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Noel "Razor" Smith

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

On a late summer's morning in South London, I sat down with Noel "Razor" Smith for a full English and an entire pack of Marlboro Reds.

At 14 years old—the age he was jailed for the first time—Noel was written off by a prison governor as someone who'd spend the rest of his life in and out of the correctional system. At the time, the governor may have had a point, but Noel has spent the past few years proving him wrong.

After a combined 32 years in jail, mostly for armed robbery offenses, the 54-year-old is now an author and the assistant editor at ​Inside ​Time, the UK's national prison newspaper. Over breakfast, he talked me through his life in crime, his involvement in the paper and how he thinks Britain's prison system should be reformed.

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Two recent front covers of Inside Time

VICE: Hi Noel. What was the first thing you were imprisoned for?
​Noel Smith: For stealing a moped and for attempted burglary of an off license. It sounds clichéd, but prisons are universities of further criminal education. My first time inside, I met a geezer who was into armed robbery and had access to guns, so when I got out I bought a gun off him. I started robbing shops, rent offices... it just went on and on.

But you were caught again eventually.
​Yeah, I was captured at the age of 16 and given a three-year sentence for armed robbery and possession of a firearm. When I got out at 19, what was there for me to do other than go back to crime?

You were put in solitary at 17 for trying to escape. What effect did that have on you?
​It's just a horrible existence. I tried to commit suicide when I was in there. I ripped off the metal bit of the door, sharpened it up on the wall and tried to rip the veins out of my arm. It was a horrifying experience, and I think it affected my whole life. Once I got out in 1980, that was it: I was just a hardened, dyed-in-the-wool criminal.

So those first few years inside gave you no incentive to stay on the straight and narrow?
​No, the opposite: they gave me the tools to reoffend. It gave me the attitude, it gave me the connections: "Go out and commit more crime, because we ain't teaching you nothing good in here."

Can you tell me about Inside Time?
​Inside Time is a prison newspaper that was set up in the wake of the ​Strangeways prison riots in 1990. During the inquiry, one of Lord Justice Woolf's recommendations was that prisoners should have a platform to get their views aired. Prison is a very closed society—you're not allowed to speak to the press, they tape your phone calls, they search your mail—so he said there should be somewhere where prisoners can be confident to ask a question and get a proper answer, as well as putting their own views forward.

When did you first get involved?
​I wrote a letter to the first issue and had it published, which was the first thing of mine I'd ever seen in print. I loved it. The paper originally started with eight pages, and now there are 85.

What's the process of putting each issue together?
Inmates send handwritten letters and I type them up. We get between 350 and 450 letters per issue, but we've only got room for about 26, so I go through them to look for the interesting ones. Ones that make certain points that prisoners should know about. Also, prisoners and ex-prisoners write a lot of articles.

What purpose do you think it serves, besides people being able to air their views?
​The paper gives you a lot of information. I remember when I was in jail, everyone would look forward to the day it came out, because trying to find information in a prison is like trying to find information in a fucking hayfield, let alone a stack. So we take information and put it in the paper so everyone has access to it.

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Noel as a young man. Screen shot ​via

And can use it to better their circumstances?
​Yeah. I learned some great things as a reader. In Dartmoor, they kept cancelling exercise when it rained. I complained and they ignored me, so I wrote to Inside Time and asked, "What's the actual rule?" They said that the only time the prison can cancel exercise because of weather is if it's so bad that they can't see the fence from the exercise yard. I showed the response to the guards, and after that we got exercise every day. So that's how it helps: it gives you weapons to fight back.

A lot of the articles are prisoners talking about how bad conditions are. What are some of the worst things you've heard?
​We've had letters from people who are so hungry in prison because the budgets have been slashed so much that they're actually eating cockroaches and mice, or trying to catch pigeons that land on their cell windows. They're cooking them in their kettles. They can't leave their cells to even wash their dishes or plates, or whatever, without six screws with riot shields and all the gear on stopping them. Imagine spending every day living like that and then being released. Do you think you'd be a normal, upright, upstanding member of society? The damage is irreparable.

What do you think is the solution to stop people from reoffending?
​You've got to scrap everything we know about prisons. Of the 89,000-odd people in prison in the UK, there are probably 5,000 who are a danger to the public. Don't put people in prison if they're not a danger to anybody—it would cost us less. And people who have drug and alcohol addictions, or mental illness, treat them as such. Don't lump them all in as prisoners and criminals. And teach the youngsters a trade—give them something they can do with their lives. We also need some politicians who know what they're talking about.

Politicians who aren't so far removed from the circumstances that cause people to offend?
​Exactly. Judges are the same. They go from their stately homes to their public schools to Oxbridge. They have no clue about real life. They think, because of the lies the tabloids say, that we all sit at home with 50-inch color TV screens eating KFC every night and feeding it to the kids. I know people who are in abject poverty, and until we really address the balance between rich and poor—the powerful and the disenfranchised—we ain't gonna have any change in this country whatsoever.

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Secretary of State for Justice Chris Grayling. Photo via ​Wikimedia Commons

What are your thoughts on Chris Grayling, the current Justice Minister?
​When the Tories first got in, they got Ken Clark in as the Minister of Justice. He took a look at the problem and said, "Here's how we can fix it: we get prisoners out of their cells, we give them proper jobs in prison, we train them and educate them, and when we let them out maybe they won't reoffend."

Of course, the right wing press said it was mollycoddling, so Ken Clark's great vision was replaced by someone the red tops would love: a hard right-winger called Chris Grayling, who had no experience of the criminal justice system. The closest he'd come to prison was seeing an episode of Porridge. The spiteful bastard sat down and worked out a way to send prisoners almost back to the 1930s. He changed the incentive system and created prisons with less food budgets and less education.

A couple of months ago, after a rise in suicides and violence, ​he said there's "not a crisis in our prisons". What do you make of that?
​ I can't believe he has the nerve to say that what he's doing has no correlation to the fact that suicides and assaults have risen. He's fucked the system so bad that it's going to take another 12 years to fix it. It's incredible this man still has the job. Mind you, unlike some politicians, he realized early on that no one gives a toss about prisoners. The only people I've met like him have been actual criminal masterminds who don't end up in prison.

What was your personal turning point?
​I've been out for four and a half years now, which is the longest I've been out since 1976. I was in the upper echelons of armed robbery firms. I'd been given life for a series of bank robberies—in which I stole a vast amount of money with a gang called The Laughing Bankrobbers—then got out after 11 years and went back in for life again on the two-strikes act after another set of robberies.

I was in Whitemoor prison, which is the most secure prison in Europe. It was full of infamous prisoners—most of them really violent people; 50-year sentences. So I'd kind of made it—I was one of the diamond geezers. I was with these people and they knew not to fuck around with me, and I quite enjoyed the life.

All of a sudden, I got news from the outside that my 19-year-old son Joseph had died in mysterious circumstances. It's very hard to explain how that feels. It's bad enough if you get that sort of news outside of prison, but I was stuck in this top security jail. It virtually destroyed me. I couldn't mourn in there because it's a sign of weakness.

I sat down and had a serious think. There were two ways I could go: I could become the worst fucker the prison system had seen since Charlie Bronson, attacking every screw that came near me, or I could try to look for rehabilitation. Luckily enough, the latter won out. Problem was, I didn't know how to start because I'd been a criminal all my life.

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So what came next?
​I discovered there was a prison called Grendon in Buckinghamshire, which is a therapeutic jail that has a great success rate at turning violent people around. They take people with severe personality disorders, which they define as behavior that you keep despite the fact it hurts you and others. I was a career criminal, so I fit the profile. They treated people with respect, and we did intense therapy every day.

What kind of issues did you work on?
​The main thing they tried to instill in you was victim empathy. When you're a criminal, you don't think of your victims. To you, they're not people, because if you personalize them it's another thing that will stop you from committing the crime. I ended up serving five years in Grendon, working on my son's death and the whole of my life. Eventually they sent me to a semi-open prison in Kent, where I served a further two years. I went through depression for a while, as all long-term lifers do when they first get out. My aim is to stay out for the rest of my life.

And to give a voice to people who otherwise wouldn't have one.
​Yeah, exactly. I know that prisoners aren't attractive to the outside world, but the message I try to get across is that you're only one missing council tax payment away from being a prisoner yourself. Anyone can become a criminal, but they're not monsters. Well, some of them are, but a very small minority who are never getting out.

Most are ordinary disadvantaged people who have serious problems in their lives, and I think it's wrong that they're demonized by people who should know better—by people who hold the power. These are supposedly educated people doing these things, and they're not even sneaky about it; they just say, "What are you going to do?" They're worse than robbers. At least Dick Turpin wore a fucking mask.

Follow Daisy-May Hudson on ​Twitter

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​When Australian photographer ​Joel Bouchier travelled to Papua New Guinea this year he ended up living in a highland village whose economy was largely built around growing weed. A dispute a decade earlier had left many of the local kids orphaned, and they were brought up by young adults in the vilalge who taught them to smoke, grow, and sell weed. The practice has provided an income to a community that would be considerably worse off without it. But it also feeds into the country's larger problem of young kids abusing drugs. While staying with them Joel shot a polaroid series that he's now showing Melbourne as part of the 2014 Independent Photography Festival.

VICE: So why Papua New Guinea?
​Joel Bouchier: It's always been on my radar, it's in close proximity to Australia but I hadn't seen much published on it. I just really wanted to get up into the highlands, I didn't know what I was going to find. I went up with my camera and went for it. I didn't have any ideas what that story would be.

How did you meet the young men and boys cultivating weed?
​Initially man, I'd been traveling for about a week, had no photos, and was getting nothing. I was stranded, broke, I literally couldn't afford accommodation and I had two weeks to stay there. I was waiting for dusk and this guy sort of stumbled over and started talking to me. I asked him where he lived and he told me and said I could  come see. I picked up my bags and went for a trek through a few rivers, up mountains, through the jungle, and then got to this village.

This guy had just brought a white guy into the village and everyone was really stoked. I was gonna stay for an hour and they sort of made me stay a night, so I was like: I'll just stay here for a month. I didn't start photographing straight away; I took my time and paid respect. Once I took a shot everyone saw the image and then wanted one. It was really quite easy in a way.

​Zack Arias talks about how Polaroid is such a social tool because you can just give a photo instantly.
​I always just wanted to shoot Polaroid. I gave them that hard copy and they'd never seen themselves in a photo like that. It just unlocked doors.

