck getting a third person in here?” I asked them. They brushed me off, saying that one friend or another might take it. I didn’t want to threaten to kick them out because they had been such great tenants so far and getting two thirds of the rent was better than getting none at all. Finding new tenants would be a pain in the ass, and nobody knew if the new tenant would be destructive and slovenly. These were nice kids. I just had to come up with a smooth way to make them pay the entire rent.

My recent journeys had taken a toll on my cash situation, so I was counting on the last third of rental income to cover me for a place to live. I was walking back out to my car when the solution struck me. I turned around, walked back up the stoop, and knocked on the door. One of the Vietnamese girls answered. “Forget something?” she asked, sweet as ever. “Nope,” I replied. “I just figured it out. I’m going to be your third housemate.” Her mouth dropped. The other girl popped out from behind the door with the same look.

It was perfect. They were being slow because they knew my mom and me liked them as tenants and wouldn’t want to give them up. By living there, I had a free spot to move into immediately. Eventually, they would get sick of me and find a new housemate who matched their lifestyle, and then I’d use the extra rent money to get another place.

On the day I moved in, they cleared out the master bedroom, which was my room when I lived there. I threw the only belongings I had brought with me (a single duffel bag and a thin foam mattress) into the unfurnished room. For the first few days, I was out quite a bit, returning home only to blaze in my room and go to sleep. I didn’t see much of my housemates. On the first weekend, I slept in as usual, blazed as soon as I woke up, and went downstairs at around noon to make tea. Still in a daze, I yawned as I walked down the steps. When my eyes focused I saw that the girls had some friends over. Three Asian dudes with lots of gel in their hair sat in the living room staring at my bedhead. I introduced myself simply by saying, “I’m the landlord,” and then I entered the kitchen. They all stayed quiet for several minutes. Finally, one of them curiously asked, “Is that your… weed smell?” I chuckled and responded, “Yeah, that’s my weed smell. You want to blaze?” He immediately said, “Nope. Thanks, but no. I mean, no thanks.” I said, “Suit yourself,” and headed back upstairs.

I spent a lot of my time that weekend hanging out in my room, blazing and fooling around. Having nothing in there besides the mattress, my computer, and one bag made it feel a bit like camping. I was delighted that I needed so little to entertain myself. I emerged from my room in the evening and paused before going downstairs. I knew this was an awkward situation for everyone involved, but there was a purpose to the exercise. If I lived there like a ghost, they might not ever have a reason to find another roommate. I would have to make enough of a presence for them to find a third roommate, so I invited my buddy Sour Joe over to hang out that night.

At one time, Sour Joe and I were capable of a ruckus that could annoy anyone, but that was many years earlier. Sitting in the living room of our old party pad led to some reminiscing and a few laughs, but nothing that would irk my tenants. When we left the house to grab a bite, I told him, “I was sure if I brought your creepy ass over they would run out of the house screaming.” He said, “You’re trying so hard to scare them off, I don’t think you realize you’ve already done it.” I asked him to explain, and he did: “You are a bearded brown man with crazy hair who constantly smokes weed and listens to offensive 90s rap songs. You swear a lot, and you spit quite a bit too. They are horrified that you live there. I could see it in their faces.” I grew tense. “I hope to god you’re right, Sour Joe.”

Amazingly, Sour Joe was right. Less than two weeks after I moved in, my housemates confronted me. “We can cover the full rent, so you can move out whenever. Seriously, anytime—like today even,” one of them said. I was victorious. “So you found a new housemate?” I asked. “No. Our parents are going to split the cost of the whole house. They thought it was really weird that you were living here.” I took no offense. I said, “Not as weird as paying two thirds of the rent!” I went upstairs to grab my duffel bag and mattress.

A week later, I moved in with Bill and a whole new adventure began.

Follow T. Kid on Twitter

I Had a Scammer Tortured by Police in Tanzania

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Illustrations by Cei Willis

It was when they manhandled him onto the table, tethered him to a water pipe coming out of the ceiling, and pulled his pants down to his ankles that I experienced a change of heart. For weeks I’d been consumed with hatred for the man on that table. But it’s funny how your perspective changes when someone is about to be tortured, especially when you’re the one that put him there.

It had begun, like many tales of misadventure, in that most anarchic staging post for travel: the Tanzanian bus station. Ever been to one? This is how it goes: The long-distance buses tend to leave at dusk or before; schedules are mind-bogglingly irregular; a tourist tax on the price of a ticket is all but inevitable. Like transport hubs the world over, they’re a magnet for the wretched, the transient, and the dispossessed. And you endure it all for the privilege of cramming yourself into a bus driven by some prepubescent boy-racer in a country with a traffic accident rate six times worse than that of the UK.

Arriving in the southern town of Mbeya at 10 PM one balmy evening in May, shattered after a 14-hour kick from Dar es Salaam and in a hurry to reach Malawi, I’d steeled myself for another onslaught. At the bus station, arrayed on an expanse of cracked concrete, an collection of ticket offices advertised destinations with a chaotic matrix of handwritten signs and sheets of printer paper pinned to the wall.

And then—and this should have been warning number one—the guy came to me. He was a stocky guy with a wolf's smile and these protruding eyes that gave him the look of a toad. He wore a white polo shirt with a label of the breast that read "AXA Coach Service"—Malawi’s biggest people carriers. We’ll call him "Mwizi," which is Swahili for "thief." He showed me bus tickets reassuringly marked with the blocky AXA logo that promised to take us all the way from Mbeya to Blantyre—Malawi’s commercial hub—620 miles south. Too good to be true.

Sure enough, the next morning it all felt wrong. Mwizi seemed agitated as he half-cajoled, half-bundled us onto a minibus bound for the border post. And as it pulled away, through the window, I could see something in his eyes—guilt, I figured later, for when I got to the Malawian side of the border there was no connecting bus to Mzuzu. The tickets were fake. And having gotten our passport stamps and relinquishing our Tanzanian visas, it would have cost us more than the price of the ticket to return—the perfect swindle.

Getting scammed is an everyday feature of the tourist experience, but this was a whole new level of chicanery. It wasn’t the loss of money that pissed me off, but the bare-faced charade, the smiles and reassurances. Not that we were alone: Relaying our tale of woe to other travellers in Malawi, it soon became clear that just about every credulous backpacker taking that route had fallen for the same routine, performed either by Mwizi or others operating just like him.

But poor Mwizi hadn’t reckoned on one thing. I was due to travel up to Rwanda for an assignment in a month’s time, and to get there I needed to pass back through Mbeya. I would be back, and I would have my vengeance.

One month later, I arrived at Mbeya Station at dusk. Looking back, I wonder what retribution I could have pursued to avoid what came later. Perhaps I could have been more subtle—I could have waited for a sight of Mwizi then ambushed him to demand my money back, and perhaps givem him a slap. But I didn’t do subtle. Instead, I simply stormed over to the ticket offices like a wronged colonial big man, shamefully exploiting my white skin, and prowled about barking maniacally until some policemen noticed me and waddled over to investigate.

Word spread. The culprit was found, bundled through a sea of onlookers by many hands. When he saw me, his eyes fell to the ground. Without ceremony, Mwizi was roughly handcuffed and frogmarched north through unlit backstreets. “I had half a mind to just stampede the office and smash your face in,” I spat, sidling up to him as we walked in the gloom. “You did the right thing calling the police, then,” he said. “I am very strong.” This bravado evaporated as soon as Mbeya’s Central Police Station loomed into view.

The station was a squat, nondescript oblong surrounded by barracks, with a wide portico leading into a reception room bisected by a high counter. Police officers strutted in and out, each of them sporting the paunches that seem to go hand-in-glove with power in Tanzania. The lieutenant at the desk—a brutish, heavy-browed man in a bomber jacket—confiscated Mwizi’s personal belongings and another officer dragged him behind the scenes, “for processing,” they said. And then, through the doorway behind the counter, that horrifying scene: the table, the water pipe, the pants around the ankles, the pair of trembling legs sticking out of the green boxers, and the horrible realization that I put him there.

Looking up from his ledger, seeing my face crumple with dismay, the lieutenant at the front desk kicked the door closed with his heel. Ten seconds later, the screaming began.

“I just wanted my money back,” I gibbered.

What had I been expecting? I knew that the Tanzaniam police weren't about to win any prizes for their human rights record. Deaths in custody are common here; extrajudicial killings are widely reported. Even as Mwizi’s shrieks rang through the building, there seemed to be no consistency in the way the police were dealing with the succession of desperate characters crossing their threshold. One man who came in beside a cowering woman, her eyes submerged by bruises that he had presumably just punched onto her face, seemed destined to escape with a reprimand.

Ten minutes later, Mwizi was dragged back into the vestibule looking forlorn and watery-eyed. It was immediately evident from his hobbled walk and hunched posture that they had beat him in the legs and stomach. I’d known that this was a possibility, but I’d been so blinded by rage that I hadn’t cared. Now, faced with the consequences, I wanted out.

He grimaced as he was forced back to the ground. “It was a mistake,” he whimpered, more for the benefit of his tormentors than for mine. Then, fixing my eye: “I have a family.” He cradled his wrists, which had been welted by the cuffs. His upper lip was trembling.

“You did it from your own free choice,” bellowed a policeman. “Why are you complaining about torture? You have to pay for your crime.” He turned away to castigate a bandy-legged woman who had just been dragged in.

Basic compassion demanded a change of tack. “I have no interest in seeing this man punished further,” I said, with false authority.

