A teen drinks a can containing "Foolio," a beverage that has killed dozens of young people but remains popular throughout the English-speaking world. Photo via Flickr user Ian T. McFarland

Eugene P. Darling is a former FBI agent who spent nearly two decades undercover at a series of high schools in California, Oregon, and Nevada. He’s a frequent guest on Nancy Grace and the author of 35-Year-Old Teen: A Life Spent Confronting the Evils Lurking Within America’s High Schools. The following is an excerpt from his latest book, Children of the Korn: How America’s Young People Are Turning to the Dark Side Thanks to Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll, which will be out in May from Second Amendment Press.

On April 1, 2010, 17-year-old Daniel Preston walked into his chemistry class at Samuel Johnson’s School for Boys in London. He would never walk out. At approximately 12:17 PM, Daniel turned pale, started foaming at the mouth, and collapsed. Three minutes later he was dead.

The coroner’s report showed that Daniel (or “Splotchy Dick,” as his friends called him) had spent his elevenses break with his friends behind the dumpsters chugging massive amounts of a beverage the kids call “Foolio D,” “Foolio,” “Fuckin’ Desperate,” “Trill Pill,” and “Cormac McCarthy,” among other nicknames. Everyone who makes it has his own “recipe”—the bottle that Daniel “necked,” as the British say, contained lager, vodka, whiskey, ecstasy, opium, horse blood, fennel, string cheese, and a 1997 WWE action figure (investigators believe it was a Stone Cold Steve Austin model). Seven other boys had drunk the concoction with him, but only Daniel wound up dead, a combination of an allergic reaction to the horse blood and a heart attack triggered by the narcotics.

While his death was undeniably tragic, Daniel was hardly the first to die on April Fools’ Day—and he won’t be the last. Traditionally the holiday is a chance to jokingly put a bowling ball in the trunk of your wife’s car or give your boss a pack of cigarettes that is actually a mousetrap, but in recent years, teenagers in the UK, Ireland, and Australia have turned an innocent fun-loving day into yet another chance to drink themselves into dangerous situations.

It started, like many drinking trends, in Scotland, where a group of university “lads” adopted a tradition in the 90s called the “Wet Foolio.” They would take shots of liquor and eat asparagus until one of them passed out, and the “winners” would urinate on the unlucky young man who couldn’t hold his liquor. Eventually they began making their own mixed drinks for the occasion, and the beverages grew progressively more vile as the custom spread to England, Ireland, and Australia. With the internet becoming more popular, teens were soon sharing "tips" and "recipes" on "social networking" sites like Reddit and Lemon Party, and the urinating was eventually phased out in favor of exotic meat consumption and homosexual horseplay (“teabagging,” “Jimmywhacking,” and “putting the old poodle in the hutch” are all common at Foolio parties). Today many students will get blind-drunk on mixtures that contain industrial solvents and roam the streets of London, Sydney, or Dublin looking for other teens to copulate and/or fight with.

Sometime between 2008 and 2011 (experts disagree on the exact date), Foolio “crossed the pond” to the US of A, where it intermingled with other beloved pastimes of America’s youth, such as Satanism, coffee smoking, and the Knockout Game. One Foolio party was documented in a video made by rapper “Earl Sweatshirt,” a disturbing, graphic cautionary tale that ends with dead children heaped on a bed. More frightening still, some took this as an instruction manual.

Is Your Teen Drinking Foolio?
The frightening thing about Foolio is that since it’s a “holiday,” many normally well-behaved kids feel pressured into ingesting chemicals and performing acts that they wouldn’t normally consider. Additionally, every year there is the sense that the “ante” must be “upped,” which can result in more and more outlandish stunts. In 2012 a straight-A student in Akron, Ohio, told his mother that he was going over to his friend’s place to practice chess and responsible finance as he had so many times before—but when police raided the house hours later, he was found out of his mind on horseradish seeds and balls-deep in a pile of rancid alligator meat. Other teens—like poor, stupid Daniel Preston—get disgustingly drunk on Foolio at lunch or even before school; last year at one elite private Los Angeles culinary academy, so many kids were doing “the worm” in the hallways that riot cops had to be called in and 12 teenagers were killed during the ensuing situation.

So how do you know if the “prank” your child has planned for April Fools’ Day involves chugging liquefied heroin and defecating in a stranger's yard? Well, there’s no way to tell for sure whether a teen is involved in Foolio parties. Teenagers are expert liars and it’s almost impossible to understand their thought processes; an estimated 71 percent of teens should be diagnosed with serious mental illnesses. But one clear warning sign is an interest in the music of rapper “Lil B.” Though his lyrics are likely incomprehensible to you, teens not only understand them but regard them as gospel. One FBI agent who was tasked with transcribing hundreds of hours of his raps uncovered this “stanza,” from the track “Topher Grace (Swag)”

Riding my car to the place swag
I masturbate (inaudible)
Drink that Foolio, fuckin’ (inaudible) get a dick sucked by a nice young lady
(inaudible) haircut so good I gave the guy a tip

Clearly, parents need to be on the lookout.

 Other indications that your teen is getting involved in the Foolio party scene include, but are not limited to, the following:

–Is your child now uninterested in April Fools’ traditions he or she used to enjoy, like braising the mayonnaised ham or making up lyrics to Jeff Beck songs? That is a sure sign your child is thinking about trying Foolio.

–If he or she is saying things like, “The idea of ‘gay’ or ‘straight’ is a false dichotomy. We should view sexuality as a spectrum, or better yet, understand that individual sex acts do not define our identities,” monitor him or her closely.

–A clear warning that your child may become involved in Foolio is if he or she begins practicing Satanism, especially organized Satanism. If a teen gets involved with Satanist rituals, Satanist book sales, Satanist soup kitchens, and Satanist online dating sites, contact law enforcement immediately.

–Don’t let your son or daughter take Worcestershire sauce out of the house around April Fools’ Day, as that is a primary ingredient in many variations of Foolio. If your son or daughter claims he or she is going to a party where they’re making Oysters Kilpatrick, it’s a lie.

–Likewise, if your child says he or she is “going to the park to maybe hang out and talk about how there's a lot of different types of ducks,” it is obvious code. Don’t be fooled!

If you are a teen yourself (given what we know about the reading habits of teenagers, this is extremely unlikely), please be careful this April Fools’ Day. Even though you may have no plans to drink Foolio, or sodomize another teen, or buy livestock online using your parents’ credit card—as one unfortunate young woman in Carson City, Nevada, did in 2013—you need to remember you have no control over your actions. Thanks to the hormones coursing through your veins and the conflicting messages transmitted by the mass media, your moods and thoughts can veer wildly from moment to moment. In fact, reading these words about how awful Foolio is may be giving you an “itch” to try it. Please stop reading this right now.

Some servers in a data centre, suckin' up your data. via Flickr user Sean Ellis.
When Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher worked with the CBC earlier this year to report that CSEC was using free airport WiFi to spy on Canadian travelers (in at least one documented incident), the mainstream media’s interpretation of this news was quietly refuted on an obscure, fascinating blog called Electrospaces, which approaches telecommunications and surveillance from a much more insider-y and technical perspective.

According to the Electospaces report, the media had largely misinterpreted the significance of CSEC’s airport spying program. It’s not surprising either, given the highly complex nature of basically any surveillance or intelligence presentation that has leaked from the treasure chest of Edward Snowden. They’re written to be opaque, and we’re living through an unprecedented time of unintended intelligence industry transparency.

In a post titled “Did CSEC Really Track Canadian Airport Travelers” written on Electrospaces, Peter Koop, the blog’s founder, published a much different interpretation of the leaks by an unnamed reader. The interpreter writes: “CSEC was just running a pilot experiment where they needed a real-world data set to play with. This document does not demonstrate any CSEC interest in the actual identities of Canadians going through this airport, nor in tracking particular individuals in the larger test town of 300,000 people…

Technically however, CSEC does not have a legal mandate to do even faux-surveillance of Canadian citizens in Canada. So they could be in some trouble—it could morph into real surveillance at any time—because the document shows Canadian laws don't hold them back.”

The post, if you are interested in unpacking the ramifications of the CSEC leaks, is a must-read. Especially since Ronald Deibert, the founder of the Citizen Lab (a University of Toronto thinktank whose mandate is largely to study the intersection between governments and the internet), who the CBC hired to help interpret the CSEC leaks, commented on the post by writing: “As someone who reviewed the un-redacted documents prior to the CBC publication, and who was unhappy with the story's focus on ‘Free WIFI in airports’ which has spread far and wide, I agree entirely with this analysis.”

One of the key elements that the post examines is CSEC’s cooperation with five different corporations to uncover metadata: Quova (a subsidiary of the American telecom giant Neustar), Bell Sympatico, Boingo (a popular airport WiFi provider), and Akamai (a corporate server company whose actual work is much more complex than this parenthetical will allow).

The relationships between agencies like CSEC and the NSA, and public corporations, is largely unreported. We know that companies like Verizon, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have all cooperated with the NSA to some degree, but how do those relationships manifest themselves in Canada?

It’s worth considering the extent that Canadian taxpayer dollars filter into Wall Street, via the purchase of American surveillance equipment and services. In the case of the airport WiFi leak, where surveillance tools were apparently tested on Canadian citizens by CSEC, the importance of this question becomes underlined and bolded. Simply put, the government is maneuvering on a slippery slope when they use taxpayer money to purchase metadata collection services from publicly traded corporations, which can apparently assist in mass surveillance operations.

For now, lets focus on Quova, one of CSEC’s corporate partners, whose parent company Neustar has been called “the most important tech company you’ve never heard of,” because of its huge share in the clandestine market of law enforcement data requests. In 2012, cell phone carriers in the United States answered over 1 million requests for customer information from cellphone carriers, who were forced to turn over “caller locations, text messages and other data for use in investigations.” While similar requests are underreported in Canada, between April 2012 and March 2013, the Canadian Border issued 18,000 requests for customer data that included: “content of voicemails and text messages, websites visited and the rough location of where a cellphone call was made.”

In a post on Neustar’s blog entitled “FAQs About Neustar and Our Assistance to Law Enforcement,” the company addresses a few questions about their cooperation with American authorities. The post explains that Neustar is the central body that helps connect cell phone customers across various carriers and providers. And, in case you’re wondering: “None of Neustar’s wireless carrier clients can, nor does Neustar on their behalf, ‘ping’ or geolocate a handset device at the request of law enforcement.” So, the company can’t track people down in real time. They also state, “we will deny requests for information when the proper documentation is not provided,” so at least the entrance to their vault of customer metadata isn’t a revolving door.

That said, Neustar did not respond to VICE’s requests for comment to discuss their cooperation with Canadian authorities.

Besides the mention of Quova in CSEC’s free airport WiFi document, the company’s name also popped up in documents that outline the highly contentious joint operation conducted by CSEC and the NSA, against the Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy. That story originally broke through the Guardian, and Quova’s name appeared a few times in the leaked Olympia program presentation, which seemed to outline Five Eyes spying on Brazil. Given the more aggressive nature of the Brazil leaks, at least compared to the airport snooping plot, Quova was seemingly used to provide agents with IP ranges (to specifically locate Brazilian government computers), geo-location data related to IP addresses (to find out where these computers are in the world, exactly), and anonymizers to mask their economic espionage.

VICE contacted Peter Koop, the founder of Electrospaces, to discuss the relationship between Quova, Neustar, and CSEC. Mr. Koop had this to say: “I only have evidence that CSEC is using the Quova-tool, which is part of the Neustar portfolio now. But as Neustar is providing a wide range of internet registry and traffic monitoring services, it's very well possible that CSEC also uses other tools and services provided by this company.”

Very well possible indeed, especially considering the steps Neustar has taken to position itself as the go-to source for surveillance assistance. While it’s hard to say just how embedded Neustar is in the world of Five Eyes surveillance, Neustar’s 2005 purchase of Fiducianet, a company specializing in Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) compliance, was a firm step in this direction.

At the time, Neustar’s CEO Jeff Ganek said this of the Fiducianet purchase: “Through Fiducianet, Neustar is well positioned to address the law enforcement compliance needs of communications service providers.” Ganek continued, “Service providers are legally on the hook to solve this problem. Fiducianet has the platform that solves it. They can do it better and more efficiently than the carriers themselves.”

The service providers Ganek was referring to were likely the telecom companies that Neustar works with, which as of writing total roughly 5,700. So basically, while your cell phone provider is gouging you on roaming and excessive data use, Neustar could be gouging them for their services that help the Bell's, Rogers', and Telus' of the world deal with law enforcement requests.

Evidently, Canada depends heavily on American corporations to help move into a surveillance-friendly future. In an NSA document detailing the relationship between the NSA and CSEC, NSA authors note that due to CSEC’s “limited ability to produce cryptographic devices,” CSEC is “a large consumer of U.S. IA (Information Assurance) products.”

Information Assurance products, like Neustar’s NeuSentry portfolio (which warns clients to “prepare for the worst” when it comes to cybercrime) can either be cloud-based infrastructure security tools, hardware products for integration into existing computer networks, or third-party monitoring services. In short, Neustar sells a shitload of products that help governments and companies stay secure on the interwebs. These products and services are likely a big part of operational expenses at agencies like CSEC. Apparently the Americans are well aware that Canada needs to spend a ton of our funny money on their fancy telecom data collection tools, which means Neustar must be doing quite well—thanks to Canada’s thirst for metadata and cybersecurity.

It certainly sounds as if strengthening partnerships with corporations is a mandate across the Five Eyes spy agencies. The five-year SIGINT (signals intelligence) Strategy plan for the NSA discusses at length the need to develop “embedded, deeply interactive engagements” with what are described throughout as internal/external and public/private partners. This desire to “fully leverage internal and external NSA partnerships,” seems to indicate that growing the corporate network of the Five Eyes spy agencies is a priority—meaning the expansive and mysterious CSEC and Neustar relationship is only a small part of the puzzle.

