On the night of July 2, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year old Palestinian from the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat, was abducted and killed by a group of right-wing extremist Israelis. The attack was in apparent retaliation for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens whose bodies were discovered north of the West Bank city of Hebron two days earlier. Khdeir's autopsy showed the boy burned to death while he was still alive. His killing set off demonstrations and clashes throughout the West Bank and elsewhere, with thousands of Palestinians protesting his death.

VICE News went to Shuafat to speak with a grieving father about his son's death and the latest round of events that followed it.

If you look past the tabloid ruckus surrounding her and her adultery and listen to some of the classic LeAnn Rimes hits, you’ll find a sublime and distinctive voice that rises above the dated beats, productions, and her hilarious music videos.

Photo via Flickr user R S

I grew up in basements. Eating pepperoni Hot Pockets and playing SEGA Dreamcast. Staring at buddy lists and Kazaa progress bars. Waiting for nine-minute scenes of Jenna Jameson, blonde and smooth and ferocious, a carnivore and an angel simultaneously, crawling toward a hard dick, mouth half-open, sweaty hairs stuck to her temples, giving orders and begging for more, wiping cum off of her eyelids.

My friend’s dad worked late at a factory that manufactured tampons. Sometimes we took lacquer from the garage and poured it into his dad’s empty beer bottles. We took off our socks and shoved them into the bottles and lit the socks on fire. Sometimes the bottles were the Smirnoff Ice his stepmom drank. My friend said only pussies and girls drank Smirnoff Ice. I wondered if there was an identity one could have in high school besides pussy or girl or god or janitor. I wondered if I would like Smirnoff Ice. Then we threw the bottles against the stone wall behind the house and watched them explode.

I went home and fell asleep on the couch. The next day I told people I’d been reading something by a dead guy who was Danish or Russian or had a mustache. Usually I was still eating Hot Pockets. Here was high school: shameless deception; processed carbohydrates; surrendering to beautiful women; destroying things simply to be reminded that I was not the only thing that could be destroyed.

And I listened to Tupac at high volumes. 

Rap was to me a means of sublimation—my fantasies of saying outrageous things to men of authority in a filled auditorium; holding a girl by the waist and telling her to meet me somewhere after class. But it was also insulation from the mundane, from my impotent, microscopic existence in a suburban sprawl. It was invincibility and a jetpack. Rap did not need a greater purpose aside from making me feel transported; alive simply because it took me out of my own frail body.

Tupac was himself a prompt, he was Tupac: The Dichotomy. The thug and the poet; the lover and the lothario; the nihilist and the daydreamer. To me he was all of those things. He was something that engulfed with paralyzing immediacy; a voice that sounded half like a phone sex operator, half like he needed a cough drop. Big beautiful eyelashes. Pounding on your face like it were a locked door, shouting about leaving dead bodies in abandoned buildings. He could not be ignored. He was fucking there. He was all over you. I listened to him to escape limits, logic, definition, and so he did not have to be definitively anything. The myth was irresistible, all of its contradictions. For four minutes and 40 seconds I was a renegade, a prophet, a hurricane.

Notorious BIG did not need your love, but he wanted it. Throwing his arm around you, telling you about the girl he fucked, sharing his takeout with you in the parking lot, laughing till he coughed like his throat was about to give birth to something. Spitting at the motherfuckers while licking his lips at a girl across the room. In a castle far away asking you to come join him. But I pictured Tupac with his head leaned against a subway car window, contemplating something vast; bleak montages and despair. His songs were not gospel but something carved into a rock by a man who had been stranded on an island. There were celebrations, but even those felt like dances around a tire fire after the apocalypse. He was by himself, trying to make it. It was 2001. I was 14.

High school was not a tutorial for integrating oneself into a brutal mass, but a lens to reveal the power of being completely alone.

**

Promotional materials for the Broadway musical Holler if Ya Hear Me declare that it is “inspired by the work of Tupac Shakur.” This is not accurate. Holler is not Tupac’s work come to life; it is his work stuffed in a museum. It is TUPAC: THE RIDE, ONLY AT SIX FLAGS. It is a diorama, a Tupac stained glass in a church window. A commodification of nostalgia, of death, of IN MEMORIAMs. It is a Tupac kumbaya.

It is a wink-nudge to that party you ended up at in some fraternity, when “How Do U Want It” was playing and no one wanted you there. When a girl who was wearing heels on the carpet and a tube top that just would not accommodate her geometry asked you what you were doing, who you were, do we even know you? You should, like, leave, honestly. And you were sitting there on the futon, looking at her, at everyone, and you didn’t really answer her, you just sort of shrugged and wanted to tell her you were someone important, except you weren’t. So you looked down and kept drinking until she walked away.

In the balconies of the Palace Theater girls in dresses took selfies in the darkness and sung along to “Dear Mama.” In the lobby were two big chalkboards with “MY DREAM IS …” written at the top, and a dozen blanks for people to fill in. Here is what they wrote: “To make a contribution,” “To make it big,” “To be famous,” “To find happiness,” “To make a difference,” “To help lots of people.” This was the black experience sanitized for white people. A vague longing for positivity and optimism; nothing specific or terrifying, because this was the deepest that people in gingham shirts can engage with social problems. They were here to turn grief into a bumper sticker, a one-lined addendum to a tumblr reblog, a crossed-arm head shake at The Struggles because they bought a meat patty from a bodega in Bed-Stuy that one time.

Holler is a watery mix of Do the Right Thing, Boyz n the Hood, West Side Story, and every urban drama redemption arc you have ever seen. There is the black protagonist returning from jail who is attempting to turn it all around, for real this time. There is the friend who is shot in the first act. The kingpin with a good heart. The young idealist. The handwringing mother. The sexy-but-beleaguered girlfriend who just can’t take the violence anymore. The skeptical white guy who isn’t-a-racist-I-swear. An old, hunched man in a dirty suit who only staggers and shouts bible passages from a megaphone and paints PEACE IS NEVER on project walls. The play is blackness as something recreational, blackness as something naughty and dangerous an audience can immerse themselves in for two-and-a-half hours.

There are brief sequences when the actors mash this into something resonant. Saul Williams, the lead, is a nuclear missile in every scene. He huffs and paces and spits words that seem like they scald his lips on the way out. But his performance doesn’t matter. The production is not about provoking but about rubbing your back; not about narrative but about reminding you that there once was a black person who sang a bunch of intense songs, threw gravel in your face, and then got murdered. It is an iTunes playlist. Buzzfeed’s 28 Times Tupac Gave You Feels. Jimmy Fallon swiveling in a chair with his feet off the ground while Michael from The Wire sings “Changes” with Bruce Hornsby on the piano.

This is how we process emotions now. Our histories are raided and stripped for parts, peddled at slideshows and listicles, at Full House reunions, at musicals that don’t last. We don’t connect, we recognize. We don’t have identities, we have signifiers. We have NOSTALGIA: UNRATED COLLECTOR’S EDITION. There is no punch line, no context, no investment, nothing at stake. There is no wound because there is not the thing you actually loved, the feeling you actually felt; there are no longer the memories, just the YOU ARE NOW ENTERING sign on the memory interstate. There is only the minutiae that once defined your life, dragged from the attic, pumped full of helium and released into the sky for you to look at as it floats away.

Follow John on Twitter.

Holler if Ya Hear Me is closing this Sunday, July 20, after just one month on Broadway. Buy tickets here.

VICE and Jim Norton are teaming up to put a weird twist on the traditional late-night talk show, beginning July 23. 

The show will be a loose mix of stand-up comedy, debates, and interviews with guests like Mike Tyson, UFC President Dana White, and notorious drug dealer Freeway Rick Ross. To keep things really unpredictable, we'll be filming everything before a live audience. 

In Norton's words, "VICE didn’t censor any language or ideas at all; they were amazing creatively. I got to do exactly the show I wanted to do. Which also sucks, because if it fails, it’s completely my fault.” We think you'll like it.

Addicts are given ten syringes a day by the Caracuda drug centre.

According to the Romanian National Anti-drug Agency (ANA), there are 10,000 intravenous drug users in Bucharest. In theory, the state is supposed to supply users with clean needles and help addicts get on methadone treatment programmes. But considering the allegations of police persecution – and the 25 percent rise in HIV rates during 2012, suggesting users weren’t getting the clean needles they were promised – it would seem the authorities’ attitudes haven’t changed a lot since the days of dictatorial communist rule.

To get a better understanding of the situation I visited the Caracuda Centre in the city’s Ferentari neighbourhood, which is considered to be the hub of heroin use in Bucharest. Here, an NGO called Carusel offers syringes and medical aid to addicts three times a week. On arriving, I heard the first example of the government’s absurd approach to heroin users: the only way a homeless addict can get the ID card that allows him to get medical attention is if a cop fines him for sleeping on public property and gives him temporary papers so he can issue the penalty.

The Caracuda centre is named after Romania's first methadone patient. On the left is Costin Militaru.

Costin Militaru, a medic at the centre who treats users' injection wounds, told me: “Addicts are treated OK in the centres, and they can get on the methadone treatment if they really want to, but it’s hard for them because they have to get IDs, and many of these treatments aren't free.”

