​It's been about a year since I ruined a Tinder date with pot cookies, and that was the last time I met up with someone through a dating site. After that night, I made one final modification to my Tinder page, changing the picture to one of me smoking a joint. I haven't had a satisfactory match since. 

I'm sure that a lot of girls in New York don't mind dating a dude who smokes weed, but I don't just smoke weed. It encompasses my work, my social life, my exercise and meditation, my meals, my downtime, and pretty much every aspect of my existence. That's not an easy regimen to adjust to if you're dating me and don't love ganja.

It never occurred to me that other people might be in the same predicament until I heard about My420Mate. Apparently there are lots of humans who have attempted online dating only to hit a wall when the question of robust pot use arises. Dating sites match you with people based on all sorts of par​ameters, but none of them directly use pot preference as a factor, though OK Cupid does include it as a question in their match meth​odology. Previously, you'd have to go through the pains of tactical messaging and even a couple of dates before potentially having the whole thing blow up in your face over a disagreement about weed. My420Mate eliminates that snag. The site's founder, Miguel Lozano, told me, "If you find someone on our site, you know that this person is friendly to weed, whether they smoke or not."

A few years ago, such a site would have seemed like poor cover for a DEA sting operation, but in a national atmosphere that's warming to weed, My420Mate filters out those who refuse to ride the wave. "We live in a country where we're fortunate enough that it's become somewhat free," Lozano said. "You could go to other countries and literally get your head lopped off for some weed." (Hyperbole aside, the last marijuana-related decapitation here in the US was an ac​cidental suicide last year.) Lozano sees this new openness as an opportunity for potheads of all shapes and colors to come out of the shadows and find one another. After all, if there's one thing we've seen in this new age of cannabis, it's that there are a​ll kinds of smokers. "I was trying to show that there are more faces to weed than the stereotype of the stoner, Cheech and Chong and dreadlocks," Lozano said.

A few minutes on the site reveals everyone from professional moms and dads to perfect stoner caricatures, complete with dreadlocks. Most of the 11,000 users are in cannabis-legal states like Colorado, Washington, and (pseudo-legal) California, so there weren't many people for me to meet where I live in New York. As chance had it, I was in Los Angeles last week and learned of a singles mixer co-sponsored by My420Mate in Hollywood. I figured that, being in America's oldest and loosest medical marijuana state, I was bound to come across some interesting stoner ladies there. 

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The author mingling with love-hungry stoners.

I arrived at the mixer with my friend Z around midnight when it was already in full swing. The backyard of the venue was packed with groups of guys and girls smoking weed, and the first thing that struck me was the racial diversity of the crowd. At cannabis events in New York, Denver, and elsewhere, I'm usually the only brown guy in a sea of white, but here there was an even mix of colors mingling freely. My ultimate goal in attending this party was to see what kind of people are on the stoner dating scene, and to achieve this, I had to appear eager to meet potential 420 mates even though I had no intention of actually starting a relationship with someone in LA.

The best conversation starter I could come up with was the fact that I was writing an article about the experience. That was the concrete reason I gave for starting a conversation with a group of girls who smoked a blunt next to Z and I as we were lighting up a joint. The one closest to me was in a Batgirl costume. I asked her how she had heard about the party (part of my journalistic research, naturally) and she said she had no idea it was a singles mixer for stoners. They had just ended up there on a random tip. 

"I think all these people are trying to date other stoners," I told Batgirl. She gave me a confused look. "Yup," I said, "It's going to get a lot weirder than this," as I signaled our conversation by pointing back and forth between us. Batgirl's confusion persisted. Thankfully, her friend broke the awkwardness by complimenting the smell of my joint. I offered her a hit but remembered to disclaim the fact that there was a little bit of tobacco in it. She wrinkled her nose and said, "No thanks." I had crossed a cultural line in this foreign land. Many weed-smokers on the West Coast hate tobacco and can't get down with a spliff. Sensing my discomfort, Batgirl grabbed the joint and took a hit. "That's not bad!" she said. She handed the joint back to me and looked at her friends. I watched them engage in silent communication using only slight eye and head movements for about ten seconds before they said, "We're going to get a drink," almost in unison.

It occurred to me that, despite our shared interest in pot, these girls were wary of dudes hitting on them like they would be at any other party. As a guy, I'll never fully understand what it's like to be relen​tlessly hollered at no matter where I go, so I couldn't fault this group of women for being skeptical of my intentions. Perhaps online dating works so well because it cuts out in-person flirtation tactics and encapsulates everyone into the same-page format, forcing douchebags to flaunt self-aggrandizing photos and inarticulate bios, while allowing introverts to present themselves without the daunting task of starting a conversation.

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Are people actually coupling up at weed meet-ups? Photo by the author

As I considered how many times I could use the "writing an article" approach, Lozano came over to introduce me to a couple that had met on My420Mate. Jonathan and B found each other in an ocean of stoners after coming up empty on sites like OK Cupid and Plenty of Fish. Rather than the usual song and dance--open with a joke, drop a compliment, ask a meaningful question--Jonathan just asked B, "Wanna smoke a blunt?" After a cup of coffee in a public place so that B could confirm Jonathan wasn't a psychopath, they smoked the proposed blunt. A couple more dates and several blunts later, they were officially an item.

B is an editor at Edibles List magazine, so she's got a formidable tolerance for pot after testing all those delicious cookies and candies. She was previously married to a guy who smoked weed but then quit and went the narc route. "He freaked out and told my parents I was a drug addict because I smoked weed," she tells me. That ended in a divorce, and since then, she hadn't met anyone who was cool with her substantial cannabis consumption until My420Mate linked her with Jonathan.

Aside from the weed-themed online setting, their story is pretty ordinary. Just like thousands of people on countless niche dating sites, these two were looking for someone who shared a very specific trait, even if being a pothead is not as readily identifiable as being a sea capt​ain, a clo​wn, or a very t​all person. I congratulated B and Jonathan on their relationship. After they walked off, I turned to Z and said, "Isn't that nice? They seem like a great couple." Z, who had been quietly listening in to our conversation, squinted cynically and said, "Those two are totally not dating. They just made that whole shit up and fed it to you."

I argued for their authenticity, but Z seemed pretty convinced that their relationship was a sham. He's a good judge of character, so I'm inclined to believe him over two strangers. Still, I'd like to think that B and Jonathan genuinely found each other through weed, and that others will follow. I wholeheartedly support the effort to romantically link stoners together through the internet, even though I've already left my own My420Mate profile to die in online dating limbo along with my Tinder and OK Cupid pages. 

Follow T.Kid on Twit​ter.

The Victory Warehouse is a grungy white building in a poor part of West Oakland, California. There are always a few cars parked in the concrete yard and dogs and cats circling some beat-up furniture by the front door. From the outside, it's unimpressive and sparse. Inside, it's every teenage boy's dream. To the left of the entrance are three couches set up around an old TV with a NES, a Sega Genesis, and a Super Nintendo. To the right are two old-school arcade games rigged so you can play all you want for free. Right in front, dead center, is a wrestling ring.

Five years ago, Sam Khandaghabadi, an East Bay-raised wrestler of Persian descent, had some friends living in the warehouse. At the time, he was wrestling on the independent circuit as the Sheik, but had never found an event that was quite right. He knew if he had his own show he could make wrestling fun again. His friends at the Victory Warehouse threw underground metal concerts once a month and said if he ever wanted to wrestle there he just had to get a ring. Khandaghabadi rented a truck and brought one to the warehouse in pieces from across town. "I had the venue," he said, "and I had the ring."

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Obviously, there's a stigma around professional wrestling--it's seen as lowbrow entertainment, soap opera for the trailer park crowd. But the people who sneer at it tend to dismiss it in broad strokes, like, "It's fake." Well, duh. It's only once you remove the facade of reality that you can truly start to appreciate the real athleticism and showmanship of the product. Once you come at it as theater instead of sport, it's hard not to be entertained.

"I've done theater, I've done high school wrestling, I've done martial arts, I've done short films, I've done adult film," Khandaghabadi said while chain-smoking cigarettes in the back room of the Victory Warehouse. "It wasn't full penetration, but I was in an erotic film--I've done a lot of things. When you have someone who can act, improvise, engage, and be physically impressive, wrestling is a one-of-a-kind form of entertainment. There is no parallel that I can think of."

Back in the beginning of 2010, Khandaghabadi started contacting all the guys he'd been wrestling with for the last decade on the West Coast independent scene. "I told all these wrestlers, 'Hey, I want to do a show where you can party and curse and be sexual,'" he said. "'There's not going to be any kids. We're going to do what we want.'"

About 25 wrestlers signed up, but only 13 showed for the first Hoodslam in April 2010. Khandaghabadi didn't charge for tickets, so he wasn't paying anyone to perform. "But it made for a really strong core, and the ones that were there enjoyed the hell out of it," he said.

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Khandaghabadi describes his event as "the evolution of the three-ring circus": a mixture of wrestling, live music, burlesque, performative self-mutilation, video game role-play, and 90s nostalgia.

The show kept growing every month. After a year, Khandaghabadi finally started charging admission. But Hoodslam was far from a cash cow. "There were still a lot of days I had to choose between food for the week or flyers," he said. "I would get fliers and a pack of cigarettes. The show was more important."

In May of 2010, the Victory Warehouse's landlord said they had to stop hosting shows because the big crowds and endless after-parties were attracting too much attention from the authorities.

Then, right as Hoodslam's future was in question, everything changed. Jamie DeWolf, the founder of the Oakland underground poetry slam and oddball variety show Tourette's Without Regrets, asked Khandaghabadi to put on some matches at his June 2011 show. Though wrestling only made up about 20 minutes of a four-hour show, the owner of the Oakland Metro Opera House saw the performance and asked Khandaghabadi to host an event on the first Friday of every month.

The Metro still brought some of the grit of Victory Warehouse while allowing for a much bigger crowd. The venue is just as smoky and the ring is the same, but the Metro can hold 1,000 people and the PA and lights make it feel like a professional event. Most importantly, the people behind the Metro are hands-off when it comes to the show. 

"I go up there and tell them, 'Hey, we're going to do fire today.' They say, 'Cool, we'll get some fire extinguishers ready as long as it's controlled,'" Khandaghabadi told me. "'Hey, we're doing an abortion on stage today.' 'All right, sounds fun.'"

