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This Grassroots Prosthetics Clinic in Turkey Is Giving Hope to Syria's Lost Generation

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Al Masri poses with Saad and the technician who made his leg outside the clinic. It's supported by four organizations: Every Syrian, Syrian Relief, Syrian-British Medical Society, and the Syrian Expatriates Medical Assocation. All photos via the author.
Muhammad Hamidu was 15 years old when a bomb dropped through his roof near Idlib, a city in Northwestern Syria, 59 km west of Aleppo. His right leg was severed on impact. Thirty-six people died, and it took three hours for his friend Muhammed Albush to dig him out.

It took another few hours before the crushed left leg was amputated in a desperate bid to save his life. Fortunately, it worked. Muhammad is 18 now and today he is getting fitted for double prosthetics that will allow him to stand again, if only on crutches.

Muhammad is one of thousands of Syrian children who have been, literally, torn apart by the civil war that has raged in the country for three years. The city of Reyhanli, a Turkish town that lies on the border with Syria, has become one of the safe havens for what is being referred to as the lost generation of Syrians.

There are 100,000 Syrian refugees in Reyhanli alone, nearly twice the city’s Turkish population of 60,000. Everywhere you look here there is war etched into the town— from eight-year-olds in tattered rags selling bags of tissues out of their pockets to old women’s faces crumpling under the weight of worry lines. There is no doubt that living in the shadow of one of the most brutal humanitarian crises is not an easy burden to bear.

There are pockets of hope, however. On a new road at the edge of town, past a makeshift military hospital made of shipping containers and a garbage-strewn sidewalk, a grassroots prosthetics clinic is a hive of activity in the heat of a Saturday morning. Crammed with patients and technicians, there is a steady hum of Arabic, a gentle clicking of metal joints, and even the occasional peel of laughter.



Omar Saad removes his prosthetic, revealing the scars left behind by his amputation. His leg was removed a week after it was shredded by a high-calibre bullet.
In one room, plaster dust chokes the air as molds are made. In another, plastic shavings litter the floor as whirring machines and handheld scissor blades smooth rough edges into beveled corners. Finally, in the largest room, walkways with railings on either side creak a little as tentative first steps are taken on new limbs.

“There is an important need for this [clinic] because of the many patients who undergo amputations,” says Raed al Masri the director for the National Syrian Project for Prosthetic Limbs.

Al Masri’s team of 12 students from Antakya University has made 800 new lower limbs since the clinic opened a year and a half ago.

As the violence in Syria exploded around him, al Masri—once a math teacher in the now-decimated city of Homs—saw the sons and daughters of his friends and neighbours butchered either by sniper attacks or air strikes. He recognized that one of the first priorities of humanitarian aid would be to “make the patient more effective by giving them a limb back.” In Syria taking or losing a limb is all too common.

Vascular surgery to save a limb can cost $10,000, money that few of the refugees here have. Amputations, however, are free. A new leg from the NSPPL clinic costs $550. In North America, a similar prosthetics can cost in the thousands.



Each prosthetic is custom fit to the patient. It takes a week to make a single prosthetic leg. The joints have to be carefully tuned; al Masri says making a prosthetic to fit above the knee is the hardest..
Despite the Turkish locale, al Masri is Syrian. His staff are Syrian. His patients are Syrian. They come from different parts of the country and speak with different accents, but they share one commonality: They arrived in Reyhanli after fleeing the deadly sniper attacks, and the endless barrage of barrel bombs and rocket assaults that pummeled their homes to dust.

As one Syrian source described in a text message from inside Aleppo this week, “It is raining barrel bombs.”

The staff arrived (mostly) physically unharmed from throughout the conflict zone; the patients were not so lucky. Every body bears the scars of war, from the 23-year-old former fighter whose left arm was paralyzed by an exploding bullet, to the father and son who now have matching double amputations halfway up their thighs.

These are sad stories relative to the tragedies. The worst cases never made it to the prosthetic clinic. They were the babies cut in half by screaming hot shrapnel tearing though the air. They were the old men and women who were too weak to walk to safety and starved to death in the shelled-out streets, where UN food aid is being sold for profit.

The clinic has produced 800 lower limbs in a year and a half.
Today, though, is about marking small successes and that is what we see every few minutes in this chaotic clinic.

The day before visiting the prosthetic clinic we toured some of the rehab centres in Reyhanli. It’s not immediately clear how many there are in town. As need grows and wanes based on the frequency and proximity of the attacks in Syria, clinics in Reyhanli are added or packed up and moved elsewhere. We visited a centre now taking over several floors of an old hotel, one in a basement apartment and another in a rented out house.

It was in these clinics that we met the two Muhammads, now inseparable friends, and a group of other young Syrians, no older than 25, who represent the lost generation. Today they have come to the clinic for a day of fitting, training and adjusting to their new life with a prosthetic.

As patients wait for their turn to be measured or to take a walk on the practice stairway, the ones who have had their prosthetics longer coach the new users while the staff set up obstacle courses and demonstrate exercises.

Omar Saad seems to have taken to his new leg without missing a step. Where some of the other patients have concealed their limbs, he proudly displays his, rolling up the right leg of his jeans, standing with his arms crossed, studying the movements of the staff and then mimicking them almost perfectly.



Omar is ready to go back to Syria just four days after getting his new prosthetic.
Seven months ago Omar had his right leg shot to pieces by a .50 calibre bullet—a round that can penetrate concrete and 1-inch plate steel. He’s a handsome 19-year-old whose gait is now so strong and purposeful that it’s nearly impossible to tell he’s lived through hell.

Omar has been studying computer science, but he plans to return to the front lines of the war in just a few days.

“I will be a sniper,” he says.

It’s hard to understand what would compel a maimed teenager to put his life on the line after such a near miss. But Syrians aren’t stupid—they know the world is ignoring them and, if they don’t go back, no one else is coming to help.

“I will defend the families and the religion against Bashar al-Assad,” he says with conviction.

We ask al Masri whether it’s normal for his patients to return to the war. He says he doesn’t ask about politics, but that only just over half of his patients are men. The rest are women and children. There are enough badly-injured women that there is an all-female rehabilitation centre in Reyhanli as well.

We stopped by the women’s centre and met one of the young female casualties: Noor. She looks every bit the grown-up Syrian woman, but she is just 14. She has already outgrown her first prosthetic, and has returned to be fitted for a new one.

Noor has been off school for a year due to her injuries, but she dreams of returning and studying to be a doctor.

“I have two emotions: sad and angry at the Syrian regime," says al Masri. “These limbs don’t return. These [prosthetics] just help with life.”

With the war still in a deadlock, and the regime’s continuing campaign of indiscriminate mass bombings, more patients will undoubtedly find their way to al Masri. But thanks to al Masri and his team, some modicum of normal life seems to be once again possible for the resilient young people lumbering awkwardly around this makeshift prosthetics clinic.


@j_ws_t

@emmajarratt1


The Newest Concern for the F-35 Fighter Jet: Canada's Birds

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The Newest Concern for the F-35 Fighter Jet: Canada's Birds

Kanye West Is Returning to Conquer Bonnaroo Once and for All

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Kanye West Is Returning to Conquer Bonnaroo Once and for All

Treating Your 'Candy Crush' Addiction

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Stone Island jacket, Beyond Retro dress, Kickers boots

This shoot is not affiliated with Candy Crush Saga.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Holly Falconer
STYLING: Kylie Griffiths
WORDS: Chris Giles
Graphics and illustration: Toby and Joe Evans
Photographer's assistant: Alex Craddock
Photographic lab: Labyrinth Photographic
Makeup and hair: Lydia Warhurst using Eyeko London, Bobbi Brown, Mac, Nars, Liz Earl, and Bumble & Bumble
Models: Gemma, Lola, and Patrish at Profile 

Yesterday, my Facebook feed was full of people keyboard crying over a Daily Mail article. The gist was that Candy Crush could be banned when new app developer rules are introduced. It won't be, of course—but it did get me thinking about how addicted some of my friends are to swiping virtual treats. I wanted to find out if there was anything I could do to help, so I called up James McInally, head of marketing at Addiction Helper, for some advice.

VICE: So, is Candy Crush addiction a problem you’ve ever encountered?
James McInally: Yes, people have contacted us with an addiction to Candy Crush—they can’t actually function in life anymore because they play so often. They might not go to work because they can’t stop playing, for example. It’s obsession and compulsion. They get a dopamine release when they get to the next level. It also might be something that helps them take their minds off of other problems.

Do you see any similarities between those addicted to Candy Crush and those addicted to, say, heroin or crack cocaine?
There are similarities. There are two different categories of addiction: substance addiction and behavioral addiction. People are playing Candy Crush to get a high—it’s a behavioral problem, and often those behavioral problems are difficult to break. Whether it’s an addiction to Candy Crush, drugs, or alcohol, it’s the same behavior.

Say my friend had a debilitating Candy Crush addiction—how would I go about treating it?
Tell them it’s OK not to be OK. How involved is the addiction? How we treat addiction varies between individuals. Not all addicts are the same. Find out the reason. Most people have an underlying problem. Some people need counselling to talk about and engage with the habit. Candy Crush is just a symptom—a manifestation of an underlying deeper issue. Addiction is a growing industry; there’s more out there to be addicted to nowadays.

Thanks, James.

Click through to see the rest of the shoot.


Vintage top, Beyond Retro pants


Hot!MeSS top, pants from Blitz Vintage, Nike sneakers; Le Coq Sportif jacket, Missguided dress, Saucony sneakers; Top from Beyond Retro, Le Coq Sportif pants, Reebok sneakers


Ben Sherman jacket, Motel dress, Kickers boots; Nike jacket, Missguided dress, Reebok sneakers; Motel top, fanny pack and pants from Beyond Retro, Reebok sneakers


River Island scarf, Le Coq Sportif jacket and shorts, Saucony sneakers


Nike top


Caterpillar boots


Le Coq Sportif jacket, Missguided dress, Saucony sneakers; Top from Beyond Retro, Le Coq Sportif pants, Reebok sneakers


Top from Beyond Retro

'Bare Bum' Is a Protest Movement for South Africans Who Are Tired of Pooping in Buckets

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'Bare Bum' Is a Protest Movement for South Africans Who Are Tired of Pooping in Buckets

We'll Always Have School Shootings Because We Really Really Love Guns

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Image via Flickr user Big Ashb

Not long before he killed himself, David Foster Wallace wrote a short piece for the Atlantic about the War on Terror, called "Just Asking." It detailed a disturbing thought experiment about whether maybe occasional terrorism in our country is, for lack of a better term, worth it:

"What if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?"

It's an uncomfortable notion, but if you chew on it for a second, you'll pick up what he's putting down. We all want A) Freedom, whatever that is, and B) to not be suddenly blown up by a stranger. But maybe we can't have both, and if you have to pick the better one, between freedom and 100-percent never being suddenly blown up by a stranger, maybe it's freedom.

There are already plenty of think pieces on America not being free anymore, because of the patriot act, and the NSA, and all that. I won't dwell on that part of Wallace's argument. 

Instead, think about how Wallace's thought experiment would play out if it were, hypothetically, put to a vote. After all, America occasionally does use its shambles of a democracy to make a change because an attitude has shifted.

Look at pot legalization for instance. We aren't a country of pot users. Only 7.6 percent of American adults use marijuana habitually, but the issue has amassed enough support to bring us to the brink of nationwide legalization. This happened thanks to the tiny sliver of Americans who legitimately need it for medicine, in addition to a much larger, passionate group of habitual users who just think it's a fun thing to smoke, and are supported by lobby groups like NORML.

These are the kinds of passionate people who make weed part of their identity, and they're slowly winning:

But the surprising power of that 7.6 percent of the population is nothing. Last time Gallup ran a poll, the percentage of Americans who owned guns was about 47 percent, or 147 million people. And are those 147 million people maybe a little bit ardent? Gun control advocates don't, I think, stop and consider that when gun owners say they love their guns, they really, passionately, deeply love them with a zeal that makes the biggest stoner you know look, well, apathetic.

