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Lady Business: This Is What A “Bad” Feminist Looks Like: A Chat With Roxane Gay

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Image of Roxane Gay, via Facebook.
The internet is crammed with highly personal, confessional essays, many of which are starkly lacking in true vulnerability. Writers (like virtually all human beings) try to hide their innermost ugliness and focus their energies on finely honed proclamations of why their opinion is, ultimately, correct. To admit our true nature would be to detract from our credibility or our carefully curated online persona.

Roxane Gay doesn’t fall into this trap. She writes with a level of honesty that makes her readers feel less fucked up, less like a singular geek destined to flail alone in this world. In her new book of essays, Bad Feminist, Gay sparks many of the conversations feminism has been failing to have. She writes, simply, about being a (flawed) human, and about how feminists can be more honest when we admit we don’t know it all.

This week, I spoke with Gay from her home in Lafayette, Indiana. We talked about Bad Feminist, how writers can be better people, Ferguson, Missouri, birth control, and the possibility that she may write a new TV show called Grown Women, in which women will finally be portrayed in all their realism and diversity.

VICE: I know everyone’s been asking you this, but I want to know first and foremost: What is the main issue with feminism as it stands that you wanted to apply the word “bad” to the front of it?
Roxane Gay: A historical lack of inclusiveness. I think historically, feminism has prioritized a narrow demographic. And that’s definitely not the kind of feminism that I want to be a part of. I want to sort of do better by the populations that have been historically underrepresented within the feminist movement. So women of colour, queer women, transgender women, working class women… These women matter to me, and they should matter to all feminists. And so if being a good feminist means overlooking these women’s needs, then I’m happily, happily going to be a bad feminist.

You write about avoiding being treated as that capital “F” feminist, that essential feminist, and how that’s part of why you titled the book that way. How can writers avoid behaving as that sort of prescriptive, essential feminist?
By always acknowledging that they’re not. And one of the things that I try very hard to do is always say: ‘You know, I’m not the authority, I’m just one voice, and I’m not trying to speak for everyone.’ But nonetheless, I think that I have something worth saying. So it’s important to do that, but it’s also important to acknowledge the other people that are doing the work in the area. Because the reason so many people start to emerge as singular voices, it’s just because that’s how they’re presented to the public, like they’re the only one—the one true feminist thinker to rule them all.

You talk a lot in the book about the importance of intersectionality, and about how badly white writers portrayed black characters in The Help. How can white, hetero writers better honour intersectionality in their work without stealing others’ narratives, and while remaining sensitive and perhaps actually making a difference?
I definitely think you can write what you don’t know. I just think you have to be ethical about it. You have to be better than Stockett was with The Help, where she had Aibileen describing her skin colour as black like a cockroach. I’m sorry, but that’s just not how we describe our skin tone as black people. You need to be careful with how you write the other, and be empathetic in how you write the other. And so what heteronormative white women can do—or really anyone—when they’re thinking about intersectionality, is begin to work from a place of empathy.

What does it mean to imagine life in someone else’s shoes? I think to write difference, we start in writing from a place of commonality. Before we are different, we do have some things in common. We’re human, we breathe, we have desires, we love. And so we start there, and then we learn to go beyond that and say, OK, how would I love if I was a young black man? And I think when you start to go further and further out into your imagination and you do so with empathy, you get to a place where you can write really well about other people and their experiences.

Do you think a part of that hinges on ensuring you do enough reading to become informed before you start writing in order to realize you know nothing? Is the first step to say nothing until you know you can say it without hurting someone?
Yeah, I think that’s part of it. But every time I’ve written something difficult, like my novel—I didn’t know how to write a novel, and I didn’t think I could write one. But at some point you have to just do it. You can only prepare so much, and sometimes you have to go blindly into something. So I think you do need to read and observe, but I also think that, at some point, you have to suck it up and do the work. The other thing is that sometimes, you’re going to get it wrong. And that’s OK. As long as you can recognize and hear criticism that you got it wrong, instead of becoming defensive and acting like, oh no, you actually got it right.

The courage in your writing is so profound. You write about everything from your unabashed love of reality TV to being sexually assaulted as a little girl. You have an honesty other writers don’t. Where does that stem from?
People want these really neat narratives about surviving sexual assault and what it does to you. But it’s not neat, it’s a fucking mess, and I think I get the courage by pretending no one’s reading. I fool myself into thinking no one’s paying attention. I have no other choice, because otherwise it makes me feel too exposed. It’s terrifying.

But I also know that in the same way that I’m a bad feminist; when I look at my own life and my own history and my own preferences now, some of those things have been marked by my experiences, and they don’t fall in line with the traditional survivor narrative. And so for me, it’s also just partly validating my own experiences. To say, ‘That’s not how it happened, for me.’ You know some of my proclivities, I always enjoy saying where does this come from? And a lot of the time people say no, you can’t connect kink with assault. But for me, I can. And I know that’s not a popular thing to say, but there are other people out there like me. I always feel alone, and so I always want to find ways of helping other people feel less alone.

When it comes to bettering some of those assumptions and challenging rape culture, you quoted that New York Times article, “Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town,” which caused a ton of controversy because of its wording. They made it sound as if the town, and not the girl who was gang raped, was the victim.
Yes. And they’ve never done that again. [Laughs]

This sounds really naïve, but when we talk about rape culture, it makes me itch to DO something. Is there any way to enforce sensitivity training for media? What do we do, Roxane?!
Well, let me tell you! I honestly have no idea. But one of the things we have to do is we have to get better editors. It’s OK if your writers are ignorant, but there needs to be a place where the buck stops. We need editors to be trained in sensitivity. There’s the journalists’ organization called the Dart Center that offers tips on how to cover trauma ethically. I think that organization needs more support, and that the work that they’re doing there needs to be taught in all journalism schools.

The other thing is that you no longer need a journalism degree to participate in the news, which is great. But how do we all get on the same page about having a code of ethics about how we talk about difficult things, when we no longer have that common ground? I’ve never been to journalism school, so a lot of the time when I’m writing, I know I’m breaking a hundred rules of journalism. So it’s difficult, but we need to remember that we’re talking about people’s lives, and there are consequences.

Most importantly, language matters. It really, really does. The issue with that New York Times article was that it was a careless use of language. It was horrifying. I mean, even today in all of the news around Ferguson, MO, the carelessness! Like, the USA Today said something like ‘police seek to quell violence,’ and there’s a picture right there of protestors standing peacefully with their arms in the air.

The other thing is the degree to which white people are failing to notice what’s going on in America right now.
Yes. I mean on my Twitter feed I see everyone’s talking about it, which makes me feel good. It means I’m surrounding myself with people that are of a like mind. Like, I’m still talking about how last night I had yogurt for dinner. But as you go into other social networks, it’s just life as usual because: ‘This does not affect us. This is not about us.’ And it’s easy to create that distance when it could never happen to you or your children. I can even think of people in my life who would have no idea what’s going on. And what’s frightening is that I am only about 300 miles from Ferguson in Lafayette, Indiana. Anyone this close to that sort of unrest and that sort of unlawful military occupation who is just sort of not even giving one thought to it is heartbreaking, actually. I pity them. Why won’t the world just be great? Why won’t it do what we tell it to do, I don’t understand!

Photo via Flickr user worldcantwait.

On the note of injustice toward particular groups, you write a lot about the birth control crisis in the US. Do you think it really will get a lot worse before it gets better? Like, were you serious in the book when you talked about doing an underground contraceptive situation?
[Laughs] The underground railroad for abortions? I mean, I think we might get to that point someday. If we do, I will certainly do my part to see what happens. I think we’re going to reach a crisis point. And that’s what it’s going to take to wake people up. To realize, Oh my god, we really need to have a better conversation about birth control and how it affects us.

The reality is that this is truly an issue that all women should be concerned with, and not just women who are seeking options.

[I fill her in on what happened to me at the doctor’s office last week when I was talked out of an IUD.]

Get you an IUD! It’s going to be fine! All they do is stick it up in there and you can have fun. It’s 2014! I mean I’m shy, but I would have been like, ‘What are you talking about!? Put that shit inside me now and let’s call it a day!’

Unfortunately for women, the medical industry often does not have our best interests at heart. What’s upsetting is there’s no consequence-free method. You’re going to be either a raging psycho on the hormones, or depressed or whatever, or you have these devices, which also sometimes have hormonal consequences. You know, Mirena makes your hair fall out! The pullout method, which I think is the best, is also not really reliable. You know, consistently, the responsibility falls on us, and then we have doctors who aren’t even going to advocate for us.

Exactly. So aside from the underground railroad plan, what else is in the works for you? I heard you were going to write a show called Grown Women, which is, and I quote: “About a group of friends who finally have great jobs and pay all their bills in a timely manner but don’t have any savings and still deal with sloppy love lives and hangovers on Monday morning at work.”
Grown Women may actually happen, yes.  That’s all I can say about that right now, but I would like to write Grown Women and I think it’ll be a fun show. My writing partner and I are definitely thinking about it, and thinking about how we might approach the show. She’s my best friend, her name is Tracy, and we are very good collaborators. There’s no one else I’d rather go on this adventure with.

Anything else you want me to put out there?
I really love tiny baby elephants. No, unnaturally. I want one, super bad. I’m so serious about it. Nobody ever believes me. But I really want one. If you could make that happen with all that VICE money, hook it up!


@sarratch


It’s Been a Year Since New Zealand Legalized Same-Sex Marriage

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This month marks one year since same-sex marriage was legalised in New Zealand. In that time nearly 1000 homosexual couples have tied the knot, including people coming from overseas specifically to take advantage of the redefined law. Prior to the popular legislation being implemented conservative Christian lobby groups called it a “cultural vandalism” that would cause the crumbling of the country’s moral fabric. Unmoved by the fact that a year’s gone by and society remains intact, the same groups remain highly critical of people with similar genitals getting hitched.

