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I Infiltrated an Abortion Protest

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Photo by the author

“We’re just a fellowship of guys who feel it’s the Lord’s calling to do this,” explained Charlie; a short guy with a stocking cap, dark sunglasses, and a video camera around his neck. He seemed generally pleased to have me there with him. I, on the other hand, felt scared shitless. “We do it for the Lord and we do it for the babies,” Charlie added, holding aloft a large sign that graphically depicted a bloody fetus. 

It was a Saturday morning and we were standing in front of Planned Parenthood (or, as Charlie called it, “The Temple of Moloch”) to protest abortions. Charlie has been picketing abortion clinics every weekend for the last 17 years—“I think I only missed one Saturday,” he said.

I was here to infiltrate the group, as a way of understanding what the hell goes through these peoples’ heads. So I gave Charlie a weak smile and began chanting their mantra: “Let’s save two lives at a time.”

We were across the street from a local YMCA in a very quiet neighborhood. I had brought along a homemade sign with a hand-scrawled “HEY-HEY! HO-HO! ABORTION HAS GOTTA GO!” but I still felt like a total amateur. My fellow protesters held signs about a million times more elaborate, with bold colors and graphic images, some of which were rigged to the back of a truck decorated with large American flags. Subtlety was not the order of the day.

The sign that Charlie held looked like a blender accident gone awry: a bloody, mangled twisted fetus. “I met one woman who’s had four abortions,” Charlie admitted. “I told her, when you get to heaven, you’ll get to hold those babies.”

I wasn’t really sure how to respond, so I vigorously nodded my head and replied: “Let’s save two lives at a time.”

Around the corner, a group of roughly 35 people were gathering along the sidewalk, on their monthly excursion from a local Catholic church. They were in the midst of an intense prayer hymn, and some had brought their small kids, who were curiously staring at us.

“What’s the deal with the dogs?” I asked, noting several stern-looking Planned Parenthood workers suspiciously looking on while monitoring the facility’s parking lot. Several held vicious German shepherds on leashes, presumably to deploy into action if a protestor crossed the line.

“They’re there to intimidate us,” explained Dave, a soft-spoken older man with glasses and a crew-neck sweater. He was clearly a veteran. He knew all the Planned Parenthood workers by first name, and he didn’t hesitate to share some horror stories: “One time Curtis let his dog jump at us, and then he said, there’s your dinner! Can you imagine the mindset of that?”

I honestly could not imagine that mindset, so I just shrugged my shoulders. Meanwhile, one of my fellow protesters hoisted up a large sign labeled “Unborn Jesus,” with an illustrated version of exactly what Unborn Jesus would look like, including a full beard.

Photo by the author

Dave asked why I wanted to become a sidewalk counselor. I paused for a moment, and then gave him the exact answer I knew he would want to hear:

“I want to save two lives at a time!”

Dave looked reasonably pleased, and proceeded to offer some veteran advice. “We can’t block the driveway. When you see a car pulling into the parking lot, go up to the window and say, “Can I give you some literature.’” He motioned towards a pamphlet that read, “Simply get up and walk away,” with a God Bless America sticker on the back.

“One woman read the literature then drove away. That’s one child I’ve saved, and I feel pretty good about that,” he said, adding that Planned Parenthood was an “abortion mill.”

A beat-up late model car with a scared-looking teenage guy in the driver’s seat pulled into the driveway. Dave sauntered over and gave him some literature through the driver’s side window. Minutes later, a teenage girl got into the car. Dave walked back over to me.

“The Hispanics, you’ll find, are usually quite respectful,” he said softly, in reference to the interaction. But as the beat-up car drove away, Dave suddenly snapped, yelling, “YEAH, BUT HE STILL WENT AND HAD IT KILLED!”

Dave pulled out a cross attached to some beads. “Do you do the Rosary?” he asked. “You bet I do,” I responded.

I joined the others in forming two parallel lines on the sidewalk as we collectively did the Rosary. Some eyed me with mild suspicion, so I started mouthing the words to “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow,” since I have no idea what you’re actually supposed to say. A microphone was passed down the line to allow each person to do a verse, and I was greatly relieved that it didn’t stop on me. Then our prayer vigil was concluded with a rousing chorus of "God Bless America," which I actually do know the words to, and sang loudly with great fervor.

“GOD BLESS AMERICA...”

When we finished singing, a few members of the group looked down the sidewalk. “Here comes Carl,” someone yelled, and everyone started to smirk. A man rounded the corner dressed in—I shit you not—a Grim Reaper costume.

Carl, as it turned out, was the clown prince of abortion protests, and he was decked out in his Sunday best: a skeleton mask, a hooded robe, a sickle, and two large signs that read “Death Sold Here” and “The Killing Place.” The little kids staring at us from the church thing refocused their attention from Unborn Jesus to Carl, clearly delighted.

“Mommy! Mommy! Can we go talk to the skeleton? Can we go talk to the skeleton?! Can we Mommy?!” Carl was becoming a main attraction.

“Do a lot of people dress up in costumes at these protests?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” said Dave.

“In general, it takes a little bit of guts to do this, so it’s part of it,” added Charlie.

“Is it okay if I come back in costume next week?” I asked.

“Sure. What do you have in mind?”

I thought for a moment. “Well, I have this great ninja costume!”

Dave pointed at Carl. “I one time saw an abortion mill worker dressed in the same costume for Halloween. Think of the mindset of that.” We all thought about it. Dave could be such a downer sometimes.

Glen, another protester with the hardened look of a POW camp survivor, pulled out a large yellow tape player and turned up the volume, pointing it directly towards the Planned Parenthood parking lot.

“That’s something Glen likes to do,” Dave explained softly.

“This is my prayer medallion!” Glen exclaimed sarcastically, pointing to a photo of Planned Parenthood worker Curtis pinned to his jacket and throwing a nasty glare towards real-life Curtis in the parking lot. Glen cranked up the tape player as loud as he could, as if we were US troops trying to get a South American warlord out of his compound by blasting rock music. The tape methodically explained how to pop the head off a fetus.

“This is one of their very own tapes. It’s a doctor explaining the procedure of how to give a partial abortion.” Dave added with disgust, “They actually applaud at the end. Can you believe it? Think of the mindset of that.”

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

“Fuck off!” someone suddenly screamed from a passing car, flipping us the finger. Glen quickly grabbed his camera and started snapping photos of the vehicle.

“I usually take a picture of anyone who flips us the bird,” Glen explained while I pulled out my camera and also started snapping away. “It’s for our own protection.”

“Just remember, it’s against the law to take a picture of anyone going into the abortion mill,” Dave calmly advised. He added that law was his other passion (other than, you know, protesting abortions). “Just like you can’t take a picture of someone going into a dirty bookstore. We used to take pictures of guys coming out of the dirty bookstores and then send it right to their homes,” he said with a smirk.

“Back in `89, I was with Operation Rescue,” Dave continued. “We used to block the doors of an abortion clinic. One time we had 800 people out there! A few of us ended up going to jail.” He recalled the golden age of the most radical pro-life groups with more than a hint of nostalgia. They used to employ bicycle locks along with human chains and sometimes automobiles to keep people out of abortion clinics.

“It’s now a felony to block the entrance of an abortion mill,” Dave said with revulsion. “You can block an animal testing clinic, but you can’t block an abortion mill. Think about the mindset of that.”

“Are you reminiscing about the good old days?” Glen piped in, and we all shared a hearty chuckle.

But the moment was short-lived. A police car pulled into the Planned Parenthood parking lot. Glen pulled out his camera and snapped a photo of the patrol car. This was going to be gooda direct police confrontation! With both hands fastened on his belt, an officer got out of the squad car, giving a “here we go again” kind of look.

“How many times do I have to tell you, you can’t have your signs on public property,” he said sternly, gesturing at the numerous graphic and horrifying blender accident signs, which were resting against trees and wired to street traffic signs for all the peaceful neighborhood residents to enjoy.

Glen immediately got in his face, while Dave tried to calmly mediate.

“Well, how come you can hang political signs on traffic signs,” Glen retorted angrily. “We’re expressing our right to freedom of speech! What about that sign,” Glen asked, pointing across the street to a YMCA Construction Parking sign, posted in front of, well, the YMCA parking lot.

Dave, who had up until this point been calm, suddenly snapped and, screeching in an angry tone, yelled, “WE DON’T WANT TO BE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST!”

The Grim Reaper and I exchanged looks of disbelief. Glen stormed off to gather reinforcements, and returned minutes later with a stack of legal papers from the Life Legal Defense Foundation and presented them to the officer.

“What are you showing me here?” asked the officer, who was clearly annoyed. Glen pointed to various sections, but the officer shook his head. “This says nothing about having the right to post your signs on public property.”

I tried to help out the cause by bellowing a chorus of “GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

Dave advised me to save my singing for later. The police officer was unrelenting. “You can have your signs, but you have to carry them. Do you understand?” He returned to his patrol car, waiting, to assure that this would actually happen.

“Can you hold this sign?” Glen asked sharply, handing me a very large, horrific sign with a very disturbing, graphic color image and words reading “The Eighth Week.”

“Sure, no problem,” I replied as I grabbed the highly disturbing sign and took my place on the side of the road. Two Planned Parenthood workers saw me in action, and started animatedly whispering, clearly putting me on their crazy-list. For their benefit, I threw in some loud, screaming chants with the spirit of a sports fan:

“Two, four, six, eight! WHO DO WE APPRECIATE? JESUS! JESUS! YAH, STOP ABORTION!”

Drivers passing by gave double-takes at my sign—not in a way that suggested they’d changed their opinion on the abortion issue, but more in a manner of incredulousness, given that my sign featured a bloody, hacked up fetus and we were in a nice, quiet neighborhood. People were not tickled pink about our overbearing presence, and I was flipped off by more than one passing car.

“Kids can see that, you know,” screamed an angry bicyclist.

“Well, what about all the kids who can’t see it,” I retorted, seizing abortion protestor moonman logic.

There were some children being picked up from the YMCA, perhaps from a tap-dancing class, who looked highly disturbed. Perhaps it was my sales pitch? I gave them a big, hearty smile and a friendly wave, enthusiastically lifting my horrific sign up higher, gesturing to cars as if beckoning them to a junior high charity car wash.

“Can you move your sign?” screamed a woman with a teenage daughter in an SUV, trying to depart Planned Parenthood.

“Hey! Free speech,” I yelled, taking a cue from Glen, and then burst into another chorus of “God Bless America.”

“You’re blocking the view of the traffic,” Dave explained, motioning me out of the way.

“Can I give you some literature?” I shouted at another car, filled with a distraught passenger, in the millisecond window of opportunity as they pulled into the driveway.

I left the hardened group of men because I was starting to develop an uneasy feeling that I was going to get a lead pipe to the back of my head; either from being discovered as an imposter pro-life protestor, or from some angry boyfriend with a newly traumatized girlfriend. I sincerely hoped that did not happen.

I gave the Grim Reaper, Glen, and Charlie a knowing nod; leaving these men to their own devices. I wouldn’t be back next weekend—but I left feeling safe in the knowledge that this group of men could surely handle how to incite fear and dictate what young women should do with their bodies. I came wanting to get into the mindset of extremists by becoming an extremist—but it was now up to them to save two lives at a time on their own.

Follow Harmon Leon on Twitter.


About That Fleshlight 9/11 Tweet

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Photo via Flickr user istolethetv

Today, on the thirteenth anniversary of the time two planes flew into the World Trade Center and set in motion a series of events that have led to uncountable cases of torture, death, and oppression, we are talking about brands. Specifically, we are talking about brands that have decided to commemorate 9/11 through social media. Even more specifically, we are talking about a single tweet from Fleshlight, a company that makes fake vaginas for men to ejaculate into for pleasure:

The Fleshlight tweet has been circulated far and wide on websites because putting "Fleshlight" and "9/11" in a headline is Facebook traffic GOLD, baby, and also because it is pretty funny and gross and awful that companies are taking a few seconds to metaphorically bow their metaphorical heads and go: See guys, we feel sad about the sad thing too. Here is a picture of a flag! 