Just look at this guy:

Listen to how he talks about going to the range and firing thousand of bullets. Did you notice he said he had made an Excel spreadsheet of all his guns? Are we to believe he's personally shot someone with his Sig Sauer with rainbow finish? Probably not. It's just a pretty thing he really likes having around.

And have you ever been to the Internet Movie Firearms Database, the site that catalogs every gun in literally every movie ever? I'm sure it doesn't surprise you to learn that there's a page there for Commando that's longer and more elaborate than the same movie's IMDB page. But they've also got comprehensive pages for everything from Bruce Almighty to Purple Rain. Imagine how excited they are when a Rambo movie comes out on Blu-Ray, and they have the chance to freeze-frame, and figure out which brand of silencer someone is using.

That kind of love is almost cute. Almost. 

So while the NRA may be a bloated, possibly corrupt, excessively powerful lobbying force, partly staffed by horrible racists, it's also the mouthpiece of a fandom more widespread than Bronies, Trekkies and Furries combined and multiplied by a hundred. Gun ownership is almost inarguably the single most popular hobby in America, and the NRA is a consequence of that. 

Even popular gun control efforts that failed like the 2013 bill would have been nothing more than tiny, symbolic changes, such as making background checks more ubiquitous, or eliminating high capacity magazines. Elliot Rodger passed his background check, and didn't use high capacity magazines. The presence of the NRA makes real reform so farfetched, nothing has even been proposed, let alone voted on, that will get us anywhere close to Richard Martinez's "Not One More" promised land. 

And meanwhile, there's shooting after shooting. When these things happened, the president used to fly out to the grieving town and give a speech. Now we don't even fly our flags at half mast. They've become an ongoing problem we can't take the time out of our day to be individually upset about, like Adam Sandler movies.

Everyone would prefer that these school shootings stop, even Wayne LaPierre. The NRA's solution to the problem, arming teachers, is the only answer that anyone's made any progress on. But that's a joke of a solution. Even if a school shooting happened to start in the classroom of a teacher who happened to be packing heat, the shooter would still be able to put a bullet in another student, or for that matter the teacher, while she's writing an equation on the blackboard. But most school shootings seem to happen in the hallways anyway, and even armed and trained campus police will never be such eagle-eyed Clint Eastwoods that they can stop the initial few shots from happening. 

Matching shooters gun-for-gun isn't a solution anyone takes seriously, not even the NRA. The real answer is that we, the American people, see that there are school shootings, and we all agree that they're tragic, but then we've done the David Foster Wallace thought experiment in our heads: gun control would mean an America with fewer school shootings, but we would lose some of our gun freedom. 

And apparently we don't want to live in a place like that. 

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter

The French Soccer Team Caught a Drone 'Spying' on Them and They're Flipping Out About It

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The French Soccer Team Caught a Drone 'Spying' on Them and They're Flipping Out About It

Comics: The Casting Couch


We Need to Get Better at Coding

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Photo by alengo/iStockphoto 

Forty seconds after it launched into the skies of French Guiana in 1996, the Ariane 501, an enormous rocket carrying four satellites, exploded rather unceremoniously. Scientists from the European Space Agency, which spent ten years working on the project, watched in horror as their spacecraft—which had cost $7 billion to develop—tumbled back to earth in a cluster of smoke and flames.

It turned out that the catastrophewas caused by a few lines of faulty code that tried to convert a 64-bit number into a 16-bit memory space (the digital equivalent of trying to park a semi truck in a broom closet). That was enough to trigger a chain reaction that caused the craft to veer so wildly off course that G-forces tore the boosters from the body of the rocket.

We rely on code like that in nearly every aspect of our daily lives. Cars use between dozens of microprocessors to get us from A to B. Banks rely on colossal databases and algorithms to store and retrieve our financial data. And one of the main features of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, which went into effect late last year, was a website that was supposed to allow people to sign up for health insurance. Unfortunately, the launch of Healthcare.gov was a notorious disaster: The site gave users frequent error messages and had glaring security flaws. “The basic architecture of the site, built by federal contractors overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, was flawed in design, poorly tested and ultimately not functional,” wrote Michael Scherer of TIME magazine in October.

Though we rely heavily on software engineering, the industry is still struggling to deliver products that don’t fall to pieces immediately after launching. According to the CHAOS Manifesto 2013, a yearly review of the tech industry published by the Standish Group, only 39 percent of software projects were completed on time and within budget, while nearly one in five projects failed. Worldwide, IT failures cost businesses an estimated $3 trillion a year.

“Where cars were in the 1930s and 40s is about where we are in software today,” said Dennis Frailey, a member of the Board of Governors for the Institute of Electrical And Electronics Engineers. “We don’t build [a product] to be high quality, generally speaking. The pressure is to get it out quickly. And this was one of the problems with the healthcare system is that they tried to get it out too quickly and something that massive really needed more time to do it right.”

Software failures can cost governments and businesses millions at a single stroke. In Britain, a melee of finger pointing ensued after an investigation concluded that the country’s nine-year, $17.7 billion-dollar effort to produce an electronic health records system would have to be scrapped. In 2005, British food retailer J Sainsbury had to hire an additional 3,000 clerks to stock its warehouses after the company’s automated supply-chain management system failed to move products off the shelves. And residents of Long Beach, California, got a free pass on their parking tickets when one of the city’s antiquated software systems failed to collect $17.6 million in fines.

So how can the industry improve so that commissioning a large software project isn’t like betting millions of dollars on a single spin of a roulette wheel?

Frailey suggests that software engineers should be required to demonstrate a certain level of expertise before offering their services to the public, just like professionals in disciplines like medicine and law.

“Anybody can claim to be a heart surgeon but how do you know whether they’re any good?” Frailey said. “You start by saying, ‘Do you have a medical license?’”

Every state has a licensing board, which grants certification in areas that range from education to medicine and beyond. Last year, 30 states included software engineering on a list of professions that require practitioners to pass state licensing exams in order to work on projects that could affect public safety. The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) administers the Professional Engineering (PE) exams, which were offered for the first time last April.

By requiring professional certification, the states are recognizing that the people who create programs to monitor and control public infrastructure, like the electrical grids that keep our stoplights and sewers working, should be held to the same standards as the civil engineers who design those systems.

The licensing effort was supported by nearly two-thirds of software engineers surveyed in a 2008 poll. Phillip Laplante, the chairman of the committee charged with developing the exam, explained the reasoning behind the licensing requirements this way: “Don’t you want some level of confidence that the person who wrote that software that is controlling the nuclear plant is who they said they are? That they have the experience they claim to have and are at least minimally qualified? Are you willing to roll the dice?”

Case in point: The 2003 northeast blackout, in which almost 55 million people in the US and Canada lost power, has been partially blamed on a programming error that allowed the outage to spread.

Laplante said he expects all 50 states to require software engineering licenses within the next decade, and possibly much sooner.

Another safety concern unique to the digital age is the rising threat of cyber attacks. The second largest portion of the new PE exam focuses on topics related to safety, security, and privacy.

“We recognize that security vulnerabilities are a real problem. Almost every day, there’s some hacking news story,” Laplante told me. “We want to ensure that the people who are working on these systems are thinking about this all the time and that it’s not an afterthought.”

Last year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the number of cyber attacks climbed from 5,503 in 2006 to 48,562 in 2012—an increase of 782 percent. The report warned, “Cyber attacks could have a potentially devastating impact on the nation’s computer systems and networks, disrupting the operations of government and businesses and the lives of private individuals.” The GAO has issued numerous reports and recommendations asking the federal government to make improving cybersecurity a national priority.

Despite all these warnings, in 2012 a group of Republicans in the Senate, led by John McCain, blocked a bill that would have created new standards to oversee cyber threats to the nation’s infrastructure because, they argued, it would be too expensive for corporations to follow the proposed new rules.

That attitude is dangerously shortsighted—as society becomes increasingly dependent on technology the average person (or average congressperson) doesn’t understand, it’s necessary to have regulations in place to minimize coding failures that can leave people without power or worse.

“I do worry that this is going to be a sleeper topic until one day, something very bad happens and it’s traced back to some failing in software that could have been prevented,” Laplante told me. “Everything is connected to software-based systems now and all kinds of stuff can happen.”

How the Canadian Government's Poor Record-Keeping Broke Up 4,000 Inuit Families

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Martha Flaherty's sister Mary was one of the 4,000 people taken away for tuberculosis treatment. Screenshot via Martha of the North.
Mary Flaherty was only two years old when she was taken for tuberculosis treatment in a southern sanitarium. Tuberculosis treatment wasn’t available in the Arctic, so she and thousands of others were shipped by the government to sanitariums in Hamilton, Montreal, and other southern cities. Her family was on its way to the High Arctic as part of a government relocation of Inuit families to Grise Fiord, the northernmost inhabited part of Canada, and a community that did not exist until the government created it to prove to Russia that Canada could claim sovereignty in the Arctic during the Cold War. Flaherty was diagnosed with tuberculosis aboard the ship there, and taken from her family. There were no translators who could speak Inuktituton on the ship, so her parents weren’t told what was wrong with her, where she was going, or when she’d be back.

Mary was cured after six months, but it took two more years for her to be returned to her family because no records were kept of where she came from or who her family was. By the time she made it back to Grise Fiord, she’d spent half of her short life in a sanitarium, couldn’t speak her parents’ sole language, and didn’t even recognize their faces.

“Ignorance and incompetence made my sister a stranger in her own family,” her sister Martha says in a documentary made about the forced relocations, Martha of the North.

Mary was one of over 4,000 people taken from their homes with no explanation to their families. Record keeping was so bad that many Inuit families to this day have no idea what happened to their loved ones, including whether or not they were cured or passed away, and if they did pass away, where their remains are buried.

“At any one point in time in the 1950s, one in seven Inuit were in care in the South. So we’re not talking about a few people,” said Natan Obed, the director of social and cultural development at Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the organization that protects Inuit land claims in Nunavut.

“Family members had no way of knowing where they were or how long they were going to be in care, and sometimes people just didn’t come back,” Obed said. “There’s this longstanding concern—and rightfully so—about where people’s loved ones are buried and what actually happened to them.”

View of the Arctic landscape via Martha of the North.
These concerns are the focus of a government project, Nanilavut (or ‘let’s find them’ in Inuktitut), to track down the graves of lost loved ones and provide as much information as possible to their families. The hope is to create a searchable database so that family members can call and find out where their loved one was treated and where they, or their grave, ended up. So far, records have been identified for 4,300 individuals, according to an Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada media relations officer. They know 1,340 of these people returned home and at least 830 died away from their communities. It’s unknown what happened to the rest.

“Both the remoteness of the communities and the limited communication media affected the flow of information,” according to Aboriginal Affairs. Another challenge was that most Inuit didn’t use surnames until the 1970s, said Terry Audla, the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the “national voice of 55,000 Inuit.” So instead, Inuit were issued dog tags to wear with an “E-number.” E was for Eskimo.

Audla said his father lost his first wife this way. “My father, prior to marrying my mom, had a first wife who was sent off to a sanitarium in Timmins. But he didn’t know that’s where she was going and was left behind with three small children. She never came back,” he said. “He never knew what happened until many years later. There were many examples like that.”

The organization Obed works for approached the government for help with this project in 2008, after receiving regular calls from individuals hoping to track down their family members.

“A lot of people came to us, either on behalf of elder Inuit who are dying, or it’s terminally ill Inuit themselves who are calling us and saying: 'My whole life I just wanted to say goodbye to my brother, or I want to have closure with my mother who passed away,’” Obed said. He received other requests from families who lost small children and have hope that they’re still alive, and maybe were just randomly adopted into other families without their parents’ knowledge or permission.