Was it complicated to frame a story like that—about drugs and kids but not totally negative?
​You gotta put that area into context: Even though it's under government control, it's been untouched for hundreds of thousands of years. It's only in the past 50 years that it's been sort of governed by law.

The story I found was that a lot of these kids didn't have parents. There was a fight in that village over a coffee plantation eight or nine years ago so all those young kids who've grown up now were six or seven when they lost their parents.

There were a few older boys who were 20 or 30, and they brought these kids up and they all smoked marijuana. They're a product of their environment—they grew up like that. 

Is marijuana used differently there than it is in Australia?
It's more on the side of addiction. They've done it for so long, to them they think it's just like tobacco, it's something that's been done for hundreds of years. I just think some of us misinterpret it. It actually is a drug that can be harmful to them, especially with the amount they're smoking. There were kids who were eight or nine smoking from when they woke up to when they go to sleep. They just smoke marijuana all day long. It's pretty frightening in that aspect. 

I grew up in rural New Zealand, and there're similarities there, there were stoner six-year-old kids.
​I think it's definitely a way to pass the day. In half these areas alcohol is expensive and hard to get—especially for communities that don't have a monetary system. Weed is their first choice just because of ease of access. And I guess family history.

Did you ever feel unsafe?
​I'd say Port Moresby is... there's definitely something there. I did see a car get jacked by people who ran out of a bush, holding up a goods truck. I saw people chase a woman and her family out of town because they thought they were sorcerers or witches. Some of their practices were just very medieval. It could be dangerous in the city, but I sort of took it as it was. IYou'd meet the odd white person and they'd just tell you to watch out and all these horrific stories. I tried not to listen to that because I was already there.

Joel's series ​Kuka Boys will be showing at ​Loose Leaf from November 11 to 16 as part of the ​2014 Independent Photography Festival.

Follow Ben Thomson on ​Instagram.

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Photo via Flickr user Chris Beckett

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

​ "Last year, my friend was attacked by a client and was nervous to keep working alone, so I let her work from my place along with me, for safety," says Toni of the Sex Worker Open University. "Unfortunately, we encountered another aggressive client who really frightened us. I threatened to ring the police, but the guy said it would be us who'd be in trouble. He knew the law, and that took our power away; because there were two of us, we were technically running a brothel."

Toni's story isn't unusual. Recent reports estimate that a sex worker is attacked or raped every day in the UK. Exact numbers are hard to pinpoint, however, given that—like Toni—many don't report crimes to the police.

No doubt you already have your own take on prostitution. Maybe you think it's patriarchal oppression at its cock-swinging, woman-objectifying worst. Perhaps you think it's an enviable, glamorous job that might help you blast through your student loan repayments if only you had the guts to do it yourself. Or maybe you think it's just something that people do to get by, whether of their own volition or because someone else is pulling the strings. Regardless, it's probably safe to say—whatever your opinion—that you don't like the idea of women routinely facing violence.

To give everyone the benefit of the doubt, let's assume this was the motivation behind plans taken to Parliament on Tuesday that would have made the buying of sex a criminal offense. Put forward by Labour MP Fiona Mactaggart, the amendment to the Modern Slavery Bill centered on her previously stated belief that "80 percent of women in prostitution are controlled by their drug dealer, their pimp, or their trafficker" (statistics that have been  ​thoroughly debunked).

Mactaggart's proposal prompted an outcry and a wave of activism. Sex workers, academics, women's charities, representatives from the NUS, the Women's Institute and several LGBTQ groups battled against the amendment, united on a key issue: safety.

In one corner, cozy-faced but zealous, was Mactaggart. Armed with questionable shock-statistics, Mactaggart believes that by ending demand, prostitution will be wiped out. In the other corner, sex workers themselves, angry that their views (yet again) are being ignored, armed with the fact that criminalizing clients--as Sweden and, recently, Northern Ireland has done—is dangerous, driving prostitution underground and making women  ​even less likely to report attacks.

The day was a triumph for sex workers. Faced with a clear lack of support, Mactaggart dropped her proposal and, for now, buying sex in the UK remains legal. Even without the arrival of the "Swedish Model: of legislation, however, things in the UK are far from rosy for those in the sex industry. Selling sex isn't illegal, but running a brothel, soliciting, and pimping are. This means that women can be prosecuted for working together in a flat and street workers can be slapped with fines or  ​AS​BOs.

"In terms of actually being on the job, it's rape, battery, and theft that we fear the most," says Toni. "On another level, it's evictions, criminal sanctions, loss of custody of children, being fired from other jobs or outed to our family."

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Photo by Giorgio Viscardini

Ultimately, the goal for sex workers is full decriminalization, meaning any premises would be legal to work from, and teaming up with coworkers for safety would no longer be a prosecutable offense. Tantalizingly, decriminalization  ​was brought up in Parliament on Tuesday by MP John McDonnell, who supported the challenge to Mactaggart. In reality, though, there's still a long way to go.

So where does that leave us? Back in Toni's flat with a violent client, not feeling able to call the police? Or maybe with Sheila Farmer, a woman who was raped, tied up, and strangled by an attacker while working alone, but prosecuted for brothel keeping after she set up a safer working flat with friends. Or with Hanna Morris, also charged with managing a brothel after she reported an arson attack in her home.

"As sex workers, our experience of the police is horrific," says Niki Adams of the English Collective of Prostitutes. "There's been very little indication that police are interested in our protection. Often, when sex workers come forward to report rape and violence, instead of their attackers being investigated, they face prosecution for loitering, soliciting, or brothel keeping."

This feeling is echoed throughout the industry. One sex worker I spoke to told me that, although she's here legally on a work visa from India, police turned up at her home and were so determined that she'd been trafficked that they referred her case to the Home Office, ignoring her protestations.

In Scotland, where a proposal to criminalize clients was put forward but defeated last year, sex worker and activist Laura Lee describes policing as "appalling."

"There's huge distrust towards the police in Scotland," she says. "And they only have themselves to blame."

Police claim to be sorting out their act. "The horrendous murders of five young women in Ipswich in 2006 was a real eye opener to law enforcement, and other services, of the need to improve our response to vulnerable sex workers," a spokesperson for the Association of Chief Police Officers said. "Since then we've seen great progress in the way in which prostitution is dealt with across the country."

Adams isn't impressed. "The only thing that's improved with the police is their PR," she says.

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Illustration by ​Cei Willis

Attempts to build bridges with the police are underway. Earlier this year, a man was sentenced to ten years in prison for the rape of a London sex worker, thanks to National Ugly Mugs (NUM). The system allows sex workers to anonymously report cases of abuse so that a national alert can be issued via SMS and email. NUM works in conjunction with the police, who've been able to make arrests as a result. Police feed information back in, alerting NUM when an offender is released from jail and matching sex workers' reports with dangerous individuals they have on file. Since the project began in July of 2012, more than 1,100 incidents have been reported.

Adams is wary, however, suggesting police may have an agenda behind their cooperation with NUM and similar projects. And her skepticism isn't groundless; last year, police conducted months of "welfare visits" to working flats in Soho, with dire consequences to those they questioned.

"On the face of it, they were asking sex workers whether they were experiencing any trouble and if they'd been trafficked," Adams says. "But actually, they were asking women for their names, finding out how much they were earning, how often they worked, who they worked with.

"When it came to the closure orders [which resulted in 18 premises being raided and shut down], every single scrap of information they'd collected in the course of those visits became the legal bundle that they used in court to evict women. If you know that, how can you not be suspicious?"

Pointing out that sex workers use NUM anonymously, Alex Bryce--the project's director of services--says that until the decrim-dream is realzsed, schemes like his are a good compromise. "Given the choice between working with the police to save the lives of sex workers and advocating for better policing, or having no links with the police for ideological reasons and not influencing them at all, I know which option I'd choose," he says.

At present, we're stuck with a situation in which certain aspects of prostitution remain illegal and, as such, sex workers' lives and bodies are subject to policing and  ​enforced "rehabilita​tion." Crimes are going unreported because women don't trust the police, and abusers have the system on their side.

The immediate battle is ensuring things don't get worse. Mactaggart will try again, says Toni; the Swedish Model is still a threat. With anti-sex work rhetoric often presented as feminism, and feminism the political T-shirt of choice in Parliament, success may depend again on appealing to a common concern for safety.

"We support full decriminalization," says Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape, one of the groups that battled the amendment. "The end result of Mctaggart's proposal would have been disastrous for women, taking choice away from sex workers to earn a living and promoting them as helpless victims. It's insulting to treat all women who've gone into sex work in that way. It's time feminists showed some respect."

Follow Frankie Mullen on ​T​witter.

​Just as a group called the "​Justice for Victims of Police Killings Coalition" was holding its fifth Annual Commemorative Gathering & Vigil in Montreal, the Quebec police ethics commission withdrew charges against eight Quebec law enforcement officers involved in investigating the fatal shooting of 18-year old Fredy Villanueva. Villanueva died in August 2008 when two young police officers tried to break up an illegal dice game in a Montreal North park. According to police testimony, the officer that shot Villanueva and wounded two others—Officer Jean-Loup Lapointe—claimed the 18-year-old was trying to disarm him. Witnesses, however, say that the police were under no threat and that Lapointe fired on the group without warning.

Civil unrest over the botched police operation led to rioting​ i​n that part of the city. Eventually, Quebec court Judge André Perreault wrote in a report that Villanueva's death was a "result of a multitude of circumstances of human nature, which, if considered on its own, cannot logically justify this result." However, after finding "human error" in multiple aspects of the fatal events, Lapointe was cleared of any wrongdoing and has since become a member o​f th​e SWAT team.

A recent ethics committee decisi​on, made public on October 28, stated that the newly appointed police ethics commissioner had concluded—after reviewing the case—that it would be "impossible to meet the burden of proof, that is to present clear and convicting evidence that each officer summoned had committed a fault in accordance to each charge."

The officers—six SPVM and two provincial Sûreté du Québec officers—were summoned in July 2013 in regards to two counts of derogatory acts that ran afoul of the police's code of cond​uct.

Jean-Loup Lapointe and Stéphanie Pilotte, who were involved in the Villanueva shooting, were not separated nor interrogated by investigators right away. The SQ investigators instead headed to the hospital to question civilians involved in the incident—including two who had also been hit by police bullets, but survived.

The coroner's report into the death of Villanueva, released in December 2013 after years of police obstruction to the public inquiry, stated that "inequities in the treatment of the key actors in the process and the failure to comply with procedures designed to insure equal treatment" had been "obstacles to finding the truth" in the Villanueva case.

