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Hillary Clinton's Foreign Policy Is Already Terrifying

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is ready for battle. Photo via Flickr user World Resources Institute 

The Iraq War sank Hillary Clinton when she ran for president in 2008. The former first lady and then-US Senator's refusal to call her vote authorizing the invasion a mistake made her seem just enough like a George W. Bush clone to alienate liberal Democrats and hand some guy named Barack Obama their party’s nomination. But she doesn't seem to have taken the rejection to heart, and may have actually become even more prone to saber-rattling since.

In a recent interview with the The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, the former Secretary of State talked Syria, Israel, Iraq, and the Obama Doctrine—if that’s really what we’re calling it now. In addition to all but admitting she is ready to run for the most powerful office on planet Earth two years from now, Clinton sounded a nostalgic tone for the bellicose American rhetoric of the Cold War, defended Israel's latest brutal assault on Gaza, and knocked Obama for not meddling in foreign conflicts more often.

“Great nations need organizing principles, and 'Don’t do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle,” Clinton said, offering her most aggressive criticism yet of Obama’s famously (some would say toxically) "pragmatic" approach to the world. “You know, we did a good job in containing the Soviet Union, but we made a lot of mistakes, we supported really nasty guys, we did some things that we are not particularly proud of, from Latin America to Southeast Asia, but we did have a kind of overarching framework about what we were trying to do that did lead to the defeat of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Communism. That was our objective. We achieved it."

Maybe we should be grateful Clinton is not quite doubling down on the Eisenhower-era fondness for brutal Latin American dictators and corrupt anti-communist regimes. And she has a point that despite all the drone wars and NSA surveillance programs (and this brand new bombing campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq), Obama has been leery of putting boots on the ground, so to speak. But it's not like this White House has been somehow reluctant to play abroad. On the contrary, the Obama administration has broadened the scope of its role in Afghanistan, massively expanded the use of drone assassinations across the Middle East and Africa, and intervened in Qaddafi's Libya, among other military adventures.

But the shadow candidate wants a more muscular approach to the scourge of Islamic radicalism, and thinks Obama dropped the ball on Syria's civil war.

"I know that the failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled," she said.

Whether arming fighters directly (as my colleague Charles Davis points out, the CIA did essentially arm Syrian rebels) or supplying firepower from the skies, Clinton wants to take action, man, and is sick of all the restraint. In fact, it seems like the main problem Clinton has with the Obama years is that they haven't been enough like Ronald Reagan's. You know, the 80s—when the president was an increasingly senile old man but still capable of delivering vaguely inspiring speeches in European capitals. Clinton promises more talk of American greatness, and to make sure the rest of the world knows how great we are, too. This is all kind of funny because Clinton actually attacked Obama back in 2008 for praising Reagan. And if the Obama era has been too cautious for her taste, one can only imagine the exotic military quests on the horizon if things go according to (her) plan.

Most of us can agree that Clinton's knowledge is plenty sophisticated when it comes to the nuances of international relations, and she has an easy command of all the key players and issues—it's not like she'd be asleep at the wheel.  But the question she has to ask herself is whether running on a platform of purging the world of Jihad, backing Israel no matter how many innocent children are bombed on the beaches of Gaza, and taking it even easier on banks like Goldman Sachs (she has a domestic agenda, too!) is really going to be enough to close the deal with American voters. 

Left-wing activist types hoping for a run by Elizabeth Warren (or someone else who isn't completely beholden to Wall Street) are probably kidding themselves, so it makes sense that Clinton feels safe to do her thing unfiltered. Still, she's playing with fire given the images of bloodshed streaming out of Gaza and the recent Pew poll that showed 55 percent of Americans are opposed to any kind of US role in containing the chaos in Iraq (though it's worth pointing out that survey was conducted before the Islamic State had begun to look this ferocious). The country is still fatigued in the wake of all these Middle East quagmires, and Clinton needs to be careful she doesn't end up on the wrong side of history once again. 

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.


One Night with EMT Workers in Canada’s Former Murder Capital

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Paramedics attend to a stabbing victim in the middle of an apartment hallway. After controlling the bleeding and monitoring the patient's blood pressure and heart rate, the superintendent (in white) began an injection of an unknown medication. All photos via the author.
On any given evening, under the cover of night, the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario is drunk on cheap beer, high on Oxys, and struggles to bear the burden of having the worst homicide rate among any major Canadian city.

Picking up the pieces are Superior North EMS paramedics, who deliver life-saving medical care on the front lines of the trauma, trying their best to delineate between the dying and the dead.

It all starts on the first call: the scene of a stabbing where multiple bodies are found spread over 400 square feet, lying in an empty downtown apartment, insides bleeding out.

A grisly scene for your average person, to be sure, but for the gang of tired paramedics I’m following around for one night, this is just another night of work in one of the nation’s most recent murder capitals. 

Welcome to Thunder Bay.

The Call 

When the call comes in, the McChicken combos go down and all of a sudden its lights on, sirens blaring, and $150,000 worth of taxpayer-funded machinery hitting the pavement at full throttle.

I’m with primary care paramedics (PCPs) *Gale and *Benson—a pair of Superior North EMS medics who've agreed to let me ride along with them.

“This is the best part of the job,” Gale yells as we fly his ambulance along the Harbourview Expressway, while negotiating a safe trajectory through four lanes of traffic with the windows down, drowning out Iggy Azalea's "Fancy" in the background. It’s a high-pressure ride, especially if it’s lunchtime and all Gale had to do so far is drop off some old-timers for their morning constitutionals. He blasts his horn at the inattentive motorists in front of us, all the while offering me a blow-by-blow crash-course on the nature of his job. "A lot of people view us as the harbingers of death you know," he states philosophically, careening through traffic at what feels like 100 kilometers per hour. "But this job is really just like any other, except for these complete moments of human chaos."

"Just don't get us killed, alright?” Gale’s partner Benson responds, jolting up with alacrity as he feels the brakes slam for the umpteenth time. He's seen this whirling dervish routine from Gale before and knows that he hasn't even reached his top gear yet.  

"This is what the guy is like at half mast," he says to me calmly, and I believe him.  There's a sort of manic quality that comes along with managing these kinds of daily extremes—of transitioning from moments of the most mundane musings to matters requiring life and death urgency—that Gale’s maniacal driving strategies somehow capture perfectly. The concerned looks that passersby give us as we navigate around and through them, over curbs and behind alleyways is enough to give me pause, but I can tell you this: If I was lying in a pool of my own blood in Thunder Bay, I'd want Gale to be the guy to get the call.

In an instant, we arrive as the second ambulance at the scene and disengage the vehicle only to hear the painful moans of those a couple floors above the apartment entrance.

After stepping over the remnants of smashed beer bottles and spilled alcohol, we find the first patient to be in particularly bad condition. 

"This guy's critical," a medic who arrived ahead of us calls out. "We gotta plug holes and go." Benson is moving very quickly now—heart monitor, kit bag—doing everything with an automated precision, managing to maintain complete composure the entire time.

Primary care paramedic Gale Benson attaches electrodes to a patients' chest to monitor their heart rate.
"Always take the approach that you are trying to be like a duck," he tells me later at the hospital.  "On the surface you’re calm, but underneath, you’re legs are kicking like crazy."

Back at the hospital, Benson is given the tough assignment of loading up his rugged field laptop to fill out the ACR (ambulance care report).  This leaves Gale with 15 minutes to cover some curriculum on what it’s like working in a city with a high rate of social determinant problems. 

“You try to rationalize why people end up doing these sorts of things to themselves and a lot of it comes back to social isolation and addiction,” he says, referencing Thunder Bay’s concomitant tidal wave of poverty, substance abuse, and violence.

What upsets Gale and Benson the most is the fact that the hopelessness and depravity seem to be never ending. 25,000 calls are fielded each year (almost one for every four residents). The paramedics talk about this demand for resources and the cost of handling their ambulances at a cost of $240 per ride.

The Night Shift

Flash forward to the night shift, and now I'm with 10-year vet *Kacey Mueller and his partner, the rookie, *Jack Gingras.  Kacey admits he's not surprised the constant stream of abuse has taken its toll on those in his profession. In the past 12 weeks, 13 of Ontario’s first responders have killed themselves according to the Tema Conter Memorial Trust, an organization dedicated to promoting mental-health awareness among Canada’s first responders. 

Kacey points to the high rates of suicide and rising levels of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) cases as key indicators of the pressure his colleagues are under. "Currently we have a committee of paramedics, mental health professionals, and administrators trying to come up with a plan for PTSD, but we still don't address it as much as we should," he says. "In terms of home life, you can try your best, but it’s hard to just leave all of these things you've seen completely at work.”

Jack Gingras is a recent graduate of Confederation College's paramedic program, having joined the Superior North EMS team one month ago. A typical shift for him lasts around 12 hours.
The cost and personal toll of engaging in this profession are probably incalculable, but for a paramedic, they are the price for doing business. But it’s not all just a simple matter of dealing with the dregs of society. Paramedics don't get paid particularly well (for Kacey and Jack, they’ll receive around $30 an hour). They can't always be with their kids on the evenings or the weekends; their marriages break up as frequently as anybody else's. 

