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​If there's one thing we've learned in the past few months—in which multiple women have been ​driven from their​ homes after expressing public opinions about video games—it's that Twitter is shamefully rife with gendered abuse. Of course, Twitter's sexist troll problem extends back far longer than that: compressing one's deep-seated problems with women into 140-character bursts is more or less a hallowed tradition on the internet.

It doesn't help that Twitter isn't particularly good at handling harassment, despite the fact that the social media platform has become fairly notorious as a medium where anonymous misogynists can convene in order to hurl vitriol at women with whom they disagree. Case in point: Robin Williams' daughter Zelda was forced to ​shut d​own her Twitter account because users kept tweeting her Photoshopped images of her father's dead body as well as messages blaming her for his death. In response, Twitter ​sw​ore it would improve its policies; so far, though, there hasn't been any substantial change. 

There was also the time that feminist activist Caroline Criado-Perez was subjected to a huge onslaught of ​invective and​ violent threats for suggesting that Jane Austen be put on the ten pound note. As a result of the abuse, she said, she couldn't eat or sleep, and she ​fe​ared for her life. And, before that, writer Zerlina Maxwell was bombarded with racist comments and repeatedly ​threatened with ra​pe and murder after appearing on Fox News to argue that guns aren't the solution to rape. I could go on for a very long time listing instances in which women were greeted with brutal, sustained sexism after voicing fairly innocuous opinions. 

This is not a new problem—although any attempted solution would be a first.

A recent ​Pe​w Research report finds that women experience particularly severe forms of online harassment—whereas men are slightly more likely to be called names, women are disproportionately targeted with sexual harassment and stalking. So, when it was ​anno​unced last week that Twitter would be teaming with Women, Action, & the Media (WAM!) in order to better handle abuse reports, the mass consensus was "fucking finally." 

According to WAM! executive director Jaclyn Friedman, the collaboration has two main goals: the first, in the short-term, is to help ensure that reports of gendered abuse actually get seen by Twitter. "We now have an authorized reporter relationship with Twitter, where we escalate things to Twitter instead of keeping them in the general fire hose of the queue," she told VICE. 

The second objective of the collaboration will be to observe the various forms that gendered harassment takes on the site. "We're trying to collect data about what kinds of harassment women are experiencing," Friedman said. "What tactics are being used, what patterns and contexts Twitter's reporting is not capturing, what types of harassment Twitter is already handling OK, and what's falling through the cracks—what do they need better policies and procedures to handle?"

Previously, WAM! had worked with activist and writer Soraya Chemaly to get content that glorified rape and violence against women ​removed from Fac​ebook. It was Chemaly who originally reached out to Twitter. "All of us see what's happening on Twitter, we all experience it," she explained in a phone interview. 

Unlike Twitter's ​current re​porting system, the WAM! model takes into account the myriad ways that women are harassed: on ​the W​AM! form, you can specify if you're being threatened with violence, doxxed, subjected to hate speech, etc. Additionally, the WAM! form allows users to say whether they're being harassed by a single person or multiple accounts, providing necessary context that's currently lacking from the reporting process.

But both Chemaly and Friedman stress that the collaboration between Twitter and WAM! is not a viable solution in and of itself. "Twitter needs to make the solution," said Friedman. "We want to work with Twitter, we want to help Twitter make the solution, but the solution is not a two-person nonprofit solving Twitter's problem. We're really happy to partner with them, and we're really encouraged by the response we've had from them so far. But ultimately the solutions are going to have to come from Twitter." 

As Chemaly put it, "I feel cautiously optimistic, but the fact is that we approached Twitter." 

There's no indication that Twitter would have taken any action on its own if WAM! hadn't reached out. And, while Friedman says that Twitter is "interested in doing better," the platform doesn't have a great track record in responding seriously to the relentless stream of threats against its female users.

A major source of contention between activists and Twitter is the (​rather a​ccurate) perception that Twitter thinks it's remaining neutral by refusing to take action on hate speech and gendered abuse. Friedman and Chemaly vehemently disagree with this view of free speech. They both maintain that refusing to take a stance on harassment allows it to proliferate, effectively silencing marginalized communities. 

"No one's paying attention to the current loss of speech that people are experiencing as a result of the abuse," said Chemaly. "That's just minimized and minimized and minimized. There's this [fear about the] future possible loss of speech for, basically, some violent dudes—whereas there's no real assessment or consideration of the suppressive, silencing effect that harassment is already having."

"We have to grapple with what 'free speech' means now," affirmed Friedman. "There's no way to have a neutral platform. Every social media platform has to pick what side they're on. If you leave your platform totally open to bullies and abusers, you are impinging on the freedom of free speech of women—especially women of color, especially trans women and queer people, who are going to be abused and who are not going to be able to freely use that platform and freely speak. You have to pick. You have to draw a line. Because not drawing a line is also drawing a line."

Will Twitter actually draw a line? Will they take a definitive stance against gendered abuse? Or will the extent of their action on this issue consist of asking a two-person nonprofit to sift through the hideous multitude of hateful Tweets sent to women on a daily basis? As of now, it's impossible to be sure. 

Twitter replied to multiple requests for comment with the same canned response: "We're always trying to improve the way we handle abuse issues, and WAM! is one of many organizations we work with around the world on best practices for user safety." 

Follow Callie Beusman on ​Tw​itter.

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Some people are defined by the sports team they love. Their team gives them an identity to wrap themselves around, something to root for through thick and thin, a nostalgic link to their past and a constant shot at excitement in the future. It's a way to build camaraderie with strangers, and an excuse to drink with old friends on the weekends. I'm from Los Angeles, but if I'm honest, my team isn't really the Lakers or the Dodgers. My team is one person, and her name is Britney Jean Spears.

I found out about Britney Spears Day a week before it was slated to go down. According to the "news" section on her site, Britney was going to be honored in Sin City and was offering VIP access to her Britney Day ceremony, a ride on the LINQ High Roller (a giant, overpriced ferris wheel), and free tickets to her show to the first hundred girls named Britney who showed up. The question of whether or not I should drop everything in my life for an urgent solo girl's trip to Vegas was never really a question at all. Nor was my decision to get a fake ID for the event. I've been obsessed with this bitch longer than I've been a legal adult—far too long to be a second class citizen on her marginally important day.

My love for Britney extends to paraphernalia as well. I own two Britney perfumes, a Britney eye shadow, three Britney shirts, one Britney hat, and one recently acquired Britney nightie. My entire being lights up when I talk about Britney. I relish when people speak disparagingly of her because it gives me an opportunity to defend her, and I've saved countless people from the scourge of having good taste by converting them into Britney fans.

In high school, I never actually bought a fake. I had fake IDs, but they were always the real licenses of older girls with flexible morals. I had no idea how to solicit the services of a fake IDist, so I wore an even more juvenile outfit than I normally do, in the hope that I would look young enough to need to look older. One of the few kernels of knowledge that I've retained from high school is that Alvarado Street is the go-to place in Los Angeles to score a fake ID, so the day before Britney Day, fueled on Red Bull and mania and minimal sleep, I headed to the neighborhood just outside of MacArthur Park and hoped that the last 14 years had been kind to the illicit ID market.

I parked my car a few blocks away and strolled down the street, locking eyes with every vendor with a blanket full of wares, under the delusion that one of them would open up their trench coat to reveal a miniature fake ID lab. No such trench coat lab presented itself, and I came to terms with the fact that I would have to ask if I wanted to receive. I scanned the hot dog stands and prepaid phone card booths looking for the most trustworthy, but unsavory character I could find, and before I could land on one person in particular, a voice to my right whispered, "ID?"

I flipped around.

"ID? Yes! ID!"

A short, wiry kid, no older than 19, stood with his arms crossed.

"Are you a cop?"

"No."

He nodded and indicated that I should follow him.

"Some people say they're not cops, but then they are."

"I swear. I'm not a cop."

Either this reaffirmation or my blood shot eyes convinced him that I was, indeed, not an officer of the law, and he led me down the block, into a vestibule, up a rattling elevator, and onto the third floor of an abandoned shopping mall.

He lifted up the metal grate to a hollowed out storefront, where a middle-aged woman sat behind a folding card table and gestured for me to stand in front of a blue backdrop. She asked if I wanted to look in the mirror before I took the picture. I declined, on the basis that the more busted I looked, the more of a Britney I would seem. She snapped the photo, and the boy who found me asked me to fill out a slip of paper with details of what I wanted my new identity to be. In homage to a great fallen Britney (well, technically Brittany), I selected Murphy as my last name. I made myself eight years younger. I chose 4/20 as my birthday.

"It will be about an hour, hour and a half," the boy told me before putting my cell number into his burner.

With 90 minutes to kill while I finished committing ID fraud, I found my nearest polling place, and voted.

I returned to our designated meeting place on Alvarado Street and waited in my car. It had been 90 minutes. And then two hours. Three years of having a medical marijuana prescription has led me to forget the fact that illicit transactions always take infinitely longer than you're quoted, and I texted the boy's burner impatiently. Finally, he called me and told me it was ready.

It was dark now as I scanned the streets, searching everywhere for him. He was nowhere to be found. I, on the other hand, at 5'11 with a neon white "young person" high ponytail bobbing in the wind, was a veritable human landmark. I was hungry and delirious and sure he'd made off with my deposit. The customer service on this street corner was horrendous. I texted him twice more and began fantasizing about barging into that storefront in a cop costume when I heard "Britney! Britney!"

Oh. That felt good. All was forgiven. I handed him the rest of his money, and he handed me my ticket to paradise:

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Britney check-in started at 8 AM, and I couldn't risk missing out on being one of the first hundred Britneys—not after I'd come this far. I got a three-hour nap in, and when my alarm went off at 5 AM, pulling my eyelids open felt like lifting a freshly-formed scab. I went home, threw my "Work Bitch" hat and sequined Uggs in the backseat, and went flying into the night toward Sin City.

I rolled into town  in the gray of early sunrise with my windows down blasting "Till the World Ends." When I arrived at the LINQ hotel a throng of people were already milling about. My heart sank. I should have just done the responsible thing and slept on the sidewalk. As I got closer, though, I realized that the crowd was not there for Britney Day, but for a monster truck convention in the adjacent lot.

In fact, there was only one other Britney in line for Britney Spears Day, and she was in the process of receiving her swag. I jumped up and down. I couldn't even. Two men with walkie talkies eyed me cautiously. When the Britney ahead of me was done, my stomach fluttered with the delicious rush that comes in the moments before attempting to use a fake ID. Being a 32-year-old woman, I had written off ever experiencing this simple pleasure again. I handed over my proof of Britney and the woman looked it over.

"Oh! Britney Murphy! Another famous Britney!" she exclaimed, making no comment about the fact that the signature on the card said "Barker."

She put a pink wristband on me, marked my hand with a "B," and handed me two tickets and a t-shirt that read "Hello: My, Name Is Britney." Oh. My. God. I had fucking pulled it off.

I was a Britney on Britney Day. My entire life had been building to this moment.