This quest to strengthen the partnerships between surveillance agencies and their various partners also reared its head in the 2009 National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) report, which asked President Barack Obama to focus on three main objectives: the integration of federal cyber-security activities “under a single, central organizing governance structure,” collaboration with industry leaders in order to develop a “legal framework to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure,” and lastly, the nurturing of “strong public/private partnership(s).” Based on that third goal, it’s not surprising to hear that current Neustar President, CEO and Board of Directors member Lisa Hook was appointed to NSTAC in June of 2011 by President Obama.

VICE reached out to CSEC for comment on their relationship between Neustar in particular, and other public corporations in general, but they only offered a non-answer. One of the agency’s spokespeople, Ryan Foreman, told us: “CSE cannot comment on its operations or capabilities and therefore we are unable to respond to your question.”

Right. Well, moving right along then.

On one hand, it can be considered a good thing that third-party operators like Neustar hold the keys to vaults of metadata that telecommunications leave behind; that they operate as a middle-man between law enforcement agencies (LEA) and the telecom providers who can sometimes struggle with processing LEA requests for information. On the other hand, however, we need to know more about the ways in which these profit-focused enterprises handle all of this information.

In Canada, CSEC’s budget for 2013 was $444 million, and is reported to total $829 million in 2014. In the United States the NSA is said to have spent $10.8 billion in 2013—so where does all of this money go?

We know that public corporations like Neustar are active in domestic and international surveillance operations, and also that understanding the nature of these relationships is about as easy as sneezing with your eyes open. But without information on these relationships, we are only left to guess about how the corporate partners of the Five Eyes alliance inform programs and operations and the extent of their profiteering. As noted by Mr. Koop and confirmed by CSEC’s man of few words, Ryan Foreman, this information is closely guarded.

If public, corporate partners assist in shady operations at Canadian airports and throughout Brazilian ministries, then are they also assisting the US government when it flies drones over Yemen, where it’s alleged that electronic metadata analysis replaced human intelligence, and was used to inform and justify a drone strike that killed 12 members of a wedding party?

It doesn’t take an internet-savvy Sherlock Holmes to see that there’s something off about taxpayer money being funneled into a public corporation that assists in dodgy surveillance operations, that sometimes targets those same taxpayers, and may piss off friendly nations like Brazil in the process—all the while operating in a way that must necessarily benefit shareholders.

Public corporations like Neustar have access to what they call “unique, authoritative datasets,” and aim to position themselves as one-stop shops for LEA’s, while remaining beholden to their shareholders and the pursuit of profit above all. In the arena of espionage assistance, this relationship is concerning to say the least.

How rich are the already-wealthy telecom companies getting by way of Canadian tax dollars? Has that tax money ever been used to pay for assistance in surveillance operations conducted against Canadians? Are public corporations selling potentially unreliable data to LEAs in the name of maximizing profits? If so, is this data used to inform programs, like the drone missions, that result in the wrongful death of innocents?

These are big questions that to date remain unanswered.


Follow Patrick McGuire on Twitter.

George Arthur is an independent journalist, this is his first contribution to VICE. He made a Twitter account today.

Manna wears Ann-Sofie Back neon jacket, Diesel sweatpants, Dr. Martens vintage shoes.

PHOTOS BY FELIX SWENSSON
STYLIST: SARA BROLIN
WORDS BY CAISA EDERYD

Special thanks to Ibeyo, Lydmar Hotel, Rolfs Kök, Nosh & Chow, Summit, Marie Laveau, Joel Sundqvist, Femi Frykberg & Titiyo, Hugo Rückert, the Hård Family
 

The toilet taboo is a widespread Western phenomenon—especially among girls. But the fact that girls take a dump less frequently than boys do is actually a danger to their health. More than 60 percent of women suffer from stomach problems directly caused by avoiding the bowl, according to a report released last year by Swedish scientists. If these issues get too severe, you might eventually end up with rectal cancer. To highlight this, we asked some girls (and boys) how they feel about the good ol' number-two taboo.
 

American Apparel bra, American Apparel denim shorts, shoes from Vans

Sindy: I’m cool talking about my toilet habits with friends. I even talk with my boyfriend. I actually just did take a dump, and my boyfriend’s in bed just in front of the bathroom door, so he knows I’m in here. I just turn on the tap and do my thing. But the water needs to be running. If the tap doesn’t work I won’t do it. That’s my cover-up.
 

Beyond Retro kimono

Amanda: I've realized after saying certain things that I’m more comfortable talking about poop than most people are. But I’m not so cool with taking a dump outside. I’ll pee anywhere, though. I’d probably be uncomfortable if my partner didn’t poop. My tip is to turn really loud music on while you’re at it.
 

American Apparel bodysuit, Beyond Retro trousers, shoes from Eytys

Sara: The weirdest place I’ve taken a dump at is either when I’ve been at some festival in some bush with loads of tents surrounding me or, when I was younger, I liked to poop as I was hanging off that pole you tie your boat around on a pier. I grabbed the pole, put my bum out, and hung over the water. My best friend and I used to do that together, but that was a pretty long time ago. And once I sat in the lap of my boyfriend when he was doing it. I guess you can say I’m pretty open about it.
 

Beyond Retro top, Hospital panties, Adidas socks

Peter: I think it’s rather abnormal for girls to pretend that they don’t do number two. But I have noticed that girls avoid doing it until much later when they’ve eventually dared to tell me. I’m the same, which is pretty silly really. Just do it!

Amanda: I’m comfortable talking about my toilet habits with my friends, but I wouldn’t talk about them with a guy unless we were in a really tight and good relationship. I don’t really have much to say about it to be honest.
 

Ivo wears American Apparel tank top, Reebok trainers; Manna wears V Avenue Shoe Repair top, American Apparel underwear, shoes from Eytys

Ivo: Girls taking a dump don’t gross me out at all. I could probably even wipe someone’s ass if it was needed. It’s not something I’d do just for the sake of it, but I mean if she really needed my help, then sure—if both her arms were broken or something. I’ve hung out with girls for long periods of time and noticed that they don’t feel the need to use the toilet. So it’s happened that I’ve told a girl that you know, "You’re allowed to go to the bathroom, lady." But the answer is either “No I don’t need to,” or she jokes about it with a classic “nice girls don’t use the toilet." I guess I find it a bit provoking when girls think that guys are that stupid to believe that guys are the only ones who need to take a shit.

Manna: I shit just as fast as other people pee so everybody always think it was the person who used the bathroom before me who took a shit, if it smells. It bores the hell out of me to shit. I don’t think that any of my boyfriends have ever noticed that I’ve done number two, so I guess they’ve thought I’m the kind of girl who never shits. But once I had a boyfriend who had some serious issues with his poop. So we talked a lot about it, and it appeared as if I was the normal one, because he was shitting all the time and I wasn’t.
 

Beyond Retro dress, Hunter boots

Malin: Maybe I’m not that cool with talking about my toilet habits. But all right, I’m OK with using public restrooms, although it definitely stresses me out if there’s a queue. I find outhouse bogs really cozy.
 

Beyond Retro T-shirt, American Apparel running shorts, shoes from Reebok

Nadia: I don’t really feel weird about using public restrooms. I just fill the toilet with tissue if I’m doing number two, and I use plenty of soap when I wash my hands. I guess it’s not the first thing you want to talk about on a date, but I don’t think it’s a romance killer.
 

Julia Koistinen dress, shoes from Vans

Beata: I think it’s pretty horrible that girls can get health issues from not using the bathroom, but I’m not surprised at all, considering that a lot of people talk about not wanting to use the bathroom when they’re at school, work, or at their boyfriend’s house. I just flush water at the same time by instinct. So it’s not really an issue for me.
 

American Apparel top, Beyond Retro skirt, shoes from Vans

Jennifer: Don’t make a big deal out of it—I’m pretty relaxed. What is there to say really? Just go in, do your thing, and leave.
 

Beyond Retro jumper, socks and panties from American Apparel

Johan: Why on earth would girls’ toilet habits gross me out? It shouldn’t be taboo, and it doesn’t ruin passion. However, I probably wouldn’t shit in front of my girlfriend, unless it’s necessary for some reason. But I wouldn’t prefer doing it. My trick to hide what I’m doing is to put loud music on.

Johanna: I’m cool with using the toilet anywhere. There really isn’t much to talk about. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
 

Beyond Retro T-shirt, American Apparel running shorts, American Apparel panties, shoes from Reebok

"Mr. Christmas" (left) with a hostess at the Smeeters date. Photos by Chloe Orefice

Smeeters is a new dating website that, like many new dating websites, seems to think the world needs yet another unnatural way to meet sexual and romantic partners. You see, Smeeters is a self-described "social club" that lets you and two of your friends go on a six-way blind date with three random strangers. Yes, a triple blind date! I bet you never even thought that was something that anyone would want to do, but according to some press releases, it's all the rage.

Perhaps it represents that odd but inevitable cultural moment when our endless thirst for social media novelty leads us all the way back to square one: the blind date. Smeeters say that its three-on-three dating experiences are as much "a place to expand your social circle" as somewhere to hook up with a stranger. If the gallery section of their website is anything to go by, London's social circle of nice people who like The Big Bang Theory and can afford to drink cocktails most nights has never been so well connected.

Personally, my social circle has diminished pretty sharply ever since I took up being a dickhead, so after reading about it in a recent Evening Standard article, Smeeting—and the dream of a less lonely life that it offered—piqued my interest. I’m a red-blooded male, after all. A single man has needs. Not least, the need to occasionally bore and disappoint a woman he's never met before and will never see again.

Gradually, things came together. I created a profile. Calls were made. A Thursday night was scheduled. A tiki bar off Fleet Street with drinks served in half-coconuts was arranged. Now all I needed was two friends.

First stop: Paddington Station, where I was due to meet my friend Mr. Christmas.

Mr. Christmas lives in the town of Melksham, Wiltshire, and has been celebrating Christmas Day every day for more than 20 years. Every day, he sits down to turkey, sprouts, and all the trimmings. Every day, he washes it down with some champagne and mince pies. Every day, he goes outside his house and posts Christmas cards through his own letterbox. His house is a permanent blaze of lights and tinsel that he never has to worry about taking down.

Basically, his life is perfect, except for the $330,000 he reckons he's spent on his perpetual festivities over the past two decades.

IT’S CHRISTMAS!

From Paddington, we took the tube, which gave us lots of time for conversation. Mr. Christmas told me about how he gift-wraps two items every day to give himself as presents. He told me he’d bought a Mercedes recently, and he’d gifted that to himself too. “Do you know Mike Read?” he said. “The DJ. He’s my friend. He lives in West London. We speak about once a week.”

Mr. Christmas also said he attended the Brit Awards regularly because of all his contacts in the music industry. “I dish out the mince pies to Shania Twain, Phil Collins—all the stars.” He knows the ex-lead singer of the Stranglers and he’s collaborated with Slade.

“I’ve got Boy George coming round next week for Christmas dinner,” he continued. Melksham is also apparently very close to where Prince Charles lives. “Camilla talks to me sometimes. She’s very nice. I’ve invited her round for Christmas dinner, but there are security concerns.” It soon became clear that Mr. Christmas had many wonderful celebrity friends. The three lasses we were on our way to "smeet" didn’t know how lucky they were.

Mr. Christmas was already in high spirits and demonstrated this by proposing to a girl on the tube.

Worryingly, our third dating partner was late. I texted him peevishly as we approached the bar.

Kanaloa, our venue for the evening, was a posh London flirting arena where girls with Louis Vuitton handbags mingled easily with investment bankers; next to them, traders in Hermès shirts mingled easily with insurance auditors. All of the most fashionable haircuts from three years ago were on display, "Moves Like Jagger" was on the stereo, and each of the drinks was more expensive than a meal at Denny's.

Our dates were, as promised, three human females. Wasting little time, I immediately started talking to one of them. She and her friend worked for a big international bank, and she said she was doing her second half marathon in Berlin that weekend. “What was your time for the last one?” I asked. “Two-twelve,” she replied. “That’s pretty good,” I said. In my heart, I knew it was merely average—but you need to be generous with the flattery if you're going to have much luck in this dating game.

“So… tell me about your friend,” she said, a note of suspicion rising in her voice.

“He is Mr. Christmas, and he celebrates Christmas every day,” I replied.

“Is he actually single?” she said.

“Yes, he is!” I said. I decided not to tell her about his earnest queries that afternoon about whether he would be assigned a girl or have to choose his own.

At this point, the mood around the table began to darken; the girls started whispering to each other. Mr. Christmas mugged and pouted valiantly, but I couldn’t help feeling that the social momentum was slipping away from us. I prayed that my second friend would hurry along, but I kept getting apologetic texts letting me know that he was still "on his way."

Twenty minutes in, Arno finally arrived. Arno plays guitar in a band called Generation Graveyard, one of the shining lights of London’s vibrant goth community. I felt sure the girls would respect him for his integrity within the scene.

Unfortunately, at this point the questions from our new friends started to veer from the usual “What sort of house do you live in?” and began to gravitate sharply towards the “What exactly do you think you’re trying to pull here?” end of the spectrum. Suddenly, I was on trial for having interesting friends. How had this happened?

While my back was turned, the girl who was running the marathon left with a very curt "goodbye." I’d sunk a fair bit of sycophantic social capital into her at this point, so it was something of a letdown. I sucked my boozy fruit drink and wondered whether I would die alone.

It was time for a game changer. Luckily, Mr. Christmas had brought along some crackers for us all to pull. And a Christmas card in which he stood next to Cliff Richard. Surely that would lighten the mood?

But it didn’t lighten anything. I asked one of the girls, who turned out to be Danish and pleasant, about what Christmas is like there. She said it was nice but different. Approaching panic, I did what I always do on awkward dates—I reached for a fascinating fact. I told her Cliff Richard is the only artist who has had a number one hit in every decade since the 1950s.

She seemed fairly tolerant of this.

Mr. Christmas’s big black bag was turning out to be an Aladdin’s Cave of delights. He had a CD of his own music, which Arno studied intently (he kind of did everything intently).

Sadly, the DJ had less time for Mr. Christmas' bangers.

Arno and Mr. Christmas discussed their respective musical careers. Despite the large difference between Christmas and graveyards, they found they had a lot in common. But all this time they spent talking to each other was less time they spent talking to the remaining girls, who were displaying classic mobile-phone-burrowing signs of boredom and irritation.