His partner Jack, a 21-year-old on his first month on the job, is beginning to understand exactly what Kacey’s talking about. At about 4:30 AM that night, we'll all be summoned to help an old lady who called 911, but won't buzz us into her apartment when we show up.  The city will receive 8,000 calls from senior “super-users” this year, though many of them will at least be for good reason. "On a scale of 1 to 10, this call is shittastic," Kacey grins, shaking his head. “It's nice to know we are making a difference.”

Jack fires up the laptop and begins to write up the call report. The hospital will issue a $45 bill out to the woman, but the cost of the whole experience is somehow more than that—every day, the weight of the city's problems—its poverty and aging population—weigh on the city a little more.  

Back with Benson and Gale, the stabbing has been taken completely off their plate. The doctors are taking over now, and the paperwork's been filed. On the very next call, they'll be brought out to another apartment—this time to handle a domestic abuse—a female has been struck in the mouth.  The inside of the residence looks like something out of a scene from "Hoarders" and the injured woman keeps apologizing to the policemen for taking up their time. Her young daughter is there attempting to console her, but her sentences aren't making any sense. The entire scene is miserable and filled to the brim with despair.  

But Benson and Gale are kind. Gale gently ices the woman’s bruised and swollen face. Benson asks some difficult questions with impressive grace. 

On our way to the next call, I ask how the two men just processed what they saw.

“I feel sorry for the daughter, 'cause seeing this is really going to fuck her up," Gale says, in the same calm and collected tone he used when dealing with the victims at the stabbing. "But when guys hit their girlfriends, we're going to be the ones who get the call.”  

"It fucking sucks," Benson replies, despondently.  "It really fucking sucks.”

The radio cackles and another code four comes in, the highest priority call. Benson cuts himself off just in time to gun it through another intersection as the sirens fire up and trumpet into the sky.
 


@maj_robinson

Stopping by the Ghost Town in Cyprus That's Been Held Hostage for Forty Years

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If you've heard of a place called Varosha lately, you're unlikely to think of what it once was—a sunny millionaire's playground on the sea—because today it's one of the world's biggest ghost towns. Its crumbling houses and buildings are slowly being reclaimed by nature, a reminder that an unresolved conflict isn't over just because people aren't killing each other there anymore. But it may hold the key to reunifying the divided country of Cyprus.

The Turkish army invaded Cyprus during the summer of 1974 and Varosha's population went from 39,000 to zero almost overnight. The two waves of Turkish attacks were a response to a coup by Greek-Cypriot nationalists. The Turkish troops captured Varosha during the second wave which began 40 years ago this week. Since then no visitors other than Turkish patrols have been allowed inside.

The grim anniversary of the war that resulted in the capture of Varosha brings new hope that a solution can be found to revive the town. A grassroots effort by people from both communities of this bitterly divided country, as well as renewed geopolitical interest in Cyprus have motivated more efforts to find a solution. 

Turkey invaded in order to counter Greek-Cypriot nationalism in Cyprus, by citizens who wanted to unite politically with Greece, which at the time was ruled by a far-right military junta. Turkey then claimed to be protecting the Turkish minority on the island by invading. One month later, the second invasion set the stage for what would become of Cyprus ever since then.

The invasion and partition of the island resulted in the killing of around 1,500 Turkish-Cypriots and 8,000 Greek-Cypriots due to Turkish Army bombardment, as well as what has been labeled ethnic cleansing between the respective sides in Cyprus. Turkey occupied the northern 36.2 percent of Cyprus, and continues to do so to this day.

When the fighting stopped soon after the invasion, the result was a partition of the island between the Greek-Cypriot south, an internationally recognized EU country, and the Turkish-Cypriot north, a breakaway state only recognized by Turkey. The two sides are separated by a UN buffer zone, referred to as the “Green Zone.” Varosha lies just north of the Green Zone in the Turkish occupied part of Cyprus.

Unlike other towns, it was not resettled, as many towns on both sides of Cyprus were. The Turkish army has kept a tight lock on Varosha, knowing it is important enough to be used as a bargaining chip against the Greek side. This has resulted in 40 years of sustained decay that has arguably become the most obvious symbol of Cyprus' unresolved conflict. 

It was possible to get to Varosha but only on the outer edges where the fence is located. There I saw life going on as normal in the neighboring town of  Famagusta. People swam and sunbathed at the beach, used the functioning hotels, and drank at beach bars. All the while, just behind a fence, buildings were crumbling. The vast majority of the beach is permanently closed, leaving only a small strip. And of course to jump over the fence into Varosha—or even take a pictures from the outside–is to risk arrest.

The first thing I saw as I approached Varosha was a hotel building that is one of two directly hit by Turkish airstrikes. The damage from the bombing is still visible. The bodies were all removed, but the site of the battle wasn't otherwise cleaned up. 

Before the division of Cyprus, Greek-Cypriots and the Turkish-Cypriot minority lived in each other's midst throughout the island, albeit not always peacefully. This is no longer the case, but the desire reopen and restore Varosha has drawn people from both sides.

Serdar Atai, a Turkish-Cypriot who lives near Varosha compared living with the abandonment of Varosha to "being forced to sleep with a dead person every day." He and other Turkish-Cypriots have been working together with Greek-Cypriots to lobby for Varosha's reopening through the Bicommunal Famagusta Initiative. George Lordos is one of the Greek-Cypriots involved in the initiative who had to flee Varosha during the invasion, leaving behind a home and family business. The initiative has been advocating for the reopening and restoration of Varosha, and the return of property to its rightful owners. It has conducted studies through Eastern Mediterranean University on the costs and engineering needs involved in the restoration of an entire town that has been closed for 40 years.

Turkish-Cypriots, the Cypriot minority, once worked in Varosha, and proponents of its reopening say it will be a chance for Greek and Turkish Cypriots to live and work together again, paving the way for a wider reunification of the island. The plan has run into opposition from both communities in Cyprus, and from Turkey. Turkish-Cypriot hardliners want Turkey to retain control of Varosha, perhaps because it's a useful bargaining chip against when they need something from Greek-Cypriots. Some Greek-Cypriots reject the plan because they see a deal with an illegal occupier as granting legitimacy to a breakaway state that has no rights to the land in the first place.

Mertkan Hamit, a Turkish-Cypriot member of the initiative was part of a team who conducted a public opinion poll which showed that the vast majority of Turkish-Cypriots do support the plan even though most of those who would return to Varosha would be Greek-Cypriots. Mertkan and Serdar were quick to cite the economic benefit of having Varosha back, saying the area around it has been especially hurt by the occupation, and Varosha would help them just as much as it would the Greek-Cypriots. 

A wider look at Cyprus shows that Varosha may be closer than ever to being freed. The discovery of natural gas in Cypriot waters, and increased desire to be less dependent on Russia has sparked renewed geopolitical interest in resolving the Cyprus question. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Cyprus and met with the leaders of both sides this year, hoping to announce a deal on Varosha. Though the deal fell victim to political deadlock, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that he will soon visit Cyprus. 

Natural gas and the possibility that Varosha could be reopened could create momentum for a solution to Cyprus. But so far, the writing on the crumbling walls of Varosha says that the Cypriot question hasn't been answered. 

This Rebel Video of a Syrian Tank Exploding Shows Probable US-Supplied Weapons in Action

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This Rebel Video of a Syrian Tank Exploding Shows Probable US-Supplied Weapons in Action

Meet the Male Escort Who Makes $7000 a Night

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Josh picking up his trophy for Male Sex Worker of the Year at the 2011 Erotic Awards (All photos courtesy of Josh Brandon)

London is home to many of the priciest things in the world. There’s a parking space that sold for $670,000, a bottle of champagne for $200,000, the $235 million apartment and, if you really feel like it, you can drop $50 for a sofa seat at a movie theater. There's also Josh Brandon, one of the most expensive escorts around. Reports peg his annual earnings at $500,000. Just a single night with him can cost almost $7,000, or almost twice the average monthly salary of a person in the UK.

Josh has been causing a stir in the sex work industry lately for his push to legitimise the oldest profession in the world. It’s time to stop stigmatising sex workers, he argues, and treat them as the productive members of society they are. I spoke with him to find out more, and in the process discovered he’s busy building himself an empire.

VICE: Okay, so let’s get this out of the way. It’s been reported you clear $500,000 a year being an escort. Is that true?
Josh Brandon:
You went there already! Well, my end of year return is due soon and I don't fancy filing it early. Let's say I'm not going to pop up on the Forbes rich list any time soon, but I’m not going broke any time soon either.

How do you earn so much? Are you doing something other escorts aren’t?
It's easier to make a lot of money if you love what you do. I think anyone who enjoys their job is going to make more than those who think, "Damn, I gotta work again." Plus, it’s about being creative. I have VIP cards—kind of like Starbucks. So it’s just being creative and using regular good business practices, and the money follows from that.