I, like most people my age, will never forget the first time I saw "Hit Me Baby One More Time." In the middle of the TRL countdown, this girl, who was my age, appeared in a Lolita-inspired Catholic school girl outfit that was straight out of every high school kid's definition of what sexy was. She had pigtails with pink fluffy hair ties, fake vibrato, and exposed, perfect abs. Her name was exactly what you would think it would be: Britney. Everything about her was so cliche, she was original. She wasn't unique enough to be gorgeous, but she was hot. Really hot. Hot in a way that was unchallenging and accessible. Hot in a way that could be my friends and I in some universe not so far away. At least, that's what we all thought when we listened to her CD over and over again as we got stoned in our cars in gas station parking lots and blew our entire paychecks at Wet Seal. We weren't old enough to have real personalities, and neither was she. Britney was one of us, and she came with us everywhere.

Fourteen years later, however, neither Brit Brit nor I were lacking in literal or figurative dirt under our nails—a fact that became abundantly clear as my early morning hit of endorphins began to recede from my body and, alone on the Las Vegas strip as "Toxic" played to me and only me, I saw stars. The bad kind. I realized I needed to get some sleep before the festivities commenced, and decide that I would save time by not driving out to the condo where I was staying and, instead, I checked into the day spa at the Venetian. Yes, I realized how basic of me this was, and no, I couldn't think of a better day to do it.

Two naps and three cups of Jasmine tea later, siesta time was over. It was time to get ready. For Britney. I got my money's worth by using the facility's shampoos and lotions and hairsprays. When I returned to the LINQ, Britney Day had brought the action.

A giant crowd of drunkards, many of whom had those chunky blonde highlights that were tragically forgotten in non-Britney populations after the year 2006, had gathered around the stage. I walked by a photo op where a Britney look-alike was posing with attendees three times before realizing that the "look-alike" was actually a pile of wax.

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Because I was a Britney, I was granted access to a corral on the side of the stage. I was annoyed to find that they were not limiting access to the Britney corral to Britneys only: Two attractive gay men in expensive sunglasses faced the stage in front of me. Ugh. These frauds. Some of us had bought a fake ID for this. One of the gay guys turned around and complimented me on my Uggs, which made me like them because there was plenty of Ugg competition that night. "What are you drinking?" asked one. I held up my Coors Light. The other one rolled his eyes, disappointed. "No hard alcohol?" They both wrote me off completely. This, more than their given gender or birth names, proved to me that they were not real Britneys. Since I was alone, I bought a tall boy of Coors Light so that I could make sure I was attracting the right kind of people.

More Britneys were loaded into the Britney corral. I was not surprised to see that one of them was dating an attendee at the monster truck convention, and they held hands over the top of the Britney barrier.

A host came on stage and asked whether we were pumped. He repeatedly told us that in just 40 short minutes, "Britney Spears will be standing right here. On this X." He assured us that Entertainment Tonight would be taking pictures and that we were all going to be famous, completely missing the point. We were not here to be average people who got famous. We were here to see a famous person who is average. He told us that his "Twitter was blowing up," and encouraged us to "Make this trend." We, the Britneys, hated him.

It was t-minus one minute to B-time. A gaggle of Harrah's showgirls came onstage and did some really impressive dancing. We hated them, too. Just give us Britney, bitches! At last, from my view on the side of the stage in the Britney corral, I saw her.

Britney.

She was hiding behind the showgirls' feathers and awkwardly holding her wrists. She had that upside down smile she gets when something confuses her, and my eyes welled up with tears. This is what I had traveled through days and nights and sides of the law and a day spa for. This was the Britney I think I know and know I love.

The feathers came down, and Britney was revealed to the rest of the crowd. The CEO of zappos.com was inexplicably running the ceremony, and within seconds it became apparent that this entire day had been a roundabout way to advertise for his shoe slinging site. Britney said her line in the sing-songy, auditioning-for-the-high-school-musical voice that she uses when she's forced to speak in public: something about her charity blah blah blah. In closing, she gave a shoutout to her fellow Britneys, and gestured ambiguously. She clearly did not know or care where we were. She closed by saying, in a voice so unconvincing that it might have been intentional sarcasm, "This is definitely our day."

Then, the key giving ceremony-turned- zappos.com ad took an unexpected turn for the best.

"And now," began Mr. Twitter Blowing Up, "We told you Britneys we had a special treat for you. Right now, Britney is going to take a ride in the LINQ High Roller with all of the Britneys that we can fit in one of those—"

WHAT. WHAT. WHAT.

None of the Britneys waited for him to finish talking. We made a mad tear to the entrance of the High Roller. We screamed, we hugged, we elbowed one another. The Shitney hit the fan. I was one of the lucky few who made it in before they cut people off.

I ran head first into a giant tangle of tattooed flesh. Collectively, we cried and jumped up and down.

"We're meeting fucking Britney! We're meeting fucking Britney!"

"My weave!" yelped a Britney.

"I'm freaking out. I'm freaking out!" panicked another. A different Britney handed her a Xanax.

"Who has gum? Who has gum?"  begged a Britney. "I've had so much wine!" 

"Britney won't care. Britney won't care," I assured her.

"You guys! You guys! Work Bitch hat or no Work Bitch hat?" I implored of my Britney brethren.

"No hat!" barked a Britney.

"Yes! Any Britney flare!" insisted another.

"Wear it like K-Fed! Wear it like K-Fed!" realized a genius Britney, and we all knew she was right.

We were herded into an elevator and thrust upward into the moment we'd all spent so many pedicures fantasizing about.

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"Is she seriously going to ride in one of those bubbles with us?"

"That's what they said!"

Oh my god. Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod. What was I going to say to her? "I love you. You're my favorite person of all time." No. She hates that. "You are my spirit animal." No. "Will you sign my arm so I can get a tattoo of it?" Maybe. She does like bad tattoos.

The elevator doors opened. It was happening.

The Britneys found ourselves once again corralled, this time onto the loading dock of the pod we would enter with Britney. A transexual Britney who looked uncannily like Britney Britney got so excited she took off her pants.

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As soon as the cray-cray maylay began, Britney's body became visibly stiff with fear. She put her hands behind her back and assumed the position of someone about to walk the plank.

"Britney! Britney! We love you Britney! Britney! Britney Britney!" Then, she approached the pod loading area with her security detail, and we all wailed involuntarily.

We rushed into the pod like ravenous hogs, and she made eye contact with nary a single Britney. With expert precision, she flashed a smile and posed for the millisecond it would take to get a promo shot with us, and then hauled ass out of there before any of us could process what had just happened. We, the Britneys, should have known better than this. She's expressed in multiple documentaries that she is "shy" and "just wants to be able to walk around the mall." We've watched her, since the beginning of the K-Fed dynasty, make attempt after attempt to sleep her way to the bottom. Britney Spears hates being famous. She wants out, but as she's gotten older, she's resigned herself to the fact that there's no escaping. She's been Miss American Dream since she was 17, so she sates us with the smallest possible piece of her. This is why we love her unconditionally, why we root for her, why we defend her at all costs. This is also the ouroboros that keeps the Britney machine running: The more of a reluctant superstar she is, the more we love her, which makes her more reluctant, which makes us love her more.

But... but...

The more lucid Britneys exited the pod, but the rest of us were still in there when the doors closed.

"Wait!" yelled a Britney.

"What's going on? Do we seriously have to ride this thing? It takes 45 minutes to go around."

"It's Britney's gift to us," offered a Britney, sadly.

We had been riding in silence for a few minutes when "Lucky" came on the monitors. Britney videos began playing on the screens. Not even this cheered us up.

"This song gives me chills," remarked a Britney, and we all nodded in agreement and began singing along:  "She's so lucky, she's a star, but she cries, cries, cries in her lonely heart."

As we floated, trapped in a claustrophobic bubble, high above the rest of the world, I couldn't help but wonder if Britney had done this to teach us a lesson.

We were finally allowed out of our plexiglass prison and the exhaustion of the day hit me like a ton of bricks. It was backbreaking work being a Britney. I got some Chipotle and contemplated going home to sleep, but then I remembered that if Britney could make herself go to the live zappos.com commercial, disguised as an honor for her, I could make myself go to her show.

I got a whiskey at the bar and spotted another platinum blonde Britney who was also traveling solo. We immediately locked eyes and started talking as though we'd been mid-conversation for hours.

"Are you here alone?"

I nodded.

"Not anymore. Follow me."

We moved past the assigned seating section, which my ticket was for, and into the general admission section right at the foot of the stage. My new partner in Britney sweet talked the ticket taker. This clearly wasn't her first Britney rodeo. I followed along flawlessly—it wasn't mine either.

In an instant, I found myself flush against the stage and in the midst of my new Britney friends: a swarm of gay flight attendants, all drinking Coors Light tall boys. I. Had. Arrived.

As soon as her taut spray tanned ass arrived onstage via giant wire bubble, I was back at the frenzied state of elation I had been in before being ditched and held captive in the giant plexi-glass tank. From this close, I could see her tramp stamp and the nude whale tail of her thong peeking out over the black beading on her butt. I could see her stop lip synching when she turned away from the crowd and faced a "mirror" with images of her past selves. I noticed her acrylic french tipped nails—the kind I got for prom and then accidentally set on fire while trying to smoke a bowl. She was wearing a watch on one wrist and a hair tie on the other, and she kept them both on throughout the entire show. Not once during the entire concert would she make mention of Britney Spears Day.

I squeezed my new Britney-in-crime's arm.

"Her hair tie! She's perfect."

"I know," she agreed. "She's just like us."

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I supposed I would figure it out later, after I drove these delightful drunk flight attendants home in my filthy, standard issue car. ​I didn't know if Britney was just like us, or if we were just like Britney. We had been feeding off one another for so long, each wanting to be the other so badly since adolescence: Britney and the Britneys.

Follow Tess Barker on ​Twitter.

Eddie Ramirez, 15, has worked in the tobacco fields to help his mother with bills ever since his father was deported to Honduras. All photos by the author

Eddie Ramirez doesn't smoke, but nicotine still makes him feel "lightheaded sometimes," like he's "going to vomit." That's because he's one of the estimated thousands of kids who work in American tobacco fields, enduring long, hot days pruning plants whose leaves will be sold to big tobacco companies like Reynolds American and Japan Tobacco International, which turn the crop into Camels and Pall Malls. Green tobacco sickness, a type of acute nicotine poisoning, occurs when tobacco seeps through workers' skin, and one report found that as many as three quarters of young tobacco workers experience symptoms like dizziness, headaches, nausea, and vomiting. Ramirez showed me his hand when we were out among the sun-yellowed tobacco stalks of Snow Hill, North Carolina, where he works. "You feel how it's sticky?" he asked, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. "That's the nicotine."

In the US, it's perfectly legal for Ramirez, who is 15 and just started high school, to work in these fields. He began working at 12, the minimum legal age, lower than in any other industry in America. In 2011, former labor secretary Hilda Solis tried and failed to raise the federal age for farm work to 16, and recently NGOs have tried another approach: targeting the tobacco industry's major players, like Philip Morris International, to get them to raise the age of the workers in their supply chain. Margaret Wurth, the author of a May 2014 Human Rights Watch report about children and teens who labor in the tobacco fields, believes that the age to harvest tobacco should be raised to 18. "This is a kind of work that children just shouldn't be doing," she argues. "It's too dangerous for them."

For Ramirez-and many immigrants from Mexico and Central America, who make up about 83 percent of agricultural workers in the US-the health risks are worth taking. "My dad's not here, you know, so I help my mom a lot," Ramirez explains. Because his dad was deported to Honduras, what he makes working 12- and sometimes 13-hour days, often at $8.75 an hour ($1.50 more than minimum wage), goes to rent and food. It's a big help to his mom, who works in a sweet-potato-processing plant. She used to work in tobacco but became too sick. "The nicotine got to her real bad," he explains. "We had to take her to the hospital."

