Seven months into his administration, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio began encountering something that has become a sort of litmus test for Gotham chieftains: the widely-publicized death of an unarmed black man at the hands of police officers. The  tragic chokehold death​ of Staten Islander Eric Garner this July, a video of which has since become a memento of a tense summer nationwide, continues to fester.

Last night, it happened yet again in the depths of Brooklyn.

Akai Gurley. Twenty-eight years old. A black man. Shot by NYPD officer Peter Liang. Gurley and Melissa Butler, his girlfriend, were leaving her place in East New York's Pink Houses, a housing development prone to high crime, and decided to take the dimly-lit stairs on the eighth floor. Liang and his partner entered the staircase from a floor below. Liang, who had been on the force for 18 months, had his gun out, and accidentally shot Gurley. Gurley went on to die later in the night  at a nea​rby hospital.

"The cop didn't present himself, he just shot him in the chest," Januce Butler, Melissa's sister,  ​told the New York Times. "They didn't see their face or nothing."

What's most interesting about this tragedy is how New York City officialdom chose to respond. NYPD Commissioner William J. Bratton held a press conference early Friday at 1 Police Plaza, and told reporters exactly what advocates of police reform needed to hear. "The deceased is a total innocent who was not engaged in any criminal activity of any type," Bratton sa​id. "It appears to be an accidental discharge, with no intention to impact anyone. A very unfortunate tragedy."

In essence, the Commissioner admitted that an officer under his command killed an innocent man who wasn't doing a damn thing wrong. And for many in New York, that admission by the top cop is news in itself: as Chris Smith  ​points out, it's something that we haven't really seen since 2004, when Timothy Stansbury, 19 and unarmed, was accidentally killed by a police officer in a stairwell on his way to a birthday party. Back then, Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited the Stanburys and apologized almost immediately.

"Bratton isn't breaking new ground here," Eugene O'Donnell, a law enforcement expert at CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told me. "But with Garner and Gurley, these are two totally different situations: one was the use of force, and one was an accident. But still, with Garner, it is the responsibility of the higher-ups to say that this was an irresponsible arrest for an unjust crime."

The thing is: that didn't happen. The day after Garner was killed, Bratton s​aid he "personally [didn't] think race was a factor" in his death. Afterwards, he w​ent on to defend broken windows policing, his style of law enforcement that targets men (mostly minority) like Garner for low-level infractions, or, in this case, sel​ling illegal, cheap cigarettes on the streets. And, as of this article's publication, the grand jury is still debating whether to charge the officers with what the Medical Examiner's office has deemed as a homicide.

And then we have Mayor Bill de Blasio, who postponed his family trip to Italy when he heard the news of Garner's death. Soon after, the Brooklynite told his citizens to listen to the police when being arrested—translation: do not​ resist, like Mr. Garner did. More recently, the mayor vo​iced opposition to a City Council bill that would ban chokeholds, arguing that the "best way to handle that is through NYPD policy," even if that policy has its occasional fatal slip-up. 

But with the death of Akai Gurley, a very different tone came from Mayor de Blasio Friday, as if he's learned a lesson or two about what the bully pulpit entails. "This is a tragic situation," he told reporters at an unrelated press conference. "We lost a life today, and I feel very humanly about that. But it does appear to be a tragic accident."

To satisfy a tense populace, Mayor Bill de Blasio may need more than just rhetoric. Especially when another video emerged of a guy getting the the shit beaten out of him by cops, this time for skipping a $2.50 subway fare—also a broken windows crime—on Thursday.

"Retraining will not solve this problem," Priscilla Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Communities United for Police Reform, said in a statement. "Meaningful and swift accountability in cases of brutality and killing of unarmed people by the NYPD is required to send a message that police brutality and misconduct is unacceptable in NYC."

In other words: Your move, Bill.

Follow John Surico on ​​Twitter.

On Thursday night, speaking to about 10 million people ​who thought they were tuning in to watch the Latin Grammys, President Barack Obama dared Republicans in Congress to take up a comprehensive immigration bill, and told them, in so many words, that until they do, he's going to do whatever the fuck he wants. Practically speaking, that meant signing a sweeping executive order that will overhaul the country's broken immigration system, and protect as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.

"If you've been in America for more than five years; if you have children who are American citizens or legal residents; if you register, pass a criminal background check, and you're willing to pay your fair share of taxes—you'll be able to apply to stay in this country temporarily without fear of deportation," he said. "You can come out of the shadows and get right with the law. That's what this deal is."

