Earlier this month, a group of high school students went to Dundas Square in Toronto to shoot a video as part of the far-reaching #SaveAleppo campaign. They stopped pedestrians on the streets and held up pictures of a war-torn Syria, then asked the same strangers what they knew about the crisis. The pictures included children digging through dirt for dry bread, and crowds looking up to the sky for the next barrel full of oil, which the Assad regime have been using as bombs, to drop from the sky. Their video garnered over 10,000 views in its first 24-hour cycle, and as of this writing it has almost 70,000 hits.

The organizer of this demonstration was a 17-year-old student named Noor Mamlouk, who says it is her duty as a human to defend against the atrocities in Syria. She lives in Canada, but was born in Syria, and is considered to be one of the brightest young activists in the Canadian-Syrian community.

The following is an edited version of my interview with Noor about why she thinks it’s so important to get the word out about one of the planet’s most underreported and devastating conflicts.

VICE: What first inspired you to work as an activist?
Noor Mamlouk: I was 13 when the revolution began, and I think I felt inspired right away. I was at home in Qatar, where I lived before I moved to Canada, and it was on Al Jazeera. I remember my mom being shocked. When the Arab Spring started I remember my friends and I were in a car on our way to eat, and the Egyptian revolution had just toppled Mubarak. I remember my friend who is Sudanese saying: “I bet if this happened in Sudan, they’d just go out for an hour and then just leave.” And I had said: “I bet if Syria protested it would last for a week because of how atrocious the government is, and then they’d go back,” but now it’s been over three years. I didn’t expect it to last this long. But I was 13 and I knew nothing about politics.

When did you start becoming active?
Well, I would go to protests with my dad in Qatar as soon as the revolution began. Those protests were really cool because we would try to make them connected with the protests in Syria and we would chant and hold each other’s shoulders and be united with protests across the world. Those were the first steps. I was also using Twitter to see what was going on. So I started using that to talk about what was happening in my opinion, and it became more emotional.

Emotional, how?
When I realized this what was happening to kids my age, it was really hard. There was a boy named Hamza al Khatib who was also 13 and he was killed in Syria after being caught up in a protest. He was missing for weeks, and then the government delivered his body in a bag to his parents. They told them they had to say on Syrian media that the rebels had done this to their son. There was a child who had his jaw blown out, another girl who was beheaded; there was a two-month old baby who died. So just the fact that it was happening to kids my age and younger, who were getting tortured for basically doing nothing was something that really affected me so I tried to get people my age involved. 



Photo of Noor and fellow Like activists, mid-demonstration. Photo via Mohamad Ojjch.
How did you get them involved?
I realized that just tweeting wasn’t going to do anything and that raising awareness was really important as well. So at my school a group of people and myself decided to have a Syria week to raise awareness. We had a refugee our age come in to talk about what was going on. That was a start. Since then I have been in so many protests, too. When I moved to Canada from Qatar, I joined different organizations that gave me opportunities to speak at universities and volunteer as much as possible. Then with this latest video, I was able to get my friends from school here to help with holding signs—and I think it really helped.

What does it mean to you to be an activist?
I think it’s more about being a human. It’s everyone’s duty to at least speak up or know about what’s going on. It’s my moral duty as a human. There was a holocaust, and what happened in Rwanda and Bosnia… all these things that have happened in history, and we are still letting it happen again in Syria. 200,000 people have been killed in three years, that’s a lot of people. It’s hard to believe just the fact that not a lot of people here still know about it and there is so much confusion in the media about what is going on. Forget the politics. Just look at it and see that little kids are dying because of chemical weapon attacks. Whether those kids are Syrian or from any other nation in the world, it shouldn’t matter. So, it’s not just an activism thing, it’s to know what’s going on and speak out about it.

How many days a week are you concentrating on activism?
Every single day. The first thing I do when I get up is check the news on various social media outlets to see what’s going on. There are several blogs I follow from people not just in Syria, but people in Canada who blog direct news from places like Palestine. It’s easier than reading the newspapers. And sometimes I am involved in events up to three times a week.

How important has social media been to you and other activists? 
It is very important. In all the revolutions coming from the Arab Spring, social media has been an essential part. For me, it’s how I got started, and how I met other activists. The most basic thing someone can do, to be part of these revolutions, is tweet. Also, when you see a whole bunch of people who are tweeting about Syria using the same hashtag or writing blogs, it becomes accessible for everyone and makes it really powerful. The video that we made, for example, got popular and went all over the world because of social media.

Right, so something like the #SaveAleppo or #SaveSyria campaign wouldn’t be possible…
Exactly, because the only real way to get news out of the Middle East is from people like the guy in Aleppo who started the campaign and then others from around the world joining in. There were candlelight vigils in DC and things happening all over the world as result of what he started. There is literally a Twitter family because we can all follow each other from different countries in the Twitterverse. We released our video as #SaveSyria because I don’t think a lot of people in Canada know what Aleppo is, but it is part of the same campaign.

Is there anything that surprised you while you were talking to people on the sidewalk in Toronto about Syria?
Yes. Many people seemed really interested in what was going on in Syria but didn’t know a lot about it. Even though we have been on the streets for three years creating awareness, there are still so many people who have no idea what is happening. But, all you have to do is turn the news on for a couple minutes and it’s there. That’s why in this video we decided to use #SaveSyria instead of Aleppo because some people might know about Aleppo—but everyone should know about Syria by now.

How did people respond to you?
We got some amazing reactions; a lot of people were shocked by what’s happening right now in the 21st century. The chemical weapon attacks, the houses that look like they’re from World War II… it’s happening now, and a lot of people aren’t aware of that.  I think we have done so much in the last three years to create awareness, but we should still get out on the streets more. Especially kids my age. People were coming up to the people holdings signs and taking selfies. We were getting them interested.



Noor, outside of City Hall. Photo via Angela Hennessy. 
Why do you think that Canadians can be so unaware of what’s happening?
Well, Canada is a huge country and the media here covers everything. Also, Canada has its own problems. But at the same time—and I see this in my high school a lot—everyone just lives in their own bubble. There are a lot of people who, if they were informed of what was really going on, they would care. Even outside the political aspect of who’s right and who’s wrong (and you should try to understand that), from the humanitarian perspective… there are kids my age and younger who are dying, because their parents are asking for basic human fundamental rights. I think that would touch a lot of people, and more media coverage would be amazing.

Why do you think there is a lot of confusion about what is happening in Syria in North America in general?
I think people forgot that it was a revolution. And it is still is a revolution, because the American and Canadian, but especially the American news media tend to focus on the Jihadists and what they are doing in Syria and talk about them cutting people’s heads of, which isn’t right at all, and they forgot about the fact that this all started because people my age put graffiti on a wall and asked for freedom. They forgot the fact that it’s a revolution. And they don’t like to cover the fact that liberated cities are basically running themselves right now without any government interference.

Why do you think it is so important for younger people to be involved?
You can’t just have an older generation doing everything and organizing stuff, because in the end it is going to be us who are going to make a change and figure stuff out for what is happening in Syria and the rest of the world. Yes, the Syrian community is tired. We’re not getting as much people out as we used to in the first year, and so I think that’s why it’s up to people my age to get things going now. The people who are older than me have families and jobs and have been doing it for the past few years, and I think they are exhausted. We are supposed to be the creative ones with new ideas and we have more energy. After shooting this video, a lot of my friends now want to do something.

Do you have hope for the future?
Yes, definitely. Even the people in Syria are still continuing their every day lives. There are still artists, and musicians, and others who are speaking out and who refuse to obey the regime. How can I say there is now hope? There is hope. Everyone outside Syria should have hope now. No one can give up hope, especially if people in Syria haven’t. This has been one of the most brutal government crackdowns that has ever happened in the Middle East, so we should have hope.

Is that your message?
Yes, you can’t give up on the Syrian revolution or any revolution. Some people down there are living through some of the most horrible things that have have ever happened in history, and they still choose to live. They still chose to educate their children in some way, they still write and blog and tweet and draw and graffiti and everything else. They still live as much as they can under the circumstances.

Do you want to go back to Syria one day?
Definitely. Even when I think about what I want to do in university, I think about what I can do to affect Syria and help rebuild the country. Because we are going to go back and we are going to rebuild, we need to reestablish society. I don’t know what I want to do in the future, but it will have something to do with helping. No matter what, I want to go back and help. Anything I can do. 

@angelamaries

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Somewhere in the background of your uncle’s monotonous and routine photos of his summer trip to Stonehenge, chances are you’ll catch a glimpse of a peculiar, burly old man. He’s often there, leaning up along the fences at the edge of the site. And most likely, he’s wearing flowing white robes emblazoned with a red griffin holding a sword, a tin crown with a dragon and Celtic crosses wrought into it, and a freaking broadsword on his hip. Many tourists make a point of zooming in and snapping a shot of him, thinking he’s a quaint historical prop left out by the site’s custodians, English Heritage. But he is emphatically not. He is Arthur Uther Pendragon, the Once and Future King of the Britons risen again to defend the land, its people, and its history. Or at least that’s how he tells it.

Arthur has been a fixture at Stonehenge for well over two decades now, and pops up in the British news from time to time for his scuffles with the site’s managers. Early on he and his Druid companions fought for access to the site, first just to celebrate the summer solstice, then for general access. But after gaining that right, while many other Druids patted themselves on the back and stepped away, he kept on fighting, both in the courts and beyond—for the reburial of excavated bones he views as respected Druidic ancestors, against the Disneyfication of the site, and against construction and developments that might ruin the site’s ambience. Most recently, he convinced the Ministry of Defense to alter its plans for new barracks to preserve the path of the sunlight at the solstice.

For many Brits, that’s the be-all and end-all of this King Arthur. He’s a particularly in-character Druid, possibly very gimmicky or tongue-in-cheek, obsessed with one historical site. But Stonehenge is just the flashy stuff. He and his personal Loyal Arthurian Warband, a collective of Druids numbering perhaps up to 10,000 worldwide and, ideally, sworn with his sword on their shoulders to defend truth as they know it, honor their word, and uphold justice through dissent and action, protest across the UK and beyond, for pagan, libertarian, and environmentalist causes. In recent years, they’ve taken on climate change, public housing, and tabloid journalism through lawsuits, rallies, direct action, and even a belief in powers beyond man’s understanding and their ability to influence the world. Soon, says Arthur, “I’ll be focusing on fracking and other things less in the public eye than Stonehenge.” Next year he’ll stand as an independent parliamentary candidate for Salisbury in the British General Elections—not his first political bid—and will try, as a candidate, “fighting for the people, of the people,” to whip others up to stand for election outside of the political system as well. And he’ll do all of it as King Arthur, because yes, he is dead serious about being the reincarnation of the legendary British folk hero, so serious that in 1986 he legally changed his name, reflected in his passport, where, after some struggle, he’s now pictured in his robes and crown.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Of course, Arthur hasn’t always been Arthur. He was once John Timothy Rothwell, a 1970s member of the Gravediggers/Saddletramps bicycle gang. Known to his friends as King John, the biker of days long past would throw parties in the abandoned Odiham Castle, off the main road between Farnborough and Basingstoke in Hampshire. In the 1980s, the bikers started partying at Stonehenge as well, and in 1985 they rallied with the Druids in opposition to Margaret Thatcher; when the prime minister sent police to intercept those looking to celebrate the summer solstice in 1985, Rothwell and company tried but failed to ride in to their defense.