Fernando Rodriguez, 13, works in the tobacco and sweet potato fields in the summer in Snow Hill, North Carolina, where he was born and raised.

People's sensitivity to nicotine varies. Thomas Arcury, a public-health scientist at Wake Forest University, found that 25 percent of adult workers who handle tobacco experience symptoms of green tobacco sickness. Ramirez tries to protect himself from the nicotine-filled early-morning dew, which can soak through clothes and into the skin, by wearing a trash bag over his body. He cuts holes in the sides for his arms and slips the black bag over his head. In spite of his homemade getup, he says, "You still get wet."

No one knows the effects of exposure in the long term, especially on kids whose bodies and nervous systems aren't yet fully developed. What scientists do know is that nicotine absorbed through the skin is metabolized into something called cotinine, which is then measured to assess how much nicotine is in a person's system. At the end of the 1999 tobacco harvest in Wake and Granville counties, in rural North Carolina, one study found that nonsmoking adult workers had cotinine levels comparable to what you'd expect to find in someone who smokes a quarter pack a day. Although there aren't the same risks involved as those associated with smoking, like lung cancer, exposure to nicotine during adolescence may have adverse effects on brain development, according to the US surgeon general.

Brandon Rodriguez, 16, hadn't had a cigarette in three days when this photo was taken. Legally, he's old enough to work in tobacco but too young to smoke.

In North Carolina, where it seems almost every man over a certain age grew up priming tobacco on his daddy's farm, to some the risks of green tobacco sickness don't seem alarming. "We called it the 'mean green' thirty years ago," says Graham Boyd, the vice president of the state's Tobacco Growers Association. "I was one of these people who suffered from it every day," he says, recalling the symptoms he experienced working in the hot sun starting from the age of 12 or 13. He says his own 16- and 17-year-old children "are large enough that I don't see an issue with them working in a field like this with regards to the safety factor," even though his own children don't work in the fields.

It's unclear who is most invested in keeping the minimum age at 12. The Tobacco Growers Association of North Carolina, following in the footsteps of another growers' association, the Council for Burley Tobacco in Kentucky, has come forward to officially say that it doesn't condone anyone under the age of 16 working. Of the eight major companies that buy tobacco leaves from farms in North Carolina, Philip Morris International has been willing to engage in a dialogue about children working on farms it does business with, detailing a list of hazardous tasks laborers under 18 should be prohibited from doing.

But while big tobacco has expressed concern, there has been little action. "We believe tobacco companies have responsibilities to adopt clear policies to prohibit children from doing dangerous work on farms in their supply chains," Wurth, of Human Rights Watch, tells me. "The companies continue to say that they are concerned with child labor in their supply chains, but we haven't seen meaningful changes in their policies."

Saray Cambray Alvarez, 13, started accompanying her family in the fields when she was only five after immigrating to the US from Mexico.

Despite the health hazards, however, many of the children's families rely on their paychecks. "If I didn't work, we wouldn't get what we actually need," says Saray Cambray Alvarez, a 13-year-old who works in the tobacco fields of Pink Hill, a county over from Snow Hill. Alvarez's whole family work as farm laborers, traveling between tobacco fields in North Carolina and orange groves in Florida, and Saray is expected to work and help her family survive.

"If [the parents of kids like Alverez and Ramirez] were earning more money," says labor-union representative and former farmworker David Flores, "they wouldn't need their kids to work in the field."

Yet for Eddie Ramirez, it's easier to stomach the nicotine than the alternative. "I see my mom working. She comes home late. She doesn't earn enough money," he says. "It feels good to provide her with some backup."

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GCHQ Building at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Photo via the Ministry of Defence

This article originally appeared in ​VICE UK

The Investigatory Powers Tribunals (IPT) are the most secretive court cases in Britain. They are the only place you can go and complain if you think you're being illegally spied on by MI5, MI6, Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ), or even by the police or local government. The only time they've actually found against the authorities was when Poole Borou​gh Council spied on a family to see if they were lying about which school catchment area they lived in. Of course before you can make a complaint you have to somehow know that you're being secretly spied on, which is pretty tricky. Even if you do, the IPT most likely won't grant you access to the evidence against you, give you the right to cross-examine anyone, let you appeal or even tell you what their reasoning was when they hand down their verdict. Sometimes they won't even tell you whether you've won or not. Needless to say, they almost always meet behind closed doors.

That was until this year, when the IPT bowed to legal pressure and agreed to open its doors for a few select public hearings. Which is how I found myself at the Rolls Building in Holborn, London at 4:30 PM on a dreary Wednesday afternoon a few weeks back. The Rolls Building is a labyrinthine Ministry of Justice court complex which houses 31 courts and three "super" courts, but as you can see from this totally chill, deep house-soundtracked video, it's really just a rad place to hang out and lay down some justice:

When I arrived the security guards were in the process of turfing out the guy in front of me, telling him the building was closed. When I told them the name of the case I was visiting, and insisted that it was an open hearing, they allowed me through the metal detectors and I set off in search of Court 27.

It was an underwhelming find. The courts in the Rolls Building lack the history and grandiose formality of places like the Old Bailey. This was just a functional room with bright strip lighting, empty bookcases and too much formica. There's no public gallery, just a few stackable chairs stuck along each side. When I arrived they were all taken, so I stood quietly at the back until someone ducked out early for a pint and I stole his chair. There were maybe half a dozen journalists, including Ben Bryant from VIC​E News, and the same number of super keen law students. They're outnumbered by the number of lawyers and their advisors in the room—I make it 18 in all—making their case to a panel of three judges.

The IPT were hearing a c​ase, brought by two Libyans, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj and Sami Al Saadi, accusing the British intelligence services of spying on privileged conversations that they had with their own lawyers. They're being represented by the legal charity Reprieve and the UK solicitors Leigh Day, who demanded that the intelligence services released their policies on whether or not they can use privileged information gathered through spying against claimants in court.

That Wednesday it became clear that the government was still stalling, so it ended up becoming an hour-long discussion about rescheduling—as if Google Calendars never existed. The judge ordered the intelligence agencies to hand over copies of their policies by 5 PM the next day, and put another date in the diary for the following Thursday morning.

There was still time for one big dispute, when it became clear that the government would not be producing the original polices, redacted where necessary, but rather new, retyped documents that make it impossible to see just how much they're keeping hidden. This is referred to as "gisting." Given that, "I'll just give you the gist of it," is the sort of thing that's barely acceptable to say to your boss if you haven't read an email properly, the idea that the government thinks this is an OK way to refer to court mandated legal documents is a tiny bit terrifying.

Dinah Rose QC, acting for the Libyans, told the judge she wasn't happy, so the Judge told the government's James Eadie QC to "bear that in mind." Eadie, the highly paid government litigation specialist who occupies a position known as the "Treasury Devil," simply leaned back and chuckled. Rose raised an eyebrow. "I can see him bearing it in mind, m'lud," she said.

When Thursday rolled around, there was a whole different vibe in the room. Reprieve knew they had a small victory on their hands—the revelation that intelligence agencies do indeed have policies on spying on people talking to their own lawyers—and even former Conservative minister David Davis turned up to watch proceedings from a little formica chair next to mine. It no surprise that he's interested in this case, given that Davis resigned and then re-won his seat in 2008 in protest at the erosion of civil liberties.

The intelligence agencies had acted like truculent schoolboys and only finally handed in their work at the last possible moment—some of it arriving 15 minutes before the hearing. No matter, thanks to the fact that this was a rare public hearing, as soon as the documents were referred to in open court they entered the public domain. It's through Reprieve's dogged pursuit of this case that we ended up with headlines ​such as "New Documents Reveal the UK's Policies on Spying on Attorney-Client Communications."

The really scary thing about Britain's secret courts is that these practices are only going to become more common. In 2013 the new Justice and Security Act rolled out something called "Closed Material Procedures" across the country's civil courts. The CMP codifies in law the ability of the government to talk shit about you behind your back in court without you ever finding out about it.

As the campaign group Liberty have warned, the government now has special access to judges to present evidence against you without telling the claimant what it is or even that they're doing it. The judges will examine this secret evidence in private and won't discuss it with you, even if it changes the outcome of your case. The fact that this is happening in secret is one issue here, but perhaps more importantly this is also eroding the idea of what lawyers call "equality of arms"—the legal principle that for a fair trial both parties should have equal access to the judge.

We're now a year on since the introduction of CMP, so at the end of July the Justice Minister Chris Grayling published an extrem​ely short report seemingly designed to tell us as little as possible. We learn from the report that in five cases last year the Secretary of State showed judges secret, undisclosed evidence. Yet nobody knows what these cases were, and even charities like Liberty have been forced to admit they don't actually know which cases he's referring to. The government delights in obfuscation—yet if they've done nothing wrong, they have nothing to hide, right?

As we're currently seeing in the Belhaj case, the government isn't above hiding behind the cloak of national security whenever it has inconvenient information that it wants to keep hidden for whatever reason. As Dinah Rose QC told the court on Thursday, the government had said on three previous occasions that releasing those documents would "harm national security." This claim is now provably false, not just because the government eventually voluntarily released them, but also because now that we've been able to read them there is clearly, as Rose put it, "no conceivable way" they could harm national security.

These lawyers' battles in brightly-lit, nondescript rooms in Holborn don't make for the most exciting courtroom dramas, but they're the fights that will determine whether trials in British courts stay free. Before the Justice and Security Act 2013 were plenty of tools that previously existed in British law to protect national security where it was a genuine concern—like redacting documents, or appealing to judges to hold certain hearings behind closed doors. Closed Material Procedures tip this discretion away from judges towards the intelligence services. We now know from watching the IPT that those spooks will not resist the temptation to use that power to withhold information that is inconvenient to them.

Fair trials depend on open courts, and have been a cornerstone of the British legal system at least since Bentham wrote in 1834 that, "Publicity is the very soul of justice." Without them we could find ourselves condemned not just in ignorance, but in innocence too.

Follow Kevin E G Perry on ​Tw​itter.

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Franklin & Marshall jumper

PHOTOGRAPHY: ​LAURA ALLARD-FLEISCHL
​STYLING: KYLIE GRIFFITHS

Hair: Lydia Warhurst using Bumble and bumble
​Illustrations: Faye West
​Models: Melinda and Amelia at Union​

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Brixton jumper

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Blue Collar Worker jumper

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ASOS jumper

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Tommy Hilfiger jacket

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ASOS jacket

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HUF top

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Franklin & Marshall jumper

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Tommy Hilfiger top

Every day, America must find a place to park 5 billion gallons of human waste, and we're increasingly unable to find the space. We wake up in the morning, brush our teeth, and flush the toilet, thinking that the waste water disappears into the center of the Earth. If only that were the case.

Every morning between 8 AM and 9 AM, the waste output of Manhattan's West Side swells from 70 million to 150 million gallons per day. This is known as "the big flush." The sewage will eventually end up on a NYC Department of Environmental Protection Sewage boat, which will take the sludge to a dewatering plant on Ward's Island, where the sludge will become "biosolids"—reused to create golf courses, cemeteries, and fertilizer for the human food chain.