We do this every year. September 11 rolls around and people feel the need to acknowledge it, because it remains this shadow looming over everything. There are the streets named after 9/11 victims and the fading memorials painted on walls; there are the stories about young children who lost parents in the attacks; there's also the matter of US foreign policy, which is still centered around getting the bad guys responsible in the Middle East. The event seems monumental and impossible to understand—this infuriating injustice that has spawned lots of other injustices. Just thinking about it for too long makes you feel angry and sick. It sucks all the irony out of the room, and you get a twinge of guilt or transgression when you joke about it.

Social media is the worst place to deal with those kinds of feelings. Quips and bombast play well on Twitter; sincerity does not. You need more than 140 characters to communicate what September 11 feels like in your head, and maybe most people can't communicate it properly at all. So what you get is photos of people looking solemn and dramatically-lit flags. You get the Skyline Chili Twitter account pausing its full-throated and enthusiastic endorsement of Skyline Chili to deliver this image:

You get the Chicago White Sox letting the world know baseball players haven't forgotten either:

And you get a fan account for the Arizona Cardinals football team tweeting out a picture of former player-turned-soldier Pat Tillman, who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, presumably on the grounds that it's all part of the same big 9/11 thing:

Something called Catser announced it would stop tweeting altogether for the morning to commemorate the day:

...and something called White Girl Week begged for favs and RTs:

This also happened:

I guess we're supposed to reject these remembrances as tawdry ways for terminally unsavvy brand salesman to inject themselves into the conversation. Lord knows they do that shit often enough—just the other day DiGiorno Pizza managed to accidentally make fun of domestic abuse victims. But this is America, where we drape ourselves in patriotism 24/7/365 and will, like, unironically bake a giant flag-shaped cake and jump over it on a motorcycle for fun. Who's to say that a fake vagina company can't publicly grieve? Who's to say that, for instance, a spammy Twitter account dedicated to vaguely inspirational sayings can't suddenly get serious?

Individually these tweets seem weird at best and exploitative at worst—on some level they treat 9/11 as just another trending topic, another chance for #engagement. Collectively, though, they combine with all the personal memories and stories being shared to turn Twitter and Facebook into the internet equivalent of a roadside shrine. Post after post of the Twin Towers, old photos of the victims, firefighters striding out of the dust and rubble, a list of the names of the dead, a pair of lights shining upward into the atmosphere. Don't they express—well, if not actual hurt and longing, than at least a reasonable facsimile of hurt and longing? And what's the difference anyway? In other words, does the fact that this tweet comes from Walmart and not an actual meatspace humanoid drain it of all meaning?

Silicon Valley has yet to invent a site or an app that gives us a good way to honor the anniversary of 3,000 people dying in fire and collapsing steel. The social media managers for America's brightest brand can't find a way to tweet about the event that doesn't feel vaguely pathetic and insufficient. Neither has anyone else. The best way to tweet about 9/11, whether you're Fleshlight or just a dude who normally uses #NeverForget to joke about dropping his sandwich on the floor, is to not tweet at all. Or just head back to bed and hope this all goes away tomorrow. 

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

VICE News: Russian Roulette: The Invasion of Ukraine - Part 80

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With the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine holding, the city of Donetsk is slowly beginning to fill with people. As the fear of sudden death from shelling begins to fade—for now—a few thousand people gathered this week at the city's World War II memorial for Donbas Liberation Day. The event, which commemorates when Soviet armies forced the Nazis from the region in 1943, featured veterans speaking about that conflict, as well as those fighting in the current struggle.

In addition to being able to celebrate victories old and new, the people of the Donetsk region are now able to count the costs of the brutal fighting over the past few months. VICE News headed to the town of Ilovaisk to see how the DNR are delivering food aid to beleaguered residents, who for weeks have been without gas, electricity, and water. Not only are the civilians of the town facing a humanitarian crisis, the threat of unexploded ordnance from the fighting also looms large. Now, small but dedicated teams are trying to dispose of the ordnance before more civilians get hurt.

Margate Is the Place to Be

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All photos by Alex Sturrock

The British coast is littered with many things, but it’s those grand old seaside towns that define our images of the place. Designed so that the Victorians could flee to the edges of the nation to escape the poverty, smog, and incest prominent in the cities, they quickly became our strange, salty Shangri-Las: Brighton, Hove, Hastings, and Bournemouth in the south; Great Yarmouth in the east; Rhyl in the west; Blackpool and Scarborough further north. Originally conceived as places to visit rather than live in, they soon became permanent homes for the working class bombed out by the Nazis and alienated by the demands of city living. Some called it white flight, others called it following your dreams.

But fast forward to the infancy of a new millennium, and these places exist in a strange purgatory, fluctuating between periods of disarray and regeneration: closed-down pubs and gastronomic renaissances, arts council initiatives and heroin epidemics. They’re a camp, fantastical mix of white working-class refugees, Grand Designs holiday homes, drunk day-trippers, artists in search of inspiration, and people just waiting to die. They’re simultaneously places where people long to be and long to leave.

Margate, on the furthest reaches of the Kent coast, is probably the most confused of them all. In recent years it has seen both a multimillion-dollar art gallery—Turner Contemporary—and a slew of beach-hut arson attacks. It’s a quaint coastal town with brutalist tower blocks, fish and chip shops, and gang violence. In many ways, it’s what London used to be.

I first went to Margate about ten years ago, when my nan moved down to nearby Herne Bay after selling her Camberwell council flat. She came to the area for the peace, whereas most people came to get drunk. My first impression of the town was that it was an odd mix of vintage clothing shops, plasma-screen pubs, and ice cream vans. There were trampolines and oxygen masks on the beach, and bandages in the sea. It was your typical Kentish seaside resort.

But among all the seaside tropes, there’s something less festive about Margate: the thousands of rehoused, under-the-radar people currently making their homes there, by choice or by force. The place is often referred to as a “dumping ground” (even by locals), as many of the local B&Bs have started to take in the bulk of their custom from social services and the like, meaning that many people working their way back into society from homelessness, drug abuse, alcoholism, prison, or even sex crimes are often put up in the town. While it’s hard to begrudge both the councils and the people who use Margate for such a purpose, they certainly contribute to an air of dispossession that permeates the town, as if Margate is the kind of place where people simply “end up,” clinging to the last reaches of London before its sprawl reaches the sea.

More controversial, perhaps, than Margate’s homeless and drug addicts are its Eastern Europeans, mostly Polish and Roma who have for one reason or another flocked to the town. Of course, in a place that prides itself on being quintessentially British, this is a point of contention for some people. The anti-immigration UK Independence Party campaigned long and hard in Margate, and did well. But when party leader Nigel Farage showed his face, he was hit over the head with a placard—a modern take on the battle of Cable Street of 1936 that some of the residents probably remember.

Still, Margate is not a place without a future, and the irony is that the diversity of cultures has created a fascinating new kind of town, all played out on the antiquated grandeur of the southeast coast of Britain. The new Margate isn’t just about seeing the sand and the sea; it’s a place where the residents come from every corner of the earth, from Krakow, Kashmir, and Catford, a place where people come chasing the dream of the British seaside.

Follow Clive on Twitter and Alex Sturrock on Instagram.

See more of Alex Sturrock's photographs here.

Click through to see more of Alex Sturrock's Margate profiles.

We Asked a Neurologist About That Scarlett Johansson Film Where She Can Control Everything with Her Mind

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Image via Universal Pictures

In Luc Besson's latest sci-fi flick, Lucy, Scarlett Johansson plays a student who due to some funny workings of fate (which I won't disclose because I'm not a total party pooper) starts using more than 10 percent of her brain, which causes her to acquire superpowers. In Lucy, the theory that humans only use 10 percent of our brains is a known fact. But Lucy is a film, and films often stretch the truth—do we really use so little of our gray matter?

Dr. Miquel Aguilar is a neurologist at the Mutua University Hospital in the Spanish city of Terrassa. I called him up to ask him if he could review the film for me and the interview turned into a introduction to neurology, with each statement or pause being accompanied by a diagram or sketch. I left the meeting carrying stacks of double-sided notes.

VICE: Is it accurate to say that we only use 10 percent of our brain?
Dr. Aguilar:
The idea that we use only 10 percent of the brain is very old. But every person has a different set of capabilities and no person is the same as another. I would say there two things to take under consideration here; one is the localization of brain activity—different parts of the brain have different functions.

The other is the very important notion of connectivity. While there are certain areas of the brain that are more active than others, our brain is completely connected. To speak of "10 percent" is incorrect. It's all so much more complicated. There, I've already demolished the 10 percent theory in less than two minutes.

Can you check what percentage of their brain a person uses with some kind of test?
No, there is no such test because everyone is different. See, one section of the brain generates movement, another helps us receive sensations, within another we see, we use another to hear, to speak. But we also see movement, notice feelings, hear what we say… All of this happens in the front part of the brain, which once upon a time people thought was the silent or mute area, but is actually the organizing and planning brain; everything goes through it.

Regardless of all this, genetics determine individuals. In turn, throughout our lives our genetics are altered and empirical information is transmitted which affects our brains. A father and mother, for example, pass on their genes, which define their child’s appearance, their behavior, their reactions and abilities. Not only what we call phenotypes (our observable traits), but also genotypes—the set of genes within us. Our parents as well as our environment determine our genes. In many ways our family influences our lives from the start making each person different and with differing uses for their brains’ functions.

Dr. Aguilar's notes on the different functions of the brain (where we hear, where we process language, etc.)

Could you at least roughly tell me what percentage we use to smile or to clench a fist?
No. In relation to brain activity, these questions are extremely complicated. Any answer I could give you would only be a reflection of the brain’s response to stimulus. Many of these actions take place in the bones and stay there. The commands enter through one door and leave from the next. There are other reactions that enter through the same door and go higher, but still remain spinal. But there are others that are cortical. This is getting very complicated and I'm sure you can't understand a word I'm saying. Why? Well, because there is also memory and memory requires learning.

Are you trying to tell me that the older we get, the more advanced our brains get because of the learning we have acquired thanks to memory? Do old people have superpowers?
As we grow older we build an increasingly large network of contacts, through experience and learning. Think about it; we are constantly exposed to a barrage of information received through the eyes, mouth, tongue... Everything is then processed through the brain. Each time the brain receives information, which it translates to learning and improvement.

All this also affects our brain’s resistance. Our brain is composed of neurons, which are like thorns connected to stems that, as we grow, fill up with new information. That is to say that the stem of learning is one that can fill an empty stem with new information and transform it into a memory thorn. The more information you learn the more memory you have, but also the less space.

An old person will be full of memory thorns but few learning thorns, and that doesn’t make for much of a superman. For example: We have a boy, his father and his grandfather. Grandpa has more experience, but the other two have more empty thorns. If we put all three in a university for the same amount of time, Grandpa will have nothing against his rivals. Nonetheless, if we give him more time maybe he can beat the other two thanks to his vital pre-acquired experience.

Dr. Aguilar’s diagram of memory

What about less rational things like the act of falling in love—is there a logical development in our heads?
When you fall in love the effect it has on your brain is similar to that of a disease. It's essentially passion, and passion is equal to a loss of control. When you are walking down a street you do not pounce on a woman you like, right? Why? Because you have learned that there are rules and laws. They might be different in each country, but essentially these regulations control such impulses when a part of your brain asks: "Why not?" Of course reasoning and justifications provide another form of regulatory control.

How do you explain the paranormal activities that take place in Lucy or real-life displays of telekinesis or hypnosis?
Everyone possesses a hidden potential for such behaviour. How does a mother living in Spain know what something has happened to her child who lives thousands of miles away? Has something been transmitted? Somehow all of that information is hidden or more developed in some brains whereas lacking in others.

Why do some people experience extraterrestrial contact? Is it psychosis or reality? There are some people who can explain it coherently. There are many things we do not know and cannot deny or explain. We use the whole brain, but there are energies that we cannot yet reason with objectively.

Notes on the case of a mother who felt her child was facing a problem and the alleged tunnel we see when dying

So is there anything real about the plot of Lucy?
In the film, there is a scene where Scarlett Johansson sees what goes on in the mind of others. Why not? Everything is magic. There are all kinds of magical things in the world for which there is no explanation. The magic of the brain is wonderful. We do not know if it's real or fictitious to see a light at the end of a tunnel when we die, nor do we know what causes this and if it actually happens.