Sometime in the 1980s, Rothwell picked up a book on King Arthur. He had never read much of the legend, but instantly saw himself in the stories. He felt such a deep connection that, in 1986, he changed his name, renounced worldly goods, jumped on his motorcycle—his modern steed—and rode down to Stonehenge in search of Excalibur. He didn’t find it there. But on the way back he saw a sword in a shop window, stopped in, and learned that it was the sword from the 1981 film Excalibur and that the store owner would, supposedly, only sell it to King Arthur himself. He showed the man his ID and walked out with the sword.

The legend grew around him from thereon, and he gradually gained prominence and recognition both within the Druid community and under English law. After meeting Rollo Maughfling, the Arch Druid of the Glastonbury Order of Druids, he decided he’d met the modern Merlin. The Order granted him the title of Pendragon and made him their Swordbearer. He then established his own Warband by the end of 1986, and joined it with the Druid orders in 1990 at the Gaelic May Day festival of Beltane. By 1998, the five major Druid orders of Britain met at Kingston-upon-Thames and, during a protest movement, named him the Raised Druid King of Britain on the ancient Anglo-Saxon Coronation Stone displayed in the town square.

Earlier, in 1994, the English courts gave up and acknowledged his identity as well, granting him the right to wear his robes and sword in court while being deposed for two years of tax delinquency. They even let him swear on Excalibur. Eventually, after 30 arrests wherein Arthur refused to remove his robes and was forced into nude solitary confinement, they agreed to allow him and the other Druids of Britain to wear their robes in prison as well.

As time went by, though, Arthur proved a bit more stringent than many of his fellow Druids. For years, they were bulwarks of the direct-action and road-protest movements in the UK, but their fights faded. “It’s part of the general political climate,” says Arthur. “Thatcher galvanized resistance, but now there’s nothing joining us.” But as that specter faded, Druid leaders realized they’d gained a few rights and became wary of sticking their necks out for more. Ironically, says Arthur, “most of [those gains that made them complacent] are what I gained by fighting for it… Now my fears are that a lot of the other pagan leaders are waiting for scraps from the master’s table. They’re afraid of rocking the boat.” But as many other Druids left the direct action movement and softened into casual, cultural followers or passive critics, Arthur remained planted at Stonehenge, getting himself arrested, and in his own words, “motivating by example, leading from the front.” Arthur believes he’s a people’s hero, and, he says, “I’m not afraid of rocking the boat.”

Today, relations between Arthur and the Druids are icy. Some Druid forums refer to him as a dogmatic absolutist, a false representation of the faith, and an unnecessarily standoffish zealot who’s drawing lightning to neo-paganism. In turn, Arthur’s relinquished all of his titles from other Druid groups, instead choosing only to refer to himself as the Battle Chief of the Druids and the Titular Head and Chosen Chief of his own Loyal Arthurian Warband, the independent and self-described militant (yet nonviolent) activist leftist wing of the Druids.

Arthur knows he’s mostly able to stay relevant and draw attention because, well, he’s a 60-year-old man claiming to be King Arthur. When he ran for office in 2010, touting his history of taking the nation to court and embarrassing political parties into electoral losses, he also admitted that his eccentricity was a political asset. He even, in a fit of strategic self-awareness, added “Loyal” to the name of his Arthurian Warband, it appears, just so the acronym in court documents and news stories would be LAW. Showing up to court in robes gets him in the papers, and he’s fine with the vapidity of that. “If being a nutter who thinks he’s King Arthur gets me a soapbox,” he says, “I will use that name as a tool, as a weapon. I once called a press conference and specifically didn’t attend, but I called it on a protest site so that when the reporters came and asked, ‘Where’s Arthur?’ they had no other choice than to cover the protest instead when I didn’t show.”

The fact that he’s savvy about using his image shouldn’t be taken to diminish his absolute faith in his identity, though. He’s spoken on the record of his reawakened past memories fighting Saxons and Irish pirates at Stonehenge. He feels that he can say, with confidence, that Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth II, and the Archbishop of Canterbury are in truth Druids themselves, but that he outranks them as the Arch Druid. He doesn’t worry too much that he’s not been popularly embraced by the British peoples, as, he says, “[The legend]’s always been interpreted wrong: It’s not [that he’ll rise again] when Britain needs him most, but when the land needs him most,” so it’s the land and its history itself he’s defending, whether or not everyone’s with or against him. And he does believe he’s here for something important, that before his life is over he’s going to do something grand, although he’s not sure what it is. “I believe I am the Arthur,” he says, “so I believe I’m back for a bloody reason. And if it comes, I’ll be ready for it.”

Record Store Day is a time every third Saturday in April when vinyl nerds worldwide spend hours in line outside music shops and drop hundreds of dollars on waxy black discs. Like every Record Store Day before it, this one was the “biggest ever,” with an unprecedented amount of special releases: more than 700 in the UK and US combined.

As if music journalism needed yet another excuse to queef out more page filler, the magnitude of this year’s Record Store Day had every online publication taking the master release list (officially announced in late March) and distilling it down to anywhere from five to 50 “recommended” titles. If it needs to be spelled out, any reader who had access to the official release list should have been offended at the assumption that cognitive listeners need their hands held as they sort through a big, confusing list of 450+ releases. And let’s not get started on the percentage of those lists that are assembled with some under-the-table padding of record collections or other nefarious motivations.

Anyway, here is my list of recommendations, along with the releases you should avoid like botulism.

KEEPERS 

1. 

BUILT TO SPILL
Ultimate Alternative Wavers
Modern Classics
Edition of 4,000

One of the gazillion micro-imprints or sub-labels operated or distributed by the Light in the Attic institution, Modern Classics (“Quick! You have five seconds to name your reissue label! Go!”) brings long out-of-print or CD-only albums into the world of vinyl availability. Built to Spill’s shit-hot debut appeared out of nowhere in 1993, seemingly a half hour after Doug Martsch left Treepeople, the awesome post-hardcore band he co-founded a half-decade earlier. This is the best BTS album by a long shot, but most critics and fans exposed to it over the years helped to solidify its place as a redheaded stepchild due to the frequent shredding, heaviness, noisy experimentation, and general sense of adventure with little of the indie/hippy festival crossover appeal that made BTS big fifteen years ago.  

2. 

TYPE O NEGATIVE
Slow, Deep, and Hard
Metal Blade
Edition of 1,500

Type O Negative’s 1991 debut Slow, Deep, and Hard kicks off with “Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity,” a 12-minute opportunity for the late Pete Steele to issue a character assassination of a philandering ex, blame himself, regret everything, and howl in emotional pain. When Pete yells “HEY! DON’T THINK I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOIN’, YOU STUPID TWAT!!!” over a tempo shift, the intentional hilarity of his chorus “I know you’re fucking someone else!” being followed by the rest of the band’s “He knows you’re fucking someone else!” will win over any smart person with a good sense of humor.   

RUSH/LOVE
"7 and 7 Is"
Rhino

This year’s installment of Rhino's annual last-minute “surprise” side-by-side split is like a comforting hand on the shoulder nestled in a bloated release list overrun with hyper-cool today/guaranteed-forgotten tomorrow bullshit. Far from being some contrived “Surprise! Rush has decent taste!” gesture, Rush’s take on one of Love’s stronger songs was originally hidden as a B-side on a 2004 EP.  

PINBACK
Self-Titled
Ace Fu
Edition of 2,000

When it was released in 1999, Pinback’s self-titled debut full-length was the gold-standard of experimental underground pop and was genuinely devoid of any historical reference points on a stylistic basis. Little did we know that this album predicted a future that held a gelded version of Pinback’s supernaturally-catchy agenda in the unsalted rice cakes of indie-pop, otherwise known as Death Cab for Cutie, or that very faint remnants of this stuff would be heard each time a short errand was run, courtesy of Gotye’s “Someone That I Used To Know.” So yeah, try to forget all of that ever happened.   

5. 

LIFE WITHOUT BUILDINGS
Any Other City
What's Your Rupture?
Edition of 1,000

Here’s the reissue of a relatively unknown (in the States), way-out-of-print 2001 debut/swansong album by an amazing band of singular vision—the long-defunct Life Without Buildings. And there are plenty of copies to go around for a little while, so those unfamiliar can get turned on to a fascinating and worthy cranny of underground music’s modern history. I’m waiting on the catch…

6. 

BREADWINNER
Burner
Merge
Edition of 500

Permanent good-people label Merge has a nice supply of important titles in the back catalogue to bring back for round two, and the previously CD-only Burner sits near the top of the heap. Breadwinner was the post–Honor Role concern of Pen Rollings, who realized his position as the preeminent guitar savant of off-kilter metal riffs as the leader of this band. Breadwinner’s blink-and-miss-it presence at the turn of the 90s was good for three 7”s and change, and it’s all collected here.

7. 

SCHARPLING AND WURSTER
Rock, Rot, and Rule
Flannelgraph
Edition of 1,000

The essential book of Genesis in the hefty body of work created by radio comedy duo Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster. Originally aired on the former’s The Best Show on WMFU and subsequently released on the compact disc format in 1999, the same semi-elitist truth about the six other Scharpling & Wurster collections that followed until 2009 also applies here: Either you know they made the greatest contribution to comedy of the last 15 years… or you don’t.

8. 

HEAVENS TO BETSY
Calculated
Kill Rock Stars
Edition of 1,000

Heavens to Betsy’s only proper album from 1993 will no doubt garner most of its attention because 50 percent of the duo happened to be a pre–Sleater Kinney Corin Tucker, but who cares how this badass record gets into people’s homes? Kudos to Kill Rock Stars for exhuming a scorching and intense burner from Riot Grrrl/queercore’s hidden history of under-the-radar, not-to-be-fucked-with works… like Team Dresch’s masterpiece Personal Best, if, you know, someone would step up to the plate and reissue that, too.

9. 