Biosolids have become a financial asset worth hundreds of billions of dollars, but it's still possible that we'll go back to dumping our waste in the ocean. In this new documentary, VICE traces the trail of waste from butt to big-money biosolid and beyond.​

Anyone troubled by the idea that having a run-in with the law should consign a person to a lifetime of stigma and stifled opportunity will have cheered the recent new​s that three New York colleges have agreed—after a nudge from the state'​s attorney general—to drop questions about past arrests from their admissions procedures.

Getting rid of that part of the application process is a matter of justice and common sense: A huge number of Americans—more than 12​ million in 2012, according to the FBI—are arrested every year, but far fewer are convicted of any crime, and many are booked on little or no basis at all. So an arrest record in and of itself isn't particularly meaningful, but needless to say, it doesn't look good, and has the potential to derail an otherwise qualified applicant's chances of getting in to the school of his or her dreams.

That said, the focus on arrests—which, it turns out, relatively few schools ask about, even though it's not illegal to do so—overlooks a much tougher obstacle to a college education that affects a lot of Americans: the widespread collection and use by US colleges of applicants' criminal conviction records.

​Two-thirds of US colleges and universities that took part in a landmark 2010 survey by the nonprofit Center for Community Alternatives reported collecting criminal justice information. Around 500 s​chools, including many of America's biggest and best known, obtain the information via the "Common App​lication," which asks, "Have you ever been adjudicated guilty of a misdemeanor, felony, or other crime?" Other schools have their own admissions processes instead of or in addition to the Common App, and these vary widely from school to school; some ask only about felony convictions, others also inquire about misdemeanors or juvenile adjudications or even secondary school disciplinary records.

Fewer than half the schools that collect this information have written policies governing its use, but most admissions officers reported that a criminal record is "viewed negatively" and can hurt an applicant's chances of admission.

Why is this a problem? Start with the issue of basic fairness. Typically, ex-offenders—and after decades of "tough-on-crime" law enforcement, we're talking about 70 million-odd peo​ple here—have been punished for their crimes, many of them with prison time; they've paid their "debt to society." Throwing obstacles in the path of those who want to get an education can prolong their punishment indefinitely, even for relatively minor offenses.

As is so often the case with US criminal justice, civil rights come into play, too. American criminal laws are race-neutral on their face, but they ​certainly aren't enforced in a race-neutral way. To cite just one familiar and depressing example: Black men are three times mor​e likely to be arrested for drug offenses than white men, though they don't use drugs at a higher rate. Latinos don't fare much better. So, if colleges are taking a dim view of applicants with criminal records, guess who is more likely to suffer?

"There's a lot of talk about improving access to college [for minorities]," says Marsha Weissman, executive director of the Center for Community Alternatives. "But unless we deal with this issue, we're not going to get there." The college admissions process risks becoming one more mechanism for keeping minority communities locked into vicious cycles of disadvantage and exclusion.

School administrators argue that collecting criminal justice information makes for safer campuses. Not coincidentally, more and more schools started requiring applicants to disclose criminal histories around 2007, in the wake of the Virginia Tech campus sho​otings, when a student shot and killed 32 people, and other high profile incidents. (That shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, didn't have a criminal record, by the way.) Michael V. Reilly, executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO), the professional organization for admissions personnel, says his group hasn't called for schools to scrap the practice, but is mindful of the pitfalls. "If campuses are going to do this, they have to be cognizant of what they're doing, because there are a lot of concerns," he said.

This reaction to campus shootings may be somewhat understandable, but there's actually no research that indicates that students with criminal records pose any more of a safety risk than those without, or that schools that screen for criminal histories are any safer than those that don't. And that holds true across offenses, including sexual assault. After two students at the University of North Carolina were murdered by two other peers with criminal records, a task force was established in 2004 to review campus safety. It found that of the students who committed crimes on campus in the previous three years, only 4 percent had a ​criminal history. Better predictors of criminal behavior, as anyone who has spent time on a college campus will be less than shocked to learn, were drinking and fraternity membership. And a 2013 study by the Colorado School of Public Health fo​und that just 8.5 percent of applicants with a criminal history to a large Southern college were charged with misconduct during their time there.

If anything, denying people with criminal histories a chance at higher education can actually harm public safety. The research on the impact on recidivism of post-release college education is limited, but there's p​lenty of evidence that inmates who pursue a college education while in prison are dramatically less likely to reoffend, and little reason to doubt that something similar would hold true for post-release prisoners.

Besides, if the idea is to keep dangerous people away from campuses, schools are going about it in too broad a way. About 94 percent of the schools responding to the Community Alternatives study repor​ted viewing violent crime and sex offenses negatively. But 90 percent reported they considered any felony conviction that way, with almost half saying they look unfavorably even at felonies committed by the applicant as a "youthful offender," which in most states means under the age of 18.

It's true that college admissions offices look at a range of qualities and character traits when assessing applicants; hence the interest in outside activities and public service and whatnot. And maybe an ex-drug offender has a tougher case to make in that sense than their high-school valedictorian. But just as kids can make bad choices, they can turn things around. Many—maybe most—deserve a second chance. US law recognizes that "kids are dif​ferent" for the purposes of criminal justice; they're less culpable, and more capable of being rehabilitated. The alternative is to tie them to their youthful mistakes for life, as happens to most of the 250,0​00 kids prosecuted in the United States as adults every year. Given all the challenges of reentering society from the criminal justice system, says Bianca Van Heydoorn, director of educational initiatives at the Prisoner Reentry Initiative at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York: "I think it says a whole lot about someone's character, drive, and motivation that they are trying to get a higher education."

Three-quarters of admissions officers told researchers they considered a drug or alcohol conviction negatively. But after four decades of harsh drug control policies, an incredible number of Americans have drug convictions. About one o​ut of four of America's 2.2 million prisoners is inside for a drug-related crime—the vast majority of them for low-level offenses.

It might seem more reasonable that a sex-offense conviction should disqualify a candidate for college admission. But a wide range of offenses qualify as "sex offenses," as Human Rights Watch has docume​nted, from the very serious, such as rape, to the relatively innocuous, like consensual sex between teenagers, and even public nudity. What's more, sex offenders are comparatively unlikely to reoffend—only 13 percent do, compared with 45 percent for all crimes—and those who commit the offense when they're under 18 are the least likely to reoffend (4 to 10 percent). Despite this, sex offenses are typically cited by college admissions offices as among the crimes most likely to trigger an automatic bar to admission.

Making matters worse, criminal records are plagued by "inadequacies in accuracy and completeness," making them "difficult to decipher" by the Department of Justice's own estimat​ion. So it hardly inspires confidence to learn that only 40 percent of the schools that collect criminal justice information have staff trained to interpret it.

Now, having a criminal record will only rarely automatically disqualify a college applicant, depending on the policy of a given school and the gravity of the offense in question. Typically, disclosure triggers additional steps in the admissions process, which can include requiring that applicants produce a letter of explanation, a letter from a corrections official, or a rap sheet. Some applicants are accepted, despite their records, but an unknown number miss the cut. Even then, it can be hard to pinpoint a criminal record as the reason an applicant was rejected; some schools tell applicants why they were denied and others don't. One admissions director told the Center for Community Alternatives that, in his experience, most applicants asked to submit additional materials "drop out at that point."

So what can we do about it? Some activists, like Weissman of CCA, and Van Heydoorn of John Jay College, want schools to stop asking applicants about criminal history, period. Short of that, state governments could take a lesson from employment law; a growing number of states and municipalities have passed "ba​n the box" laws barring public agencies—and in some cases private employers—from asking about a prospective hire's criminal history until the candidate reaches the interview stage or receives a conditional job offer. Likewise, states could require schools to defer asking about criminal records until after making an applicant a conditional offer. (New York state lawmakers are ​considering legislation that mandates essentially this approach.) Admissions staff should be required to get adequate training in interpreting criminal justice information. Legislators should also make it clear that juvenile records are off limits. (Ex-offenders prosecuted in the juvenile justice system aren't required by law to produce these records, but some schools ask anyway.)

Ex-offenders deserve a chance to realize their basic human right to education, free from discrimination. When colleges ask applicants about their criminal histories, they compromise that right, and without any perceptible gain in public safety. They also send the message that past mistakes can have the drastic consequence of permanently closing off one of the surest routes to a better future.

Julian Brookes is a senior editor with the US program of Human Rights Watch. Follow him on Twitter.

New York City has been the US capital of marijuana possession arrests for years now, but the most powerful men in town announced on Monday that change is coming—and soon.

Starting next Wednesday, November 19, possession of 25 grams or less of pot—even in public view—will no longer get you cuffed and brought downtown by the cops. Instead, police will begin issuing criminal court summons, or desk appearance tickets, requiring guilty parties show up in front of a judge at a future date. The bad news for pot lovers is that smoking the stuff in public will still be sufficient to earn you a night or two in jail. And since many New Yorkers—especially young men of color—fail to show up when issued desk appearance tickets, this isn't exactly a game-changer when it comes to the war on drugs in America's largest city.

Still, Mayor Bill De Blasio, who campaigned on reining in NYPD excesses, framed the issue as a simple matter of social justice.

"When an individual is arrested," he told reporters at a press conference at One Police Plaza, "even for the smallest possession of marijuana, it hurts their chances to get a good job; it hurts their chances to get housing; it hurts their chances to qualify for a student loan. It can literally follow them for the rest of their lives and saddle young people with challenges that, for many, are very difficult to overcome."

The new policy is certainly his boldest step yet on policing reform, and it would appear to be in direct conflict with NYPD Commissioner William J. Bratton's signature "​broken windows" theory. The idea there is that going after minor offenses like pot possession and turnstile jumping can help nab the really nasty guys, like rapists and murderers. But Bratton seems on board with the change—in fact, he even held up 25-gram bag of oregano at the press conference Monday to demonstrate how much weed you can carry around without being arrested.

"All I can think of right now is pizza, because I usually like oregano on my pizza," he told reporters.

After he addressed a conference on criminal justice issues at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan that afternoon, I asked the commissioner about the apparent contradiction between a laissez-faire attitude on pot and arresting people for dancing on the subway and other "quality-of-life" crimes.

"Broken windows ultimately is about discretion," Bratton told me.​ "An officer, one of the tools they have, is... whether to give a verbal warning, admonition, summons, or an arrest. This way, they have the ability to issue a summons, which is a less harmful part of the process rather than making an arrest... in keeping with quality-of-life policing."

So broken windows is still the name of the game, even if Bratton is ready for some tweaking at the margins after a summer characterized by ​graphic videos of police doing extraordinarily terrible things to minorities. Private possession of weed has actually been decriminalized at the state level since the 1970s, but city cops have tended to go rogue and force people to take the stuff out of their pockets into open view, making it a crime. When I asked the commissioner if marijuana was effectively decriminalized in New York City now, he was having none of it.

"Not at all," Bratton replied. "If you're smoking a joint, you're going to be arrested. If you're trying to sell joints, you're going to be arrested. This pertains to a portion of the problem."

When asked what kind of impact this new policy might have on arrests, the commissioner was noncommittal: "Our anticipation is that it will result in the need for fewer arrests—that's a hopeful expectation."

Even if Bratton seems intent to brush it off like no big thing, this represents the single most significant change so far in the De Blasio era after the establishment of universal pre-K for the city's children. Stop-and-frisks are way down this year—Bratton gushed to the  New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin, who interviewed him at the criminal justice conference, that his cops have only conducted 45,000 of the controversial searches so far in 2014, on pace for the fewest in some time. But that trend actually began under his predecessor, Ray Kelly, as Bratton is more than willing to admit.