Many of the country’s churches have found themselves caught in the crossfire. The top 10 denominations had vowed not to hold same-sex ceremonies in the time around the law change, but with a cultural sea-change on the horizon many are beginning to soften their resolve. To mark the anniversary of the law change VICE caught up with minister Glynn Cardy, who is probably best known for the controversial billboards outside his Anglican church St Matthew-In-The-City, one of which featured a gay baby Jesus, resulting in death threats and hate mail. An outspoken supporter of same-sex marriage, Cardy was poised to hold the first same-sex marriage in New Zealand when church leaders ordered him to call it off. He has since moved to Presbyterian church St Lukes in Remuera where he is allowed to marry same-gender couples.


VICE: Are the Anglican rules on same-sex marriage the reason you switched denominations?
Glynn:
No, no. It was just simply that this community was looking for a minister and I was looking for a change. It was a good fit. But currently in the Presbyterian church, even though Presbyterian is more conservative generally than Anglican in New Zealand, I can take same-gender weddings right now.

And have you?
No. I haven’t been asked. But things may change in October, when the main assembly of the Presbyterian church meets again. Allowing minister’s to marry same-gender couples just narrowly survived last time, and I’m not sure whether it will survive again.

Why is that?
Well, the ultra-conservatives wanted to make sure that no Presbyterian church has same-gender weddings, but what they were up against was the strong sense of autonomy among the parishes. It wasn’t so much the issue of gay or not gay, it was about autonomy, and over 41 percent felt like this was violating their autonomy. And the motion to prohibit same-gender marriage needs over 60 percent to be enacted.

When you say ultra-conservatives, who are they?
The Presbyterian church has a very flat structure. They have a moderator who is appointed for two years, and he or she doesn’t have any real power, the real power lies with individual parishes. So it is particular clergy within individual parishes who lead the pack on some of these issues.

Does your new congregation have many homosexual members?
Not like at St Matthews. There probably about a third of my congregation was gay or lesbian. Here there is probably a few couples and a few individuals.

Image via

Is that was drove you to put up the controversial billboards at St Matthews?
There were billboards before I arrived, but they weren’t quite as edgy. We said to our advertising agency, “come up with something that wouldn’t be put up in front of any other church.” We had the gay baby Jesus, which I thought wouldn’t make that much of a splash at all. It had Jesus in a manger scene, and he had a gay rainbow above his head. Our press release read, “Would it matter to you if Jesus way gay?” And the inference for us was no it wouldn’t, but for conservatives it was like, “oh yeah, you would be a sinner, it would be terrible and I wouldn’t want anything to do with it.”

For all the controversy the billboards stirred, the death threats etc, was it worth it?
I think so in all sorts of ways. I mean they were the first viral religious thing ever to go out from New Zealand. And they made people think about Christmas in a different way.

You’ve long been an outspoken supporter of same-sex marriage, why?
Well the church has not only blatantly discriminated, but promoted discrimination for centuries and it is very clear from science that it is discrimination. The science has been in for a long time now. And yes you get some screwballs trying to say it’s not natural or whatever, but that’s been laid to bed. It’s like evolution, it is the truth. So it’s like, “come on church, wake up. Are you going to continue to discriminate because you don’t like something?” You are just dinosaurs if you do that. That’s where the church is, they are just a bunch of dinosaurs. So you’ve got to, whether you feel passionately or not, say this is wrong.

Do you think same sex couples even want to be married in churches?
I think churches have turned most gay people off formal religion. There have been some getting married in churches. I mean, churches are beautiful venues, and people say just by their architecture there is something sacred happening there. So it’s not just a contractual arrangement like you might make over the sale of a car—this is a life commitment to one another. And a lot of couples, when they come to that point their lives, they want it to feel it’s sacred. The church has traditionally provided some apparatus around that—to acknowledge that commitment and say, “I love you and I want to grow old with you, and be saggy and bald with you.” Churches can offer a safe place to say that, but a lot of churches don’t. They say, “we know what’s right and pure, and you are not right and pure.” And that’s sad. More than sad, for me it’s bloody annoying.

How would you like to see things change in terms of the church and gay marriage?
I’d like everyone gay straight, bi, transgender, intersex, to feel that churches are places where their spiritual life will be honoured and accepted and encouraged. I’ve often said the big change will come when the grandmas change. A lot of the grandmas, they might know someone, or maybe one of their own offspring is gay, and that’s the point where this little old lady who has been a loyal churchgoer for many years has to decide whether he believes all they anti-gay vitriol the minister has been telling her for years from the pulpit, or does she realise the love for her grandson transcends that. And at that point when she goes where her heart is, with her grandson, that‘s when the foundations of the church start to rattle, because when you get those mass of grandmas eventually you are going to change the foundations of the church.

Follow Danielle on Twitter.
 

The Worst Part of the Ice Bucket Challenge Is the People Criticizing It

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Do you know what actually happens if you have ALS?

In the beginning, it’ll feel like old age—unless you’re 27, like Pete Frates was when he was diagnosed. Something will feel different, like you had slept in a bed the shape of a trapezoid the night before and that’s why your hands feel sluggish. It’ll feel like sore fingers; but you’ll question if it’s even possible for fingers to get sore. Then you’ll realize that soreness is actually weakness. You’ll go to open a door and despite how much your brain protests—“You can do this!—you won’t be able to. Then, holding a knife and fork will become a chore. It’ll make you avoid ordering steak—yes, steak. You’ll start making fashion choices based on which clothes have fewer buckles and buttons. You’ll run out of breath shampooing your hair.

When the disease is in its early stages and has only claimed your fine motor skills, you won’t be out enjoying life or checking off a—forgive me—bucket list. No, you’ll be in the hospital, where neurologists will shock you with electricity and poke you with needles. Since ALS is a disease with no known cause, doctors have to exclude every other possibility in order to diagnose it. Even with our advanced medical system, doctors can’t just check your blood for ALS. No, they’ll run so many tests you’ll be convinced the doctors are trying to clone you. It’ll be exhausting, frustrating, and ultimately heartbreaking as you get your hopes up for any other disease than this one.

Meanwhile, you’ll watch your muscles concave and disappear, completely adamant that you once knew how to use them but also like you never even learned in the first place. The disease will spread, each day claiming a little bit more of your ability to walk, speak, chew, and swallow until you reach the point of complete paralysis. Somewhere in the span of three to five years, the disease will spread to the lungs and breathing on your own won’t be an option anymore.

This shitty disease only affects about two to five people in every 100,000, but it’s equal parts a blessing and a curse that it’s so rare. Only a few have to suffer, which means that it’s largely ignored by big pharmaceutical companies. The average drug costs $5 billion from conception to initial tests on lab mice to the WebMD-driven retail market, so funding such a rare disease isn’t exactly the best return on investment. Federal funding is low—down from $59 million in 2010 to $40 million in 2014. Even the number of charities supporting ALS research is a decimal point compared to the number of charities for, say, cancer.

If the definition of depression is hopelessness, then this disease embodies it perfectly. Before July 29, when the ice bucket challenge went viral, ALS wasn’t something people spoke about very often. It was that disease that claimed a friend’s uncle’s life, fuzzy and disconnected—not something that is prominently displayed in one of the world’s most visited websites. After the challenge, the ALS Association has raised $41.8M compared to $2.1M in the same span of time as last year. The cause even spread across the Atlantic and reached the UK. At long last, ALS patients find themselves in the spotlight.

ALS runs in Anthony Carbajal's family. He was diagnosed six months ago, at 26, with ALS. 

Enter the douche ex machina here to ruin the day: the self-righteous friend complaining via Facebook about people not following the rules, the person who texts you a meme about African children without water, or the journalist/media commentator who needs to find a way to call out "hashtag activism." We took something that by all accounts is a success and found a way to make it terrible.

The worst people aren’t the hashtag activists—they’re the ones sitting behind their computers, typing angry prose of disapproval. You know the type, the ones who point out how unrealistic something is when they’re watching a Seth Rogen movie. We know the ALS ice bucket challenge isn’t perfect, just like we know that Seth Rogen couldn’t possibly launch into the ceiling if he sat on an airbag. But that doesn’t mean we need to frantically wave our hands in the air about how not everyone donated, that we should’ve donated the money we spent on ice instead, or that we’re “wasting” buckets of water on our heads.

Yes, people are spending money on ice to dump over their head, but that’s an element of fundraising, like making team t-shirts for a charity or bringing cookies to a bake sale. All the cynics who want people to donate in humility and not post it on our social media feeds completely overlook the fundamental reality that humans are social animals. In the hierarchy of needs, we search for community and fulfill the urge to belong, so donating without dumping buckets of water on our heads disconnects us from a cause. It’s about being a part of something.

The hashtag activists actually create that community. Since when did fighting for something—whether a cure for a disease or gay rights—mean that you needed permission to sit with the cool kids at lunch? What's the harm of having them there, even the ones who ended up there on accident, the people dumping buckets of iced water on their heads with zero connection to the cause? They are the people who end up at a bar where the proceeds go to charity, and they’re only drinking for fun, but who the fuck are you to kick them out of the party? They’re pumping up the crowds, having a fabulous time, and building momentum. Or are you that desperate for your Facebook feed to go back to engagement announcements and mediocre attempts at food photography?

Keep dumping buckets of iced water over your head and I’ll keep “liking” it. I know that the ice bucket challenge is one of the few things that's given me hope since I got diagnosed with early ALS six weeks ago at age 29.

Angelina Fanous will be participating in the Walk to Defeat ALS on September 20. Follow her on Twitter.

Are Moroccan Gangsters Being Paid to Beat Up Sub-Saharan Migrants?

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Babs

“Fuck Africa,” snarls the young Moroccan kid as he pushes past the café table, spitting on the ground and sticking his middle finger up at my Senegalese translator, Babs. My first taster of racism in Tangier happens within five minutes of us sitting down, but 34-year-old Babs appears utterly unphased.

I arrived in Tangier during a tense period in Moroccan politics. Since January of 2014, the government has been trialling a process to grant illegal immigrants resident status in Morocco. However, although this seems to be a positive step, tensions are brewing in Tangier due to many of the city’s illegal immigrants refusing to take part in the scheme and settle in a country that sees them routinely abused by Moroccans and the Moroccan authorities.

