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Is America Ready to Finally Elect Presidents by Popular Vote?

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Bizarre 2012 electoral college proceedings in Massachusetts. Photo via Flickr user Governor Deval Patrick

US presidential elections are frequently the butt of jokes worldwide, and deservedly so. Between the eye-popping fundraising totals, the awkward pandering to billionaires, and the shameless jockeying for the support of key interest groups in weird places like Iowa and New Hampshire, there's a lot to hate.

Much of this can be blamed on the electoral college. Instead of simply counting votes nationwide and giving the Oval Office to the guy or gal with the most ballots, America holds 50 statewide elections, then awards points called "electors" to the winner of each election. It's a confusing system that makes winning 51 percent of the votes in California more than ten times as valuable as winning 100 percent of the votes in Nebraska, and gives special status to the few swing states that could go either way. Standard practice nowadays is for candidates to camp out in the dozen or so of these key states, which enjoy special status because their cities are surrounded by dense, conservative suburbs that balance out the votes of liberal urbanites. This means millions of voters are effectively stuck on the margins of political life, and thanks to our system we risk disaster every four years.

George W. Bush's incredible non-victory in 2000—which came, of course, thanks to an assist from his dad's pals on the Supreme Court—may be the the most recent example, but it doesn't even scratch the surface of the twisted intrigue that the electoral college has encouraged over the years. After the 1876 election saw the electors go one way and the popular vote the other, the "compromise" that was reached set the stage for a flood of Jim Crow laws and racial terrorism into the American South, as a key concession from the Republicans was to remove occupying federal troops that had been in the former Confederate states since the Civil War.

Never one to pass up an opportunity to pander to idealistic young voters who think this sort of thing is ridiculous, earlier this month Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York signed a bill into law making his state the 11th in the country to join the National Popular Vote (NPV) compact, which supporters expect to soon pave the way for the demise of the electoral college.

The idea is that if states comprising a majority of electoral votes (the magic number is currently 270) pass laws agreeing to award their share to the winner of the national popular vote as soon as a sufficent number of other states have done the same thing, the reluctance of federal lawmakers to overhaul what many believe to be an absurdly archaic system would instantly be rendered irrelevant.

That Cuomo was able to get lots of Republicans on board with the idea might lead you to think this is a bipartisan cause. But all of the states on the NPV bandwagon have one thing in common: They lean Democratic, or are so-called "Blue States." Which presents a pretty big problem if you want to get to the threshold that you'd need to make nationwide changes to the system.

"Republicans have this perception out of the 2000 presidential election that the electoral college favors them," said Michael McDonald, an expert on voter behavior at George Mason University. "Now the truth of the matter is, who knows? In 2004 Republicans were very worried [John] Kerry was going to win the electoral college and lose the popular vote."

That, obviously, did not happen. Spooked by his party's popular vote meltdown in 2000, infamous GOP strategist Karl Rove made sure Evangelical turnout ramped up in safely Republican states like Georgia in order to bolster their national margin, and Bush secured re-election by a healthy three million votes.

The reformist thinking, as captured by the New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg's recent blog post on the subject, holds that the electoral college skews voter intent by making most of us a sideshow, and leads to the TV airwaves being flooded in those states unfortunate enough to be closely divided. He dreams of a more democratic America where money's influence is dispersed across the 50 states and presidential campaigns are about winning over the entire country rather than some angry steelworkers in Ohio. Experts agree a truly national eleciton would probably increase turnout, as those of us living in predictable states like Texas and California would suddenly have a motivation to head to the polls.

Lost in all of this is that most Republicans, according to surveys, feel the same way about the electoral college as the rest of the planet. But elite signaling by GOP powerbrokers—who tend to decry reform proposals as tantamount to a left-wing coup d'état—inevitably seems to turn them against the idea whenever it comes up on their territory. Even so, Oklahoma's senate passed the NPV this winter (it's currently stuck, waiting for the state house to act).

Despite the palpable sense of momentum, it's tough to see this playing out as electoral college foes might like.

"We're reaching the upper limit of where this NPV compact can go at the moment," McDonald told me, before throwing in a warning: "If you don't like money in politics now, you would not like what would have to happen for a national popular vote plan."

His fear is that nationwide campaigns would be even more dominated by money, as expensive TV ad markets in coastal cities like San Francisco and New York would require huge investments from campaigns, which would leave them with less to spend on grassroots organizing. Inevitably, candidates would have to raise even greater amounts of cash than they do now, and dozens of new super PACs would crop up on both sides to help buoy the official campaigns.

Making things extra complicated is that some constitutional scholars question whether the NPV is even legal.

"The proposed NPV compact is plainly unconstitutional for a reason that has received very little attention," Daniel H. Lowenstein of the UCLA School of Law wrote me in an email. "The legislature has plenary authority to select a means by which the state selects electors. The legislature is not authorized to select a means by which someone else, such as the Pope, or the Queen of England, or the United Nations General Assembly, or a majority of voters in the United States can select electors."

So don't go getting your hopes up for an end to this system any time soon. Besides, the obscenity of the electoral college is arguably a distraction from more urgent problems like corruption, which may not be baked into the Constitution but always, somehow, seems to find a way.

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.


VICE Premiere: 'The Cost of Living' by the Revelations

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The Cost of Living is the fourth studio album from Brooklyn soul group the Revelations, set to be released on April 29. The album has a classic Southern sound with an urban take on hard times. Listening to it is like having a mint julep in Bed-Stuy. The Revelations recorded The Cost of Living at Willie Mitchell’s legendary Royal Studios in Memphis. It features five original songs and three covers—including a fresh take on the 1960s Isley Brothers classic “Why When Love is Gone.” With geniuses like Stevie Wonder and B. B. King in their fan club, a schlub like you has no choice but to put the Revelations' The Cost of Living on repeat. 

Follow the Revelations on Twitter, pre-order The Cost of Living, and watch the video for "Why When Love Is Gone."

Venezuelan Protesters Replaced Judas With Maduro and Burned Him on Easter

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Venezuelan Protesters Replaced Judas With Maduro and Burned Him on Easter

Canada’s Domestic Violence Courts Didn’t Work in the 90s and They Don’t Work Today

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Photo via WikiMedia Commons.
It’s the definition of he said/she said. At Ottawa’s specialized domestic violence court at the Ottawa Courthouse, Judge Neil Kozloff heard the case of Ian, a man accused of partner assault—or allegedly pulling his pregnant wife to the ground by her hair and choking her.

The crown prosecutor relied on four witnesses: the victim, her friend, and two police officers who were called to the scene. The defence called only one witness: Ian. Did he mean to grab her hair or was it an accident? Did she punch him in the face before or after he pushed her to the ground? Did he even push her to the ground, or did she trip over his feet? Is he lying, or is she? These are the questions both the Crown and defence tried to answer. Neither had much evidence other than their respective witnesses’ testimony. And the testimony better not take too longer—Judge Kozloff has a flight to catch.

Heavy reliance on victim testimony was one of the key issues the specialized court was supposed to solve. Courthouses aren’t well suited to deal with the issue of domestic violence, with its complex power dynamics and dramatic implications for families. That’s why the domestic violence courts exist. Or did, at least in Newfoundland. Last year, the province’s government completely cut the domestic violence court program from its budget. Now, cases of intimate partner violence will go through the courts like any other assault case.

“We’re back to where we always were,” said Lynn Moore, a lawyer who worked as a prosecutor for Newfoundland’s Department of Justice for 20 years. “There’s no counseling for the offenders, no prosecution for the offenders, so the risk level for women and children is rising.”

When domestic violence cases go through the normal court system, charges are rarely laid. Victims often recant their testimony out of fear, request that charges be withdrawn, or judges decide that jail is too harsh a sentence for a man who just needs help. Generally, women want violence to stop. They don’t necessarily want to see the father of their children or their partner of many years behind bars. But the constant back-and-forth of calling the police just to go to court and drop the charges perpetuates the cycle. The abuser gets more and more pissed off and the victim becomes more and more vulnerable.

“Pretty much nobody got anything unless you killed her or caused serious bodily harm,” said Vivien Green, who was executive director of the Woman Abuse Council of Toronto when the specialized court was created. “The men get no consistent message that this is wrong. That’s one of the bottom lines,” Green said.

That’s what Ontario looked like before the domestic violence court was created in 1997. And it’s what Newfoundland looks like today. Newfoundland’s family violence intervention court provided perpetrators with counseling instead of jail time, and had mandatory charging so that even if a woman declined to testify, charges would be laid. The counseling program taught abusive partners to think about what triggers their violence, and how to deal with that anger in other ways. Men who went through the program were four times less likely to reoffend than men who didn’t, Moore said. So in order to save money, the government cut a program that prevented the future costs of multiple trials.

“In 20 years of prosecuting I’ve never had anyone say ‘this is a great process’ at the end of a case, except at family violence intervention court,” Moore said. “Everybody thought it was a great idea.” Women’s groups in St. John’s met on Thursday to work on their campaign to reinstate the court. “I think we’re going to see it come back,” said Moore. “The people that are in favour of the court are not giving up.”

Even in Ontario, where we are lucky enough to have a domestic violence court, huge problems with it still exist. It’s better than it was, thanks to Green. She literally wrote the standard for abuser counseling programs in Ontario, when the government realized they needed some quality control. (They got the message when one man went through the program, got his certificate, and went home to shoot his wife in the face five times. She survived and now speaks publicly about her experience.)

Still, the program’s funding hasn’t increased in 15 years. Councilors see the same number of men they did in the 1990s, despite the increase in population. And the program was just cut from 16 to 12 weeks to save money. As of April 1, men who hit their partners get less time to talk about the issue, and their partners get less time to reflect safely. A lot of men come in with macho attitudes, and it can take up to a month for any content to even be absorbed, said Green.

The counseling program also gives women time to think about the situation without their partner around, and with someone checking up on them regularly. “Shortening it at all is a real problem,” Green said.

The courts are incredibly disorganized and each one does things differently than the others, said Green’s son, Adam Helfand-Green, who runs a court watch program to sit in on proceedings at multiple domestic violence courts in Toronto. “You could have one judge that’s just awful and seems like they’re living in the 20s, and some are much better,” he said.



