Israel’s military offensive, Operation Protective Edge, is now in its fourth week. More than 1,200 Palestinians and 50 Israelis have been killed, and the fighting shows little sign of letting up. The majority of those killed in Gaza have been civilians, with many strikes hitting schools, homes, and hospitals. About 40 percent of Gazans have been told by Israel to evacuate, but they have few if any options for where to evacuate to.

In the ninth dispatch from Israel and Palestine, VICE News correspondent Danny Gold is in Gaza talking to Palestinians as they sift through the rubble of their homes, and visiting makeshift outdoor and indoor camps where displaced residents have fled.

Class is in session. Image via Pegas Productions (link NSFW).
Pegas Production, a Quebec-based porn company producing “porn for Quebecers by Quebecers,” was having trouble finding viable actors for their website. The solution: a $149 one-day school to teach men how to bump uglies like their favourite porn stars. Pegas Producer Nichola LaFleur realized that the problem was that their porn “actors” didn’t know how to act, so he created a hands-on approach to casting.

As the Journal de Montreal reported, Pegas Productions are searching for “good actors” for their films. I’ve never associated good acting with porn, because, well, who cares about the acting, really.

During the ‘trial-run’ (the first class), LaFleur received 50 applications, accepted ten, and chose four to go on to phase two. Phase two is literally making porn, just without turning the cameras on, which I imagine is as awkward as it sounds.

The first day of porn school begins with theory, safety, the physical and mental qualities of a porn star, and how to prepare for a shoot. Lesson two is a lunch Q&A with two of Pegas’ porn pros. Students have an hour to ask anything and everything about the realities of making skin flicks. Finally, students are put to task during the practical stage where students are placed with a porn star and taught the most common positions while trying to keep their boners in check.

VICE spoke to Nichola LaFleur to find out if a day at porn school is as weird as it sounds.

VICE: Where did you come up with the idea for Porn School?
Nichola LaFleur: We were having a lot of trouble finding good porn actors. I realized that we could teach aspiring porn stars the tricks of the trade, and in the process recruit those we thought were best for Pegas Productions.

What was the application process like?
Fifty people applied. They were required to send in a picture of themselves naked and erect. From there we sent them questionnaires and gave them information on the realities of porn. A lot of people think that they’ll make a lot of money in porn. In Quebec, that can’t be the number one motivation to get into porn. I don’t know about elsewhere, but here it won’t be full-time work, and it won’t pay $10,000 a shoot—unless you’re amazing.

We look for confidence, a good attitude, the penis (which can’t be too small, but too big can also be problematic) and looks. Looks aren’t as important, because there are all sorts of people with different preferences. So sometimes we’re looking for a young, white, skinny boy, but other times we need someone that’s the opposite of that.

The application process has changed this time around. The only way to apply is to subscribe to the course on Pegasproductions.com. If we accept you, you pay the $149 and you’re in.

Why is a really big penis a problem?
A 13-inch penis is definitely better than a three-inch penis, but a little above average is ideal. The problem with a huge penis is that it can be tough to stay hard. So let’s say we need to film for an hour, a person with a large penis can have a lot of difficulty with that.

You mentioned a looking for a “good attitude,” I always assumed the right attitude was “horny.”
It depends. For men, we’re looking for someone who gives 100 percent. Someone who wants to improve, that’s a good attitude. Someone who’s intense but can also be sensual when needed. We look for people who are creative and who participate in the process. We want people who give ideas. Sometimes we [behind the camera] lack the imagination. A porn star who gives their input can help the movie look more natural. That’s a good attitude.

Would you consider a hairy fat man with a gorgeous penis?
Yes, because one huge criteria is personality. Is there something in his personality that makes him stand out? Look at Ron Jeremy, he isn’t in perfect shape but he’s special and it gives him a trademark. Everyone knows his name.

It seems like good acting in porn is oxymoronic. How do you find someone that can act and fuck on camera?
Obviously we want someone who can act throughout, but having sex on film is acting in its own right. The positions look comfortable and fun, but the reality is that these actors are having sex for the camera. Meaning they need to put themselves in a variety of positions that can be grueling. That’s why we pay attention to physique, we need someone who can do and hold those positions while looking natural. It’s what the last part of the class is centered around.

The men in your class are learning to have sex right off the bat?
Kind of—they aren’t having sex. Everyone—including the actors that are helping—are wearing underwear. The point is for the students to get a taste of how porn works and for us to see if they are physically fit enough to be considered to move on to phase two.

So sexual yoga.
Yeah, I guess that’s exactly what it’s like.

I’m picturing a bunch of horny young men in a classroom just waiting to jump on some random girl, is that accurate?
Not at all. I’m estimating that they were 20 to 35 years old. They acted professionally and four went on to phase two.

So people get hired.
Yeah, we’re not here just to take people’s money. The goal is to learn and get hired. Phase two (where the students go to set and perform without us turning the cameras on) is the final process. If we feel that the student is a fit for Pegas Productions, we hire them. We’re expected to hire one or two this time around.

Was anyone really shy, penis or personality wise?
We had shy and timid men. They were dismissed from the school because we are strictly looking for confident men with a good personality. This job takes a person with leadership who is comfortable in front of the camera. A person who can take the initiative to help a woman look her best without being constantly told by producers to do so. A shy person isn’t about to do or be these things.

I’m sure getting kicked out of porn school would be great for their self-esteem. You also teach these guys about the perfect cumshot… what does that entail?
What’s important to know about the cumshot is that, unlike everything else, it can’t be retaken. You have one shot to get it, so the actor’s mentality has to reflect that. Everything has to be perfect. Everyone has to be perfectly in place. It takes a lot of concentration, and nothing should disrupt that perfection until the director calls cut. We also need to teach them (and women) how to react to it.

So an example would be that sometimes it’s the woman who gets him to cum—with a handjob or blowjob—the guy starts cumming and the instinctive reaction is to stop. That can’t happen, she needs to keep going because he could cum six or seven more times. Those are all good shots for the camera.

They need to know how to react when they’re about to cum early—how to hold it, or how to get the cumshot, so they can go back and film the rest later. They also can’t cum into their condom, so that can be tricky.

What was most memorable about the schooling experience?
There wasn’t one thing in particular, but I can tell you that the men really liked the practice better than the theory. We developed 60 characteristics of a porn star and went through them all. It was funny how all of their attitudes changed when it was time to turn theory into practice.

Are you planning on having a school for women?
Eventually.

What are you going to teach, mastering the art of faking an orgasm?
It’ll be adapted specifically for women. So the theory and practice will be fairly different. As far as the fake orgasm goes, that’s not really what we’re looking for. We’re looking for something more natural. We’re looking for people who are looking to have fun and want to experience porn.

Overall, are you happy with the school experience?
So far. We aren’t finished with it, we still have phase two, but we got a lot of great feedback from the students and actors. We were really pleased as well. In fact, the second schooling session—which we’re hoping will take place in about a month and have up to 20 students due to a higher number of applicants—will be practically the same. There will only be minor changes to the program, we’re convinced we have a great formula.


@jesskenwood

Last Sunday, a freak thunderstorm hit Venice Beach, just a stone’s throw away from the VICE office in Los Angeles. The bolts struck more than a dozen people, and one young man was killed. About 50 people in the United States die from lightning each year, but rarely in southern California, where lightning storms are an oddity; only five people have died from lightning in California since 2005.

We wanted to find out what it feels like to be struck by lightning (and survive), so we asked Stuart Archer, who was among the victims of the Venice Beach lightning storm this weekend.

VICE: So, what were you doing on Sunday, before the lightning struck?
Stuart Acher: I was playing volleyball. It was sort of an overcast day, and then out of nowhere, it got black out. It was really ominous. Before I knew it, there was a huge boom explosion sound, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a lightning bolt shoot down into the water and a huge flash right in front of my face.

And that was the lightning. What did it feel like?
It felt like someone punched me in the back of my head. There was kind of a shock down my body and then my whole body locked up and I got thrown to the ground. It wasn’t fun. I would not recommend it.

Did it burn at all?
No, no burning. There are no marks on my body. It was more like.... You know when you get punched? Or, wait, maybe you don’t.

Yeah, not really.
Well, if you’ve ever been knocked out, there’s a lot of pain. But there wasn’t any pain. It was just the shock of being hit really hard and then that was it. Then my head was buzzing, as if I had a really bad cold that made me almost lightheaded. That’s how I still feel, actually. They say it should get better within a few days, and I’m going in for a full physical tomorrow, but no one really knows.

When people get struck by lightning in cartoons, I feel like their hair always sticks straight up. Did that happen to you?
No. It didn’t do any of that stuff. I didn’t, like, see my skeleton for a second or convulse on the floor. But I’m pretty sure I can travel through time now, which is pretty cool.

Oh, really?
I mean, we’ve actually already had this conversation. I’ve already been through it, but I just wanted to relive it again because it was so lovely.

Photo by Flickr user Andrew Malone

So what did you do after the lightning hit?
I went back to playing volleyball.

Wait. You got struck by lightning, you fell to the floor, and then you were like, ‘This seems like a good time to play volleyball’?
I have to tell you, I gave the best serve of my life in that game. I literally did not lose a game of volleyball for the rest of the day.

Powered by lightning.
Exactly. I mean, look: I literally had a moment where I was sitting there and watching the chaos on the beach and, of course, this is before we knew that anybody passed away. I went to the paramedics there, they checked me out and recommended that I go to the hospital, and I was like, ‘Really? I feel fine. I’m a little buzzed, but I feel fine.’ The craziest thing about it was that if you watch the news footage from that day, it starts out in bright sunshine. The whole thing is in bright sunshine! Five to ten minutes after I got hit by lightning, there was not a cloud in the sky. It was bright blue, the sun was out, it wasn’t like some storm rolled in. It was just gone. When I saw that, I looked at the ambulance and I was like, I could go there, and then I looked at the volleyball court where it was gorgeous and sunny, and I was like, I could go there. If I’m going to die, I want to go out having fun. So that’s why I went to play.

Wow.
I am doing a full physical tomorrow, so hopefully I won’t have a horrible follow-up story to tell you.

Have you felt any residual effects from the lightning?
Right now I’m a little sore. My neck is sore and my muscles are sore, almost as if I got into a car accident. My head is sort of lightheaded, like buzzing. I don’t really know how to explain it. It feels like I’m buzzed—a little drunkish, but minus the loss of motor skills. I feel connected to the air.

You feel connected to the air?
Yeah. I mean, I saw that movie Lucy last night, which was probably not the best idea. There’s this moment in the movie where her brain is getting more and more active, and she’s at like 50 or 60 percent usage of her brain, and she has this moment where she explains how she can remember every touch as a kid, and she can feel the electricity in the air touching her face… I’m not saying I’m that, but I can relate to that now.

That’s… wild.
I knew you were going to say that.

Have you felt any difference in your mood?
There’s a huge emotional component to it. I’m a filmmaker and a director, and I have a movie coming out on October 10. It’s called #STUCK, and everybody’s joking that I should change the name to #STRUCK. It’s my passion, and going through this experience is very crazy and has made me realize that my life could just end tomorrow. So, pursue your passion, pursue your dreams. I mean, that poor kid passed away, and he was only 20 years old. Why didn’t I? The way I’ve been dealing with it is that I’ve been trying to have fun. I bought a bunch of lottery tickets, so hopefully they all win. I’m trying to make light of it, because otherwise it’s just too crazy. It’s a random occurrence, but for me, I’ve really just been prioritizing what I love. I mean, I know that’s so cliché. And maybe you’re not going to quit your job, and maybe the realities of life will hinder you from living your life the way you want to and going to the Maldives and going diving. But maybe it’s just one thing you do for yourself each day. Maybe it’s just one moment that you look to yourself and say, ‘Try something new. Do something that scares you.’ Because no matter what you’re doing, there are a lot scarier things out there, like being struck by lightning.

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Peretz Partensky

This is the first in a three-part series on housing the substantial homeless population in San Francisco, featuring stories from the people living on the margins of life in one of America's richest cities. 

San Francisco’s SROs (single room occupancy housing) once used to function as low-cost dormitory-style apartments for the city’s artists, students, transient workers, fresh immigrants, and bachelors. Those newly arrived and/or down on their luck were at least able to maintain some acceptable standard of living.

But the start of the housing crisis in the mid-70s demolished or repurposed at least 9,000 of these long-stay units into expensive apartments and office buildings, relegating the remaining SROs to serve as government-sponsored housing for about 30,000 of the city’s poorest residents; those who are chronically homeless but stable enough fulfill the bare minimum requirements for welfare. In 1970, Justin Herman, the executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency said of the SRO-studded SoMa neighborhood, “This land is too valuable to permit poor people to park on it," echoing the political sentiments that have lead the city to its current crisis in housing the poor.