"A lot of this is Giuliani-era criminalization of people, with a fetish for incarceration," Eugene O'Donnell, a former Brooklyn cop and prosecutor, told me of pot arrests. "They took a tremendous number of routine arrests and made people stay in jail for 24 hours.  The major transformation in the city at this point is that it's real-estate central, it's safe as hell, and serious crime is not a concern. This is a much easier sell now than it would've been in the 90s when you had the fear factor. The New York Post is ​endorsing it today, which should tell you a lot about where we're at." 

Despite the seemingly historic shift, policing reform advocates were already warning on Monday that this is a wolf in sheep's clothing, or at least nothing to get too excited about.

"This policy shift from Mayor de Blasio is a positive step forward," said Priscilla Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Communities United for Police Reform (CPR). "But real reform requires an end to unlawful searches, since they are a main driver of unlawful marijuana arrests. If marijuana ticketing targets black and brown New Yorkers, it will only perpetuate racial profiling and discriminatory policing."

Bob Gangi of the Police Reform Organizing Project agreed.

"Black and brown New York men are liable not to show up to court, meaning their summons dates could lead to court-issued warrants," he said Monday. "So next time they're stopped, cops have to arrest them. We're not convinced that this policy, even if the NYPD is set to implement it, will change the main problem."

If the new pot policy just shifts the disproportionate impact of the criminal justice system on minorities from the arrest side to summonses, it's not clear who benefits except a mayor desperate to shore up his support among the people who elected him. Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson—who helped augur the change by announcing this summer that he wouldn't prosecutor most low-level pot cases—has ​already expressed concern that, since summonses are not subject to prosecutorial review, this new system might be even less accountable than the status quo. People with outstanding warrants will still be arrested for having small amounts of pot, as will those who can't produce ID, which means mostly immigrants, the elderly, and minorities. But we shouldn't downplay what amounts to a complete reversal on a decades-long war on weed in NYC.

"This is supposed to be a violation, so the fact that arrests are being made in the first place has been the issue," O'Donnell, the former cop and prosecutor, told me. "We're on the road to sanity, finally. It's long overdue. The political establishment wasn't exactly a profile in courage on this."

​John S​u​rico contributed reporting.

Follow Matt Taylor on Tw​itter.

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A Greggs sausage buttie. Image via Flickr user  vagueonthehow

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

Being a sandwich maker isn't sexy. As a Greggs bakery alumnus I know that spreading honey mustard on a grainy roll comes with all manner of hidden pressures. It's a cutthroat industry, sandwich-making. So, you know, I get why Brits don't want to make sandwiches for a living and why the Daily Mail ​believes that Eastern Europeans will definitely hijack all of the UK's unwanted sandwich sector jobs.

Here are a few the things I learned while making sandwiches every morning for six months.

MOST SANDWICHES CONTAIN ENOUGH MAYO TO SINK A FERRY
​ Whether you're sinking your teeth into a roll or baguette, I'm willing to bet that your shop-bought sandwich features enough mayonnaise to keep the battery hen industry in business for an epoch. I used to use a giant ice-cream scoop to measure out the mayo from tubs the size of bedside cabinets when making up the sandwich mixes at Greggs, decanting the stuff onto packets of ready-cooked chicken—that, once opened, smelled like a million old man farts; you never forget your first hit.

By the time I left Greggs, I reckon 75 percent of my own composition was mayo, 24 percent Bavarian slice and 1 percent soul. I was a sloppy mess of a woman with a belly that resembled a bowl of crème patissiere that'd been sat on a windowsill for hours. If you sliced open my chest, grated cheese would have tumbled out. 

NEVER MISS WITH THE TOMATO-TO-CUCUMBER RATIO
​ Aesthetics matter, people! Customers can be very tetchy about the veggie accents on their ham and cheese baguettes. My boss told me that every sandwich had to be made to the same standard to ensure product uniformity. Fine. Standard. But customers often couldn't keep their shit together if there was any divergence from Greggs' buttie blueprint, which was plastered over the wall in a handy diagram. One day, we ran out of tomatoes at the shop so every sandwich had two extra slices of cucumber instead. The customers stared at the glass fridge as if it were an unfathomable abyss, eyes glazed over with abject fear while they tried to work out what was wrong with their Mexican Chicken Oval Bites. Poor bastards. 

WATCH THE CLOCK, FFS
​ Sandwich makers at Greggs are expected to produce one sandwich a minute, firing off tuna rolls and cheese salad rolls like culinary Rambos with bread knife machetes. It's pretty cool. There was often fierce competition between the sandwich makers to see who could produce the fastest Chicken Club Baguette—the meanest sub on the Greggs menu. The issue of contention lay with the crunchy surface of the crusty French stick, which is a lot tougher to cut through than its pillowy alternative, the Soft Bite. So, you know, 60 seconds was a push at times.

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A branch of Greggs. Image  ​via Wikimedia Commons

SANDWICHES ARE A FEAT OF ENGINEERING
​ There was always bit of jiggery pokery going on at the sandwich stand to make the sarnies look fuller and bigger. First impressions mean everything, after all. I was often told to use two forks instead of a knife to gently spread the fillings over the lettuce and create a "lifted texture" that sounded, then and now, like a brassy barmaid's fringe. Cheese, bacon and tomatoes were to be placed gingerly on top of one another like a game of edible Jenga, while slices of chicken were positioned on the edge of the bread like the fibrous hand of an unwelcome admirer. It was magic, really. 

YOU NEED A GOOD SET OF TONSILS 
​ My manager told me to announce the arrival of freshly prepared sandwiches and hot pasties (which are, as the Greggs mission statement says, always fresh and always—always—tasty) on the shop floor to attract customers. My feeble shouts of "hot Cornish" did little to boost sales, though. She also told me to say, "How can I help you?" to every customer. But her desire to speed up service meant it often came out as a swifter, far more deeply-toned, "Can I hell poo?", making her sound like an angry woman who wanted the world to know that, hell yes, she could poo.

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Phwoaaaaargh. Image via Wikimedia Commons

DON'T ANGER THE MANAGEMENT 
​ My manager looked like she had an everlasting sour lemon lolly hidden in her pocket that she licked every five minutes. Uptight and varnished with cheese pasty-scented sweat, she called me into her office for a chat one day. I had left a dirty tray in the pot wash and, for that, I was to be admonished. By God, did I get my revenge. In secret. 

I covertly used up key ingredients in my own—deeply—personal sandwiches, piling cheese "savory" mix on top of tuna mayo and chargrilled chicken to create the ultimate three-tiered baguette of savory revenge. Soon enough she went catatonic on herself for ordering the incorrect amount of ingredients for the week's sandwiches. However, the joke eventually came to bite me on the arse when I had to explain why we'd run out of Tuna Crunch to unhappy customers. What I should have said was, "It's in my belly, mate, along with the crème patissiere and a dank ocean of fajita-flavored mayo." 

All that said, you genuinely won't find a better sausage roll in Britain that the one you'll get at Greggs. Skip the sarnies and eat a molten pastry that will take your soft palate off in one quick, clean layer. 

Follow Javaria Akbar on ​Twitter

​A city in Alberta, where recent law enforcement news included two cops being chased by an upset​ owl, will soon be awaiting delivery of an armoured vehicle for the local police force.

After a fierce debate, city council in Medicine Hat, Alta., approved the purchase by a vote of five to four. Technically, though, the truck had already been approved months earlier, when the Medicine Hat Police Commission voted unanimously in favour.

The catch is that the money to cover the $275,000 price tag for a Ballistic Armoured Tactical Transport 4V Armoured Rescue Vehicle, manufactured by the Armored Group, LLC, was going to come from a loan. That necessitated council passing a bylaw to approve the loan.

Medicine Hat is a city of a bit more than 61,000 people, and is a little less than 300 kilometres southeast of Calgary. It has its fair share of crime: statistics provided to the police commission say the tactical team was dispatched 19 times in 2013. As well, that year, police responded to 831 weapons complaints—12 of which were for firearms.

Having an armoured vehicle isn't entirely new, either: the Medicine Hat Police Service had one previously—but it was just a repurposed Brinks truck—and police ditched it five or six years ago, citing concerns that the armour wasn't tough enough.

Nevertheless, when the purchase came before council, it sparked debate, one that centred around, in some ways, Coun. Bill Cocks, a criminal trial lawyer and former Crown prosecutor, who became the face of the opposition.

"I think most people are opposed to it simply on the grounds that they don't believe we need it, they just go, 'I wouldn't spend $50,000 for one of those things, we don't need it,'" Cocks said in an interview.

But, Insp. Tim McGough, head of the support services division with the police, said the vehicle is necessary to "enhance police officer and public safety."
​
​"In the last 18 months there has been at least three firearms-related incidents that our officers have been involved in where an armoured rescue vehicle could have been used," said McGough in an email.​

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​The inside of the armoured vehicle.

​Part of the justification is that an armoured vehicle helps get police in close to a situation—say, a shooter—and then police might be able to use a Taser or other less lethal means to take down a suspect. Robert Dumanowski, who supported the purchase, and sits on the police commission, said "post-mortems" from previous incidents showed an armoured vehicle would be an asset, and it's one that police predict will last for 20 years.

"Even though crime's going down in Medicine Hat, we have an increase in dangerous crime, for lack of a better word," Dumanowski explained by phone.

Additionally, Medicine Hat is a few hours from the nearest big city, meaning that if a serious incident of some sort does occur, in the absence of their own armoured vehicle, local cops would have to wait for reinforcements from another municipality.

"When you're dealing with high-risk situations like this, the immediacy of being able to deploy that kind of equipment is absolutely imperative," Dumanowski said.

Nevertheless, the purchase is controversial, though not exactly over the money, which, realistically, is a drop in the bucket in a city budget of millions of dollars. But, it highlights policing strategy in the community, which has Hatters (the folks who live in Medicine Hat) riled up, Cocks said, noting the opposition is mainly due to two factors.

"The philosophical 'we don't want it,' bleeds into the pragmatic 'we don't need it, good god, we're in Medicine Hat, Alberta, we do not need an armoured vehicle,'" Cocks explained. "We have our share of drug trafficking, but we don't have major drug lords holed up in fortresses that need to be assailed."
​
Five of his colleagues on city council, though, plainly didn't agree with his assessment of the necessity of an armoured vehicle.

"We are replacing an existing vehicle that will be used by our tactical unit, which again, is not new," Dumanowski said. "Could we use a school bus? Absolutely. Is that prudent? Is that practical? No, it's not."

He argued that the fight over the purchase constitutes meddling in police operations. Council has control over police budgets, and officers are constrained through the Police Act, but Dumanowski indicated that there's a problem with civilians questioning police expertise, especially when the police are already responsive to many public concerns, such as drunk driving.

"When it comes to day-to-day management on an operational level, I'm sorry, you don't have the right to tell the police how to do things," he argued. "Pretty soon, the public, through the elected officials, are going to be challenging the police why they even have a tactical unit. Why do they utilize smoke bombs and stun bombs and Tasers and deployment of batons and tear gas? These are tools that every tactical unit has at their disposal."

The purchase of heavy equipment—whether it's weapons or armoured vehicles—has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. Critics refer to the process of "police militarization," and argue that the change in materiel leads to a shift in the way policing is done, from community-oriented, public service policing, to officers that look and behave like an occupying army.

