Ukraine's ultra-nationalist Right Sector movement has been extremely active during the Euromaidan protests, but Kiev is now moving to disarm the group. On Monday, March 31, one Right Sector member instigated a shoot-out outside a restaurant. Three people were injured, including a city official.

In response, riot police surrounded the Dnipro Hotel, which the group was using as its headquarters. The group was forced to vacate the building without its weapons and move to a base outside Kiev. Simon Ostrovsky of VICE News was there as the events unfolded.

Photo via PixiBay user tpsdave.
Last November, Environment Canada set what some see as a rather unsettling global precedent by allowing genetically modified, all-female salmon eggs to be manufactured on a commercial scale in Canada—at a time when every other country in the world is reluctant to cosign genetically modified animals for human consumption. The architect of this new fishy species is AquaBounty, an American bioengineering company that’s aiming to put genetically altered Atlantic salmon on store shelves worldwide, and besides the obvious Jurassic Park parallel (where an environment of all-female, laboratory-created beasts devolved into violent chaos) various agencies are concerned about this “frankenfish” development.

These fish, called AquAdvantage by their creators, are part Atlantic salmon, part Chinook salmon, and part eelpout, which are, apparently, an eel-like species. These human-made fish grow at twice the speed as regular Atlantic salmon, and are being touted as an environmental revolution to the seafood industry.

The life cycle of a GM fish starts at Bay Fortune, PEI. AquaBounty fertilizes the salmon eggs in their research and development facility that overlooks the bay. The facility is supposed to be impossible to escape from, which is the only condition set by the Canadian government when it comes to farming a potentially “toxic” organism. “Toxic” is the language of the Environmental Protection Act of 1999; it doesn’t necessarily mean poisonous, but rather that the species could have an irreversible, damaging, or potentially uncontainable impact on its surrounding environment. Given that the possibility of GM fish entering the natural environment could be devastating to salmon stock, these modified aquatic beings fit the bill.

The fish have to be contained in a landlocked tank inside a closed-off room, and unspecified chemical barriers are listed alongside physical boundaries to limit any chance of these frankenfish escaping. The AquaBounty facility is connected to the ocean by a single pipe. It’s mostly buried underground, but it pops out of the compound’s dike wall before diving into the shallow waters of the bay. Here’s hoping they have a good filtration system. Though the fish are allowed to grow to full-size in Canada, once the eggs have been fertilized they get flown Panama. There, they will grow to full size, at which point they are promptly slaughtered.

For the time being, there is no country to legally export the AquAdvantage fish to, so their existence is wiped from the face of the earth as soon as they’ve matured—at least until the next batch starts to grow. AquaBounty has plans to harvest and ship their genetically modified salmon to Canada, USA, Argentina, Chile, and China as a food source. They have their production system all worked out and running; all they need now is permission from the relevant regulatory bodies.

The allure of GM fish is obvious. The fish mature twice as fast as “normal” fish, which makes GM fish a significantly cheaper and a more efficient product—since they ostensibly provide an economically viable way to feed a whole wack of people. AquaBounty claims to be the future of aquaculture, but in spite of these lofty promises, a large and diverse group across Canada has gathered to challenge the manufacturing of GM salmon.

Right now, no country has approved the sale and consumption of genetically engineered fish, though that might not stick, as AquaBounty’s future relies on it changing, and has already applied to sell its fish in both Canada and the USA. At the moment, Canada is still considering the application, and the American Food and Drug Administration’s current stance is that there wouldn’t be any significant environmental impact caused by the fish. AquaBounty’s CEO, Ron Stotish, seems sure that the FDA, at least, won’t stand in the way of the company’s new bioengineered product. In a quarterly report, he’s quoted as saying: “We remain confident of receiving approval for our new animal drug application for AquAdvantage salmon.”

The Ecology Action Centre (EAC) and the Living Oceans Society filed a lawsuit over the GM salmon against the Minister of Health, the Minister of Environment, and AquaBounty Canada Inc. They’ve alleged that the government has not properly researched the potential toxicity of the GM salmon.

“We’re asking the Canadian courts to decide if the federal government violated its own law when it issued approval of the manufacturing [of GM salmon],”Joanne Cook, the Minister of Toxics Coordinator at EAC, told me over the phone. “And the legal challenge is based on the assertion that the government failed to asses whether GM salmon could become invasive and that they did not obtain all the information required by law in purporting to complete their assessment.”

Besides EAC’s lawsuit, a campaign of dissent has been mounted against the introduction of GM fish. The Atlantic Fish Farmers Association of Canada, the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, Ecojustice, as well as major grocery chains Safeway, Kroger, Target, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods have all taken a public stand against the AquaBounty’s salmon.

Danny Kingsberry, a spokesperson for the Minister of Environment, told me through e-mail that the minister’s decision was thoroughly researched and based on scientific evidence provided by scientists within Environment Canada and Health Canada.

“It was concluded that there were no concerns identified to the environment or to the indirect health of Canadians due to the contained production of these GM fish eggs for export,” said Kingsberry.   

When asked if there were any other bioengineering projects being bandied about for approval, Kingsberry said that new organisms under review are not disclosed for “confidentiality reasons.”But that itself seems to be part of the problem for some Canadians.

As Joanne Cook told me: “Part of our concern is that the process has really been cloaked in secrecy. There is no public comment—there was no public notice that the approval was being considered. It was just quietly posted shortly before Christmas in the Canada Gazette.”

Canada’s Minister of Health, Leona Aglukkaq, has unilateral authority to approve projects of this type, and is under no obligation to inform Canadians on controversial issues, like that of genetically engineering food sources and livestock. The lawsuit doesn’t challenge the minister’s authority, but instead focuses on what they claim was an insufficient amount of research; particularly over the lack of an environmental impact assessment of the damage that genetically modified salmon could do to natural salmon, or the environment, if any were to escape.

One scientist has already proven AquAdvantage salmon capable of breeding with a wild brown trout. The hybrid offspring outcompeted its progenitors and stunted their growth in a semi-natural environment. This is the danger that the opponents of GM salmon are worried about: a possible scenario where mutant fish further damage the ocean’s ecosystem, exacerbating the ongoing crisis of depleted global fish stocks. As it stands, 85% of the world’s fish stocks are in a crisis of being over-exploited. If bioengineered fish further destabilize oceanic ecosystems, the ocean itself could run dry of fish. That scenario isn’t entirely to blame when it comes to tampering with the genetics of salmon, but the myopic trend of ramping up production without concern or even thought to the consequences is how we ended up in this situation to begin with.

AquaBounty are only manufacturing AquAdvantage eggs at the moment, but the Canadian government has already sunk $2.9 million into the GM fish company through the Atlantic Innovation Fund, an R&D grant program that subsidizes businesses in Atlantic Canada. Canadian tax dollars have been invested into a project that the government would rather keep under wraps. And since all government actions so far have been benefitted the company, it doesn’t seem likely that the feds will turn against them in the future.

The point of investing in a company like AquaBounty is to embolden the Canadian private sector and grow the nation’s economy. To then turn around and deny it a market of 34 million consumers wouldn’t make for good business, so pending this upcoming lawsuit, these GM fish may end up in Canadian grocery stores in the not too distant future. Clearly, the potential hazards outlined by concerned scientists and environmental groups have been chalked up as necessary hurdles in the race towards economic progress. The only thing that could force a proper examination of our technological advances—or hubris—is public concern, but that seems to be mitigated pretty well thanks to a cocktail of government secrecy, corporate privilege, and confidentiality.

The court case against the government and AquaBounty will likely be heard late this year, according to Tanya Nayler, a lawyer for Ecojustice who will be representing the EAC and LOS. No specific date has been set, but the stakes are quite high. As Joanne Cooke said: “One of the interesting things about this issue, is that if the Canadian approval stands and the US Food and Drug Administration approves the marketing of the genetically modified salmon flesh, it would be the first genetically modified animal approved for human consumption in the world.”

Kevin Oliff and Tyler Lang. Photo by Dom Greco

An animal rights activist with a long history of activism—and an equally long rap sheet—was sentenced to 30 months in jail for having bolt cutters in the back of his Prius.

Kevin Olliff and Tyler Lang were driving through rural Illinois on August 15, 2013, at about 1 AM when they were pulled over by police. The cops say they stopped them because the brand-new green Prius had only temporary dealer plates. But rather than let them off with a warning, police asked to search the car.

Olliff and Lang refused to consent to the search and quickly realized that this wouldn't be a normal traffic stop. After police separated them into two squad cars, Lang heard one officer on the police radio say of Olliff, "He's on the terrorist watch list."

Police brought out drug-sniffing dogs, and not surprisingly, they say the dogs smelled something (Lang says "the hardest drug in the car was caffeine"). When police searched the car, they found, among other items, bolt cutters and wire cutters. The two were charged with "possession of burglary tools," a felony.

The items in Olliff's car certainly sound sketchy when police list them out: bolt cutters and wire cutters; duffel bags full of sweatpants, sweatshirts, gloves, and ski masks; spray paint; concrete stain; laptop computers; bear spray; head lamps; latex gloves; walkie-talkies; rags; bleach. Most of us can have those things in our cars and not worry about being charged with a felony. According to the FBI, Olliff and Lang are not most people, though: They're animal rights activists.

FBI agents made their presence known at the bail hearing, telling prosecutors that there have been unsolved fur-farm raids in the region and other farms may be targeted. They specifically mentioned the Aeschleman fox farm in Roanoke, one of the largest in the country and the site of the historic PETA investigation in the 1990s, which revealed sick and neglected animals pacing in their cages and being anally electrocuted.

Bail was set at $100,000 for Lang and $200,000 for Olliff, or more than ten times the typical amount.

They were not charged with any fur-farm raid, or any other illegal activity. But the FBI and prosecutors hung the threat of additional charges over their heads, and they eventually accepted plea agreements. Lang, who accepted a plea deal for time served and was released in November, will only say that the items in the car were an "inconvenient circumstance," and that they had no choice but to take a deal. Olliff was sentenced to 30 months in jail and is currently imprisoned in Vandalia, Illinois.

Lang says that although he received a much lighter sentence than Olliff, the FBI is clearly trying to send him a message. When he flew home from jail, he saw that he had four S's on his boarding pass; he was singled out for additional security checks. Now, every time he travels he is searched by TSA and Homeland Security. Meanwhile, both his mother and step-mother have been visited by the FBI. Both refused to talk to the agents and have been supportive throughout the ordeal.

"The day after I got home [from jail], I went to a protest," Lang says. "It was liberating for me, because I really did not want to let this make me afraid."

Olliff continues to deny his involvement in the Animal Liberation Front, but is outspoken in his support for illegal direct action. In a statement from prison, he told supporters: "Get out into the streets. Better yet, get out into the countryside. Do what you know in your heart is right. You won’t regret it."