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When I walked into the Oakland Metro Operahouse, which sits on a low-lit street a few blocks from Jack London Square, it looked like they were setting up for a rock show. The house band was doing a sound check, burly men were carrying lights and equipment, and photographers were setting up. But instead of a stage, all the preparation centered on a full-size, duct-tape-patched wrestling ring.

Next to the ring was a green room, filled with weed smoke, barrel-chested behemoths, and tattooed girls. Each wrestler had a suitcase full of costumes and was in varying states of undress: tights half on, faces half painted, bow ties hanging undone. There was energy in the room, everyone talking at once, a mix of pre-show nerves and catching up with old friends.

For most of these wrestlers, Hoodslam is the highlight of their month. Every first Friday, they come from all over the West Coast to wrestle in front of a raucous 21-and-over crowd. While the WWE has to worry about entertaining little kids, Hoodslam can be as vile and out-there as it pleases. The show's credo is "Fuck the Fans"--the wrestlers are there to have fun and don't really care if you get it. For them, this is the one time a month they can be as vulgar and violent and weird as they want. Amazingly enough, almost five years after its creation, Hoodslam has become a full-blown hit. Last Friday, the Metro sold out. Once they hit the 1,000-person limit, they had to send fans away at the door.

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At 9 PM, the lights at the Metro went down and the Hoodslam band began to play. The crowd, which was shoulder-to-shoulder right up against the ropes, began to scream as AJ Kirsch, who wrestles as Broseph Joe Brody, started his slow walk to the ring. 

"Welcome everyone to the BROakland Metro Operahouse," he growled, as the fans behind the ring shot clouds of Axe Body Spray into the air. "Tonight is my show, so prepare for some bro-etry in motion."

Kirsch plays a heel--that's wrestling jargon for a bad guy--so almost instantly the crowd began to boo. About five minutes in, Kirsch had riled the 1,000 fans into a frenzy. They started to chant, "Fuck your mother!" in unison.

Kirsch, whose business card bills him as an "actor, model, public speaker, and social media consultant," called for the house lights to be turned on. His mother sat on a bench against the far wall, and he scolded the fans for being rude to her. He asked his mom what she wanted to say to them, and she stood and screamed, "Fuck the fans!" Right on cue, the whole fanatical crowd began to chant, "Your mom's awesome!" The band broke into the Hoodslam theme song, and Kirsch poured whiskey into the mouths of fans in the front row.

"If WWE tells the kids that there's no Santa, then Christmas is ruined. We make Santa a homeless alcoholic and there are a bunch of drugs in his bag."

Kirsch started training to be a wrestler while studying communications at Chico State. Three times a week he took an hour-long commute to "a crappy, sweaty little gym" called Pro Championship Wrestling in Yuba City. After two years, he finally began to perform, which meant driving up and down California--and sometimes as far away as Florida--playing small independent shows for little or no money. Five years into the independent grind, he sent an audition tape to Tough Enough, a WWE competition-based reality show, and was chosen as one of 14 contestants. He made it through eight episodes, but ultimately didn't win and was not offered a contract by the WWE. At 28, he was back on the independent scene.

But Kirsch knew Khandaghabadi and had heard about his weird little show out in Oakland. Khandaghabadi asked if Kirsch would like to do commentary for the event until they could work him into the Hoodslam storyline. At that point, he was still wrestling as AJ Kirsch, a clean-cut kid who had been on a reality show. He needed a character. 

"There's the Stoner Brothers, the Dark Sheik, the Butabis," Kirsch said. "Everyone's character was so out of left field, and I was just AJ Kirsch from Tough Enough."

Character is the key to great pro wrestling, and while the WWE falls into classic tropes of good and evil, Hoodslam uses nostalgia and bizarro costumes to play outside the traditional dichotomy. So Kirsch racked his mind and drew on his well of experience as a Chico State undergrad, a gym rat, and a bouncer to create Broseph Joe Brody, who is "basically a composite of every douchebag bro that I've ever come across."

Kirsch leaned back and grinned as he told his creation tale. He knew he'd hit gold with the young Oakland crowd, to whom bro is a dirty word. "From the moment I stepped out and Nickelback played over the speakers and I sprayed myself with Axe," Kirsch said, "all I heard was, 'Booooo. Fuck you, bro!' And I'm just like, Yes!"

He said it wasn't until he spawned Broseph at the Metro that he ever felt fully comfortable in the ring. "For me, it's not about getting to WWE anymore," he said. "WWE is not where I feel like I would be fulfilled as someone who loves the art of pro wrestling. I feel Hoodslam, more than anything else, excites and invigorates me in a way that nothing ever has and, I dare say, nothing ever will again."

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Every wrestler I talked to was just as disenchanted with the WWE. They all grew up wrestling fans, but can no longer get behind the WWE's current kid-friendly product. For the wrestlers, the 21-and-over stipulation is about more than letting the audience drink. 

"We don't let kids in. That's not just because I like to drink and smoke and curse, all that good stuff," Khandaghabadi said. "It gives us more freedom to do whatever we want."

He explained that making it 21-and-over cut out at least half of his possible audience initially, but that it made for a more interesting fan base and a much better show. And not having to sell merchandise, championship belts, and trading cards to kids means that no character will dominate the way John Cena--the clean-cut, Make-A-Wish Foundation-loving, baby-faced star--has dominated WWE for the last 12 years.

There's a dream among hardcore wrestling fans that Cena will turn heel like Hulk Hogan did at Bash at the Beach in 1996. But young fans are the lifeblood of the WWE's business, and to them Cena is a god. His heel turn would break the hearts of millions of kids. More important, for those writing WWE storylines, it would be bad for business.

And that same force that keeps Cena from turning heel also forces WWE to nurture the idea, at least in its youngest fans, that professional wrestling is real. "The kids believe it, so if WWE tells the kids that there's no Santa, then Christmas is ruined," Kirsch said. "We make Santa a homeless alcoholic and there are a bunch of drugs in his bag."

Instead of sticking to the illusion, Hoodslam plays with it. Their tagline is "This is real"--it's on all their shirts, merchandise, and flyers. "Rather than trying to convince our audience that it's real, we're going to go completely the opposite direction," Kirsch explained. "We're going to be so ridiculously over the top that you can't help but go with it. If you pay ten bucks and walk through that door, you're going on this ride. So get comfortable, bite your lip, and learn to relax, because we are going to fuck these fans rotten."

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The odd play on reality is what separates professional wrestling from almost any other form of entertainment. When we go to the movies, we know to suspend our disbelief. When we watch sports, we're disgusted by any hint that the result might be fixed. But pro wrestling must both trick kids into thinking it's real and find ways to entertain adults who know it's fake. What gets lost in this complicated charade is the incredible athletic feats and oddball mic work that should be applauded.

When I asked Khandaghabadi whether it matters if Hoodslam is fake or real, he smiled and told me a story from one of the early shows, when they were still held at the Victory Warehouse. Scott-Rick Stoner, a member of the Stoner Brothers--a tag team of twin 350-pound, longhaired, bearded potheads--was fighting Charlie Chaplin, an invisible wrestler who appears most First Fridays. During the match, Stoner picked his assailant (who, remember, nobody could see) up over his head and threw him out of the ring and into the audience. "The crowd spread out like he was going to land on them," Khandaghabadi said, "And then all at once turned and looked at where he fell and started cheering, 'Holy shit, holy shit!'"

Right then, Stoner walked into the back room at the Victory Warehouse where we were having the interview and offered Khandaghabadi a blunt. After a few hits, Khandaghabadi continued.

"That's as real as it gets, if you ask me. Someone outside could be like, 'There's nobody there.' Tell that to the 200 people that were here, crammed into this tiny warehouse. Every single one of them will tell you Charlie Chaplin is real," he said. "And perception is reality."

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Back in the ring at the Oakland Metro Operahouse, Kirsch explained to the fans that there would be a Booze vs. Blunts Tag Team Contest, with the Knights of the Roxbury fighting on behalf of booze and the Stoner Brothers defending the honor of blunts. The rules were standard for tag-team matches, except each team also had to finish its respective blunt or fifth of cheap vodka--only consuming when the other wrestlers were dazed on the mat. The crowd excitedly chanted "smoke that blunt!" or "drink that booze!" as each team partook of its vice of choice, but also got invested in a storyline about the belligerently hammered Anthony Butabi trying to get his older brother, Johnathan Butabi--who had been sober and gluten-free for six months--to fall off the wagon and become Johnny Drinko once again.

The Stoner Brothers are hulking figures in the ring but also incredible athletes. After a long, brutal battle, Scott-Rick Stoner put Anthony Butabi on his shoulder and Rick-Scott Stoner jumped from the top rope, hitting the dazed wrestler, and then held him down for a three-second pin. Though the match was obviously a farce, it was impossible to ignore the physical feat. It's truly a spectacle to watch a stoned 350-pound man fly through the air.

The last match was a 21-and-Over Royal Rumble. This, more than anything else that night, was about the wrestlers just entertaining themselves. The first four fighters in were Macho Taco, a guy in a banana suit, a hot dog, and Cereal Man. Link from Zelda and Ken from Street Fighter both joined the action, and there was even an impressive cameo by the invisible Charlie Chaplin. Later in the bout, wrestlers from some of the earlier fights, like the Stoner Brothers, the Chupacabra, and the Butabis, climbed through the ropes. The match ended when Jonathan Butabi finally fell off the wagon, got Popeye-like strength from the vodka, and threw the last two wrestlers from the ring. It was the kind of fairy-tale ending that is totally and completely Hoodslam. You'd never see it in the WWE.

Joseph Bien-Kahn is a freelance reporter, part-time café worker, and roving intern in San Francisco. He's had articles published in the Rumpus and the Believer, and writes a hip-hop column for BAMM.tv. He's also editor-in-chief of the literary mag ​OTHERWHERES. Follow him on Twit​ter.

Toby Silverman is fine-art photographer based in San Francisco. You can see more of his work ​h​ere.

​Call it the subpoena surge of 2015. ​Republicans are now preparing to take control of the Senate for the first time eight years-a political power shift that gives the GOP free rein to torment President Barack Obama, and unleash the full weight of Congressional oversight to investigate, subpoena, and generally make trouble for Democrats in the next two years.