MEDICINE
Part Time Punks Live
Captured Tracks
Edition of 900

The year 2013 was when everyone offered Kevin Shields his first-born child, then spent 11 months uncontrollably urinating and defecating all over the house because the new My Bloody Valentine album wasn’t the horrifying catastrophe it could have been, not because it was any great shakes. So when Medicine, a lower-profile though formerly superior (on 1993’s Shot Forth Self Living album) early-90s shoegaze chestnut, reemerged with the appropriately titled To the Happy Few and it was everything MBV wasn’t, plus more—meaning a stunning, authentically futuristic and proper update of the long-expired sub-genre—heads were up asses. This is a live album by the current incarnation of Brad Laner’s Medicine, but I have no idea why it's named after a Television Personalities song. 

10. 

GRANT HART
Every Everything/Something Something DVD/LP
MVD
Edition of 1,750

Last year, Grant Hart released the double-LP epic The Argument, and not only is it the best album of his solo/Nova Mob career, but it’s the best album by any former member of Husker Du. Despite the greatness of the album and its marking his first time on a reputable label (Domino), the world pulled a Grant Hart on Grant Hart and responded with a deafening silence. Now here’s a lovingly crafted documentary about Grant accompanied by a bonus LP of live material, so what’s he gotta do? Come over to the house and shove it down your throat? 

11. 

DINOSAUR JR.
Visitors
Numero
Edition of 3,000

Most of this has appeared as bonus content through one of the two separate reissue events over the last decade that made Dinosaur Jr.’s first trio of original-lineup full-lengths available again, and most of this is front-page old news for serious fans, but Dinosaur Jr.’s first five 7”s are still just that, Dinosaur Jr.’s first five 7”s. Here’s to Numero Group, the most powerful fighters of the good fights and vigilantes delivering blows against the historical revisionism dominating the retro-reissue wars!       

GARBAGE

1. 

THE PIXIES
Indie Cindy
Pias America
Edition of ???

The Pixies decided to celebrate ten years as a reformed band with this harsh reminder of why we should be paralyzed with trepidation and consumed with cynicism when the next once-loved, once-important act of the 80s and 90s announces its reunion, which will happen in the next five minutes. Not even a real proper album, this collects three previously-released EP’s (EP1, EP2, and EP3)  and is as bad as, if not worse than, its embarrassing title, officially placing today’s incarnation of The Pixies in the criticism-proof territory of other pity cases like Lady Gaga or Courtney Love. Well, maybe not Courtney Love.

2. 

DRESDEN DOLLS
Self-Titled
Rhino
Edition of 3,000

Supporting the maxim that those who speaks the loudest have the least to say, there’s no doubt an introductory five-minute conversation with Amanda Palmer would reveal 100 percent of the didn’t-ask-don’t-care personal info and grab bag of obvious aesthetic/artistic interests or endeavors that beat reasonably intelligent and logical people about the head and neck upon perusal of "the official website of Amanda Fucking Palmer” or related Wikipedia entry. Combine this with Palmer’s sub-literate slaughter of the English language (she’s thirty-fucking-seven) and explain the miracle that would have to take place in order for more than 30 seconds of her music to be tolerable.

5. 

LIARS
Mess On a Mission
Mute
Edition of 1,000

This 12-inch features two remixes (the best way to slap your fans in the face without leaving any marks) and the studio version of a track from LIARS’ recently released seventh full-length, Mess. I guess the idea is that pressing brightly colored wool yarn into clear vinyl will change the music on this 12-inch into something other than DJ Spooky, Peter Murphy (circa bad music), and Rozz Williams rummaging through some shit that didn’t sell at Alien Sex Fiend’s yard sale—or whatever you’d call LIARS' latest bathroom break on the identity-crisis highway.

8. 

XIU XIU
Unclouded Sky
Polyvinyl
Edition of 1,000

Yet another album that makes me feel like Rowdy Roddy Piper’s character during the few minutes in They Live! when he’s alone in his experience with the reality-revealing sunglasses. In order to not lose 100 percent of my faith in humanity I believe that musical forces like Michael Gira and Eugene Robinson collaborate with XIU XIU’s Jamie Stewart because they lost a high-stakes poker game or it’s some Make-A-Wish Foundation project, and that right after the tenth XIU XIU full-length is released (this is the ninth), a masterful cultural manipulator like Bill Drummond or the dudes in Negativland will jump out and scream, “GOTCHA!!!” 

Rabia was the drummer for a Damascene band called Ana, which is the Arabic word for “I.” He was one of five members who dreamed about making an album that mixed Arabic rhythms with post-rock instrumentals.  Yet as civil unrest spread throughout Syria, the band’s aspirations faded away.  

As the mood of Damascus changed and the music scene diminished, Rabia became more active in demonstrations against the regime.  But on May 25, 2012, someone followed him home. He was found dead at the age of 31, with a bullet in his neck inside his sister’s car the next day.

“I didn’t believe it at first,” said Anas, a 25-year-old Syrian songwriter and former vocalist for Ana. “Rabia’s death broke our spirits.”

With the band parting due to the incident, after being together for four years, Anas took a break from music to focus on his work at a radio station. But strict state control on media content pushed him to resign three months after Rabia’s death. Confining himself to his basement in Damascus, Anas began producing music again.

With more than 145,000 people dead and 2.7 million Syrians displaced since the beginning of the crisis, music has, like many aspects of life, become an instrument of resistance and war. But while artists from all circles propagate support for the regime or opposition, Anas has endorsed a more constructive message.

Before uploading his first track in November 2012, Anas, in order to protect his identity from the regime, called himself Khebez Dawle—a title meaning "My Country’s Bread." Anas told me that bread represents the foundation needed to build any project. He hoped his music could build solidarity by connecting listeners from all around the country.

After uploading his music, not only did Khebez Dawle gain relative popularity in the country for a new style of music—reaching more than 5,000 views within the first two weeks—but his old bandmates quickly took notice.  

“I told him to come to Beirut once I heard his music,” said Bazz, a 25-year-old old bassist and former member of Ana.

Bazz joined a cover band called Purple Haze after Ana split up. Yet growing instability in Syria pushed him out to Lebanon in search of new opportunities.  “Beirut had a more advanced music scene and donors willing to help us,”  Bazz told Anas.

While Anas eventually agreed to join he insisted to first return to Nabek—his hometown in Syria—to say goodbye to his family. But upon arriving to Nabek, a ceasefire between the opposition and regime ended and fighting broke out. Without knowing whether he would survive, he chose to enter an internet café to transfer his last song to Bazz. The track was called “Lasatk Aish”—meaning, “You’re Still Alive.”

Instantly after the transfer finished, while still speaking to Bazz online, a bomb landed on the building next to the cafe causing a power outage in the neighborhood.

“I thought he was dead,” Bazz told me in the band’s underground studio in Beirut.

“I don’t think I have ever experienced a more honest moment,” said Hekmat, the 24-year-old guitarist and keyboard player, who had been sitting next to Bazz when Anas suddenly went offline. "'Lasatk Aish' captured life in Syria.”

Although Bazz and Hekmat didn’t receive word until hours later, Anas survived. In March 2013, a week after the fighting in Nabek, he left for Beirut to form the band Khebez Dawle. They have since started to work on a concept album that portrays the events of the Syrian Civil War through their eyes.

After applying for financial support in August 2013 to the Arab Fund for Art and Culture (AFAC) and the Arab Culture Resource (ACR), two agencies committed to empowering cultural production in the Middle East, Khebez Dawle was awarded its first grant from AFAC in November and its second from ACR in January.

Finally, dreams once shattered seemed attainable. But despite their success, the band still wasn’t complete.

While collaborating in their studio one afternoon in May 2013, Hekmat received a call from an unknown number. It was Bashi, a 27-year-old guitarist and the lone remaining member from Ana.

“I never heard from Bashi after Ana split up,” said Anas.

“Damascus became a prison,” said Bashi. “After I heard the band rejoined I fled to Beirut to be a part of it.”

Today, Khebez Dawle is scheduled to perform three shows in Beirut to promote their album release in August, including a performance at the American University of Beirut’s outdoor festival on May 24. And though they intend to perform with a guest drummer, replacing Rabia remains an impossible task.

“He was more than our drummer. He was our friend,” Bashi told me as his hands fidgeted and rubbed his neck, while looking at the vacant drum set in their studio.

While each member reflects upon friends and family living in Syria, the simplest of ambitions pushes their project forward.

“We’re not promoting a political side, but we’re sharing our story, as it is” said Anas. “We just want our people to listen to something different than shelling and bombs every day.” 

The train tracks in Ard el Lewa, Cairo

Three years after the revolution broke out, little has changed for the majority of normal Egyptians. If you want to see some physical evidence of that, the place where the train tracks cross the dusty road into west Cairo’s Ard el Lewa neighborhood—just a few miles from Tahrir Square—isn’t a bad place to start.

It’s a poor area, much it like was before the upheaval in 2011, and shares many similarities with the rest of Cairo: densely packed with concrete apartment buildings, thrown up without planning permission (or planning of any kind) in the last third of the 20th century as Egyptians left their rural villages and headed for the big city. There are makeshift stalls clustered around the rail crossing, selling lightbulbs, tea, can openers, and oranges, ripening and rotting in the heat.

Just inside Ard el Lewa, a row of tuk-tuks await their passengers. These machines—a cab grafted onto a motorbike—are a totally illegal but widespread form of transportation in the narrow streets of Cairo's poorer suburbs. Men mill about in fluorescent workwear and hard hats, their jackets carrying the logo of their employer, Orascom Construction. A nearby billboard announces that the flyover they are building has been contracted by the armed forces. This is an economy built on casual labor, in which the major beneficiaries are now, as they have been for years, whoever can siphon money out of the state. 

Things are the same here as they’ve always been, because while the country’s leader may have changed twice, its economy is still as lousy as it ever was. Former military chief Abdel Fatah al Sisi is expected to win the presidential elections in late May by a landslide, but he too will inherit the economic sludge that overwhelmed his predecessors, Mubarak and Morsi. 

Walid and Mustafa

Walid's story is pretty typical of the men working here. Now 24, he has worked as a tuk-tuk driver since he was 18. For the four years prior he was a tailor. Each day, after hiring a vehicle, he takes home 50 to 60 LE (about $7), which is better than what his dad earns as a day laborer—around 30 to 40 LE (about $5)—if he's lucky enough to be picked up by a contractor.

At 19, Walid was engaged to be married but had to break it off. Before raising his own family his first obligation is to support his four sisters and pay their dowries. There wasn't enough money to do both. The girl didn't wait, marrying someone else before Walid could get his other affairs in order.

Walid's friend Mustafa jumps into a tuk-tuk. He's out of work for now, like more than 13 percent of Egyptians. He starts arguing with the owner of the motor-taxi about damages to the vehicle; his main complaint is security, or the lack of it. Men sometimes stop the vehicle and ask for money, 2 LE (about 25 cents) for "protection." The police take ten times that amount each time, a more expensive version of the same deal.