“Mzungu [a Bantu word for a person of European descent] we have already treated him,” spat a burly officer. “His relatives will be coming tomorrow morning with your money.”

Seeing me waver, Mwizi snatched his chance, “If they torture me like this again, it is better to die,” he said, before being dragged away again.

At nine the next morning, I was led through the bowels of the police station and into a dingy anteroom stacked high with yellowing case files. An obese female officer sat behind a desk in a creaking wooden chair. Mwizi was there—the picture of exhausted contrition. A deal was struck. Mwizi would have a month to gather the money he’d pilfered. His friends paid the necessary bribe and we walked out, blinking into the sunshine, at 10 AM.

We did the obvious thing and went for a beer. Slurping greedily from a bottle of Nile Gold, Mwizi told me what they did to him in the room, how they hung him over the water pipe by his cuffs and smashed him about the legs and stomach with an iron bar. He’d spent the night in a lightless cell with 100 men stuffed inside it. “They kill people for less here,” he murmured pitifully.

I still felt a nagging urge to have it out with Mwizi, but by now my anger had all dried up. Here was this man with a wife and two boys seeing a weekly drip of pampered Westerners pass through his town with backpacks full of laptops, Kindles, and $750-cameras. The money he'd stolen from me—around $35—was pocket change to me, and I am by no means rich by Western standards. For him that cash meant food, shelter, and the survival of his family. In a country where everyone has to fight for themselves, where corruption is rife and the police respond to a foreigner’s accusation with an iron bar, would I have been above doing the very same thing?

Three weeks later, as I disembark from the Abood bus from Morogoro, Mwizi is waiting at the door. He gives me a bear hug and over a beer, he tells me of his efforts to start making an honest living in the tourism sector, an industry to which he is apparently naturally predisposed. He admits that he has not obtained all of my money. I tell him that I am glad he has tried, and grateful for the 30,000 Tanzanian shillings (around $18) he has amassed in so short a time. I reiterate that I had never intended to have him so severely punished.

“If you hadn’t done that, I might have made the same mistake again,” he declared grandly. “God is very clever. I am thinking of you as a prophet. Now I want to change my life.”

That afternoon, back at the border, I step into the money-changer and reach into my pocket for Mwizi’s hard-earned penitence. But my fingers find nothing—and then I remember the man on the minibus, who’d pressed rather too emphatically against my side to let a woman get off, and realize that the money has been pinched. I shake my head, suppress a moan, and shuffle off to get the fuck out of Tanzania.

We Need to Quit Our Obsession with Meat

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Shit-tons of meat. Look at that meat. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

On Sunday, March 9, Pitt Cue Co—the meat mecca just off London’s Carnaby Street—hosted a special evening, a one-off “Highland Beef Night” that featured a nose-to-tail menu of beef dishes made from a pair of Highland cows the restaurant bought a year ago from a Cornish farmer. The animals spent two months dry-aging, their flesh and bones eventually finding their way into dishes like beef scrumpets, beef and bone marrow pasties, and the king of all cuts, rib of beef.

All of it was fucking fantastic. Not many places in London do the things to pigs and cows that Pitt Cue do. But with everyone smiling at each other—lips slicked with grease, teeth like fenceposts that live animals had been fired into—I couldn't help but think that there was something a bit culty about a group of humans gathering together to eat two specific cows.

Locavore obsessives will kick their hooves at this; speak to any chef, food critic, restaurateur—whoever—and they’ll give you the eat-better-meat-less-often argument, droning on about where the animals lived, what they ate, how humanely they died, which artisan coffee they drank, etc, etc. All of that is irrefutable. If you’re going to eat meat, you can do your part by eating the best quality available and, when you can, consuming the animal's less popular parts (neck fillet, onglet, cheek, trotters, that kind of stuff) and not just the common cuts.

Meanwhile, we've become increasingly obsessed with meat. If an event like Highland Beef Night had been touted even a few years ago, there’s no way it would have pulled in the people it did on Sunday. Meat is now highly fetishized, especially among young people. Burgers are the new tits—if you look at any social media platform, there are as many 20-something men posting photos of ground flesh covered in neon sauce as there are sharing that zero gravity Kate Upton video. We’ve become a society of rabid carnivores, and it’s not just getting tiresome—it’s fucking killing us.

I love a nice burger as much as the next idiot, but if I see any more evangelizing of what is essentially bread and ground-up cow, I might collapse. I'm aware this will infuriate any chef who's devised their perfect supreme-quality-ground-beef-to-brioche-bun ratio, but, really, just how good can a burger be? And let’s not even start on bacon.

Some meat that died recently. Eat it. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Last year, bacon sales in the US rose by nearly 10 percent to an all-time high of $4 billion, which is a lot of cash to spend on salty, water-injected slices of pig—especially in light of how unhealthy a flesh-heavy diet is. The National Health and Nutrition Survey, which has been collecting data on 6,381 Americans over 50, recently released a study that found that diets rich in protein (like the protein found in meat) could be as harmful to the body as smoking. If you’re under 65 and eat lots of meat, dairy, and eggs, you are, apparently, four times more likely to die of diabetes or cancer. Yet despite these terrifying “eating meat will give you cancer” headlines, we still ask for bacon on our burgers, and chefs and food bloggers are still worshipping at the altar of artisanal meat.

Again, please don’t get me wrong—I love bacon. It’s just that the collective meat fever gripping foodies doesn’t seem to be breaking, even in light of all this news about how bad animal flesh is for you, and that’s troubling. Shouldn’t we start obsessing over something else? Are we really so fucking moronic that we'll carry on like this?

This meat hysteria is probably a product of recession weariness. When times are hard we crave food that isn’t just comforting and a bit childish (a burger and fries is a five-year-old’s dream meal) but also escapist. Eating meaty food can make you feel drunk—the fat, refined carbohydrates, salt, and sugar sees to that—and getting a little bit high on a burger is accessible and acceptable to everyone. A hunk of meat is reliable, too; it’s not likely to be booby-trapped with anything nasty. You know where you are with it and that means something.

Another issue is that we’ve been led to believe that protein-heavy diets are what will keep us healthiest. The most successful diet fads of the past decades—Dukan, Atkins, and, of course, "paleo"—all promote cutting your carb content drastically and overloading on protein. Each is based on some sort of bespoke science, especially paleo, which makes woolly claims about how we should eat what our caveman ancestors ate.

But it seems now that even though it might help us get thinner, eating meat every day is probably going to kill us. I have friends who don’t consider a meal complete without some meat on the plate, and they don’t get that they’re the subjects of all these news stories. It feels like there’s a gulf between the information and people’s realities.

The only solution I can think of for this problem is that we need to start fetishizing broccoli the same way we do steak. It might look a little silly at first for people to shove green things into their mouths and blog about the different textures of squash, but it would probably help us live a lot longer.

Follow Eleanor Morgan on Twitter.

How Bitcoin Cyberpunk'd Us

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How Bitcoin Cyberpunk'd Us

The Satanic Temple Weighs In on the Impending Death of the Leader of the Westboro Baptist Church

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Fred Phelps. Photo via Getty

Yesterday, Nathan Phelps, the son of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps, posted a note on Facebook claiming that his father is "on the edge of death at Midland Hospice house in Topeka, Kansas." He also mentioned that Fred was excommunicated from the church in August of last year, but didn't give any details as to why. Although the information at this point is sparse and unofficial, Westboro spokesman and Radiohead fanboy Steve Drain told the Daily News "Fred Phelps is having some health problems. He’s an old man and old people get health problems.”

In celebration of the icy hand of death caressing Fred's gross old body, we reached out to Lucien Greaves, the leader of the Satanic Temple, who last summer performed a "Pink Mass" over the grave of Fred's mother in order to turn her into a lesbian in the afterlife. When we spoke to him at that time, he told us, "Fred himself is getting pretty long in the tooth, and I hope to be presiding over his Pink Mass before long," so yesterday we asked Lucien what he thought of the recent news of Fred's demise, and if there are still plans to turn him gay after he dies. We have republished his response in full below.

It is often considered proper form for the remaining party among two established enemies, when one is dead or dying, to make disingenuous statements of remorse—to express that "nobody wishes death" upon their opponent. You’ll find no such dissembling from me. As I write this, Fred Phelps is now in the process of doing probably the one thing that he’ll ever do for which he will have my gratitude: He is dying. And while some part of me thinks, the sooner the better, another part of me hopes he lingers long enough to savor the full terror that must consume a mind as superstitious and bitterly haunted as his during its last moments of life.

The claim that Fred Phelps had been excommunicated from the Westboro Baptist Church within its recent history is new to me. I only hope that it is true, and that the consequence of this excommunication is that Fred finds himself frightened and alone on his deathbed now, abandoned by the only people he personally shared his spiteful and depraved sense of mission with.

In his life, Phelps can be credited with many an inadvertent positive influence. As a caricature of cruel religious-based inhumanity, Phelps often rallied people in opposition to his stupidity, and he served as a ludicrous arch-villain. He was a living argument ad absurdum in support of all of the things he detested and decried. On the eve of Phelps’s death, I think there is much that the American public can be proud of. We can be proud not only of the strong counter-protests that followed the Westboro Baptist Church wherever they flagrantly and tastelessly displayed their disgusting malice, but also that we live in an environment where Fred Phelps was allowed to publicly spew his vindictive ideas with such infuriating and thoughtless impunity. It is infinitely better to suffer the few Fred Phelpses that will surely always exist than to live in a political environment in which odious speech is regulated by an officiating body.