Privately, Obama advisers have been complaining in recent weeks about how much more time they will presumably have to spend dealing with Republican-led congressional investigations once GOP leaders take over as committee chairs in the Senate. After four years of beating back investigations from the House, the new subpoena blizzard would come from the upper chamber, whose 100 members are often (though not always) more polished, camera ready, and far more potent adversaries than the lower chamber's motley assortment of Tea Party street fighters.

"When you have the opposition party to the White House calling the shots in the Senate, I think there would be more oversight and more critical oversight, albeit with the greater measure of decorum that is typical of the Senate," said Adam Zagorin, a senior fellow at the Project on Government Oversight.

A senior Senate GOP investigator agreed: "We're salivating at the opportunity," one senior GOP Senate investigator told me, "and not because anyone has a hit list or anything but because there's just been an absolute gulf of oversight from the Senate for nearly a decade."

"People [want] to give the Federal Administration an appropriate level of scrutiny," the investigator added.

Republicans have said little publicly about what they plan to do with Senate subpoena power. But it's easy to see how things could get ugly fast once GOP committee chairs have gavels in their hands. Expect investigations into the president's use of executive privilege to push through his agenda on issues like climate change and immigration, as well as probes into the Obama administration's handling of various foreign policy conflicts, from the deadly attacks on Benghazi in 2012 to the mission to recover Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Not to mention what will likely be an endless string of hearings on the botched rollout of Obamacare.

"The Obama Administration is going to come back claiming executive privilege against whatever they don't want to cooperate on," said one congressional oversight expert who consults with both parties. "Congress will then try to hold the Administration in contempt, and court battles will ensue. This will have to go to the Supreme Court at some point."

None of this is new. The shit tends to really hit the fan in the last two years of any president's second term. Think Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinsky, the US attorney firing scandal under George W. Bush. There's no reason that Obama's presidency, which has taken place amid one of the most rancorously partisan atmosphere in recent memory, will be any different.

Already, a team of likely Obama adversaries is shaping up, preparing to take over control of key Senate committees when the new Congress begins in January. Key players include Senator John McCain, a leading critic of the Obama administration's foreign policy who is expected to take over the Armed Services Committee, and Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, the likely chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who could take the lead on investigating the IRS under the Obama administration, among other things. There's also Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who is expected to take over the Senate Judiciary Committee, and who, along with Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, the likely head of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is also likely to cause trouble for the administration by digging into agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.

One of the more interesting places to watch if the GOP wins a majority will be the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, or PSI, a panel that is known for having a talented staff with the authority to take depositions without a Senator being present, which means it can cover a lot of ground. Democratic Senator Carl Levin has chaired the subcommittee for ten of the last 14 years, and has been described as a one-man band leading government oversight of major fuckups, like the 2008 financial meltdown. But Levin is retiring, and Ohio Republican Rob Portman is likely to take his place, according to a Senate investigator with knowledge of the committee's workings. The position could make Portman one of Obama's most powerful adversaries, giving him the power to quietly dig deep into the administration's files until he finds a scandal.

Of course, the target of these investigations won't really be Obama. After Tuesday's routing, the GOP will happily declare his presidency to be effectively over, and will treat his administration as irrelevant for the rest of his time in office. Instead, Republicans in the Senate will launch their investigations and serve their subpoenas with one eye on the next presidential race, with the goal of taking down Hillary Clinton, tarnishing her accomplishments and branding her as damaged goods going into 2016.

Follow Timothy on ​Twitter

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Balls, flower bouquets, boomerangs--I've seen people run to catch all sorts of things in my life, but never a wooden ladle. Which is what has been happening every year since 1884 in the French town of Comines during a festival called La Fête Historique des Louches (rough translation: "the Historic Ladle Feast").
​
Like many other customs of northern France, the Historic Ladle Feast is basically about people throwing stuff at other people--just like the Festival de l'Andouille (where people throw andouille sausages at each other) or the Fête de Jehan van d'Helle, also known as the Tobacco Party, (where people throw wooden pipes at each other).

​And like many other festivals of northern France, the Historic Ladle Feast is based on a legend: In an attempt to let his people know of his whereabouts while imprisoned in a high tower, the lord of Comines apparently threw a wooden spoon engraved with his coat of arms through the bars of his cell.

​The festival includes a procession of floats pulled by tractors, cheerleaders, and marching bands, as well as a Miss Comines pageant. The procession ends with a chariot carrying a bunch of people seen as the members of the "Fellowship of Ladles" (these are the guys wearing weird red costumes in the photos). At the end, every villager counts the ladles they have collected and hidden under their coats during the festival--the more ladles you have, the more you deserve to live in Comines.

Director Damien Chazelle's new release, Whiplash, is the most high-strung and tension-packed movie of the season. The film's scenes are almost exclusively between J.K. Simmons, the bandleader at a prestigious music school, and Miles Teller, the protégé who hopes to become a legend under the guidance of his crazy master. They live in a realm where the only thing that matters is music--any side step from perfection is the gravest offense.

It reminds me of the way Francis Ford Coppola talks about wine making: At the highest levels of production, you do tons of work just to improve the quality a little bit. You pay extra to make sure there are no leaves or twigs mixed in with the picked grapes. That tweak will make the wine a tiny bit better, but at those high quality levels, a tiny bit means a lot. In the similar world of jazz perfectionists, the tiniest bit of improvement also means a lot, even if it takes practicing all night until your hands are bloody.

I have a few grievances before I can fully start praising the film. First of all, what these guys are doing spending all their time worrying about jazz? They mention that jazz is dying, acknowledge that their field is a lost art, but the student still has aspirations of being the next Bird. The teacher claims that jazz is dying because we live in a soft, cushy culture where everyone is patted on the back for being mediocre, creating a generation of bad players. Although I'm all for hard work--especially in creative fields--I don't think jazz is dying because of a lack of effort. It has more to do with changing trends.

There is the amazing scene where the student calls off a budding relationship with a girl because he can foresee that it will get in the way with his devotion to music. But it's not like he's even working toward anything that will be appreciated by more than a select group of aficionados. That being said, his speech to the girl is haunting, for anyone who has tried to pursue something with all his or her energy and time and will. The way to greatness is often lonely. But in the film, watching a character so young forestall a relationship that he needs so badly is a portrait of heartbreaking masochism.

I'm also confused by the message of the film. The teacher is a proponent of unrepentant bludgeoning as a way to separate the weak from the talented. He spends the whole film torturing his students into playing correctly, pitting them against each other in order to increase their efforts through competition. This is a great set-up, but I thought we were supposed to see this behavior as harmful, and the teacher as the villain.  In the end, the teacher has planned the demise of his former student by having him publicly perform something he doesn't know how to play. It seems that maybe he has won the battle of wills--only to find that his former student is up to the challenge, and he proves as strong as the teacher.

What are we meant to take from this? That unrelenting, brutal tutelage is the way to greatness? The characters seem to think so. The weird, fascinating, and sadomasochistic relationship turns to one of sweaty bonding, and conspiratorial nods after the explosively climactic performance. What is the message as they stare at each other in ecstatic mutual recognition?

Those questions aside, the film's performances are amazing. J.K. Simmons plays the teacher like a demon who seems to show a soft side every once in a while, only to pull way the mask and reveal that he was pure devil all along. He is as hard, impenetrable, and polished as his shiny, shaved head. There isn't a moment lost in Simmons's performance. Every move is honed and precise, though still as electric as if it were improvised. Miles Teller is great as the student who isn't exactly cool, but is exciting through his devotion to his art. It's always interesting to watch a person obsessed--especially when that obsession is artistic. 

The cinematography and editing are in a class of their own. The framing and rhythm of the images are in tight relation to the sounds, pulling us even deeper into the world of the characters.

The movie works for many reasons, but it's the music that brings it together into a tightly wound package. The characters infuse the music scenes with conflict, they give them drama and direction. In turn, the music gives the film a visceral feeling of rising tension.

The adage may say that practice is the only way to Carnegie Hall, but as a teacher myself I question the drum teacher's methods. Maybe I don't know how music works, and I can acknowledge the benefits of being pushed to my creative limit. But I also know that creativity is often aided by nurturing environments, not brutally competitive ones. I would say that the movie understands this, except for the gnashing satisfaction on the characters' faces at the end, after the teacher has pounded his students into mush. Regardless, the experience of this film is nothing but greatness. Whiplash is kinetic storytelling at its best.

Ulyana is from Yekaterinburg. She has been on the island of Ko Samui for three months and is currently unemployed. Photos by Sergey Poteryaev

It seems as though, these days, the subject of Russia is on the tips of everyone's tongues. Russia's territory is as huge as its ambitions, which would make one believe that--at least as long as they aren't gay--Russians are having the time of their lives. Yet the Facebook generation of Russians is constantly discussing migration possibilities; in fact, a 2013 Levada Centre survey ​showed that 22 percent of them are ready to leave Mama Russia for greener pastures. I belong to that 22 percent. I am young, Russian and on December 19, 2012, I found myself on a plane to Ko Samui via Beijing. My ticket was one-way.

Don't get me wrong, I love my country. It's just that I prefer to love it from a distance. I coincidentally bought a ticket for the very same plane bound to the very same final destination as an old friend from my hometown. He had planned to hide away on a tropical island with his girlfriend. I, on the other hand, was trying to escape a broken heart and looking for time out from a stressful work schedule. And so we landed on a beautiful island in the Gulf of Thailand, where we found ourselves immediately surrounded by about 6,000 other Russians.

There we all were: my half-naked compatriots and I, either running from something or searching for something, because basically there are only three reasons to trade life in Russia for a life unknown.

First of all, Mother Russia is famous for the cold. This means that if you don't play ice hockey, for at least three months each year you become a grumpy, fur-wrapped ball of cabbage. This involves complaining about your depressing life, hiding from the cold with croissants and coffee in the daytime, and drowning your sorrows in a couple of vodka shots in the evening (the cold makes stereotypes unavoidable).

Then there are the prices: For a room in Moscow we pay an average of $635, $24 for dinner at a restaurant and $13 for a McDonald's. The average salary in Moscow amounts to about $1,275.

And thirdly, on top of everything, Russia has in the past few years become more and more socially antagonistic. The presidential elections of 2012 gave birth to a couple of loud political performances, like the backlash against the anti-gay propaganda bill and the arrest of Pussy Riot.

That's why young Russians leave, that's why they come--that's why they don't hesitate to rent their apartments in Moscow to do all kinds of freelance work from afar or start random tourist-orientated business. 