Today, SRO owners manage to stay viable within the city’s ballooning real estate bubble by offering rent prices equal to a low-income tenant’s federal SSI stipend, around $700 to $1,200 a month, while minimizing responsibility for problems such as bedbugs and mice, electrical malfunctions, dirty bathrooms and kitchens, harassment among residents and from staff, as well as a lack of heat, plumbing, fire safety, maintenance, and repairs. Most tenants are too intimidated to complain because the threat of eviction is so high for such in-demand housing, and their landlords couldn’t be happier to oust tenants from their rent-controlled units.

Photo via Flickr user Mark Coggins

Of the roughly 500 SROs still standing—containing some 19,000 units peppered throughout Chinatown, the Mission, SoMa, and the Tenderloin—over 8,000 residents are adults and seniors with disabilities; short on income, housing alternatives, work opportunities, and adequate ADA accessibility as required by law. A San Francisco Human Services Agency survey of 151 residents found that over half had no access to a kitchen, and as a result, had skipped meals from a lack of resources. Additionally, elevators in these old buildings are often semi-functional or consistently broken, forcing seniors and those with disabilities to either take the stairs or stay trapped in their rooms.

Living in an SRO often places you either one step out of homelessness, or one step away from it; its rooms often occupied via shelter recommendation or caseworker placement. Tenants are a combination of permanent residents with no reason to leave, and unstable temporary assignments, kicked from one building to another. I wanted to know what it was like.

Photo via Wolfgang Ante

Visiting at an SRO requires you to hand over your ID and sign in before being collected by your tenant. Some have multiple gates to be buzzed through before entering the building, or even reaching the front desk. In a way, it felt like a sexless conjugal visit. Many of these hotels have massive dilapidated marquees over the entrance, reminiscent of 70s porno theater signboards. The rest are tucked away in back-alleys, their entrances surrounded by people "waiting for a friend." As I did the same, a woman with dirty, blonde hair shouted in my ear that she’d murdered her husband in 1998, and asked if I could please help her out. I couldn’t bring myself to make eye contact, but I looked down at her thin, torn up arms just as the entrance door buzzed.

The front desk reminded me of medical marijuana dispensary waiting room. A security camera sat at eye level, inches from my face as I waited for the gum-chewing desk clerk to slide a sign-in sheet beneath the inches thick Plexiglas divider. I raised my camera to take a photo, and the clerk promptly snatched the clipboard away, warning that if I took any pictures outside of the tenant’s room, then both he and I could be thrown out. While I waited for my first interview to meet me downstairs, the clerk eyed me as she made a call I couldn’t hear through the divider. After what felt like an itchy eternity, my man came down and I was allowed into the main building.

The hallways and stairwells were much narrower than I was used to, and looked overly thick with bright yellow paint, as though you could press a fingernail in and leave a soft dent. I realized this was probably because it must be easier to paint over blood and dirt than it is to clean them off.

The small elevator was the type with a sliding metal grate you had to pull by hand, and on the wall was a notice to residents saying that Management had received their complaints about the lack of an elevator permit, and that because the paperwork had been in process for the past three years, they were under no obligation to service said elevator.

There was also a warning prohibiting more than two people inside at one time. The air smelled thick with weed and rubbing alcohol, and it appeared that none of the windows up here were open. I started to get dizzy and I was relieved to finally make it into the first room.

Next week, we meet the residents of San Francisco's SROs, and learn how they manage to survive.

Follow Jules Suzdaltsev on Twitter.

All photos via Anthony Tuccitto.
“Miss Cougar Canada 2014” is a thing that exists, and I know that because I am on my way there. The event, which promises to crown this year’s hottest Canadian cougar, is to be held at a club called Crocodile Rock, and will include dancing, an 80s theme, and fun door prizes. I search for an 80s-inspired outfit and settled on a loud Floridian floral top with some Mom Jeans (get it) before getting revved up on some Real Housewives clips.

Google’s second suggested autocomplete for “Toronto Crocodile Rock” is “Cougar.” Following this search yields Yelp reviews, PUA sites and bodybuilding advice forums lauding the spot as “the city’s premier cougar bar” and “a cougar frenzy.” A Metro writer, in a derisive article entitled “Cougar’s just another word for nothing left to lose” says “When I mentioned the bar during a standup routine it evoked instant laughter.” Perusing the search results I feel a wave of Gob Bluth wash over me. I’ve made a huge mistake. I’m not out to mock anyone’s mid-life sexuality. I call a cab and hope it will be a fun, over-the-top, campy romp not dissimilar to a drag show.

On the way to the event, I consider the cougar-as-concept. To the OED, it is primarily a North American term for puma, and “INFORMAL: an older woman seeking a sexual relationship with a younger man." On Facebook, Miss Cougar Canada 2014 is described as a fun pageant and party for women aged 35 and up who prefer the company of younger men. It strikes me that there is not really a word for this situation in reverse—“Woody Allen movies,” maybe.

After all, Colin Firth was almost 30 years old when Emma Stone was born, and they fall whimsically (and, more notably, inoffensively) in love in Magic in the Moonlight. Paul McCartney’s wife is 18 years his junior, George Clooney’s fiancée over 17 years younger. We don’t really have a word for what they’re doing, unless you count the Sheen-ism #winning (I don’t). May/December relationships aren’t of note where the man represents December and his female partner, May. A man dating a much younger woman is par for the course, while a woman dating a much younger man is a phenomenon. In the zoo of middle aged sexuality, a silver fox and a cougar do not have equal standing—look at what happens to Phaedra, or rather, what doesn’t happen to Zeus.

I make the mistake of arriving at “Croc Roc” at exactly the time printed on the event flyer. This is literally hours too early. The bar reminds me of the Ale House, a multi-storey Kingston establishment from my university days. Dirt cheap watered-down drinks complement the club’s jungle decor, producing a vibe best described as “Rainforest Cafe after dark.” The only cougar in sight is a beautiful woman in a wrap dress named Angela selling raffle tickets. A remix of Katy Perry’s Fireworks reminds me that we all feel like a plastic bag, blowing through the wind, wanting to start again, sometimes. The bar is playing footage of actual car crashes.

Scores of research indicate that women reach their sexual peak in their late 30s/early 40s while men’s peak (i.e. the height of their body’s testosterone production) is around 18 years of age. If this is the case, aren’t older women seeking out younger, hornier, more physically capable men simply searching for their equals? Why does the idea of a place for women of a certain age to meet men for the purposes of sex elicit immediate laughter from a standup audience? Surely the location is the set up, not an entire punchline? Further, what is laughable about a Miss Cougar Canada pageant? Beauty pageants for women in their 20s and teens are a normalized practice. We encourage the parade of younger women’s beauty, sexuality and youth, to be scored and quantified, held against each other. In 2013, a nine week-old baby was crowned “Miss Natural Sparkle UK.” And yet the joke is not “women’s sexuality continues to be defined by men’s opinions of their worth.” The joke is “women’s sexuality.”

I hesitate on the raffle tickets and Angela makes a joke of her own: “It’s to benefit cougars, and you’ll be one one day, honey.” According to the definition of the event, she is largely right: while I’ve never been one for younger men, I do hope to a) stay alive for at least the next 9 years or more, and b) continue to have sex throughout that time, preferably often. But the idea of someone calling me a cougar or (somehow worse) self-identifying as such, irks me for reasons I can’t place. I find out later that proceeds of the event will go towards Gilda’s Club, a cancer support centre.



One of the organizers of Miss Cougar Canada 2014 and her daughter.
On the Croc’s top-most patio, women and men of all ages mill about, drinking and smoking in the shadow of towering condos-in-progress. Somewhere on the roof is a girl named Sarah, and I know this because her friend is screaming her name over and over, sloppily carrying around shots destined for Sarah’s lips alone. Her friend is young and tacky, which is fine because we’re allowed to be tacky when we’re young. Her shout-y presence barely registers to the other patio-goers. The event has not technically started and will not for another few hours.

As the bar starts to fill and a cover band sets up, the word cougar is repeated over and over. It feels like something more insidious than a double entendre, though less outwardly offensive than a slur. It is not intended this way by the creator of the event—a kind, smiling woman called “Jules Cougaress" who is fighting cancer—but it feels to me like it cannot be helped. The word is tainted. It has not been “reclaimed” the way the gay community has taken back “queer,” primarily because it has not been used overtly to put down or Other. And yet, that is precisely what it does. The Oxford English Dictionary is wrong to suggest a cougar is simply an older woman looking to have sex with a younger man. We all know the image conjured by the word: a cougar is tawdry and desperate, past her prime. She is too loud and her dress is too tight. She wants it too badly. She is the punchline, not the set up.

The women at the event are not like this. To be fair, there are only two of them. The rest of the crowd is middle-aged men. I am reminded that even the stereotype of the sexually insatiable older woman is nothing compared to the real-life thirst of aging males. They wear their shirts unbuttoned too low and seem harmless, if horny. Jules and Angela are beautiful and friendly amidst this sea of admirers, and tell me 5 women have signed up to participate in the pageant. They do not show up.

I can’t imagine why. As you may have recently read, even 42 year-old women are sexy now. Congratulations, gals, Esquire says you did it. And the truth is, Esquire is right: women at 42 look different today than they used to. Film’s most famous cougar, Mrs. Robinson, was supposedly in her 40s in the 1967 film The Graduate, but 36 in real life. Julianne Moore today is two years older than Rue McLanahan was during the first season of Golden Girls. We don’t even need to bring up Helen Mirren, but I’d like to, because goddamn. An increased awareness re: the dangers of the sun, smoking, drinking, and basically everything that makes the 60s look like a great time in old photos has women and men alike looking better into middle age and beyond. But do incredible looking women (or average looking women, or ugly women, for that matter) really need Tom Junod to tell them that it’s OK for them to continue aging and fucking?

This, to me, is the crux of the cougar issue: women in general, but older women in particular, are allowed an active sexuality only via their relationship to male desire. Another popular search term in the “cougar” porn genre is the more Freudian but equally “me-me-me, please make this about guys” moniker, MILF. While the idea behind the pageant was positive (it’s a cancer fundraiser, for Christ’s sake), it’s frustrating to see that women’s sexuality is still being reduced to pageantry. Older women aren’t the problem—it is sexism that is aging badly.

Near midnight, the photographer and I call it quits. As we leave, a woman in a shiny cocktail dress (and her 50s) wanders in drunkenly with her daughter. The bouncer IDs the daughter only. The woman in the cocktail dress is annoyed. “Oh come on,” she yells, shifting in her heels. “What do you know?”

@monicaheisey

All photos courtesy of Free Rick Wershe Jr.

When ex-Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick landed in jail on public-corruption charges in 2012, he needed some advice. He sought out Rick Wershe, a long-time inmate and Detroit legend.

“I was with him when he was indicted by the government,” Wershe said in an interview with a Detroit CBS affiliate. “We were in the state facility together, and I think he made a phone call, and he went outside and his attorney told him, ‘Listen, you’re going to be indicted by the federal government.’

“He came in, and he just looked sick. He told me what happened, and I said, ‘Dude, you’re in for the fight of your life.’”

It was one of those “only in Detroit” stories that news outlets couldn’t help picking up. A headline even dubbed Wershe “Detroit’s Most Notorious Gangster.”

Better known as White Boy Rick, Wershe is a former drug dealer and police informant who was convicted in 1988, at the age of 17, of possessing 17 pounds of cocaine.

The most prominent photo of Wershe is a head shot of him frowning, cherub-cheeked, half of his young face lost in shadows. It looks like a bad prom photo. In the popular consciousness, he’s been frozen like that for the last 26 years—White Boy Rick, the kid who showed up to court wearing an Armani suit and who was declared “worse than a mass murderer” by the judge.

But behind the urban legend is a real person. Wershe, now 46 and a father of three, is the only convict in Michigan behind bars who was sentenced to life in prison as a minor under a mandatory minimum law that has since been repealed.

“He’s the last one that I know of still serving life,” said Robert Aguirre, who was on the Michigan State Parole Board from 2009 through 2011. “I don’t know if I quite have the words, other than I don’t understand it. I just don’t understand.”

In prison, Wershe worked with the FBI to take down a group of corrupt cops and several violent gangs. Since then, Wershe’s contemporaries—drug dealers, murderers, and former police—have all cycled through the criminal justice system, but Wershe sits in prison still. The Michigan State Parole Board has refused to release Wershe, despite his cooperation with federal agents and the recommendations of US Attorneys, FBI agents, and even Kid Rock.