Here, the word "government" is used to mean "police." Apart from the state schools, which pack up to 80 into a classroom—55 in the school Mustafa attended—the state doesn’t have much of an active presence in most people's lives. Medical treatment is free in theory, but medicines run out, and then people have to buy their own. State schools are so bad that even the poor pay for the private classes that impoverished teachers run to supplement their income.

On the other side of the tracks, one of the construction workers, Abdu, 19, walks to a tea stall to fetch a brew for his workmates. The company recruited him from a village near Beni Suef, which, he said, has now lost around half of its young men, most of them leaving to find work elsewhere. He lives with seven other laborers from his village in a two-bedroom apartment. His basic pay is 40 LE ($5), but he can make an extra 25 LE if he works a 12-hour day.

"Even animals shouldn't work 12 hours," interrupts the guy from the next stall while he pours himself a cup. This is Mohamed, who, at 42 and with four children, makes about the same amount selling lightbulbs that he has bought broken and repaired himself. Like the tuk-tuks, his stall is unlicensed and illegal. These days, he said, the police are too busy to harass him, but before the revolution he would have to pick up what he could and leg it down the street if the police came along.

These guys are typical of around 40 percent of Egyptians, trying to support a family on a monthly wage of about 1,200 LE (around $150) in jobs that are often borderline illegal. Of course, their illegality doesn’t affect how many people work these professions, but it does make it easier for police to extort bribes.

Inflation is at nearly 10 percent, while food prices are rising at about 15 percent per year. The average Egyptian family spends 40 percent of its income on food, so the fact that it’s now two-thirds more expensive than it was at the beginning of 2010 may explain why one-third of Egyptian children suffer from malnutrition.

If Walid, Mustafa, Abdu, Mohamed, and their families represent one side of the contemporary Egyptian economy, the half-built flyover represents another: a coalition of the army, wealthy businessmen, and Gulf money. Unsurprisingly, the very people who supported, funded, and carried out the coup against Mohamed Morsi last year are the ones now benefiting from the regime they installed.

Construction of the flyover in Ard el Lewa

In November, President Adly Mansour decreed that in "emergency" cases contracts for major public infrastructure projects could be awarded to a preferred contractor, skipping a competitive bidding process. Between September and December more than $1.5 billion in contracts went to the military, which operates a huge business empire, worth at least one percent of the GDP and perhaps even several times that. A veritable state within a state, it controls 87 percent of land in Egypt, manufactures everything from pasta to washing machines, pays no taxes, and has access to conscripted labor. It also has more tanks than the entire of Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America combined, the pointless fruit of billions of dollars of military aid from the United States funnelled back into arms manufacturers.

Senior officers, unlike regular soldiers, have access to a network of luxury leisure facilities. A new army leisure club includes a football stadium, tennis and squash courts, and an Olympic-size swimming pool. A former Western diplomat who was entertained at several of these clubs told me that they were of a four to five-star standard.

For this flyover, the military sub-contracted the building work to Orascom Construction Industries (OCI), one of the biggest companies in Egypt. Naguib Sawris, brother of the hugely wealthy head of OCI, backed Tamarod, the movement that called for the demonstrations that brought down Morsi. Some say that the ascendance of the military now is bad news for large private businesses, who will win fewer of the primary contracts themselves. Perhaps, but they’re clearly still part of the mix.

Much of this building work is being paid for with money provided by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, which began backing the military-installed government hours after their takeover was announced. Without that backing, the current government wouldn’t have survived, as Qatar and Turkey—which had both supported the Muslim Brotherhood administration—withdrew their support following Morsi’s ousting. The UAE-based Arabtec Construction has now entered into a $40 billion partnership with Egypt's army to build one million new housing units in the next three years.

Egypt today is an odd mixture of the top-down 1950s development state built by Nasser and the privatized market mayhem unleashed by his successors, Sadat and Mubarak. Since the 1970s, a group of businessmen have enriched themselves via state assets sold off on the cheap and lucrative public sector contracts, Gulf-owned companies have increased their presence in key sectors, and ex-military men have taken up powerful positions in business and politics.

Nowadays, many government jobs are secured for life and carry with them benefits (like health insurance) that you won’t find in other lines of work, but the pay is so low that public employees have to moonlight elsewhere. A friend of mine who’s been a doctor for six years has a basic wage of 1,200 LE per month, less than Walid makes driving the tuk-tuk six days a week. A job—a real job with a contract, not the casual work undertaken by the majority of the men in Ard el Lewa—is an ambition not because it pays well (because it doesn’t), but because it offers a modicum of security.

Walid is applying for a job as a plumber in a government office. If he gets it he’ll take home half what he makes with his tuk-tuk, but he’ll also receive subsidised medical treatment and, once he’s been in the job for six months, can quit and return whenever he likes.

None of the men milling around the Ard el Lewa crossing express any political views, except Mohamed the lightbulb seller, who told me, “The whole country is corrupt, just like it has always been.” But they have one definitive answer when I ask them what the various governments of the last three years have done to make their lives easier: nothing. "All of them are garbage," Mustafa added.

Clashes in Cairo in during last year's military takeover

While the men I met were hesitant to discuss politics, a substantial minority have taken to the streets to voice their discontent. The revolution that toppled Mubarak had social justice and "bread"—which, in Egyptian Arabic, is also the word for life—as two of its three main demands. When I was out on the streets on June 30 last year, amid the demonstrations that would topple Morsi a few days later, I noticed the huge numbers of poor Egyptians in attendance, mostly there because they hadn’t seen any kind of social justice.

Understandably, Sisi has expressed fears about becoming president just as Egypt’s “financial support from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates [seems] likely to dry up.” Shortly before he resigned from his position at the head of the military to run for president, Sisi was visited by a group of agricultural workers imploring him to stand. "Sisi expressed his fear of the impatience of Egyptians because of the economic difficulties facing the country," a source told one newspaper.

Sisi has talked about the need for austerity and more hard work from everyone. "Egypt’s youth should not be thinking about when they will be able to get married or when will they ‘live.’ They need to build the country first,” he said in a recent speech.

It's probably true that, without the massive external financial help, there's no way that Egypt could have a totally smooth economic transition. But Sisi has never mentioned the crony capitalism that’s now strangled Egypt's youth for decades, let alone show any sign that he intends to challenge it. For Walid, Mustafa, Abdu and Mohamed, their families, and millions like them, that's kind of a shame. Because as much as Sisi tries to shut them down, they want to know when they’re going to have a chance to live.

More from Egypt:

Will Egypt's Mass Death Sentence Provoke More Violence?

WATCH – Egypt Under Sisi

WATCH – Egypt After Morsi

Palestinian kids throw stones at cops in Hebron.

It is barely 2PM when the first explosions reverberate through the narrow alleys of Hebron’s old city. A few streets away, a gang of young Palestinians—kaffiyehs tightly wound round their faces—are using slingshots to fire rocks towards a dozen heavily armed Israeli soldiers, who return fire with volleys of tear gas.

Amid it all, vendors pull down shutters or wheel away their packed fruit and vegetable carts. A group of Western tourists walk round the corner but then quickly retreat as a gas canister explodes yards from them. Meanwhile, a growing crowd of locals looks on, just out of reach of the fumes.

It is a Tuesday afternoon in Hebron and all of this is pretty normal. Today, it started when an Israeli settler inexplicably drove down this street in the Arab district. Angry locals surrounded the car and IDF soldiers tooled up and moved in. Things then escalated, as they so often do here in the West Bank.

Abandoned shops in the historic centre of Hebron

Things are always bad here but at the moment relations are even worse than usual. This is a city where 500 of the most radical Israeli settler families there are living among 250,000 Palestinians and one where, just a few days earlier, Israel’s Ministry of Defense approved the re-opening of a new settlement, in a disputed building in the middle of a Palestinian neighborhood.

The following day, an Israeli settler was killed and his family injured when a man opened fire with an assault rifle as they drove on a highway just outside the city. For at least a week, protests have taken place in the Arab district of Hebron, known as H1, while behind the checkpoints and army positions in Israeli controlled H2, the settlers celebrate pesach, or Passover, a weeklong Jewish holiday.

The historic centre of Hebron is known as "the Ghost Town" and for good reason. It has been totally abandoned, with the doors to Arab shops welded shut by the IDF in the early days of the second intifada. Almost 15 years on, this once thriving city center is derelict, filled with garbage, barbed wire, and military towers. Palestinians are forbidden from driving or even walking in much of it.

But this latest settlement—on Hebron’s Ein Sarah Street—could not come at a worse time for the US-sponsored peace initiative, and is unlikely to further the efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry to bring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas any closer to compromise.

For Palestinians, settlements constitute the ultimate red line, particularly in Hebron.

Makeshift barriers separate the two communities

“This whole thing was doomed from the start. I said it, I said it from the beginning,” says Issa Amer, a coordinator at the Palestinian NGO Youth Against Settlements, sitting outside the group’s base on a hilltop overlooking the city.

“John Kerry has made the same mistake the US always does: by putting the pressure on us and not on them. We want one state or we want two states; we do not want half a state,” Amer tells me, as the sound of explosions boom across the valley.

Although the talks have largely stalled, due to Israel’s failure to release a final batch of Palestinian prisoners, for Amer it is the settlements that remain the major obstacle to achieving lasting peace. And Amer should know, his house, the house where we're now sitting, backs directly onto one of them, where an armed IDF guard stands facing his backyard 24 hours a day.

A Palestinian about to throw a slingshot at the police

As we sit and talk, we can see Israeli settlers relaxing in their garden.

Isn’t a bit a weird? I ask.

"Yeah, it is weird," he laughs, before shouting "happy holidays" in Hebrew to a group of bemused Israelis walking past his front gate. Things are not always so friendly. Last weekend he was attacked in his garden, and a few weeks ago settlers came and defaced the murals painted on the back of his house.

"The soldier didn’t see it," he says. "The soldier who stands guard right there, 24 hours a day, he saw nothing."

The Palestinian Authority was given relative autonomy over most of the cities in the West Bank after the 1994 Oslo Accords, but Hebron was considered a special case. Not only had it had been home to both Jews and Arabs for centuries, but its settlements—which began construction in the 1960s—were entrenched in the very heart of the city.

In 1997, the city was divided, with the PA taking control of H1 and the Israelis H2. The classification sounds simple, but of course it is not. In downtown Hebron, settlers often live in the top levels of buildings with Palestinian shops downstairs. Nets have been stretched across the roof of the souk to catch rubbish thrown from the windows.

A new Israeli settlement in Hebron

The complexities of the division are no more obvious than in Hebron’s holiest site, the Cave of the Patriarchs, believed to be the burial site of Abraham—sacred to both Muslims and Jews. The building is split down the middle with a mosque on one side and a synagogue on the other. The tomb itself is half on one side and half on the other, with bulletproof glass separating worshipers.

