Photo courtesy of Flickr user Chloe Dietz

When they’re in the company of veterans, lightweights tend to smoke far beyond their limits. After years of consuming weed daily, I know that I can tolerate more weed than occasional smokers, so I’m extra careful when I smoke with newbies. Still, I had to screw up a few times before I learned to be cautious. The first time I got a newbie too high, I thought he was going to die. 

High school led me to many strange, one-off encounters with kids that I had nothing in common with besides an interest in smoking pot. I rarely met anyone who I would consider a permanent fixture in my routine. Most of the time, I didn’t mind smoking alone and making beats, but I still wanted to find a smoking buddy that I could chill with on a regular basis. At school there was only one other brown kid who seemed open-minded enough to blaze, so I was delighted when he said he was down to burn one with me after class. I had never had friends of my own race, and I had great expectations for my session with Haroon.

After school, he met me at my car and apologized for not bringing any weed. I told him not to worry about it. My brother had recently brought me a small supply of really nice weed from upstate New York; at the time it was more powerful than anything we could buy locally. On the drive to my apartment, my conversation with Haroon revealed that he knew very little about weed. He had smoked only once before, and pot didn't make him stoned. I was too inexperienced to realize I did not want to deal with a kid the first time he actually got high.

After we arrived at my place, I gave Haroon some lemonade and brought my dragon bong out onto the balcony. I loaded my glass with some upstate weed and then offered Haroon the first hit. He fumbled with the bong, so I taught him how to use it. He took a medium hit and then exhaled without coughing. “Whoa, that was great!” he said, sitting back to enjoy his high. As I lit the bong again, Haroon stood up and asked where the bathroom was. I pointed him in the right direction and continued smoking—the upstate weed was amazing. I finished the bowl and then packed and smoked a second one. Suddenly, I realized Haroon was missing. Even if he had the audacity to take a shit at my house the first time we hung out, he would have been back by now. I finished the cigarette and went inside to see what was up.

I knocked on the bathroom door but heard nothing. I knocked again, listened hard for a response, and then heard a small whimper. “Haroon!” I yelled, “Are you alive in there?” He told me the door was unlocked and I could come in. I heard anguish in his voice. I entered and saw Haroon sitting on the tile floor against the wall; his face was as pale as a brown guy’s face can get. Vomit covered the edges of the toilet in front of him. He looked up and said, “I’m sorry. Can you help me?”

I had seen people react badly to weed, but never like this. I wondered if he had the flu and the hit had triggered his illness. I didn’t care how this happened—I just needed to abort this mission as soon as possible. I told him not to worry about the mess and that I would drive him home. He thanked me and asked for a few more minutes with the toilet. Based on what he had already hurled, I was amazed that the kid had anything in his stomach to vomit. I brought him some water and then left him alone. I started working on a beat and then waited about 20 minutes before I checked on Haroon again. This time, he didn’t respond at all when I knocked. When I opened the bathroom door, I found him lying on the floor motionless. I screamed, waking up Haroon. He was alive, but it didn’t look like he would stay that way for long.

I asked Haroon what was going on and if he needed to go to the hospital. I prodded him about any potential health conditions that might have given him a negative reaction to a single hit. He insisted that he was just a lightweight and that he’d be fine if I gave him a few more minutes to chill.  It was already past five, and my mom would arrive home within the hour. I knew I wouldn’t get into trouble for having a sick Pakistani kid at the house, but I didn’t want to turn the situation into her problem after she had a long day at work. I told Haroon that he’d have to finish recovering at his house. It took five more minutes to get him onto his feet. I led him out the front door and told him to wait there for two seconds so I could grab my keys. Within those two seconds, Haroon puked again. He mostly barfed into the kitchen garbage can, but he was having a hard time controlling his vomit. His condition seemed worse. We made it to the elevator without incident, but Haroon yacked again when the elevator was only one floor away from the parking garage. After the elevator doors opened, I rushed him to my parking spot. I knew he might puke in my car, but I was willing to take a risk to make sure we left before my mom’s car pulled into the parking garage.

To my dismay, Haroon gave up about 15 feet away from my car. He laid down in an empty parking spot and told me he needed to pass out for a few minutes. I felt bad for him, but I knew the situation was now outside of my control. Taking the poor bastard home, so his parents could sort him out, was the best thing I could do. I roused Haroon enough to get him into my car, and then finally we were on our way to his house.

The drive had unanticipated complications. The car’s changing speed made Haroon queasy. I tried to keep him at ease, but I was basically driving with a mop bucket full of puke strapped into the shotgun seat. We reached his neighborhood without any more incidents, but then when we were less than a mile away from his house, he shot up and threw up on the window. The vomit shocked me—I swerved to the left, nearly missing a passing SUV. The SUV’s driver screeched to a halt and shot me a furious look. Before she could scream, she saw the mess in my passenger seat. Her eyes went wide, and she urgently waved us along.

We finally pulled up to Haroon’s house. After he thanked me for the ride, he said, “I actually feel a lot better now. Maybe we can hang out and smoke again some time. I think I can handle it next time.” I couldn’t believe my ears. “I’m sorry, man,” I said. “We’re never gonna hang out again.” I had about four minutes to get my pukey car home and clean up the vomit before my mom came home. Miraculously, she was late and I pulled the cleanup off before she arrived.

Wherever Haroon is now, I’m sure he’s gained an understanding of his own limits. He was committed to smoking weed, though it did him so dirty, and I respect that. Still, I wonder how many people had to witness his insane puke fest before he finally understood his limit.  

Follow T. Kid on Twitter.

Photos by Tom Johnson

Every year, a bunch of English nationalists celebrate Saint George's Day by marauding around Brighton, screaming about Muslims, and getting into fights. Sunday was no exception.

The March for England (or MFE) is organized and supported by various small far-right groups. Since the implosion of the English Defence League, the most prominant gang of protest-happy Islamophobic nationalists, there have been a number of attempts to reunite the far right under something called the “United British Patriots” and Sunday was their first big public outing.

In the past, the MFE has been billed as a family-friendly kind of event—organizers portray it as the sort of thing that would just be a bunch of smiling kids waggling English flags around and eating chips if it weren't for the presence of mischief-making antifascists. In reality, it's always been a lot more violent.

This year, MFE’s pre-match propaganda dropped the pretense and left little doubt that aggro was the order of the day.

It seems that MFE targets Brighton because it's probably the most liberal town in the UK. Previous years have seen MFE laughed, jeered, and punched out of town. But for whatever reason, possibly because they like this kind of shabby treatment, they refuse to go somewhere more tolerant of their intolerance. I went down to the seaside with my photographer, Tom Johnson, to find out if they would have just as bad a time this year.

As we drove into town it was busy with police and black-bloc clad antifa. The MFE members were corralled into a pub, trading insults with antifascists over the heads of a line of cops. “Fascists!” one side would shout. “No, you’re the fascists!” came the reply. It was pretty childish, but then again, these things generally are.

One of the antifascists shouted, “You’re stuck in a pub, that’s where racists deserve to be!” To be honest, I can think of worse gulags than a place where you can get a beer and burger for $10.

After a while, the police moved the marchers on towards the starting point, to the relief of some non-fascist customers who made “We only came for breakfast” signs and pushed them against the window.

Now that they were out of the pub, the nationalists had the march itself to look forward to. It was the reason they'd all come: to walk 400 yards along the seafront, hermetically sealed in a police cordon, while getting pelted with insults by antifascists and soaked by the rain. And then walk the 400 yards back again.

As usual, the English Disco Lovers were out in force. There’s a small part of me that thinks this kind of protest is hatefully twee. But there’s something about blasting ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” at a load of meatheads that is undeniably quite funny.

At several points along the way, people hung anti-racist banners out of their windows—a convenient way to tell the marchers to fuck off without being drenched by the rain or risk getting attacked by thugs.

Their short walk over, the demonstrators were marched back up the road to the station. At this stage, the police grip on things loosened up a bit, leading to a lot of awkward confrontations between passing fascists and antifascists, including the one pictured here, in which the man in the Adidas windbreaker and an elderly gentleman pretended not to hear each other for about a minute, exchanging muttered insults, you-what-mates and I-beg-your-pardon-I’m-not-speaking-to-yous.

It ended with the marchers cheering because someone unfurled a Saint George’s Cross flag, which they took as some kind of moral victory.

The MFE was very slowly escorted towards the station in a moving kettle, jeered all the way by angry Brightonians, and a Chelsea soccer fan who shouted, “[I’ve been] Chelsea for 20 years and never a fascist! Chelsea isn’t fascist except for maybe 200 season ticket holders!”

It was at this point that we decided to cut down a side street to get ahead and find a better vantage point. Breaking away from the protective mass of cops and antifascists proved to be a bad plan. Walking along the street, I heard shouting from behind me along the lines of, “COME ON THEN!” Turning, I saw a group of thugs marching toward us, two of whom were breaking into a sprint, leaving their friends behind and shouting things like “Give me that camera, you cunt!” at Tom.

Obviously he didn’t want to give up his camera and I didn’t want to endanger my beautiful, beautiful face, so we started running away.