The Satanic Temple exercised its own right to offensive Free Speech in our performance of the Pink Mass at Fred Phelps’s mother’s grave this past summer. After having two same-sex couples (one male, one female) engage in homoerotic activity at the grave site, we declared Fred Phelps’s mother a post-mortem homosexual conversion. At the time, I predicted that Fred hadn’t too much longer till he would pass, and I stated—in a direct tweet to the WBC—that I would be presiding over Fred’s own Pink Mass before too long. As I have made a promise to a dying man, I fully intend to do my very best to see it through, and the pomp and circumstance of this Pink Mass will surely far, far exceed that of the original event in Meridian, Mississippi.

For more on the Satanic Temple, go to thesatanictemple.com

All Bad News Considered: Sbarro Filed for Bankruptcy Protection, and Scientists Think We Can Clone Woolly Mammoths

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Photo courtesy of Flickr user Scott Hendo

Malls hold a special place in my heart. Growing up in the suburbs as a teenager without booze connections, I didn't have many other places to hang out at with my dorky friends other than the mall, where we wasted hours upon hours trying to meet girls. (This goal was quickly abandoned once my friends and I realized meeting girls meant we had to actually work up the nerve to talk to girls. Knowing we wouldn't get laid anytime soon, we settled for looking at Crown Books' adult magazine section.) When I was locked in these concrete islands of commerce, I had to eat whatever the tribespeople had to offer at the food court. I thought about my food court memories last week when I read that the pizza chain Sbarro had filed for bankruptcy protection (again). I was hit equally hard by the news that Quiznos, Sbarro's food court cousin, had followed the pizzeria down the same bankruptcy rabbit hole—at least I felt depressed until I remembered that nobody gives a shit because Sbarro and Quiznos are both disgusting. 

Photo courtesy of Flickr user MadLab Manchester

When I first read that Tokyo-based engineers and Squarepusher, a British recording artist, had made a band made out of Japanese robots, my first instinct was to put on my grumpy old man hat and whine about how the news symbolizes the decline of modern music. Instead of worrying about Skynet taking over our weapons and enslaving us, we should have focused on the machines attacking our souls by co-opting our species's monopoly on art. But then I remembered that humans used auto-tune to create “Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin'),” so, you know, maybe it's the machines' turn to create art. We had our chance, and we blew it.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Leandro Algro

Here's a good rule to live by: If you think you're getting a good deal, you should assume someone on the other end is getting screwed. Like you know how easy it is to get Amazon items shipped to your doorstep by the next day? Well, on the other side of your rushed delivery of Veronica Mars DVDs are terrible working conditions in Amazon's warehouses. Here's another good rule: If you think you're getting a good deal, you're probably not.  According to two lawsuits, Amazon Prime users weren't receiving free shipping. Amazon was allegedly encouraging third-party vendors to inflate their prices by the shipping cost, pretty much taking away any benefit of paying $79 for the membership. (Soon Amazon will raise the membership fee to $99.) If you ever felt bad about sharing your Amazon Prime streaming password, you should probably start sharing the password with your friends now.

Many people will greet the news that scientists have a “high chance” of cloning a woolly mammoth with alarm bells. They'll claim that this is the first step to creating a real-life Jurassic Park and velociraptor soldiers are going to hunt us down. As an admitted wimp, I understand their mentality. But I also understand that we have the chance to live in a world where woolly mammoths exist! Sure, they'll be confined to zoos—a whole different moral conundrum, which I don't have time to get into here—and it's a slippery slope before we start cloning other species, our dead cherished pets, our relatives, and ultimately the Founding Fathers, so we can finally put an end to partisan bickering about the Constitution by going straight to the racist source. But luckily most of those issues won't be dealt with until after I'm dead. Carry on, scientists! Clone the mammoth!

Follow Rick Paulas on Twitter


Scally Lads Are Gay Brits Who Like to Smell Stinky Socks and Have Sex in Tracksuits

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Photos from a shoot for the Trackies website, “the place for guys who love trackies, trainers and scally gear.” All images by Gaz, courtesy of Trackies.com

Deep within the fist-stretched bowels of the gay fetish scene, Britain’s working class and their budget sportswear chic have become objects of sexual fascination. Tracksuit bottoms tucked into white socks, trainers, caps, hoodies and clunky Argos gold are all eroticised by scally gear fetishists.

Sites such as Sketboy.com and Sneakersex.net feature guys who look like your local skunk dealer, fucking and jizzing in each other’s trainers. The gay porn production company Triga Films produces comically titled bluecollar porn called things like Dads ’n’ Lads: Council House and Job Seeker’s Allowance: Extra Benefits, while UK Scally Lads has a web shop selling the cum-stained sports gear used in each photoshoot. There are hookup sites, too. FitLads.net and Trackies.com are strewn with profile pictures that look like mug shots pulled from the vaults of Merseyside Police’s Anti-Social Behaviour Taskforce. Shaven-headed guys scowl into the camera, accessorising cans of lager with Staffordshire bull terriers.

Much like the biker-loving leathermen and boot-licking skinheads of decades past, scally fetishism perpetuates a long-standing cycle of re-appropriation of working-class aesthetics within the gay scene. Phil Hamill, the founder of Trackies.com and the internet’s largest gay fetish network, Recon, sees this as a natural step in cultural evolution.

“Gay fetish always marries itself with the street culture of the generation that came before it,” he says from his company’s glass-panelled offices in east London. “You have these younger gay kids watching these cultures develop around them in their formative years. As they become older they start to wear the gear, sexualising it and it becomes a fetish.”

This fetish, in particular, is said to have grown out of the happy hardcore club scene that flourished in the Greater Manchester area in the late 90s. While the term “scally” has been used in the region to denote working-class youths with a penchant for violence and criminal behaviour for decades, most of the fetishists I spoke to associate the term with that specific scene and era. It’s not clear when it crossed over into the fetish scene, but most of the sites I’ve mentioned appeared on the web three to four years ago – the two exceptions being FitLads, online since 2003 and Triga Films, which has been committing burly builder orgies to celluloid since 1997.

Although incredibly niche, this isn’t an isolated scene confined to the fringes of the UK’s gay underground; it’s just as popular in France, where they hold annual “Mister Sportswear” competitions, and enjoys sizeable followings in Holland, Germany and Italy. Ladz, a bi-monthly sportswear fetish party in Amsterdam, regularly attracts 400 to 500 punters, while Trackies’ Facebook page has over 22,000 likes. To put this into perspective, that’s almost a third as many as popular gay cruising app Grindr.

Cruising guys on Trackies feels a lot like thumbing through a smutty JD Sports catalogue. Shots focus on bulging tracksuit crotches, and hooded, shirtless men sprawl out in front of their webcams like gym-bound centrefolds. Scally fetishists are particular about the brands they buy and how they wear them, with most admitting that no matter how hot someone is, a poor choice in footwear can be the difference between a hook-up and a lonely wank at home.

Adidas is the most popular choice of tracksuit, particularly the Chile 62 model. Its tactilely satisfying, wet-look nylon gives it the appearance of an athletic gimp suit. Fetishists are visual people, so Adidas’ logo-heavy branding holds particular appeal. Nike is the overwhelming favourite in footwear, specifically TNs and Air Max 95s. Typically retailing at £120, these models were revered by straight scallies for being some of the priciest trainers on the market. Like the super-sized jewellery and pimped-out rides you see in rap videos, this brash exclusivity resonates with working-class machismo, explains Alex Taylor, Trackies’ advertising director. “I’m from Manchester, and there were always scallies in school. For them it was all about status symbols, usually represented in footwear. That’s why Rockports were so popular, because they’re the most expensive shoes you could wear in school.”

Although they’re now interlinked via the web, the varying scally scenes across Europe developed organically, and each have their own local customs. While they still retain a penchant for TNs, French scallies (known as kiffeurs) dress exclusively in Lacoste, even down to their socks – again, a reflection of the brand’s price and prestige. Dutch sportswear fetishism borrows from the 1990s gabber scene, hence the popularity of the Air Max Classic and Air Max 90.

Fashion has particular significance for gay men because it also acts as a flagging system. In the 70s and 80s, handkerchief code helped them differentiate tops from bottoms as well as identify those with similar kinks to their own. In Britain, tracksuits are as common as a pair of jeans, so scally fetishists set themselves apart from the tabloid cliché of “benefit-thieving ASBOs” by meticulously curating their image. “In the gay scene we take a look and refine it,” says Alex. “A guy has to have the right trainers and his track bottoms must be tucked into his socks. It has to be a lot more obvious and on display. There is a concerted effort that goes into the look to stand out more than the average guy from a council estate. You want to show guys you’re into it and that it’s something that turns you on.”

While most people derive sexual pleasure from physical acts, like rim jobs or asphyxiation, fetishists draw erotic gratification from clothing. “If I’m having sex, it’s full gear. I wouldn’t even pull a tracksuit down to the knees,” says Phil. “I keep it as high as possible. If someone gets naked, then that’s me done. Time for some X Factor.”

“I like to keep the gear on when I wank,” says Niall, a guy I found on Trackies and whose name has been changed. “I’ll cum on the gear, either in it or on it, both when I’m by myself or with someone else.” Licking trainers and socks is widespread, while “trampling” – a procedure where someone sprawls themselves out on the floor and offers their services as a human doormat – is big in Germany (quelle surprise).

Because the tracksuit-and-trainers combo is so commonplace, scally fetishists are likely to encounter dozens of unattainable cock teases every day. Consequently, for some of them the gear becomes a proxy for all the fucks they can’t have. “There are types of guys you’d like to go for but aren’t necessarily going to get,” says Niall. “You see them wearing certain things, and if you go out and buy them yourself, it’s almost like a bit of [the guy] is captured in the clothing.”