Where do you draw the line with extreme requests from clients? Or is it just a case of, “That’ll cost you another grand”?
Things like bodily fluids and bondage on the receiving end are a no-no. Being in control is very important. Anything unsafe is off the menu, regardless of price.

You prefer the term “escort” to “sex worker.” You also think the term “prostitution” is outdated. Why?
“Prostitution” is so last century. The business has changed since the advent of the internet. The term “escort” covers more areas. For example, sex happens, but sex doesn't always happen. I have disabled clients who can only cuddle or chat; I have clients who want companionship in non-sexual ways. And a lot of escorts now are true entrepreneurs. If someone disagrees with that, I would say, “Why? This is a capitalist country after all. Everything is OK to sell except for sex and companionship? That’s just bizarre.”

Where I’m from in America there are a lot of Christian fundamentalists who would label you “bizarre” for being an escort. What would you say to the people who make those kinds of moral judgements about you?

I am very spiritual, believe it or not. But I don't buy the dogma. I keep it simple. The universe has laws. It’s always expanding, growing; everything is in a constant state of change. It must love all things equally if it created everything and creation is done out of love. I don't think you can create from hate. 

Josh in Miami

Do you feel society stigmatises you, as a male escort, less than it does your female counterparts?
Oh, trust me, I still take flak—and occasional death threats. But it's much easier for males in my line of work. But among the bisexual guys I've dated, many have said they would never date a woman who did what I do, yet they’ll date me. When they explain, it comes to down to general sexism.

You’ve compared being a sex worker to a psychologist. What have you learned about the human psyche from your clients?
As a gay escort, learning how many people believe that “fitting in” is more important than personal happiness is the biggest eye opener. Many of my clients have a lot of repressed feelings and desires—and not only older clients. I'm still amazed how many young 18–25-year-old clients still feel they “have to” get married, and yet don't want to. It’s also quite evident how nationality and race affects those beliefs. Then there’s a lot of clients who bring up early sexual experiences they need to relieve and express feelings they've never talked about with anyone.

Josh in New York

Do you feel you’ve helped any of these people in some deeper way?
A client in New York I met weekly over a few months, the effect the experience had on him—he was questioning everything and he told me on our last meeting how his life had changed because of our time. He was happier. Family life, business, everything got better. He said he felt like he dealt with things that were beneath the surface. I’ve had lots of experiences like that, and those are the best in my opinion.

You're campaigning to promote the legitimacy of sex work in the hopes it will lessen its stigma. What change do you want to see?
It's about creating a safer environment. If no one talks about sex work publicly it could continue to go deeper underground, which will only make it more dangerous for people forced into sex work against their will. It's about recognizing that some of us are business people, yet others aren’t in it by choice—and they shouldn’t be ignored.

Josh in an advert for the NUM

Which brings us to the charity you work with: The National Ugly Mugs Scheme. What to they do?
The NUM is very important and unique. It lets escorts make reports direct to the project to be logged in their database so other escorts can be alerted to any dodgy dudes. Escorts can check the database and get alerts via emails, text or the app. NUM helps escorts report crimes to the police anonymously. That's vital because most escorts won't report crimes, expecting the police to not be interested or do anything—or maybe even arrest them. That’s because not everyone knows where they legally stand. The charity works closely with all police forces around the country on behalf of street sex workers and escorts. Everyone in the business would be smart to sign up.

You’re a guy. Do you think female escorts have to fear for their safety more than males do?
Reports that come in from NUM show males and females are more or less equally likely to suffer violence from clients. I weigh, like, 110 pounds with a 25-inch waist, so I guess I’m in the same boat.

Any advice for escorts on how they can better protect themselves?
It's about having a strong mind and the confidence to deal with situations. Being smart every time—taking measures as if you expect someone to be violent, even if there's no reason to think so. Only meeting in hotels or your home with safety measures in place—like friends expecting a call at a certain time and keeping all information about your whereabouts logged in different places other people have access to.

If a friend came to you and said they wanted to get into the escort industry, what would you tell them?
I used to advise newbies a lot—I get asked more than I can respond to. One guy ignored everything and got himself in trouble with drugs and other things, so I'm less eager to advise since then. But visit uknswp.org/um and read everything, know the risks. Go into it as a business, respectful of customers. Know yourself first, your limits, and have a hard head. If it's about desperation for money, don’t get into it. If drugs are an issue, deal with that first, because drug problems could easily be amplified in this business. And realise that only about 5 percent of people in this business actually make big money.

You have a book, several internet businesses, and a tapas lounge all in the works. If those do really well, are you getting out of the escort game?
[...] Sometimes it gets to the point where I can't meet clients, and it's annoying because I still see “Josh Brandon” as my first business and want him to keep going. So then I have to increase my rates and work less when other business gets busy. My time is worth more these days, but when it goes beyond what clients can afford, that’s when I'll have to hang up my overnight bag.

Thanks, Josh.

Follow Michael Grothaus on Twitter.

Why Is the Islamic State Trying to Eradicate Iraq's Yazidi Minority?

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The Yazidi people are in trouble. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

On Tuesday, a helicopter bearing supplies for the embattled Yazidi people crashed in the mountains outside the city of Sinjar in Iraq's volatile northwest. There, the Islamic State (the IS, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, ISIS) is besieging, scattering, and starving out the remainder of a population of Iraqi Yazidis, an ethno-religious group to whom most of us have been introduced by their current plight. Over the two and a half months since the IS seized nearby Mosul, we've learned to expect bigoted terror targeted at vulnerable, non-compliant populations around their strongholds. Early coverage focused on the destruction of shrines, imposition of taxes on or complete expulsion of Christian groups, and execution of Shi‘a and resistors. But the attacks on Sinjar move beyond the horrors of cleansing and control—the old ISIS refrain of get in line, get out, or die—and towards the complete, intentional, and targeted eradication of a people and culture.

Information coming out of Sinjar is spotty, with estimates of the number of Yazidis fled and under threat varying by tens of thousands and almost no information about the fate of refugees or captives. We are certain of a few facts about the conflict, though. “This is definitely targeted,” says Joe Stork, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division who spoke to VICE from Iraq after spending a week amongst Yazidi communities. That is to say, the Yazidis are not just random casualties who happened to get wedged, as a group, against the IS’s progressive march with no escape. The IS appears to want more than just the dispersal, conversion, or subjugation of the Yazidis, and instead their outright eradication. “Everyone we know believes this is their intention,” Stork says. By August 7, both the UN and US President Barack Obama were openly declaring the IS campaign against the Yazidis a genocide. But why the IS has decided to initiate the eradication of an entire people now—whether the campaign is entirely ideological or at least partly strategic—remains unknown, making it hard to judge whether there is any chance for abatement or whether they will pursue the Yazidis beyond Sinjar if they manage to flee. “None of us are in a position to ask ISIS,” says Stork.

A small community numbering perhaps 700,000 worldwide, the Yazidis are members of a faith that displays elements of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, but is distinct from all of them. Perhaps half a million adherents live in northern Iraq, mostly in Nineveh Province, where their holiest shrine and pilgrimage site, the temple at Lalish, houses the tomb of their reincarnated demigod saint Sheikh Adi bin Musafir. Unfortunately, Nineveh Province is also ground zero for the Islamic State.

The Yazidis believe in a monotheistic God, but think he created the world only to leave its affairs in the hands of seven Holy Beings, often referred to as angels. Chief amongst them was the Peacock Angel, Melek Taus, known in Islamic tradition as Iblis or Shaytan and in Christianity as Satan. But while in most Judeo-Christian traditions, the devil is condemned for his refusal to acknowledge and honor God’s creation, Adam, the Yazidis revere his choice to honor no other creature than God. They believed Sheikh Musafir was a reincarnation of Melek Taus, the speaker of God on earth. Besides the occasional creation of avatars of angels and reincarnation of spirits, the Yazidi also believe in elements of nature worship, purification rituals, and a type of caste system, all of which leads them to near-total endogamy, a practice of marrying within their own community.

A Yazidi temple in Sinjar. Photo via Flickr user James Gordon

Ethnically, they are usually described as Kurds thanks to their use of the Kurdish language and customs and residence in Kurdish lands. But given their historic aversion to marrying into even nearby and culturally similar Kurdish clans, this equation may be an oversimplification and is often rejected. They are their own people—a unique culture astonishing for its survival despite years of persecution for their allegedly heretical devil worship.

The IS never hinted at any fondness for or acceptance of the Yazidis, but it wasn’t until late July that signs of systematic aggression started to emerge. On July 25, Kurdish news outlets reported that militants had distributed leaflets in and around Sinjar, a major Yazidi town, threatening to forcibly convert them to Islam. On August 1, the IS pushed into Sinjar, taking the town within two days. “For the first hour they said to stay calm, and we have no problem with you,” relates Stork. “Then an hour later they were rounding people up in cars.” Within days, hundreds of Yazidis had been captured, some of whom were killed and some of whom—mainly women—may currently be enslaved or enduring efforts at forced conversion. Yazidis attempted an armed retreat, using old rifles to hold back the IS as they fled into the mountains, but eventually ran out of ammunition.