As for the local authorities, Costin claims they confiscate the state-issued syringes he hands out to addicts. “Sometimes they take them to the precinct and watch them go into withdrawal for fun," he told me. "I've heard of situations where they were taken into the middle of a field and left there. They apparently say stuff like, 'If you don't beat each other up, we'll do it for you, so it's better for you if you do it yourself.' But these are all stories from the addicts – I don't know what's true and what's a result of their own paranoia. We had this one guy in with a fractured arm who said he was beaten up by the police and lost all his syringes.”

I wanted to find out first-hand what the addicts think of the authorities, so I spoke to a few who dropped in at the centre.

Bogdan Suciu (left) is a social worker at Caracuda who managed to get off heroin after six years of addiction.

VICE: How did you get over your addiction?
Bogdan Suciu: With methadone. I took the treatment on the street after they'd kicked me out of the government's treatment centre because I missed two appointments – but that was because I was working. The centres can only handle treatment for 1,000 patients, but there 18,000 people who need the help in Romania. It's hard to stay on the treatment, as it sometimes costs money, which most of them can't afford. Many take the methadone pills orally, with the wrong doses, then they think that the treatment doesn't work so they refuse to try it a second time. I've had two relapses. Each time it took me about a year to get over them. 

How did the authorities treat you?
They terrorised me. As soon as they found me on the street they'd take me to the precinct to try and make me rat out other addicts. I told them to leave me alone because I was undergoing treatment, but they just said, “What treatment, you bloody addict? Your kind never quits.” I was lucky that my dad argued with them for me. Then the people from ANA told them that I was having treatment and should be left alone.

What about the ones who aren't so lucky?
A friend got held up for a week at the precinct. They made him clean everything, even the curtains and the windows. Also, my best friend was so terrorised by them that he fled Bucharest for over a year. They were harassing him to try and get some dirt on me.

Why? Do they have an arrest quota they have to hit, or something?
Even if they did have one, what's the point in harassing the same ten addicts? Go catch the big fish – the guys selling the drugs. They’ll often force you to ask a friend of yours to buy some for you so they can arrest him for trafficking.

Maria has been addicted to heroin for over four years. She has two kids in an orphanage, but she visits them occasionally. 

VICE: When was your first time taking heroin?
Maria: I lived with this boy who was doing synthetic drugs. I saw that he felt nice when he took them, so I asked him to make two lines for me so I could see how it felt myself. That's how I ended up doing heroin.

How do doctors and cops treat you?
Badly, especially since they found out I have HIV and work as a prostitute. But the doctors did give me the treatment I need, even though the police fined me for prostitution.

They never arrested you for doing hard drugs?
No, because I'd always admit that I had balls of heroin on me. They saw that I was sincere and left me alone. They didn't even confiscate my drugs. Others argue with them, so that's why the cops take all their stuff, including the syringes.

Have you ever quit?
Yeah, I was clean for six months while I was in a treatment centre where I wasn't even allowed to go out for a smoke. But as soon as I got out I met up with my friends, who said, “Let's go trip balls.” It all went to shit again after that.

Rosanna has been addicted to heroin for 16 years.

VICE: Have you ever tried to quit?
Rosanna: Yeah, but I couldn't do it. I know it's bad for me, but I've grown up with drugs – I don't know how to quit. I'd try the treatment, but my ID has expired. I tried it once, but stupidly I stopped doing it because the centre was too far from here.

Do your family understand your predicament?
It's one thing to be understanding; it's another to feel this yourself. They tell you all it takes is will and ambition, but they don't know it's a struggle, that you go through terrible pains. Eventually they got disgusted that I kept doing it. I would be, too, if I were in their place.

How do the doctors act around you?
I had an operation a while ago because I had problems with my gut, and the doctor told me I had two hours to live. They all said, “Oh my god, you're in such bad shape – how did you get like this?” I was so swollen you would have thought I was pregnant, but they still refused to hospitalise me.

What about the cops?
It depends on the shift. There are some who'll be abusive – who'll swear at you, call you “a fucking cunt”, yell about “your mumma's vagina” and beat you. After that they ask you details about what you do, when you whore yourself, how big the cocks are that you ride. It's not normal.

Adi has been an addict for ten years

VICE: What's the worst thing that's happened to you since you started doing drugs?
Adi: I have HIV and hepatitis. People treat us like mangy dogs. I was also cut with a knife recently. They stuck it my leg and my shoulder, just to steal my syringes.

How do people on the street react to you?
If I ask them for a piece of bread, they refuse. I don't steal; I just beg.

How do the cops treat you?
One time they beat me up, took my syringes and took me to the precinct. When we got there they swore at me and hit me with a metal table leg and their plastic batons. They arrested me for drug consumption, then they pinned some unsolved thefts on me. They said, “Hey, you're the one who stole a ladder a few days ago.” I told them to find some witnesses to confirm it, but they kept going, “No need, we know you took it.” They saw that I was so poor that it wouldn't actually hurt to send me to prison.

Dracul has been addicted to heroin for 12 years

VICE: What are your biggest needs?
Dracul: Money, which you need for drugs. I work on a construction site, so I do OK, but others have physical problems and they can't do it.

Do you ever feel persecuted?
Nobody knows I do drugs at work, but it wouldn't be an issue because I'm employed without paperwork anyway. I don't even have an ID. But everyone outside of work stares at me. I can't talk to my friends or my wife any more, and her mother looks at me like I'm scum of the earth.

Nobody understands?
My mum tries to. It's hard for a mother to be cold when she sees her child is ill. She gives me money and says: “Go on, son,” because she can't stand to see me shiver from withdrawal.

Do the police do anything to you?
They keep beating me and asking me why I'm getting high. They take me to the precinct, where they make me wash the desks of the beat cops. They spit on us, they swear at us, call us bums. They confiscate my money because I can't prove where I got it from. My ID expired and I can't get a new one because I don't have a house. I'm a homeless person, so apparently I don't deserve an ID – I'm not worthy of an ambulance coming to pick me up if I get sick.

Some names have been changed to protect the identity of interviewees.

More articles about heroin addiction:

This Doctor Says He Can Cure Heroin Addicts By Putting Them in a Coma

What Is the Future of British Heroin Addiction?

Ireland Must Act to Combat its Growing Heroin Problem

Photos by the author

Everyone waited for Kelly Osbourne’s royal entrance, “Is she coming? Did you talk to her publicist?” chattered the PR hordes, and when she got there, charm blasting from her eyeballs, a TV host for some obscure channel asked her about her new purple hair.

“I really just believe in doing anything that’s against the mainstream,” said Kelly, “My hair is in support of that.”

Kelly Osborne, being against the mainstream

I went inside and pounded two Jack and cokes from the top shelf open bar, and waited for my chance to talk to the attendees—female CEOs who were changing the fashion and tech landscape with their successful websites.

Click here for last week's episode.

Lizard King in Bristol

Lizard King is what your grandma sees when she thinks of a skateboarder. Hand tattoos, wild eyes, an impressive alcohol tolerance, once cleared Bob Burnquist’s huge mega ramp without any pads in the midst of a comedown. That kind of guy.

However, all of that stuff is secondary to his skating. Moving from Salt Lake City to California in 2004, he got his break on Deathwish and has since risen up to become one of modern skateboarding’s most iconic names. The fact he goes by Lizard King rather than his real name, Mike Plumb, might help with that a little, but it's his part in Baker Has a Deathwish—and every video, shop promo and piece of tour footage he's been featured in since – that's really responsible for where he's at today.

I met up with him in Bristol during the Supra team's recent UK tour to talk about skating, painting and Mormonism.

VICE: Let's get the most important question out the way first—is Bristol better to skate than California?
Lizard King: Dude, it's sick. Everywhere we've been to has been fucking fun. It kind of sucks skating in front of shit loads of people, but other than that it’s fun. Everyone seems to be killin' it; kids seem to be having fun.

Good to hear. So why Supra? What are the perks compared to other sponsors?
Umm, free shoes and money? [Laughs] No, it's pretty cool. Our team is, like, full of just rock stars, so it's pretty epic. There's not many other teams on the planet like ours. I think we're kind of like the last one standing of a legendary team. I think we came together as one; we all get paid or whatever, but at the end of the day we're all homies.

We got Chad Muska, Erik Ellington, Stevie Williams... fucking Lizard King! But then our amateurs and other pros are all so well rounded and so legendary; there are so many different styles. There's still the best and the gnarliest, but then also the coolest and most stylish. Supra's more like a lifestyle than a brand.

Do you think skating still has the kind of relevance to young people as it did in, say, 2001, when Jackass was the biggest thing on TV and everyone was wearing Blind hoodies? People have the internet and online gaming now.
I think it’s bigger than it’s ever been before. All that shit's only made it so fucking accessible and way more mainstream. Everyone knows about skateboarding now; back in the day it was like you'd wait – fuck – a couple years for a video to come out, and then you'd sit at a skate shop watching it a hundred times, wishing you had a copy of it at home. Now you just type in someone’s name on the internet and you fucking own the video. It sucks. It makes skating cool in one way, but makes it suck in another, because everyone expects so much more now. Skateboarding's hard on you – mentally, physically, everything.