In  beautiful and peaceful Asia--Thailand, Bali, Vietnam, China--with delicious food, cheap everything and gorgeous seaside views, there's no stress, ambitions that push and pull, political conversations or risk. Because Russia basically tastes like risk.

Here are some photos I took of the young Russian diaspora living in Ko Samui.

Inga has lived in Ko Samui for four years and owns an events agency. In St. Petersburg, she worked in management

Yevgeny has lived on Ko Samui for one year and works in digital marketing. In Krasnodar, where he's from, he worked in e-commerce

Lusya has lived in Ko Samui for three years and works as a DJ. In St. Petersburg, she worked in IT.

Illarion has lived on Ko Samui for one and a half years and works for a tour firm called Thaistar. In Vladivostok, he was a reserve officer.

Masha has lived on the island for 14 months and works as a consultant for a pharmacy supplying Thai folk medicine. In Moscow, she worked in the hotel business

Sergey has lived in Ko Samui for two years and works as a cook. He did the same job back home in St. Petersburg

Olga has lived on Ko Samui for three years and works as a photographer. In Moscow, she worked in HR

Renat has been living on Ko Samui two years, working for a tourist company called Samuidays. In Vladivostok, he worked as a commercial director

Nastya has been on the island for seven years. She currently works as an events organizer but in Irkutsk, where she's from, she worked as a journalist

On Tuesday, Californians voted on ballot proposals surrounding issues like water supply, health insurance, and state budget reform. But none of them garnered the same level of national interest as Proposition 47, the criminal justice reform initiative that promised to thin out the state's saturated prisons by reducing six classifications of nonviolent drug and theft-related crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.

The measure passed, and California will now become the fir​st state to defelonize nearly all accounts of drug possession with the intent of personal use.

That California is now leading the nation in this regard is extraordinary. Along with Texas, the Golden State has been an archetype of the United States' prison boom since the war on drugs began escalating incarceration rates decades ago. As Jessica Pishko points out in her pi​ece on the measure in Pacific Standard, the state's prison population in 2010 was 735 percent higher than it was in 1965, while its residential population only grew by 72 percent during the same period.

Even so, Prop 47's success comes as little surprise to those who have been following the state's prison woes closely. Within the past decade, California has been under pre​ssure from the federal government to shrink its inmate population and alleviate unconstitutional prison conditions. The state tri​ed mitigating the issue by exporting nearly 8,500 inmates to penitentiaries in Oklahoma, Arizona, and Mississippi, but even after this transfer, local prison populations continued to hover between 120 percent and 150 percent of their intended capacity.

In 2012, more than 68 percent of voters agreed to water down California's contentious "Three Strikes Law," which put anyone with three felonies, violent or nonviolent, in prison for life. This indicated a major shift in the public conscience; it dismantled a foundation of the state's tough-on-crime mantra that was approved by nearly three-quarters of voters during Bill Clinton's presidency in 1994.

These moves have already​ started sifting nonviolent offenders out of state prisons, but Prop 47 will raise depopulation efforts to a new level. Along with defelonizing most counts of drug possession, it gives at least 10,000 inmates without a history of violent or sexual crime the potential to challenge their sentencing. By increasing the felony threshold of non-violent acts like shoplifting and purchasing stolen goods to $950, it more than doubles California's previous limit for imprisonable theft crimes.

The proposal's success augurs a massive shift in our understanding of how to heal, not bandage, crime and prison issues. It will create a Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Fund, which plans to take the estimated $750 million to $1.25 billion saved from incarceration reform over the next five years and inv​est it in K-12 schools and convict rehabilitation programs. Tackling prison glut while maintaining public safety doesn't mean simply revisiting law structures--it means also pushing for boosts in the capacity of tertiary education.

On a national level, Prop 47 is a watershed moment because it adds major weight to a push for criminal justice reform that's already seen​ 30 states restructure their laws since 2007. Michigan, Alabama, Tennessee and Utah may soon join California and raise that number to 35; task forces in those states are currently looking into local prison issues and are likely to try out reform initiatives as early as 2015.

In other words: more than half of the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world is finally recognizing the need to rethink what it means to be "criminal."

"Governments are starting to ask, 'Who is in prison, and should they be there?'" says Alison Lawrence, a policy specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures' Criminal Justice Program. She's been closely following prison reform across the country, and is documenting its development in comprehensive reports over at the NCSL's webs​ite.

"If they find that some people shouldn't be, they change their criminal code and lower the penalties for low level offenses," Lawrence adds. "If they're not lowering the penalties, they're authorizing community sentences and giving judges more discretion."

This process is a derivative of what's known as "justice reinvestment." Initiatives like the Prop 47 campaign in California take prison and corrections data, and use it as the bedrock of incremental reforms that aim to cut incarceration costs while boosting public safety. Texas, somewhat surprisingly given its reputation as a national backwater, was one of the first to pursue it. The state invested $240 million in expanding its rehabilitation services for convicts and increasing parole and probation capacities for local law enforcement in 2007. As a result, Texas saved $432 million from 2008 to 2009, and in 2012 its prison populations were the lowest they'd been in five years.

While distinguishing between dangerous and non-dangerous criminals is one facet of the national reform movement, another is making sure state policies towards non-violent crimes like theft are aligned with the inflating cost of goods. Some of these states' theft laws were ratified more than 20 or 30 years ago, and as a result, many of the monetary thresholds for felony charges are disconnected from today's commodity price indices.

Most of the 30 states that have enacted justice reinvestment or similar initiatives are showing signs of success, or at least progress. Based on data from​ the past few years, Vermont's prison population has declined by 5 percent since 2009, and the state is expected to save $54 million by 2018. South Carolina has seen a 2 percent drop in the number of parolees or probationers being sent back to prison for committing new crimes. Hawaii, which has some of the highest cost-per-prisoner rates in the country due to its pricey land, plans to save nearly $130 million over the next five years by changing its retainment laws for parolees and low-risk offenders who have completed their sentences.

Others, like Kansas and Oklahoma, have had to go back to the drawing board since moving for reform in 2007 and 2012, respectively. But in light of what all these states have done before, how will California do? Can Prop 47 live up to its promise?

"It's hard to compare any state to California because of its size and realignment policy," Lawrence says, referring to a 2011 act that began migrating prisoners with low-level felonies out of prisons and into county jails. "But overall, states have experienced tremendous success. In most cases, offenders that are going on to probation instead of prison are successfully completing their probation. They aren't committing new crimes, so public safety, which is tantamount to justice reinvestment, is being achieved."

Going forward, Lawrence notes, states in the beginning stages of pursuing justice reinvestment should pay attention to the unique nature of what's been done in Georgia and Colorado. Georgia, which has the fourth-most populated prisons behind Florida and ahead of New York, installed a special oversight council along with its reform legislation in 2012. Instead of just monitoring numbers and devising new laws when statistics don't meet the state's goals, the council has the power to suggest and implement auxiliary approaches on the fly.

Colorado approved a law that made reevaluating its theft-related felony thresholds a mandatory, recurring thing. Every three years, the state analyzes its laws in context of the price of goods and makes adjustments if the two don't sync up. Because of this, last year, the state doubled its felony threshold, bumping it from $500 to $1000, acc​ording to Denver criminal attorney Kevin Churchill.

While this burst of state activity shows that the lock-them-up mentality in the United States is starting to wear down, plenty still needs to be done to nullify the status quo. As VICE rep​orted in September, federal prison populations are slowly shrinking, but even states with justice reinvestment initiatives like Texas have started seeing their numbers creep upward again.

Regardless, Prop 47 has struck a major blow at America's prison problem. An overhaul of California's incarceration culture will not only have major statistical significance in terms of nationwide crime data, but should resonate in the halls of power.

Follow Johnny Magdaleno on ​Twitter.

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For three decades, famed drug smuggler and writer Billy Hayes was reviled in Turkey. He was on their terror watch lists, Interpol had a warrant out for his arrest, and he basically couldn't travel. Last week, however, the American helped raise the Turkish flag up over Wall Street.

If you've seen the  Oscar-winning  1978 film Midnight Express, you have a decent idea of what happened to Hayes. Oliver Stone's screenplay and Hayes's best-selling autobiographical book of the same name both recount his 1970 arrest, imprisonment, and escape from a Turkish prison five years later--but they differ in two crucial spots, and the differences helped Hayes become an object of scorn in Turkey. 

"I think it was the courtroom scene," Hayes said of Stone's dramatization. "Cursing out the 'nation of pigs' and 'fucking their sons and daughters' that most incensed the Turks,  even more than me killing the guard, since he was not the most sympathetic of characters."

Stone's embellishments didn't make Hayes's story better, but they certainly made his life harder.
​

The whole ordeal started in Istanbul on October 6, 1970, when Hayes was 23 years old. The Long Island native was arrested for attempting to board a plane to New York with two kilos of hashish taped to his torso, then convicted of smuggling drugs and sentenced to four years and two months in a Turkish prison. But only weeks from his scheduled release in 1975, a high court extended that sentence to 25 years. The extension put Hayes in escape mode. 

Because of the length of his new sentence, he was able to arrange for a transfer to the island prison of İmralı. Three months after he arrived, Hayes slipped out one night during a storm, cut loose a small boat, and rowed 17 miles across the Sea of Marmara. He got to the coast of Turkey by morning, made his way through the country over the next few days, and then crossed a river into Greece almost five years to the day of his arrest.

Back on American soil, Hayes was an instant celebrity. His autobiographical book Midnight Express was released in 1977. The following year he attended the premiere of the film adapation of Midnight Express at the Cannes Film Festival, where he met his future wife Wendy West. Hayes was free, he was in love, and nobody was beating his feet with a stick. Life was great.

But the barbaric portrayal of the Turks in the film garnered the country a sordid reputation in the US. American tourism to Turkey dropped sharply, never truly recovering, while Turkish Americans in the States were discriminated against in the wake of the film's success. Many Turks placed the blame for this spat of xenophobia on Hayes and he was held in contempt in Turkey for decades. It wasn't until he was able to make a semi-official return to the country in 2007 that he was able to make amends to the people of Turkey through the media. His redemption in the eyes of the Turks seemed complete last week when the Turkish American Cultural Alliance asked Hayes to raise Turkish flag up over the Charging Bull on Wall Street in a ceremony commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Turkish Republic.