There are different types of intelligence: emotional, musical, mathematical, physical—there is no single unique intelligence. Take the example of a boy who has the ability to memorize an entire telephone directory because he has a tremendous visual memory. Does that not sound like an almost made-up skill? Human beings have so much potential. However, everything has its limits and nothing can outgrow its means—when talking about the brain, it does have a clear capacity. Wouldn’t it be a disaster to know it all? Would you really like to remember absolutely everything that you ever experienced?

The War on Drug Tests

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Photo by David Bienenstock

Weed is now legal for recreational use in two states and for medical use in 23—but cannabis consumption can still come back to haunt you if it shows up in your pee. That's because, despite legalization, few companies have budged on their drug testing policies to accommodate those who toke, medically or otherwise. When I asked the major companies in Washington—Amazon, Microsoft, Expedia, and Nordstrom—if they had plans to adapt their drug testing policies, none of them said yes (although a few shut me down with “no comment,” which is basically another way of saying no). It's been reported that one in five companies in Colorado have adopted even tougher policies since marijuana became legal; earlier this week, the New York Times noted that many companies have retained their pre-employment drug testing policies for fear of “having a stoned workforce.”

The Times brought up the case of Brandon Coats (who we wrote about last year), who was fired from his job at Dish Network after he failed a random drug test. Coats, who lives in Colorado, had a prescription for medicinal marijuana to deal with the effects of a car crash that left him partly paralyzed—but he was fired anyway, with little recourse.

But wait, you're probably thinking, how can that be legal? It's legal, as it turns out, because most states don't have clear policies or precedent for dealing with the increasingly common situation of legal drugs showing up on employee drug tests.

Take Sue Bates, who in 2010 was fired from her job at Dura Automotive Systems after she tested positive for hydrocodone—a narcotic that she was prescribed for back pain. When she offered her prescription as an explanation for the test results, Dura argued that it was impossible to determine if she had been using the medication as prescribed or if she was a substance abuser, which would presumably affect her job performance. A similar thing happened to Chassity Brady, a Georgia woman who was fired when her bipolar medication showed up on a drug test; and Tim Sparr, a police officer in Arizona, who was let go for failing a drug test (he had been taking oxycodone, which he was prescribed after being shot in the arm on duty).

In 2011, Bates and six other Dura employees sued the company, and won when a judge ruled that their drug testing was not "job-related and consistent with business necessity." Brady also sued, in 2013, and won.

But it's not clear that marijuana users will have the same recourse. Some states—Connecticut, Arizona, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, and Rhode Island—have made it illegal to discriminate against medical marijuana users, but other states have ruled that drug discrimination is perfectly legal. In Florida, where an HIV-positive man named Gaylus Bailey was fired for using medicinal marijuana prescribed to him to alleviate HIV-related symptoms, a judge ruled that the company was well within its right to fire him, prescription or no prescription. Colorado, where Brandon Coats is taking his case to the state's Supreme Court later this month, will likely set a legal precedent once his case is decided—for better or for worse.

Part of that problem stems from marijuana's wishy-washy legality—while it's legit in many states, weed is still illegal on a federal level, giving employers ground for discriminating against those who use it. Many employers have also equated marijuana use with having zombie-stoned employees, which makes about as much sense as saying that unless you're a teetotaler, you're going to be drunk on the job. One employer in a Seattle-based company dismissed the legitimacy of smoking weed with the argument: “Yeah, it’s legal, just like alcohol, but you can’t have it in your system.”

This is exactly the kind of mixed message that employees are given about how their (legal) drug use can affect their employment. And even with piecemeal state legislation, it's not a problem that looks like it's going away any time soon. It’s estimated that 90 percent of Fortune 1000 companies and 62 percent of all employers require drug testing—which is remarkable, considering that drug tests don’t do what they’re supposed to. Here are a few reasons why:

  • They aren’t accurate. We’ve all heard the lore about how eating too many poppy seeds will make you test positive for opiates—and while it seems crazy, some research suggests that it’s actually true. It’s estimated that about one in every 20 people will have inaccurate results from their drug tests (in other studies, it’s estimated to be as high as 11 percent), and the inaccuracy is more likely to yield a false-positive than a false-negative.
  • They’re easy to fake. In addition to the fact that tests often yield bogus results, it’s pretty easy to use bogus urine. Unless there’s someone monitoring you during your drug test (which is pretty uncommon, unless you’re in prison or something) it’s well-established that you can bring a baggie of someone else’s pee, incubate it by holding it near your body, and pour that into the cup.
  • They target marijuana users. Most pre-employment drug tests can be scheduled during a time that’s convenient, so most people have at least 48 hours to get whatever drugs they’ve just taken out of their system. Within 48 hours, your body can usually get rid of amphetamines, alcohol, barbituates, cocaine, codeine, morphine, LSD, and sometimes, even PCP. Depending on how often you consume marijuana, it can take between a week and 30 days for weed to leave your system. That means that even the occasional puff of a joint can show up on a drug test weeks after you’ve smoked. That means you’re more likely to pass your drug test if you snorted coke over the weekend than if you smoked a joint.
  • They don’t deter drug use. If you use one of the drugs that leaves your system quickly, then there’s a good chance you’ll resume using after your drug test. If you’re a marijuana user, you can use the aforementioned pee-baggie method. As our late prison correspondent so eloquently put it: “I have pissed in a cup at least 100 times, and I still haven’t learned a damn thing, except that the taxpayers sure waste an assload of money on these tests.”
  • They’re expensive. They really do cost an assload. On average, drug tests cost between $20 and $60—which doesn’t seem like that much, but when you’re talking about gigantic companies or entire states, that shit adds up. Utah, for example, spent $30 million on drug testing welfare recipients between 2012 and 2013. Only 12 people tested positive.
  • They’re not catching that many people. Like the Utah example suggests, only a very narrow slice of people test positive on their drug tests. For workplace drug testing, about 3.5 percent of drug tests run positive; for welfare recipients, that lowers to two percent.
  • They’re an invasion of privacy. There have been various legal disputes about whether or not drug testing invades a person’s privacy in a constitutional sense. But in an even simpler way, drug testing is flat-out discrimination against recreational drug users. To say that a person who recreationally smokes marijuana—or uses cocaine, or does ecstasy, or trips on acid—is unqualified for a job is like saying someone who binge-drinks on the weekends is unqualified. Does their substance use affect the job? Maybe. But a zero-sum drug test can't tell you the answer.

Ironically, the New York Times hasn’t changed their drug testing policy yet, even after their Editorial Board published a six-part series arguing that marijuana should be legal for recreational use in all states. When they were asked why they still discriminated against weed-smoking employees with their pre-employment drug tests, a Times representative answered: “Our corporate policy on this issue reflects current law”—which is a strange thing to say, given that medicinal marijuana is legal in New York and there are zero laws that require employers to drug test their employees in the first place.

The US Department of Labor makes this fact perfectly clear on their website, where they note that while a small handful of federal employees are required to be drug tested, the majority of employers in the US have no obligation to administer drug tests. So if companies are clinging to drug testing policies, then it's a morality issue, not a legal one.

America's love affair with drug testing dates back to the 80s, when the Reagan Administration recommended employers to use them as part of the War on Drugs. Before this point, demanding to have someone’s pee in a cup or a piece of their hair was considered a massive invasion of privacy. In 1988, the Drug Free Workplace Act required any company that had a contract with the federal government totaling $25,000 to uphold a “drug-free workplace,” which encouraged periodic drug testing—but even then, didn't require drug tests for most employees. A White House report from 1989 rationed, “Because anyone using drugs stands a very good chance of being discovered, with disqualification from employment as a possible consequence, many will decide that the price of using drugs is just too high.” This was the same kind of fear-mongering used with the DARE campaigns of the same era, which delivered a clear message to young folks: If you do drugs, you will ruin your life.

In 1991, the Omnibus Transportation Employee Testing Act required drug and alcohol testing for people who had safety-sensitive jobs, like flying a plane, driving a train, or driving a truck. And that makes sense—no one wants to ride in a vehicle driven by someone who’s drunk, high, or otherwise incapacitated. But pre-employment drug tests were also becoming ubiquitous, even for jobs that had no safety requirement, and even though there was no state or federal law that required them.

What happened? Hoffmann-La Roche, a Swiss pharma giant, launched a massive lobbying campaign to “mobilize corporate America to confront the illicit drug problem in their workplaces.” This happened in 1989, and thousands of employers signed up.

Soon thereafter, states began adopting Drug Free Workplace Programs, which incentivize employers to drug test their employees by lowering their workers comp premiums if they do. This coincided with when Hoffmann-La Roche became a paying member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a “partnership” between conservative lawmakers and private sector representatives that, together, created legislation. Since then, many states have also expanded their legislative reach to require drug testing for welfare recipients—a policy which is expensive, intrusive, and humiliating.

It's not just a conservative agenda, though: President Barack Obama’s 2012 Drug Control Policy report encouraged drug-free workplace programs, arguing that they are “beneficial for our labor force, employers, families, and communities in general.” Included in this same report was a behest to Congress to give $20 million for the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign—which had been defunded in 2003, after spending $1.4 billion in tax dollars, because it flat-out didn’t work.

To be sure, drug abuse is a real thing, and that seems to be the impetus behind the continuing drug testing policies in Washington and Colorado, where the risk for "a stoned workforce" is arguably higher. The idea that being stoned on the job would jeopardize workplace performance is not unfounded; indeed, the US Department of Labor estimates that 10 to 20 percent of employees involved in fatal on-the-job accidents tested positive for illicit drugs and alcohol. The problem is, urinalysis doesn't offer any information about when the person was using a drug, how much they were using, or what effects it had on their cognitive functioning—and there's clearly a difference between getting high in your off-time and getting high at work.

If employers want to know if their employees are capable of doing their jobs, there's no point in testing for traces of a drug lingering in someone’s system (something that happened in the recent past) when they could, instead, test an employee’s cognitive functioning while they're actually at work (something happening in the present). This is the idea behind impairment testing, which measures a person’s impairment through a series of cognitive tasks, and can help determine if someone is drunk, high, or otherwise impaired at the present moment, while they're doing their job.

After all, if the point of drug testing is to have a more productive workforce, then employers should start looking at actual productivity levels—and stop looking at little plastic cups of pee.

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

Neither Big nor Easy: Meet the Painter Cop Who Fingerpaints with Shooting Victims' Blood

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photos and artwork courtesy of Charles Hoffacker

Charles Hoffacker is a compassionate cop who joined the eternally troubled New Orleans police department in 2004 because he wanted to make a positive difference. He is also an accomplished conceptual painter. Many of his fellow officers consider him a pussy—even as civilian locals who know 33-year-old homicide detective Hoffacker wish the rest of NOLA’s cops were a little more like him.

His most famous piece, "The Ghost of Telly Hankton," renders the famous drug lord and killer using 14,000 rounds of spent 40-caliber bullets. He buys the cardboard signs from homeless panhandlers and paints their portraits on them. His more traditional oil and acrylic paintings depict things like AK-47s draped in Mardi Gras beads.

Recently, Detective Hoffacker came under investigation after being accused of letting his artistic side interfere with his professionalism. On a particularly violent night last March Hoffacker visited 19 different bloody shooting scenes. According to a story by NOLA.com crime reporter Naomi Martin, as the site of one murder scene was about to be hosed down and cleaned up, “Hoffacker was looking for bullet fragments in the victim's coagulated blood, which had pooled on the street. Hoffacker wiped his bloody hands off on the sidewalk, the source said, and then he appeared to start writing the word 'Help.' A nearby officer scolded him and Hoffacker stopped.”

"While compassion is certainly a noble quality in a normal human being, for a homicide detective, that can be something that is detrimental to you," Eric Hessler of the Police Association of New Orleans told Martin. "You can only see so much blood and so much violence, and that was a particularly disturbing weekend for New Orleans. It was a particularly disturbing weekend for Charlie."