A Fresh Prince track came on, and the bankers coalesced into a mass of respectably drunken sexy face. But back at our reserved table, a perpetual winter had taken hold. Even Arno seemed to have given up on Mr. Christmas and was now eyes-down into his mobile phone.

Then the girl on the left (who had earlier told Mr. Christmas she was "a brain surgeon"—a statement he said he had no reason to doubt) began telling me that I was a bad man and that I’d pulled a dirty trick on her. She said she refused to have her photos used in any article, and kindly offered to sue us if they were. She then further underlined and amplified her basic point, that I was a shitbag.

Finally, she launched an appeal to my basic sense of fairness. “People,” she complained, “come out here to meet someone they might want to take things further with.” She then gave me a coup-de-grâce daggers stare. Oh, brother, I’d really cocked this one up.

I sucked down more sugary booze, felt like a shitbag, and got back to wondering whether I would die alone. Then, bizarrely enough, I started having a wonderful time. I fell deep into conversation with the Danish girl, who, as I said, was really pleasant. We talked about our childhoods, the fall of the Berlin Wall, our previous relationships, and exactly how ready we were for commitment. That’s pretty good, no? I said something, and she laughed. I laughed, and she said something.

But then a bitter melancholy took hold. I realized that the Danish girl would never consent to be with me, because I was essentially a predatory journalist who had brought her and her friends on a night out that they now viewed as an attack on their character/precious free time. Whatever happened over the brief span of this moment, I knew it would be canceled out by the fact that they thought I was a prick.

No—instead, this was to be our own version of Brief Encounter, but with party poppers, the guitarist from Generation Graveyard, and a profound feeling of loneliness. An exchange of tender feeling—an honesty I’d not felt in weeks—then the whistle blows and we move on with our lives. She, back to an international banking conglomerate. Me, back to the killing fields of writing mildly sarcastic articles for money.

It would never work.

Far too soon, it was that point in the evening when the in-house DJ plays "Hey Ya." “Let’s have a mince pie?” I suggested. Chloe, our photographer, realized she’d never had a mince pie before in her life, because she is secretly from Italy. I stuffed one in her gob, and one in my own. They were delicious mince pies. The Danish girl had one too. What a nice girl. And so attractive beneath those pixels.

Everyone loved Mr. Christmas's fake Xmas-themed £20 notes.

The witching hour arrived. Mr. Christmas needed to be back in Wiltshire. He had important things to do the next day. It was Christmas Eve, after all, and the best kind of Christmas Eve—one on which the trains are still running. After we paused to pay our $116 bar tab, the evening came to its unnatural conclusion. Goodbye, Arno. Goodbye, Mr. Christmas. Goodbye forever, pixelated Danish girl.

I flung Mr. Christmas into a cab and flung myself and Chloe into the nearest bar. At 4 AM, I awoke back in Mudchute, sweating the sweat of a man who had skipped dinner, drunk too much sugary booze, and exposed three vulnerable West London gals desperately seeking Mr. Right to the dating equivalent of the Stanford prison experiment.

In the early morning glimmer, I thought a lot about the direction my life is presently heading in. And I resolved to get on Tinder instead.

Follow Gavin Haynes on Twitter.

See more of Chloe's photos here.

This photo was posted to the Golden Dawn's first website before the site was taken down by hackers.

On the evening of March 23, I found myself in the back of the Taverna Greek Grill, a small, family restaurant in Howard Beach, Queens, picking at a plate of tzatziki and pita bread. I’d come to the boonies of New York City’s outer boroughs to meet a band of Hellenic fascists known as the Golden Dawn.

Initially, I contacted the group out of a sick fascination—the kind you might have with a pus-inflamed wound: Your eyes fixate on it, even though your stomach tells you to turn away. Besides, as events in Greece have illustrated, if one doesn't keep a careful eye, the infection can spread and sometimes turn deadly.

Politics in Greece have become increasingly polarized. The country's economy  collapsed under the weight of a sovereign debt crisis when the world financial meltdown broke in 2008. Since then, Greece has endured a series of unpopular austerity measures imposed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund that have only exacerbated poverty and social unrest. 

The drama has played out with general strikes, clouds of tear gas engulfing large demonstrations, and the ascension of political parties that stand on radical ends of the spectrum. Syriza, or the Coalition of the Radical Left, went from winning 3.9 percent at the polls in Greece's 2004 general election to receiving 26.9 percent of the vote in 2012, becoming the country's leading opposition party.

In the shadow of the country’s economic malaise, the right-wing movement of the Golden Dawn rose in opposition to Syriza and pretty much everyone else. Their party symbol is a Greek meander, which looks an awful lot like a swastika. Since its ascension, the group has been tied to an uptick in deaths and beatings of immigrants, gays, and leftists.

On September 17, 2013, about 30 Dawn thugs surrounded anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fissas (Killah P.) in an Athens café and stabbed him to death. Nineteen leading members of the party were arrested and charged with running a criminal organization. Still, with widespread reports of the Dawn infiltrating Greek police forces, questions remain over just how thick the blood runs between law enforcement and the fascists.

Despite their renowned penchant for violence, polls have shown that more than 11 percent of Greeks support the party, and their spokesman, Ilias Kasidiaris, has stated his desire to spread cells “wherever there are Greeks.” So far they have established branches in Melbourne, Montreal, Nuremberg, and New York City.

Before a meeting with the Dawn's New York cell could be arranged, a guy calling himself Georgio interrogated me over the phone. After my lengthy cross-examination, Georgio started to open up.

I asked about his accent. “I was expecting someone who sounded Greek,” I said.

He laughed.

“I don't have a 'Hello, I'm from Greece,' kind of accent,” Georgio said. “But we have guys like that. They just came over. We have some Greeks that have been here since the 70s, and we have Greeks that were born here in Queens—Astoria and White Stone. We're pretty much regular people. We do charity stuff. Even though we live here, we still have close family ties over there, and it kind of bleeds over.”

Bleeds being the key word. About two years ago, when the Golden Dawn began making appearances in Astoria's Greek community, many people were worried that blood would be spilt.

“They work out,” said Nicholas Levis, an organizer with Aristeri Kinisi (Left Movement) New York. “They look tough. They like to march around.” 

The Dawn first showed itself by coming around to local Greek businesses and asking for donations to help their people in the mother country who were hit with economic woes. They didn't identify themselves at first. A few days later, they showed up offering free Golden Dawn T-shirts to those who pledged monetary support. Business owners were horrified.

Even the Golden Dawn's charitable efforts were tinged with xenophobia, which is ironic considering they are the immigrants in the US. A box asking for donations of clothing and canned food, placed without permission at Stathakion Cultural Center in Queens, was labeled “For Greeks Only.”

“I almost had a fist fight with one of their members,” said Christos Vournos, who works at the center, explaining how Dawn members loitering by the charity box had resisted his entreaties to leave. They eventually complied and left the building, but that wasn't the last the cultural center saw of them.

At a May 2013 screening of Greek American Radicals, a documentary about 20th-century union activism among the Greek diaspora, about 200 people turned up, including four Golden Dawn members. The Dawners were upset that the film lacked patriotic spirit. “Not a single Greek flag is in the promotional poster,” the Dawn's website complained.

“They didn't do anything until after the film,” recalled Nicholas, who was at the screening. “But afterward there was a question-and-answer period with the producers. The first question was being answered, and then they came out with a megaphone and were like, 'We have a question.' A hundred people fell on them. They were grabbed and thrown out.”

Photo by Peter Rugh

The Dawners pouted on the web that a “group of 15 or so elderly communist zombies tried to silence us.”

“They conflate everything,” said Nicholas. “Aristeri Kinisi to them is a front for Syriza, which is a front for the Jews, which is a front for the world communist conspiracy of George Soros.”

Nicholas and other activists I spoke with told me that a group of expats sympathetic with Syriza had planned to have a meeting last October in the basement of an apartment complex in Astoria. The Golden Dawn heard about it and showed up the night before, chucking rocks at the building's windows. The next morning residents found banners bearing the Dawn's swastika-like insignia strewn along the building's exterior.

Though most in the Astoria community are weary of confrontations with the Dawn, the group's provocations have activated circles of the lefty diaspora in New York. On March 22, outside the Greek Consulate on the Upper East Side, a crowd of about 50 people turned up to mark a global day against fascism. Velina Mandova, with the Bulkan Queer Initiative, said she joined the rally even though she is Bulgarian, because fascist groups are on the rise across Europe. They could gain traction in the US if people don't take them as a threat.

“It's tolerated by governments over there,” said Velina. “It's represented as this extreme, radical fringe thing when, in fact, it's rounding up all this nationalist sentiment in precarious economic times.”

The Golden Dawn's presence in New York has been heralded in the seedy corners of the white-supremacist internet and greeted with trepidation by most Greek Americans. Yet little is known about their activities in the city, just that they claim to be conducting charity operations.

The New York group has never spoken to the press, nor have its members ever been publicly photographed in their Dawn paraphernalia. When I headed to Howard Beach, my goal was just to find out who the hell these people are without getting put upside down on a vertical spit, shaved into little pieces, and stuffed into a gyro.

Georgio was 15 minutes late to our meeting at the Taverna Greek Grill, before I decided to call him. He said the guys were wrapping up their weekly meeting and would be joining me shortly. Forty-five minutes passed. I’d finished dinner, a plate of spanakopita (spinach pie), and there was still no sign of the Golden Dawn. On my way out the door, I called Georgio again and asked why he had wasted my time. He started to seethe.

“The Golden Dawn does not give interviews!” he shouted. “You are communists. You are the enemy. Did you really think I'd let you talk to us? This is Rocky IV; you're Ivan Drago.” 

Georgio hung up, but on my way home I got a call from a blocked number.

“Is this Peter?” a grandfatherly Greek voice wanted to know.

“Who is this?” 

“This is Beano. Where are you, Peter? Are you at the restaurant?”

“No.”

“Do you want to interview the Golden Dawn? Why don't you go to the restaurant?”

“I went to the restaurant. Nobody showed up.”

“Nobody came to meet you? This is a mistake. What happened? Why don't you go back to the restaurant? Wait, and we will meet you.”

Something told me that if I returned to the restaurant, they'd try to snuff me out the same way their brothers in mother country did Pavlos Fissas. Beano kept trying to entice me to turn around until I hung up. When I got home I noticed I'd missed a call. There was a new message waiting for me.

“Peter, tell me what's going on with you guys?” It was Beano, again. “If you want me to tell you something I can tell you anything you want. But [are] you this kind of faggots and communists and like Syriza from Greece? I don't know, man. I don't know what's going on with you guys. Probably you take it up the ass, you know? I hope not, because you are a man, you know? All right, Peter, all right. I hope [if] you can take a dick in your ass, you can take a dick in your mouth too, you know?”

Hearing Beano's ridiculous message made me ruminate on the Golden Dawn cell in New York's main purpose: to help bring legitimacy to what the group is doing abroad. But with mouth-breathing apes like Beano at the helm of the group's US arm, that goal seems pretty unattainable. Nonetheless, if the group's rise in Greece has proven anything, it's that, given the right series of unfortunate events, Golden Dawn's brand of xenophobia and hate can become pretty appealing to a portion of the population. Let's just hope in the states, where an austerity program is also underway—including an $8.7 billion cut to food stamps this February—their vitriolic and contentious politics stay on the fringes. 

Follow Peter on Twitter

About a year ago, I was emailed an image of a beached whale and a dead raccoon in a bag. No text, no link—just two jpgs. Feeling like I had just received a digital kiss of death, I instantly Googled the offender's email address. Turns out Clark Allen (aka Sink Stuart) isn't a darkweb killer for hire, but just a man who winds up in some strange situations. If you get past his post-Geocities portfolio, his website is a haven of perfect timing: cheerleaders, crying kids, and sex shops are treated with that oft-discussed "democracy" so cherished in contemporary photography. I always admire the sincerity in which street photographers approach voyeurism and everyday theatrics—when it works. Lucky for us, it seems as though Clark Allen has a life worth living.

 

Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National, on the campaign trail.

After far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen placed second in France’s 2002 presidential elections, the country's left lost its collective shit. Two million people took to the streets to voice their outrage at the success of the Front National (FN) party. It was definitely a disturbing moment—a Holocaust denier who once described Nazi gas chambers as a “mere [historical] detail” had just picked up more than 17 percent of the national vote.

It's been a decade, but the FN still isn't going away. Sunday’s local elections saw the party—now fronted by Jean-Marie’s daughter, Marine—claim their biggest-ever victory, with 12 of its candidates winning mayoral elections. Notably, the midterm election also saw record-low turnout, with one in four people not bothering to vote at all. It was a disaster for President Francois Hollande’s Parti Socialiste (PS), which lost control of 155 towns, and yet another victory for the FN, which has been steadily increasing its influence on French society—its slick PR campaign and the loyalty of its supporters has led to the party becoming the public face of French nationalism.

According to Jean-Yves Camus, an expert in far-right French politics, the election results can be partly explained as the people rejecting the country's political class. "The main political parties in France have been involved in several scandals over these past few months,” he told me. “So they are discredited in the eyes of the population... A recent poll showed that only 8 percent of French people trust political parties.”

Oh, right, the scandals: A year ago, Budget Minister Jérôme Cahuzac was forced from his position after repeatedly lying about a secret offshore bank account; the government is under pressure for failing to deal with rising unemployment; its fiscal reforms have been controversial, as demonstrated during the wave of “bonnets rouges” protests; and Hollande’s approval rating is currently sitting at a pathetic 23 percent. Things are not going well for the people who run France, and the FN represents an alternative.

Bonnets Rouges protesters clash with police in Brittany last year.

Far-right parties have also capitalized on the recent radicalization of moderate right-wingers. Several FN bigwigs joined protesters during the anti-same-sex marriage demonstrations at the end of last year, and more recently, the Jour de Colère (the "Day of Anger") on January 26 drew around 17,000 ultra-droite (ultra-right) protesters, who were there to shout about everything from Hollande, unemployment, the media, and taxes to abortion rights, same-sex marriage, homosexuality, Jews, and Satan.