Most recently, Wershe’s lawyer, Ralph Musilli, got a sworn affidavit from a former Detroit police officer claiming he and other officers had been ordered to testify against Wershe, despite having no knowledge of him or his case. According to the affidavit, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office had given the police officers sealed grand-jury testimony from Wershe for review, which is a felony.

So why all the fuss over White Boy Rick?

“What it is is public corruption in Detroit, and in the State of Michigan, that has been in existence for years,” said Gregg Schwarz, a retired FBI special agent. “It’s the old boy system.”

Schwarz met Wershe on a drug raid in the mid 80s, when he was part of a task force of federal agents and local police known in the papers as the “No Crack Crew,” which had been formed to combat Detroit’s drug wave. Schwarz was the case agent serving a search warrant on the house of Johnny and Leo Curry, who controlled most of the crack trade on Detroit’s east side.

As agents swept into a room full of some of Detroit’s major drug dealers, Schwarz came across the odd sight of a white, blond teenage boy.

“Hi, I’m Rick Wershe,” the teenager said, putting his hands up. “What would you like me to do?”  

“Sit down and shut up,” Schwarz barked.

Police were initially caught off guard by the complex criminal enterprises that had sprung up around the crack boom. Gangs like Young Boys Inc. were operating organizations that resembled corporations—complete with franchising, branding, and hostile takeovers—more than they did street-corner hustles.

Detroit in the 80s was “Dodge City,” Schwarz said. “It was wild. People did whatever the hell they wanted to do. If you had a problem, you got out your wallet and solved the problem.”

Detroit’s top drug barons drove around in flashy cars and executed rivals with near impunity. There was “Maserati” Rick Carter. There was “Wonderful Wayne” Davis. There was Art Derrick, who flew cocaine into Detroit on a private plane that he was rumored to have bought from the Rolling Stones.

“Everybody was running and gunning in that city because there wasn’t any control over the drug scene,” Schwarz said.

And in the middle of this scene was Wershe.

By all accounts, Wershe’s home life was grim. His parents, in the midst of a bitter divorce, were negligent. His older sister was stuck in a cycle of drug addiction and stints in rehab.

His father was a firearms dealer who had frequent dust-ups with the law, despite allegedly being a police informant himself.

According to Wershe and his lawyers, the FBI began using him as a source when he was 14 years old.

“I was just a kid when the agents pulled me out of high school in the ninth grade and had me out till three in the morning every night,” Wershe said in an interview with Alternet. “They gave me a fake ID when I was 15 that said I was 21 so I could travel to Vegas and to Miami to do drug deals."

Although he was a member of the anti-crack task force, Schwarz never had access to Wershe, but he said “all the agencies used him.”

The details of how Wershe became a drug dealer and police informant at such a tender age have never been sorted out, much less confirmed. What is known is Wershe got involved with Johnny Curry and his brothers and began making a name for himself on the streets.

Within a couple of years, Curry landed in jail, and Wershe used what he had learned to take over the operation. He soon had his own flashy car and was dating Curry’s wife, Cathy Volsan, who was five years his senior and also the niece of Detroit Mayor Coleman Young.

“He was a 14-year-old put into the system to provide information,” Aguirre said. “The expectation was what? That he would choose to achieve things in high school and go on to higher education?”

By 1986, Wershe had gone from being a police asset to a target. The DEA orchestrated several small drug buys and raids of Wershe and his associates. The trap closed in 1987, when police stopped Wershe and found cocaine in his car.

Wershe was charged with possession of 17 pounds of cocaine with intent to distribute. It was the largest seizure in the city’s history.

A preliminary examination in October 1987 set the tone for the rest of the trial.

Wershe, his lawyer, and his parents outside the courthouse during his initial trial

"Even though he looks like Baby Face Nelson, as far as this court is concerned, he's worse than a mass murderer," Judge William Hathaway said of Wershe. Hathaway tried to remand Wershe without bond, but his decision was later overturned by another court.

Hathaway’s statement sounds hyperbolic, but consider that Detroit’s murder rate peaked in 1987 at a staggering 686 homicides. That same year, the Chamber Brothers, who ran one of the city’s biggest cartels, controlled roughly 700 crack houses and grossed $55 million in drug sales. As a result of the crack boom, politicians, judges, and police were adopting tough-on-crime rhetoric and sentencing structures that are only now being rolled back.

And here was the perfect defendant to throw the book at. According to popular legend, Wershe showed up at court wearing an Armani suit. “Wershe often was surrounded during his trial by an entourage outfitted in leather, furs, and gold,” the AP reported. He also had two children and a third on the way, all from different mothers.

The local news outlets ate up the sensational trial with headlines like “Cocaine kingpin or loyal son?” It was then that press foisted the moniker “White Boy Rick” on Wershe. He and Musilli claim it was never his street name.

Wershe’s lawyer was William Bufalino II, a portly, sharp-dressed criminal-defense attorney whose father had been Jimmy Hoffa’s trusted counsel. The younger Bufalino inherited a similar elan for choosing clients. Over the course of his 30-year career, he defended Detroit mafia boss Jack Tocco (guilty), a suspect in a trio of gangland beheadings (guilty), and a former Nazi SS officer (deported). All upstanding citizens of the fine state of Michigan, if you asked him.

At the same time as Wershe’s criminal trial, Wershe and his family were counter-suing the city for various alleged miscarriages of justice, such as beating Wershe, destroying the family’s property, invasion of privacy, wrongful arrest, and raiding the house of Wershe’s 76-year-old grandmother.

Bufalino got affidavits from three of the “leather, furs, and gold” crowd who said they had been paid $20 a piece by police to show up. Wershe’s defense found many such curious incidents.

An officer in Wershe's case admitting to using false information to get warrants, according to a 1995 book by William Adler. FBI wiretap recordings also revealed another officer admitting to giving perjured testimony against Wershe.

According to a 2003 Detroit News article, a key witness at Wershe’s trial, who police testified had disappeared because he feared for his life, later submitted a statement to one of Wershe’s lawyers claiming he was never called to testify and his earlier testimony had been coerced.

After four days of deliberation, the jurors announced they were deadlocked, but the judge refused to accept a hung jury. The next time the jury came back, it found Wershe guilty.

On January 15, 1988, Wershe was sentenced under Michigan's 650 lifer law, which mandated anyone caught with more than 650 grams of cocaine serve life without parole.

A more recent yet undated photo of Wershe

Wershe’s conviction was the beginning of the end of the Detroit crack empires.

A gunman shot and killed Maserati Rick Carter while he was lying in a hospital bed, recovering from another attempt on his life. Carter was buried in a coffin fashioned to resemble a Mercedes-Benz, complete with tires, grill, and hood ornament. The Curry brothers pled out and took 20 years a piece. Wershe’s father was convicted in 1989 of possession of 23 unregistered silencers and served seven years in prison.

It was victory for the No Crack Crew, but they didn’t exactly ride off into the sunset.

In 1992, Detroit Police Chief William L. Hart was convicted of embezzling $2.6 million in taxpayer money intended for narcotics informants. According to prosecutors, he spent the cash buying cars, gifts for women, and renovations on his home. He was caught when the money fell out of the ceiling in his kitchen.

Later that same year, the FBI snared 11 Detroit police officers, along with several civilians including Cathy Volsan, in a sting operation. The police officers accepted bribes from FBI agents, disguised as drug dealers, to guard shipments of cocaine being flown into the Detroit airport.

From inside prison, Wershe acted as a go-between for the fake deal, vouching for the FBI agents. According to FBI agents and US Attorneys, he also provided information that led to the arrests of many violent gang members in Detroit. Because of his cooperation with federal agents, Wershe was placed in the witness protection program and moved to an undisclosed federal prison for several years.

In 1998, Michigan politicians reformed the state’s 650 lifer law, and in 1999 a judge resentenced Wershe to life in prison with the possibility of parole. His first hearing came around in 2003.

Schwarz and fellow FBI agent Herman Groman went to the board to testify in favor of Wershe’s release. Groman wrote a letter crediting Wershe with helping break up the "Best Friends" gang, whom he said killed more than 80 people.

Wershe has also been credited with stopping two murder-for-hire plots while in prison. Assistant US Attorney Lynn Helland testified that several investigations "would not have been possible" without Wershe's cooperation.

Wershe even received support from Kid Rock, who bragged on his second album that he “got more cash than fuckin’ White Boy Rick.”

"With Rick and I coming from the same type of background, I feel he would be able to help youths from making the same mistakes he did by reaching out to them and telling them the story of how drugs ruined his life," Kid Rock wrote to the Michigan Parole Board in 2003.

But the Detroit Police had not forgotten who snitched on them.

“The next day, after we left town, a bunch of officers testified, saying that Rick Wershe was responsible for all the narcotics problems that the city of Detroit had ever had, that he was tangentially involved in a bunch of murders,” Schwarz said. “They just said all kinds of crap that wasn’t true.”

Assistant Prosecutor Karen Woodside said Wershe “was involved in a lot of other matters that never resulted in prosecution because he got a life sentence. But there were numerous other incidents involving large amounts of cocaine, there were intimations that he was involved in murders and rapes,” she said.

One of the officers who testified against Wershe, William Rice, recently submitted a sworn affidavit to Musilli saying he had no prior knowledge of Wershe’s case before he was ordered to testify. Rice said he was in the homicide unit when he was informed he had been selected to testify against Wershe. When asked why, he said he was told it “came through channels,” meaning from superiors.

Rice also says the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office gave the officers Wershe’s sealed grand jury testimony for review.

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office said, “The information that you reference regarding sealed grand jury testimony being given to police officers by Ms. Woodside or the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office is not true.”

In any case, the parole board rejected Wershe’s petition for parole, and since then he’s never been given a full hearing again.

Wershe’s record hasn’t been entirely clean in prison. In 2005, while in prison in Florida, he pled guilty to a minor role in a car theft ring. According to his lawyer, Wershe only pled guilty because the prosecutor threatened to charge his mother, who had bought one of the stolen cars.

"I messed up, your honor," Wershe told the judge. "I been in jail my whole life and I tried to help my kids."

He was sentenced to five years in Florida prison, to be served in the event that he is paroled from Michigan.

In 2012, the Michigan State Parole Board cancelled a planned pre-parole hearing for Wershe.

“[The prosecutor] opposes his release on parole because he has not demonstrated while he has been incarcerated that he can be a productive law abiding member of society,” the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office said in an email.

Which is an interesting argument, given who else the state of Michigan considers rehabilitated.

The Curry brothers are out of prison. The two Miami dealers who supplied Wershe, they’re out, too. So is Frank Lee Usher, who was convicted in 1979 of murdering two men and a woman outside of a Detroit club and then chopping off their heads and hands. His sentence was later overturned, and he served several more years on other charges.

James Harris, one of the Detroit cops convicted in the 1992 FBI sting, received a presidential pardon from George W. Bush in 2008.

“Those of us who are old enough can recall the media hoopla when a 17-year-old white kid with the media-friendly nickname White Boy Rick was alleged to be the capo di tutti capi of all the drug lords in Detroit in the mid-to-late 80s,” Detroit lawyer Steve Fishman wrote in 2013. ”As a lawyer who represented many of the guys who were in fact the top dogs in the drug business in those days, the notion that a 17-year-old kid—black, white, or purple—could have been the boss of those grown men is so ridiculous as to deserve no further comment. And to suggest, as the Parole Board spokesman did [...], that Rick Wershe's situation is comparable to other lifers—most of them serving sentences for violent crimes—is an insult to our collective intelligence.”

Every few years, a similar story or op-ed appears in the newspaper about White Boy Rick. Author Seth Ferranti, who is also serving time in jail for drug conspiracy charges, recently wrote a book about Wershe this year.

Wershe’s lawyer Musilli recently filed an appeal based on the Supreme Court’s decision last year to ban life sentences without parole for minors. He hasn’t gotten a response yet.

Meanwhile, Wershe bides his time while a fresh crop of corrupt public officials parades through the prison system. William Rice, the former Detroit police officer who provided Musilli with the sworn affidavit, is currently serving two to 20 years in prison on several counts of perjury and running a criminal enterprise. He is housed in the same cell block as Wershe.

“Do you remember me?” Wershe asked Rice shortly after he arrived in prison, according to a story shared by both Mussili and Schwarz.

“No, should I?” Rice asked.

“You goddamn well should. I’m Rick Wershe. You testified against me in 2003.”

“Holy shit, what are you still doing here?”

“I have recently learned, to my great surprise, that Richard Wershe is still incarcerated,” Rice wrote in his sworn affidavit. “I thought he had been released on parole.”