Coroner André Perreault's report listed over a dozen irregularities in the procedure, including the fact that Lapointe's partner, Stéphanie Pilotte, only signed her report on August 15 and that Lapointe himself didn't file his own report—which was not submitted on the proper form and was neither verified nor dated—until September 4. Both officers filed their reports after having consulted with their attorney.

Having a lawyer vet police reports "provide police with impunity from the laws that govern the rest of us and leave families and communities to struggle with the violent deaths of their loved ones while police killers walk free—protected by the blue shield and an unjust legal system," the Coalition Justice For Levi Schaeffer argued in a landmark Supreme Court case that they won on Thursday December 19, 2013.

The outcome of the Villanueva case won't help make the police force more accountable for its actions nor will it help the public feel protected against police violence or abuse. In that sense, it is symptomatic of police systemic impunity: Lapointe and Pilotte have never been penalized for their conduct and for their lack of a proper investigation into the matter—and now the officers involved in botching the investigation are cleared of any wrongdoing.

It remains to be seen whether the long overdue independent investigation bureau, expected to be implemented in 2015, will bring any more accountability. Even so, the proposed bureau will far from meet demands from groups such as the Coalition Against Repression and Police Abuse who ask that "the people be given the power to lay criminal charges against police officers who take lives or cause severe bodily injuries."

One thing is for sure, with 2009​ statistics reporting less than 10 percent of complaints leading to investigations and over half of the investigations being closed right after the preliminary evaluation step, it doesn't seem that the police ethics commission is going to right the wrongs any time soon.

VICE contacted the ethics commission, the SPVM, and the fraternité des policier et policières de Montréal for comments. In their reply, the SPVM referred VICE to the ethics commission for comment. We did not get any other response before filing.
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​​@MAIS893

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One of America's favorite punching bags and its most reliable boogeyman isn't a person, an institution, or even the Fox sitcom Mulaney. It's the mysterious, shadowy "PC Army." This is the favored catch-all term to describe literally anyone who gets offended about anything that would have been acceptable behavior 20 years ago. Do you not like it when someone makes a joke about rape? Well, you're just being a big ol' pussyfart killjoy that needs to lighten up. Hate when a stranger tells you that you ​have a nice ass? Guess what? You're destroying freedom of speech, specifically my freedom to tell you you have a nice ass.

The PC Army is coming with their mind control drugs, Big Brother–style surveillance drones, and special episodes of Ellen about the psychological effects of bullying to force you into compliance. Soon, you won't be able to wear ​blackface on Halloween. Is this even America anymore?

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This week, comedian  ​Artie Lange ran afoul of the PC Army when he ​publicized a sexual fantasy he had about ESPN host Cari Champion. This probably would have gone unnoticed if not for the fact that Lange's erotic tale was a period piece set in the antebellum American South. In the fantasy, Lange was a cruel slavemaster and Cari Champion was his slave. His dream concludes when he cums and she escapes; small consolation for her years of servitude, but at least his id had the common decency to set her free. Maybe he could have gotten away with this whole thing if he'd also been blown to shreds with a shotgun like at the end of Django Unchained. (Quentin Tarantino gets away with whatever he wants as long as someone dies at the end.) Let this be a lesson for all of you out there planning to masturbate to slave fantasies this Christmas season.

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When a public figure gets scolded for saying something inappropriate, they'll always be able to flail his or her (mostly his) arms at the invisible prude that won't let them just say whatever they want. Lange refused to apologize to those he felt were unfairly lambasting him for merely "telling a joke." I happen to love jokes, particularly the ones that end with a money shot, but there is plenty of loathsome material passed off as humor—and I'm not just talking about the average comedy open mic in Los Angeles.

​Niggermania.com—your one-stop shop for all your favorite zingers, LOLs, and racist laugh 'em ups—contains such sterling wit as the following: "What do black men do after sex? Fifteen to life." The "it's just a joke" defense is clearly not an absolute when we live in a world where people retell one-liners from Niggermania at dinner parties, but just about any moralistic stance is open to interpretation. If I kick you in the nuts for cutting me in line at Subway, you could call that assault. I call it payback. See how that works? 

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Lange is not writing jokes for Niggermania.com (I imagine they're not  ​WGA signatories and Artie ain't no scab) and is not a racist, and because of that, he'd surely admit that there are some jokes that are offensive. Who gets to be responsible for where that line is? When we talk about the so-called "PC Army," we're really talking about the formless mass of slobbering zombies called "society." 

Laws are written by politicians and bureaucrats. They're enforced by trained, deputized government employees. When a law is unjust or a police officer behaves badly, we can grasp the mechanisms that allowed these things to happen. They can be changed through the democratic process (theoretically). Manners, on the other hand, are decided by...  ​Emily Post? Kate Middleton? Who is Artie Lange really mad at? The entire planet? We are all at the mercy of someone else's sense of propriety. If I fart on a train, people will be upset. There's just about nothing I can do to change their minds, save for giving them all free Jack in the Box coupons. Who decided that the word nigger wasn't OK to say? I guess we all kind of just agreed after a few hundred years? Some people still don't buy into that, like "Anthony from San Diego," who recently phoned in to CSPAN so he could ​call the president a nigger. Some people are a bit more artful with their deconstruction of the "system." Like Artie Lange, they're comedians.

Most comics get into their profession due to a contempt for order and a desire to subvert the establishment. Lenny Bruce, Joan Rivers, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, and George Carlin all became legends of the craft because they blazed trails and said things that weren't "PC" for their time. All of those comedians suffered for their efforts. Moral finger-waggers haven't taken over the world. They've been here all along. It's just that the line of acceptability keeps moving. Until we can all take a global vote on every single thing that is or could be offensive, there's going to be a "PC Army" hive mind that will push back against whatever the culture of the moment deems transgressive—be it a woman ​wearing pants or a woman ​not wearing pants. No matter what you do or say, there's going to be someone who's offended and you have to decide who you're going to choose to offend. The question for comedians, writers, artists, and anyone who says things in public is: What's actually worth fighting for?

Is it worth fighting for a world where a famous person can pound his pud to a basic cable TV personality and graphically describe his fantasy in the clear light of day? Lange has already suffered greatly for his comments. ESPN has banned him from ever appearing on their networks. The producers of Comedy Central's @Midnight removed him from a planned appearance this week. Was this the joke he wanted to go down for? Was it worth it? That's a personal choice, I guess, just like the number of times I used the word nigger in this article (fun game: can you spot all the times I said "nigger" in this article?) or which celebrities one chooses to masturbate to. 

The PC Army is not like a real army. They don't answer to government, to their superior officers, or the general public. They only answer to the passage of time. In 20 years, will we look back on Lange's predicament and say, "I can't believe how people overreacted to his joke," or will we ask, "How was anyone this stupid?" All I know for sure is that I'll probably be too depressed to get out of bed in 20 years.

The Most Racist Tweet of the Week:

[tweet text="teachers tell u to be honest but when u call em a dumb beaner they kick you outta class idgi" byline="— tet (@kneehighlover)" user_id="kneehighlover" tweet_id="528800146289483776" tweet_visual_time="November 2, 2014"]

Follow Dave Schilling on ​Twitter.

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​I met Amber at a party in LA, and when the "so what do you do?"part came up, she was not at all shy about informing me that she was an independent escort. She was in from San Francisco and had had a one-off client out here this afternoon, and would be heading back up the coast in the AM. Oh-ho? A fellow freelancer? I had so many questions. Where to begin?

Amber and I chatted a bit that night, but as it was our first interaction, I didn't feel comfortable enough to delve deep into the nitty-gritty. The next day, however, after looking at my bank statements, I wondered what sort of effort it would take to become a (straight, male) escort myself. We'd found each other on Facebook already, so I started asking her some questions. And the some more specific questions. And that's how I found myself getting a makeover with the intention of becoming an appealing and profitable prostitute.

​"Amber"

It wouldn't just be a matter of me getting new clothes—Amber planned to give me a crash course on the best sites to use to set up my new persona and how to create a professional ad that would draw real business. I agreed to cede all authority in light of her years of experience and essentially let her mold me from clay. 

(By the way, this was all to satisfy my curiosity. I have no intention of breaking the law, so if any police officers are reading this please don't come knocking on my door.)

My new sex work sensei came to my apartment the next week and we got to work on my look. Amber explained I'd want to dress in a neutral fashion so as to appeal to the broadest possible spectrum of potential clients. This meant I'd be ditching my look (I call it "Preppiest Bike Messenger") for something a bit smarter. 

She prescribed a crisp white dress shirt, subtly checkered blazer, and simple dark denim. We cycled through a few pairs of dressiness-adjacent shoes before settling on some brown Chelsea boots. I put on the outfit and stared at the mirror in horror, as my gaze was met by a drab Jeff Foxworthy–looking dude ready to host another round of ​Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Amber walked into the room and could instantly sense my discomfort.

"I know you don't think it looks good, but it does. You're shooting for Orange County cougars or housewives looking to cheat on their husbands," she said, adjusting my collar. "They're going to want clean-cut. If they specify that they want someone a little more hip, you can dress for that. This is just going to be your look for the ad."

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OK. Her word was law. We then took a trip to my barber to make sure I'd be presentable if clothes weren't a factor. Fortunately, Amber approved of me getting my usual high fade as it was now mainstream enough to be acceptable for even the more conservative blue-bloods seeking my services. I also needed a shave, but she suggested I take a second after picture after a day or so of stubble had grown back, as "every woman likes a five o'clock shadow on her man, no matter her dispositions otherwise."

When I returned to my apartment, I was eager to get cracking on the ad blitz that would ensnare my sex-deprived quarry. I immediately fired up Craigslist, but Amber stopped me in my tracks. "That's where the trashy clients shop. It's not worth your time, nor will you earn enough money there for it to be worth the trauma."

The modern, independent escort has to post paid ads to quite a few sites, many of which started out as Craigslist alternatives but have morphed into digital red light districts. Posting ads is a never-ending game of musical chairs for sex workers, as government agencies—who are clearly aware of the nature of these forums—can and do swoop in at any moment to shut them down, as was the case with the San Francisco–centric MyRedBook earlier this year.

The sites Amber recommended for a fledgling LA escort like myself were Cityvibe, ​Humaniplex, and the elder statesman of the group, ​Backpage. Let me be blunt here: These sites are hideous. Geocities hideous. They're utilitarian digital lean-tos clearly not meant to withstand the test of time. And that makes perfect sense. If Uncle Sam is likely to come bulldoze your house at any moment, there's no sense in investing time and money in painting and gardening when you only need four walls and a roof to stay alive. 