Tens of thousands fled the immediate area, and tens of thousands more have abandoned the surrounding region. At present, it is unclear what has happened to those who fled into the mountains, north towards Turkey. But many remained trapped without provisions in the mountains, pinned in by the IS forces, for much of the last week. At least 20,000 became trapped atop a single mountain, as Iraqi state and Peshmerga forces of the autonomous region of Kurdistan, who are now fighting to hold an often flagging border against the IS, failed to open a route of escape or to deliver effectual aid to the exposed refugees. By August 8, the Peshmerga opened a corridor for Yazidi families—all of whom seem to have lost someone to violence or attrition—to flee. By the next day, the United States had initiated a still-ongoing air support campaign targeting the IS militants in and around Sinjar to relieve pressure on the community. The effects on the Yazidi community, their destination, and their fate, remain unknown.

The most obvious explanation for the IS’s decision to eradicate the Yazidi is that the notoriously puritanical sect considers them devil worshippers, irredeemable and corrosive heretics who deserve extinction. Many other Muslims in the region condemn Yazidis for the same reason, but ISIS differentiates itself by the desire to fully eradicate their culture and religion. According to Stork, "that’s the hardline ISIS type of image of this community.” While the Islamic State claims it has room for other monotheists, recognized in the Qur‘an as the ahl al-kitab—the people of the book, which historically encompassed Christians and Jews, as well as the Zoroastrains, all of whom the Yazidis resemble—they appear to have determined that the deification of Melek Taus invalidates the Yazidis from that protected status.

This fits with the religious motivation in other targeted IS campaigns against ethno-religious minorities, some of whose plight, despite documentation by human rights monitors, have not received as much international recognition as Nineveh’s Christians or the Yazidis. At least 11 villages belonging to the Shabak have been taken by the IS, forcing members of the ethno-religious minority to flee to Kurdistan. The Shabak, 100,000 or more northern Iraqi Turkmen related to the Qizilbash tribes who helped the Safavid dynasty conquer Iran in the 16th century only to face extermination at the hands of their masters (who saw them as a threat in peacetime), take both Sunni and Shi‘a labels. However, they also show reverence and take pilgrimages to the shrines of past leaders. Their invocations show a quasi-deification of their divine leaders, and their cultural practices allow them to drink alcohol, earning the ire of the IS.

The IS has also killed members of the Mandaean ethno-religious community, most notably one of the few female taxi drivers in Nineveh Province, whom they executed in early July. Once a major force in Iraq, but now reduced to a few thousand dispersed adherents, the Mandaeans are remnants of Gnostic Christianity who revere St. John the Baptist as a Christ-like savior, relying on their own gospels—which refer to the world in Zoroastrain terms as divided between a realm of darkness and a realm of light. They’ve long identified themselves as the Sabians, given protection as ahl al-kitab, but likewise have been denied that status by radical Islamic clerics through the ages, most notably during a purge in 2003.

Any heterodoxy or deviation from the tight parameters of the IS’s definition of a protected people appears to merit, in the minds of its leadership and foot soldiers, eradication to create a pure religious state. This willingness to define popular faith—rituals and reverences not found in traditional orthodox Islamic tradition—as heresy gives the IS wide discretion in its choice to persecute, suppress, or eliminate any religious group that doesn’t fall tightly into line with them. All forms of difference have suffered under their occupation, and every human tragedy deserves equal and due response and memorialization. But despite the common religious motive in the IS’s campaigns, it’s clear that certain religious groups, condemned for similar reasons, have born a greater brunt of aggression than others.

In early July, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued reports acknowledging that the IS seemed to be specially targeting vulnerable minorities. In the initial days of the conquest of and expansion beyond Mosul, certain religious minorities had an easier time escaping the wrath of the militants. “Up until now, Christians had an easier time getting out of the region,” says Stork. But the groups who remained behind mostly lack visibility, wealth, protection, or established and powerful connections beyond their region to whom to flee. This may be why, of all the Shi‘a in the region, some of the greatest atrocities have befallen the ethnic Turkmen, who faced a similar mass slaughter and expulsion from Tel Afar at the end of June.

Yazidis on the run from the Islamic State. Photo via Flickr user Domenico

The Yazidis have suffered previous massacres, most recently in 2007, at the hands of other religious groups in Iraq. In the late 1980s, the Shabak were forced into a mass relocation by endemic Iraqi bigotry. To this day, according to Human Rights Watch , they’re often called devil worshippers or infidels, respectively, by many of their co-nationals. Almost everything is distastefuideol to the IS, but these groups are massively marginalized by the broader population, too. In the case of the Yazidis, they are also, from the IS’s perspective, in the way. “There may be a strategic purpose here in terms of the quest for continuity of control in ISIS-held territory,” explains Stork, with the Islamic State tying up loose ends and demonstrating its power, unfortunately often by catching up and making an example of those who have little recourse or protection. As the IS flexes its muscles and secures its territory, “the Yazidis particularly have born the brunt of it,” says Stork.

For a time, the Yazidis had the avowed protection of Iraqi Kurdistan and its formidable Peshmerga forces. In April, Kurdish regional President Masoud Barzani proclaimed the Yazidis authentic Kurds and paragons of his ethnicity’s resistance to tyranny—his government had previously recognized Yazidi festivals as public holidays. Throughout June, the Peshmerga took on the duty of protecting the Yazidis, as well as Shi‘a Turkemn and Shabak, where the Iraqi state had abdicated its control and responsibility. By so doing, they strategically demonstrated their competency to international powers, and their commitment to a pluralistic society, conveniently scoring points in their quest for global recognition and full independence. The hundreds of thousands of refugees they took in often turned around to bolster Peshmerga resistance to the IS’s advances, implicitly expressing the buy-in of the region’s minorities and Nineveh Province’s fractured territory to a Kurdish state project. Whether strategic or heartfelt, it was a win-win situation.

But that protection failed upon the IS force’s approach to Sinjar. “That probably an understatement,” says Stork. “Confidence in Kurdistan’s protection is now pretty low… no one know’s if it’s a lack of ability or determination, but it certainly has eroded and no one’s sure what’s going on right now.” Despite the Peshmerga’s role in liberating the Yazidis stranded in the mountains outside Sinjar-proper, the IS and the world alike now recognize that even those troops ostensibly under Kurdistan’s protection are, when push comes to shove, extremely vulnerable, often on their own. To the IS, that makes them easy targets.

Whether the ultimate motive is purely ideological, a natural extension of previous campaigns pinning in the most vulnerable communities as they consolidate their control, or perhaps even a conscious effort to specifically target the weak as examples, the fact remains that the Yazidis face extermination. And they recognize the extent of the threat, according to Stork. Few have taken up the IS’s offer of safety in conversion (and those who did have not been seen since), as most doubt it would actually save them. “They were fleeing out last week, but the situation could be different now” he says. “And today, it’s hard getting out. Crossing over to Turkey is total mayhem.” All we know now, Stork tells me, is that “this is a campaign of general eradication, and it’s going all too well for ISIS.”

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

Canadian Cannabis: Exploring the Power of Weed Extracts

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In this episode of Canadian Cannabis, Damian visits with two weed-oil enthusiasts (Dablo Escobar and Earl Capone) who show off their wax cooking method. Here's a preview: it's very, very sketchy. After that, he goes to Jim's Weeds, a no-holds-barred compassion club in Vancouver that was recently raided by the police. That's where Damian got his first taste of Phoenix Tears; an extract designed especially for cancer patients.

At the moment, Health Canada does not support the sale of extracts.

 

Stay tuned for Episode 3 of Canadian Cannabis, where we visit patients across the country to learn how cannabis can relieve HIV, Multiple Sclerosis, and epilepsy symptoms. Damian asks them how they feel about Canada's restrictive marijuana laws.

WHO Experts Have Decided It's Ethical to Offer Patients Experimental Ebola Treatments

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WHO Experts Have Decided It's Ethical to Offer Patients Experimental Ebola Treatments

VICE Photo Issue 2014: Atlantic Wall by Pierre Le Hors

The Jim Norton Show: Dave Attell - Part 1

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On the fourth episode of The Jim Norton Show, premiering August 13th on VICE, Jim sits down with comedians Rich Vos, Sherrod Small, and Dave Attell, for a discussion that could never happen on a traditional talk show.

Stream Jules Born’s Debut Solo EP ‘Memorybilia’

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A few weeks ago, Jules Born and I were driving to a taco spot in Jersey City trying to define his debut solo album, Memorybilia. Alternative was too vague, begging the question, alternative to what? R&B was straight up inaccurate. He said his sister once called it progressive punk, which I didn’t really understand at all.

“Last year was the first year the Grammy’s had the urban contemporary category. Maybe we should just call it urban contemporary?” Born then said.  “I don’t even know what urban means. Black music that’s not R&B and not hip-hop, I guess. Should I just own that?”