Hoffacker was reassigned to a desk job while awaiting his investigation’s outcome—which has given him more time to work on his art. I spoke to Hoffacker about how his intense day job influences his art, his struggle to be a good cop in a city not famous for good cops, and what it’s been like living through America’s recent Ferguson-inspired love affair with hating the police.

Hi Charles! Is it safe to say when you're at work, you feel like nobody gets you?
Yes. It’s very frustrating for me. I’ll go to work at the department and everybody’s like, “That’s the weird guy.” But I think everybody else is weird. So I don’t really fit in at work. They take potshots, and they make jokes about me doing art. They’re very Type A personalities. Like, these guys were the jocks. But then I don’t fit into the art world either because of my day job.

Artists aren’t more accepting?
No. Less, I think. There is a lot of anti-police sentiment. I’ve literally lost friends because they were like, “You chose this path and I don’t want to have anything to do with that anymore.”

Do you know any other conservative artists?
Yeah, sure. But not many are conceptual artists. There are like conservative landscape artists, like, This is a riverboat. And this is the south, and it will rise again! But with conceptualism you have to think outside the box.

Then what part of you is drawn to police work?
Helping people, man! My first night on my own as a policeman, the first thing I did was went and found a bunch of homeless people and gave them some money. There is a problem with people getting too drunk in the French Quarter, where I was working at first, and you have to go and wake them up, or if they’re so drunk they’re not safe you have to bring them to the drunk tank. And if it’s cold, I’m like “Hey man, you need a ride to the shelter or some money?” 

Has any of that empathy worn off over time?
Oh yeah, I definitely became jaded for a while. I went from like Democrat, very liberal, to conservative Republican, like "You need to work hard," and "Obey the state." But now I’ve gone back to even more liberal than I ever was—just more open-minded. I don’t know why.

How many cops are like you?
I think there are a few [who are] more in the direction of helping. There’s people that I work with that are extremely friendly. I have a friend in the department who comes to all my art shows and makes a point to put his arm around me and say, “I support you.”

The NOPD is famously having a hard time recruiting police, and are supposedly hemorrhaging employees. Is that why you haven’t been fired from the police department yet?
Actually, I don’t think it’s hard to get fired. I think the department is not going to hesitate to clean it up. If someone messes up they’re not going to keep them around. They are trying to rebuild it the right way. It's scary though because there are so many allegations, every day; you pull someone over and then later they say, “He mistreated me.” It might not be true, they’re just mad they went to jail—and that will get you off of a charge. So it’s very common.

Have you been working during all of the problems in Ferguson?
Right now, I’ve been reassigned. I sit in the homicide office, and I don’t even carry a gun. I am not allowed to wear anything that says NOPD. I don’t have a badge, a radio, handcuffs—everything was taken from me.

But has Ferguson had an effect on you as a cop?
It definitely made me rethink my career. I am very nervous about it; it makes our job that much more difficult. I would consider myself very nice and sweet. I don’t like the feeling of arresting people; it’s a terrible feeling taking someone’s freedom away—even when it’s deserved.

Do you feel like you understand what they're upset about?
I will never know what it’s like to be a young black man in America, the way I hear people talk about [the police], I would say it’s gotta be somewhat close to being a white police officer. I walk into a coffee shop in uniform and it’s like I have leprosy. It’s not the same—you can’t take your skin off—but it’s the same look of disgust. And I’m like, What did I do to deserve this? I would gladly take a bullet for you. It kinda makes me wanna embrace my art career one hundred percent.

Did the hate noticeably intensify recently?
I don’t think it did in New Orleans. We have this laissez faire attitude about everything—I’m talking as a citizen now. People have a hard time staying angry here, it seems like. In New Orleans we have young babies, toddlers, shot here—that’s the worst thing ever to see. It’ll make the local paper for like a day and then the Saints will play and everyone will forget about it. Whereas, if a toddler gets shot in Chicago or New York, it’s national news. If I quit [the NOPD], I am never going back, because I have seen some shit, man.

What's the worst thing you've experienced?
A seven-month-old's autopsy? You don’t get that out of your head. Other cops are very in tune with it and don’t let it effect their job at all. You never cry on a crime scene. When you have to knock on the door and tell someone, “I’m here to investigate your son’s murder.” Or when you don’t have any answers, that’s hard. You’re like Shit, I’m a horrible person. Why can’t I solve this? I deal with a lot of self-loathing. I take some medicine for depression, whatever. And I never feel good about myself, except when I’m making art. But I can’t just make art about anything—like a portrait of someone—it just doesn’t do it for me.

What will you make art about if you’re no longer with the police department?
I’d like to work on an international scale. There is so much conflict everywhere. I am always gonna be a homicide investigator, somehow. Though I will say that since I was reassigned, in the past three months my stress level and anxiety level has diminished. My art is getting better, tighter. My social life is in a better place. It’s really nice to step away from everything for a while. If nothing else I am retiring in a year and a half, that has already been decided. I will be vested. That means you can retire with 40% of your pension after 12 years. You can get a retired status.

How much money do you make as a homicide detective?
I make about $35,000.

Jesus! That’s not much for having to look at dead kids? That’s less than a public schoolteacher. How much did you make when you started ten years ago?
Maybe $28k or $30k. Public school teachers deal with worse stuff than we do sometimes. But that’s the problem: most cops are leaving because it’s not paying anything. Austin is starting at $72k and then after five years you’re up to $90k.

There’s an aura around your crime-themed art that it is controversial. Is it because it’s sort of racially tinged?
My art just reflects what I see at work. I don’t go to work and see an old white female dead on the street; it’s always young black males. Some people see racism where there is none. I don’t paint anybody in a bad light, so I think I can get away with it. For instance, my “Virgin Mary” piece is about a black female. This chick is moving weight but she has nothing to show for it; she has a shitty apartment, drives a shitty car, wears shitty clothes. So we find out she’s saving money for her son’s college tuition. We never did arrest her. 

Thanks, Charles!

See more of Charles' artwork on his website, HYPH3N.com. Follow Michael Patrick Welch on Twitter

Would an Independent Scotland Decriminalize Drugs?

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(All photos by Liam Turbett, unless otherwise stated)

In Scotland, the current set up means the Scotish government deals with its own policing, addiction and treatment services, but the legal status of drugs is still a matter for the UK government. However, this country might not be part of the UK for much longer; if there’s a "Yes" vote next week, independence will follow, and the Scottish Parliament will become accountable for policy in a raft of new areas.

While there may have been a global trend towards relaxing drug laws as of late, the UK has been resolutely marching in the opposite direction. From upping cannabis to a schedule B drug, to the knee-jerk mephedrone ban. Then there was the bizarre prohibition of khat earlier this year. Government policy has often appeared to be more about placating the hang-‘em-and-flog-‘em brigade—the types who share hysterical reports about "what the teens are doing these days" on Facebook—than making any constructive efforts to reduce the potential harm drugs can cause.

So if the laws around narcotics do suddenly become the domain of the Scottish National Party, what are the chances of a more pragmatic, evidence-based approach? Could Scotland’s broadly center-left consensus mean a future of decriminalized cannabis, with Scottish exporters standing at UK border firing bricks of weed south into Berwick upon Tweed? Or would an independent government end up just as stubborn and regressive as the current British coalition?

Few would dispute that drugs aren’t an issue in Scotland. Though we may finally have cast off Trainspotting-era perceptions of being a country populated exclusively by baby-killing heroin addicts, Scotland is still among the worst in the world for drug-related crime and deaths, and has been branded the narco “capital of Europe." 

Campaigners for independence have aggressively focused on the failings of successive UK governments, particularly on emotive subjects like poverty and the rise of food banks. Yet drugs have barely featured in this narrative—presumably because they’re a contentious topic and not exactly a vote winner among the general population. In fact, the Scottish government’s extensive White Paper contains little more than a paragraph on the subject, stating that full powers over classification will allow for “coherent” decisions to be made, with no real indication of what this might mean. When I asked if they could expand on this, an Scottish National Party spokesperson was unable to comment due to the referendum’s “purdah” period, telling me to come back after the 18th.

Instead, I thought I’d look to the failures of the Westminster system to see what kind of mistakes an independent Scotland could learn from. Undoubtedly one of the UK's biggest blunders in this field was firing the head of one of their own scientific advisory bodies for pissing them off with some studiously researched facts that they weren’t happy with.

Professor David Nutt (Photo by Matt Shea)

Professor David Nutt was dismissed from his role as chair of the Advisory Council for Misuse of Drugs in 2009 after a fall out with the then-Labour government. Since then, he’s helped to establish a new research body, written a book and become the de facto face of drug reform in the UK. Earlier this year, Nutt delivered a lecture on the Isle of Man, which is legally independent of the UK and can make its own decisions on matters like drug policy. He argued that the island should exploit its status to pursue a more evidence-based approach, which could involve licensing weed for medicinal use, opening cannabis cafes and becoming an offshore refuge for scientists wanting to carry out research inhibited by the UK’s restrictive legislation.

The island’s Chief Minister was initially receptive, but when I called his press office to see how things were progressing I didn’t quite get the answer I’d expected. A spokesperson explained that the Chief Minister had merely been trying to provoke a debate by expressing his own opinion, with decriminalization not currently a legislative priority. “Cannabis cafes would be a step too far at this moment in time,” they helpfully clarified.



So with hopes of an idyllic Isle of Man on the back-burner for now, I asked Professor Nutt if Scotland could, in the event of a "Yes" vote, use its independence to start taking steps towards decriminalization. Strangely enough, for a leading proponent of drug policy reform, he seemed pretty amenable to the idea. “The UK Government is the only one in the world to have taken backwards steps on drugs control in the last decade—the opposite of, say, the USA,” he told me. “A free Scotland could be more sensible and reverse this regressive trend.”

The gains of such a move, Nutt speculates, would be numerous: “Any country that developed a rational approach to drugs would benefit from reducing crime, improving health and accelerating new research into medicines,” he said.

A legalize cannabis march in Glasgow in 2010

Of course, how willing a future Scottish government would be to actually implement such measures is uncertain. Recently, Alex Salmond was pounced on during a BBC phone-in and asked if Scotland would follow the lead of Uruguay in legalizing cannabis. Tactfully, he replied that he’s “rather sympathetic” to medicinal use, assuring listeners that an independent government would do a “good job” when it comes to deciding what is and isn’t criminal.

While it would be premature for decriminalization campaigners to start firing up their victory vaporizers, his words were still enough for the Scottish Mail on Sunday to splash with the revelation that the “drugs vote has swung to the nationalists."

The “drugs vote” may be disappointed yet, as the Scottish National Party’s track record is mixed when it comes to this area of policy. Having long since abandoned the radical plans laid out in their pre-devolution 1997 manifesto, they’ve nonetheless won plaudits for their recovery-focused approach to tackling heroin addiction. A major step has been making the life-saving drug Naloxone, which can delay the effects of a heroin overdose, freely available. Conversely, they’ve rejected calls from their own advisors to introduce prescription heroin and supervised injection rooms, proposals designed to reduce deaths and cut out criminal suppliers.

In March, a spokesperson cited ambiguous “ethical and moral issues” as the reason for their refusal, although fear of shouty headlines about free junk and shooting galleries on the National Health Service likely played its part, too. The Scottish government also proved they’re just as susceptible as their Westminster rivals to talking total bullshit about drugs, when they joined in with the overblown hysteria around mephedrone a few years ago.

Drugs reform campaigners north of the border are cautious of how to view prospects for reform under independence. Jolene Crawford co-founded Transform Drug Policy Foundation Scotland after the death of a family member in 2009. She told me: “In the five years since we started the charity, there has been a massive global shift, but there’s still a disconnect. Scotland could have an opportunity to be really transformative and to show the world that deregulation and control of drugs is a completely common sense thing. We could transform society if we were to implement even a few basic changes.”

However, Jolene remains skeptical as to whether a new Scotland would really have the confidence to push through such radical changes to the drug laws. “There’s still a fear for people about putting their head above the parapet,” she said. “What we could hope is that if there’s a government closer to home, they would be more in tune with specific Scottish issues. It would be a conversation that we could have in the future.”