Scally fetishists don’t just get off from trips to JJB, though. If you’re straight, a stench in the bedroom is usually a sign that something’s gone horribly wrong, whereas for gay scallies this can be an additional source of arousal. Trackies is full of pictures of guys burying their snouts into trainers like pigs at a trough. One guy who tried to cruise me on the site requested that I don’t shower for a week before our meet, telling me that he loves “stinky socks” and a “cheesy cock” because it’s “fucking manly, the smell of a real man”.

This obsession with being a “real man” was a recurring theme as I researched this piece. Ultimately, whether it’s consciously recognised or not, scally fetishism is a fixation on masculinity. A fetish develops when sexually arousing, inherently human qualities become associated with an inanimate object. In the case of sportswear, it’s the macho posturing and boisterous, hetero-normative masculinity of the scallies who wear it. “A suit doesn’t work for me. I don’t consider that masculine at all,” says Phil. “I guess the point I became attracted to sports gear is when I started seeing really masculine guys wearing it.”

Nearly everybody I spoke to echoed this sentiment. Most traced the origins of their fetish to their sexually formative years, when they began associating the people they were attracted to with the clothing they wore. “At school my mates were what you call ‘lads’ lads – into football, smoking, girls. I knew I liked guys, and these mates were my point of reference,” says Lee (not his real name), another guy I contacted on Trackies. “When you’re from a certain background, you wore those types of clothes. As I started fooling around with guys, I realised that their clothes turn me on too.”

Perhaps this goes some way towards explaining the enduring appeal of blue-collar subculture to gay fetishists. In the same way that clothing becomes associated with masculinity, it appears that class does as well.

“There’s this conflation of working-class masculinity and authenticity. Working-class men are somehow more authentic,” explains Murray Healy, the author of 1996’s Gay Skins: Class, Masculinity and Queer Appropriation – one of the earliest investigations into the gay skinhead scene. “They’re not processed by culture, they’re untamed, like ‘real men’ are supposed to be.” Ironically, despite their resemblance to the cast of Shameless, few of the guys I interviewed fit the socioeconomic profile of a scally or “chav”. From successful businessmen like Phil Hamill to public-school boys and an architect, everyone appeared thoroughly middle class. One guy claimed to be from a “not so great area”, but according to Phil, no more than 20 percent of the guys come from deprived backgrounds, if that.

“It’s a lot like drag, but at the other end of the spectrum,” says Phil. “A lot of guys in this scene have normal jobs, like working in an office or a bar – they’re not selling drugs from a council flat – so it’s a form of release. It’s role play, pretending to be something different to what you are.”

Because it is role play, a great deal of congruency is needed to keep it genuine. “You take a look at a guy on Trackies, he looks good, he’s got the gear,” says Alex, “but then you take a look at where he is – a room with a nice pink carpet and flowery bed sheets. At the back of my mind I’m going, ‘Oh, his name’s actually Jonathan and he’s an accountant from Surrey’. It ruins the fantasy. You can’t be too old, either. Guys in their 40s and 50s just don’t fit the scally demographic and usually don’t understand the culture behind it, so you’ll often see them wearing the wrong gear. Oh, and fat people in sportswear? The irony is terrible…”

This congruency doesn’t simply stop at physical appearance, it extends to sex, too. “You’ll never have sex in a bed,” says Lee. “That’s so normal, it’s the missionary position, vanilla. I like to meet up with a guy in a pub, have a few pints and then go fuck in the toilets. I know some guys who won’t have sex at all – they’ll just wank off together because they think it’s how straight lads would do it.”

“Straight” and “straight-acting” are words you see a lot on Trackies profiles. Everyone seems to be looking for an archetypical straight boy, and I wonder if the extensive use of ALL CAPS and poor spelling are all front, just superficial attempts at fitting into loutish stereotypes.

In some cases, this obsession with heterosexuality and fear of effeminacy is so extreme that it carries a tinge of homophobia. One guy, who declined to talk to me, proclaims on his profile: “I hate those fucking skinny jeans-wearing, glitter-faced queens. I like guys to be guys, and I might be a bottom, but I ain’t no sub-bitch either.” Even Lee, who claims he’s cool with his sexuality, admits, “The guys I met on FitLads.net back in the day were just typical blokes, but now it’s just like Gaydar, full of Soho queens who ponce around.”

It feels like lazy pop-psychology, but it’s impossible to avoid assuming that this forced hypermasculinity stems from feelings of inadequacy. “If a fetish is all about being harder and tougher and more aggressive than everyone else, then that is a fetishisation of masculinity,” Murray explains. “I think this over-investment in masculine symbols is a hysterical reaction to ward off accusations of effeminacy or not being male enough.”

The irony is, despite all the grunting, Cro-Magnon manliness, most members specify themselves as bottoms. Phil puts the figure at roughly 65 percent, but my own research suggests it might be higher. Scally porn is largely violent and degrading, while Trackies is full of subs looking for someone to dominate them. Throughout my month-long membership, I was inundated with guys looking for beatings, rape and even kidnappings. Chillingly, one said I could do whatever I want to him “just as long as I live”. Most guys were too inarticulate to entertain, but there were two I propped intensely, and I even rewarded one by posting him a dirty sock.

The first one wanted me to tie him up and kick him in the balls repeatedly. Perversely, he saw this as an empowering process, rather than an emasculating one, because “if you can take a kicking to the bollocks and handle the pain without crying, it’s fucking manly.” He’d ask me what trainers I’d wear, how big my feet are, and wondered, “What’s the worst you’ve done to a lad’s cock and balls?” He told me about his testicles, which he described as “low hangers”, inviting me to use them as a punch bag. The other asked me to round up a group of friends, ideally ones who didn’t know it had been pre-arranged, and assault him somewhere secluded. As we set parameters, he told me: “You can snap my ribs, but don’t break my arms or legs. No permanent damage. I want you to knock me the fuck out. Want to feel you stamp my face in with your Nikes. Just leave me there, smashed up. You ever use knives? You should bring one, just don’t cut me up too bad…”

As I delved into the root of his fantasy, he told me that he was a quiet kid in school who always looked up to the “hard lads”, whose “arrogance” gave them an aura of “invincibility”. “I knew I wasn’t ever going to be a proper lad,” he said, “so I decided I’d be the opposite, come into their circle from below, if that makes sense. Having them do what they want to me is a big turn-on.”

When I asked him why he didn’t go to a fetish club that specialises in domination, he claimed that he’s straight and that they’re “full of proper faggots”. When I pointed out that, although it isn’t penetrative sex, he still derives erotic pleasure from men, our correspondence came to an abrupt end.

It’s logical to equate violent, painful sex with submission and selfharm, but as I discussed the act of trampling with Max Hollman, the organiser of Amsterdam sportswear fetish party Ladz, he argued, “Someone might start with trampling but have dominant sex after. It’s difficult to explain to non-fetishists, but the feel or smell of a trainer, the sensation of soles treading against your skin, is a real turn-on.”

I’m reluctant to draw any psychobabble conclusions on the violence and degradation in scally fetishism, because if I’ve learned anything writing this piece, it’s that human sexuality is complex and utterly irrational.

VICE Shorts: I'm Short, Not Stupid Presents: 'Xemoland'

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When I was a kid growing up in the 90s, I used to visit my grandparents in Florida for the holidays. Florida is a specific type of nothing that can make a person go mad. There’s just the beach and eternal heat.

Most people don’t even get to live near a beach, which probably causes all of the crazy shit to happen in the state, like eating human faces, butthole tattoos, and biting your daughter when she tries to turn off your Rihanna CD. My twin brother and I were the only kids around that retirement neighborhood, and so we were forced to make up our own adventures, which inevitably ended in punched stomachs and bruised arms. I would set up traps for him to fall into, and he would see how fast he could throw things at me. We weren’t usually that imaginative, but we were pretty evenly matched. That's why I always appreciate the particular torment an older brother can bring on a sibling.
 
Animator Daniel Katz turned his older-brother prank problems into a beautifully rendered autobiographical tale of trauma for his 2011 short, Xemoland. Daniel paints a portrait of a young boy who just wants to be as cool as his older brother, but whose older brother’s sole goal is to not give a shit about him.

The older bro and his best friend spin tales to the seven-year-old Corey about Xemoland, a magical place where parties can be “cut short by an angry mob of gaylord Einsteins chasing David Hasselhoff on a hoverboard.” As much as the young boy tries to fit in, his brother’s desire to torture rather than nurture him keeps getting the better of him.

Katz’s cartoon-style animation is simple but expressive, especially when accompanied by an Animal Collective riff. The characters live in a nostalgic paradise filled with real-life posters and scenes from Terminator 2, the Doors, Sonic Youth, and Back to the Future.

This movie, if anything, proves that the main thing about being a younger brother is that you’re never going to be the older one. You’ve got to realize that he treats you like his little brother because you are, and will always be, behind him. He’s going to try drugs, see R-rated movies, and watch porn before you, and that’s cool. But you still really need to pretend there are places like Xemoland out there, where every wish you have can come true. That’s what being seven is all about, and being seven is kind of badass.

 

Jeffrey Bowers is a tall, mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as an art and film curator. He is a programmer at the Hamptons International Film Festival and screens for the Tribeca Film Festival. He also self-publishes a super fancy mixed-media art serial called PRISM index.