“This type of thing happens every day,” shrugs Babs. I ask if he’s ever seen abuse move from verbal to violent, and he nods, rolling up his sleeve to reveal a deep scar across his wrist, caused by an attempted stabbing one night in the medina quarter. A Moroccan teenager tried to stab him in the stomach as he walked home to his hotel; Babs deflected with his hand before managing to run and hide in the warren of back alleys and boardwalks that make up the old town.

Idris, 25 was stabbed repeatedly in the arms and legs by three Moroccan gang members

“They [the Moroccans] do everything [to us] like it’s no problem. And sometimes when you go to police to tell them things, you know what they tell you? They tell you ‘So? Go and buy a knife.’ They don’t care.”

He also recounts the three times he’s been arrested on Tangier beach by Moroccan police as he and other migrants tried to smuggle themselves across to mainland Spain by inflatable boat, and how on each occasion police have stolen his money and phone after detaining him. The more I listen, the more evident it becomes that the migrants gathered in Tangier—most of whom are trying to reach Europe illegally—are trapped in a brutal limbo of violence and victimization. And all of this despite the government’s reforms.

As a port city on the African frontier, Tangier’s always been a cultural crossroads of African, Middle Eastern and European sensibilities, but recently the spatial politics of the city have become heavily geared towards obscuring black African migrants from visibility, and feeding a violent engine of isolation and abuse against them. The most obvious example of this was the building of the city’s new port at Tanger-Med in 2007, which sits 40 km (~25 miles) east of Tangier.

Before Tanger-Med, the old town’s port area and car parks were littered with Moroccans and sub-Saharan migrants trying to smuggle themselves across to Europe by hooking themselves under trucks. But now, with all trucks diverted to Tanger-Med—as well as the increased security around the old town’s ferry port—illegal immigrants aren't such a common sight.

“Tangier has a huge tourist economy, and one of the reasons for building the cargo port at Tanger-Med was to separate the tourist ferries and the cargo to help disassociate the city’s image with illegal immigrants. The city doesn’t want the tourists coming off the ferry to see all that,” said a US post-grad researcher and port specialist I interviewed, who asked to remain anonymous.

Senegalese immigrants squat the vacant buildings in Boukhaelf

Today, Tangier’s migrant population exist on the ragged edges of society, living mostly in the Boukhalef neighborhood, 15 km (~9 miles) out from the city center, where they squat the area’s empty high rises. Boukhalef is now the city’s primary flashpoint for violence and racist attacks, so Babs and I flagged a taxi and headed up there.

Despite King Mohammed VI’s 2013 decree to reform government policy and address widespread humans rights violations and the poor treatment of black African migrants in Morocco, there were several standout cases of police violence around December of 2013 that pushed Boukhalef to boiling point. These were the deaths of Cameroonian Cedric and 19-year-old Senegalese immigrant Moussa Seck, a friend of Babs. On both occasions the police cited the deaths as accidental, a result of routine operations to combat drug trafficking in Boukhalef, prompting widespread fear and anger among the migrant community living there.

In recent months, police activity in Boukhalef has dropped dramatically, according to its residents. But those from sub-Saharan Africa living there have seen a daily increase in violence perpetrated by Moroccan gangs. This has led to heavy speculation that they are being paid by the police as a clandestine approach to flushing out Boukhalef’s migrants without attracting criticism from the EU.

We arrived there just after midday, the neighborhood a mass of half-built tower blocks, wide, dusty roads and scrappy little cafes.

“Before, police they come, they enter, they shoot. We wake up 4 AM at night and we go sleep [in the] bush—we leave our houses because we know at 7 PM they come here and they fuck up every black boy [in Boukhalef].”

Ibrahim, 24, was stabbed in the stomach 

Tension here between the Moroccans and black migrants are evident immediately. And as I sit with a group of Senegalese men under the shade of a high-rise entrance, Moroccans shove past, shoo-ing them away or shouting at them from across the street. I ask the five-strong group if any of them have ever been assaulted here. People immediately roll up shirts, trousers or brush their hair back to show deep bottle-scars in their heads. I talk to a young man called Idris, 25, his legs and arms covered in stab wounds from an attack three months ago.

“One night, this boy, eight Moroccans take him with a knife,” says Babs.

“Here, here, here, here,” he motions, plunging an imaginary blade into Idris. Next to Idris sits 24-year-old Ibrahim, who lifts his shirt to show me a small circular knife-scar under his ribs as we talk.

“They try to kill,” he says, pointing at the scar. Ibrahim then recounts a story about his friend DuCorais, who was stabbed repeatedly on this very corner. When Ibrahim finally managed to get him to a local hospital after being refused a taxi on account of the blood, DuCorais was refused treatment for his injuries by Moroccan doctors and the pair were both ejected.

“Here, every time we see problems with Moroccan gangs,” mutters Ibrahim. “If you want people to talk—one person, two person, three, four, five, they all talk the same.”

“The problem is now in Boukhalef [that] the Moroccan people don’t want to see the black people,” he continues in broken English. “But police can’t enter. Instead they pay some person—but that person they are junkies and they pay them to fight [us].”

Chez Kebe

Back in the old town I talk to local outreach worker and activist Kebe, owner of Chez Kebe, a Senegalese café and informal drop-in center for sub-Saharan immigrants in Tangier. I ask him if he’s ever heard of Moroccan gangs being paid by police to attack people and he nods gravely, telling me that it’s common among the huge population of heroin and solvent abusers Tangier is home to.

“They’re looking for migrants who have telephones, passports, stuff like that… the kids, the sniffers, these are totally messed up kids anyway and they’re looking for cash, they’re looking for things to sell. So they’re aggressing the migrants. And they’re also getting paid by the police," says Kebe. "In the last three years there’s been a lot of aggression and violence towards the migrants and it’s become the Europeans that are really upset at what’s happening so that’s where the pressure’s coming from. The sub-Saharans, they understand the racism. It’s a city of passage. They don’t want to stay here. It’s not a choice, it’s just the geography."

Everywhere I went and everyone I talked to in Tangier painted the same picture: it’s hell for sub-Saharan immigrants here, and many of them face brutal choices: try to make it across the Straight of Gibraltar and into mainland Europe at the risk of drowning; storm the fences into the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla and risk death or serious injury from Moroccan or Spanish security forces; or stay and try to make a home for themselves in a city where they're unable to find work and are subjected daily to violence, abuse and institutional racism.

As I leave to catch the ferry, I bump into Babs again near his hotel. He’s a little jittery and waves his hands around wildly as he speaks to me about what happened last night.

“When you leave Boukhalef there was [a] big fight between Moroccan people and Cameroon. People run from their houses and everything is set on fire. Maybe 30 bandits... and we see the police just looking, watching.”

Follow James on Twitter

The LAPD Thinks It’s at War and Now It Has Drones

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Anti-drone campaigners held their press conference just outside City Hall in downtown Los Angeles

Police hate the word “drone” because they know the idea of flying robots patrolling the skies is, to many people, a bit too reminiscent of a cyber-punk dystopian hellscape. So when the Seattle Police Department announced that its two drones had gone off to Southern California “to try to make it in Hollywood,” it never used that word, calling them “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” and “mini-helicopters,” hoping that might help its friends at the Los Angeles Police Department avoid a public relations disaster like the one that had forced their department to give away its high-tech surveillance toys.

Yeah, it didn't work.

Soon after news of the gift-wrapped drones spread, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck was forced to declare that his department wouldn't actually be using them—not just yet, anyway. “I will not sacrifice public support for a piece of police equipment,” he proclaimed, saying he would seek input from the public before ever allowing a drone to fly over the city. As of now, the city's drones are stashed away in a warehouse owned by the Department of Homeland Security.

Still, the LAPD insists the fear over drones is much ado about nothing, with a spokesperson telling the Los Angeles Times that if the department ever does decide to deploy them, it will only be for “narrow and prescribed uses.” But on Wednesday, outside City Hall, a coalition of community groups and civil liberties advocates offered some feedback: hell no.

“Drones don't make us safer, but they do make us less free,” said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council, which represents Southern California's oft-surveilled mosques. He was one of a half-dozen speakers at a press conference organized by the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, all of whom expressed concern that drones flying over LA will mean a loss of rights for the city's residents.

To be sure, the drones collecting dust in that warehouse are nothing like the ones that occasionally wipe out wedding parties in Pakistan and Yemen. Unlike the menacingly named Predators and Reapers deployed by the military, the Draganflyer X6 (available now for $8,895) is not equipped with any weapons, much less Hellfire missiles. In fact, it's closer to a toy helicopter than a tool of mass murder. It does, however, have a camera that is capable of providing “crystal clear, high resolution images” of the ground below, according to the manufacturer. That, say the critics, is what makes the use of drones a 20.1-megapixel invasion of privacy.

Jamie Garcia of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition address reporters

Letting the LAPD use drones will only “exacerbate the flagrant violation of privacy rights” by “normalizing continued surveillance,” wrote Hamid Khan of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition in a letter to Mayor Eric Garcetti. Earlier this year, the LAPD was caught scanning and storing the license plate number of every car that passed by one of its cameras, reasoning that everyone is a suspect for something. This is not a department known for being overly concerned with (other) people's privacy. Why trust them with drones?

Activists I spoke to said we shouldn't even be talking about it.

“We don't need a discussion about their value, we don't need to come up with laws on how to use them—we just don't need them, period,” said Eden Jequinto, a law student at UCLA. Jequinto was part of a group of activists who staged a short theatrical presentation intended to demonstrate some of the dangers posed by drones. While bemused old reporters looked on, a woman in a robot suit used a bullhorn to shout commands to a "drone" held aloft by a man with a stick. After 30 erratic seconds in the air, she "lost contact" with the drone, which then came crashing down into a screaming crowd below.