No one is expecting Scotland’s first independent government to set about an immediate program of decriminalization. But as David Nutt says, it could yet present a chance to buck the UK’s regressive trend on drug policy, opening a space for other views to be heard. As many of the "Yes" campaigns arguments go, could things really be any worse than they already are?

Follow Liam Turbett on 
Twitter


'Breaking Bad' Merchandise Is Cheapening the Show's Legacy

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That first scribble of the elusive meth kingpin Heisenberg—the one you see in episode one of series three—announces Walter White’s final descent into his alter-ego. It’s a deliberately simple sketch that’s supposed to look like a seven-year-old drew it—Bart Simpson for the Netflix generation, the perfect thing to scrawl all over your math books while you should be learning what "focal radius" means. If you can draw it, you're in the know.

Trouble is, its presence in the actual world is an overbearing, irritating one. Mall kiosks filled with made-in-China crap, convenience stores and costume shops—all usually content with a stream of One Direction masks, The Big Bang Theory pens and sports memorabilia—now have Breaking Bad merchandise, most of which has a detrimental effect on the legacy of the multi-award winning monster of a TV show.

The sketch we first see pinned to a candlelit shrine in “No Más” has became the plastered, painted, scanned and stamped sign of membership in the Breaking Bad fan club. Together with a collection of other colorful logos—notably Better Call Saul’s nostalgic italics and the Los Pollos Hermanos emblem—the merchandising of Breaking Bad leaves the gruesome undercurrent of the show lost in a gaudy, tacky selection of collectibles that color the series as a lightweight cartoon. The narrative is diluted from a bleak tale of economic strife, drugs and terminal illness and reworked into travel mugs and a throwaway fashion line.

How did this masterpiece become a stocking stuffer?

Heisenberg is on the high street, and aptly, he’s ruling it. IT managers wear the Bryan Cranston's stern face on their chests, and your auntie just put her keys on the kitchen table to the sound of clink and the sight of a familiar pink teddy bear’s eye. There are coffee cups destined to be plonked on foldable desks in freshman orientation lectures. And there are cuddly versions, 2D versions, tiny versions and tall versions of Walt and Jesse that further fuck with the purity of the show.

Perhaps that's the problem. Unlike the production of meth in Vince Gilligan’s twisted Albuquerque, there seems to be no filtering process or scientific, efficient equation that separates dreadful guff from attractive stuff. This results in a marketplace where you can buy a subtle wallet bearing the Vamonos Pest insignia and a T-shirt that inexplicably parodies the Heineken logo, changing it to read "Heisenberg" instead. A marketplace where "Keep Calm and Rave On" shirts sit next to vests reading: “Yeah—science, bitch!”

The weird phenomenon of Breaking Bad, curious in its balance of pulpy commerciality and highbrow accomplishment, means it is both a profitable goldmine and a cultural marker. In comparison to other major television shows of the past decade or so, including The Wire, The Sopranos and Mad Men, Breaking Bad carries with it a chaotic sensibility that favors set-pieces and bombastic villains over brooding intellectualism or intense social realism. That’s why it’s not necessarily a surprise that we aren’t dealing with—or never have dealt with—a plethora of Don Draper bobble heads, Stringer Bell Babybels, or Tony Soprano beanbags.

Heisenberg and Jesse, with their crappy hats and almost-catchphrases, encourage an afterlife of costume parties and dorm posters. 

The risk of this current marketing strategy, however—with the bulk of these tacky creations pegged as “100 percent official”—is that Breaking Bad gets forgotten as an important TV show and increasingly recognized as a stag party theme. You can buy a yellow Hazmat suit, a mask, gloves and a goatee at the mall. You can buy the goatee. Forget your felt tip grooming. It feels like a matter of time before there’s a bargain bin version of the official Breaking Bad action figures available in the back of a discount supermarket.

As a modern television juggernaut, Breaking Bad’s appearance across the world leaves the feeling that it may have sacrificed artistic legacy for an irrevocable position as an idol. It keeps reminding us that it’s around, but doesn’t mind if we don’t watch it. The implications of this could eventually result in Breaking Bad merchandise becoming a kind of hyper-real replacement for the show itself, with hoodies, canvas bags and rock candy replacing tropes, character and direction as the markers to measure its importance by.

A similar fate met Scarface, Brian De Palma’s expletive-laden excursion into Miami’s dangerous drug world, and a film that is probably playing on one of the TV channels with commercials as I type. The presence of shabby merchandise post-film, both unofficial and official—manifested on ill-fitting T-shirts and exquisitely framed but ultimately shitty holographic photographs—has turned it into a movie you associate with teenager's bedrooms before you've ever even sat down to watch it. You know “Say hello to my little friend” even if you’ve never heard Pacino boom it. You’ve seen that suit and shirt before. You know who the bleary-eyed loudmouth on the train is dressed as, even if the bag of Stellas is hiding his gold chains.

When Vince Gilligan said he wanted to take Walter White on a journey from Mr Chips to Scarface, he surely didn’t mean this. Sure, the extension of the cult of Heisenberg past the four walls of a television show allows him to retain a space in our cultural consciousness. But the cartoonization of characters—the shallow interpretation of the show apparent in most of its merchandising—threatens its long-term credibility.

It should only be bullets, blood and narcotics that Heisenberg and Tony Montana have in common—not how often their face adorns a beer belly. 

FEMA Is Trying to Get Back $5.8M in Hurricane Sandy Aid Money

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FEMA Is Trying to Get Back $5.8M in Hurricane Sandy Aid Money

How One of New York City's Most Storied Police Officers Became Public Enemy No. 1

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Image of retired NYPD Deputy Inspector Corey Pegues, via YouTube.
In early August, just four days after Michael Brown was gunned down by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, and just under a month after 43-year-old, father of six, Eric Garner, was killed on camera while the NYPD attempted to arrest him, retired Deputy Inspector Corey Pegues appeared on an episode of the popular hip-hop podcast, the Combat Jack Show

What followed was a fascinating conversation wherein Pegues detailed his childhood growing up as one of five kids with an alcoholic father and struggling mother in rough and tumble North Queens. The family’s dire financial straits led Corey to get involved in the street life at age 13. “The ironic thing is I think about Eric Garner getting murdered in Staten Island—for the record, you heard what I said, murdered—is at 13, I [was] selling loosies.” 

After a few years as a “hobbyist” drug dealer, Pegues says he had graduated from loosies on the Northside to becoming a full-fledged member of Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff’s notorious Supreme Team.

Pegues operated as a loyal solider in the Supreme Team for years, engaging in various street brawls, gun fights, and robberies. But that all changed in 1988 when Corey’s first son was born. “When my son was born, I was like: ‘What kind of hero am I going to be? I’m either going to be a street legend or somebody positive,” Pegues told Combat Jack. “That was the change in my life. If you’re 25 and you’re selling drugs, you’re either going to be dead or in jail.”

Leaving the drug game isn’t easy, but Pegues managed to clandestinely join the army so he could escape the trap. After finishing his three-year service in the army, Corey returned to New York to find most of his drug dealer pals dead or in jail, so he decided to join the NYPD, where he was accepted quickly because of his military service. “Back when I was in high school, there was a cop assigned to the school, and I used to talk to him. I noticed all the girls always around him, I was like, yo, I gotta do this job!” Corey told Combat Jack. “The cop knew what I was doing in the streets and he was telling me, ‘This can change your life, benefits, etc’ […] So I took the test while I was in high school, knowing it took about three years for a [background] investigation. I figured if I went away for three years and I came home [I would be good to join the force].” He was right. After returning to the city and being accepted into the NYPD, Corey rapidly climbed the ranks over the course of the next 21 years. “After five-and-a-half years in the force, I made sergeant. Three years after that, I was promoted to lieutenant. Then about three years after that, captain,” Pegues told me. “In 2006 I was promoted to captain and in 2008, I was appointed Deputy Inspector of one of the most violent precincts in the city, 67th precinct.”

While ascending the NYPD’s ranks, Corey found time to earn a Bachelor’s degree from St. Joseph’s College and a Master’s from St. John’s University. In 2005, Corey began teaching in the criminal justice department at Monroe College in the Bronx. “The school is probably 97-98 percent minorities, mostly Spanish and black. I could have gotten a job somewhere else, but there I got to take more time to give back,” Pegues told me last week. “They could look up to me as a role model—someone who they can look up to and try to achieve.”

A mural painted by a local artist honouring Pegues's work in the community, via Twitter.
After listening to the episode and hearing about a forthcoming book entitled, From the Streets to the Beat, that Corey is currently shopping around, I gave Corey a call last week and talked to him about his role as a resource for families of black men killed at the hands of the police, including his relationships with the families of Sean Bell, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown, and his work in connecting the NYPD to the communities that so frequently feel victimized by them. “I worked hard to build bridges between the community and police,” Pegues said in our interview. “I was able to bring down crime every year that was a commander.”

But before our interview could be published, the New York Post got hold of Pegues’s appearance on the Combat Jack Show and splashed Corey across the front page with the headline, “Thug Cop,” which argued that if Pegues’s past had been made clear, he would have never been allowed to join the police force.

This story kicked a chain of events that left Pegues reeling. The day after the Post’s story, several NYPD officers visited the Pegues family home in Hempstead, New York, and confiscated three of his guns for breach of his “good conduct” clause on his permit. Sources told the Post that this was just the beginning, as certain members of the NYPD are allegedly looking into revoking his $135,000 a year pension. The Post also breathlessly reported on Pegues’s alleged connection to convicted cop-killer David McClary.

A thread on New York-based message board “Thee Rant,” where membership requires you send in an ID card proving you’re active on the job in law enforcement, the fire department, or the military (where thread titles like “Why Don’t Black People Tip?” and “Upstate rag paper has a columnist who has a black daughter, built like a boy” are the norm), reveals a discussion by cops unimpressed by Corey’s transition from the streets to the executive realm of the NYPD and his willingness to speak out against police brutality. A few members member even bitterly discussed trying to tie Pegues to any cold cases and get him indicted for a crime.

For all of this to come from an interview on a podcast meant to motivate and illuminate, left Combat Jack troubled. “I think a great story of someone turning his life around was cruelly exploited to bring said individual down,” Combat told me. “Is this an attempt to take the focus off Eric Garner? I feel a bit guilty that my story was used in such a malicious manner. My prayers go out to Pegues and his family.”

Pegues quickly shifted into damage control mode, appearing on Don Lemon’s primetime CNN show and making an impassioned appeal for the public to examine the body of his career before discarding him for a past influenced by poverty and youthful indiscretions.
 


When I called Pegues for additional comment in light of the New York Post’s stories this week, he declined to speak further.

There’s no denying that Pegues may have been too candid about his past in an effort to drum up interest for his book, but making him public enemy number one after a lifetime of quality service and community advocacy reeks of misplaced justice. Through his career and support to some of New York’s most marginalized people, Pegues has proven himself to be a shining example of what can happen when community policing is done right.

Pegues’s story has a cinematic arc that could be used to inspire and show the power of redemption through hard work, but it’s now threatened to be bookended with scandal, which feels like a tragic conclusion, particularly in light of Corey’s steadfast dedication to uplift those caught in the same turmoil he faced as a kid. “When you feel the doors are closed and the windows, the feeling of walking outside everyday and thinking you’re going to be dead, it’s a tremendous amount of pressure on you,” he said. “And I was able to navigate my way out of that, not only navigate my way out of that, but use my experiences that I went through to better myself—to come out of the most unlikely extremes to being the executive in the biggest police department in the country is a great feat.”

As the NY Post and NYPD circle Pegues like sharks sensing blood in the water, let’s hope that point isn’t buried in an effort to find a convenient scapegoat for police malfeasance while the force is under scrutiny for brutality.

@jordanisjoso

Zoe Quinn Told Us What Being Targeted by Every Troll in the World Feels Like

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photo courtesy of Zoe Quinn

I just spent a few days trying to schedule a conversation with Zoe Quinn, the game developer whose personal life recently became a trigger point for millions of discussions of gamer misogyny. Contacting her wasn't easy. Even after she told me how to get a hold of her by phone, I knew I was calling a number that had been leaked onto the internet in order to harass her, so delays were understandable. I would be cautious if I were her. To make matters worse, a couple weeks prior, I had written an article about her ex-boyfriend, a guy I thought was just a young and naive computer nerd who pulled a dipshit move when he wrote a novel-length blog trashing her. 