As I wasn't planning on taking this game the whole way across the finish line, and placing each of these ads cost real American dollars, we figured it would be fine to just post one ad on Backpage to get the best response sampling. I also changed my name to "Chase" in the advertisement, since that seemed like a suitably sleezy name. (Apologies to any Chases out there; I'm sure you're all great guys.) I shaved and put on my official gigolo duds and we took some pictures where the only usable shot of me made it seem like I was either snapping my fingers like a Rat Pack–era crooner or talking to Johns (Janes?) about "a-spicy meat-a-ball."

"Normally, you could get some free glamour shots taken if you put your existing pics up on Model Mayhem," Amber explained. "They wouldn't be the best or anything, and it would probably be some creepy guy jerking off the whole time he shot you, but hey, free photography."

Crafting the meat of the ad took a bit more brainstorming. The women escorts seemed to be using a garish, 1990s AOL message template for their ad titles with unnecessary underscores, letter-case changes, and symbols littered throughout in aid of—I suppose—grabbing the reader's attention. The men were more succinct, and just laid out their main traits and/or what they offered: "Hung jock giving erotic massages," "Straight hung black dude," or, simply, "Irish-Italian." I couldn't compete with the Adonis-like figures who were my fellow flesh merchants, so we decided to play up my charm. Yes, I had become the prostitute equivalent of "I've got this friend you should go out with. He has a great personality."

Amber went through a short list of things to see what I would hypothetically be OK or not OK with as she typed up my profile. Upon completing the short paragraph, we looked at the payment options and decided I could use a nice prominent feature in the Backpage sidebar for a week. I opted out of the service that would bump my ad to the top of the page once a day for a week. If I wanted to really rake it in, this would be the most important purchase I could make, according to Amber. On these ad-bumping services alone, spread across maybe four or five sites, she calculated her monthly expenditures were around $700. She was quick to point out that the ROI was well worth that cost.

A click of the mouse and $9.80 debited from my card, I was now officially a male escort. Only thing left to do was kick back and let the requests pour in.

Guys. Lots of guys. "Women only, please," was right there, politely, in the text of the ad, but there were still plenty of scamps who tested the waters, one of whom wanted to know if I'd be down to maybe just get my dick sucked by a guy, "in the dark." Sorry fellas.

Amber had told me to expect this, so I rode out the storm. After a little waiting and staring at my inbox: paydirt. it looked like the tide was turning. A 31-year-old woman who said she dates younger guys messaged me. And get this: She said she likes to financially invest in them because that power dynamic was the crux of her fetish. Um, OK. Yes. You want to put all your money in "Chase"? Go right ahead! I'm only 27, but I've slept with women older than 31 before without getting paid for it. This sugar mama sounded too good to be true. 

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And alas, she was too good to be true. My response to her email was met with silence. Perhaps it was for the better. Who knows how tempting it would have been to go through with a transaction if she'd actually written back.

On that note, I was getting pretty discouraged, and Amber needed to get back to work. Sensing I was losing hope, she told me this looked like a pretty normal pattern. Depending how long I stared at my inbox and wait, I would most likely start getting a reasonable ratio of flakes to actual clients. I was already seeing detailed, if somewhat arcane messages.

There was an unwieldy shorthand to discussing "activities" in this world. The MyRedBook archives have a compendium of terminology ranging from the obvious BJ (blowjob), to the hilariously specific BBBJTCWS (bareback blowjob to completion with swallow). I wasn't sure I would ever have a hot little Nancy Botwin bon vivant requesting LK (light kissing) with FOV (finger outside vagina).

Sensing she had sent me down a dark path, Amber warned me about the dangers of discussing "activities" with potential customers. "A sure sign of a cop is when they keep going on about, 'Would you do this or that with me?' and I just reply, 'I'm looking forward to spending time with you, honey!' Make sure you're always discussing time. Never any acts. That's where you get caught up. If they keep pressing about what I'd do with them, I tell 'em, 'Listen, dude. You sound shady. Take care.'"

The odd message keeps popping up, and I'm still ignoring them lest the allure of the payout get the better of me. I can market myself as a prostitute, but do I really want to find out if I could make it as a prostitute? I'm not sure, but I still have my photos and what I'm told is a solid and highly reusable ad template. After all, these student loans aren't going away without a little help.

Follow Justin Caffier on ​Twitter.

​You get it from both sides when you make a career out of sneaking into abandoned buildings and taking photos. Seph Lawless (a pseudonym), an urban explorer who sold $60,000 worth of self-published books last May alone, has garnered Banksy-like accusations of being a sellout. But Black Friday, a compilation of photos from abandoned malls throughout the Midwest, took off in the mainstream media. He even got interviewed by Greta van Susteren on Fox News—and almost immediately afterward, he was indicted for criminal trespassing.

How could Lawless be charged with a victimless, witness-less crime months after it occurred? I got in touch with him and he explained how a group of dedicated Cleveland detectives combed through thousands of his private online communications to find the nuggets that made him a criminal.

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VICE: How did you get caught?
​Seph Lawless: It came out during discovery [the phase of a trial where the prosecution must share all its evidence with the defense]. When I saw it, I was really surprised. They had pulled conversations from my Facebook, conversations between me and another local explorer, and I thought right away that was crazy. The conversations weren't all that incriminating, they only indirectly talked about me being inside the mall. It was a girl fan saying, "Oh hey Seph, I love your stuff! Btw, I was in the mall it was great." Just a normal conversation about one mall in particular.

This was on your Facebook wall?
​No, no, no, These were private messages. 

How did they get them?
​They got a subpoena for them. It's not hard to do. If you're a detective, and you use your channels to get to Facebook, and you get someone that has access, you can go on and get anything you want. There were thousands of messages on there, and they must have had to go through each and every one to find this one little snippet that they used. I was a little put off by that. It's one of those things you always hear about. "Are they really doing that?" "Would they really do that?" Well, sure enough, they did.

That's surprising.
​Yeah, and that was only part of the evidence. Another was a personal email that I sent, where in my own words I said I was in the mall. They also got a security firm that stated that they were worried about people scrapping in one of the malls. They had contacted the police after they saw me on the news, saying, "Oh we don't think he should be in there." 

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So you think the security firm's complaint was the reason they went after you?
​My lawyer, Larry Zuckerman, thinks that it was so overblown nationally that they just thought, "We're going to go after him. He's got this name Lawless, he's on TV, no one has done what he does, taken it to this level." The news kept running the story on me over and over again. Also, there's the way the local police work here in Cleveland. I mean, it's horrible here. I hate to say this, but the city should've been on fire awhile ago. There was Ferguson-type stuff here years ago.

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What's the status of your case?
​I am out on bail, but not on felony charges. Originally I was charged with breaking and entering though, which is a felony.

How did you get those charges reduced?
​Before I turned myself in, I was told all I needed was $500 cash to bail out of criminal trespassing, which is a misdemeanor in Ohio. But when we got there, they put me in a room and said, "We talked to the prosecutor, and he's upping the charge to breaking and entering," a felony in Ohio. So at that point I'm wigging out, because I know that that will mean I can't leave. Whenever you get arrested for a felony, you're going to have to spend the night in jail, and get arraigned by a judge in the morning, and then you pay bail. We were prepared for one thing, then they changed it, which was crazy. But then [my lawyer] Larry called the prosecutor. And I guess he's such a well-known defense attorney in Cleveland—I don't know what he said, but they came back and the detective said, "They're keeping it a misdemeanor." I don't know if the detectives were just fucking with me, or what.

So you didn't spend the night in jail?
No, I just had to pay $500 cash to bond myself out. They kept it at first-degree trespassing, which is only a misdemeanor. But I'll tell you what, it was over the course of four hours. It was a crazy night. I thought I was fucked and was gonna go down hard on the felony.

If you operate under a pseudonym, how did they find out who you were? 
​The discovery in the court documents shows me on television, so I'm guessing facial recognition. Maybe even local news stations that had my phone number cooperated with detectives. This all happened just days after I appeared on Fox News.

Back in 2003, before we invaded Iraq, there was a small group of us using the ACLU offices in Cleveland to orchestrate protests against the war. It came out a few years later that the Bush administration wiretapped several of these places where people were organizing protests, and one of them was that ACLU office in Cleveland.

Are you saying there's a connection? That the government wanted to take you down?
No, just that my paranoia goes back to that moment. Just that I'm always being watched. So I wasn't that surprised. I am a little worried though. I've never flown out of the country before, and I have this exhibit opening in Germany, and people say if you're on the no-fly list you don't know until you try to get your boarding pass. So I don't know that I'll be able to fly. We'll see. 

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​ Any coders out there fancy a new job? Working from home, you'll choose your own hours and, to a certain extent, set your own wages. It's a lean and agile start-up—minimal staff, operating in an incredibly hostile legislative environment, with hundreds of dogged, highly experienced cops working overtime to parade your sorry scalp on primetime.

The rewards, though, for running the latest iteration of the dark web's most notorious drugs bazaar, the Silk Road, are proportionately high: $300,000, tax-free, a month. The right candidate will have a vainglorious streak of political libertarianism and an enormous, misguided sense of self-confidence. Oh, and another tip—if you do end up becoming the world's biggest illegal Bitcoin businessman, it's probably best not to go splashing your virtual currency on expensive electric cars.

This was one mistake of Blake Benthall, the 26-year-old  ​"rocket scientist" and "Bitcoin dreamer" who ​got arrested for running Silk Road 2.0, which was shut down yesterday by the FBI. Allegedly helming the site under the pseudonym "Defcon," Benthall reportedly cashed out $270,000 worth of Bitcoin and put down a $71,000 deposit on a Tesla Model S—a luxury electric car worth $125,000 in December last year. Did he not ​watch Goodfellas?

Mind you, I see where the temptation arose. According to  ​the criminal complaint filed against Benthall—a Californian with facial hair, a floppy fringe, and ​a fairly awful singing voice (h/t ​@RasmusMunks)—the site was clearing $8 million in sales a month from its 150,000 users—figures any other startup would kill for. Commission ran at about $300,000 a month, according to the FBI.

If Benthall did do it, how did he think he'd get away with it? There's something strangely solipsistic in the hacker mindset. It's not clear what comes first: the isolated working environment with only code for company, or the outlook that finds such work enjoyable.

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Blake Benthall, Photo via Facebook

What is certain is that most people, after the shuttering of the original Silk Road last year—and the intricately detailed criminal case against alleged owner Ross Ulbricht—would not believe themselves smarter than the FBI's Christopher Tarbell, who busted Ulbricht and now works as a private consultant fo​r a cyber-security firm. Of course, the "Defcon" persona that Benthall is said to have operated under speaks to the self-assured way he allegedly went about his business.

