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Chatting with NFL Draftees Right Before They Get Paid

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Since I grew up in Utah, the only sports team I can truly rep is the Jazz, which means I haven’t felt any sports-related emotions since Jerry Sloan quit. When it comes to football, I’m more interested in the politics of the sport than the sport itself. I wonder thing like: How long has the NFL known about the degenerative brain disorders caused by multiple concussions, and how seriously are they taking the problem now? How does it feel to be an indentured servant to the NCAA? And what’s the deal with all the homophobia and the name “Washington Redskins”?

This week, I had the chance to find out. Puff Daddy’s clothing line Sean John invited me to attend their NFL draft party, promising free drinks and the chance to sit down with the athletes for a few one-on-one questions. Not knowing what to expect, I rolled over to the Bad Boy headquarters, armed with nothing more than a voice recorder and list of questions

In typical New York fashion, the event had all the hallmarks of a cross-branded trade show. Random sponsors like Cadillac, Samsonite, and Kobe Bryant’s sports drink Body Armor were handing out free shit and Old Spice was giving out free haircuts. I was particularly interested in the vodka booth. The future draftees were all in the midst of change. Their agents (who undoubtedly had prepped the players in the procedures of professionalism) hovered over their clients like mother hens in pinstripe suits, guiding them from booth to booth as their eyes scanned the room for potential problems. All the players had to worry about was not fucking up before the draft.

The press assembled for the event were more than willing to help the players stay in bounds, with softball questions like: “What’s the first thing you’re going to buy?" "What do you consider to be your personal style?" "What’s on your iPod?" "Did you work out with the New York Jets?” I vaguely wondered if the agents had prepped the press on professionalism as well.

Asking someone if something exciting makes them excited is like asking someone in a downpour if it’s raining. The answer is obvious. Luckily, no one at Sean John really knew who VICE was, and I got the feeling they thought it was a personal blog. They treated me like an amateur, and since I looked like someone who didn’t know any better, I assumed I might as well fit the mold. What did I know about professionalism? I just asked the questions the agents were worried about. With this in mind, I grabbed a drink, turned on my voice recorder, and went to work.  

Photos by Tyler Nevitt

CALVIN PRYOR
Safety, Louisville

VICE: You play safety, which is a pretty bone crushing position. Part of your job is to just throw yourself at other players with reckless abandon, right?
Yeah, what happened to your arm?

I dislocated it playing street ball.
Damn man, good luck with that.

I’ll need it. In that same vein, do you worry about the health risks associated with playing?
I feel when you’re playing football, you have to be a fearless competitor cause if you think about getting injured, sometimes you’re going to go half-speed and then it’s going to happen. So if it’s meant to happen, it’s meant to happen, cause everything happens for a reason. So just play to the best of your ability and go all out.

How does your family feel about it?
They worry about me getting hurt, cause they’re so protective of me. They don’t want to see anything happen to me. But at the same time, football is a very tough and physical game, so…

Do you think the NFL’s policy towards concussions is where it should be or do they need advances?
I’m more of a fan of how football used to be, the bone-crushing type. They’ve really pushed the issue about not having helmet-to-helmet contact, so I think they’re doing a great job and will continue to do a great job.

Would you have any reservations about letting your own kid play football?
If I have a son, there’s no doubt he’s gonna play football.

How do you think the NBA handled the Donald Sterling thing?
I feel they did a great job because there’s no room for that now in the NBA. The playoffs are going on, and if you’re an owner of a team, you have to care for each individual that’s playing for you. When you talk about racism—I feel it just doesn’t need to exist. It should be left in the past.

So how do you feel about the Washington Redskins?
It’s kind of a cool name I guess.

Do you think they should change it?
Um… that would be nice.

Photos by Tyler Nevitt

DONOVAN MCNABB
Former NFL Quarterback

VICE: You’ve come out here to hang out with some of the future NFL players, the rare few who are making it to the next level. Erstwhile in the NCAA, you have players who are busting themselves up who will never see a dollar for it. What do you think about the concept of NCAA football players being considered employees of the schools?
Well I mean, they make money for the schools. They provide everything they need around the school facilities. Everything is paid for through bowl games, NCAA tournaments in basketball, women’s lacrosse, soccer… I think the kids should reap some of the benefits and receive a stipend of some sort. I love what [former quarterback Kain] Colter and the Northwestern football team has been able to do. I think it’s going to continue to spread and the NCAA is in trouble. I think at some point they’re going to move on to where it isn’t the NCAA, it’s about these divisions coming together and taking care of their sides of things. And we’ll see where it goes from there.

How do you think the NBA handled the Donald Sterling controversy?
I thought Adam Silver did a good job. I think he set precedence, not only for the NBA, but for all professional sports. You have to be stern in your consequences, and you have to stick with it. Now the whole thing about it is, who’s going to follow? There are a lot of owners out there in the league—a good ol' boy system—where people defend and support one another. Can they all come together to 75 percent and boot him out of there?

How do you feel about the name Washington Redskins in the same context?
I can’t really speak on that aspect of it because I’m not Native American, but from a minority standpoint, you don’t want anything reflecting in a negative way. This is something that’s been talked about for years, and Roger Goddell and Daniel Snyder are going to have to come together and find a solution.

Photos by Tyler Nevitt

C. J. MOSLEY
Linebacker, Alabama

VICE: Do you think the NCAA should allow football teams to unionize?
That’s a hard question. From what I’ve been through, growing up—it’s all been about playing football, especially at a young age. When you get to the NFL, you worry about that thing. But when you’re in college or high school, you’re playing football because you love to play it.

What do you think about the Ed O’Bannon lawsuit against the NCAA for video games?
I’m a little hurt by it. Growing up, that’s all I’d play. I love playing college games, seeing yourself and playing with yourself and your old teammates. I don’t really know why they did it. I guess everyone has their reasons.   

What about Title IX? Do you think it still has a place?
What’s Title IX?

Agent: [interrupts] Pass on that one.

Photo courtesy of Sean John

TAYLOR LEWAN
Offensive Tackle, Michigan

VICE: You’re a big guy, offensive tackle, so you’re hitting guys about your same size. I can’t imagine the impact—it’d probably murder me. Do you worry about the health risks associated with your position?
I think if you worry about those things now, it’ll effect your game in the future. My biggest thing is stay as healthy as possible and stay around people who will help me be successful. If I get hurt, I’ll do the things I have to do to get back, but I’m not really worried about it.

What about your family and the people that love you? Do they worry about it?
[Laughs] I know my mom’s a nervous wreck. But my brother loves it, my best friends love it, and I love doing what I do, so it’s not an issue to me if injuries do come up. But I know it does worry my mom quite a bit.

Now that you’re going to be drafted, you stand to make quite a bit of money off of doing this, but most of your teammates from college won’t, and they took the same health risks as you. Do you feel like the NCAA owes those players something more considering what they put on the line?
I really don’t know. For me to give you a solid answer, I’d have to dive in deep and read about the subject. If the NCAA is doing something a certain way, there’s probably a reason why. At the same time, there are players that need certain things, maybe a couple other benefits, not exactly extra benefits, but other benefits. There are two sides.

Considering all the research that’s gone on with concussions and tragedies like Junior Seau, would you have any reservations about your son playing football in the future?

[His agent interjects and says he doesn’t have to answer]

No, I’ll answer. I don’t have a son right now, I’m sure I’d want my son to be as safe as possible, but at the same time I would never be worried about my son playing a sport because it’s part of life. I grew up like my dad and granddad, outside, getting hurt and stuff. You know what it’s like. You can never stop someone from being injured. Everyone has their own opinion. My thing is, injuries do happen and you might as well enjoy yourself and be as healthy as you can. Do those things.

Photo courtesy of Sean John

JUSTIN PUGH
First Year Offensive Tackle, New York Giants

VICE: You just finished your first year, and now you’re here hanging out with kids about to get drafted. From your perspective, what’s the one thing they probably aren’t ready for?
The first thing I found out about was taxes. You get that first contract and then the government takes their piece, which I didn’t know about going into it. And then you’re back at the bottom of the totem pole. A lot of these guys, they’re the best player at their college, but when you get to the NFL, everyone was the best player in college. You have to go out there and earn it. So the biggest thing I learned was to be seen, not heard. Earn your respect on the field for how you play the game.

The average career in the NFL is something like three years, right? A lot of people say it’s important to be able to fall back on your education, but I have a master’s degree and I am dead broke. So what’s your backup plan for when you finish your career?
I graduated early with a degree in finance. My mom’s a teacher. Her whole thing was, “You’re going to get your degree before you can declare in the draft.” Finance is something I’m interested in getting into. The NFL has programs where you can do internships in the offseason, so I did one with Morgan Stanley this year. I also want to continue my education and they have a program that pays for you to go back to school, so I can go back and get my master’s degree in finance once I get comfortable with the system we’re running and solidify my spot. So that’s something I’ll probably get into when I’m done.

Since you have your degree in finance, do you manage your own money?
No, my uncle is into finance as well, so he manages my money. But I know what he’s talking about and what he’s doing, so I’m learning from him as he’s doing it. He’s been doing it for years and a lot of times you gain that experience in the workplace, so learning from him and doing the internship helps me a lot.

As a player, what do you fear most—knee injuries or head injuries?
I got a concussion this past year and it was scary. It’s something where you’re messing with your brain. Your knee can be repaired, but your brain? It’s definitely something that’s scary.

The whole concept of having a gay teammate—you remember how those guys from the 49ers were sitting there saying they didn’t dig the gays and stuff? How do you think the majority of NFL players feel about the subject?
This is a business, you know what I mean? So if you can go out there and produce on the field, guys don’t care what you’re doing outside of the field. A lot of the guys on my team have their wives and their kids, so you don’t see them all the time anyways. A guy’s own personal life is his own personal life. If it’s effecting his work or play, then it could be a problem, but that’s regardless of what your orientation is. As long as he works hard and is a good teammate, I have no problem with it.

When Arizona was talking about passing a law that allowed private businesses to turn away gay people, the NFL said they’d start looking into relocating the Super Bowl out of protest. That’s a big deal. So what role do you think sports plays in politics?
I think it plays a pretty big role. Football is one of the most profitable sports organizations, so I think they definitely have a say. In America, it’s crazy. People are so attached to their teams that they’d miss political events to go to a game. Some of my boys would miss graduation if the Eagles were in the Super Bowl, or if I was there. I think it plays a major role. Players have a lot of influence on young kids, molding the minds of America, so it’s a good thing if you use it the right way and a bad thing if you’re negative.

So how does the locker room feel about the name Washington Redskins?
They don’t care at all. The whole Indian thing, they’re trying to get rid of it. But at the end of the day, I’m going to go out there and play those guys. I don’t care what they have on their chest. I know some people see that as offensive. I have no problem with it, but I also don’t have that background. I could understand why some people were against it, but at the same time, I’m going out there to play football and I don’t care about the name on their jerseys.  

Photos by Tyler Nevitt

JUSTIN GILBERT
Cornerback, Oklahoma State

VICE: Shabazz Napier talked about how he often went to bed hungry, even though he was leading UCONN to a March Madness victory, and recently two football players were reprimanded for eating crab legs or something. Do you think that student athletes should be better compensated?
You mean pay for play?

Yes.
Yeah! There were a lot of times when I was in college man, I’d have to rely on my family for money and stuff, and we’re out there grinding, playing football and going to school at the same time… I think it’s something where they should get a little bit more for what they do…

What about being featured in a videogame and seeing nothing for it?
I didn’t really play too many video games, especially NCAA, so I don’t really know too much about that. I know that a lot of my statistics were wrong on that, which was part of the reason I didn’t play too much.