Hanging Out at a Moscow Peace Protest

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"Bring Russian Armed Forces Home"

If you thought all Russians were bloodthirsty lunatics hellbent on starting World War III, you would be wrong. On Saturday, tens of thousands of liberal Muscovites lined up to pass through metal detectors and march down a route lined with police and barriers in an effort to convince Putin to give peace a chance. With 200,000 Russian troops sitting at the border with Ukraine and 20,000 already inside Crimea in the build-up to yesterday's plebiscite, it seemed a little late, but I guess it's good to make your voice heard anyway.

In fact, expressing your opinion is becoming a bit difficult in Russia at the moment. The march followed a crackdown that has seen opposition leader Alexei Navalny placed under house arrest and cut off from the internet and press, and much of Russia’s opposition and independent media shut down or muzzled. A similar peace protest last week resulted in dozens of people being dragged off by the police. Only elderly ladies were allowed to yell at cops, thanks to the niceties of local gender politics.

This weekend's protests were less dramatic and passed off without any disorder. Relatively confident that it wouldn't get my face smashed in by the police, I decided to pick the brains of some Muscovite peaceniks.

The sign reads: "No war! No violence! Russia! Wake up from your sleep! A gang of thieves is scared of Navalny! How much has been stolen from the people? The Tatars have done well! They said 'no' to fascism and 'no' to stupidity."

VICE: Punchy sign. Why did you come out today?
Valaeriy Landin, 70: I have been alive for a long time. I lived under Stalin and suffered through a lot, and I don’t want things to slide back. I want peace, because I remember all the veterans when I was young who were missing limbs from fighting in the Great Patriotic War.

Crimea has a very special meaning for Russians. My wife is from there, and we have family graves there we still visit. But we don’t want it like this. My friends warned me not to come today. They said bad things would happen to me. But I am a disabled veteran. It can’t get much worse. The Crimean Tatars have it right. They are standing up to Putin. They are good people, Muslims. They don’t even drink.

What are you holding?
Galina Bronina: It is a depiction of war.

What message are you trying to convey?
I don’t want any bloodshed. I have a son who is 30 and a daughter who is 15. My husband is Ukrainian. I want Ukraine to stay Ukraine and Russia to stay out.

Why are you here today?
Man and woman in white coats: Our patient escaped from the psych ward. He is schizophrenic and very dangerous. If you find him, please let us know.

The sign reads: "International sanctions for an international criminal! Send Putin to the Hague."

Why did you come out?
Mikhail Agafonov, 36: Putin is a threat to the world and our country. I want him to face justice.

The sign reads: "Change yourself and the world will change."

What does that mean?
Yuliya, 34:
Everything that happens in the world also places restrictions on each of our personal inner worlds. Our government, and everything else that happens, is a part of us. It affects us and can’t be ignored.

Follow Ian Bateson on Twitter.

The Crimean Referendum as Told Through Social Media

Health Canada Is Forcing Medical Marijuana Patients to Destroy Their Weed

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A private grow-op in its infancy. via Flickr.

On Friday, the ideal time for any government to release bad news, Health Canada issued a public statement outlining their new medical marijuana (or as they often refer to it, marihuana) system. In it, Health Canada explains that they do “not endorse the use of marijuana” while adding that they will be “taking the necessary steps to protect public safety while providing reasonable access to marijuana for medical purposes, as ordered by the Courts.”

When these new laws go into effect on April 1st, existing medical marijuana patients will no longer be able to grow their own weed. Instead, these roughly 40,000 registered Canadian marijuana patients will have to turn to corporate, legal grow-ops that are being built and regulated all across the country. This means that patients will have much higher costs (Canada’s new legal grows will charge these patients $5-$7.50 a gram), while also being provided with a more limited selection of cannabis.
 
Thus far, it seems that Canada’s new corporate medical marijuana system will only sell buds—which means no waxes, oils, or edibles. That may seem like a minor deal (though, of course, weed culture worldwide has diversified greatly to enjoy these variants) but for patients who are unable to smoke or vaporize, like lung cancer sufferers, removing these products from the catalog greatly limits the efficacy of Canada’s medical program.
 
Variety aside, Health Canada is stripping the rights of patients nationwide who are simply looking to grow a plant in their own home that they use to treat their symptoms. The Canadian government has also issued a form, which all existing medical marijuana patients need to fill out, in order to confirm that they will be complying with the unwelcome change. If you want to see what a government form designed to destroy Canada’s newly-illegal medical marijuana supply looks like, you can download the PDF from Health Canada here.
 
 
In Section B of Health Canada’s “Notification Form,” patients are asked “Did you destroy dried marijuana/seeds?” and “Did you destroy marijuana plants?” with an extra field to indicate how much marijuana was eviscerated to comply with this new system. Apparently, Health Canada is quite serious about enforcing this marijuana-destruction policy, as they have clearly stated: “If participants do not comply with the requirement to notify Health Canada, the Department will notify law enforcement.”
 
According to a report posted on Reddit, some patients have already experienced a heads-up from law enforcement about these new medical marijuana laws. In a post published on /r/Canada entitled “RCMP Knocking on MMAR Patients Doors,” one user wrote: “Two days ago in the morning, the RCMP showed up on my doorstep. 2 plainclothes officers in an unmarked vehicle wearing their kevlar and armed. Drug squad, I believe. They wanted to make us aware of the new laws going into effect on April 1st, and started asking questions about my husband's production license. This is information they should not have had as it is private medical information.
 
I reached out to a few friends who also have their MMAR licenses, who reached out to their friends, and etc. We're not the only people who have had visits from the RCMP in the last few days, and all of them with production licenses.”
 
While I was not able to verify this Reddit user’s claim, there certainly is precedent for Canadian law enforcement and Health Canada being wildly out of sync when it comes to medical marijuana patients. In 2006, while waiting for his medical marijuana license to be renewed, AIDS sufferer Tom Shapiro from Regina had his plants seized by police. Tom blamed “Health Canada for telling him he could grow marijuana while waiting for the renewal of his medical marijuana licence.”
 
What’s clear is that Health Canada is at the ready to release the information of medical marijuana patients, who don’t comply with their corporate-friendly medical weed plan, if they haven’t begun to do so already.
 
I reached out to Lisa Campbell, the Outreach Director over at Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and a Fort McMurray–based medical marijuana patient, for her thoughts on this seismic shift by the Canadian government. She wrote: “As a medical cannabis patient I am extremely offended by Health Canada's latest attempt to control ‘marihuana.’ Not only can they not decide how they want to spell it, they are criminalizing patients by disclosing their personal health information, whether through mail outs or directly sharing data with the RCMP. Personally, I applied for a personal production license last summer while I was volunteering on an organic farm, which also had a designated grower licence. Inspired by my experience watering the plants during sunset, I thought I would apply in order to save money and have more choice of strains than the Prarie Plant System shwag. I ended up using my permanent address at my parents house, so now I'm finding out that if I don't fill out this new form then the government will send the RCMP to their house. I am outraged that our government would share personal health information for criminal purposes, especially as I never even ended up growing! Hemp seeds aren't even illegal in Canada, and I enjoy them in my oatmeal and smoothies every morning.
 
I still have the leftover shitty Health Canada weed which is so low in THC I use it like tobacco batch for joints. After learning how high it tested in heavy metals and how bad quality it is, I have no qualms getting rid of it. What worries me is the patients and designated growers who have put years of work into developing strains to treat their symptoms. Now the new licensed producers are able to buy clones from the former designated growers, so they are basically forced to sell their intellectual property with no ability to negotiate on price.”
 
Matt Mernagh, Toronto mayoral candidate and marijuana advocate, had a much more harsh statement: “This is a heinous act! Words do not describe how awful these motherfuckers are acting. This has nothing to do with public safety but RCMP orchestrating a boot-fucking to some of Canada’s sickest citizens. The person who came up with this plan is a monster.  The Minister of Health is taking direction from the RCMP. This is a huge police action. The man is picking on the sick and dying because they are cowards. Fuck these people! Any RCMP officer or Health Canada official engaged in this plot deserves to get asshole cancer and die a miserable death because they took away natural medication away from others. Heil Harper!”
 
Whether or not you join Mr. Mernagh in wishing butt cancer on law enforcement or health care officials, his outrage at this new, highly regulated medical marijuana system—which will provide a monopoly to government-authorized, corporate grow-ops that will be the exclusive merchants to medical marijuana patients in Canada—is completely understandable. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of patients, many of whom have debilitating diseases and sicknesses, have been stripped of the right to grow their own plants. While politicians like Ted Adlem, mayor of Mission, British Columbia, insist: “I don't think any municipal police department is going to go and try and search for somebody who is growing for their own personal use," it seems as if Health Canada and the RCMP have different intentions.  
 
Meanwhile, as the medical marijuana system braces for massive change, the Justice Department is supposedly planning to “soften” penalties for non-medical marijuana laws by removing some criminal code provisions, in favour of a more open-liquor style ticketing system for police. As the Globe and Mail pointed out: “One critic said the move, if implemented, could be more onerous for recreational marijuana users, as police who turn a blind eye to it now would instead start writing tickets.”
 
There’s obviously a lot of government money to be made when it comes to authorizing corporate grow-ops, while collecting fines from recreational marijuana users. This new system obviously does not have the interest, comfort, and health of medical marijuana patients in mind as the top priority; and the Justice Department’s move towards a falsely soft enforcement policy makes that even clearer. With so much of the world moving towards a more open system of legalization, it’s unfortunate to see Canada move in the opposite direction. Hopefully next year’s federal election will shake up this system for the better.
 