Over the next month, you'll be able hear more about Hayes and  his incredible story in the writer's one-man show at Manhattan's Barrow Street Theater. In Riding the Midnight Express, Hayes eloquently lays out his life and takes questions from the audience, clearing up the differences between the book, the film, and reality--including anecdotes about how he actually smuggled hashish into the US successfully three times before he was caught, and how he didn't kill that prison guard.

I had breakfast with the Hayes at a Manhattan diner one week into his show's two-month run to talk about what it was like returning to Turkey, how junkies used to get loaded in Turkish prisons in the 70s, and more.

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VICE: So your one-man show is not freestyle storytelling, right?
Billy Hayes: ​It's been freestyle storytelling for 40 years! These are the same bullshit stories I've been telling for 40 years. People get me at a party somewhere and give me a joint and the next thing they have me telling them stories.

Sorry I didn't bring a joint. When you were locked up, were you able to write? Was there stuff taken or lost?
​Oh, a bunch of stuff, like a novel about a madman underground with a monkey named Vito. 

With the monkey rolling the joints?
​And the monkey knew sign language... That all got lost. I gave that plus a bunch of other stuff to this Italian guy, Pino, who was going free. I knew somewhere down the line, one way or the other, I was gonna be out of there. And he was supposed to take all that stuff to the American counsel. We never knew what happened to it.

But were you writing before you went in?
​Yeah. I went to the journalism school at Marquette University. I wanted to be in advertising. Then I realized what advertising really was and said, Fuck that.

Being in prison saved you from advertising.
​There you go... I used to write short stories and send them off and get pink slips or yellow slips back. I had a bunch of Field & Stream, Boy's Life, and Adventure magazines and shit. Everybody sent my stuff back. It was very discouraging. And then I went out into the world to experience life and really write about it.

So you were allowed books in prison.
​Yeah, a lot of books, but every so often they would come by and there would be a control. The guards would rush in and they'd tear everything up. Later on I found out that they would take all the books and send them out to the local bookstore in Istanbul, selling them to tourists at the [Grand] Bazaar. So we always had quite a few Light on Yoga books. They'd come and go. They'd take them away and then somebody would order one or send it in, but it kind of made the rounds. Quite a few guys ended up doing yoga for a while in there. But you know, people come, people go. There were quite a few foreigners. If you got busted for a joint or any small amount of pot, the minimum you got was 20 months. So there were a lot of guys who would come in, do 20 months, and leave.

In the movie, who was the most accurate character?
Max. John Hurt's character. Down to the glasses with the cracked lens on it, and just being this gangly junkie who... He used to shoot up this stuff they called gastro. It was stomach medicine. My first night there, I smelled this stuff above me. He cooked it on a spoon with a little candle and then scoop it out and get these homemade needles and he'd shoot the shit. Nasty stuff. It fucked him up. Eventually they could get heroin. After I left, they had a big heroin epidemic in the jail. In The Midnight Express Letters, which are letters from my friends who I chronicle throughout the book, there's one point where this heroin epidemic took over the prison. But before that, it was very sporadic. It would come and go. There was always hash around and weird pills. I don't like pills, but people took a lot of pills. And when heroin hit, apparently it was really, really bad. Because it's small, you can smuggle it in easy. And of course the guards bring it in, the food cart people bring it in, anybody from the outside... Or they throw shit over the wall. I mean, there's millions of ways to get shit in, and there's this waiting market inside for it.

So what was the stuff you got nailed for? Was it processed marijuana? Like the Moroccan stuff?
​In Morocco, it's probably kief--almost powdery? But this is pressed hard. Like a Turkish taffy. Really good hash. Now of course, the pot in the United States is so good. You've got all these herbalistic idiots out there growing this shit hydroponic, weavin' strains together--unbelievable stuff! But back then, nothing even came close to this hash, which is why when I brought it back and started sellin' it to my friends. They were like, "Holy shit! We want more of that!" In six months, I sold it all. I made about five grand.

When you went back seven years ago, was there an official pardon in place where you knew you weren't going to be re-arrested?
​No, what they had was the Interpol warrant that had been issued. Interpol is a very loose thing. Different police in different countries react differently, so it's kind of hard to tell who's going to do what.

I think that's the way they like it.
​I think so too. I had to go to London at one point and I contacted the English government and said, "We believe there's an Interpol warrant out for my arrest." And they said, "Well, we don't honor that warrant." So I could go there, but I had to be very careful where I went. Very selective. And for the most part, I didn't travel for about 20 years. But I wanted to go back to Turkey. I always wanted to heal the breach, connect, and change this thing. 

What happened?
​I requested permission  to go back to Turkey, and it was denied. They refused to let me back in. I'm an escaped convict, I've got an Interpol warrant out for my arrest, I'm asking to come back and they wouldn't let me in. The irony of that is still bizarre. And then these Turkish guys called me up and said, "We've seen YouTube where you talk about how you love Istanbul and you want to make a balance and correct things." There was a big conference and they wanted me to come back. The head cop guy, he said to me: "The best image we could have is you walking down the streets of Istanbul, free... The worst image is you walking down the street and having somebody jump out and shoot you in the head."

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Were you scared something was going to go wrong?
​Not really. It's life. You never know what's gonna happen. But once I got there, these guys were literally around me 24/7. One guy slept in a chair outside my hotel door. They were serious. They had a big conference, and all the newspapers and television stations were there. Then I got to say what I've been saying, that I loved Istanbul.

It's a different place now than it was in the 70s, isn't it?
​It's a very different place. So much has changed for the better and worse. Erdoğan, the government that's in there now for ten years, has made Turkey a superpower. The economy is booming.

Their military is neutered.
​Exactly. They're the geopolitical heart of Europe and Asia, and they have the strongest military anywhere over there except for the US and probably Russia. But the military doesn't run things the way they used to. Erdoğan has cut all the strings. He arrested generals who have spent years in prison and are all being released now by the Turkish courts because they say the charges were trumped up. It doesn't matter. He has all the power. He was the Prime Minister and now he's the President and he's assumed all this authority. They had all these riots last year over Gezi Park when the bulldozers...

I was there.
​You were there?

I was there. How aware were you of the protests?
​Very. I follow that news all the time. I was actually talking to a Turkish journalist back then. At one point, I was ranting about Malala, the Pakistani girl who got shot in the head... I said, "The prophet would weep if he knew what these cowards are doing in his name." He was recording all of this. And I said, "Wait, wait, wait, stop... that'll probably get a fatwah out against me," and he said, "I don't care. They need to hear this." He was in the park for ten days while they were gassing people. He said, "I don't know how it's going to turn out. They have all the cards, they have all the power, but the people are angry and there's this whole secular/religious thing." They have so much tension now over there. I'm afraid it's going to be violent. It already is.

Well you mentioned that about secularism and the military. I mean, the duty of the military in Turkey is to protect secularism.
​It used to be.

And now it's been defanged. But if Turkey can't get Islam and secularism right...
​They were the hope, and they still are. But if they can't, I don't know that anybody can. It's just not a form of government that's being used and being accepted. It's difficult to impose something--like these idiot neocons who try to "Bring American democracy to the Middle East."

Yeah, at gunpoint. They're kicking a hornet's nest.
​Then they're just running away, and the hornets are flying.

Follow Lance Scott Walker on ​Twitter.

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​Photo ​via Flickr user andrewarchy.

​The tragic deaths of two military servicemen, Patrice Vincent and Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, terrified Canadians from coast-to-coast. These unexpected tragedies also resulted in a firm response from Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who vowed to strengthen Canada's laws "in the area of surveillance, ​detention, and arrest."

But for Canada's largest municipal police force, these two extreme crimes also, evidently, scared the cops enough to try and toughen up their security practices. Earlier this week, it was revealed that the Toronto Police Union has been lobbying for a special privilege: allowing their service memb​ers to carry guns off duty.

Even if you try and induce short-term amnesia on yourself to forget the trigger-happy behaviour that led an 18-year old, Sammy Yatim, to be shot nine times in 2013—a killing that resulted in a second-degree ​murder c​harge for Toronto Police officer James Forcillo—it's obvious that combatting the police's fear of terrorism with more guns is not even a remotely good idea.

Recommendations were laid out after Yatim's death that called for​ police to wear body-worn cameras and carry tasers. Where is that kind of level-headedness now?

Since the Ottawa shooting, and the hit-and-run that left warrant officer Patrice Vincent dead, the Toronto Police have increased their presence at subway stations. CFRB 1010 reported "the TTC and police were reacting to ISIS comments about Canada's decision to launch airstrikes on Islamic State Targets in Iraq," based on comments made by Police Chief Bill Blair.

While the chief did, thankfully, deny the union's request to arm their officers when they head out for FroYo, this request speaks to the climate of fear that can be so quickly generated by brazen, extremist crime. Given what we have seen happen to our allies, where rash new surveillance and terror-prevention laws are quickly passed in the wake of tragic attacks, one would think that there would be some kind of lesson learned now that Canada is coming to terms with our own lack of perfect security.

In the decade following 9/11, according to the ​Department of Homeland Security, the state of New York alone received over $3 billion in anti-terror funding. New York City, which the department describes as the "most prominent terrorist target in the nation," received heavily armed servicemen standing at subway stations, where travelers' bags are regularly searched at random, and the island of Manhattan was outfitted with more surveillance cameras, licence plate scanners, and "other target hardening equipment;" to make New York, the "target," more "hardened" from the bad guys.

Obviously, 9/11 brought about a "new paradigm​"​ when it comes to terrorism and the law. But when terror is so loosely defined in the first place, and when we have watched Americans accept legislation like the Patriot Act, which has had such unintended consequences as allowing secret surveillance to be conducted in police investigations that have nothing to do with terrorism we need to tread lightly with our police powers, as we come to terms with terror on Canadian soil.

In England, police have been accused of leveraging anti-terror laws to reveal the anonymous sources who provided journalists with information about a scandal involving a politician swearing at two cops. This has led to a ban of cops using anti-terror laws to monitor journalists in the first place. All of this comes shortly after David Cameron has passed new "emergency" surveillance laws to give police and other authorities stronger powers in the event of a terror attack.