According to his affidavit, Rice believes “that the only rational explanation for the continued incarceration of Richard Wershe, Jr., and the consistent denial of even a parole hearing since 2003, is that his file has been ‘red flagged,’ which means that someone, or some group, has taken a special interest in his file.”

Wershe is not eligible for parole again until 2017.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Earlier this month, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan declared that universities in his nation would no longer test applicants on their knowledge of the Ruhnama. Most of the world ignored what seemed like a minor domestic issue, but for a population of Turkmenistan watchers—and many Turkmens themselves—this was cause for celebration.

For Turkmenistan, eliminating the Ruhnama from public life is like rooting out the lingering power of its author, Berdimuhamedow’s predecessor and Turkmenistan’s first President for Life, Saparmurat Niyazov. The former Soviet strongman, shielded from scrutiny by geographic obscurity, neutrality, and extreme natural gas wealth, ruled the small country of 5 million from independence in 1990 until his death in 2006. It was sort of like North Korea with no one watching. (International observers still have trouble securing visas, and spies follow anyone visiting.)

The Ruhnama was his magnum opus, a quasi-religious summation of his brand of scatterbrained, smothering paternalism. Although you’d be hard pressed to find many people who could explain what that manifesto contained, given that beyond the inherent distaste of its authorship, it’s a ramble of 800-plus repetitive, disjointed pages split across two volumes. According to an article by Slavomir Horak of Charles University in Prague, who analyzed it in 2005, it’s an uneven amalgamation of the Qur’an, communist brochures, Turkmen (pseudo-) folk histories, and pure invention, blending together spiritual guidance, morality, and autobiography.

In the first section of the first volume alone, entitled “Turkmen,” Niyazov bounces from legends of the founder of the Turkmen, Oguz Khan whom he claims lived 5,000 years ago, to personal reflections and aphorisms, to a rehashing of documents related to Turkmenistan’s independence. Then, suddenly, in section two, “Turkmen’s Path,” he lurches into the lineages of the various Turkmen clans (which, in section three, “Turkmen Nation,” he denies have any relevance to modern Turkmenistan) and litters it with fables and proverbs. By section five, Niyazov gets downright esoteric, dividing Turkmen history into epochs and assigning each one a spiritual leader, symbolic animal, and series of moral and social characteristics. By the second volume, all pretense of thematic and historical organization falls away into roughly divided admonitions on personal life and practice, with sections like “Do Not Be Low, Be A Man!,” “Read, Learn, Know!,” or “The Turkmen Does Not Spare His Life in Battles, and His Property at Weddings!”

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

So it might not come as a shock that it was the years of effort Niyazov spent trying to crowbar this manifesto into every apparatus of state and society, rather than the actual content of the work, that freaked the world out in the early aughts. When the first volume was published in 2001, Niyazov started requiring schools and libraries to hold copies of the book, then demanded that mosques give it a place equal to the Qur’an, and finally installed Ruhnama rooms in most workplaces. Then he replaced algebra, physics, and physical education with hours of Ruhnama studies for students, made a 16-hour course on the text a mandatory element of driving tests, and included questions on his work in university entrance exams and governmental job interviews. Disrespect for the book was made a punishable offense, and September 12, the day of the book’s publication, became a national holiday. A giant electric-powered statue of the book in the capital of Ashgabat opens at 8 PM every evening to read a passage aloud, and in 2005 a copy was launched into space alongside the Turkmen flag in the hope of enlightening extraterrestrials. At the time of his death in 2006, Niyazov reportedly claimed that reading from the book three times a day would ensure you a place in heaven, although he insisted publicly that the Ruhnama was not religious literature because it was not the word of God. Instead he dubbed it “spiritual literature,” directly inspired by God.

All of that is in line with Niyazov’s personality and severely inflated ego, and arguably had less to do with spreading the content of the book than ensuring he had some direct involvement in the lives of all Turkmen citizens. Niyazov ran his country with the apparently sincere belief that he had not just the right but the obligation to impose his wisdom upon the face of the earth. By 1993, he’d assumed the name “Turkmenbashy,” the Great Leader of the Turkmen, just a year after he’d reworked the constitution to give himself broad and unchecked powers.

His cult of personality grew through the 1990s, as he introduced a 1994 Oath of Adherence for Turkmen to pledge themselves to him and their nation daily and launched a quest from 1996 to 1999 to find traces of the Muslim prophet Muhammad and the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great in his lineage. By the end of the millennium he’d declared himself President for Life. Over the next six years he erected the Arch of Neutrality, a 240-foot monument topped off with a 40-foot golden statue of himself—which automatically rotated to face the sun—as well as a sculpture of himself as a child, carried upon the horns of a bull impaling the earth, a representation of the 1948 earthquake that killed his family and left him an orphan in the Soviet state system.

Alongside his personal mythos, Turkmenbashy took the title of Marshal and titlke, meaning “the great one,” while press secretaries suggested in the lead-up to the publication of the Ruhnama that he ought to be called the Prophet of the Turkmen. By 2003, state news agencies were publishing stories about his possible divine powers of rejuvenation, claiming that his hair was turning from white to black. When not building monuments and accumulating titles, Turkmenbashy made gut-intuition decrees left and right, banning opera, ballet, beards, long hair, makeup for TV anchors, gold capped teeth, and renaming every month after his family, his works, and famous Turkmen heroes. He even found the time to create a Ministry of Fairness.

The Ruhnama, which literally translates to The Book of the Soul, came along a decade into this father-knows-best madness. Soon after publication on the second volume finished in 2004, Turkmenbashy apparently decided that his genius opus needed to be shared with the world. According to Shadow of the Holy Book, a 2008 documentary, he started pressuring international corporations like Caterpillar, Daimler-Chrysler, John Deere, Nokia, and Siemens into sponsoring translations and printing copies of the book. Thanks to these companies and numerous others who wandered into the nation, the text has been translated into several dozen languages, including Belarusian, Beluchi, Braille, Croat, Dutch, English, German, Hungarian, Italian, Malay, Russian, and Zulu. But none of that seems to have successfully turned the book into the internationally revolutionary bestseller Turkmenbashy might have hoped it would become.

Despite all the lore and self-aggrandizement, a good chunk of the Ruhnama’s core is just a softly lobbed message of peace, dignity, and tolerance that would probably appeal to a wide swath of the world. Turkmenbashy spends much of the first volume using parables as a proof that all peoples, languages, and faiths should be accepted; that Islam should change with the times and reject fundamentalism in favor of a unique, neutral (Turkmenistan was given Permanent Neutrality by the UN in 1995), syncretistic Turkmen flavor; and that divisive factors like tribalism should be set aside in favor of national unity. He speaks of the need to remember and remind criminals of their good personal qualities to prevent them from seeing themselves as evil or socially rejected. He talks of setting aside the sword in favor of a future of the mind, invention, and environmentalism. He defends the state’s decision to completely subsidize natural gas, electricity, salt, and water for all its citizens as serving mankind before serving economic theory. He even has a section in the second volume entitled “Meaning of Life,” which he preciously sums up as: “Love, be loved, and lead a great life!”

That said, it’s still the life’s work of a man who took the book and tried to shove it down his peoples’ throats with sheer force. So predictably, behind all the nicer paeans to human rights, there are strong hints that the work promotes quiescence and deference to the supreme ruler. “The poor man understood that his life was best for him,” explains one parable as to why it wouldn’t have been better for that lowly man to become wealthy. Elsewhere, he calls pessimists infectious downers, expresses a fairly sexist view of women as vessels to nurture and train new Turkmen nationalists, and promises that adhering closely to the set and firm social rules and philosophic ideals laid out in the Ruhnama will purify, justify, and fulfill the reader’s existence.

The Ruhnama is ultimately an extremely paternalistic document, a direct result of Turkmenbashy’s view of his own moral purity and the role of the state as an agent obligated to transform its citizens into utopian cogs. “Unlike for people in the West the state is not ‘a night watchman’ for Turkmens,” Turkmenbashy wrote (as quoted by Horak) in a 2000 article in one of his own state-run social science journals. “They [Turkmens] see in it a paternalistic organ, which displays father-like care for them, transforms the population into a single nation. It also takes care of unity, ensures its security, makes them happy, and provides them with a free life. This is the reason why the Turkmen people adore with devotion the state and its President, believe in it, support it, and are willing to defend it even laying down their lives.”

Berdimuhamedow. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

When Turkmenbashy died in 2006, the new president, Berdimuhamedow, knew that the Ruhnama had to go. But he also knew better than to uproot a deeply embedded personality cult and ideology too swiftly—you’ve got to ease into it. In 2007 he began to slowly cut down the amount of Ruhnama covered in schools. By 2009, Berdimuhamedow still recommended the lessons of Turkmenbashy, but was busy writing his own little manifestoes (alongside scientific treatises on medicinal plants and Akhal race horses), like a memoir about his war hero grandfather, which contained hints that he ought to be considered the new and logical leader of a Turkmen Renaissance, perhaps aiming to overtake the Ruhnama’s social position in the coming years.

Sure, some of the things in the Ruhnama—all the peace, love, and understanding junk—are actually kind of nice. The vast bulk of it is harmless, all the more so because it’s so disjointed. But it’s an encouraging step forward for the country to get rid of a text that promotes quiescence, deference, and massive state paternalism, especially given the craziness Saparmurat Turkmenbashi got up to in the guise of an all-knowing father.

The question now is who’s to say that Berdimuhamedow’s manifestoes won’t turn into a new rambling opus, one that replaces Turkmenbashy’s name with his own and elevates him to the position of a state-sanctioned god?

Photos provided by Neil Bantleman's family

Around the time of this article's publication on Thursday night, July 31, a candlelight vigil is being held in Burlington, Ontario, in honour of Canadian teacher Neil Bantleman who is being detained in Jakarta, Indonesia without facing any charges. 

Neil worked as an administrator at Jakarta International School, where his wife Tracy also taught. But since July 14 he’s been detained by Jakarta police in relation to an investigation into horrific sexual assaults committed against several students at JIS.

Neil, a 45-year-old teacher born in Burlington who also taught in Calgary, has not been charged with a single crime. At first he was called into police headquarters as a witness but now he’s a suspect. Under Indonesian law, suspects can be detained without charge for 60 days or more as the investigation continues.

“This doesn’t feel like a nightmare,” Tracy says in an interview. “It feels like an alternate reality. It’s so outlandish.”

Tracy is adamant her husband should have never been implicated in this, a complex fog of crime permeating the school, which is popular with expatriate families. 

In March, a five-year-old pre-school boy at JIS refused to wear pants, telling his mother he didn't want to go to the bathroom. She discovered from him that he'd been locked in a cupboard in the toilets near the school's preschool. His captors were the cleaning staff employed by international outsourcing company, or ISS.

The mother also said her son was anally raped.

Head of School Tim Carr says the boy's parents wanted his privacy protected, and the school said very little in public or to the media.

The police then arrested two ISS cleaners who confessed to the crime. Four others were declared suspects. 

But the mother was encouraged by her lawyer to take the story public. On April 14, she held a media conference in a restaurant, imploring other parents to ask their children about similar assaults. That’s when Neil’s life was upended.

As the school started facing calls for it to be closed, another mother stood up to declare her son was also a victim. Her statement came just as the first parents launched a $125 million civil suit against JIS.

The second mother claims Neil Bantleman, a teaching assistant and the primary school principal all assaulted her son, acting with the six cleaners from ISS and possibly other henchmen, including an unidentified guard.

This mom told police her pre-schooler was hypnotized somehow and poisoned with a “light blue” potion. She also claimed the assaults were videotaped, but no video has surfaced so far in any of the police investigations made public to media.

Tracy is shocked at how attention has shifted to the second mother and very little has been exposed about the circumstances over the first boy’s alleged assault. “We’re wasting time on all these lies [told by the second mother] when we should be looking at what happened to the first boy.”

Calls made to the Indonesian police headquarters in Jakarta were met with no response.

“This case is so complex can the Indonesian police really investigate it properly?” Tracy wonders.  “Do they have the training and the tools to interview alleged victims of child abuse?”

Neil and the TA Ferdinant Tjiong underwent polygraph tests last week, but police have yet to release results. Hotman Paris Hutapea, the high-profile lawyer representing the school’s two staff members, said the lie detector tests showed that the police did not have a strong case against Neil or Tijong. 

“The lie detector tests are proof that the police are lacking in evidence and witnesses to prosecute my clients,” he told the Jakarta Post.

Tracy is quick to relate this case to the 1984 trials of the McMartin Preschool in California. Members of the McMartin family, who operated the school, were charged with numerous acts of sexual abuse of children in their care, but the charges were dropped once the trial determined the child interviewers were posing leading questions to entice the students to answer positively to child abuse allegations.