The order temporarily shields around 4.3 million undocumented immigrants—of the estimated 11 million currently living the country—from getting deported. The bulk of these immigrants, or roughly 4 million, are the parents of legal US residents who have been in the country for at least five years. When it takes effect, likely sometime next spring, those who register with the government and pass a background check will get work authorizations and protected status for up to three years (they will also have to start paying taxes). The plan also expands the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhoo​d Arrivals program, which extends temporary protections for people who were brought to the US illegally as children, and allows them to apply for work visas as well.

Beyond these protections, Obama's new executive action also signals a broader shift in the way that the federal government deals with unauthorized migrants. Specifically, it orders the feds to prioritize deporting criminals over other immigrants, including by reforming the Department of Homeland Security's  ​"Secure Communities" program, which until now has basically been a dragnet for the feds to deport any undocumented immigrant who has been picked up by the cops, regardless of whether he or she was convicted of anything. With Obama's new order, the feds will only ask state and local authorities to hand over immigrants after they've been convicted of a serious crime. The order also expands work permits and visas for foreign students and entrepreneurs, a key demand of the business and tech lobbies.

What the order doesn't do is make it easier for any of these undocumented immigrants to become citizens. Only Congress has the authority to do that, which means that gridlocked cesspool will still have to pass comprehensive immigration reform, at some point. And because it's an executive order, and not a law passed by Congress, whoever is elected president in 2016 could simply reverse it. So it's not clear how many undocumented immigrants will actually register for the protected status, given that it could be taken away a year after it's granted. By and large, though, it's hard to see how any action, however incremental, that reforms our cold-hearted immigrations systems, keeping families together and giving people an opportunity to make their lives better, is a bad thing.

"Are we a nation that tolerates the hypocrisy of a system where workers who pick our fruit and make our beds never have a chance to get right with the law?" Obama asked in his speech Thursday night. "Or are we a nation that gives them a chance to make amends, take responsibility, and give their kids a better future? Are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents' arms? Or are we a nation that values families, and works together to keep them together?"

He added this jab at his critics: "The actions I'm taking are not only lawful, they're the kinds of actions taken by every single Republican President and every single Democratic President for the past half century. And to those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better, or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill."

As you might expect, Republicans have lost their minds over all this. California Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House majority leader, called it a "brazen power grab." House Speaker John Boehner declared that Obama has "damaged the presidency." Rand Paul spent most of Thursday night  ​tweeting out King Obama memes. (​The Drudge Report took up this line as well.) In a video that appears to have been shot in his bathroom, ​Ted Cruz appears to have come completely unhinged, and demands voters "stop Obama's amnesty."

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Post by Ted Cruz.

Perhaps rightly, Republicans see Obama's latest immigration move as a "fuck you" to Congress, and also as a big abuse of power. It's true that the executive order is an unprecedented relaxation of the country's immigration laws, and also a huge expansion of executive power. While it is pro​bably not illegal, as many on the right have claimed, the immigration order does raise uncomfortable questions about just how far presidents can go to unilaterally rewrite domestic and foreign policy. (New York​ Times columnist Ross Douthat and the Atlantic's Co​nor Friedersdorf have particularly grim views on this point.) It doesn't help that Obama himself has previously said that he couldn't take such​ actions on immigration, only to change his mind.

Politically, though, Obama's executive action puts Republicans in a tough spot. If initial reactions are any indication, the move has pushed the entire party even further to the right on immigration, uniting Tea Party xenophobes and Establishment-types against a common enemy. It basically guarantees that immigration will continue to be an issue going into the 2016 election—when Republicans will need to win over Hispanic voters—while at the same time giving a platform to the more insane voices on the right. Following Obama's speech Thursday, Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King and outgoing Tea Party darling Michele Bachmann head​ed to the border to stop Obama's plan themselves, although what exactly they plan to do down there is unclear.

Follow Grace Wyler on ​Twitter

​In Dispatch 8, VICE News returns to Ferguson, Missouri, where the community is on edge as it awaits a grand jury decision over whether to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the August 9 shooting death of Michael Brown.

VICE News meets a group of young men who live in the apartment complex where Brown was killed, visits a local gun store that has seen a sharp uptick in sales, and speaks with residents who are arming themselves in preparation for the grand jury decision.

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​On Friday nights, people around the world leave their offices to fill their innards with cheese fries and shitty booze to put the pain of the workweek behind. This makes for some gross yet beautiful moments, so we've decided to send photographers to the planet's finest (or shittiest, depending on your point of view) cities and towns to capture Friday night as it unfolds. 

For our first installment, Amy Lombard, one of our favorite photographers, went to Times Square—the American landmark once known for its back-alley depravity but is now basically one big TGI Fridays. Amy loves ​convention centers in New Jersey and ​chain restaurants, so she naturally had a ball of a time. 