The Women at the Centre court watch blog.
He mentioned an example that he’d recently written about on the court watch’s blog, womenatthecentre.com. It was the case of a man who’d hit and pinned his girlfriend to the ground because she wouldn’t leave his house, leaving her with bruises all over her body and a mark on her face. The victim had taken days to contact the police, and even then had to be coaxed to do so by her friends. The judge ruled that because the couple didn’t live together, she was a trespasser and he had every right to use force. The defence lawyer was kind enough to tell the victim that his client is well versed in karate, and thus “could have hurt her more” if he wanted to. The fact that she was just bruised and scratched showed her boyfriend had demonstrated restraint, he said. It’s hard not to read this as a message that states: Listen to your boyfriend or be beaten. If you are beaten, you’re lucky you’re not dead.

In many cases, Ontario’s specialized court still completely fails victims. A lawyer represents the accused and the Crown represents the state. “There’s nobody there to represent the victim in all of this,” said Helfand-Green. “It’s just a really unfair dynamic.”

Domestic violence is not a small problem. It’s estimated that 29 per cent of Canadian women have been physically or sexually abused by a partner, according to a 2011 University of Ottawa study, Specialized Domestic Violence Courts: Do They Make Women Safer? Nearly 90 percent of all partner violence is men assaulting their female partners, the study says. And our current system does not have women’s safety at the forefront, said Holly Johnson, one of the authors of the study.

Judges like the one mentioned may not be the standard, but there’s no way of educating him or determining how many other judges have similar attitudes. “The judges have been a real weak link,” said Green. She sat in on some of the domestic violence sensitivity training for Ontario judges and said it was “pretty pathetic.” Judges can only be trained by fellow judges, and women’s groups are seen as partisan advocacy groups that could sway their objectivity. Green invited a judge to hear from women’s groups once. He was an administrative judge, so he just assigned other judges to cases and didn’t actually hear them himself. He came to one meeting, and requested that all paper work with his name on it be shredded so no one would ever know he met with women’s groups. “They see knowledge as something that’s going to influence the judge’s decision,” Green said.

Right now, we have a one-size-fits all program that treats a minor first-time offender the same way it does a highly dangerous sociopath. “The worst part about this is that there’s been no-evidence-based—dare I say—rational thought, about it,” Green said. Another criticism is that the program changes physical behaviour without dealing with how abusers think, so they’re still emotionally abusive. “I guess I would say at least she’s not dead,” said Green.

Apparently that’s all Canadian women can ask for.


@waitwhichemma

Bad Cop Blotter: Is Obama Finally About to Use His Pardon Powers to Set Prisoners Free?

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Photo via Flickr user Beth Rankin

Last week, President Barack Obama commuted the prison sentence of a man who had spent three extra years behind bars because of a typo. This was a nice use of the executive privilege of pardons, but it was a blip in the career of a president whose underuse of that power is just another reason for civil liberties advocates to be disappointed in him.

According to a Yahoo News article by Liz Goodwin, however, that disappointment may be about to turn into at least tepid excitement. Goodwin's story is focused on Barbara Scrivner, a woman serving 30 years for meth distribution because of mandatory minimum sentencing. Scrivner’s story—sexual abuse, a negligent mother, depression, early drug use, and a collection of addict-convict boyfriends—is a perfect, dreadful picture of how a troubled person making bad choices can have her life further destroyed by lunatic drug laws. Previously, Scrivner has been denied appeals, though even the judge who sentenced her says she should have received a lighter punishment. But she is trying again, because Obama is maybe about to get kinder and gentler.

In Goodwin’s piece, an unnamed senior administration official claims Obama may be leaning toward granting clemency to "hundreds, perhaps thousands" of prisoners like Scrivner. One of the reasons this may finally happen is that Ronald Rodgers, the Department of Justice’s pardon attorney—who has been opposed to this kind of mercy-showing—is expected to resign, and Obama told a group of prosecutors that he wants to see pardon requests with his own eyes. On Monday, Holder announced that the Justice Department was preparing to hear thousands more requests for clemency from imprisoned crack users.

President Obama has been more miserly in his use of pardons and commutations than any modern president—ProPublica estimated that prisoners whose pardon applications got to Obama’s desk have only a 1 in 50 chance of having their requests granted (though most applications never get to his desk at all). In the last few months, Obama has pardoned a few more prisoners, including some inmates who got screwed by the disproportionately harsh sentences handed down to people who were caught with crack as opposed to powdered cocaine. And last August, Attorney General Eric Holder offered some guidelines—though ones the next administration can ignore—that offer leniency to nonviolent drug offenders. Meanwhile, reducing mandatory minimum sentences that can send people to prison for insanely long periods has become, shockingly, a bipartisan issue that is getting somewhere in Congress. So while the times are a-changin’, a little, Obama hasn’t taken the lead on this issue, despite having spoken eloquently about racism in the justice system, as well as his own youthful drug use.

Holder's announcement, however, makes it more likely that Obama will be using his pardoning power to do some real good and free some people from the cages they’re trapped in. Granting some pardons won’t, by itself, reverse the generations-long effects of the war on drugs, but this would be no small start in terms of righting some of those wrongs.

Here are this week’s bad cops:

–A 78-year-old man in Humansville, Missouri, says he was attacked by police on April 10 because they thought his wife was in trouble. Elbert Breshears called an ambulance to help his wife because she suffers from dementia and had knocked out a window, but the cops showed up before paramedics and apparently assumed he was the bad guy. Breshears says an officer knocked him to the ground, then ordered him to get up to be handcuffed, though the senior citizen couldn’t stand after being struck by the cop. Photographs of Breshears taken later by paramedics confirm that he had a head injury that required stitches as well as a black eye. Thanks to the usual logic of encounters with the police that result in violence, Breshears is currently being charged with elder abuse, resisting arrest, and assaulting a police officer, though he says he wants to press charges against the police. His wife of 47 years is getting care in a nursing home.

–On Friday, VICE contributor Justin Glawe reported on how his friend Jon Daniel’s home was raided on Tuesday because he created a parody Twitter account to make fun of Jim Ardis, the mayor of Peoria, Illinois. The account was actually shut down by Twitter weeks ago because it wasn’t clearly labeled as parody, but seven plainclothes officers from the Peoria police department showed up at Daniel’s home anyway—the social media funnyman said his house was trashed, his roommates were cuffed and interrogated for hours, and police took away his phone and other electronic devices to prove he'd originated the Twitter account. (No charges have been filed as of yet.) It hardly need be said that this is situation is fucking ridiculous in every conceivable way. Already, a bunch of Jim Ardis parody Twitter accounts have appeared in the original’s place.

–A deputy who was serving an eviction notice in Riverside, California, on Wednesday accidentally shot himself in the leg when he tried to take down an approaching pit bull. According to spokesman for the sheriff’s department, the pit bull, named Precious, approached the deputy in “an aggressive manner,” so he fired, scaring the dog into complacency but injuring himself in the process. A local TV crew later filmed Precious calmly wagging her tail while children petted it—hardly the dangerous animal the cops made it out to be. The owner, who felt bad for the injured deputy, says the dog was indeed barking, as dogs will do, but the dog was behind a fence. A good rule of thumb is to not shoot dogs when there’s a barrier between you and them.

–Footage of Vandegrift High School student rushing the field Saturday after a winning championship soccer game in Austin, Texas, shows a uniformed police officer tripping and shoving several students. That was probaly not what his assignment was! A local Georgetown police officer—seen at the top of the frame in television footage—was seen more clearly in cell phone video taken by 15-year-old Rohan Gupta, who told local news station KXAN that “[The cop] should’ve used better judgement. We’re high schoolers just trying to have some fun after our team won.” The department is going to forward the video to internal affairs for investigation, but you gotta wonder how much “investigating” needs to be done in the case of a cop knocking over kids.

–Masslive’s Garrett Quinn (a friend of mine) reported on April 21 on some of the arguably excessive security measures instituted at the Boston Marathon one year after the Tsarnaev brothers killed three people and injured 260 with their pressure cooker bombs. These controversial measures will include bag searches for race watchers, a ban on backpacks for runners, bomb dogs, 3,000 police officers, and 400 military police officers. Quinn interviewed a 27-year veteran of the Boston police department whose civil liberties–savvy concerns about all this tough stuff makes him our Good Cop of the Week, even if he is retired. Tom Nolan, now a criminal justice professor at SUNY-Plattsburgh in New York, told Quinn that bag searches in public without a warrant are a violation of the Fourth Amendment. “This is a public place, these are public streets,” he said. “People have the absolute right to travel them without being stopped and searched by police.” Nolan also criticized the psychic effect that this kind of security theater has—people accept it so they can feel safer, and their rights get stripped away in the process. Hopefully other cops are paying attention to what Nolan is saying—some of them might consider taking his classes.

Lucy Steigerwald is a freelance writer and photographer. Read her blog here and follow her on Twitter.

Dear VICE - Old People Read Your Magazine Too

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Pamela Stewart, an old who reads VICE. Photo courtesy of the author

Here's a letter from an old person who reads VICE. We don't typically publish stuff like this, but there are a few adorable "old people be crazy and feeble" lines in there, and it's been a while since we posted a letter from a reader, so we figured why not. She's also trying to help a fellow old person who was scammed out of her life savings by some young crooks. Old people be crazy, young people be thieving. Anyway, send us more letters, olds. You shall be heard. The world may be fast-moving and scary to you, but you have a calm friend in VICE. Let us be your most trusted media outlet during your final years on Earth.

If you're lucky, you will all be old one day. Or maybe that isn’t such a good thing. Getting old ain’t fun. Until you experience aging, you really don’t have a clear understanding of what it is like. It’s not just saggy boobs, slack vaginas, and dangling balls—you become invisible. Terry Richardson isn’t going to take your photo, although he is on the slide—one day he will find that his substantial dick doesn’t work without the aid of pharmaceuticals.