His book list is like a giant middle finger to police, with Wireless Reconnaissance in Penetration Testing alongside Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion. He also asked for a subscription to VICE.

His father, Stacey Olliff, says he's frustrated with his son's vocal support of direct action, and the fact that he has been in and out of jail for protesting and shoplifting throughout his 20s. But police are "taking things that otherwise wouldn't be illegal and criminalizing them," he says, "in order to turn the screws and send a message."

"It's frustrating to see this kind of repressive response from authorities," he says. "But their goal is shutting down this activity, and when they happen to catch somebody they know, they want to make an example of them."

Will Potter is the author of Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege. Follow him on Twitter.

Crimea's Tatars—who amount to 12 percent of the peninsula's 2.2 million residents—overwhelmingly boycotted the March 16 referendum for Crimea to become part of Russia. The Tartar's bad history with Russia was a major factor of their decision, as Stalin persecuted and deported them en masse from the Crimean Peninsula in 1944. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tartars trickled back into Crimea, but their status there was always temporary. With Crimea's much-disputed status as part of Russia following the referendum, the future of the Tartars is a big question mark.

VICE News's Simon Ostrovsky spent some time with Tatars in Simferopol in the week leading up to the referendum to get their side of the story.

If you've never been there, you probably have a preconceived idea of what Dubai looks like. And I’d imagine it involves lots of tourists walking over silk Louis Vuitton scarves so they don’t burn their feet on the sand, before popping vintage Veuve over domesticated lion cubs—a purified Disneyland of opulence devoid of any genuine culture.

But, from where I’m standing, staring across a sandlot buzzing with Indians, Emiratis and other Arabs who’ve gathered to watch a bunch of barrel-chested South Asian laborers in brightly colored pants throw each other around in the sand, Dubai doesn’t look all that cut and dried.

Every Friday a diverse crowd gathers to witness Pehlwani—a raucous form of wrestling from the Asian subcontinent that’s being kept alive in Dubai while it fades away in its homeland. As a sport, it’s similar to the kind of wrestling you see in the Olympics or high school movies. The aim of the match is simple: Pin the shoulders of your opponent to the ground for three seconds. 

However, a few notable exceptions and regional variants exist, like the complicated act of grabbing an opponent's underwear and using it to flip him onto his back. That side of it veers more toward the WWE spectacle, only without the spandex short-shorts and nu-metal entrance music.

As the Friday sunlight wanes between asr and maghrib—the third and fourth prescribed prayers of the day—three Pakistani men hauling a crate of water in a dusty wheelbarrow shove into the centre of the lot, and the Pehlwani ritual begins. Two of the men methodically throw water and ghee around to form a 15-foot wide circle called the khala, a sacred wrestling ring. The third, an old man with Kohl-lined eyes, shouts at passers-by in Urdu and Arabic, ordering them to assemble around the arena.

Emiratis saunter over from the souk a few blocks south. Scores of Bangladeshis and Indians disembark shoddy buses driven in from labor camps on the outskirts of the city, pushing their way into the crowd—which, by this point, is three people deep—around the ring. I stand next to two Balochi men who work in an oil field near the Saudi border and get one day in the city every four weeks.

“I come here every month with my friend,” one of them told me excitedly in broken Arabic, pulling his co-worker into a tight headlock. “We were wrestlers in Pakistan. Now, in our village, there is no training. I swear, only in Dubai can I see Pehlwani now.”

Before the first match begins, the old man introduces the brawny competitors who’ll be taking part in the afternoon’s two scheduled bouts, and the crowd roars for all four names. It’s a knowledgeable audience, and my new Balochi friend nudges me when his favorites’ names are called. The first two move to change into their jangia—bright cotton underwear used as a wrestling uniform—and a section of the crowd knowingly forms a tight, outward-facing circle around each of them to protect their privacy. As the two Pehlwans finish tightening their waistbands, the old man goads the audience again.

“Is anyone brave enough?” he dared the crowd in Urdu, pointing his cane at the spectators. Unscheduled fights occasionally happen between Pehlwans new to the Emirates, former Dubai champions who only came to watch, or just gutsy idiots (I once watched a champion Pathan take about ten seconds to pin a doughy Syrian man who thought he could wrestle). The old man calls the first two Pehlwans into the khala, and they emerge from the crowd shouting an Arabic invocation before patting the edge of the ring, kneeling down to ask forgiveness and touching the feet of the old man, a pre-fight ritual that merges Islamic and non-Islamic rituals. After covering each other’s bodies in sand, they’re ready to brawl.

Mohamed Rafiq, the old man—a 30-year resident of Dubai and one of Pehlwani’s two weekly match organizers—gives me a brief history. Pehlwani in this form dates back at least as far as the 16th century, when Mughals conquered northern India and melded their Sufi-infused Persian koshti pahlavani wrestling with India’s Hindu-inflected malla-yuddha form. Indian seafaring merchants then brought Pehlwani to the shores of Dubai in the 19th century, and for the past four decades practitioners have organized bouts in this same sandlot.

“Jhara Pahalwan fought here before he beat Inoki,” Mohamed said, referencing the famous match between the Pakistani and Japanese wrestling legends. “He took down three men in one afternoon.” 

Even as late as the 1980s, Pehlwani wrestlers were national heroes, and names like The Great Gama, The Bholu Brothers, and Goga Pahalwan were legendary across the subcontinent. However, today, the form struggles to survive. In Pakistan, only around two dozen of the 300 akhara training centers that existed at the time of partition in 1948 survive today.

In India, coaches complain of scant government funding and pressure from wrestling’s national body to align their traditional sport more closely with Olympic wrestling. And the exhaustive training—which often lasts over six hours a day—to learn the intricate series of moves and counters prevents full-time employment. Without sponsors or government assistance, the incentive to continue as a serious Pehlwan no longer exists.

No formal Pehlwani training programs exist in the United Arab Emirates, but as a country where expatriates make up of over 75 percent of the population—and a majority of those from South Asia—the country is bringing together wrestlers, coaches, and aficionados from all the different villages and cities across the subcontinent where the sport once flourished. Even into the second match, men from Pakistan and Bangladesh walk over together in droves as they finish their shifts at the fish market across the lot, kicking up sand as they walk.

As the crowd grows larger, I’m pushed next to a barber from Varnasi who’s eagerly filming away on his crappy flip phone. “I just moved here before three weeks,” he shouted above the crowd’s roar, pointing to his ramshackle apartment building across the lot. “I see Pehlwans here from Pakistan, from Bangladesh, and I could not believe this, so I will send pictures to my family. Maybe next week I will fight,” he smiled.

Before the second match can finish, a middle-aged taxi driver in a crisp blue uniform runs across the lot to Mohamed and solemnly touches his feet. Once the crowd calms after a burly Rajasthani pins his opponent, Rafiq announces that the Pakistani taxi driver wants to wrestle. A group of men from northern India’s Uttar Pradesh push one of their friends towards the ring and he agrees to a match. Both men pat each other on the chest and move to change into jangia.

“I just finished my ten-hour shift driving. Dubai, Sharjah, Dubai, Sharjah—back and forth like this. I am very tired,” the cabbie sighed, loosening his tie. “But today in Lahore, young people don’t like Pehlwani. Only here in Dubai. There are some Indians, some Bengalis,” he said. “So I thank God I can fight.” He told me that he tries to come every week, even in the July and August’s roasting 120-degree heat.

As the two spontaneous competitors day sand each other up for the final match of the day, the winner of the last bout takes a victory lap around the ring with Rafiq. As the Pehlwan champion shakes hands with his supporters, Rafiq playfully shakes them down for donations. Men reach into their pockets and eagerly hand over ten dirham bills—the equivalent of about $2.50.

“Pay or I will throw you upside down!” Rafiq shouted in Urdu, laughing. “He is a driver like many of you. Praise God. He is a champion, but he has no sponsor. There is no Saudi dairy company sponsor or anything like this,” he laughed again. “There is only you! Five, ten dirhams for the champion!”

Winning one of these matches in Dubai allows a Pehlwan to take home upwards of $200. For these men—many of them taxi drivers, construction workers, or unskilled laborers who come to Dubai to support their families still living in South Asia—that’s the equivalent of more than two weeks’ salary.

“I watched the finals for Champ of the Camp, but Pehlwani is every week,” one Bengali construction worker told me, referencing a hugely popular annual competition among 70 labour camps in the UAE to find the best Bollywood-style singer. Each week, he and some co-workers drive rusty vans in from their camp, he explains. “Pehlwani is better than watching music or movies because it is real life,” he told me, slapping the Rajasthani winner on the back and handing him five dirham.

Finished with his long lap around the ring, the winner stares incredulously at the money in his hands before changing back into his clothes and shoving it in his pocket, a proud smile lighting up his face. “I was a very good Pehlwan in India,” he told me, his friends gathering around to congratulate him. “But there was no money for my family there, so I came to the Emirates to send them my salary. Now, in Dubai, I can support them as a builder and as a Pehlwan. This is my dream,” he smiled.

As the maghrib call to prayer rings out across the darkening lot, the taxi driver pins his opponent to the sand and wins the match. He’s jubilant as Rafiq shouts his name, grabbing his arm to start the final victory lap of the day. After his daily grind, he gets the chance to be a hero for a few minutes. Concerns about the treatment of migrant workers in the Gulf remain, but at this unkempt sandlot, Pehlwani gives them an escape.

“The khala is like a mosque, church or temple. The khala is our [place of] sanctity,” Rafiq told me as the last of the crowd hands money to the taxi driver. “Every week, we skip invitations to tea, or we skip dinner with other friends on our one day with no work, because wrestling is our love. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh—no problem. In Dubai, we can all be Pehlwans.”

Follow Gaar Adams on Twiiter.

David Letterman’s cantankerous wit, mixed with a penchant for mocking the absurdities of late-night clichés, has endeared him to those who make people laugh for a living. After hearing today's news that Letterman is planning to step down next year, I reached out to some of my favorite comedians to get their thoughts on losing another late-night icon.

Eric Andre (The Eric Andre Show)

Letterman was one of the first "anti-talk-show" talk-show hosts. He didn't give a fuck when the show started and just filmed himself walking around the studio. He also gave a platform to more "out-there" comics: Andy Kaufman, Bobcat Goldthwait, Bill Hicks, Mitch Hedberg. He will be missed.

Todd Glass (The Todd Glass Show)

I remember when Johnny was leaving. For people, it was more than someone funny was leaving; it was the comfort watching the same person every night. No disrespect to Johnny Carson, it’s just that I didn’t really connect to that. Now, I understand, because that’s how I feel about David Letterman leaving.

I don’t think there’s a right or a wrong when it comes to leaving your political or social views to yourself. You just have to do what you want to do. But it really made me fall in love with him on another level, because over the last five or ten years, he’s really been expressing those views more and more. He will be very proud of that, I think, as years pass. We’ll realize that he was on the right side of history.