I Discovered Mixed Martial Arts Because of Street Fighter II

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I Discovered Mixed Martial Arts Because of Street Fighter II

The Day Crimeans Woke Up in Russia

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The Day Crimeans Woke Up in Russia

There Is an Official Leprechaun Colony In Portland (of Course)

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A leprechaun lives here. Image via Wikicommons

In 1948, Oregon Journal columnist Dick Fagan reported a leprechaun sighting in his newspaper. According to Fagan’s article, which over the years has become solid lore in Portland, the reporter’s office window looked out over a roadway where the city had long ago dug a hole to put up a lamppost but forgotten it and left it to sprout weeds. Fagan, presumably on slow news days, started taking jaunts out to the middle of the street to plant flowers and tend the two-foot-diameter circular plot. Then, one day he saw a leprechaun rooting around in his flowers, ran out to the street, caught him, and was offered a wish. He wished for a new park, and the mischievous sprite offered him his own home: the fallow lamppost hole. So Fagan took it and christened the hole “Mill Ends Park” (named after the column in which he announced the whole affair), the largest leprechaun colony west of Ireland.

This is a matter of record as much as whimsy. Whether it was a solid bit or a half honest belief, Fagan kept up the story of the leprechaun, Dennis O’Toole, in his self-proclaimed park for years. The creature and his invisible clan, known only to Fagan, would occasionally pop up in his column, once issuing a threat of magical retribution through the Oregon Journal against the mayor for his 11:00 PM park curfew plan. By the time of his death, in 1969, Fagan had repeated the story enough that the legend of the O’Toole leprechaun colony and the fact that this abandoned lamppost was a park just stuck. It stuck so well that in 1976 the City of Portland labeled the plot an official park.

At the park's inauguration, it was clear that the city was mostly into the tongue-in-cheek novelty of designating the world’s official smallest park. The first iteration of the space featured a butterfly swimming pool and a mini Ferris wheel lowered into the plot by a full-sized crane. But, as Portland Parks & Recreation press officer Mark Ross admits, “everything about the history of the park was taken into consideration as we incorporated it as part of our properties.” And that involved the recognition of the myth of the O’Toole clan as part of the park and its history.

The world's smallest Occupy protest. Photo via Wikicommons

For a few decades the park was a hub not just for bizarre little stories—like the smallest Occupy protest in 2011—but for St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in which city and community officials would gather and honor the lore of the city’s leprechaun colony. But after construction on Southwest Naito Parkway in 2006 required the relocation of the park (into a flowerpot outside Portland's World Trade Center), the celebrations disappeared. The last official leprechaun-loving shindig was in 2007, when the park was returned to its original posthole. But while the memory of Dennis O’Toole may be fading in popular memory, the city still occasionally acknowledges the possible existence of leprechauns.

“I’m not aware of anyone who’s ever seen one,” Ross told me, “although their lore is a lot more visible than the actual leprechauns. [Fagan] was not a park staffer, and I’ve never had the opportunity of talking to them myself. If a leprechaun ever does decide to do an interview, we’d hope that he’d go through the proper media-relations channel for the bureau.”

Asked whether or not the Parks & Recreation team approves of a leprechaun living in a city park day and night, Ross said, “I’m not sure if he has the permits that would be required for that. It’d be nice to talk about it and see how we could enhance his standard of living.” Then, no doubt recalling Fagan’s article on the curfew and O’Toole’s threatened curse, he added, “I believe there’s actually a grandfather clause for him, yes.”

While the diameter of Mill Ends Park is quite small, leprechauns are magical, making it difficult to put an official number on the hole’s population. “There has not been a census,” Ross told me. “We’d love to do one. The resources we have prevent that for now. Obviously, we want to make sure there aren't too many mythical creatures crowding an actual space.”

Marginalized populations throughout the world face injustice and hardships every day that the privileged among us would find difficult to imagine. Leprechauns are no exception, and I asked Ross whether or not the encroachment of other mythical creatures into a leprechaun colony was a concern for the city that recognized the settlement. He compared the lamppost hole to Bon Temps, Louisiana: “You know, we wouldn’t want to end up like True Blood, where every single day you find a new character or… what’s next, shape-shifters, werewolves, benevolent vampires? You have to draw the line somewhere.”

But most importantly for the safety and security of America’s sole officially recognized leprechaun colony cum world’s smallest park, when asked whether or not the presence of leprechauns would prevent the city from developing or reappropriating the parkland in the future, Ross hedged: “That’s a policy question that would have to go before consul and involve a public process for sure. We haven’t ever had to face that question before. But again, if the leprechauns have any input, we’d be happy to hear it.”

If the day ever comes that Portland decides to renege on its honorable protection of the O’Toole clan's homestead in Mill Ends Park, let the city be held accountable: They must make all efforts to bring their magical wards to the table for negotiations, compensation, and resettlement. And if they do not, then they shall surely face the curse of a leprechaun who, by their own accepted lore, likes to trick quirky old reporters and threaten the city for curfew policies. Tread carefully, Stumptown, for ye know not the power of leprechaun magics.

Tarafied: Hanging Out with Tara Reid at a Horror Convention

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The author with Tara Reid. Photos by the author

A great philosopher once asked, “How do a whale and a shark have sex?” Just kidding. Tara Donna Reid said that. Tara is known for saying a lot of ridiculous things, but if you weren't aware of her movie career, I wouldn't be surprised. After appearing in movies like Josie and the Pussy Cats, American Pie, Van Wilder, and The Big Lebowski, she starred in flops like the unfortunate reality show Taradise and drank herself into oblivion. Last year some genius decided to cast Tara in the SyFy channel film Sharknado, giving her a new life as a professional mess.

It was the job Tara was born to do. Although the TV movie only aired last summer, it has already become a cult classic thanks to its campy, over-the-top combination of lousy special effects, sharks, and a tornado. Thanks to its "success," Tara was signing autographs at the Days of the Dead Horror Convention in Atlanta on February 8.

It was held at the Sheraton in downtown Atlanta; when I walked in I was hit by the cumulative body odor of hundreds of Juggalos and grown men dressed as Leatherface and Michael Myers. I asked some fans where I could find Tara, and they directed me to the room where the convention’s biggest celebrity guests were signing autographs.

A Tara poster greeted me as I walked into the room, and Twister Sister’s Dee Snider was posing for a photo with a fan who had paid $30 to meet Dee Snider, but I didn’t see the real Tara anywhere. I asked a polite man dressed as a latex vampire where I could find her, and he pointed me to a long line at the back.

Tickets to meet Tara had sold out before the convention started, but some of her fans seemed angry as they waited in line. One of them, a young lady named Darbella Knight, informed me that Tara had left early the night before without warning, which Darbella took as the ultimate insult. “I think that train wreck left early to go to a bar and drink,” she said, “but I’m standing in line now because I paid for it."

Gary, another fan, agreed with Darbella's sentiments. “I came here last night to meet her and I promised to give her a shirt promoting my website yeszombies.com, but she left, and I’m stupid to wait in line again. She is such a train wreck.”

The group behind me seemed pleased to wait though. “I’m in line mainly because I loved Van Wilder,” a fan named Bruce said, “It’s one of my favorite movies comedy-wise from the 90s.”

Xinwen, standing next to him, was perhaps less passionate: “I don’t know why I’m standing in line, but I don’t remember her or any of the actors. I’m from China, so.”

Xinwen (left) and Bruce

When the line started moving, I caught a glimpse of the Reidster in the flesh, and I started to wonder what it would be like to meet her at last. Would she be mean? Would she be a snob? Would she immediately want to be my best friend, and we’d go to get drinks later? Then a guy wearing a gas mask jumped the line, interrrupting that train of though.

Finally, it was my turn to stand in front of Tara and ask her to sign my movie still from The Big Lebowski. She asked me what I wanted her to write on the picture and how to spell my name. I told her to write that we’re BFFs because it’s always been my dream to be her best friend. She laughed and told me no one has ever asked her to write that before.

Then her people ordered me to plop down next to her and take a picture. Since I'm overweight, I looked morbidly obese next to Tara, who is probably half the size of an Olsen twin. But after thanking her for her time, I got up and was full of all the glee, rainbows, and unicorns I knew I’d feel after meeting the girl who played Melody in Josie and the Pussy Cats.

Darbella Knight, who wasn't pleased with her meet-and-greet with the Reidster.

Tara’s other fans had mixed feelings about their time with her. Tara was “quiet and smelled like alcohol," according to Darbella.

"They put all these pictures up on the Day of the Dead Website where she looked voluptuous,” Darbella said. “She’s still cool though, but I think everyone is nice when you pay to meet them. Someone needs to feed her.”

After speaking with a few other fans, I decided to see if I could have a brief interview with Tara. Her assistant told me Tara declines interviews because she would hate to tarnish her image and the media is comprised of haters, so I waited for him to go to the bathroom and then I asked Tara if I could interview her. She said she'd love to speak to me.

“Did you enjoy being in Atlanta this weekend?” I asked.

“It’s been weird,” Tara said. “I’ve met a lot of amazing, fun people. Crazy outfits, crazy personalities. No. Do not put the word weird [in the article]. Everyone has been lovely and just so sweet. You included. You are so sweet.”

She then asked me if I had watched Sharknado. “It was so bad, it was good,” she said.

“It was just bad,” I told her.

“Right? You’re the only person who has been honest about that. But I’d be a fool not to play in a movie like that with that title.”

Her manager saw me talking to her and ran up to inform me that that Tara needed to sign a bunch of extra posters before she left the convention. She went through the stack of photos of her until she reached an American Pie poster of her in a bikini. She stopped and then glanced up at me, a depressed look on her face.