Lizard King for Supra

Do you think that helps motivate you, though? The fact that you can now see people from all over doing the craziest shit?
Skateboarding's so personal, though – no one person really skates like another, so I feel like there's a lot of individualism in skateboarding. You can always go to the same spot, but no one's ever going to do the same fucking thing. And even if you did the same trick as someone else, it’s never going to look the same. That’s why skateboarding is the shit.

You're saying it has a kind of inherent level of personal expression to it.
Exactly. It's like if you give two dudes a canvas and a bunch of paint and ask them to paint the same thing – it's not going to look alike. They're going to be completely different paintings; everyone has their own outlook on it.

What about the money?
At the end of the day, it’s like, you don't skate for a living for free. If they didn't pay people, no one would do it. And why should they?

What would you be doing today if you weren't skating?
Fuck. I like painting and doing weird shit, like building stuff. I used to be pretty into climbing and biking. But yeah, probably painting, dude.

What do you like to paint?
Just weird shit – whatever I can come up with. Some days it's like weird faces getting chopped up, and other days who knows.

What are your thoughts on the plans to convert London's Southbank park into a shopping plaza?
Fuck – I mean, don't close that shit. Legendary spots are legendary and they will always be. I think spots like that should always be there. You might as well turn it into a massive dildo.

Solid point. How do you unwind on tour?
Oh my god, I feel like the shenanigans always continue – one thing after the next. Fuck, as long as it keeps going, y'know?

Is that your biggest fear, the day it ends?
Yeah, I think about it all the time. I'm 29. Eventually it ends, but I hope not for a long time. The last thing I want to do is end up trying to figure out the fuck I'm good at besides skating.

You've just had a kid. How do you balance touring and skating for a living with family life?
You live like a rock star and you act like a rock star, but you aren't one. At the end of the day, you're not. You don't get paid like one and you don't live like one, but you can try. But no, I think it mellows it down and I think it makes skating cooler; you're actually skating for something, not just yourself. I've got a kid to feed and a family to fucking take care of.

Is there added pressure?
Pressure in a good way. Like when, you know, you have to perform, but you also want to. If anything, I think I care more about skating now more than ever.

How was it growing up in Salt Lake City? I can't think of many other pros from there.
It's awesome, man! There's so much shit to do, like ride bikes, rock climb, fucking skate and snowboard. It's such an extreme sports place. It's such an awesome place to grow up. There are so many options to try and to get good at that you're probably going be good at something.

Did you ever consider converting to Mormonism?
No. Hell no. I got family that are Mormon; they're fucking lame.

Okay, let's have a few quick-fire questions to finish off. Any rituals before a comp or a demo? 
A Burger King junior meal. You always gotta come in light.

The tattoo you're most proud of?
They called my grandpa “Grandpa Gator”, so I got this gator on my arm with a little hearing aid. He passed away just recently, but he used to give me money when I was a kid. He was kind of a dick to everyone but me. For some reason me and him got along.

Favorite city to skate in?
Salt Lake. Hometown rules.

Which way do you vote?
Neither – that shit's bullshit.

Favorite cheese?
Hmm, Havarti cheese is my favorite. Kind of sweet but tangy.

Finally, today's the summer solstice. What are your plans for the evening?
Breathe. Just fucking take a deep breath and realize that I’m still going.

Dennis Hopper (left) and Jeremy Thomas on the set of Mad Dog Morgan (1976). All photos courtesy of Jeremy Thomas.

Britain doesn’t exactly nurture independent film. Bar the few directors making movies about skinheads or suicidal Irish hitmen, cinema that you actually have to engage with is a concept mostly left to the French and Italians—those of great artistic depth and little time for Keith Lemon box office spin-offs. However, since the 1970s, British producer Jeremy Thomas has been wading against the current, helping to sustain what reputation his country has for great independent film.

In 1987 he won the Best Picture Oscar for The Last Emperor, and without him you never would have seen Sexy Beast, Only Lovers Left Alive, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and a whole host of other films that make you want to quit your job and pick up a camera. The list of directors Thomas has worked with is staggering; Bernardo Bertolucci, Nicolas Roeg, Terry Gilliam, Jim Jarmusch, David Cronenburg, Takeshi Kitano, Jonathan Glazer, and Nagisa Oshima are all in there, among others. Essentially: the man’s made a lot of films and they’re mostly very good.

His next picture, directed by Ben Wheatley, is High Rise, an adaptation of the JG Ballard novel which Blake Butler wrote about yesterday. This isn't Thomas's first tango with Ballard—in 1996 he produced the film adaptation of Crash. He was recently honored by the British Film Institute with a month-long retrospective of his work, and a few days after he spoke there I went to his office to talk about his life in film. 

Jeremy (center) at the 1987 Academy Awards after The Last Emperor won nine Oscars.

VICE: I’ll start with the obvious: What does a producer do?
Jeremy Thomas: Well, one thing is for sure: no film happens unless there is a producer. Somebody has to be between the money and the creativity. A producer like me—an independent producer—is a private man who’s got a business, who risks money to get books and screenplays and then starts assembling a team to make them. The producer is the manufacturer, the controller, the instigator, and the person who takes the film from its first breath to its last. For me, that last breath means I’m still taking care of my patients right now—the films I made in the 1970s. I’m still looking after those negatives and trying to promote them.   

In some sense, the work never ends.
Yes, yes. Obviously there’s a cliché of film producers as being loud and unpleasant, with a young girl and a cigar. That’s a tradition from Hollywood movies and the Marx Brothers. It’s something that’s come through the era of powerful moguls, when there were singular people who’d say: “I like that. I want to do that. You’ve got the money.” Somebody as successful as Spielberg or Tarantino can probably find that, but that style of being a boss is over nowadays because of the dreaded words: “We’d better run the numbers.” That’s restrictive in terms of what films can be made, because the films need to fit into a certain pattern that will make them popular enough to have in thousands of theaters.

How have you, as an independent producer, dealt with large investors and big studios?
I’m not really in that structure. There were moments when I thought about wanting to become a really big player, but my taste is against me. If you look at the films I’ve done, they’re not exactly going after what’s popular; there are no rom coms. That’s managed to keep me in business longer than anyone else.

Have there been temptations?
I was tempted after The Last Emperor. It happened like a lightning strike, winning nine Oscars. After that, I was enticed to Hollywood, and at times I’ve had offices there and been there for months on end in rented homes. But I’m a European and this oxygen here gives me my energy, not the higher altitude oxygen of Hollywood. I said facetiously the other night that I can’t stay in Hollywood for too long because I get jealous of Jerry Bruckheimer. But it’s sort of true, because the aspirations are totally different there. The buzz of the movie business is much stronger than here.

David Bowie in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)

When you say you'd become jealous of Jerry Bruckheimer, do you mean that your priorities would change?
Well, what is the general meritocracy in America? Money. Here, you can be a well-respected man about town without being the richest and without aspiring to be the richest. You can survive in a different way and not be considered some sort of freak or loser by making the films that we make here.

Part of your job must be to try and consider the market, though?
I try to make films profitable and I try to make them interesting. Take my latest film with Jim Jarmusch, Only Lovers Left Alive; that film was made modestly with a very interesting cast and director. It’s fantastic, but it’s not a general audience film. 

Even though it’s about vampires.
It’s a special vampire film, which is why I made it. Just like when we made Sexy Beast, it was a special film about criminals. We could hardly get a promotional trailer out of it because it was all swear words, and it was very difficult to translate into French and Spanish.

Ben Kingsley and Ray Winstone in Sexy Beast (2000)

It wasn’t a huge hit?
No. It has, like films we’ve made in the past—Bad Timing, Crash, Naked Lunch—a long life, because people are interested in seeing it. They’re always going to remain rich, like a book by Albert Camus. They’re things that will sell forever. How does one judge an artwork? We’ve got the meritocracy, but then how do you judge things by their life? We judge Picasso, Van Eyck, Beethoven, great blues by the fact that they’ve stood the test of time. Some things last, other things fall by the wayside, including things that were incredibly popular when they came out.

You also have great art that gets lost permanently, or rediscovered.
I’m talking about the rediscovery. There was outrage when Citizen Kane came out—it offended everybody and was closed.

For you, that happened with Crash—it was banned in Westminster and there was a huge outcry. 
It only happened in Britain, and it was political, moralistic flag-waving. The politicians who banned it didn’t even see the film. It was a strange feeling to be so hated, but it was a fabulous film and I had to defend it. The Mail and the Standard decided to make a campaign against it. I was at a pub in the Isle of Man, where they were birching people 15 years ago, and I heard people talking about the outrage of Crash and using car crashes as pornography. I thought, I could be lynched here. Of course, that’s not what the film is about, and people who go and see it expecting that are disappointed.  