The guy pictured here on the right caught up to Tom and managed to land a couple of crap punches on the back of his head. I turned back and watched as he went for a third and failed to connect, the force of his own momentum sending him spinning into a wall. Meanwhile, the guy on the left was spreading his arms and screaming, “LET’S FUCKING HAVE IT!” at me, his face fizzing like a condom full of Coke and Mentos. Thankfully, Tom’s assailant keeling over gave us the couple of seconds we needed to put some distance between them and ourselves.

Around the corner, we were relieved to find a bunch of antifascists and police. But when he caught up, Tom’s attacker was in no mood to concede that he was both outnumbered by his enemies and surrounded by cops.

He really, really wanted to attack us.

Before long, they were all being arrested. I'm not gonna lie; it was pretty cathartic watching the guys who just attacked us getting their hands cuffed behind their backs.

Further up the road towards the station, a load of metal barriers were being used for road works, so for whatever reason, the antifascists decided to build a barricade.

For good measure they reinforced it with some traffic cones, road signs, and upturned pub tables. Soon, the chant, “Alerta! Alerta! Antifascista!” was filling the air.

But they quickly fell back in the face of the advancing cops, leading to an uneasy standoff. Eventually, the lines of police arranged themselves in a way that made it clear a kettle was being created. Most people scattered, not wanting to spend the rest of the day in detention. The marchers were put on trains home, ending another crappy day out.

Another year, another fascist day trip, another reminder that nearly everyone in Brighton really, really doesn’t like nationalists.

Follow Simon Childs and Tom Johnson on Twitter.

Aedes aegypti, the principal vector for the spread of chikungunya. Photo by João P. Burini

In the southern United States, it’s that time of year again: Birds are chirping, the sun is shining, and thousands of baby mosquitoes are hatching in your weird uncle’s neglected swimming pool.

But this year there’s a new problem child: Aedes aegypti, otherwise known as the yellow fever mosquito. Typically brown with white markings, this mosquito is a highly aggressive biter, generally found in hot, humid areas like Mexico and Central America, and sometimes the American south. But this year, mosquito control managers were concerned to find a bunch of Aedes aegyptias as far west as southern California, and they’re multiplying quickly. The female of the species lays up to 200 eggs several times a season, just above the water line in containers of standing water.

Aedes aegypti is the perfect vector for a handful of frightening tropical diseases, including yellow fever, West Nile virus, and dengue fever. But they’re also a great transmitter of a little known virus that’s been popping up in the Caribbean this year: Chikungunya.

Chikungunya is an acute virus transmitted from the bite of an infected mosquito. It’s not usually fatal, but it causes acute fever, joint pain, and rash. What’s scary is that it has a strikingly high rate of epidemic—up to 50% of potential human hosts will contract the disease when bitten. And of those, around 10% will have persistent arthritis in the smaller joints for up to three years. There’s currently no vaccine to prevent or medicine to treat the disease—the best thing we’ve got it bug spray.

In late 2013, the virus was found for the first time in the Americas, on islands in the Caribbean. More than 5,900 suspected cases of chikungunya have been reported in the Caribbean and South America since December 6. The Public Health Ministry of the Dominican Republic recently reported 3,690 suspected cases in the San Cristobal province alone. Although this may not sound as bad as a disease like Ebola (which kills you through internal hemorrhaging in your gastrointestinal tract), a full-blown outbreak of chikungunya, replete with hundreds of southerners experiencing long-term arthritic symptoms and fever, would take a serious economic toll on the isolated rural areas of the deep south.

So, on to the question: How worried should we be about this particular disease? I called up Dr. Tim Brooks at the Rare and Imported Pathogens Department of Public Health England (PHE). He’s been helping to run the main UK referral center for the disease out of the PHE office, so I figured he’d be able to tell me whether or not you should cancel your upcoming vacation to New Mexico.

Health workers identifying chikungunya in a patient after the disease traveled to the south of France via a tourist. Photo courtesy Valentin Pezet, Jules Foulongne, and Nicolas Gueniot

VICE: So what exactly is Chikungunya? What is it named for?
Dr. Tim Brooks: Chikungunya is a disease that’s pretty much had its day, but it comes around every so often. Its name translates to “that which bends up,” because the biggest problem with the disease is the arthritic debilitation that follows the infection. It’s also got a fascinating history: Chikungunya was first pinned down in Tanzania in 1952, but historical accounts appear across Asia and Africa as early as 1779. Historically, outbreaks began in the Indian Ocean Basin, and it’s been able to travel very successfully since then.

What are the symptoms exactly?
Normally chikungunya presents with joint pains, a rash, and acute fever, followed by all the other symptoms you associate with high fever: headache, diarrhea, back pain. The main problem is the arthritic pain, which does not go away for maybe 10% of patients. It can persist for up to three years, and is very debilitating. It tends to affect the smaller joints, causing local swelling and pain. Once you’ve got it, you’ve got a lifelong immunity to it, but it will generally infect a large portion of the population, move on, and then disappear until the next generation comes up.

How does it travel?
Chikungunya survives in closely connected landmasses, but it’s also possible for someone who travels with it to spread the disease during the incubation period, when mosquitoes in a new territory bite them and contract the disease. We’ve seen this in the last major epidemic, which was in 2007. That was really fascinating. The virus spread way beyond where it’d ever gone before, and most importantly, it had a single base mutation, where one nucleic acid changed.

Rash commonly associated with chikungunya

Whoa. What happened after that change?
Well, it certainly increased the virus’s virulence, and cases became more severe. But it also altered its mosquito tropism. Instead of being confined to be spread only by the yellow fever mosquito, the virus evolved to use the tiger mosquito as a secondary vector. This mosquito is from Southeast Asia, and it’s a very tough little bug. It’s famous for traveling around the world in motorcar tires.

Wait, what? These mosquitos breed in tires?
[Laughs] Yes, motorcar tires shipped worldwide often have water in them, and the mosquitoes can live and breed in that water, and then establish themselves around the world.

So exactly how virulent is this disease?
Chikungunya has an extremely high attack rate in a vulnerable population. Up to 50% of people susceptible to the disease get it, and it has a very high rate of epidemic. The problem is that many countries that are currently experiencing cases don’t have the ability to properly handle it. If you look at the number of suspected cases in parts of the Caribbean, there are reports of 1000 cases, but only 1400 confirmed cases. Part of that is that they don't have the resources to identify it.

How bad do you think it could get in the southern United States?
Well, it could start in the south with a single tourist. Then, imagine a school kid comes into school with the disease. You might have some cases in that area, and whether or not the disease will spread depends on public health. If you cut back the number of mosquitos, you can cut back the potential for an epidemic. But many people in the rural areas of the south don’t necessarily have access to hospitals, or even health care. It’s those areas that I’m concerned about.

This past weekend the Toronto Policing Literacy Initiative (a group of 20 young people who aim to produce “substantive advocacy” about “policing issues and community safety in Toronto”) released this 30 minute documentary about carding. If you haven’t already heard of carding, it’s racial profiling. The term is used when people are randomly stopped, and asked for ID, by the Toronto Police. It’s an issue we’ve covered in the past, but it’s a long conversation that requires further examination—especially given the Toronto Star’s impressive expose on the program, and a recent decision by the TPS Services Board to revise the carding policy.

So, watch the PLI’s doc above and read this op-ed below, written by its director, Dan Epstein.

On Thursday evening, a historic vote took place at the Toronto Police Services Board, the civilian oversight body that governs the Toronto Police Service. The policy, known as the Community Contacts Policy, that the TPSB passed has ostensibly taken away officers’ power to stop and question whomever they please. However, residents of Toronto should not rejoice quite yet. The policy has some pretty clear legal loopholes that would allow officers to continue certain unjust practices. Furthermore, the wounds of carding and racial profiling by the TPS will not heal with only the balm of policy solutions. The policy is, on the surface, very good. But it will take a concerted effort on the part of every TPS officer to make sure that community relations become better.

I have just directed a short film with a group called the Policing Literacy Initiative, which we screened to an audience of community members, activists, Police Service officers, lawyers and academics at City Hall on Saturday. It’s called Crisis of Distrust. We focused on the negative impact that carding policy has had on people of colour across the city. Working on the film, and with the PLI in general, has given me the opportunity to meet some of the most important voices on this subject, and many of them are in the film. The film opens with a young man telling us a story about how he and a friend were stopped while walking home one night. He tells how the officers were investigating a specific offence that had happened some minutes drive away. Rather than representing the kind of carding that the new TPSB policy prohibits, it is an example of what the policy seems to encourage: stops based on investigating or preventing a particular offence.

I’ve spoken with TPS Deputy Chief Peter Sloly on this issue, as well as prominent members of the committee working on the Police and Community Engagement Review started in 2011 and released as a report in the summer of 2013. The TPS seems to be an organization that, at least at the corporate level, wants to change in order to gain the trust of the community. They seem to realize that the cost of information retention and street checks is that the communities they are meant to police no longer trust them. That cost is too great for the TPS and for the city. Police need citizens to trust them so they can do their jobs. But the trust needs to be earned, and it can only be earned if officers consistently show community members that they respect their rights. The Neptune Four incident, the killing of Sammy Yatim, and other high profile cases have conditioned the public to be afraid of police force. People of colour are more likely to be stopped and questioned in Toronto than others, and for that very reason some community members do not trust the motives of the police. Individual interactions between police and community can either help or hurt that perception, and every member of the police service needs to be committed to helpful interactions.

