A gaggle of New York's Democratic power players felt the need to Stand with Israel on Monday. Photo by the author

When I asked US Congressman Jerrold Nadler at a pro-Israel rally on Monday whether our government bears any culpability for the mounting civilian death toll in Gaza, he called me an “ass” and stormed away.

The brief encounter was instructive. We were talking amidst a tense and uncomfortable press conference that had been convened by a delegation of leading New York City Democrats at the steps of City Hall in Lower Manhattan. At least 186 Gazans, including many children, are dead in the latest round of ethnic warfare between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, and while both sides have their share of villains, only Jerusalem receives billions in US military aid each year. This assortment of elected officials had decided to offer a fresh show of support for the aerial and ground bombardment campaign currently being waged by the Israeli government. Most if not all of these politicians identify as ‘progressives’—Nadler belongs to the Congressional Progressive Caucus—but nonetheless posed with a giant placard emblazoned with Israeli Defense Force (IDF)-distributed graphics, created by an official military PR operation in hopes of convincing other nations that the country's actions are justified.

The area at the steps of City Hall, normally freely open to pedestrian traffic, was closed off and guarded by a coterie of NYPD officers. Michael Miller, lead organizer and CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council, explained that the general public had been prohibited from attending for “security reasons.” (“Nothing nefarious,” he insisted.) Initially, an officer manning one of the entrances to City Hall’s pavilion area informed me that I would be barred entry without displaying an official City-issued press pass, which are often ridiculously difficult to obtain. When I replied that every other time I had attended events at this location no press pass had been required, the (now agitated) officer advised that he was “under direct orders” to impose stringent regulations, and denied me entry. (The officer presiding over a different entrance proved more amenable, and I was allowed in.)

Plainclothes NYPD personnel scoured the event, suddenly springing into action at one point when a woman, Tammy Gold, who had somehow found her way behind the press conference podium amongst the assembled dignitaries, held up a sign denouncing the Gaza assault. She was forcibly escorted away by an individual who self-identified as “Detective Berkowitz” but would not spell his name. A second individual who claimed to work in some police capacity refused to identify himself whatsoever. Jennifer Pastrich of Rubenstein Communications, a PR firm, distributed copies of talking points to journalists in the hopes they would use them to frame their stories. When asked to provide her name, she appeared uncomfortable, at first only replying with “Jennifer” and then inquiring why I'd asked who she was.

Almost immediately after the pro-Israel festivities got under way, protesters who’d crowded the outer perimeter of the park drowned out the elected officials’ speeches. As Capital New York's Azi Paybarah noted, the intended “Stand With Israel” message seemed to be supplanted by the dominance of the protesters, as well as the general absurdity of such a tightly regulated affair. The assembled politicians at times appeared really uncomfortable; before the “ass” remark, Rep. Nadler wore a grimacing frown and stared awkwardly at the ground.

But it wasn’t just that the officials saw fit to declare their allegiance with a warring foreign government, or that their sympathies were with Israel—neither of these things would be particularly remarkable on their own. What struck me more was their jarring resistance to assessing the conflict with even an iota of skepticism toward the actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his generals. One by one, these officials uncritically repeated talking points disseminated by the Israeli government. Perhaps the most widely-used example goes something like this: Israel is making every effort to minimize civilian casualties, and in fact should be applauded for engaging in such enlightened bombing tactics.

“Israel has taken extraordinary measures to protect the civilians, much more so than I’ve ever seen any other country in a warlike situation take,” Nadler proclaimed at one point.

Missing from his analysis is that the most effective civilian casualty minimization strategy would be to, you know, refrain from bombing areas that are heavily concentrated with civilians. The Gaza Strip is more densely populated than London. The idea that ostensibly not targeting civilians somehow legitimizes any kind of attack the Israeli government should see fit to carry out—that just seems nuts. (VICE News’ Danny Gold visited one 5-year-old Gazan child in the hospital.)

Given the manipulation and deceit that representatives of this foreign government have admitted were employed to create pretext for initiating the bombardment, one would think at least a dose of skepticism toward their claims is, by now, warranted. But not only did these officials uncritically parrot talking points, they amplified them to a greater extent than even many Israelis do. It was truly a weird scene.

“Imagine if you will for a moment, that there were hundreds of rockets raining down on the Lower East Side,” offered Mark Levine, chair of the City Council’s Jewish Caucus. This was yet another talking point propagated by Israeli government PR teams, who have created a bevy of slick-looking promotional material asking citizens of various metropolitan areas around the world how they would like it if rockets were falling on their residences.

Levine’s colleague on the Council, emerging NYC power-broker David Greenfield, bemoaned the lack of “context” in which the current conflict is depicted by Israel’s critics. Agreeing with the need for additional context, I asked him whether invoking the specter of rockets raining down on Manhattan to justify the current actions of the Israeli government was also devoid of context, given that New York City is not occupying, embargoing, or dropping bombs on a neighboring people.

As Greenfield began to answer the question, a particularly obnoxious New York State Assemblyman, Phillip Goldfeder of Queens, sauntered over. Goldfeder interrupted the conversation by cackling about my concern for Palestinian civilian deaths. When I pointed out that children getting extinguished in the dead of night under questionable pretext is a serious matter, the assemblyman escalated said cackling. Even Councilman Greenfield, who was in the process of defending the Israeli government’s actions and is by all accounts a devout backer of Israel, appeared put off by Goldfeder’s conduct.

None of these liberal politicians expressed even an iota of curiosity as to how recent Israeli bombings of a rehabilitation center for the disabled, a World Cup watch party, and the Gaza police chief’s residence might further Netanyahu's stated goal of curbing rocket attacks. When asked about the assault on the World Cup watching party, New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said simply, “I wasn’t there.” Presumably, he also wasn’t there for the numerous attacks he had just cited as allegedly having been perpetrated by Hamas “terrorists,” but as I’m trying to get across, these people have largely dispensed with logic at this point.

You don’t have to view the Israeli government as uniformly overrun by cold-blooded killers to recognize that their claims demand special scrutiny, especially when the lives of innocent children are being ended. And neither do you have to accept Hamas as blameless agents in order to recognize that a state-of-the-art military apparatus subsidized by the US government is on a wholly different moral playing field than a few rogue Islamist-affiliated young men propelling shoddy rockets into Southern Israel (which as of yet have killed just one Israeli, thanks to their Iron Dome shield).

“If civilians are killed, that’s the fault of Hamas, not the fault of Israel,” Democratic Congressman Eliot Engel told me. Ponder his reasoning for a moment: The people who initiated and launched the attack are absolved of any moral culpability for the results of their actions, according to this formulation. That just seems crazy, whatever else you might think about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Hamas is the elected government of Gaza. Does that mean anyone with any kind of affiliation with Hamas is an acceptable target? That would be like saying, in retaliation to the US Government’s flagrantly illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, that any American would be a justifiable target for counterattack. It doesn’t make any sense.

“No country can exist if its citizens are under rocket attack day in and day out, year in year out,” Engel continued. He may be right, but the same logic was used to justify Israel’s previous two sustained assaults on Gaza, in 2012 and 2009, neither of which apparently succeeded in stemming rocket attacks for more than short time. So purely from a tactical standpoint, the proposition of renewed bombing warrants extra attention. “Hamas wouldn’t allow demonstrators to demonstrate against them,” Engel told me. “They would kill people.” The congressman also invoked 9/11 for some reason, because of course.