"I do have a concern about the militarization of police and the kind of 'us and them' mentality that seems to... wash through a lot of police dealings in this community, and in a lot of communities," said Cocks. "(Many young men), rather than feeling sympathetic towards the police, are really left feeling that there's this very macho, well-armed, well-dressed, well-kitted organization in their city that just harasses them."

For their part, police reject the idea that equipment is changing their behaviour, and the premise that they're becoming militarized.

"To equate the appropriation of an armoured rescue vehicle by police to the militarization of police, is in itself a faulty analogy and a mischaracterization of its purpose," said McGough. "Police services have always used various forms of armour to protect themselves and the public from projectiles and gunfire. Police have had personal body armour, ballistic shields and armoured rescue vehicles at their disposal for many years."

Regardless, the purchase has raised several questions about oversight and crystallized an issue that previously has, in Canada, mostly been a debate in major urban centres.

"This is the first I have heard of a small city acquiring an armoured vehicle," said Darryl Davies, a criminology professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, and a vocal critic of police militarization.

He argued that tens of thousands of dollars would be far better spent on drug addiction and poverty reduction programs to fight the causes of crime.

"Instead, it's Tasers, armoured vehicles, bulletproof vests, tactical training, the complete antithesis of what policing is supposed to be about, namely a service to the community," Davies said.

Police equipment is still a hot-button issue, and one that continues, in both the United States and Canada (Edmonton police recently asked for an​other helicopter, for example), and raises questions about policing tactics, culture and expenditures.

"The police subculture in Canada all subscribes to the 'toys for the boys' syndrome, but not to the extent that they do in the US. However, unless it is nipped in the bud we will continue to see Canadian police mimic their US counterparts," Davies warned.

​@tylerr​daw​son

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"When I was 22 or 23, I took a semester-long photography course. We had an assignment, and I decided I wanted to follow Santa Claus. At the time, there were all these guys around New York dressing up as Santa for Volunteers of America, and they'd collect donations outside Macy's, etc. After they'd collect, they'd head back to the volunteers headquarters on Houston Street and go out drinking. Most of the Santas were alcoholics. I took this picture because in my head, I remember thinking, Why is Santa taking the A train? Where is his sleigh? Later, I took this photograph to an editor at the New York Times, and he loved it, but said it was too late to publish for Christmas. Well, I missed the boat that Christmas, so I guess I'll catch the boat 46 years later."
​ -Bruce Gilden

Regular VICE readers are probably pretty familiar with  ​Magnum​ Photos, the photo cooperative founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David "Chim" Seymour, and George Rodger. We've ​publicly declared ​our love for them a few times and Magnum member Bruce Gilden sometimes drops by our office and ​tells us w​hat's what.

You also might remember that back in June, the generally old-school cooperative surprised the photo world by offering signed six-by-six prints for $100. Actually, people sort of flipped and the Magnum  ​site ​crashed because of traffic.

Well, now they're doing something similar, but with this time the photographers challenged each other to search old hard drives, basements, and attics for one image each that they've always liked but for one reason or another has remained in relative obscurity. The idea was to pick one photograph to "rescue from oblivion." It's a cool reminder that 99.99 percent of the work a photographer makes either stays hidden or even gets thrown out. But you know what they say: "One man's trash..."

The cooperative doesn't edition these signed prints by limiting quantity, but instead has created an edition of sorts by only offering them a few days. So if you want one, you gotta grab it before November 14 at 5 OM EST. Here are some of the excavated photographs that we liked. 

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At a car wash in the suburbs of Paris, I saw this poor woman locked in a car just as the giant rollers were about to swallow the vehicle. She looked familiar: She was, in fact, my wife. I could never put this picture with my personal work, because there was a certain complicity between me and the subject. To maintain my credibility, my photos must be 'found,' which wasn't quite the case here, so the picture has remained lonely and neglected. But I like it anyway.
​-Richard Kalvar

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This photograph was taken during my first visit to the United States for the project I Am About to Call It a Day. I had just finished working on the series Ou Menya in Russia, a project made by asking people I met on the street to spend a single night in their home. This was my way of entering into the intimacy of their family. With this, I finally felt comfortable taking photographs of strangers. But I wanted to use the same approach in a country where I could speak the language; I wanted to see if it would still work even then. So while shooting in the US I got stranded in a little town in Louisiana. I couldn't find a place to stay, but an old man wanted to show me "the only beautiful museum in town." The exhibits were buried under dust and the dismal, lonely atmosphere was remarkable. This is not an image I wanted to use in my book because it's totally different than any of my other photographs. And to be honest, I actually still don't know if I like this image! But somehow, for some reason, the photograph keeps popping up in my mind. So, maybe it's best that it doesn't get lost in an undefined digital archive. Maybe it's best that it isn't just forgotten with time.
​-Bieke Depoorter

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This was photo was taken on the set of L'important c'est d'aimer by Andrei Zulawski in 1974. It was my first film set. I had only one year of professional photography behind me, and I was just finishing university. With Kinski, there was also Romy Shneider, Jacques Dutronc, Fabio Testi, and more. All these prestigious figures made me feel quite intimidated as a beginner, but I was so fascinated, watching in silence what was unfolding in front of me. I discovered amazing intricacies that existed between the mood of the film and the inner psychology of the actors during the shooting. I ended up unable to truly be able to emotionally differentiate what was happening in the fictional film and what was happening with the real-life actors. Andrei Zulawski has always excelled in handling this kind of situation. The film crew and producers had given me almost full carte blanche. I was left alone with the actors. Kinski fascinated me most—his sudden moods swings, from very calm to incredibly violent. He was struggling with his demons and playing with the struggle. With me, he was attentive and kind. It was while the crew was setting up the lights that Kinski began to improvise this moment, began to play. It weighed on me, the mood he would inhabit a few moments after this frame was made. After the take ended, he got up and walked away slowly toward the bedroom window. He cried. We stayed both silent.
​ -Jean Gaumy

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When I began photographing the women who performed striptease at carnivals in the early 1970s, I had two Leicas: one for color, the other black and white. I did portraits with a medium format camera. As I immersed myself further into the world of the Girl Show, I realized that the ASA of color film at that time couldn't handle the exposure I needed. Daylight was fine, but by night I ended up shooting handheld at low shutter speeds and still had to push the black-and-white film to 1600 to render the interiors of the dressing room and performances. This door was the entrance to the tent for "Men and men only, no ladies, no babies." Being excluded provoked me to sneak in disguised as a young man. I'm now just beginning to rediscover the color buried in my archive, which makes me think about how different the work then would be with digital today.
​ -Susan Meiselas

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When I look at my shelves, I see dozens and dozens of folders with negatives. Published projects like Sabine and Tokyo, sit alongside those still unpublished: The Gomez-Brito Family, Bangkok, and Home. I take down a folder from Home. There are hundreds of rolls, maybe thousands from the last five years, most of them unseen, most of them never to be published. I turn the pages. Images of people I have met, places and buildings appear in a constant flow. This is what I saw that day, this is how I felt. I then recognize the skin: Onse and Axel. I will never forget this day, the day I met Onse and Axel, and the love they shared. Axel is 90 years old. "You have to meet my girlfriend," he said. "She is ten years older than me!" He tells me about Onse and how they fell in love on a holiday in Bangkok. He invites me to visit them at Onse's house. Onse is 100 years old and lives alone. She has never been married. She used to be a photographer and traveled all over the world. She still dreams about it. They live apart, but every weekend Axel comes to visit. On this saturday in spring 2010, they invite me in. I photograph them hugging and caressing each other. Onse has many wounds on her body, so Axel is tender when he touches her. I hear Onse express her comfort, whispering groans of joy. Axel tells me that until two years ago, they still made love, but now Onse has a special bed from the hospital with no room for Axel. "But we still kiss," Axel says. And so they start kissing. The first image feels right. Before I start thinking. Before I start framing. Before I ask them to do it again. The first kiss is the best.
-​Jacob Aue Sobol

​Order these signed prints from Magnum fo​r $100 each. They'll look good in your apartment, and they're also a piece of photographic history.

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Roger Day, who was caught out as a "Walter Mitty" at a Remembrance Day parade after wearing an impossible number of medals. Photo via South West News Service

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

Some fantasies strike me as incredibly weird. A dream world, for instance, in which you're paid badly, bossed around and regularly shot at doesn't seem like it's worth spending that much time on.

Mind you, people love soldiers. And people also love being loved. So it's not entirely surprising to discover that there's a steady stream of charlatans heading to surplus stores, stocking up on jackboots and Special Forces camo vests and pretending they once did some heroic stuff in service of Her Majesty's Armed Forces.

But, perhaps unsurprisingly, faking a history of military service goes down very badly with proper ex-servicemen. Take Roger Day, for example, a man who wore a ridiculous amount of medals—medals he couldn't possibly have won—to a Remembrance Day parade a few years ago and  ​was caught out as a fraud and scolded by the ex-servicemen organizing the march.

One bunch of ex-forces personnel—the  ​Walter Mitty Hunters Club HQ (WMHCHQ)—have decided enough is enough. Sick of all the sad online swindlers posting Facebook photos of themselves in combat fatigues and boasting about "seeing action", the real veterans decided to publicly shame offenders. Named after the classic James Thurber story about a fool with a vivid fantasy life (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty), the Walter Mitty Hunters Club HQ uses old army contacts to check service records and pick apart tall tales.

If a "Walt" is found to be making it all up or wantonly exaggerating his military experience (former cadets claiming to be ex-SAS men is fairly typical) the investigating hunters and their squadron of online followers are merciless. Fantasists are taunted as "Walting thundercunts" and have headshot photos stuck on Action Man dolls.

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A photo uploaded after MWHCHQ outed Britain First's "Armed Forces Officer" Adam Hodgen as a "Walt"

One of the group's most recent scalps was Adam Hodgen, someone the far-right group Britain First announced as its "Armed Forces Officer" back in August before his fictitious service record was thoroughly exposed. The Britain First page was quickly removed and Hodgen returned to the shadows. His own Facebook page is now deleted and a spokesman for Britain First says only that "he's got nothing to do with us".

I asked one of the Walter Mitty Hunters Club HQ's main members—who wished to stay anonymous—to explain why exposing the fantasists was necessary. 

​ VICE: So what pisses you off most about the Walts?
​ The Walter Mitty Hunter: It's an insult to all those who have worked hard, felt the pain and, in some cases, lost people close to them—the people actually doing the things the Walter Mittys like to boast about. The Walts also abuse charity resources for PTSD sufferers. We've come across quite a few who go on to claim having PTSD from serving in war zones by recounting stories they've heard or read about.

In your experience, what's the main incentive for these guys to pretend they've been in the army?
​ Mostly it amounts to getting attention. Some do it for potential financial gain—people like ​Bob Spour, conning people into buying a survival DVD, or ​Richard Lee, who set up his outdoor assault course business Spartan Race using his so-called experience as a Royal Marine. But they all have one thing in common: they have lied and deceived people, sometimes the people close to them—wives, girlfriends, sons and daughters.

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Richard Lee, who boasted about serving in the Royal Marines and set up the Spartan Race endurance race

How do you sniff out a possible Walt?
​ It normally starts with a tipoff on Facebook—we're inundated with private messages. We ask for several pieces of evidence before we fully commit to an investigation. We then use several means to cross-reference everything and make sure we're 100 percent accurate. We have to be on our guard because previous Walter Mittys we've exposed have made up fake profiles with the aim of trying to get us to expose someone who doesn't exist, or someone completely innocent. Their logic is that if we get it wrong with a made-up profile, then we could have got it wrong with others. It's bizarre.