When I finally got her on the phone, she sounded uneasy. "I’m still kind of couch surfing, because threats are still coming in, friends and family of mine are still being targeted," she said. When I asked her if she was working, she told me she was starting to, and that it was "an enormous relief."

If you haven't been paying attention to #Gamergate, I can't blame you. August was a very bad month for gaming, gamers, and games. If anything about this garbage made it to your news feed despite your being someone who doesn't pay much attention to the gaming world, it was that gamer guys were ganging up on gamer feminists for some reason. It's been the kind of story most people avoid because it combines the "This makes me ashamed just to be human," aspect of a college rape scandal, with the "I have no frame of reference for this," aspect of a labor dispute in the waste management industry

But it's been a fast-moving, and surprisingly earth-shattering piece of news, considering it stems mainly from the internet rage of a bunch of poopypants babies. The shock waves are beginning to be felt, and the significance goes right to the core of the gaming industry. Quinn says the scandal has "morphed into something else. It roped well-meaning people who cared about ethics and transparency into a preexisting hate mob. And now, I’m not sure what the hell it is."

The seeds of #Gamergate were planted early last year, when an indie game called Depression Quest got good reviews, despite its lack of machine guns, and emphasis on feelings rather than making aliens explode. Gamers had furrowed their brows suspiciously at such flukes in the past, and there was a limited negative reaction to Depression Quest. Some gamers even got abusive, but it apparently didn't merit mainstream headlines. Months later, though, when a blog post decried Quinn as a figure of "corruption," who slept her way to positive reviews for her game, it was gaming's Benghazi moment. 

The anger that erupted when Zoe Quinn was (probably falsely—not that it matters) accused of boning game journalists for good press (a series of events known online as the "Quinnspiracy"), has turned #Gamergate into a dog-whistle codeword that lets those in the gamer population who are misogynists to couch their adolescent rage at women in concern about the purity of games journalists' motives in reviewing games. 

Despite the low stakes, reactions to the allegations against Quinn were intemperate to say the least. Every forum where games are discussed online temporarily shifted its focus to the scandal, if you must call it that. The loudest and most immature man-children in the gamer world had previously been directing their rage at Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist who hosts a web series about games. Threats and harassment of Sarkeesian and other social justice warriors (SJWs) had been an ongoing embarrassment that sane gamers tried to distance themselves from. When the Quinnspiracy broke out, hating a woman suddenly had a moral component. The whole SJW movement was ostensibly a fraud, and she was the smoking gun that proved it. 

The horde of angry teenagers expressed itself in the usual ways—angry Twitter jokes about rape, angry forum posts calling her a cunt, and epic mansplanations on YouTube. The vastness of the movement to discredit her was immense. "They use astroturfing techniques to make a bunch of Facebook accounts, all have each other tweet each other, drum up this false sense of grassroots movement stuff, to make something seem bigger than it is. And that hits you like a tidal wave," she said. 

That provoked some media coverage, including—after a couple of weeks—my own. Despite trying to give her ex the benefit of the doubt in the article, I even experienced a taste of what I started calling the "anime avatar brigade," on my own Twitter account. The minor troll infestation in my Twitter notifications tab was probably childs' play by comparison to Quinn's.

"I try to have a policy of engaging people even if they seem like they're being total assholes, on the off chance that nobody's given them a chance before," she said, adding, "I had never blocked anybody on Twitter before this." 

But the less public, more anonymous type of internet comments ventured beyond intemperate, and into shocking. That's when the mainstream media got involved. This subset of angry teenagers started saying some really scary shit. One 4chan user wrote, "Next time she shows up at a conference we [...] give her a crippling injury that’s never going to fully heal [...] a good solid injury to the knees. I’d say a brain damage, but we don’t want to make it so she ends up too retarded to fear us." Language like this was also used by sock puppet Twitter accounts, but most of these tweets have since been deleted, and the accounts have been banned.

At some point, the abusive language and violent rhetoric could, maybe, in some universe, have been dismissed by the gaming community with some sort of blithe boys-will-be-boys defense. It wouldn't be right, but I can imagine them trying it. However, toward the end of last month her contact details got into the hands of her adversaries, and the worst of the harassment was relocated from the internet to her door. That was when she got out of her house and started couch surfing, out of fear for her own safety.  

But she wasn't just hiding in a closet from the scary internet meanies. "I was monitoring the progression of this mob that sort of ended up morphing into #GamerGate," she said. And she wasn't just spying in order to be prepared, she told me she was also "recording everything, hiding out in the IRC rooms, silently picking logs, and documenting the evolution. It started out as a harassment campaign and turned into something else entirely."

The next step was to use all this information to end the harassment. "I waited until the time seemed right and then just posted a very small fraction of the logs that I had collected over the last three weeks, kind of exposing it for what it had been. Somebody collected all of these tweets in a link, and called it #GameOverGate," she said. 

She also informed the FBI of what she'd found: "Reposting of peoples’ information with incredibly elaborate rape threats and death threats. Distributing of private information, with calls to harass. There are calls for people to send naked photos of me to my colleagues—and to distribute that illegally. There’s open talk of hacking, what we’d refer to as 'black hat hacking.'"

The tide turned after #GameOverGate. It became clear that there wasn't a battle between nasty, mean self-promoting sluts, and game-developing saints and journalists, creating and promoting good honest war games with snow-white consciences. Something was palpably different in internet discussions about this issue. On Wednesday, a subreddit called "Gaming4Gamers" was being promoted on Reddit's front page, advertising itself as a "community based on open-minded discussions," and "camaraderie above competition." The community's rules make it look like a friendly and tolerant place. I asked her if she was optimistic about signs like these. "I will cross my fingers and remain optimistic for that," she said. "I go back and forth between having faith in it and being tired of dealing with the same crap over and over and over." 

If our positions were switched, I'd have given up on the world of video games a long time ago, so I can understand her cautious optimism. Even during our conversation, she would often cut herself off when she was afraid of stepping on yet another land mine in the discourse. "Games as a medium and as an art form, or whatever the hell you want to call it—I know even just calling games as an art form will piss people off," she said, before managing to express her thought. "I totally love the potential of it, and I’m excited to see where it goes. I hope that we can stop pushing it so hard to stay the same forever." 

Can existing hardcore gamers get along with the alternagamers? Quinn hopes so, "The hardcore game crowd will come in there and be like, 'I just wanna play games! I don’t wanna talk about these social issues!' And I’m like, 'The people who make the games are a little bit artsy and non-traditional, and they just want to be able to make their games in peace, too.'" 

It's not a very far-fetched idea, but nonetheless, games like Depression Quest being viewed as serious contenders for the awards and acclaim normally reserved for games like Bioshock does present a challenge to gamer identity. "it’s as if people making weird stuff is somehow threatening, when really everybody just wants to do their own thing,"

"I really wish that instead of being defensive and hostile, people would just maybe get better at listening," she continued. Now there's a far-fetched idea.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter

Rob Ford Is Stepping Down so Doug Ford Can Discover He Can’t Win an Election

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DoFo giving reporters the death-stare. via Don Peat on Twitter.

With just over a month to go before the municipal election, Rob Ford’s mysterious abdominal tumour, which was addressed last night at Mount Sinai hospital by colorectal cancer expert Dr. Zane Cohen, has forced the crack-smoking mayor of Toronto into a hospital bed for further testing. As a result of this medical emergency, Rob Ford’s brother, a kickboxing black-belt holder by the name of Doug Ford, has taken the reigns of Robbie’s campaign and will aim to extend the rich legacy of a Ford-run Toronto into 2018

Despite his noble intentions, Dougie showed up to City Hall’s elections office with inadequate paperwork to run, which nearly ruined his campaign before it even began. But, like a Hail Mary in the 4th quarter (the Fords love football, remember), he was able to fill out a goddamn form properly, just in time for Friday’s 2 PM deadline, and is officially in the race.

Rob, despite being hospitalized, is not completely out of municipal politics in 2014. His nephew Michael, who was originally going to run for Doug’s council seat, has stepped down from running in Ward 2, and RoFo will now be running for City Council.

Nice try, Mikey.

While Robbie had already fallen behind in the polls to mayoral candidate John Tory before he discovered his tumour (a conservative, creationist candidate who has swayed many potential Rob Ford voters to his camp), Robbie’s hospitalization was quite clearly the final straw for an already damaged campaign—marred by years of extreme controversy.

All of this surprising news comes on the heels of another shocking Rob Ford revelation, pertaining to the production of “Crack Tape 2,” a video shot in Kathy Ford’s (Rob’s sister’s) basement, which the Globe and Mail released screenshots of earlier this year. The Crack Tape 2 leak, if you recall, forced Rob Ford into rehab.

Apparently, that video was shot by a man whose street nickname is “Jugga.” Jugga was picked up by the Toronto Police on a dangerous weapons charge for brass knuckles shortly after news of Crack Tape 2 broke (a charge that has since been dropped due to insufficient evidence). In a report published yesterday, Jugga told the Toronto Star he was angry with Rob Ford for calling him the N-word and throwing pennies at him, during a drugged-out party in Rob’s sister’s basement.

If you take any lesson away from this, people, it’s that you shouldn’t whip pennies at people while smoking crack and yelling racial slurs. Especially if you’re the mayor.

On top of all this, Rob Ford has recently been subpoenaed to testify in his buddy Sandro Lisi’s trial, set to take place next spring. Sandro is being accused of extortion in connection to Crack Tape 1, and apparently was present during the taping of Crack Tape 2, where Rob Ford allegedly pummeled Lisi until he was in tears.

With all of this on Rob Ford’s plate, along with the recent revelation that he made his former football team roll around in goose shit as a punishment (news that, with all that we know now, really didn’t make much of an impact), it’ll be hard for Doug Ford to separate himself from the many mistakes of his brother. While Doug has largely stayed out of the scandal-tornado that has engulfed Rob Ford’s entire tenure as mayor, the allegations of his past as an intimidating drug dealer should still be in voters’ minds.
 

Doug will have a tough job teaching Toronto how to Dougie (fingers crossed he uses the Cali Swag District song as his campaign theme) when the city has become so accustomed to the aggressive foibles of his brother Rob. He will also need to get some A-list talent on his side, given that Rob has garnered the support of such non-controversial figures as Mike Tyson and Don Cherry. Doug also does not have the late night talk show experience that Rob has, nor has he bro’d down with the people in the same way that his crack smoking, racist brother has been able to capture the hearts and minds of about 28 percent of Toronto’s voting block. In fact, Doug Ford mainly seems to be really, really pissed off a lot of the time.

He’s demonstrated that he doesn’t understand the concept of racism and has delusional dreams about becoming premier one day. Plus, it wasn’t so long ago that he had to apologize for making libelous statements about the Chief of Police. Oh and let’s not forget about his battle with a group of autistic children.

So, Doug Ford has a mountain of bullshit to climb if he wants to plant the Ford Flag in the mayor’s office again. It seems like John Tory still has it in the bag, but you never know what kind of combination of secret videotapes, celebrity endorsements, and drug scandals could still emerge to tip the scales of the election. It’s too bad the more progressive candidates in the race have so far been unable to drum up anything resembling a fighting chance, but moreover, today is further evidence that Ford Nation is going up in flames.

@patrickmcguire

Militarized Cops Pretend to Fight Terrorists in Oakland

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Marin County Sheriffs getting briefed on their terror scenario in the 49ers' old locker room at Candlestick Park. All photos by the author

Inside the air-conditioned Emergency Operations Center of the Alameda County Sheriff's Office (ACSO) outside Oakland, California, dozens of law enforcement officers spent the weekend coordinating more than a thousand terrorist attacks. Each attack was scheduled down to the minute. Each attack occurred 35 times.

Masked terrorists stormed the visiting locker room at Candlestick Park during a soccer tournament and took five members of the Filipino National Team hostage in a luxury suite. In nearby South San Francisco, “homegrown jihadists” engaged in an indoor shootout with officers attempting to deliver a search warrant. Elsewhere in the Bay Area, a “militant atheist extremist group” took hostages at a suburban Presbyterian church, “foreign terrorists” hijacked a public bus, and the Golden Gate Bridge was threatened by a terrorist with an IED.