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio was not present, but in the past has addressed AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, in meetings that were omitted from his public schedule. “It is our obligation to defend Israel,” he reportedly told one audience.

Curtis Sliwa, the red beret-clad talk radio shock jock of Guardian Angels fame—and partner of Queens Borough President Melinda Katz—was also on hand. I asked if he was troubled by the latest round of Palestinian civilian deaths. “No,” he replied.

Follow Michael Tracey on Twitter.

If you ask the linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, the Arab Spring did not begin in Tunisia in 2011—it began with the October 2010 protests in the town of Gdeim Izik, in Western Sahara's occupied territories. The former Spanish colony has been illegally occupied by Morocco since 1975. Its territory is divided in two by a 1,677-mile long sand wall and surrounded by some 7 million land mines.

The native Sahrawis, led by their independence movement the Polisario, are recognized by the International Court of Justice as the rightful owners of the land. However, Morocco hijacked Western Sahara's decolonization process from Spain in 1975, marching some 300,000 settlers into the territory. This triggered a 16-year war between Morocco and the Polisario, which forced more than 100,000 Sahrawis into exile across the border in Algeria. Technically, Western Sahara is still Spanish and remains Africa's last colony.

Whether adrift in refugee camps and dependent on aid or languishing under Moroccan rule, the Sahrawis are still fighting for their independence in an increasingly volatile region. Meanwhile, the UN has no mandate to monitor human rights in occupied Western Sahara. VICE News travels to Western Sahara's occupied and liberated territories, as well as the Polisario-run refugee camps in Algeria, to find out more about one of the world's least-reported conflicts.

In part two, VICE News heads to the Polisario-controlled liberated territories, an all but uninhabitable no-man's-land littered with land mines from the 16-year war. On the way, we pass a Sahrawi protest near the Moroccan Wall—also known as the berm or the wall of shame—that separates the Polisario-controlled Free Zone from the Moroccan-occupied territories.

Once we reach the heart of the liberated territories, Polisario Commander Ahmed Salem shows off one of the many pieces of art he has created and placed in the desert. Then he has his soldiers demonstrate their desert guerrilla tactics.

On this episode of VICE Meets, we sit down with Ken Vogel, the chief investigative reporter at Politico. In his new book, Big Money: 2.5 Billion Dollars, One Suspicious Vehicle and a Pimp—on the Trail of the Ultra-Rich Hijacking American Politics, Vogel dives into the world of mega donors and their role in politics. We discuss the evolution of big money in American politics and how its influence has changed the game.

This photograph originally appeared in the 2014 VICE photo issue. 

Roxana Azar is a Philadelphia-based photographer. See more of her work here

Hamas and other militant groups have been raining crude rockets into Israel since Operation Protective Edge launched last week—more than 1,000 at last count. Thanks to the Israeli missile defense system known as Iron Dome, few have struck targets and there has been one confirmed Israeli casualty.

But the threat of rockets remains terrifying for people across Israel—especially in the country's south, which takes the brunt of the barrage. VICE News heads there to get a feel for life under constant attack.

There is cowboy class and cowboy crass and a hell of a lot of in-between at the Calgary Stampede. It’s like the whole city dusts off boots and picks up plaid and ten gallon hats for the ten day event. You see a lot of denim and you also see a lot of skin. Old, young, sloppy, phoney, sharp, rich, flashy, and double chilli hot—it’s all there. Leather too, as well as frills, feathers and glittering gold belt buckles: anything that’s western. For the first time in my life, I have had hat envy. It was elegantly woven of straw, so shady and cool. And there were hats of felt and fur too, as well as boots of leather, crocodile, and ostrich.

Here are some people with outlandish Stampede style at Cowboys nightclub, on a bucking Saturday night. A Calgary resident described the place as ‘Cancun on spring break with western wear.’ For better or worse  A three hour line to dance with 4,000 people to standard DJ party tunes in a hangar-sized tent beside the midway. The place was already working up to a fever when I was told at 10 PM that there would be no more pictures. It was like Cancun in western wear. Sort of. Yeeeeee haw.

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Photo via Wikicommons.

Every world has its own rock stars. There are rock star journalists. There are rock star CEOs. Rock star surgeons. There are probably even rock star plumbers if you know where to look. But there are definitely rock star architects. We know this because they created their own word to describe the state of being a rock star in the architecture industry: "starchitect."

This itself tells you all you need to know about the craven insecurity of their industry. No other profession has its own word to describe a state of stardom. No one is talking about "starliticians" or "startists." Why? Because in those worlds who's cool and who sucks is self-evident. If you need to tell people you are a star, well, perhaps you have already failed at the first hurdle of stardom.

Architects don’t get this, and they don’t think you should either. They rail against the idea that they should just get on with building nice buildings and collecting fat checks. They want their own version of the caste system. They want their own version of sticking pieces of shark into a groupie’s vagina. They wanna be adored, baby. Not merely "validated for a positive contribution to society." Screw that. Fuck the people. They want the fans. Hence why, over the last 30 years, the top tier of architects have given us the building equivalents of concept double-albums about journeys to the center of the earth. Because they are fucking rock stars. They are, they are they are, and they don't care what you have to say about it.

We have all aided and abetted them in this. Frank Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim building iced that cake. The hulking black sail set in a depressed part of a depressed Spanish town forged the idea that a place could be reinvented and regenerated single-handedly by a building with enough modernistic baubles on it. They even coined a phrase to describe that theory: The Bilbao Effect.

And so we’ve all become obsessed with the idea of making weird buildings simply to impress ourselves. Every city needs a Gherkin, a Burj Dubai, a La Défense.

Our cities have become big birdbaths, designed to trap tourists into liking us for being so very cutting-edge—to make us forget about the fact that we owe China $1.3 trillion. Our culture isn’t in decline, they say, with that sense of tedious self-awareness that marks cultures in decline. The sort of insecurity that makes former imperial powers bid for the Olympics. Yes. "They still like us," these buildings say. "They actually like us."

Face it: starchitects are a symptom of decline, not a symptom of success. They are people you should beat with a stick if you get close enough. Here's who they are:

RICHARD ROGERS

The Lloyd's Building, right. Photo via Wikicommons.

In 1986, when he became in one swift move the grandaddy of the fetish for starchitects, Richard Rogers already knew where pipes were supposed to go. It wasn’t like he was unaware. They’d covered that one in his basic training. But Rogers wanted to take a new approach to pipes—pipes on the outside. So he made the Pompidou Center art space in Paris. Everyone was wildly excited about seeing their own aircon vents and shitpipes. No one had had much contact with pipes until that point, and they found the idea of all their breathed gases and flushed turds swishing up and down in plain sight utterly enchanting. Rogers was applauded, widely and wildly, for his designs. That was everyone’s first mistake.

He was like the guy who shows up to the party and ices someone and everyone loves it, but then he does it every subsequent time to diminishing applause. Rogers did it again. But this time, in Britain, with the Lloyds Building.

But the die was already being cast. Rogers and his bloomin’ pipes pretty much invented the idea of the starchitect. Which is why, when it came time to design the Welsh Parliament, Rogers was once again at the top of the list.

The Welsh administration wanted a building to stand for all time. This was the natural end-point of devolution: Welsh decisions made for Welsh people in a Welsh structure that would last until the Kingdom of the Dragons tumbled into the sea. In 200 years time, the authorities will be raising funds for the restoration of Rogers’ creation. They will be sandblasting it clean in 2430—a vital link in the eternal braid of people and place that makes Wales.