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All photos by Stacy Kranitz

Multiple venues across the country have canceled Bill Cosby's upcoming shows since several recent allegations of rape have tarnished the image of the lovable father figure. The comedian is no longer invited to appear for shows in Arizona, Oklahoma, Washington, Nevada, Illinois, or South Carolina.

But in Florida? Eh, we've seen worse.

The 77-year-old comedian performed in front of a sold-out theater Friday night in Melbourne, Florida, to consistent laughter and multiple standing ovations.

"We love you Bill Cosby!" at least one person shouted mid-performance from the back of the 2,016-seat house. The show, held at Maxwell C. King Center for the Performing Arts on the Eastern Florida State College campus, was Cosby's first US performance since the sexual assault accusations against him have  ​re-surfaced and ​multiplied.

Rumors of protesters dressed in colorful Cosby sweaters brought a swarm of media attention and increased police presence to the venue. Although a local radio station tried to incite controversy by  ​offering a $1,000 reward to anyone willing to heckle Cosby, ticket holders seemed to have no inclination to harass the Jell-O commercial king. If anything, the aggressive media attention incited a self-justifying defensiveness in the mostly geriatric crowd, who welcomed the comedian to the stage with as much wheezing whistling as they could muster.

Much of the Melbourne population grew up replaying the comedian's bits on their record players and staying up late to catch him on their televisions. So naturally, show-goers didn't like to hear one of their childhood idols called a rapist—even if he is one.

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Bill and his wife Peggy wait for the show to start

"This is garbage," a Melbourne local named Bill told VICE as he waited for the show to start with his wife. "If I was Cosby, I wouldn't put up with this nonsense. Where were [the women] 30 years ago?"

That seemed to be the dominant sentiment.

"When it's a celebrity, I just have to question why people come out that much later," another man explained to me. "I mean how many people do you hear coming out 15 years later when it's not a celebrity? There's something to be gained—money, notoriety..."

During the show, Cosby spent 90 family-friendly minutes relating stories of sibling rivalry, Sunday school slip-ups, and nagging wives. His innocuous jokes pandered to the sea of balding white heads—and they ate it up.

The ­­­comedian wore gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt that read, "Hello Friend," a phrase often repeated by his son Enni​s Williams, who was shot to death in a robbery attempt in 1997 in Bel-Air. But coupled with the tame, grandfatherly humor, the subtle reminder of Cosby's lost son inserted an awkward layer of sadness and sympathy into the act.

I didn't expect him to address the allegations, as his lawyers have surely instructed him not to, and smartly. (Cosby is much better at hiring lawyers than PR​ reps.) He hasn't addressed the claims since 2006, when he ​settled a civil suit—brought by Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee who said Cosby drugged and raped her—out of court for an undisclosed amount. He's avoided opportunities to publicly explain himself, like when he canceled a scheduled appearance on ​The Late Show with David Letterman and when he sat in silence during an ​NPR interview last weekend, refusing to answer questions related to the allegations.

But the crowd in Florida didn't really care to talk about that icky stuff anyway.

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Judy Pollard isn't buying Cosby's bad press

"I don't want to be a Ferguson," Judy Pollard, a 40-year-old window manufacturer from Melbourne, told VICE. "I hope to believe that we are a community of people who wait for all the facts and don't jump the gun. He's done a lot of good."

The promised protest didn't materialize either. One woman, 47-year-old Julie LeMaitre, held a sign reading "Rape is no​ joke," but police kept her far enough away from the venue to keep her from interfering with the show.

"I consider myself a feminist. I want to make sure that these woman know that they are being listened to," said LeMaitre, adding, "I don't think it is right for him to go on with business as usual."

"Ron White got  ​arrested for marijuana down south and nobody protested that!" Pollard said, likening a misdemeanor charge to at least 20 claims of rape.

An elderly woman named Peggy brushed off my questions.

"I believe in innocent until proven guilty!"

It's true: The 77-year-old has never faced criminal charges over any of the allegations. But NBC is playing it safe, following Netflix and cable channel TV Land in disassociating itself from the defamed star by dropping Cosby from an upcoming pilot project.

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A Florida woman accused the star of sexual harassment just o​​ne day before his visit to her state, and thre​e ​more came forward the morning of his Melbourne show. None of this mattered to Florida's Friday night ticket holders, though—they were there to enjoy the show and ignore the "air-head stuff," as one woman put it.

Or as a cane-wielding ticket-holder huffed at me angrily: "Whatever."

Follow Erin Meisenzahl-Peace on ​Twitter.