Also, he’s just so comfortable and so relaxed. The type of relaxation that you’d maybe see on a podcast. To do that on national television? To just be so comfortable in your skin that you’re not afraid of silence sometimes. I just love everything about that.

Jake Fogelnest (The Fogelnest Files)

I knew this day was coming, but the news today really caught me by surprise. It's almost impossible to articulate just what a profound influence David Letterman has had on me. He is the definition of late-night comedy cool. Always has been, always will be. I just hope Regina doesn't get too annoyed with him sitting around the house playing with ham-radio equipment.   

Photo via Flickr User Rob DiCaterino

Ryan Stout (Conan, Chelsea Lately)

I have always been fond of David Letterman because, in order to find him funny, you need to pay attention. You have to be on the edge of your seat, watching every moment, or you're going to miss something. 

If he comes back from a commercial, he might say something like, "Really, Paul? A piece of cake, every day?" And if you didn't catch what they were talking about before the break, you don't know why that's funny. So now, you've been alienated, left in the dark, and it's your own fault. You weren't paying attention, and you didn't get the joke. That's not Dave's fault; that's your fault.

I enjoy that. I think you can offer someone the gift of laughter, but in order to receive it, they need to deserve it. Sometimes they have to earn it. It's not free. And comedy shouldn't be wasted on simpletons who can't focus.  If you were sharp enough to pay attention to Letterman's every move, it paid off.

In general, late-night talk shows were designed specifically to tuck people in and put them to sleep. And I would argue that job description hurt Letterman's ratings. He's not the comedian you fall asleep watching. If you are dozing off and Letterman is making jokes that you don't understand because you aren't paying enough attention, that is going to be very agitating. You're constantly going to be asking yourself, Why was that funny? That struggle is going to keep you awake. And if you don't want to be awake, you're going to change the channel to a more mellow brand of late night.

But for those of us who want our comedy sharp and crafted at the 11:30 PM hour, David Letterman has always been the guy to watch.

Photo via Wikipedia Creative Commons

Chris Gethard (The Chris Gethard Show)

Discovering Letterman was the first time in my life I saw something funny and realized that funny could also be smart and cool. When I was a kid, his book of Top Ten Lists was like a bible of comedic timing and dumb subversiveness. Most importantly, he does what he wants. He conducts the most honest interviews, he brings on interesting fringe people as guests to give them exposure, and he is willing to wear an Alka-Seltzer suit on national television. He still does the best interviews in the game, hands down. He brought us Kaufman and Stern and Pekar and Elliott and so many others who may not have had as much of a chance without him.

To me, Carson is God, and Letterman is king. To people of my generation, he was the guy saying, "We can be weird and different, and that's what's cool now." I can't overstate his influence on me, and on comedy in general. I think he's probably the most underappreciated voice in contemporary comedy, and he's a dude who's on national TV every night to great praise. He will always deserve more credit than he gets. Always.

I've never met him or been on his show, and if I can't make that happen before he retires, I know it will be one of the biggest regrets of my professional life. I only hope that my work extends the ballsiness he put out there in some small way, because he's in my Mount Rushmore of comedy. And he gets the Lincoln slot. His is a standard I will always seek to honor in my own work.

Photo via Flickr User thejointchiefs

Guy Branum (Chelsea Lately, Totally Biased)

David Letterman merged the absurd with the human. When he'd suggest to Isabella Rossellini that they rent a Ford Taurus and just drive around, it was a legitimate, honest flirtation put in the most ridiculous terms. From "Will It Float?" to his attempts to psychically predict which pies his mom made for Thanksgiving, he put basic, human curiosities and emotions and turned them into something delightfully absurd.

He also showed me how important it is to respect other people—from making a hamburger with Julia Child to bantering with Amy Sedaris, he gave other people the space to be great, and it always made him look better. He's magical (but I still haven't forgiven him for fucking over Merrill Markoe).

Laura Kightlinger (HBO)

I have a folder that's called "Sucking Eddie Brill's Dick."

Follow Josh Androsky on Twitter.

In the UK, Alan Partridge—the outlandish, boorish, arrogant talk-show-host character desperate to escape regional radio and get back to national television prominence—is about as ubiquitous and revered a comic creation as Ron Burgundy or Homer Simpson. Alan's existed in just about every artistic medium you can think of—other than maybe bronze sculpture, slam poetry, and interpretive dance.

In America, Alan Partridge is just another persona of Oscar-nominated writer/actor/producer Steve Coogan. On a recent episode of Charlie Rose, he said he benefited from not being closely associated with Partridge in America. I will never forget seeing a sleepy-looking Coogan perusing the produce aisle of a grocery store on Santa Monica Boulevard. He seemed pleased just to be able to squeeze a grapefruit in peace, which is not even a possibility in his home country. His ability to start over in LA allowed him to do big studio comedies like Tropic Thunder and Night at the Museum, but also to transition successfully into drama.

The overwhelming success of last year's Philomena put Coogan into a higher showbiz weight class, but now Alan Partridge is about to hit theaters in the US on April 4th. The film—Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa in the UK, but simply titled Alan Partridge in the States—serves not only to act as an introduction to a unique character but also to remind audiences that Steve Coogan is one of the most thoughtful comic minds we have.

VICE: First of all, let me just say congratulations on the last year you have had with Philomena. I’m sure it's quite an overwhelming moment for you.
Steve Coogan: It has definitely been a rollercoaster year for me. There is no doubt about that. It has been a rollercoaster year. I mean, in the last twelve months I did two really tough movies, and we know what happened at the Oscars. I met the Pope, went to the Vatican for the movie. Bill Clinton spent half an hour telling me how much he loved the movie and how it was the best movie in years about faith.

I met so many influential people and people who have been moved and touched by Philomena, especially here in the US and the UK. It's certainly had an impact.

Who is a more majestic person to speak to— the Pope or Bill Clinton?
Well, that’s a very interesting question. This new Pope—I’m not a big Pope guy to be honest with you—but this new Pope, everything he has done so far has been really good and cool. I told him that there is opposition by certain Catholics in America towards Philomena, and his senior advisors in the Vatican said, "Those people are not who we are."

And when Sarah Palin says, “He sounds like some kind of liberal," [that] is the best compliment I think any Pope could ever have, especially coming from her. But in terms of charisma, they are really pretty close. Bill Clinton, all the stuff they say about him having charisma is absolutely right. Bill Clinton’s one of those guys where he has kind of grown after his presidency. He said, "I’ve just had more constructive influence since I’ve stopped being president than when I was."

Speaking of charismatic figures, let’s talk about Alan Partridge. If you watch everything and listen to everything that you’ve done with that character, there’s a really clear character arc that kind of culminates at the end of this movie. He grows, and he ages. There is so much pathos to him that is not something you see in a lot of broad comic characters in America. Did you plan to have Alan grow this much? Did that come out of doing it for so long, or did you always see this as a great, long tale of a man growing and maturing in very strange ways?
It’s a couple of things. One is that as the years go on we want to make the character more interesting for ourselves. You want to change things, and the way you change things is you make the characters more rounded and you keep sculpting and sculpting. What we find is that when you get more confident with the comedy, you can tamper with a little pathos and find comedy in other areas, more subtle nuance. Sometimes it’s in the movement. In their eyes, you see a kind of insecurity.

It’s not an explicit thing; you have to really be paying attention.
You have to pay attention. If you just look at it broadly, it can pass on you. But those people who are die-hard fans love the movie because there’s a lot more detail and substance in a second viewing sometimes. You have to get in the right mindset to watch it, because if you look closely, you can see the clocks turning around in Alan’s brain as he figures out what to do. That’s what’s delicious about it. He’s still a broad comedy character, but he’s become more nuanced and subtle in the ways I’ve performed him 20 years after we invented him.

Twenty years ago he was a lot more caricatured, and as the years have gone on, the way we’ve explored the character is we have him reflect the zeitgeist. We have him reflect currents changing. Where Alan would have been very intolerant, slightly nationalistic, and xenophobic in the early days, now we have him trying to grapple with certain liberal sensibilities because the world is changing. There are a lot of people that are economically conservative but socially liberal. I think that Alan figures that’s the way to go about being someone in the media. So you see him grappling with sexual politics and grappling with racial issues, and trying to do the right thing.

It’s interesting that you bring up the media, because the core of the film is that Alan's station is being turned into something very generic. It's morphing into a sort of consolidated media company that nobody is really asking for. The media doesn't have much empathy for eccentrics.
Part of it is me railing against the notion of what is hip, trendy, edgy, and cool, and that’s also in Philomena. That movie was an exercise in saying I don't care about something if it’s hip, edgy, and cool. I just want it to be authentic and sincere. That’s what that movie is about, and Alan Partridge has my kind of attitudes. I’m trying to say that, yeah, Alan Partridge is a jerk, but at least he’s just trying to serve the community. There are people out there, those little guys that we laugh at, that are just trying to serve, do a decent day's work, and be authentic.

The kind of faceless bottom-dollar people who are just talking marketing terms don’t seem to understand or have an ounce of humanity. Although we laugh at Alan, we have an opportunity to take a swipe at those faceless mobs in media conglomerates—guys you meet sometimes. They talk in these marketing terms. There is a bit where I say in the Alan Partridge show, they're just trying to provide more people with constant content delivery. I don't know all that jargon. You’re just thinking, What the hell does all that mean? Like I said, I meet those people, and they scare me, because they’re kind of the enemy of art.

Yeah, and they don't have a connection to communities or cultures or know what people really want. It’s homogenized.
Absolutely. That’s happening more and more. It’s the mentality of one-size-fits-all. I don't want to be totally pessimistic, because of course there are initiatives that spring up all over the place, community initiatives, but the bottom line is, they've got to pay their bills. The notion of public service is that you pay the bills, but you do something because there is an ethical dimension to it. Too many people are put in a place where you just can’t think about stuff, and I applaud all those people that do those things. Community radio and all of those people that do things because they want to—the idea of service, putting something back, which means a lot these days.

It’s not a virtue, especially in the US, to be someone who is not famous. To be someone who is just a local personality who is providing that service that you mentioned or speaking to a small subset of the population. We don't value eccentrics or people who exist off the beaten path anymore, especially here. This movie sees those characters as heroes.
You can laugh at people, but at the end of the day you want to kind of lift them up. You don't want to destroy them. And I don't like the comedy of cruelty—the comedy of just mocking the little guy, of destroying the weak and disempowered. It doesn't leave you with anything. There is hope that you have to elevate the eccentric and those kind of marginalized people, and you can do that in a funny way.