National Assembly for Wales. Photo via Wikicommons

THIS. IS. IT.

One day, a future Hitler, or a future Napoleon, may want to run his flag up the pole over here. Exactly how low will they have to stoop to conquer? “What a pathetic piece of crap is Wales,” they will think as their flagship runs in through Cardiff harbor. “What a fucking depressingly self-conscious little monument to their own petit bourgeois good taste these people have constructed to rule over them. Changed my mind. Turn the gunboats around. Let’s see what’s over the Irish Sea.” 

RENZO PIANO

The Shard's inauguration. Photo via Wikicommons.

According to legend, Renzo Piano first sketched London's Shard on the back of a napkin in a restaurant. No wonder it took him over a decade to get the thing off the ground. He’d designed a shard. “You see, it’s a big shard,” he’d say, “for the rich,” as he was gently but firmly escorted towards the elevator. It took the Qataris—a nation with the sort of tenuous relationship with reality that allows them to imagine air-conditioning entire stadiums in 100-plus degree heat, to take him seriously.

The Shard and Tower Bridge. Photo via Flickr user George Rex.

Skip forward several years of money wrangles and you have an utterly ahistorical monument to the power of global capital formation and Middle Eastern national gas reserves that could have been built in any city on the globe at any time since 1990 and it would’ve blended in exactly the same—i.e. not at all. Look at this photo. Now sub-in the Statue of Liberty for Tower Bridge, or the Eiffel Tower, the Colloseum, perhaps a Gaudi or two. Same difference.

SANTIAGO CALATRAVA

Turning Torso. Photo via Wikicommons.

Making buildings look like they might fall over has long been "a thing" in architecture. So the makers of the Malmö’s Turning Torso, the tallest building in Scandinavia, probably thought it would really get people excited if they made the building equivalent of a rollercoaster. After all, you’d like to go to sleep on a rollercoaster, wouldn’t you? You’d like to nurse your new baby on a rollercoaster? Secretly, they imagined, everyone wants to live somewhere that looks like it might do an auto-9/11 on you unexpectedly one morning at 2:15 AM. That’s the reason humans seek out dwelling spaces, isn’t it? To challenge their sense of fear.

Somewhere, Spanish starchitect Santiago Calatrava seems to have missed the basic fact that skyscrapers are all unnatural acts that our caveman instincts have had to make an uneasy compromise with. Living up in the sky is not God’s plan unless your granddad was a bald eagle. So why overcomplicate things?

Sadly, Calatrava exhibits the same backward logic that drives human beings to make passive exercise beds, electric toilet seats, and heated cup holders. But while you can always throw your turbo-juicer out when it inevitably breaks, the Turning Torso is going to be around forever.

This despite the public seeming to have given their own verdict on the project already: the apartments have remained unsold, and so most are rented instead.

Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia. Photo via Wikicommons.  

If you’re one of the lucky renters living on the 23rd floor of the Turning Torso, you’d probably just want some basic reassurance that the man’s buildings don’t fall apart entirely at random. You’d want it. But you can’t have it, because his Valencia opera house is doing exactly that right now.

Turns out the whole thing is being slowly destroyed by high winds, has been closed to the public for several years, and Calatrava’s home city is now suing him for a refund on his poxy designs. Remember: rent, don’t buy, and always wear your parachute when vacuuming.

ZAHA HADID

“Well I guess we just want something sympathetic. This is quite an old square. In Budapest, venerable capital of several empires and all that. Think Mozart. Think Hussars. Think Hapsburg. So we’re open-minded, obviously, but let’s at least try to rule out things that look like gigantic glowing mesh colostomy bags?”

“No… colostomy… bag…mesh… glowing. Got it. OK, how’s this?”

Szevita Tower Budapest. Photo via Zaha Hadid.

“Well, it’s not ideal…”

Zaha Hadid seems to design all her stuff via the melting method. She probably sculpts models of perfectly normal buildings in butter then points a hair dryer at them for a few minutes. Which is exactly why she has become a go-to for big public commissions: because she simply looks futuristic. In the modern world, you could never convince an Olympic bid committee that you should be allowed to host the 2022 Summer games if you can’t make a stadium look like George Lucas would be interested in staging a pod-race around it one day. Starchitects always win out, because organizing committees need to have some reason for distinguishing the stadium-is-a-stadium-is-a-stadium nature of their job.

Starchitects are often accused of making buildings that are effectively 600-foot plaster casts of their penises, so it’s great to see Hadid winning one back for the laydeez via this fetching bit of anatomy which doubles as a future soccer stadium in Qatar.

Yes, thanks to this Iraqitecht, it seems that the secret of what’s under all those niqabs is finally out in the kingdom of Qatar. Pretty soon, apartments with minge-facing views will be in hot demand. Single men, in the absence of secure VPNs, will turn their predatory male gaze toward the stadium to secretly whack one out. “Ooh, stadium,” they will moan at the moment of release. And that is surely every starchitect’s Ballard-style dark techno-sex thrill. You jizzing on their own personal jerk fantasies.

Follow Gavin Haynes on Twitter.

Photo via Instagram.
There’s something admirably misanthropic about getting a face tattoo. You really need to be fully committed to having a somewhat shitty life to let a stranger draw something on your face forever. Whether it’s a teardrop, or the name of the softest rapper in the game, having a face tattoo defiantly screams: “You may never trust me with your child or gainful employment, but I’ll be damned if I care!”

Of course, there’s the rare occurrence when people with face tattoos have not just succeeded despite their regretful life choices, they have excelled as a result of their facial ink. Would Gucci Mane’s rep as “the coolest rapper in jail” be secure if his face didn’t have a triple scoop ice cream cone on it? Would Miami rapper Stitches’ video for “Brick In Yo Face” be as insanely popular if his mug didn’t look like it was decorated by a tween with an unhealthy obsession for Tim Burton and assault rifles? Could Zombie Boy have parlayed his association with Lady Gaga into his own brand of overpriced bath towels, condoms, and energy drinks if he had just been some random non-skeletally decorated Montreal skid living on the streets? The answer is a resounding: “Hell-to-the-no!”

Enter Canadian model Vin Los, the latest in the honourable lineage of people who have done stupid things to their face because, who gives a fuck? According to his YouTube video—a budget version of that Zombie Boy video that includes the very Quebecois directive to “BE ADDICT”—the 24-year-old’s goal is pretty straightforward: to become the most famous man on earth. His face and arms already look like a buzzword checklist written by an ESL student with things like  “FAME”, “LICK” and “BAISE MOI” (fuck me) tattooed in handwritten font all over his toned body—which is hairless unless you count all the tiny fake follicles he got tattooed on his chest.

Objectively, without the tattoos, the man is a total babe. In fact, I admit that—even with the words “ICONIC FACE” scrawled on his cheek—one look into his deep brown eyes gave me a ladyboner. After spending hours caressing his Apollo’s belt on my HD screen, dreaming of the day where my name finally finds itself on his right inner thigh, I decided I needed to see his “iconic face” in person and find out why would a man with such a beautifully chiseled jawline would want to permanently walk around with the words “SEX BOMB” on his neck. Here’s how it went.

Photo via Instagram.

VICE: How old were you when you got your first tattoo?
Vin Los: I was about 16 or 17 years old. I got the Le Coq Sportif logo. Then I got words tattooed on my arms, and that’s when I decided I would never get another image or drawing tattooed. Drawings don’t mean anything to me. It may sound like I have bad values or something, but my tattoos aren’t just for me. I want to be an image for people to look at, something that has an impact. Everybody who sees me is bound to ask questions: “Why fame? What’s his life like?”