Incoming PLI Coordinator Zakaria Abdulle speaking at Saturday's PLI Community Forum where this documentary was screened at Toronto's City Hall.

The most important part of the new policy is the requirement that community members must freely participate, and that officers have to let community members “know as much as possible in the circumstances about their right to leave and the reason for the contact.” This should be the point that both citizens and officers take to heart above all else. People need to know that when they are stopped by Toronto police officers, that they can leave. If an officer stops you tomorrow and wants to ask you a few questions, but you happen to be on your way home, you can simply say “no.” By requiring that officers communicate this to people, Alok Mukherjee and the TPSB have taken a great step towards building community trust.

Another important part of the policy is the amendment that attorney Peter Rosenthal instigated. Rosenthal argued that the policy would become null if it allowed officers to collect “intelligence relating directly to an identifiable, systemic, criminal problem and pursuant to a service or Division-approved initiative.” Not only could this be interpreted very broadly, but it would allow officers of the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) to continue to card at will. In the Toronto Star’s analysis of carding data, they found that TAVIS officers were conducting a disproportionate amount of carding. TAVIS officers do not have a specific division, but respond to ongoing crimes and investigations throughout the city. This means that TAVIS officers are not recognizable in the communities they police, making it hard for community members to understand their motives. In contrast to TAVIS, community policing Initiatives like the Somali Liason Unit demonstrate that the TPS is interested in forming real and lasting community bonds. Enforcement has its place, but the ultimate goal of police in this city is safety, and safety is built out of trust rather than suppression.

The Community Contacts Policy is milestone, and has been needed for years. Every one of its recommendations is a step in the right direction, but the real work of rebuilding community trust needs to take place on the street. Police need to be following the spirit of the policy as much as its letter.
 

Learn more about the PLI on their website, or follow them on Twitter.

A humpback whale, showing off on the coast of Calvert Island, B.C. via Flickr user A. Davey.

The Canadian government’s announcement that it's knocking humpback whales off its endangered species list has critics pulling their “Save the whales!” signs from the 1980s out of storage.

While the decision to remove the marine giants—known for their amazing group air-bubble fishing and haunting long-distance singing—from the list may sound like positive news, it coincidently comes only months ahead of a final decision on the widely despised Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline—an $8-billion proposal that has already faced a lawsuit alleging possible oil spills and tanker accidents would endanger threatened species.

One of those species named in the suit is the humpback, an animal that faces less protection now that it's been downgraded from “threatened” to “special concern status.” The move has many whale scientists scratching their heads—even one who sat on Canada's Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife (COSEWIC), the government-appointed “independent” body whose data on whale populations was used to change the classification.  

That particular Washington State expert is research biologist John Calambokidis—whose 30 years of research was cited repeatedly in the Department Fisheries and Oceans own humpback recovery plan just last year. He told me he disagreed with the decision, and was baffled as to why the committee decided to ignore “very strong” evidence of at least two distinct whale sub-groups.

That's right: while the data shows an overall “dramatic increase” of between five to seven percent of humpbacks on the B.C. coast since the population was decimated by commercial whaling decades ago, many researchers insist that a smaller, genetically unique southern group faces a greater level of risk of extinction.

Calambokidis's data was in fact the basis for the government's own most recent population numbers. In the mid-2000s, he sat on the COSEWIC marine mammal subcommittee, which advised the species be de-listed, and though as a whole it might be doing well, there are segments of the whale population that are still very much in trouble.

“I do not think the southern B.C. and Washington units should be down-listed from threatened at this time,” said the biologist who currently works with Cascadia Research Collective in Washington. “It doesn't make reasonable sense to me.. I'm disappointed to find out after the fact. I wish there had been more of an attempt at dialogue.”

Marty Leonardis is a Nova Scotian biologist and the chairwoman of COSEWIC. She insisted their assessments are based only on “the best available scientific knowledge,” as well as aboriginal and community input.

In 2011, the organization recommended “special concern” status for North Pacific humpbacks, based on the fact that their population had boomed to more than 18,000 (compared to the mid-1960s when it was estimated there were fewer than 1,500). But when critics argued there are at least two sub-populations—one vacationing annually in Hawaii, the smaller one to Mexico—the government sent it back to COSEWIC's subcommittee to review, Leonard explained.

“They looked at the evidence for two distinct populations,” she told me. “Their conclusion at end of it was there wasn't enough evidence to support separating that population into two distinct populations... Our decision to assess humpbacks as a single population is what we were standing by.”

Leonard also said that there is “no political interference” in the scientific organization, and that Northern Gateway pipeline had nothing to do with the fact that humpbacks have simply made a miraculous recovery in recent decades.

“The discussion is strictly related to the risk of extinction,” she said. “Nobody brings up political things or what happens if we list it this way… Keeping the science separate from other concerns—whether social, economic or political—is extremely important. We don't want to mix them up with the risk of extinction to a species.”

However, that's not the way some other scientists see it at all, particularly since humpbacks have still only recovered to roughly half their pre-whaling numbers.

“The decision by the federal government is politically motivated,” said Misty MacDuffee, a marine biologist of 15 years, “but they're able to hide behind COSEWIC. They made their 2011 decision in the middle of Northern Gateway hearings. We're halfway [to where populations once were], but we're going to make a decision now when we know that stressors on the population are going to increase?”

MacDuffee, who works with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, said evidence of more than one humpback group in B.C. is convincing. But even if COSEWIC doesn't buy the two-group theory, it’s still questionable that humpbacks are being de-listed.

“When you've got a species with [growth] numbers as slow as they were after commercial whaling,” she said, “50 percent does not by any scientific criteria meet the goals of recovery. If that's what they're using to define recovery, it's clearly inadequate.”

One current member of the 11-member COSEWIC subcommittee stands by its decision, and said there's simply too much disagreement on the existence of a more vulnerable southern population.

“It's the right decision,” he said. “They no longer met the criteria for being threatened… The science was divided on whether or not we have one humpback population or two in B.C. If there's a bone of contention, that's what it's about—not about whether the correct decision was made.”

He said the subcommittee carefully reviewed the research on whale genetics and migration patterns, but that “there is not a clear line” to separate the populations, but rather “a bleeding of animals as you move north.”

On a fundamental level, former subcommittee member Calambokidis disagrees with that assessment, pointing to his recent peer-reviewed research, part of what he called the “most comprehensive” humpback investigation ever, involving roughly 400 scientists over three years.

“The differences between northern B.C. and southern B.C. are pretty dramatic, actually,” he said. “The evidence is very strong… It's a very clear conclusion last year that represents very strong evidence that should be taken into account. Genetics are usually a pretty high bar—you're talking about patterns that have existed over extended periods of time to allow genetic differences to take hold. This is not a borderline statistical call.”

Several other scientists approached for this article agreed the evidence is overwhelming that southern B.C. is home to a unique group of humpbacks that return to the same feeding grounds year after year—the same ones their mothers brought them to, and these are the ones that are at risk.

But with the DFO's own website warning that humpbacks “face potential risks from exposure to significantly higher numbers of oil spills due to increased tanker traffic in coastal areas,” many are simply shaking their heads at what seems to be a brazen move to eliminate one major barrier to oil tankers and pipelines: endangered humpbacks' habitat.

“The timing is just odd,” said Linda Nowlan, World Wide Fund for Nature Canada's conservation director. “We're wondering why the federal government is reducing protection now, just as the threats are poised to skyrocket if Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline is approved this summer."

@davidpball

An ever-expanding group of paparazzi has descended on Señor Grandes, a Mexican restaurant located in a Woodland Hills, California strip mall—the paps, by far, outnumber the subjects they have come to shoot. The reason for their presence is Tabloid Taco Time, a Feed My Starving Children charity event featuring appearances by such humanitarians as Michael Lohan, Joey Buttafuoco, and Nik “The Dirty” Richie. Tabloid Taco Time is, naturally, the brainchild of Gina Rodriguez, a celebrity manager and self-described “D-list diva.” The event exists to raise money for Feed My Starving Children and promote the infamous characters on Rodriguez's roster. Members of the press, myself included, have once again taken her on-brand bait.

At 11AM, the event’s set “red carpet” time, there is no one on said carpet (which, actually, is a green patch of astroturf). As a DJ pokes at his laptop, paparazzi wither in the hot sun, staring off into space. All the usual suspects (TMZ, E!) are in attendance. Toby Sheldon, a man who spent $100,000 on plastic surgery to resemble Justin Bieber, steps out of a cherry-red car, composes himself, and heads toward the carpet like a moth to a flame.