Tracy and her lawyer don’t want to wait for a trial to prove Neil’s innocence. Hutapea is urging the Canadian government to get more involved in the case. He said the embassies of the United States, Britain and Australia—which founded the school in 1951—released a joint declaration “expressing concern that the detentions may violate the presumption of innocence assured under Indonesian law,” according to the Globe & Mail.

“Canadian citizens need to wake up their ambassador and their prime minister,” says Hutapea.

In an interview with Neil’s brother Guy, who lives in Neil’s birthplace of Burlington, Ontario, he said he has faith Neil will be released, but he doesn’t have complete faith in “how that will come about and what conditions there are going to be or the long-term ramifications of his release.”


After all, Guy says, these are allegations that can stick with a teacher the rest of his life, no matter if any charges are leveled against Neil. 

Tracy is making sure she checks up on Neil often. In her last visit, he was gaunt and frail, and “the emotional trauma and mental anguish of this situation are overwhelming him.” In the past two weeks, he has suffered from stomach pains and diarrhea, Tracy says. Family and friends can bring him food, and he’s allowed time to exercise in the prison yard, Tracy notes. 

But he’s afraid to go outside, Tracy adds with a sigh. While he’s detained in an area with white-collar criminals, spending time in the exercise yard would mean mingling with violent offenders, “and he doesn’t want to risk any confrontation,” Tracy says. This past weekend, he spent 72 straight hours without a peek of sunlight.

He also sleeps in a cell with five other inmates, Tracy says, and some inmates support Neil. But there are a few who don’t believe his side of the story. “Imagine sleeping next to a guy who thinks you’re a pedophile,” she says.

Back in Canada, a petition is circulating online calling for Neil’s release, and a Facbeook Page has been set up with just under 3,300 supporters. It’s all part of the community effort to raise awareness about this case. 

Neil’s mother, 82, took to Facebook to post a statement to supporters of the Page dedicated to Neil’s release. She wrote: “We are shaken to the core that he is having to endure intolerable indignities and humiliation. Worse, we are powerless to help...”

Neil’s students in Canada couldn’t believe the detainment when they first heard of it too. Lauren Webber, 25, best knew Neil as her junior high school basketball coach when he taught in Calgary. “I see [Neil and Tracy] like they are the older brother and sister I never had growing up."

Webber describes Neil as “one of the most loving and compassionate guys I know.” She goes on to say, “His optimism and smile [were] contagious, and he would always show us the ways we had grown in sports from one game to another, and more importantly, where there were opportunities for us to improve.”

Tracy sounds tired when she speaks, as if her energy is slowly being sapped by the lack of information coming from Jakarta police. Hope still flickers for her, though. The many Canadians and Indonesians backing Neil and Tjiong during this ordeal strengthen Tracy’s resolve. 

“I don’t think these families [who implicated Neil in the child abuse crimes] could predict what they would be up against with the supportive community we’ve been seeing all over world.”

Photos via Confused Cats Against Feminism

A little over a week ago, the Women Against Feminism Tumblr rose to national prominence. While the concept of posting selfies with hand-written signs to make a political statement is certainly not new, neither is this particular anti-feminist iteration. A similar effort had started over a year ago following the Duke University “Who Needs Feminism?”. 

As Jenny Lawson observed, these pictures show confusion about what feminism actually is. David Futrelle, the owner of We Hunted The Mammoth—a site that has tracked and mocked online misogyny and sexism since 2010—is certainly no stranger to people misrepresenting feminism. Sharing Lawson’s frustration, he decided to launch “Confused Cats Against Feminism” since as he writes “cats need a place where they can post pictures of themselves holding signs denouncing feminism for assorted weird reasons that don’t seem to have anything to do with what feminism is actually about.”

It apparently struck a chord with a lot of people. Due in no small part to the media blitz that cropped up, Futrelle says the Tumblr picked up 12,000 followers in less than a week, which may be more than “Women Against Feminism” if today’s feedly subscriber count for each is any indication (subscriber info released by “Women Against Feminism” isn't available).

I talked to David today to fine out how “Confused Cats Against Feminism” fits in with the wider movement against misogyny and sexism.

VICE: What is it about feminism that makes people misrepresent what it is when they argue against it?
David Futrelle: When it comes to discussing issues of consent, I think in that case a lot of the critics of feminism resort to caricatures especially because it’s something that really is fundamentally challenging them. Like the guy that feels he’s entitled to blatantly stare at women in public, or pressure a woman until she agrees to have sex, because that’s the way he’s always done it and that’s the only way he’s ever gonna get sex.

They don’t always want to say that out loud and so they pretend that consent is this extremely complicated thing and that feminists want everyone to sign forms in triplicate before they can have sex. So I think particularly around the issue of consent, there’s an enormous amount of smoke that they put up. They don’t want to have an honest conversation and say, “You know what? I don’t think I can have sex with a woman unless I get her really drunk first”. They don’t want to say that. So they’re like “oh, you want us to fill out a form first, well that’s ridiculous.” 

So they need it explained?
There are always better ways to explain things, but at the same time, as someone who’s tried to debate anti-feminists online, one of the reasons some feminists are reluctant to explain things is that they have explained things many times to people who simply don’t want to listen, and will not accept anything that they say. I think a lot of feminists are tired of explaining feminism because people aren’t listening.

Is this an alternative to explaining?
[...]People are sending in many many more than I could ever reasonably put up without overloading readers. It’s clear from the notes that they send along with them that a lot of these people putting them up feel very cathartic. They’re frustrated, they’ve been having these sorts of discussions with people and they’re trying to educate them and trying to say, “Your argument doesn’t make sense.”

What do you mean by catharsis?
There’s a catharsis in saying “You know what? Your argument is based on ignorance. We’ve tried to explain this. We’re just gonna respond with a picture of a cat.” When you get into these discussions with these guys online, it becomes just like quicksand. Because you feel like you’ve fallen into this realm of “Wait a minute. The sky is blue, right?” It’s also just sort of nice to present something that I think the opponents of feminism just don’t know how to handle or don’t know how to react to. So when they see the cat pics, they can’t go into another regular one of their little rants because it’s a cat, and what’s being said is probably absurd. It sets them up for once. 

You've said that mockery is the only appropriate response to certain men's rights activists. What about people like Christina Hoff Sommers who aren’t in that category?
It is worth getting into issues where there are people who are making wrong, but—at least in some ways—intellectually honest arguments. Like take for instance the pay gap. There’s no denying that statistically there is a wage gap, the question is how do you explain that. In those cases it is worth engaging and to argue with them on an intellectual level. But it’s been disappointing to me that a lot of the so-called more reasonable opponents of these things have aligned themselves in so many ways with the more extreme folks. Like with Christina Hoff Sommers’s response to the “Women Against Feminism” thing was that she tweeted—and it was re-tweeted by all sorts of MRA’s—“these women are saying ‘no’ to feminism, do they [feminists] not think that ‘no means no’?”

When young women say no to feminism, feminists don't accept that no means no.

— Christina H. Sommers (@CHSommers) July 24, 2014

That’s problematic on so many levels. You don’t have to get someone’s consent to disagree with them. You absolutely do have to get their consent to have sex with them and it’s just very disappointing to see someone like Christina Hoff Sommers who presumably knows better conflating those two in that way. 

Or if you look at someone like Warren Farrell who a lot of people consider kind of respectable, and yet he went to the A Voice for Men conference. You think, you’re at a conference run by someone who likes to call women ‘whores’ and worse. He’s aware of it but he’s fine with attaching himself. But the fact is if you look at Warren Farrell’s work it’s not actually academically respectable in any way. Whereas if you look at people like Christina Hoff Sommers or Cathy Young or whatever, they make real arguments. They’ve read more than a couple books about feminism, certainly more than 99.9% of MRA’s so there is a distinction there. 

Right, people like them. Is it different when you argue with them?
In terms of the tactics, I do think that it is kind of appropriate to be kind of gentler or less confrontational with some people. And I think this is the case with a lot of the people who posted on Women Against Feminism. They’re of the “I don’t personally need it and therefore I don’t think anyone needs it” point of view. It’s myopic but it’s not driven by hatred or driven by an ideological agenda. I think the confused cats blog is in a lot of ways a more gentle critique than the kind of tone I use for people on my site which are these outright ideologues. I like cats. If I was going to liken most MRA’s to a particular animal I probably would have picked a dung beetle. 

What prompted you to focus on the men's rights movement when you started Manboobz (now called WeHuntedTheMammoth.com)? 
It was basically that I was arguing with men’s rights activists on Reddit with somewhat silly arguments. I was trying to engage with the arguments and what happened is that after I started the blog, which I didn’t expect to turn into what it’s turned into, I discovered that I had really underestimated the amount of just sheer misogyny that was out there. It wasn’t just people that were a bit misguided or myopic or whatever. It was people who were really driven. It gave me an idea of some of the harassment that outspoken women get, and they’re getting it worse because these guys really hate women. That kind of spurs me on. I hadn’t recognized it for the problem it really is. 

How do we improve the situation?
Just a little example, even for guys that are a little sympathetic to feminism: guys that are sitting in front of the television watching a movie with a woman and they see an attractive woman, and they say, “Oh, I’d like to bone her,” or whatever. You don’t mean it in an oppressive way or a demeaning way or anything like that. But just think a little bit about the kind of atmosphere that that creates. Don’t take criticism personally, and just try to [put] yourself in someone else’s shoes.

What about for outright opponents of feminism though?
The best way to move forward on this is to try to get the opponents of feminism to develop a little more empathy. To think of the experiences of people other than themselves. It may be that Confused Cats Against Feminism is the way to get them to do that. Cats are very self absorbed. Maybe the blog can sort of suggest, “Maybe you want to think of more than just yourself.” “Maybe I don’t need feminism but part of the reason women are able to speak out on these things today is because of feminism.” 

Shirt via Skreened

I just broke up with my best friend, a man I’ve shared the last half-decade of my life with. And yet, I don’t hate him. It’s odd, not hating him. Not only do I not hate him, I still love him (albeit non-romantically.) I still want him in my life. Having formerly advocated a “scorch the Earth” policy when it came to breakups, this is a new and exciting development in my ever-evolving emotional maturity. Non-hatred of an ex being wholly uncharted territory, however, I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing. In the interest of full disclosure, dear reader, I must confess—I’m terrified. I know, however, what I should do. You should do it, too, if you want to move on from lost love without slitting your wrists in the bathtub.

Don’t Date Someone Shitty in the First Place

It goes without saying that you should never date anyone atrocious, but had I not done that in the past, I wouldn’t have all this swell perspective! My ex is the only person I’ve ever courted who wasn’t a total piece of shit. And boy, did I appreciate the hell out of it. Spending your life with a fundamentally good, rational human being ensures that you don’t end up ending things by, let’s say, getting beaten with your own umbrella on Hollywood Boulevard after a Superchunk concert (I say this theoretically, of course, having never experienced a break up that remarkably insane. Cough.)

Don’t Ask Questions You Don’t Want the Answers To

Asking the question, “Do you want to sleep with other people?” of your former mate may seem innocuous, logical even, but the profound, soul-crushing truths of the answer (which, naturally, is yes) can send you into an emotional tailspin. The next thing you know, the only thing you’re capable of thinking about is which 20-something mutual acquaintance the former love of your life will soon be publicly balling, and the only thing you’re capable of drinking is bourbon and the only place you’re capable of sleeping is on the floor, after having consumed enough bourbon to make that seem like a perfectly reasonable idea. (I say this, again, theoretically. Cough.)

Acknowledge Your Faults

You know what the common denominator in all of your failed relationships is? You. Placing blame solely on the other party is tempting, but childish. Think of every time you passive aggressively told them you “weren’t mad” when you really were. Every time you took some unrelated aggression out on them. Your hands aren’t completely clean, Mother Teresa. Wash them off with some good old fashioned self reflection.

Don’t Try to Fuck Your Way Out of It

Fucking, either with other people or with the person you’re breaking up with, is not a good idea in your fragile emotional state. Y’know what is a good idea, though? Masturbating! Use your own tears as lube!

Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

Recognize the Fundamental Impermanence of Life and Love

Relationships, like life, are of a transient nature. Sure, looking at that elderly couple holding hands on the park bench may make you feel as though you’ve failed, but they’re the exception to the rule. And anyhow, they can’t fuck without pills, so you still win. Not that it’s a competition or anything. But fuck them.

Eat Something

Your initial instinct is to not. Your initial instinct is wrong. Regardless of what that poorly photoshopped, pixelated meme your mother put on Facebook would imply, love is not necessary in order to sustain life. Sustenance, however, most certainly is. Eat a sandwich. You’ll feel better.