Activists staged a theatrical demonstration of the danger posed by drones

One reason LA doesn't need drones is that it already has the most extensive aerial surveillance program in the United States. For those living in poor or mixed-income neighborhoods, the sound of a police helicopter hovering above is near-constant, and good luck watching Netflix on a laptop when one's circling over your house (this is personal.) The LAPD has 17 of these things and it flies them at least 20 hours a day.

Still, drones have the potential to be even more invasive. “Helicopters take a lot of money,” said Xander Snyder, an organizer with “Restore the Fourth,” an anti-surveillance group. Drones, by contrast, “will become cheaper and cheaper,” he said at Thursday's press conference, which “essentially means that they'll be affordable to fly 24/7, maintaining watch on areas where it simply wouldn't be cost-effective with helicopters.”

Activists also fear that drones could someday be used for more than just watching people. A South African company has designed a drone armed with “non-lethal” guns that can fire up to “4,000 pepper-spray paintballs,” according to a report from The Guardian. Called the “Skunk Riot Control Copter,” the manufacturer claims its already shipped 25 of them to an international mining company. Given that American police departments already use chemical weapons, why wouldn't they want to someday shoot them from a drone? “Officer safety,” after all, “is the number one issue,” as one police chief put it.

It would seem we're headed there. On a trip to Israel earlier this year, LAPD Deputy Chief Jose Perez “lit up when talking about the HoverMast, a new tethered drone” that's being use by the Israeli military. “That was incredible,” he told the Jewish Journal. The LAPD was ostensibly in Israel to share “best practices” for policing, which according to Horace Frank, commander of the LAPD Information Technology Bureau, was “just a euphemism for: We're here to steal some of your great ideas. And a lot of great ideas and technology, indeed, you do have here in Israel.”

Eden Jequinto and other activists said drones don't have to be armed to be dangerous

The LAPD already possesses a whole stash of military gear, including three grenade launchers and three mine-resistant vehicles. Why? As Frank told an audience in Israel: because it's at war. “Our needs are truly similar,” he said. “In fact, we are much more alike than dis-alike. As civilized nations, we are all confronted with, in many cases, the same enemy: The ever-growing threat of terrorism and other major criminal elements.”

Hamid Khan of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition told me that activists have requested a meeting with Mayor Eric Garcetti but that so far they've been brushed off; told that he's too busy to talk with anyone about drones. Earlier in the week, however, Garcetti's office promised to arrange a meeting between anti-drone activists and the deputy mayor for public safety, Eileen Decker. A date has not yet been set for that meeting, but Khan said it's a nice first step—and not enough.

“We’re going to keep the pressure on the mayor because, ultimately, it’s an administrative decision,” he said. “The mayor’s the chief executive of the city and he’s going to have to make a decision.”

The mayor's office did not respond to a request for comment.

Follow Charles Davis on Twitter.

What's Behind the Mysterious Drop in Teen Pregnancy?

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Teen sex rates have fallen rapidly since the world met Bristol Palin. Photo via Wikimedia Commons 

Here’s some good news: American teens are finally figuring out how to not have babies. According to new numbers released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week, the US teen birthrate fell to its lowest point since 1940 last year, with 277,749 babies born to mothers under 20. That means that there were 26.6 births for every 1,000 teen girls in the US in 2013, down 72 percent from an all-time high in 1957.

While we’ve known for a few years now that teen birth rates have been falling, the new CDC data illustrates just how precipitous the drop has been. According to the report, the teen birth rate fell 52 percent between 1991 and 2012, with the number of teen births falling across age groups and ethnicities, and in all 50 states. In that period, the steepest declines were seen among black teens and Asian Americans, with the teen birth rate falling 83 percent and 64 percent, respectively, among those groups. More recently, the declines have been steeper and faster, with the number of teen births falling a full 29 percent between 2007 and 2012. In that period, too, the declines were seen across regions and groups, with the steepest decline recorded among Latina teens (39 percent).

Image via CDC

The numbers echo a report published earlier this year by the Guttmacher Institute, which found steep declines in teen pregnancy between 1991 and 2010, the last year for which data was available. According to that data, just six percent of women between the ages of 15 and 19 got pregnant in 2010, a 51 percent drop from 1990 and a 15 percent decrease from 2008 alone. Combined with the new CDC numbers, it seems that not only are fewer teen girls having babies, fewer are getting pregnant in the first place.

Obviously, this is a very good thing. The majority of teen pregnancies are not planned, and teen mothers are significantly more likely than older mothers to have dropped out of high school, live below the poverty line, receive food stamps and Medicaid benefits, and to not receive assistance from the fathers of their children. All of this makes teen births very expensive for the American taxpayer: According to the CDC, the average child born to a teen mother costs the taxpayer an estimated $1,700 per year until age 15; CDC researchers guess that the drop in teen pregnancy saved taxpayers $12 billion in 2010 alone.

The problem is, no one can explain why this is happening. Clearly some teenage girls have figured out a way to avoid getting pregnant. But what exactly it is that they are doing—and why—remains a mystery.

According to the CDC report, at least part of the reason for the decline stems from the fact that fewer teens are having sex, and from the more widespread use of birth control among teens who are sexually active. Data from the CDC’s National Survey of Family Growth showsthat the number of teenage girls who describe themselves as “sexually experienced” has been going down for the past two decades, and that a growing number of teens who are having sex report using some form of birth control, and often two forms of birth control. Researchers point out that these numbers correspond to a period of implement.

But as I wrote back in May, this explanation doesn’t account for the unprecedented drop-off in teen births over the last five years. For one, according to data from the federal government’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, the rate of teen sexual activity has remained relatively level since 2007, while the number of teen births (and teen pregnancies) has plummeted. And while contraception use has increased among some teens—the availability of IUDs and Plan B, in particular, seem to have had an affect on birth rates—the federal data shows that since 2007, more teens are choosing not to use any contraception at all. That number is echoed by federal STD statistics, which show that half of new infections in the US are contracted by people under age 25, and that girls ages 15-19 have the largest number of reported cases of gonorrhea and chlamydia.

“There seems to be an unsolvable mystery here,” Bill Albert, the chief program officer for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancies, told me. “Teen sex has gone down, but it has leveled off, contraceptive use continues to creep up a little bit. But pregnancy rates have fallen off the charts. And yet the STD rates remain quite high.”

So what exactly is it that is preventing teen girls getting knocked up? Maybe it’s the recession. Or maybe teen boys are just pulling out. Maybe its some combination of factors—a “perfect storm,” as Vox’s Sarah Kliff suggestedin a lengthy piece on the subject this week. Whatever it is, finding the answer could unlock the secret to helping the too-high number of teen girls that are still getting pregnant. Because despite the positive trend lines, the US teen birth rate remains one of the highest among other developed nations, ranking 29 on a list of 31 countries highlighted in the CDC report.

“When we talk about all of this good news, we do have to temper it a bit with a glass half-empty interpretation,” Albert said.  “The wrong message to take from the new data is that we can pack up our tents and go home. It's not like we found a vaccination.” 

Yes, There Are Still People Who Believe the Earth Is Flat

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Photo via The Flat Earth Society's Flickr

In 1881, English writer Samuel Rowbotham published Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globea 430-page book in which he affirmed that Earth is flat. One-hundred and thirty years later, despite all the silly science that proves to us that the land we step on is actually spherical, his work is still spawning mini movements.

After Rowbotham passed away in 1884, Lady Elizabeth Blount, who admired his work, established a Universal Zetetic Society whose objective was “to carry on the work of the master.” With their beliefs largely based on a rather subjective reading of the Bible, after WWI the organization gradually lost influence and eventually disappeared.

Yet, the idea of a disc-shaped Earth has not completely vanished. The Flat Earth Society is a modern group dedicated to promoting Rowbotham's ideas and trying to convince skeptics like me. I wanted to make sure they were serious, so I got in touch with some of them via their online forum.

 

Image courtesy of the Flat Earth Society

VICE: Hi, guys. Can you clarify your Flat Earth concept?
People from the Flat Earth forum
: Welcome on board. Our group carries on Samuel Rowbotham's work. In his book Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe, he demonstrates that our planet is flat. He died 130 years ago but his opinion survived. Like him, we base our reflection on the zetetic method—an alternative to science, which asserts that sensory observations prevail over scientific theory. Through logical deduction and empirical data, we maintain that the Earth is flat.

OK, but how do you explain the fact that we can't see the same stars depending on which hemisphere we are in?
We all know some stars are visible from the Southern Hemisphere and not from the Northern Hemisphere, but the reason behind that is electromagnetic and optical acceleration through an aetheric whirlpool. We believe in cosmic speed, but in an esoteric sense.

If the Earth were flat and you put two sundials in two different places, they would have the same shadow, wouldn't they?
Certainly not! Observe the floor in your kitchen. It is flat, isn't it? Imagine there is a ceiling light and you just put a stick in a vertical sense. If the stick is perpendicular to the floor, the length of shadows will depend on its position in the room.

It's just trigonometry, which also works on a flat Earth. This also proves that the sun is closer than what the scientists say.

Image courtesy of The Flat Society

What do you mean? How far away do you think the sun is?
It's about 2500 miles above us. [The distance between the earth and the sun, which astronomers call the semi-major axis is alleged to be 93 million miles.]

If I take the kitchen example again, it's pretty hard to compare the sun with a light bulb as the bulb is much smaller than the kitchen whereas the Sun weighs about 333000 times what the Earth does.
You're wrong. The sun and the moon have the same dimensions. Both stars have a diameter of 32 miles.

How can you be so sure?
When you observe the sun, it's always located between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, which means a distance lower than 3000 miles. How can you explain that a star, whose diameter is 865000 miles according to scientists, could be seen between both tropics? It is just a logical deduction.

Image courtesy of The Flat Earth Society

If you look through a telescope, you will see that every planet and star in the universe is spherical. Why would the Earth be an exception?
Don't go too far into sophism. It's not because every planet seems spherical that the Earth is spherical as well. Our planet is very special. First, it is inhabited. The ancient Greeks used to think the Earth was round, because they believed every celestial body was a perfect sphere, including the Earth. They just strengthened their assertion with observation.