He takes photos in front of a logo-laden wall. (Tan-XS of Westlake, TabRag, Deejay Mickey, Lebrisa Designs, and Shane Sparks Dance sponsor the event.) Interviewers, not afraid to probe deep, ask hard-hitting questions. “How tall are you?” one posits of Sheldon. “6'2'',” Sheldon replies. "How tall is the Biebs?" the interviewer asks. Sheldon does not know. "You're a cool, nice guy,” the interviewer tells Sheldon. “You’ve got really good vibes. One last thing—any message for the Biebs?"

A group of gals, who appear to be employed as professional housewives, approach the carpet. One, holding a copy of her own book, I later find out is Erica Rose, star of Bachelor Pad 2. “I'm nobody,” a friend posing alongside her tells the press. “It's not actually out yet,” Rose says of the book in her hand, titled Confessions of a Reality Show Princess. “My publicist just mocked up this cover.”

Occasionally, the DJ apathetically informs us that proceeds from the restaurant go “to a good cause,” reminding us that taking photos of celebrities at Senor Grandes supports a good cause. Bobby Trendy, the celebrity interior designer who appeared on The Anna Nicole Smith Show, gave away these Anna Nicole Smith-branded pillows to convince people to donate to Feed My Starving Children. 

Angelique “Frenchy” Morgan’s enormous fingernails furiously clack against her iPhone as she shades herself under an umbrella. “I got hot,” she tells a member of the press. “You are hot,” he replies. She giggles. He tells her that he's on his way to interview the guy who got $100,000 in plastic surgery to look like Justin Bieber. “Holy shit,” she replies. “It only cost $25,000 to look like me.” They share a laugh.

“Let me give you my business card,” Frenchy tells me after the man leaves. “I give everyone my business card.” She pulls a card out of her see-through pink plastic handbag—it lists her profession as “Reality TV Star.” She wears the same shoes on the card as she is wearing in real life. Her accent is incredibly thick, rendering her near impossible to understand. “You know the show Rock of Love?” she asks. “I'm sorry, what?” I apologize. “The show Rock of Love?” she repeats. “Yes,” I say. “I was on Rock of Love,” she tells me. “I was one of Bret Michaels's girlfriends.” She sweetly, demurely, delivers this information, though her dress is the antithesis of demure. As she does so, a man on a scooter drives across the green carpet before us, beeping his horn all the while.

Nearby, Manu Toigo, star of Naked and Afraid, explains who she is to a journalist. She recently contracted Dengue Fever; the journalist asks what kind of press she got out of her near-death experience. “On TMZ, they showed a little bit of me in the hospital bed in ugly pain,” she replies. “Did it already air?” he asks. “Yeah,” she sighs.

Ron Jeremy, in spite of the fact that he isn’t listed as an attendee of the event, is tied to the hip of Joey Buttafuoco, a man who’s famous because his teenaged mistress shot his wife in the face over 20 years ago. The dynamic between Jeremy and Buttafuoco resembles that of a buddy comedy. (Buttafuoco, in case you were wondering, is the straight man.)

Two stoners, who just so happened to be patronizing the coffee shop down the strip mall, stare in wonder at the sight before them. “Instagram?” one asks the other. “Definitely, Instagram,” he replies, before approaching Sheldon and asking for a photo.

Frenchy was right—it is fucking hot out here. I don't know how the heavily made-up Venus D'Lite, star of RuPaul’s Drag Race, isn't melting. The fact that she isn't wearing pants, I suppose, helps.

At one point, Sheldon poses for a photo with Justin Jedlica, the human Ken Doll, and Kitty Jay, a woman who paid to have plastic surgery to look like Jennifer Lawrence. 

An hour into the event, Michael Lohan finally arrives. Wearing acid-washed jeans and a cuffed shirt, he spends most of his time having intense conversations on his phone, the ringtone of which is the sound of a slot machine paying off.He gets off his phone at one point to take a selfie with Buttafuoco and Jeremy, the sight of which spontaneously causes me to whisper, “Oh, my God.”

Shane Sparks, who the press packet informs me is a choreographer on So You Think You Can Dance, introduces teen pop singer Laci Kay to the group. After informing the press that he and his crew have been “developing her for a couple of months,” he gets out of the way and allows her to perform her new single, “Runnin Free,” which, conveniently, came out today, with two teen backup dancers. 

As I take my leave, I watch an ostentatiously dressed man, who has described himself as a stylist, tell a fellow attendee that he’s a “superstar in training.” The “artist/designer” he's talking to concurs. "My day is tomorrow," she says.

Did the photo of Michael Lohan, Joey Buttafucco, and Ron Jeremy taking a selfie make you hungry? Well then drive to the San Fernando Valley and eat tacos at Senor Grandes!

Follow Megan Koester on Twitter. 

Lebowski Fest, the long-running tribute to the cult classic comedy The Big Lebowski, came to Los Angeles for yet another trip down cinematic memory lane. These bizarre conventions happen periodically in 30 cities across the English-speaking world. People who have seen the movie a bunch of times get together to behave like the Dude and Walter: Dress shabbily, drink, go bowling, and yell catchphrases. Some also wear costumes.

In Los Angeles, on April 25 and 26, it was clear that there's been a weird arms race of costume obscurity going on since these started in 2002. A classic Dude getup, a well-executed Jesus-the-child-molester costume, or a nihilist in black with stuffed ferret may have once been good ways to get recognized for your effort, but not anymore. Now you have to dig deeper into that barrel to come up with something memorable.

No, deeper. Now scrape. Now you're getting it.

Maybe you'll recall that there is briefly a dog at one point in the movie, obscured by a carrying case. So a thing you could do is dress as a dog, and then, the whole night when people ask "Why a dog?" remind them that there was a dog, and they'll probably remember.

Both of these Asian guys had the same basic idea. Think about it for a second. Give up? They're the Chinaman who took Lebowski's legs in Korea! One wore a period paramilitary outfit. The other decided to be truer to Lebowski's account of events, and opted for what would probably be an elderly Purple Heart recipient's recollection of the hated Chinaman.

I asked if this lady was wearing a photo of a marmot, a-la the Dude's misidentification of the nihilists' pet ferret. Nope. That's a beaver. It's a beaver picture, because Maude Lebowski refers to a porn movie at one point as a "beaver picture." Remember? While I was talking to her, a guy suggested he take my camera and get a shot of both of us. So that's me with the lady wearing a beaver picture.

Was there a Soviet guy in the movie? No. But remember when they mention Lenin? That's this. Thing is, when your costume is someone who's been immortalized in millions of statues, you have to have the face shape for it. And granted, he took a stab at the goatee, which is the honest way to do a costume, but if it were me, and the day were coming, but I still just had stubble, I'd head to a costume store. Like Lincoln, the costume doesn't work without the exact right facial hair. 

If you can easily recall the five seconds of the movie where Maude Lebowski is being lifted off her crane painting apparatus by two burly guys in overalls, this is a great double costume. If not, it's just overalls.

If you google it, you'll find out that "Branded" was a real TV show, not something made up for the "Is this your homework, Larry?" scene. You'll also find out that the main character really should have on a cavalryman's uniform, at least for the opening sequence. Again, that's if you google it.

This isn't so much a costume as a memorial on a shirt that this guy made. The one thing I was hoping to see at Lebowski Fest was a really excellent Brandt costume in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman. It would be hard, because clothes-wise it's just a conservative suit. But the right blond hair and nervous bluster would have really sold it. Oh well.

Does this have something to do with the "Over the line!" standoff scene? Close, but no. In between the memorable "the Chinaman is not the issue here," and "Dude, Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature," Walter says something about drawing a line in the sand.

Next to him is a guy in a "Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes, well, he eats you." costume, which I also liked.  

Sure, why not balls? My first guess was that this is what would remain after the nihilists cut off Lebowski's johnson. Think harder though. You'll have to recall what makes a man, according to Lebowski: "Is it being prepared to do the right thing, whatever the cost?" to which the dude replies: "Sure, that and a pair of testicles."

What had captured this guy's imagination was the scene where all the porn stars in Malibu use a blanket to toss that topless lady into the air. He's dressed as one of the guys, and because apparently he didn't have someone willing to dress as the topless lady (skin-colored suit?), he brought a prop lady. He had to carry his prop lady around all evening, and leave her lying face up on the table while he bowled. Make of that what you will, grad students.

These fun, chatty guys flew out from Australia for Lebowski Fest, and they dressed this way because "everything else had been done." I assumed they were the nihilists in negative, after the battle in the parking lot toward the end of the movie. I didn't give it a second thought, until I overheard something about them being a rash. There is a line about a rash.

Costumes show off the thing about yourself you want people to notice. You can draw attention to your good looks, if that's where your vanity is, or, through attention to detail, you can draw attention to your geekiness if that's what you're most proud of. The least successful costumes at Lebowski Fest—the embarrassing outfits that you have to constantly explain—are the ones that show the closest kinship with the characters in the movie.

Good on you if you're into that sort of thing.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter

Photo via Taslima Akhter

I don’t think I’m alone in feeling a bit guilty about the Rana Plaza factory collapse. I feel complicit when I buy something from a major clothing chain. I feel anxious when I start browsing Topshop’s addictive online store. I feel dirty when I find a rogue Made In Bangladesh label in my bulging wardrobe, because I know I've been a beneficiary of a global system that is unquestionably unfair.