How would you fix the way the NCAA approaches student athletes?
Put a little bit more money in their accounts and help them out. Make sure they’re not starving. They should probably have unlimited meal plans, freshman year through senior year. 

Photos by Tyler Nevitt

MARCUS MARTIN
Center, USC

VICE: You’re about to successfully make the leap from the streets of Krenshaw to becoming a millionaire. Is it going to be overwhelming to suddenly have that much money at your fingertips?
Nah man, one thing people misinterpret is that everybody from the streets is just going to spend a lot of money, blow it on clothes and jewelry, but I’m well educated. I was fortunate enough to go to USC and learned about investments and finances. It was my minor, so I learned how to manage my money and stuff.

I know if I made even 10,000 bucks, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I’d be terrified.
I know what you mean.

Are you going to manage your money yourself or will you have someone else deal with that?
I have a financial advisor. The NFL suggests you get an advisor and then run him through them, so they can verify the background and make sure he’s not a sleezeball in a suit.

To the best of your knowledge, have you ever played with a gay player?
Not that I know of.

How divided are football players on the subject?
I don’t have an opinion about that man. I’m not against somebody because of their sexuality. If you’re a good football player, man, you’re a good football player. Just show your talents on the field.

Do you consider any sexual prejudice to be similar to racial prejudice?
I can’t compare the two, but I don’t think we should judge people based off their sexuality if they want to play sports.

What are you most worried about—blowing out your knee or getting a bunch of concussions?
Um… neither man. I’m just worried about getting acclimated to the league and allow myself to be one of the best players to ever play my position.

Photo courtesy of Sean John

SAMMY WATKINS
Wide Receiver, Clemson

Do you actually worry about the health risks associated with football?
Not really. I think if you get hurt, you’re doing the right things for money you can live the rest of your life off, roughly 15 to 20 million dollars. You just got to have a plan and a support staff that can educate you on that type of stuff.

How does your family feel about it?
My family is good, they’re just like me. I mean, I could go buy a Buggati right now, but that’s not what I need. My focus is getting better at life and the game.

Do you think it’s the NFL’s responsibility to take health risks into consideration or is it you as a player?
First of all, you have to teach yourself. You know if you’re hurt or injured. That falls down on you. But I think there are a couple things you can do in the National Football League. But football is a violent sport and you can’t really stop contact and injuries.

VICE: How do you feel the NBA is handling the Donald Sterling thing?
I didn’t pay too much attention, but I think the whole thing’s been blown out of proportion. All this stuff is done for money. I don’t really know what took place, I don’t really know what happened, so I can’t say too much.

What about the name Washington Redskins?
It’s just a team to me. I wasn’t born back in those days and I don’t know the history. But I think if you know the history, what took place… they could change it or not. It shouldn’t matter. It’s still gonna be a football team.

Photos by Tyler Nevitt

ODELL BECKHAM JR.
Wide Receiver, LSU

[At this point, the Sean John PR lady told me I only had time to ask one question. Seeing as, “How’s football?” didn’t seem to make much sense, I just pulled a question from my Kathleen Hanna interview.]

Check it out, obviously I know a lot about hair, right?
Right.

Well I was looking at your haircut and I was thinking, that’s pretty punk rock. I’m pretty punk rock myself, so I pick up on those things.
Right.

So my one question to you is, who’s your favorite lead singer of Black Flag?
[Pause] I don’t even know who Black Flag is, man.

PR LADY: Wait a minute, what kind of question is that?!

The only question that matters.

Follow Mike on Twitter. For more from Mike, visit his website


The Human Cost of Your Mother's Day Flowers

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All photos by Juan Arredondo. All names (apart from Beatriz Fuentes) have been changed to conceal identities

Lorena never wanted to work in the cut flower industry. But when she gave birth to the first of two daughters at 19, she understood she needed the money. In the region of Colombia where Lorena has spent her entire life—known as the Bogota Savannah—cut flowers are king. “There’s no other work, no other industry here,” she told me when I visited her this spring. As a single mother, Lorena had few alternatives but to enter the vast farms and factories, where she cut, trimmed, and arranged carnations, alstoemerias, and roses for export to flower-hungry US consumers.

Almost twenty years later, Lorena’s two daughters have managed to avoid working with flowers—one is a student, the other does missionary work—but Lorena still works in the same plantations, pulling a minimum wage salary of $333 per month. Years of difficult and dangerous work have wracked Lorena’s body, leaving debilitating injuries in their wake. Lorena traded her youth and health to support her family. “I don’t want the same for my daughters,” she told me.

The National Retail Federation estimates that this Mother’s Day weekend, Americans will purchase more than $2 billion worth of flowers. Almost 80 percent of those flowers come from Colombia, where impoverished mothers like Lorena toil long hours to produce tokens of affection for more fortunate mothers elsewhere. While the provenance of the peonies we buy last minute at gas stations, supermarkets, and corner store bodegas remains a mystery for most Americans, for the women that produce these bouquets the cut flower industry is a harrowing reality, and Mother’s Day is a cruel joke.


The Elite Flower, a major plantation on the outskirts of Facatativa

Work in the cut flower industry is notoriously dangerous. Flowers are fickle, and sensitive to pests and disease. To protect their investments, companies pump highly toxic pesticides and fungicides into the greenhouses where flowers are grown. Twenty percent of these chemicals are so toxic and carcinogenic that they’re prohibited in North America and Europe. As a result, workers often suffer from rashes, headaches, impaired vision, and skin discoloration. Women, who make up 70 percent of the cut flower workforce in Colombia, report substantially higher instances of birth defects and miscarriages.

In the high season between Valentine’s Day and the summer wedding season, work conditions deteriorate as companies cut corners and rush to get their flowers to market. During these months, women often times wake at three of four in the morning in order to finish chores and prepare meals for their families. By dawn, they are already at the plantation, where a workday can last 16, 18 or 20 hours. After a few hours of rest, the marathon starts over again.

In early March, I traveled to Facatativa, Colombia, to meet Lorena, and others workers responsible for our Mother’s Day bouquets. Located an hour and a half outside Bogota, Facatativa is a sprawling, dusty city that sits in the heart of the Savannah. Thousands of acres of flower farms, blanketed under gray plastic tarps, stretch from the city’s borders like spider webs.


Discarded bouquets in the Facatativa cemetery

When I met Lorena in front of her home, she was visibly nervous. If her employer found out that she’d spoken out against the industry, she said, there could be serious consequences. At just over five feet, Lorena has the petite build of a young girl. But her body, she laments, has been broken by countless hours of huddling over flower beds, trimming stem after stem. Years of cutting, bunching, and arranging bouquets in massive factories. She rattles off a list of injuries: tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, a spinal column disability, a torn rotator cuff. Though the company provides minimal healthcare, Lorena has to fight to see a doctor. “Every time I go they say there are people with more serious problems, and they push me to the back of the line.”

Does the company where she works offer any precautions to protect her and her colleagues from the dangerous pesticides sprayed on the flowers? “Yes, they give us masks and gloves,” she told me as we sat in the living room of her cinderblock home. “But you can still feel it on you when you come home. Whenever anyone falls sick, the company investigates it thoroughly, attempting to shift the responsibility from the company to the workers.” Lorena recounted the story of a coworker who’d recently collapsed in the middle of his shift, his face turning purple. “The company says that it was just a heart attack. But there’s a rumor that he’d succumbed to the chemical sprays.”


Carlos, Alejandra, and their daughter at home

Given the arduous conditions I asked why she continued to work in the industry. Lorena nodded toward her daughter, flitting between other parts of the house. “The most important thing,” she said, “is to have a home for my family.”

A week later, I attended a meeting to discuss the role of women and labor rights within the industry.“What we’re looking for is to form and organize the flower workers sector,” Beatriz Fuentes, one of the event’s organizers, told me afterwards. Fuentes worked for years in the cut rose plantations before becoming a union leader.


Workers listen to speakers during a meeting to discuss the rights and roles of women in the cut flower industry

“Women are chosen to work in the flower industry because they have agile hands—they can go through the motions smoother and more efficiently,” Fuentes explained. “Their hands aren't as heavy and so they can mange the flowers and arrange the bouquets faster.”

But in exchange, they’re often taken advantage of. “Women are regularly paid less than men for the same jobs,” Fuentes said. Because of limited alternative employment—Colombia regularly has the highest unemployment rate in Latin America—female workers are hesitant to assert their rights. Companies commonly require female employees to take pregnancy tests in order to weed out workers who might be eligible for maternity leave. A 2008 International Labor Rights Forum report suggested that more than half of all women in the industry have suffered from sexual harassment.

As the meeting wound down, I struck up a conversation with Alejandra and her husband Carlos. Between the two of them, they’ve spent almost 50 years on the plantations. Like Lorena, both Carlos and Alejandra have torn rotator cuffs—Carlos in both arms. Because of her injury, Alejandra can no longer work. Carlos, only 53, walks with a cane. He can only work sitting down.


Carlos, Alejandra, and their daughter at home

The next day, I came to their home for a cup of coffee. The couple has two daughters—Camila who’s just a child, and Mariana who’s of high school age. Mariana wants to escape the industry and go to college in Bogota, but the family can’t afford the $5 it costs for her to travel to the capital and back each day. Now she’s picking up spare shifts on the plantation.

Carlos and Alejandra are involved in an effort to unionize flower workers for better conditions. It’s an uphill battle, they say. Increasingly, companies are veering away from permanent employees in favor of temporary, three-month contracts brokered by employment agencies. Known as tercerización (or third-party hiring), the practice is illegal but rampant.

“With an indefinite contract, you have much more security—I can plan on taking care of my family,” Carlos said. Unlike the younger generation of hires, he still has a permanent contract.  “If my job wants to get rid of me, they need to do it for a just cause, like showing up to work drunk. But with these temporary contracts, they can work you to the bone and toss you aside.”


A dumpster's worth of discarded flowers and wreaths in the Facatativa cemetery

Carlos called his 25-year-old neighbor, Sofia, to come over and testify to life as a temporary contractor. “In the farm where I work,” Sofia said, “no one works for the company—everyone works on contract. The companies keep track of whether we’re good or bad workers. If you’re bad, they won’t hire you. And if you’re part of a union, they won’t hire you either.”

Without stronger labor rights and greater visibility, Carlos and Alejandra believe the conditions in the cut flower industry are unlikely to improve. Meanwhile, the back-breaking work and long hours are having destructive ripple effect throughout the community.


Flower beds in the Elite Flower plantation

“There are so many mothers in this industry that have to work all day and can’t take care of their children,” Alejandra told me, her young daughter cradled on her lap. “Kids go to school and get out at 1 or 2 in the afternoon, and their parents don’t come home until 1 in the morning. So what do these kids do during that time? How can our kids grow up and be cared for when their parents are gone?”

“In the United States,” Carlos added, “people love flowers. But they have no idea what goes on here. A husband might give his wife a bouquet of flowers, and it’s a beautiful gesture. But he doesn’t know about the pain it took to get it there. People in the United States just don’t think about all this.”

Follow Michael Zelenko on Twitter.

Brooklyn's Domino Sugar Factory Is Now Home to a Giant Sugar Sphinx

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Brooklyn's Domino Sugar Factory Is Now Home to a Giant Sugar Sphinx

Survey Says Journalists Are Old White Cowards

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Noted white man Donald Rumsfeld gives a press conference to a bunch of other white men at the beginning of the Iraq War. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Today's typical journalist is an unhappily middle-aged white male who complains he's losing his freedom while declining to use that freedom to threaten those taking it away. That, at least, is the takeaway from a survey of reporters that found they are older, whiter, and better-educated than they were a decade ago—and more timid than ever before.