About an hour later as we’re driving back into Manhattan, we decide to settle on urban contemporary. Weirdly enough, the old white dudes who I imagine sit around a gilded table and decide how to categorize all Grammy-worthy music have gotten it right. Or at least they were able to decide on a name.

For Born, it’s more about uniting a group of artists who have been miscategorized or not categorized at all, just because no one knows what the fuck to call it since they’re making something that we’ve never really heard before. A post-R&B, post-hip-hop, post-soul, post-funk sound of black music. There’s Gordon Voidwell, Allan Kingdom, Young Fathers, I Love Makkonen, SZA, and Born’s other project, Voices of Black, making weird, smooth-sounding and melodic electronic music that they mostly sing over.

Born and his high school friend Baba Ali started Voices of Black back in 2010 and quickly built a fan base that includes musical innovators and tastemakers like Little Dragon, who asked the duo to open for them in Prospect Park. Over the past year or so, Born had been producing and singing music on his own and finally decided to release it as a solo project. The time just felt right.     

It’s an enveloping, quirky and warm soundscape of his life in Teaneck, New Jersey. And if he decides to in fact call it Urban Contemporary, he might just make it a bit easier for himself to win a Grammy.

VICE: Do you see yourself as part of any scene?
Jules Born: I’m for the scene of progressive people and that scene doesn’t exist—it’s a mind state. So anyone with that mind state, I make music for them. It doesn’t have to do with race, color, economical background, gender, sexual preference, or anything. It’s progressive people who do things that come from them and want to live their life with positive energy.

What is progressive to you?
Progressive is just pushing yourself to be as creative as possible without worrying about format or genre or how you’re marketable as a product. It’s trusting the universe and having an authentic expression of yourself to take you wherever you want to go in life.

Why’d break out from Voices of Black and go solo?
With this album, I honestly just wanted to have non-conventional song format for most of it. But then at the same time “Alone in this Town” and “Missouri Loves Company” are traditional song format, but more chord based. I wanted to build around that with more sounds for a full experience and then to be listened to together. But if anything, sonically I wanted to set an example to blur the lines between what can be classified as certain genres. I just feel like it’s starting to happen for a lot of alternative black artists and I just want to embody that instead of being like, Oh well I got to make something that’s a little more for hip-hop fans or something for electronic fans. I just kind of did what I wanted. I guess that was all I was really trying to say.

Do you play instruments?
I grew up classically trained in piano. I went to Yamaha music school when I was a little, recital at Steinway when I was young and all that. But I just never dedicated myself. I played sports growing up and I would never practice. I didn’t stay up with my music theory and my sheet music and I kind of unlearned it, but now I’m actually relearning scales and chords and all of that. I’m actually happy that I didn’t stay with it because I think it could be limiting in some ways.

Are your parents musical?
Yeah, in the sense of surrounding me with music, but no one in my family’s really professional or anything. I come from a real big sports family. My dad played two years of professional football, my uncle coached and played professional baseball, and my other uncle, my moms brother, is a running back coach of the Chargers and he’s been with the chargers for like 10 years. I used to intern for Immortal Technique when I was 17.

How?
MySpace. I MySpace messaged him. I’m the king of the private message. Two months later I got my internship as a freshman at Pace University, transferred over the college credit, I was in a video, I was helping sell merchandise at shows.

Have you messaged anyone else?
I message Wardell. It’s Sasha Spileberg and her brother. Not even on some creepy shit.

It’s just out of the blue though, right?
Yeah. I don’t want to name drop, but I’ve messaged a ton of people, like Kali Uchis. I messaged her. She didn’t answer, but we’ll meet.

Do you think that anything about your music is inherently New York?
I’m going to say it’s inherently New Jersey. New Jersey is kind of this place that everybody knows about for the wrong reasons and low-key has produced arguably the most talent out of any state in America.

Who’s your top New Jersey talent?
George Clinton, Bruce Springsteen—obviously—Sarah Jessica Parker, Shaquille O’Neal, Queen Latifah, Ice-T, Kool & the Gang, The Isley Brothers, Sugar Hill Records, Bruce Willis, The Fugees, Naughty by Nature, Ray Liotta...

People don’t rep New Jersey.
That’s the problem. It gets washed into the New York metropolitan area thing, but I’m trying to change that. I’m not trying to act like New Jersey has a sound. New Jersey has contributed through that amazing vision and talent from the state that I think is very undermined.

Eight is kind of a short, random number of songs for a full album. Why’d you choose that?
I like the number eight and I knew I wanted to do something that wasn’t that long and I never wanted to break its cohesiveness. A lot of the Parliament albums and rock albums in the late-70s and mid-70s were seven or eight songs. Not that I was trying to embody that, but with everyone’s attention span now, I like the idea of having seven or eight songs. It’s either the extreme where it’s like the single or the EP or the album, and I wanted to do something where you respect it for what it is cohesively, but it’s not long.

How do you listen to music?
By feeling and color. The melody or the chords register in different colors. If it’s sad and minor chords it’s going to be dark purple and black and gray. If it’s major chords: oranges, light blues and greens. I instantly know—that’s just how I listen to it.

Do you have Synesthesia?   
I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t want to be that guy that’s like, Yeah, I got Synesthesia! I’ve always heard music in terms of color. Days of the week is the same thing. Every day is a color. That’s how I memorized the days of the week, but I just thought that was normal. I’m not going to rep synesthesia just because.

What are the days?
Monday is light blue, Tuesday is white, Wednesday is orange, Thursday is black, Friday is maroon, Saturday is yellow, and Sunday is baby blue.

But you’ve never been diagnosed?
I do have a sensory disorder that I was diagnosed with in high school.

What is it?
All it means is that I have a really bad sense of direction and I can’t really do puzzles. I was super advanced at math at a young age and that’s why I think when I was very young I was very advanced in music theory and playing scales. I was in piano classes and recitals with my sisters who are three and five years older than me when I was eight. So I think I topped out of the mathematical side of my brain and it fucked up my other side and that’s what I am now.

Memorybilia's official release date is August 19th. The album will be available for free download and will also be sold on iTunes beginning on September 3rd.

Follow Lauren on Twitter

Boston Police Used Facial Recognition Technology to Spy on Thousands of Music Festival Attendees

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Boston Police Used Facial Recognition Technology to Spy on Thousands of Music Festival Attendees

Illustrators Pay Tribute to Robin Williams

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Although you might have never uttered the words "I'm a huge Robin Williams fan," I could probably rattle off at least five of his movies that you love, or that at the least made you very happy for a while. Robin Williams was omnipresent through a lot of our childhoods. Somehow, through the range and progression of his roles, he was able to rise up and meet my generation at whatever level of maturation we were at, from the age of about four onward until he stopped existing.

Learning how to channel grief is hard, especially when it's over someone you didn't know personally. I draw pictures, as do a lot of people I know. Robin Williams was a fan of comics and illustration, so I asked people to submit drawings of him in tribute.

Out of hundreds of submissions, here are the 15 I thought were best.

Alex Fine

 

Nick Gazin

Brian Butler

Killer Acid

Serena Dominguez

Rick Altergott

Mathilde Van Gheluwe

Penelope Gazin

Zack Soto

Matt French

A.T. Pratt

Spencer Hicks

 

 
Follow Nick Gazin on Twitter.

This Canadian Criminal’s Fight to Regain Citizenship May Set a Precedent For New Citizenship Laws

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Image via Facebook.
Deepan Budlakoti has been living a nightmare for the last four years. Stripped of his status as a Canadian citizen, despite being born in Canada as the son of former Indian diplomats, he has a current charter challenge before federal court in Ottawa. His case is likely being closely watched by Immigration Minister Chris Alexander and the Conservatives to set a precedent, or at least the tone for the conversation on the controversial measures put forward in Bill C-24. Bill C-24, which passed at the end of June, is ironically also known as the “Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act.”

There are already at least two constitutional challenges to the new law, which has come under fire from critics because it grants the immigration minister a wide berth to strip Canadians of their citizenship. Depending on who you ask, Budlakoti was either stripped of his status because he committed a crime-—or because he never should have been issued papers in the first place.

Budlakoti’s nightmare begins and ends with his criminal charges. His rap sheet is long, and he admits himself he was a bad kid-—running afoul of the law on breaking and entering, weapons, and drug trafficking charges. Budlakoti is far from innocent, it was likely his criminal charges that triggered the process of the government flagging his file and reviewing and revoking his status. It is important to note however, that despite serious criminal charges, Budlakoti has served his time and repaid his debt to society. To strip someone of citizenship and all of the rights and benefits it affords is an entirely separate issue from a criminal past.

If we’re now taking away citizenship for breaking the law, it constitutes a serious erosion of the legal notion of “a citizen.” It seems, unfortunately, that this is exactly the message our government is sending.

Budlakoti’s case has significant legal implications for citizenship that link up with the new law Harper’s Conservative majority has successfully pushed through. The law empowers a single official—the Minister of Immigration, Chris Alexander-—to strip Canadians of their citizenship at his discretion, if they have committed a crime and the government can prove it has reason to believe they are also citizens elsewhere.