This system was made clear one year ago last week, on April 24, when the Rana Plaza garment factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed, killing more than 1,130 workers—many of them young women sewing clothes for major fashion labels on a dollar a day. Rana Plaza’s legacy is the worst garment factory disaster in recorded history, made all the more tragic by the fact there are still bodies beneath the rubble waiting to be found. Today, there are 2,500 injured survivors, and 800 orphans who lost their parents in an avalanche of concrete, sewing machines, and cheap polyester clothing.

How do you even reconcile the odd pang of consumer guilt with this unfathomable level of tragedy? Many of the narratives around Rana Plaza try, subtly, to reconcile the consumer discomfort that's gripped rich westerners in the past year. Everyone from free-market economists to Vogue have said Bangladesh is just experiencing its “21st century equivalent” of New York’s 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. The implication is that this dirt-poor nation’s booming garment industry, while dodgy, is a sign of progress—as long as Rana Plaza leads to more worker protection, a rise in monthly wages to over $68, and safety accords (things which are still a work in progress).

This argument is also prominent in Bangladesh. After 2012's Tazreen Fashions fire, another horrific Bangladeshi factory disaster, Bangladeshi writer Zafar Sobhan wrote “The harsher and even more difficult truth is that these sweatshops are signs of a kind of advancement. In 2012, few Bangladeshi starve to death any more. This wasn’t the case a generation ago.” Others compare the nation’s woes with China, which has apparently evolved from 1990s Nike sweatshop conditions into an unlikely poster child for industrial capitalism.

Former Bangladeshi garment factory worker Sumi Abedin survived the Tazreen inferno by jumping out of the factory’s third story window. “Please, do not boycott Bangladeshi products,” she said at an Oxfam Australia event last week in Sydney. She reminded the audience that millions of Bangladeshi workers (most of them young women) depend on the nation’s garment industry to feed their families and children.

Sumi’s translator and Bangladeshi garment workers' rights activist Kalpona Akter also warned against a consumer boycott. “If you boycott, you’re just hurting the people who you’re trying to help,” said Kalpona. “What’s happening in Bangladeshi factories is happening in garment markets all over the world: in Southeast Asia, China, and even South America,” she said. This argument is supported by countless headlines. For example, Zara has been regularly accused of using sweatshop in the less likely market of Argentina.

What's confusing is we don’t really know where or in what conditions most of our clothes are made, especially because retailers and their sourcing agents hate talking about that sort of stuff. As a consumer, it’s really tempting to just mentally blacklist Bangladeshi producers—everybody from Just Jeans and Kmart to H&M and Adidas—in favor of some more cuddly retailer that sell quaint pastels, but it's likely they're still owned by a retail group that outsources to Asia.

Some sourcing agents do speak out. This week, I did an interview for FBi Radio with a former sourcing agent, Ceridwen Filer, who’s traveled across Southeast Asia for brands like Rivers, Target, Harris Scarfe, and Myer. She said she’s seen reassuring garment factories and a few terrible ones. One of her best memories is of a glass-blowing village in the mountains of the Czech Republic that was tasked with making Christmas decorations. Her lowest moment was visiting a clothes factory outside Ningbo in mainland China in 2011. “That was one of the saddest days of my buying life,” she said.

Ceridwen said the workers at that Ningbo factory wouldn’t even look her in the eye, which made her feel like they’d been instructed in advance to not interact with outsiders—never a good sign in the global sourcing business. She told me the main responsibility for ethical working conditions primarily lies with factory owners, as well as corrupt governments in sourcing countries, but that retailers also have a huge obligation to source ethically. “We need to make sure that we encourage people to treat other people well,” she said.

Many activist groups and international lobbyists, including Oxfam Australia, have been trying to change the hidden nature of globalized retail in the year since Rana Plaza. The International Labor Organization is also pushing an Accord for garment factory safety in Bangladesh, which a host of large retailers have now signed. This Accord is legally binding, which means if a retailer signs it and then uses a dodgy factory, they are liable. Keeping retailers liable will take a lot of implementation, which is why the effects of the Accord won’t be known for another 12 to 18 months.

But does signing a document really do anything? Some retailers think signing the Accord is a sign that a once unsavory supply chain is now clean. Lucy Siegle, a fashion activist and author of We Are What We Wear, was diplomatically stern when I told her about this attitude. “Signing the Accord is not a silver bullet. It’s not a cure-all. It’s a first step [and] well done for signing it, but forgive me if I’m not going to bake you a cake or give you a knighthood, because it is not enough,” she said.

So, what is enough?

The first answer is obvious, but it’s easier said than done: there needs to be an overhaul of developing nations’ factories (and probably some factories in ‘developed’ places, too). “We’ve found problems in every [Bangladeshi] factory we’ve inspected,” Brad Loewen, the Accord’s chief safety inspector, told the New York Times this week. “There are lockable gates at 90 percent of the factories, and occasionally they’re even locked when our engineers are there.” (FYI: the locks aren’t to keep people out.)

It's not easy to say who should be responsible for cleaning up factories, and finger-pointing has become a routine part of the garment sourcing debate. Lucy Siegle says retailers have become unwieldy and comfortable with "squeezing the system" of cheap and unregulated labor to their advantage, and they need to face sterner repercussions (both consumer and legal) for this behavior. Lots of people say factory owners and corrupt governments are worse types of boa constrictors, but acknowledge that developing countries need help with development problems. This is why the Accord is chaired by an independent global body.

The second answer depends on the consumer. Lucy Siegle says boycotting isn’t really the answer, but consumers should value what they’ve got—a thriving vintage scene and local designers—before flocking to the likes of H&M, Uniqlo, or Topshop. “It would be so sad if I came back in five or ten years, and all those things were gone and all that was left was fast fashion retailers,” she said. She also says it’s important to research brands and their garment sourcing before buying new things, and to wear and cherish your existing clothes rather than treat them “like a roll of toilet paper.”

And then there’s the third answer. This one is more abstract, because it comes back to globalized capitalism’s incredible ability to sniff out the next poor and hungry sucker. There’s a reason why nobody talks about what came after the Triangle Shirtwaist disaster, because the US garment industry mostly disappeared by the 1990s as retailers found cheaper options.

I don’t think you can blame any single retailer for the market’s reliance on cheap offshore labor and resources, although it’s clear that some give less of a shit than others. At the end of the day, we like cheap stuff and companies like making money. This is something that has happened on a global scale for generations, all the way back to the late Victorian bike craze fueled by Congo slave labor. Helping distant garment workers requires acknowledging how this increasingly globalized system works: we have an excessive amount of incredibly cheap and frivolous things because some people have it much worse than us.

What do you even call a system that’s based on this principle? “It is time we called this what it is—slavery,” said Oxfam NSW State Committee member, Dianne Sackelariou. Dianne’s passionate outburst elicited spontaneous applause from everybody in the crowd. She's not alone in her views—even Pope Francis agrees there was an element of “slave labor” at play in the Rana Plaza collapse.

Sumi and other Bangladeshi workers have a right to be offended by this well-intentioned comment, and calling an entire workforce of people slaves when they might say they chose to work in the industry could be a bit patronizing. But it’s worth recognizing that choices in Bangladesh, or China, or many other countries, aren’t necessarily the same sorts of choices people in the Western world face. How much choice is there for people at the bottom in a system that sometimes feels so rigged by the top?

Some people say this is the way the world will always be. Others, such as French economist Thomas Piketty, say that global capitalism and its methods of production are in urgent need of reflection. If Rana Plaza should teach us anything—outside the fact that we need to urgently address workers' rights—it’s that there’s nothing wrong with feeling that odd pang of consumer guilt. We should feel guilty, because forgetting that emotion would be to concede something far worse: that it’s OK to live with a dangerously unequal system. 

Follow Emilia on Twitter: @EmiliaKate

A dog that will hopefully never interact with a police officer. Photo via Flickr user Andy McLemore

On good Friday, Cole Middleton called the sheriff’s department in Rains County, Texas, to report a break-in, and several hours later deputy Jerrod Dooley responded and shot Middleton’s dog, Candy, in the head. OK, he didn’t immediately shoot Candy: Dashcam footage shows the medium-sized dog barking, then jumping out of the bed of Middleton’s parked pickup truck; Dooley said she “charged” him. The shooting happened off-camera, but the audio picked up Dooley telling Middleton his dog was mortally wounded, and Middleton breaking down at the news. Worse still, Candy seemed to be suffering, but Dooley couldn't bring himself to shoot her again, and the burglars has taken Middleton’s guns, so the owner took it upon himself to drown his beloved pet to put her out of her misery. When other officers arrived on the scene, Middleton began filming them, and one deputy can be seen waving to the camera and saying, “Hi mom! Hi channel 8! Hi Youtube!” which upset Middleton even more.