The survey, “The American Journalist in the Digital Age,” was carried out by researchers at Indiana University and is based on interviews with over 1,000 US journalists working for radio and TV stations, newspapers, magazines, wire services, and websites. According to the survey, fewer reporters than ever say they have “almost complete freedom” in selecting stories—a third said that in 2013, compared with 60 percent in 1982—and fewer members of the fourth estate are willing to get their hands dirty in the service of speaking truth to power.

All graphs courtesy of Indiana University

Two decades ago, more than 81 percent of journalists said it “may be justified” to report on “confidential business or government documents without authorization”; in 2013, that number had fallen to below 60 percent, meaning that more than four out of ten respondents believe that their stories should be approved by the government or corporation they’re reporting on. In every way, journalists are more docile than before, with the survey finding that three quarters of journalists think it is wrong to obtain a job “to gain inside information,” while just 4.5 percent said it's sometimes OK to pay “for confidential information”—bizarrely, more journalists think “badgering unwilling informants” is justified (37.7 percent), though even that number is down.

The media’s meekness is evident in how it treats those who provide it with vital information—actual news, as opposed to never-ending electoral speculation and op-ed outrage. Chelsea Manning, the US soldier who leaked thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks—thereby helping reporters file thousands upon thousands of stories about government and corporate malfeasance, from US complicity in torture in Iraq to the widespread slaughter of civilians in Afghanistan—was largely condemned for doing so. As a staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor put it, “In the case of Manning, it's not clear that anything was revealed in [her] leaks beyond the horrors of war and reams of fairly routine diplomatic collection and reporting.”

Apparently, nothing bores the US press corps more than a routine diplomatic cable proving US cluster bombs killed 41 innocent men, women, and children in Yemen. But as the survey suggests, journalists weren’t always so willing to shrug at crimes committed by those in power. Now, though, they are remarkably incurious creatures, with more reporters saying they would like to increase their knowledge of “podcast production” rather than their “knowledge of world affairs.”

“I think a lot of the change has to do with social class and expectations,” said Jim Lobe, the Washington bureau chief for Inter Press Service, an international news agency. Lobe—who is sometimes my editor, through no fault of his own—has been covering politics out of the National Press Club for more than three decades. And while he's seen a lot of bad reporting, he said there is no doubt things have shifted for the worse.

“Journalists are now indisputably part of the Washington elite compared with 30 years ago,” Lobe told me. “They now mix very comfortably with the people they cover, not just on the job but socially as well.”

Instead of having an adversarial stance toward those with power, journalists are friends (sometimes with benefits) of those who wield it. That's always been the case to some extent, but now there isn't even the pretense of trying to be an outsider. “Objectivity” has come to mean uncritically regurgitating quotes from a couple of “sources” or “unnamed officials” the reporter has relationships with and leaving it to the reader to figure out who’s up to no good.

Lars Willnat, a journalism professor at Indiana University who coauthored the survey, told me he’s “not really sure why journalists are more timid today,” but he suspects “that it has something to do with the tighter job market.” Journalists might fear losing their jobs if they are too aggressive in their reporting, and there are fewer and fewer opportunities for a fired journalist to get hired elsewhere. “Looking at our data, it seems that journalism during the past decade has become somewhat tamer,” Willnat wrote in an email, “with a focus on analyzing complex issues rather than serving as watchdog.”

Instead of exposing corruption, “data-driven” sites like Vox produce journalism that analyze complex topics by answering important questions like “What is marijuana?” Wonkery that accepts the general framing provided by the powerful is a profitable enterprise; “expertise” is a valuable commodity.

“One recent remarkable change has been what happens at think tanks these days,” said Lobe. “Every time there's a big session on something with big names, having a famous journalist moderate the discussion has become an absolute 'must have'… Journalists have become celebrities with whom 'experts' are eager to be associated with. And while a lot a lot of these journalists are very smart and well-informed, if you have them as moderators, asking questions and acting deferentially toward the experts and officials in settings like these, that helps define the conventional wisdom for other journalists who aspire to be as prominent and successful as moderators.”

There is no downside to being perceived as friendly to those in power—if you're friendly enough, you may even become their spokesperson—but if you are perceived as a troublemaker, no one will pay you to moderate their discussions, and you may lose the lifeblood of a lazy journalist: access. “In so many ways, it's a weird scene,” Lobe told me.

Careerism may explain part of it, but journalists are also older, whiter, and more educated than they were a decade ago—these are people, in other words, for whom the system is working, at least compared with the young, brown, and less educated. Of those surveyed by the researchers at Indiana University, 92 percent were college graduates (fewer than six out of ten journalists had degrees 40 years ago), and 91.5 percent were white. And while more reporters are women these days, journalism is still by and large an old boys' club, with men representing 62.5 percent of all journalists. The median age of 47 is also the oldest on record; in 1982, the typical journalist was 15 years younger.

So not only is every hack in the business trying to land a better job, but those hacks have the same class- and race-based prejudices of the policy makers they cover. Their shared upbringings and college educations condition them to believe that those in the political and business establishments—people just like them—are basically good people of good faith just trying to do their best. Sometimes this bias is implicit; other times it’s more obvious.

“Let me put my cards on the table,” explained Josh Marshall, editor of Talking Points Memo, in a 2013 post on why he was troubled by Manning's revelation of state secrets. “At the end of the day, for all its faults, the US military is the armed force of a political community I identify with and a government I support… If you basically identify with the country and the state, then indiscriminate leaks like this are purely destructive. They're attacks on something you fundamentally believe in, identify with, think is working on your behalf.”

If you think that journalism is supposed to expose information that the powerful wish to keep hidden from public view, you are terribly naive, the responsible old men of DC say—an ideologue, that is, someone who does not accept that the system is basically fine. Publishing or even reporting on leaked documents is unethical, and those who leak evidence of war crimes should be treated as if they had leaked the nuclear launch codes.

The good news is that most of these journalists hate their lives. Less than a quarter of those surveyed said they were “very satisfied” with their jobs, compared with 49 percent in 1971. Newspapers are dying, newsrooms are downsizing, and the news outlets left standing are in the hands of a few rich people, which means if you lose your job for committing journalism at one outlet there aren't many competitors to which you can turn. What's left is a gaggle of stodgy old white men, their ranks replenished by those who can afford to be unpaid interns for months or even years, at the end of which time they will have learned to accept the narrow parameters within which their profession operates, aware that their freedom to choose a story is inversely related to their desire to have a long career.

Ultimately, a free press committed to exposing the truth cannot be owned by those who profit from its suppression. But in the absence of major structural changes, there are ways to make things better: Mainstream news outlets should diversify, both in terms of race and class, in order to benefit from reporters with different perspectives and life experiences—at the very least, that would decrease the odds of more good stories slipping through the filter.

All of this is not to pine for a “golden age” of journalism—in the 70s, newsrooms were even whiter and more bro-y than they are today, and 100 years before the media helped sell a war in Iraq, the most famous names in journalism helped sell a war with Spain. But unquestionably, the reporters and outlets willing to take big risks in the name of important stories are fewer and farther between than they were just a couple decades ago. It used to take a call from a senator or corporate executive to kill a story; these days, responsible journalists know to kill it themselves.

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

President Chill

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Photo by Mariano Carranza

On the morning of October 8, 1969, José Mujica woke up and got dressed for a funeral. He and nine other young men—nephews of the deceased—piled into a Volkswagen van and waited on the side of a two-lane road that led from Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo, to the small city of Pando, about 14 miles east. Six other cars and a hearse—rented from the fanciest funeral home in the country—drove past, and the VW joined the cavalcade, rumbling through the flat green cattle pastures that hug the South American nation’s coastline. The journey was somber and quiet, until about three miles from Pando, when the mourners subdued the hired drivers of the cars and stuffed them into the back of the Volkswagen.

In reality, there was no funeral to attend, no corpse, and no mourners. The Pando-bound people were members of the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional—also known as the Tupamaros—a Marxist guerrilla group that wished to install a Cuban-style dictator in Uruguay and rid the country of its supposedly kleptocratic government. Mujica, who at 35 years old was one of the group’s earliest and most charismatic members, got into the backseat of one of the cars and clutched the wooden handle of his Spanish-made Z-45 submachine gun. When he arrived in Pando, a sleepy industrial city of 12,000, he and his small battalion robbed its banks and tried to take over the local government, killing a police officer and one civilian in a brazen, chaotic shoot-out in broad daylight.

Four decades later, at 74, José Mujica donned Uruguay’s blue-and-white executive sash and became its president after his left-wing coalition party won the country’s 2009 election. Although his hair had grayed and his belly had expanded, Mujica looked over the crowds gathered at the capital’s central square for his inauguration with the same olive-pit eyes that had scanned the road to Pando back in 1969. The crowd looked back at him admiringly, as he delivered a fiery oration in front of a Jumbotron screen bearing his image.

If a man’s character is his fate, as Heraclitus wrote, then Mujica’s has brought him on an exceptional ride, one that occasionally creeps into the headlines of newspapers and websites but rarely gets a treatment beyond his life’s major plot points. Mujica is a former revolutionary (some might call him a terrorist) who was shot six times, imprisoned for 14 years, tortured, and kept in solitary confinement for upward of three years, only to be released, renounce violence, enter politics, win election to the nation’s highest office, and lead Uruguay as it rose out of recession, all the while legalizing gay marriage and abortion, which is noteworthy for a country that counts Catholicism as its dominant religion. He donates 90 percent of his income to charity, lives at his small farm rather than the country’s lavish presidential palace, drives a Volkswagen Beetle, almost never wears a suit, and rails against the excesses of consumerism and the West’s reliance on it as economic ballast.

But Mujica’s most piquant achievement as a head of state, the one that has made him a cult hero to droves of young progressives around the world, is his government’s decision to fully legalize and regulate marijuana across the country, which became law on December 13, 2013, but won’t take effect until late 2014—making Uruguay the first nation to do so countrywide. Mujica himself is no stoner—he prefers whiskey and cigars and claims to have never smoked the stuff—but as he stated in an address to the United Nations General Assembly in 2012, “What we want is to take the market from drug traffickers.” Rather than continue to fight the war on drugs and perpetuate its cycle of violence—which in South America alone has cost upward of a trillion dollars and taken the lives of tens of thousands of people, by some estimates—Mujica is presenting otro camino, another path. If Uruguay’s legalization succeeds in wresting marijuana sales from cartels, Mujica’s model could reverberate around the world. Drug-policy-reform advocates hope that he will win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Pepe’s three-legged Chihuahua, Manuela. Photo by Mariano Carranza

José Mujica Cordano was born in 1935 on the outskirts of Montevideo. As a child he would help his single mother sell flowers in their neighborhood, riding a bike piled high with bundles of orange, white, and pink chrysanthemums to the farmer’s market. It was their main source of income. “We endured a dignified poverty,” he later recalled.

Poverty was his gateway drug to political activism. According to The Robin Hood Guerrillas, Pablo Brum’s forthcoming biography, after dropping out of a prestigious high school, Mujica began to “link up with small time criminals in Montevideo’s shadier neighborhoods,” where he met a socialist named Enrique Erro. Erro led a youth branch of a left-wing political party and offered Mujica a leadership role because of the teenager’s charisma. With financing from the party, Mujica—who went by the nickname Pepe—traveled the communist world, visiting, among other places, Moscow, Beijing, and Havana, where he met Che Guevara and Fidel Castro in 1959, just months after they took Havana.