A number of Israeli human rights groups, including one comprised of IDF soldiers who once served in Hebron, have condemned the treatment of Palestinians living in Israeli-controlled H2. B’Tselem, another Israeli NGO, claims that physical violence and property damage occurs almost daily.

One family we meet in a house that borders the Israeli side of the city show us bullet holes in their water tank, caused by IDF soldiers taking pot shots at their roof. Later, in the old city, we have to leap out of the way of a bucket of water thrown from an upstairs window onto the Palestinian shops below.

Jabari and his son

On Ein Sarah Street, 47-year-old Bassem Jabari lives only 200 yards from Hebron’s latest settlement. For him, it makes a mockery of any talk of peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

“If they wanted to live as good neighbors, they would not act like this,” says Jabari, a shoemaker and father of eight who runs one of the last shops remaining open on the street.

“The Israeli government is deceiving Mahmoud Abbas, and Mahmoud Abbas is deceiving us.”

As for Amer, the settlement issue—and Hebron in particular—is feeding all of the hatred that grows among young Palestinians in the West Bank towards the occupation. Not all settlements in the West Bank are violent, and not all settlers are extremists, but the settlements on both sides of the separation wall are growing on a monthly basis. All this in land that, if the peace process should succeed, would be part of Palestine.

Part of the old town in Hebron that has not been abandoned

Most of those we saw throwing stones at the police downtown are under 16, if not younger, and when that generation grows up into a world of rising unemployment and diminishing prospects, it is clear who they will blame.

“It is the feeder of everything, of violence, of aggression, of everything,” says Amer.

Amer is not sure what will happen if and when the peace talks fail, and while his group is a staunch advocate of non-violent resistance, like many Palestinians he fears that the prospect of a third intifada is not beyond the realm of possibility.

And while he isn’t willing to make firm predictions about what form such a reaction would take, he is sure of one thing.

“This time it will begin in Hebron,” he says. 

Follow Orlando Crowcroft on Twitter.

I first took photographs at a Romanian fairground in 2008, in the city of Rosiorii de Vede. I hung out with the kinds of people who draw their living from following the fair: merchants, grill masters, and craftsmen, all of whom were unavoidably covered in a weird mixture of glitter and grime.

I also watched the crowds arrive, dressed to impress—many in their Sunday best, girls in bright colors and high heels. When I saw these clashing identities, I quickly understood that the fairground was a place where I could witness firsthand the modernizing of Romanian traditions and rural culture.

Since then, I’ve been to many others across the country—in Fieni, in Lapusani, in Bogdan-Voda, in Calarasi, in Pietrari, in Galicea, and many other places. It never ceases to amaze me how much can change while basically remaining completely the same.

See more of Ioana's work here and here.

Click through for more of photographs from Romanian Fairgrounds.

Planes at San Francisco International Airport, where Dr. Rahinah Ibrahim was arrested in 2004 (Photo via)

Dr Rahinah Ibrahim is not a national security threat.

The federal government even said so.

It took a lawsuit that has stretched for eight years for the feds to yield that admission. It is one answer in a case that opened up many more questions: How did an innocent Malaysian architectural scholar remain on a terrorism no fly-list—effectively branded a terrorist—for years after a FBI paperwork screw up put her there? The answer to that question, to paraphrase a particularly hawkish former Secretary of Defense, may be unknowable.

Last week, there was a depressing development in the case. A judge’s decision was made public and it revealed that the White House has created at least one “secret exception” to the legal standard that federal authorities use to place people on such lists. This should trouble anyone who cares about niggling things like legal due process or the US Constitution. No one is clear what the exception is, because it's secret—duh—meaning government is basically placing people on terror watchlists that can ruin their lives without explaining why or how they landed on those lists in the first place.

This flies in the face of what the government has told Congress and the American public. Previously, federal officials said that in order to land on one of these terror watchlists, someone has to meet a “reasonable suspicion standard.” That means there have to be clear facts supporting the government’s assertion that the individual in question is, you know, doing some terrorist shit. Which seems like a good idea.

But not any more, apparently.

Dr Rahinah Ibrahim (Photo via University Putra Malaysia)

Ibrahim, a Muslim who is currently the Dean of Architecture at University Putra Malaysia, was placed on the federal no-fly list in late 2004. She was removed from that specific list the following year, but her name remained on federal terrorism watchlist databases. Her daughter, a US citizen, was also watchlisted. Ibrahim was arrested at San Francisco International Airport while she was enrolled as a PhD student at Stanford University. She was not charged with any crime, but her student visa was revoked; later attempts at obtaining a new visa were denied. She sued the US government in 2006, basically saying that what the federal authorities did was illegal. Eight long years of litigation followed.

She found herself in a guilty-until-proven innocent legal quagmire. Perhaps most importantly, she was never given an explanation as to what landed her on this list. For that answer, she is still waiting. The government would ultimately concede that she had never posed a national security threat. In January, the court found the US government violated her due process rights.

During the case, there was one clue as to what may have convinced the US that Ibrahim was a potential terrorist. She belongs to a women’s economic organization called Jamaah Islah Malaysia: there have been rumors that the FBI confused this with the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah.

Which would obviously be a really, really dumb thing for an investigative agency to do.

Ibrahim’s attorney, Elizabeth Pipkin, said she can’t say for sure how the authorities first became interested in her client. “That was speculation on our part,” she said. “The sad thing is, even after eight years of litigation, we weren’t able to get to the bottom of what was the underlying information that lead an FBI agent to her door and brought this whole thing about.”

But as great as a “Feds Suck at Googling” headline would be, it could be even more simple and ridiculous. According to one judge, an FBI agent made a basic paperwork error by filling out the form the opposite way from the instructions: ticking the lists she thought Ibrahim should not be on rather than the ones that she should. That screw up might be to blame for turning eight years of her life into a hellish pit of litigation.

The real criteria of the no-fly list, if there is one, remains cloaked in secrecy. In America’s post-9/11 fever dream, it’s looking increasingly like the government has targeted Muslims who have no connection to terrorism on such lists, in the hope of developing informants, according to multiple ongoing federal lawsuits. (More on that in a minute.) And once you’re on these lists and terrorist databases, it’s a bitch to clear your name, as Ibrahim found out.

Pipkin said the only historical precedent for a like-minded program occurred during the McCarthy era back in the 1950s, when the government denied passports for people who were suspected communists. It would appear the G-men of the 21st century are ripping a page right out of J Edgar Hoover’s playbook. When the Red Scare was all the rage, a case challenging such a policy went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which found that if someone is deprived of their right to travel, the government has to say why—something the authorities have failed to do in Ibrahim's case.

As head of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover ran roughshod over civil liberties during the 1950s, during which time one US policy tried to prevent passports from being issued to suspected communists. (Photo via)

In other words, it’s secret law: The government is deciding it doesn’t like you for some reason and punishing you, but declining to say what exactly you did to trigger the punishment. People like Ibrahim are stuck in a legal no-man’s land, where they can’t fly but they have not been charged with a crime.

“The assertion of executive privilege in this case was extreme and the secrecy that was asserted by the federal government with respect to its action here are really hard to stomach when you believe that this should be a democratic country,” said Pipkin.

Ibrahim is not the only Muslim to be caught in an extrajudicial limbo.

Gulet Mohamed, a US citizen of Somali descent, is also currently challenging his placement on a no-fly list. Mohamed has not been charged with any crime, but his placement on the list left him stranded in Kuwait for a month from December 2010 to January 2011. His designation prevented him from flying home. During his confinement, US authorities grilled him about his travels in Somalia and Yemen, but Mohamed denied having contact with militants. Mohamed, then still a teenager, said he was beaten and that federal agents made him an offer of becoming an informant, which he turned down. Ultimately, he was allowed back into the US in January 2011. This January, a federal judge ruled that he had a right to challenge his placement on the list.

His attorney, Gadeir Abbas, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the watchlist policy violates due process rights guaranteed by the US Constitution.

“We know that whatever it was that interested them in Gulet, it was not enough for them to press charges against him, and if you can’t test your allegations through the criminal process, then what, exactly, are you doing?” he asked.

Abbas said that Federal authorities have significantly expanded the use of such watchlists since that guy decided to ring in Christmas 2009 by stuffing explosives into his skivvies and boarding a plane that was bound for Detroit. The feds, he said, are now using the watchlists as a, “punitive tool that it can use as leverage [against] individuals that they want to interrogate, to become informants”.

Put another way: Federal authorities are using the watchlists to target Muslims in the hopes they will spy on their own communities on behalf of the US government.

Hina Shamsi, the director for the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) National Security Project, meanwhile, has said the US terrorist database is broken. Thousands of people, she said, have been added to a no-fly list without any explanation as to why and with no opportunity to correct “the error or innuendo” that landed them there in the first place.

Abe Mashal

Abe Mashal was one such instance. The married father of four grew up the son of an Italian-American mother and a Palestinian father in Illinois. He is a former Marine. He also happens to be Muslim. He believes the confluence of those last two factors may have caused him a considerable headache.

Mashal trains dogs for a living. Sometimes this requires him to fly around the country. One day in April 2010, he arrived at Chicago’s Midway International Airport to fly to Washington state for a dog training job. He wasn’t allowed to board, he learned, because he had been placed on a no-fly list.

He is now part of an ongoing ACLU lawsuit challenging the legality of the no-fly list. In a familiar story, he's never been clear exactly about what landed him on the list. He said he can fly now; he was apparently taken off the list but was never told when, how or why. But for three-and-a-half years it hurt his business. About a third of his clientele required him to fly, he said.

Mashal has not been charged with a crime. He thinks federal authorities targeted him because he was a former Marine who identified himself on his military records as Muslim.

Authorities, he thought, saw him as someone whom they could groom to be a solid informant. He said during his attempts to get off the watchlist, federal authorities offered him a deal: Become an informant, spy on your fellow Muslims, and you’ll be off the list. He declined and lawyered up. There are several other ex-military Muslims who are part of the ACLU’s suit, he said.

“I think they feel that you’re a patriotic person and you’re used to taking orders. They want someone with that type of discipline as well,” he told me. “You start putting the pieces together and say, ‘They’re aiming for military people who claim to be Muslims.'”

He added, “The FBI is very good and trained at intimidating people and getting them to do what they want. It’s been a frustrating experience. It’s made me question whether we have these rights that they say we do." When the government can put you on a terror-list without giving you a reason, that seems a fair question to raise.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security both declined to comment for this story, deferring to other agencies. The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment in time for publishing.

Follow Danny McDonald on Twitter.

London, 1978. A National Front march.