We are talking about things that matter, but in the UK, it’s a very broad, popular movie. It’s also about something. It is there in the world as a broad, comedic movie, but [a message] is definitely there. The same thing is true in terms of Philomena. That’s more about something important, but that again is done for a movie that is funny. I’m all about trying to make something accessible, make it for a big audience, and try to say something. With too many movies, you say, "What’s the movie about? What’s the movie actually about." The answer is precisely nothing. That’s what the movie is about. It’s about nothing. I find that there are too many movies like that, and I think movies can be about something. Too many movies, it’s all about the execution and the style—not about the content.

Do you want Partridge to be successful here, or do you feel like it’s more advantageous for you to not be associated with it as strongly in the US?
With the movie, I didn't do that thing of making the films generic or making all the references international. I didn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater to please everyone and wind up pleasing no one. I want to keep it true to its identity. If people in the US like it, that is a bonus. I didn't want to do that thing of trying to make it as accessible to America as possible because that way just doesn't feel right. I’ll do that, but not with Alan. I want to keep that pure.

As a longtime fan of the character, I appreciated that you didn't send him to America or put him in some convoluted action story, like a lot of these characters end up in. He grows. He learns something. It’s of a piece with the entire body of work, and I really appreciate that.
Well, thank you. To me it’s like squaring the circle of trying to make him cinematic, but not losing his DNA. Our touchstones were Dog Day Afternoon, Ace in the Hole, which was a Kirk Douglas movie, and also Network. We looked at all that, and I think we pulled it off.

Follow Dave Schilling on Twitter.

Over the past three years, Eric Andre has developed into one of the most oft-kilter and versatile comedians on planet earth. His bizarro talk show on Adult Swim, The Eric Andre Show, takes the late-night talk show format and throws it in a blender full of salvia that spits out 11-minute episodes of insanity. Co-hosted by the increasingly famous, and hilarious, Hannibal Buress, Eric's show is home to daring man-on-the-street pranks, oddball celebrity bookings ranging from Sinbad to Scary Spice, and a compendium of tricks concocted by the show's staff to elict absurd conversations (e.g. excessively increasing the studio's temperature without explanation, having 45 minute conversations with guests who were expecting to talk for seven, and placing rotting sardines underneath the guest's chair).

In addition to his Adult Swim antics, Eric is becoming an in-demand actor. He co-starred on ABC's Don't Trust The B---- in Apt 23, he has a recurring role on CBS's 2 Broke Girls, and he appeared in the Vince Vaughan-Owen Wilson starrer, The Internship.

Eric was in Toronto to shoot a pilot for FX, so we met up with him in Kensington Market to discuss the insane structure of his show, huffing ether, and the time he went to a strip club in Atlanta with T-Pain and $1,000 in singles.

Quebec's fraught relationship with its First Nations People has been largely ignored during this election cycle. Photo via Flickr user husseinabdallah. 
With Quebec elections only days away, federalists and separatists are squabbling over election-stealing students and the dangers of headscarves. In the meantime, many spectators have been left wondering why more serious issues aren’t being discussed. For the province’s 150,000 First Nations & Inuit people, that question is more present than ever.

At times, Quebec’s relationship with First Nations people has been outright disastrous. 1990’s Oka crisis—a land dispute that prompted gun battles between Quebec police and Mohawk warriors—stands out as a particularly low point. Things have improved since then, but many native leaders are looking at the current election campaign and wondering why their people haven’t been included in the conversation.

“Really, in the politics of Quebec, First Nations issues don’t get you elected. Some non-native voters would probably look at aboriginal issues in a negative light, so leaders just push it to the side during their campaign,” says Chief Lloyd Phillips of Kahnawake, a Mohawk reserve just south of Montreal.

Three weeks into the provincial election campaign, Phillips says none of the parties in the running have reached out to the Mohawk leadership. The Parti Quebecois only vaguely mentions aboriginal people in their platform, and the Liberals don’t at all. Even Ghislain Picard, Chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador, the main representative body of aboriginal peoples in the province, had yet to be contacted by any of the parties currently sitting in Quebec’s National Assembly as of Friday.

Aboriginal leaders started piping up about this problem weeks ago when rich-dude-turned-Parti Québécois candidate Pierre Karl Peladeau started fist-pumping for an independent Quebec. As it does for any non-pure laine minority, the PQ’s fanning of separatist flames has many Natives wondering what their place in a Francophone country would be. Across Quebec’s aboriginal territory, the sovereignty movement gets about the same amount of love as it would on an Alberta oilrig.

“If anyone is going to declare sovereignty, it should be first and foremost the First Nations of this province,” said Chief Phillips, one of several First Nations leaders to voice his opposition towards separatism last week. “To us, it’s almost ludicrous that anyone would even suggest the idea without bringing First Nations into that conversation."

Although the sovereignty issue has the potential to draw Native people to the polls, Quebec’s reserves are still some of the only places in the province currently spared from Marois’s grinning mug and the Liberal Party’s poorly-translated campaign slogans. Politicians aren’t lining up to kiss babies on reserves, and the low voter turnout rates in those territories prove it. Many communities rarely see over 20 percent turnouts, and some see none at all. For many aboriginal communities in the province, voting in federal or provincial elections is a faux-pas that goes back to Canada’s outstandingly poor history of native relations.

“It’s very common for many Quebec aboriginals to decide against voting. It’s often considered to be a recognition of the sovereignty of another government over our own, something that takes away from our right to self-determination,” says Melissa Mollen Dupuis, an Innu woman, who is also one of two main organizers behind the Quebec branch of aboriginal activist group Idle No More.

Melissa is an off-reserve aboriginal, and votes every election. Although she admits that the PQ’s agenda had more people talking about the vote, the lack of aboriginal issues being addressed on the campaign has left many people feeling alienated. This is especially true in remote northern communities, where important issues like housing and poor access to health and social services aren’t being talked about. “If Quebec is one big hamburger, why are we the side of fries?” asks Dupuis.

Chief Phillips says he has never voted in a provincial or federal election, and that the Mohawk council does not endorse voting. Despite allegations of voting intimidation in Kahnawake, he says anyone who wishes to vote is free to, and a tiny percentage of the community does.

But the aboriginal vote is never completely absent, and the last push for Quebec sovereignty proved that. During the 1995 referendum, the Cree of James Bay and the province’s Inuit people decided the best way to assert their own right to self-determination was to hold their own referendums. Both drew 75 percent of their eligible voters to the polls, with 96 percent of respondents refusing to be part of an independent Quebec.

Today, billions of dollars flow into the Quebec economy from resource development in the north. Hydro Quebec, the world’s largest hydroelectric producer and the crown jewel of Quebec’s resource economy, operates on territory that is shared with Cree and Inuit people. With both the Liberals and the PQ pushing for increased northern development, the voting climate stands to change in Quebec’s northernmost riding of Ungava.

“Aboriginal people will play an increasing role in the way that resource development takes place on the traditional territories of aboriginal people,” Cree Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come told The Nation. “This reality will translate eventually into an increasing interest on everyone’s part in involving our communities in electoral politics.”

Coon Come openly encourages his people to vote, and with good reason. In the last provincial election, their riding (Ungava) was decided by 1,153 votes. With only a 13.5 percent turnout amongst Crees, 7,705 eligible votes were not cast. As one of the province’s fastest growing demographics, today’s northern aboriginals have the potential to claim a greater say in Quebec’s politics.

“Too often, electoral boundaries have been configured in such a way as to ensure the minority status of our people across the country,” Coon Come says. “In spite of that, there are areas where the population of Aboriginal people is still increasing and where they cannot be ignored anymore.”

It’s easy to admit that politics in Quebec can get ugly. But in an election campaign that has focused on the province’s so-called values, the values of its original inhabitants have not been acknowledged. The decision to participate in any election is a personal choice. Whether or not Quebec’s aboriginal communities choose to vote, this year’s campaign leaves little doubt that their allies in the National Assembly are still few and far between. 

Photo by Bradley Scott

This article originally appeared on VICE Australia.

Earlier this year, two young women in Queensland, Australia, were filmed verbally and physically assaulting an old man on a bus while shouting slurs about aboriginal people. The resulting video introduced the world to Australia’s one truly unique contribution to the global taxonomy of douches: the moll. Most countries have loud, irritating, and offensive youths, but only we have the special breed of scrag capable of committing a violent racist act while wearing $40 shoes, $300 sunglasses, and a cocktail dress.

The moll shares several things in common with her male counterpart. She loves drinking and her friends, is not above punching someone in the face, and spends eons getting an outfit together. Her dresses resemble those worn by early-2000s Latin Grammy Award winners. She gets her tan from a can and works in places with names like Ice, Magnetic, or Xposed. At times, she's indistinguishable from any other young woman. What sets her apart is the pure primal aggression with which she lives her life—she controls every situation through a terrifying mix of heightened competitive sexuality, simmering violence, and a confidence derived from a dozen or so watermelon Cruisers.

Molls roam in packs day and night. Before dark they stalk suburban malls in tracksuits and $40 worth of makeup, calling shop assistants bitches for not sharing their staff discount at Cotton on Body [sort of the Aussie equivalent to Victoria's Secret]. When night falls they shed their fleecy skins and emerge as screeching and bedazzled butterflies. It’s maximum impact with zero body hair.

Photo by Bradley Scott

The cornerstone of all their social interactions is alcohol. In the early evening they pre-game with friends on the back decks of their parents' houses. Living at home has its advantages: You never have to learn to do laundry, you get to use your dad's good stereo to listen to Jason Derulo, and you can pour the savings into drinking alcopops with your BFFs every Friday and Saturday night.

They have highly complicated female friendships which were formed in the first few days of high school and have been tested by years of online passive aggression. You’ll know who they are before you meet them because of the thousands of selfies they post every time they come within 15 yards of a bathroom. You’ll also know what all their friend’s bathrooms look like (spoiler alert: purple towels). These are the women they get shitfaced with before going out to meet the guys they will drink under the table. Drinking serves several purposes: It limbers them up enough to both flash the party photographer at the club and, if the mood strikes, punch someone in the face.

To outsiders it might look like a bunch of chicks smashing wet pussy shots [this is a drink, in case you were wondering] and letting their 50 percent human hair down, but beneath the surface this scene anything but carefree. The Australian female douche is locked in a constant battle to keep up with the boys, which means she has to humiliate whichever douchebag she is screwing at that moment.

She values strength above everything, so there’s no way she’s hooking up with a pussy—but at the same time she’s nobody’s bitch. To date her is to look good on her arm. Their boyfriends may be 'roided-up beefnecks who sucker-punch strangers after the ecstasy kicks in, but at home they are dominated and deballed.

She drinks to be one of the guys, but also to dominate and destroy the guys. There’s nothing the moll loves more than belittling her significant other in front of their mutual friends. Any guy who dates a moll is completely whipped. It’s kind of awesome. Next time you see a dude screaming, “Show us your minge!” at some girl outside a club at 3 AM, remember that there is a terrifying woman waiting for him at home who will make fun of his weird dick while his buddies spit-laugh beer and Doritos.