When Pepe returned to Montevideo, he abandoned Erro’s party and became a guerrilla. Very little is known about how exactly Pepe went from a young democratic socialist to full-on gun-toting guerrilla fighter. But according to Mujica: El Florista Presidente, a biography by Uruguayan journalist Sergio Israel, the Cuban Revolution pushed Mujica to imagine a similar South American upheaval.

It was in this context of revolutionary longing that Pepe joined the Tupamaros. Founded in the 1960s by Raúl Sendic, a lawyer who had also met Guevara, the group started out doing what they called “armed propaganda”—taking over cinema houses, for example, and forcing the audience to watch slide shows decrying the injustice of liberal democracy. The Tupamaros would also rob banks and give back to people in the city, earning them a Robin Hood–like reputation. Women were well accounted for in the organization, and the guerrillas became notorious in the Uruguayan press for their high-profile female members—like a beautiful blond Jane Fonda type named Yessie Macchi, whom Pepe dated. The group’s propaganda minister told the press that “at no point is a woman more equal to a man than when she is holding a .45 in her hand.”

The Pando raid, in which Pepe dressed as a funeral attendee, was timed to honor the second anniversary of Che Guevara’s death and was meant to advertise the group’s presence—and goal of eventually taking over Uruguay—to the country. When the line of black cars and the Volkswagen entered the city just after noon, Tupamaros in disguise who had already arrived in town commenced a vaudevillian display of character acting in front of the city’s main police station. They harangued the officers at the front desk with their petty complaints until, in a coordinated assault reminiscent of a scene from The Town, they drew their guns and raided the precinct, locking the cops in the building’s jail cells and trading fire and grenades with one policeman who had held out and made a break for it.

Pepe and his team were in charge of disabling the telephone exchange, and they dispatched their duties efficiently, without firing a single shot. The stunned telephone operators left their desks and lay on the ground. Then Pepe went into a tirade about the Che Guevara–inspired revolution the Tupamaros hoped to ignite in Uruguay. Besides the intricate planning, careful disguises, and hiding-in-plain-sight nature of Tupamaro attacks—of which there had been a handful before the Pando assault—pontification was a frequent and important feature. Their tactics of urban assault weren’t geared toward amassing a body count; they were calibrated to convert everyday citizens to the cause.

In the end, three Tupamaros were killed and many more injured in a dramatic gunfight that started at the town’s main bank branch (which the Tupamaros were robbing) and spilled out into the streets. Meanwhile, Pepe had already fled Pando and returned to Montevideo, where he sat at a bar, listening to the action unfold on the radio, like the rest of the country. To Uruguayans alive then, that day is reminiscent of the chaos in Boston after the marathon bombing last year.

Pepe addresses a crowd at the beginning of his legitimate political career, on September 29, 1985. Photo by Marcelo Isarrualde

On March 23, 1970, Pepe was arrested. A cop recognized him while Pepe was drinking grappa at La Via, a bar in the center of Montevideo. The officer called for backup, and Pepe, seeing a police car pulling up to the bar’s entrance, took out his gun and opened fire.

A gunfight ensued. Two policemen were shot, and Pepe was hit twice. While he was sprawled on the bar floor, another cop shot him four more times, in the gut. He likely would have died had it not been for a fortuitous Tupamaro twist: The doctor who ended up treating him turned out to be a Tupamaro too, hiding in plain sight.

From a broad historical perspective, Mujica’s capture could be seen as the beginning of the end for the Tupamaros. Their merry days of masquerading had transformed into an increasingly brutal urban guerrilla war, during which the Tupamaros kidnapped and murdered an FBI agent. The military staged a coup in the summer of 1974, and the junta made a special cause of imprisoning, killing, and torturing hundreds of Tupamaros—including most of the leadership. Pepe spent most of the 1970s in and out of prison, escaping several times, only to be caught again. He and eight other leaders of the Tupamaros were singled out as special prisoners—the government called them hostages—and they were placed in solitary confinement and shuttled around in groups of three between military prisons.

At one of the locations where he was held—a military base in the rural town Paso de los Toros, about 160 miles north of Montevideo—Pepe lived at the bottom of a well. Or not exactly a well, but an outdoor pool in a courtyard from which the military’s horses would drink water. They drained the pool and built three cells, placing sheet metal atop the pool to block the sunlight.

Pepe went mad. He started hearing static, as if a radio had been left on, stuck between stations. He would scream for someone to turn it off.

In 1984 the military rulers signed an agreement to hand power over to a democratically elected government, and the dictatorship officially ended the following year. During that transition, Pepe’s conditions of imprisonment improved. They let him garden. He grew vegetables and regained a degree of psychological stability. But one of the other Tupamaro “hostages” died in captivity, and another went insane.

The surviving eight prisoners were released in 1985 and offered amnesty. Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro, another leader, and Pepe started the Movement of Popular Participation, a legal political party, with other former Tupamaros. Pepe’s charisma carried him to win election to the country’s parliament in 1994, then to its senate in 1999. In 2005 he was appointed the minister of livestock, agriculture, and fisheries. And then, in 2009, riding a crest of liberal sentiment in Uruguay, he won the country’s presidential election with 52.4 percent of the vote.

Mujica has commented a few times over the years about his time in the Tupamaros and his subsequent rise to legitimate leadership, and the statement that makes it into his biographies speaks to the unlikelihood of his life’s arc. According to Mujica, “Not even the greatest novelist could have imagined what happened.”

Pepe speaks during his inauguration in Montevideo’s Independence Square on March 1, 2010. Pablo Porciuncula/AFP/Getty Images

In March I flew to Montevideo to interview President Mujica. The day we were scheduled to meet was bright and sunny. I stood in Independence Square, the same public plaza where he was inaugurated. In the center of the square stands a massive statue of Uruguay’s colonial liberator, José Gervasio Artigas, who fought against the Spanish to secure the country’s independence in 1830. He sits in full uniform astride a horse. Artigas died in exile in Paraguay, and legend has it that as he was approaching death he called for a horse so he could die in his saddle, like a true caballero. His remains are interred beneath the statue.

On the southeastern side of the square is the Torre Ejecutiva, the offices of the president, and I escaped the morning sun under its blue-green glass awning while waiting to be driven to Pepe’s farm, a few miles from the city.

A beige Hyundai minivan emblazoned with the seal of the president—a smiling sun with undulating rays reaching over a curved horizon—pulled up to the curb near where I was waiting. I got in, and we drove through the center of town and its Italian Gothic–style architecture, past the city’s maritime ports, and into the flat countryside.

Pepe’s farm is bucolic and ramshackle. We sat in the sun-dappled courtyard of his one-story farmhouse, where his three-legged Chihuahua, named Manuela, and a few small kittens roamed. Songbirds chirped in the meadow surrounding his farm. I asked him why he chose such humble environs instead of the presidential palace.

“As soon as politicians start climbing up the ladder,” he said, “they suddenly become kings. I don’t know how it works, but what I do know is that republics came to the world to make sure that no one is more than anyone else.” The pomp of office, he suggested, was like something left over from a feudal past: “You need a palace, red carpet, a lot of people behind you saying, ‘Yes, sir.’ I think all of that is awful.”

As his wife, Lucía Topolansky, a former Tupamara who is now a senator, worked inside the house, I asked Mujica what the implications of being the first nation to fully legalize marijuana meant for his country.

“We’re going to start an experiment,” he said, in gravelly Spanish. “It’s almost certain that we’ll be under the international spotlight. We’re a petri dish, really, a social laboratory. But remember this: In Uruguay there are 9,000 prisoners. Three thousand of them are locked up for narcotrafficking crimes. What does that mean? That three out of nine incarcerations are drug-related. First and foremost we need to fix that.”

While many of those prisoners are locked up for marijuana-related offenses, Uruguay also consumes the third most cocaine per capita in South America. When I asked whether other drugs might become legal, he responded, “Paso a paso.” Step by step.

Under the current law, tourists are not allowed to buy weed, but examples like Colorado—where hundreds of millions of dollars in increased economic activity is expected to produce a windfall of tax revenue for the government—are enticing. Is developing a weed economy a pragmatic economic decision?

Pepe, on March 14, 1985, the day he was released after 14 years in prison. Photo by Agencia Camaratres/AFP/Getty Images

Mujica rejected this as a goal of his law. “We want to find an effective way to fight narcotraffic,” he repeated. “After that we might encounter different chapters. But let’s take it easy and go slowly. Because we have to apply a thing and invent a road that we don’t know yet… we have to discover it along the way.”

Even though Pepe is a humble man, his goals are ambitious. The international drug trade is “basically a monopoly for the ones who control it,” he said. “We want to introduce a huge competitor, which is the state, with all the power of the state.” The endgame is to force cartels out of business through economics: The government will sell weed at a shockingly low price of a dollar a gram. To Mujica, stamping out the violence associated with the drug trade comes down to slashing prices, not funneling billions of dollars to military and police and locking up his citizens.

Perhaps surprisingly, while drug-policy analysts, news-hungry stoners, and other anti-prohibition observers love Uruguay’s move to legalization, it’s actually unpopular within Uruguay. A poll conducted prior to the law’s passage determined that 64 percent of citizens oppose legalizing the drug. And the United Nations’ International Narcotics Control Board has decried the nation, and Pepe in particular, for irresponsible policy decisions. I asked him what he thought about that.

“It has always been like that with changes,” he said, wagging his head. “In 1913 we established divorce as a right for women in Uruguay. You know what they were saying back then? That families would dissolve. That it was the end of good manners and society. There has always been a conservative and traditional opinion out there that’s afraid of change. When I was young and would go dancing at balls, we’d have to wear suits and ties. Otherwise they wouldn’t let us in. I don’t think anyone dresses up for dancing parties nowadays.”

Also unpopular is Pepe’s recent push to open his country up to mining. In 2013 his government approved what’s known as the Valentine’s Project, a $3 billion open-pit mine complex. Once the mine is up and running, Uruguay will become a global exporter of iron ore in the amount of roughly 4 to 5 billion tons, according to projections. To Pepe, it’s the most important foreign-policy decision of his administration, but farmers, ranchers, and environmentalists fear that the project, which includes hundreds of miles of slurry pipelines and a deep-sea port, will be disastrous. When I asked him about it, he cut me off mid-question, leaned in closely, and squinted his eyes into two downward-facing crescent moons.

“Let’s get things straight,” he said. “We want to diversify our economy. We don’t want to stop our cattle industries or agriculture or water. If we can add one more economic activity, that could be very interesting. But we have to do it the right way.”

He went on: “What’s sad is that an 80-year-old grandpa has to be the open-minded one. Old people aren’t old because of their age, but because of what’s in their heads. They are horrified at this, but they aren’t horrified at what’s happening in the streets?”

Pepe has no children and was referring to his grandpa-ness in a metaphoric sense, and he won’t turn 80 until after his term in office ends. But I was curious what he thought about the current state of revolt that has gripped young people and set streets on fire from Brazil to Greece, Taiwan to Turkey, and has brought down governments in Egypt and Tunisia.

“I’ve seen some springs that ended up being terrible winters,” he said. “We human beings are gregarious. We can’t live alone. For our lives to be possible, we depend on society. It’s one thing to overturn a government or block the streets. But it’s a different matter altogether to create and build a better society, one that needs organization, discipline, and long-term work. Let’s not confuse the two of them.”

Before I could ask my next question, Pepe interjected, hoping not to admonish the spirit of revolt that had guided most of his life. “I want to make it clear: I feel sympathetic with that youthful energy, but I think it’s not going anywhere if it doesn’t become more mature.”