OK, but that doesn't prove anything. Is there any other generally accepted idea you believe is false?
Yes, of course. For instance, the sun is a spotlight, which shines and lights up a defined area. If you are outside the luminous flux, it's dark. When you watch a sunset, it's just the sun that stops shining for you.

We also think that the North Pole is located in the center of the Earth, and beyond the border of the planet there is the Antarctic. What you think is the southernmost continent is actually an ice wall which surrounds the Earth. This ice wall is 164 feet tall and holds back water. But we still have debates about what is beyond the wall.

I see. Thanks a lot guys.

I Spent an Afternoon with Montreal Squeegee Punks

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All photos via the author.
Panhandling is a polarizing issue in Canada. On the one side, organizations like the Canadian Observatory On Homelessness argue that the “panhandling problem,” is really a reflection of a homelessness crisis that needs to be addressed. Others, like ex-Toronto Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday, argue that it’s a violation of public space, and that we “need to give police the power to clear these people out of the way.”

A 2011 poll found that 38 percent of Canadians think police should crack down harder and push panhandlers off the streets—even if that means some jail time. Thirty-one percent think we should learn to accept them as part of our cities (22 percent preferred not to answer). The poll also found that people from Quebec are the most accepting of panhandling in Canada, and least likely to say police should crack down.

Perhaps this compassionate attitude, along with the absence of anti-panhandling bylaws in Montreal, is why many Canadian homeless continue to migrate to there from places like Ontario and BC.

At the forefront of Montreal’s panhandling scene are the city’s iconic squeegee punks. Working in small groups, this dreaded, tatted, torn-denim-clad army walk into traffic and wash windshields for change with short-handled squeegees at most of Montreal’s major intersections. On the nationwide annual circuit that many Canadian squeegee punks travel, this city is a popular summer stop. Their strong presence, along with their reputation for being misanthropic and hot-tempered, has tested Montreal’s relatively inclusive attitude in recent years, with some business owners going so as far as calling the trend an epidemic.

I decided to spend a day with a group of them at one of Montreal’s more popular squeegee corners to find out what these guys are up to in a day. Here’s how that went.

Finding a squeegee punk is easy—look for a high traffic area with a stoplight (e.g. St Catherine Street or St. Laurent Boulevard) and you’ll usually find a couple working diligently.

I biked over to Square St. Louis in Montreal’s Plateau to see if they would let me sit and talk with them. There were about half-a-dozen squeegee punks within a 50-metre radius of the intersection, standing and talking, smoking, and washing windshields in traffic. Along the sidewalk was a collection of their stuff—Doritos wrappers, army backpacks, and malt liquor bottles.

As squeegee punks are not known for being the most welcoming of communities, it took a minute to gather the courage to approach them. I asked a man sitting with his dog if I could sit with them. He told me his name was Chris, and that he had no problem with it but his price was ten dollars.

“OK, so,” he said in a raspy voice as he sat down cross-legged across from me on the grass, clutching a 40, “What do you wanna know? That I got stabbed in the ribs, shot at, that I’ve been to prison, that my best friends have screwed me over for the last 12 years?  That I’ve done everything there is to make money except prostitution? That my doctor gave me a low dosage of methadone just now and it took everything I had not to knock him out? Hey, can someone get me a fucking cigarette!?”

There was frustration in his voice. His eyes darted back and forth purposefully in the top of his head like he was reliving old memories.

“I escaped from my first group home after juvie when I was 13 by jumping out of my window. They caught me an hour later and moved me to a new home that was a lot more lenient. So I started hangin’ with these guys from juvie who would pay me for various things, and we started… fuckin’ drinkin' booze, smoking joints. We were hustling poolhalls, I was fuckin’ their bitches, I was doin’ whatever I wanted because I was young, I was beautiful, and I was free. I started rollin’ downtown and started hangin’ out with some squeegee punks I knew from juvie and next thing you know it was… it felt good.

It felt good because we made great money, we got to get drunk all day, we got to do all the drugs we wanted, we got to fuck all the women we wanted. We were kings. We were kings of the street. We didn’t owe nothing to nobody and nobody fucked with us because we were fucking crazy. We were a family of violent ass motherfuckers who had nothing to lose but everything to gain.”

Then he introduced me to his dog, Rusty.

“If it weren’t for Rusty I would have offed myself years ago.”

“I got the [they lied] tattoo on my hands for my friend who was wrongfully accused of murder and went to prison. He killed the guy by accident. So we were tripping on acid and I got this tattoo.”

He showed me the track marks on his arm and neck, but told me not to take photos of them.

“When you get sick, your veins shrink, so I had to shoot up in my neck.”

“A lot of people turn to this because they reject the 9 to 5, they reject the office job, but you know what? I want that. I want the white picket fence and the wife and the 10-year-old kid running around telling me he learned how to ride a bike. You think we’re doing this because we want to? Hey Groove, if you could be doing something else, would you?”



Groove, or “Phil de Groove” had more of a bounce in his step and optimism in his voice: “Well, ya sometimes I think that. But in the summer time man, it’s beautiful out here.”

Chris introduced me to his other friend Mark, or “Dirty Mark.” He had been squeegeeing while Chris was talking to me. Mostly he was getting honked and yelled at. A white Mercedes tried to run him over at one point.


I asked Dirty Mark where he got the name from: “I dunno, probably because I’ve fucked a lot of bitches without condoms and I may shit my pants from time to time.”

Fair enough. Chris told me about the social connection Chris felt to the community.

“Most of my friends are dead. I wouldn’t consider most of the people on the street my friends. Acquaintances, yes. But not friends. There are two huge misconceptions about us: that we’re all the same, and that we don’t work hard. So first, we’re not one unit. Guys like me and my bros, we try to be entertainers. We try to put a smile on people’s faces, and show them that life ain’t as bad because you could be in our position.

Then you have the guys who are really hardcore coke junkies and crackheads. Then you have fuckin’ yuppie kids who are just using squeegees to try to make fuckin’ money. Then you have the guys who have been on the street for 20 years and never made anything with their lives. Then you have the people with mental disorders, then there are the people who have everything—family, house, and they just come down and pretend that they’re streetcore. So there are many different genres. We’re not just one people.”

Chris had to go, so I went to hang out with Dirty Mark for a while. I asked him about the pragmatic side of squeegeeing—how you go up to a car, how much money they make, etc.

“Right now it’s slow, he said. On a Monday, at the beginning of the week it’s slow but on Thursday, Friday, when everyone gets their paycheque, it picks up. When the Habs were in the playoffs it was crazy. When Montreal’s happy, we’re happy”

Chris came back to give his input: “In the mornings when people are all stressed out and late for work, you gotta ask. But if it’s at night, like midnight, and people have been partying and are drunk, you just go right up and wash the cars.”

Dirty Mark told me that he was born in Halifax, and has been sleeping next to ATM machines since he was 12. He woke up in the Montreal General Hospital one time with 750 mg of methadone and 30 mg of Lorazepam in his system, where the typical dosages are 10 mg and 1 mg, respectively.

“I’m lucky to be alive. I really am.”   

Mark has squeegeed almost everywhere in Canada and in the States, but likes Montreal.

“Montreal is good, but in most other places I’ve been you can get arrested or shot. So life is good, well except for the fact that I wake up shaking and vomiting every morning before I drink one or two 40s. Hey Steve, bro, do you like hardcore rap?”

He put his headphones in my ears and told me it was "Slam" by Onyx.

“It’s fuckin’ nice right?”

He told me he wanted to be a truck driver, because he loves driving fast and listening to loud music. I asked Chris about the territories that squeegee punks have in Montreal, if it was divided amongst different factions.

“We don’t have those, no, not anymore. We used to, back when we were more organized in the 90s. We used to have a purpose, a fight against the system. The old school motherfuckers know what I’m talking about. There’s a fight against the system now, but it needs to be a lot smarter than smashing windows and breaking shit.”

Nasty Mark quickly ducked out of the street when he saw a police van drive by. He stood on the sidewalk and hid his booze in a Starbucks cup behind his back.

“You get a ticket for soliciting to a vehicle, same as prostitution,” he told me. “I can’t go to prison,” he said, looking down and spinning his squeegee. “I couldn’t take the withdrawals.”

I looked around for Chris. He had his head down on a bench on the other side of the park. He was visibly distressed. I asked Nasty Mark what Chris was upset about.

“He lost someone. We call him Angry Chris. I dunno why he’s so angry. Maybe it’s because of this fucked up world we live in,” he said, stepping into traffic.

Groove and the five or six other guys hanging around whose names I never got had all left to get high. Angry Chris had his head down on a bench and Dirty Mark was bobbing his head in the middle of traffic to old school rap in an amphetamine-induced haze.

It felt like the right time to leave, so I got on my bike and said goodbye to Dirty Mark before riding off. I had gotten to know two very broken people, and found it equally inspiring as it was sad. Despite a lifetime of hardship, they’re still fighting, and beneath Dirty Mark’s optimism and Chris’s angry diatribe, the men were trapped in a cycle of drug dependence and mental illness—a symptom of the crippling, larger issue of homelessness and substance abuse in the city.


@keefe_stephen


Comics: Band for Life - Part 27

Cry-Baby of the Week

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

Cry-Baby #1: William McDaniel

Screencap via Google Maps

The incident: A man discovered that a stripper wouldn't have sex with him.

The appropriate response: Not having sex with the stripper.

The actual response: He called the cops.

On Saturday, 53-year-old William McDaniel spent the evening at Sagebrush Sam's Exotic Dance Club and Casino in Rocker, Montana.

According to reports, William paid a stripper $350 for a private dance. After the private dance, the stripper did not have sex with him. 

Once he'd realized that he'd just spent $350 for just a private dance at a strip club in rural Montana, William called 911 to register a consumer complaint. 

Police responded to the call, but, obviously, not to make the stripper have sex with him. William was arrested and charged for offering money for sexual favors. 

He was released Sunday morning after posting a $550 bond. 

The Smoking Gun quoted a Yelp review of Sagebrush Sam's, the strip club where this took place. It is, apparently, "dirty and smells like vomit." The man who wrote the review said he "will not go back."