In the past few days, the media jumped on the story. Tens of thousands of people liked Middleton’s Facebook page, and some of his supporters made angry (and occasionally threatening) phone calls to the Rains County Sheriff’s Department. After all that, Dooley was fired on Thursday. Middleton is pleased by this, but according to his Go Fund Me donation page—which has raised nearly $25,000—he still intends to pursue a lawsuit against the sheriff’s department for animal cruelty as well as “illegal search and seizure (opening the doors to our house without permission).” Middleton will use any leftover money to advocate for better animal interaction training at police departments—a worthy cause, since stories about cops shooting dogs for no good reason are depressingly common. (The police have even shot Chihuahuas and bulldogs on leashes.)

When cops kill dogs, it’s generally later ruled that the officers were justified in their actions. So firing Dooley seems like the right move—yet the deputy teared up while talking about the incident in an interview and called himself a dog lover. He said he isn’t going to challenge his firing, he just wishes people would stop sending his family death threats. Watching that interview, it seems like a case of a guy screwing up in a moment of stupidity and fear, and understanding that he has caused a lot of pain. If all law enforcement officers everywhere were seen grieving over the times they had mistakenly shot dogs (or people) like Dooley was, perhaps that could start a conversation about how communities, victims, and cops deal with the aftermath of such situations. There’s no question the police should be trained to deal with animals better, but firing one cop who seems really, truly sorry seems somehow unsatisfying.

Now for the rest of this week’s bad cops:

-Dooley’s mistake pales in comparison to a lot of police misconduct that goes on. For instance, five members of the Philadelphia Police Department who have spent five years being investigated for theft, misconduct, lying on search warrants, cutting security cameras in stores before looting them, and a laundry list of other crimes may get put back on the force without being punished at all. A grand jury heard the allegations but declined to pursue them, and neither local or federal district attorneys seem interested in the case. A local DA will, however, look into allegations of sexual assault from two women who identified one of the cops, narcotics officer Thomas Tolstoy, as the perpetrator.

-In could-have-been-much-worse-but-damn news, a Bakersfield, California, woman and her five children were frightened by cops breaking down her door on April 19. Jessica Walker had just enough time to see cops outside before they smashed down the front entrance and demanded at gunpoint that she lie down on the floor. Police were searching for Walker’s neighbor who was wanted because he was a felon in possession of a gun (an informant reportedly gave police the wrong address). Walker didn’t realize this until the officers had searched her entire apartment while her children cried. She—and they—are understandably shaken by the experience.

-On Tuesday, a grand jury decided that a Euharlee, Georgia, police officer’s shooting of an unarmed 17-year-old in February was not a legal use of force. On Valentine’s Day, officer Beth Gatny came to the home of Christopher Roupe in order to serve a probation warrant on his father. Gatny said she shot Roupe once in the chest when he came to the door holding a pistol pointed at the officer, while Roupe’s family and other sources said that the boy was holding a Wii controller. The grand jury also suggested the the local district attorney pursue criminal charges against Gatny—one more step on the long road to handing down a real punishment to the officer.

-An April 27 piece in the Green Bay Press-Gazette documented the backlash in Appleton, Wisconsin, after the local police department acquired a 30-ton military vehicle last month thanks to the Pentagon’s 1033 grant program. Appleton, population 73,000, will share the Caiman truck with the Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department. Certainly there are smaller towns that have acquired excessive SWAT-style gear, and the backlash is likely in vain, but it’s nice to see people voicing their displeasure at the creeping militarism of the cops.

-This is gross and awkward and all, but the Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies who bothered to concoct a sting to arrest a Scottsdale, Arizona, woman who used Craigslist to advertise her desire to fellate a horse need to find something better to do. Yeah, bestiality is illegal in Arizona, but she wasn’t really close to breaking the law, she was just talking about doing it. I’m sure there are more worthwhile crimes to investigate.

-Two plainclothes police officers in West Philadelphia shot a food delivery guy on Tuesday night, leaving him in critical condition.The cops were responding to another shooting when they encountered Philippe Holland, clad in a hoodie and having just finished delivered a cheeseburger. Details are still unclear, but Holland either didn’t hear the identifying shout of “police” that may or may not have come, or he thought the guys were impersonating officers. In any case, Holland got into his car quickly, and the police fired a total of 14 shots in his direction when he drove toward them. Three of the bullets hit Holland. Police commissioner Charles H. Ramsey has made sympathetic public comments about the incident, and mentioned the officers feel terrible about the 20-year-old’s condition, so it sounds as if this is going to end up as one of those officers-acted-in-good-faith-and-reacted-to-split-second-conditions things, which means they won’t be charged.

-In better Tuesday night news, a cop in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, saved a woman from a heroin overdose by quickly administering the drug Narcan, making him our Good Cop of the Week. Earlier this month, another Seaside Heights officer saved someone with Narcan. Preventing drug overdoses is the opposite of arresting people who have said they wanted to blow horses: a very good use of the cops’ time.

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

Illustration by Sam Taylor

If you’re an employed member of British society, you’ll probably have spent the past week starting a union or periodically complimenting your boss on their appearance. Because unbeknownst to anyone but the right-wing, UK Independence Party (UKIP), there are apparently 26 million European people currently fastening their pencil skirts and Windsor-knotting their ties, ready to Eurostar their way to your office, give you paper cuts with their resumes, and whip your job out from beneath your feet.

Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, says the figures on UKIP’s European election billboards are bullshit; UKIP boss Nigel Farage says they’re a “hard-hitting reflection of reality." Either way, they’re a pretty good indication of the anti-immigration sentiment being stirred up by right-wing British media and politicians. The exact same sentiment, in fact, that prompted “John” (not his real name) to set up a Facebook page calling for all first, second and third generation immigrants to ditch work on Saint George’s Day last Wednesday just to demonstrate how crucial migrant labor is to Britain’s economy.

Around 800 people clicked “attending” on John’s event. Considering there are roughly 7 million foreign-born British residents, it didn't attract the attention he might have hoped for. However, the idea did make me wonder what might happen to the UK if all of its foreign friends jumped ship for places that don't introduce vans designed to make you feel unwelcome, or send border agents onto public transportation to racially profile passengers.

To find out, I spoke to Tim Finch, associate director of migration at London’s Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR).

One of the UKIP's anti-immigration posters. Photo via Twitter user @isntdave

VICE: So, what do you think would happen if every immigrant currently in the UK upped and left tomorrow?
Tim Finch: Well, the country would fall apart, quite frankly. There has been quite high migration to the UK, particularly in recent years. So if we were to say all migrants were to leave Britain tomorrow and stop working, there’d be large gaps in the workforce, particularly in certain industries. At the moment, the UK economy needs migrant workers in all sorts of sectors, so for them to leave overnight would be frankly disastrous. It’s a hypothetical situation. Thank goodness it will never happen.

What would happen to those industries that rely on migrant labor?
There are large numbers of Eastern Europeans who come over and are working in food processing, construction, hospitality, and things like that. A lot of them are actually highly qualified people and they’re working below their skill level. If we did have this apocalyptic situation, you would find that certain industries—one, in certain areas, would be food processing, and another would be support industries for agriculture—just wouldn’t function at all, really. You’d have to find some way of dragooning unemployed people, or finding volunteers, to do the work instead. 

Which other industries would it have an immediate effect on? 
Construction would suffer very badly. The hospitality industry—within places like London, in particular—is also heavily dependent on migrant labor. Anybody who knows London at all knows that the city has masses and masses of coffee shops, and you could count on one hand the number of times you’re served a coffee in London by somebody who doesn’t appear to be a migrant. So the Costas and Caffè Neros and all those sorts of places would go bust overnight.

What about big business and the financial sector?
Well, large numbers of people within the City of London are long-term migrants to the UK, attracted to the City of London because it’s the center for that type of business—or they’re people who have been transferred by their firms. So that would have very negative consequences for one of our biggest industries.

Could the City of London still survive without immigrants?
A key part of an international financial system is that money and trade is moving around the world at increasingly high speeds. You couldn’t be part of that system and cut yourself off from the fact that people will move around and be in different places as well. I mean, apart from the instant effect it would have on institutions—losing the people they need in order to carry on doing what they—you’d simply find yourself in a scenario where pretty much every financial institution would just relocate. They wouldn’t stay. London as a financial center would essentially just cease to exist.

And what about the National Health Service? Would we all end up having to consult Yahoo Answers every time we had a cold or a head wound?
It's called the British National Health Service, but it's a global employer. Something like 8 percent of the entire workforce of the NHS are migrant workers, and nearer a quarter of doctors are [migrant workers], so if we were to just say, "You’ve got to up and leave"—or if they decided to up and leave—then our health service would be in a dire state overnight.

We'd presumably lose a lot of specialists.
Yeah—you obviously have specialists, who the NHS particularly wants, from overseas. One of the most important reasons why migration is good for economies is not just that it matches skills to the demand in the economy, but that it also brings in innovation, creativity, and additional productivity. The best heart surgeon might be an American, and no British person could measure up to them.

What if all the immigrants being kicked out was the result of a far-right, anti-immigration party coming to power? How would that affect our international standing?
The only countries that have tried things like mass expulsion of foreigners effectively would be countries like Idi Amin’s Uganda—he expelled the Indian and Pakistani communities en masse. But only rogue states do things like that, and only countries like North Korea just effectively don’t allow anybody in or out, so it’s simply never going to happen. If Britain were to do something like this, it would become a pariah state; it would destroy itself and it would destroy its relationships with every other country in the world straight away.