He's now facing one count of conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking (at least a ten-year stretch in prison), one count of conspiring to commit computer hacking (five years more), one fake ID charge (another 15 years) and one money laundering charge, which could get him another 20 years in the can if the judge is feeling uncharitable. The poor, poor bastard.

Long-term, this bust makes no difference. A new .onion website will be online in a few days selling drugs to anyone who wants them. In fact, there are dozens online already. There are even sites for individual vendors, which you can only use via personal introduction. You can now buy enough bulk LSD direct from the chemist to dose an entire festival. Kilos of MDMA can be yours by next-day delivery. People are growing weed to order. 

The appearance of an online trade in illegal drugs will be seen, I believe, as a pivotal moment in legal history. Because what will police do when the market inevitably grows and we end up with drug-related criminality on an amazon.com scale?

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TheGrugq, a renowned computer security specialist, told me recently that a whole new sector of organized criminals are now involved in the online drug market.

"What I've been seeing is that a lot of the 'next gen' guys are not technologists [because, obviously, if you're a skilled technologist you make money by gambling on startups, not risking jail time]," says theGrugq. "They're using outsourcing sites to get an unwitting third-party developer to build the site for them. They are compartmenting themselves from the infrastructure component of the business and focusing on, presumably, the capitalization, marketing, and so on."

This game has been going on since the net first flickered into life. The first online transaction a human made ​was for ​a bag of grass, and it's Silk Road that's responsible for truly monetizing prohibition. But Silk Road 2.0 was the absolute proof-of-concept: Many people want to buy and sell drugs online, and there are fortunes to be made.

For some, it's just fun or convenient. For others—like one user who told me that the consistent delivery of high quality heroin took him away from the constant temptation of street dealers, therefore helping him control his smack and crack habit—it can be a lifesaver.

"It means I can live a normal life, go to work and avoid all the financial, social, and health problems that come with drug addiction," he said. "I'm able to be a responsible, contributing member of my family and the wider community around me, instead of being a burden and a social pariah, costing society through crime and treatment."

We might laugh snidely at the alleged site operators' adherence to the slightly incoherent principles of Ago​rism, or their beards, or whatever, but there's a chance these gung-ho hippy idealists—the latest of whom ​even repaid thousands of users millions of dollars following a hack—are actually some of the most forward-thinking and fundamentally revolutionary agitators of the 21st century.

Think about it: What have you ever actually done to end the war on drugs?

Mike Power's book, ​​Drugs​ Unlim​ited, The Web Revolution That's Changing How the World Gets High, is out now.

Follow Mike Power on ​T​witter.

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Photo courtesy Baltimore County Police Department

Most Americans first experiment with alcohol far away from the supervision of adults who might teach them the responsible way to use the stuff. So when teens are presented with the opportunity to drink, they often overindulge. There's an unstated logic that if you don't know when you'll be able to drink next, you might as well make the most of it this time. Couple this covert drunkenness with a suburban infrastructure devoid of public transportation, and teens—who don't want to admit to their parents that they've been drinking—often choosing to drive home, and you've got a recipe for disaster. A​ccor​ding to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, "5,000 people under age 21 die each year from alcohol-related car crashes, homicides, suicides, alcohol poisoning, and other injuries such as falls, burns, and drowning."

But if it's hard to argue that teen drinking ever accomplishes anything of substance, this week underage drinking actually seems to have prevented a tragedy.

In Maryland, a 16-year-old boy planning to carry out a school shooting had his plans foiled after he drank too much whisk​ey. The boy had planned to shoot up and bomb his school on Halloween, and even brought a gun to school, but postponed the event when he realized that he had forgotten his bombs at home and that he was too intoxicated. The boy admitted his plans to police on Sunday, when he was questioned for breaking into cars and discovered with a stolen gun. 

The boy said that he had been bullied and teachers had refused to help him, which other students deny. Whether the bullying was real or merely perceived, it's clear that the kid was troubled. Obviously this is a sad case—for parents, teachers, students, and for the boy himself, who's now facing criminal charges as an adult and serious time in prison. Still, it's a lot less sad than it might have been if not for the whole reckless adolescent alcohol consumption thing.

Here's the rest of this week in teens:

-Sometimes it's not the teen drinking itself that's the problem—for the underage crowd, the procurement of alcohol can be the main issue. Teens can steal from their parents or try their luck with a fake ID, but for the truly desperate, asking an older (often homeless) stranger to to make the buy can be the best option. But in Texas, one such game of "Hey Mister" went h​o​rribly ​wron​g this week. A 16-year-old boy approached a 58-year-old man to buy him beer and when the man refused, the teen ran him over, killing him. It's not clear in news reports whether the boy meant to actually murder the guy, but it's a reminder that teens are impulsive, and also that maybe we should just let them buy their own beer.

-In case you hadn't already noticed, teens are mistake-making machines. All adults can do is try to create a world of soft landings. We do our best to make sure that adolescent missteps aren't permanent (that's why you have to be 18 to get a tattoo). And we all regret our younger selves' poor decision, so when an ex-teen publicly acknowledges their mistakes, we should listen. Cameron Lacroix is the former teen computer whiz who, in 2005, at the age of 15, hacked into Paris Hilton's Sidekick and leaked her nudes. This was the first high-profile case of stolen celebrity photos, a phenomenon that continues to this day. This week, speaking to NBC N​ews, Lacroix told Hilton, "Paris, I'm sorry I put your information online. I should never have done it. I wouldn't want it done to me." Lacroix is about to go to prison for four years for his decade-long cybercrime spree, but he promises that upon release he'll help law enforcement and "use his hacking for good."

-It's midterm season, a stressful time for college students. Combine constant studying and a lack of sleep with some Adderall and you've got a recipe for mental breakdown. At Colorado State University, one 19-year-old sophomore was arrested after stealing an ambulance that paramedics had left running, then crashing it, and refusing to listen to police orders to drop the Wheat Thins in his arms. According to the police, the boy was found carrying the study drug and talking about "following the bright lights and other ramblings which were not relevant to the incident at hand." As the Colorado​an notes, it's actually standard procedure for ambulance drivers to keep their vehicles running. This "allows for faster transport and ensures all devices in the patient cabin can work immediately." According to hospital spokesperson Kelly Tracer, "However, in light of Sunday morning's theft, we will definitely reevaluate the protocol."

-In 2005, after a successful tryout with the Baltimore Ravens, Molly Shattuck became the oldest NFL cheerleader of all time. Now 47, she was arra​igned this Wednesday on charges of third-degree rape, unlawful sexual contact, and providing alcohol to minors, after one of her kid's 15-year-old classmates told police that he and Shattuck had a sexual encounter at a vacation home. Shattuck, who has pleaded not guilty, is "very upset" about the charges, according to her defense attorney. The former cheerleader, described as "Baltimore's answer to Martha Stewart," is no stranger to media attention; in addition to her time with the Ravens, she stars in exercise DVDs, is a prominent philanthropist, and also appeared on the reality TV show Secret Millionaire, in which she donated $190,000 to people who help the poor. 

Stories about attractive older women having sex with teen boys often inspire terrible comments like, "what a l​ucky ass kid," but situations like this really aren't funny. So it's a good sign that, as the Baltim​ore Sun put it, the media is "surprisingly" showing restraint in its coverage of the story. Maybe people are starting to realize that assault of an underage teen is a serious issue, regardless of gender.

Follow Hanson O'Haver on Twitter.

Image via

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

Last week, in a leafy part of South London, a vicar was charged with two counts of indecent assault, five counts of sexual assault, and six counts of child cruelty. The reason for Reverend Howard Curtis's attacks? Senior minister at the Coulsdon Christian Fellowship, he's an advocate of Christian Domestic Discipline (CDD), a practice that advocates husbands asserting dominance over their wives using corporal punishment.

It's impossible to know just how many CDD adherents there are worldwide, but online it's a pretty big deal. There are dozens of NSFW blogs, websites, forums and, perhaps predictably, self-published eBooks from the US and UK that prove CDD isn't limited to just one nutter in Croydon. 

Read around the topic yourself if you like, but to save you some time: both men and women in these relationships believe that the man is head of house ("HoH") and refer to the wife as Taken in Hand ("TiH"). He will use spanking with hairbrushes, belts, hands or anything he can lay his hands on to "discipline" her if she's "out of line." On one CDD website, this is the Biblical passage that welcomes you in: 

"Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." 

- Hebrews 12:11

You don't even have to do anything terrible (i.e., fuck up dinner a little bit) to warrant the abuse. The guy will dole out handy "maintenance spanking" at random, just to remind you how much he loves you and that he's the boss. (To clarify—the woman must give her consent for this to happen, but consent cannot be un-given.) Testimonies from women on many of the sites purport to enjoying it, believing that it's enriched their relationships. In one post, a CDD advocate explains how the practice is merely a natural, mutual impulse: 

"If the couple acts on these natural impulses, the woman notices that she actually *feels better* after being spanked," writes someone called "No One."

"At the same time, the level of stress within the marriage plummets because there is a bonding that takes place between husband and wife. It also fosters communication within the marriage." "No One" also explains how, while CDD won't "resuscitate [a] dead marriage," a "firmly applied paddle" is much more likely to "prevent or break a destructive cycle and replace it with a more constructive one than it is to turn the husband into a monster." Right-o. 

CDD is mainly practiced by Fundamentalist Christians—a genre of believers that encapsulates more than just those repressed Midwesterners who present religious talk shows out of their garages. In fact, there are estimated to be upwards of 1.3 million Christian Fundamentalists in Britain, with 2,000 children in Fundamentalist education. Forgive me for speaking so plainly, but is this behavior really all that "Christian"? 

"I would agree, after studying it, that CDD is a form of socialised domestic violence," says former Christian Fundamentalist and religious blogger Joel Watts. "The only real difference between CDD and domestic violence is that the wife 'agrees' to it." 

Watts' first-hand experience of Fundamentalist Christian male dominance is pretty sobering. The 36-year-old, who runs Unsettled Christianity, was raised in a Fundamentalist cult in Louisiana, escaping at the age of 27. "The trigger came when several boys were revealed to have been molested by one individual," he says. "The response was to simply 'pray it away.' I had to get out."