So you like it when people look at you that way?
Yes. A puzzled stare is one that’s gonna last. I want to create a myth, a mystery. A lot of people ask me if I’m scared I might regret it one day. If I was indecisive, I don’t think I would write on my face.

How do you pick the words or expressions that go on your body?
It’s very superficial. I’ll go on YouTube and listen to all the big hits and I’ll just take words from these songs. For example, “Top of the World” is from the song by The Cataracs, but it’s also what I want. I want to rule the world. As for the city names, it’s to show that we are all on the same level. Borders still exist but not to the same extent. Whether you’re like, in Zurich or Sydney, I personify all of that. I want to embody pop culture. You could look at me in a hundred years from now and really get the idea of what pop culture was like in the early 2010s.

You say you want to be the most famous man on earth. Why are you so fascinated by celebrity culture?
I’m still trying to figure out why I’m so passionate about it. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always been fascinated by Marilyn Monroe. And not just people, but also fame which applies to products like Starbucks for example. It’s all around the world. The marketing aspect really fascinates me.

So you’re more interested in the process behind creating celebrities than celebrities themselves?
Yes. I would like to create celebrities one day. I’m only 24. I’ve done a bunch of press in the past few weeks, but I still haven’t gotten a single modeling contract out of it. I don’t think I am the problem, it only means that there is no industry here. I could go to New York and say, “Fuck Quebec,” or I could be more of an entrepreneur and create my own market here. It takes more time but I think that’s what I feel more strongly about. It’s a shame that considering the number of people living in Montreal, we don’t have an actual star system. I don’t ever see celebrities being chased by paparazzi.

You’d like to see more of a TMZ thing happening in Montreal?
Yes. I want to create that. I could be the founder of this sort of culture and perhaps become a millionaire at 45 after launching a bunch of magazines, TV channels or whatever.

Do you have a plan to make that happen?
I want to create a mainstream media outlet meant to get a lot of shares and likes, something super American, nothing “quétaine” (kitsch).

Would it be about American celebrities or would you try to keep it local?
It would be local. For those people who want to break into show business but can’t because it’s too hard. If you’re an unsigned model and you write me, I may not be able to pay you at first but eventually I will. We can do a photoshoot and I’ll write a short piece about you, “Montreal’s hottest new model”, etc. It would be a way for people to break through. My job is to make people famous. The power is currently in the hands of the same people, and those people are boring and stupid.

Photo courtesy Maxime Girard-Tremblay.

Do you consider yourself superficial?
No, not at all. Show business is the path I chose for myself. That’s what I’m interested in. I work at a supermarket right now and I want to die. I drink a thousand coffees a day just to get a little kick. I need something that’s more stimulating. I want to wake up in the morning and have meetings with people, take pictures, and make your dreams come true. It’s the job I chose, but I’m not superficial. Like my parents for example, they don’t want me talking about them.

Why?
It’s a weird feeling. I always thought my parents were very open-minded. But turns out they care a lot about appearances. I may look like I base my every decision on looks, but it’s a job. If my friend were to get into an accident tomorrow and end up completely disfigured, I would not give a fuck what he would look like. I would take care of him. I’m not gonna judge people. I always tell myself people do things for a reason. But that’s what my parents did. They judged me based on my tattoos and we haven’t seen each other in two years. I talk to my mom once a week but my dad has stopped all communication.

Did you ever try to have a conversation with them about your career path?
No. There were two months at the beginning where we didn’t speak at all. The reason my mom doesn’t want to see me in person is that I think it would be too hard for her. I went through a voluntary transformation. If I got disfigured in an accident, would they have stopped talking to me? No, because it’s involuntary. I don’t want to keep going in life with people like that. You live your life and who cares what other people are doing. I’m not here to judge. Things only go wrong when you start judging others. 

@smvoyer

Kickstarter genius Lawrence Shepherd and an unnamed woman. Photo courtesy of Lawrence Shepherd

Did you recently waste money on an ironic Kickstarter campaign to make potato salad? Well, first, Paypal usd the money you apparently can't wait to get rid of. Secondly, fuck irony. There are people out there with actual, worthwhile goals that need help funding. 

For instance, a Van Nuys-based producer's bold project to make a Breaking Bad sequel series starring Val Kilmer and Slash as the cops who recovered Walter White's body. No, he doesn't have the rights to Breaking Bad, nor has he received a commitment from Kilmer or Slash. But when Lawrence Shepherd saw the series finale, where two cops drag Walter White's body away, he knew that he was the guy to tell those cops' story. All the other pieces will fall into place.

It's a pipe dream, sure. (Not least of which is due to only $143 of the $500,000 funding goal being raised.) But, still! What's the value of life without dreams? Who gives a shit about the second season of True Detective when there's the (remote) possibility of Val Kilmer and Slash tracking down a not-dead Walter White?

We called up first-time producer Lawrence Shepherd to learn more about his Breaking Bad spinoff, which he's calling Anastasia. 

VICE: The show has an intriguing premise, to say the least. Where'd the idea come from?
Lawrence Shepherd: For the last six years or so, I was getting very critical of the writing on shows. Then I saw one of the last episodes of Breaking Bad—remember when Jesse came into Walter White's house with the gasoline can and he was going to burn it down?

Yeah.
There was a sequence when Jesse looks down the hallway, and the two doors were closed. I thought, Junior's in there. Junior's in there with the baby, he's going to come out, wrestle with Jesse, and something's going to happen. Junior's the only one who hasn't broke bad in the whole show. It didn't happen, and I was a little disappointed.

I like the way Breaking Bad ended, but I think they could have done better. That's when I just started writing.

Seems like you'd have to worry about copyright issues...
Of course. You have to watch the uniqueness. Remember the last episode, the machine gun rotating back and forth in the Cadillac? Very unique. I can't use it. The dead guy in the recliner chair going up and down? Very unique, couldn't use it.

But other than that, nothing there is copyright or trademark available. A guy dead on the floor? My God, that's been done a bazillion times. Police responding to an issue? It's been done a bazillion times.

We're not going to be confrontative with Sony and Vince Gilligan if they say no. We are filming the pilot independent of Breaking Bad, so if they do say no, we're ready to go with our own show.

It would be the same show? Or different?
Anastasia's gonna be stand-alone. If they say yes, the first season is going to be very Breaking Bad dependent. But the second season and forward—I'm trying to go 12 seasons and break Frasier's record—we may only have a two and a half minute teaser that will go along with the Walter White thread. 

If we have to do it independent from Breaking Bad, then instead of dragging out their Walter White, we'll drag out our Walter White.

How realistic is it that you're going to get Val Kilmer?
From what people tell me about Val Kilmer, you don't have to pay him a million dollars. If there's some money there, he'll typically do it. Slash is who I'm more worried about. He plays guitar—that's his love, and he makes a good living off of it. And I've heard from a few people he's busy with his new album release, so Slash probably won't be in every episode, but we could do it either way.

Slash is going to be undercover—that's why he dresses the way he does and his hair is the way it is, right? He's the undercover part of the cop partnership.

I asked Laura San Giacomo to star, but I just got a very nice letter back from her manager that she's already doing a pilot.. We have to look for somebody else.