The [far-right British Nationalist Party] was a tiny rogue element that had a little moment in the sun, winning a few council seats, before imploding completely. The other populist right-wing party in the UK is UKIP, but as crazy as UKIP can be, they’re not this crazy.

On that note, what kind of effect would it have on political parties during elections if there weren't any migrants casting votes?
The only real way you can answer that question is to say that, on the whole, over historical periods, migrants tended to vote Labour in larger numbers than they voted for the other parties. So if you were to remove that section of the population, the most likely mainstream political party to be hit would be the Labour party. Otherwise, I don’t quite know what the impact would be.

I guess if UKIP said, "We’re going to remove all migrants," and they did, in the short term people would go, “Oh, well done, you’ve fulfilled your pledge.” And quite a lot of people would, in an idle sense, go, “Oh, that’s a good thing—we must prefer to be a homogenous country without all these bleeding foreigners.” But I don’t think it would last for long. The consequences of it would be so disastrous that whatever party saw it through would implode quite quickly. The whole proposition is so nonsensical that it would, and could, never happen. 

Japan, which has a pretty restrictive immigration policy, is suffering badly from an ageing population. How would all the immigrants leaving affect the UK’s demographics?
From what we know, the effect would be to increase the problem of an aging population. The migrant population is younger than the British population, so we would instantly become an older society with fewer young people in it. That would have serious consequences, because obviously the young are paying into the tax system and the old are generally taking [money] out through pensions. We’d have a worse demographic time bomb situation than we have even now. That would, over time, accelerate. The foreign-born people coming into the UK, because they’re younger—and also sometimes because of the cultural factors—are having more children.

Some flag-wavers at last year's March for England, an annual event popular with people who don't like immigrants. Photo by Henry Langston

So how would the UK recover?
I suppose you could pass a law saying that people should have more children. It would almost get to that. You would presumably have to start framing policies that would encourage people in their fertile years to have more children than they’ve been having recently, so you’d frame the tax system to make that more advantageous. You’d also presumably try [to limit] various things, like the extent of women having careers. You'd go back to the situation where the role of women would be to produce children and not much else.

That doesn't sound great. Finally, what do you think about "John's" idea of encouraging every migrant in the UK to take a day off work? 
I actually think that’s a really stupid idea. If it did one thing, though, it would raise [awareness] of how our economy relies on people. In effect, it would be like a great big general strike, and we would see the consequences of it in schools and hospitals, etc. Though, I think even some of the popular far-right parties in Europe—the Golden Dawns and the Front Nationals—have softened their policies a little on these things, because they now know that the countries of Europe and elsewhere are highly dependent on migrant labor.

I grew up long enough ago to be in a place where people were overwhelmingly white, British-born and British in their attitudes, outlooks, eating habits, and what have you. It was boring compared with now. I wouldn’t want to live in a world like that, and I very much doubt that even Nigel Farage wants to.

So you think migrant workers should stay at work.
We do not, on the whole, become more sympathetic to Tube drivers when there’s a strike on the London Underground. You can understand their point, but it annoys us very much. If all migrants were to strike, we’d all be inconvenienced, and I suspect it would be an absolute gift to UKIP. If there’s anybody out there thinking that would be a good way to increase support for migrants, I'd say please think again.

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I was equal parts intrigued and nervous to speak with Jen and Sylvia Soska—aka “The Twisted Twins”—in person. I had watched their cameo in their latest film, American Mary, where they play a pair of Goth twins who have their arms removed and switched so that they’ll remain connected no matter what. I met them at a sound studio in Santa Monica where they were doing postproduction on See No Evil 2, their first directing gig with Lion’s Gate and WWE, which was a long way from not being able to afford food while they were making the film.

But they were warm and enthusiastic, talking over each other to tell me how thrilled they were about having come so far so quickly. After the years of financial and emotional hardship they had endured trying to sell their first two films, American Mary and before that, Dead Hooker in a Trunk, Jen and Sylvia were delighted and shocked when Lion’s Gate contacted them. In the early years of their film career, they had paid the bills by taking any acting gig they could get. “Sexy twins, sexy clones, sorority twins,” Sylvia remembered how much she hated it. “Slutty Martian,” added Jen, “Slutty Martian was the one that really bugged me. Even the Martian has to be a slut.” Sometimes all the money would go into their films, and they literally lived on bread alone. They still seemed in shock as they told me about their first call with the studio executives who had seen their film and wanted to bring those same qualities to See No Evil 2.

American Mary is not exactly a slasher—in fact, it’s difficult to say how to categorize it. In your typical slasher, there is often a “final girl”, who is the only person to survive to the end of a film. You can usually recognize her by her conservative or boyish clothing. In American Mary, plenty of slashing occurs, but it lacks the traditionally predictable plot, and the main character, Mary, is a loose cannon—you have no idea what will happen to her.  It covers a lot of ground, much of it based on real phenomena, like the body modification community.

“I’m so tired of seeing the same shit over and over again, especially in North America, they have this really tired formula for horror. Where it’s the slasher thing and you can guess who dies and in what order,” Jen told me. “We have the beautiful blonde, we have the final girls, we have the kind of slutty female character. But we take those stereotypes and shatter every single one of them. You can tell it’s by people who love horror because there are the character types that you traditionally see.  But we totally turn those types on their head.”

The film starts in a typically mundane way: Mary, a starving medical student specializing in surgery, answers a Craigslist ad for a seedy strip joint to help pay her tuition and her phone bill. Plausible. But you wouldn’t guess that she walks out of the strip club with $5000 without even having to get naked—our heroin performs emergency surgery on one of the club’s frequent torture victims. Mary quickly earns a reputation among the “body mod” community, and the clients pour in with disturbing but lucrative requests. Her first such client, Ruby, wants “some skin removed,” specifically her nipples and everything “extra” on her genitals. Ruby is tired of being sexualized and degraded, and wants to experience the same freedom a doll has. You wouldn’t guess how Mary begins to identify with Ruby: the professor she most admires sees her improved financial situation and assumes she has become a prostitute. He thinks this gives him an excuse to invite her to a party, drug her and rape her.  

American Mary depicts some pretty disgusting stuff, but with an artfully restrained hand. Mary wields her scalpel in an almost loving way during the surgery scenes, which are as fascinating as they are off-putting.  Their film is a bit rough around the edges, but it’s an independent horror. Their parents had to refinance their house in order for them to finish it. Seedy, minimally lit low-budget locations fit the atmosphere of the film well. Amidst the hokier bits are many disturbing but strangely beautiful moments, like when Mary lies staring at the ceiling and covered in blood as she sews her own chest back together.

Unlike American Mary, the See No Evil series falls firmly within the slasher genre, but See No Evil 2 will play with the limits of that genre.

The Soska Sisters have a personal stake in breaking down these stereotypes. Their experiences in the film industry have given them too many reasons to rebel against the idea that you can ever know what to expect from a woman by looking at her.

From the start of their career, the sisters would meet with men—always men—with hopes of improving their professional prospects, and found that these men had expectations that they were not at all prepared to meet, and that had nothing to do with their talents as filmmakers. “Every fucking hollywood cliché,” Sylvia described them to me as she told me one of these men had actually invited them to his house late at night, where they were both drugged.

“It’s a really scary situation,” Sylvia continued. “I find it’s a lot of people at the lower levels and you can see these leeches, because a lot of the time they’re failed directors themselves. Failed filmmakers. They’ve never gotten to where they are and they’re just angry people and what they do is they want to have power of probably women that rejected them their whole lives so they have a negative connotation on them.”

While that was a scary situation, Sylvia expressed how hard it was for them in general because of how easy it is to fetishize identical twins.

“We always read comic books and watched horror movies and we were like ‘I wanna look like that!’ and so we dressed a certain way. And people judge on appearances right away. And they see the two of us and they’re like, ‘oh! I’m gonna fuck ‘em!” Sylvia told me, “And the rudeness. The people insinuating that if I did fuck them I would get a certain job or something like that.”

The financial strain, and the pressure to use sex to relieve that strain, inspired the plot for American Mary. Mary felt pressured to work in a strip club to pay her tuition bill, while Jen and Sylvia had to deal with men who suggested that the sisters would have to sleep with them to get film work.“It became so therapeutic. Everything we were going through went into the script,” said Sylvia. Even the turning point of the film, the rape scene, was based on an experience that they narrowly escaped. “Thank god I have her”, Sylvia said, looking at Jen “We’ve both been drugged before but there’s two of us so we got our asses out of there fast.”

Although the rape is vital to the plot, Jen insists that American Mary isn’t just a rape revenge film. There were a number of factors that broke Mary down. “Everyone can feel the clamp of the recession. And unfortunately the easiest way for a woman to make money is to do something sexual,” said Jen, “She doesn’t want to do it but she wants to be a surgeon so badly that she would literally do anything.” That’s why American Mary differs from other rape revenge horrors, which tend to flatten other aspects of the female protagonist’s identity.