Obviously, it's a good thing that young women are able to level the playing field in their interactions with young men in some social arenas. But in Australian culture, our national identity is inextricably bound together with drinking, so naturally, this playing field is soaked with liquor. The combination of drinking and being super uncomfortable in your outfit usually leads to one of two things: forcing your less hot friend to swap shoes with you or fighting.

Photo by Sam Wong

These women love to fight. On any weekend at any club pumping some sick bass, you'll see two (or more) molls throwing down. It doesn’t take much: Madison banged Caz? Tegan spilled Amee’s Bacardi? Stacy clipped Sheryl’s car? You better believe someone is going to get leveled. In other countries, girl fights are all pushing and slapping, with maybe some hair-pulling when things get serious. In Australia, after a lifetime’s training of fending off randy Australian drunks, these fights feature haymakers, above-the-neck tackles, and beating on someone when she's down and cowering. If there is one thing Australia teaches its young, it’s how to kick the shit out of one another.

What is it about Australia that breeds such a heightened sense of entitlement? The country's wealth helps—molls belong exclusively to the upper and upper-middle classes and are raised to feel that they deserve their wealth. When you mix that attitude with a rugged outdoors culture of booze and fighting, you’re basically creating huge muscular toddlers whose tantrums can lead to broken noses.

Getting into drunken fights with strangers—once practically the Australian national pastime—is now being discouraged by public curfews, while penalties for violence in sports—another once-celebrated tradition—have increased. The only place where our inborn desire to punch someone in the neck is alive and well is the dance floor on a Friday night. Because no amount of police presence, legislation, or positive role models is going to stop a moll from teaching a bitch a lesson.

If we step back, there is something admirable in Australia’s hyper-aggressive alpha females: their prioritization of female friendships, domination of men, and physical prowess. It’s almost a testament to the power of woman—or at the very least the equality of men and women at their lowest ebb.

In 2012, a few broke Spanish kids made a short film called Fist of Jesus that centers around the son of God killing zombies with a giant fish bone. Instead of coughing up five minutes of mirth for the internet, it somehow has more than a million YouTube views and has collected upward of 60 awards at film festivals around the world.

Encouraged by their runaway success, those broke Spanish kids want to make a full-length feature called Once Upon a Time in Jerusalem. Thing is, like most broke Spanish kids, they have no money. Hence this Kickstarter. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the whole venture is also accidentally topical and liable to enrage the fundamentalist right in the US, who are doing such an effective job of mobilizing in the face of emergent atheism that they were able to make a pro-Christian telemovie like God’s Not Dead a big success at the box office.

Director David Muñoz and producer Simon Brading spoke to us about their unexpected success, and tried to explain themselves and their movie.

VICE: Tell me about this travesty.
Simon: Once Upon a Time in Jerusalem is high-risk, high-reward, basically. We did the short film prequel, Fist of Jesus, with no budget whatsoever. None.
David: A thousand euros [$1,370]. Practically none.
Simon: Compared with the millions people usually spend on films and stuff like this, we did it with a thousand euros using recycled elements, and we were doing the directing, stunt work, writing, camera work, and everything else ourselves.

Recycled elements?
David: Literally recycling. We found a table and made it into a Roman shield.
Simon: It’s ingenuity and desperation mixed together.

Why are you doing this to yourselves?
David: When we made the short film, we wanted to mix Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Peter Jackson’s Braindead. Now we want to mix something like the New Testament and Mad Max. We must merge these two universes.

What are your religious beliefs? I'm guessing you are atheists? Otherwise surely you would fear the wrath of God right about now.
David: Well, I don’t know what to say. I’m agnostic. I say I don’t know; I don’t say I don’t care.
Simon: I don’t think it was so much bringing Jesus down and saying you’re idiots for believing in Jesus. I don’t think that’s the idea. It was just taking a historical character and making it absurd.
David: And making him human, too. We wanted a Jesus who has vanity. He’s a good man, but he’s selfish, too. He will survive at all costs. In the movie, we make him even more human. He tries to do good things, but we all make mistakes, and Jesus will make mistakes too.
Simon: What cracks me up about the short film is when he brings back Judas, and he’s hanging there. He brings him back to life, and he’s still hanging there, and he dies again, “I did it! I di—oh.” Just stupid mistakes that normal people would make. We’re not infallible. Why should Jesus be infallible?

Are you worried about the potential reaction from Bible thumpers?
Simon: Oh, yeah. The first thing I said was, “There are going to be people who hate you.”
David: There are a lot of believers who laugh out loud and tell us, “You made Jesus anew! He’s fighting the monsters!” Then they say maybe they will have to confess the next time they go to church, because they like it a lot. Others have said that if Jesus saw this short film, he would love it.

That is surprising.
David: We’ve only had four or five comments of people saying, “This is bad.” A lot of people are saying, “I’m Christian; I love it.” I don’t know if they’ll say the same about the feature film.
Simon: We haven’t reached the negative people yet, though. It hasn’t gotten to the Christian fundamentalists or anything like that. It’s gone to places where people go to see films about zombies or films that takes the piss out of something. It’s gone to the right audience so far. The feature film might not. We hope it does. Any publicity is good publicity. If we have people picketing outside the cinema, that’s gonna make it even bigger. Historically, that’s what happens to films.

Image via

Neither of you seem to care about the religion. Why Jesus over Gandhi or even Hitler?
Simon: Hitler’s been done.
David: I had to study Jesus when I was a kid in Catholic school. My teachers were priests. I used to study a lot of the New Testament. Fist of Jesus came to me when I got to that college and started to learn all these things. I was doing drawings for Fist of Jesus when I was eight years old in class. I wrote this story when I was a kid. I tell my co-workers: “Look at these pictures I did when I was kid; maybe it will be a funny short film?”

Why do you think the short film was so well received online?
Dave: We think it's because nobody in the last few years has done films in the way Peter Jackson used to—mixing bizarre and gory stuff with lots of crazy comedy. A lot of people were saying, “At last someone’s doing stuff like Braindead or Bad Taste or Meet the Feebles again.”
Simon: It’s not an hour and a half of watching blood explode everywhere and people going through the same evolution: A girl gets naked, a guy who saves the day, and everybody else gets killed. This was just so different. It’s a humorous way of telling it.
Dave: Loads of people are gonna get killed, though.

What other biblical figures do you pervert in this film?
Simon: John the Baptist, Salome, all the Apostles. It’s basically the Jesus story retold.
David: Then we mix it with monsters and mutants and demons.

Does God show up?
Dave: It’s about Jesus trying to find God, but wherever he goes, he can’t find him. That’s the journey. He’s always saying to all the people he meets, “God wants to speak with me. I have to go to the desert.”

Who’s the guy playing Jesus?
Simon: Mark. He’s a local. A friend of David’s.
Dave: He’s my neighbor.

Can you give me a brief synopsis of the script?
Simon: The journey of Jesus, tempted by the Devil, goes to John the Baptist, goes to the desert, is tempted by Satan—that’s all there. It’s unrecognizable sometimes. It’s so twisted by their minds. I can’t explain it without giving away too much.

Come on. Anything stick out?
Simon: I had problems with the John the Baptist character

Why?
Dave: He puts people underwater and they have to survive. If you get out of the water you are in his religion. If not, you are not worthy. He lives in a swamp. There's a lot of corpses floating on the swamp.

Follow Toby on Twitter.

All photos by Omar Alkalouti; Zadi Hobeika (left) and Robert Tabet, founders of Yalla Condoms

“If my girlfriend doesn’t come, can I return this?”

That's one of the stranger queries the founders of Yalla Condoms have had from customers since launching their lube and condom delivery website a little over a week ago.

According to Yalla founders Zadi Hobeika and Robert Tabet, the site is a result of a very local problem. They say that the average Lebanese person isn't exactly comfortable when it comes to buying contraceptives. So at a party in January of this year, the two came up with a remedy: a discreet service that could supply a vast array of condoms, lube, creams, and various sex-related accessories to the masses, allowing them to practice safe sex while also broadening their horizons. In a society where the neighborhood pharmacy may well be owned by your family’s landlord, any opportunity to avoid an awkward encounter while buying all your sexual paraphernalia is a welcomed one. 

Hobeika, 28, has lived abroad most of his life, but owns an advertising agency in Lebanon and recently left Google Dublin to come back to his homeland. He made the move in the hope of working on projects that he feels passionately about, and watching him switch between laughter and mock seriousness, it becomes immediately clear that he and Tabet are enjoying their first foray into the sex-product industry.

Loads of condoms in the Yalla office

Despite his extensive time outside the country, Yalla Condoms is a project that Hobeika has been considering for a long time. Startlingly tall, at 6-foot-9, he draws from personal experience when he talks about one of his reasons for creating the company.

“People already stare at me because I’m tall," he said. "And when I go into a pharmacy to buy condoms—to me, it’s nothing. But you feel sometimes [that the pharmacists] are looking at you in a certain way."

Tabet, 27, the other co-founder, is quieter than his partner, coming off as the more serious, business-minded half of the pair. He works in the pharmaceutical industry and has seen firsthand the difficulty some people have not only with buying condoms, but with more sensitive sex-related products, due to their societal implications.

“I told [Zadi] that condoms are just the name of the website," Tabet said. "Because, usually, people are ashamed to ask, for example, for extra-small condoms or delay tubes. I wouldn’t even see myself going to a pharmacist, ‘Hey, do you have something that delays ejaculation?’ It’s tough to say."

According to Tabet, even buying lubrication can be problematic, as the notion in Lebanon that it's only ever used by homosexual men, and the stigma around being gay still hasn't been eroded enough for people to buy lube in public. Thanks to Yalla, people can now buy any of these products anonymously. In fact, couples can even browse the website together and choose products to stimulate their sex life without suffering any of the stigma they might do in public.

Zadi Hobeika in the Yalla office

The two are currently working out of Hobeika’s office on the eighth floor of a building off the Zalka highway, less than 20 minutes outside of downtown Beirut. For now, their operations are slow and steady, so they don't need much more than a table, a smartphone, or a computer, a couple of shelves, and box full of product. Their pre-delivery happens in their small office, where they keep the stock they have bought in bulk, mostly from local pharmacies. The two double-wrap the products in nondescript brown envelopes, then take them to a courier company to be shipped out to customers.

Despite Lebanon’s reputation as an oasis of freedom in the Middle East, talking about sex and buying sex-related products still remains taboo for many. Across the sectarian divides in the country, there is a common thread of conservatism when it comes to premarital sex. However, according to medical sexologist Dr Sandrine Atallah, things are slowly starting to change, especially for the younger generation.

“We have more outside information," she said. "We are more open because the people are changing their point of view on virginity. You see more people who think it's normal to have sex before marriage.”