On Saturday afternoon, a giant screen in the middle of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) displayed four livestreams of attacks in progress, including an assault by “a violent homegrown extremist group” in the theater of a local community college. Other areas of the screen displayed a live traffic map of the San Francisco Bay Area, the interface of the ACSO’s command and control software, an NFL game, and the semifinals of the US Open.

Paul Hess, the ACSO’s Emergency Services Supervisor, apologized for the sports. “It is the weekend,” he said.

The EOC was the nerve center of Urban Shield, a 48-hour training exercise for law enforcement agencies that’s been held in and around Oakland for the last eight years. Founded by James Baker, a former assistant sheriff in the ACSO, Urban Shield began in 2007 as a series of training scenarios for SWAT teams. Since then, it has grown into what organizers describe as “a comprehensive, full-scale regional preparedness exercise” that aims to “test regional integrated systems for prevention, protection, response, and recovery in our high-threat, high-density urban area.” The event takes place under the auspices of the Bay Area Urban Areas Security Initiative and is largely funded by the Department of Homeland Security. Because of the DHS money, Urban Shield's training scenarios must include “a nexus to terrorism.”

This year’s Urban Shield, held September from 4 to 8, took place amid increased scrutiny of police militarization in the wake of the overwhelming response to protests against the killing of Michael Brown by local cops in Ferguson, Missouri. On the second day of the conference, Dan Siegel, a former legal adviser to Oakland Mayor Jean Quan who is now running to replace her, publicly criticized the convention, telling local news station KPIX: “Urban Shield is an effort to further militarize police departments in Alameda County, and it is certainly something that we don’t need.” Later that day, while hundreds of protesters rallied against the event, Mayor Quan, who is herself running for re-election, issued a statement announcing that the event “will not be held in Oakland next year.”      

The public side of Urban Shield is a two-day trade show at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Oakland—an event filled with the corporations that cater to “anyone who has a gun,” as a salesperson for Safariland described it to me. But away from the convention center, 35 teams of six to eight police officers—mostly from local police departments, but also including some from South Korea, Singapore, Philadelphia, and Texas—compete to see who can best respond to to 31 different terrorist or emergency scenarios at locations around the Bay Area. The teams rotate through the scenarios for 48 hours with just one scheduled 30-minute nap (on bunk beds in cells at the San Francisco County Jail).

Map of scenarios from the Emergency Operations Center

Inside the EOC, the various departments of the ACSO ran Urban Shield as if it were itself an emergency incident. The incident commanders tested new software meant to help law enforcement agencies coordinate during an emergency. The IT team was prepared to keep communications going even if telecommunications went down. A logistical team tracked delivery of AAA batteries and bottled water to sites using the same protocol they would during a mass casualty event.

The Public Information Office, which would be charged with disseminating updates to the media during an emergency, was one department without a clear corollary. Inside, two staffers meticulously collected and tracked the scores that teams achieved on their exercises.

The question of whether Urban Shield is an essential training experience worth a significant investment of taxpayer money or a chance for grown men to run around and play war games was bubbling beneath the surface the whole time. Paul Hess, the ACSO Emergency Services Supervisor who gave me and a group of nine other journalists and corporate sponsors a tour, boasted that Urban Shield was the “largest terrorist field response anywhere in the country.” However, he went on to say, “Really what we’re building here is camaraderie. How often do we get to get into the field and exchange and play with other agencies?”

Sean League, an IT staffer with the ACSO, boasted that during the Boston Marathon bombing, law enforcement “were able to save a lot of lives because of the training at Urban Shield,” moments after he greeted a representative from Samsung by saying, “We have some of your toys out there.”

Meanwhile, in a room at the rear of the EOC, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) was gathering intelligence and monitoring social media. It’s a role the fusion center would play during a real terrorist attack, but in this case the focus was different. On a white board in the NCRIC’s room were two pieces of “intelligence”: the text of a tweet from a user I recognized as one of my Twitter followers (an anonymous Oakland activist, as best I can tell) and a printed copy of the document that tweet linked to—a version of the schedule of Urban Shield exercises that had been leaked to IndyBay, a local independent news site.

The same document had been handed out at the protest against Urban Shield held Friday, the day before I toured the EOC. The demonstration condemned the militarization of the police, which activists say has “created a culture of surveillance and repression targeting poor communities of color.”

When I asked Paul Hess why the tweet was written out on the white board, he told me that he preferred I not mention that I’d seen it. When I asked him whether the NCRIC was monitoring the protests against Urban Shield, he said, “Absolutely.”

Marin County Sheriffs raid a luxury box full of "terrorists" at Candlestick Park

While Urban Shield may be premised on local law enforcement’s “nexus to terrorism,” the Urban Shield Vendor Show is all about the nexus to profit. Inside the Oakland Convention Center, dozens of military turned law enforcement contractors showed off their wares.

The happiest guys in the room were showcasing the personal digital recording devices (PDRDs) that are being touted as a solution to police brutality in the wake of Ferguson. Representatives from VieVu, which was the first company to put cameras on a police department (Oakland), and Verizon, which is pushing a streaming body camera, both said they’ve seen much more interest since Ferguson.

Some vendors bragged that their products were designed for the kind of terrorist attacks for which Urban Shield claims to prepare police. Phil Li from iRobot, maker of the Roomba, said that while most of his company’s security robots are used by the military, the 510 PacBot was the “first robot on the scene” when police in Watertown, Massachusetts, were confronting the Tsarnaev brothers after the Boston Marathon bombing. Li gave me a stress ball hand grenade stamped with the brand “iRobot.”

Others struggled to come up with a reason for law enforcement agencies to have military-grade gear. A vendor with thermal imaging equipment posited that it could be used by “a patrol officer looking for someone who shouldn’t be in the park after dark.”

A representative from a company selling LRADs (long-range acoustic devices) suggested they could be useful during “hostage negotiations.” But I overheard another LRAD salesman joke about its use during protests: “It can give you a legal basis if you need to escalate force,” he said. “They used this at G-20.” He demonstrated the LRAD’s pre-recorded audio messages in English and Spanish: “Do not move. Put your hands on your head and get down on your knees.”

Jeremy Johnson, Tactical Vehicle Specialist and Manager of International Operations at the Armored Group LLC, was showing off his Ballistic Armored Tactical Transport (BATT) at a spot in the room set up for team photos. With wheels nearly as tall as I am and gun ports made “so you can get a teargas launcher out,” the BATT resembles the military-issued Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles (MRAPs) recently seen on the streets of Ferguson. However, Johnson says, “I designed this structure specifically for law enforcement. It had nothing to do with the military.”

Johnson would not disclose which law enforcement agencies have purchased armored vehicles from his company, but says he believes the protests in Ferguson were an example of why a local police department might need one. “Did it get to the situation where it [a BATT] was probably needed? Yeah, it probably did, when bottles were thrown and things like that,” he said. “These guys [law enforcement] don’t want to get hit with that stuff. These guys have people to go home to just like you and me.”

Asked about the imposing appearance of the vehicles, Johnson said, “Is there a reason some of these are designed to look scary? To some degree, yeah. Because when they are pulled up you want it to make a point.”

A Ballistic Armored Tactical Transport vehicle

The most frightening technology at Urban Shield comes in much more innocuous packaging. The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate displayed a rapid DNA-testing machine it developed with IntegenX. According to Christopher Miles, a Biometrics Program Manager with DHS, the machine can produce a unique DNA identification within 90 minutes by mapping 13 specific DNA locations. Miles stressed that DHS was not yet using the technology and that its initial use would be limited to verifying family relationships in refugee camps abroad. But, he said, the technology was co-funded by the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense, and he could foresee it being used by law enforcement in the future.

“It’s simple enough for a police officer to run it,” he said.

On Friday afternoon, I was interviewing the public information officer for ACSO, Sergeant J. D. Nelson, just as protesters were arriving outside the hotel. Nelson seemed to be going out of his way to appear unconcerned and welcoming. “It’s a peaceful protest. That’s OK,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with it. You see us out there in riot gear?”

ACSO did not, in fact, suit up in riot gear. Instead, a handful of uniformed officers stood behind orange plastic barricades, observing the protest alongside a dozen or so Urban Shield participants. About 300 protesters gathered across the street from the Marriott, carrying signs reading: “Stop all activities related to Urban Shield/ Stop killing kids”; “Stop police terror”; and “Oakland lives are not video game targets.” Leaders of the coalition organizing opposition to Urban Shield gave brief speeches.

“They are trained to treat us like enemy combatants,” said Michael Walker, co-chair of the ONYX Organizing Committee, a black community group in Oakland.

“The only reason this sort of thing exists is to keep us down,” said Sanyika Bryant of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, an organization that has become well known for its research finding that an extrajudicial killing of a black person occurs in the United States every 28 hours.

“We know that with all of that Department of Homeland Security funding—none of that safety is for those of us who are here today,” said Tara Tabassi of the War Resister’s League.

About an hour after the protest began, another hundred or so protesters arrived, trailed by dozens of Oakland police. The newcomers were, in Oakland protest culture parlance, “the families,” and they had marched to the Marriott from a park about a mile and a half away. “The families” are the relatives of Oscar Grant, Alan Blueford, James Earl Rivera Jr., Mario Romero, and Andy Lopez, some of the black and Latino men and boys who have been shot and killed by Northern California police in recent years.

Protesters outside the convention

Everyone at Urban Shield has a vested interest in constructing a narrative of fear. The corporations use the fear of terrorism to sell equipment to police. Law enforcement agencies use the fear of terrorism to justify buying and using that equipment against the citizenry. The national security state uses the fear of terrorism to keep tabs on local activists.

What the organizers of Urban Shield don’t want to admit is that the most pressing fear felt by the police is fear of the people they’re supposed to protect. When I asked Sergeant Nelson about the militarization of the police and the military-grade equipment on display at Urban Shield, he responded:

"Forty years ago, you had a revolver, and there was an option to wear a bulletproof vest. Now I wouldn't dream of going out there without a bulletproof vest. There's so many guns out there. There's so many violent people. Kids nowadays, it's crazy. The amount of guns and serious weapons people have. I'm not talking like pea shooters. You get these calls in Oakland, you hear rapid gunfire. They've got powerful, powerful weapons. So to say that you don't want to have any kind of equipment to protect themselves. I understand what they're saying, but until people stop going into malls and shooting people, and schools, and churches and airports and all these terrible things that happen, how can you say, Well, let's not have that?"

Nelson is not describing anything that contains a “nexus to terrorism.” He’s describing urban crime—crime that has been steadily declining since it peaked 40 years ago, in the 1970s.

Oscar Grant was shot once in the back while he was lying on the ground. Alan Blueford was shot three times in the chest. James Earl Rivera Jr. was shot 19 times by two police officers. Mario Romero was shot 31 times. Andy Lopez was shot seven times. None of them were armed, although Andy Lopez, who was 13 years old, was holding a toy gun.

Michael Brown was shot six times. According to multiple eyewitnesses, he was holding his hands up in the air.

“In Ferguson, I’m sure that there are very few people saying, ‘Man, we should get these guys [police] less training,’" said Sergeant Nelson. “They’re saying, ‘We need more training.’ And we’re giving people more training.”

I asked Nelson whether Urban Shield offered any training in de-escalation tactics or ending a situation without gunfire. The answer was no. “As far as talking your way out of this or that,” he said, “that’s not what we’re training for today or tomorrow.”

The next day I sat in a soon-to-be-demolished luxury suite at Candlestick Park and waited for the Marin County Sheriffs team to take out three terrorists and rescue five hostages in the suite next door. The attack, heralded by the sound of a sniper round taking out a terrorist standing by the window, was over in minutes amid a flurry of shouts and shots. When it was over, most of the role players were marked with paint. The “good guys” were shooting yellow paint pellets, and the “bad guys” were shooting green. I couldn’t tell one from the other.

“A penalty of ten points will be imposed against a team if any member demonstrates an excessive use of marking rounds (fire control and intentional improper targeting of body parts, i.e., headshots),” reads the Urban Shield Exercise Plane. “Ten points will also be deducted for friendly fire and each hostage shot.”