“I look so different,” she said.

“That was 1998. Everyone looks different than they did in 1998,” I told her.

“Yeah, that was 15 years ago.”

“Who cares? It was 1998.”

Tara cheered up. “You really are sweet!”

After this awkward exchange, I decided to leave Tara at her table. It's always exciting to speak to a celebrity, but I couldn’t help but feel bad for Tara—she seemed oblivious to the fact that her so-called fans perceived her as a train wreck. Yet, at the same time, she recognized that she was no longer the hot blond bombshell that had 15 minutes of fame in the 90s. Like watching Sharknado, hanging out with Tara Reid is uncomfortable and hysterical at the same time. No wonder she's been resurrected as a camp icon.

Italy Wants to Take the Word 'Parmesan' Away from Kraft

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Creative Commons photo by Flickr user Pandemia

The European Union wants American food manufacturers to rename domestically produced foods in a number of categories, including Parmesan, feta, and Gorgonzola cheese.

They want to do this so they can't be confused with the real McCoys, which have been ostensibly monopolized by European manufacturers. Whose cheeses, no doubt, are derived exclusively from black-and-white-spotted dairy cows, lovingly milked at dawn by tawny Continental milkmaids, the milk squirted directly into a wooden bucket resting on a bed of dew-speckled hay. 

What little authority the European Union has to make American companies change the name of a product on American shelves remains to be seen. Roger Waite, an EU representative, signaled to the Associated Press that this is "an important issue for the EU," and our authorities think it’s going to be on the agenda at an upcoming US-EU free-trade conference in Brussels.

A shaker full of something or other. Photo by flickr user Wigxxx

Kraft sounds pretty mad about it. Their spokesman, Basil Maglaris, said, "Such restrictions could not only be costly to food makers but also potentially confusing for consumers if the labels of their favorite products using these generic names were required to change." But while they may balk, businesses only care that they’d have to pay to design and print new labels. 

The controversy may sound like an example of that sort of smug, European cheese snobbery you have to combat when you travel abroad. Cue offensive French accent: “You know, what you Amereecans call cheese, we would not see fit to use as—qu'est-ce que c'est—industrial lubricant.” I’m not saying it’s not that, but there’s also much more to this.

For expertise, I reached out to John Coupland, food-science professor at Penn State, who put the controversy in context for me. I first wanted to know how likely the EU's plan was to succeed. "I don't see it going anywhere," he said when I initially emailed him. Coupland is an expert on food ingredients and was knowledgeable about the trade politics of food.

I got him on the phone to learn more. “It’s fairly alien. We’re much more used to defining food by what it is,” he said, referring to Europe’s protected-food classifications. “You can make Swiss cheese, and I can make Swiss cheese, and as long as you meet certain standards, that’s what it is.” In Europe, he says, the thought process is completely different. “Food is associated with a place. It doesn’t matter how good your champagne is—unless you brew it in a certain place, it’s not champagne.”

Here’s a row of bottles. If you’re an American, tell me what you’re looking at:

Photo by Chris Ibbotson

If you said “champagne,” you’re way off. It’s Martini & Rossi's notoriously crappy, hangover-inducing asti spumante, a college-party favorite. But if you walk into most American supermarkets asking for champagne, this is what they’ll point you to. If you’re like me and most Americans, you’ve probably never had authentic champagne, and you don’t give a fuck.

As for authentic Parmesan, forget it. We don’t even care whether we’re eating “cheese” in the first place. Kraft singles omitted the controversial word from the main label a long time ago, and we, the eagle-eyed consumers of America, just kept faithfully shoveling it into our shopping carts.

Screencap from ReadLionCanada on YouTube

Be honest—even if this is a stupid restriction brought about by Italian snobbery, do you really think the spider eggs and salt you shake onto your pizza deserve to be called “Parmesan,” a word meaning “from Parma, Italy"?

Now, for the record, even at its worst, our Parmesan isn't spider eggs and salt. It's mostly Parmesan cheese as defined by the FDA, plus, according to Coupland, "microcrystalline cellulose, a powder added to prevent caking." He also explained why dietary fiber is in so much of our food:

"I think they want the stuff to be refrigerated, but I don’t think most people refrigerate it. Even if you write 'Refrigerate this stuff' on the package, you’re gonna be nervous that your customers aren’t going to. You can’t go in and enforce that. So in order to get the stuff to last, well, they have to put some cellulose in there, which stops the pieces of cheese sticking together."

There's also a little potassium sorbate in there. It's an additive, yes, but one found in nature. And that's it. A short list of ingredients, all things considered.

"I like Kraft cheese. I’ve got a can of the stuff at home," Coupland told me. "Industrial manufacturing is all about making something consistent. It’s not like it’s awful." 

I'm being honest when I say that "It's not like it's awful" is exactly what I think when I eat 90 percent of the foods I eat. It's just flavor powder. If you're like me, you probably mispronounce it and say “parma-jann” anyway. So if the can suddenly says “Parmesan-flavored product,” will you even notice, let alone hesitate to buy it?

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Could Montreal Benefit from Being a Sovereign City-State?

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Flag of Montreal, via Wikimedia Commons.

Geographic location aside, it’s sometimes hard to believe Montreal is really part of Quebec. Diversity, bilingualism and authentic Chinese food aren’t stuff you’re likely to find in the rest of the province, and living in Canada’s second largest city is a completely different experience than settling anywhere else in Quebec. So different, some may say, that Montreal should no longer be part of La Belle Province. That’s right, the Montreal: City-State Foundation is currently advocating for a model similar to that of Hong Kong, which would make Montreal its own administrative region. With the provincial elections coming up, the once ridiculed idea is back on the table and to some, more appealing than ever. To get a full picture of what the movement is about, I called up Michel David, the foundation’s president to talk about why Montreal would need this kind of emancipation.

VICE: What’s going on right now?
Michel David: Basically, Montreal and Quebec are both economic underperformers. This was already well documented, but a couple of weeks ago BMO and the Boston Consulting Group put forward a really well done study with alarming results. They found Montreal performs at about half the rate of other similar Canadian cities, both in terms of population growth and wealth, GDP per capita. Another study compared the GDP per capita of the top 25 largest cities in North America and lo and behold, Montreal is dead last.

And why is that?
In our view, the most important cause is that in terms of attracting or retaining people or companies that produce value, we have more factors that are repulsive than attractive. These repulsive factors are basically a number of laws that are particular to the province of Quebec: the language laws and the way they are applied, the recent debate around the charter and Bill 14—which is totally promised if the PQ wins a majority. So these laws may be good in a certain way, but their current application and their effect on Montreal’s economy is toxic.

That being said, you somehow have to create a situation, a city-state, where those laws don’t apply. It doesn’t mean we’d walk away completely from protecting the French language; I think one of the key assets of Montreal is its bilingualism, but you don’t need Pastagate to protect and nurture the French language. The problem is that we’re being managed under language laws that emphasize negative aspects and that are applied with a lack of intelligence or judgement. In our view this won’t change. The city-state would make its own laws and apply them, thus creating an environment that’s positive for its citizens, and also for businesses and economic growth.

So that’s why we’d need a city-state?
To paraphrase Einstein, if you think using the same system will give you a different result in the future, you’ve gotta be kidding. The way out of this is to create a new system that will probably give you a different result.

Could you elaborate about the model you propose?
The city-state, in our view, should comprise the island(s) of Montreal, 514 and 438 area codes. Quebec would devolve powers to Montreal, very similar to the powers a province has.

To create the environment I’m talking about, we’d run our own taxes, and our tax regime would be quite different than the one in Quebec. Quebec’s regime is very social. They hit the high earners, whereas we would have a different system. More people would pay a little bit, but if you come here and work 24/7 for ten years and create a beautiful company, enjoy your money! So, in other words, you let the people who create wealth enjoy the rewards of their work. So the fiscal regime would be different.

The second thing is you’d have to redo the schools, the health system, the labour laws, everything—because our main goal is economic growth. You’d have to align policies with economic growth. If you want to attract either companies or entrepreneurs to come and do their projects here, as opposed to elsewhere in North America, you have to have a product offering that’s attractive to them. You have to be able to offer the best conditions to them, not only money. Keep in mind that our rates would be reasonable, but low enough to make a difference. It’s really about making yourself attractive to the people who will create wealth and jobs.

What makes Montreal so different that it would need its own system?
The cause of all these issues, in our view, is that Montreal and the rest of Quebec are two totally different things. By segmenting the population, as we do in marketing, you’d take Montreal as a specific entity and the rest of Quebec separately. If you look at their economies, they don’t produce the same thing. In terms of society, Quebec is the old stock French Canadians and Montreal is cosmopolitan, 50/50 and the Anglophone and allophone part comprises 80 ethnicities. That’s fantastic in terms of diversity. The Quebec laws aren’t cosmopolitan. They’re for “everybody’s the same and they’re all Québécois,” as opposed to “do your thing and we’re glad to have you here, or to be all together in this project.” The Montreal city-state’s purpose is to answer what we think is our most basic problem.

Wouldn’t that make Montreal more dependent on the Federal government than it is at the moment?
Not necessarily, if Quebec stays in Canada, Montreal would remain part of Quebec and part of Canada. Otherwise, it would be like Hong Kong in China; they are two different systems in the same country. In Montreal, one thing you want to put an end to is any discussion of separation and referendums. That kills businesses. Chinese entrepreneurs, for example, can always keep in mind the threat posed by a separatist government. It’s a killer in every shape or form, in terms of economic growth. If ever Quebec [separates], we’re not going with them.