Pepe holding a cigar he received from Fidel Castro, one of his earliest revolutionary mentors. Photo by Mariano Carranza

After our interview, Pepe showed me around the rest of his property and then brought us back to the courtyard. He answered a call on an old Nokia brick phone—urgent state business. After he hung up, I asked Pepe whether he minded if I smoked a joint. I fully understood the implications of smoking weed in front of a head of state, but of all presidents, I thought, he’d be game. After my translator relayed my request, Pepe smiled broadly and exclaimed, “Por favor!

I sparked up a joint, and Pepe shrugged and smiled. “I have no prejudice,” he said, “but let me give you something juicier to smoke.” He got up, went back into his house, and emerged with a cigar. “This is a cigar given to me by Fidel Castro.” His wife, Lucía, followed behind and showed me a portable humidor, a large box shaped like a house filled with Castro-length Cohibas. For a moment, I thought she was giving all of them to me, and I worried how I’d get them through customs. Pepe chuckled, and I smoked the rest of my joint.

To be clear, Uruguay’s legalization is not aimed at allowing bozos like me to get high indiscriminately. It’s a serious legislative experiment designed to dismantle what pretty much everyone agrees is a horrid failure of public policy: the war on drugs. And while Pepe has an almost too-good-to-be-true avuncular charm, he’s a carefully calculating statesman with a keen sense of how to capture the limelight. A small country of 3.4 million legalizing weed is, on the global scale, a tiny occurrence, but it might just be that crucial example, the hiding-in-plain-sight truth, that all it takes is bold decisions and bold leadership to turn ideas into action. Whether it actually will work is a question neither Pepe nor I can answer.

Britain Is Freaking Out Over Halal

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Britain Is Freaking Out Over Halal

Paris Lees: You Need to Learn to Handle the Truth

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Collage by Sam Taylor. Photo by Alex de Mora. Make up by Rhea Le Riche using MAC.

You have daddy issues. You probably got felt up by your uncle as a kid. You’re just saying it for attention. You’re a man, really.

These are just some of the speculative comments left on the column I wrote last week about how much I love fucking around. I warned my mom not to read it but she never listens. “It’s OK,” she said, “I know how these things work. You take a measure of truth, a pint of imagination, and a little sparkle and, hey presto, you’ve got yourself some controversy.” I can understand my mom not wanting to believe that I had a fivesome but why did so many other people struggle to accept my story at face value? I couldn’t give a shit if you believe what I write about my sex life; the reality is far more exciting than anything I’d reveal in this column. But why the automatic distrust?

It's weird that we can't discuss our experiences honestly without others rushing to question our motives. There are various reasons I wrote the article. Some of it was attention seeking, yes. (Though no one’s forcing you to read my column and if you do, well, I’m just going to assume that you enjoy it.) Also, I wanted to get paid, I’m contracted to write one column a week, and I was doing a speech at the Oxford Union on the same subject. Not to mention the reasons I explicitly set out: Sometimes I find promiscuity fun and think other people should be able to enjoy it too without having to feel ashamed. Is that really so unbelievable?

People can be so incredibly hostile toward the truth. Let’s say you tell your buddy that you think you're really clever. Or that you think you're very, very stupid. Tell people either of these things and they might think that you're joking, or mocking them, or just really insecure.

But if we accept that some people genuinely are clever, and that some people really are very stupid, what is wrong with people referring to themselves as clever or stupid? Why shouldn’t we describe the world as it is? Why do we always suspect that there's a hidden agenda?

A few years ago, I asked a pregnant friend what she’d do if her baby was born fugly. "I'd want people to lie," she said. "I'd want people to tell me she’s the most beautiful baby in the world." Isn’t that rather meaningless? It’s kinda like when I’ve been getting ready for a night out with the girls and one of them, a fat one, asks if she looks fat. Of course someone who is fat looks fat. There’s nothing wrong with being fat. And you can be fat and hot. But you cannot be fat and not-fat. You don’t have to go round telling those people that they're fat – but if they ask you if they're fat, you don’t have to shriek theatrically and then, wearing your most sincere face, tell them: “Don’t say that. Don’t even think that about yourself. Not for a goddamn minute. You’re not fat. Curvy, maybe. But definitely not fat.”

I’ve been guilty of this myself because I didn’t want to hurt people’s feelings. As one of my friends pointed out recently, honesty without love can be cruel. But dishonesty with love can be just as unkind. Who wants to be patronised? “When I call myself fat, people either make a face and say, ‘Oh stop!’ or they say, ‘Uh, you're not fat!’ Please. Don't tell me I'm not fat. I'm not delusional,” writes Teri, by email. Eddie agrees: “The words, ‘But you're not fat!’ are annoying. It's a lie. I would much prefer to be told, ‘Yeah, but it doesn't matter.’” I haven’t spoken to all of the self-identified fat people in the world but clearly some would prefer to not have their intelligence insulted.

A true friend will tell you the truth every time. If I look like a pile of shit and we’re about the leave the house, I’d rather you tell me while I’ve still got time to fix myself up. A jealous bitch will let you go out with your bob tucked behind your ears even though it makes you look like a mouse—a fucking ugly baby mouse—just so you don’t outshine her. Yeah, I know what you did there, babe.

I don’t blame us for becoming a nation of skeptics, though. Whole industries are devoted to warping our perceptions or, worse, second-guessing why we do what we do. Psychiatry tries to tell us why we do things and, in the process, creates disorders out of normal human behavior. Advertising sells us lies; PR bends the truth. Instagram helps us rose tint our own little worlds. It’s easier, isn’t it, to put a filter on our lives and pretend the world is how we’d like it to be? Truth is not an objective or valueless thing and none of us can deal with life without inventing stories and motives for ourselves.

Honesty is scary but, like everything that threatens us, it can also be deeply rewarding. Take this guy, who came out as bisexual to his wife. Now their marriage is "stronger than ever" and they both get to explore something that might otherwise have destroyed their relationship, or caused him to waste years feeling frightened and ashamed and her to be deceived.. We can’t have important discussions without the truth. As Salon points out, the douchebag whose opinion piece was recently published by TIME on why he’ll “never apologize” for his white privilege was only admitting something that millions of Americans think anyway. We’re outraged with him for saying it when really we should applaud him for being so obnoxiously candid.

"Telling it like it is" currently has some pretty shitty ambassadors: Katie Hopkins, Richard Littlejohn, and the Jeremies Kyle and Clarkson, for example. But even though I'm convinced they barely mean a word they say, they haven’t done too badly for themselves, and I suspect this is because even if we despise their views, we’re thirsty for what we at least wish to believe is sincerity. In an age where we've lost trust in the press, the police, and the 24-hour news channels—not to mention our depressing lack of faith in the political class—a little honesty would go a long way. Trust me.

Follow Paris Lees on Twitter.

Cry-Baby of the Week

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It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Bryan Mackenzie


Photos via Facebook

The incident: A kid grew his hair long in order to donate it to cancer victims. 

The appropriate response: Making a donation to a charity in his name or something.

The actual response: His coach told him he's not allowed to play with his baseball team until he cuts his hair short.

Until Wednesday, 16-year-old Liam Nazarek was a member of a baseball team called the Junior Dust Devils in Pincher Creek, Canada.

Nazarek currently has long hair, as he has been growing it for a year with the intention of eventually donating it to a charity that makes wigs for children with cancer. 

Before the team's game on Wednesday, Nazarek was told by the coach, Bryan Mackenzie, that he had to either cut his hair off, or sit out the rest of the season's games.

Nazarek's mother, Kimberley Jorgensen, filmed the exchange with coach Mackenzie and posted it to Facebook. 

In the video, the coach is seen explaining that Nazarek must get get his hair cut "if he wants to continue to play baseball."

"Hair is not a rule in baseball," Jorgensen can be heard telling the coach. "It is for me," the coach responds. 

Despite there being a fairly large online backlash against the coach, the baseball league has sided with him. In a statement, a representative for the league wrote, "The parent in this situation manipulated the situation using social media. This is totally unacceptable if not only because it sets a terrible example for our children. There was no respect in this situation whatsoever."

After hearing news of Nazarek's suspension, a team in a neighboring town has offered to let Liam play for them. He has yet to decide whether or not to take them up on their offer. 

Cry-Baby #2: Needville High School

The incident: A kid refused to stand during the Pledge of Allegiance.

The appropriate response: Raising one fist in the air and saying "right on, man."

The actual response: He was suspended from school. 

On Wednesday, 15-year old Mason Michalec was in class at Needville High School in Needville, Texas.

Because Texas is in America and America is weird, it's customary for the class to have a moment of silence, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and also say something called the Texas Pledge at the start of each school day.

While the class did this, Michalec stayed seated and silent.

In the KHOU news video above, which features some VERY snazzy editing (including a ripple wipe!), Michalec explained that he's been refusing to stand during the pledge for the last few months. "I'm really tired of our government taking advantage of us," he explained. "I don't agree with the NSA spying on us, and I don't agree with CISPA or any of the internet laws."

Generally, his protest hasn't caused any problems. But on Wednesday, Michalec's class had a different teacher. The teacher, who hasn't been named, reportedly told Michalec to get up. When he refused, he was sent to the principal.

The principal gave Michalec a two day in-school suspension. He was also told that he would be given an additional two days of the punishment each time he refused to stand during the pledge. 

Mason told KHOU that he intends to continue his protest and face the punishment. "I think it's time that people do something for themselves and stop taking whatever's handed to them... I'm angry and frustrated and annoyed that they would try to write me up for something I have the right to do."

Which of these guys is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll right here, please:

Previously: A woman who sued the family of a kid she ran over vs. a person who called the cops on a free book giveaway

Winner: The woman who ran over someone!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.


Plymouth Is a Paradise

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I moved to Plymouth in October 2013. Coming from Italy, my idea of England was mostly influenced by different music scenes and fashion trends, that cities like London and Bristol export across Europe.

With a few exceptions, my expectations have been fully dissatisfied. Entering most of Plymouth's pubs, at whatever time of day, feels like entering a grimy nightclub in the suburbs of Novosibirsk, only without pole dancers.

Although the nightlife doesn't offer much to write home about, once the sun begins to shine and the surf picks up, Britain's Ocean City shows its best colors.

Find more of Glauco's photos here and here

Barrick Gold Could Lose a Quarter of its Net Worth Thanks to One Colossally Botched Mine

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Protesters outside the Barrick Annual Investors Meeting 2014. Photo courtesy Micheal Toledano. 
 
The testimonies, if true, are damning. 
 
Former employees of the world's largest gold producer, Toronto's Barrick Gold, have dished the dirt on the company's behind the scenes knowledge of environmental violations and cost overruns at its proposed flagship Pascua-Lama mine—mothballed in November, 2013—that was to be built on the border of Chile and Argentina. And, they allege, that for years the company's upper executives knew about it, but kept it secret from regulators and investors.
 
The allegations are part of a class action lawsuit filed in August 2013 in the US Superior Court in New York State on behalf of shareholders who had invested in Barrick Gold from May 2009 to May 2013, alleging they violated the US Securities Act for failing to disclose information to shareholders.
 
And the testimony is not only damning: it could cost Barrick Gold a quarter of their market worth. Since the end of April, 2014, four class action lawsuits—three in Ontario and one in Quebec—have been filed on behalf of shareholders, alleging that the gold miner broke similar disclosure laws in those two provinces. A finding on behalf of the shareholders could total a $6 billion payday for investors—and an equal loss for Barrick, according to Garth Myers of Koskie Minsky LLP, a Toronto-firm that, along with Sutts, Strosberg LLP, filed one of the suits.
 