“These are incredibly moving stories and the requests to us are very simple,” he said.

Obed hopes to provide an active database, proper headstones for Inuit who were buried en masse in unmarked graves in the South, and memorials so that family members can pay their last respects and see that their mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters “can be buried in a dignified way,” he said. He’d also like to see a travel program for Inuit to visit the graves of their family members, because it’s “prohibitively expensive” to travel from the far North to Hamilton or Montreal, or wherever else the sanitariums were.

“We’re looking for closure in a few different ways,” he said. “This isn’t something Inuit did themselves. The government provided care, the government demanded that Inuit go South for care, the government was responsible for all of this initiative. And yes it was to help Inuit overcome tuberculosis, but at the same time there’s basic human rights.”

It’s still hard for some Inuit to trust the intentions of the health care system, Obed said. In 2007 he was part of a national health survey, and many Inuit hesitated to take part because all the tests and surveys were done aboard ships. And at the same people were being sent South for tuberculosis treatment, Inuit families were being relocated into the High Arctic under false pretenses, there were coerced settlements, the beginning of residential school programs, and dog slaughters to ensure Inuit had less access to the land and their traditional way of life.

“All of these things were happening in a very short period of time, one on top of the other,” Obed said. “The legacy of the tuberculosis treatment and care in the South is mixed in with all these other things.”

“The emotional consequence of that on a society is tremendous,” he said. “This society as a whole was traumatized.”


@waitwhichemma

Epicly Later'd - Season 1: Keith Hufnagel - Part 2

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In part two of Keith Hufnagel’s Epicly Later’d, Keith brings his East Coast style to the West. His combination of technical style and a unique ability to ollie big shit leads to a pro spot on Real Skateboards and eventually earns Keith a place on the DC Super Tour, where he sets out to conquer Europe.

M. Geddes Gengras Makes Electronic Music for the Last Wild Indian

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For more than seven years, M. Geddes Gengras has been a staple of the LA experimental music scene, producing and recording a wide array of work alongside the likes of Sun Araw, Akron/Family, and Pocahaunted. The 17 albums he has on his Bandcamp page often consist of drone-like sounds made with a moog and synth. The feeling I get from such a catalog of work is something like a computer asleep and orgasming at the same time, conjuring weird worlds of sound that mutate and bleed and dig out tunnels through each other, vibing the fuck out.

Gengras’s latest record, Ishi, to be released from Leaving Records on June 24, takes its name from “the last wild Indian,” a man who appeared from out of the wilderness in 1911, having survived late into his 40s completely unexposed to civilization. Also inspired by the death of two friends, Ishi opens wide and swallows the listener in a wide glimmering field, somewhere between Eluvium and Tim Hecker living under a sea of electronic water.

Gengras was kind enough to answer some questions via email about his creative and performance processes, as well as the recording of Ishi.

VICE: Watching you control and manipulate sound using a modular synth has a very different feeling compared to watching, say, a guy with a guitar play. Do you feel there is a different emotional quality there, an almost surgical feel, versus jamming out with an axe?
Gengras: I feel like that's a common perception of it, but maybe that has a lot to do with our history of music and its performance. The guitar mode has been so dominant for the last 70 years that bass and even some keyboards have adapted toward a similar portable, wearable form. And the freedom that is afforded a performer who can roam the stage with their instrument makes people tied to their stage position seem pretty boring in comparison. I spent a lot of time playing drums in bands—another instrument where you are stuck in one spot—but I liked to think about it as a focal point for energy that you could just build and build over the course of the set. Modular synth is a lot like guitar in that small movements can create small or large change, immediately or over time. I also think the look of the instrument has a lot to do with that—to most people it looks more like an amateur science experiment than a synthesizer. I've done a lot of shows opening for more traditionally equipped “bands,” and many times I don't think entire segments of the audience were aware that I was even performing. They probably thought I was a roadie and the DJ was shitting the bed.

I like the idea of thinking of playing the drums as building within a space. Is where you record a specific piece of music very important to its mood? Where was Ishi recorded?
Except for the odd trip to Jamaica or an occasional session at a friend's place, I record everything at home. I have a decent sized extra bedroom in the house I'm in now, for a studio space, and I did the record here. After years of buying lots of goofy pedals and cheap keyboards and guitars on craigslist while all my 4-tracks ground to a halt under a film of spilled beer, a couple years back I put a little chunk of money into a couple of nice preamps with good converters and some fun, studio-friendly outboard gear, so I'm pretty set as far as anything I might really need to make my music. In that respect it's incredibly important, because I’m usually recording or editing almost every day and having those tools at my disposal gives me the freedom to create off of a schedule. But the vibe of the room is certainly important—I keep all the records in here because I figure they make for good absorption. I also burn a lot of incense, have good lighting, a rug, and a comfortable chair. These things are really crucial because I spend a lot of time in here.

How do you approach the layout of a record like Ishi? Specifically, what did you know going in about what you wanted it to be, and what rules emerged along the way?
The performances the record was built around were selected from a pool of six that were all made around the same time and with similar intent. As I began the post-performance process of manipulation and expansion, these pieces floated to the top. They naturally fell into place: the first piece is the thesis statement, the second is the conflict, and the third piece is epilogue. The bonus track is actually an outlier as it was the first piece of music made in in the series and acts as a sort of amorphous playground for those ideas. On a purely emotional level, there were very specific states I wanted to evoke, and some trauma I was trying to work through. Beyond that, one idea led to another and the whole thing evolved in a very natural way.

You said somewhere that to some extent a written piece played through a modular synth “performs itself”? Could you elaborate on that?
When I talk about writing a piece, I feel like maybe this needs clarification because the wording lends itself to a different understanding... the music I make isn't composed in the traditional sense (sounds arranged in predetermined orders) nor is it improvised—it's generative, which means that my role in it is to conceptualize and implement a set of constraints and event/signal chains that will output music with the desired emotional effect. Synthesizers are built around cycles, from the LFOs to the VCOs, sequencers are usually expressed as circles or pendulums. Once a process is initiated it generally continues until you tell it to stop. With creative programming, infinite variation isn't difficult to arrive at. Even three or four out of sync cycles can create almost endless variation. So I begin with that, then try and sculpt it into something that sounds like music to me.

What goes into developing a system for an individual piece of music that places some of the creative decisions on the machine, rather than on yourself?
Use of random or quasi-random sources mixed with fixed cycles (like a sequencer or LFO), creating constantly evolving combinations of notes and sounds. Most of the processes are controlled through other parts of the synth, for instance when I manipulate a sample with a joystick, a trigger signal could be generated any time I touch it and those pulses clocking other elements. Arranging small or simpler patches in “rings” like this allows changes to migrate around an entire patch, and changes on one side have unforeseen effects elsewhere.

Could you provide an example of the synthesis of a constraint and/or event signal chain? Like with what kind of impulse does the idea begin when writing, and how do you work toward knowing what each next instance in the chain will be?
There are a certain amount of “voices” (on average around 8-12 depending on configuration) in my system, mostly analog and digital voltage-controlled oscillators, but other things, too, like samples or a drum module. I start with timbre, so somewhere in one or a combination of those elements, plus modifiers, such as filters, voltage-controlled amplifiers, phase, delay, etc., I either find the sound I’m trying to make or come up on something else that is interesting in that pursuit. The fully modular (no two parts are hardwired to each other in any way) nature of the instrument allows me to combine any of these things in pretty much any meaningful way, while providing no "stock" or pre-set options to do it. Compare this to an average software synth, which might have 10 times the voices/operators available, but you basically have to unbuild something to start from scratch, and in most cases you aren't provided with the options to make 'bad' or 'wrong' patches. There are obvious benefits to both things, but starting with a blank slate and having to turn basically the same X amount of voices, Y of modifiers, Z of control modules into a system that creates something that sounds like music while being different from the one before, that just really inspires me creatively.

What about albums? What albums most inspired your approach to synth-based music?
Anything by Parmegiani and Pierre Henry (though La Creation Du Monde and Prismes are my respective faves) as far as pure sound and its organization goes. Angus Maclise's rhythm without accent. Space, time, and the motion of both come from King Tubby and Brian Eno. The ecstatic cool fluidity and infinite melody of Alice Coltrane and Terry Riley. 

Do you think machines have souls?
God, I hope not. But they definitely have character.

Preview “Passage” from Ishi on Soundcloud and preorder the album on iTunes here.

Follow Blake on Twitter.

Anti-Pipeline Activists in Vancouver Had Their Computers Confiscated Over Graffiti Charges

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“Get down on the ground!” Vancouver police shouted at Gord Hill and his girlfriend as they raided their house last week, with their handgun pointed at his centre-mass.

In an interview, the Kwakwaka'wakw activist and author accused the police of using “No Pipelines” graffiti charges against another roommate—since dropped pending an investigation—as an excuse to confiscate all four residents' phones, computers, video cameras and USB sticks and to search their house.

Now, the activists' supporters are fundraising to buy new phones and laptops for the household.

Hill is author of the book 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance and an outspoken radical Indigenous activist.

Even though the warrant only named one of the four residents and said cops were looking for “graffiti vandalism paraphernalia”—related to hundreds of spray-painted “No Pipelines” slogans that have peppered East Vancouver's walls for the last five years — Hill said officers seemed more concerned with snatching up everyone's electronic equipment and political propaganda in their day-long search, which included a K9 dog squad.

“We were locked out of our house until 6 p.m.,” he said in an interview through a friend's phone, since his phone was seized. “Everything was obviously searched-through.

“The main thing missing were all our laptops, computers, USB sticks, my video camera, political zines, a banner… but they left lots of spay-paint cans behind.”

As Hill recounts it, 16 officers were involved in the raid of his Parker Street home, shared with three other environmental and Indigenous activists and one overnight couch-guest. One of the roommates had only moved in the day before.

Details about the raid were posted on Warrior Publications, a blog run by Gord Hill, that’s stated mission is to “promote warrior culture, fighting spirit, and resistance movements.” In a post entitled “Talking with a Target: Vancouver Police Department’s ‘Guns-Drawn’ Graffiti Raid Draws Fire,” police intimidation methods are described frankly in a dialogue between ‘C.L. Cook’ and ‘Zig-Zag’ who compared the raid to a similar arrest in London, Ontario where environmental activists had their computers confiscated under the guise of a graffiti charge.

VICE reached out to a Vancouver Police Department spokesman, who disputed that there were that many officers involved—but notably didn't deny their guns were drawn.

“I am assuming that your interest comes from the colourful blog posting online today,” wrote Const. Brian Montague in an email, referring to Warrior Publications. He went on to write that when police execute a search warrant, “in many cases” they attempt to have occupants surrender of their own volition.

Often, officers will use “less-lethal bean bag rounds” in such situations, he said, but that drawing sidearm pistols is always an option because the “safety of the public, our officers and the suspects is a priority when entering a home to look for evidence related to criminal activity.”

“Officers are not required to unnecessarily risk their personal safety,” he explained. “We have various tools for entry and protection available to us.

“In potentially dangerous situations, such as entering premises where there are always many unknown factors, drawing of a sidearm and having it 'ready' is one of those options.”

Hill first realized a police raid was underway when he heard “yelling” outside his East Vancouver house around 9 AM. When he looked outside his upstairs bedroom window, he recalled seeing several police officers on the sidewalk. He and his partner went downstairs and a plainclothes officer was in his living room “with a pistol pointing towards us,” yelling at him to drop to the floor.

“I asked if they had a warrant,” he recounted. “They proceeded with an armed takedown.”

The graffiti in question—“No Pipelines” scrawled freehand around the neighbourhood since at least 2009, sometimes accompanied by a circle-A anarchy symbol—has raised the ire of more moderate anti-pipeline activists anxious it will damage the movement to stop Enbridge and Kinder Morgan from building controversial oil sands pipelines across the province.