Photo courtesy of Lawrence Shepherd

Do you have backups for Val Kilmer and Slash, then?
Nathan Lane was my first choice. I thought he'd be perfect in Kilmer's role. But because we're going to be so tight on money—I'd have to pay for transportation and lodging for Lane, because he lives in New York City—we did the flip to Val Kilmer. I think Kilmer and Lane have equal acting ability. 

As far as Slash, I'm hearing that he will definitely be in the pilot. That's what I'm hearing. I don't have a letter of intent yet, and we have to work around his tour. He tours a lot.

When you say you hear from Slash, does that mean you've talked to Slash?
Not hearing from Slash, no. Him and Myles Kennedy just put out a new album, and he didn't have time for anything. So, I'm hearing from people that know Slash.

So, you have contacted them or sent letters to their management?
Oh, absolutely. Nobody's come back and said no, except for Laura San Giacomo, and only because she was too busy. Steven Tyler's already been sent the video and everything—he'd be in the second episode.

I also talked to John Westphal, he's the main head guy at Sony. He said they'd have to be involved with it if they went forward, and we said of course. That's where we left it.

Can you go through the side-plot with the 12-step program?
Val Kilmer's role will be a recovering alcoholic. He will go to 12-step meetings throughout the season. He does the on-scene sharing, if you want to call it that, in the first episode. Steven Tyler, if he signs on, will be sharing in the second episode's meeting.

We're going to invite anybody in the entertainment industry that's been through substance abuse or addiction to do that. And it won't be scripted. It will be whatever they want. If they want to do it funny, if they want to do it real, if they want to do it sad, that's fine. We're only going to do it two or three times per season, because it might get old and not be as magical.

I went down to Big Lots and bought about 20 red-and-white checkered tablecloths that we're going to use for the meetings. Therefore, let's say it's Robert Downey Jr.'s turn for a 12-step meeting scene, but he's in Brazil filming some Iron Man thing—no problem. I can put the tablecloth in an envelope, mail it down to him, and he can film it right there. I think that's going got work real well.

You're nearly half-a-million dollars away from reaching your Kickstarter goal. What's the plan if you don't get?
My timeline got blown with finding a director for the Kickstarter video. My initial plan was to find the director before the Kickstarter went off. I find one didn't until two weeks after the Kickstarter started, so we didn't get the video done until three days ago. That timeline got completely blown.

We're going to restart on Kickstarter on the first of the month if we don't get funded. By then we'll already have the director and video, so we should do much, much better.

Good luck.

Although pro-Russia separatists have been largely driven out of Donetsk and Luhansk, they still control significant parts of eastern Ukraine.

In this part, VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky goes hunting for separatists with Oleh Lyaskov, a Ukrainian politician who placed third in the most recent presidential election. Ostrovsky embeds with Lyaskov's personal security forces as they successfully track down Viktor Rybalko, a pro-Russia separatist who organized the referendum in Luhansk calling for independence and allegiance with Russia.

What Lyaskov does is technically illegal, but he believes that the police are not doing their job and has taken it upon himself to bring order back to eastern Ukraine.

All photos courtesy of Jowita Bydlowska

Drunk Mom is a rarity in this age of constant overshares—a work that had me questioning, "Does she want us to know this? Should I know this?" as I read it. The book chronicles its narrator and author’s 11 month-long relapse into alcohol addiction, which coincides and clashes with her first year of motherhood. Author Jowita Bydlowska is unsentimental and unflinching about this period of her life: pumping breastmilk into the sink because it’s tainted with cocaine, hiding wine in the stroller, and waking up next to her son “soaked in piss and milk” after she had blacked out next to his crib or without underwear and without memory of the previous night’s events. Her descriptions are not florid or excessive, but induce a kind of claustrophobia in the reader by virtue of their recurrence: her son in the stroller while she buys wine and light beer. Her son watching her pour sparkling wine into Sprite bottles in the bathroom at a cafe. Her son asleep in his crib beside her when she wakes up passed out on his floor. 

The book as a whole is exhausting to read, unyielding in its cycle of binges and blackouts, guilt and redemptive lies. There is cheating, lying to her sister and family, a break up, and the nasty, cruel words of an addict lashing out at those closest to them, those just nearby. Jowita the addict can get mean. She mocks members of her 12 Step Program, other mothers, and her partner. But her endless attempts to hide her drinking are countered by her endless attempts to be a good mother to her son. To go a few days without booze so she can breastfeed, to eventually leave the baby with her partner to attend a rehab facility. The book is dedicated to her son, in the hopes that he can "forgive me for this transgression," and portrays with immediacy the destructive solitude of addiction, but also the isolation of new motherhood and postpartum depression. At times, it's also a shockingly amusing read, sprinkled with wry, dark humour. I couldn’t put it down. 

I met up with Jowita, now almost four years sober, on a sunny day in Toronto. She fidgeted with a coffee cup on my front porch and told me about the public’s reaction to her book, the process of writing about such a messy time in her life, and the politics of sharing it.

VICE: How has it been for you since the book came out?
Jowita Bydlowska: It’s been OK. We’ve been managing it. The reaction in Canada was much more intense. The day before the book was released here, there was a profile in the Globe and Mail and it was kind of… I didn’t expect it to be the way it was. I don’t know if it was negative, per se, but I read it and was like “What the fuck did I just do?” I went home and we called a lot of our friends and had this spontaneous support party, which was nice. A lot of guests got pretty drunk at that party, which is kind of ironic. That weekend my face was on the front page of the Arts section looking kind of forlorn, which was a bit off-putting. The main thing for me has been to keep a distance between the book and myself and the person I write about in the book and myself. The reason I was able to write it and talk about it and still am able to talk about it is because I did treat it as someone else’s story, I distanced myself from it. I had to.

How do you delineate between self, narrator, and writer when they’re all you, or some version of you? Where did that distance come from?
I wrote it in present tense, first of all. I imagined speaking to someone directly while I wrote it. I also wanted to do this thing where I had to put myself back into the mind of an addict, so that was, I think, a form of literary device. I don’t necessarily think that way anymore, but I remember how that felt, how that was, and that’s what I wanted to represent. It’s not stretching the truth, but I am in a way playing my past self—there was a wall that existed between myself and the character of myself.

Did you have a ritual or a place that got you in that headspace? Where did you write the book?
Dark closets. Laughter. A lot of it I wrote when I was still active in my addiction—it was supposed to be notes for a work of fiction that I thought I could base around that time in my life. To be honest I don’t remember a lot of that work. Then once it was becoming a memoir I’d just write at my desk—I had a full time job at that time and I was taking care of my kid and my family. So I wrote after 9 PM. I used to drink after 9 PM, and I’d drink and write. Then when I got sober I would just would write and write.

How has your family received the book? You say a lot of very personal things about yourself, but also the people in your life, and not all of it flattering.
My partner was very supportive. He’s also a writer, so we have this rule where we don’t try to influence each other’s writing. He only read it when it was finished and ready to go into copy editing. His reaction… He needed time to think about it, because he didn’t want to react right away. So he took some time off… Actually, we haven’t really talked about it a lot. I’m not even sure if my parents read it. I’m hoping not. My sister read it and was very compassionate and empathetic. She had lots of questions afterwards. Difficult questions. One thing I was worried about was that I was going to lose a lot of friends, that people would tell me what a terrible person I was. In the end I just had some angry feedback from friends who were upset that I didn’t reach out for help.

Your son is five now, and a lot of concerns in reviews of the book seem to centre around his reaction when he inevitably reads it. Do you want him to read it? Are you worried about that?