One pharmacist in Beirut, who asked to remain anonymous, believes that though it's a more open city, where “people always go to the extremes,” there is still a significant chunk of society who are uncomfortable addressing sex.

“[Yalla Condoms] will help, but it won’t change the problem," he said. "It’s the old-school mentality. It will really help with preventing STDs and infections, but you won’t cure this problem of character."

But until things change drastically, Hobeika and Tabet are cornering the market. And the appeal lies in the simplicity; the website, yallacondoms.com, is minimalist, and offers 14 different types of Durex condoms, 12 from Pasante and an accessories section that includes a pregnancy test, delay creams, vibrating rings, and even wobbly pink and transparent snake-like condom enhancers.

According to Hobeika, most of the feedback so far has been positive. Tabat adds that some of the emails they have had since launching show that there's not only a need for their service, but that there are also people looking for guidance. They don’t ask their parents or their pharmacist for help, but they are asking Yalla Condoms—sometimes even on their live chat.

“First of all, I want to say thanks for this amazing idea. I support it," said one email. "I have a question. If I want to have sex with my girlfriend, what is the best condom I can buy? I need your help because I’m not expert in this kind of work. Thanks, best wishes."

The majority of the messages they've received have also asked that the founders diversify their merchandise even more; along with pregnancy tests, people have expressed their desire to be able to order sex toys and the morning-after pill. Because of regulations and laws, they won’t be selling either any time soon. Sex toys are illegal in Lebanon, and the morning-after pill is something they can’t currently get involved with.

Robert Tabet in the Yalla office

“We started by going to all of the pharmacies and grocery stores to see what they had on their shelves. If the product is being sold next to the cashier, we can [sell it], too," Hobeika laughs. "The first thing is that no one is really doing this, so there’s no benchmark. Can we do it? Can we not do it? How far can we push it?” 

Every order comes in an unmarked package within 48 hours and is cash on delivery. The two were surprised that the majority of the approximately 30 orders they have filled so far have been from outside of Beirut, from villages in the south, Bekaa Valley in the east and outside Byblos, a city in the north of the country. They believe this is due to the fact that, in villages, there are a limited number of pharmacies, and they're usually run by someone the customer knows.  

For the founders of Yalla Condoms, the mission isn't just to make money, or make it less awkward to buy condoms, but also to raise awareness about sexual health. The pair are planning to set up partnerships with initiatives and non-governmental organizations, and to use returns they get on their investment for charity work related to sex education and disease prevention.

It’s clear that, soon enough, Hobeika and Tabet will no longer have to roam Beirut's pharmacies, desperately trying to find the popular Love Light "techno sex" condoms that are constantly out of stock. Distributors are already knocking on their door, and a few new brands will be on the website in the coming days.

Though many initiatives and trends in Lebanon go viral and disappear quickly, Yalla Condoms is confident they have the brains, business-savvy, and the market need to stick around for a while.

“It’s a way to have fun, be safe, make some money, bring awareness, overcome taboos,” Hobeika said, before Tabet added, “Plus, I don’t know if you know the feeling of being the first to do something—that’s a great feeling, to be innovators.”

Follow Melissa Tabeek on Twiiter.

A cyclist riding through the floods in Somerset, England, earlier this year. Only about a quarter of British people don't think that the floods were linked to climate change. Photo by Jake Lewis.

It’s time to lay off climate scientists. I don’t mean go easy on them or leave them alone, I mean we should fire them, because they’re pointless. This week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) delivered the latest part of its fifth assessment, which looked at "impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability" with respect to climate change. Here's a summary of their findings: We're going to impacted in horrifically negative ways, it's dubious we'll adapt, and we remain very vulnerable. These conclusions remain essentially unchanged from the those of the four previous reports, released in 1990, 1995, 2001 and 2007, which were basically ignored, ignored, ignored, and ignored by anyone with the power to do anything about climate change.

Each successive report has brought more evidence (and more sophisticated analysis of that evidence) to bear, but the impact of this extra work has been minimal in practical, real terms. At this point, continuing to fund climate scientists with public money is like buying a really expensive Bose stereo system for your car when you don’t actually own a car or understand how to drive.

The following things are already happening, according to the IPCC's assement: Changes in recent decades have “caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans,” glaciers are shrinking steadily, the permafrost is thawing at high latitudes, a small number of species have already gone extinct, and many other species are moving about as aggressively towards oblivion as a old lady shot from a cannon.

Crop yields have been damaged, and the impact of an increase in extreme events has resulted in “alteration of ecosystems, disruption of food production and water supply, damage to infrastructure and settlements, increases in morbidity and mortality, and consequences for mental health and human well-being.” And the poorer you are, the more fucked you are, which goes some way to explaining the spluttering denial on the right of the political spectrum.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the IPCC report is that for all the political nonsense around climate change, governments are planning for it, or at least trying as best as they can. Australia is already preparing for rising sea levels and increased droughts, the US is quietly protecting its energy infrastructure, nations across Asia are implementing new water-management plans. All this is already going on, yet there seems to be a fundamental disconnect between the reality-based community and the wider public.

Part of the problem, undoubtedly, is the audience. Last night, I watched a crazy man ranting about how Putin had the right idea on foreign policy and there was no proof that Assad used chemical weapons. Except he wasn’t some overserved punter at the pub, he was on my TV with UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who looked like he longed for the days when politicians just said “I agree with Nick” all the time because they wanted something from him. Watching Independence Party leader Nigel Farage—a right-winger who processes information the way a washing machine processes a brick—ranting about millions of Romanians coming to live in Orpington, two thoughts struck me. The first was how terrible it was that millions of immigrants' first experience of Britain would be Orpington. The second, that even though we—you, me, my friends on Twitter—get that Farage is a moron who understands foreign policy like my granddad "understood" Facebook, lots of real people actually think he’s a genius.

The problem with debates over topics like immigration and climate change is that it’s easier to argue the wrong position than the right one. People are fundamentally ignorant and paranoid—we know far less than we think we do, and we assume everyone’s out to screw us. Which, to be fair, is largely because many people are out to screw us. That aside, it’s far simpler to make easy points like "the government’s out to get you," "immigrants are taking our jobs," or "experts don’t know what they’re talking about" than it is to process complex arguments about economics or climate science, especially when pundits treat these kinds of debates like fans cheering for two competing soccer teams.

To be fair, people's ignorance is partly the fault of the press. Both the Daily Mail and the Telegraph told Parliament recently that they believe climate change is happening, yet the Telegraph employed James Delingpole to write about it, a man whose previous experience as a fashion writer probably wasn't all that helpful. Meanwhile, the Mail seems more interested in pandering to its readers’ bloody-minded hatred of anyone more intelligent than them, which unfortunately turns out to be most people. To understand how much Mail readers hate clever people, check out this comment in response to to a recent study suggesting—suggesting—people eat seven portions of fruit and veg a day:

"Who cares what so-called experts say? - No one believes what any of them say anymore because they have sprouted so much utter BS. - Has anyone noticed how the media are making expertise female? - This looks to me like a desperate attempt to give females kudos now that the dumbing-down and feminisation of education, which was designed to give females a helping hand but which has rendered it unfit for purpose, is being reversed. Anyhow, never has what the experts say been held in lower esteem than it is now."

The crippling fear for these people is that the government might team up with clever people to try to steal their precious tax dollars or bodily fluids. The irony is that even as they scream so loudly about taxes, our failure to deal with climate change is imposing thousands of taxes on them, eating away at their pay packets penny by penny—as the world heats up and resources get scarcer, the price of everything from bread to hard disks stands to rise.

The great thing, though, is that the individual effects are small enough to ignore. For now. You can live in blissful ignorance for the time being, and then cry like a baby in about two decades when the government gives up trying to keep your house above water. Or you can adopt the mentality of Farage, who doesn’t care how far up shit creek Britain is as long as the French have lost their paddle.

It’s possible that we’ll find better ways to communicate science to the public, but the academic field of science communication has yet to produce anything of any practical value for people actually communicating in the real world, and in fact tends to hold them in a sort of weird contempt. The government and the BBC haven’t done a lot better, with both drawing criticism from the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee for being uncoordinated and prone to treating unscientific, factually inaccurate arguments seriously. The public is only going to be persuaded that climate change is a reality when a dramatic event turns their living rooms into shitty swimming pools. (Only a quarter of Britons denied that the recent floods were linked to climate change.) Global warming is the best tool we have for convincing people that global warming is a threat. Unfortunately, it’s not exactly the timeliest.

Ultimately, it will be the scientists and engineers of this world—the same community that the rest of society tends to either ignore or shit on—who tackle the problems created by climate change. Politicians lack the intelligence, drive, and honesty, and the media hasn't taken its job seriously for about 20 years—there are barely any serious science journalists left, anyway. Public attitudes will continue to shift, and in a few decades, as we watch cities and towns slip beneath the waves, no doubt many will be demanding, “Why didn’t we do something sooner?” And somewhere, a scientist will facepalm.

Follow Martin Robbins on Twitter.

Illustrations by Jack Graydon

I’ve been part of a few fads in my lifetime: Wearing Nikes, sleeping in a bed, reading The Hunger Games. I’m writing this on an Apple MacBook, I’ve driven a convertible Jeep in the sun, and I’ve eaten kettle corn out of a microwaved bag. I’ve blogged. I’ve Tweeted. I’ve worked 50 or more hours a week for months on end. So in many ways, I’m an average 37-year-old US citizen, except for one thing.

I’ve never owned a cell phone.

I know—I’m supposed to be embarrassed. Or at least that’s what I think I’m supposed to be. People are embarrassed for me. My little sister introduced me at a party this past year by saying, “This is my brother Peter. He doesn’t own a cell phone.” Apparently this is key information during an introduction to a stranger.

And last week, a woman on the street asked to borrow my phone for a minute.

When I said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t own one,” she looked horrified.

She said, “Are you OK?”

“Am I OK? Well, honestly... I’m not sure.”

Sometimes I feel like Holden Caulfield in his scene with the prostitute. I know that I’m supposed to have an orgasm when you tell me about Boeing’s security-oriented Blackphone, but so far, I’m not even turned on.

Wait, you say it has a Silent Circle–encrypted calling client, SpiderOak online storage, and it only costs $629? Why didn’t you tell me all of that in the first place?

***

When I watch an advertisement wherein people argue about 4G, I think to myself, Is there a 5G? Or a 6G? Is 6G what CIA or NSA spies are secretly using right now? Was there a 4F before the 4G, or a 3G before a 4G? What about 3.5F?

I don’t know how cell phone math works. And is 3D related to that whole G thing, or something else, because I’ve seen some pretty stupid ads on the topic of 3D phones and I’m guessing that those two could be related? 

When I start spacing off and thinking like this, pretty soon I’m considering the use of the alphabet to sell products, and the alphabet’s limitations—only 26 letters—but how numbers are infinite, even when negative, and then I remember the fact that there are infinite numbers between three and four.