"We're witnessing the formation of a reactionary right, similar to the Tea Party in the US," said Alexis Corbière, the national secretary of the democratic socialist Parti de Gauche ("the Left Party").

Jean-Yves Camus believes that the FN’s relative lack of success in the past has also done them some favors. “Since the Front National has never properly been in power, they’ve got a clean sheet on that level,” he said. “It’s neither positive or negative, just blank.”

So where the PS can no longer be trusted, the FN and other far-right parties are unknown quantities. This holds particularly true in places like Hénin-Beaumont, a former mining town in northern France with a high unemployment rate. Last year, a former mayor, a PS member, was sentenced to four years in prison for embezzling public funds and accepting bribes.

"Right or left, it’s always the same thing—nothing ever changes," explained Jean-Paul, a 63-year-old from Hénin-Beaumont. He used to vote for left-wing parties, but this year he backed Steeve Briois, the newly-elected FN mayor.

"Briois has been at Hénin for the past 19 years—we always see him around," said Jean-Paul. I asked him how he felt about voting for a party whose members are regularly accused of racism. “There’s no racism here,” he replied. “That’s all talk to try and exclude us from the political debate. People try to discredit the Front National, but the reality is that it’s a party like any other. In my [area], you know, there are some foreigners. They’re there and I speak to them. They’re part of the scenery now."

Protesters clash with police during the "Day of Anger" earlier this year.

I wasn’t convinced. I have vivid memories of watching Jean-Marie Le Pen’s anti-Semitic rants on TV when I was a kid, and more recently he accused Roma people of being “naturally” inclined to rob people. Le Pen has been condemned for his racist and violent outbursts plenty of times before, so now that his daughter Marine Le Pen has taken over leadership of the party (with Jean-Marie remaining its honorary president), a lot of effort has been put in to massaging the FN’s image. Marine has even vowed to sue those who label the FN as an “extreme right” party.

"We are not extremists," said Nicolas Bay, FN's campaign manager. “What defines us is patriotism. We are here to defend the vital interests of France and its people." Well, that and cutting immigration from about 180,000 to 10,000 migrants per year, outlawing protests that support undocumented migrants, instituting a “national priority” policy, and reinstating the death penalty.

Candidates from French far-right parties don’t win local elections very often, but when they do they've occasionally ended up doing some pretty stupid stuff. For example, in 1997, the Mouvement National Républicain (MNR)—a party founded by former FN members—won control of Vitrolles, a town in the south of the country. The newly elected mayor dramatically slashed public spending on welfare and culture, equiped the town’s police with nice new shoes, and introduced a special 5,000-franc allowance for babies born to at least one parent of French (or EU) nationality—a measure that later ruled illegal.

Any street name that sounded too left-wing was changed to something a bit more palatable to the average MNR supporter. Nelson Mandela Square, for instance, was renamed, and Salvador Allende Street—named after the Chilean Marxist—became Mother Theresa Street. An avenue was even dedicated to Jean-Pierre Stirbois, an influential figure in Front National history.

"The FN is a reactionary force of hard right ideology that believes we need to reduce public and welfare spending,” explained Corbière. “In today’s context of rising unemployment, this is going to be disastrous for the cities it took over [in the recent elections].”

Camus, however, thinks the electoral success might signal that the FN is a legitimate party. “We have a political machine in the making,” he said. “The British far right is outlandish in comparison; the [British Nationalist Party] won a few council seats, sometimes with very good scores. They got three [Members of European Parliament] elected, but it remains a very unprofessional party. From the moment you have a number of cities falling into the hands of the FN, the training of a new militant elite that could become elected representatives will develop.”

The next chance for France's far right to capture more power will be May’s European elections, where the FN will hope to capitalize on this weekend's results, riding on the wave of fear and subsequent nationalism that always swells in times of crisis.

Follow Rebecca Suner on Twitter.

Photos by Megan Koester

Reggie Watts is in demand, and if you’ve ever seen one of his dizzyingly original performances, you know exactly why. There is absolutely no one on the planet like him. I caught up with him the day before he headlines a comedy show I run with other LA VICE writers. He somehow found time in his crazed schedule to have a fantastic 45-minute conversation that was so fun, it made me want to start a podcast. In addition to filming the third season of IFC’s Comedy Bang Bang, he’s pitching a sci-fi TV show that he doesn’t think will get picked up because it’s too weird, planning a studio album that may have multiple producers and even a full band involved, developing a Comedy Central special, and filming a documentary.

VICE: Last night we were at Neil Hamburger’s awesome monthly show at The Satellite. I was talking to you when a girl came up and was like, "Is that San Diego song available online?"
Reggie Watts: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was funny.

Does that happen a lot? Describe that moment for you, knowing that you do something new pretty much every time.
Yeah, I mean, it’s funny to me when someone comes up and I’m like, "Oh, sorry," but there’s also a part of me that’s kind of excited to tell them that it isn’t available. The idea behind making songs on stage the way that I do, the goal is to make it seem like it is a written song. And if I can do my best to really make it seem [planned], sometimes I can go much further than other times. But usually for like a stand-up night or whatever, my goal is to at least make it sound 60 percent like a written song, y’know?

Is the goal to just get the light and go, "Oh, awesome, I was present the entire time"? What is a perfect set for you?
I guess a perfect set is something that feels like it had a good energetic arc to a certain degree. Like, things occur, people had a good time. I felt like I was kind of hitting on something, had some nice grooves, controlled the way that they ended or got out of it, came into another thing, was listening to the audience, was getting that great feedback loop that occurs when things are happening, listening, expressing, like listening, minimally processing, expressing. But it’s always nice when I’m aware when I’m supposed to wrap up, because I do like creating a nice ending.

How do you dismount? Do you have something in your back pocket for that?
Uh... no. I mean my favorite is something I do relatively often. Just have a really good groove of a song happening and just end it in the worst place you can end it and just say like, "Thanks, everybody." That’s one of my favorites. Or y’know, if I’m aware of time, other styles of ending are wrapping it up like you’re telling a story: "And that’s how the blah blah blah blah blah. Thanks, everybody; good night." You know, that type of a thing. I don’t know, somewhere between those two. Either of those two, or something in between.

You’re a man of many options.
I try. Yeah, I try. I hope to see many options; otherwise you’re just heading towards this thing and you’re like, "Well, the more options I can see, the more of a chance that I’ll avoid this obstacle that is coming up. But if I hit the obstacle, that’s OK too, because I can use that." Just don’t have that weird mushroom moment where you’re kind of holding a mirror up to you and you start questioning who you are or what you are on stage. Everything starts to unravel very quickly.

I guess you could call it being self-conscious or insecure or whatever that is. Those are kind of by-products of it, I think, that feeling of "Oh, shit, I’m listening too literally to everything right now, and I’m always aware of me listening to it." And then I’m like, "I don’t know what’s going on. Malfunction, malfunction! We’re going down! Do something!"

We’re taking water!
Icebergs! There’s no way! What do we do now? It’s like that scene out of The Last Starfighter, if you’ve been lucky enough to see that film.

I have not.
Where the general’s there, and the bad guys. This is not giving away very much—

Spoiler alert.
Impossible-to-be-a-spoiler alert! They’re going to crash, they’ve lost all capability of steering their massive ship, and it’s going to crash into a moon. And they’re trying to do everything they can, and finally one guy turns to the captain and is like, "What do we do? Impact is inevitable," something like that. The captain—he has this monocle that’s motorized; it’s red—he just goes [robot sound effects], "We die."

That is the ultimate onstage bomb—crashing into the moon. And you, specifically, have an apparatus, like you are a giant starship on stage with your music setup.
It sort of feels like I’m in one, hopefully.

It feels like you’re rocketing through some shit, and we’re along for the ride.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s like everybody’s on board, and we’re like, "How are you doing today? Do you need anything? How are you doing?" And then we’re just making adjustments. "We’re approaching." It kind of feels like that when we’re grooving because weirdly I do pretend that I live on a starship a lot of times—before going into doors, entering false access codes, and going through it and just like, "Commander. General. Vice General. Lieutenant. Walk with me." I really kind of wish life were like that.

So, I wrote down some Q’s for you, just some fun Q’s—
Q’s for the Cuse. Call me Cusack from now on.

I’m going to hold up a boombox and play the questions out of the boombox.
All right!

So, here’s the first one. Andrew Jackson is on the $20 bill and that guy sucks. He was a genocidal maniac, and he’s on our money. If it were up to you, who would be on the $20 bill?
The first thing that I wouldn’t want, but for some reason kind of naturally came to mind, was Whoopi Goldberg.

OK, follow that.
But that’s not who I would actually want on there. For some reason I was just like, Oh let’s just see what she looks like on there. It’s partially about how it looks, right? Maybe Jackson was just a really handsome guy.

Maybe.
I know, what about—it’s kind of easy—but what about Tesla?

Tesla! That’s a great one. Why do you want Tesla on money?
Well, y’know, he really did something. Like he really kind of changed Western society. He really flipped the whole script on what is possible, and harnessed something as crazy and as powerful and as chaotic as electricity. Understanding it’s different, like really understanding electricity intuitively and in practice. That’s quite an achievement, and it really changed a lot. And it was a neutral energy. I mean, how it’s produced is arguable, but the energy itself, when you have access to it, is really amazing. That type of shit is heavy. And he’s kind of a superstar. His name, thankfully, lives on in the car company, which is brilliant.  He’s an important guy, and also mysterious and not totally understood. But definitely a superstar of American culture.

Yeah, and kind of a fun little twist having him on the money after he died penniless, surrounded by pigeons.
Oh, yeah, that’s right—he had that weird obsession with pigeons. So crazy, man. I mean, sometimes minds like that, they have a very specific but intense purpose, and then it doesn’t quite fit in the paradigm. They don’t quite develop the social skills to relate, to have a group of people around them that are caring and nurturing. They’ve lost those people because of some very strange inability to reflect something that they can value and connect with.

Next question: If I could have one made-up superpower, I would want to have the ability to choose a soundtrack that everybody hears when I walk into a room. So when I walk into a room the Jurassic Park theme plays, or some awesome old New Orleans music, like Professor Longhair sort of shit. That would be my made-up one. If you can think of any not-so-popular superpower, what would you choose?
Well, it’s kind of boring but, I think I would choose the power to be able to restore people to their healthiest state.

Ooh, OK. Mentally, physically, or all of the above?
The whole thing.

So you’d be a cleric, like in Dungeons and Dragons?
Yeah, and they’d just be like, "Oh, thanks." "Dad’s got Alzheimer’s." "Well, that won’t do." But I like the idea of it being so simple and so easy, so you just kind of do it and move on. No sweat.

"Let’s go get a taco."
"Are you sure? Well, I’ll go get a taco. But are you sure, like, I don’t have cancer anymore?" "Yeah, but what do you want on your taco?"

OK, next one. I lost my virginity to the song “Your Body Is a Wonderland” by the immutable, the amazing John Mayer. Do you remember what song you lost your virginity to?
Wow, that’s a really good question. It seems like a question I should have thought about and come up with an answer to. I would have to say… At that time it would’ve been 20, I think, was when I lost my virginity. I was 20 or 21, so that would’ve been Jane’s Addiction, Soundgarden... What was it? Dumb Sex, was that the name of the album?

Well, that’s appropriate.
It was Big Dumb Sex, Soundgarden's second album. Or what would I have been listening to? Maybe the Sundays. I’m imagining myself in a room in this little house off of 93rd and Aurora in Seattle, behind this really bourgie supermarket. Tiny house, tons of property around it, really small house. Front bedroom, which was my bedroom; my girlfriend was over, and we hadn’t done anything in weeks, and then we did it. I was like, Whoa.

And there were mushrooms.

You were like, "I got the tape; the cassette is in."
Yeah. I think it might have been that. It might have been Jane’s Addiction. Ritual de lo Habitual. It might have been that.

Hold on a sec, did you say you were on mushrooms?
I was on mushrooms, yeah.

When you lost your virginity? What was that like?
It was amazing. It was like something that I’d always imagined my whole life, and when it was happening it was amazing, but it was also like what I had imagined. Great. So it was like two things. You got two things in one.

If you could go back and change the song to a song that also was out during the period, would you change it? And what would you change it to?
Hm. I mean, back in the early days of Sade, before it sounded like soft jazz, you know, kind of like elevator soft jazz with a vocalist over it or something like that. It was something you hear on a chill-out mix circa 1994–95. Before that started happening, when it was kind of really sexy and sultry and we didn’t have a lot of that. It was just very unique. I would probably listen to something by Sade.

Next, if you could go camping with one person from the world of fiction—one fictional character—who would you go camping with?
Who would I go camping with? Camping, camping...

Because it’s a different experience, camping.
Yeah, for sure. You have to reduce some layers there. I mean, with people. Especially if you’re there for four days or something like that. Anything more, you have to kind of get rid of some shit in order to function as a crew, or just be really on the outside the whole time, you know, and just deal with that until it’s time to go.

Exactly.
Who would be really fucking awesome? It would either be terrifying or great to camp with Doctor Who—but the Matt Smith Doctor Who.

And for what reason? Is the time-travel aspect part of it?
Yeah, I like that he’s really into time travel. I mean, that’s all he does really. And yeah, he’s probably got a lot of perspective on things, and he’s got insight into a lot of cultures and civilizations. The way we relate to our society wouldn’t really apply. He would have an oversimplification of what it is because he’s experienced that already. So for us, he’s just like, I’ll be patient with everyone and chill out with you guys, because I’m also open to hanging out and seeing what happens. So I think he’d be a cool cat. He’d have great gadgets. Also, you could duck out and have adventures and it wouldn’t take any more time than your already pre-planned length of a camping trip.

That’s a great idea. You could technically go camping forever if you went camping with Doctor Who. You wouldn’t age, and no one you know would age.
Yeah, hopefully a minimal amount of consequences. The only consequence is having a greater knowledge of yourself and the universe.

Right, yeah, what a bummer. Bummer Town.
So I guess I take it all back.