Cry-Baby #2: An unnamed woman in South Carolina

Screencaps via WAGT26

The incident: A woman said "fuck" while grocery shopping.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: She was arrested.

Last week, 27-year-old mother of two Danielle Wolf was shopping at a Kroger store in North Augusta, South Carolina.

At some point, after noticing that her kids were squashing the bread in her shopping cart, she told them off. According to the police report, Danielle said, "stop squeezing the fucking bread."

Danielle says, at that point, she was approached by another customer who chastized her for swearing. "She's like, 'You said the F-word,' " Danielle told WAGT26.

The woman, who has not been named, then called the police to tell them what had happened. 

Amazingly, because North Augusta law dictates that using "bawdy, lewd, or obscene language" while "in the presence of another" qualifies as "disorderly conduct," Danielle was handcuffed and arrested.

"He was like, 'You're under arrest.' Right in front of kids, in front of my husband, in front of customers." said Danielle, of the officer who arrested her.

After booking, Danielle was released. She is due to appear in court on September 12th. 

Several days after the incident, the woman who called the police contacted Danielle to apologize. She said that seeing her swear at her children reminded her of her own abusive childhood, which might make her the most decent person to have ever appeared in this column.

Which one of these guys is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here:

Previously: A church who cancelled a man's funeral because he was gay vs. a woman who attacked someone over the length of their shorts

Winner: The homophobic church!

VICE News: The Crisis of Migrant Children

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Between October 2013 and May 2014, authorities at the US-Mexico border began detaining underage migrants at an alarming, never-before-seen rate. During this period, thousands of underage migrants ended up in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detention facilities along the border. Capacity at CBP detention facilities was overwhelmed by the influx of migrants, who predominantly came from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. 

As overcrowding became more severe, conditions for the migrants worsened. Lacking proper installations and sufficient personnel at the facilities, Department of Homeland Security officials began to release underage migrants into the custody of family members in the US, and cited them to attend immigration hearings at a later date.The situation is similar in Mexico. The flow of underage migrants in the border region has increased rapidly, and shelters for child migrants report that the Central American population they care for now outnumbers the population of Mexican children. 

VICE News travelled to the border between Texas and Tamaulipas to speak to people who have been detained on both sides of the border. They told us about their reasons for crossing the border, how they were detained, what their stay was like inside the detention centers, their plans for the future, and their fears. Now migrants have two options: return to their country, where they could be killed by gang-related violence, or attempt to enter the United States again, hoping that their luck will change, and they will achieve their American dream.

This Doctor Wants to Provide Quality Control for Your Illegal Drugs

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All photos courtesy of Fernando Caudevilla

Have you ever been to a hole-in-the-wall taco shop where, even though a passable health inspection grade is on display, you're not really sure what's going in your burrito? Buying drugs is kind of like that. You can gauge a dealer by reputation, but most of the time dealers don't even know exactly what's in the drugs they're selling.

Basically, there's no quality control for the market of illegal drugs. A 2013 report by Energy Control found that 38 percent of pills sold as ecstasy didn’t contain any MDMA at all. Only about eight percent of what’s sold as cocaine is totally pure; the rest is combined with additives like phenacetine, levamisole, caffeine; 17 percent of cocaine didn’t have cocaine in it at all. That's basically like paying for filet mingnon and getting a slice of roast beef. Besides getting cheated out of high-quality drugs, there are also serious dangers to not knowing what's in your drugs, like the recent rise in lethal overdoses from heroin that's unknowingly laced with fentanyl.

That's where Dr. Fernando Caudevilla comes in. Meet him in his office in Madrid and Dr. Caudevilla is simply a Spanish family physician. But meet him on the internet and he morphs into Dr. X,  a one-stop drug consultant who was once described as the “Roger Ebert of illegal drugs.” In forums on the deep web, he offers practical advice about using illicit drugs; in a laboratory in Spain, he tests drug samples for purity, which people send him from around the world.

We spoke to Dr. Caudevilla/Dr. X in January for an article about buying drugs on Silk Road, but we wanted to know more about how he got involved in his work, so we spoke to him over Skype.

VICE: So you’re a family doctor by day, and a drug-tester by night.
Dr. 
Fernando Caudevilla: Yes, but I do it in the day also. [Laughter] But yes, I work with an NGO called Energy Control to do these drug test programs. We do testing at parties or at raves that are colorimetric tests, which will give you information about whether there is a drug or there is not a drug. We also do another kind of drug testing that we do in the laboratory, where we can analyze the substance and know its composition.

So you can tell if you’ve got cocaine cut with chemicals, or heroin laced with fentanyl, or whatever. How did you get into this?
I joined the Energy Control team by a mixture of personal and professional interests in drugs, basically. I'm personally interested in experimenting with some drugs—using them wisely and with all scientific knowledge—and also I'm interested in them as a professional, as helping drug users is one of my fields of work.

Do people send in drugs from all around the world?

Yes.

How is that legal?
In Spain, it’s not forbidden to analyze the drugs. It’s forbidden to sell drugs, or to give drugs to people, but not to analyze them. We view this as a prevention model. At Energy Control, we’re not just giving people the drug composition, but also taking the opportunity to talk with the drug user and give him accurate information, objective information, about the drugs. Drug users feel that we are not judging them. We’re not telling them, “Don’t take drugs.” We just accept the fact that people take drugs, and we try to give information so that drug use is less risky and more healthy.

So the goal is harm-reduction.
Yes. In this sense, testing drugs is one of the strategies we use. Drug testing is not about saying “this drug is good, this drug is bad.” It’s just to have the opportunity to be in contact with the user.

How often do people send in drugs that are not pure, or are not what they thought they were taking?
It depends on the drug, and where they got it from. If you go to the party and know the person selling the drugs, then you don’t have as many problems. But if you buy a drug at a disco from a person you don’t know, it’s more probable that you’ll get something impure. It happens a lot with prescription drugs. People who think that they are buying ecstasy are actually buying the medication from their grandmother.

Yikes. I’m sure that’s disappointing.
It can be very harmful, too. Sometimes, that medication can be way more harmful than taking ecstasy.

You’re on a lot of deep web forums under the name Dr. X, and you let users consult with you about their drug use. Why did you start that?
I started with this a year and a half ago, and now I’ve answered over a thousand different questions and had 30,000 visits. Similar to what I told you before, people have questions about their drugs, but health professionals will just say, “Drugs are bad.” But that’s not useful for them. People want to know the effects of drugs and their individual risks, the combination of drugs with prescription drugs, risks about having a particular health problem… I can answer all of these questions. I’m doing this almost every day.

That’s amazing. How do you find the time to do this? I mean, you’re a full-time doctor.
Yeah, I’m a full-time doctor! But it’s maybe one or two hours a day online. Sometimes I answer three questions, sometimes five, sometimes zero. But I think it’s also very interesting.

Do you charge a fee for your services?
Not at all. The lab testing is volunteer, and so are the internet question-and-answers. But I do accept donations, and some users have been very generous.

Can anyone send you a drug sample?
The program we were doing at first was just for Spain, and we do that for free [for Spaniards]. Now, we are accepting samples from all around the world. But it’s a little more complicated. We ask for a little money for doing the testing service, but if you get in contact with Energy Control, you can find information about how to send in drugs to be tested here.

There’s been a huge increase in people buying drugs online, with the expansion of the deep web and marketplaces like Silk Road. Do you think that’s a safer way to buy drugs?
It’s just different. These are still illegal markets, and if a market is illegal, there’s no possible way to control it. But these kinds of markets, like Silk Road, have many interesting things—like the fact that you can give feedback about the products that you get, so the good vendors are easier to find. In general, that’s better than what we had before. But obviously, they’re not perfect.

Would you say you’re an advocate of legalization?
Absolutely. The answer is yes, with no doubt. We will have to see what kind of legalization we like, though. Think about apples, tobacco, and antibiotics—these are three products that are legal, but legal in different ways. It’s not the same to buy an apple than to buy alcohol or prescription drugs. We have to talk about what kind of legal state we’d like for drugs, but if drugs are dangerous, then that’s the main reason that we should make them legal. If it’s not legal, it can’t be controlled.

That’s a really good point. How would you want people to frame drug use, then?
Taking drugs is a human activity. People will always take drugs—some people take legal drugs, some people take illegal drugs. Drugs—both legal and illegal—have their problems. But I think that there are better ways to relate people to drugs than we have been doing. I think that the work that I do is just trying to prove this—there are different ways we can relate to drugs, and make good relations between people and drugs.

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

This Week in Teens: Why Are American Teenagers Ditching Shopping Malls?

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This place is a fucking ghost town. Photo via Flickr user Nicholas Eckhart

Have you been to the mall lately? It's a heavy scene: Anchor stores sit empty and once-prominent chain stores are gone. Meanwhile, dental clinics and for-profit colleges have opened in their places. Malls are dying; the one-two punch of the recession and the rise of e-commerce have turned America's shopping centers into half-empty vestiges of their former selves.

Even stranger though, is the lack of teens. From Clueless to Bill and Ted's, from Mean Girls to those SNL skits where David Spade and Chris Farley dress as girls and work at the GAP, the mall has always been inextricably linked to American teenagers. Rich kids went to Abercrombie; their less-fortunate peers worked at Hot Dog on a Stick. Even misfits hung out together at the mall. My heart pangs at the realization that future generations will never know about mall punks, the erroneously-named mix of demi-goths, gutter punks, Doom aficionados, and kids who have just changed a lot since fifth grade. 

Do you remember that golden hour when stores were closed but the physical entrance to the mall was still open? Walking past the grated-up shop windows, there was a looming threat, but also a feeling of endless possibility: What if we waited in the bathroom and then stayed in the mall all night? Anything could happen. Sadly, today's teens don't even have that option. In Texas, it recently emerged that a 14-year-old spent four days hidden not in a shopping mall, but in the aisle of a Walmart. The boy hid out near the baby section, and he even wore a diaper so that he wouldn't draw attention by using the store's bathroom. He was only discovered because employees saw his trash pile. This is a clear example of our teens' lowered expectations. Put plainly, the American dream of eternal paradise at the shopping mall has been replaced by Walmart. After all, who needs stores like Sam Goody and Victoria's Secret when you can take care of all your shopping in one place? Sure, the CDs don't have swear words and the underwear is less sexy, but hey, things are now cheaper and way more convenient.