All four lawsuits—which still need to be certified by the courts in order to go ahead—allege the company knowingly withheld information from investors while the Pascua-Lama mine was being developed, misleading them on the riskiness of their investments. When the extent of the problems with the project came to light in late 2013, and after the Chilean government ordered operations halted because of environmental regulation violations, Barrick announced the mine was being put on hold. Since the height of developments on the mine in 2011, the company's stock has dropped from over $50 per share on the TSE to just over $18 today.
 
Beyond the financial costs, this is part of a complex debate around whether Canadian mining companies are being held to account for alleged environmental destruction and human rights abuses abroad, and how to make their operations more transparent.
 
Barrick is the largest gold miner in the world, and it's also part of the largest mining sector in the world. Some three-quarters of the global mining industry is based out of Canada. And while many companies have operations in the country, a large proportion operate abroad, from Chile and Mexico to Tanzania and Papua New Guinea. Part of this abundance is because Canada, as a resource-based economy, has a certain expertise when it comes to developing mining techniques. But it's also because Canadian laws and regulations are more lax than in other jurisdictions. For example, the NYSE, the benchmark US stock listing, has stricter reporting regulations than the TSE. There is also no legislation in Canada that allows a Canadian-based company to be taken to court over crimes committed abroad. All this adds up to an attractive environment for mining companies to flourish in. 
 
But while the companies have grown, so have their critics. Mining, while it provides jobs and the raw materials for the mainstays of our daily lives, is a dirty business. Ecosystems need to be disrupted, mountaintops removed, rivers and lakes diverted, villages and towns displaced. 
 
Pascua-Lama is a case in point. Announced in 2006, it has met opposition because of the fragile ecosystem it could impact. The mine is located on Chile-Argentina border, in the mountains above the fertile Huasco valley. There are fears that the mine would destroy portions of the glaciers that feed water to the valley, and that chemicals such as cyanide and mercury (from the gold mining process) could seep into waterways.
 
The Chilean government imposed 400 environmental restrictions on the project. According to Sakura Saunders of Protest Barrick, which has made a mission of shining a light on the company's activities, Barrick has said that this shows that Pascua-Lama would be an environmentally sustainable project. But for Saunders, it shows how environmentally sensitive it is and nearly impossible to build without impact. From 2009 to 2013, company said they were meeting obligations. But costs continued to rise—from an initial $1.5 billion to now an $8.5 billion price tag. And the Chilean government ordered a halt to operations in 2013 when it became clear that Barrick was unable to meet its environmental obligations. That's when Barrick mothballed the project. But the testimony transcripts allege that Barrick's upper executives knew about the environmental concerns all along—which, according to testimony, resulted from trying to cut costs.
 
According to one source, “[Pascua-Lama] managers were attempting to rush project construction, which led to water... often being contaminated.” Another noted that “many of the Company's environmental problems arose from unapproved changes to the original, approved plans relating to water channels—changes Barrick had made in an attempt to reduce project costs. [The ex-employee] stated that these changes were in place by the end of the first quarter of 2011, and that they were implemented without any notice to Chilean regulators.”
 
Some 70,000 farmers in the Huasco Valley rely on the watershed from the mountain for their livelihood. But in an effort to cut costs, the testimony implies, the company was willing to put this at risk. A Barrick spokesperson points out that no studies have yet shown any water contamination around the project. But the company admits there were problems, and that they are doing their best to resolve them and to eventually be able to re-start their operations.
 
It's situations like these that have led to proposed legislation that would better regulate the mining industry, like the private members Bill C-300. Introduced in 2010, it would have brought in tougher oversight laws that many feel would have forced mining companies to clean up their act, including an independent watchdog with the power to enforce regulations. The bill was narrowly defeated though. Some in the industry, like the Mining Association of Canada and the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, have supported reforms, but that willingness fell short of backing Bill C-300.
 
So for now, it is still just threats to the bottom line that can affect mining companies. And that's exactly what the lawyers who are representing Barrick’s scorned investors hope will be accomplished with this lawsuit. Beyond, of course, getting those investors their money back.
 
“A lot of people lost a lot of money and there are a lot of questions for Barrick Gold to answer,” said Myers. “Class-actions serve a number of goals. One is of course financial compensation for class members, but there's also behaviour modification goals, and in cases like this, it's that companies like Barrick, but not just Barrick, have clear and plain and accurate disclosure to their shareholders. And we hope that will be accomplished through this case.”
 
In response to questions about the class action, a company spokesperson sent the following statement: “The Company is aware that a notice of action has been filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. Barrick disputes the allegations, and will defend itself against any lawsuit vigorously.” The spokesperson also stressed that, beyond the court case, Barrick feels that it has responded quickly and clearly to any concerns that are raised about their mining operations, in Chile or in other countries.
 
Barrick, as one of the biggest mining companies, is also one of the most contentious. Its founder and just-retired chair, Peter Munk, has been known for his outspokenness and bluntness when it came to addressing critics. And the company's Barrick Gold Africa subsidiary is currently facing a lawsuit in the British High Court over whether the security forces at its Tanzanian mine used undue force when they shot and killed locals—many former small scale miners put out of work by the mine—when attempting to steal small amounts of ore.
 
So in the wake of lawsuit, could this change their way and have ripple effects in the mining industry?
 
“Honestly, there is nothing that will truly change a company like Barrick’s behaviour in a timely way like a threat to its bottom line,” wrote Catherine Coumans in an email. Coumans works with MiningWatch Canada, which has led the charge to bring greater accountability to Canada's mining companies. She believes that such lawsuits can have an impact, but that it isn't every case of environmental or human rights abuses that will actually impact a company's bottom-line.
 
Sakura Saunders, an organizer with Protest Barrick which has targeted the company over allegations of human rights is more blunt in her assessment: The lawsuit will help in two ways; it will highlight fraud at the company towards their environmental commitments, and it will have a significant impact on the company's bottom-line. Ultimately, she hopes, hindering their work or even putting them out of business. “The best Barrick is no Barrick,” she said. “If this company were to go under, that would be a positive thing. Or if they didn't go under, that they just have less cash flow; that means that they would be mothballing projects, and that would be great.”
 
While both Coumans and Saunders believe such lawsuits can force companies into greater disclosure, there are still limits on what it will mean for long-term, structural changes in the industry. It's the communities themselves who have been impacted by the operations of companies like Barrick that should be able to sue, says Saunders.
 
Coumans for her part points to Open for Justice, a initiative being led by the Canadian Network for Corporate Accountability. The campaign is picking up where Bill C-300 left off, calling on the federal government to adopt legislation that would allow both Canadians and non-Canadians to sue Canadian companies in domestic courts for crimes committed abroad, and for the establishment of an independent ombudsperson who would receive complaints about Canadian mining companies, have the power to investigate and be able to produce public reports. 
 
“It's a slight injustice that shareholders can recoup their money for the destruction in the Huasco Valley,” said Saunders. “What we need is to see the communities themselves be empowered in the face of the mining companies and environmental destruction... They are the ones who should be getting this money.”
 
 

Comics: Band for Life - Part 12

VICE News: Last Chance High - Part 6

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In episode six of Last Chance High, Cortez takes an emotional trip to the prison where his father is serving a life sentence for murder. Deeply affected by the visit, Cortez begins taking his medicine regularly and soon shocks his teachers with a new sense of self-control and openness.

On Chicago's West Side, there is a school for the city's most at-risk youth—the Moses Montefiore Academy. Most of the students at Montefiore have been kicked out of other schools for aggressive behavior, and many have been diagnosed with emotional disorders. 

Last Chance High takes viewers inside Montefiore's classrooms and into the homes of students who are one mistake away from being locked up or committed to a mental hospital.

The VICE Podcast - Gia Coppola on 'Palo Alto'

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This week on the VICE podcast, Reihan Salam sits down with filmmaker Gia Coppola, to discuss her directorial debut, Palo Alto.

VICE News: Russian Roulette: The Invasion of Ukraine - Part 35

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On Tuesday morning the Ukrainian government announced it had ordered the halting of flights at Donetsk airport and the closure of the airspace across the region. The airport was almost completely empty, except for a few stranded travelers.

Later in the day, VICE News visited a Ukrainian regional military college where pro-Russia rebels had set up a perimeter surrounding the entrance to the building, blocking the road of any traffic. A Donetsk People's Republic spokesperson said they heard that the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist group Right Sector was going to seize the academy and use it as a base.

In a sign of increased escalation, the militia in Donetsk was well equipped with AK-47s, RPGs, and even anti-tank missile launchers. 

Inside England's New Shipping-Container Ghetto

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Richardson's Yard, the shipping-container housing project in Brighton, England

So how did artist Charlie Devus come to call a 40-foot metal shipping container home? “In this place, we’re all God’s polyps. All of us flow according to the tides,” he explained as he gave me a guided tour of his new abode.

The process began when Brighton Housing Trust, a local housing charity, found him an apartment straight out of a Dickens novel. “I couldn’t stay there. There was this giant hole just pouring water down through the ceiling. It was just insane—and I had to leave, quickly,” he shudders. A few months later, while construction was still being carried out on a new flagship housing project, Brighton Housing Trust suggested he move in and try it out.

His new place is inside a five-story compound made up of 36 shipping containers. Richardson’s Yard, as it's known, was completed in December and now sits on the site of a former pub and a scrap-metal yard near Brighton’s London Road area. There's no question the area needs more housing: Along with its stony beach and gigantic seagulls, Brighton is home to one of the biggest homeless populations on England's South Coast. Shortly before the project’s completion, Brighton Housing Trust’s chief, Andy Winter, remarked that “there is an acute shortage of affordable accommodation in Brighton and Hove, and—in a landlord's market—particularly for those with a history of homelessness.”

Brighton’s Homelessness figures tend to jump about, with Brighton Housing Trust estimating the current number of rough sleepers at around 70 to 100. But local charity Antifreeze told me that its drop-in center had worked with 788 rough sleepers in 2013 and 776 already in 2014—no small number when you consider that you can walk across Brighton in 25 minutes.

Brighton Housing Trust has been swamped with media requests and is denying all journalists access to Richardson's Yard until June, when it will likely receive a ton of media coverage. But thanks to Devus, I was able to sneak in and spend the night down there, with the estate's residents.

Charlie Devus at home

I walked into Devus's container expecting the worst—something thin, bare, and sinister, like the containment cell before a water-boarding scene in a Jason Statham movie. At first glance, the place felt spacious enough. The magnolia walls and office-blue carpets were predictably bland but left some potential for personality. A giant window at each end provided a broad view over the rooftops out into the distance, and a small kitchen and a shower-only bathroom reminded me of amenities available in a budget motel room.

The containers were purchased at a discounted rate from Dutch company Tempohousing, where they were originally used as housing in Amsterdam until the project’s funding fell through. Now the containers and the land are being leased to Brighton Housing Trust for five years by a company called QED Estates.

“It’s a bold scheme, and I applaud it,” Devus said. “But it’s severely flawed. These ceramic heaters are useless. The place got so fantastically cold this winter I couldn’t stay here. It was just too cold to sleep. Plus, the whole place had started to rust within two weeks of moving in. Look at the wood paneling outside—it’s all rotten. It should’ve been condemned. I get the impression that while QED have done their best to look eco-friendly, what they’ve actually done is just recycle otherwise unsalable products."

(A QED spokesperson admitted to me that "there’s a couple of places we can’t physically access where the wooden fillets have rotted slightly" while insisting that the containers are designed to rust and that repairs are going to be carried out "imminently.")

More important than the physical structure is how the residents interact with one another, and that's one of Devus's biggest concerns.