Besides this, there are a host of other potentially nebulous legal justifications for stripping Canadians of their status contained within the language of the law (something that was only possible if citizenship was obtained through misrepresentation or fraud before). The law also contains provisions that make it harder to become a citizen through residency and language requirements, and to make punishments for citizenship fraud much harsher.

Critics have said the law won’t hold up in court. Budlakoti’s Charter challenge is itself a test case for how far the courts will let Conservatives go in redefining the legal limits of citizenship. Budlakoti’s case demonstrates what it looks like when the law works specifically to strip Canadians of their status. Budlakoti lived as a Canadian for more than two decades-—he had twice been issued a passport when Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) took it away claiming it was issued in error. The issue? A technical question of Budlakoti’s parents being diplomatic officials at the time of his birth on Canadian soil, a condition that would disqualify Canadian citizenship from being issued. Meanwhile, Indian nationals claim that Budlakoti will not be issued documents by them.

Despite assurances from Minister Alexander that the law would not leave people stateless, that’s exactly what has happened to Budlakoti, a man who calls himself “stateless in Canada.” Canada has revoked his citizenship and India will not issue him documents.

“While the bill promises that it will leave nobody stateless, it’s unclear how Canada can force someone to obtain citizenship in a foreign country before deporting them,” parliamentary reporter Justin Ling wrote for VICE when the bill was first introduced.

If the law survives legal challenges, those who find themselves in Budlakoti’s position in future would no longer have clear recourse to a challenge before federal courts. The point is, if it survives legal challenge, the new law will make what has happened to Budlakoti far more common. It would turn citizenship into something determined at one official’s discretion--so if the Minister doesn’t want you here, you’re gone.

That’s a scary prospect.

As for the government’s stance on Budlakoti, Alexis Pavlich, spokesperson for Chris Alexander, the Citizenship and Immigration Minister, told VICE: “This convicted criminal has never been a Canadian citizen. He should not have chosen a life of crime if he did not want to be deported from Canada.”

Budlakoti’s lawyer, Peter Steida, told VICE via email that he believes the new law and the outcome of Budlakoti’s federal challenge will set the tone on stripping so called “undesirables” of their Canadian citizenship.

“The present government now seeks to broaden the already far-reaching powers of the state in immigration law with the [Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act]. The legislation seeks to empower the government to strip Canadians of citizenship pursuant to a number of scenarios including when a citizen’s behaviour is ‘contrary to the national interest of Canada’... will that include political activism?” Steida asks.

The language of the law is vague enough for Steida’s concerns to be worrisome. He also explained that the new law would give the government-—in the form of the Immigration Minister—the jurisdiction to make most citizenship revocation decisions. “The court (federal court) would only have jurisdiction to deal with revocation in limited situations,” he said. Ultimately, there will be no grounds for questioning the Immigration Minister’s authority, and there will be no due process.

“If Bill C-24 survives legal challenges, we can anticipate that the will of the Minister to revoke [the] citizenship of undesirables will be rubber-stamped by the Minister's delegate. True due process, in which evidence can be tested before an impartial decision maker, will simply be a conceptual notion limited to books of law, and that will have no application in the trenches of immigration law,” said Steida.

Steida told VICE that Deepan Budlakoti’s case before federal courts in Ottawa is illustrative of the direction in which the government is headed. Given the numerous times Harper government’s “tough on crime” approach has clashed with Canadian courts lately, you would think that Harper and his majority would take care to stop pushing through legislation that steamrolls over civil liberties and is unduly punitive, wide-reaching and vague in powers granted to the government. Lawyers and judges warn that Parliament is coming close to a breaking point with the courts given its confrontational rather than cooperative approach. C-24 is simply one of a laundry list of current court challenges: C-13 and C-36 are also on the docket.  

“Deepan's plight simply illustrates the mad direction in which the present government is embarked,” said Steida. “Harper seeks to reduce citizenship to a club to which ongoing membership remains at the discretion, for the most part, of the minister. But citizenship strikes at the very heart of our identity. Such an effort compromises the very essence of our [Canadian] identity.”

Budlakoti’s court decision is expected to be handed down any day now in Ottawa. For more information on Deepan Budlakoti’s campaign (supported by The Council of Canadians and Amnesty International amongst others) to reinstate his citizenship, check out his website

@muna_mire

Canada Wants to Scientifically Prove It Owns the North Pole

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Canada Wants to Scientifically Prove It Owns the North Pole

VICE Meets: Shosh Shlam on Her New Documentary about Internet Addicts

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China is the first country in the world to declare internet addiction to be a clinical disorder. The country views it as is the single biggest threat to its youth today. In this episode of VICE Meets, director Shosh Shlam discusses her documentary Web Junkie, in which she follows three boys through their deprogramming treatment in one of China's 400 specialty rehabilitation centers.

Web Junkie is screening at the Film Forum in New York until Tuesday, August 19. 

For more information visit the Web Junkies website

My Parents Had a Party

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My Parents Had a Party, Long Island, NY
 
Last summer, my parents decided to throw a party to celebrate life. I wasn’t quite sure what my mom had planned other than an entertaining night with good food and company. As I entered my parents' house that evening, I was greeted by a little person my mom had hired from an adult entertainment agency. He was dressed as a cop and demanded that each arriving and unsuspecting guest show his or her ID… or else.
 
OK, a little weird, but nothing too extreme. As the party continued, two of the cocktail waitresses and one of the male servers started taking off their clothing, and suddenly they were naked and the lap dances and the tequila ice-luge/body-shot demonstrations began. At first, many of their guests were unsure of how to react to the nakedness around them. I, for one, was amused and a bit surprised to see adults whom I have known my entire life getting smothered in breasts and bathed in booze at my parents' house.
 
As the night progressed, two additional strippers arrived to perform for the guests, and the little person quickly stripped down to join in the show. Slowly and surely, more and more guests began to loosen up and really experience the celebration of zany fun that my mom had planned from the start. The hours went by fast; everyone was merrily drunk, including the dog sitter. After a long night of hard partying, the talent was paid, the guests sent off with coffee, and we all went to bed. The next morning may have been even more fun as we conducted the post-party critique, with mom wearing the little person's uniform, which he had somehow forgotten to take home that night. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Amanda Dandeneau is a photographer based in Brooklyn. See more of her work (and more pictures of her parents) here.
 

We Had a Somewhat Tense Conversation with Neal Brennan about Race, Eddie Murphy, and His New TV Show

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Image via AMC Networks.
For years, Neal Brennan was the mostly hidden half of the duo responsible for Chappelle’s Show. After his relationship with Dave Chappelle publicly soured around the time the show’s abrupt end in 2004, Neal kept himself busy by writing screenplays and directing. But his position as an anonymous figure in the world of entertainment began to change when Neal—primarily a writer, producer, and director—began a standup comedy career of his own.

Before long, he’d settled into a standup persona as cutting as his writing one, whether it’s his disdain for his friends who forcefully recommend television shows for him to watch (“It’s six seasons long. It’s 12 episodes a season, it’s an hour long an episode. That’s 72 hours of show to watch. That’s a big commitment. I can either watch Battlestar Galactica or get a helicopter pilot’s licence”) or attacking the way white people treat their black friends differently (“If one of your white friends screws up, you’ll get legitimately pissed and be like, ‘Dude, what the fuck?’ But if one of your black friends screws up you immediately go into human resources mode like, ‘Malik, your behaviour’s made me very uncomfortable”).

In 2011, he began co-hosting the highly listenable podcast The Champs with comedian Moshe Kasher. The show has a mandate to only feature black guests (with the exception of Sasha Grey, Riff Raff, and Action Bronson) and has welcomed guests as varied as Blake Griffin, Chris Rock, and Freddie Gibbs, providing Neal with another testing ground to develop his persona, which is alternatively cantankerous, off-the-cuff hilarious, and almost endearingly bullheaded.

Now he’s taken his role in the public eye to the next logical stage, as the host of the Sundance Channel’s new show, The Approval Matrix, a show based off the backpage of New York Magazine. It’s certainly not Chappelle’s Show, but hey, a TV cheque is a TV cheque.

With Neal’s steadfast reputation for surliness, I was a little apprehensive about talking to him about the hot-button issues that he holds dear, but I called Neal to talk about producingThe Approval Matrix, his views on social media pundits pushing Saturday Night Live into hiring a black woman, and the fallout that occurred after he called Quentin Tarantino “the best black screenwriter.”

VICE: What’s the biggest thing you’ve had to learn from being on camera, versus directing, or being behind the scenes?
Neal Brennan: It’s a whole different amount of cocaine. Uh, no. You know there’s weird stuff like what to do with your head. For instance, when I did the monologue, I had a tendency to lean my head back. It’s all weird shit that you wouldn’t think anything of, and then you watch it on camera and you’re like: “Dude, what are you doing with your head?”