I’m in the six percent of people over 41 who read VICE. At 61, I am in the demographic some people like to call “Boomers” or even worse, “Zoomers,” who are apparently boomers with zip, if you read something as equally offensive as some of the articles in VICE.

I’ve been reading VICE since my two sons were teenagers and used to bring the print version home. I’m rarely shocked by anything I read, although sometimes it upsets me. My kids and I used to put together a zine called Dysfunctional Family, and I took a lot of flak for letting them use the word "fuck" and produce art that was disturbing to some people, so I am pretty open-minded about shit.

While the body starts to fall apart, there should be a trade-off in wisdom, but that doesn’t always happen. When I hang out with my sons and their friends, they not only turn me on to some cool music; they expand my inner world, open my mind to new possibilities, and make me laugh—a lot. That’s important. VICE makes me laugh too, especially the “DOs & DONT's,” which is a section I hope I never get caught in.

I’m sorry if we old folks have fucked up the world for you. Some of us had good intentions in the 60s and then became corporate assholes and government lackeys. We have provided some value, even if it's just weed brownies or the beginnings of music that you have taken and made better or worse. We gave you life—that must be worth something. Some of you were planned, and some of you sprung forth from stoned or drunken moments of passion, but we were young then, like you. I know you don’t want to think about old people having sex.

I did a search on VICE for topics about old people. I got: “Old People Having Sex Is Gross, Despite What the Huffington Post Says.” I also got this: “Old People Hate Hipsters, Justin Bieber, and Kurt Cobain, Poll Shows.”

Everyone hates Justin Bieber, unless he or she is someone who really is too young to be reading VICE. Doesn’t everyone hate hipsters? I loved Kurt Cobain, so I don’t fit into that group. Yes, I know this article was about something more important, but the title doesn’t show that—anyone who writes for the internet knows you need a headline that will get hits.

Young people may have invented SEO and all that shit, but old people can be cunning. I’ve used this platform and hopefully got you to read this far for one reason only. I have an Indiegogo campaign. I’m embarrassed to say that I had to explain what Indiegogo and crowdfunding is to my peer group, and they still don’t get it. Some couldn’t figure out how to donate, so they haven’t.

That’s why I have to reach out to you young people, who know about this shit. You aren’t going to be helping me; you are going to be helping a really old person—94-year-old Norma Marshall. She is a Toronto woman who was scammed out of her life savings. The mainstream media wrote about Norma the day the police had a press conference on April 2, and then forgot about her.

I’m running out of time, and my campaign is turning into a flop. I don’t have anywhere near the donations I need, so I am going to the people who know what crowdfunding is. I know I have to compete with all those fantastic tech inventions and Burning Man projects. You are supposed to offer perks on your crowdfunding, but I don’t have any.

If you donate here, I’ll make a deal with you. I promise not to show you my naked, aging body or videos of me having sex, because I don’t want to gross you out. To be honest, I haven’t had sex in a while. Not because I don’t want to, but the pickings are slim when you are an older woman.

I also won’t regale you with stories about my misspent youth when acid was really acid—the Timothy Leary kind. I definitely won’t go on about how you inherited all your coolness from our generation, because it isn’t true. I don’t even know if “coolness” is a word, but it’s on Urban Dictionary, so I guess it must be.

Donate to the Indiegogo campaign for Norma Marshall here.

VICE Premiere: 'Drift' by Prism House

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If you’re looking for something to pair nicely with the dopamine that’s been caking your neuron receptors since you ate that space cake yesterday afternoon, you should listen to Prism House’s latest single, “Drift.” The electronic duo describes the song as a "an exploration in otherworldly dance music" and an "attempt at blending the predictable with the experimental," and we couldn't agree more. We've been following the Brooklyn-based Brian Wenner and Matt O’Hare since they started releasing songs in 2011, and they just keep getting better. We can't wait for the release of Landfall, their latest EP, which drops April 29 on Ceremony Records. But in the meantime, we'll just keep "Drift" on repeat. 

Pre-order Landfall EP and follow Prism House on Twitter

Ex-Soldiers Are Being Given MDMA to Help Them Forget About War

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Tony Macie

If hanging out with a bunch of strangers in a foreign country, shooting at other strangers for a living wasn’t damaging enough, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is always there to prolong the trauma once combat soldiers return from war. Around 25 percent discharged American soldiers suffer from the disorder.

Tony Macie, an Iraq veteran, is one of those soldiers. Traumatized by the deaths of two of his friends in a truck bomb attack, Macie was prescribed conventional medication to treat his PTSD after returning to the US. When that wasn’t working out for him, he started to research alternative remedies and came across the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which was offering an experimental treatment with MDMA.

I gave Tony a call and spoke to him about using the drug to try to overcome his post-Iraq trauma.

Tony in Iraq

VICE: Hi, Tony. Can you tell me about your experience of serving in Iraq?
Tony Macie: I was there for 15 months. A lot of the time I was clearing roads, and there was a constant fear of being ambushed. I think it was six months into my tour. I wasn’t there when it happened, but a petrol base got hit by a truck bomb and killed a couple of my buddies. That was really upsetting; it was the point when I was like, "This is real. This is war."

Do you think you were suffering more than your colleagues? Or was everyone in the same boat?
I think everyone was suffering. At times we didn’t realize it, though, because we were so focused on staying alive.

Were there any points when you felt particularly afraid for your life?
Probably just after the car bomb went off. We were there for three days straight guarding the road, just waiting for another car bomb to come. There was a point when we were sitting in the Humvee and we thought there was going to be an attack. Nothing happened in the end, but I was out there for three days, on night duty, just waiting for something to happen. Over there, death could have happened at any point. I was always expecting an ambush or a fire fight.

How did you feel when you got back to America?
At first, there was a lot of relief. I was glad to be back and felt kind of safe. But after a couple of days I couldn’t really sleep and I started overheating. After a couple of weeks I started drinking to go to sleep, and a month or two after that I started to have anxiety and panic attacks. That’s when I decided to go to the doctors.

What did they prescribe you?
They gave me anti-depressants; I don’t remember which ones. Then Xanax and a couple of sleeping pills.

Did that have any positive effect?
I’m not a big fan of anti-depressants; they had side effects that didn’t help at all. If anything, they made things worse. I ended up taking even more medication.

How did you first find out about the MDMA trials for your PTSD?
I looked at alternative treatment for PTSD on the internet, read about how MDMA was used in treatment and found out about the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). I contacted them to give it a shot.

Can you tell me about your MDMA trial?
The dose was 75mg, which I took once in pill form. I went to meet with the guys three or four times before I took the MDMA, just to talk with them about the trial. I was on the coach and just relaxing for the first hour after I took it, but I started to feel a lot of anxiety when the MDMA was about to kick in. I think I was trying to fight it.

Then the MDMA kicked in and I started to feel good. I felt relaxed and calm, and a complete peace came over me. Memories came up I was previously trying to ignore, but then as soon as I would let the memory come up I would have a wave of pleasure, so I think my body was telling me to accept the memories. I also felt I needed to take the positives out of everything, no matter what the situation is. I also came to a lot of realizations when I was on the MDMA.

Tony in Iraq

What kind of realizations?
I was using painkillers, and when I was in the session I realized that I was very dependent on them. I also realized that I had to accept the past how it was. I needed to move on; there was nothing I could do to change it.

How did the MDMA treatment affect your relationships with friends and family?
I realized that I was pushing people away, so I rekindled a lot of relationships with my family and friends and I was more open to love. I also felt I was able to talk and communicate again. When I got home I couldn’t really communicate with my family, but I think I'm a lot closer to them now. But, just in general, I don’t try to say negative things to people now. My relationship with PTSD has also changed completely.

How long did the positive feelings last for? 
I think it’s been something I have actually been feeling more and more. I feel I can open up more now and talk to people about things. It’s a continual thing.

Did you feel any negative effects when you were coming down?
Not really. The only side effect was that my jaw might have been a little sore, but I didn’t really feel any negative effects from the treatment. It was a very positive experience.

Are you going to do more sessions?
If I start to drink or suffer from symptoms again then I would try to do it if I could—if it was legal.

Would you recommend the MDMA treatment to other veterans?
I wouldn’t recommend that anyone try it off the street, but I feel there should be more trials and research into this treatment. I want anyone who is lost as a result of trauma to be able to have this tool at his or her disposal. For me, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy opened the doors to compassion, love, and moving on.

Thanks for chatting to me, Tony.


I Interviewed Sex Therapist Dr. Suzy at Her 22nd Wedding Anniversary Party

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Dr. Suzy and her husband, Captain Max. Photos by Elizabeth Vazquez.

Dr. Susan Block, better known as Dr. Suzy, is a sex therapist based in Los Angeles. She has been in the business of sex for several decades. Her works spans from hosting her own radio show and television show, to authoring several books and co-creating a holiday known as “Eros Day.” To say that Suzy loves sex is an understatement.

I was given a confidential address to Dr. Suzy's headquarters by one of the many volunteers who work for her. The giant building is an old motel that is now in the process of being converted into what Suzy dubs, “Bonoboville.” Suzy is known for having sex-fueled bacchanalian parties, but the party on this night was slightly different. We were all to go to a bar nearby and celebrate the 22 years of marriage between Dr. Suzy and her husband, Prince Maximillian Rudolph Leblovic di Lobkowicz di Filangieri—Captain Max for short—who she met after he got out of prison for publishing porno magazines in the days of heavy publishing industry censorship.

I met with Dr. Suzy in her office as she was getting her corset adjusted. She described herself to me as the “green horse-woman of the apocalypse.”

VICE: So, what is Dr. Suzy about then?
Dr. Suzy
: I'm a sex therapist but I incorporate a lot of play, erotic theater therapy, phone sex, fantasy role play, erotic hypnosis—

Wait, what's that?
Erotic hypnosis? Basically hypnosis with an erotic attitude. Most hypnosis is erotic anyway. Especially if you have a sleep fetish. You can be hypnotized in order to improve your health by dieting or quitting smoking, and you can also improve your sex life. You can become more accepting of yourself and enhance certain aspects of your sex life.