Finally, if you could give the kids at home who are reading this, and one day would like to become like Reggie Watts, the worst advice possible, what would the worst advice be?
The worst advice I could give would be to really try to listen to everything literally—everything that you hear, and even lightly overhear, through hallowed halls. Listen to all of that stuff and comply completely; mimic it. Make sure what you do sounds like everything else, and you’re sure to succeed

Follow Josh Androsky and Megan Koester on Twitter.

Mark McCloud has about 30,000 tabs of LSD. He collects them, frames them, and catalogues them in his San Francisco home, which is why Mark gets periodically arrested by the DEA. Most of the tabs are now too old to send anyone on any kind of trip, but they sure look cool in his Victorian row house. I visited him there and we talked about hobbies, hallucinogen history, and psychedelic rebirths—mostly, I did lots of nodding as Mark smoked a joint and became increasingly mysterious. By the end I wasn’t sure what we were talking about, but it seemed very, very important.

VICE: So Mark, you collect tabs of acid as artwork. Why?
Mark McCloud: This happened because I have an interest from my childhood in small, well-made things. When I was growing up in Argentina they put out these little books and the one I remember most clearly was called “Weaponry of the Second World War.” You would buy a stick of gum and inside would be all these little images to collect. We tried filling the books with them to entertain ourselves.

So how old were you when you arrived in California?
Well, I was raised in Buenos Aires until I was 12 and then sent to a boarding school in Claremont. Two weeks after I got here, Frank Zappa’s Freak Out came out, just to place the time [meaning it was 1966]. So I became an American eighth grader, reading The Doors of Perception and doing pot, then mescaline when that came on.

How old were you when you discovered acid?
I was 13. It was in Santa Barbara at a very nice hotel on the beach. Me and a friend had our own cabin and we ordered some cubes from the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, which was Owsley [Stanley's] outlet. (He means that it was some primo shit. -Ed.) The experience was very full-bodied, even though I was nervous and I just liked acid for its humility and educational effects. I was blind but then I could see.

So when did you start collecting it?
Oh, that was when the first imagery came out. See, when acid first came out it was just drops on paper. This was in 1968 and it was the first commercially available acid. It came out of New York City and it was done by this great underground chemist called Ghost—may he rest in peace—and they were called Five by Twenties. They were five drops by 20 on a little card that was the same size as autochrome film and it came out wrapped in Kodak packaging.

And when did the first illustrated tabs appear?
In the 70s. There’s a whole vignette of imagery that appears throughout that era and it’s usually on sheets of paper the same size as an LP so they could ship it dressed as a record. The first sheets would have a single image that would be divided up into the tabs, usually in a single color. They quickly became individual pictures though, with great detail.

One of the very first illustrated sheets.

And how did you come to start framing them?
Well that’s another question about my rebirth. See, I was a very difficult 17-year-old. Hendrix had just died so I took 300 mikes of Orange Sunshine and basically the fabric I existed on changed. I vibrated myself out of this world and into a different thing and that’s when I really started collecting. At first I was keeping them in the freezer, which was a problem because I kept eating them, but then the Albert Hofmann acid came out and then I thought, Fuck, I’m framing this. That’s when I realized, Hey, if I try to swallow this I’ll choke on the frame.

So how did a guy with a freezer full of acid become an acid historian?
Well I was on the board of the San Francisco Art Institute, and to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Summer of Love I proposed that we do a show on the San Francisco acid guys. So we set up a big art show and I exhibited the whole collection. And 1987 was still loose enough to have a huge acid party with everyone afterwards.

How do you avoid being arrested, given the size of your stash?
I don’t. I’ve been done a few times and it’s always for the same thing—conspiracy to manufacture and distribute narcotics. Back in 2000 the DEA busted a group of kids at a high school in Kansas City, Missouri, and that led to a group of distributors in New Orleans and somehow the snitch factory led to me. They wanted to put me away for life but they couldn’t because the tabs were old and inactive. In the end I got off and they had to hand over all their evidence, which was a couple of folders of the photocopied collection. Fuck them. Someone has to say, “Enough already, you fucking arseholes.”

The DEA catalogued Mark's collection.

But I’m guessing you know who the chemists are, right?
That’s a very difficult question because to admit it is to take a big chance. So let’s just say that I can sometimes tell by the flavor who makes it. Some of my favorite guys are Dutch. They do great acid in the Netherlands.

How many trips have you taken in your life?
Half of one. The full trip is when you’re happy playing harp in heaven and your job is done. That’s the full trip.

Should everyone take acid?
No because you have to ask the right question to take it. Do you want a one-on-one with your maker?

And what if the answer is yes, even if you’ve got a mental illness?
Well there’s a correlation between acid and curing mental illness. I realized after my beautiful accidental rebirth that what we usually call psychology is actually just art.

You use a lot of complicated metaphors.
No, I just use the truth.

OK, well, what would you say to someone who is reluctant to take acid?
I would say go with it and don’t take it until you’re willing. The will is very important. If you are willing be sure to take it sensibly, surrounded by your favorite things and, if people are involved, make sure they’re your favorite people. And just expect a miracle.

Follow Julian Morgans on Twitter.

Image via

According to the World Health Organization, 121 million people worldwide have been diagnosed with depression. The latest ground-breaking treatment for those 121 million is Special K, or if you’re outside of a loud dark room, ketamine. Medical grade ketamine operates on glutamate receptors—the same ones affected by alcohol, hence the feel-good effect—and its use has been referred to as “the biggest breakthrough in depression research in half a century” by Professor Ronald Duman, a neurobiologist and psychiatrist at Yale University.

Australia’s forerunner of ketamine research Professor Colleen Loo refers to it as a “quiet revolution.” Despite the hype, the psychiatric breakthrough of a generation is almost impossible to get past the medical committee at any major Australian or New Zealand hospital. Australia trialed the treatment in the early 2000s when traditional treatments had failed to work, but it has yet to be adopted as a common practice. This isn’t some backwater idea, however—the American Psychiatric Association has been vocal with their excitement about ketamine.

New Zealand has dipped into the ketamine pool more recently; it was first used to treat depression in New Zealand at the Southern District Health Board in 2010. The psychiatrist in charge was referred to as “Dr. A”, a pseudonym invoked in the aftermath because the drug was technically off-label, which is to say unapproved. The doctor was reprimanded and the work was buried from public view. Although it wasn’t exactly an international incident, it left the Health and Disability Commission very much against the use of ketamine and psychiatrists wary of experimenting with it.

So only one person in the Auckland District Health Board region has received ketamine as a treatment for severe suicidality: me. I was severely depressed and had made numerous attempts to take my life in the ward—I was placed in the Intensive Care Unit, where they checked on me every fifteen minutes and, for several weeks, had me under constant watch.

I tried all the available SSRIs and had 18 treatments of Electroconvulsive Therapy. Nothing worked. Then my psychiatrist and a senior consultant suggested ketamine infusions. They had to go through a hellish amount of paperwork to get this approved—the most difficult party involved was the separate government agency Pharmac, which determines what drugs and can and cannot be prescribed. Suffice it to say they aren’t huge fans of pumping patients full of party drugs.

Researchers know why ketamine works, but still have no idea why ECT, the traditional treatment for severe depression, does. They only have vague theories. And ketamine is a much cheaper treatment than ECT; a ketamine infusion in New Zealand costs $200, whereas ECT is closer to a grand.

I had four infusions and within a couple hours, my mood lifted considerably. During treatment I was euphoric. Never had the K-hole experience—although I did have some entertaining conversations with the clinical director, ECT doctor, nurse, and registrar. After the treatment, I no longer had thoughts of suicide, and felt good for the first time in forever.

After two weeks, my mood dropped again. This time my psychiatrist was unable to get approval from the medical committee for further infusions—a confusing decision, considering our evidence that it had clearly worked. My doctor explained it was a matter of “what people would think, and [their being] averse to risks.” Following Dr. A's debacle, no one was too keen to go rogue without the committee's approval. Despite their concerns, I had experienced none of the adverse effects.

It was then suggested I try treatments of ECT and ketamine at the same time. They were approved simply because ECT is the old reliable treatment with an established protocol. After 18 more rounds, I was well again. It was incredible. I no longer felt a devastating, debilitating, dead-eyed blankness. I felt whole again. My personality returned. According to friends, I was “normal” once more. I didn't want to die. Rather, I wanted to live.

Anxious that my mood would drop again, I asked for oral ketamine after discharge. My psychiatrist said, “We just can't do it here. We can't get it approved." Despite my experience and the international research that demonstrates that both ketamine infusions and oral ketamine are highly effective, Pharmac hasn't licensed it as a treatment for depression. The stigma attached to the drug meant it simply wasn’t allowed for my condition.

Arguments against the use of ketamine include its side effects of hallucinations, psychosis, and irrational behavior, as well as the fear that a patient will become dependent. But really, it's the reputation of ketamine as a party drug and a horse tranquilizer, coupled with the fact that it's still technically an experimental, off-label treatment, that makes it so taboo. There is also the worry that if oral ketamine is prescribed, it will offer a new channel of access for those using it recreationally.

The refusal of Pharmac and the Health and Disability Commission to approve ketamine as a treatment is an example of intransigence, a hesitation to establish new protocols allowing psychiatrists to try out new things and accomplish significant new research. The use of and research into ketamine could lead to the development of new drugs that also operate on glutamate receptors—drugs that have less stigma than Ketamine. It seems unfair to impede research into an incapacitating illness over a negative social connotation. Some people abuse drugs—but a lot more people need them to feel well, and they shouldn’t be suffering because of the choices of others.

Buskers on the New York City subway. Photo via Flickr user Gary H. Spielvogel

If you live in a large American city, chances are you've had an encounter with a panhandler on public transit. Perhaps the stranger who asked for money did so after serenading you with beautiful music, in which case you were happy to pitch in. Or maybe the beggar was hostile or clearly mentally ill, which scared you off from giving them any cash. But even if this sort of interaction has the potential to be uncomfortable, does it really make sense for police to concentrate their resources on what is ultimately a nuisance?

According to Bill de Blasio, the new mayor of New York City, and his police commissioner, William J. Bratton, the answer is yes, it makes perfect sense. Since Bratton took the helm in January, arrests of panhandlers and peddlers on the city subway system have more than tripled, and police are now claiming that subway crime—which mostly means the seizure of credit cards and gadgets like cell phones without force, with some turnstile jumping thrown in for good measure—went down about 7 percent as a result.

A few weeks ago, the commissioner embarked on a late night tour of the subway with George Kelling, the criminologist who coined the "Broken Windows" theory that gained nationwide influence after Bratton made a show of embracing it during his previous stint as city police commissioner in the mid 1990s. It essentially holds that sweating the small stuff—subway panhandlers, the "squeegee men" who wash car windows with dirty newspapers and ask for money—helps prevent more serious offenses, including theft and even murder. The theory’s alleged genius is the foundation of the myth of Rudy Giuliani, who appointed Bratton after he was first elected two decades ago and (so the legend goes) promptly rescued New York from its own depravity.

The reality, of course, is a bit more complicated than that.

"The social science research has consistently shown, since the 1990s, that minor disorder does not cause serious crime and that aggressive misdemeanor arrest policies do not reduce it," argued University of Chicago criminologist Bernard Harcourt, who, along with his colleague Jens Ludwig (and plenty of other experts), has pushed back on the conventional explanation for the city's incredible transformation from a bankrupt hellhole in the 70s to the gentrified low-crime wonderland it is today.

But if it wasn't Giuliani and Bratton's embrace of Broken Windows theory, how else can we account for the New York miracle?

“Crime went down everywhere in the 90s," said John Roman, a senior fellow in the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute, referring to a sharp dive in violence nationwide during the Clinton administration. “It went down in Dallas and San Diego, as well as cities like New York when they increased their police force by 30,000.” So a booming economy and an infusion of federal cash that paid for more cops (the relevant law passed in 1994, which just so happens to be the year Giuliani and Bratton first came to power) brought the the urban decay of the Reagan era to an end (the waning of the crack epidemic didn't hurt either) and introduced the expectation for cleanish streets and basically uninhibited subway rides.

And despite the tired trope of of unsuspecting (usually female) citizens being confronted by scary thugs in dark, lonely subway platforms, underground crime has been perennially over-hyped.

"Crime in the subways was never significant, but it always got outsized attention," explained Eugene O'Donnell, a veteran Brooklyn cop and prosecutor who advised de Blasio during the campaign on police issues.

So stopping rapes, murders, and other serious offenses is not what busting up the mariachi bands, churro dealers, and breakdancing "Ladies and gentlemen, it's showtime!" kids is about. Instead, Bratton—whose first local gig was as chief of the transit cops—is sending a signal to the (white) Wall Street and business types allegedly terrified of de Blasio's left-wing views that the city's seedy elements will be kept under wraps and that this is still their town. And with stop and frisk rates plummeting since last year, the cops need to do something to rack up arrests and pad those stats.

"What's happening is that the definition of Broken Windows or quality of life policing simply bends to fit the contours of whatever the cops are doing," said Franklin E. Zimring, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley Law School and author of The City That Became Safe.

That Bratton is using the subway system—his old stomping ground—to leave his mark early on makes sense as "the subway was his greatest triumph," according to O'Donnell, the former prosecutor and cop. "That's where he made his name."

The problem is that the people being swept up in these underground raids are likely to be poor and brown, whereas the one area of the city that saw a noticeable spike in crime in 2013—public parks—gets no special attention. And cities like Washington, DC, which under Chief Cathy Lanier has gone in the opposite direction by having officers go into troubled neighborhoods and hand out business cards as part of a program of community engagement, are seeing their own impressive drops in violent crime, raising doubts about just how essential the old-school Bratton approach is.

City Hall, for its part, insists Bratton is making a sharp break with the regime of his predecessor Ray Kelly despite the renewed emphasis on subway crime.

"That is different from the culture of quotas that was unmasked in the course of the Floyd trial and verified by officers who testified," one city official told me. "Commissioner Bratton, while also being a disciple of Kelling on this and one of the more successful implementers of [Broken Windows], has been very clear about his focus on community policing."