The federal government is poised to announce its final decision on the much-hated Enbridge Northern Gateway any day now, with a deadline of June 17 to rule on the $7-billion project.

Others, who purport to be fans of street art, have criticized the tags for being either unoriginal, or painting over existing businesses' mural art. On social media and newspapers, some in the anti-pipelines crowd have even suggested the alleged vandal should be beaten or injured by police for bringing their popular cause into disrepute.

The issue has raised tensions amongst activists over how they should go about opposing the pipelines, and provoked a violent reaction from some who normally tout nonviolence. One Facebook commenter quipped after the raid, “If they had pistol-whipped that idiot I probably would have been moved to make a large donation to the Policeman's Benevolent Fund or whatever they have today.” The artist behind one Commercial Drive mural “defaced” by the graffiti told the Province newspaper he's “a pacifist at heart, but there’s a part of me that would like to disable the hand that uses the spray can.”

So was the unnamed suspect sought by police actually the tagger behind the ubiquitous slogan?

“He's not convicted of it at all that this point,” Hill replies. “The method of their investigation is over the top and rather extreme on the part of the police.

“The method by which they carried out this raid is a message they're trying to communicate to radicals here: to intimated and silence opposition… To possibly disrupt our communications—a number of us run blogs and do communications work. It puts a dent in that.”

But Hill said that those protecting the land and water shouldn't be deterred from activism. Rather, what he called “heavy-handed” police tactics should serve as “a heads-up to people” that standing up against major industrial projects is increasingly seen as a threat to the state itself.

In fact, two years ago Canadian authorities launched a new integrated national security enforcement team (INSET) dedicated to protecting the country's increasingly vital oil sands infrastructure, including pipelines and refineries, from “extremist” activity by politically, ideologically and religiously motivated groups.

The INSET brings together the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), RCMP, and local police forces.

Coupled with former Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver's infamous comments that fossil fuel activists were “foreign-funded radicals” endangering the national economy, some say the Conservatives have cast a chill over dissent.

“I don't think people should be intimidated out of organizing or participating in social movements,” Hill says. “On the other hand, it's something we expect from the state when you resist the state and corporate entities.

“It's part of the package when you're fighting against government and big corporate projects—these are national security issues.”


@davidpball

Ryan McGinley's Advice to Young Photographers: Don't Compete

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All photos examples of Ryan McGinley's early work, courtesy of the artist and Team Gallery

I didn't go to Parsons' graduation ceremony last month, but people tell me I missed a remarkable commencement speech delivered by photographer Ryan McGinley. Luckily, his studio already put it on YouTube. It is almost certainly a good idea to pay attention to whatever advice McGinley gives to emerging photographers for a number of reasons. For example, he had a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2003, when he was 25. He also was named "Young Photographer of the Year" by the International Center of Photography in 2007, and has since been called things like "the most important photographer in America" and "the pied piper of the downtown art world." He also used to have my job as photo editor of VICE, where he gave buckets of deserving young artists their first chances at editorial work.

Here are some gems from McGinley's speech. Consider them useful pieces of career advice for young photographers, from a guy who knows. He opens, "Everyone always says it helps to picture [the audience] naked to calm my nerves. Unfortunately, that’s another day at work for me."

"By my fourth year in school, I was shooting every day and every night. I photographed every little thing—all my food, doorways covered in graffiti, and my friends and roommates. I tortured my first boyfriend, Marc, by capturing each moment of our relationship. I was obsessed with documenting my life. So that’s my advice to you: find something to be obsessed with, and then obsess over it. Don't compete; find what's uniquely yours. Take your experience of life and connect that with your knowledge of photographic history. Mix it all together, and create an artistic world that we can enter into."

"If you only like shooting cell phone photos, then do that. If your dad works at a construction site that looks cool, use it. If your mom breeds poodles, then put them in your photographs. Use the camera to take what you know that others don’t, what you can access that others can’t, and the people or things you connect with, to construct your own world."

"Be busy. Seek and find a way to do what it is you want to do. Identify what that thing is and do it. Don’t stand around too long having conversations about it. Do it. Refine it. Do it more. Try it a different way. Keep at it until you break through to the next level. Don’t talk or think yourself out of doing it. Put one foot in front of the other and let it happen organically."

"I realized I could make intimate pictures of strangers. It was a breakthrough for me. I found that most people liked being photographed; they like being paid attention to and being told to do things they normally wouldn’t do. I learned that all I needed to do was ask."

"Say yes to almost everything and try new things. Don’t be afraid to fail, and don’t be afraid to work hard. Do your pictures—don’t try and do somebody else’s pictures. Don’t get lost inside your head, and don’t worry what camera you’re using." 

"I once heard the legendary indie director Derek Jarman had three rules for making his art films: 'Show up early, hold your own light, and don’t expect to get paid.' That always stuck with me. Approach art like it’s your job. Show up for photography every day for eight hours. Take it as seriously as a doctor would medicine."

"Remember, it’s romantic as hell what we do."

"Take photos of everything. If you are working hard—really hard—opportunity will come. And when it does, you better be ready for it with your camera in hand."

Ryan McGinley is a good photographer. See his previous contributions to VICE here. 

Matthew Leifheit is current photo editor of VICE. Follow him on Twitter.

I Was OJ Simpson's Accomplice (On His Hidden Camera Prank Show)

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My first big break in Hollywood. I was hired to work on a reality TV show with an "internationally known celebrity." Except, on the first day of production, the producer took me aside and dryly explained, “You know Harmon, we really can’t mention… the murders.”   

I took in the information, nodding my head vigorously. “OK!” I said with complete enthusiasm. “No mention of murders!” 

This was actually a major consideration when you’ve just been hired to work on a zany hidden camera prank show with, of all people, OJ Simpson. 

You know, “OJ.” From the slow-speed Bronco chase; the subject of If-the-glove-don’t-fit-you-must-acquit murder trial of last century.  Yeah, OJ, as in HOLY-FUCKING-SHIT-OJ-YOU-CAN’T-BE-FUCKING-SERIOUS. That OJ.   

There’s a guy out there; a man, a producer—the guy who brought the world Bum Fights and Backyard Wrestling—who thought in 2005 it would be a spanking good idea for a double-acquitted murderer’s comeback project to be a Punk’d knockoff straight-to-DVD, hidden camera prank show called Juiced. As in, a prank is pulled, OJ Simpson pops out and goes, “You’ve been Juiced” at which point the person pranked goes, “HEY AREN’T YOU THAT GUY WHO MURDERED THOSE PEOPLE!? YOU KNOW YOUR WIFE AND THAT OTHER GUY!!?” 

And I was hired off an ad on Craigslist to be OJ’s “funny little sidekick.” To give me some credit, all throughout the two-week, straight-to-DVD production of Juiced, OJ kept referring to me as “Crazy Boy." Which gives you a little insight into my craziness, because how crazy does one have to be to be referred to as “Crazy Boy” by OJ Simpson? Yes, I was Kato Kaelin to OJ’s OJ.

In a nondescript recording studio in Burbank, we waited for OJ to show up for the first day of production. A weird hush came over the crew as OJ arrived with his handlers while loudly talking on a cell phone. The first thing I noticed: He has a really large head in terms of cranial capacity. A shady entourage surrounded him. Rumors flew that Warren G, OJ’s bodyguard, just got out of jail, and that his driver didn’t have a driver’s license. 

OJ was made to dress like a gangsta rapper (ironically wearing—forgive me—a wife-beater).  The first thing OJ said to me was “Why don’t you push me!” I’d just met OJ and he wanted me to shove him. The setup for the first “funny” prank involved singers and dancers coming in blindly for an audition. All they knew was that it’s for a “celebrity’s” music video. What these “victims” didn’t know: The celebrity was actually, yes, OJ Simpson. 

I felt bad. We were just wasting people’s time and crushing their dreams. Later, one of the women we'd pranked screamed, “When the ad says I’d make $750 per day, that pisses me off!” Clearly she was not happy with the reward of a free Juiced T-shirt. 

While wearing a pink belly-shirt and going by the name Power, my role was to go in and audition with a group of dancers, screw things up, and then get into a big argument with OJ. So, as requested, on cue I shoved OJ Simpson (I actually screamed “Do you want a piece of me!”)

I expected when OJ made an appearance, people would freak out and flee from the room. I expected people to react with horror—most likely even crying, thinking, yes, the devil himself now has a reality show. But that, as it turned out, was not the case. 

“You’ve been Juiced!”

The would-be dancers were actually thrilled to meet OJ Simpson. It was great he got to show America his practical joking side.

“Why don’t you all dance around OJ,” the director instructed a group of excited girls. OJ attempted to be the lady’s man, adding: “This is not working out, but if you want to have dinner later, or…?” 

Yes, OJ loves the ladies. Later, while wearing a disguise and pulling a prank in a tropical fish store, he tried to be suave with a girl by asking, “If I were OJ, would you try to go out with me?”

The frightened girl replied, “I’m only 17.” 

OJ coyly retorted, “If you were 18, I’d try and go out with you!”  

There was soon trouble in straight-to-DVD hidden camera prank paradise as the Juiced honeymoon immediately turned rocky.  “OJ just doesn’t give a shit,” ranted the producer on the mere second day of production. “OJ shows up late, OJ doesn’t want to wear wardrobe, OJ refuses to do things. What the hell is the matter with OJ!?”  

OJ was nowhere to be found. The crew, who were putting in long hours for little pay for OJ’s big comeback, impatiently waited. “It’s pretty weird, you know, because of the murders,” commented the sound guy. “But he is pretty funny,” he added. 

Finally, jovial OJ drove up in a golf cart. "I’m playing golf with the worst golfers,” he stated to the stressed producer, who passive-aggressively pleads to let the shooting begin. “I’m going to play a round of golf,” OJ responded. “I need to warm up.” 

I got the strong feeling that OJ wasn’t doing Juiced for the love of pranks, but strictly for the money. OJ continued to chat away to two of his lifelong golfing buddies, oblivious that roughly 20 people are waiting for him to start filming. After OJ vetoed the chosen wardrobe of old-time golfing knickers (the cap’s too small for his melon-sized head), things got rolling.

We started by doing a few gags that clearly didn’t work. I was supposed to once again antagonize OJ. The humor here relied heavily on working off OJ’s masterful improv skills. When I came running up to OJ, pretending to be a member of the paparazzi, he simply ignored me. 

“People are always try to catch me doing something crazy on camera,” he mildly commented to the golfers who now want to pummel me silly. Quickly learning OJ was not blessed with the Second City art of improv, the gag somehow ended (much to everyone’s confusion) with me and the producer wrestling around on the fairway. Utilizing a phrase that I’ve never thought my brain would formulate in all my life, I informed the producer afterwards: “OJ’s really not giving me much to work with!” 

Time to regroup. OJ had a plan. He knew how to really piss off golfers. I was supposed to run on the fairway and steal all the golfer’s balls after they’re hit. All right!

 “OJ! Mr. OJ! Will you sign a golf ball for me?” My arms flailed as I ran down the fairway to a group of golfers who emitted venomous hate through their eyes. They were pissed off to, well, OJ proportions. 

One golfer, a very large angry man, stormed directly to his golf bag and grabbed an iron. He cocked it back, ready to swing at my head. I was depending on OJ Simpson, of all people in the world, for my safety. When things got too hairy, he was supposed to jump in and cry, “You’re Juice’d!” Except he didn’t.

“PUT DOWN THE FUCKING BALL NOW!” the large angry golfer screamed, turning increasingly red, rushing towards me. 

“Not until OJ signs one of these golf balls.” I insisted.

“PUT DOWN THE FUCKING BALL NOW!”

“That guy’s crazy,” casually commented OJ, acting like he didn’t know me.