I start to think about simple infinities and how, even though the world spins and there’s day and night and seasons and shifting magnetic poles, there is no upside-down in the universe—just one big universe in every direction.

And then I have to go drink a glass of water in the kitchen, over the sink, while staring out the window for a while, because distance is relative, you know?

With cell phones, I’m confused in lots of ways. Because I’ve never texted, I’m what people call a “text-speak moron.” I don’t know what “LMFAO” stands for, or “IMO.” And the numbers thing comes in here too. 

For example, I just learned that “<3” doesn’t equal “less than three.” I kept wondering why people on the internet were commenting, “I love your singing less than three," or “You look so hot in that outfit less than three.” I wondered why not “more than 100” or at least “more than nine.”

***

One of my friends is in a new relationship, and he’s texting all the time. I keep worrying about his neck. He hunches a lot right now, and his neck is in bad shape. He’s always looking down at that tiny screen in his hand.

Oh, I’m sorry. I meant to say that he’s always looking down at that huge, 4.7-inch AMOLED Plus display screen in his hands. I forgot how huge 4.7 inches is, that 4.7 inches is enormous. Actually, when I see an advertisement for 4.7 inches, I think about when I was in college, and that anyone who had 4.7 inches in his hands was seriously embarrassed and hoped that nobody would ever find out about his little secret.

***

My sister has the Apple iPhone 5S with Siri. Not only is it a touch screen, but it also has voice recognition.

She talks to her phone: “Find Red Robin.”

I look up in the sky, but she means a restaurant.

She says, “I’ve got 81 apps for free.”

“Oh,” I say, and just to annoy her—even though I know exactly what she’s bragging about—I say, “You can’t even eat 81 appetizers, can you?”

***

One of my friends said recently, “It’d be great to live under a rock like you,” but I know she didn’t mean it. People don’t want to be me. Living without a cell phone is dangerous. My friends and family are always saying, “But what if you’re in trouble?”

I say, “What kind of trouble?”

They say, “Like, if you’re lost in the woods, and you need help.”

“How would a cell phone help me if I were lost in the woods and needed help?”

“GPS, Pete. Phones have GPS now.”

“Oh, right,” I say. “GPS—but why would I be lost in the woods in the first place?”

Then they shake their heads. My not owning a cell phone annoys them. I obviously don’t understand what’s important in this life. I’ve had no fewer than seven people offer to put me on their plans. Like drug dealers in a John Hughes movie scene, they all say the same thing:  “I can just start you for free, man. You’d be part of my family.”

So I get into character and say, “No thanks, man. I’m gonna stay straight.”

***

In David Sedaris's "Remembering My Childhood on the Continent of Africa," Sedaris’s partner, Hugh, says that while he was living in Ethiopia as a kid, he saw the movie with the talking Volkswagen, and afterward he discovered a dead man hanging from a telephone pole in the theater parking lot.

When he tried to explain later how he felt about seeing the body swinging from the rope, his friend stopped him and said, “You saw a movie about the talking car?”

That’s how it is with me not owning a cell phone.

I say, “My friend crashed his bike next to me the other day, and he was bleeding everywhere, out of his nose and forehead, and I was trying to borrow a cell phone from a passerby, to call for help, because I don’t have one, and my friend was completely knocked out, and then he started convulsing on the ground and I thought he was going to die, and—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” the listener stops me. “Hold on now. You really don’t have a cell phone? Why not?”

I talked to a person on the street yesterday who held a sign that read: "No food, no money, anything helps."

He had a huge touch-screen cell phone on his hip in a belt holder. Beyond the fashion faux pas, I wondered about him begging for food while paying a monthly cell phone bill. I wondered who told him it was necessary to own that phone. I’m all for America, land of the free, and I’m no better than anyone else, but does freedom mean that everyone is required to pay a ton of money to hold a portable phone?

***

On the other hand, I’ve heard that some hipsters in Portland are “going back” to old-school flip phones. It’s like buying one of the Decemberists’ albums and saying that they’re still obscure, like reclaiming Green Day or Radiohead as “a couple of bands nobody’s really heard of.”

A young man named Ashleigh, who’s wearing horn-rimmed glasses, a scarf, and a Che Guevara hat, says to me, “My phone has no internet capability, and it only cost $19.99.” He’s sort of breathless as he explains this to me.

“Wow,” I say. “That’s great.”

He holds the phone between us and closes his eyes like he might cry. “You can’t do anything on this,” he says.  “Just call and text and take pictures.”

I nod and say, “Wow,” again. “That’s crazy.”

Then I wonder, What would going back to the old-school look like for me?

***

I have to admit, I’m not the last human being without a cell phone.

There’s probably a 97-year-old man in Carthage, South Dakota, who’s hard of hearing and didn’t understand his grandchildren when they said, “THIS IS IMPORTANT, GRANDPA. YOU NEED A CELL PHONE SO YOU CAN CALL FOR HELP WHEN YOU’RE LOST IN THE WOODS.”

***

My friend and I were talking about Google Glass yesterday. He’s naturally pro-Glass, and I’m naturally con-Glass.

He said, “Are you afraid that we’re flying too close to the sun, Pete?”

“No,” I said, “I’m afraid that we’re digging too close to the already-cracked sewage pipe.”

“Oh, Pete,” he said, “you just don’t under—” But then he stops talking and puts one finger up in the air before dropping his head, the universal sign that a person has received a text message.

He gets very quiet, like he’s praying, and I get very quiet to respect his moment of religious devotion.

I’m not a believer myself, but I don’t want to interrupt him in this, his house of worship, because to interrupt him would be rude.

Peter Brown Hoffmeister is the author of Let Them Be Eaten By Bears: A Fearless Guide To Taking Our Kids Into the Great Outdoors (a Parenting magazine selection for Best Books of 2013), the novel Graphic the Valley (starred reviews from Booklist and Library Journal), and the memoir The End of Boys, a Goodreads End-Of-Year Selection.

He just spent five weeks working on a novel in a dirt-road village of 200 people in Central America where one 12-year-old kid owned an old-school cell phone. All of the other kids in the village wanted that phone.

Follow Peter on Twitter.

Ford voted against three motions that would further investigate the effects of Enbridge's Line 9. Photo via Don Peat, on Twitter. 
Mayor Rob Ford, along with three other city councillors in Toronto, voted against a motion to ask the province to study the environmental risks of the thoroughly-cracked, almost 40-year old Enbridge Line 9 pipeline. The NEB has just approved Enbridge’s application to use the line to transport highly toxic and explosive fuels like tar-sands diluted bitumen and US Bakken crude through the city.

Council voted 28-4 in favour of a motion to ask the “Ontario Minister of Environment to conduct a comprehensive Environmental Assessment for the Enbridge Line 9B Application” and to “forward a copy of the request to the Federal Minister of the Environment.” In passing this resolution, Toronto joins Kingston and all five municipalities in the Durham Region in asking the province for an environmental impact assessment.

“An environmental assessment is the least that the province can do to understand this potentially devastating project that the NEB has rubber-stamped. I would call a 90 percent risk of rupture predicted by pipeline experts a bit of a red flag,” said Sakura Saunders, an activist who belongs to the Toronto Coalition Against Line 9 that brought the issue to the attention of several city councillors.

“Before Harper's gutting of environmental regulation in this country, a federal Environmental Assessment (EA) was standard. Let's not forget that,” Saunders added.

Rob Ford was also the lone voice voting against two other Line 9 motions, which were put forward by councillors David Shiner and Anthony Perruzza. Together, these motions ask the City Manager to report on Enbridge’s emergency preparedness and measures to protect Toronto’s drinking water supply, as well as asking the company to inform GO transit and the TTC of any maintenance work needed for this project over the next five years. Another motion to ask Enbridge to confirm where and when their emergency response team will be deployed passed unanimously.

David Shiner, a councillor of a ward Line 9 runs through, told me that “Line 9 runs—not only close to so many homes and over so many rivers and streams right across Willowdale and the city—it’s within feet of the entrance to the busiest subway and bus terminal in all of Canada, at the Finch-Yonge station. Just yesterday staff advised me, looking at some TTC projects, that Enbridge might be going in to do some other repairs to the pipeline there. And I’m really concerned and would like to know what’s going on, what repairs are being done, what problems there are with the pipeline. Residents and people across the city deserve to know what’s happening with a major pipeline in their community, and in addition to that, Enbridge has committed to put an emergency response capability into the greater Toronto Area, and it’s still not there. It’s never been there. This pipeline has been there for 38 years and we want to know when that’s going in.”

The environmental assessment motion was put forward by Councillor Mike Layton, but Sakura Saunders told me that “other councillors had showed interest in this motion as well.” Saunders explained that Rising Tide Toronto has been hand-delivering a community report on Line 9 “to city councillors and educating them on the issue and seeking endorsement for the report. Mike enthusiastically endorsed the report, as well as other councillors.”

The meticulously researched community report, entitled Not Worth The Risk, details a litany of problems with Line 9. It points out that Enbridge has a “horrendous record of spills, averaging one spill every 5-6 days over a 10 year period.” It concludes that the project poses a massive economic and public safety risk, while only offering marginal economic benefits—significantly, the report warns, that a spill into any of the tributaries that Line 9 crosses could poison the St. Lawrence River or Lake Ontario, endangering the drinking water supply of millions of people.



Sakura Saunders speaks to a resident at a Line 9 blockade in Toronto.
It outlines the many sensitive ecological areas that Line 9 crosses, deficiencies with Enbridge’s leak detection and pipeline integrity management technologies, and that Enbridge has requested to operate the pipeline at a pressure of 1,000psi, despite their own assessment that parts of the line would rupture at pressures between 687psi and 818psi, and offers a number of reasons why diluted tar sands bitumen is more corrosive and dangerous to transport than conventional, liquid crude.

The report also presents evidence that many residents in areas affected by the project have not been properly educated about its existence, and that a number of First Nations along the route were never consulted about the project as is legally required under treaties and the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. “Evidence submitted by interveners including Mohawk Council of Kahnawàke, Chippewas of the Thames First Nation, and Aamjiwnaang First Nation indicate that neither the NEB nor Enbridge have honoured the treaties in Line 9’s approval process,” the report says.

“I don’t think that many people even knew it was there, know the age, know what it’s carrying and in addition to Enbridge having the oil pipeline, I believe they have a high pressure gas line and I believe Trans-Canada has an oil line as well, running through that same corridor,” Councillor David Shiner told me.

Toronto city councillors had been briefed on the project already, but Saunders said “most of the staff recommendations had to do with a confidential report that even city staffers couldn't see, and it was discussed in private by the council.” She was concerned because “their backgrounder was horrible, basically cut and paste from the NEB decision. That is one of the things that instigated myself and others to do a fresh round of education with the councillors starting late last week.”