Do you personally do that?
Yeah, I hypnotize people all the time. Don't worry I'm not doing it now.

I don't think I'd mind. What sort of issues do people come to you for?
The most common question people ask is, “Am I normal?” Whatever their fetish is, whatever their fantasy. They worry it could be that they have a foot fetish or a boob fetish. Well, boobs are pretty international, but it could be more specific. They could have a cuckold fetish. They could have any number of desires or interests; more than one partner, or bisexuality. Sometimes it's women who can't have an orgasm, or men who can't slow down enough to give her an orgasm or can't get it up.

So you're there to console them and make them feel “normal”?
Sometimes I'm there to console. Sometimes I'm there to say, “You know that fantasy is OK, to have as a fantasy, but you got to keep it that way,” when there's certain things they want to do that are dangerous or wrong.

Or illegal.
Yeah, you know, like lust murder. That's across-the-board wrong.

Yeah. All kinds of wrong.
So you know there are always ways to deal with a fantasy or cope with a fantasy. But, very often, I have to caution people not to act on things. People do dangerous things that are legal. Like a lot of unsafe sex that I try to help people prevent. Use your condoms! Also, “Am I normal?” It's just such a funny question. Most of the time they are, and even if they're not, I say to them, “Would you really want to be normal?”

I imagine the internet must have helped what you do?
Yeah, I don't know. My business has grown up with the internet. It started as just counseling people in person only, and then went to telephones. Honestly, I still enjoy telephones most. I feel it's the most intimate medium where you really get to mingle your ideas and fantasies and feelings. You don't care what someone looks like, and you just really get into the ideas and thoughts and feelings. Webcam is all about the looks, even more so than in person.

I totally get that.
Inflection is very important. When you have the deprivation of the other senses you can really put someone under you know? You can also more easily go into their past, when they were younger. Delve deep into the root of their fetishes. Childhood always affects you, and it's hard to talk about that when someone's looking right at you.

What do you make of sex today? Are we really that much more liberated and sex-positive?
We have some things that are better, but not so much. I'm a big supporter of the bonobos.

Oh yes, I was going to ask you about the bonobos.
They're highly endangered, but we're building more awareness. I feel they could be saved. Bonobos are the “make love not war” chimpanzees. They swing through the trees as well as with each other. They're apes. Like common chimps, they're 98.7 percent genetically similar to humans, but unlike common chimps, they've never been seen killing each other in the wild or captivity. They have a lot of sex, in lots of different positions. They have a lot to teach us about sex and sisterhood. The females are very sex positive and aggressive. The males are pretty chill.

I assume they're just happy to be getting laid.
Yeah, it's a cool “kissin' cousins” group we got in the family tree.

So we should model ourselves after these bonobos?
I'm not going to say we should model ourselves after them, but well, you said it. I don't know. Obviously, there's a lot to learn from them about our capacity for peace and capacity for pleasure.

Solving conflicts through sex?
Make peace through pleasure. I think there's hope for that in the world. Sex is always with us. It ebbs and flows. I'm celebrating 22 years of love tonight. Marriage is not very fashionable right now. It's more fashionable to consciously uncouple or whatever.

"Gwen and that guy from Coldplay"-style?
Yeah, Coldplay. I don't know his name. Anyway, it's OK. I'm all for it. Although, I love my husband. I love him, and I lust for him. Twenty-two years later feels like 22 minutes. I mean marriage is not for everybody. It's maybe even not for most people.

Do you think there's any sort of ideal relationship? I mean, is it truly different for everyone? I guess I'm talking about polyamory versus monogamy. That sort of thing.
It could be polyamory for some. I have my one-and-only. I love him with all the romance of old times. I'm all for polyamory. I'm kind of polyamorous. We play with other people, but we have this thing between the two of us called a marriage. It's a good thing for us. Marriage is an institution, and most people don't want to be institutionalized. Neither do I, but my marriage happens to be very freeing. That's the paradox of sex. Sometimes bondage is freeing. Marriage is bondage in a way. The way I don't like to be ball-gagged, some don't like to get married.

Marriage is a kink maybe?
It is! Marriage is a kink. It's a fetish. It's a thing some people are into. A good marriage that is. One that has love and lust. Love is important, but lust is what makes you happy to be together. It's what puts the spice in your enchilada.

Well, what got you first into all this sex stuff?
I first started masturbating when I was two years old.

Two?
Well, that's my first memory of doing it. I probably started before that. Not to orgasm but just for comfort.

It is comforting.
Sex is so many things. I think we hurt ourselves when we define it in one way. I don't even know. Fucking is great. Can I say fucking?

Yes, please do. Do you have different types of sex in your mind? Or, terms rather. Like this is fucking, and this is love making, or whatever.
No. When I'm fucking I'm making love. I don't have that kind of bad fucking anymore that I had when I was single.

That's exactly where I'm at now.
I feel for you.

What would you do in those situations? In those cases where someone was bad? Tell them to stop and show them what to do, or just let them have their fantasy?
Sometimes I'd tell them to stop and leave. You try all kinds of things. Kiss all kinds of frogs. Sex-wise, you could have more than one prince or princess. You can have a lot of good sex. You don't want things to be too easy. When things are too easy then you make trouble.

After our talk, Suzy had to finish getting ready and I was escorted to the bar where her party was taking place. It wasn't as crazy as I was expecting. There were topless women with pasties here and there, but it was overall a mellow night. I left at around 12:30 after having a conversation with an older man who told me he was Drew Barrymore's brother. The next day, I got an email from one of Suzy's producers. He wrote, “Hope you had a great time. Sorry you missed the after-party orgy on the Bonoboville kitchen table.” I'm sorry I missed that too, but I guess there's always next time. 

Follow Alison Stevenson on Twitter.

VICE News: Violence and Private Security in South Africa

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The high walls, electric fences, and private security guards surrounding South Africa's residences and businesses are as inherent to the country's landscape as Table Mountain is to Cape Town. And with good reason—South Africa's 2012-2013 crime statistics were the worst in a decade, with increases in murder, attempted murder, violent armed robbery, and carjackings.

Fear of crime has led to a boom in South Africa's private security industry since apartheid ended 20 years ago. The field's quick expansion is largely a result of continued social and economic inequality, increased violence, and inept police forces.

VICE News traveled to South Africa's mother city Cape Town to look at the lifestyle gap between those who can and cannot afford the luxury of safety.

Gagnef Is a Paradise

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Three hours north of Stockholm lies Gagnef, a city mostly populated by cattle, red-painted houses, and forests. In July every year however, this calm farmers’ hideout doubles its inhabitants as 1,500 hipsters gather to the tunes of music they've never heard before. Some say people go there to experience the beauty of Sweden's countryside. But one guy told us that, "going to the Gagnef Festival means you’ll have guest lists to Stockholm club nights and drug dealers sorted for the next year coming." From what we experienced, we think it might be the latter.

To see more of Felix's work click here.

How Silk Road Bounced Back from Its Multimillion-Dollar Hack

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How Silk Road Bounced Back from Its Multimillion-Dollar Hack

Cars Should Be Safe, Legal, and Rare

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A traffic jam in Kuala Lumpur. Photo via Flickr user Michael Loke

The look on the receptionist's face told me I had said something wrong. It was a maternal expression, like that of an elderly woman who has found her grandkid outside in the cold with a runny nose but no jacket. There was genuine concern in her eyes, but her pursed lips suggested a certain annoyed disbelief: Just what were you thinking, if you were thinking at all?

“You don't have a car?” she asked, accusingly.

“I don't have a car,” I replied.

It was my first day at a new job and I had taken the bus that morning. That bus took me to a subway—a futuristic train that literally goes underneath Los Angeles in order to get from one place to another—so I didn’t need a car, just like I didn’t need the people's history of the local parking situation she had graciously told me. Seriously, the subway is, like, right over there.

She nodded her head and forced a smile the way tourists do when they don't understand a word you are saying.

This happens almost daily: We, the car-less of Los Angeles, must confess our lack of an automobile as if it were a character defect on par with betting on dogfighting. You risk being judged not only at your workplace, but at the supermarket, where the teenaged bagger asks if you need any help carrying those boxes of generic cereal out to your four-wheeled expression of self. Having a car shows that you have the financial means to own a car. Not having a car makes people assume you live at home and have an unhealthy relationship with your mother—and as sexy local singles say, that's a deal-breaker.

So it’s a bit heretical when I say I like not having a car. It's actually rather nice to leave the driving to someone else and not have to worry about steering your personal air-conditioned death box at 70 miles an hour on a freeway full of idiots—and hundreds of thousands of people in the LA metro region agree with me on this. Sure, it takes a bit longer to get somewhere—30 minutes instead of 15—but you also don't have to spend 20 minutes circling the block for parking whenever you go out. And there are buses and trains that go almost anywhere, and by taking them you free yourself from worry about car payments, parking tickets, and DUIs.

You also don’t need to worry about getting mutilated in a horrific car accident. According to the US government, more than 2.3 million people were injured and 33,500 died on America’s roads in 2012. For people in the US between the ages of one and 44, motor vehicles are the leading cause of death. Avoid driving on a freeway and you significantly reduce your chance of being injured or killed on one.

Just take the bus. Photo via Flickr user adrian8_8

Public transit has another important thing going for it: community, the idea that while things may not always be going great, and yes that man sitting in the back is not just scratching himself, we're all in this commute together. Cars encourage the individual operators of the mobile social isolation chambers to compete for position in traffic, at the gas station, while exiting the freeway—the roads are fundamentally capitalistic in that cooperation is possible, but not encouraged. People may generally be good on the inside, but traffic brings out the worst in the best of us. And if you think humanity is fundamentally garbage, at least on a bus the person glaring at you over some perceived slight isn't maneuvering 2,500 pounds of potential murder.

We've all seen what cars do. Take the most quality person you know—the one with the most gentle soul, the one you would call if you were in real trouble—and put them behind the wheel and they become rage-fueled monsters ready to go off at the slightest provocation. A lazy Sunday drive down the Pacific Coast Highway can easily turn into your brother-in-law screaming at you to “get the fucking gun!” you didn't know was under the seat, all because some asshole didn't use a turn signal. Is this any way to live?