Have you ever got it wrong?
​ Sadly, an innocent did get through the net. Once. Two previously exposed Walts got their heads together and managed to post a picture that was doing the rounds on several Facebook pages, claiming under their fake profiles to personally know the innocent guy. The admin person at the time took the bait and posted the picture up without following our investigation procedures. So we sacked him.

Do some people own up quickly when they're caught?
​ Yes. Sometimes we've had people offering themselves up and we've not even been looking at them. But some of these guys have been living these lies for years. Some have wives who married the guy in a uniform full of medals. They've built their lives around it, so they'll fight to the bitter end. At first they might try to convince us it's just a jealous business rival trying to set them up. When that fails, they threaten us with legal action, then they threaten us with the police, claiming we're bullying them. And when that fails, they claim mental health issues. We've heard it all.

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Do you ever feel bad about shaming these guys so publicly?
​ No—these are people making fraudulent claims. But we are careful to try to avoid people with very obvious mental health issues.

The law on Walter Mittys seems unclear—only in cases where charities are defrauded of cash are people being prosecuted. Do you think we need ​a UK version of the US Stolen Valor Act, which makes it a crime to lie about military honors?
​ Yes. It's getting out of hand, and the police need guidance on what powers they can use in order to make an arrest.

§

When Hunter told me to look out for several new Walts "soon to be exposed," I wondered how many more there could possibly be. Since several of the group's exposes have been picked up by the tabloids, surely—I thought—all those British Army fanboys would keep their surplus store fatigues safely tucked away out of view?

I clearly underestimated the power of fantasy. Sure enough, the WMHCHQ posted the results of a fresh sting on Facebook a couple of days before Remembrance Sunday. It seems some people remain utterly devoted to the adventure playing out in their heads.  

Follow Adam Forrest on ​Twitter

Today, people in Canada and Britain don poppies to mark their remembrance of soldiers who died in World War 1 and in all of the other armed conflicts that followed. Websites sport digital flowers; companies adapt their logos; even the felt poppies dotting the ground, having fallen off careless rememberers' coats, seem intended to remind us we have a job to do. In the first few weeks of November, between Halloween and when Christmas season begins in earnest, we need to remember.

But what good are the poppies on our lapels, really? Well, of course, they signify a person interested in remembering fallen soldiers and in having that remembrance documented by others, not necessarily for selfish purposes, but to express solidarity. Solidarity with the soldiers themselves, with their cause, with the hope for a better world in which war is unnecessary. All worthwhile stuff, most people would agree.

But in recent years Britain has been host to a vigorous debate over the poppy. A renewed push for its use has led some people to conclude that it's being used to shore up support for current military endeavours rather than to remember and mourn the casualties of past battles.

Harry Leslie Smith, a WWII veteran and author, ​wrote last November about why he would no longer wear a poppy to remember his friends who had died: "I will no longer allow my obligation as a veteran to remember those who died in the great wars to be co-opted by current or former politicians to justify our folly in Iraq, our morally dubious war on terror and our elimination of one's right to privacy."

This is a point rarely made in Canada, and one that might be worth exploring. The Harper government more than any other in recent memory has used the imagery of soldiers and war to its advantage. The bicentennial ​of the War of 1812 was a huge ​PR co​up for the government, which celebrated Canada's pre-Confederation military might for an entire year. This week, Historica Canada is hol​ding a p​arty to celebrate the launch of a new heritage minute about a team of WWI fighters who went on to win a gold in Olympic hockey.

But behind the cheerleading and feel-good history ads, the Harper government is actually less than supportive of the soldiers who come back from more recent military engagements.

According to statistics released in ​September​, more military personnel have committed suicide since 2004 than died in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2014. The new numbers, which include reservists and "female regular force personnel," stand in stark contrast to claims by the federal government that it is doing all it can for the military personnel and veterans it so ofte​n ​uses for political gain.

Michael Blais, founder and president of Canadian Veterans Advocacy, says mental health is one of the most important issues facing veterans.

"Veterans Affairs Canada is clearly not providing expedient services,"he said. "Many, many veterans are taking their lives after they leave the service. Sometimes within weeks, sometimes within months."

Blais said while he's happy with the attention the Department of National Defence has paid to the issue, and to caring for soldiers while they're still serving, post-service care is unconscionably far behind.

Another primary concern is financial benefits: many veterans are unable to survive on the benefits they receive after serving, and feel forgotten by the government they dedicated a part of their lives to. Calculating veterans' benefits is complicated, especially because they rely on individual-specific information on time served and salary.

Adding to that complication is the new veterans charter, which Blais charges has created a two-tier hierarchy that disadvantages new veterans. New vets receive less robust financial support than those of years past, and the issue is compounded for reservists. Blais brought up Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, the former reservist who was killed in Ottawa on Oct. 22; Cirillo's financial benefits were just 45 per cent of the regular forces soldiers he served alongside.

Vets who can still work when they return—who don't have debilitating physical or mental health issues—still face the same post-2008 job market the rest of us are competing in, with plenty of part-time minimum-wage work but very little beyond that. To help veterans re-enter the civilian workforce, the federa​l go​vernment has introduced Bill C-27. This bill would allow veterans released for medical reasons, or who left after serving for at least three years, to apply for jobs only otherwise available to internal public service candidates. The problem with this bill is that the federal public service is in the middle of a hiring freeze, so it doesn't really matter how high on the candidate list a veteran might be.

But no list of the government's many shortcomings in its dealings with veterans would be complete without that time in ​2013 when hundreds of employees were laid off and VA offices across the country closed, leaving vets feeling abandoned by the very ministry set up to help them.

In fact, relations between veterans and the federal government have deteriorated so much that six veteran-advocate g​rou​ps have banded together, creating the Canada Coalition for Veterans and announcing a boycott of federal photo-ops and news releases. They plan to maintain their boycott until the government moves to provide adequate healthcare and financial benefits. Don Leonardo, founder of coalition member group Veterans of Canada, told the Globe and ​Mail that while he's glad Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino is meeting with advocate groups, talk is no longer enough. "Show me some action,"he said.

Wearing a poppy is a fine way to remember soldiers who fought and died, but the soldiers who fought and came back need more than felt flowers on lapels. They need action from the government, and that will be more likely when people demand it. If we really want to do right by the soldiers, we shouldn't ignore their need for proper health care and employment. 
​
​​@tyel​land

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This post originally appeared in VICE UK

I first came to Brick Lane as a boy 30 years ago. I was struck by two things—its extraordinary history and how run down it had become. By the time we launched the Old Truman Brewery—anchoring it with the Vibe Bar—off the back of our years as promoters of acid house parties and running clubs around the world, Brick Lane was in an even worse state than I remembered as a kid.

Twenty years on, having been part of a transformation of a part of London that has become a destination, thriving with business and visitors from around the world, we closed the Vibe Bar yesterday due to what we believe to be excessive and unreasonable restrictions on our activity. In this climate, both financially and psychologically, it has proven very difficult to run the kind of operation that we believe the public deserves.

Councils have a responsibility to balance the considerations and concerns of local residents, local businesses and visitors to the area to ensure a sensible urban balance. Of course they do. The question is, though: What constitutes "sensible"? We have always supported the idea of being part of a community, but in the past 18 months there seems to have been a new type of clampdown.

While 
Tower Hamlets Council, under whose jurisdiction Brick Lane falls, have issued statements saying that the "planning and licensing regulations have not changed", police officers working with licensing have made it very clear that things such as ​Temporary Event Notices, a type of license that was used by many of the Brick Lane clubs to go on beyond 1 AM, would no longer be permitted. Alongside that were a raft of other measures that contributed to my decision to shut Vibe Bar.

When we started out in Brick Lane, we were told by many that nobody would visit, that it was a "no go" zone. But after getting in very early, the Vibe Bar acted as a sort of catalyst. For new businesses that were coming to the 10.5-acre Old Truman Brewery site, it was a place to collaborate and network with other new companies. For the public, it was a venue where all the buzz of a nightclub existed, but with the intimacy of a smaller DJ venue. Curating diverse events—from spoken word to live music, as well as multi-genre DJ events and festivals—foreshadowed much of what happened over the next two decades in East London. 

The Old Truman Brewery and Vibe Bar were often referred to as case studies of urban renewal and regeneration. The nighttime economy contributes enormously to revitalizing run-down areas, which is why it's even more confounding that the authorities are increasingly regulating and restricting activity.

Only recently we were teased with the hope of 24-hour leisure in Britain, similar to the civilized experiences of café culture in cities like Paris, Barcelona, and Berlin—as well as to the far more flexible times in Finland, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands. However, the powers that be have decided that, up and down the country, British citizens are not to be trusted with such cavalier freedoms.

It's worth reflecting upon the historic backdrop of licensing laws in Britain. From early knee-jerk reactions like the  ​1751 Gin Act to the Intoxicating Liquor Licensing Bill of 1872 (which introduced the first restrictions on opening hours), all legislation has been directed towards the control of ordinary people. Indeed, it was the concerns of having society "fit for war" that led to the ​1914 Defence of the Realm Act, which severely restricted the times that premises could sell alcohol. The working classes were not to enjoy a tipple too late for fear that they would not be good to fight for the empire.

No such laws, of course, were directed towards private drinking clubs, the domain of the wealthy and influential. To this day, a few privileged people enjoy a greater latitude of rules because they don't let the general public in.

Things loosened up in 1988, when pubs wriggled free of their archaic afternoon closures, allowing  weekends to operate more sensibly. British life was changing forever then. There was a reorganization of society after several political battles between the trade unions and Margaret Thatcher, and it birthed an entire new youth movement: acid house. 

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Police out in force at a Czech festival under the Criminal Justice Act. Image  ​via Wikimedia Commons

Acid house's large-scale warehouse parties and field raving transformed music, clubs, fashion and going out in the UK and beyond. When the ​Criminal Justice Bill was announced, it met significant challenge. Young people questioned the motives of legislation that basically wanted to stop them getting together and partying. While the bill became an ac, many were vocal about the implications for civil society. ​Then the Licensing Act of 2003 was brought in, effective from 2005, presented as making licensing more simple—but what has accompanied this has been an increasingly paranoid attitude towards British citizens. The law suspects us of being constantly out of control, always on the edge of behaving antisocially. 

I have always been impressed by how enthusiastic, intelligent and motivated most members of the public are, though. For it is the vast majority of ordinary people who go out to enjoy a few drinks and some entertainment who are being targeted by increased legislation. If the licensing authorities are serious about curbing problems, attention should be placed on the few that break any laws.

Nightlife is the backbone of a city. The nighttime economy in the UK is worth £66 billion ($104 billion) and employs around 1.3 million people. With that in mind, Britain is hardly in a position to hamper one of the few dynamic success stories it currently has.

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Brick Lane. Image  ​via Wikimedia Commons 

The major political parties present themselves as being in favor of small businesses. Ed Miliband declared that Labour is the party of small business and enterprise, while David Cameron created his 12 " ​business ambassadors." Which makes it all the more ironic, then, that we're under constant pressure from the police, checking up on whether we have the correct number of hooks under our tables. 