Would it be like creating immunity?
With immunity from separation, you create a predictable environment. The two laws of economic growth, as we say in our paper, are clear rules and stable rules. This has been documented by economists worldwide for a really long time. Separation is like a dark cloud ahead for the economy, and as long as there’s a threat you can’t move forward.

Have you totally given up on the idea of Montreal’s cultural diversity ever being embraced by the rest of Quebec?
Yes. In my view, they are different and they will stay different. And that’s not necessarily bad. The Québécois are Francophone, of course. They are a small group trying to preserve a culture. The French culture is one of the key assets of Montreal, so in my view this should be a win-win type thing.

How would you proceed?
The first step was to make this part of the public discourse. 12 months ago it was a big step. But now, look: you’re calling me to talk about it! I started this five years ago after getting mad on Sunday night dinners with my daughters, complaining about everything. I came to the idea of the city-state, which I discovered this year other people had also come to in 1996. Anyways, it’s a logical conclusion for somebody who studies the problem objectively.

From there, I reached out to 400 people, starting with the Prime Minister and the premier of Quebec and basically there was close to zero acknowledgement of anything. Of course in the last 12 months the situation has changed. All of this came back up with the new government and Bill 14. The next step of course, and this turns political but we’re not political, is to get political leaders aware.

When important players start focusing on the problem and making propositions, eventually somebody will find it to their advantage in the political process to say, Montreal [should be a city state]. They’re saying it now, but it’s very timid; even the PQ announced a strategy for Montreal. Eventually, somebody will find it in his or her interest to push the idea. I don’t have more answers than that at this point, we have ideas but they’re still being processed.

On a provincial level, which party do you think would be most likely to support your project?
I don’t know. The one thing I do know is that the separatist parties are toxic to Montreal, because of the idea of separation is an economic destroyer. They don’t say that, they don’t admit to that, but in my view, it is. That leaves you with the Liberals and the CAQ, basically. So you know, if you put your “Montréalais” glasses on, and say, “what I need is stability at the Quebec level and at the federal level,” the next question remains who of these people would support Montreal in becoming an adult jurisdiction, as opposed to being treated like it is now, which is a young child. I don’t have an answer to that. You could make an argument that the government of Quebec has purposefully, regardless of the party, kept Montreal as weak as possible for as long as possible, because if Montreal ever achieves its full potential it would be more powerful than the Quebec government.

Do you have any predictions as to what Montreal’s future holds if the PQ wins with a majority vote?
Either they get their way, and you know, we keep going down. Or else, they get their way and the Montrealers decide that a city-state is absolutely essential, and they do what’s required to get it.


@martcte

Canada Has Officially Pulled Out of Afghanistan and Left a Mess

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Afghan National Army soliders patrolling in 2007. All photos via the author.

Panjwayi’s rocky, sandy, mountainous landscape looks a lot like Star Wars’ desert planet of Tatooine, a weird mix of modern technology and centuries-old dwellings; a cross between the Old Testament and a Mad Max movie.

One would think the place is secure. Afghan National Army‘s easily recognizable Toyota pickup trucks carrying heavily-armed, battle-ready soldiers are as ubiquitous as the military camps from which they come and go. The camps are concrete-walled, strongly-defended fortresses such as the one dominating the bazaar from Ma’sum Ghar’s mountaintop, a former Canadian military forward operating base transferred to the Afghan military when the country recalled most of its troops and all of its fighting force in July 2011.

Today marks the formal conclusion of Canada’s 12-year mission in Afghanistan with the last Canadian troops returning to Ottawa. And yet, while many Afghan civilians greet the departure of foreign troops from their land with some degree of relief—Afghanistan has a well-documented history of unwelcoming military occupation by strange nations—some wish they had stayed a bit longer.  

Najibullah sits comfortably in his shaky, humble shop boarding Panjwayi’s bazaar’s dusty yet recently paved main road—it looks better than some streets in Montreal. Like many Afghans, he can’t remember how old he is, ballparking it between 60 and 63, but he mentioned his prime years serving in the Afghan National Army under Zahir Shah, the country’s last monarch deposed in 1973 by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan. "The last time I remember things were going the way they should,” he said while gazing around vacantly, as if searching for something he knows he will not find.

“My son disappeared three years ago. I never heard of him again. Rumour is he joined the Taliban. Nothing is certain for me anymore. That damn war destroyed our lives. Nothing will ever be the same and fear will dominate our lives from now on.”

The future does seem blurry at best for the 75,000 people still living in Kandahar province’s Panjwayi district, one of Afghanistan’s bloodiest battlefields from the latest war, second only to the neighbouring Helmand province. Poverty is always a major concern with a gross national income of $680 USD per capita, but so is security. Canadian troops left the area in July 2011, concentrating their efforts on training and beefing up a struggling Afghan National Army, leaving the US in charge of securing the area. But the bell will also toll for the remaining 27,000 American soldiers still deployed in Afghanistan as part of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force. A bilateral security agreement guaranteeing 10,000 US military trainers and consultants was drafted amidst a Taliban attack in November 2013, but President Hamid Karzai delayed its signature until after the April 2014 Afghan Presidential election—in which he is not allowed to run.

Old Man Najibullah.

Such a massive foreign troop withdrawal puts tremendous pressure on fledgling Afghan security forces, both military and police—a pullback also seemingly premature. A 2012 US Government Accountability Office report indicates that only nine percent of Afghan army units are considered “autonomous,” with half of them still needing further training and mentoring only 18 months before the 2014 mission deadline. Almost the same for Afghan National Police outfits whose numbers are slightly worse, with a seven percent complete autonomy figure.

Worrisome situations like this called for local initiatives. 32 year-old Ahmadullah leads a small, 50-man Afghan Local Police contingent, a district-level force made up of local volunteers trained by American Special Forces. “A month after we finished training, we were already engaging Taliban fighters without support from American soldiers. I lost four men in our first fight,” he said while adding that the ALP closely works with Afghan national security forces.

As of November 2013, five months had passed without a firefight, and according to security and military sources, the creation of the Afghan Local Police seems to be successful. “The best way we can hurt the Taliban is by having them lose their grip on villagers. If the villagers fight them, they have nowhere to go,” said Ahmadullah.

But the ALP isn’t without its problems, basically being a foreign-funded, foreign-trained, organised local militia. Human rights organizations routinely investigate allegations of war crimes, most notably in a scathing report by Human Rights Watch published in 2011. “The constant resort to militias as a quick security fix suggests a lack of understanding of how oppressive even a small militia can be when it operates without proper oversight and with impunity when it commits abuses. When militias engage in rape, murder, theft, and intimidation, and when there is little or no recourse to justice for victims, the creation of militias doesn’t decrease insecurity, it creates it,” suggest the authors of Just Don’t Call it a Militia: Impunity, Militias and the Afghan Local Police.

Too little, too late

Panjwayi’s local leaders euphemistically describe Afghanistan’s last war as “unfinished business” as the spectre of the Taliban’s possible return lurks around the corner.

“We live in fear of the Taliban. Nobody I know wilfully supports them, it’s mostly out of fear or despair,” said Najibullah, still glancing into the distance.


Panjiway Shura leader, Haji Mahmood.

Haji Mahmood, Panjwayi’s leader of the Shura, the district’s popular assembly, echoes the elderly Afghan’s grievances. A sturdy, black-bearded man in his mid-40s, his looks feature the textbook example of a Pashtun, Kandahar’s main ethnic group. Expressing gratitude to Canadian and American soldiers who fought and died on Panjwayi’s sandy battlefield, he also fears their departure. “They should have stayed at least another decade,” he said. “In Afghanistan, things take a long time to change. People in the district tell me they start to be scared as Americans prepare to leave. Some of them who worked for the foreigners started receiving more death threats than ever through night letters posted on their home doors.”

He also acknowledges the difference between US and Canuck troops. “Americans are fighters. Canadians were builders.”

Both armies have operated in the district since 2001, but they mostly conducted “in-and-out” operations until the beginning of 2008, with a 2009 troop surge inspired by Gen. Davis Petraeus’ moderately successful Iraq strategy. Only then have they started occupying villages on a more stable basis, establishing more solid—and essential—links with local leaders.

“Too little, too late," said Panjwayi’s district leader, Haji Faizal Mohammed. While he also praises American and Canadian military efforts, he expresses worry about the future and stresses that Canadians, especially, left many incomplete projects to wither, citing in prime example the paving of Highway 1, the area’s main road stretching from Kandahar City to the Horn of Panjwayi, the district’s westernmost edge—a strategically important objective since it impedes the Taliban’s ability to place improvised explosive devices along the road and increases economic activity by facilitating transportation to the province’s capital. “They left with the last seven kilometers gravelled,” he said. No other country picked up the project, likely to remain as it is for the time being. Mohammed also wished the Canadians stayed so they’d keep carrying on reconstruction projects. “They completely remade the bazaar and the district center [the local government building],” he said. While he praises Afghan forces’ abilities and eagerness, he’s unsure they can permanently assure the district’s safety, let alone the country.

While official Canadian military PR did not respond to my inquiries about the pull out, retired Canadian colonel Pat Stogran who commanded 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and a seasoned veteran of the ill-fated 1990’s peacekeeping missions in the Balkans, was frank about the conflict: “We lost,” he said.

The official closure of the Afghan front in the West’s War on Terror leaves a fog of postwar uncertainty in its trail, but hope can still be found in the Afghan people’s core beliefs.

Old man Najibullah puts it simply. “Only Allah can guide and save us.”


@mforgues

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