Peter Marlow’s career has covered everything from news photography to war reporting, through street photography and a much lauded collection of portraits. However, he is perhaps best known for his own, more personal projects—like his series on the closure of Longbridge's Rover factory, or Liverpool: Looking Out to Sea, the book focusing on the urban degeneration of Liverpool—often covering the stories with a lack of human subjects, which lends much of his portfolio a sense of eerie stillness even at points of crisis.

I gave Marlow a call to speak about not being cut out for war, spotting the moments, and details that bring spaces to life and the importance of curiosity in photography.

Haiti, 1975

VICE: I spoke to David Hurn for the previous column in this series. He was very open about his motivation for getting into war reporting—that it was the most direct way to become a professional photographer at the time. What were your motives?
Peter Marlow: I am a generation on from David. I left college in 1974, which was an era when you could actually live off your student grant. I led the life of Riley, left school, did some work in the summer, and had never thought about what the hell I was going to do after. We had the luxury of knowing we would probably get jobs easily, because back then people who went to university were much more of an elite than they are now. I'd always wanted to be a photographer. Influenced by color supplements that came out in the 70s, seeing the work of Don McCullin and Larry Burrows. There was an issue of the Telegraph Magazine on war photographers, and I thought, That’s what I want to do.

I got a job as a photographer on a cruise liner. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. The other photographer had to suggest to me that I focus and press the button with different hands in order to save me from moving them. After that I traveled around and spent a few months in Haiti. That was the first experience I had of what we used to call the Third World. It was an amazing eye opener,the first genuine hardship I had seen. I look back at those pictures and think they're some of the best work I've done—the first thing I did that was a serious piece of work.

I then started talking to some agencies in New York and finally at job as a photographer with Sygma, a French photo news agency, and basically went all over the world for a few years. Got everything from Northern Ireland to the revolution in the Philippines, and war in Angola. You name it.

Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1977. A Republican youth with a gun during the Queen's Jubilee riots.

I always read that Angola was very unpleasant, even by the standards of that era’s African wars.
Yeah, very unpleasant. I was quite political. I took a mobile darkroom in a suitcase and toured with the Patriotic Front’s photographers, and sort of in return for that they allowed me to see some of the training camps in Zambia. I was the first person showing these thousands and thousands of guys—it was a big spread in the Sunday Times Magazine—these men and kids training with wooden Kalashnikovs to liberate Rhodesia.

So you were quite idealistic then? It wasn’t, 'I’m going to go there so I can become a professional photographer'?
It was both. I was politically motivated, in that I thought what was going on in Rhodesia wasn’t right. It wasn’t apartheid, but it was pretty close. But I got quite friendly with Joshua Nkomo, one of the partners in the Patriotic Front, who eventually fell out with Mugabe because he got rid of a massive part of his tribe. But he used to stay in the Savoy Hotel. That’s where I used to go and see him. And I suggested [I travel with the Patriotic Front] and he said, "Yeah, let's do it." 

So what went wrong with that type of work for you?
I did get some very good pictures, and was doing a lot of conflict work,  but I just realized I was never ever going to be Don McCullin. And actually, in certain situations, I was very, very scared. It just didn’t feel… well, I don’t mind admitting it, I just wasn’t cut out for it. I mean, I’d do earthquakes and famines and, you know, I still do those things; but I always tried to do more behind the scenes. Like the work I did on Kosovo, I was there with the US fleet, behind the scenes.

Having a contract with Sygma meant that if they said, "Go to Iran," or something, you had to go;  there was no choice, basically. So I was attracted to Magnum because the impression I got was that you could really do what you wanted. You know, no one was going to tell me what to do. So that was about that.

Londonderry, Northern Ireland, 1979. Ten years after the arrival of British troops in the country, the barricades are once more dividing Catholics and Protestants in the areas of Belfast and Londonderry. Here, children eat their ice creams while soldiers patrol the streets of Londonderry.

What year did you join Magnum?
In 1980. I had always carried on my own work—and I've carried on doing news photography. But I have balanced the two. And I did do news things, like Northern Ireland with Magnum.

And I did a lot of work in Israel, the revolution getting rid of [former Filipino dictator Ferdinand] Marcos. I was working on The Sunday Times Magazine a lot and you had a bit longer when working with them, working with really good writers. And the balance was more in my own hands then. In '82 I did the shipyard strike in Gdańsk and got a big shot there of [former Polish president] Lech Walesa holding up the pencil that the government used to sign the agreement to the strikers’ 21 demands. That got a double page spread in Life magazine.

But I’ve always tried to do my own thing on the side, so during the mid-80s I started a project on Liverpool and I did a book on that. But I’d always be combining that with doing assignments. I’m very prolific as a photographer.

Yeah, and you're quite challenging to interview because of that. Not only in terms of the subjects you work on, but also the type of photos you take – everything from portraiture to reportage to the very different stuff you’re more associated with now: empty interiors, buildings, factories, aircraft. It’s quite hard to know what to focus on.
The one focus might be that you don’t need to have a load of action to take a good picture. The Rover [factory] story is classic and I think I took like 25 trips up there and it never got published. Wallpaper published [some of the photos], but I thought [the rest of the photos] would make a fantastic book about the deconstruction of a plant that used to employ 45,000 people. I followed that plant all the way through to it becoming a green field. But, in a way, there was nothing going on in that place; it was basically falling apart.

Longbridge, Birmingham, England, 2005. The abandoned MG Rover factory and offices after the company went into receivership on the 7th of April, 2005.

I guess that’s your thing: capturing the emotions of a story without needing to record the people involved – doing it through objects or streets or buildings. For me, the Rover story was sad – it is sad. There’s the unavoidable dreariness about factory life, then the loss of all the livelihoods and that community.
It was all the details that were there… There was a chart on a wall about how the people had their tea – you know, "Pete - two sugars, Eric – no sugar." You can either go and photograph the Job Centre in Longbridge [near Birmingham] or you can photograph that, and to me that’s more powerful because it shows a way of life that’s disappearing. I [enjoy] the challenge of showing that in photography. It’s what keeps me interested, because it is so challenging to do that.

It’s similar to the Liverpool story, too, which I also found to have a sadness to it. Do you worry that taking photos in the way you do – without the participants – makes the work too open to interpretation?
You can make some comparisons in terms of mood and in terms of the kind of thing I’m interested in with all the details of things in those two stories. There are parallels; one's colour, one's black and white. But yeah, I’d agree there are similarities.

Taken from the book Liverpool: Looking Out to Sea. (1993)

But was conveying that sense of loss and sadness an active aim for you in shooting the Rover story? Or do you just take the photos and let the viewer take whatever they will from them?
When they closed it down in 2005 I saw it as an opportunity. It was completely closed—no one was going in there, no journalists—and I did a deal with The Birmingham Public Archive that they could have 50 photos if they could help me get permission to shoot there. But I didn’t go in there thinking anything. I just went in there as a really curious person. I was fascinated to see this Mary Celeste-type scene. There were 25 factories or something. People had left, like, half cups of tea, and things lying about. I’m fascinated by that kind of detail. I don’t know if that’s got some deep psychological meaning. It’s an emotional thing, not really an aesthetic thing, but I do seem to have the ability to convert it into a picture—translate it into a picture. But I’ve never understood why I could do that. Why me?

I also wanted to talk to you about the Concorde project, documenting its last days before its 2003 retirement.
That was not my finest bit of work ever, but I don’t know. The book was a bit superficial. One of my old assistants became an airline pilot and he could get cheap tickets on Concorde, so I got a couple of tickets for my wife and youngest son and sent them off to New York on the Concorde. My other son and I went to the end of the runway at Heathrow to watch it take off, and it was like a bloody rocket. I remember being terrified. Seeing it take off was amazing, but the main thing was that, while there, I saw all these people who had come to watch, too. I thought, What a great project. This was before they announced Concorde was shutting down. It’s basically a book about obsession, because that’s what plane-spotting is.

Cumbria, England, 2001. The disinfected mat across the road is an attempt to stop the advance of the foot and mouth disease to the farm beyond. Taken from the series "Point of Interest".

I guess, inadvertently, that project also fell into the theme of things dying and falling apart. So I guess you could say that your projects are often tied together by an emotional subject. Do you think of yourself as covering some theme in general? Do you have an eye for a decline of industry and places? Or is that accidental?
I think what unifies it is a way of seeing things. So I’d liken it to going on a long car journey, and when you close your eyes that night some little images come back into your head and they're very random—stuff that you don’t actually notice at the time. I try to identify what those things are and photograph them. Trying to find the places that people tend to ignore and give them meaning. I work a lot better, I think, when not a lot is going on. I get more satisfaction from taking a good picture of an empty place. The challenge of it is what keeps me interested.

And just to make this even harder, let's finish by talking about the recent stuff you’ve been doing. Portraits—you shoot a lot of them. How do they fit in to all this?
I see portraits more as a "job," but it’s a job I’m fascinated by. I shot the deputy prime minister the other day and we got on quite well. He's a very nice guy—almost too nice, really. And then, during a shoot, there was one picture I took just of his legs—chinos and suede shoes. That was more interesting to me than the head shots. So I don’t differentiate between the two, particularly. It’s an opportunity to take pictures and see some interesting things. I think, for any photography, you’ve got to be curious.

Click through for more of Peter Marlow's photographs.

Taken from the book Liverpool: Looking Out to Sea (1993)

Geneva, Switzerland. The summit between Ronald Reagan, then-president of America, and Mikhail Gorbachev, then-general secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR. The two leaders listen to their interpreters during a press conference. (1985)

Haiti, 1975

Longbridge, Birmingham, England, 2005. The abandoned MG Rover factory and offices after the company went into receivership on the 7th of April, 2005. Newspaper cuttings showing Rover's recent history.

Longbridge, Birmingham, England, 2005. The abandoned MG Rover factory and offices after the company went into receivership on the 7th of April, 2005.

Longbridge, Birmingham, England, 2006. Demolishing the MG Rover Factory, “Old” West Works.

Taken from the book Liverpool: Looking Out to Sea (1993)

London, England, 2002. Empty office on Gee Street. Taken from the series "Point of Interest".

Dungeness, Kent, England, 2006. The Experimental Station. The conversion process. Taken from the series "Point of Interest".

Previously – Sublime Moments in Mundane Life: David Hurn's Amazing Photos

Photo by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum 

My tenth-grade American history teacher once told us that in the Civil War, twice as many men died of disease than died in combat.

That macabre Snapple fact is all I really remember from that class. It felt weighty, highlighting something that seemed revelatory because it was suddenly so goddamn obvious: War doesn’t exist in a vacuum. War exists in this world—this brutally unsexy place of sandwiches, video games, baseball, friends, soda, Walmart, foot cramps, allergies, and—of course—cold weather and disease. Maybe I was slow on the uptake, but this blew my little 15-­year-­old mind.