“Residents of my community come to me as a city councillor, and we’re doing anything we could possibly do to protect them and their interests,” said Councillor Shiner. “However, both our provincial representatives, which we believe could call for an environmental assessment, and our federal elected representatives that have the National Energy Board as one of their agencies, are doing nothing... It’s being left to the city of Toronto, which has no jurisdiction on this, to send our lawyers to the board, to fight Enbridge on this for changes. Even just to make sure that there are emergency response capabilities available in the Greater Toronto Area should have been done decades ago by the federal government, and it’s ridiculous that those type of response capabilities aren’t here.”

The provincial Ministry of Environment has continued to shirk responsibility for studying the risks of the project. “It would be up to the federal government to determine whether or not they would want to proceed with a federal environmental assessment,” an Ontario Ministry of Environment representative told the Toronto Star.

In contrast, the Ontario Ministry of Energy requested a full, independent engineering report on Line 9 at the National Energy Board’s October hearings, but the NEB determined this was unnecessary when they approved the project with weak conditions.

Sakura Saunders is cautiously optimistic that this resolution may lead to a closer look at the issue by the province. “I don't know if the province will listen right away, but they will have to open up the debate. You simply can't ignore all of these cities that are speaking with one voice to say they want a full EA, and of course this is really the minimum that should be done, so if it is a debate, I believe that the EA will be carried out,” she said.

Mayor Rob Ford declined to provide a comment by press time.

@M_Tol

Courtesy of the artist, Metro Pictures, and Petzel Gallery.

Robert Longo is a kingpin in the arts who graced the cover of the VICE Catastrophes issue back in September 2010. His photorealistic drawings often capture the "moment before orgasm," flowers before they bloom, waves before they crash, explosions before they explode.

His latest sculpture is an American flag as a sinking ship, referencing Moby Dick. He is also showing his epic seven-panel-wide drawing of Capitol Hill, which has all sorts of hidden treasures—if you zoom in to look inside the windows you'll see symbols for where he thinks America stands (or sinks) today.

If you’re in New York, you can catch all this and more at Strike the Sun, an exhibition opening April 10 at Petzel Gallery and Metro Pictures. If you’re into Chris Hedges books like War Is the Force That Gives Us Meaning, this show could be your brainfood. Instead of just sketching out American history, Longo offers an interesting twist: He sourced an original photo from the John F. Kennedy funeral—which will also be included in the show—while including political art that tells a story like non-fiction.

I caught up with him while he was prepping for his show to talk about dyslexia, government windows, and how culture is a warzone.

VICE: What is your relationship to the American flag? I’m not American, so I’m interested.
Robert Longo: You’re lucky. You’re also not a guy and maybe if you’re a white guy in America then you can be blamed for everything in the world. It’s an iconic image, for sure. I read Dangerous Nation by Robert Kagan, who addressed the idea of American exceptionalism. American nationalistic ideas are based upon the idea of inalienable rights and freedom for all which is an idea which transcends blood ties and nations. It basically makes American nationalism kind of international. The title of my show, Strike the Sun, is taken from a Captain Ahab quote on his mission to get Moby Dick—which is interesting because Moby Dick is like the genetic code of America. It’s like what A Winter’s Tale was by Heinrich Heine was for Germany.

What do people say when they see your drawings?
They say “I love your photographs.” That really freaks me out because people don’t actually look at the things. My drawings are made out of charcoal, which is essentially dust, carbon, one of the primal elements of life. It’s like making a voodoo doll, packing it in with as much as possible.

Why did you want to shoot Capitol Hill?
I went to Capitol Hill, photographed it, and learned everything about it—what windows you’re looking into. I want the viewer to be like King Kong, who peeked into the windows of Capitol Hill and see what’s going on in these offices.

You created subtle variations in the building’s windows and curtains. What did you do?
There’s a relationship between how many windows are open and closed. There are all sorts of weird shit in there. As a drawing, it’s so extreme. Drawings have always been things in the basement of a museum with low lights, bastard art between painting and sculpture. When I found drawing, I figured out it was something I could exploit and make my own, which was really important. The irony of all this is that I’ve always had a great respect for painting but never had the balls to paint because these guys are heavyweights.

What was it like when you visited Capitol Hill?
I couldn’t get very close and I wanted to understand what was happening. I learned what parts of the building were built first and the different sections of the stone color. The image I have is a composite of a bunch of different photographs. The clouds and the sky were meant to have the same perspective as the building itself, like a dolly zoom, where the background changes. I wanted there to be some kind of feeling of movement, that the drawing isn’t static.

Why did you choose this angle?
This is the back of the Capitol, where they do the inauguration facing the Washington monument. That’s a more historical side of the Capitol, rather than the Greek façade with columns; this is the back. The way it is built has the Senate and the House of Representatives on either side. You know when they are in session by the flag flying. In my drawing, the Senate is in session, the House of Representatives is not, which is how they are in general.

Courtesy of the artist, Metro Pictures, and Petzel Gallery

Can you tell us more about the piece from John F. Kennedy’s funeral?
I have the drawing of the saddle from John F. Kennedy’s funeral, which has a backwards boot hanging from the horse. This is the actual photograph of the original horse by the original photographer.

How did you manage that?
I found him. I first saw that photograph when I was ten years old. I cut school the day JFK was assassinated, I remember watching it on TV. I remember seeing the riderless horse with this backwards boot, it as creepy and it stuck in my mind. The year 1963 was a strong year in my mind; Ad Reinhardt’s black paintings were done in 1963. This is a very American show, obviously. American abstract expressionism represents this postwar euphoria rejecting Europe. It is kind of like high hopes for the future, I guess. It’s a combination of who we think we were and who we are.

In your love of black and white pictures, what is your relationship to journalism and storytelling?
I was dyslexic when I was younger, I couldn’t read. I grew up looking at picture magazines, pictures were more important to me than anything else. I remember looking at magazines with Marilyn Monroe on the cover in color, but inside, the kind of stuff that was in black and white was the Vietnam War or the hurricane in Oklahoma. I felt like I was learning that the truth was in black and white.

What’s the scoop?
As an artist, our job is to be reporters of what it’s like to be alive now. Back in the 1970s, I was more interested in the art, not so much “the scene.” As an artist, the idea of making money wasn’t even on the menu. I just wanted to make art.

Now a lot of artists are fame-obsessed.
I don’t teach, but I have done visiting artist lectures at the graduate program of Columbia University and I can’t believe how some of these guys are. They shouldn’t be artists; they should be lawyers or businessmen. The 1980s got everyone confused, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Everyone wants to be famous. I wouldn’t want to be a young artist right now. It’s overwhelming.

Follow Nadja Sayej on Twitter.

Iraqi war veterans meet a dolphin. Photo via Flickr user James Brooks

As a brand, dolphins are typically known for having great sex, being really smart, and looking good on those binders all the middle school babes had. Dolphins are cool, but they’re lovers, man, not fighters. Being seen as a brand associated with toughness was left to other amphibious creatures like turtles, toads, and sharks.

Well, brand watchers, its time to update your mental associations because sometimes dolphins have harpoons on their backs and are trained to kill human beings for the benefit of Mother Russia, and that’s something we should talk about.

An American military dolphin trains with its handler. Photo via WIkimedia Commons 

You’re aware that Russia has formally annexed the Crimean peninsula from neighboring Ukraine and taken their naval ships from them. As it turns out, included in that package are dolphins trained for combat.

Battle dolphins are a Cold War relic, established in the 1960s by the Soviet Union and the United States, who were somehow able to take a break from all that nuclear stockpiling they were doing to also get into a dick-measuring contest about who could have its dolphins the most trained in espionage. Ahh, the 60s.

What does it take to be a battle dolphin, you may be wondering—particularly if you’re a disenfranchised dolphin yourself looking for a greater purpose in life? Well, battle dolphins are capable of many great military purposes: they use their natural sonar to help detect enemy vessels, they deliver equipment to deep-sea divers, and they can detect underwater mines.

The US used dolphins in Vietnam to guard military boats and possibly kill enemy frogmen, which the Navy obviously denies. Dolphins were also used in Iraq to help guide oil freighters through treacherous waters.

Dolphins swim next to a U.S. military support ship. Photo via Wikimedia Commons 

Based in San Diego and still in effect today, the United States Navy Marine Mammal Program, with about 70 battle dolphins in tow, is the only other battle dolphin program in the world besides the one that Russia just acquired in Crimea.

When the Cold War ended, the battle dolphins employed by the Soviets fell into Ukraine’s possession, since Crimea was part of their territory. But without as many geopolitical foes to be paranoid about, the dolphins didn’t have much battling to do.

Ukraine sold off several of its dolphins to Iran more than 10 years ago, along with a handful of sea lions and walruses, because it couldn't afford to feed the animals, according to the BBC.

So, the Ukrainian battle dolphins ended up being repurposed for civilian programs, namely to provide therapy for autistic and emotionally disturbed children. That’s right: Battle dolphins also have a heart of gold. How they didn’t have some kind of animated series and toy line in the 90s is beyond me.

A U.S. Navy marine commands this trained dolphin with hand signals. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Anyway, Russia put a stop to all that “helping kids” nonsense and now the dolphins will be utilized for battle purposes once again.

“The Ukrainian Navy lacked the funds for such know-how, and some projects had to be shuttered,” a source at the Crimean dolphin base told RIA Novosti, a state-operated Russian media source. "Our experts have developed new devices, which convert the detection of objects by the dolphins' underwater sonar to a signal on an operator's monitor.”

Of course, the Ukrainians don’t see it that way. Vladislav Seleznyov, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military, told the Washington Post that while the dolphins have been trained for combat, they don’t necessarily need to be used for it. "In my opinion, dolphins are not a military asset," he said.

Animals have been used in other strange ways during the 20th century. For instance, during World War II, the Soviets famously made it a regular practice to strap bombs to dogs and send them under German tanks.

Bats were used as remote bombs by the United States to attack Japan, also during World War II. The idea was pitched by Eleanor Roosevelt’s dentist, who realized you could cause a lot of damage if you strapped napalm devices to bats and sent them across Japan’s mostly wooden homes. Turned out he was right. He later said this technique could have been expanded to end the war in Japan rather than using nuclear weapons. He was probably right about that too, but at a certain point everyone was tired of listening to the guy who just wanted to strap a bunch of bombs to bats.

A U.S. Navy mate tends to a dolphin while aboard an aircraft. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Dolphins with harpoons, dogs with bombs, bats with napalm: In a way, these battle animals were essentially paving the way for modern drone warfare. Drones are a brand no one wants to embrace right now, but I see an opportunity to improve the branding of both dolphins and drones simultaneously by linking the two. After all, can you really hate drones’ callous elimination of human life if dolphins basically invented it? Of course not. Try to hate a dolphin. It’s impossible. And now you support drones.

Hit me up, Obama.

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