Be Active

Get out of bed, you miserable slag. Go on a walk. A jog. Anything. While advocates of a healthy lifestyle are wrong about a number of things (a “Runner’s High,” for example, isn’t nearly as exciting as really being high), they are right about how exercise makes you feel better. And wouldn’t you like to feel better? Wouldn’t that be nice?

Don’t Isolate Yourself

Sitting, alone, in the apartment you once shared, staring at the vacuous black night beyond your living room window, or laying prostrate and shallowly breathing in between dry heaves on the bed you once shared is a waste of goddamned time. Not only does it not make you feel any better, it actively makes you feel worse. Y’know what does make you feel better, though? Accepting the help and support of people you love, who love you. Sleep on their couches. Tolerate their hospitality. Allow yourself the opportunity to take a break from the nightmarish hellscape that is your mind, at least for a night (or two, or three, or four, depending on how benevolent the members of your support system are) by watching the 0.0 Bechdel Test scoring The Other Woman with them. (Again, theoretically. Cough. God, I can’t stop coughing. I must be coming down with something.)

Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

Be Kind

Don’t send shitty text messages. (I say, this, of course, after having sent multiple shitty text messages to my ex in the past few days. Allow me this opportunity to formally apologize for said shitty text messages. Sorry, Allen, for all the shitty text messages.) Don’t be selfish. They want space? Give them space. Don’t scream-sob to them about how you feel like they’re avoiding you, and why the fuck are they avoiding you, what are you, a fucking monster? Is that what they think? Do they hate you? Oh my God, they hate you. No, you will not stop sobbing, they can’t tell you what to do anymore, and so on and so on. Cut it out, Zelda Fitzgerald. 

Vouch for Their Character

There’s something you like, something you loved, about your ex in the first place—that’s why you dated them. They have intrinsic value, both to you and others. Celebrate that value. Talk them up to mutual acquaintances. Unless, of course, they’re completely irredeemable pieces of shit, but you don’t date irredeemable pieces of shit, remember?

Stop Feeling Sorry for Yourself

You’re not in Gaza. You don’t have a terminal illness. For the sake of everloving fuck, chill out. Listen, kiddo—you miss 100 percent of the failings you don’t try. But at least you tried. Next time, you might succeed. There will be a next time. 

Recognize Your Irrationality

You’re not thinking clearly. Your mind is clouded with regret, bourbon, or both. You may not actually feel what you think you’re feeling. Allow time to pass before you make any rash decisions, like cutting your hair (don’t) or fucking your best friend (don’t) or getting a tattoo of a Phoenix rising from the ashes to, like celebrate you rising from the ashes of your former relationship (dear God, please don’t).

Stay Hydrated

In general, you should always stay hydrated. Awful things happen when you don’t. Terrible things. Worse than you could even imagine. Worse than the death of love.

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On July 24, 14 bodies were exhumed from a burial site in Sloviansk. The victims were civilians, all of whom are believed to have been killed by pro-Russia separatists when they were occupying the area. According to Ukrainian officials, there are roughly 300 people missing in Sloviansk, and mass and individual graves are consistently being found.

VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky investigated what may have been behind these murders, traveling to the mass grave site near Sloviansk as the bodies were being unearthed. He also met up with journalist Chris Miller, who found signed death warrants and proof that the separatists were operating under their own form of martial law while controlling Sloviansk.

As much as the The Golden Girls was about friendship, family, freaky elderly sex, and the joys of Floridian weather patterns, it was also about getting old and dying. Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia didn't just need each other because the men and children in their lives were gone. They formed a surrogate family because, well, they were gonna croak eventually, and that's when you need a friend who gets you the most. Who better to share the last few decades of your life with than someone who knows exactly what you're going through? 

But what do the actors think now that they've "crossed over"? Do they have any special insight into life back on Earth? Can they offer advice to their fans? Are they cool with how renewed interest in their show made pastels popular again? To answer these questions, I asked Anya Briggs, a New York-based psychic medium, to tell me how Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, and Rue McClanahan are holding up on the other side of the etheric plane.

VICE: I love the Golden Girls. What if I wanted to talk to Rue McClanahan and Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty? Can we talk to them?
Anya Briggs: OK, they’re highly amused. Are they all dead? Are all four of them gone? No, Betty White’s still alive. Yeah, I’m only getting the three women. So it’s the tall woman…?

Yeah, Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty.
I would be the grumpy bitch. That’s who I would be. The one with the glasses, always being grumpy. They would rather we talk about past lives and things like that. They’re kind of just like, perching in and listening. They’re like, “We don’t want to talk right now.”

Are they still friends?
They are! Well, there’s love. They have that karmic soul connection. That’s not an accident that they all got cast in that thing. They got on well. At least, now they’re getting on well. I’m getting that there was some bitchiness and rivalry on the set. This is hilarious. This is the best famous person request I’ve ever had. They were sisters in past lifetimes, believe it or not.

I see.
I’m getting in Mesopotamia? They were members of a goddess cult. I’m telling you the truth! And the 20th century manifestation of that would be a television show in Hollywood. They were members of a goddess cult that had to do with I want to say Ishtar? Isis? It’s a Mesopotamian goddess. I’m being shown that they’re giving feathers at the alter. They’re handing frawns, like, large feathers that look like palm frawns that look like they came from emus or some north African bird. I don’t know. A winged creature. They’re offering these feathers at the alter as a symbolic gesture. I don’t know what this means. This is hilarious. They’re all wearing these headdresses and everything and they’re really in a goddess cult. It’s very pro-woman, very cool. I like it. There’s some period ritual as well.

Oh...
No, it’s not gross. It’s just, there’s some blood in a cup thing. It’s kind of worshipped. I know that sounds really satanic or something, but it’s not. It’s menses. Feminine reproduction, the belly, the womb.

That’s interesting because the show itself was so much about female sexuality.
Exactly. That’s what I’m picking up on immediately. There’s one in the pyramids. I’m getting Rue… Wait, Rue McClanahan’s not dead, is she?

Yes, she’s dead. Betty White is the one who’s alive.
Aw. I liked her. Was she the slutty one?

Yes.
I loved her. She was the saucy one. She actually, I’m seeing her in the pyramids in Egypt. She was a slave girl and very submissive. She was kind of into it. Like, kind of got off on it. It’s kind of funny because she’s this tart on the show. But this was more mentally sexual. It was more about, “Oh yes, I will serve you.” It wasn’t to a pharaoh but it was to a high-ranking rich man in the home. I’m being shown the Pyramids of Giza, I’m being shown Egypt. She very much had a lifetime there. She’s telling me this now. That Rue McClanahan can show me her past life in Egypt is really funny to me. It is pretty crazy.

How do they feel about being gay icons?
They love it. They are so proud to have helped gay people with humor, grit, and chutzpah. They are "built-in drag queens" in spirit, they are saying.  

Is it strange for them that people dress like their characters?
Yes. Even in death they still don't understand the popularity of the show as long as it's been since it aired. They are shocked, but delighted. They're saying it's helped tremendously with the way people view geriatrics and aging. Rue McLanahan is wearing a kinky nurse's uniform right now! She's actually hamming it up a bit now. I don't know what that uniform is in reference to, but she's giving her trademark smile and saying "this is the costume I really liked." I guess she wanted to be a nurse at one point? Or a latex nurse? OMG TMI.

Do they know where their wardrobe from the show is kept?
They're saying Burbank. I don't know where specifically. A warehouse? Most of it has been donated or given to charity they are saying. I see warehouses for the TV industry involved with this. "They own it, not us!" they're saying.

My fiancee wants to know if Bea Arthur could be her maid of honor at our wedding.
Bea is smiling and laughing but says she doesn't feel qualified for the honor but wants you to know she "treasures you a lot too, kid" (meaning, your fiancee) and likes her spirit too! Know that she is "there in spirit sending her blessings on this honor-filled day." She is blown away that anyone would ask her. She's reluctantly saying yes, but is laughing at the same time and says "I don't understand, but OK."

Anything else from the Golden Girls?
They’re saying your spirituality is your wellbeing, dearheart. And they love you! They’re stroking your hair and saying, “Oh, what a good looking man!” They’re stroking your hair and they’ve put their hands on your shoulders. Rue is stroking your hair and Bea Arthur has her hand here, and Estelle Getty has her hand here, and they’re just smiling and laughing.

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Screenshot: vom Wilzenberg

The world wide web has given us things like instant messaging, tentacle porn, internet banking, cyber stalking, and cats—all of which have been written about a lot. Weirdly though, there's one thing that has been grossly overlooked: German cat breeder websites.

Most people think that it is companies like Apple who shape our understanding of design nowadays, yet there are thousands of dedicated housewives and other types of animal lovers out there tirelessly working to challenge our sense of aesthetics and redefine the notion of "beauty."

What follows is a symphony of forms and furs that can’t be matched.

Image via Fairy Cakes

FAIRY CAKES

What immediately strikes you here is the extraordinary composition of the image. A sleepy, somewhat sad looking fairy is emitting a ray of light that ends on a cat in a flower hat. The cat seems to be in a really good mood. She’s unpacking a present—but for who? Her contemplative gaze reaches out into the distance. She seems to be content, full of inner peace.

The cat with the pearl necklace also seems peaceful and well-balanced. 'Fairy Cakes' is a place full of foaming cupcakes and love.

Image via vom Jägerswald

VOM JAEGERSWALD

Spirits in the 'vom Jägerswald' [of the Hunter’s Wood] cattery are noticeably more inflamed. One cat all but accusingly looks directly into the camera, while the others' gazes are wildly scattered throughout the forest landscape.

A legless bust of a stag appears out of nowhere, somehow recalling images of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist. You almost don’t dare to take your eyes off this atmospheric backdrop. So many questions remain unanswered—I guess the only way to have them answered is a visit to the Birman cat breeder.

Image via von den Silberfeen

VON DEN SILBERFEEN

Glitter, fairies, clouds and pastel tones. The 'von den Silberfeen' [of the Silver Fairies] cattery abides by the unwritten laws of the cat breeder game and presents the fluffy offspring as what they are: babies that only deserve the best. The white cat on the left affects a somewhat psychotic look. But the same could be said of you when you open your eyes a little wider to look cute in selfies.

Image via von den Mooswiesen

VON DEN MOOSWIESEN

I'll be honest with you—this website is my absolute favorite and not just because of the minimalist design that eschews animation, moving text, and any presence of fairies. What I like the most about it is the super grouchy facial expression of this nasty puss that’s about to eat the tiny, absurdly spotted bunny in the left corner.

The only thing keeping me from setting the homepage of Mooswiesen [Mossy Meadows] as my desktop background is the fear of being locked up for being slightly cuckoo.

Image via Juraperlen

JURAPERLEN

Yoga for the eyes—everything on the screen symbolizes harmony. The abundance of crystal balls and delicate flower petals refers to the precious fragility of the British Shorthairs on sale.

These two kittens are as pure as the white roses surrounding them. They’re unbelievably plush and fucking happy about the pearl necklaces they’re wearing.

Image via from Gloryhill

FROM GLORYHILL

Whether you like these forever-shedding fur balls or not, there’s one thing you can’t deny about cats: Even when shit's running down their tails, they are able to maintain a certain sense of dignity.

'From Gloryhill' takes advantage of their grandeur, setting their British Longhairs in Greece—the birthplace of democracy. And pairs them with a very colorful bird.

Image via vom Halterner See

VOM HALTERNER SEE

While many cat breeders use delicate rosé and terra-cotta tones to communicate cuddliness, the 'vom Halterner See' [of the Halterner Lake] cattery works with the jovial hues of sun, sea and beach. You can almost hear the Caribbean music in the background, while the kitties in heart-shaped sunglasses stare directly into your soul, purring “Buy me!” An advertising concept so brilliant, I doubt Don Draper could have thought it up.

Image via vom Winde verweht

VOM WINDE VERWEHT

A lot of catteries employ slogans in an attempt to stand out from their competitors. Few do it with this kind of panache: 'Vom Winde verweht' [Gone with the Wind] orients itself with the 1930s Hollywood classic of the same name.

That’s why you feel emotionally involved immediately after noticing the little cat on the right pulling the drapes shut, to conceal the view of the plantation house. This deeply romantic motif is present throughout the website. The cursor, for instance, leaves behind a trail of sparks as you browse your way through a way of life that's now become extinct.

Image via vom Dellwiger Schloß

VOM DELWWIGER SLOSS

As other websites spend their efforts on making their animals look as innocent and lovable as possible, 'vom Dellwiger Schloß' [of the Dellwiger Palace] offers a much more realistic, unembellished look at what cats really are: fluffy egomaniacs that force you to surrender all of your love and couch space.