Now, ten years later, Magnum’s Peter van Agtmael plops his new book Disco Night Sept 11 on my desk, and I’m suddenly having the revelation all over again, only this time with a more immediate relevance and bite.

Photo by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum 

The elevator pitch of Disco Night Sept 11 is certainly Romantic even if it’s mostly about the erosion of Romanticism: A boy who idolized his veteran grandfather, played with toy soldiers, and studied the history of warfare wakes up on the morning of September 11 an aimless college kid. He wakes up not all that many mornings later a war photographer in the thick of things in Iraq and Afghanistan. He witnesses both the loud horrors—limbs blown off, skin burned away—and the quiet horrors borne of months of bad food and boredom. He comes home the same but different, and eventually puts together a deeply personal book.

It makes me feel alien sometimes, but images of conflict, of guns, gore, and guts, rarely get serious traction in my emotional marketplace. Maybe it’s because war has never been on my doorstep, but the pictures that seem to have the ability to undo me—the ones that can induce the kind of nausea that I usually associate with missing a step on some stairs—tend to be grounded in the everyday.

I like that photography is a medium where big things can happen in little places, where the echoes of the abyss can be heard in the silent hum of a neon Del Taco sign (see: Philip ­Lorca diCorcia’s Hustlers) or some dull complexity of existence found in the slopped-on preparations of a PB&J (see: Alec Soth’s Last Days of W).

Photo by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum 

But somehow Disco Night Sept 11 works backwards, deriving its power from an inverted flow of significance that has epically little things happening in pathetically big places.

Take van Agtmael’s somewhat unremarkable picture of the historic inauguration of Barack Obama, America’s first black president, a man who felt like a messianic figure of hope after eight years of Bush Round Two. The shutter clicks well after the ceremonies, in a moment when a gust of wind is blowing the event’s detritus into the face of a family that’s bundled up in a lame way that’s somehow uniquely American. That day, 1.8 million people congregated in the National Mall and stared at the back of the head of the stranger in front of them while freezing their asses off and listening to a speech they could have heard on Youtube.

With complete seriousness and sincerity, that’s what it is to witness history. That is history—a day they’ll never forget, one they’ll tell their grandkids about.

Photo by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum 

See, van Agtmael’s photographs, whether captured during the death­-ridden throes of war or the more quotidian moments that accompany it, constantly undermine surreality. His photographs constantly prevent us from imbuing them with Romanticism. But they do so without being unfairly harsh or even cynical.

Instead, they simply seem to recognize a reliable dissonance between reality and the way we imagine it, between life and the way we imagine it, between war and the way we imagine it. If Disco Night Sept 11 is a work that asserts anything, it’s that the exploration of that dissonance is both an integral part of thinking in a historical context and an unavoidable part of just plain growing up.

The book opens with van Agtmael stating that he felt war was “in him” from the beginning of his consciousness. But kids don’t really know what war is. Kids don’t really know what anything is. What we have in us from the beginning are the placeholders, the blocks of dummy text that keep the seat warm for more concrete versions of it all.

So is Disco Night Sept 11 about the loss of those placeholders and—in turn—about a loss of innocence? Nah, that stinks of the same Romanticism van Agtmael seems to habitually shirk. That would be another kind of tale best told by a grandfather and best acted out by a boy and his toy soldiers.

It feels more appropriate to just call this great work one man’s reconciliation between war and everything else, between 9/11 and disco dances, and leave it at that. 

Signed copies of Disco Night Sept 11 are available in Magnum's web store. It was published by Red Hook Editions, the publishing community Peter van Agtmael runs with photographers Jason Eskenazi and Alan Chin.

Gideon Jacobs is the creative director of Magnum Photos, New York. He was an actor and now is a writer, publishing a book called Letters to My Imaginary Friends in summer 2014.

Once upon a time, a thriving arms industry operated in Essen, but that stopped being something to be proud of around the same time the German city was mercilessly bombed by the Allies during World War II.

Not much has happened to the place since then, though its proximity to Holland means the drugs are plentiful. Which, in turn, means that the local kids are more than willing to share their intimate parts with each other and with photographer Peter Kaaden.

Does your town or city qualify for paradise status? Feel free to send your pitches to ukphotoblog@vice.com. Don't be shy.

Illustration by Sam Taylor

This month, in a “game changing” development, the US navy said it had developed technology that allows its ships to make fuel from nothing but seawater. In other words, we officially don’t need oil any more.

Of course, this may be bullshit. Theplan is nowhere near as green as it sounds, and is also pretty impractical; but it did get me thinking. Oil is often stuck under pristine locations or countries that necessitate some kind of invasion before we can get to it properly. So what would it mean for world conflict and international relations if, thanks to future technological developments, oil was no longer such a big deal? Would we still be friendly with dodgy oil-rich regimes? Would “No blood for oil” stop being a protest slogan and simply become a political reality?

I spoke with Dr Walter Ladwig III, an international relations professor at Kings College London, to find out.

Navy experts trying to power a tiny aircraft with a liquid hydrocarbon fuel (Photo: US Naval Research Laboratory)

VICE: I want to begin with the idea that this new sea water-based technology could power sea vessels without them having to refuel, meaning they could theoretically run for years. What effect do you think this would have on the world’s naval conflicts?
Dr Ladwig III: The first thing to say is that there are already ships in the world, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, that have a power source that would allow them to operate, in theory, indefinitely; but they don’t. And the reason is because fuel is obviously a very important part of the equation here. But there are a lot of other things that affect how much endurance a naval vessel has.

There are other things a ship needs [for its endurance], like the crew. You also need lubricants and spare parts, and things break constantly on ships, so if you solve the fuel problem people expect ships to run forever, but that's not the case.

If ships were to become less susceptible to damage as technology improves—and then could run indefinitely—how could that affect naval warfare?
Well, if you merge it with drone technology... There are stories out there that people are investigating the idea of largely autonomous cargo ships, so if you solved the crew problem that could be part of it.

The second thing to say is that, right now, it's just the big five—the nuclear powers, plus India—that even have naval nuclear propulsion. So if the technology is simple and could be replicated by a lot of other countries, the real change is going to come with smaller nations, such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam, who will be able to have naval vessels that stay at sea a lot longer. That's where you'll see a big change.

At the end of the day, the use of naval force and skirmishes are all driven by politics. I don’t know to what degree there are skirmishes that are not happening that would occur if the technology were there, but maybe we’d be seeing more action and territorial disputes in the South China Sea between Chinese vessels and Malaysian, Filipino and Vietnamese [vessels].

I also think there could be room for more [confrontation] if you look at the US and China; if two vessels come close to each other, or if Chinese and Indian vessels began to shadow each other or bump up into each others’ territory—and the Financial Times runs a story about the "dangerous games in the Indian Ocean"—there would certainly be more opportunities for those to happen. There would also be more opportunity for states to signal or maybe send messages to each other by moving their vessels here and there, which could contribute to a broad escalation, but I think you would still need the politics in which to do it.

If this technology could also be used to power cars, homes and businesses—if oil became obsolete, basically—what do you think the geopolitical ramifications would be?
Well, it would certainly be the case that oil-producing nations would be far less important to the United States. Since the Carter administration, the US has undertaken a strategy to try to safeguard, in its view, the stability of the Middle East, and to protect tanker lanes and ensure that no hostile country could dominate too high a percentage of oil production. But [ if that were to happen, the Middle East] would be a region that would be far less important.

Do you think America would maintain its close relationship with, say, Saudi Arabia?
I don’t see how that wouldn’t happen. The actual importance of Saudi Arabia would decline significantly, because the utility of its oil would go away. I also feel its endemic social problems would rise. That’s the other thing; from a geopolitical standpoint, I think we would see an Arab Spring on steroids, when a lot of these conservative Gulf monarchies – which basically use their oil wealth to buy off political dissidents – are no longer able to do that.  

Illustration by Sam Taylor

What effect do you think this new energy technology would have on the developing world, in nations that rely heavily on oil?
That’s a tough call. For countries like, for instance, Nigeria, which gets so much of its wealth from oil, you think there would be significant [damage to its economy]. That being said, if unlimited energy was suddenly available to everyone, we're talking about electrification, so there is some kind of trade off there. In the short term it probably would be pretty bad, in the sense that the money they are getting from oil would go away right away. The benefits from this would probably take longer to roll out.

Also, another argument: in some of these places in Africa, China, and South Asia, you're already in a place where roads in major cities are gridlocked, and we haven’t got to the stage where the average man owns a car. In Delhi, it’s already practically impossible to get from one side of the city to the other. You could imagine that if everyone had access to cheap fuel some of these major cities would grind to gridlock.

Russia’s economy is obviously very dependent on oil. What effects do you think it would have on them?
It's a bit silly that Russia’s economy is lumped into this [group of wealthy countries], because Russia’s growth and development over the last decade or more has almost only been on the back of commodities: oil and gas. If those are suddenly largely worthless, with a massively shrinking population, it’s hard to see what kind of diversification Russia could do. It will still be, for a time, important, because of its nuclear weapons and its large conventional military. But those things would suddenly be unsustainable if the government can’t pay the bills.

We would expect to see a big drop. At the same time, we might reach into the problems of the early-90s, with loose nukes around the various ‘stans. Suddenly Russia can’t keep the lights on, then we might be majorly concerned by this nuclear arsenal. What would happen to it? So Russia could become a major problem zone.

Do you think maybe terrorist groups could become more powerful as the government becomes weaker?
It depends—certainly in places like Chechnya, where there are already undercurrents of dissent.

Do you think, without oil, Russia would lose its grip on Eastern Europe? How would it change what’s happening in Ukraine, for instance?
It would become much less able to influence affairs. But when you talk to Eastern Europeans, Russia’s military power is a lot closer to them and they are a lot closer to Russia than the West.

Do you reckon the UK might move closer to Europe and further from away from its "special relationship" with America?
I don’t know if it would lead to a significant change in relations, either to the US or to Europe, in the sense that the Anglo-American alliance is as much about a shared vision for the world and its supporting institutions. Oil is probably a significant part of the alliance, but I don’t think it's anywhere near the sum total.

Thanks, Doctor.

Follow Jack Gilbert on Twitter here and Sam Taylor here.

Rescuers at Rana Plaza waiting in line to carry out the dead bodies retrieved from under the rubble. Photos by Atish Saha

One year ago today, a nine-story factory building named Rana Plaza in Savar, Bangladesh collapsed, killing 1,116 workers and injuring many more. Some of their bodies are still in the back lot, waiting to be found.