Follow Julia Carrie Wong on Twitter.

Watch the Trailer for 'NOLA: Life, Death, and Heavy Blues from the Bayou'

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Watch the Trailer for 'NOLA: Life, Death, and Heavy Blues from the Bayou'

How to Cook Like an Iron Chef

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How to Cook Like an Iron Chef

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: Pennsylvania State Police

Photos via Google Maps and Facebook

The incident: A 14-year-old simulated oral sex on a statue of Jesus for the sake of a photo.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: He was arrested.

Back in July, an unnamed 14-year-old boy in Everett, PA, posed for several pictures with a statue of Jesus. In one of the photos, which you can see above, he pretended Jesus was giving him a blowjob.

He posted this photo, along with another photo of him standing on the statue with his arms in the air, on his Facebook page. 

Somehow, somebody at the district attorney's office saw the photos on the teen's Facebook page, and forwarded them to state police. 

The state police then launched what they referred to as an "investigation," into the incident, and decided to move forward with arresting the boy. 

He was charged under a 1927 law which makes it a crime to "desecrate a venerated object." His case will be held in a juvenile court. According to Kron4, the teen could face two years in jail if convicted. 

A reporter from the Daily Mail contacted the church where the incident took place, and a spokesperson said they didn't want the boy arrested. "Our request was for prayer for the young man," the spokesperson said. 

Cry-Baby #2: Steven Rosa

Photos via Google Maps and Click Orlando

The incident: Some people parked their cars on the street outside their houses. 

The appropriate response: Nothing, if they're legally parked there.

The actual response: A man repeatedly egged the cars in a campaign of terror that spanned weeks. 

For the last few weeks, residents in Clermont, FL, have been finding eggs smashed on their cars. 

One family, the Trawick family, had their cars egged more than six times. So they set up a camera in order to catch the culprit. 

On Thursday of last week, their car was egged again. The family reviewed the footage and saw that it showed one of their neighbors, 58-year-old Steven Rosa, throwing the egg from a moving car. 

He was arrested and charged with three counts of misdemeanor criminal mischief. 

According to a report on Click Orlando, Steven told police he'd egged the cars because he was upset that people in his neighborhood were parking on the street. 

The Trawick family claim that Steven's egging spree caused about $2,000 of damage to their cars. 

Which of this bunch is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here, if you could:

Previously: A kid who tried to kill someone because they intterupted his cartoons vs. a school who made a student wear a "shame suit"

Winner: The cartoon kid!!!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter

This Woman Blogs About Her Private Stalker

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What’s it like to have someone tracking your every movement every day? Sending you anonymous messages, pretending to be you on the internet, meticulously and devotedly doing everything to make your life as miserable as possible—just for kicks? Mary Scherpe, one of Germany‘s most successful style bloggers, knows a thing or two about that. For the past two years she’s had a stalker—sending her everything from carpet samples to kitchen catalogues in the mail, signing her up for a welcome package for their unborn baby (named Karl Johann), telling her how stupid, dumb, and fat she is, or tweeting, blogging, and Instagraming embarrassing stuff in her name.

Instead of curling up in a corner, packing up her business, or fleeing to another part of the universe—after all the internet is where Mary makes her living: Her blog Stil in Berlin is read by thousands of people every day, and Gucci and Prada advertise on the site—she’s decided to the exactly the opposite. She started a Tumblr to document everything this nutball does to her and has also written a book about it.

I spoke to Mary to find out what it’s like to have someone mess with you so badly and why she decided to go full-frontal public with it.

VICE: How is your stalker today? Have you heard from him lately?
Mary Scherpe:
I hear from him every now and then, unfortunately. Mostly stuff in the mail he sends to my office. But he’s been very quiet lately.

Would you say you are a typical stalking victim?
Totally, in the sense that I have very strong reason to believe that it’s not just any guy. It’s someone that I was in a short relationship with once, and in the majority of all stalking cases it’s an ex-partner doing the stalking. So in this sense I am very typical. In the sense of being a public person, I’m probably not. I might be well known, but I don’t put a lot of my private life online. Compared with other people who blog about art, fashion, and food, I’d say there are very few pictures of me on the internet, not a lot of information about how I live and whom I hang out with. But the thing with stalking is, there are so many different constellations that pretty much everybody could become a victim. The things that can trigger someone into stalking you could be totally minor.

Wait, so you know who this guy is?
Yes. I have to call it a suspicion to not get into legal trouble, because it’s based on circumstantial evidence and I don’t have any hard proof. But I am very sure it's him.

What makes you so sure?
I wasn't in the beginning. It was mostly my friends who’d called it from the start. But over time he started using things that indicated this is someone who must actually know me, not just from my online persona.

Like what?
He’d use stuff that I had mentioned while we were dating. Like he’d make fun of my big nose because he knew I thought it was too big; I had mentioned that to him once. I might think my nose is too big, but I also realize that it’s not actually big enough for someone to notice that—unless that someone knew about my vulnerability. He also started making mistakes that gave him away.

What mistakes?
He’d usually use Tor software to anonymously send me messages or post comments on my blog, but sometimes he’d forget and the IP address would indicate that the commentator was from the city where he lived at the time. He also created a bunch of fake Instagram accounts pretending to be me, but sometimes he’d post a similar comment under his real name. At a certain point I contacted him and told him that I’d report him to the police. After that he lay low for two weeks and didn’t do anything online, not even under his real name. All this makes it pretty obvious it’s him.

Germany passed a law against stalking in 2007. Why couldn’t you just go to the police and report him?
I did. Twice. Both times the case was dismissed with the same explanation. The problem is that the current law is not based on what the perpetrator does. It’s based on how this affects the victim. The way it is right now, you have to prove that you as a victim are “strongly impaired in your way of life." Did you have to move because of it? Have you lost your job? Were you afraid to leave the house? Did you curl up in a corner and come unraveled? It’s about how badly this messes you up.

So basically because you weren’t messed up enough, didn’t have a breakdown, and were still able to function and work, it’s not a crime?
Yes. For the prosecutor to start investigating that would have to be the case. It’s pretty twisted: On the one hand everybody tells you to just go on with your life, try ignore this, not let it get to you. But if you do that and stay strong, like I have done, it means you don’t have a case. He’d have to succeed in destroying me first.

That sounds very wrong. Is that why you started blogging and writing about it?
I didn’t immediately start blogging. That was kind of my last resort after a year of this getting continually worse, to the point where I didn’t know what else to do. I felt totally helpless. When you have a stalker, you learn to constantly ask yourself, What would he do? What does he think about this? You get used to constantly being on the lookout and reacting to what your stalker does, extinguishing fires, while at the same time you can’t do or say anything. My lawyer was advising me to not event talk to people about my suspicions. So your stalker gets to yell at you and threaten you out of anonymity every day and you can’t say anything. That was so frustrating and unhelpful that I decided to turn it around and do exactly what you are advised not to do. Not ask how will he react to it but instead do what feels right for me. And I immediately knew that it would make me feel better to write about it, make me feel like I am back in charge again. Going from defense to offense felt so good that I was willing to take the risk that the stalking might get worse because of it.

With the book it was the same. Will he have a ball reading about how much he made me suffer? Maybe. But I didn’t care. I only focused on what I wanted.

What did you want?
I want stalking to be something that is talked about. To not have to shut up about it anymore. I also want the law to be tightened and focus on the perpetrator, not the victim. Because this is not just my problem, most of the stalking cases are dismissed because of this. These adjustments of the criminal code are on the way—they are already written in the coalition agreement—but who knows how long it’s going to take. So I am hoping that the book and the petition I am launching to go with it will help to speed things along.

What was it like living with this guy virtually breathing down your neck before you started the blog? Were you constantly freaked out?
When I walked to the mailbox or was checking my phone for messages. But mostly I tried to just go on with my life. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction to keep me from my job. When I first started to blog about him, a lot of people were really surprised and said they never even noticed anything. That was me trying hard not to let anybody notice. But this takes a lot of courage.

I was lucky because my peer group was really supportive. For a lot of people who have a stalker, when they mention this problem reactions are like, "Don’t blow it out of proportion," "Just ignore it and it’ll stop eventually," "It’s not that bad." But that’s the thing: It is that bad. It feels like a constant threat, and that’s the treacherous part about it—it's exactly how your stalker wants you to feel. This isn’t just a temporary blackout. It’s something that person meticulously plans and executes every day to make you suffer. This feeling of knowing there’s someone out there who is willing to go through this every day, who won’t give up on it, who will just continue to do it day after—that’s truly horrible.

Was everyone around you supportive?
Mostly. After a piece came out about my story in Süddeutsche Zeitung and even the Bild (the largest German tabloid) picked it up, there were a couple of people claiming I just wanted attention. Well, yeah, I did want attention for this. I wanted to not be alone with it anymore. Why is that a bad thing?

Did people try to blame you for it?
This guy from the Chaos Computer Club where I called to find out how Tor works and if there’s a way I could track him was really patronizing and was basically like, “Why are you even still on Facebook? No one forces you to do that." When I tried to explain to him that it’s part of my job he wouldn’t have it. It took me a really long time to convince him that this guy doesn’t give a shit about me being on Facebook or not. He’d always find other ways to get to me.

Your stalker wasn’t just sending you messages, calling you at night, sending all this stuff in the mail. He was also trying to destroy your reputation, bad-mouthing you with your colleagues and creating parody accounts pretending to be you. Which kind of makes me wonder: Does he still have time to do anything else in his life?
On the surface he’s a functioning guy; he’s very active online. But that’s a pretty thin veneer of normalcy I’d say. Underneath he obviously has a huge problem. I assume it probably does take up most of his life. He’s not just following my social media accounts; he’s researching everything that was written about me. He managed to get access to my bank account and donated money to a women’s shelter in my name. And apparently I am not the only woman he does this to. After I went public and announced the book, another woman wrote to me. We met and talked, and it’s definitely the same guy.

Wow, he must have a busy schedule.
Yeah, he calls her at night, which was the one thing he couldn't do with me anymore because I just turn my phone off. Meeting her was shocking, but really good also, because it showed me that it really didn’t have anything to do with me. It could have happened to any other woman, and it will happen to others. It’s not about me. It’s him.

Do you ever fantasize about what you would do or say to him if you’d meet him face to face?
I’d probably just turn around and walk the other way.

What do you think will happen now that the book is coming out?
Don’t know. If I had thought about that I probably wouldn’t have written the book. It’s coming out next week, but it’s already publicly announced. Things might get worse, but that’s nothing I want to think too much about; that guy is just disturbed. I have to focus on myself and not let myself be intimidated by him.

What do you hope will happen?
That someone who’s in a similar position will pick up the book and realize they’re not alone with this shit. Others have gone through the same thing; we just don’t talk about it.

Follow Chris Köver on Twitter.

VICE News: Yemen: A Failed State

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Since 2011, when Yemeni youths took to the streets and sparked the eventual demise of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime, the country has fallen to pieces. The new embattled government is now struggling to cope with a bevy of issues, including sectarian rivalries, CIA drone strikes, and one of al Qaeda's most sophisticated branches. It now risks presiding over the failure of one of the world's most fragile countries.

VICE News visits some of Yemen's most dangerous and hard-to-reach places and groups, including the national Army in the country's lawless East, the Houthis in Sana'a, and the Popular Committee in the South, to find out how both the government and the West's policy toward Yemen have gone wrong.

The Director's Canvas: Gabe Polsky

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While Russia and Canada haven't always got along, there's certainly one thing our nations agree on: we both love hockey. So it's no surprise that one of the breakout successes of this year's Toronto International Film Festival is The Red Army. On the surface The Red Army is a documentary about the infamous Russian national hockey team that dominated the sport in the early 80s. But director Gabe Polsky's love of the game, and desire to understand life behind the Iron Curtain has elevated the film beyond a standard jockumentary and into something much more nuanced, emotional and engaging. In this episode of The Director’s  Canvas, we lace up with Gabe to talk about his film and inspiration while hitting the ice, shooting some pucks, and visiting the Hockey Hall of Fame.

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