Image via of little Buddha

OF LITTLE BUDDHA

Cats are the Shaolin of the animal kingdom: fast, silent and… whatever, it somehow makes sense to bring up the obvious connection between cats and the monastic culture of the Far East. There’s a ton to discover on the homepage of the 'of little Buddha' cattery. Make sure you don’t miss the animated hummingbird!

Would I buy my cat here if I liked cats at all? Maybe.

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

Cry-Baby #1: Julius Lopowitz

Photos via West Melbourne Police/Google Maps

The incident: A man was given a speeding ticket.

The appropriate response: Paying it. Or contesting it if you don't think you deserve it.

The actual response: He dialed 911 and reported a fake murder in progress in the hopes of distracting the issuing officer.

Earlier this week, a West Melbourne, Florida man named Julius Lopowitz was pulled over for speeding.

As the officer who pulled him over was writing his ticket, 911 dispatchers received a call to report a possible murder in progress.

"There is a murder that's going to happen, I swear," the caller said. "On Wingate and Hollywood. Definitely someone going to get shot. Please, please, Wingate and Hollywood. Please."

He then hung up the phone. 

As every available officer was being dispatched to the intersection of Wingate and Hollywood, the man called back. 

This time he said, "I swear, there's going to be a murder any second. There's a man and a gun. Please."

When he hung up this time, 911 dispatchers looked in their records for the caller's name. As he'd called 911 before, they had his name on record. The name was Julius Lopowitz.

The dispatcher said Julius' name over the police radio, and the officer who'd pulled Jules over recognized it as the name he was writing on a speeding ticket. 

“It almost worked,” Police Lt. Rich Cordeau told local news station WBTV. “The officer was trying to wrap up quickly to respond.”

Police believe that Julius made the fake calls when the officer's back was turned to write the ticket. 

Julius is now facing a felony charge that carries a five-year maximum prison term. Which is quite a bit worse than a $200 speeding ticket, so fuck knows what he'll pull to try and get out of that one. 

Cry-Baby #2: Kristina Riddell

Photos via Longmont Police Department/Google Maps

The incident: A concerned couple called 911 after seeing a child locked in a car on a hot day.

The appropriate response: Nothing. 

The actual response: The owner of the car ran the concerned couple over. 

On June 7th, 43-year-old Shannon Dominguez was with her boyfriend at a Dollar Tree in Longmont, Colorado.

While in the parking lot of the store, she noticed a young boy locked inside a hot car. "All four windows were rolled up and it was in the direct sun," Shannon told Fox 13.

She called 911 to report the situation. "It scares the heck out of me... Some innocent child might die," she said.

While she was on the phone, the child's mother, 27-year-old Kristina Riddell returned. Kristina was not too happy when she realized police had been called, and reportedly threatened to beat Shannon up. She then allegedly punched Shannon's boyfriend, Alan Mason, in the face. 

Kristina then got in her car reversed out of her parking spot, before driving at the couple. 

Alan rolled over the hood of the car, while Shannon went under the wheels, crushing her legs. 

Her tibia and fibula were both broken. She is currently bound to a wheelchair and has been told by doctor's that she may never walk normally again. "Every day is a chore," said Shannon. 

Kristina was arrested and charged with hit and run, child abuse and assault. Fox 13 reported that she already has an extensive criminal record, including assault, domestic violence, and driving violations.

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

Previously: Some guys who tried to cut off a thief's hands vs. a guy who is suing some people he robbed

Winner: The suing robber!!!

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Two girls with a sign that reads "Hating Arabs is not racism, it’s values." (Photo from The People of Israel Demand Vengeance/Facebook via)

In Israel, racism and extremism are exploding. It began shortly after the kidnapping of three Israeli boys—Naftali, Gilad and Eyal—in Gush Etzion, that led to the assault in Gaza which has seen over 1,000 killed. A Facebook page calling for the murder of Palestinians went viral. In one photo, a soldier posed broodingly with his gun, the word "vengeance" written on his chest. In another two teenage girls smiled happily with a banner that read: “Hating Arabs is not racism, it’s values.”

A few days later, at the boys' funeral in Modiin, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu fanned the flames. “May God avenge their blood,” he said to the gathered mourners. “Vengeance for the blood of a small child, Satan has not yet created,” he tweeted later.

Bibi got his wish. Over the weeks that followed, videos began to emerge almost daily of right-wing mobs roving across cities from Jerusalem to Beer Sheva, waving Israeli flags and screaming “Death to Arabs!”

Many ended in physical assaults. Last Thursday two Palestinian men were attacked on Jaffer Street in West Jerusalem as they delivered food to a grocery market. The following day two more Palestinians, Amir Shwiki and Samer Mahfouz, were beaten unconscious in the Eastern part of the city by a gang of 30 young Israelis wielding sticks and metal bars.

Pro-Israeli and Pro-Palestine demonstrators clash in Haifa

Nationalistic Israelis have also turned on Israelis who disagree with them. Photographs have even emerged of pro-war protestors dressed in t-shirts with “Good Night Left Side” prints, a slogan usually used by European neo-Nazis. Violence from these groups has reached unprecedented levels. Last week in Haifa, a city usually presented as a model of liberal co-existence, an anti-war rally was attacked by 700 people carrying weapons.

The worst is reserved for Palestinians. Four weeks ago in East Jerusalem, a group of Israeli men, acting in revenge, poured gasoline down the throat of Mohammed Abu Khdeir and burned him alive. For some his death, just like Jamal’s, was an aberration, an act without precedent from some mad fringe of Israel’s far-right. “What have we become?” an Israeli relative of mine asked that evening, shocked that somebody with “Jewish values” could commit such a crime.

But while the recent spate can be partly seen as a visceral reaction to the tragic killing of the three boys, this kind of violence is not really that new. Take the story of Jamal Julani. He was walking along a street near Zion Square when a group of young Jewish Israelis, one as young as 13, kicked him in the head over and over. "A Jew is a good soul, an Arab is a son of a bitch," overheard one bystander.

There were hundreds standing in Zion Square that evening in September, but nobody, not even a duty officer on the scene chose to intervene. When paramedics did arrive, it took ten minutes of defibrillation and constant CPR to restore the dying boy’s pulse. He had been so badly beaten that police at the scene had assumed he was already dead.

“Abu Khdeir’s murderers are not 'Jewish extremists’” said an editorial in Haaretz, Israel's left-leaning newspaper. “They are the descendants and builders of a culture of hate and vengeance that is nurtured and fertilized by the guides of 'the Jewish state'."

"When you translate it into English you realize how horrific it is, but in the Israeli context there's nothing shocking about it."

Israel has never been the kind of free and open society it has tried so hard to project. Racism did not begin with the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir or the beating and attempted lynching of Jamal Julani. “Zionist doctrine has always pushed society in a very particular direction,” the academic Marcelo Svirsky told me. But it is getting worse. “There is a phenomenon happening right now across Israeli cities that I have not seen before, having lived in Israel for 25 years.”

One of the most striking aspects of this “phenomenon” is how young the people taking part appear to be. Those posting on social media, running amok in lynch mobs, and crashing leftist rallies with sticks, chains, and brass knuckles are, for the most part, young people—many in their mid-20s, some in their teens.

Three weeks ago the activist and journalist David Sheen published an article on Storify called “Terrifying Tweets of Pre-Army Israeli Teens” after he searched the word “Aravim,” Hebrew for Arab, into Twitter. What he found was a harrowing amount of morbid bile presented in the form of grotesque selfies from teenage girls.                                                                         

#ZionStandUp for Israeli @amit_ezra_new: "In the end there will be no more Arabs, God willing" http://t.co/QlNpsDnsDm pic.twitter.com/10ThN6Gw0k

— David Sheen (@davidsheen) July 10, 2014

Other quotes included "I spit on you, you stinking Arabs," "From the bottom of my heart, I wish for Arabs to be torched," and "Arabs may you be paralyzed & die with great suffering!"

What is going on? For anyone familiar with Israeli politics, the answer should be obvious. In the past month alone the stream of racism coming from politicians and religious authorities has been relentless. Take Avigdor Lieberman, the Foreign Minister, who called on Israelis to boycott Palestinians who don't support the war. Or take Ayelet Shaked, the Jewish Home party politician and member of the Knesset (Israel's national legislature) who recently called for the murder of Palestinian mothers. “They should follow their sons,” she said. “Nothing would be more just.”

“Those words the girls said are not in any way strange to the discourse in Israel,” Sheen told me. “When you translate it into English you realize how horrific it is, but in the Israeli context there's nothing shocking about it.”

"Price Tag attacks" on people taking action against settlers have grown in number without the police really trying to stop them. Vigilante patrols led by extreme organizations like the state-funded Lehava have cropped up across the entire country to stop Jews and Arabs from having romantic relationships. Perhaps the biggest victims of this fanaticism have been refugees from sub-Saharan Africa. Locked up in detainment centers, they’ve faced abuse from almost every part of the Israeli establishment. From the hundreds of Rabbis banning Jews from renting apartments to Africans, to politicians like Eli Yishai, the ultra-orthodox Interior Minister who in 2012 said “until I can deport them I’ll lock them up to make their lives miserable.”

“Both governments under Netanyahu have been responsible for inciting racism,” Svirsky said. “They’ve put in place a long list of anti-equality and anti-Palestinian legislation in all areas of life. That’s why it’s become normal in political discourse to express extreme ideas toward Palestinians. The obsession with a state only for Jews has brought Israeli society into a racist abyss.”

"Half of all Jewish Israeli high school students said Arab-Israelis should not receive the same set of rights as Jews."

For Israeli youth, things might have gotten marginally better in 2013 if a proposal by the left-wing Zionist party Meretz to have anti-racist education included in schools hadn’t been voted down by the Knesset. The bill had been submitted by the Arab-Israeli MK Issawi Freij after a theme park in Rishon Letzion admitted renting out its facilities on separate days to Jewish and Arab schools to “avoid conflict.”

Issawi’s fear that racism was growing in Israel’s schools echoed what others had been saying for years. In a recent study by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, half of all Jewish Israeli high school students said Arab-Israelis should not receive the same set of rights as Jews. Of those who identified as religious, half said the now familiar slogan “Death to Arabs” was legitimate.

In 2010 a group of concerned teachers sent a petition to the education ministry explaining precisely these fears. “We cannot remain silent in light of the increasing presence within the walls of schoolhouses of expressions of racism,” they said. “We see ourselves as educators who must issue a warning. The prevalence of racism and cruelty is growing among young people in Israel.”

According to Sheen many Israeli teachers, particularly those who teach civics, have become afraid to even broach the issue of human rights in the classroom. Earlier in the year Adam Verete, a teacher who dared to call the IDF an “immoral army,” was hauled before a tribunal and later fired after a pupil complained about his “extreme leftist” views. “They can't even bring up the topic without inciting in their students rage and racism,” Sheen said.

A soldier poses with "Vengeance" written on his chest (Photo from The People of Israel Demand Vengeance/Facebook via)

Of course, militarism and nationalism have always been part of the Israeli education system—embedded in history books, on maps on the walls, in cartoons of Palestinians on camel backs—but under Netanyahu’s watch, things seem to have gone further. The first major change of the former education minister Gideon Sa’ar, a man who described teachers as “lifelong draftees,” was to enlarge a program designed to inspire even more enthusiasm for the army.

“Service in the IDF is not only an obligation but a privilege and a social value,” Sa’ar said at the time. “The connection between the school system and the IDF will become stronger in the context of the program that I initiated." The budget for civic education, a rare space for critical debate on Israel and its “democratic values,” was cut in favor of an orthodox Jewish studies curriculum. Heritage tours to Hebron were introduced as a way of increasing support for settlements and the idea of Greater Israel. And whatever passing reference to an alternative Palestinian narrative that remained in school textbooks was quickly removed.

“During the 1990s and early 2000s there was some kind of attempt to be more factual,” Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told me. “There was an effort to be more academic and scientific, to speak about Palestinians, even if the ideology was the same. Today it’s back to simplified stories and sheer indoctrination. It’s going backward.”

Right wing Israelis chanting joyfully about how there are "no children left" in Gaza

Though Israel remains a multicultural place, for the most part Palestinians and Israelis live deeply separate lives. Within the 1948 borders just five non-segregated schools are available for young children to meet and learn about one another. Within the occupied territories, physical barriers introduced after the Second Intifada mean contact is almost non-existent.