I cast this stone not as somone who has never shouted profanity at a terrified family in a Dodge Caravan (kids, your daddy should not have been in that lane), but as a sinner. I have been there myself. Twenty minutes after getting in a car, I lose all concern for those outside of it. On my own two legs, I have the usual amount human empathy, cooing at your baby and signing petitions demanding justice for a pitbull named Sally; on four wheels, I'm thinking the lady with a stroller better not start crossing that street for I am making this turn.

In a car, we have the chance to act decisively and unilaterally for the only time in our lives. We have no power over whether our jobs will be eliminated tomorrow (if we even have a job) or whether our homes will be washed away by mudslides, but driving a vehicle gives us control over a machine that has power to kill. That's maybe the reason even the most wilted of flowers turn into full-grown alpha males behind the wheel. And in a country where the masculine ideal is a vigilante with anger issues, that's potentially lethal.

Everyone gets frustrated and pissed off behind the wheel of a car. Photo via Flickr user Jared and Corin

“Oh, come on, you liberal prick,” I hear the reader say. “Because peace will come if everyone just buys a bus pass, right? Some people have jobs—real ones, not some bullshit writing thing—and they need a car to get to them and, hey, that doesn't make them bad people. Please call your mother. Love, Dad.”

OK, some people do need cars to get to their jobs because our cities are set up in such a way that jobs are sometimes far away from residential areas. Fine. But for most, buses and trains are already a viable alternative to the personal automobile, even in those cities that represent the worst in car culture. LA once had a world-class electrified streetcar system, but city planners allowed it to be torn apart—GO WATCH ROGER RABBIT NOT JOKINGbelieving the future to be thousands of stupid gas-powered cars all stupidly going to the same stupid place. But even in this town, which is decades behind in its development of public transit, you can get all the way from Skid Row in downtown to the beach in Santa Monica in about an hour, or less time than it takes to get from Brooklyn to the Bronx. After the city finishes extending the subway, which will supposedly happen by the end of next year, that trip will take about half the time, which is to say: Watch out, yuppies, we're coming.

Still, despite all the benefits that public transit brings in in the form of reduced aggravation, pollution, and fatalities, officials in LA are considering more than doubling fares over the next eight years, which will only discourage people from using buses and trains. Most transportation funding goes toward subsidizing the use of private transportation, so while there's always more money for freeways, the public transit system has a projected $225 million budget shortfall over the next decade and riders are the ones expected to cover it.

Now, maybe owning a car in a city shouldn't be banned outright—I'm undecided—but even with a second-tier public transit system, driving one is some damn foolishness, and those who choose to engage in such a dangerous, harmful activity should have to subsidize my bus fare. Ideally, this would come in the form of tolls or a carbon tax or direct transfers of wealth from those who have cars to those who do not, but rich people and their politicians aren't going to do any of that anytime soon. So maybe the next time some smug car owner rrasks me how I get by taking the bus with all those people, I just might have to take a direct action and slash their tires.

Charles Davis is a writer in Los Angeles. His work has been published by Al Jazeera, Inter Press Service, the New Inquiry, and Salon.

The Toxic Uzbek Town and Its Museum of Banned Soviet Art

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Chaikhana with the Portrait of Lenin by Alexander Volkov, one of the banned pieces of Soviet art now housed in the State Art Museum of the Republic of Karakalpakstan

Making our way out of Uzbekistan’s Xorazm Province, we began our three-hour drive to the city of Nukus, capital of the country’s autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan. Up until the late 1990s, the land we were driving through was still cotton fields; today, it’s just an expanse of salty gray emptiness.

Once a thriving agricultural center, Karakalpakstan is now one of the unhealthiest places on Earth. Respiratory illness, typhoid fever, tuberculosis and esophageal cancer are rife, and the region has the highest infant-mortality rate in the former USSR.

These problems started with the destruction of the Aral Sea, which dates back to the US Civil War. After finding his supply of American cotton under threat, the Russian tsar decided to use the sea’s tributaries to irrigate Central Asia and create his very own reserve of cotton plantations. With a staggering 1.8 million liters of water needed for every cotton bale, the liquid began to run out, and by 2007 the Aral had shrunk to one-tenth its original size.

An abandoned construction site and derelict Soviet block in Nukus

The dehydration of the landscape has led to vast toxic dust-storms that ravage around 1.5 million square miles of land. Spreading nitrates and carcinogens, these storms used to hit once every five years, but now they come ten times a year.

North of Nukus, beyond rusted ships stranded in the manmade desert, Vozrozhdeniya, or “Rebirth Island,” contains the ruins of a Soviet bio-weapons facility that you might recognize from a mission in Call of Duty: Black Ops, in which you have to kill a bunch of Russian doctors in hazmat suits. Sensors on the island's testing range measured the effects of smallpox, brucellosis, and the bubonic plague on monkeys, sheep, and donkeys (all tied a mile apart), until it was quickly vacated following the collapse of the USSR. Now joined to the mainland thanks to the Aral Sea’s falling water levels, the island is an eerie wasteland of smashed test tubes and petri dishes, its radioactive scraps fought over by smugglers.

Getting out of our car in Nukus, we were greeted by a smack of hot, dry air, machine gun-wielding guards sweating outside the Council of Ministers building and a child with a goiter the size of a pomegranate circling us on his bicycle.

A man passed out at the Markaziy bazaar, Nukus

Sprinkled around the thinly spread city center, nondescript Soviet-era blocks were smattered with broken windows and attempts at Timurid motifs. Groups of unemployed men hunkered together, loitering on street corners, and there was a wedding taking place near the distinctly un-amusing amusement park.

In the bustling Markaziy bazaar, babushkas in socks and sandals peddled the cheapest brands of loose cigarettes from buckled wooden trays; men wearing skull caps lay passed out in the shade of tin shacks, drained bottles of vodka at their sides; and the young women flashed glimpses of gold teeth—normally a sign of wealth, but here a by-product of endemic malnutrition; in Karakalpakstan it's either gold teeth or bare gums.

Savitsky's art museum in Nukus. Photo via WikiMedia Commons

Yet it’s in this environment that a remarkable collection of art has survived, precisely because of its inhospitable location. Ukrainian-born art collector Igor Savitsky collected thousands of avant-garde artworks banned in the Soviet Union under Stalin and founded the State Art Museum of the Republic of Karakalpakstan in the mid 1960s. The museum houses works from a forgotten generation of artists—their styles far removed from the “Socialist realism” permitted by the Communist regime of the time—who mostly met an unsavory end.

In the Cart by Alexander Volkov

Featuring geometric scenes of everyday Central Asian life, Alexander Volkov’s colorful oil paintings saw him labeled a bourgeois reactionary after Stalin issued a campaign against free-thinking artists. Fired from his posts, he lost everything, and over the course of the next three years all his works were removed from the leading Russian museums. Moscow ordered that Volkov be isolated from anyone who had anything to do with the art world, and if anyone requested to meet the artist the authorities would tell them that he was far too ill to receive visitors. In many ways, however, Volkov was one of the lucky ones—at least he avoided the gulags.

On His Knees by Lev Galperin

A fusion of dadaism and cubism, a piece called On His Knees is one of the only surviving works by Lev Galperin, a painter and sculptor from Odessa. His paintings were regarded as counterrevolutionary, and he was arrested on Christmas Day of 1934 and sentenced to five years of hard labor. During his trial, Galperin dared to voice his feelings about the Soviet regime and the state of art in the union. His death certificate reads, “Cause of death: execution by shooting.”

A series of sketches by Nadezhda Borovaya show what conditions were like in the gulags. When her husband was executed by the authorities in 1938, Borovaya was sent to the Temnikov Camp, where she spent the next seven years secretly recording and smuggling out scenes of daily life. Savitsky managed to procure funding to purchase these drawings for his museum by persuading party officials that they were depictions of Nazi concentration camps, not the Soviet forced-labor facilities.

Islam Karimov on a billboard in Nukus

On the upper floor, an entire section of the museum is dedicated to a visit from Uzbek despot Islam Karimov. Even in the desert of forbidden art, the authorities were watching—Karimov scowling down from billboards in the abandoned construction sites outside the museum. In fact, his influence was everywhere; as we walked around this remotest of backwaters, it took us three hours to find the city’s sole internet hub, but we passed plenty of elegant clay tennis courts along the way. The president’s daughters clearly liked tennis.

That evening, the only thing open along the main drag—besides the shashlik grill being manned by two slurring middle-aged men—was a bar. Settling on a rickety bench, we sat in front of a fridge containing one lonely bottle of UzCarlsberg.

Making their way along the uneven pavement outside, a pair of khaki-clad police paused by the crumbling lattice fence. The atmosphere in the bar immediately changed—the conversation became stilted and the barmaid’s smile turned into a wary grimace as she clicked the radio off. Having stumbled upon the only two tourists in town, the soldiers blocked the pitch-dark track to the back-alley toilet, indicating that we should pay them to use this hole in the ground.

Making their excuses, all of the bar’s other patrons soon vanished, clearly experienced when it came to escaping this kind of fleecing. “Go! Close!” the flustered barmaid pleaded with us, wringing her hands. It wasn’t even 10:00 PM.

Briefly mulling over the disappearing act we’d just seen, we figured that it was probably a good idea to take the barmaid’s advice, so we backed away and left Nukus and its avant-garde art museum behind. 

This story is excerpted from Stephen Bland's forthcoming book Does It Yurt?

Follow Stephen Bland on Twitter.@StephenMBland

I Ate Live Food from the Pet Store for a Week

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Photos by Steven Smith

Somewhere along the great corporate coastline of the North American highway system a truck driver is hitching-up his pants and sauntering across the asphalt to his rig. Behind him, golden arches eclipse the setting sun. He is an elite member of an army of civilian road warriors, transporting somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 billion pounds of meat per year to restaurants and supermarkets across the country.

According to every environmental expert out there, producing that amount of meat is completely unsustainable. The average American eats 270 pounds of meat per year, putting us in second place (behind Luxembourg, oddly enough) as the flesh-eating capital of the world.