It is true that Bratton got high marks for community outreach when he was running the LAPD, though some of his divergence with Kelly these days seems driven more by personal rivalry than anything else.

And while it's awesome that de Blasio is determined to "end a stop and frisk era that unfairly targets people of color" as his son Dante promised in the TV spot that won him the election, it might be even better if he and his police commissioner ditched the archaic theory that inspired it, too.

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

Lucas Foglia's new project, Frontcountry, took seven years to complete. Edited down from 60,000 photos to just 60, his pictures document the current mining boom transforming the American West. Depictions of rural Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Wyoming mark the contradictions of industry and wilderness as well as their importance to the people who live in these isolated places.

I wanted to know more about how Foglia's own worldview changed since his first project, so I caught up with him for a beer just before the opening of his new show at Michael Hoppen Contemporary in London.

VICE: If you were to sum up the book in one sentence—how would you? What is it about?
Lucas Foglia: Well, I went to the American West expecting cowboys, ghost towns, and wilderness. And when I got there, I found a mining boom—and cowboys. Frontcountry is a photographic account of two very different lifestyles that share and depend on the same landscape—ranching and mining.

Was that a surprise to you?
It was. That's what drew me back there to photograph more, and what led to the book ultimately. The idea that those two lifestyles share the same landscape—one based on tradition and history and the other so reliant on that idea of new money.

A lot of people in the book have had to transition from that old lifestyle into the new, I presume?
A number of the cowboys I photographed grew up as cowboys, and chose to stay that way. There's not a lot of money in it, so people do it for reasons based on the landscape, the history, and the satisfaction, knowing that it's hard work. A lot of the people that I met who were in mining had grown up on ranches or had moved into the area from somewhere else.

That was another surprise. I had thought of cowboys as people who would be travelling around the landscape, but in fact miners are the modern-day nomads. They are following jobs across America. Every mine closes at some point. Either the price of the mineral goes down, or the mineral runs out. And when that happens the miners move. I quickly realised that the communities I photographed are far from cities but closely connected to the global economy. For example, in Nevada whole towns are built or abandoned in response to fluctuations in the price of gold. All mines have a life cycle.

Was there any tension between these two groups?
The landscape is big enough to hold many different lifestyles without them conflicting with one another. There are still more cows than people in the areas I photographed—these are some of the least populated parts of the United States.

In many of the photos the landscape's intimidating to me—the extent of the emptiness.
Have you ever seen two million acres of open space? The first time I encountered such place, I felt incredibly small. The land felt more powerful than I was. I think a lot of the people I met and photographed love the independence that it allows. They have made an effort to be there, and they are working hard to stay there.

I guess that's another thing that's incredible to me about this book. In most popular culture or coverage of America—certainly in the UK—one could well not realize that there are still areas like that in America. Empty wilderness.
There's still more space (in terms of acres) in the States that's open than it is developed. It's not a frontier anymore. That landscape shows the evidence of generations of booms and busts—scars on the land from previous mines that closed, towns that were abandoned, new towns, ranches that have operated for generations. The history is evident in these places. but then you drive an hour between these towns and... it's big. It's vast.

Were the people you photographed aware of this transition they were part of? Is there some sadness or a feeling that they are being forced in some cases to work in mines or abandon the older way of life? Maybe I'm just romanticizing.
It's a landscape that you only live in if you want to. There are exceptions of course, but everyone I met was working really hard to be able to live there. There is a sadness about losing that old way of life—I heard that a lot. But I hear that same sadness in a lot in cities too.

It's the same, when someone lives next to a vacant lot where a skyscraper is then built. Or my parents' farm outside New York, where I grew up. There are suburban houses on both sides of it now. That same tension is there as it is in the West. If anything it's just clearer in the West because the land's so open, and when it's mined, the scars are pretty deep and very visible.

So the land sort of emphasizes these tensions and changes?
You have a ranch that's thousands of acres squared. A mine gets put there, and it's a hole two miles around. Then come the roads leading to it that are 30 yards wide, for trucks to drive in and extract tons of rock to make a tiny amount of gold—you feel it. You feel the loss of that.

There's a bunch of pictures in the book of the Big Springs ranch in Nevada. It's one of the few places in the state where there's enough water for cattle to graze all year. It's this green valley between high desert mountains, it's astoundingly beautiful. It was bought by the Newmont Mining Corporation, before the project started, and then leased to ranchers. But they have left now, and it's becoming a gold mine—the Long Canyon Gold Mine. It's the biggest gold deposit that's been discovered in Nevada in years, millions of dollars worth of gold. It's hard to argue with if a town's going to be built because of that.

Talking to you is surprising to me. Your first project, A Natural Order, was a beautiful depiction of mostly young and idealistic people, who turned their back on society and returned to the land. Obviously these two projects share themes about the importance of preservation of wilderness and so on. I guess I expected Frontcountry to be more overtly critical of the mining boom, but it isn't and I guess that's the point?
It's important to me that the photographs in the book don't tell people what to think. I hope they make people think, and feel something. But I want people to find their own answers. Giving answers is not what art's job is. It's a politicians job to tell you what to thinkl it's mine to ask questions.

The core issue for me is, what will keep people on this land and connected to this landscape? I think a frontier in the American West, that open space, is part of our identity and our mythology. When someone says "America," you probably think of New York, San Fransisco, or LA, then cowboys somewhere in the middle? What happens if these cowboys aren't there? What keeps the open space open as a backdrop?

In A Natural Order, I photographed people who had chosen to leave cities and suburbs to move off the grid in Appalachia. I met everyone through friends of my family, and in many ways I was exploring my own past. At the center of Frontcountry is a question on how to use land that is wild and open, on whether we should grow crops and raise animals or develop the land for faster money. That's a question that my family is facing today.

What's your overall feeling about the mining boom then?
Randy Stowell, one of the figures I met during the project, said to me while herding cattle on the Big Springs ranch near Oasis, Nevada: “This little town has nothing. It’s dying on the vine. But when the company opens a mine here, it’ll bring jobs and make everything in town bigger and better. There are people who want that boost to the community. I’m not one of them. The mine will ruin this mountain, and you’ll never find land this beautiful anywhere else.”

I believe there's a value in having open space and wild land. And I believe there's a value in having small communities of people living in rural spaces. I believe in that; I grew up with that. But the question remains: What jobs should be there to keep people in those communities?

Michael Hoppen Contemporary in London will exhibit the photographs from March 28 to May 10. The book is published by Nazaeli Press.

Photo via Flickr user Catherine Snodgrass

The 1980s image of nerds as desexualized virgins was as outdated then as it is laughable now. For a start, there's no longer one kind of nerd. The intense following of niche interests that the internet accommodated has sparked a proliferation of nerd subcultures, which overlap and intertwine like a long gray braid down the back of a seasoned RuneScape master.

The word itself is now basically just a synonym for "fan." For example, you've got everything from Airfix nerds to sneaker nerds, equals in their level of obsession but very different when it comes to the obsession itself—one spending hours painting a miniature wing to make it look like it's flown through a sandstorm, the other spending hours arguing with strangers about the merits of ventilated toe caps.

Even sex, something that was always supposed to be kept secret from nerds, has its very own nerds nowadays: sex nerds—the kind of people who get into polyactivism and livestream discussions about sexual fluidity.

What makes someone a nerd is no longer an interest in RPGs or history or comic books, because all of those passions have, to a certain extent, become mainstream in the past decade or so. In fact, in The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida wonders if “perhaps the nerds were the mainstream all along, and the jocks were the deviants.”

This is maybe the nerdiest thing you could ever possibly say, but you have to wonder—with the popularity of shows like The Big Bang Theory, the enduring obsession with dressing like Screech, and an increasing cachet associated with technological ability—how much longer we can pretend that nerds couldn’t also be leading the way sexually, as well as culturally.

As a group, nerds may be especially suited—if not wholly predisposed—to great sex and/or relationships. After all, what is a nerd but someone who's thought about something longer and deeper than you? A 1976 study by psychologist Jacquelyn Knapp noted that individuals in multi-partner relationships shared many of the same qualities. They tended to be individualistic, academic, non-conformist, and stimulated by complexity. Basically, an archetypal nerd.

Photo via Flickr user Chris

Sure, classic nerds might be into MythBusters, Magic: the Gathering, and Minecraft. But they’re also into sex. In fact, the crossover between sex and the more traditional realms of nerd interest is longstanding; science fiction, for example, is frequently pointed at as a source of progressive and even transgressive sexual theory.

In devising alternate universes, authors, filmmakers, and fans imagine new ways of living, loving, and fucking. Sci-fi and comics are full of latex and leather and futuristic orgy planets where anything goes. Everyone loves it. Conventions like Arse Elektronika exist exclusively to provide an intersection for the worlds of sex and tech.

Robert A. Heinlein—who wrote sci-fi short stories, novellas, and novels from 1939 until 1987—is often held up as an early promoter of sexual liberation and polyamory. As early as 1939, his works dealt with group marriage, multi-partner relationships, and the elimination of sexual jealousy as a positive force for society.

The cult classic Stranger in a Strange Land, published in 1961, features a protagonist arriving to Earth from Mars, bringing Martian values—among them, non-monogamy—that transform society. If you ask a nerd about it, they'll tell you that Heinlein is not a perfect example of a secret crusader for alternative sexualities, and that his work is problematic in a lot of ways. But that’s what nerds do—they argue and complicate and think.

Yes, sometimes that culture of imagination leads to things like this fuckable dragon’s mouth, but that’s honestly not much weirder to me than the disembodied vagina and butt combos you can buy anywhere online, or those Twilight dildos you're encouraged to toss in the fridge for an "authentic experience." I would also venture that nerd sex is less about realistically salivating over mythical creatures and more about what nerd culture has always concerned itself with: debate, dissection, and discussion.

So this relatively new breed of sex nerds who get all earnest and intense while discussing their copulation habits are simply doing what nerds have always done: talking about their passions.

What makes things interesting is how crucial these discussions are to good sex and healthy romantic relationships—which arguably can't be said for more conventional nerd pursuits. Dedicated Trekkies will probably disagree, but in theory, your enjoyment of Star Trek is not predicated on the ability to discuss each episode with your message board. The quality of the episode remains the same, regardless of any additional pleasure derived from going on Reddit and debating the realism of an alien planet that’s been hiding from the rest of the universe via a planet-wide cloaking device. 

Photo via Flickr user Matt Refghi

However, ask any relationship or sex expert about the key to both of those things, and across the board they will tell you that one factor is more important than any other: communication. In their instinctive desire to talk about, question, and critique their interests, sex nerds might have hacked sex.

So what are sex nerds into? Consent. The destigmatization of kink. Sexual fluidity and the dissolution of gender binaries. Feminism. Sex positivity. Figuring out a place for BDSM in a world where rape culture is the norm. LGBTQ activism. Polyamory and other alternatives to traditional monogamy. Hacking sex toys to make them bigger, better, and scarier. 

Of course, this is not a comprehensive list. As with any nerd interest, there are hundreds of specific subcultures that bleed into one another or exist completely disparately. However, the general message of sex-nerd sex seems to be: “You do you, and whomever else you want, however you want, as long as you’re being safe and responsible with their and your physical, emotional, and mental health.”

As with many nerd or alt interests from the past (tech, graphic novels, bands that play songs about ships on antique instruments), some of these issues are now picking up steam in more “mainstream” communities.

Which, of course, makes complete sense. If you wanted to know about the future of technology, would you just talk to some guy who texts a lot? No, you’d find someone who’s been making use of wearable tech for years. If you wanted to buy something expensive, would you ask your parents what they did 30 years ago when the economy was completely different? No, you’d probably consult real estate experts or some kind of car fetish message board or your old classmate who collects boutique electronics.

So why look to conventional pornography or Hollywood for the future of sex? Sex nerds know more about sex not only because they're talking about it and passionate about it but because forging their own paths is what nerds have always been doing. Sexual experimentation and individualism is simply a natural extension of the nerd lifestyle. If you and your friends already exist on the social fringes for your clothed interests, why bother continuing down the path of vanilla sex when you could at least survey the other options?

In recent years, the internet has done for alternative sexuality what it did for comic fans, anime otaku, and gamers—uniting like-minded but geographically distant subgroups and revealing the “fringe” to be larger and far more passionate than anyone had expected. And considering how deeply nerd subculture permeated fashion, film, and television, you have to wonder if the sexual fringe can even accurately be called a fringe at all.

Photo via Flickr user Ryan C

An American study found that more than 40 percent of millennials think that traditional marriage is becoming obsolete, while OKCupid data indicated that more than 34 percent of its users have had a same-sex sexual experience or would like to. The numbers are similar regarding threesomes, according to an ABC survey. 

Gen Y’s much-discussed hyperconnectivity, constant communication, and desire for gratification on their own terms actually puts them in a prime position to become a generation of sex nerds. They can figure out the parameters of their relationships on an individual level and eschew conventional sexual and romantic codes in favor of ongoing discussion about their own needs and interests, and the needs and interests of their partners.

But it’s not just young people. The slow mainstreaming of alt sex and love is picking up speed. How much longer can we classify BDSM as a niche interest while Fifty Shades books and paraphernalia fly off shelves nationwide? Sure, it's not exactly an ideal introduction to BDSM, but it implies a large-scale interest in kink across North America, the UK, and elsewhere.

And if a single trashy trilogy can ignite global interest in an allegedly “deviant” sexual subculture, what else are people interested in? How can they access it? Are they already doing so, in quiet corners of the internet after the kids have gone to bed? Are body-positive threesomes the new functional bum-bags? Is queer-friendly feminist tumblr porn the next Star Wars?

Are you ready to start having sex like a nerd? 

Follow Monica on Twitter

In the 1970s, South Africa was the world's most prolific exporter of gold. Over the years, industrial decline has seen widespread closures of the mines across the country. However, Johannesburg sits on the biggest gold basin ever discovered. It's perhaps not surprising that many of these abandoned mines have seen a recent boom in illegal mining activity. 

Every day, hundreds of illegal gold miners—known as Zama Zamas—descend deep beneath the surface. The miners often spend weeks underground, toiling away at the country's untapped gold reserves. Observers have suggested that illegal mining is now so widespread, black-market gold arguably supports the communities once subsistent on the same mines they worked in before they shut down.