“My fear is that this place is a [sensationalist] Daily Mail article waiting to happen," Devus said. "There are a lot of drugs here. There’s been violence. And there’s been no real attempt by Brighton Housing Trust to address it.

“What you’ve got here is a ready-made ghetto," he continued. "And if it’s not policed, it has the potential to explode. Many people have complained about the drugs and the need for security. One of the major objectives was to vet out drugs and dealers at the very start, but that hasn’t happened at all. My neighbors are both working. And the danger is that they’re at risk of getting priced out by crackheads with subsidized rent."

Richardson's Yard

“Priced out?” I asked, puzzled. “I thought this was a council initiative to help rough sleepers? I didn’t realize working people lived here too.”

“It costs £650 ($1,100) a month to live here. My rent's subsidized, but for a lot of people, it’s no different from renting privately,” he replied. Now, £650 month is fairly expensive for Brighton and even more expensive to a homeless person. It was a surprise to me that people here were paying rent at all to live in a glorified sardine can with no on-site security, let alone a significant amount.

Following our conversation, I wandered downstairs to talk to a few more people about living here, stopping a middle-aged woman on the stairs, who asked not to be named.

“They told us the rent was only going to be £400 ($675) a month," she told me. "A lot of people got upset about that." According to the resident, the price isn't the only problem. "We’re ignored on some issues—like the portable heaters we were promised. It’s costing people £5 ($8.50) a day to heat the place, and they’re doing nothing to help. The lack of security’s pretty scary, and I know people who’re genuinely afraid to come out of their houses.

“I’ve been on the council housing list for 15 years, and my application was repeatedly mislaid or ignored," she continued. "I tell you, the more you understand the system, the more disgusted you get with it.”

After knocking on several doors, I found another resident who was willing to chat to me, a man named Merzak Maarli, 54, who lives on the third floor.

“It’s not bad, I guess, but someone’s making an absolute fortune here,” he shrugged. “To be honest, they gave us the wrong picture before we moved in. They really upsold it. It hadn’t been built yet, so all we saw were the architect’s designs. It looked lovely, but it was a completely different picture when we moved in.”

Maarli is bright-eyed, personable, and well dressed. When I asked what brought him here, his story sounded strikingly similar to others I’ve heard.

“I was referred here by Elm Grove mental health clinic. I was technically homeless—you know, staying at people’s houses and stuff. At the moment I work one day a week to help get me back into employment.”

Devus in his container home.

Interestingly, Devus, Maarli, and another of the block’s residents I spoke to, Kweku, were offered a container at Richardson’s Yard after being “technically homeless,” the type of homelessness that comes with an abrubt shift of circumstances. People dealing with that situation still have access to a warm shower and clean clothes and are firmly entrenched in the governmental paper trail of housing benefits and back-to-work schemes; it's a precarious way to live, but it's not close to shivering in a rain-soaked sleeping bag beneath the awning of a convenience store.

What I came to learn is that there is a world of difference between someone who is homeless and a rough sleeper, and this housing project doesn't focus on the latter. When I quizzed several homeless men selling copies of the Big Issue around town about it, they all seemed clueless as to how to get a container at Richardson’s Yard. I doubt they'd be able to afford it, in any case.

As Maarli and I chatted, something caught my eye. It was a letter from QED notifying residents of a new development due to begin on the little scrap of land next to the yard—an office space designed to cater to Brighton’s “young creative industries.”

“We were under the impression that it was going to be made into a garden,” Maarli told me, seeming a little confused.

One of the yard's 40-foot containers

Shortly before I came to Richardson’s Yard, I came across a Brighton and Hove Council document titled The London Road Central Masterplan that proposed a series of planning objectives. On page 14, it lays bare the site's true destiny: The aim is to harness it for “employment uses including business floorspace and affordable workspace for creative industries. Residential may be allowed as enabling development.” In other words, Richardson's Yard might not be so much an attempt to solve Brighton's homelessness problem and more of a lucrative stop-gap while the regeneration industry pauses for breath.

In fact, on the Brighton Housing Trust website Chris Gilbert, the director of QED, almost says as much: “If successful, this formula could be a very effective way of helping to alleviate the housing crisis in Brighton, by providing ‘transition housing’ on a site that would otherwise be underutilized until a major development came forward." Gilbert admits that this is "not likely to happen for a number of years, given the current economic climate" and so it's easy to see why, for now, this project might be a good way for the site to keep some money coming in, while providing everyone involved with some decent PR.

The beauty of shipping containers is that, when needed, they can be moved quickly. According to a recent article in Inside Housing, QED plans to move the containers after Brighton Housing Trust's five-year lease expires, potentially waking up the area as prime real estate for office blocks and expensive flats. QED has already sunk £900,000 ($1.5 million) into the scheme, suggesting there’s a plan way beyond giving homes to the “basically homeless” at £650 a month for five years. That said, adding a few numbers together, I worked out that QED could have netted some £1,404,000 ($2.37 million) in rent out of the yard’s 36 shipping containers by the time the lease is up. Which isn't bad at all.

The day after my stay in the containers, I called Andy Winter, the CEO of Brighton Housing Trust, and put some of the criticisms I had heard about Richardson's Yard to him. He told me that he was "fully aware" that incidents of antisocial behavior had occurred, adding, "It’s generally visitors of two residents who’ve been responsible... We’re also fully aware of the tenants whom they are visiting, and we have taken robust management action against them.“

He added that they'd also been "consulting residents on getting a lock for the front gate" and assured me that the tenants had been thoroughly vetted and most were already known to Brighton Housing Trust. "What we couldn’t vet is friends coming onto the property," he said. "On the whole, we’ve known of persons coming onto the property and trying to sell drugs. I take a hard line on drug dealing, and my first port of call when dealing with drugs is always to involve the police."

Richardson’s Yard may appear to be a creative solution to a very real and growing problem. But the impression I got is that it's less about rehabilitating long-term rough sleepers and more a get-rich-quick scheme that provides a beachhead for urban redevelopment—a formula for wealth extraction in the form of 36 metal cans with a five-year shelf life, unjustifiable rents, high utility bills, and security problems.

Follow James Rippingale on Twitter.


A Wedding Officiant Schools You on How to Actually Stop a Wedding

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Pictures via original WikiHow article 

A couple days ago, a WikiHow article called "How to Stop a Wedding" went viral.

What drew everyone's attention was the sheer insanity of the headline, but what made everyone share it on Facebook was the seemingly methodical and sober step-by-step approach it recommended, and the surprisingly competent artwork. On the surface, it seems like a sane, rational way to go about doing something totally insane and irrational.

Elysia Skye, owner of LA Wedding Woman, was the most experienced and trusted minister I could find on short notice, and she was surprisingly game to go through the manual step-by-step and provide an unsentimental critique. 

VICE: How many times have you had someone bust in and break up a wedding?
Elysia Skye: None. My grandfather, my father, my sister, and myself are all officiants. In 40 years, and thousands and thousands of weddings, we've never seen an objection on the wedding day.

Can you criticize the procedure for me anyway, as an expert? You consider yourself an expert, right?
Yes.

 

How about step 1?
I do like that the article reminds people that it’s not about you. It’s not your movie. It’s their movie. 

What about the rest of the planning steps? Are they practical?
Even if phase one is discouraging them, the bride will probably say, “We’ve invested $100,000, and we’re not getting it back.” So go, “OK. Have the party. Just don’t sign the license. You’re not ready yet. Have the ceremony. Enjoy your day. Just don't get legally married." I've seen things like that.

What about this?
At that point you’re kinda going into crazy town. 

What about the part about sneaking in?
They don't seem to realize that other people might be aware of you. Which means when you pull up there’s gonna be someone outside. I've experienced versions of this, where there was a crazy person who might show up. Everyone who was there knew, “If you see this person, escort them out immediately.” Sometimes what's going on is not a private matter. People know. People know you’re the crazy ex-girlfriend and you’re not allowed on the property.

OK. So it might be tough to get through security. What about the part where you build your case? 
Unless you know something, and you have proof, you can’t do it. What I’m alluding to is “someone is cheating.”

So you should come in with surveillance footage on your phone?
You can walk in and say, “I’ve been sleeping with him for six years,” and nobody might believe you. If the groom is walking down the aisle that day, he’s gonna say, “Who is this person? I’ve never seen her before in my life,” or “She’s crazy. It’s not true. She’s an internet stalker.” They’re going to continue to lie. So don’t come in unarmed.

Then it says to pipe up and object. Could this happen, even though you've never seen it?
The article is correct that most people don’t put that “speak now or forever hold your peace” part in the ceremony. That’s not in any of my ceremonies.

Oh, really? None of them?
Never. In fact, in our ceremonies, we say, “Does everyone here support Tony and Jim and their marriage?” We ask for support, not objections. If you don’t support, you don’t answer.

Oh, but there's still that pause. They could go "not me!"
Well, at that point everyone yells and cheers and claps. Sometimes people ring bells. It’s a loud, fun, energetic, awesome moment, and everyone’s feeling great. If someone was like, “Wel,l not me!” you probably wouldn’t hear that.

But anyway, it's true that most people don’t include that at all now. It’s just tacky. Maybe your brother-in-law’s a douchebag. That doesn't mean you'll object at the wedding.

Let's say it all worked. What then?
This is all fine and dandy, and someone can run into a wedding and stop a wedding, but that doesn’t mean the couple isn’t already married.

It would be too late? Why?
Oftentimes the marriage license is signed with the couple ahead of time. The minister will sit in a room with the couple before the ceremony and say, “OK, do you wanna marry this person? Do you wanna marry this person? Yes? Let’s sign." Then when the ceremony is over, they don’t have to take time to go and do paperwork. They go right into cocktail hour or couple's photos. 

What percentage of the time?
Let’s say 50 percent. 

Wow. 
Yeah.

That should really be in the guide. 
I know. Someone can be all high and mighty and run in and stop a wedding, but that doesn’t mean shit if the couple’s already married. Or they’re getting married at a destination wedding, like in Hawaii or India, and they don’t want to deal with paperwork out of the state. That’s another large percentage on top of the other 50 percent that’s already finished getting their paperwork done the day of.

But what if they say, "I do" but don't sign the license? Can someone stop them from signing?
Maybe, but even that might not work. Even if they tell the minister, "Hey, don’t mail that marriage license in. We’ve changed our minds," that’s impossible. They’re already legally married. They’ve said their oath in front of the minister. Even though there’s a separation of church and state, the state says that if a minister pronounces you married, you are legally married, even if you don’t want to sign your own license, and it’s the minister’s responsibility to sign that license and send it in. The court will do their best to track you down and get your signature.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Lady Business: Rapist Sentenced to Community Service at Rape Crisis Centre; More Nigerian School Girls Stolen.

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Michelle Obama also recently voiced her concern about the stolen Nigerian girls. Image via Twitter.

Welp, misogynists and other such bigots have done a great job keeping me busy as of late, and this week was no exception. A judge in Texas, for example, has just sentenced a convicted rapist to do community service hours at a rape crisis centre.

Also, more Nigerian schoolgirls have been stolen from their village, and no one (besides the girls’ parents) seems to be doing much of anything but handwringing and moaning about it. The world has been too slow to react, and now, it might be too late.

More Nigerian Girls Have Been Abducted, And Aid Might Be Too Late

Last week, I wrote about how no one seems to give a damn about the 223 (according to the Nigerian government) Nigerian women and girls stolen from their school in the village of Chibok over three weeks ago. Well now, everyone seems to give a damn about how no one gives a damn, but the only result is lots of blustering and further inaction.