According to the EPA, the factory farming industry is responsible for 28 percent of global methane emissions, thanks largely to cow burps. That methane, which contributes greatly to global warming, can and has caused severe droughts in portions of the country where cattle, and the corn necessary to feed them, are raised and grown. And they screw up the water supply, too. From the EPA: “agricultural nonpoint source (NPS) pollution was the leading source of water quality impacts on surveyed rivers and lakes, the second largest source of impairments to wetlands, and a major contributor to contamination of surveyed estuaries and ground water.”

Long story short: We need to find viable, palatable, nutritious alternatives to traditional meat.

With that in mind I decided to replace one meal per day for seven days with sources of protein that can be purchased alive from a pet store.

At this point I should note that I’m not some granola here to chew your ear off about how fucked up factory farming is. In fact, I eat a lot of meat myself. I’m from northern Michigan, where there’s only one day in the Christian calendar year when most folks will intentionally choose fish, and I’m the type of heathen who doesn’t even abstain on that day. So this little experiment was done for my own sake, to know what sort of animal-based dishes I can look forward to when hamburgers are enjoyed exclusively by the one percent.

Before beginning the diet, I consulted my doctor to make sure I wasn’t about to spark some Contagion-type situation. As I told him about my plan he put his chin in his hand and nodded politely, but seemed pretty unconcerned.

“Isn’t there anything I should be worried about?” I asked.

He shook his head with an offhand warning against eating mice intestines. “Make sure to take those out.” 

“Sure,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to eat their poop.”

After a pause, and without irony, he told me where in town I could find the best price on regionally raised beef tenderloin.

And so, with my doctor’s blessing, I drove to the pet store to buy some groceries.

Day 1: Crickets Pancakes

Nutritional Facts: 1 serving equals 100g of crickets. Each serving contains 121 calories, 12.9g protein, 5.5g of fat

Ingredients

4 cups of flour
1 cup of roasted crickets

Directions

Place your crickets in the freezer for 1-2 hours, then boil briskly for 1-2 minutes. Strain and cool. Place clean and cool crickets on a cookie sheet and bake at 300 degrees for 45 minutes.

Remove antennae and legs gently; they fall off easily. Crush collected crickets using a rolling pin or mortar and pestle until they are ground into small brown specks. Insufficient grinding will result in their small faces peering out at you from the batter L. Use flour in pancakes.

First Impressions

Crickets smell fishy—an aroma no doubt exacerbated by their placement in my local pet shop in thick plastic bins against a backdrop of blue fish tanks. In an effort to outwit my better instincts I told myself that the shrimp-like aroma wafting from my hotcakes was actually almonds.

Taste

Crickets taste like almonds, if you think of almonds, and shrimp if you think of anything other than almonds. This flavor is subtle, but when you place it in a pancake drenched in syrup, it becomes amplified. I recommend incorporating the cricket flour into a savory pastry, instead. Like nuts, they add a satisfying crunch.

Day 2: Mealworm Fries

Nutritional Facts: a single mealworm can be broken down as 10.63% protein, 3.1% fiber, 420 ppm calcium, and 10.01% fat.

Ingredients:

1 fresh Idaho potato (russet)
2 dozen mealworms—boiled
1 cup chopped scallions

Directions

Place mealworms in the freezer for at least one hour. Remove from freezer and boil two minutes. Slice your russet lengthwise into long slender sticks, skin on. Heat oil in a deep pan. Drop fries, meal worms, and scallions in together. Fry until worms and potatoes are golden brown. Remove and season with sea salt, chili powder, and cayenne pepper to taste.

First Impressions

Mealworms aren’t exactly protein-packed and iron-stacked compared to beef, but they occupy only half-an-inch of space and require virtually no resources. Also, the little plastic container mine came in is totally recyclable, and they stiffen in the freezer, so handling them doesn’t feel perverse at all.

Taste

Everything tastes good fried, and mealworms are no exception. The deep fry and the cayenne really mask any potentially off-putting flavor, but the worms themselves have virtually no odor before you cook them, and they become light and crunchy afterward, perfectly complementing the soft insides of the potato. This was also one of the quickest-to-cook meals on my menu, which gives it bonus points.

Day 3: Mice Pie

Nutritional facts: Mice are 55% protein and 19% fat, according to feline-nutrition.org. Which, incidentally, has one of the most wonderful website banners I’ve ever seen. Seriously, just go check that thing out.

Ingredients:

4 dead, flayed, skinned, and boiled mice

2 boiled potatoes

¼  cup of shredded cheddar cheese

½ cup of mixed veggies (in my case, from a can)

Directions:

Learn quickly why beef and poultry are excessively processed and packaged (without their heads) by attempting to remove the innards from a distressingly soft, malleable creature that reminds you of how much you once loved Fievel.

Once you’ve carefully removed the salvageable sections of mouse meat located mostly around the hindquarters (use clean nail scissors if your household utensil selection isn’t equipped for gutting rodents), toss the scraps in boiling water while you prep your shepherd’s pie (boil taters, shred cheese, open the veggie can—it’s not rocket science). Bake all ingredients together for 30 minutes at 375 degrees.

First Impressions

Ideally, you should buy your mouse alive from a pet food store. Do NOT, under any circumstances, buy a mouse bred to be a pet for your pie. When I tried to do that the lady at the store told me pet mice are “pumped full of antibiotics” and will kill whatever animal you feed them to. Those words of wisdom may have saved my life.

Unfortunately, many pet stores don’t carry live feeder mice. Mine didn’t, and I had to scramble for a substitute. I’d read catching and eating the wild mice that run through walls and grassy fields is unwise because there’s no telling what they’ve eaten, so I decided to try a favored alternative: Arctic mice.

I chose to ignore the ominous “not safe for human consumption” label on the little blue box of dead mice the pet store kept in a subtle mini-fridge next to the bearded lizard’s aquarium. The frozen mouse company doesn’t want to be responsible for my choices, but those little guys were raised in a sterile lab, which is more than you can say for your average chicken nugget.

Taste

You want to believe that mice taste “just like pork!” But they don’t. Considering how little I managed to salvage from their sad small bones, the flavor of my mice was potent, almost gamey, and much more like an overripe rabbit than a pig, which makes sense, really.

I spent most of the night afraid I was dying of a zoological disease, a dire consequence according to the box. I could taste mouse in the back of my teeth throughout the next day.

Day 4: Banana Worm Muffins

Ingredients

½ cup shortening
¾ cup sugar
2 bananas, mashed
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup chopped walnuts
2 eggs
¼ cup dry-roasted mealworms

Directions

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl. Bake in greased cupcake pan at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

First impressions

Banana muffins are easy as hell to make, and adding worms is quick. This time I bought the “giant” ones instead of just large. If I had planned ahead, I probably would have done it the other way around (XXL meal worms work better next to fries).

Taste

Banana worm muffins are surprisingly delicious. Mine were a bit dry because I let them stay in the oven for a full hour, which is what the original recipe called for. Stick to my abbreviated cook time, and you’ll love them. All banana flavor, no wormy texture. Will keep you full all morning.

Day 5: Battered and Fried Minnows

Nutritional facts: Similar to silversides, but packed with protein (especially by comparison to other fish). Minnows can be eaten whole, so that’s what I did.

Ingredients

1 dozen live minnows

Equal parts flour and cornmeal (enough to dredge each minnow completely)

Vegetable oil

Directions

According to Craig, my friendly bait slinging salesman, minnows’ lives are best ended by adding salt to their water. This seems intuitive, but wasn’t all that efficient. My minnows persevered, and started doing this creepy lunging thing like they were eating the insides of the Styrofoam bucket. Or their fallen comrades.

I wanted to put them out of their misery as soon as possible, so I dumped them into a strainer, covered it with a plate, and plugged my ears while they flopped their way to suffocation. I recommend cutting to the chase and killing them in this fashion sooner than later.

Once the minnows are dead, rinse them off in cool water and dredge them in the combination of flour and cornmeal you’ve prepared and set aside in a nearby bowl. Heat oil in a deep pan, and drop the minnows in a fryer until they are golden brown. I let mine get extra crispy, which turned out to be a good choice.

First Impressions

By mid-week my enthused confidence had waned. People, I thought, aren’t going to eat these recipes if they require Little House on the Prairie-style prep time. An exaggerated analogy, maybe, but one that our microwave-meal culture legitimizes (in 2009 sustainable food firebrand Michael Pollan wrote, “the average American spends a mere 27 minutes a day on food preparation”). My deep-fried minnows were a well-timed reminder of how simple it can be to create new cooking habits. If I had known in advance the most efficient way to kill them, I would have discovered a meal that required less time and attention than boxed mac and cheese.

Taste

About halfway through I ate one that actually tasted fishy. It unsettled me, and sent me down a dark path of thinking about eyeballs and fragile fish bones. Up until that moment I had considered this meal downright delicious.

Crisp and hot. Pairs well with beer.

Days 6: Cricket Pad Thai

Ingredients:

4 oz rice stick noodles
3 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons fresh squeezed lime juice
2 tsp. sugar
Peanut oil
1 cup crickets
2 cloves of garlic
2 eggs, beaten
¼ cup scallions, finely chopped
1 cup bean sprouts
¼ cup fresh cilantro (cilantro tastes like soap, but if you like it…)
Crushed peanuts to taste

Directions

Combine fish sauce, soy sauce, lime juice, and sugar in a bowl and mix. Heat peanut oil in a wok or skillet, and cook the crickets over medium-high heat. Scramble the eggs on the other side of the wok. Remove crickets and eggs and set aside. Add garlic and scallions and fry briefly.

Add sauce mixture, crickets, and eggs back into the wok and warm thoroughly. Cook rice noodles for about ten minutes in boiling water. Remove and drain noodles, and add to wok or skillet. Add bean sprouts and toss thoroughly, top with peanuts and cilantro.

First impressions

By day six, I’d become so old hat at buying crickets that when the kid behind the counter asked me if I wanted “cardboard or paper for these” I knew exactly what he meant and what my answer would be. (Pro tip: cardboard gives the crickets something to cling to so they don’t jump around the bag and give you the creeps.)