The large angry man kept charging at me. Worried, OJ seemed to be caught up in his golf game and completely forgotten the whole premise of the show. Right before the club was about to make contact with my skull, OJ nonchalantly decided to fill them in.

“You’ve been Juiced!” 

OJ pointed to the hidden cameras. The large, angry golfer didn’t give a shit.

“I DON’T CARE WHAT IT IS. YOU DON’T TOUCH PEOPLE’S BALLS!”

Despite the prospect of a free Juiced T-shirt, the large angry golfer didn’t calm down.  

“YOU JUST DON’T GO TAKING PEOPLE’S BALLS.”

“I thought they were going to kick-Harmon’s-ass,” OJ laughed afterwards. My eyebrow raised as OJ, in a reflective moment, shared to the camera: “That guy was mad. He was like OJ on alcohol.”

Days later, I found myself sitting in a motel room with OJ. Earlier, I accidentally walked in on him with his pants down. Boxers in case you were wondering. OJ sat in a chair and was having heavy makeup applied while the camera crew filmed behind the scenes footage. 

“The lights are on me. I’m feeling like a star,” OJ kept repeating. “I’m feeling like a star!” 

OJ was supposed to be made to look like an old white man (with a huge head). Unfortunately, he looked more like a severe burn victim. 

Meanwhile, the TV was on. OJ’s channel of choice was Court TV. OJ kept talking to the TV as if it were a person who could hear him.

“That’s such bullshit!” he kept saying to the TV.

It got weirdly surreal and uncomfortable as a Court TV reporter went into grizzly details about the Scott Peterson murder trial (that other famous guy who killed his wife). “Of course they think he’s guilty,” exclaimed OJ in white face to the TV.  

I prayed the reporter wouldn’t start talking about OJ. Everyone else got weirdly quiet, as they awkwardly stared at their shoes. 

“How are they going to work me into this?” OJ asked the TV, seemingly hoping for the notoriety. “During my trial, my lawyers covered my ass.” 

The room stayed quiet. This time I looked at my shoes. 

To break the tension, OJ gave us the treat of OJ jokes—from OJ himself. “Who’s the first Jewish guy to get a Heisman Trophy?" he asked. "Fred Goldman, because he’s got mine!” OJ let out a crude laugh at the expense of his murder victim’s father as everyone kept uncomfortably staring at their shoes and contemplating career choices. 

Later, OJ went to a very white Elks Club lodge for bingo night. Under a large American flag, he portrayed Carl, an inept guest bingo caller with a stutter. I was on hand to heckle and antagonize Carl. Comedy mayhem ensued. OJ executed the gag with the pure comedy finesse of  a high school gym teacher. Venturing back to the motel, the camera crew stopped a random guy and asked if he recognized the identity of the large-headed burn victim. When finally told its OJ, the confused man sympathetically asked, “Is this how you have to go around now?”  

At the end of the evening, OJ, still in disguise, wanted to pull one more prank.  

“Let’s go to the bar. I want to fool my wife,” he slipped, then corrected himself. “I mean my daughter.” (How many times did I end up awkwardly staring at my shoes during this shoot?) Before leaving OJ told me, “You’re pretty funny. You really got your stuff.” Always the people pleaser, OJ promised to introduce me to some key showbiz people at a production company. 

Would it be a fast-track to the A-list, having OJ Simpson’s stamp of approval (“He comes highly recommended by OJ!”)? I found out later the production company he mentioned went out of business five years previously.

Due to OJ’s uncanny performance ability (“It’s clear that he has no talent,” shared a crew member earlier), I was hired on for another week of Juiced. I’m not saying I’m that good, I’m saying OJ was just that bad.  

Added to the mix, we were filming in Vegas—a city of glittery facades, masking its true vile underbelly. My goal in Vegas was to go out drinking one-on-one with OJ and see if I could get him to confess to the murders—by telling him about all the murders I'd committed.

It was then time for one of the “classic” pranks of Juiced. OJ posing as a used car salesman, trying to get people to buy a white Ford Bronco, which he ad-libs and says has “Great escape-ability.” (Yeah, he’s got a sense of humor about what happened. You know, “the incident.”)    

“I tried to keep mine, but unfortunately they wouldn’t let me keep mine,” he added. 

For some reason, this particular Ford Bronco had a large bullet hole on the side. OJ signed his autograph right above the hole, making it a limited edition collectors’ model. 

“It’s OJ,” a man exclaimed after being pranked. 

“Just be glad he doesn’t have a knife!” his friend laughed under his breath. 

Between pranks, sitting in the lot manager’s office, we learned more about the famous white Bronco from the slow speed chase. 

“Ford owns Hertz. They would give me new cars each year. I got a Bronco and a Town Car. I gave my father-in-law the Town Car.”

OJ told the producer that the police lied about finding $10,000 and exaggerated about the amount of blood found in the Bronco, though he made no mention about the disguise kit and passport.

Still, I couldn’t help but feel that OJ wasn’t doing the straight-to-DVD production of Juiced for the love of hidden camera pranks, but strictly for the money. The executive producer, though, had found an award-winning formula to keep OJ interested in Juiced. The idea was to keep OJ constantly plied with alcohol. OJ took to the formula like an oversized hand to a bloody glove.  

Oh wait, did I not mention that OJ also made a rap song?

We were then in the lobby of a crappy motel off the Vegas Strip. OJ was propped up in the corner wearing an Elvis Presley jumpsuit. OJ was supposed to play a wacky motel clerk (“Look out! Here comes wacky motel clerk OJ. You see it’s funny because he murdered some people!”) But OJ was completely shitfaced. I guess the idea had segued to, if you couldn’t get OJ pulling pranks, at least you could OJ near some pranks while they were being pulled.

When tourists came in, I was supposed to say their credit card has been declined, confiscate their card, and threaten to rip it up. I know, really funny shit! This resulted in people telling us to “go fuck ourselves” and storming out, despite the enticement of a free Juiced T-shirt! Except, OJ failed to grasp the whole concept of the hidden camera prank surprise. 

“Hey!” drunken OJ whispered to a couple before I could Juice’d them. ”Hey! I’m OJ!’ he slurred from behind Elvis glasses. “Hey! Do you recognize me?”

But still, the most mind-numbing part of this whole scenario was that tourists went nuts when they found out they’ve been Juiced by OJ.  

“Oh my God! This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me!” screamed a kid in a basketball tank top, who high-fived his friend and suddenly started freestylin’ to impress OJ. “I just rapped for OJ! That’s as big as it gets!”

Tourists swarmed in from off the strip, thrilled to be in the same room as the double acquitted murderer. Mothers and daughters requested photos.  Remember, this was no mere rape-accused Kobe Bryant; this was the granddaddy of them all, OJ!  

Surprisingly, it got really sleazy towards the end. Drunken OJ rapping in a pimp outfit in a rented mansion with topless strippers and a midget dancing around. Some people might’ve thought this image alone signified the end of the world.

Early in the day, while filming a prank, I kept spontaneously referring to OJ as "Danny Glover" over and over again, and he actually really did get angry. (“I ALREADY TOLD YOU I’M NOT DANNY GLOVER!”)  

The guy who let us use the mansion was  a scumbag on many levels, but had also invited over all his equally scumbaggy buddies. Large middle-aged guys with big bellies, all of whom were slamming down copious amounts of Red Bull and vodkas and getting increasingly drunk and  aggressive. 

“Yo coach, I’m a tiger on the loose. There’s no stopping the Juice,” rapped OJ with the gangsta rapping finesse of a fourth-rate Shaquille O’Neil. The only time I become nervous on the set of Juiced was when OJ’s girlfriend (a heavy job title in itself) started flirting with me. OJ kept looking over. I got nervous because I CLEARLY REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LAST GUY IN THE SAME SITUATION! By no means, did I want to see OJ’s jealous side! 

Bad energy was afoot. The only thing missing from this volatile mix was loaded firearms and oily rags near open flames. I knew there was going to be trouble, I just didn’t know when. Do the math: OJ Simpson + strippers + mansion + drunken big-bellied men. How the hell do you think a night like this will end?

“THAT STUPID FUCKING BITCH CAN’T TALK TO ME LIKE THAT IN MY HOUSE!” we heard a drunken scumbag scream from the bathroom where he just aggressively barged in on a stripper. The shoot abruptly ended as everyone was ejected out of the mansion. Unfortunately OJ had already left (just when we needed him to throw-down for our benefit ).  

Our Vegas shooting schedule came to an abrupt end. The first thing the next morning, the producer informed me, “OJ’s sick today, so we’re going to pack up and go back to LA.” Strange. The last I saw of OJ, he was shit-faced.  

Yes, this was the true Dante-level of show biz purgatory one gets sentenced to when they still crave fame but have been banished from paradise like a disgraced Fatty Arbuckle. A true savage journey into the heart of the American Dream, because for a brief moment, between murder charges and a prison sentence, scandalized OJ reinvented himself as… a zany prankster! 


Komp-Laint Dept.Oswald and Dallas…Let Them See What They Have Done

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In the lobby of the Sixth Floor Museum, Dallas. All photos by Jason Metcalf, unless otherwise noted
 
The founding father of Dallas, John Neely Bryan, had been at various times in his life an Indian trader, gold prospector, lawyer, postmaster, and colonel in the 18th Texas Cavalry, briefly and not particularly distinguished. He operated the ferry across the Trinity River, persuaded many to settle in the town, and once served as a delegate to the state's Democratic convention. He shot a man who insulted his wife, and though the man survived, Bryan abandoned his family for a half dozen years, leaving five children behind.
 
Nearly marking the centennial of these events, entirely by coincidence, an elementary school was built on Deer Path Drive and named in his honor. Some time has passed since deer have been seen in the area, but the school remains, as does Bryan's legacy, such as it is. His varied exploits, troubles, and tribulations may be seen to reflect the city and its history, which, as rampant development continues, is in danger of being erased. 

Elevated practically to the status of a fine art, erasure in our time inhabits many forms, yet spans the same echo-trajectory: the presence of absence, equally haunting and mundane. Take, for example, a small unobtrusive plaque set into the trampled ground alongside Elm Street in Dallas, just in front of the Bryan Colonnade. Its inscription: 
Dealey Plaza has been designated a National Historic Landmark. This site possesses national significance in commemorating the history of the United States of America. 1993. National Park Service, United States Department of the Interior
Nowhere does the plaque state exactly why the site is particularly significant. Maybe it’s unnecessary? Or perhaps it's simply inconvenient, in the way that guilt often manifests itself, weighing on so many for so long that it's simply easier to elliptically remember what's better forgotten. What might “possess” mean today? To contain, or its opposite, to let slip through one's fingers? And what does “commemorate” mean? To honor the memory, or to enable amnesia?
 
 
A large white X is marked in the street directly before the plaque. From time to time a tourist will step onto or alongside the X, while a friend, wife, or husband stands directly opposite on the curb with a camera to take a photo. More than something to show the folks back home, it allows anyone to occupy this charged site, and die another day. The person on the X almost always voices impatient concern: "Hurry up. Take the picture. What are you waiting for?" This is because cars coming straight down the slope on this section of Elm approach quickly on a green light. Were they maneuvering the hairpin turn at the corner and driving much more slowly, there would be time to get off a second or third shot, and the tourists wouldn't have to scramble back onto the matted lawn. 

Out of harm's way, they sometimes proceed toward the blocky brick building that houses the Sixth Floor Museum, which could more accurately be described as an illustrated book that you can walk through. As with most institutions, the only admission is the price of entry, and here it's $16. As my photographer and I purchase a pair of tickets, the woman at the register calls us "Sugar" no less than four times in about half a minute—our most welcoming moment in Dallas. Though for many of us this is an insignificant space of time, a lot can happen in 30 seconds.