-A new report from the Center for Disease Control highlights that teen pregnancy rates are continuing to drop. Though it's pretty funny that teen pregnancy falls under the jurisdiction of the people in charge of disease control, this study's news isn't surprising. It's been happening for a few years and, as we've been saying for a while now, no one is really sure why it's happening. As our own Grace Wyler points out, there are lots of theories: It could be better birth control, better sex education, or maybe the recession has made potential teen mothers decide that the time isn't right.

There's also the idea that reduced exposure to lead might have something to do with it. This seems a little bit insane—could a random chemical element, and not our imperfect human brains, be what's directing our lives? But lead has previously been linked to all sorts of criminal behavior, so it's maybe not quite so far-fetched. Most likely, it's a combination of all these factors, but my favorite theory is that MTV's shows 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom made viewers realize that being a teen parent isn't fun at all (unless you're Farah Abraham). According to Vox, MTV's "shows are a realistic window into having a baby during high school. Boyfriends leave, weekends are ruined, and college plans get deterred." It's kind of pathetic that it took a couple of MTV reality programs for people to realize this, but progress is progress, I guess.

-Semi-adulthood isn't what it used to be. Teens have never had total freedom, but at least parents didn't expect them to be literally on call at all times. Cell phones have changed that. The problem with traditional cell phones, of course, is that teens can always just not answer them. Every good mom knows that "I didn't hear it ringing in my purse" really means "I didn't hear it ringing because I was on drugs," though, which is why one Houston mom invented the app Ignore No More. With Ignore No More, parents who fear their kids are deliberately not answering their calls can lock their kids' phones. Kids are then forced to call them back before resuming games like Angry Birds and sexting. This might seem like yet another example of helicopter parenting and the infantilization of young adults, and, well, that's exactly what it is. 

-According to a new poll of 500 teenagers, "Eight out of 10 18-year-olds felt it was too easy to accidentally view explicit images while surfing the internet." While writing this column I spend a significant amount of time researching teens online, so I can verify that this is all too true. 72 percent of those surveyed also said "pornography led to unrealistic views about sex" and 66 percent felt that "it would be easier growing up if pornography was less easy to access for young people." While porn certainly creates unrealistic expectations (real-life sex is not gymnastics, and porn stars almost never say things like "that usually doesn't happen" afterwards), the idea that life would be easier without porn seems misguided. Does porn lead teenage boys to pressure teen girls into doing things they're not ready for? Definitely. But those pressures have always been there, and at least now we're talking about them. The normalization of porn has gone hand-in-hand with an increased acceptance of sex as a healthy, normal, and potentially fun thing. Porn has put sex out in the open, and it's hard to think that covering it up will make things better. More realistically, puberty and sexual awareness are always going to be difficult things for teens to deal with—with or without porn.

Follow Hanson O'Haver on Twitter.

VICE News: VICE News Capsule

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The VICE News Capsule is a news roundup that looks beyond the headlines. This week, the Islamic State releases a propaganda video of Yazidi men and boys converting to Islam, the Chinese government advises villagers in Xinjiang to fight terrorism with “angry stares,” Thailand's junta chief seizes more power after being picked for the prime minister post, and Russia's closure of McDonald's restaurants may say more about politics than food safety.

You Can Now Use Bitcoin to Buy 3-D-Printed Sex Toys

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Photos courtesy of LeLuv

As a cam girl, I’m always hunting for new, eye-catching sex toys to use in my cam show. During my most recent online-shopping binge, one toy stood out amongst the usual offerings—a smooth, glow-in-the-dark dildo created by LeLuv with a 3-D printer. 

The technology to print my own sex toys exists, but I don't have the guts to try it at home. (As the Daily Dot points out, printing your own dildos could lead to health risks.) Luckily for this cam girl, LeLuv promises that their new poliquered production process creates safe 3-D-printed toys. Staying true to their advanced technology, they also accept Bitcoin as a form of payment.

Curious about the intersection of this new production process and the sex toy business, I called Taylor Coleman, LeLuv's owner and founder, to discuss the adult industry and the company's new 3-D-printed sexual-wellness line.

VICE: Why did you decide to start 3-D printing sex toys?
Taylor Coleman: I had an assistant who pointed out that the 3-D industry was starting to boom and that we could actually make things. Then I received a couple of emails [from my team] about how 3-D printing was taking over the manufacturing businesses of China, and I looked into it further. (We have a licensed engineer who designs our products for us, so they’re not what you’d call hobbyist-designed.) Then we make them in our shop here. We can offer 32 different colors, and we can customize them.

Would you say that 3-D printing lends itself to sex toy production?
It does because we can offer customization—many different types of products. Today we have logged in our master database over 2,000 skews [or types of products] that we can go ahead and print with 3-D printing.

What did you think about as you designed this sex toy line?
We took a look at the existing products out there and asked ourselves, “How could we improve these, and how could we differentiate [our products]?” We’ve also found a very high demand for what we have termed “out of round.” What we do is customize the products so that instead of having a circular dildo, we now have one that’s oval-shaped and slightly out of round. The orifices in the human body are not perfect circles—they’re actually ovals—so these toys really fit better ergonomically with the human body.

How many people are involved in the production process?
It’s a four-person team. Our first concern was [if we could] really make products that were of a medical-grade standard, and if we could not [make products] that were strong, sturdy, and had a finish that would be safe for their intended use, for us it would have had to be a pass.

We try to keep the equipment running 24/7 producing products. We have to do a minimal amount of sanding, and then we have to go into the finishing and drying process. It’s a multistep process to go ahead and get the lacquered, glass-like finish that we have on these toys that makes them medical grade and safe for human sexuality.

3-D-printing technology is here, but not everybody has access to the right materials, correct?
The ability to finish [these toys] as we do is not a hobbyist kind of technique. It’s much more sophisticated and time consuming if you don’t know what you’re doing.

What are some of the pros of your line in comparison to homemade 3-D-printed dildos?
The product is very strong—it’s extremely sturdy and durable—but I would say the real lynchpin here is the safety features due to the proprietary, poliquered finish that we use that makes the surface uniform, nonporous, hypoallergenic, and waterproof. Those things are extremely important for safety and health with human sexuality.

Do you have any predictions about the future of 3-D printing and sex toys?
We are working towards adding more machines and more capacity, as we get more and more and more product listings up. On a weekly basis, we are growing the number of products we have available. As we increase the selections, the demand for the products grows quite substantially because we provide more things that people are really looking for. So as the volume keeps growing, we’ll be adding more machines.

Follow Crackdoubt on Twitter.


I Attended Facebook's Hacker Party in Las Vegas

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I Attended Facebook's Hacker Party in Las Vegas

You'll Really Enjoy Justin Hager's Drawings of Hello Diddy and Nestlé Snipes

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If you haven’t seen the work of San Francisco-based artist Justin Hager you are quite frankly missing the fuck out. His illustrations are an amusing mix of celebrity culture and word play that might appear silly at first but will have you lurking through his website for hours. That's what happened to me.

Lately, Justin’s work has been getting some well-deserved recognition, and since this coming Saturday he will be hosting an exhibition in San Francisco with Andrea Sonnenberg, I thought it'd be a good time to get in touch with Justin for a chat.



VICE: Hi Justin. You’re from Bakersfield, right?
Justin Hager: Yeah, they test out new fast food items there to see if it sinks or floats, so that was pretty cool. Bakersfield is a good place actually. I still have family and loads of good friends back there. There wasn’t too much to do growing up there except for skateboarding. But that kind of atmosphere made me really hungry for more. It made me work really hard so that I could move to a more diverse, fast-paced city where actual stuff is going on.

Is that why you chose to move to San Francisco?
Yeah, I also wanted to stay close to my family, and I’ve always liked Northern California more than Southern California. I love bundling up in jackets too. Plus, I’ve always been a huge fan of the Mission District art scene and the Bay Area music scene so it made sense.



So how did you get into drawing and painting?
I’ve been drawing and painting my whole life. There are old Ninja Turtle drawings in my grandma’s house from when I was four years old, so it’s just something I’ve always done. I’m still learning how to paint though. In each painting, I try to paint something that I’ve never painted before or try out a new technique—but I mix all that up with what I usually do.

How do you come up with concepts or themes? Do you just thing hard and long to come up with a wordplay or do they come naturally?
I’ve been doing the word stuff for so many years that it’s hard to not to think about it. It’s kind of taken over my brain; I can’t really switch it off. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and have to write them down, otherwise they’d be gone forever.

Do you ever get suggestions from fans or other artists?
All the time.



Have you ever followed up on any of those suggestions?
It’s really fun when people start sharing their mash ups. I don’t really use their ideas because I want my ideas to be my own for the most part, but I like that they are thinking the way that my brain works. It makes me feel less crazy! My friends constantly hit me up with ideas and suggestions. We have some crazy text battles. Sometimes I’ll use an idea from them but it’s more like a team effort.

How has your process changed over time?
I used to do Bic pen and printer paper pieces only. I did one drawing a day for years, and I have hundreds of sketches. Now I’m working with all kinds of materials—acrylic and oil, sometimes spray paint, and I’m working on canvas and wood panels too. I only found out what archival meant last year! So I’m still learning, still exploring.

I noticed you were using crayons too. Do you have a preference in material or is it more of a whatever-feels-right-at-the-moment type of thing?
It depends on what I’m working on. Sometimes I just need to get an idea out, so I'll just use whatever I can draw with in front of me. I like painting with oil sticks, acrylic paint and micron pens for the most part.



How long does it take to finish a piece?
It depends on the size and the subject matter. They take a little bit more time now than they used to, because they are more intricate. It ranges from a couple hours to a few days.