The lack of policing in the mines has seen the practice go on largely unabated—the extensive network has become an arena to deadly gang warfare between rival factions. VICE News visited illegal mines near Johannesburg to meet the Zama Zamas risking life and limb every day in the violent struggle for South Africa's illegal gold.

It was the kind of place where the mysterious stains are exactly what you think they are.

Wherever there are people, there is masturbation. From the plains in Africa to the mines in Mongolia, to the Denny’s on the side of the Highway 1, around the world people are rhythmically mashing their own genitals 24/7 in grimaced delight. Society has developed rules to mediate when and where pumping your python (or greasing the peanut, for you ladies) is unacceptable, but for the most part it’s a boundless, self-indulgent, global free-for-all.

One of the perks of masturbation’s massive popularity is that no matter what your masturbatory desire, there’s an entire industry out there catering to your every whim. For example, if you feel like masturbating in an establishment filled with private chambers where neverending channels of porn play on loop, you can go to a peep show or, as they’re sometimes called in Montreal, a “jack shack.” For those of you who haven’t been, jack shacks are a lot like porn theatres, except you get your own private room with a coin-operated TV. When I first heard about them, the concept intrigued me: a strange business model stuck in an era where the internet doesn’t exist, and machines still operate by coins—like a spank-bank for steampunks.  

Walking around Montreal, I had seen some of these places before without realizing what they were. The front windows are usually blacked out as neon signs buzz with names like “Sex Village” advertising 24-hour “private cabins” or cabines privée, if you speak French. The entrance is usually littered with homeless drug addicts and sex workers. In the past, whenever I’ve passed by these places, I would feel their heavy, grungy stigma and wonder what it could possibly be like inside. There are several of these places, some in the gay village at the back of video stores, and others in the back of sex shops, or in standalone buildings dedicated to slapping the salami. I decided to do a survey of them all.

Just for fun, I went on Tinder to see if someone would come with me. Judging by how uncategorically gross these places seem to be, it was very likely that no one would say yes. But at the last minute I met Karen, a Fashion student from Montreal, who agreed to accompany me.

“This is completely insane. But yeah, sure.”

We met up at my house a few hours beforehand to drink a bit and go over the game plan. Karen had the face of a porcelain doll, and at first looked pretty innocent, but when she told me to stop listening to the Shins because it’s not 2009 and laughed, then promptly grabbed a bottle of whiskey and poured us shots, I knew I was in for a weird night. She said she had considered being a surrogate mother, and thought the phrase “raising awareness” was really stupid. I liked her. She had a nice smile.

We polished off the bottle of whiskey as we planned our route for the night. We would start in the gay village to see what those ones were like, then go to the red light district on lower St. Laurent. We got into a cab around midnight, red-faced with whiskey on our breath, and started our adventure.

I realized we hadn’t talked about our expectations. I considered bringing it up, but maybe it was better this way. Karen was perched up on the middle seat excitedly. The mystery of this sketchy, sexual, weird world we were about to enter seemed to hold us in suspense. We slowed down to Wega Video, an adult porn store that had a cabine privée in the back. We looked inside and to our dismay saw that it had already closed.

Disappointed, we decided to turn around and go to Sexothéque on St. Laurent because it was a short ride and open 24/7. The cab dropped us off and we stood in front of the place for a moment. Our faces were lit up red and blue by the flickering neon lights.

Sexothéque, legitimately cleaner on the outside than it is on the inside.

Part of me was still holding on to the idea that it would be nicer and classier than I had expected; or at the very least, the staff would pretend to have some sort of class by having some guy welcome you from behind a desk with a candle burning in front of him while Vivaldi’s Four Seasons played over the loudspeaker. But if the outside was any indication—smashed windows, graffiti, cigarette butts and crushed Pepsi cups—the inside was going to be a dark, pervy mess. As long as we could get a private room rather than having a homeless pervert squad follow us around like at a porn theatre, I thought, we’ll survive this.

I opened the door cautiously and couldn’t see a thing. We inched in further and started to see shapes moving around as our eyes adjusted to the light. It smelt like cigarettes and cheap, flowery perfume, and it was quiet.

“Hello, my friend. What do you need?” came a voice to the left of me.

I looked and saw a short South-Asian man wearing a baseball hat and a hoodie. He looked to be about 45 years old, and the small amount of light around the room caught his stray eyebrow hairs extending several inches from his face. I didn’t answer right away and his head darted side to side before checking his shoulders. His shiftiness was making me feel uneasy, and I kept an eye on the door in case things got too weird.

I didn’t really know what to ask for in a place like this. I looked to my right and saw a row of sex workers in high heels with makeup caked onto their leathery skin. The ones that saw me were staring and smiling, but most of them clutched their handbags and faced forward with glazed-over eyes. I just wanted to go into one of those magical rooms with endless porn like I had heard about.

“Uh, could we have a room?”

“Ahh,” he said, smiling a little more than I liked, “yes, my friend. Come with me.”

It looked like the whole place was one giant room, with a bunch of curtained-off smaller rooms in it connected by a hallway. Figures ducked in and out of the curtains and crossed the hallway to the other side. A few people were standing in the hallway talking. They turned as we approached: “My man, what you need? Girl, you need something?”

We shook our heads and kept following the eyebrow guy down the hallway. Where was he taking us? The curtained area ended, and the doors were now caged and numbered. He took out a giant circus key ring and opened up room number 3 for us.

The blue light of a TV lit up the room as we walked in to the left of his outstretched arm that was holding the door. The room was about the size of a small suburban garage, and had three things in it: a TV on the wall, a cracked leather chair in the near left corner, and a podium with numbers on it that was cemented to the ground. Right now the TV was playing some kind of promotional image of a blonde woman smiling with a dick beside her face.

“OK, my friend you have one hour. It’s 22 dollars.”

Karen and I looked at each other to see if we wanted to spend that much time and money here. She cocked her head as if to say, “Why not?” which made sense. I paid him, and he lingered by the door for a bit before leaving: “I’ll be back in an hour. My name is Solomon.”

I shook his hand, “I’m Stephen, and this is Karen.”

His eyes lit up when he saw her and smiled as he shook her hand.

“OK, bye my friend!”

I got the feeling he wasn’t used to unthreatening, docile couples coming in and using his porn cells very often.

I sat down on the cracked leather chair as the porn started playing. Karen sat on my lap. The room was dank and cold, and we could hear the porn from the other rooms next door playing over ours. It smelled like a bowling alley. The numbers on the podium changed the channel, so we started flipping through the different movies and laughing at them. Most of the movies were from the 80s and had the quality of overdubbed VHS tapes.

The interior of a Sexothéque cabine privée. Yes, that's a knee cushion for beejers.

The girls had giant perms, the guys had mustaches, and the plots were iconically bad. The movies were all at the same stage, so we flipped through nine different versions of hairy guys being seduced by fitness instructors, teachers, and piano students with their clothes still on. We settled on the fitness instructor one—Karen thought the actress was hot.

Despite the lack of hygiene, lighting, and safety in this place, the room felt sexually charged. Neither of us had ever done this before, and we were getting turned on by each other’s sense of adventure. The actors started with the standard fellatio on the desk, and I jokingly told her we should reenact the scene. She one upped me and started kissing my neck while undoing my belt. I took off her shirt and she started going down on me. She glanced at the screen and saw that the scene had moved on to sex.

“Do you have a condom?”

Fuck. That’s stupid of me. I didn’t think this would actually happen, but I should carry them all the time anyways, I guess.

“I’ll go get some,” I said, jumping into my pants. I burst out of the caged door and left it open a crack so I could get back in. Solomon was standing right outside the door against the wall. His head snapped in my direction attentively,

“What you need, my friend?”

“Condoms.”

Ok, follow me. Solomon led me through the dark corridor into an open area as the sounds of 80s porn music leaked out of the rooms. He showed me to these two guys lurking in the corner, who walked up to me.

“What you need, man?”

They were the guys you never want to run into in a dark alley. They wore dirty, stained winter jackets and bounced from side to side with bloodshot eyes. Patchy facial hair covered their faces, which were blotched with discolouration. A stench of piss, plastic bags, handled change and what could have been blood floated off of them in my direction. The one who asked me was shorter, and was wearing a crusty plaid jacket. He looked like he was covered in a thin film of sawdust.

“It’s two for five. Two for five.”

“You need anything else, man?” the other guy said with a raspy voice. He was wearing a torn up Raiders jacket with salt stains and had his hood up. He touched his nose and mimed snorting three or four times with his eyebrows raised, as though if he kept doing it, I might say yes.

“No, thanks. Here’s 20.”

I handed the first guy a $20 bill and he took out two warm, green Lifestyle condoms and started shifting in his pockets. He pulled out a handful of change. He gave me dollars and quarters at first, and counted it out for me,

"4.50, 5 dollars. We good?”

“No, you owe me 15.”

The Raiders jacket guy nodded in humble agreement, like he had been trying to do the math too.

“OK, 9.75, 10 dollars. We good?”

“No, it’s 15.”

“Oh! You’re killin’ me man!” He said, looking genuinely disappointed that he had to give me more.

The Raiders guy stepped in closer as plaid jacket was now counting out the rest of the change in dimes. The Raiders guy was staring right at me. I could hear him breathing heavily. I didn’t dare look at him, but knew I had to get the fuck out of there.

“Ok, that’s good, thanks!” I said, and backed away. I hurried back with $12 in quarters chinking around in my pockets and warm condoms firmly clenched in my right hand.

I realized I really had to pee, and asked Solomon back down the hallway where it was.

“I’ll take you.”

I had to wait for the washroom to get free, so I talked to Solomon for a bit. He told me he had been working here for 15 years, and has a family in Markham, Ontario.

“These guys with their crack,” he said, waving his hand into the darkness in disgust, “It’s all the time. It’s all anyone wants in here. There’s nothing I can do. Is that your girlfriend with you?”

“No, no. She’s not my girlfriend.”

“But she’s not a hooker?” He asked with disbelief.

“No. I met her on Tinder.”

“What’s Tinder?”

“It’s a dating app. It’s a little like this place, actually.”

I went to pee, said bye to Solomon and hurried back to caged door #3.

I walked back in the room. Karen jumped in surprise and terror and held her chest.

“Oh, it’s just you.”

I sat on the chair and took off her clothes. This was happening now. Her moans mixed in with the sounds coming from the TV as she writhed up and down in the dim light.

We finished and sat there on top of each other in a drunken, sweaty haze.  It looked like we had about 15 minutes left on our deal. The car mechanic guy was eating the neon spandex girl out like it was his last meal. Now that the sexual tension was broken we could see the porn for what it was, and it was really funny. We switched around the channels with the cemented podium and laughed at the actors. The cool air from the room touched our sweat, and we went under my jacket to warm up.

Out of nowhere the screen turned back to the photo of the smiling woman with the dick beside her, and Solomon burst in the door jingling his keys.

“Hello, my friend! Time is up!”

Karen inhaled quickly and covered her chest in shock. I was topless.

“Is that your girlfriend?” He said excitedly,

“No. I just told you we’re… nevermind.”

Karen pulled her pants up and I stood in the way to try to give her some privacy. Solomon left and we got dressed. We strode down the hallway a little less apprehensively than when we came in, like we had somehow conquered something.

As I was leaving I realized I hadn’t taken any photos. I borrowed Karen’s iPhone, held the camera up to the room and took a photo. A giant unexpected flash lit up ten or so sex workers and crackish looking individuals mulling around in the shadows, who immediately turned towards us.

“Yo what the fuck you doin’ with that camera, man!?” One walked quickly towards us as the others gathered together in the darkness. I could hear the violent anger in his voice. The adrenaline kicked in so hard that I couldn’t feel my limbs. I knew what he wanted most was the photo deleted, so I made the quick decision not to run, and try to cooperate with him.

Before I could say anything, one of the sex workers grabbed my arm and dragged me outside.

“Let me see the phone,” she said.

“I have to unlock it myself,” said Karen. I handed it to Karen but the angry guy was outside now and snatched the phone back. He started to walk away and I walked after him but was stopped by two or three sex workers.

“You wanna take fucking pictures of us, huh?”

“No, it was supposed to be of the room, we’re deleting it right now.”

Finally Karen got the phone back after reasoning with the guy who couldn’t unlock it. She deleted the photo while having her phone grabbed at by four or five panicked hands.

We got the phone, and got in a cab. My heart was still beating violently out of my chest. Karen looked remarkably calm.

“Sorry, that was stupid,” I told her.

“No, it’s OK,” she said, “I’m feeling pretty shaken up right now though.”

I held her hand because I didn’t really know what to say, and it seemed like an OK thing to do. She gripped it back.

“Do you wanna get food?” I asked.

She laughed, “Ok.”

We stopped at a late night burger joint and the mood started to lighten. We had been through one of the most surreal, sketchy, dangerous and thrilling nights of our lives.

“I can’t believe that just happened,” I said in between bites.

“Yeah, I know. Hey you wanna go to another one?”

I looked at her in shock before realizing she was joking.

@Keefe_Stephen

A farmer and woodcutter, 65-year-old Mohammad Abdullah Malik, lost his hand in 2010 while cutting grass in the meadow.

Kashmir's tourism ministry has done a pretty good job promoting their portion of the Himalayan valley. "Sky-touching deodars fence this pasture, presenting a view of a green carpet in summer," a blurb on its website reads. "During the summer, the camps of the Gujjar community, and shepherds with their grazing sheep in the pastures, present a riveting picture. Also, the fragrance of wildflowers refreshes the whole environment." 

Sounds delightful, right? Only, what the website fails to mention is that the 3,000-acre meadow, Tosa Maidan, is also known for being littered with unexploded shells, lurking in the tall grass under all those fragrant wildflowers. That reputation is an unfortunate side effect of the Indian army and air force using Tosa Maidan as a heavy artillery firing range for the past 50 years—testing, among other things, 40 and 80-pound shells. 

The residents of surrounding villages—and their cattle—often come into contact with these shells, which explode on impact, killing or seriously maiming their victims. 