Wayne Gonzales, untitled, 2001. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 76 inches (254 x 193 cm)

We are informed that photography is not allowed on the sixth floor or in the gift shop, but that pictures can be taken on the seventh. For whatever reasons, they are wary of cameras around here—even in the gift shop. Now that almost anyone with a cell phone can take photos, everyone is a potential witness with the instant evidence to prove or disprove, which also makes every one of us a potential liability. Of course, given the flattened photo-book feel of the exhibition at the Sixth Floor Museum, wouldn't taking pictures be entirely redundant? Even if photography can't escape its own "compulsion to repeat," a photograph of a photograph remains in no way remarkable. More likely the activity of taking pictures in this museum is thought to be disrespectful, as if this were some sort of hallowed place, a reverential site. In that respect, one must wonder why it has been turned into a sideshow to begin with, a diversion and its edifice, a means to perpetuate one of the longer running fictions in a world of faithful disbelief. Maybe every museum, whether devoted to natural or unnatural history, is in some sense “the scene of the crime.”

 
Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
 
Here, in the only display that comes vividly alive, there is a photo of the moment when Jack Ruby shot Oswald in the basement of the Dallas police station. Although his contorted body and face is undeniably the focus of this iconic image, it is a double portrait, for Oswald is inextricably linked to the detective to whom he was handcuffed that day, Jim Leavelle. Wearing a tan-colored suit from Neiman Marcus and a Stetson, Leavelle stands in stark contrast from the crowd, his eyes locked on Ruby as he instinctively yanks Oswald away from the shooter and prevents his demise—in that moment at least. Perfectly lined up with the photo in the display case, we see the actual suit and hat and the handcuffs, rigid yet floating in space. It's as if, in that instant, shot at point-blank range, Oswald simply vaporized. Already gone, a problem summarily dispensed with, and for all to see. 
 
Over in a corner, behind a floor-to-ceiling glass case, is a cluster of Texas School Book Depository boxes, some stacked around a window, serving as the backdrop for a rifle on display, a Mannlicher-Carcano—a stand-in for a stand-in. Although it's a bright, sunny spring afternoon, the lighting in the museum is dimmed, funerary. So much for setting the stage all over again. 
 
 
One flight up, you can position yourself at the window that looks down onto Elm Street in front of the Colonnade, and onto the X in the road, though it's invisible to the naked eye. One's comprehension of what happened here is not so much revealed by the museum's exhibitions, but in the place itself, its exterior, the landscape, how it's all laid out geographically—the building, the trees on the hill, the fence, and the railroad tracks that run conveniently behind. What happened here, it's clear to see, happened out there. Dealey Plaza is not in the shadow of the former Book Depository building, which is now the Sixth Floor Museum. It is, in fact, quite the other way around. The building is in the shadow of the plaza. To see it from above and then to walk around outside, to see it from the perimeter and from all angles is to grasp exactly what occurred, neither as related in the official story nor its gently calibrated revision, but what took place that day. You have no doubts at all, and even though you may not be able to put it into words, your own certainty is articulated in being there. And being there, sensing so strongly in what the actual topography will tell you, the evidence and the indictment is simply incontrovertible. No wonder that plaque is so deceptively banal, a banality that is in no way evil but merely a matter of business as usual.
 
You can't help wondering why the building wasn't torn down, why the roadway and the pattern of traffic wasn't altered, why the Colonnade still stands. To obliterate a place is to remove every physical vestige, every psychic trace, brick by brick. If only they—whoever they are—had thought of it 25 years ago. People would have been against it, of course, but accidents happen, and surely in Texas a gas explosion isn't all that difficult to arrange. Nothing in comparison to the removal of the most well-protected person in the country, his supposed assassin, the assassin's assassin, all the collateral damage. But you can't obliterate a place as easily as its inhabitants, especially when the place itself inhabits our very consciousness.
 
 
Wayne Gonzales, untitled, 2000. Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 inches (61 x 76 cm). Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery
 
That day in Dallas it was easy to be reminded of a sign that once prominently hung on the back of Carlos Marcello’s office door in New Orleans. Marcello headed the city's crime family in the early 1960s, and his sign read: “Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.” How do we know this? Because Marcello was a cousin, by marriage, of one of my best friends, someone who grew up on Pauline Street, the same street where Oswald was born. This was someone whose parents were close to Lou Ivon, an assistant DA and right-hand man to Jim Garrison, the District Attorney of Orleans Parish. Garrison's office investigated the connections between Oswald and the mob, and the mob and various intelligence agencies, concluding that the man so many believed had killed the president, a man reviled, himself believed he had infiltrated a plot and was in Dallas to prevent it from being carried out.
 
While he came to be seen as a convenient patsy, even by Jackie, Garrison considered Oswald a hero, particularly in the sense that a hero is sacrificed to a greater cause. Though in this instance it was in every way sinister, and the "hero" would go on to be demonized. The fact that my friend, the child who grew up around the larger-than-life figures of Marcello and Garrison, and in the wake of a national tragedy, would become an artist who, for many years, was obsessed with and made numerous paintings related to this story, is in no way surprising. This is what the genre of history painting is for, to show us images that the camera cannot capture, a genre revived in Andy Warhol's post-'63 portraits of Jackie. 
 
And the source of that quote, "Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead," turns out, unexpectedly enough, to be none other than Benjamin Franklin. And with a hundred? Secrets kept to a power of ten, to the grave and beyond, whether or not they knew they were part of the bargain. And to all those questions which continue to be raised like so many bodies exhumed over and again, we may only conclude, "Ask not what your country can do for you…"
 
 
That afternoon in Dallas, we saw signs in shop windows urging customers to leave their guns in their cars, reminding them of the penalty for entering the premises with unlicensed weapons. The west remains as wild as ever, ready to defend itself against anyone who might threaten its freedom, or who might insult its wives, offering a very believable stage for just this sort of play. We thought of this as we flipped disinterestedly through a $3 box at Good Records, as we cruised slowly past the Last Baptist Church on Federal Street, as we furtively snapped pictures of a Sphinx in front of an enormous Crystal Palace.
 
Within seconds, as if on cue, a security guard emerged, informing us that permission is required to take photos. He was nice enough, though, letting us simply apologize and be on our way. This turned out to be the Infomart, which, according to its website, is "a premiere data center, telecom and high-tech office facility" whose tenants include AT&T, IBM, NCR, Burroughs, and Texas Instruments. With its oversized pretension to echo the past, specifically that of civilized, scientific England in the 1850s—a far cry from the Lone Star State of that time—the Infomart is emblematic of the aspirations and fantasies that drive so much of modern life, or at least support its facade. A Sphinx with no particularly enigmatic quality, merely decorating another repository for the useless hoardings of the information age.
 
 
This pavilion monstrosity sits in weird parallel to its immediate neighbor across the freeway, Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament, an establishment that doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is—a place of escape that embodies an inalienable fact of the present: Entertainment erases history. And nowhere in Dallas, not even in the vicinity of the Crystal Palace and Medieval Times, is there any trace of Camelot. Yet everything here stands in the shadow, if only of fantasy, or of itself: The Infomart across from a theme-parked restaurant, a faux French chateau on a hill next to the sleek glass wall of the Plains Capital Bank. Money and its double. And from the windows of a faithfully replicated Oval Office at the George W. Bush Presidential Center, one's view is not of Washington, DC, but of the West Elm Mall.

We stopped for lunch at a place called Lee Harvey's one afternoon, a friendly, unpretentious rock 'n' roll bar on Gould Street, an area that is likely destined for the next wave of gentry. Despite the name, as we were indifferently informed by the woman behind the bar, who has surely been asked a thousand times before, the building has no connection to the city's most infamous son. The name serves as a reminder that among a younger generation of Texans—perhaps especially for those who saw the Oswald hit on live TV—only an irreverent relation to what happened is possible, the disconnect which allows for any sort of proximity to horror. Thus you have the Butthole Surfers in the 80s with their psychedelic nightmare, "The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave," the questionable taste of poster artist Frank Kozik and his brilliant image, which seamlessly shifts Oswald's assassination to the kinetic punk rock stage. But in it you also have the possibility for a song as elegiac as Homer Henderson's "Lee Harvey Was a Friend of Mine," as well as Erykah Badu's controversial and misunderstood video for "Window Seat," which this telescoped distance allows, yet which lingering guilt and dread would deny. Maybe it should have been filmed from that perch in the Sixth Floor Museum? Or from alongside the Bryan Colonnade? Or from both angles, for a much more cinematic and documentary effect.
 
On our way to dinner at Mesa on West Jefferson, a Mexican restaurant that specializes in cooking from Veracruz, we noticed that the Texas Theater was just a block away, where Oswald, or someone who bore a striking resemblance, was arrested that November 22. Three doors down, coincidentally enough, is Anytime Bail Bonds, of which he couldn't have availed himself, and wouldn't end up needing in any case. We made plans to drive over to Fort Worth the next morning, to Rose Hill Memorial Park, where Oswald is buried—and where, quite possibly, two bodies were interred, though not simultaneously. 
 
 
The sky that day was impossibly blue, crisp, and clear, streaked with long white lines, as if gridded by surveillance from above. The former Carswell Air Force Base is not so far away, but really, at this point, why would anyone care? At Rose Hill, a modest stone is set in the ground, about the size of the plaque at Dealey Plaza, though it bears only the last name, and no dates as these markers almost always do, inscribed with the birth and death of the person, referring to loved ones or children left behind. It's fitting, somehow, since Oswald came into and left this life as a ghost who haunts us still.
 
Landing late that night in New York, drowsy, I was suddenly startled as the plane touched down, thinking that we'd traveled through a half century of time and space and had, all the while, been flying back to JFK.

Indigenous People in Chile Are Worried about Canadian Mining Sparking a Genocide

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Photo from the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal hearings, via the author.
“Not all that glitters is gold.”

It's a cliché, but it takes on a whole new meaning when you are sitting across from a member of the Diaguita Huascoaltinos indigenous community in Chile who says that his people are facing a genocide if Canadian mining interests in his region have their way.

The words came from Sergio Campusano, a representative of the Comunidad Agricola Huascoaltinos, who was in Montreal for the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (TPP) hearings on the Canadian mining industry's impact in Latin America—not to be confused with the clandestine, multi-national trade agreement that is still being negotiated. Campusano was one of the 20 witnesses from the Americas and Europe who came to testify to the Canadian mining industry's disastrous impacts in the southern hemisphere, and how Canadian and host governments have colluded to protect them.

Campusano's primary beef is with Barrick Gold, their subsidiary Nevada, and their Pascua Lama gold mine project in the mountains above the Diaguita people's home in the Huasco Valley of the Andes. The Diaguita say that the mine threatens the mountain glaciers that provide water for them and their agricultural land; farming is their primary industry and their means of subsistence. In our conversation, Campusano spoke of dust from construction settling on the ice and causing it to melt faster and become polluted; chemical toilets dumped into rivers, and leaking drainage canals. Barrick has denied allegations that they are damaging the glaciers and polluting groundwater, but Pascua Lama has been shut since late 2013 when its license was revoked by the Chilean government because of environmental violations.

“If this mine goes ahead, we would all die, or we would have to leave,” he said. “It is a genocide.”

His first hand testimony was only one among many at the hearings into how Canadian mining companies across Latin America—from Honduras' Siria Valley to southeastern Guatemala to Chiapas, Mexico—with the support of local authorities and the Canadian government, have been committing environmental and human rights abuses in the pursuit of gold.

At the end of the two days of hearings at a downtown Montreal community centre, the judgement of the eight jurors who listened to the testimony—ranging from the Council of Canadians' Maude Barlowe to physician and TPP Secretary General Gianni Tognini to human rights and international law experts from Peru and Spain—was unanimous:

“The cases examined by this Tribunal shine a light on the violation of human rights, and the Tribunal consider it proven—backed by the documents and testimonies received—that the Canadian mining companies located in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and Chile, whose actions were examined during these proceedings, clearly led to the violation of multiple [human and environmental] rights,” they wrote in their preliminary verdict, adding that the Canadian government and the companies' host governments have also clearly been complicit in allowing these crimes to take place. The final verdict, which will include more detailed proposals for solutions to the violations of international law and human rights they identified, will be released in the coming weeks.