I don’t think i’m going to encourage him to, but I’m sure he’s going to read it and I’m going to have to answer all his questions, if he has them. He was of course taken into consideration before I published the book, but I can’t speculate about his future reaction. It would be OK if he had questions, and I’d be happy to answer them.

What made you want to publish something that made you so nervous about the reaction? What about writing this book was something you felt you had to do?
I think you should never not write because you’re afraid of offending someone. In the book it looks like I’m not worried about anyone’s feelings but that’s certainly not true. I just needed to be true to myself as a writer, otherwise what’s the point?

You’ve written other memoir pieces now about very personal issues. Why do you think we’re so hungry for personal stories, and especially about people’s low points?
I think personal disaster stories are the most interesting for people to read. There’s the scandal element—oh boy, I’m not as bad as this person. And with the internet too, there’s been a shift towards more focus on the individual and the individual experience. The individual is as important as the collective experience used to be. I don’t know if that’s a good thing. I’ve indulged in that but am hoping to move away from it.

What’s your relationship with alcohol like now?
It’s OK. I don’t think about it everyday. I talk about it a lot, especially with the book, but I can go to a bar or be at a dinner party no problem. I think addiction is less about having access to whatever your substance of choice—or lack of choice—is, it’s more about an internal compulsion. It’s also easier because the peer pressure “we’re all getting shitfaced” culture of people in their 20s is not something I’m around as much anymore. I think in your 30s that stuff looks a little sad.

Yeah, my friends in their 30s are dropping things—alcohol, smoking, drugs, gluten—like crazy. There’s a mass Giving Up Of Stuff.
It’s true. You hit 30 and you start buying organic mattresses.

How has sobriety changed you? Anything you didn't expect?
It’s great! I have more time, I don’t have to nurse hangovers, I know what happened the night before—I was a blackout drinker. I’m present now, I pay attention to things. It’s only been positive. What is baffling to me is that that’s what it was like before I relapsed. I got sober for the first time at 27, and I was a senior editor at a magazine, my relationship was going great, I had a nice place to live… Everything was going well, so I don’t know why I thought, “Well, I’m going to fuck this up by getting drunk all the time.” I think maybe I appreciate it more this time, because I see how fragile it is.

Does it still feel very fragile?
To stay sober? Yeah. I have more respect for it now. Before I relapsed I was still very nostalgic about those party days. I thought, “I’m still too young to be sober, I want to be out at all night shows.” And I’ve done those sober now—and it’s hard to stay out until 4 AM without substances of some kind, but it is possible. You just have to drink a lot of coffee.

When I publish personal things online I get this crazy annotative urge to guide people’s reading experiences and tell them what I was thinking at the time, to justify why I chose those words. Do you get that post-publishing anxiety?
People don’t seem to understand Canadian maternity leave, so I’m getting a lot of comments about being a rich bitch pushing a stroller around, getting drunk because I had nothing better to do, and I want to respond like, “You have no idea!” When you read people’s assumptions about you or your intentions, that’s hard, but other’s interpretations are also interesting. I don’t think I thought of the book as a feminist book particularly, but after it came out some of the reviews were suggesting that it was, simply because it was a true, a flawed woman’s story that challenges our expectations of parenthood and motherhood.

I would definitely consider it feminist as an endeavour. A lot of the reviews seem concerned with your likeability, and I think it’s great that you weren’t, particularly, in your writing about yourself.
Yeah, likeability is such a bitch. It’s like, why does that matter? A story is a story. I didn’t want to likeable, I wanted to be truthful. I find addiction memoirs often end up the same—I call them “misery lit.” There’s this narrative like, “Things were bad, I tried to get better, and now things are really really good, and I’m married." People in interviews are always asking me if I married my partner finally, like that would be the real ending to the story.

Did it feel cathartic when the book was out? Was that a kind of ending?
I was just happy to have a book out. There wasn’t much catharsis to me. I find the book hard to read. When I do public readings I’m a bit like, “What the fuck did I say?” which is stupid, because I wrote it, but sometimes I’m surprised by what I wrote.

Would you ever write a follow up? 

Sober Mom? Laughter. God, no. I don’t think that would interest anyone. I’m interested in fiction exclusively from now on, I think.

Follow Monica Heisey on Twitter.

I was sold on J.G. Ballard’s High Rise (1975) after the first ten words: “Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog…”

I didn’t care what the second half of that sentence would turn out to be, I was already there, sitting on the balcony. It’s not that I don’t like dogs, really, but more that here was a book that clearly had no qualms about its world, had the confidence to disarm probably half of its possible readers with the bleak and unnerving image of a human casually eating a dog on a balcony. If this is where Ballard began, I knew there would be hell to pay in what came after.

High Rise, as the title portends, concerns the lives of people living in a 40-floor high rise apartment building and sharing common areas such as a gym, grocery store, liquor store, pool, et cetera. The book follows several different protagonists through the landscape of the building during a time in which something is wrong and getting worse by the minute, though no one seems to know precisely what. When the book begins, the sound of cocktail parties and jubilation fills the building’s halls; men and women conduct their lives under the throes of daily work and casual sex; people come and go from the apartment into the larger world for work and return at night alongside their neighbors. Ballard is very good at establishing an ambience of life among people with an almost Victorian sense of exposition—each character has their daily manners and conversations, amidst which small interruptions begin to bleed in. 

First, an unknown man gets into an altercation at the pool with a group of children. It is a strange and restrained scene that lets the reader know there is something wrong with some of the people here. The next night the electricity goes out on several floors for no apparent reason. In Ballard’s world, that bit of darkness is all humanity needs to be pushed over the edge. Increasingly thereafter fights break out on various floors throughout the apartments. Things are thrown from balconies onto the world below. Some elevators fail and others are taken over, blocking access for the families on lower floors to the more expensive and exclusive ones above. Tribes begin banding together to protect their territory, food, and valuables. By page 40, violence and rape abound within the building, establishing in its confined territories a kind of survival-of-the-fittest world of living hell.

Most gripping about Ballard’s portrayal of his isolated arenas is how even-handedly his characters report the mania that surrounds them. No matter how high the boiling waters rise, the narrators remain logical, within their means, progressing from one psychopathic act to the next, as if this dystopia were a fact of life, as if there were no other choice but to continue. As the terrain gets darker, the stakes of life change, as do the manners of survival and social norms.

It’s rare to witness such a balanced report within an environment where almost anything can happen, and Ballard makes it seem natural, matter of fact. A swimming pool of skeletons feels comfortable alongside men screening videos of their brutality in a theater covered in blood. The prose is bright and steady, like an IV drip through which the reader continues feeding right alongside each character, delving deeper and deeper into a world as it is ripped.

So besides the violence, how does Ballard manage to make this book so unnerving? Having read a lot of novels full of brutal descriptions of grotesque arenas, there was something else to High Rise beyond its circus of slow degradation. The book’s most central power seems to come not from how its world unravels, but how clearly and steadily the narration holds the reader as he descends. From the start, the conceptual framework of the book (citizens within a communal living space gradually become unhinged unto total chaos) provides the reader with a feeling of a laboratory experiment, less a narrative where we are supposed to change or care, and more like a documentary through which we are made witness to a condition of the world amidst us all. This isn’t a parable or even a nightmare; it’s a possible future. The narrators could be our children, their children, or ourselves.