In light of these egregious police abuses of laws meant for anti-terror, massive spending, and legislative overhauls that we've seen in the US and UK, it may seem like small potatoes to let Toronto cops carry their pistols when they head out to play laser tag. But, as always, anti-terror regulations create a slippery slope that we don't need to engage simply because of a couple of relatively minor—albeit scary and tragic—extremist crimes.

With the threat of radicalized individuals committing violent acts on Canadian soil becoming more tangible, it's crucial that our law enforcement agencies take a tempered approach to policing these crimes.

So, while it's a good thing to see TPS Chief Bill Blair shut down the Union's request to allow cops to bring their guns with them everywhere they go, it probably won't be the last such request coming from the Union. And one would expect new federal legislation could allow even more intense powers to be granted sometime soon, if Harper's vow to beef up security is to be believed.

@patrickmcguire

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A statue of the goddess Isis. Photo by ​Vasse Ni​colas

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

Unbelievably, despite all the attention and ​award-winning docum​entaries, some people are still really confused about what ISIS is. Like: Is it an extreme terror movement represented by the ghoul-like "Jihadi John," causing havoc in the Middle East? Or is it an innocuous-looking alternative therapy shop in Stockport? Because they are both called Isis, and the concept of two distinctly separate things sharing the same name is, to some, a mind-alteringly confusing one. Sandy vistas spattered with blood? ISIS. One of them diffuser things that blows steam that smells of lavender? Isis. But which one is the bad one? Which one?

ISIS--or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or the Islamic State, or most simply IS--is not just a knot of extremists operating in the Middle East behind a spate of kidnappings and beheadings in the area this year.  ​It's al​so the name of the dog from Downton Abbey. And a Thai-Irish fusion restaurant in Manchester. And a newsagent up the road from me. And the Egyptian* goddess of nature, motherhood, and magic.

So if, like me, you're the kind of mouth-breathing idiot who firebombs pediatricians' houses after misreading the Yellow Pages as some sort of oversized primary-colored sex offenders' register, then maybe you too could do with this primer--a guide I like to call, "Which one is the Bad ISIS, again?"

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Ellie the dog actor. Photo ​via Facebook

THE DOG OFF OF DOWNTON ABBEY: NOT THE BAD ISIS

It's been a confusing time for TV-watching non-beheaded white people in recent weeks. Like: the dog in Downton Abbey? That is called Isis. But now Isis the dog is ​being omitted from​ the Downton Christmas special, because apparently ITV think their viewers are so dumb that they will confuse a fictional Labrador for some sort of terrorist sleeper cell and send in letters of complaint. Yo, fuck that dog! That totally old-ass period drama dog is the worst! Boo! Boo to you, dog! Fuck that terror dog!

THE SPY AGENCY FROM ARCHER: NOT THE BAD ISIS

This isn't even the first time a TV show has had to shelve a fictional element of itself that was named, ostensibly, after the Greek goddess of love, light, and magic. Adam Reed--creator of the extremely excellent FX show Archer--confirmed the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS) ​wou​ld not be making an appearance in January's season six, partly because of the storyline, and partly because it's called ISIS, and people will confuse it with Bad ISIS, because people are largely morons. "We have a lot of ISIS merchandise," he said. "So I guess that's all going to a landfill somewhere."

THE DEFUNCT HARDCORE/METAL BAND: NOT THE BAD ISIS

​As Noisey has alrea​dy pointed out, there is a difference between the terror organization ISIS and the now defunct hardcore/metal band Isis. The key difference being: terror. But that hasn't stopped the now defunct hardcore/metal band Isis having to change their still funct Facebook page and moderate angry comments from the kind of people who didn't learn the art of shoelace-tying until about halfway through puberty. "It is an unfortunate situation," a label representative said. "A few less-than-enlightened people are not seeing the distinction between an inactive band of musicians and a band of terrorists involved in current world affairs."

A THAI-IRISH FUSION CAFÉ IN LEVENSHULME: NOT THE BAD ISIS

Isis Café in Manchester was one of the first name-related Isis victims, with the police warning the café owners in early October that they might want to consider changing their name to put distance between them and Bad ISIS. So they did. They changed it to Thairish. Thairish. "I have been explaining to people the name Thairish comes from the Thai in me and the Irish from [late husband Mike Lyons]," ​café owner ​Sa-Nguan said. But Thairish, though. Call it anything else. Call it "Terrorists Eat Free." Call it the "Osama bin Laden's Butty Bistro." Call it anything else. Call it anything that isn't "ISIS" or "Thairish." That's all you need to do.

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Photo via ​Janette Asc​he

THAT BIT OF RIVER THAMES RUNNING THROUGH OXFORD: NOT THE BAD ISIS

The bit of the River Thames that wends its way through Oxford is historically referred to as "Isis," because--historians reckon--the River Isis is what starts at the source in Dorchester before meeting the River Thame tributary in Aylesbury, where the two converge and become the River Thames. But that's fallen out of favor, and now the only people who call the River Thames "Isis" are Oxford University rowers, a sport for posh lads who want to pop their collars and shout but don't want to have to play rugby to do it. 

EVERY SINGLE WOMAN OR GIRL NAMED ISIS: NOT THE BAD ISIS

Obviously, because Isis is a goddess, there are thousands of girls worldwide whose parents beheld them as a baby and went, "Yeah, she's giving off a goddess vibe. Like: I was thinking 'Julie' was a good name, but looking at her now I'm thinking something more goddess-y. I literally think my child is so special that she should be named after a goddess." And all those Isis goddess babies are now all grown up and mad. Name campaigner Isis Martinez has been trying to get the media to stop calling Isis "Isis" because she is also called Isis, saying: "Imagine someone calling Isis out on an airplane? Our name is becoming synonymous with 'bomb.'" Yeah it's... it's not, really. But 37,000 signed her petition, so don't confuse any of them with a faceless terror organization.

AN ALTERNATIVE THERAPY SHOP IN STOCKPORT: NOT THE BAD ISIS

Actual quote from Derek Morgan, 52-year-old proprietor of Stockport-based candle-and-dangling-bell-shaped-crap-you-hang-from-your-ceiling shop, Isis: "At first it was just one or two people but now it is a steady trickle of people asking if we are connected to the group. Some are even accusing us of being terrorists." What kind of person accuses a joss stick purveyor of supporting terror?

What bothers me is the words "steady trickle of people." As if more than one person has wondered aloud, in a shop full of those clacking bead curtains I always get caught in at a party, whether the whole thing is a very cleverly disguised terrorist front. Have they looked at the selection of tiny little cymbals and the deodorant crystals and gone, "Hey, hold up. You're not a terrorist, are you? This chart about tongue color isn't a terrorist thing, is it? What about that candle shaped like a water lily?"

The ongoing ISIS confusion that peaked with the Downton Abbey dog proves this: there are so many thousands of idiot humans among us it's a wonder the planet isn't just constantly on fire. Because who is truly making it an issue that a café in Manchester has to change its name to "Thairish"? ISIS, with their beheadings? The media, with their misquotes? The police, with their warnings? Or just stupid idiots?

UPDATE 11/5: An earlier version of this article referred to Isis as a Greek goddess. She's actually Egyptian.

For an alternative education on ISIS, watch the VICE News documentary, The ​Islamic Sta​te​.

Follow Joel Golby on ​Twitter

Iqaluit is one of the most magical places in the entire country. Our crew, and Rich, had never been up so far beyond the tree line, and it was an incredible experience. Not only did Rich get to play an absolutely insane party, in a yurt tent, five miles away from Iqaluit, in the middle of nowhere, he met with throat singers, a clothing designer, and Iqaluit's best band: The Jerry Cans. This is the final episode of our FACTOR-funded series, Tripping Out. Don't miss it. And we hope you enjoyed the series.

'Untitled,'1995, from the series 'Young Heroes'

Our favorite Finnish photographer, Jouko Lehtola, passed away in 2010. His photos were some of the most honest portrayals of Finnish youth we've ever seen.  
​
​ Before he passed away, Jouko had said: "I know that I'm not going to have kids, that my works are my children. My exhibitions and my images. They will live after I'm gone. In their own silent way they will tell what was relevant in me. How I saw and how I felt." ​

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'​Untitled (Under the Tree),' 1996, from the series 'Young Heroes'

Now  ​​the Jouko Lehtola Foun​dation is organizing an exhibition titled Jönssi at the ​Lasipalatsi G​allery in Helsinki. Jönssi opened last night, and its aim is to raise funds and offer grants to young documentary photographers so that Lehtola's spirit can live on through the work of others. Hundreds of prints will be available for sale at the exhibition, printed by Lehtola himself. 

Jönssi runs until November 16 at the Lasipalatsi Gallery in Helsinki, Finland. See more of Jouko's photos ​​here. 

'Untitled (Urban Youth),' 1998–1999, from the series'Young Heroes'

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'​Untitled (Panda Boy),' 1996, from the series'Young Heroes'

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Noi, a Thai people smuggler, on her boat. Photo by ​Joh​nny Miller

Business is booming in the dark corners of the internet. Since the closure of the original Silk Road in late 2013, around half a dozen dark markets have sprung up, all of which will sell you basically any drug in existence as long you have some bitcoin and a posting address. If you want a vial of liquid LSD, for instance, it's a lot more convenient to pull up OpenBaazar and order it on there than to wander around Glade Festival harassing strangers.

There's also evidence to suggest that the dark web is a much safer place to buy your drugs than on the street. Earlier this year, researchers from the University of Manchester and University of Montreal published  ​a paper that claimed "The Silk Road's [...] virtual location should reduce violence, intimidation and territorialism [in the drug trade]." The study also points out that the system of feedback and user ratings helped steer customers away from bad vendors and toward more trustworthy ones. 

But what about other illicit markets—could the deep web also make those safer? Every year, millions of migrants hire smugglers to transport them across borders. Much like the drug trade, this market is notoriously violent, so could a crypto-market designed to match illegal migrants with smugglers make the experience physically safer for those who want to uproot?

According to Professor David Decary-Hetu, one of the Silk Road study's authors, "[a similar] system could help—through public feedback of smugglers and the use of  ​escrow services—to hold on to the payments until the illegal migrants have reached their destination."

I should clarify here exactly what human smuggling is, as it's a term that's sometimes confused with human trafficking. Human smuggling implies the consent of both parties. These are people who want to migrate to a new place but do not have official permission to do so. Human trafficking is when people are forced to migrate against their will, often being forced into sex work or otherwise held captive. Some traffickers may pose as smugglers to kidnap their would-be clients.