Right. So, The Approval Matrix… it seems like a lot of the show’s controversial topics come from the strong opinions you’ve talked about extensively on The Champs, like how you didn’t agree that Saturday Night Live should have hired a black woman just because the internet told them to. Do you feel like the stakes are higher, now that you’re saying this shit on TV instead of on a podcast?
Yeah, well, I’m starting to realize that it’ll probably have a bigger impact on television. But the other thing is, I actually believe all of the things I’m saying. These aren’t things that I had to be like, “Look, I’m hosting a show so I better drum up some controversy.”

Yeah, that much is clear.
These are things I actually believe in—things I really have considered and thought about. Like the thing with SNL… as much as I don’t think that they should have had to hire somebody [female and black], they emailed me for who I thought they should hire and I gave them a bunch of names.

Really?
Well, it’s not like I was going to have them email me and stand in front of the tank, like, “I will not help you.”

But at the same time, I still don’t believe they should have had to because the internet forced them. What about Asian people? I don’t remember anyone getting upset when Amy Poehler played Kim Jong Il.

I think some people see a difference between Amy Poehler playing Kim Jong Il and SNL having a white guy play Barack.
Yeah, but A) He’s mixed, and B) What’s the difference?

Well…
What’s the difference? You’re still putting an Asian person out of work, you know what I mean? When Darrell Hammond played Jesse Jackson, no one gave a fuck, because it was hilarious. Again, that’s the thing for anyone who tries to argue with me—I’m pretty well versed in this stuff. Chappelle used to call me “SNL Historian, Neal Brennan.” As much as people pretend that they care, they don’t really care. They just see an opportunity to grandstand, and they take it. I don’t see anyone worrying about Middle Eastern men getting on the show, or Asian men. It’s just somehow people only cared about black women.  

I imagine it’s because of the racial history of black people in America. Casting North Koreans or Middle Eastern people doesn't necessariy come with the same historical implications.
Yeah, OK. That’s not a very good point, but OK. So people aren’t against racism, they’re just against racism against black people? They’re not against discrimination; they’re just against discrimination against black women on SNL.

OK Neal, let’s move on. On The Champs, you’re really great at cutting to the core of what’s wrong with someone’s career or persona. Are there any parts of yourself or your career that you’ve had trouble reconciling?
No. My personality fucking stinks.

[Laughs]
I’m not the easiest dude to work with. I’m a pain in the ass. I’m obsessive, I’m a control freak, I get snappy with people. I’m not… I’m not a picnic. I act superior half the time. I don’t know where I got these personality traits from, but I’m working on ‘em.

You’re also spectacularly un-PC on The Champs. You often say the N-Word in front of black guests with impunity. Has anyone ever gotten upset with you for saying it or saying something where that they perceive as a little across the line racially?
No, I’m friends with most of the black people who have been on the show. Black guys like calling me the N-Word. I can’t explain it. They think it’s funny. And I think they understand that I’ve written it so much and that I’m also a comedian. I’ve also said it in my act. I said it eight times in my special. There are some episodes where I don’t say it because if I don’t know somebody [and their comfort level with me], I’m not gonna say it. And if you think about it, most of the time I say it I’m paraphrasing somebody else.  It’ll be like, “Mooney said…” or “Eddie said…”

A while back when you were doing press for your special Women and Black Dudes, you said: “I think the best black screenwriter is Quentin Tarantino,” and shortly afterwards Ta-Nehisi Coates went after you for it. How did you feel about that? I know you’re a fan of his.
I’m a huge fan. What was funny is that I emailed him. And I think at first he literally wrote back, “Dude, you write these things and never expect the person who you’re writing about to read it.”

We went back and forth over a long email. We had at least three back and forths. They’re private, but we had an interesting discussion.

Was there anything that he said that made you feel differently about your comments?
We went back and forth and it was definitely interesting but it didn’t resolve itself in a way that I’m happy with, I’ll say that. But it was definitely interesting.

Sometimes in The Champs you’ll reference hanging out with folks or being at a party that sounds like a who’s who of black Hollywood. Has there ever been a time when you’re some place and you’re looking around and you’re like “Wow, this is crazy. There is some legendary talent in this room.”
There was one a few months ago where me and Dave went up to Eddie Murphy’s house and we sat on his patio. It was just me, Dave, and Eddie talking about comedy. It was just one of these things where Eddie said something to Dave about comedy or life that would just leave me like, “I can’t believe I saw that.”

Whenever I see Eddie, I browbeat him with questions about comedy. The last time we were at his house, me and Dave were straight up annoying him about stand-up like two eight-year-olds who wanted candy. We’re like, “Why don’t you do it? You should do it.” At one point, Eddie goes,  “Neal, how long you been doing standup?” And I say, “seven years.” And he goes, “Oh, that’s why you’re asking me all these fucking stupid questions.”

I’m friendly with people like Eddie and Chris Rock, but every time I hang around them, it’s hard not to act like a fan, too.

You’re a producer on The Approval Matrix. What’s been the hardest thing about putting this show together for you?
I have a low tolerance for inanity, so the big thing was making sure everything on the show was insightful.

Amy Schumer watched the show and she’s like, “Thank you for making a show where it’s not like embarrassing to comedians, or a show where comedians are just going for stupid jokes the whole time.”

The thing about comedians is we’re generally pretty smart. So, if we can be smart and funny, that is the victory. That’s what I like about the show—that we can be both insightful and fun.

You’ve worn a lot of different hats in the business: writer, director, standup, television host. Is there anything left that you’d really like to do?
Journalist. I would love it if for one day we could switch places, so I could be in a conference room on speakerphone.

[Laughs] Thanks, Neal.
Thank you, man.


@jordanisjoso

Stop Bitching About Facebook Messenger

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Photo via Flickr user Marco Paköeningrat

Outrage plays out differently on each of the social networks. Twitter attacks like a swarm of wasps. The onslaught grows until the target submits. Tumblr turns into a sixth-grade slumber party gone awry. Overwrought accusations are hurled back and forth until everyone gets bored and falls asleep. And LinkedIn? I couldn’t tell you. I’m trying to stay away from that shit for as long as I can.

Facebook outrage is the worst, because it spreads misinformation. Any idiot can post junk about Fukushima radiation poisoning US oceans or lemons curing cancer, and the site displays it with the same neat and credible-looking format it uses for the London Review of Books.

Photo via Wikipedia Creative Commons

Facebook users are ultra-passionate about Facebook, so the greatest outrage is reserved for the site itself. Over the last couple of weeks, Facebook’s users shit a brick over changes to the site's mobile app suite. As of last week, they’re required to use the separate Facebook Messenger app for direct messages. Messenger sets up an exhaustive list of permissions to access your phone, like most apps. This caused a fracas. If you use the site, you’ve probably noticed it.

An AP story that ran almost everywhere debunked the controversy, but that hasn’t slowed the rate of martyrdom-flecked announcements about heavy-hearted decisions to opt out of Facebook messaging.

The furor bugs me, because it’s worse than inaccurate. It’s a massive misapplication of rage against the smartphone. Facebook’s loathsome content policies are nothing compared to the top US wireless carriers, who are driven by an unswerving impulse to keep our networks slow and outdated while bilking consumers as much as possible.

Here are just a few reasons why your phone company is a more worthy recipient of your outrage:

It Steals Your Money

Where do you begin? Locked phones. Two-year contacts. Termination fees. Those $15 per GB overage rates. If your contract isn't up, and your new smartphone gets smashed or stolen, they team up with the manufacturer to charge you as much as $850 for a replacement. This forces you to turn to Craigslist for a replacement, which ensures more demand for stolen phones. The carriers dominate government: in a sort of corruption Möbius Strip, the FCC’s chairman is the industry’s former chief lobbyist, and its current chief lobbyist is a former FCC commissioner. The result? None dare call it racketeering. Facebook might be tacky, addictive, and annoying, but at least it’s free.

It’s Trying to Kill the Internet

Along with its trade association (CTIA), the big four wireless carriers spent more than 47,000,000 of your phone bill dollars on federal lobbyists in 2013. That’s not just so they can ensure the two parties’ obedience to their agenda. It’s also intended to devolve the internet down to a glorified cable TV service by killing net neutrality. They’re preemptively dancing on net neutrality’s grave by throttling users' broadband speeds. Facebook, even if driven by self-interest, deserves a little credit for fighting on the right side.

It’s Why We Have to Settle for Mass Market Apps

At the dawn of the smartphone era, carriers and manufacturers implemented operating systems that saddled our phones with the limited functionality of game consoles. Remember personal computers? They had a fraction of the power of today’s phones, but could use them to save files to a directory or run programs without prior approval. And you could do it all without the censorship imposed by proprietary App Stores. Man, those were the days.

It’s not wrong to criticize Facebook’s disregard for its users’ fears about privacy. The company is tone deaf and creepy. The problem is that Facebook is already a cultural punching bag. The cellular phone industry gets a free pass, thanks to the gobs of advertising money they use to bombard a distracted public.

The Messenger rabble is big and loud enough to get the media’s attention. Its heart is in the right place. Before it’s too late, it should weigh in against the looming internet coup d’état.