Jeremy with Peter O'Toole on the set of The Last Emperor (1987)

On the other hand, with The Last Emperor the Italians were very supportive and got behind you and director Bernardo Bertolucci.
The Italians embraced the film. They wanted to help their prize-fighter, and their artistic prize-fighter was Bertolucci. We don’t have artistic prize-fighters in England. I mean, Fellini, Pasolini, Rossellini, Antonioni… they’re all incredible figures of Italian culture. You know, they’re proud to have such a thing as Fellini in Italy, but we couldn’t give a shit about any of our filmmakers. Michael Powell? Nic Roeg? Who? What? We don’t have the culture.

It’s true. Why don’t we have that culture?
Because we have a class system different to other places. In France, having a film company is something to be proud of. In England, film lives at the end of the pier. The metaphor for that is the BFI, which I love. When the Royal Festival Hall and the National Theater were built, cinema said, “What about us?” They said, “OK, you go under the bridge, and you stay under the bridge for the next 60 years.” 

When you won your Oscar for The Last Emperor you said that independent cinema could be great, that it could be “epic and popular.” Do you still believe that?
No. I can’t get the money to do that any more. I went to China with hundreds of people, with cars and food and tents, with no digital communication. I went across the Sahara desert with 400 people. I went up to the top of mountains in Bhutan and I did these things for real. No digital effects, nothing faked. You don’t have to do that any more. You don’t even have to go to China to make a film set in China; you can take a few photos of the Great Wall and use digital effects to show 300 people fighting in front of it. Films are made in a very different way today. The image is there at the end but the means to getting there has changed.

Distribution has changed, as well. I like the cathedral, watching in a darkened room. But I admit, and it’s true, that everybody’s watching films at home. That gives an opportunity for someone like me to cut out a few areas of middlemen, because at the moment I have to go through many other people. So I’m looking at a time in the future, if I can last long enough, when I finally get closer to my marketplace.

Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston in Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

Many of the directors you’ve worked with regularly are people who Hollywood would consider mavericks.
That’s why I’m working with them. I couldn’t afford to work with the leaders of Hollywood—their fees are probably more than my films cost.

Are any of them actually difficult to work with?
No. “Maverick” is a label put on somebody—I’ve been called maverick—that means you’re not with the crowd. They’re just not in the super-mainstream. Someone like Terry Gilliam is pretty mainstream, but he’s not in the super-mainstream.

Your next film is a Ballard adaptation, and just as you have these long-standing relationships with directors, you seem to have a long-standing relationship with him.
I was friendly with him. I like his books. I think JG Ballard is one of our greatest writers of recent history. A lot of his books are still ripe for adaptation.

What was your personal relationship with him?
We did Crash and he liked it. I saw a lot of him, we shared interests and he was a wonderful man. I gave a talk at his memorial—he was a special sort of guy, a very unusual person. He wrote every day. He was commenting on life and writing about situations through us. There’s a lot more in them than the story.  

There’s a prophetic element to a lot of what he wrote.
The situations all come to pass. He was a very happy man, but I’m sure he was also troubled by the world because how can you not be?

Is it a pleasure to look back on a body of work?
It is, but it’s quite frightening to think that you’re as old as you are and I don’t know how I did all that. Producers are pretty hidden figures, but I think my taste runs through all my films. I’m the chooser of what I’m doing and I just try and do what I like. That amazes people, but how else do you judge things? I like that, or I don’t like that. Or I hate that. I’m judging whether I like something. And that’s very unusual in the movie business.

Do you feel like there’s a specific film of yours that never got the attention it deserved?
I think all of them.

Thanks, Jeremy.

Follow Oscar on Twitter.

Image via Flickr.
Montreal is going through an unprecedented wave of fatal drug overdoses that is spreading terror among users.

At least 56 overdoses linked to the intake of street drugs, including heroin and cocaine, have been reported in Montreal since May—18 of which were fatal. By comparison, there are usually an average of 1.3 deaths following drug injection per month in the city. Early reports show a number of these overdoses occurred after users injected heroin, but other substances are likely to be involved. Victims were between 20 and 61 years old and were both regular and occasional users.

The situation has gotten so out of hand that Montreal’s public health department has launched an investigation into the cases, and a prevention campaign has been set up inciting users to use extra precaution such as testing their drugs and using in the presence of someone else.

“Users are feeling terrorised,” said Dr. Marie-Ève Morin, and addiction specialist working at OPUS clinic in Montreal.

She thinks traffickers have wrongly manipulated the heroin batch currently circulating on the Quebec market.

“Either they didn’t know what they were doing, or they made a mistake,” Dr. Morin told VICE.

Fentanyl, a deadly substance that has been causing dozens of deaths in the US, has been found to be at play in at least one case, but lab tests have so far indicated that a highly concentrated heroin is more likely to be the main cause of the overdoses.

Montreal’s drug traffic has been going through big shifts after one of the local mafias running the trade saw its leader disappear, as revealed in La Presse last week. According to La Presse, for years, the heroin market was dominated by a small number of experienced organizations: the Turkish mafia, some Iranian importers, a leader of the Italian mafia clan, and a branch of "traditional organized crime in Quebec" who exercised a quasi-monopoly. New inexperienced traffickers have taken advantage of the chaos that followed the probable death of Turkish mafia leader Attilla Gascar, which has left the drug trade in shambles.

Increasing consumption of opioids (synthetic drugs such as oxycodone and codeine that resemble opiates like heroin and morphine) across North America has also changed the regional drug trade, especially since prescription drugs like Oxycontin have become more difficult to procure, and illegal labs have jumped in to fill the need. Last year Montreal police seized an unprecedented amount of synthetic drugs during a major bust, including three kilos of fentanyl.

“Cocaine is losing ground in favour of opioids,” said Dr. Claire Morissette, from Montreal’s public health department.

It is still unclear whether the current situation is temporary or not; in the meantime the debate around prevention has been amped up in light of the recent overdoses. Health professionals and community workers have been wondering why naloxone, a substance used to counter the effects of opiates and used to treat overdoses, is only available in Montreal’s emergency rooms. Quebec’s ministry of public health announced a plan to make naloxone available to paramedics, but this might take weeks to implement and would be of little help as overdoses following opiate intake can be fatal within minutes. Some think it would be more useful for users to carry a couple of doses around should they witness an overdose.

“That the public health ministry hasn’t made Narcan available to us baffles me,” said Dr. Morin, referring to naloxone’s trade name.

Others think the current wave of overdoses is just another proof that Montreal should open injection sites sooner rather than later, a project that has been stuck in bureaucratic procedures for months since it was announced in late 2013.

“This situation brings a new perspective on the utility of supervised injection sites,” says Morissette.


@flaviehalais

Photo via Flickr user Joakim Formo

When Travis Kalanick and his co-founders launched Uber in 2009, it was just “about being baller in San Francisco.”

How things have changed.

Kalanick appeared on Bloomberg TV Thursday to discuss Uber's rollout in Hong Kong. He made just two references to the Mercedes S-Class cars that will pick up Uber Black users there before the host turned their conversation to less glamorous subjects, like Uber's conflicts with taxi drivers' trade groups and regulators.

“Now, there's choice words I've had at times for the taxi industry,” Kalanick said, later adding, “In many ways they don't provide choice for consumers and they've often lobbied city governments to restrict choice and restrict supply and restrict convenience for people who live in those cities.”

That seems to be how the last two years have gone for Uber, beginning with fines from the California Public Utilities Commission in November 2012. What began as a story about tech-industry geekerati coming up with a more convenient way to tool around in luxury cars has turned into one about political insiders haggling over the particulars of chauffeurs' licenses and insurance policies. In a recent interview with Re/Code's Kara Swisher, Kalanick said the company was in a “political campaign” against “an asshole named 'Taxi.'”

The disruption Uber brought to the way cities work turns out to look a lot like politics as usual, as full of the crazy and terrible and banal as the rest of the world. While Kalanick might see himself in the middle of a battle with good guys and bad guys, the events of the past few years have made it more and more difficult to pick out heroes and villains.

There are other companies like Uber—Lyft and Sidecar, for example. But thanks to Uber's financial success and its three-tiered business plan, with various combinations of black cab, taxi and part-time individual drivers at work through the company's services depending on what each city will allow, it has attracted the lion’s share of attention. Kalanick has taken the opportunity to try to redirect any negative heat towards the taxi industry—and, given increasing demands that Uber drivers take on more expensive insurance policies, he may look to insurers next. But the company’s recent history looks less like that of an underdog on the ropes and more like an $18 billion business opening new markets every way it can, with regulators scrambling to keep pace. Uber is now active in more than 100 cities, and Lyft in 67.  

Uber and Lyft both appear to follow a pattern in launch after launch. First, they set up operations in a city under a legal theory about how they are allowed to operate under that place's current rules. In the US, at least, regulators often disagree. As Uber and Lyft continue to operate, they build a user base. If regulators haven't cleared the company's drivers to work—and that has often been the case—then fines start to pile up for drivers and possibly even the companies themselves. At about the same time, the companies start sending representatives and lobbyists to meet with regulators. Eventually, lawmakers pass new rules that make room for companies like Uber and Lyft to operate legally.