“There used to be so many more casual opportunities for Israelis and Palestinians to get to know each other,” Sheen said. “Now you have a whole generation—the terrifying-tweets cohort—that has never even known a Palestinian.”

Beyond the physical barriers the mental walls are perhaps even stronger. “I grew up without knowing any Palestinians,” Peled-Elhanan said. “All I had to do was cross to the other side of the city but the thought never occurred to me. This was the kind of education we got—that Palestinians, if they exist at all, exist as an obstacle.”

Israel likes to use its status as the region’s only European-style democracy to fudge criticism of its occupation and siege. Usually this works. There is, particularly in the Jewish diaspora, a monumental gap between how Israel is represented and what is actually happening. But in the present conflict, with over 1,000 dead in Gaza and youngsters pouring through Israel in violent mobs, these delusions may finally be coming undone.

For those who live in Israel and do not support the war or the right-wing government, it is becoming more difficult to voice an opinion, and some people are weighing their options. “Two nights ago there was a big protest in Tel Aviv,” Sheen said. “A long-time leftist was holding up a sign that said ‘flee while you can.’ In conversations I’ve had with hardcore activists, everyone has said they are preparing an escape plan. For people who have children or want to have children, this is no place to raise them.”

@PKleinfeld

Keep up to date with developments in Gaza with the VICE News dispatches, Rockets and Revenge

Image via Flickr user 7593675@N04.
By definition, an unidentified flying object is no longer an unidentified flying object once we are able to identify the flying object correctly.

To the 'Spooky' and optimistic, a UFO could be a spaceship coming great distances from some mysterious cosmic place. To others, it could be swamp gas, weather balloons, engineering students dicking around, or various other difficult to understand—but nonetheless drab—physics anomalies. To Sarah Chun, a series of strange lights hovering high in North York leaned toward the cosmic explanation, titling her video "UFO In North York, Toronto. What is this?!? #UFO #Toronto 2014.07.26." and not “Weather balloon in North York, Toronto. How about that!!! #WeatherBalloons #Toronto.”

“It was a really bright orbital object...glowing!” wrote Chun in the comments. “Stayed in one spot for about 10-15 mins but then started moving towards South/West towards Yonge/Sheppard... then disappeared out of my sight.” As of writing this, the video has over a million hits.

Sarah’s video was not the only account. In a very social mediated way, others in the area began chiming in to openly hypothesis over what the lights could be, though generally leaning towards the supernatural given that #ufo trended on Twitter. It wasn’t unlike an incident earlier in July, when strange noises boomed over an overcasted downtown. Questions about bombs or Godzilla began to spring up over Twitter, when reports of fireworks at the Harbourfront gave a sounder explanation to theg mystery.

Roxanna Maleki, a local musician, posted an account of her encounter, saying she spotted the odd “droplets of sparkles of diamonds” when the fire alarm went off during a movie. “We had no idea what the hell that was,” says Maleki in her video, “it was like a space shuttle, space shuttle? What do you call that? Alien’s plane?” She also states that she has never been a believer, but the incident made her a little uncertain. The situation amplified when a police officer chimed in.

“I've been a police officer for 15 years. Tonight I have a first! My first report of a UFO!! He was serious!” tweeted Const. Craig Brister. After seeing local media hovering around the story, Brister clarified he believes the flying object was just a quadcopter, a drone device being remote-controlled from on top of a building. And it was at this point where the UFO sighting seemed to hit an impasse between two major modern tech trends.

Twitter and social media explode with speculation whenever there’s a mysterious news event to obsess over. So when strangers in the same community spot what could be Widget the World Watcher popping by, they’ll scroll the feed to share information, find testaments, gag, troll or debunk. A Canadian UFO Report survey suggested there were 1,180 sightings in Canada in 2013, 40 percent in Ontario. When I asked Sue Demeter-St Clair, of PSICAN why this one caused such a stir, she told me “the fact that there were dozens of witnesses, videos and images, and police statements is why I believe this one garnered so much attention as compared to others.”

As much as social media can inflate a UFO sighting, it can now be deflated just as easily, not by ready internet contrarians, but by drones. We’ve become familiar with drones as faraway conflict killing machines, but they’ve also begun infiltrating the world in unintimidating, much dumber ways. Gimmicky or practical, we’ll be seeing more and more of these whirring air bots in our cities as time goes on.

It’s not a stretch to say that some university engineering departments can’t wait to give drones a joy-ride after the sun sets. And given their unconventional, dramatic, alien-like appearance, it’s even less of a stretch to say that other people could start mistaking them for flying saucers. Most UFO sightings have always suffered a less fantastical explanation, and when drones become more normalized it will make those who tout their encounters feel like the boy who cried wolf.

While it wasn’t an official police statement, Brister is already banking on drones. Sue isn’t convinced by that explanation, though that doesn’t mean she believes the Empress Walk plaza in North York was visited by greys. “The police do not investigate UFO reports so this is more speculation than an actual explanation,” says Demeter-St Clair. “In my opinion the best guess so far is that the string of lights was possibly a kite with LEDs. Quadcopters according to some of the sources we consulted wouldn't have been as stable as reported for such a long period of time. At this time I am still following up with witnesses and hope to hear from others.”

Admittedly, and especially in Roxanna’s account, it does sound like North York was greeted by a tricked out kite over an extraterrestrial. The way lights hung in a row, upward. As still as they were, until the area starts encountering odd men in black suits, it’s safe to say someone’s weird after-dark recreation was the cause.

When I asked Demeter-St Clair if she felt UFO sightings are endangered by drones, she explained: “It would depend on whether or not the described event would fit the quadcopter or RC drone explanation. I witnessed one recently here in Ontario in June at the Battle of Stoney Creek, and while it certainly startled people at first, the crowd quickly figured out exactly what it was, and no UFO reports were made.”

While, in person, it may be easy to separate the human-made flying saucers from the intergalactic ones, fuzzy iPhone videos will be diligently more scrutinized. It’s always been the case, but the future of UFO spectators may become an even steeper uphill battle for the public’s faith as even hovering discs become commonplace. But, if it was an alien, then my heart goes out to it, because it’s going to get an earful from downtown Torontonians on how it missed the “good stuff” by just hanging around Yonge Street.


@zaaackkoootzer

The donk that launched a thousand thinkpieces. Image via Facebook.
This week, the owner of a hip-hop site suddenly decided it’s his job to parent female hip-hop stars. Meanwhile, a candidate for Toronto City Council (and well-known PUA) decided it was cool to publicly endorse violence against women.

In other news, we’ve got a Prime Minister who is now trying to actively delete the country’s feminist champions from history.

Here we go:

Screenshot via Dimitri the Lover's official website.
Revolting PUA Running for Toronto Council Is Also a Promoter Of Violence Against Women

Lately in women getting cyber bullied: a Toronto city councilor, Mary-Margaret McMahon, who is known for actually wanting to help other humans, is being targeted online.

Some depraved asshole by the name of James Sears (aka grotesque pick up artist Dimitri the Lover) is running against her in Ward 32, and he wants people to “help spank McMahon for stealing taxpayer money.”

On Sears’s website, he’s published a game that allows you to play as either Hitler, Putin, or Rob Ford. As you “play,” your sole objective is to spank McMahon, until her ass turns red, and the “stolen” taxpayer money flies out of it.

All of this goes down, by the way, while what appears to be a smiling Jesus dances in the corner.

I would hazard a guess to say this is against the City Councilors’ code of conduct, and Sears should be kicked out of the running if the City has any pride in itself. Imagine a City Councilor who unabashedly promoted violence against women in his campaign voting, say, on an item involving funding for women’s shelters? I’m not devoting any more words to this person, except for just “no.”



Image via Facebook.
Feminist Deleted From Canada’s History

And in another huge win for Canada, Harper has now managed to actually delete a famed Canadian feminist from the record.

Therese Casgrain, a prominent feminist voice from Quebec, used to have her name affixed to an award that was set up to honour activists in the country. The volunteer award was started in 1982 by Trudeau’s Liberal government, and eliminated in 2010. It was replaced by a different volunteer award with the Prime Minister’s banner.

Casgrain’s picture was also unceremoniously removed from Canada’s $50 bill, only to have a picture of an inanimate object—an icebreaker—put in her place. The same bill had a picture of the Famous Five women removed, as well.

That is some serious disrespect. A spokesperson for Employment and Social Development Canada gave a characteristically flavourless response about it all to the Toronto Star:

“There was no public announcement of its end. The spirit and objectives of the Therese Casgrain Volunteer Award were retained in two national categories of the PMVA (Prime Minister’s Volunteer Award).”

Why could it not just fall under its own award? I’m getting a drink.


 

Screenshot via AllHipHop.
My Anaconda Don’t Want None Unless You Got Buns, Hun

I’m going to proselytize, if you will, for a moment on Nicki Minaj’s awe-inspiring booty. Minaj, and specifically the all-out form her ass has taken in the much-circulated Anaconda photo, is signifying an important and necessary cultural shift.

Minaj is, arguably, as famous for her booty as she is for her rapping (see: “Google my ass”). And the art for “Anaconda” has inspired countless memes and rants about the supposed deception that it is Photoshopped.

But it’s also inspired a whole lot of sappy paternalistic lecturing disguised as good old handwringing and well-meaning cries of “What about the children!” Chuck Creekmur, owner of allhiphop.com, wrote Minaj an open letter as a concerned daddy, suggesting that, perhaps, she might tuck her bottom decently into some trousers so as to be a good influence on little girls.

“Now, the most popular, current Black female rapper starts overtly pushing her hyper-sexualized image again? Just my luck.” He laments that his daughter is turning into a young lady, and he doesn’t want her to be influenced by Minaj.

Erm, Chuck? I’m pretty sure Nicki’s image is her own prerogative, and I’m also sure she is a rapper, not a governess. Further: it’s not about you. By putting herself out there, she’s actually doing something good, I would say, for all women who don’t fit the white, skinny-ass Hollywood ideal. Minaj drove this point home on Instagram when she posted several hilarious photos of flat-assed white girls posing for Sports Illustrated with captions like “appropriate” and “acceptable,” words she felt aren’t oft applied to her own posterior—and why? Because it’s Black? Or round? Or both?

Let’s face a fact here as grownups, children aside: Women’s bodies are beautiful, and they’ll always be used as art and as advertising. Minaj is a businesswoman, and she is aware of that fact. But Minaj, whether it’s her intent or not, is opening the door for women of colour, curvy women, and gasp, curvy women of colour to also be regarded as desirable and, to use her word, acceptable.

As Jamilah Lemieux, Ebony’s senior editor, puts it:

“Nicki Minaj should be able to show her grown Black ass when and wherever she wants—for her own pleasure and/or for the entertainment of fellow adults. It isn’t her responsibility to cover up to save the children, though I do think she should also be clear on when she’s performing for kids and when she’s speaking to an older crowd.”

Yes, that. But Chuck Creekmur goes out of his way to slut shame and patronize Minaj, going so far as to assign her a moralistic homework assignment:

“For a moment, forget my daughter and let’s talk about you. My interactions and observations tell me you are this sweet, kind person at heart.” (Everybody knows you have to be either a Madonna or a whore; can’t be a bit of both). “When you get a quiet moment answer the following questions:

“How is Onika Tanya Maraj doing?

How does she truly feel about Nick Minaj right now?

What is your higher purpose with young girls (and boys)?

How will boys, already conditioned to sexualize girls at a young age, internalize this big booty of yours?”

This makes me want to pluck all of the hairs on my head out, one by one, in frustration. Higher purpose? She isn’t God. And Minaj hardly gave birth to the fact that young boys “sexualize” young girls.

Perhaps Creekmur, in turn, could be suffered to ask himself what, exactly, he’s trying to protect his daughter from. Is he trying to protect her from Minaj, or from a world in which her sexuality is her own—a concept that obviously scares him.

As Mychal Denzil Smith writes for Feministing:

“Whenever black women own their sense of sexuality and it appears to not be controlled by the hetero-male gaze, the whole world gets into a tizzy.”

What people really mean when they say they’re concerned about their children being faced with overt sexuality is: “Oh no, what if our society changes the way it looks at women’s sexual autonomy, and more importantly, how will that affect me (and potentially strip me of power)?”

If anything, Minaj is doing little girls a favour. She seems proud to be in her skin, a feeling all women with big brown butts deserve just as much as those with tiny white butts. (This is a simple concept, but I feel I repeat it at the same frequency with which my mother used to tell me to close cupboard doors. It has been slow to catch on). If Minaj likes herself, and young girls of colour see her celebrating her sexuality and being comfortable with who she is, that’s a good thing. Especially if parents decide to stop letting their televisions parent, and actually start teaching their children some sex positivity.


@sarratch

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