Human smuggling, often synonymous with illegal migration, is, understandably, often intertwined with politics. However, in a more general sense, it's simply people—both good and bad—moving away from a shitty situation and onto a better one. Even the most  extreme supporters of closed borders would be ill-pressed to decry the ​Underground Railroad during the era of slavery in the South, or Jews escaping Nazi Germany. These situations are still happening today—for example, Kurds fleeing into Turkey to escape the onslaught of the Islamic State. 

The VICE News film "Night Operation with a People Smuggler: Turkey's Border War"

Whether it's on a boat across the Mediterranean to Europe, a long way through the dessert to the United States or locked inside a container on a cargo ship from Asia, migrants will continue to smuggle themselves into places without permission. And thousands die trying every year;  ​more than 4,000 already in 2014, according to estimates from the International Organisation for Migration. 

I spoke with volunteers at a migrant shelter in Mexico about the dangers of a covert trip over the border. 

"Migrants ask around to see if they can find a smuggler recommended by a friend or family," Eduardo, a former migrant and smuggler explained. "But these people tend to move a lot or end up dead or in jail, so often you can't find someone you know, so you have to take a chance and go with a stranger. That's when it becomes dangerous. The smugglers have total control over you, and some of them are very bad people. They might rob you, or rape you. They could leave you in the desert to die, or sometimes they work with traffickers and sell you into slavery. Migrants are always trying to figure out who to trust and who to stay away from."

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A refugee rights rally in Melbourne in 2013. Photo by Flickr user ​Takver

On the surface there are a lot of parallels with the drug trade and human smuggling. Both continue to increase, despite increased pressure from law enforcement. Both are dangerous. Both could possibly become safer via a reputation based system that acts as a type of self-regulation among community members.

A digital black market for human smuggling would face some daunting challenges, though. Decay-Hetu explained: "A crypto-market for illegal migrants and smugglers would have to somehow vet the people looking to use the service so that no undercover agent is sent as a fake illegal migrant. While it may be possible, I think it would be very difficult to do."

"Another problem," according to Jason DeLeon, a University of Michigan professor, "is it's such a long and winding chain, and one migrant might pass through many hands." 

Jason directs the  ​Undocumented Migration Project, a study of clandestine migration between Mexico and the United States. "But if there was something like [a digital black market] that people could go to, it would change the game. Anything that can add accountability to the smugglers would be in the best interest of the migrants; right now there really is no recourse."

The VICE film "Mexico's Other Border," about the journey of Central American migrants through Mexico and into the States

Since the collapse of the original Silk Road, the emerging generation of crypto-markets have been evolving quickly. The Silk Road was a centralized system and was taken down after the arrest of a site admin. Something like ​OpenBazaar, however—which released its Beta 2.0 last month—allows individual users to each run their own "shop." Its decentralization and more advanced security features make it much harder—if not impossible—for authorities to control or shut down the network. 

There's a learning curve to the access and use of crypto-markets on the deep web, and illegal migrants—who are often poor and lacking in access to modern amenities—generally aren't known for their technological skills. 

Decay-Hetu sees "a small minority of people not making it onto [the deep web] or buying bitcoins, but for the most part I think it won't be a problem—at least at this point in time." 

DeLeon is even more confident: "The newer generations are much more tech savvy," he said. "I think even if there wasn't a conscious attempt, I wouldn't be surprised if [a digital black market] happened anyway. People are already on the internet talking about which smugglers to trust. We shouldn't think about it as a hypothetical, it's already starting to happen."

It's clear that the tools and ideas are already there, ready to be exploited—but there are still plenty of hurdles to overcome. It's unclear if an online, reputation-based system for human smuggling is possible, how popular it would be and how it would affect the safety of those who used it. But we're inching closer to finding out. 

The sons and daughters of the middle class have over the last few years uncovered a new pursuit to keep them busy and feeling good about themselves: Photographing their food, and posting it on your blog alongside a write-up.

This represents a sea change in how we talk about the things we put in our mouths. Back in the 20th century (ages ago, when I was young), there was a food guide called Zagat where people would write in their restaurant ratings. The Zagat Guide would compile these together with pithy quotes about the joint in question. A lot of people, especially in New York City, would utilize this guide as their sole cue to where they were going to have dinner. The problem with the Zagat was that the people who contributed their opinions about restaurants were the people who liked to contribute opinions about restaurants. People who could not be trusted to steer you on a worthy course, in other words—people who routinely mistook the picturesque for the sublime. Nowadays this is the norm: Food bloggers, food instagrammers, hell, anyone who describes himself as a "foodie" can under no circumstance be trusted to midwife your next meal.

If a restaurant is declaring itself as tasty and cozy, and presents the insignia and symbols of tastiness and coziness, then people who visited the restaurant in meatspace will declare it tasty and cozy in cyberspace no matter what the food tasted like or how it felt to eat there. This has to do with how the web makes us feel: The mass distribution of our opinions makes us feel omnipotent, like we can control the discourse in the same manner as a paranoid schizophrenic chooses the direction cars turn from the vantage point of his bedroom window. Every food photo or blog entry or Yelp comment feels as if we've yet again made our humdrum existence important through connoisseurship. And then the snowball starts rolling. Every dinner is now a media event as well as a meal. With Instagram a meal can be a media event while you are in the midst of noshing. This becomes competitive really quickly, between friends, between strangers, and between the friend-strangers who constitute the totality of our online communication. This accumulating one-upmanship leads to a online food culture desperate for novelty.

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Food blogging is not about communication, not about food as communion, nor is it about sharing enthusiasm. It's about showing off. You've done something other people haven't done. You've eaten something other people haven't eaten, you've experienced something other people haven't experienced. Soon, of course, this desire to flaunt your life online bleeds over into your decisions in your real life. You choose restaurants and eating experiences that mingle novelty and gestures of authenticity. Possibly as an attempt to silence those doubting squeaky-balloon noises in your head that are telling you your choices as a consumer are of no importance to anyone but yourself.

Cue what I'm going to call "stupid food."

You drank a bloody mary made from pigs' blood.

You ate a grilled sausage of salmon guts that was made right in front of you.

You chose huitlacoche as the topping on your pizza.

You dined at a restaurant that was harder to get into than Blofeld's sub-oceanic lair.

You ate that 25-course tasting menu at that impossible-to-get-into Bushwick invite-only restaurant where a customized vinyl-only soundtrack accompanied each course and each glass of wine, and you had to pretend to have heard of every chateau in every micro-growth region of Borneo.

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Stupid food makes you feel afraid that you are stupid about food, and that your pals and peers and work buddies are all eating tastier, more authentic, and weirder foodstuffs than you. And that this somehow has something to do with your social status. 

A lot of this can be chalked up to the stressfulness of these heady years in your 20s, the frenetic, hectic pace that the world demands. You have to be worldly while still fresh out of college. No more lingering residue of child, now only a bon vivant, a connoisseur, someone in the know, someone who knows. Someone who knows more. Maybe more than you, so better to trump them with your insider knowledge before they trump you with theirs—which is how you end up howling about the right amount of quail eggs stirred into the shaved yak tartare atop an aged oaken table in some hip new sincerity restaurant.

The flipside of this form of conspicuous consumerism is the dudebro yearning for booze that tastes like toasted marshmallow and candy. Food bloggers and basic dudes who pound protein shakes and Fireball in equal measure may despise each other, but they're basically the same when in comes to seeing mastication as a form of tribalism. 

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A place that titty-twists comfort food with luxury ingredients will always serve stupid food. If the restaurant deconstructs childhood foods or fast food items with a restauranteur je ne sais quoi, then you can immediately identify it as a stupid food establishment.

The motive behind these food businesses seems to be to provide fresh-out-of-college millennials with something picturesque to do, something they feel proud and entrepreneurial about. Something to tell people at dinner parties or at the bar that they are doing that sounds cool, ahead of the curve:

"I own a food truck. We serve Korean-Mexican fusion tacos."

"I've opened a speakeasy in Crown Heights. You have to whistle the first bar of 'Careless Whisper' to be let in."

"Oh, I just opened a restaurant with my college roommate. We are a omnivore-locavore bistro specializing in offal prepared in the Northern Portuguese style."

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So what is so bad about that? Well: All these spots are curated. The meals are curated. Getting into the restaurant is curated. Ordering drinks is curated. That guy over there isn't your waiter, he is your food and drink curator. These people are selling you things to eat and drink and acting as they are doing you a favor, as they are experts and you are a lowly peon who is lucky that you even knew the location of their establishment.

I wonder if this is because the sons and daughters of the middle class are now working in a service industry, and thus feel compelled to describe those jobs as the height of bourgeois refinement? I mean, running a food cart back in the 50s was a pretty low-grade job—no way in hell you could brag about that at a dinner party. Same with restaurant work. Or selling coffee in a coffee shop. 

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One of these businesses goes out of business every 20 minutes or so, and that is sad. These post-college dingbats borrowed money from their moms and dads and grandparents to realize an entrepreneurial dream, a cozy vision of a place in meatspace where all the community we crave (and never get) in cyberspace can be delivered to us. It is possible that the elitist connoisseur stance of most new sincerity restaurants and cyber-foodies is the result of a deep-rooted yearning to experience the sublime through food, and that they (we) end up getting lost in the picturesque of alienated consumption instead, is just more society-of-the-spectacle stuff: The basic humanness of sharing enthusiasm for food getting lost in translation. This goes for customer as well as restaurateur.

I think that when food bloggers food-blog, they aren't just curating a meatspace experience, they are translating said experience into an exclusionary  white middle-class patois that only really exists in cyberspace. They are turning the physical sensation of tasting something nice into a public spectacle, a status symbol. It's not what you eat, it's about how you eat it and how you tell everyone what you're eating.

Calvin Trillin, who might be the tastiest food writer in this nation, once wrote about how he'd sit in a Michelin-starred something or other, eating a free-range something or other with a truffled something or other, sipping on a perfectly temperatured something or other, wondering why all of it doesn't taste as good or vibe as nice as the sausage-and-peppers hero you had for lunch at Parisi Bakery.

And that is my answer to the new foodie culture. When people tell you about a new restaurant, tell them about an old restaurant, when people tell you about an exclusive restaurant, tell them about a non-exclusive restaurant, and when people show you something tasty online, take them somewhere good to eat. 