As all of this goes on, strange and sad things happen that call into question the idea that Uber and Lyft don't need much regulation. It may be true that the taxi industry is also throwing “mud” at Uber, as Kalanick told Swisher in May. The company has been named in at least a dozen ongoing federal civil lawsuits around the country, many of which are brought by customers or taxi or livery cab drivers. It's also true that many of the counts in those lawsuits have been dismissed.

For example, one Uber user sued the company after he and his fiancé got in an altercation with an Uber-summoned driver in an Arby's parking lot in Oklahoma City. He says the driver asked his fiancé why she was “being a bitch,” so he told him to stop right away and let them out. After pulling into the Arby's lot, according to the civil suit, the driver walked around the car, punched him in the face, got back in the car, and sped off. The driver, an Air Force veteran, is quoted denying this version of events. He has said the passengers actually became belligerent and assaulted him, and criticized the company for its handling of the incident.

Either way, The Oklahoman reports no criminal charges were filed. A federal judge took Uber off the list of defendants in the civil suit. The driver no longer works with Uber. In general, Uber relies on a ratings system to track which drivers are good and which ones may need to be let go.

But these incidents seem to have little to do with jealousy from old-school cab drivers. Earlier this month, an Uber driver allegedly took passengers along on a high-speed chase in Washington, DC. In Los Angeles, a driver was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping for purposes of sexual assault. Another driver in Seattle has been cleared of a rape accusation in what remains an active sexual assault investigation. Then there's a suit seeking to hold Uber liable for the 2014 New Year's Eve death of a 6-year-old girl. She was struck by an UberX driver who was not carrying a passenger at the time.

Uber has said that UberX drivers are backed by commercial insurance while carrying passengers, but that 2014 New Year's Eve incident has motivated new California legislation that would raise insurance requirements for drivers even when between fares.

Then there are Uber's conflicts with competitors and drivers themselves.

One such claim is that a 20 percent "gratuity" Uber includes in the bill for its users is deceitful because a chunk of that money goes to the company and not to the driver. This argument appears in several pending federal cases brought by customers and drivers.

“Uber driver partners are licensees of the Uber platform and earn 80% of every fare,” Lane Kasselman, an Uber spokesman, said in an email. “Although it varies by market, Uber generally has a 20% commission for lead generation and marketing.”

I asked him if “fare” includes charges labeled as gratuities.

“There is no need to tip with Uber,” he replied.

Confused? Perhaps that's why the cases haven't been dismissed and are still pending in federal court.

Another claim is that Uber overburdens drivers with the cost of new cars in the name of keeping its fleet up to date. In Seattle, Uber drivers—whom the company treats as independent contractors, not employees—want to form a union to fight to improve working conditions. One of their complaints, according to the Stranger, an independent Seattle weekly newspaper, is that the list of vehicles approved for Uber Black, the black-car service, changes so frequently that it puts a strain on drivers' wallets.

A livery cab driver who works in New York City made that charge against Uber in a case now before the State Supreme Court. In the suit, he says he was bumped to UberX because his 2010 Chrysler was not on a new list of approved Uber Black vehicles. He traded it in for a newer model worth nearly $65,000. Just five months after buying that 2013 Chrysler 300, Uber notified him that this vehicle, too, had been bumped from the Uber Black list and he was once again being dropped back to UberX. As an UberX driver, he says, he can't make nearly as much money. At issue is whether Uber made any promise to keep the driver on Uber Black for any length of time, which of course the company denies. Uber has filed a motion to dismiss the suit and the case is still pending.

All of these issues—ranging from tragedies to alleged crimes, bizarre events and routine business disputes—are the same kinds that bedeviled the taxi industry long before Uber arrived. Perhaps the biggest actual departure from the norm on Uber's part is its "surge pricing," in which the company raises prices during peak usage times—like snowstorms—and is now testing out what happens if it reduces prices during low-usage summer months. Uber has promised drivers they will not lose money because lower prices will raise demand.

Innovative? Absolutely. Disruptive? Probably so. But revolutionary? One city official I spoke to said surge pricing was among the least problematic issues confronting regulators, because Uber customers know what the cost of a ride is going to be before getting in the car.

"As long as that agreement is made up front," says Adam Stevens, an assistant city attorney in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, "let the free market decide."

Milwaukee officials are working on a bill that would allow Uber, Lyft, and companies like them to operate within their city limits. In the meantime, both companies have been told that drivers might be fined for violating city law—and have stayed in business anyway. (Stevens said this week he was not aware of any drivers actually getting fined, and that the companies would probably reimburse them in any case.)

Milwaukee would join Seattle on a list of places where ride-sharing companies disrupted their way to the bargaining table and got laws passed that cleared the way for their drivers to work, although only after some tough talk—or more—from officials. .

Seattle's mayor was on the verge of issuing a cease and desist letter to Uber and Lyft before officials brokered a deal earlier this month to revise previous legislation that set a cap on the number of drivers each company could have on the road. In California, the state Public Utilities Commission fined Lyft, SideCar, and Uber $20,000 each; last year, the state issued regulations allowing ride-sharing companies to operate. Uber was fined $26,000 and Lyft $9,000 in Virginia, according to a state DMV spokeswoman, Sunni Brown. Both companies appealed and have since applied for authority to operate, although Lyft withdrew its appeal and paid the fine. In Pennsylvania, regulators have filed complaints seeking more than $110,000 in fines from Lyft and about $95,000 from Uber. Both companies are seeking authority to operate there, now, too. (Lyft had already applied when investigators from the state Public Utilities Commission there slapped the company with those fines.)

“Many of those processes have moved forward and turned into a thoughtful, collaborative discussion where we can work with local leaders to create new rules for peer-to-peer transportation,” said a Lyft spokeswoman, Paige Thelen.

Ride-sharing companies are pulling out all the stops to steer that discussion.

On Monday, the Illinois state legislature sent a bill to Governor Pat Quinn that Uber and Lyft don't like. The legislation sets new rules for "ridesharing" services, like prohibiting drivers from working more than 10 hours a day, preventing them from charging more than the most expensive cab ride in the area, and requiring them to obtain a chauffeur's license. It mandates cars conform to some of the same insurance and safety requirements as taxis and livery cabs. And it requires that 5 percent of vehicles available through a "ridesharing arrangement" like Uber be able to accommodate wheelchairs. It would also keep services like UberX out of airports and cab stands.

Uber's response has been a petition calling on customers to urge Quinn to veto the bill and a public suggestion that it would add more jobs to an already planned expansion of its Chicago office—provided Quinn prevents those provisions from becoming law. In a blog post, Uber writes that the bill's rules "threaten consumers" and that insurance provisions are a maneuver to "protect the taxi monopoly."

“Uber works with leaders across the country to develop regulations that protect driver economic opportunity and rider access to safe, affordable and reliable transportation alternatives,” Kasselman, the Uber spokesman, told VICE.

This might not be a change in position for the company, but it's sure a change in tone. In 2013, the Wall Street Journal’s Andy Kessler quoted Kalanick this way:

"We don't have to beg for forgiveness because we are legal," he says. "But there's been so much corruption and so much cronyism in the taxi industry and so much regulatory capture that if you ask for permission upfront for something that's already legal, you'll never get it. There's no upside to them."

Maybe Uber's rough ride to success over the past two years has motivated the company—including Kalanick, who was more diplomatic in his Bloomberg TV appearance Thursday—to get better at this whole politics thing.

The company has hired lobbyists in Illinois to advocate on its behalf, according to public records, including Governor Quinn’s former chief of staff, Jack Lavin. In New York, it made a similar move by bringing on former NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission official Ashwini Chhabra earlier this year. And Kara Swisher at Re/code reports that Uber is looking for a senior communications hire to head up its growing government affairs staff.

All signs point to a rapid shift by Uber and companies like it from trying to ignore politics to actively shaping it. That shift must be informed by the fines, the penalties, the accidents and the allegations of the past two years—not just, as Uber CEO Travis Kalanick puts it, the “asshole named 'Taxi.'”

In Milwaukee, for example, officials are in discussions with Uber and Lyft about whether their background checks, vehicle inspections and insurance provisions are in line with what the city wants. Thelen, the Lyft spokeswoman, says the company's background checks are done by an industry-leading third party, and claims they meet or exceed local standards in most cities where the service operates. Uber makes similar claims about its own safety standards. But according to Stevens, the Milwaukee official, officials there want the police department to check drivers working within the city limits, the argument being that cops have access to databases that no civilian can see. The city wants to find suitable third parties to handle things like vehicle inspections, too, rather than taking companies at their word that cars are up to code.

Even with an algorithm matching passengers and drivers rather than someone at a radio console, many problems seem to crop up for Uber and its brethren—just as they do for regular cabs.  Passengers get angry. Drivers get lost, or worse. Cars break down. Collisions happen and sometimes, sadly, six-year-old kids wind up dead. Hiding all of this behind a smartphone interface changes nothing. Uber cannot protect its drivers or its users from all of the terrible things that happen while people are humping to Point A from Point B in the modern city, and there are not enough lobbyists in the world to convince a state or a city that it isn't within their rights to force the company to try harder anyway.

"I think the companies are recognizing that there's going to be some regulation," says Stevens, the Milwaukee official. "They can't just operate outside of the law."