In the meantime, eight more girls, reportedly between the ages of 12 and 15, were stolen from their village Monday night. At this point, the lack of action from military and government is signifying a deep hatred of women, and of Black women in particular.

For example: In response, the UN has “warned” Islamist militant group Boko Haram against selling the girls. But, really, that amounts to little more than a slap on the wrist.

"We warn the perpetrators that there is an absolute prohibition against slavery and sexual slavery in international law,” said UN human rights spokesperson Rupert Colville. “These can under certain circumstances constitute crimes against humanity," he told a news briefing in Geneva.

No shit.

Colville also urged Nigeria's federal and local authorities to “work together” to rescue the girls. Because it’s really likely that they’re just going to hop to it and start doing an adequate job now, three weeks after the fact. Colville sounds like a helpless father trying to admonish an unruly teen, and an impotent response like this undermines the entire intended purpose of the UN.

The inaction is made worse by the fact that this isn’t the first time Boko Haram have taken it upon themselves to abduct women and girls. Nigerian journalist Alexis Okeowo did a great segment on CBC’s Q Tuesday morning, and she said it’s routine for Boko Haram to pluck women off the street, or from their homes. These young women often wind up as sex slaves. This mass abduction, in other words, is not an isolated incident.

Okeowo wrote about the girls for the New Yorker blog. She reported that Boko Haram is responsible for 1,500 killings in the past year alone, and she also reminded us that:

“The day after the abduction, the Nigerian military claimed that it had rescued nearly all of the girls. A day later, the military retracted its claim; it had not actually rescued any of the girls. And the number that the government said was missing, just over a hundred, was less than half the number that parents and school officials counted: according to their tally, two hundred and thirty-four girls were taken.”

The lying, on top of the inaction, on top of the fact that president Goodluck Jonathan still says he has no sweet clue where the girls are, signifies, in my view, a total lack of concern on behalf of the government.

Canada, the US, and the UK have all offered to help. But it’s been over three weeks. Is it too late? A lot of rapes and unwanted pregnancies can happen in three weeks. Further, it’s unlikely that all of the girls are still being held together in one group, which will make finding them and bringing them home even more challenging. The shame on this one lies not only with the Nigerian government, but with the international community.

If you’re not mad yet, this video shows the supposed leader of Boko Haram saying he will “sell the girls in the market, by Allah. There is a market for selling humans.” Also, you should be mad, because these circumstances in Nigeria can be boiled down to this: Today, right now, Black women are being stolen from their homes in Africa, and being sold into slavery.

I’m no expert on Nigeria’s political climate, or on war tactics. But one thing I do know was nicely summed up by writer and publisher Christelyn Karazin on her site Beyond Black & White: “If those poor Nigerian girls were white, there would be UN conferences and demands and threats made until every last girl was returned to her family or someone would have a scud missile up his ass.”

Rapist Sentenced to Community Service… At a Rape Crisis Centre

This past week, Texas judge Jeanie Howard angered the internet by sentencing a convicted rapist to community service at the Dallas Area Rape Crisis Center.  The centre wasn’t consulted about it, though, and promptly asked that the sentence be changed, according to Salon’s Katie McDonough.

Howard sentenced the 20-year-old man to 45 days in jail and 250 community service hours at the centre. He was, reportedly, 18 when he raped a 14-year-old classmate.

Working at a rape crisis centre with people who have been sexually assaulted takes a healthy mix of training and experience, along with superlative levels of kindness and empathy. Forgive me, but these aren’t exactly the traits widely exhibited by rapists.

Howard is right about the fact that the solution to rape and sexual assault lies in better education, but she’s enforcing that in absolutely the wrong way. Education needs to happen before the fact in order to prevent these crimes, and if you want to employ education as a rehabilitation tactic, it’s got to be done far away from people who are already scarred from being sexually abused. These people are not helpless victims, but we are often prone to excessive feelings of vulnerability.

Education on rape and sexual assault needs to happen at a younger age. We need to teach boys (and girls) about sex and what constitutes consent in elementary school. So many parents are still squeamish when it comes to talking about sex with their children, but that’s only exacerbating the problem.

And while talking to your children about sex might be awkward, teaching them about consent and respecting others’ bodies and spaces doesn’t have to be. This wonderful piece by Paige Lucas-Stannard explains that even so much as forcing a child to hug an adult when they say they don’t want to can give entirely the wrong impressions about consent.

I would normally want to attack Howard like an actual canine bitch, but today, for some reason, I actually feel like her thinking was coming from the right place. She was, perhaps, trying to get the experts who work at the centre to teach the rapist some empathy. It wouldn’t have been wholly preposterous, for example, to arrange some sort of class or other work with staff from the crisis centre in an effort at rehabilitation. As it stands, though, her decision was woefully inappropriate, and possibly dangerous.

In the end, Howard said she would change the sentence at the centre’s request, adding that she would reassign his community service hours to a different location.

@sarratch

 

The VICE Report: Saving South Sudan - Trailer

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Late last year, South Sudan's president, Salva Kiir, accused his former vice president, Riek Machar, of attempting a coup d'état amid accusations of rampant corruption within the government. Infighting immediately broke out within the presidential guard, sparking what has now become a brutal tribal and civil war that has pitted Machar’s ethnic Nuer loyalists against the majority Dinka, who have sided with Kiir. Machar narrowly escaped assassination, fleeing to the deep bush as Kiir’s troops razed his home and killed his bodyguards. And now the world’s newest sovereign nation is in imminent danger of becoming a failed state.

In February, journalists and filmmakers Robert Young Pelton and Tim Freccia set out on a grueling mission to locate Machar in his secret hideout in Akobo and get his side of the story. Accompanying was Machot Lat Thiep, a former child soldier and Lost Boy who had advised on South Sudan’s constitution and now works as a manager of a Cosco in Seattle. Machot acted as a guide of sorts, arranging Pelton and Freccia’s rendezvous with Machar through a series of endless satellite-phone calls to old contacts and rebel platoons, who would eventually guide the group to the deposed vice president.

After spending a couple days with Machar, he granted Pelton and Freccia unprecedented access to the front lines of a battle in Malakal, where for the first time in history the pair documented the heretofore mythical White Army as they looted, murdered, and pillaged their way to some twisted interpretation of “victory.”

As Kiir and Machar plan to meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, we will release Saving South Sudan, a multi-platform exploration of the horrors of the country’s newest civil war.

Saving South Sudan premieres Monday, May 12.

Syrian Refugees Are Stuck at the Jordan Border

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Barrel bombing drove this elderly couple from their village in the Golan to a field near Tal Shihab, where they wait for the border to open. Photos by Abo Bakr al Haj Ali

Syria’s southernmost province of Daraa is often referred to as the birthplace of the revolution, but for a growing number of displaced people, it’s also literally the end of the road.

Even though the stretch of border between Daraa and Jordan has been closed since the summer of 2013, families from Homs, Hama, Damascus, and beyond are still turning up there, trying to get away from the chaos of the Syrian civil war. In many cases, they only reach Daraa after exhausting their resources in a failed bid to enter Jordan through the last open crossing, much further east, at Ruwaished.

This continuous flow of new arrivals has led to a buildup of people in the towns and villages near the border. Omar al Hariri, a Daraa journalist with the activist-based Sham News Network, estimated there are more than 5,000 people crowded into the stretch of land that includes the border villages of Tal Shihab and Naseeb. Lama Fakih, a Syria and Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch agreed that there could easily be between 4,000 and 5,000 refugees in the area, but can’t say for sure because his organizatoin hasn’t had access to the area.

Human Rights Watch isn’t the only aid group to be effectively shut out from Daraa. “Due to security constraints our access to Daraa has been restricted,” said Ahmed Mohsen, an external relations officer with UNHCR’s Damascus operation. “We rely on our partners on ground to deliver the respective services and assistance.” Those partners, noted al Hariri, are mostly informal local organizations and individuals giving what they can, when they can. But it is not enough, he said.

The lack of aid organizations has led to a situation verging on the catastrophic—and according to Baroness Valerie Amos, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, it is only getting worse.

Around 200 displaced people, mostly women and children, are crammed into this school in Tal Shihab.

While factions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) currently run the camps, there is none of the infrastructure that well-funded humanitarian organizations can provide. People are crowded into abandoned schools, other disused buildings, and orchards filled with makeshift tents. More arrive by the day, straining already stretched resources.

“We’ve got clear and consistent messages that in some parts of Daraa people are struggling to feed themselves,” said Robert Beer, the Jordan country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, an NGO that receives new arrivals and distributes relief items at Za’atari and Azraq refugee camps—both across the border in Jordan.

“They say it’s getting more and more difficult, that there are lots of checkpoints," Beer continued. "There are pockets of safety, but other places will have been heavily affected and houses destroyed.”

Um Firas, a young mother from Homs who was wearing a black niqab when I spoke to her, has been in Daraa since the beginning of February. In January her family paid to be smuggled to the crossing at Ruwaished, making the long journey through regime-held land in the back of a truck “like sheep,” she said. But there were questions about her family booklet—an identity document—and she said she, her husband, and their young child were ultimately denied passage to the Za’atari camp.

Abu Khaled, a 34-year-old father of two, had a similar disappointment. “We came from Reef al Sham through al Ruwaished road," he told me, his face wrapped in a red and white keffiyeh. "They let us enter Al Sarhan square, and then they took us out because of IDs and I don't know what.” He and his family had no choice but to come to Daraa, where they have been stuck ever since. “The borders are closed and now there is nothing.”

One of the many factors compounding the desperation in Daraa is poverty. Any bid to enter Jordan costs money, and the price is going up. “We’ve recently heard that people are paying $140 per person for transport to the border, up from $10 to $15 not that long ago,” said Beer.

In Tal Shihab, a local entrepreneur opened up shop selling cookies, chips, and juice outside a school filled with displaced people.

Um Mohammed, a 45-year-old from Al Ghouta, near Damascus, said she sold her last item of value—an automatic washing machine—to pay smugglers to transport her and her five children to Ruwaished. “They kept on moving us from one place to another, not to mention the hunger, the cold, and if a child got ill. Then we reached Al Sarhan square. I had my family booklet and a receipt for my ID, but my ID got lost in the town.” Without her ID, she was unable to convince authorities that she was Syrian. “I was put in the station and I was unable to go past this point.” Like Um Firas, Abu Khaled, and so many others before her, Um Mohammed and her children had nowhere left to go and precious little money to get there. After ten days in Daraa, she was truly desperate: “I can’t go back to Damascus and I can’t live here. How can I reach Jordan just to sort my children?”

All along the border, displaced families spoke of feeling trapped and having nothing to do but wait until the border re-opens—if indeed it ever does. After failing to reach Jordan at Ruwaished, they have run out of options.

But for an unlucky few, there is one last way out: by ambulance. Jordan quietly provides emergency medical care to those with the most grievous injuries. Typically a local ambulance takes victims to a Daraa field hospital, then transports them to the border, where they are transferred to a Jordanian ambulance and rushed to hospital for specialized care.

As I filed this article, I got a message from Daraa: Helicopters were hovering and barrel bombs were falling. A long pause. Then another message: A 12-year-old boy had been hit. He’d lost a leg. It had been severed, then and there. The boy was in an ambulance within minutes, bound for the nearest field hospital and then on to the border and a Jordanian ambulance. It’s not policy to take family along—this is emergency medical care, not a pathway for refugees.

The boy crossed the border alone.

Additional reporting by Abo Bakr al Haj Ali

Follow Sara Elizabeth Williams on Twitter.

Cecily McMillan Jurors' Remorse Is Not Good Enough

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Cecily McMillan Jurors' Remorse Is Not Good Enough
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