Actual Taste

This was the meal I was most looking forward to, and I blew it. I was expecting the fishy flavor of the crickets to pair well with this classic dish, and I’m sure it would have. My first bite was overpowering and salty, and at first I thought the soy sauce was the culprit. It turns out that peanut oil isn’t exactly like every other oil. I didn’t see it burning, but it was. A disappointment, but also the reason I’ll probably revisit eating crickets after this experiment has ended.

Day 7: Chocolate-Covered Crickets

Ingredients:

Semi-sweetened chocolate chips for baking

Crickets

Directions:

Take roasted crickets (like the ones used in the cricket flour), and dip those fellas in melted chocolate.

First Impressions

Day seven happened to land on my birthday, so I thought I’d treat myself to something sweet. Chocolate, much like fryer grease, can make anything delicious.

Taste

Yes. The chocolate somehow divested the crickets of their evil shrimp-like powers and turned them back into crunchy almonds again. The perfect way to end my diet.

Conclusion

Eating mice, bugs, and worms isn’t as bad as our first-world privilege would lead us to believe. If you have the right recipes, it can be downright delicious—even healthy. Over the course of my weeklong diet I lost 3.5 pounds. My energy level actually improved over the course of the experiment, and I didn’t experience nausea or any other forms of sickness.

Unfortunately, we’ve all inherited the habits built by a long and thoughtless series of unsustainable choices. The great cheeseburger gravy train established generations ago is pulling into the station as I write, and probably won’t be around for our children—who would do well to develop a taste for alternative meats at an early age. While the deeply flawed system wasn’t our doing, the burden of fixing it is on us, and replacing a couple of meals per day with some tasty bugs might not be the worst place to start.

Obligatory disclaimer: Consult your doctor before eating weird stuff from pet stores.


The Chinese Are Buying Up London

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I recently came across two little-known PR artifacts that were produced a few years back by the Newham London Borough Council. The overcrowded, ethnically diverse east London borough is home to more unemployed people than any other in the capital, but taken together, the PR artifacts seem to prophesize London's future. One is a brochure, the other a three-minute promotional video—shared here after being briefly hosted by a website aimed at foreign investors.

Designed for the 2010 Shanghai Expo (theme: Better City, Better Life) and adorned with on-brand, shocking pink slogans, the two objects functioned as an investment prospectus, offering five and a half square miles of Newham land to foreign developers and businesses.

A (silent) section of Newham's video for foreign investors

“Look beyond your borders and find your place in the future of London,” the subtitles read. The capital, we are told, “is moving east”—east to Newham? Or to Shanghai?

In the video, the Regeneration Supernova starts in outer space, before zooming through the earth's atmosphere, down through the clouds, and coming to rest above humble Newham. Take a moment to chew over the words: “A Regeneration Supernova is currently exploding across Newham London.” Perhaps they were caught up in the excitement of selling off large chunks of the capital to overseas investors, but it seems the council has had a lapse in caution—a rare slip in the densely euphemistic argot of regeneration.

This is not about "modifying", "modernizing," or "improving" a run-down area. No. It is about wiping it out in a "supernova"—a brief moment of total and blinding destruction.

That's five and a half square miles to us on this side of the pond.

Nova = new. A supernova is caused by the collapse of a massive star—it is marked by an intensely luminous and catastrophic explosion, one that sends out a giant shockwave into space, sweeping up all dust and gas in the atmosphere. It is a cosmic detonation and its effects on the existing space around it are without limits. A policy of zero tolerance and maximum Giuliani. Blast clean the dust fragments of history, the uneven layers of messy urban sediment. No beach under the cobblestones, just reclaimed marshland.

What do the council see being left behind after the destruction of the Regeneration Supernova? That's revealed in another Newham Council slogan: an "Arc of Opportunity" running from the north to the south of the borough—a huge swoop of pink from Stratford and the Olympic site that reaches down to envelop what was formerly the Royal Docks, the hub of Britain's trade, the final destination for the plundered wealth of empire, which closed in the 60s. The scale of opportunity is five and a half square miles, we're told in the video.

CGI mock up of the "Asian Business Port"

In May 2013, it was announced that Newham had found a buyer for the Royal Albert Dock, the largest of the three royal docks. In a $1.6 million deal, a Chinese company called Advanced Business Park (ABP) won the right to turn the derelict 35 acre site into a European headquarters for hundreds of Chinese firms.

An astonishing 3.2 million square feet of office space is planned—though it won't be completed until 2023. It is ABP's first venture outside China, and it is a big deal in every sense—for Chinese expansion, for London, and for the current Conservative government. “This is going to be the very center of Britain,” declared Communities Secretary Eric Pickles to Reuters, in an acknowledgement that—like the Newham comms team—he believes the future lies to the east.

In ABP's new glossy brochure announcing the project, Mayor Boris Johnson promises the project will be both “a beacon for eastern investors,” creating tens of thousands of jobs, and a revival of London's waterways, “the throbbing arteries of UK trade and commerce.” It will be “a mini city for Asian companies,” operating 24 hours a day, housing its very own retail and leisure opportunities—this will be nothing less than “London's third financial district.” Canary Wharf both symbolized and hosted the boom and bust of the 2000s, the Lehman Brothers, and LIBOR fixers—and, if all goes according to plan, this could be global capitalism's newest fulcrum of financial power.

The CGI projections for what the area might look like feature, as always, white people drinking coffee at outdoor tables, talking on cell phones, sheltering in the shade of trees. The pixelated ghosts of future commercial expansion.

East London, Newham's video reminds us, is “historically London's gateway to the world.” But where is history's place in all this? Cities are supposed to be palimpsests; ever-evolving refinements of what has gone before, historical epochs written over the top of one another, medieval streets threaded through dazzling modern buildings. But not after the Regeneration Supernova in Newham. After that, we start from Year Zero, where the narrative begins with the computer-generated planning blueprints of an international property conglomerate.

The video—the version we have is silent, but adorned with Mandarin subtitles—is keen to welcome you to an international city: 300 languages are spoken here, it boasts; there are 27 million visitors a year. Because really, you're visiting a "hub," not a place—not a finite or definable locale, limited by fusty old 19th century borders. Elaborate infographics in the brochure show off Newham's “superb transport connectivity”—via City Airport, via Crossrail (coming soon! Probably!) and via DLR—London's metro system.

Listen guys, we know you're busy, you needn't stay long, it says—but look at where else you can get to from here, the Thames Gateway to the world. Once you've finished your business at Canary Wharf and walked through the gargantuan mall at Westfield Stratford, you can be on the first plane out of here, we promise. This is Newham London, “Where you can fly to NEW YORK. Where you can get the train to PARIS and beyond.”

The video ends with the injunction: “Take your place in the future of London” and the now-dead URL flashes up: www.newhamshanghaiexpo.com. The brand guidelines are clear: in its logo and all official communications, Newham is "Newham London" and it doesn't have a comma in the middle. This is more significant than it might seem: Southwark isn't "Southwark London." Brent's logo doesn't read "Brent London." Newham Council have attached the capital's name to the borough's to direct their taxpayer-funded communications strategy at people outside the borough, outside the capital—outside the UK, in fact.

The sales pitch seems to have worked. Johnson released a statement on the ABP deal that gave a clue as to how much London is already “moving east.” In the past five years, the capital has attracted 80 percent of all Chinese property investment in Europe. Even before this deal, London was the number one capital city for Chinese investment outside Asia in the last decade.

Part of the Royal Docks area (Photo by Chris Wood)

What's in it for China? At the time of writing, Newham remains a pretty unfashionable part of London. But after the Regeneration Supernova, it'll be a strong foothold in the West—in the heart of Europe's financial capital, in fact—with nice views and good vibes to boot. “The area benefits from a large waterfront,” reported the New York Times, “an advantage when attracting Chinese companies because of its importance in feng shui, which holds that water can help the flow of energy.”

I don't know what the ancient art of feng shui has to say about airport hotels, but I bet it's not good. On the approach to the DLR's Royal Albert stop, you traverse a gauntlet of grim, blocky, mid-level hotels, built to serve the ExCel conference center/City Airport nexus of transient salarymen.

The map outside the DLR station describes the vacant area that will house ABP as "Royals Business Park." It's a subtle warning from history, a marker of a failed previous coup—the Royals Business Park was a short-lived project stopped in its tracks by the global economic downturn. The nearby neighborhood of Beckton is home to the largest sewage works in Europe. 

The waterfront itself was mostly peaceful when I visited a few weeks ago—there were some gentle ripples in the Albert Dock when the planes took off, and the occasional moment of incredible noise from the jet engines. A few dog walkers, a few plane-spotters, and the occasional breeze blowing in from the North Sea.

The Central Offices and Buffet (Photo by Chris Wood)

The one new building on this open wasteland is a massive, showy glass box, a new-build statement of intent, a gleaming 3D plank of Newham Council's Regeneration Supernova strategy. This is Building 1000, and the council spent $187 million moving there in 2010, including $31.5 million on refurbishments, and designer light fittings that cost $3,000 each. It resembled, Local Government Minister Bob Neill said, “a glitzy West End nightclub.” Newham claimed the purchase of Building 1000 was motivated by efficiency, not vanity—bringing 26 different council departments together under one roof. The grim irony is that after only four years the council might be forced to leave already, because they can't offload the older, less glamorous premises they moved out of. In January of this year, it was announced that ABP will be moving in to the building, too. That sounds cosy.

As I strolled around the giant transparent walls, watching council officials have their meetings in soft-furnished "break-out areas," Building 1000 seemed voyeuristic and needy in its vanity, shameless in its sales pitch to the businessmen passing by every day. Building 1000's official entrance is on the north side, facing away from the docks, but it's the southern side—the one directly facing City Airport across the narrow stretch of water—that is surely the building's raison d'etre for Newham Council. Spread across this facade is a giant shocking pink billboard, measuring maybe 60 feet by 30 feet, emblazoned with the legend "Welcome to Newham London.".