Nick Judd is a freelance writer whose work has also appeared at Yahoo News and techPresident. Follow him on Twitter.

Who thought that such filthy stuff would come out of Caden's mouth? Watch our little friend tell jokes about his, uh, larger endorsements—and somebody go tell his parents.

Net neutrality backers at a recent rally in Vermont. Photo via Flickr user Free Press

After releasing a proposal that effectively ends net neutrality this spring, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opened a comment period for members of the public to speak up and provide their two-cents on the future of the internet before the regulation is finalized. That comment period, after an unprecedented number of e-mails and letters came in, has been extended to today. But do these comments—which includes indignation at what at least one participant has deemed the FCC's "poop-laden plan"—even matter?

The only path forward for real net neutrality, a rule that prevents internet Service Providers (ISPs) from creating internet fast lanes and slow lanes, is for the FCC to reclassify broadband services as a public utility. That much was made clear by a federal court ruling in January. Will the outpouring of public demand for a free and open internet result in any movement on the issue? A look closer at the meetings that have gone on shows that the ISP lobby, including Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and others, has the FCC under its grip, and like so many policy disputes in Washington, the industry has gamed the process from the start.

VICE has obtained newly released ethics forms and meeting letters that show that the back and forth between regulators and industry is really just industry groups talking to their former colleagues. Beyond FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, a former cable and wireless industry lobbyist, the revolving door spins throughout the entire agency. When a cable group asked to meet with the FCC on Net Neutrality, Wheeler dispatched an aide who just months ago worked for Comcast. When Verizon asked for a similar meeting, who led the gathering? A former Verizon lobbyist who recently became the FCC's general counsel. And a number of so-called public interest groups demanding that the FCC oppose public utility status are in fact ISP lobbyists in disguise.

Take Daniel Alvarez, an FCC attorney hired by Wheeler. As we reported in April, Alvarez worked in 2010 for Comcast to lobby against the first effort to enact net neutrality. VICE just obtained Alvarez's ethics form that shows that he was working for Comcast as recently as last year, just before he was hired to help oversee the latest net neutrality talks. In May of this year, representatives from the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (an umbrella group that represents the cable industry, including Comcast), requested a meeting on net neutrality and reclassification with the FCC. Who represented Wheeler at that meeting? Dan Alvarez.

In March, representatives from Verizon requested and obtained a meeting with the FCC to complain about the "adverse consequences" of reclassifying the internet as a public utility (and net neutrality). The FCC's representative to that meeting was none other than acting general counsel Jon Sallet, who just a few years ago was a partner to Verizon's lobbying firm, the Glover Park Group.

The comments from the public are being astroturfed as well. Last month, we revealed that two fake consumer groups funded by the ISP industry, Broadband for America and the American Consumer Institute, were lobbying the FCC to back down from reclassifying broadband as a utility. And a look at more recent submissions shows a steady stream of random civic organizations with ties to the ISP industry continuing this trend. On Thursday, for example, the Chicago area chapter of the National Black Chamber of Commerce filed a letter to the FCC claiming that reclassification of the internet as a public utility would somehow be a "major step backward for minority entrepreneurship and black business owners." The NBCC, notably, has received funds from Verizon and a cell phone industry lobbying group. 


Also on Thursday, VICE caught wind of what appears to be a slick new strategy by Comcast to buy left-leaning support. During the live stream of Vice President Joe Biden’s speech to Netroots Nation, a liberal blogging convention, MSNBC.com aired a bizarre ad claiming that Comcast’s proposed merger with Time Warner Cable—which is currently awaiting regulatory approval, given the fact that the combined company will create monopolistic-like conditions by controlling about two-thirds of the US market—would somehow enhance net neutrality protections.

"How do you make online better?" the commercial asks. The ad continues by claiming that Comcast is committed to net neutrality, before declaring: "Comcast and Time Warner Cable: together is better for more people." A staffer on Capitol Hill noticed the video and sent us the clip. View the video below:

The claim by the MSNBC ad that Comcast not only supports net neutrality, but that its merger with Time Warner Cable would somehow enhance such protections, is odd. In May, Comcast filed a letter to the FCC explicitly opposing the effort to reclassify broadband services under Title II regulations. And for years, Comcast has battled net neutrality. But the feel-good ad, which builds on a Comcast marketing campaign that began in April, creates a blanket deception to hoodwink viewers about both the merger and the company’s position on the open Internet.

So on paper, the FCC is supposed to protect the interests of consumers and the general public. But the ISP lobby has transformed the entire net neutrality process into a kabuki theater of sorts, one in which the stage of policymaking appears to be open and honest, but all the main actors are playing from a familiar, industry-written script. 

Lee Fang, a San Francisco–based journalist, is an investigative fellow at the Nation Institute and co-founder of Republic Report.

Melody Kush. All images via Roslyn Julia.
In the early 2000s, Melody Kush was just a Canadian girl living in Montreal trying to get by working barely over minimum wage. Today she is an internet superstar living off the money she makes from masturbating in her bedroom.   

Viewers on sites like Chaturbate and MyFreeCams purchase tokens (worth about five cents each) to tip models like Kush. The hundreds of camgirls broadcasting on these sites at any one time work towards goals of token amounts that get them naked and doing various sexual activities.

I meet Kush at her apartment on a day in late June, ironically St-Jean-Baptiste Day, a Quebec holiday. Since it’s the beginning of summer when kids are back from school and people are vacationing, it’s a “crunch-time” camming season when she has to hustle harder to make bank. But she does it. In fact, Kush says the most she’s made in one sitting of getting herself off on webcam was around $2,200 in four hours—that’s about $550 per hour, so you can start reconsidering your career now. She regularly makes at least $200 in the few hours of each day she cams, and she usually cams four days a week.   

She takes me to the scene of the moneymaking: a small, whimsical room with a single bed covered in a polka-dot duvet with a blow-up unicorn head mounted on the wall (she calls him Sterling). She excitedly opens her “tickle chest,” a box filled with at least 100 sex toys immaculately organized at the foot of the bed. Next to it stands a closet exploding with lingerie, brightly coloured clothing, and flashy accessories like a white, faux-fur animal hood with blue LEDs. Part of being a camgirl is being creative.       

“There’s my glowstick camshow. You crack a bunch of glowsticks, you put them in the bottom of the tub, you put like two-three inches of water… then I have two blacklights and you put them in there and then I have a glow-in-the-dark dildo and I also have some dildos that light up and you wear glow nail polish, glow-striped socks.”

Clearly this girl isn’t fucking around when it comes to the cam game. By this point, you might be wondering how she got here, the answer is simple—she had an experienced, business-minded mentor.           

Ariel Rebel is essentially the mother of an industry family Kush belongs to: The Rebels. Rebel recruited Kush when she met her while working together at a skate clothing shop in Montreal. They started doing cam shows together and eventually Kush sustained enough interest to go out on her own. “Mama Rebel,” as Kush calls her, wanted to create a safe environment with the group where industry models could support each other. Ten years later, they have five solid members including themselves and Gemma Lynx (from Ontario), Minnie Scarlet, and Alaina Fox (both from California). They’re all in the process of launching their own solo sites as Rebels, but Kush has had her own erotic blog since her debut on the internet in 2007, Breakfast at Melody’s. Today she’s moved her blog over to Rebel Mayhem.

Of course these girls are hot, that goes without question. But Kush’s personality is the main reason for her success.

“Camming is really like having your own TV show,” she says. “If you’re a pretty face and you talk like a cardboard box, you’re not going to do well.”  



She’s constantly smiling, giggling, and putting the most positive spins on every word she utters, on and off cam. Even if she’s having a bad day, she has a moderator in her chatroom to let her know “Hey, stop being a bitch”—her fiancé. He’s always there to watch over and encourage her, as well as silence any assholes in the chat log.

"I think showing people how special our bond is and sharing her camming moments creates a special mood in her room and really shows people our love. It seems to attract all the right people,” her fiancé says. “The fact that she’s naked is an absolute bonus, I mean who doesn’t want to see their lover naked and enjoying themselves."

They’re not shy about their relationship online. Even though some have said it “ruins the fantasy,” a vast majority of her fans were happy for her when she announced last year that she’d be getting married. They even are helping fund her big day—her best day economically on cam was a fundraiser for her wedding. But that doesn’t mean that her career hasn’t affected her relationship.     

“Having to put so much sexual energy into my work doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for the sexual energy I want to have towards my relationship,” she says. “I’m fulfilling a lot of other people’s sexual fantasies before my own and that can be an obstacle.” And while her fiancé has been her biggest support system, some other important people in her life are in the dark when it comes to her cam career.

“The fact that what could be weighing right now is the need to tell my family,” she says out of nowhere to me. While her brother knows, neither of her parents do—she says she wants to be more established before she drops that bomb. She’s hoping she gets to that point with the launch of her solo site in the next year, but she already has a huge number of fans.

She has over 91,000 followers on her Chaturbate. Watching is free, but in order to make requests or contribute to a goal, tokens must be purchased and given to her. She regularly has over 1,000 people watching her at a time—one of her fans even joked with her, “How does it feel to have an entire small hockey arena watching you masturbate?” They’re from all over the world, but there’s an especially high volume of Dutch and French fans since she cams in the afternoon when it’s evening in Europe.