Images of the wrecked building—layers of concrete pancaked from roof to street—made it perfectly clear how severe the collapse had been. A year later, the site looks a lot different from the one you see in those photos. It's now an empty gap in a dense commercial strip, a rare blank in one of the most crowded, swiftly developing nations on Earth. But like the World Trade Center site before it, the grim history of this place has temporarily delayed redevelopment. Besides an ugly hammer-and-sickle statue left there by some communists, nothing has been added.

Curiously, almost nothing has been taken away, either. A week after the collapse, heavy construction machinery moved in and started to shift the piles of broken concrete to an undeveloped lot a few yards away. The wreckage is still there, unsearched. It is known to contain body parts of workers who died in the collapse. The question is why they're still there and what this means for the families

At another historical atrocity, some 12 years and 7,000 miles away, the approach to human remains was very different. After the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, a hunt began with the excavation of Ground Zero. Eventually, the results of the search included bone fragments retrieved from locations as far away as the gravel roof of the Deutsche Bank Building. To date, the New York Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (NYOCME) has cataloged over 21,000 human remains and matched two-thirds to the 2,794 victims of 9/11.

Just as 9/11 initially overwhelmed the NYOCME, the Rana Plaza atrocity overwhelmed the Bangladesh National Forensic DNA Profiling Laboratory. In the seven years between January of 2006 and February of 2014, the Bangladeshi lab profiled just 222 homicide cases, or about 31 per year. Rana Plaza killed 1,116 people—basically three decades of homicides in a single day. The lab had nowhere near the kind of funding or equipment as the NYOCME. In fact, the lab in Bangladesh was unable to efficiently identify the deceased until the FBI donated some software.

However, in other ways the identification work is easier than 9/11. The World Trade Center attacks were an “open manifest mass fatality” in a dense section of Manhattan, which meant the total number of victims was unknown. The force of explosions had also “vaporized” some bodies, and fires as hot as a cremation chamber burned for days. At Rana Plaza, there were one-third the amount of victims, and casualties were clearly limited to workers inside the building. The disaster crushed and burned some bodies, but didn’t “vaporize” or cremate anyone. This means that identifying the remains of every person who lost their life in the Rana Plaza atrocity is theoretically possible.

Heavy machinery used during the clean-up operation.

In practice, identification has its limits. The process hinges on extracting DNA, chemically processing it, and comparing it to samples from living family members. Software like CODIS quantifies matches and assists in certainty, but while DNA sometimes lasts a long time, extracting enough DNA for a conclusive match can become more difficult over time if the tissues are left exposed to harsh conditions. 

In the wreckage behind Rana Plaza, what's left of workers has been dumped into a kind of landfill of garments and concrete—not ideal conditions for preserving DNA. The people looking for body parts are not scientists or government personnel, but the bereaved families of the dead.

This neglect has led to another problem: there are more people waiting for bodies than there are actual bodies. By mid-May, some 550 people had registered as family members with the DNA lab, which held samples from only 321 individuals. Now, a year after the collapse, 207 bodies have been identified. Over 100 bodies remain unidentified, but some 300 families are waiting for a lost loved one.

Mere absence was enough to constitute a death after 9/11, though some disappearances were highly ambiguous, and the identification of bone fragments was often purely to allow families some closure. In a gesture of sensitivity, the 9/11 memorial eventually even classified voice recordings of the deceased as “human remains.”

In Bangladesh, where people still gather at the old factory to weep for missing loved ones, no such respect exists. According to government policy, missing Rana Plaza workers must be identified by a DNA match before their families can receive compensation, even though there's basically only one possible answer for what happened to those workers.

This is partly because of misidentifications in the atrocity’s chaotic aftermath. Last April, hundreds of family members came to Savar. Amid their panicked searching and overwhelming grief, they identified the first recovered bodies through their phones, ID cards, or clothing. To relieve overcrowding, rescuers buried unidentified bodies in Jurain cemetery (many of whom have now been identified via DNA samples rescuers obtained). About 777 bodies were also hurriedly given to loved ones, sometimes in error. Meanwhile, criminals laid claim to a few cadavers and their 20,000 taka ($257) payouts, dumped the corpses, and escaped with the money.

The factory site shortly after the rescue operation closed.

The fact that fraud of that kind happens here demonstrates something important about Bangladesh: the level of poverty is so crushing that some are willing to steal a stranger's corpse, just for the $257 payout. It’s crushing for the actual families of the dead, many of whom were destitute before losing a major breadwinner. The humanitarian function of DNA identification after 9/11 was to allow families emotional closure. In Bangladesh today, it would also enable families to eat.

Families now allege that the government is obscuring the true number of victims to push down compensation payouts, while a Bangladesh Garment Manufacturing and Exporters Association representative has told the press that families are “village people who are unclear about how they can properly trace [their living family members].”

The information that could end the debate is readily available; it’s in the rubble directly behind the old factory.

In the soccer field-sized lot, concrete chunks are piled high. Scattered throughout is a mélange of purchase orders, lunch boxes, and cheap garments. While scalps and other large bones are visible, there are likely plenty of smaller fragments hidden among the rubble. Family members may want these for identification purposes, but the larger bones are the only ones retrievable by untrained observers.

And there are many of these amateur archeologists. Scavengers earn a living sifting through the rubble to find sellable scrap metal; sari-clad women hunt; children hammer concrete off reinforcing bars. Standing on a pile of rubble, scavenger Laila Begum thinks about coming across bones for a long while. “I’ve never seen [any],” she says.

But a local man named Khalil told me that he believes bones are there. And he’s right. This December, children collected over 100 body parts and turned them in to Savar police. According to the police chief, it was the fifth time that month.

For now, there is no word on whether those remains will be tested.

@msophianewman

Keep your eyes peeled for new installments of Blobby Boys every Wednesday (we're a day late today) from here until the end of time.

At the end of 2013, Uruguay became the first country in the world to fully legalize marijuana. VICE correspondent Krishna Andavolu heads over to Uruguay to check out how the country is adjusting to a legally regulated marijuana market.

Along the way, he meets up with Uruguay's president, José Mujica, to burn one down and talk about the president's goal of a chicken in every pot, a car in every garage, and six cannabis plants per household.

Members of Génération Identitaire during their first anti-scum tour on March 14. All photos courtesy of Génération Identitaire via Flickr

Last month, members of extreme right-wing group Génération Identitaire (GI) launched an “anti-scum security tour” in the subway system of the northern French town of Lille. About 30 men in yellow raincoats gathered on March 14 and 25 to patrol the trains running on the Transpole network, apparently with the goal of imposing a “deterrent presence against thugs who attack and steal with impunity.”

A bunch of far-right activists marauding around an enclosed underground space in search of their definition of “scum” obviously doesn’t sound like a particularly good thing. So it’s understandable that a lot of people got pretty up in arms about the initiative—not least the French NGO Human Rights League, which released a statement claiming that the GI’s patrol was intended "to serve as a propaganda tool for their extreme right splinter ideas.” Transpole representatives also said that they were “deeply disapproving” of the GI action.

One problem with the GI's apparent goal is that there are already 450 officers and 3,600 security cameras active across the Transpole network, so it's unclear why any further deterrent is needed. However, one other potential motivation for the “anti-scum” campaign becomes apparent when you look at a recent survey conducted by local newspaper La Brique, which concluded that certain neighborhoods in the city suffer from “an unemployment rate fluctuating between 30 and 40 percent,” while also housing “a large concentration of immigrants of mixed origins.”

If you’re a member of an extreme far-right group, seeing those two bits of information next to each other is presumably enough ammo for a whole album of spoken-word hate speech. I wanted to know whether that was the actual reasoning behind the GI's "security tour," or whether they actually believed they were protecting people by standing around and intimidating subway passengers. So to find out I spoke to Aurélien Verhassel, head of GI in Flanders, Artois, and Hainaut—three of Lille's most important historical areas.

VICE: Why did you organize these “anti-scum” security patrols?
Aurélien Verhassel: They were launched as part of our "Generation Anti-Racailles" [Anti-Scum Generation] campaign. We believe that young people are the main victims of this culture of insecurity in our country. There aren't many people who've never been abused or mugged on the streets, and we have to live with this reality.

How did your first security patrols go?
Our security patrols went well. Most importantly, they paid off. Our presence is enough to scare the scum off the subway; thanks to our presence they can no longer commit crimes with impunity. We had some very positive feedback from subway users—everyone welcomed our group of vigilante youth.

Don’t you think that the law enforcement agents already working in the subway can handle this kind of problem sufficiently?
French people confronted by these hateful scum groups feel isolated and scared, mostly because no one taught them how to cope with scum. We want to break this pattern and show young people that they can defend themselves. We also want scum to understand that playtime is over. That’s what our campaign is based on. Our slogan sums it up pretty well: "Join our clan—when faced with scum, you’re not alone anymore!"

There are 450 officers and 3,600 security cameras active across the Transpole network. You're really saying they can't handle it?
We have received many complaints from Transpole staff [about problems in the subway]. They all say that [Transpole having] full control has been to the detriment of the subway users’ security. The response time is too long, and the mediation officers are useless. This is why we’re suggesting an alternative: a police for public transport.

Has crime actually increased in Lille recently?
Yes, without a doubt! We see it every day on public transport, in front of high schools, universities, and night clubs. The annual crime report for the city of Lille is overwhelming. The document is meant to be a secret, but a reporter from La Voix du Nord [a local newspaper] got his hands on it and the case came to light. It reveals that there was a 65 percent increase in violent robberies between January and August of 2013.

The Human Rights League have accused you of spreading "propaganda for your small extreme right-wing group, as well as a stigmatization of foreigners and other disadvantaged groups." What do you say to that?
The Human Rights League should start worrying about crime. Gérard Minet [regional secretary of the Human Rights League] accusing us of that is a shame. We are a youth movement, and there are certainly more disadvantaged people among our members and supporters than within the Human Rights League. If Gérard Minet is genuinely concerned about human rights and not about political propaganda, then he should do something about the increase in violence that undermines our fundamental right to move and live safely. 

But still, you’ve called it an "anti-scum" campaign. Isn’t that name bound to cause controversy?
There are no taboos in Génération Identitaire. We're not calling these thugs “young people” like the mainstream media do in order to cover this “togetherness” nonsense that's progressively turning into a nightmare. Semantic contortions are not enough to overshadow what people experience every day in our streets.

Regardless, the language you use is only going to add fuel to the fire. Have you scheduled any more patrols?
Police presence in the subway has strengthened lately. We're so pleased about our effective actions! You know, we weren't there to replace the police, but to alert the authorities [of the problem]. As a committed group, we are supposed to press right where it hurts to make people react. These security tours wouldn’t be needed if the mayor and the police were doing their job. But, for now, I’m happy to announce that other security patrols will be organized in even more northern cities and all over France.

Follow Emilie Laystary on Twitter.