I personally love the Nestlé Snipes piece but is there a certain piece that you did that you particularly like?
Buffalo Bill Cosby is the one I get asked about the most, but every new piece is my favourite when I’m working on it. It’s just a lot of fun making all these ideas in my head come to life.

Who are your favourite artists?
I really like self-taught artists like Daniel Johnston, Raymond Pettibon, Basquiat, Chris Johanson,and Mark Gonzales.



Also, weren’t you part of a group show with Daniel Johnston in Denmark? How was the reception for that?
Yeah, it was a group show at Galerie Wolfsen. I just never thought that I would end up in Denmark because of my artwork. It was really cool—that country is really beautiful. And to be on the walls next to Daniel Johnston was something that I never thought would happen. Dream come true.

You seem to be focusing on mainstream celebrities. Are you working on anything based on subcultures?
At this point I haven’t done one single-themed project. I try to mix it up all the time because I like so many different genres of music, movies and TV shows. I like having a range. I guess it depends on what I’m feeling at the time I start something.



I heard something about you designing a bar in New York—is that still going on?
It’s a bar in Bushwick called Left Hand Path. I didn’t design it, I just painted one of the bathrooms in it. It’s an R. Kelly-themed bathroom. There are three different R. Kelly murals in the stall and only R. Kelly’s music plays in there.

Sick. How did the upcoming show with Andrea Sonnenberg come about?
We’ve been friends for a while and we’re both fans of each other’s work. The owners of Pretty Pretty Collective just thought we'd be a good pair to show together, and I completely agree with that. They kind of just approached both of us separately and as soon as we both heard that the other person was gonna be in it we got super excited. Her stuff rules.



What’s next for you after that show?
I’m in a group show at As Issued in LA on September the 13th, then I have a show in NY later this year and in San Francisco early next year. And on top of that I’ll be in a group show at Kinfolk Gallery but I also have a solo-show with them in the works. I’m also working on a bunch of commission stuff like an album cover for a well know hip-hop artist. It’s still in the beginning stages so I can’t really say anything more than that though.

Looking forward to it.

Justin’s exhibition with Andrea Sonnenberg will be held this Saturday, August 23rd at The Pretty Pretty Collective in San Francisco, CA. You can see more of Justin’s work here and buy prints of his work here.

Follow Sameet on Twitter

 

VICE News: Guantanamo: Black Out Bay

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Approximately 800 men have been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility since it was established in 2002. Today fewer than 150 remain. Despite the fact that more than half of current detainees have been cleared for transfer from the base, and in spite of the executive order signed by President Barack Obama in 2009 ordering the closure of the prison within one year, there's no indication it will be shuttered anytime soon.

VICE News traveled to Guantanamo to find out what the hell is going on. After a tightly controlled yet bizarre tour of the facility, we sought out a former detainee in Sarajevo and a former guard in Phoenix to get their unfiltered impressions of what life is like at Gitmo.

VICE News: State of Emergency: Ferguson, Missouri - Part 4

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The August 9 killing of Michael Brown transformed Ferguson into a flashpoint for America's racial tensions. It also turned the lives of local children upside down. Kids and families were a regular presence at Ferguson's daily rallies. As protesters were met by SWAT teams in riot gear—with tear gas, stun grenades, and road blockades—Ferguson's youngest were exposed to chaos and violence that, parents and community leaders say, will have a lasting impact on them. Since local schools closed because of the protests, many children in Ferguson got an extra week off this summer, but it was a week filled with confusion and fear. VICE News spent an afternoon with a group of them, eating ice cream and talking about being a kid in the neighborhood during the events of the past two weeks.

VICE Movie Club - Onibaba

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You know when you're bored on the weekend and you don't know what movie to watch because the internet is a cesspool of bad direct-to-DVD movies? We've decided to bring back an old column called the VICE Movie Club to solve this problem. Each month, we'll choose a series of movies connected to a different theme—this month the theme is Japanese cinema—and Alexandre Stipanovich and some of our favorite contributors will give their two cents about the films.

To start the return of the column, Alexandre is talking about the classic film Onibaba.

If you've seen Onibaba and you didn't love it, you should watch it again. If you haven’t seen it yet, book yourself a lazy evening and discover the film's tough and indomitable women who kill men by day and sleep naked under the Japanese moon by night. Onibaba is a tale about how invoked demons will possess their invokers; it is a fiction about hate, who feeds it, and whom it consumes.

The film bridges several genres—horror, drama, and action—and although it was created by Japanese writer/director Kaneto Shindo in 1964, the themes are timeless.

It's 14th century Japan and two women are living in a hut by a swamp. They survive by ambushing warriors, killing them, and selling their belongings. Both women are united by the same man—the older one is his mother, the younger one is his wife—who has left for the civil war and most likely won’t come back. The missing son is the invisible link between them; they are accomplices, almost like sisters. They sleep in the same hut, in a silent harmony driven by necessity. They pull out their strength and determination by the conviction he will come back soon.

But as they learn of his death, they slowly lose hope, and the missing man holding in between them becomes the reason for their mutual hate, like a ghost that unlocks dark and manipulative intents. One of the son's comrades, who was also inducted by force into the army, returns instead, and the two women slowly start feeling an attraction to him. The older woman becomes jealous of her daughter-in-law, who reunites with her son’s comrade at night, so she dresses into a demon to terrify her. By doing so, she hopes to make her feel guilty and docile. If daytime is for appearances, nighttime is for passionate instincts to unfurl and suppressed forces to come to life.

One night, the demonic mask won’t come off the mother’s face. In a panic, the mother confesses her devilish plan and begs her daughter-in-law to help her remove the mask. When it finally comes off, it leaves the mother’s face mutilated.

Since Greek antiquity, drama has chosen the family as its favorite topic, and family is the greatest theater for all instincts to unfold. And in Onibaba, we come to understand how demonic masks only serve to conceal human passion and frustration. I’ve asked three friends to share their points of view on the film, which show how Onibaba remains relevant even 50 years later.

NICOLAS NIARCHOS – JOURNALIST
Something moves in the grass in Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba. Made in 1964, it was the first of Shindo’s films to depict sex, a topic he would return to again and again. And sex prevails in Onibaba, where a war in 14th century Japan has left two women without men living in a hut in the middle of vast fields of long susuki grass. To survive, they kill soldiers who stray into the grass and sell their armor for bags of millet to a hawker named Ushi who seems to be ripping them off.

Ushi’s lair provides a counterpoint to what they call “the Hole,” a pit hidden in the long grass where the two ladies (they are never named) drop most of the bodies. “Deep and dark,” we are told, “its darkness has lasted since ancient times.” The first shot of the film is a long tilt that starts with the wind moving in the fields and ends on the image of the Hole. To interpret it too symbolically (these women are literally killing men with their vaginas) would be overly simplistic, but the spirit of the Hole and its darkness certainly provides a counterpoint to sexual desire.

At the beginning, there is a sort of stability, albeit a desperate one, to the women’s existence, modulating between these two dark spaces. One is a pit of death and decomposition, the other a space of sensuous exploitation. (At one point Ushi has to clamber over a reclining nude who doesn’t seem to budge.) But it’s no Thelma and Louise. What moves in the grass is a dark longing, the spirit of the Onibaba (demon hag), which precludes intrahuman connection. When the women shout into the Hole, they hear the voice of the Onibaba echoing back, and it is their own.

Read in context, Onibaba is a reckoning with war and the forces that affect people on the periphery of war. The face of the Onibaba with her mask removed is remarkably similar to the burned visages of the Children of Hiroshima, the title of another of Shindo’s films made a decade earlier. So while Onibaba praises sex and carnality over the powers of destruction, it is also a lament for the inability of those who have been touched by the spirit of violence to return to desire. What moves with the wind in the grass is not sex or destruction—it’s a longing for a world without that violence.

JONATHAN LEDER – FILMMAKER, PHOTOGRAPHER (PROMISCUITIES

The interesting thing about watching 50-year-old films is to see how they age. Perhaps, in the long-term view of film history—say, 200 years or more from now—people won’t be as concerned with how a film does at the box office, so much with how it ages and stays relevant to audiences over time.



Personally, this was one of the most compelling 50-year-old films I have ever seen. Spanning numerous film genres—period piece, historical drama, action movie—the film is an erotic masterpiece of human proportions.



Driven by greed and lust, the film is sparse, tense, and claustrophobic. The suffocating world of pampas grass closes in on the characters all the time. 

Shindo proves once again that in the hands of the right director, a beautifully shot, edited, and well-crafted film can be so much more compelling than scores of big-budget modern monstrosities.

FABIOLA ALONDRA  DIRECTOR AT FULTON RYDER  
The first image is that of a female warrior sculpture holding a sword and shield, before giving way to a vast field of tall grass, lithely dancing to the wind’s heavy breathing. The field is powerful and its presence is the strongest character, creating a sense of entrapment and restlessness. Among the beautiful field lies darkness in the shape of a deep hole in the ground: “Its darkness has lasted since ancient times.” I appreciated the function of history in the film, from the mythological goddess sculpture at the beginning to the primordial field and the archaic darkness that lies within the mysterious orifice. The film overflows with symbolism, eroticism, superstition, and allegories.

The mood throughout reminded me of a melodramatic noir film with its black tones highlighted by sharp white spotlights. The way the light hits the women’s faces accentuates sweat and pores and reveals the humid and moist environment. The focus on their heavily lined eyes emits fierceness; the light hits them the way lightning strikes during a thunderstorm. They are the all Seeing Eye, the female eye.

The music in the film is essential, heavy on percussion and drumming, with every sound felt and heard with equality: the sound of the wind caressing the grass blades, the birds chanting their messages to the earth, the ravens on tree branches, the tedious dragging of heavy corpses as they brush against the lush earth, and the heavy breathing released while racing through the reeds at night time.

I also found Shindo’s approach to the idea of demons compelling. The demon mask conceals beauty and goodness in such a way that the mask transforms physically and also metaphorically. It leads to darkness and madness. The human becomes a demon, which is itself an allegory of war: “You become a demon, you stay that way.”

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