“If people are talking to me in French for two sentences, I can tell immediately if they’re from Quebec or if they’re from France,” Kush says.

Kush is extremely Canadian through and through—she was born in Vancouver, went to high school in Ottawa, and moved to Montreal at 18. She’s 30 years old, of Acadian decent, and speaks both French and English fluently. And she’s a huge Ottawa Senators fan.

Besides watching hockey, she has a bit of an off-kilter hobby that goes right along with her skill of hustling. She’s really into bar games, specifically poker. She enters online tournaments and regularly places. Her fans have even helped fund a few trips to her “mecca”—Las Vegas, where she did a cam show where she “stuck a dildo to the window and basically fucked [the city].”  

Just like Kush, Montreal is sexy and that’s no secret. Even though this girl has to work from her apartment most of the time, she’s no homebody.

“It is such a sexually liberated city—I can be open about what I do for a living to new people that I meet without worry of being judged,” Kush explains. “Having this city at my disposal when I do get out of the house is really important.”

She’s really into electronic music, so if she needs to schedule around going out to party, it’s no issue. Oh, and it’s no coincidence her name is Kush: she stays high, lighting up every day on her morning walk to go get coffee.           

“I grab a coffee, I go down to the water, I smoke my doobie, I shower, I get ready for cam, I answer my emails, whatever,” Kush says.

Camming is not the only time she’s working—she’s constantly coming up with contests and themes for her shows, while planning out her full schedule. Even though she’s killing it right now, she knows that her career as a camgirl is not forever. She has a serious interest in being on the other side of the camera photographing models in the future, but for now she is happy being one of the sweetest internet hustlers out there. 


@allison_elkin

Image via Tumblr.
This week in feminism, I’ve got some good news: While the Morgentaler Clinic in New Brunswick is closing, there’s a plan in place to save it (at least temporarily). And the coolest woman to grace this planet is officially the Japanese artist who has created a vagina boat. That’s right: A real boat molded after her own vagina.

But are you a feminist who hasn’t yet been angered this week? Looking for something a little different? If so, never fear, because I’ve got you covered with the most ridiculously anti-woman Tumblr ever.

So, let’s get on with it.

Screencap via the Morgentaler Clinic.
Save New Brunswick Women from Having to Travel Out of Province For an Abortion

You may have heard by now that New Brunswick’s only abortion clinic is closing on July 18. But Reproductive Justice NB is rallying to #savetheclinic, and there is a fundraising effort going on right now so the group can lease the clinic in order to ensure women have access to safe abortions.

They admit it’s a temporary solution, but it’s a hell of a lot more than the government will do. Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives (which are essentially the very same thing in NB) have issued any response to the group’s call for help.

Now, there’s a way to stand up and circumvent that.


Screencap via Twitter.
Sex Workers Fight Bill C-36 By Getting A Little Bit… Personal

To fight back against the incredibly harmful and backward Bill C-36, Ottawa sex workers are compiling a list of all MPs who regularly use their services. Particularly Tory MPs.

I am so, so excited about this. At Slutwalk last week, Heather Jarvis thanked everyone for being present, and for being part of a revolution. I’m choosing to believe there is a revolution going on right now when it comes to women’s rights, and sex workers are leading it. They’re the ones fighting for an end to body policing and laws designed to oppress women and repress everyone’s sexuality.

Now, as stodgy old white bread crusts in parliament try to make sex work illegal by criminalizing clients, sex workers are turning the tables by playing their game—and making them the criminals in the process.

I’m not going to name names of politicians I hope to see outed—but I cannot wait to see this list. I hope sex workers in other areas decide to pick up the torch and do the same with politicians in their own communities—then we may actually get somewhere in stopping C-36 in its tracks.



Screencap via the Guardian.
Normalizing And Celebrating the Pussy Is Highly Illegal in Japan

My hero of the week is undoubtedly Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi. She made an actual 3D scan of her pussy and scaled it up to the size of a boat. This woman is making it possible for pussy lovers to be fully, completely and thoroughly ensconced in pussy.

Of course, she was arrested for it. Japanese authorities thought her project merited “obscenity charges,” because she emailed a scan to funders of her campaign so they could get their fingers on their own pussy boat.

The 42-year-old artist has been trying to normalize the vagina for years.

"When I pronounce the word 'vagina,' men especially get very angry with me," Igarashi says. "Don’t be angry. Vagina is just a word."

Unfortunately, people are angry, indeed. Igarashi faces charges that will either land her in jail for two years, or she’ll receive a fine of 2.5 million yen ($25,000 USD) if convicted.

There, there, men and prudes! Vaginas aren’t scary; they’re fun and awesome! And if you agree, there’s a change.org petition to free Igarashi and let the pussy vessel roam free and un-oppressed.

Igarashi has been making and decorating molds of her vagina for years. Because it’s taboo to talk about the vagina in Japanese culture, she was simply curious about whether hers was “normal.” She even decorated some vagina molds to look like little dolls!And golf courses! Igarashi-san, will you be my new best friend, please?

Image via Tumblr.
People Misunderstand Feminism Entirely, Make Tumblr About It

This past week, I discovered one of the most horrendously ignorant websites I have ever had the misfortune to stumble across.

People, largely women, have taken to Tumblr to announce all of the reasons Why We Don’t Need Feminism. It features statements I can only assume are being made by people who have never read a single feminist work or had a discussion with an actual feminist. Though it started out with photos of women holding up signs with their anti-feminist statements, most all of the statements are now anonymous.

A few choice quotes from some hyper-intelligent anonymous posters:

“[sic] We dont need feminism because, why does it matter how women are viewed? Shouldnt we be teaching everyone that it doesnt matter what other people think. Not that you are a person because you arr told you are by others. Not sure if that made any sense.”

“I don’t need feminism because us women can do it all, we can vote, have casual sex, have babies and still have a fulfilling career, or be stay at home mommies. We can do anything we want.”

Srsly, tho, library cards are free! Photo via Tumblr.
Honestly, you know what? I feel truly sorry for these women. Is feminism failing? Or are these girls choosing willful stupidity over any sort of engagement with the real world? Either way, I sat and drank a bottle of wine and angry-read this thing for at least half an hour. I couldn’t look away. Here are two more gems:

“I do not need feminism because I am a Christian, and I believe that we should value all children of God, not just the female or the male ones. Supporting any movement that excludes on the basis of gender goes against a spirit of true tolerance that can only be reached through a valuing of all people as equal in God’s eyes.”

Oh, rly? So because you’re a Christian, the fact that an American woman can expect to make only 77 cents on every dollar a man makes is just fine. The fact that one in five women you love WILL be sexually assaulted is fine, because God is on your side! And the fact that your ass and titties are salivated over by people who think they deserve access to your body is also just 100 percent fine. And this

“I do not need feminism because women in America have more rights than women anywhere else”

Yeah? Well if you work for certain companies, you’re hard-pressed to control your own uterus. And if you happen to get raped, it’s likely no one will believe you. But you know who thinks you should have powers of bodily autonomy, and who will believe you and fight for you if you are raped? Feminists. Further, it is unbelievably insensitive to undermine the importance of women’s rights in countries OTHER THAN ‘Murica. FYI.

Young ladies who don’t need feminism? I’ve seen many of your photos on this site, and you are very young, and very smug-looking. It must be properly divine to stew in your own cluelessness and avoid taking responsibility for anything, to feel as though there’s nothing to fight for. But if you truly think you don’t need feminism, I challenge you to spend a day researching the inequalities in this world, or even, you know, to read a single newspaper, and come away feeling the same.

Image via Flickr user theogeo.
Thoughts On PUAs

Last week, VICE published my interview with a former pick up artist. Lots of dudes emailed me to elaborate on my thoughts regarding pick up artists as a whole.

For the record: I think the majority of that community is reprehensible at best, and emotionally and physically abusive at worst. (Yes, trying to force sex on someone showing “last minute resistance” is abusive. No, she doesn’t want it, AT ALL, if she is literally shoving you away). I do not sanction cooking up plans to manipulate women you find particularly stupid into bed.

That said, I think some people become involved in the community because they’re simply awkward and looking to meet someone, and aren’t quite sure how to do so. That was my subject’s story. Should he be vilified? I don’t know him well—we spoke for half an hour—and he isn’t perfect, by any means. Neither am I, neither are you, etc. Let’s just get over that fact for a sec. But he wasn’t an evil satyr on a hump’n’dump quest, either. He just wanted to learn how to approach women. There are layers here, and if the feminist community pushes people away whose participation in these communities was truly innocent, we’ll only nudge them further down that path through our alienation.

It’s important to listen to why people become involved in PUA activities so that we can figure out why it goes to its extremes. Rape is not about sex—it’s about power. The same goes for the deliberate attempt to manipulate women into bed—we tell men much of their power lies in their ability to make a sexual conquest. Why and how, exactly, do we do this? Without exposing the answers to these questions, we won’t understand the deep disrespect these men have for women. It’s not likely any real change can be made until that is understood.