Johan Kugelberg runs the project space/archiving company ​Boo-H​ooray. They are hosting a show in collaboration with Emory University of William Burroughs Cut-Ups that opens on Thursday at their Manhattan Gallery. Follow him on ​Tw​itter.

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​​Peter von Tiesenhausen. Photo via Brandy Dahrouge.

​It's no secret the Canadian energy industry's pipeline development is rife with controversy. Enbridge, the company behind the Harper-approved Northern Gateway Pipeline and the ever-controversial Line 9, commits an average of 73 hydrocarbon spills per year. An internal memo from Natural Resources Canada conceded that tailing ponds from oil sands production are leaking into Alberta groundwater, while Enbridge's Line 9 Pipeline has a "high risk of rupture" in its early years.

Many of the proposed or existing pipelines run through, or nearby, protected First Nations' land—which bears the full environmental and cultural brunt of their construction. Despite being protected by Canadian c​ourts, the federal government continues to issue permits, without consultation, on unsurrender​ed First Nations' land. And in June 2014, Vancouver police performed an arme​d raid of the home of anti-pipeline Kwakwaka'wakw activists for suspicion of "graffiti vandalism paraphernalia." Plus, in Alberta, thousands of workers employed by oil companies are facing a housing crisis.

Anti-pipeline movements, like the 700 km march across Canada, indig​enous lawsuits, and encamp​ments that stand directly in the path of pipeline development, are part of a gruelling battle inspiring people across Canada to action. One such Canadian is artist Peter von Tiesenhausen, a sculptor, painter, and video/installation artist based in Demmitt, Alberta, who has managed to keep pipeline developers off his land for 17 years through a combination of art and legal acrobatics.

In 1996, Peter claimed legal copyright over his land as a work of art, forcing pipeline developers to do expensive rerouting around it ever since. To meet with him, he charges land developers $500 an hour. When I heard about Peter's clever and inspiring pushback against the pipelining giants, I had to know more. So, I reached out to him over the phone to learn what it's like to beat industry conglomerates at their own bureaucratic game with your art, and where it fits in to the larger picture of the Canadian pipelining conflict.

VICE: So what triggered your copyright claim?
Peter von Tiesenhausen: Before the copyright, my wife and I were getting approached by someone every two to three weeks with a project proposal for our land, and because we were ignorant kids or whatever, we did allow a small pipeline through, under certain conditions we agreed upon over the table. When I finally looked at the contract, it had none of those conditions on it—they had just built on their terms and walked away.

So when I told a friend about all this she said, "Well you should just copyright your land like the architect, Cardinal, who was trying to copyright his church in Red Deer." So the next few times I was faced by these guys, and they're threatening me with arbitration, that memory came back to me and I just blurted it out without any kind of legal understanding. I did my research after that and actually claimed copyright.

As an artist in Canada you automatically have copyright over your own creations for up to 50 years after your death. So if you create something you retain copyright unless you sell it. So that was the part of that law that we decided to enforce.

So how did you claim your actual land as a work of art? 
​One of the really important pieces on my land was this white-picket fence. The picket fence is probably 100 yards or less, within 100 yards of where they wanted to build this pipeline. I [plan to] extend it 8 feet every year for the rest of my life and I've been doing that for 25 years. It got me thinking, where does this piece end? Does it end at the actual structure of the fence or the things growing around it, growing through it, that are part of the photography, the documentation of it? I realized at that point that [the fence], and the other sculptures and pieces and incursions and conceptual works, were actually integral to that piece of land and to my practice.

I had not intended for it to be a political piece, it was just a piece, an idea the follow-through of which at some point became poetic, you go, "Wait a minute the fence actually stopped them!" But the fence doesn't actually enclose anything. It's just a straight line. And it's marking something that's actually unmarkable, which is time. And one day it'll be gone, as will I. The land will be changed--but it was just this crazy irony that kicked into play when I was standing there with those oil negotiators.
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​​Peter's white-picket fence. Photo via the author.

And how did the oil negotiators respond?
​They came back and offered me a huge amount of money, after talking with their lawyers, I imagine. I told them it's never been about money. When you refuse it, they don't know what to do. They actually have no idea what to do next. What was interesting was seeing how much money they offered, and seeing my values measured in some degree gave me a huge amount of confidence and I started selling artwork. My sales started to go like crazy and within a short period of time I made the amount they offered legitimately through the sale of my work. Instead of compromising and have a line in the ground forever, marking out what your sellout point is.
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​When did you start charging $500 an hour for meetings? 
​​Right after my copyright claim, I had a good friend come to me and say, "OK, say a real estate agent comes and says, 'I'm gonna buy your land and this is how much I'm gonna pay you,' and you have to take it." That would never happen! Nowhere else but pipeline drilling does that kind of thing even get proposed. Like you guys are all getting paid around the table and I'm the only guy that doesn't want to be here, and I'm not getting paid. That's ridiculous! Lets turn this around. You wanna meet with me, you gotta pay.

And you're ruining my day here. I actually have a really hard time working in the studio after I've been agitated by a bunch of guys that want to just wreck the place. So I said, "Well, OK I'll meet with you and the rate is 500 dollars an hour. And the answer straight ahead, I'll tell you now, will be no." And for a while they're willing to take that risk, but after two or three meetings when they realize the answer is going to be no, they stop asking for meetings because they're quite expensive. So far we've been able to keep them at bay, and they don't bother us at all anymore.

Your community is situated in a popular Canadian drilling region. Has there been more conflict there, apart from yours?
There's been all kinds of stuff that's happened in my area that never hits the papers. Supposedly, ​someone blew up a pipe just across​ the border in Tomslake, BC. And there was one sour gas well that blew right on the same road two or three kilometers from the alleged bombing site. The pipe actually blew out from sand corrosion on an elbow from fracking—they hadn't cleaned it out properly—and that thing blew for eight hours. The people in that area had to self-evacuate. Nobody came. Even when they called 911 they didn't come. Eight hours of "jet engine" blasting of sour gas into the atmosphere. Cattle lost their fetuses, horses got sick, and one of the women who lives nearby is sick, probably for life.

It's just unreal what those people have been through. Raids in the middle of the night—I even had special investigators [who were looking into the bombing] come to my house in the middle of the afternoon and demand my DNA. Two guys showing up with briefcases and a flashy red pickup. I told them you better have a warrant if you want my DNA. Anyone who ever wrote anything to Alberta health officials or complained was investigated during the time of those bombings in the Tomslake area. A lot of people got interrogated very intensely. I was lucky probably because of my media ties.

So there's a big history of this in your area.
Oh yeah. We had a gas leak at the gas plant just down the road that leaked for ten years. Ten years! And I complained minimum weekly. During that time my son was born with a congenital heart defect, which is what he had an operation for three days ago. And this is his fourth operation as a 21-year-old man. The first one was three months, second at three years, third at 15, and now at 21.

Every time I complained they would try to figure out what it was, and they always said, "Yes, there's SO2 and other chemicals in the air, but they're well within Alberta guidelines." So, OK my wife wretching in the garden and my son born with a congenital heart defect, and my other son develops asthma? I have my belief where it came from, but I can't prove it. The studies aren't being done because they don't want to find out that it's a problem. Some people are more sensitive? Well that's just the cost of business maybe to them.
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​What's it like to have been in so many battles like this throughout your life? 
​We could launch some kind of legal suit, but I really just want to make art. I don't want to fight my whole life. I'm all about having fun. I just want to have a good time, but at the same time within that, you can change the world, well maybe not the world, but you can have some influence. I think about those people who walked 700km [to protest pipelines]; you can't tell me they didn't have fun along the way. It's not all bleak, there is change coming.

Do you think there's hope for other Canadians who are in battles over pipeline development?
​Oh man, I'm telling you there's never been more hope. There's never been more hope in my existence because there's a consciousness arising. There's people all over the place demonstrating, the occupy movements... they might not know what to do, I mean they're directionless quite often, but shit is hitting the fan. Look at Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest,for example, who says it's the biggest uncharted movement in the history of the planet.

Stuff is gonna change. It has to. Because we won't survive if we don't. So I have to believe that it's possible because I have kids. I mean what's the point of keeping Alex alive, and taking him into this surgery if there's no hope? Of course there's hope. I think it's gonna be frickin' awesome. I think the future is going to be fun, actually I'm gonna have a blast as long as I'm around.

And yes, I'm gonna see the restrictions that we have as possibilities. In the same way that, in a time where my community was dysfunctional, my partner and I led the construction of a community centre in our community made from recycled and local materials where people get married now. What you can do is see everything as an opportunity, everything as a potential raw material, whether it's people, politics, or a situation.

@keefe_stephen

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Photo via Flickr user Generation X-Ray

On Tuesday, scientists in Paris claim to have discovered the genetic mechanism that allows for a "​spontaneous cure" among a very rare group of HIV-infected patients called "elite controllers." These people belong in a fewer-than-1-percent group. They are able to keep the virus inactive in their bodies, with virtually undetectable symptoms.

The two asymptomatic patients studied in this case were a 57-year-old man diagnosed in 1985, and a 23-year-old man infected in 2011. The scientists have stated the phenomenon isn't new. However,  they've detailed new findings in medical journal Clinical Microbiology and Infection, writing that the virus was inactive due to an altered HIV gene coding that prevented it from replicating in immune cells. This spontaneous evolution is called "endogenization." The claim states this could be the result of the stimulation of an enzyme—a method that could possibly be used for a future AIDS cure.

"The work opens up therapeutic avenues for a cure, using or stimulating this enzyme, and avenues for identifying individuals among newly infected patients who have a chance of a spontaneous cure," they wrote. This is a different approach from previously attempted cures, which aimed to eradicate all traces of HIV from the body. The researchers believe that, instead, it may actually be the persistence of HIV DNA that could cure infected patients. To further their study, the scientists have called for "massive sequencing" of human DNA, particularly from African patients who have been exposed to HIV the longest.

It's not a foolproof method, and we could still be far from a real AIDS cure. There are still many scientists who are dubious about the findings. For one, Jonathan Ball, molecular virology professor at University of Nottingham, has told AFP that there is no real evidence of a cure in their work. Others, like Sharon Lewis, Director of Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, say that the real battle now is finding the right protein for "crippling the virus." Only time, and a lot more research, will tell.

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