Equally unnerving is Ballard’s use of media to provide a kind of normalizing effect within the book’s world. In a state of total chaos, people wander the trashed floors and hallways recording videos of people being attacked, of women being made slaves by men hungry for power, of pets running rampant in the corridors. One character records himself hiccuping and barfing as a woman moans for the sole purpose of playing it back and filling the air with sound. Even though they have descended into complete perversion, the building’s residents are desperate to continue documenting themselves. In the era of the selfie and Facebook and Twitter, this dementia feels all too real.

Meanwhile, the world beyond the high rise goes on as if the terror inside did not exist. The narrators make little effort to reach out for help, as if they love the new power structure. On the flip side, when cops show up outside the building they just park and do not enter. The contained hell is symbiotic with the peace that walls it in. Perhaps the most compelling thing is how in the face of all the awful shit that happens, the narrators continue, searching abandoned rooms for liquor, television, sex; even on the roof, where countless birds wait for the bodies to become food, there is not a yearning for a return to normalcy or even survival as much as to uncover what lies at the end of this one hall, what that person locked in their room alone might be doing, how their shriveling body might soon feel. The inaction of humans is as unnerving as any action.

Follow Blake on Twitter.

An American juggalo, looking more like a soundman at a Halloween party than a gang member (Photo via)

It’s not a crime to dress like a clown and listen to horrorcore, though it’s certainly not going to get you a job at Goldman Sachs. However, it does seem a little harsh that here in the United States, fans of Insane Clown Posse are legally on a par with the Bloods and the Crips.

Back in 2011, an FBI report labeled ICP fans a "loosely organized hybrid gang," whose members were guilty of committing assaults and vandalism, and were actively engaged in more serious crimes. ICP brought a lawsuit against the FBI on behalf of their beloved Juggalos and Juggalettes, but last week they lost that court case, bringing great shame upon the Juggalo cohort.

We asked some UK-based juggalos and juggalettes how they feel about their subculture being criminalized.

Stephen, 42, Sunderland

VICE: Hey Stephen. What does being a juggalo mean to you?
Stephen: It’s all about family, friends, the music that we listen to—as in ICP, ABK, Twisted. It’s all about the horror music. We smoke the old green, but most people do nowadays, so that’s nothing new. To me, it’s all about family and respecting one another. I have not met a juggalo that I haven’t respected, because we all come from different backgrounds, areas, walks of life.

So you're not a “gang” then?
I just think it’s ridiculous, to tell you the truth. The whole UK juggalo community thinks it’s ridiculous. To call anyone into different music a gang member is just wrong. To call Slipknot or Slayer fans a gang is mad. The same thing happened when people started listening to Marilyn Manson—it’s all to do with dark music and death metal.

What’s the UK juggalo community like?
We have gatherings and meet up when we can. I have a juggalo tattoo and I’ve become sort of the unofficial juggalo tattooist. It’s all about family. We’re there to help the family. We go to a lot of gigs and shows, and never seen one bit of trouble. All we do is keep to ourselves. When the people from the outside come in, that’s when any trouble gets caused, but it’s us that get the bad name. It’s always the God Squad and people like that.

Why do you think the FBI problems started?
There are good juggalos and bad juggalos, and the younger juggalos are giving us a bad rep. We try to guide the younger ones, as the older juggalos. We all do stupid things when we’re young, until we get older and learn better.

Does the US case mean anything for juggalos in the UK?
There are juggalos worldwide, so what’s happening in the US affects us all. It’s frustrating, because there's only so much we can do to help over here in the UK. Either way, I support my fellow homies in the States.

What would you do if being a juggalo was criminalized over here? Renounce your allegiance?
I’d still be a juggalo. My youngest son is a Juggalo, too. I’ve brought him up as one, listening to all the music. Neither of us would stop being juggalos.

Craig, 26, Hereford

Hi Craig. What’s a juggalo to you?
Craig: It’s basically being a strong fan of the music. We’re no more a gang than the people that follow other bands, like Justin Bieber and shit. I’d say Bieber fans are more dangerous than juggalos, definitely. I’ve heard the shit they do. It’s ridiculous. They cut themselves in front of him and stuff. All juggalos want is to have a good time, painting your face up, and listening to music. It’s nothing about gang members and all that.

Do you paint your face up?
I paint my face up and go out for a laugh sometimes. I haven’t got any tattoos of Hatchetman [the logo of Insane Clown Posse's record label Psychopathic Records] yet, but I'm looking to get a few. And I’d still get them if [the gang allegations] kicked off over here. The music’s what I love, and nothing’s gonna stop that. I’ll get a tattoo on my neck plain as day—don’t matter.

How long have you been aware of the American juggalo scene's issue with the FBI?
Since about a year ago; I speak to a lot of the US juggalos daily. I think it’s so stupid that they could even think juggalos are a gang. There are actual gangs over there that are causing real trouble. It’s just ridiculous and I can’t see why they’ve done it. I can’t describe how I feel about it.

Have you got any friends who've had problems over there?
Yeah, I was speaking to a juggalo friend of mine who lives in the US and he got stopped by the police for having a Hatchetman tattoo. They pulled him in and questioned him more about it.

Are you worried that the police will criminalize juggalos here?
I’m definitely worried, especially because of the way that people over here get so panicked about stuff. It’s gonna cause riots. Does that mean I can’t walk down the street now wearing a Hatchetman logo on me, or what? It’s ridiculous to think I’m a gang member.

Kev, 30, Hereford

What do you think of the FBI classing your juggalo brethren as gang members?
Kev: Well, it seems to just be another case of people thinking they can control everyone through conformity. It’s all about conformity and not really toeing the line. It’s just another example of the world becoming a dictatorial state. If you don’t conform, you’re not right, and therefore you must be stopped. They want to stop it because they don’t understand it. It comes across as being scared of something out of the mainstream. To my knowledge, there are no juggalos involved in crime over here.

Are you a part of the UK scene yourself?
I’m a bit of an outsider juggalo. I wouldn’t mind going to the gatherings—they certainly do look like a good laugh. I want to see ICP live, but they don’t come to the UK. That’s about it for me. For me, it’s all about the music. I like all the Psychopathic music, but I listen to metal as well. I’m a juggalo from afar, I’d say.

So you don't paint your face?
No, never been tempted with that one myself. It’s part of it, but it’s a choice. Everyone thinks, What are you doing that for?

Do you fear the prospect of police over here treating you all as gang members?
It’s certainly daunting, yes. It’s a bit crazy, isn’t it? You think about it and it’s just music fans. It happened before with Marilyn Manson and the Columbine shootings. To be honest, it could happen, but it’s all whether we’re well known enough over here. It’s a bit of a different thing in the UK.

Do you think of yourself as a gang member?
I’ve never really given much thought to it, but I’d say that’s a bit ridiculous. If they said that over here, I wouldn’t stop listening to the music. If they can’t accept that it’s just music, it’s all madness. That’s for them to deal with. If they just talked to juggalos, they’d see that. But they’d never do that.

Sez Too-Dope, 27, Manchester

You’re the organizer of the UK Gathering of the Juggalos. What’s the scene like here?
Sez Too-Dope: It’s only the un-official gathering, but it gets bigger every year. It’s all good fun. The first gathering I did in Liverpool was small—there were only about 20 of us, but we traveled from all across the UK. And since then, it’s grown huge. It’s like we’ve known each other for years. It’s really special.

What have you heard from US juggalos about what's going on over there?
People are having to get their tattoos covered and stuff. It’s ridiculous. The people giving juggalos a bad name aren’t juggalos—they shouldn’t be called juggalos.