Follow Tom Berman on Twitter.

Israel's War on Palestine: It's Bad, but Is It 'Genocide'?

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Photo by Charles Davis

“It's heartbreaking to see,” said US President Barack Obama of the death and destruction his government has helped the state of Israel deliver to the people of Gaza. It's “really heartbreaking,” said US Secretary of State John Kerry of the nearly 2,000 innocent people killed by the Israeli military with weapons provided by the US government. “The loss of children has been particularly heartbreaking,” said Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the United Nations, of dead little boys and girls—more than 400 of them—being stacked on top of one another in a freezer meant for ice cream because Gaza's morgues are overflowing with corpses.

There are a lot of words that one could use to describe the collective punishment of a stateless people living in what a top United Nations official describes as an “open-air prison,” but “heartbreaking” is perhaps the most inadequate, suggesting that there's a certain tragic inevitability to Israel's bombardments of Gaza, to which the only proper response is a shrug and a shake of the head. It's acceptable to lament Israel's killing of innocents, but the repeated bombing of UN schools packed with thousands of frightened civilians is, according to the harshest respectable critics, a strategic error—a case of “good intentions” paving the way to hell on Earth for Palestinians—not a reason to withdraw support for the settler-colonial project in Palestine or to “delegitimize” the idea of a state explicitly founded on ethnic supremacy.

Israel's brutality is, of course, tragic, and the killing of babies is never a good look, but it's more than just heartbreaking folly. “It is a moral outrage and a criminal act,” according to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Widely viewed as an ally of the US and Israel, Ban nonetheless has labeled Israel's deliberate targeting of UN schools in Gaza a “gross violation of international humanitarian law.”

Amnesty International has likewise accused Israel of committing “crimes against humanity” over its targeting of hospitals, ambulances, and first-responders, saying the state should be referred to the International Criminal Court for prosecution. And Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of “blatantly violating the laws of war,” with the group documenting numerous instances in which Israeli soldiers went out of their way to shoot fleeing civilians. But no Western official has called the terrorizing of 1.8 million people living in Gaza an “act of terrorism,” though it is openly intended to bring about political change and punish the people of Palestine for electing the wrong leaders. And while you'll hear the word at protests, the leading human rights organizations have refrained from calling it “genocide."

Defenders of Israel will say that's because it's the wrong word to use. Writing in the Jewish Daily Forward, New York attorney Inna Vernikov goes with Merriam-Webster in defining genocide as “the deliberate killing of people who belong to a particular racial, political, or cultural group.” That's inappropriate with respect to Gaza, she argues, because Israel isn't to blame for the killing—the Palestinians are. Absolutely, the “people of Gaza are under siege and are being denied basic rights to freedom, movement, education, and life,” but Vernikov argues that it’s their own fault: “Those rights are denied them by their own government, which they selected for themselves.”

While “you made me hurt you” is a favorite of abusive spouses and nation-states, even dusty old international law—drafted by the world’s most abusive powers—holds that innocent civilians may not be killed for the crime of voting the wrong way, though as with many other things criminalized by international law, that has of course happened, usually at the hand of the imperial powers (and de facto jurists).

Journalist Michael Wilner also believes it's wrong to use the “G-word” with respect to Gaza. “Genocide is what happens when a people are discriminated against, corralled, and led to slaughter,” he writes in the Jerusalem Post, a paper published in the state of Israel—a state that bulldozes Palestinian houses while giving subsidized homes to American settlers of Jewish descent, ethnically cleansed 80 percent of the indigenous population upon its founding, imprisoned millions in militarily occupied ghettos, and just slaughtered one out of every 1,000 people living in Gaza. Wilner means to suggest what Israel has done isn't as bad as some other terrible things in the world, but a bad thing need not be the worst thing in the world in order to still be a bad thing.

Map via Wikimedia

“It's important to remember that you don't need millions of dead bodies and a Nazi industrial system of extermination to constitute genocide under the relevant convention,” writes Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a Washington-based media watchdog. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines "genocide" as inflicting on a group “conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” As the very title of the treaty suggests, a genocide need not be anywhere near completed—the destruction need not be “in whole”—for genocidal behavior to merit the label. What matters is the motivation, not the body count.

“While conflict has many causes, genocidal conflict is identity-based,” says the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, an expert on such things. “These conflicts are fomented by discrimination,” as well as “hate speech inciting violence.”

Now, consider: Israel is a state that openly discriminates on the basis of identity, denying Palestinian refugees the ability to visit their old villages in what is now Israel while granting citizenship to anyone with a Jewish mother who wants it. Israel is a state where the deputy speaker of parliament openly calls for replacing the indigenous population of Gaza with Jewish settlers, and where a leading newspaper just published an article titled “When Genocide Is Permissible.” It's the sort of place where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu feels comfortable calling the 20 percent of the population that isn't Jewish—the indigenous people who weren't pushed out—a “demographic threat” to apartheid, their continued reproduction posing a serious challenge to continued ethnic supremacy west of the Jordan River. So why are people afraid to use that word: “genocide”?

Amnesty International spokesperson Natalie Butz said that the language her group typically employs is "war crimes and crimes against humanity," which she said both sides in the conflict have committed (though with a wildy varying degree of success). She said that "we want the situtation referred to the International Criminal Court, which is the international institution with jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide," but did not respond when asked why Amnesty doesn't refer to Israel's actions as "genocidal." Human Rights Watch was also reluctant to explain its linguistic decisions. Their press office would only say that the group "condemns Israel for committing war crimes in Gaza but does not refer to its actions as genocide," which I, of course, already knew because I asked them why they do that.

Not getting very far by asking the groups to explain themselves, I turned to Ali Abunimah, publisher of The Electronic Intifada, a news site devoted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The popular definition tends to make people automatically dismiss or diminish claims that anything short of Holocaust-scale extermination of human beings can be considered ‘genocidal,’” said Abunimah, author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine. By using the word “genocide,” some may simply be looking to avoid appearing insensitive, to avoid the appearance that they're equating an awful situation in Palestine with one of the worst crimes humanity has ever known, the genocidal killing of 6 million Jews.

Indeed, some might point out, and many people do, that the slaughter in Gaza isn’t even the worst contemporary case of mass murder. Syria’s civil war has left more than 100,000 people dead, with atrocities committed by both Bashar Assad and the rebels fighting against him. But that’s a civil war being fought to preserve a regime’s hold on power, not to eliminate ethnic minorities. It’s horrific, but it’s not genocide—it's a fight for power, not a fight to extinguish an ethnicity—and, crucially, there’s no shortage of people willing to condemn what’s happening there.

It takes no courage in the west to condemn the crimes of the Syrian government or, for that matter, the Islamic State. Israel, on the other hand, is supported by a super power that gives it a $3-billion-a-year allowance for weapons that it then uses to carry out war crimes. It has nuclear weapons. As journalist Max Blumenthal argues, Israel’s not David but Goliath—and right now it acts with impunity.

It’s not just the thousands of people—Palestinians—that the state of Israel has killed over the years in its regular assaults, dwarfing the handful killed by Hamas’s rockets. Israel has, for decades, been carrying out what Israeli historian Ilan Pappé describes as an “incremental genocide,” one that has since 1948 seen Palestinians steadily removed from their land, their homes destroyed, and their families forced into fenced-in refugee camps, for no reason other than that Palestinians were born to the wrong mothers.

Map via Wikimedia

“It's been going on for a long time, the killings, the incredibly awful conditions of life, the expulsions that have gone on [since 1947], when 700 or more villages in Palestine were destroyed, and in the expulsions that continued from that time until today,” said Michael Ratner, president of the left-of-ACLU Center for Constitutional Rights, in an interview with the Real News. “It's correct and important to label it for what it is.” And that label, he said, is “genocide.”

It's in these types of situations that the supposedly civilized nations—the ones that go to war for petroleum, not to ethnically cleanse—are supposed to invoke their “responsibility to protect.” In Libya, that meant dropping bombs from the safety of the sky and leaving it worse than it was before. No one wants that. Israel should not be bombed. But Israel can be prosecuted for being an apartheid state carrying out a slow genocide. Western governments can stop blocking legal actions aimed at providing consequences for genocidal behavior and stop giving Israel the weapons it uses to slaughter Palestinians.

At the very least, Israeli leaders should be as afraid to travel abroad as a Bashar al Assad or Dick Cheney, fearing that at any airport, at any time, somone could come up to them, slap on some handcuffs, and carry them off to a war crimes tribunal. But it's best not to wait for the political establishment to act. Indeed, it's all too clear that the United States, the country in the best position to protect the people being bombed by its client-state—which has a responsiblity to do so—has no intention of protecting any Palestinians. It's up to the people, then, to make Israel a pariah, something that can be accomplished in part by calling its behavior what it is. There's a lot of war and evil in this world, but kicking people out of their homes and bombing them because of who they are—because they aren't the same ethnicity—has a specific name: "genocide."

Follow Charles Davis on Twitter.

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