Finally, if any of this is making you feel sad or frustrated and you have five minutes, watch this video of amother talking about how awesome her trans daughter is for a better pick-me-up than cocaine.

@sarratch

Welcome to another edition of This Week in Racism. I’ll be ranking news stories on a scale of one to RACIST, with “one” being the least racist and “RACIST” being the most racist.

–The upcoming NWA biopic—cleverly titled Straight Outta Compton—is one of the most hotly anticipated film releases of the next year in the black community. NWA is a seminal group in hip-hop history, and exposed the overwhelming tension between LA's black underclass and the police, which would eventually come to a head in the 1992 Rodney King riot. The story of Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren, DJ Yella, and Eazy E is one that is intrinsically linked with racial animosity and mistrust. It's a uniquely black story about black cultural icons. That's why a recently released casting call for black female actors caused such a disturbance this week.

The casting call is broken up into four distinct types, or levels of perceived beauty. Being light-skinned is preferred, and synonymous with attractiveness. The lowest group requires women to be darker, and specifically, "poor, not in good shape." I think it's safe to say that the casting office that prepared this call was not intending to be prejudiced. That said, it illuminates a very complicated, rarely discussed issue within the black community: the lighter your skin, the more capable you are of being accepted into the upper classes. Alternatively, dark skin is associated with poverty and ignorance. It's telling that Beyonce is referenced as an avatar for black female sexuality, because she's been dogged by controversy over her skin seemingly getting lighter for the past few years. 

The perception is that the lighter you are, the more you can assimilate into the white ruling class. This isn't just an African-American problem, either. This goes on in India, Mexico, and Japan too. The light-skinned "ideal" dominates pop culture in these countries. Models, actors, TV personalities, and politicians overwhelmly tend to be lighter. Ultimately, Straight Outta Compton is a film about real people and real situations, and that world discriminates against dark-skinned people. Instead of specifically targeting this film, ask yourself why this scenario even exists in the first place.

–The Ku Klux Klan knows that in the 21st century, marketing has to be truly be clever in order to be successful. It's not enough to just burn a cross or shout racial slurs into a bullhorn. This is the era of Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Grindr, and countless other networking tools. What newfangled techniques are the Klan using to get their message across to impressionable white youth? Candy, of course. Delicious, sweet candy. This is apparently an initiative designed to soften the image of the Klan, whose reputation suffered when they publically announced their hatred of just about everyone who isn't white. It's been a tough 200 years for the KKK, folks. Hopefully, a chocolate bar will help you forget.

Robert Jones, who holds the prestigious office of "Imperial Klaliff of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan," (try fitting that on a standard-sized business card) told VICE News, "It’s one of our recruitment techniques, and it’s also to let everyone know that the Klan is still out there and still active." This reminds me of going to my grandma's house for the weekend. She'll jabber on about how she's "not dead yet" or something, and then placate me with a Werther's Original when my blood sugar starts to get too low. That might be a good slogan for the KKK, actually: "The Ku Klux Klan—Kinda Like Your Grandma, But Racist." RACIST

–The co-creator of a new Canadian sitcom put his weiner in the chow mein when he decided to tweet a few clumsy jokes about Chinese people during a flight from Los Angeles to Calgary. Brent Piaskoski, executive producer of CTV's Spun Out, starring Dave Foley, tweeted the above in what he subsequently called a "hasty attempt to be funny."

I know when I'm desperate to tweet something funny (because, you know, if you aren't tweeting every two to three minutes, you might DIE), I immediately go for the "Chinaman" material. My grandma loves that stuff! Piaskoski deleted the tweets, but not before the intrepid folks at the Toronto Star screencapped his "jokes." On the bright side for Piaskoski, America now knows he exists. 8

The Most Racist Tweets of the Week:

Some faggot ass dune coon hacked my debit card and bought 8k worth of fucking air line tickets !!!

— the legend (@JonnyHuck69) July 17, 2014

Why do people shop at nigger garage sales? To get all there stuff back

— niggers jokes (@niggers___suck) July 18, 2014

@MOSHESABACH IVE ALREDY FUCKED YOUR KIKE SISTER AND SOLD HER FOR RAPE U KIKE NIGGER, SIEG HAIL U DIRTY FUCKING FILTHY JEW KILL U KIKE

— Niko the Don (@Niko1Don) July 18, 2014

Keep fucking staring at me you fucking sand nigger! Watch what fucking happens!!

— david henderson (@D_henderson24) July 15, 2014

Fucking grass cutting ass Wetback ass Messican ass Taco Bell ass Mexicans MAKING ALL THIS DAMN NOISE

— Tone Reigns (@FatherTone) July 17, 2014

Follow Dave Schilling on Twitter.

If you haven’t heard about Eric Garner yet, let me fill you in. He was a 43-year-old father of six who lived in Staten Island, and he died in the street on Thursday after as many as four New York police officers choked him and slammed his head on the ground. The NYPD told the Associated Press that they stopped Garner because he was selling untaxed cigarettes, something he’d been arrested for before. However, witnesses who spoke with local news website Staten Island Live have basically said that’s bullshit. Ramsey Orta, who was on the scene and shot a now infamous video that is making the rounds, can be heard in the clip saying that all Garner had done to get bothered by the police was break up a fight.

In the video, Garner denies any wrongdoing and asks why he’s being hassled. “Every time you see me you want to mess with me," he says in an exasperated tone that most men of color across this country can relate to. Garner, who was 400 pounds and has been described by people who knew him as a “gentle giant,” suffered from chronic asthma and police claim his death was the result of a heart attack suffered during the arrest.

Police say that Garner made a “fighting stance” and resisted arrest. Which, based on the video clip, is complete nonsense, considering we can see him pleading to the officers, "I can't breathe, I can't breathe!" before going completely silent as several officers pile on him.

The video of Garner’s death is disgusting, but I can’t say I was shocked or even outraged the first time I watched it. At this point, as someone who’s read and written about some of these stories time and time again—and who's had firsthand experiences with the way cops treat black males—this kind of reprehensible shit is not surprising at all. After so many cases like Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell, you start to feel desensitized by the seemingly insurmountable injustice that plagues communities of color.

As an editor at VICE, I am well aware of how often the “Black Person Is Abused by Police” story arises in the news cycle. It’s become sort of an evergreen editorial topic for us, like anal sex or circumcision activism. If one of my contributors submits a piece on the phenomenon of unarmed black dudes getting shot by the cops a little past deadline, I just tell them to wait a few weeks and we’ll be able to run it again when the next black kid gets killed with a few of the details changed. We’ve even resorted to running Bad Cop Blotter, a column dedicated to the brutality of American police just to chronicle it all—because the instances are so numerous that we can’t commission full articles every time it happens across the country.

In the time since I wrote about the curious case of Victor White in Louisiana (local police claim that White shot himself while handcuffed in the back of a cop car), my inbox has been getting blown up by grieving black parents and community members from all over the country who are suspicious about the events that transpired in altercations between the police and their loved ones. These stories are everywhere—sometimes they’re never reported or they end in trumped-up charges.

This long legacy of police brutality really hit home for me a couple weeks ago, when I was sitting in a lush theater seat at the industrial-chic BAMcinématek to see the 25th anniversary screening of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. If you haven’t seen the classic film, it takes place in the late 80s on the hottest day of the year in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood as tensions mount between the blacks, Italians, and the NYPD. The movie hit theaters a few years before the 1992 riots in Los Angeles and can been seen as a perfect encapsulation of that era’s contentious race relations. The climax of the film, which ends in a race riot, is punctuated by the iconic young black character Radio Raheem (played masterfully by Bill Nunn) dying in the choke hold of NYPD officers. Most famously, as Raheem gasps in vain, the camera frames just his twitching feet, making a horrific visual allusion to the history of black lynching in the United States. To me, this shot has always signified a truth often ignored through all of our claims of equality and progress—that the plight of the black man in America hasn’t changed as much as we’d like to think. It’s so incredibly disheartening to think that a film made about the racial turmoil of the early 90s is just as relevant today as it was a quarter of a century ago.

Like the fictional death of Radio Raheem, the actual death of Eric Garner is a blatant reminder that in the eyes of the law, black lives are worth a lot less in this country than whites and that black men are still seen as needing to be controlled and killed if necessary—just as they were in antebellum South. If you’re a black man, that harsh reality is the kind of shit that haunts you so much that it almost seems easier to acquiesce and just give up. Why expend emotion over something that seems like it will never ever change? That’s the question I jadedly asked myself as I watched Eric Garner’s video. It wasn’t until I hit social media that I was pulled out of the hopeless, resolute reality of these incidents. There, on Facebook feeds and Twitter hashtags, I was emboldened by the righteous indignation of my peers of all colors, clamoring at the clear fucked-up-ness surrounding the NYPD and Garner's death.

For what it’s worth, we’ve got to keep talking about the Eric Garners and the Ramarley Grahams and the Kenneth Chamberlains of the world in the hope—even if it is a blind hope—that this shit doesn’t happen again.

Follow Wilbert L. Cooper on Twitter