It's worrying that the contemporary preoccupation with "antisocial behavior" should dominate so much of legislators' thinking. It has made for a stifling climate in nighttime business. For example, by allowing the frequent use of Temporary Environment Notices, all  bars and clubs in Tower Hamlets were effectively informed that there was a curfew beyond 1 AM. The police, working with the council, had decided that a blanket ban on TENs was what was needed to curb—you guessed it—antisocial behavior. 

This catch-all term avoids specificity, though, and allows authorities to impose limits without clarifying real goals and objectives. Venue owners and licenses were told that "crime has spiked in the borough" because of nighttime activity. When we asked to know what that meant, fearing attacks and burglaries, it became apparent they were not referring to an increase in serious crime (which was actually reported last year to have ​decreased by 9 percent). Rather, an increase in people losing mobile phones and reporting them stolen to get their insurance payments. 

The police's position isn't enviable. They don't have a choice but to respond to crime figures. They're under pressure to transfer responsibility for "crime management" onto licensed premises. But risk-averse culture has meant that police are often not willing or able to police the streets actively in the same way as before, or to tackle crime due to health and safety issues. All the while, British nighttime businesses are clamped even further with heavily bureaucratized regimes. Compulsory identification scanners, loads of CCTV cameras and small armies of security guards are, it seems, the smart way of avoiding the consequences of dwindling police resources.  

Unlike some of the public challenges to the Criminal Justice Act, though, the constant erosion of business and our freedoms—under the guise of anti-social behavior—go largely unchallenged. Venues and licensees understandably fear additional attention and pressure from authorities. After all, we're reminded by more vocal officers that we can be subject to a "review" of our licenses at any time, threatening the existence of our clubs and bars. ​The Anti-social Behaviour Crime and Policing Act that came in to effect on October 21 takes things even further.

The Orwellian-sounding ​Public Spaces Protection Orders take ASBO-inspired legislation further still. Up and down the country councils have already imposed restrictions on what we can do in our leisure time. A host of strange terms including "Cumulative Impact Zones," "Saturation Zones," "Early Morning Restriction Orders," and "Late Night Levies" all compete with one another to impose more restrictions. In addition to this, even having a DJ play in a bar or club today requires something called a ​696 Form detailing their name and address. Your premises can be shut down without it. 

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Image ​via Wikimedia Commons 

While some "partnership" supposedly occurs on Pub Watch meetings between police and venues, the over-arching message of all this—the alcohol-free zones in Leicester, the breathalyzers being trialled outside Norwich clubs, the Blackpool ASB act that ​prevents men running around in bikinis on stag nights—is: Hey, ordinary people, stop having fun! 

The trouble is, though, that nighttime economy brings desperately needed inward investment, employment and activity in to run down areas, whether that be in London, Liverpool, or Glasgow. For a country that was once one of the coolest destinations in the world, we seem to have allowed a situation where the very thing often provides the glue for our most creative industries—nightlife—to come under attack. And it's independent traders rather than the big chains that will be the ones to suffer the most.

It is one thing for me as owner of The Vibe Bar to be upset about personal business curbs. However, the far more profound sea change with attitudes towards the public as a threat to law and order—as well as the implications for UK productivity and creativity—makes me worried for us all. 

Follow Alan Miller on ​Twitter.

We've got the exclusive premiere of "This Charming Man," the mind-bending new music video by James Franco and Tim O'Keefe's conceptual art school band, Daddy. The song is just a teaser for their upcoming full-length album, Let me Get What I Want, which set to drop in 2015. The new album, their third release since Franco and O'Keefe and started making music together as MFA students at the Rhode Island School of Design, is based off of Franco's book of verses, Directing Herbert White: Poems.

"We took a ten-poem sequence called 'The Best of the Smiths: Side A and Side B,'" Franco explained. "I originally wrote this sequence as a way to use one medium (music) to influence another one (poetry). The Smiths' songs provided inspiration for the poems, lending tone and situation. Once I had the sequence, Tim and I took the material one step further and turned the poems inspired by songs, back into songs of their own."

On top of all of that, Franco and O'Keefe enlisted Andy Rourke, the original bassist from the Smiths, to play on every song of this super meta album. 

The colorful video for "This Charming Man" is just one of ten clips that flow seamlessly into one other, making up an hour-long film with no beginning or end. 

"We created the record at the same time James's mom ran a program teaching kids how to make films [at Palo Alto high school]," said O'Keefe. "They developed scripts out of the same poems that we made songs out of, then shot film based on those scripts... While they were doing that project, we took all of the raw footage we had for each song and brought in editors to put together our film."

The characters in the film—Tom, Sterling, and Erica—originally appear in the poems and were inspired by real people Franco knew when he went to high school in the mid 90s.

"I thought it would be fitting to have high school students in the 2010s take the material I had generated from my own experiences and interpret it themselves," Franco said. "It would add one more layer of youthful influence, Palo Alto influence, and another medium."

As if that wasn't enough, each video also opens with an original painting from Franco that he created during his time at RISD. Each one is inspired by his 1993 high school yearbook, with some of the subjects of the paintings also appearing in the poems.

If you haven't guessed it by now, Daddy really isn't interested in the traditional idea of a band—it's more of a multimedia project, and instead of the typical musical performance, they plan on presenting their work more like installations.

Follow Erica Euse on ​Twitter.

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An image from 'This War of Mine'

People don't die in 11 Bit Studios' This War of Mine—they just stop. Each of the game's wartime refugees is represented by a bowed, shuffling 3D model that moves around on a 2D plane, plus a black and white photograph on the menu bar (a photograph, in fact, of one of the creators, or their relatives). 

The pictures fall somewhere between police mug shot and passport photo: They look on impassively, like a jury, as you coax the character models into a pantomime of subsistence, probing the corners of a part-demolished house for food, bandages, wood, and metal.

If and when those characters succumb—to sniper bullets, or to disease and deprivation—the only things about the portraits that change are the eyes: they close. The uneventfulness of this is quietly grotesque: in confronting you with loss, yet refusing to inject meaning, This War of Mine manages to stand apart both from titles that treat death as an opportunity for ghoulish spectacle, and to those that acknowledge it as little more than a blip among the bleeps and bloops.

The gameplay trailer for 'This War of Mine'

Things do change for the victim's comrades, however, who must swallow their shock and grief and learn to make do with one fewer pair of hands—and one less mouth to feed. Perhaps there's a sense of guilty relief at the easing of pressure on supplies—it's difficult to say. In This War of Mine, a character's emotional state is subject to "hundreds" of influences, some of which may be deduced from profile pages, animations and the scraps of text monologue that bleed out as they roam their shell-shocked world.

There's great intensity to how these cowed, dog-eared entities think and feel. But all that is kept at a distance by the camera's X-ray vision, which slices buildings into anatomical slides on which human beings wriggle like amoeba; by the cruelty with which the game translates fear, sadness and hope into a question of (well-camouflaged) character resource bars; and by the use of visual filters that reduce faces and shadows to pools of cross-hatched static.

At once ground-down yet sensitive, This War of Mine's portrayal of psychological meltdown speaks to, yet rejects, the recent tradition of simulations that glamorize —or even fetishize—suffering and survival by inches; a tradition that, in some ways, transcends an older oeuvre of action games that are too power-mad to trifle with emotive nuance, and is, in other ways, a furtive escape from such subtleties. It's a phenomenon captured by 2013's Tomb Raider reboot, which ostentatiously stripped Lara Croft of her Teflon coating and turned her into an exaggeratedly vulnerable survivor. But I think it applies most to male characters, many of whom now resemble the burned-out veterans of a siege that's worn on far too long.

The old tentpole action heroes of the 1990s—Duke Nukem, BJ Blazkowicz, DOOM's battering ram of a space marine—were creatures of unproblematic bravado, secure behind their sunshades and grenade belts. They whole-heartedly embraced the centuries-old cliché that masculinity boils down to your ability to destroy or impose your will by force. The new breed are no less capable killers, but they're softer, more approachable—a product of the criticism of hyper-masculine slaughter machines, and of a greater demand for narratives that move us like the best films and TV shows.

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Joel from 'The Last of Us', in a rare moment of not murdering something

The art of writing a male character seems to increasingly be that of translating such critiques into the protagonist's backstory, where they take the shape of irredeemable crimes and life-long doubts, infecting the previously glorious experience of battle. Thus BioShock Infinite's Booker DeWitt, a man who mechanically re-enacts atrocities he's unable to think about, and Joel from The Last of Us, a father turned wild-eyed father figure whose protective instincts spiral down into nihilistic violence.

Even the latest incarnations of long-established frontmen and franchises show signs of combat fatigue, ravaged by their years in the trenches. Wolfenstein: The New Order's Blazkowicz is a man-out-of-time with severe cranial trauma who uses breathing exercises to keep his cool between firefights. Halo's Master Chief, formerly a blank tablet propped on top of a mechanized muscle-suit, is apparently AWOL following a grievous personal loss in the fourth game. Arkham Asylum's Batman is a shattered orphan held together by a suit and what it symbolizes. And Far Cry 3's Jason Brody is a vacuous bro who veers clumsily into the role of tribal alpha—a drunken latecomer to the Action Man party.

A provocative picture of the male-dominated action genre as a whole is offered by Starbreeze's wonderful, terribly sad Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, whose juvenile heroes brave the depths of a mountain range in search of a cure for their father's illness. The game is a pretty phallocentric affair—its womenfolk are either sirens to be feared, or saintly mums to be placed on a pedestal, and the plot is essentially a filial coming-of-age fable—but it also explores the fallout from hyper-macho conflict. One striking chapter sees you clambering around a giant's battleground, strewn with enormous, armor-plated torsos that wouldn't look out of place on the cover of God of War.

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A screen shot from 'Brothers'

Backstories aside, developers have sought to answer—or at least acknowledge—criticism of video game machismo by embracing the idea that male bodies can be punished. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's bloodshot, woozy first-person storytelling has conditioned peers to revel in the sight of pain and injury, ranging from Far Cry 2's dislocated fingers to Nathan Drake's wincing-away from nearby bullet impacts in the Uncharted series. It's a trend that works well for exponents of cutting-edge graphics tech, for whom affective portrayals in games are joined at the hip to fidelity. But it doesn't really alter anything. These characters are no longer entirely defined by their ability to kill, but they're still party to narratives about killing. Aggression gives way to flamboyant agony and stoicism, which just asserts another set of age-old masculine clichés at no real cost to the body count.

Boys, we all know, don't cry. Feelings are for the female and feminine. And yet, society increasingly expects men to articulate their feelings, rather than retreating behind a stiff upper lip—an inability to talk about private doubts and fears  ​has been linked, after all, to a surge in anxiety and depression among young men in particular. Games that trade solely in the fleshy suffering of a hero offer a reprieve from that expectation, because there's no time for such "delicacies" when your entire world is a whirlpool of blood and sweat. The rest of the affective spectrum can go hang.

This War of Mine doesn't presume to resolve anything (in my experience, at least—the final build, on sale starting November 14, may differ). It's too preoccupied with the problem of endurance, its characters too busy scraping at piles of rafters or peering fearfully through keyholes to make sense of their own misery. The broad narrative is out of your hands: Peace will come eventually, perhaps even before your supplies run out, but there's nothing you can do to hasten its onset. 

It does, however, insist that you reckon with the messiness of feeling even as you punch your way up out of the rubble. The result is both a monument to the survivors of war, and a spotlight turned upon the anxieties of an art form that can no longer deal in death without compunction.

Follow Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on ​Twitt​e​r