Now a happily married United Methodist with three kids and living in West Virginia, Watts says that, while CDD wasn't preached, it was basically practiced. "Women in Fundamentalism are third class. Husbands, then sons, then wives and then daughters. In Fundamentalism, women are to submit—and often, with every possible meaning of the word," he tells me. "Sex is not about love or even a good time. It is a duty the wife does for the husband so he finds her pleasing. Usually, the women stayed home and raised the kids, keeping the house clean and ensuring the man is properly fed. There are times women work outside the home, but this is only to give the husband more money. All decisions are usually routed through the husband." 

Sounds kind of like being in the army. "Right. They were forced to wear a kind of uniform, too-long skirts, non–form fitting clothing, and, in many instances, could not cut their hair. Our dress code prevented women from showing their elbows." Why? "Because someone thought this was too sexy."

A Fundamentalist Christian, who may or may not practice CDD, proselytising in Louisiana. Photo via

Right. But where does CDD fit in here? Is CDD a particularly Fundamentalist thing? "Not all Fundamentalists use CDD," says Watts. "I would wager that many would never think of CDD as legitimately Christian, and yet, I would also wager that if you took the tenants of CDD—such as the wives that submit to their husbands, providing sex on demand—without naming it as such, many Fundamentalists would agree to them as something 'Biblical.'"

So CDD just codifies it, then? "Exactly. It gives the system rules, and names it. Both abuse women, valuing them as nothing more than free sex and babysitting. Both believe women must submit to their husbands. Both systems believe that 'manliness' is dependent upon controlling your wife."

But with Christian Fundamentalism spreading, it suggests that more and more people look at that horrifying system and think it looks alright. Why would anybody, especially a woman, want to join? "I'm not sure why women would adopt it unless they come from a situation that they believe it could end. For instance, I know several women who are Fundamentalists because they believe it has cured them of drugs," says Watts.

It sounds like they're just trading one system for another. "They are. And once you're there, it is difficult to leave," he says. "No promises of a better life are made—except that by submitting to your husband you are obeying the wrathful God who created you as second class anyway. The promise is also made that if you rightfully submit to your husband, then this will magically force your husband to love you more. I've seen this in action. The woman comes to the pastor to say that her husband mistreats her. The pastor tells the woman that it is her fault, that she needs to submit to her husband properly in order for her husband to really love her. She just isn't good enough to be loved unless she obeys him."

"How does joining these groups become an attractive option for a woman?"

In the case of our south London CDD vicar, is it an isolated incident? Or can we expect more cases like it in the future? "There are small movements in the UK urging a return to Fundamentalism, but I hope and pray they never go anywhere," says Watts. "These groups should be banned."

The trauma of Fundamentalism, even if CDD isn't practiced, can be great. "Now I'm out of it I've had the chance to speak with more who are trying to leave. Fundamentalism plays on and destroys your psychological side," says Watts. "It ensures that the Fundamentalistic system is the only system you believe is 'real.' Thus, when you get out, you are immediately distrustful of everything and everyone. Then you start to realize what you have done as a Fundamentalist—the people you have hurt, the goodness you have missed. The guilt is likely to never go away."

There are those who believe that CDD isn't a small pocket of Fundamentalism, either. "It's not just one small group that do it," says Amanda van Eck, Deputy Director of Inform (Information Network Focus on Religious Movements). And it seems like advocates are actively trying to recruit more disciples. "They're putting it out there online as a practice to be picked up by other groups and communities," she says. The danger is, surely, that people will interpret and apply it to their own culture. "Yes," says van Eck. "And they'll use it as a frame for a number of practices and behaviors that aren't necessarily homogenous."

If Fundamentalist practices are so ripe for subjective interpretation—if men can ostensibly use "God's name" to exert power over women—the question remains: How does joining such groups become an attractive option for a woman? 

"There's a theory that a lot of women find the choice of modernity confusing," says van Eck. The author of Virginia's Secret Garden says: "Our feminist society encourages women to be rebellious," and believes it's "a disaster in the making."

Some more Fundamentalist Christian proselytizers. Photo via

So hardline religions can give people better boundaries, then? "Some people think so," says van Eck. "Women today are overloaded with messages and choices, and in a religion, the gender roles work more clearly. I do think the idea of the woman being subservient is fairly common in Christian Fundamentalism, but it's also fairly common in lots of religions."

This may be true. But even if women do claim to genuinely enjoy the dynamic of CDD, it is hard, as an objective outsider, to not be alarmed by some of the CDD literature out there.

A woman's choice is her power. That's a given. But if there are, as van Eck suggests, women attracted to Fundamentalist practices because they seek stability—because they don't know how to find it within themselves—CDD is a terrifying thing. To the outsider, it's an acceptance and celebration of domestic violence, of the systematic belittling and abuse of a woman to a point where she truly believes she deserves and will be a better person for it. That her contribution to her marriage, and society, will be valid and right once her errant behavior has been tamed. 

Follow Helen Nianias on ​Twitter.

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The memorial in all its glory. Photo ​via

We all know how much Russia hates them gay people—why, ​VICE did an entire documentary series on it ju​st this year. But when a company in St. Petersburg announced it was planning to rip a memorial to Steve Jobs out of the ground just because current Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly disclosed his sexuality, it all seemed a bit, well... If you wanted to prove a point to Tim Cook by throwing your iPhone on the floor and crunching it with your foot, you're the only one who's really feeling that, aren't you? Tim Cook is still gay and now you can't get on Instagram.

But here's the thing: the Steve Jobs memorial wasn't being destroyed because of Tim Cook—it was actually being pulled down because if you leave a six-foot iPhone out in the bitter cold of the Russian winter it will get solidly fucked up by wind chill and need to be repaired. 

Or that was the plan, at least. The two companies that lay claim to the memorial, ITMO University (whose territory the memorial is on) and ZEFS (which sponsors the memorial and are financially responsible for its repairs) have a slight difference of opinion re: all the millions of LGBTI people on Earth—a difference of opinion that only came about in the hours between a repair crew being asked to take the memorial out of the ground and ​Tim ​Cook's​ Bloomberg​ statement. The memorial is a victim of bad timing and ZEFS's trigger-happy CEO.

"Well, three years ago, the head of this company ZEFS had an idea to have this monument," ITMO University's Natasha Ros told me. "He [Maxim Dolgopolov] was a former politician, in fact. And we gave them the territory." And lo, a memorial was born: an iPhone-a-like built to Steve Jobs's exact height, with a fully functioning touchscreen that allowed students to find out about Jobs and the impact he had on tech, all while simultaneously working as a WiFi router. Shits on any memorial you can think of, doesn't it? 

But when Natasha noticed last August that, after three years of being battered by the wind and snow of St. Petersburg, the memorial had started to lose function, she raised a repair request with ZEFS. Which... sort of did nothing for a very long time, until Thursday last week (October 30), when Tim Cook first published his statement. 

With the repair request filed months before, ZEFS saw their chance to swoop in and dismantle the monument with the university's blessing, sending them an official-looking letter saying they were going to make the repairs. Instead, they "fixed" it by dismantling it piece-by-piece and carrying it away.

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:(. Photo v​ia

It didn't help, of course, that ZEFS's chief released a statement after the dismantling, saying, "In Russia, gay propaganda and other sexual perversions among minors are prohibited by law. After Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly called for sodomy, the monument was taken down to abide to the Russian federal law protecting children from information promoting denial of traditional family values." 

Exactly how Tim Cook publicly called for sodomy (Auto-installing Grindr on every iPhone in the world? Scattering lube sachets out of the window while helicoptering high above the city skyline?) is not clear, but ZEFS's statement tagged a clear message of intent to the dismantling of the memorial.

Cue a rash of Western media stories essentially saying the same thing: "Look how much Russia hates gays, guys! They hate them so much they can't even look at an iPhone in case it makes them want to throw a Kylie night in the nearest Kruzha bar!" Problem is, as Natasha said, the university—as well as any logical non-bastard in Russia—has now been tarred with the gay-hating brush by a spate of breathless news stories.

"They think that we don't want to interfere at times with our social problems," Natasha told me. "Because we know people in Europe, the UK, the USA, and the West are very tolerant. Tolerance is very important for us, as we are people of science. The man who said these words, the head of this company ZEFS, has the opposite opinion from us—and we were very surprised because it was a deception. They said they wanted to take it for repairs, but they decided to dismantle it. And we now want to find money [to] provide funding for another Steve Jobs Apple monument."

Also, the students are down a WiFi router. "Our students like this monument," Natasha said. "We feel that Steve made a lot for the world, and Apple is the leader in its field, so it's very important for us. And now it's empty. We have an empty yard."

But all is not lost: ​VKontakte, the Russian version of Facebook, are in talks with the university to sponsor a new Steve Jobs memorial if ZEFS continue to be really ZEFS-y about things. 

Of course, I doubt "university quietly reinstates iPhone memorial now they figured out how to make iOS 8 work on the fucker" will make many headlines if it finally happens, but still.

Follow Joel Golby on ​Twitter​

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Artwork by ​Nick Scott

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

A couple of weeks ago, a new word—"chivster"—was curled out on to our already stained and woebegone linguistic landscape. It came via Sunday Times Style, whose "Going Up" section had this newly-invented subcultural hybrid at the top of its list. "Hipster-turned-chav," it opined. "Tattoos and hoodies in, beards and long hair out. See Tom Hardy for further details."



Following the inexorable meh of " ​Health Goth," the chivster represents yet more semantic pollution from the current tide of laddish leisurewear, trainers and tracksuit bottoms, which has infiltrated luxe fashion in recent months. The term was invented by self-styled trend forecaster, LSN (Lifestyle News Network). 

"With the chivster we started to notice a new aesthetic coming through blogs, niche magazines, graduate fashion shows and of course on the streets," Peter Firth, a former journalist and now LSN's "Insight Editor," told me. "Right now sports and performance wear is on the rise, and we're reaching what I think is the first wave of nostalgia for the 'chav' look of the mid naughties."

Chav is, of course, along with "hoodie," "scally," or "ned," reductive shorthand for an oft-imagined adolescent, usually from an estate, who, in addition to sportswear, likes weed, benefit fraud, FIFA, and intimidation. It's a word that does nothing to help the problems that the myth might have grown out of—problems of underemployment and antisocial behavior. But despite many attempts to kill the word, it has endured. Why?​

Terms like chivster don't help. In the end the new word doesn't seem to have caught on, attention confined to a bemused few on Twitter, and an Evening Standard ​follow-up piece that asked: "Is the chivster a thing, then?" 

No, is the answer. But it doesn't mean its materialization does not betray a truth.  It feels like fashion media has fallen back on the appeal of class mockery under the guise of an invented style tribe.