“It is a very good verdict in that it really confirms the allegations that were brought to the tribunal against the mining companies, but also against the Canadian state for its complicity in this situation,” said Claire Doran, one of the hearing's two spokespeople and longtime human rights and international development activist. “The tribunal went even further in that it also laid down the responsibilities of the host states, which we hadn't really presented for the tribunal to look at, but is of course intimately linked to the rest.”

There won't be any criminal charges laid or CEOs hauled off to jail, though. The TPP, founded in 1979 and marking its 40th session with this latest hearing, is a tribunal of opinion, meant to shine a light on wrongdoings that evade the courts. Over its history, it has investigated everything from the violation of human rights in the Algerian civil war, the human and environmental rights impact of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the policies of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Founded in Italy by legal experts, writers and human rights advocates, it was designed to follow on the work of the Russell Tribunal, which in 1967 exposed war crimes committed against the Vietnamese people.

According to the TPP's Secretary-General, Gianni Tognoni, who served as a juror at the Montreal session, the role of the tribunal is “identifying and publicizing cases of systematic violation of fundamental rights, especially cases in which national and international legislation fails to defend the right of the people.”

For juror Mireille Fanon-Mendès-France, president of the Frantz-Fanon Foundation and a human rights expert with the United Nations, the issue of Canadian mining companies in Latin America is just the type of situation the tribunal is meant to look into.

“Because these companies don't listen to the people whose land they are stealing, it's important that we give space for the voices of these people,” she told VICE in an interview following the release of the verdict. “It's extremely important that [these tribunals] exist in order to get to the bottom of the issue.”

While some may question whether the scope of Canada's mining industry in Latin America deserves this kind of investigation, Doran says that's exactly the kind of misconception that made the tribunal necessary.

“I think the public is not always aware that we're talking here about large scale projects,” said Doran. “[These projects] are going to have a huge impact on a number of countries and communities, and they are implemented without any respect for the right of self-determination of the people there and for their right to define for themselves kind of development they want.”

In all, it is estimated that over 230 Canadian miners operate in the region, representing between 50 percent to 70 percent of all mining activities in the region, and that almost 1,500 mining concessions in Latin America are operated by companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Canada in general is a mining behemoth, with three-quarters of the world's mining companies based in the country. And the list of concerns and accusations is long and damning.

According to the Observatory of Mining Conflicts in Latin America, of the 200 community conflicts they identify across the region, more than 90 involve Canadian companies.

In the charges for this tribunal, the TPP looked at just five companies operating in Latin America: Barrick Gold and its subsidiary Nevada; Goldcorp and its subsidiary Entre Mares; Tahoe Resources and its subsidiary San Rafael S.A.; Blackfire Exploration and its subsidiary Blackfire Exploration Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V.; Excellon Resources and its subsidiary Excellon de México S. A. de C. V.

But their alleged transgressions run long: destruction of the environment and water sources in Honduras and Chile; ignoring the right to self determination and the right to free, prior and informed consent for Indigenous Peoples in Chile and Guatemala; denying the right to full citizenship, including attacking peaceful protesters in Mexico and Guatemala, and union busting in Mexico; and spurring on conflicts that lead to community division and violence, including murders, in Mexico.

While the tribunal sent the charges to all the companies, none responded or participated. VICE reached out to some of the companies for response. Only Barrick Gold spokesperson Andrew Lloyd wrote back: “We do not tolerate human rights violations by our employees, or by anyone working on our behalf and our mining operations apply world-leading environmental standards,” he wrote in an email to VICE. “Our operations in Latin America support thousands of high-quality jobs, along with substantial economic development and meaningful contributions to important initiatives in health and education.”

The Canadian government was also in the hot seat for directly and indirectly aiding mining companies as they committed these violations, including from using diplomatic pressure and foreign development funding to influence mining legislation throughout Latin America. As has already been revealed, development assistance money granted to non-profit organizations has been tied to promoting the profile of Canadian mining companies in the region. The Tribunal also pointed to the Canadian government interfering in Honduran and Colombian legislative processes in order to push for more favourable mining legislation. And as VICE has previously reported, public funds through crown corporations go to many of these companies to bodies like the Canadian Pension Plan, which invests hundreds of millions of Canadians' dollars in the lucrative extractive industry.

While the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development was contacted for comment, they did not reply by deadline.

Also of great concern, and one of the main focuses of 40 or so non-profits and community organizations across Canada and Latin America that organized the TPP, is what they refer to as a “judicial gap”: the fact that people affected Latin America have little to no power to pursue these companies in Canadian courts. While a company may be accused of committing a crime abroad that they would be prosecuted for if committed in Canada, there is no way for them to be pursued domestically. While this verdict may not be an immediate tool to solving that problem, Doran sees it as a crucial step in that direction: It helps as a tool to spread awareness at the Canadian and international level, pressuring the government to act. But, she added, it also provides an outlet for people who have been seeking some kind of recourse for years, with very few people willing to pay attention.

“We heard from people from Chile going to the Canadian embassy, hoping somebody would listen to them there, and were denied any kind of sympathy or even politeness,” she said. “So I think that for them, to have their case listened to and presented and analyzed by experts and also sent around the world... That's really very, very significant.”

As Canadian and international organizations push for reforms domestically, the fight continues on a daily basis for people like Campusano, who see their land under threat. He hopes that this tribunal helps drive home the message to Canadians that they need to look beyond what they hear from mining corporations and the Canadian government.

“Canadians can't put their faith in Barrick Gold,” he said. “We're not for sale, not looking for compensation. We may be economically poor, but they are spiritually poor."

“Which is worse?”


@timmcsorley

69 Loves Denim Like We Love to 69

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Denim is universal and so is 69. No, not the position, but the brand, the symbol, and the name behind the designer who is creating full denim collections made for everyone. This anonymous designer has been creating non-demographic denim since the brand launched in 2011. People have been going apeshit since the first 69 collection sold at Assembly New York, and in an industry where image is everything, forgoing fame is a true testament of character. 69 can't be anonymous forever but can at least keep its unnamed integrity for now. 

Not focusing on any particular collection at the moment, 69 is still on the grind pumping out denim designs daily. They are renovating the studio located in downtown Los Angeles to create the ultimate chill zone for both showroom visits and shoppers. Visitors can rest on big denim basketballs, play with a white model house, and of course, browse through endless denim. The showroom will be open Saturday, June 21. 

I had no idea what to expect upon meeting this nameless character 69 in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood a few weeks back. Is it a he, is it a she? Well, I got to find out, but you'll have to wait—at least for now. After promising not to spill the identity beans, we sat down and spoke about revolutionizing this fucked-up fashion industry, the California sunshine, and our mutual love for the goddess, Sade.

VICE: Someone mentioned you'd like to stay anonymous, is this true?
69: Yeah, and I hope you're able to contain yourself! I don't care or believe in notoriety. Its all in our subconscious when we as humans put a name, gender, or race to something. I don't like how we manifest certain characteristics about strangers. For example, if I didn't know anything about a band that I was in love with, I wouldn't give a shit. They make music I like so what else matters?

I really respect that. You are the only designer I know who does that.
I think its one of those things we have to learn in life is release our ego. It's something we acquire over time through peer pressure, acceptance, and meeting new people. As long as you are doing something to the best of your ability and you're happy with it then whatever, its all that matters. Obviously, its even better if other people like it too.

It's a great concept to think about, ESPECIALLY in this industry.
This industry is the worst. Its so competitive and full of ego maniacs. I know that everyone is sick of it. Anyone who has any sort of a brain is sick of it. Its all just really fucked up. It's so dictated by a specific type of person who chooses what people want to look like. I hope that I'm at least a part of the movement for change. I'd really like to modify the whole image surrounding this industry as a whole. Thats really what I'm interested in, representing everyone. 

I think this idea of representing everyone is really important, and it takes a small few of us to make some different things happen in order to start the change we want to see in this industry. Our generation is the evolving point in a lot of ways. I can see it changing slowly.
It just takes a movement to do it. You feel it, I feel it, we just have to do it. The movement could be very rapid since we have the internet, it could spread like wildfire. We're very lucky to live in this time, its also very scary too.

Is that why you create garments that are unisex?
I like to think they are non-demographic, thats what I call it now. It's why I don't consider myself a "fashion designer" at all. Its because I just design clothes, you know? I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel either. I'm just trying to make comfortable shit for everyone. 

Comfortable, unisex clothing seem to be the direction more designers are taking lately.
I feel like thats where everything is now and where it's headed. Obviously, theres always going to be very masculine and very feminine people. But this next generation is all going to be so blurred its not even going to matter. 

When you create a new collection do you have a specific idea in mind or inspiration? What was the inspiration for the fall collection?
These past few collections definitely. For FW14, I honestly just went back home and binged on Game of Thrones. The whole time while watching the show I thought to myself, "What if they had denim in the middle ages? I should make a whole Game of Thrones collection in denim!"

I love that hat you made in your spring collection, where did the idea behind it come from?
I was really proud of that hat and I'm going to make so many fucking hats now. Its my hiking hat. I like to go hiking but I don't like to wear sunscreen, so I created garments that cover the skin for my spring collection.

As a young tycoon, what do you think is important when developing a name for yourself?
Whats most important is how brands choose to market their stuff. I just feel like there is such a strong barrier of who and what is represented. People sometimes compare my marketing to United Colors of Benetton and I can see why. Benetton is great as they use all races, but at the same time all the models they use in their campaigns are pretty and thin. I really want to fuck that all up.

In what way?
To me, everyone is beautiful whether they are flawed or not. For example, Bennett Perez and I did a shoot recently where we played with the idea of using models with skin conditions or burn scars. Once again, they are still all young and beautiful people because its really hard to cast otherwise. I wish I knew how to approach/cast real people for my shoot campaigns. I don't want anyone to think I'm exploiting certain types of people either, I just want to be able to represent everyone. I really, really do and so genuinely too. Hopefully, this shoot Bennett and I just finished might open up a door for that. 

Is it difficult to cast the types of people you are looking for in LA?
There isn't an agency for the type of people I'm looking for. NYC would be so much easier to cast, which is why I've been inspired to come here and have a casting call. I've noticed a lot of brands using a lot of older people lately, but they are still really beautiful and look like older models. I'm really inspired by this photographer Pinar Yolacan. She always casts the best women in her portrait series. She's fucking amazing; I would love for her to do my lookbook. I want to know how she finds the women she shoots.

Do you think 69 would be as successful today if you didn't have a NYC-based background first before moving west?
I do owe a lot of credit to NYC. It spit me out then embraced me back in. It was because of NYC that 69 has been so successful. The first store that sold 69 was Assembly and people went ape-shit over it. I was really social, networking and out all the time. Thats why the start of my business took off. 

NYC garment district seems to be a dying economy but LA seems to be booming.
New York City made clothing has to be more expensive plainly because the cost of living is so much more expensive. Designers' lives are that much more stressful because they live here. I wish there could be a movement to Los Angeles. LA has all the same resources and is so much more pleasant, not to mention cheaper to make garments. There's plenty of work, places and people to make clothing in LA because there is a person who specializes in everything.

Is everything made in LA? Do you create all your samples?
Ha! I wouldn't have a life if it was only me. I was limited for a long time because I was the only person doing everything. Once I got help, the design and production process became easier for me. There are endless possibilities now that I'm focusing solely on design. I never stop designing now. I realize this is how it should be. 

If there was anyone in the world you would want to see wearing your clothing, who would it be?
Sade. She is the goddess of the universe. If I could have a spokesmodel it would be her.