Would the criminalization happen over here?
I hope not, because I’ve got two Hatchetman tattoos and I don’t want to get pulled over by police. I don’t think there’s as many of us over here as in the US or other European countries and ICP haven’t toured over here for years. No one gets any stick over here at the moment. We get asked about the tattoos and what we’re wearing and stuff, but that's no problem. We’ve got high-ranking people over here who are juggalos. We’ve got a juggalette who works for the council and she openly says she’s a juggalette.

That's handy for the future. What would you say to anyone who thinks juggalos are dangerous?
The world would be a better place if we all treated each other like we juggalos treat each other. 

Thanks, Sez.

Follow Hannah on Twitter

Meet the Girls Who Are Terrorising Juggalos with Their Perfect Asses

In the Land of the Juggalos

Juggalos Are OK, Cupid

This article was updated at 5.54PM on the 16th of July to reflect transcription errors.

Muslim women whose relatives were killed in the massacre outside the Srebrenica-Potočari memorial in Srebrenica, Bosnia. All photos by the author

In mid-July 1995, over 8,000 “Bosniaks” (Bosnian Muslims) were systematically killed by Bosnian Serb soldiers in what is sometimes called the lone act of European genocide since World War II. It was the culmination of three years of Muslim ethnic cleansing.

From July 11 onwards, a force led by Serbian General Ratko Mladić, commander of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) and the elite, deadly unit known as the Scorpions, inflicted nothing short of hell on the Muslim population in and around Srebrenica.

The Srebrenica memorial, officially known as the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery for the VIctims of the 1995 Genocide

It all began after the fall of Tito’s communist regime in the late 1980s. At that point in time, the multi-ethnic Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was inhabited by Bosniaks (44 percent), Orthodox Serbs (31 percent) and Catholic Croats (17 percent).

After a declaration of national sovereignty on October 15, 1991, as the former Yugoslavia began to disintegrate, a referendum for independence was held the following February. The result in favor of independence was rejected by the political representatives of the Bosnian Serbs (who had boycotted the vote). Nonetheless, the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was formally recognized by the European Community on April 6, 1992, and by the United States the next day.

Immediately following the declaration of independence, Bosnian Serb forces, supported by the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic and the Yugoslav's People's Army (JNA), attacked the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in an effort to unify and secure Serb territory. A brutal struggle for regional control ensued, accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of the non-Serb population from areas under Serbian influence; in particular, the Bosniak population of Eastern Bosnia, near the border with Serbia was targeted. This is where Srebrenica lies.

A goat farmer stands in a field next to the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery for the Victims of the 1995 Genocide.

From 1992 to 1995, the Bosnian Institute of the United Kingdom counted some 296 villages that were wiped off the map in this area around Srebrenica, though not all were Muslim (in fact, some Serbian villages were destroyed by Bosnian army forces in response to the invasion, and Bosnians committed some atrocities of their own, which helped keep the cycle of ethnic conflict going for years to come). Some 70,000 people were displaced from their homes in this region, with many thousands of Muslims killed. The chaos was largely ignored by much of the rest of the world. This inaction has now come back to haunt the United Nations, who had even set up the first-ever UN “Safe Zone” in the area but failed to prevent the massacre during the weeks after July 11, 1995.

When General Mladić drove into Srebrenica, he began rounding up and killing all the Muslim men he could find. Soon 25,000 local residents took refuge in the Dutch-run “Safe Zone” but were turned over after a few days, with Dutch-Serbian negotiations ensuring the safety of women and children only. The Dutch commander of the 'Dutchbat' UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force), Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Karremans, was largely powerless and his calls for airstrikes on Serbian forces were ignored in those critical first hours.

Dutch graffiti on the walls of the former UN peacekeeping headquarters

Much has been said about these UN troops and how they let this happen, but the lack of aid for vulnerable civilians originally stems from those who placed the under-resourced peacekeepers in Bosnia in the first place. UN leadership hesitated and allowed the massacre to happen.

The "Dutchbat" forces eventually handed over the last 3,000 people, mostly men of military age and a handful of younger boys, all of whom were executed. A large majority of the children were spared and shipped off to Tuzla. Less publicized was the fact that Serb soldiers picked up a number of young Muslim women in the vicinity of the powerless Dutch soldiers and gang-raped them nearby, their screams apparently audible from the UN base. The peacekeepers had arrived in 1993 and left two years later having failed quite miserably. (On Wednesday, the Hague found the Dutch state liable for over 300 deaths.)

Many of those transported to Muslim safe zones over 60 miles away were women and children who got picked up by Serbs in coaches, their gas paid for by the UN. The 10,000-plus men left behind were not so lucky. Many were rounded up and shot over the next days and weeks.

One of the many factories on the outskirts of Srebrenica where Muslim men were rounded-up and detained before being driven to the hills for execution by Serbian forces

The men were instructed to dig their own shallow graves. After being shot, their bodies were thrown into these graves in locations so heavily mined that identification methods are still extremely perilous, adding to the on-going trauma some 19 years later.

Reflecting a year after the massacre, Jean-Rene Rues, the chief war crimes investigator for the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, said, “What we’re talking about here was a crime against humanity and a crime against humanity is a crime against all of us.”

Yet, like Rwanda the year before, the UN and world governments all stood by as these atrocities took place.

There are 8,372 names engraved into stone at Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery for the Victims of the 1995 Genocide.

As of July 2012, 6,838 genocide victims have been identified through DNA analysis of body parts recovered from mass graves; as of July 2013, 6,066 victims have been buried at the Memorial Centre of Potočari. Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić officially apologized for the massacre, although he stopped short of calling it genocide.

On October 4, 2005, the Special Bosnian Serb Government Working Group said that 25,083 people were involved in the broader Srebrenica operation, including 19,473 members of various Bosnian Serb armed forces; the number of direct participants in the slaughter is thought to be lower, however—perhaps 1,000 people. 17,074 of the individuals involved in the military operation have been identified by name. It has also been reported that some 892 of those suspects still hold positions at or are employed by the government of Republika Srpska, the Serbian state tucked into Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their names remain an official secret.

Ratko Mladić is finally in prison at the Hague after being on the run for 16 years. But the world is still waiting for the outcome of the trial.

A former car-battery factory where the Dutch peacekeepers were based. The words mean: "Comrade Tito, We Pledge Our Allegiance."

Emir Suljagic, a former UN translator and Muslim Srebrenica resident, talks to me about his life on the run during the days of the massacre. He later went on to become the minister of Education in Sarajevo, Bosnia. He’s been a continual campaigner for the fair treatment of the Muslim population in Bosnia.

Outside the former car battery factory. On the slopes in the background lies the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial.

Mothers, wives, and children’s statues outside the former Dutch UN peacekeeping headquarters in Srebrenica

Inside the former building of the Dutch UN peacekeeping headquarters. Some 25,000 Muslim refugees sought shelter in and around these buildings during the massacres, but eventually were evicted after the UN forces pulled out in late July, 1995. 

"Ratko is a hero" reads the graffiti. Ratko Mladić, the general of the Serbian forces at the time of the massacres, is still sadly revered by some in the area today.

In central Srebrenica, a new minaret from a mosque sprouts up behind a ruin from the war.

A lone podium stands in one of the factories that the Serbians used to round up Bosnian Muslims. Every year, thousands of relatives gather to pay respects of those killed in the July 1995 massacre.