 

The word chav was said to have Gypsy roots, coming from the Romany word for child, chavi; it was used as shorthand for suddenly upwardly mobile perennials like Wayne Rooney and Jade Goody as well as the conveyor belt of dispossessed scowling on Jeremy Kyle. The obvious way for us to look at them was from a lofty, disgusted height. Despite the word's grotesque usage, though, it was lifestyle journalism that carried it through to a kind of hushed respectability.

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Wayne Rooney. Image  ​via Wikimedia Commons

"The 'chivster' thing is not surprising," says the University of Birmingham's Dr. Joe Bennett, who wrote his Ph.D thesis on the usage of the word in the media between 2004 and 2008, and is writing a book on language and morality. " Chav has grown out of ways of talking about lifestyle groups as much as class, which may be one of the reasons why it was invented." Making a shrewd point about the word's usage in media, he adds: "Obviously since it first appeared, you'd never get chav in the hard news. It was always the lifestyle sections, the light news, the Sunday magazines: Something happened to the columnist's family when they 'came across this crowd of chavs.'"

'Chav' was announced to the world ten years ago as Oxford University's first ever word of the year. Bennett lays part of the blame for the word's longevity on Oxford University. After that the word appeared everywhere, from Grace Dent's hugely popular Diary of a Chav children's book series, to message boards and forums like Mumsnet, where it is still used without fear. "If you read all the stuff that was published, there was quite critical stuff in there—but the effect of producing a press release saying 'chav is the word of the year' is very different to that," says Bennett. "After that, you'd get serious sociology articles that labelled groups of kids as a 'chav' group."

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One of the search results you get if you type "chav" into a search engine. "The height of Chav Chic—a pink leather settee... this color suggests they're going after an older, less bolder Chav." Image via  ​Flickr user Andy G

Owen Jones's publishing sensation ​Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class popularized the view that the word was no longer viable for usage, describing the phenomenon as a "flagrant triumphalism of the rich who, no longer challenged by those below them, instead point and laugh at them." 

But in selling around 120,000 copies and being emblazoned with the emblematic Burberry cap on the cover, it might have achieved an aim counter to that of Jones or his publisher Verso, in helping canonize the term for some until it has become not one of violation or abuse, but of subcultural affection, even nostalgia, for modern Britain's very own alienated antihero.

If "chivster" ever did take off, it wouldn't be the first time that middle-class kids have looked to the working-class they feel estranged from in a kind of fascination (and maybe jealousy) for a supposed wantonness that cannot thrive among the strictures and etiquettes of Middle England. For LSN's Firth, it's this that fuels it. "We are frequently shown a life through social media and mainstream media that is inaccessible to most of us," he says. "Maybe we need more angry young men and fewer people who are willing to roll over and accept things as they are so long as they can still afford to live in Dalston."

While it's hard to see a horde of angry young graphic designers posing a real threat to London's grossly disproportionate property prices, it's true that poverty and abandonment have always been impetuses for subculture. Boris Johnson's new London has played its own part in siring the non-subculture of the chivster. The city that he has designed has no space for those communal spaces in which music-born subcultures have germinated in the past—abandoned warehouses, makeshift shebeens inside residential properties, fields—spaces that have inspired a kind of cross-class unity, last seen in its most intense form during the rave era. When you don't have those spaces, you don't have subcultures, and it has been left to the media and people like Firth to fill the gap.

Unfortunately, you can't design a subculture from scratch, which results in the uncomfortable truth of what subculture is now: a linguistically confused non-event dreamed up to persuade masses of people to prefix a social-media post with: "So apparently this is a thing."

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Tom Hardy: apparently the epitome of 'chivster.' Image  ​via Wikimedia Commons

Firth acknowledges that the history of the word chav is "highly derogatory". On the flip side, though, he says, "The term isn't meant by us to be offensive, but rather something that's memorable and instantly understandable." This, in a nutshell, is the problem with branding people and calling it a subculture. It takes the logic of business and applies it to something that should grow organically.

Usage of the word chav in the newspapers has decreased, but it's kept steadily bubbling along by the middle classes themselves. People in the media use it freely. "Yeah, it went alright," one acquaintance, a music video producer, once confided after shooting a "gritty" promo in Tilbury, Essex, a place situated in a banlieues-like state of decay outside the M25 ring road. "A load of chavs came over and started bothering us though. Absolute scumbags."

Ours is an age where new editorial ideas are served up by endless meetings cobbled together from statistics and so-called media trends. Guests attend "Trend Briefings" in places such as the Future Laboratory in Spitalfields—a fortress in a flattened media topography, where LSN is based. There, aspiring brands and writers are served canapés of franken-words with a side order of pseudo-intellectual concept. Take your pick from "fear marketing," "the polarity paradox," "the U-turn society," "the sharded self," or the "me-conomy," but no amount of Rennie is going to help you keep it down.

Consider the etymology of the word "hipster" compared with that of the "chav." The "hipster" evolved out of the jazz age, hepcat evolving into hepster, which in turn became hipster. It was always allied with connotations of superiority in terms of cultural capital, evolving until the word was immortalized by Norman Mailer, who described it as an "American existentialist" bent on "setting out on that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self." The phrase was reappropriated around 15 years ago to variously describe the perhaps more self-conscious but no less astute subcultures of Shoreditch, Williamsburg, and beyond. 

It's why the fusion of the two stereotypes is a problematic one. The obvious way for the hipster to view the chav is from a lofty height. Where the disdain for the hipster may carry some kind of affection—we were all pretentious twats once, right!—the hatred of chavs carries a more sadistic air.

Next to Sunday Times Style's ordaining of "chivster" was Camilla Long's editorial about the scandal of professional wives powerless against their big-shot husbands. Long purports to be a feminist—a view no doubt shared by Sunday Times Style—and the fashion industry is often commended for its feminist ethics. Rightly so. Yet the longevity of chav also relies, in part, on society's background misogyny, from blanket tabloid derision of single mothers to povvo porn Twitter feeds, advertising stolen images of mid-teen girls as "chav slags."

"You rarely see class mentioned by mainstream feminist commentators," says feminist campaigner and writer Rhian E Jones, who is trying to highlight that the use of "chav" is a feminist issue and who spoke at the conference ​Does "Poverty Porn" Undermine the Welfare State in Hulme, Manchester, yesterday. "Working-class women don't have access to the media, so they can't defend themselves against the misogyny directed to them under cover of the word chav."

The chav stereotype has taken hold to such an extent, she says, that we don't actually need to use the word. As she says, "We all know what someone means by 'single mother.' It's someone on a council estate with kids by multiple fathers."

"I often have conversations with people and they know what I've spent my time doing," says Dr. Joe Bennett. "They want to say someone's a 'chav' but they have to avoid it. Because we live in a society with such strong hierarchies of class and status, it became a term not just used to express pure hatred, but to express where you want to be, where you want to live, where you want to send your kids to school. The ultimate problem is not that people are saying 'chav': it's that it is a useful word for them to use in the first place."

"Chivster" will never catch on. It's too artless, too clumsy. But it matters. Like much reductive matter pushed out by the industry, it massages prejudice, allowing it to bloat. It isn't just Daily Mail readers who carry forward bigoted, lazy views—it's young generations at the mercy of ever-narrowing options in terms of careers and creativity.

The endurance of "chav" reflects the new meanness of the UK, a hardening of the so-called squeezed middle while the safety net of the welfare state is stripped. The economics of aspiration guides such language, and as the screw is turned in forever-booming London, there looks to be no let-up.

Follow Tim Burrows on ​Twitt​er.

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If you really sat down and tried, you could turn a lot of pages in the space of 30days. While we've spent over a decade providing you with about 120 of those pages every month, it turns out there are many more magazines in the world other than VICE. This new series, Ink Spots, is a helpful guide on which of those zines, pamphlets, and publications you should be reading when you're not staring at ours.

We know that Of the Afternoon founder Phil Anderson has good taste, because when he emailed us with some of the great photographers he's published, the problem was that VICE had published half of them too. The similarities end there however: Of the Afternoon is a magazine dedicated entirely to contemporary photography, and—now in its sixth issue—has put put the work of a bunch of new photographers, as well as the likes of Christian Patterson, Lorenzo Vitturi, Esther Teichmann, and Fred Huning. And to think, it was only started in Phil's dorm room back in 2012. 

​We caught up with him to find out more about the mag. 

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VICE: How did the magazine get started?
​​Phil Anderson: Of the Afternoon started out as a blog a couple of years ago that I occasionally updated whilst in my while year of university; I was just posting work from photographers that inspired me at that time. I always wanted to eventually curate a show or release something physical, especially as the blog was becoming quite popular. This lead to printing the first issue which was a zine with a print run of 300. It sold out a few weeks after I released it. A few months later I released the second issue with a launch night in London, and it's gradually grown from there.

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Photo by Synchrodogs

​What's an iconic photograph you remember seeing when you were younger that influenced your interest in photography?
​I remember being shown a copy of Claudine Doury's Artek book when I was in college and being in awe of her ability to connect with her subject and the level of trust that they had with her; there are some incredibly beautiful and intimate moments that she captured and her presence feels completely invisible to the viewer.
​
​Tell me about your exhibitions.
​​So far we've had six exhibitions, which are also used to launch each new issue. Each takes place in London. We then exhibit the work the following week in Manchester or Leeds. 

We made the decision early on for the exhibitions to be one night only, which always ensures a really good turnout—it's always good to catch up with everyone over a few drinks too.

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"I found Lydo Elise Le from browsing Instagram one day. I've always loved her work so I asked her to write something for the latest issue, to describe the moments surrounding the picture being made."

How do you find the photographers that you feature?
​The first half of the magazine is made up of images that we've exhibited—these are submitted to us when we announce our call for entries and then curator Christine Santa Ana and I will look through each submission, with Christine then curating an exhibition around the selected work. We had over 5,000 images to look through last time, so it's one of the most time consuming aspects of running the magazine.

The second half of the magazine features more in-depth interviews with five or six photographers which I find from visiting exhibitions, coming across their photo books or being sent their portfolio. I generally look for work which is innovative and with a strong aesthetic.

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Photo by Filip B Bojovic

What are the challenges of starting your own zine? And what's the secret to success in terms of turning it from a bedroom zine into a global magazine?
​There's an endless list of challenges; one of the most important being making it finically viable so you can fund the next issue, especially if it's published fairly often like Of the Afternoon. It's also important to build strong relationships with the people you work with; writers, printers, distributors and stockists.