A CGI mock up of the development on Newham's now defunct investors' website

Amid all the detritus scattered along the half mile site, two buildings remained standing. They used to be the Central Offices and Buffet—colloquially, just "the Central"—where the dockworkers used to feed and water themselves. Currently, the buildings lie empty and untouched. You'd hope that at least one awkward remnant of history could outlive the smiting hand of the developers.

It will surprise no one that the lessons of the 2008 crash, and Canary Wharf's role as “Wall Street's Guantanamo” (a lawless zone, free from such awkward encumbrances as government regulation and good practice), are being quite determinedly unlearned. In its official response to the ABP deal, the Mayor of London's office announced that it was looking into ways to make it “easier and cheaper for Asian businesses to set up and trade internationally from the Royal Docks... As an existing Enterprise Zone, the area already offers reduced business rates, a simpler planning process, and superfast broadband.”

How very accommodating! Boasting speedy internet connections seems almost comically trivial, at first glance, compared to the other concessions and genuflections made—but I guess it's almost like corporate hospitality, or the behavior of a luxury hotel: Here's the mint on your pillow.

ABP chairman Xu Weiping (center) and delegates look around the derelict site at Royal Albert Dock in May 2013

So who are the buyers? A profile of ABP and Xu Weiping on the Quartz website described the company and its chief as obscure and mysterious, with thinly disguised links to the Communist Party hierarchy. To date, ABP's only significant completed project anywhere is a "Silicon Valley of Beijing" on the outskirts of the city, which, according to Quartz, “raised questions about how Xu obtained rights to build such a massive project... despite having no history as a developer.” “One explanation for the firm’s quick ascension," Quartz continued, "could be close ties with the government, which is not unusual for businessmen in China but could be problematic given that London has billed ABP as a private company.”

Like all great empires, and target-setting Communists, APB are already thinking about their next goal. "We want to build the site far beyond the boundary of the current plans," Xu said last month. "That's what we want to see in east London and we're fully confident we will get it done. We want the community to support us and watch over us to make sure it will be done." The local community don't have a great deal of choice in the matter—if they are even allowed to remain locals, and not say, told by the council that they have to move to Hastings.

Capitalism almost destroyed the docks once before, a century ago. Back in 1909, the government-run Port of London Authority monopoly was formed out of necessity, because the ferocity of competition between rival dock companies was ruining them all. This time, the people of Newham, one of the most deprived boroughs in London, are being promised 20,000 jobs—a figure, one suspects, plucked entirely out of the air—as a result of the Regeneration Supernova and the Asian Business Port's $1.7 billion arrival. As ever with regeneration, it is not the act of investment, modernization or construction in and of itself that is a problem—it's who benefits from the regeneration. Will we ever be Royals? I wouldn't hold your breath.

The striking thing about a supernova is the paradox of its purported novelty—it is newly bright, and newly spectacular—and it does totally transform the space around it. It's a star that appears brighter than ever before, emitting enough radiation to outshine an entire galaxy. But because the luminosity is a result of the star's fatal implosion, what appears to be a dazzlingly bright star is in fact just a dazzlingly bright ghost. The star, you see, is dead.

Follow Dan Hancox on Twitter

Hanging With a Vancouver Meth Dealer

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In my mind, Vancouver’s downtown east side has always spoken for a suffering that is particularly—even if not entirely—female. When the neighborhood comes up in conversation, I mentally lock in on women like Dianne Rock, a Robert Pickton victim. Or I remember Lincoln Clarkes’s devastatingly beautiful photo series, Heroines. So when I learned that recent photojournalism grad Matthew Desouza spent some time documenting the daily affairs of Diablo, a 32 year-old meth addict and dealer on East Hastings street, I became eager to see the neighborhood from a man’s perspective. So, I called up Matt to talk about cigarettes as currency, East Hastings’ McDonald’s, and the vivid photographs he shot while hanging out with Diablo and his pals.

VICE: How did your friendship with Diablo start?
Matt Desouza: I was hanging out in the Hastings area, trying to figure out how I could get involved in a story down there. I stopped by this McDonald’s that’s on the outside corner of the area. I was sitting there minding my own business, and in walks Diablo. He pointed to the chair across from me that was empty and he’s like, “Hey, do you mind if I sit there?” so I’m like, “Buddy, I’m going to be done in like three minutes.” He’s like, “Alright,” and he sits down anyway. One of the first things he said to me is: “Do you need any jib?” I’m like, “Jib, what the hell’s that?” He’s like: “Crystal.” I said, “No, bro. That’s not for me.” And then he asked me if I wanted to see [the crystal meth]. I’m sitting there, so I said, “Sure, I guess,” and he pulls it out. That was one of the first photographs I took.

He went on about how he’s a dealer in the area, he buys and he sells, and I asked him what he was doing for the rest of the day. He’s like, “Oh, I’m waiting here for my buddy, I’m buying some, I’m selling some; I got a couple errands to run.” So I said, “Yo, do you mind if I follow you around and take pictures of you?” And he’s like, “No, that’s cool.”

So, Diablo and his pals were cool with you photographing them?
I don’t want to say Diablo was showing off, but he was totally down with it. Everywhere I’d go with him, he’d introduce me. He’d say, “This is my buddy Matt, he’s a photographer, he’s cool.” One kid smoking a cigarette thought I was an undercover cop, and Diablo’s like, “No, he’s cool, he’s cool.”

This girl came into McDonald’s, and Diablo’s two buddies were in the background. I think she was asking if she could get some crystal off him. For one reason or another, he didn’t sell it to her, but he’s like: “Oh, here, you can have a cigarette.” The photograph is of him passing her a cigarette. He called her by her first name so I’m assuming he knew her.



Diablo handing over a cigarette in the McDonald's he operates out of.
What did you and Diablo get up to while hanging out?
The first day, I think I spent four or five hours hanging out with him. I’ve gone back three or four times now. The McDonald’s there, it’s a 24-hour McDonald’s. It’s his home. So, while we were hanging out, I took his portrait up against the wall. He had just traded a cigarette for an extra pair of glasses, the ones hanging around his neck from the big chain he has going on [laughs].

Cigarettes are currency down there. People would come up to him and ask for a cigarette and he’d say, “I want your sweater.” One cigarette gets you a sweater.

On the Hastings strip there’s a whole bunch of people who set up and sell random junk. Later on, Diablo took the bag, laid out all the T-shirts, all the clothes, all the shoes, and he started selling everything. So for two cigarettes he got that whole bag of shit he was selling.

Were people paying him in cigarettes or money?
Quarters, a T-shirt—basically anything.

What do you know about the McDonald’s where Diablo lives?
Diablo’s like: “This is my McDonald’s, I run it.” He hangs out there, he sells there, he buys there, he does his drugs there. Him and his boys are doing drugs inside, right around the corner. The employees come out to clean tables, and they don’t even bat an eyelash. It was pretty wild in there, I gotta say.

Whenever he’s selling, he tells people to meet him there. If I need to find him, I go right down to that McDonald’s and nine out of ten times he’s there. I saw him sell his crystal in there a handful of times. Sometimes he sleeps there. He showers in the sink in the washroom.

When I was in there, there were a couple of addicts hanging out in there. One guy smoked a full cigarette, threw it on the ground, and then stepped on it. I was like, “Oh my God, we’re going to get in trouble here,” but no. No one came around. There were people eating McDonald’s meals a couple spots over. No one said anything. They run the McDonald’s.

Is McDonald’s Diablo’s only home?
He doesn’t have another home. The photograph of stairs, that’s from what he calls blood alley. That’s his home. He sleeps in the alley way. He calls it blood alley because it used to be an alley way with a whole bunch of butcher shops in it and all the blood would run into the alley. That’s his spot, right underneath the set of stairs. You see the two cracks in the cement? He usually gets cardboard and puts it down, and that’s his house.



Blood alley.
What did you learn about Diablo by hanging with him?
Aside from his addiction, he’s actually a pretty smart dude. He’s fluent in French and Spanish and he’s from Montreal. If he wasn’t an addict he’d be a solid guy. He started speaking fluent Spanish, fluent French for me.

Did he talk to you about how he got started with meth?
I don’t think I really touched on how he got into the drugs. He just said he wanted a change of scene from Montreal so he hopped on a bus and came out to Vancouver. I think he’s been here for a few months, I don’t think it’s been a full year yet.

What does he think about East Hastings so far?
He loves it. Something he said to me was, “Most people that come down here, they think this is a garbage area. To me, this is home.”

What are you taking away from your time with Diablo and his pals?
As messed up as some of these addicts are, they’re genuine people. It’s a shame that they’re addicts, but at the same time they’re nice, they’re friendly, they’ll talk to you. They’re sometimes coherent. Diablo took me in, he allowed me to photograph him, it’s shit you don’t see every day. I live by the beach in Vancouver, where everything is nice. On East Hastings, it’s like Skid Row.

@kristy__hoffman

You Won’t Be Drinking Powdered Alcohol Anytime Soon

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You Won’t Be Drinking Powdered Alcohol Anytime Soon

VICE News: London's Holy Turf Wars

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Over the last year, a quasi-religious turf war has sprung up on the streets of London. Young, radicalized Muslim patrols are enforcing Sharia law in the capital. In reaction, far-right Christian patrols are also taking the law into their own hands.

Since the Woolwich killing, anti-Muslim rhetoric as been at an all-time high, and the right-wing Christian patrols are only exacerbating the rising tensions.

These two marginalized but potentially dangerous London subcultures believe that society has failed their communities enough that they are now taking to the streets to implement or defend their ways of life, according to their opposing politicized and religious ideologies. 

The irony being that while their shared aggressive approach has resulted in media coverage and media panic, they ultimately are responsible for and justify each other's existence.

Alex Miller meets the leaders and footsoldiers in Britain's holy street patrols—the Anjem Choudary's followers' Muslim Patrol and Paul Golding of Britain First's Christian Patrol—in the same area he lives and works, to find out just how effective their operations are, and how genuine their belief is in the battle for East London's streets.

Your Diet Is Making You Smell Weird

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Your Diet Is Making You Smell Weird
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