Mohammad Abdullah Sheikh holding photographs of the corpses of his two sons and his nephew, who were blown up while playing in a nearby field in 1991.

For 22 years, Mohammad Abdullah Sheikh has carried his two sons in his breast pocket. He takes them everywhere, he says. 

Unwrapping them from a transparent plastic sheet, he places two photos on the floor of the gloomy room we're in and points at the torn-apart dead bodies. “These are my boys,” he says. He then lays another photograph of a dead boy next to them. “And this is my nephew.”

Sheikh’s two sons, aged seven and nine, and his 14-year-old nephew had taken their cattle to graze on the peripheries of a nearby meadow. Drawn to a strange object poking out of the undergrowth, they were all killed in the same blast.

“I found them in pieces, and I washed them myself, piece by piece,” Mohammad says.

Women climbing to gather firewood and grass from the Tosa Maidan

A dozen people gather in the room while Sheikh speaks. Among them are two young men—one without his right arm, the other without his right leg—and in the corner is a man whose clearest memory of his older brother is seeing him bathed in blood. Outside, they tell me, are dozens of people waiting for me in the rain, with their amputated fingers and hands and limbs, holding pictures of dead fathers, husbands and children. I have to hurry, the village elder tells me, so that I can listen to everyone.

I'm in Drang, a village of about 800 households in the center of Indian-held Kashmir, an unknown, unremarkable village that has the misfortune of being next to the beautiful, but incredibly dangerous, meadow. “Tosa Maidan,” they all say, pointing at a mountain not far away. “Our best gift, our worst curse.”

According to government figures, shells in the Tosa Maidan have so far killed at least 63 people, but the villagers believe the numbers to be much higher. There are also no figures of those who have been wounded or disabled by the shells, but there seem to be plenty in the villages that surround the meadow.

Mohammad Abdullah Khan lost his finger in the meadow sometime during the last decade. He only remembers it was spring.

Every May, hundreds of Indian soldiers arrive in these quiet villages, carrying huge guns and boxes full of explosives. They set those guns up, take aim on the Tosa Maidan, and turn the whole area into a war zone.

The meadow and the villages around it are a tragedy within the larger Kashmir conflict. Kashmir, a separate state until India’s partition in 1947, has been cleaved by three larger neighbouring powers—India and Pakistan, which hold it in parts and claim it in full, and China, which controls the remainder of the disputed territory. Kashmir, one of the world’s longest-running conflicts, saw a popular armed resistance to the Indian rule in 1989; India then reportedly deployed more than 600,000 soldiers to put down the insurgency.

The Indian army estimates that militants in the whole of the Kashmir valley amount to about 300, with Kashmiri resistance to the Indian rule largely consisting of street protests, stone throwing, and clicktivism, rather than armed insurgency. Nevertheless, most of the 600,000 soldiers are still present in Kashmir, protected by an impunity and immunity that stops them from coming under the purview of even the Indian law.

Since he lost his fingers 11 years ago, Abdul Sattar Malik can no longer hold a plough or a spade.

“Every morning in the summer, our lives begin with a bomb,” says Ghulam Mohideen, a villager who lost his fingers cutting grass in the meadow. “When a hand grenade blasts nearby, one turns deaf for a few seconds—so imagine when an 80-pound shell blasts half a mile away, and then another one goes off, and then another, and so goes the day. Every summer, that is our life.”

But after half a century of helplessly watching the meadow at the center of their lives be reduced to a practice target, 51 villages surrounding the Tosa Maidan have banded together in an attempt to change both their own fate and the meadow's fate. Tosa Maidan’s lease to the Indian army ends on April 18 of this year. The villagers see this as a potential fresh start for the local community and are now fighting to stop the Indian army from renewing their lease on the meadow.

Members of the Indian army with their artillery taking aim at the Tosa Maidan. Photo by Javed Ahmad

“We'd been told all our lives that the army has bought off this whole mountain and it belongs to them and they can do here as they like. Even when my children were blown up, I thought that was how it was,” says Sheikh. “But now that the children here are educated, we know that it's our land, not the army’s, and we won't let them make our lives hell.”

Sheikh, 51, says he's spent his last two decades failing at many jobs—baker, laborer, farmer, shepherd—and making unsuccessful attempts to come to terms with the death of his two sons, whose body parts he had to rearrange into a human shape before he could bury them.

“I have lived on the fringes of insanity, and I feel my whole life wasted, but now I will fight with everyone and stop our future generations from getting blown up,” he says.

Farooq Ahmad Lone, 29, lost half of his arm 14 years ago while playing in the meadow.

Sheikh is part of the group Save Tosa Maidan Front, which the villagers have formed in a bid to convey their suffering to the government, putting pressure on them to end the use of the meadow as a firing range.

The government in Indian-held Kashmir, meanwhile, has formed a high-level committee to look into the grievances of the people and see if there are any possible replacement locations that could be used by the Indian Army. However, the committee is yet to contact the local district administration.

“We have not been contacted yet,” says Mushtaq Ahmad Baba, deputy commissioner of Budgam, the jurisdiction that the meadow falls within. Mushtaq, the highest civilian authority in the district, believes that the people’s demands are justified, but reminds me that the army does need a firing range. He also confirms that there has been no system of compensation from either the army or the state for the victims so far.

“But if the lease to the army is extended in April,” Baba says, “we have decided that compensation will be paid to any new victims.” 

When he was 12, Bilal Ahmad thought he had found a cricket ball lying in the grass. He remembers poking at it with his foot, before an explosion ripped his leg off. He recalls spending the rest of his childhood watching his friends do things that he was no longer able to do.

But the people here are in no mood for compensation—they want the lease to be stopped. There is a stirring here in the villages. There have been rallies and meetings already, with plans for protests on the highway and in the Indian city of Srinagar. Come April, they say, their demands will be answered, or they will make decisions that the government will then have to deal with.

“We will go with our families and sit in the meadow, and the army can blow us up, all at once—unlike [the current situation] where our lives have no value,” says Mohammad Akram, village head of Shunglipora, one of the most affected villages around the meadow.

Akram explains that it is impossible for the villagers not to go to the meadow, since their lives are completely dependent on it.

“We go there for the firewood, for herbs for ourselves, and for our cattle—and most of us earn our livelihood as shepherds, using Tosa Maidan as our pasture,” he continues. “How do we not go there?”

Two widowed sisters-in-law, both named Raje, lost their husbands to live shells in the meadow in 2010 and 2012. 

Akram, 39, takes me around his village and introduces me to people who have been disabled in shell blasts, and to the families of the dead. While we're on our way to meet two sisters-in-law whose husbands were both blown up in the meadow, he casually mentions that his own brother was killed there. He then stops suddenly and unzips his leather sock to show me a scar.

“I stepped on a shell myself. I have no idea how my leg wasn’t taken off,” he says.

In fact, almost every sixth or seventh person I meet in Shunglipora rolls up his sleeve or hitches up his trousers or offers to remove his shirt to show me the scars, the burnt flesh, the bent bone, or the missing fingers—or just launches into stories of dead relatives or neighbours. 

The Indian army says that some accidents are bound to happen. They deny that they leave behind any unexploded shells, and they blame the casualties on the greed of the villagers.

“The army goes around with metal detectors and collects all the unexploded shells after the firing exercise,” says a senior army spokesperson based in Srinagar. “But these people want to sell the shells for scrap, so they pick them up before the soldiers can find them. Then they get wounded or die in the process.”

Bashir Ahmad Malik points at an unexploded shell that he doesn't know what to do with. He hides it from the village children, but doesn't get rid of it so that he has evidence of what is happening in Tosa Maidan.

When I mention this to people, they deny it vehemently, and one of them—a young man—offers to show me a live shell in a field on the outskirts of their village.

“You can see for yourself how we find some of these shells outside our homes,” he says. “I had to hide this one under a rock so that children don’t go playing with it.”

Surrounded by amputees, I’m a little nervous about visiting this shell, but I agree out of curiosity.

Malik explains during our drive how, when the snow melts in the meadow, shells ride down the Dam-Dam stream that passes through the local villages. We slowly walk down a snowy slope while Malik mentions his uncle, who died last year after a prolonged disability caused by a shell in the meadow. Then, suddenly, he takes a rusted miniature missile from under a rock and holds it in front of my face.

"I have seen thousands of these in my 33-year life," he says, "and one doesn’t even have to go the meadow to see them." Malik keeps the shell where it is as evidence of what's happening on Tosa Maidan, but the number of people I've seen who are missing body parts is already evidence enough.

Malik is hopeful that this April they might finally wake up from half a century of terror—of not knowing whether a trip to gather firewood could result in death or a missing limb. But he's knowledgeable enough about Kashmiri politics to know that there's just as much chance of the lease being extended, forcing the villagers to endure another 50 years in which spring means not new life but fresh, unexploded bombs.

Follow Zahid Rafiq on Twitter.

Illustration by Cei Willis

It hasn't been long since the Copenhagen Zoo pissed off the entire internet by turning a young, healthy giraffe named Marius into lion food. But last week, they were at it again, killing four lions to make room for a new male lion.

The zoo’s enthusiasm for culling healthy animals underscores Denmark's unique approach to animal rights. For example,a it’s illegal to buy a pit bull in the country but completely legal to have sex with a dog, or any other animal, as long as you aren't torturing it. There have been multiple attempts to criminalize zoophilia, but nothing has been done yet—presumably because none of the major political parties seem to think that having sex with animals is that big of a deal.

A number of animal rights groups don’t share the Danish political class’s breezy apathy and have warned that Denmark is becoming a prime destination for animal sex tourism. The thing is, there’s not a lot of evidence to support the activists’ claims—only some websites set up by various Danes demanding that lawmakers clamp down on zoophiles and "beasts" (as proponents of bestiality are called by people who know about that sort of thing).

To find out more, I logged onto Beast Forum, a popular zoophilia message board and apparently a great place to go if you want to borrow a dog from a stranger for an evening of consensual lovemaking. On the boards I met a 29-year-old I'll call “Michael” and spoke to him about his country’s attitude toward having sex with animals.

A mare in a field. Michael has "caressed" one of these before, but not had sex with one yet. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

VICE: How did you realize that sex with animals turned you on?
Michael: It started when I was 14 or 15 years old. I grew up in the countryside, so I'd often seen animals mating, and that made me curious.

When did you first act on that curiosity?
A couple of years ago. I'd talked about animal sex with a female friend, and she got curious about it. She had her own dog, and one day she let the dog take her. She told me about it the next day, and we went to her place, and I got to watch. Later, I got to try it myself. The dog looked interested in me, so I let it take me.

What is it about animals that turns you on?
It's difficult to explain. They're more honest and, well, more animal-like. If a dog likes you, there's no doubt about it. Contrary to what people think, an animal can easily say no if it doesn't want to have sex with you. I guess some animals are just beautiful and lovely to be with.

Which species turn you on in particular?
Mostly dogs. Horses a bit as well. An, with dogs, specifically collies, labradors, and German shepherds. They're beautiful dogs. Most of my experiences have been with dogs, but I also caressed a mare once.

How often do you have sex with animals?
Probably two or three times a month. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I own a wonderful big male dog with my wife. But it varies.

Does your wife know that you have sex with the dog?
Yes.

What does she make of that then?
Well, after she learned more about it, she became interested in it herself.

Does your wife have sex with the dog?
Once in while, yes.

Are there feelings involved, or is it just sex?
Well, within the culture, we differentiate zoos [zoophiles] and beasts. Zoos love their animals—not in the same way I love my wife, but love nonetheless. Beasts force themselves on the animal; they're the ones giving animal sex a bad name. I am a zoo. Probably 95 percent of the people who have sex with animals do it for more than just the sex.

So how exactly do you go about having intercourse with your dog? He's male, right?
He started it himself when he was younger. I was getting a DVD from the machine, and that was all he needed. That's when he took me the first time. He's since learned when it's OK and when it's not, judging by my and my wife's body language. The sex is like this: I'm naked and on all fours. If he wants to go, he'll jump up and take me. If not, he'll go get a toy, I'll put my clothes back on, and we'll go into the garden and play normally with each other.

Is there much danger of contracting STDs when you're regularly having sex with animals?
Yes. That's one of the reasons that I don't lend my dog out to other people. Also, it would feel wrong—he's part of the family. But the sex that my wife and I have with him is unprotected. There's a lot of stuff in condoms that's unhealthy for the dog, so you need to be really careful.

Is it hard to hide your sexual preferences during your daily life?
Not at all. It's easy to hide. If we have guests over who don't know I'm a zoo, all they see is a guy who loves animals. But I'm very open about it. Most of my friends know about it. It's actually pretty common; I bet you know some zoos without realizing it.

Animal-rights groups have been saying that Denmark is becoming a destination for animal sex tourism. Have you seen anything that would support that allegation?
No, far from it. The community does not approve of animal sex tourism. If people come to Denmark with the sole purpose of having sex with animals, they'll be sorely disappointed.

What about animal brothels? There's been plenty of media hype about them in Denmark.
In my 11 years in the animal sex community, I have never seen one—or even heard of one. If one opened, you can bet yourself that most zoos would be against it. Animals need to have the chance to say no to sex. I can't tell you that they don't exist—there are about six million people in this country, so you could probably find someone doing it, but you're going to have to look for a long time.

If animal brothels don't exist, how does one go about finding an animal to have sex with?
Well, I waited for eight years. Maybe you're lucky and find somebody with a dog that wants to have sex with strangers. Otherwise, you can buy your own—though you shouldn't buy a dog just so you can have sex with it. Or you can start with animal dildos. I started with a couple of dog dildos before my first real experience.

The law in Denmark allows animal sex, as long as the animal doesn't suffer from it. What's your view on that?
I think the law is perfect the way it is. If animal sex is made illegal, it's only people like me—who love their dogs—who are going to get punished. People who abuse their animals aren't going to stop. But people like me could have our lives ruined. And if you're doubtful that animals enjoy sex with humans, you haven't seen it in real life. There is no doubt in my mind that my dog looks forward to having sex with me and enjoys it every single time.