I think one of the keys to the magazine's success has been to make it accessible to people that might not already have an active interest in photography. There are a lot of aspects of the photography world that feel very insular and inward-looking—I've always hoped Of the Afternoon appeals to a much wider audience.

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Photo by Andrew Miksys

What's been the best moment so far?
​There's been so many highlights, one of them being when I was trying for months to get some sort of feature on photographer Collier Schorr whilst she was preparing her exhibition at 303 Gallery in New York. Literally right before the issue was sent to print she ended up emailing me 500 words on one of her most famous self-portraits, which I was able to publish in Issue 5.

Getting the magazine stocked in museums like MoMA in New York, Pompidou in Paris and MoCA in LA are also definitely highlights.

You can follow Of the Afternoon ​here and pick up a copy ​here. 

Follow Amelia Abraham on ​Twitter

​All photos by Jan Müller

As part of a lecture series accompanying its 75th anniversary, the ASVZ (Zurich's Academic Sports Association) invited FIFA President Sepp Blatter around the Confederate Technical University (ETH) yesterday to speak on the subject of "Football as a school of life." Given that Blatter heads an organization which is contriving to​ rui​n soccer by staging the World Cup in whatever dictatorship bribes their officials no matter how badly it treats workers, some people weren't very happy about this.

Unsurprisingly, Indymedia and some other media outlets called for people to  disrupt the event. By 5 PM, at least six police vehicles as well as several guards from the private security ETH had also showed up.

At about 5.30 PM, chants of "Sepp, you bloody bastard!" could be heard coming from the crowd but the entrance to ETH remained open. The protesters chanted, "Joseph Blatter, the dream's over, soon you'll be lying in the trunk" (this rhymes in German).

The protesters started moving closer to the building but police held them back. Calls from inside the demo crowd announced that they'd go for a small "tour" around the ETH. And so they moved to a side entrance on Karl Schmid Strasse.

Unluckily for Blatter and the event organizers, a woman from the security service didn't manage to close the door ahead the demonstrators' arrival. The demo was finally inside. On the top floor, demonstrators met with some riot cops, and set off a red flare.

Soon a cat and mouse game started and spilled over the corridors of the ETH. The protesters seemed to know the building much better than the police. Confused students suddenly found themselves between protesters and riot cops armed with pepper spray, batons, and rubber-bullet-firing shotguns.

Gradually, the demo moved out of the building. In addition to the police they were met by a fire truck, because someone managed to set off the fire alarm.

On seeing the mass of police vans, the demonstration broke up quickly. In the end, some people started throwing stones at the police. Finally, the police arrested one (alleged) protester and one (alleged) stone thrower.

​
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​I have no idea how to please a woman. Hell, I can hardly please myself. But, by God, I want to. Desperately. And so, in the interest of ​expanding my sexual horizons while not looking like a total fucking amateur (pun intended), I did what any sensible person would do—I took a night class at the Learning Annex (OK, the LA Gay & Lesbian Center) on eating pussy, taught by pussy eating expert Nina Hartley.

When I purchased a ticket for "Cunning Cunnilingus," the hour-and-a-half crash course in gash, I was promised that Hartley, a "sex educator, author, porn icon and registered nurse," would show me "how to please [my] favorite vulvas with her signature wit and wisdom!" I have yet to find a favorite vulva other than my own, but I'm confident time and prayer will bring one to me. I need to be prepared when that fateful day arrives, hence the class.

My uniform for the evening—brown suede Clarks, faded jeans, a blue sweatshirt with cat hair on it—made me look like a lesbian suited up to work down in the pussy eating coalmines. To get motivated, I listened to Pulp on the way ther— if anyone knows how to eat pussy, I thought, it's Jarvis Cocker. He would be my shaman on this fantastic voyage.

Forever an academic overachiever, I arrived at the class egregiously early. Only two other people were punctual—a nondescript looking white guy in a backwards baseball cap (don't want that brim gettin' in the way of that trim, bro!) and a female free spirit with tattoos as ornate and colorful as they were meaningless. No eye contact between us was exchanged, which seemed wholly appropriate given the circumstances that led us there.

The room in which we were about to matriculate was not—by any stretch of the imagination—sexy, save the presence of bags filled with condoms and dental dams sitting on each chair. A man to my right, who vaguely resembled the actor Gary Cole, opened his bag and examined its contents in great detail.

The free spirit made a fast friend—both eagerly sat in the front row with a "first day of school" level of enthusiasm. Her new pal, who wore a scrunchie around her wrist, talked about the PhD she was working on. Looks like we have a fucking academic here... emphasis on fucking! I thought to myself. I'm incorrigible. Who wouldn't want to get eaten out by me?

Two very young, very minx-like women came in; a raccoon tail dangled from the brunette's tight jeans. The blonde gushed about how "starstruck!" she was in the presence of Hartley. Gary Cole lecherously leered at them then made eye contact with me and winked. A shiver ran down my spine. They were so young, they took notes in glitter pen. I, on the other hand, was using a motel ballpoint on a tattered spiral bound book leftover from college.

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To start, Hartley asked the class who liked having sex with women. Inexplicably, not everyone raised their hands. She told the class she got into porn because "that's where the naked ladies were," and described how hard it was to find a woman in the outside world willing to fuck her. If she has trouble finding chicks, I thought, I'm screwed.​

FUN FACT I LEARNED: Women normally can't come when they're drunk. Guess I've never come, then!

After a brief anatomy lesson, she brought out a labia puppet to demonstrate proper licking and fingering techniques. As she spoke, she absentmindedly stroked the puppet, much to the delight of the two creeps flanking me. She expressed disappointment over being unable to demonstrate the techniques she was outlining on herself; the shared disappointment amongst the more lascivious members of the class was palpable.

Struggling to keep up with her rapid-fire delivery, I found myself furiously writing absurd notes like "Squeeze between vulva and leg, trap clit between lips," "Try to pull clit up with finger, like chopsticks—pull lips over" and "Bottom of tongue on bottom of clit—suction. Use whole of tongue, meaty part, not tip." I was so intent on taking notes, in fact, I missed much of the physical demonstrations. I, however, was in the minority; most other attendees just stared, some with mouths agape, at the striking Ms. Hartley as she stroked her puppet and talked about how much she adored vulvas. ("People ask me, why are you good at eating pussy? Because I love them.")

FUN FACT I LEARNED: After four weeks gestation, the clitoris starts to develop. Choose life!

FUN FACT I LEARNED: The shaft of the clit, apparently, is much like a string on a bass. I've always been a mediocre bass player at best. But damnit, I have heart.

Looking back at my notes triggers little recollection of the lesson. They're almost as indecipherable as the previous notes in the book, written for a sociology course I took years ago (example: "Cube: foundation is thought system [i.e. victim, etc.]"). I was, it seems, too focused on documenting the information I was hearing than absorbing it, ultimately to my detriment. But that's always been my problem in non-pussy eating related fields, so why should this be any different? The uninspired diagrams I drew, thank God, were actually useful after the fact.

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FUN FACT I LEARNED: Kegels are "the vulva's way of talking to you." The more you do, the better being fingered feels. Stronger muscles equal stronger orgasms. Get it tight, get it right!

At all of Hartley's revelations, up to and including how hard it was for her to have an orgasm (Gasp! We have so much in common!), Gary Cole sighed and uncomfortably shifted in his chair. The bald guy to my left, who had shown up late and pushed his way next to me, moaned. Out loud. Shamelessly. At times, I found it difficult to concentrate on the lesson, my mind filled instead of contempt for the schmucks surrounding me. Why couldn't everyone in the class be a scrunchie owner working on their PhD in fuck therapy?

FUN FACT I LEARNED: If you're going on a date, you should masturbate beforehand in order to be "relaxed and chill."

After a detailed description of how to finger a chick but good, (with two fingers, hook and pull on the PC muscle—the more low pitch a noise she's making, the better you're doing) Hartley told the class she doesn't perform oral while penetrating a gal, instead preferring to stand above her and "have a conversation." Ugh, typical woman—always yapping! I'm trying to watch the game over here, and she won't shut up while fingering her sidepiece!

FUN FACT I LEARNED: If you end up fisting someone, make sure to keep your thumb on the outside. Trust me.

In spite of the fact that my notes left much to be desired, I still exited the class with infinitely more confidence in my ability to, at some undetermined point in the future, make a woman at least tolerate being fucked by me. And anyway, it's not a race. Everyone else in the class, sans the excitable young women, was decidedly older. If they haven't figured it out by now, time, at least, is on my side.

Follow Megan Koester on ​Twitter.

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Construction in Qutar. Photo via Flickr user ​Paul Trafford

In order to make the 2022 World Cup a good show, Qatar has to fill a tall order. The smallest country to ever host the tournament, both in size and population, desperately needs to bulk up its infrastructure. In order to withstand the anticipated influx of soccer fanatics, the country's leaders are constructing Lusail City, a development replete with island ​r​esorts, and luxury shopping. Concept art for the planned city looks like it could be a gated subdivision in Central Florida, or a retirement community centered around a golf course—only, y'know, in the middle of a desert and financed by bushels and bushels of oil money.

So what to do do when you when you're tasked with a construction project like that? Cue the modern-day slaves. The harsh conditions faced by workers in mega-rich Gulf states is by now well known—see this piece for​ VICE by Molly Crabapple, for instance—but what wasn't known was that thousands of workers in Qatar are "state-sponsored slaves," a fact only recently reported by the Guardian.

Yes, North Korea's economy is apparently so pathetic that the regime has resorted to exporting human beings in exchange for foreign currency. The regime sent up to 3,000 workers to Qatar, the Guardian estimates, and perhaps as many as 65,000 abroad in total.

This latest information is consistent with what VICE found in a 2011 documentary on labor camps in Siberia. Most of the workers are in their 40s with families and move to miniature versions of the homeland—waking up to the same songs in houses that look like ones in North Korea. After three years, the workers return to their homeland, where they go through a one-month reintegration project to get caught up on missed propaganda.

At this point, it must obvious to anyone who cares about human rights that letting this tiny, authoritarian, extremely hot, host the World Cup was a terrible idea. Not only is Qatar dragging people in to work on the project against their wills, the pl​ayers don't even want to go to the country, because it's going to be too fucking hot. Perhaps a soccer tournament isn't worth all this?

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

​This year, the jihadi group knows as the Islamic State swept into Iraq and Syria, determined to reestablish the caliphate. IS's expansion is only accelerating and the group is now considered the wealthiest militant organization in the world. In this week's episode of VICE Meets, journalist Graeme Wood breaks down the group's religious ideologies and visions for the future.