“It’s a literal and figurative rape,” said Sylvia, “Everything she wanted is taken away from her.” It’s not just her body that is violated, but also her sense of place in the professional community she’s passionate about.  To emphasize this, Jen and Sylvia chose to shoot the rape scene in a way that focused more on the emotional violation than the physical violation.

“It’s not a sexy moment. I thought it was so much more powerful to just hang on her eyes and that trapped awful experience for the film. Instead of some kind of pseudo porno thing,” said Jen, “I find that a lot of [rape revenge] films are very exploitative of women, especially for that scene. Where it’s made to be sexually gratifying for men with the moaning and the tits out and the nudity. And we had some fights while we were making it because they wanted us to put nudity in.”

The producers complained that there wasn’t nudity in the script, and when Sylvia pointed out that there actually was, “There’s a whole frame of just a tit and Mary’s hand is on it for the nipple removal.” But that’s not sexy, they insisted, “I was like ‘you know what, guys? This isn’t sexy tit movie.”

The lack of, well, “sexy” made American Mary a hard sell. But once it was successful, producers began calling the Soska sisters asking them to make another slasher-type film about a female surgery student. They weren’t interested—they wanted to move on to new things. When they got the opportunity to direct See No Evil 2, they were ready to do whatever it took to make the film that they wanted it to be. “I was ready to fight. I was always ready to fight,” said Sylvia. But they didn’t have to. The producers were receptive to their vision of a slasher with rich and complex characters, the type of characters audiences sympathize with or female characters mirroring the modern woman’s struggles. “What I’ve always liked about horror and the whole ‘final girl’ mentality is you see women overcoming extreme situations, which in life is something women always do, but we’re so polite and well mannered we rarely draw attention to how much ass we kick all the time,” said Sylvia.

Jen and Sylvia might not look like the part for a typical final girl, but they’ve successfully tackled many of Hollywood’s horrors.  

Follow Hannah Harris Green on Twitter.

ISIS social media image of ISIS fighters parading with captured Iraq security forces vehicles

In late December 2013, Iraqi security forces stormed a Sunni protest camp in Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s restive Anbar province. The Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki claimed that the protest camp had become a haven for militants with ties to al Qaeda.

Maliki’s crackdown provoked an uprising in Anbar’s cities, as tribal rebels assaulted and seized control of government buildings and police stations. As he seemed set to lose his grip on Anbar, Maliki withdrew the army from Ramadi and Fallujah, Anbar’s main cities, on New Year's Eve. Unhelpfully for the Prime Minister, this proved an even more disastrous step, and as the Iraqi army moved out, in poured hundreds of vehicles flying the flag of the al Qaeda originated, homegrown jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) from the surrounding desert.

By early January, the government’s control over Anbar's main cities had almost entirely collapsed, with ISIS and groups of tribal insurgents taking over Fallujah, and controlling nearly half of Ramadi.

ISIS was able to take the former city despite being outnumbered by local government-aligned tribal fighters and other insurgent groups. In early January, as ISIS convoys moved in, its fighters reportedly declared Fallujah an Islamic emirate, and hoisted their black flags over police stations and the main government buildings. Soon, the radical cleric Abdullah al-Janabi was back on the scene. Al Janabi used to lead the Mujahideen Shura Council in Fallujah, a group established by ISIS' precursor, al Qaeda in Iraq. Last time he was in the city, he took it upon himself to set up Sharia courts whose punishments "made the Taliban look soft." Now he is back, openly preaching in mosques.

ISIS has also announced the establishment of a "Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" to enforce its strict interpretation of Islamic law, and in a coalition with other insurgent groups set up an administrative structure to control the city and keep public services running.

Despite its reputation for fearsome brutality ISIS has moved cautiously in Fallujah, indicating that in Iraq, at least the jihadist group appears to have learnt the lesson of the 2006 Anbar Awakening. Back then, local tribes and insurgents who'd grown resentful of ISIS' domination allied with the Americans and the Iraqi government to drive the group out of the province.

“ISIS’ strategy has been much more conciliatory then was initially expected when it entered the town,” observes Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, noting that despite fears of mass executions of local police and their families, ISIS has not moved against them. Al Tamimi also notes that “the group’s financial resources have enabled it to engage in outreach to residents, sheikhs and religious scholars.” Finally, in a Sunni city with a history of rebellion against the US occupation and the Iraqi government, “there is undoubtedly appreciation on the part of many people in Fallujah that ISIS plays the main role in leading the boldest offensives on Iraq’s security forces in the wider Anbar area.”

The provincial capital of Ramadi, which the Iraqi government has repeatedly claimed to have cleared of ISIS insurgents, has proven to be a meat grinder for the Iraqi army. There has been continuous fighting in the city since January and ISIS still controls several neighbourhoods in southeastern Ramadi. In response, the Iraqi government has deployed elite Special Operations units that include the notorious Golden Division, which answers directly to Prime Minister Maliki.

But, while the Golden Division and elite counterterrorism units are adept at clearing insurgents from an area, they are then forced to turn security over to regular Iraqi Army units. Inevitably, this leads to problems.

ISIS image of destroyed Iraqi army vehicles in Ramadi

Iraqi soldiers in Ramadi face a far more level playing field then US Marines did when they were here clearing the city in 2006. However, they are increasingly overstretched, suffering from ammunition shortages, massive desertions and a critical lack of air support. ISIS has captured large quantities of Iraqi army equipment, including rifles, body armor, helmets, and night-vision equipment, Humvees, pickup trucks, and even US-supplied armoured personnel carriers. Images have emerged of ISIS fighters using captured anti-tank guided missiles against the very Iraq army tanks and personnel carriers they are meant to defend.

The fighting has been merciless and brutal: in March, video footage emerged on social media of an ISIS fighter moving down along a row of kneeling Iraqi soldiers, executing them one by one with a pistol. Iraqi army units have also reportedly carried out extrajudicial killings of ISIS fighters, parading images of the mutilated bodies on social media. In gruesome scenes reminiscent of the Blackwater guard killings that sparked the first battle of Fallujah in 2004, ISIS militants have responded by burning the bodies of Iraqi soldiers and dragging the corpses behind a captured Humvee.

Iraqi Special Operations Forces fighting ISIS insurgents in Ramadi in March

The work of ISIS to thwart and frustrate the Iraqi government have gone beyond murder and theft. In March, ISIS insurgents closed the gates of a dam on the Euphrates river south of Fallujah, flooding nearby rural areas to impede the movements of Iraqi security forces and nearly turning the city into an island. The flooding has forced the Iraqi army to pull back from the city and rely almost entirely on imprecise, long-range artillery, killing tens of civilians every day. Large areas of agricultural land have disappeared beneath floodwater, displacing thousands of families and destroying homes and fields.

The closure of the dam has caused water shortages throughout southern Iraq, and worsened Iraq’s already dismal energy situation, with power plants dependent on Euphrates water reportedly operating at 50 percent below capacity, causing massive blackouts and power shortages. As elections approach, in what will largely be a referendum on Prime Minister Maliki’s security policy, ISIS is in a position to wage economic warfare on a massive scale.

The growth of the insurgency has not been restricted to Anbar. In early April, video footage emerged of a 100-vehicle ISIS convoy parading through Abu Ghraib on the western outskirts of Baghdad. The site of the notorious prison is located a mere 30 miles from the Green Zone, the center of the Iraqi government, and five miles from Baghdad International Airport and Camp Victory, the former US headquarters in Iraq. Insurgents have also asserted control over vast rural areas west and south of the capital, moving to encircle the city from all sides in a repeat of the push they made into Baghdad at the height of the Iraq war in 2006 and 2007.

ISIS forces with a captured Iraqi Army tank after an ambush in al-Humayrah

As the insurgency has grown, the US has supplied Iraqi forces with ammunition, M4 rifles, nearly 100 Hellfire missiles, and surveillance drones, with Apache helicopters and F-16 fighters slated for delivery later this year. According to Daniele Raineri, a journalist for the Italian newspaper Il Foglio who specializes in the Iraq insurgency, the US has also intervened more directly. Raineri says US surveillance drones flew over Anbar in December and January to provide intelligence to Iraqi forces, and the NSA, which gathers metadata on all telephone communications in Iraq, has helped Iraqi security forces to locate and target ISIS leaders. This strategy appears to be having some success in Anbar province.

Nonetheless, as elections approach on April 30, ISIS insurgents remain in control of Anbar’s main cities and are drawing ever closer to Baghdad. Iraq’s security forces are ineffective and overstretched, and this time there are no tens of thousands of US troops to flood into the country to beat back the insurgency.

In a speech at the beginning of April, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, ISIS' firebrand spokesman, trumpeted: "We have returned to the cities, and controlled the ground, and we will be killed a thousand times before we think of going back. The cities and provinces that are under our control, on top of them Fallujah, will not be ruled today, by the Will of Allah, except by the Law of Allah, and there will be no place in it for the secularists. For Fallujah is Fallujah of the Mujahideen and Anbar is Anbar of the Mujahideen."

Some ten years after it first began, the Iraqi insurgency has been fully reborn, and the conflict is escalating into a bloody new phase.

Follow Memlik Pasha on Twitter.