What is your ultimate goal with 69?
Everything still needs to be streamlined and smoothed out within the company. Once that happens, I would love to do more collaborations with other brands and be able to travel for work more. I'd like to be a part of that movement for change in the fashion industry. I don't really care about being a big name, as long as people continue to like my stuff, is all that really matters to me. I just want to have a chill life and not have to stress out about anything. Once I have no stress in life I know I've made it.

Do you think thats possible?
Yeah, it is. Its a very good goal to try and attain. No ego and no stress is all that matters. 

The 69 showroom will be opening in Downtown Los Angeles, Saturday June 21, 2014. For more info please check out 69US on Instagram and 69USA on Facebook.

Activists Poured Concrete on 'Anti-Homeless' Spikes in London This Morning

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Photos by Tom Johnson

The war against London's "anti-homeless" spikes escalated today from sign-waving to radical criminal action. In the small hours of the morning, some activists dressed as construction workers poured concrete over the metal spikes outside a Tesco Metro supermarket on London's Regents Street, and then vowed to strike again.

A "Homes Not Spikes" demonstration organized by Left Unity is taking place at the store later today. I was tipped off last night that some kind of protest would be happening early this morning, so I went along to check it out for myself.

Walking through London's West End on the way there, it was clear to see why this issue has touched a nerve. There were plenty of homeless people around, using shop doorways for shelter—and the more private businesses install metal studs in those doorways, the fewer sheltered places there are to sleep.

The number of homeless in England has been rising for the last few years, with programs to help people off the streets struggling and public housing waiting lists overstretched.

Some have said that the spikes are a good thing, because rough sleeping is dangerous and needs to be discouraged. The problem there is that sleeping on the street generally isn't something people choose to do—so maybe the best way of discouraging it is by asking the government to stop gearing policy towards housing for the rich, rather than making an already uncomfortable situation even worse.

I hung around outside the Tesco for a while, and before long some guys in fluorescent work clothes appeared.

They were all carrying buckets, which I soon found out were full of concrete. Tipping the containers all over the spikes, the stuff inside landed with a messy thud on the ledge. The activists then tried to spread the concrete out with some wooden slats, but it looked a little thick and wasn't really budging.

When they dashed down a side street, I caught up and asked one what exactly they were doing. They explained that they were trying to drown the spikes in concrete, rendering the ledge non-spikey. “These [spikes] are in places where people are trying to find a cosy, less wet place to put their head down,” one said. “These are places that the underclass rely on. We give [Tesco] our money and this is how they treat us.”

“Homeless people are some of the most vulnerable people in society with the government's austerity program,” added another activist. “They’ve cut Shelter’s funding. Crisis are in crisis. There’s more people on the street, more people using food banks—and you have businesses installing anti-homeless spikes. It’s a really degrading way to treat human beings.”

After our chat, they prepared themselves for a second round. This time they poured concrete mix directly out of a bag, then mixed it with the water al fresco. This mostly resulted in a powdery mess and a load of concrete-y water running down the pavement.

I pointed out that what they were doing to the spikes was illegal vandalism. “We don’t really care, to be honest. If any others pop up, anywhere in London, we’re going to do the same thing to them.”

“Others are going to get hit as well. It’s going to be the same way—they’re going to get hit.”

With that, they walked off with their buckets in tow.

Homeless people of London, your shitty new mattress awaits. 

Tesco has insisted that the spikes aren’t there to deter rough sleepers—they claim they're actually there to stop people sitting on the ledge to smoke and drink, which puts off customers. Unfortunately for the supermarket, I'd say their storefront now looks even less appealing than it did before.

Follow Simon and Tom on Twitter

Explaining Football, a.k.a. Soccer, to Americans

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If a common language divides the English and the Americans then they’re also divided by a common sport, football, which is incorrectly called "soccer" in the US. Prior to the World Cup, my American buddy John Klingler got in touch with me to start a little football-related dialogue. We’d lived together in Argentina, which is pretty keen on football (Maradona comes from there you know?), so John was a little more clued up than most of his fellow countrymen. Nevertheless, I still had to school him a little.

From: John Klingler

To: Oscar Rickett

Date: 9 June 2014 18:16

Subject: dumb American

O,

So, I've been getting ready for the World Cup, trying to do my homework and be prepared enough to hold my own in a bar conversation (not hard), as the nation readies to cheer on our boys and their relentlessly hard-fought/numbingly dull brand of, um, football (soccer?).

But, I got questions. You, Bristisher, help. You know the drill—I ask dumb questions, you answer them.

1. Tactics. I do not understand formations AT ALL, and no one ever endeavors to explain it. Is there any real difference between a 4-5-1 and a 4-3-2-1? Doesn't everyone just basically run to open space anyway? (To repeat, I am dumb.)

2. Strikers. Seems like, and correct me if I am wrong, which I probably am, but ideally you have two strikers, right? One super fast guy and one kinda burly guy. This would be similar to American football, where you want two wide receivers (the dudes who catch the ball)—one fast guy to run up the field and "stretch" the defense and one sure-handed guy to run across the middle of the field, underneath the space just opened up by the fast guy. In terms of the English team, Wayne Rooney would be the kinda burly guy that you would want to pair with a speed guy, right?

3. Defense. Continuing the tactical discussion... football defenders play zone, correct? You get an area to defend (left back, for instance) and it's your responsibility to defend it. My question is does anyone ever play "man" defense, like basketball? Where instead of a space to cover you get a man to cover, and you basically just follow him around all game? Perhaps this is a dumb idea, since the formations seem to be bottom-heavy. But, maybe a box-and-one? Why not take your best defender and put him on Lionel Messi—Think of him as chewing gum. By the end of the game, I want you to know what flavor he is.

4. Macroeconomics. One of the things that has been most surprising to me about the European football leagues is the almost obscene capitalism of it all—the open talk of "buying" and "selling" players. This happens in US sports, but the leagues are structured differently, with more of an emphasis on "parity"—trying to get all the clubs to be competitive. (The NBA, the NHL, and the NFL all set a limit to what teams can spend.) Somehow, our sports seem socialist in nature, and you guys are all free market, and you're supposed to be the welfare state and not us, so what gives, man?

5. Microeconomics. Continuing... since you can just buy a player, does that mean you ever trade players? I'm not sure I can remember hearing of a soccer trade. It’s always about transfer fees and such. Which is unfortunate, because trades are exciting. They vastly improve the sports page and general sports discourse, as figuring out the merits of hypothetical trades and reacting to the actual ones are enjoyable diversions. And I'm guessing you don't have a draft either. You're missing out.

6. Italians. Does anyone actually enjoy watching Italian football?

7. Importance. So, I had been under the impression that the World Cup was the end-all, be-all most important thing ever. But I've heard in a couple places that the Champions League title (crown? whatever) is equally important, if not more prized—the argument being that the football itself is better, the stakes higher, competition fiercer, etc. Perhaps I've overestimated the importance of the World Cup because that's the only the time soccer gets any attention in the US. Anyway, please rank the following in level of importance: World Cup statue thing, EPL title, La Liga title, Champions League title. (Also, while on the subject, what is considered the "European Championship"? Is this the Champions League or that Europa thing, or that other thing they play in the two years between World Cups? It gets confusing.)

8. John. Yes, John. I need a club team. Help me decide. Here's what I'm looking for:

a. Good guys. Obviously, the team should have likable players. And by likable, I mean no known child molesters or rapists. A funny guy with a blog or a Twitter account would also be a plus.

b. Not the Yankees. Or, whatever the equivalent of the Yankees is in Europe. The rich team that is always good that no one likes except people from that city and/or bandwagon fans.

c. Not the Clippers. Or, whatever the equivalent of the Clippers is in Europe. The cheap team that never wins that no one likes because they're horrible year in and year out.

d. "Pretty" football. Define this how you want, but ideally, it should be something pleasurable to watch that does not end one-nil every week.

e. Good uniforms (kit? is that right?). Maybe I wear the jersey or a shirt or something to the bar during the game or around the house. Would be better to look cool.

Basically, the question is: If you could step away from yourself and choose to start with a new team, not the one you currently have (which probably has something to do with where you're from or who your family liked), which one would you go with? What team would allow you to maximize the football-fan experience?

OK, this is quite long enough. I will end in the traditional way: USA! USA! USA!

–John

 

From: Oscar Rickett

To: John Klingler

Date: 12 June 2014 19.13

John,

That’s some keener-than-the-average-Yank knowledge you’re showing there but obviously you’re still just a dumb colonial, feeling your way in the footballing dark, so here are some sub-standard responses to your questions:

1. Tactics Generally, formations are put in this format: defense-midfield-attack OR defense-defensive midfield-attacking midfield-striker(s). Formations like 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-2-1 are basically 4-5-1 formations. What often happens is that teams will play with one central striker and two wingers/attacking midfielders supporting him in a 4-3-3 formation which reverts to a 4-5-1 formation when the opposition gets the ball, with the two supporting attackers dropping into midfield. If I’ve confused you well, hell man, maybe you aren’t cut out for this football thing.

On a side note, occasionally you get someone like Maradona who, when he was Argentina manager, ignored all these rules (in his case, because he’s paranoid and crazy/a genius).

2. Strikers Ah, the traditional big guy/little guy combo, an oldie but a goodie, particularly in English football, where you’d hoof the ball up to the big guy who’d then heft it on into space for the little guy to scamper after. When I was a kid I played in a team whose game plan involved having a big guy (i.e., someone who’d gone through puberty at an alarmingly young age) in defense who would kick it as far as possible (he was the only one who could kick it the length of the pitch) for a couple of speedy small guys to run after. The plan never worked that well.

The big guy/little guy combo is kind of dying out a bit these days, with most teams preferring to have just the one super-striker, if possible, who combines both these roles into one. For England, Rooney is currently playing neither the burly nor the speedy role but the clumsy, oafish, depressing role. But who knows, maybe the suffocating Brazilian heat will bring the best out of him, the fat pig.

3. Defense Yes, they zonal mark BUT when they are defending they will pick up men, mostly. Again, this depends on the coach, but a central defender will generally mark (follow) a specific striker and will often stick to him. Left- and right-sided defenders will generally have the job of marking their particular winger. Messi's a tough one as he's too good for one man to mark, really—but generally speaking, if he's on the right wing (attack) for Barcelona, he will be marked by the left full back (defender) UNLESS he goes too far over to the other side. Sometimes teams do use a sort of "box and one" defense, when a specific player will be asked to stick to someone like glue throughout the game. This is considered kind of dishonorable but definitely happens.

4. Macroeconomics Yes, in sport, Europe is Donald Trump smoking a massive pile of cash and doing a load of coke off the tits of a Thai prostitute to the US's hard-working inner-city schoolteacher who just wants all her kids to do well. In Europe, it's much more about money and there isn't a lot of parity.

5. Microeconomics No draft. That would be fun. Usually players just go for money like so many cattle at a market, but players are sometimes included in deals. So, if I want to buy Hot Young Brazilian Guy and he's valued at £15 million I might say OK, I'll give you £10 million and throw in my player Aging Danish Guy, who is worth £5 million on account of being a little portly and fond of lying about his age when hitting on girls in bars.

6. Italians Yep, not any more they don't. It used to be the best (in the 90s). Here are some examples of why with hilarious musical bits:

7. Importance World Cup football is not quite the highest standard—that is probably the Champions League, in which players come out to the kind of bombastic classical music (featuring the refrain “Champions!”) that any dude would be happy to have played at his wedding/funeral. But the World Cup is a massive event. And has way more romance. In terms of domestic leagues, the English and Spanish are probably the two best, with Germany and Italy close behind, followed by France.

8. John As for club football, there's only one team: Liverpool Football Club.

En-ger-land, En-ger-land, En-ger-land!

–Oscar

Follow Oscar Rickett on Twitter

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