Politics is weird. It has a strange way of turning seemingly stodgy, well-heeled people into screaming lunatics, and even transforming said lunatics into intimate bedfellows, sidling up to the very ideological opponents thought to be their sworn enemies. Like the time that Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi ​yu​kked it up on a couch. Or when Arianna Huffington—the Republican version—​literally got into bed with Al Franken and Barney Frank, a super-liberal then-Congressman from Massachusetts. Now, we can add to that list the time that libertarian icon Rand Paul had a cozy breakfast with Al Sharpton. 

This unexpected morning summit, which Sharpton's office requested, took place Thursday, in the exclusive Senate dining room. Both Sharpton and Paul characterized it as a cordial attempt to create dialogue across the political aisle and discuss the rare issues that the libertarian-leaning Republican Senator and the liberal reverend agree on.

"We talked about his position on dealing with some criminal justice issues that I am concerned about," Sharpton said in a  ​statement after the meeting. "It was a very candid and courteous conversation. We pledged to continue to have such conversations where conservatives and progressives can have dialogue and break the log jam in American discussion."

In the past 18 months, Paul, who is  ​almost certainly running for president in 2016, has made a major push to reach out to leaders in the black community, building his nascent White House campaign around the idea that he can broaden the Republican Party base by appealing to youth and minority voters. He's given speeches at Howard University and the National Urban League Conference, co-sponsored legislation with New Jersey's Cory Booker to reform drug sentencing laws, and recently visited Ferguson, Missouri, to meet with black pastors about racial unrest there. Occasionally, these efforts are tone-deaf—in a ​Q&A with Salon published Thursday, for instance, Paul said, "I don't think there has been anybody who has been a bigger defender of minority rights in the Congress than myself." By and large, though, the senator's outreach has been well-received, even among Democratic leaders.

But Sharpton is by far the most high-profile black figure that Paul has met with as he attempts to expand his appeal beyond Tea Partiers and libertarians. Despite being a caricature of himself,  ​Sharpton remains the most powerful civil rights figure in the country, spearheading marches and rallies—and putting racial profiling and police brutality on the map as political issue in the process.

In recent years, he has also become a political powerbroker, particularly on the progressive end of the spectrum. He's a close advisor of President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and regularly hosts conferences and fundraisers where a parade of Democrats show up to kiss his ring. And Sharpton continues to incite action around racial issues: On Wednesday, the day before his meeting with Paul, he told reporters that he and his organization, the National Action Network, a​re on "high alert" for the ​coming grand jury decision on whether to indict the white police officer who shot black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson this summer. According to Sharpton, his group is planning vigils and protests in at least two dozen cities, regardless of the grand jury outcome.

"Both Senator Paul and Reverend Sharpton have been very outspoken on the issue of criminal justice reform," Paul's press secretary, Eleanor May, said in a statement to VICE. "They plan to have more meetings in the future and will work together to implement meaningful reforms within our broken criminal justice system."

Associating himself with Sharpton is a high-risk—and potentially high-reward—decision for Paul, who is about to fight what is likely to be a crowded field of Republican 2016 presidential candidates. Sharpton has been a target of conservative critics for years, pilloried and ridiculed by the right as a 90s race riot relic-turned-cable-news-hack who traffics in demagoguery. It hasn't helped that the man is relentlessly besieged by news reports about his financial and legal troubles, like this week's New York ​Times story finding Sharpton owes more than $4.5 million in state and federal tax liens.

In a  ​blog post for the American Spectator Thursday, conservative writer Aaron Goldstein went after Paul for the meeting, warning his fellow Republicans that Paul's breakfast meeting should disqualify him from getting their party's nomination.

"This is the same Al Sharpton who has more than anyone in America stoked the threats of violence in Ferguson should the grand jury render a decision not to their liking," Goldstein  ​wrote. "Anyone who still thinks the GOP nominating Paul to be its presidential nominee in 2016 is a good idea should pause to consider Paul's judgment in seeking out Sharpton in the first place."

But liberal politicians have long since realized that it is  ​more dangerous to ignore the Reverend than to deal with him. Judging from Paul and Sharpton's chummy post-breakfast tweets, it seems the ambitious Kentucky Republican has learned the same.

I am in Senate Dining Room having breakfast meeting with Sen. Rand Paul. We don't agree on much but he is an interesting guy.

— Reverend Al Sharpton (@TheRevAl) November 20, 2014

This morning, I had breakfast w/ @TheRevAl . We don't agree on much, but he's an interesting guy. #FeelingIsMutual

— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) November 20, 2014

Like I said, politics is weird. 

Follow Grace Wyler on ​Twitter.

Mike Nichols never raped anyone. He never beat any of his (four) wives. He was never the subject of a scathing thinkpiece, nor the target of online indignation. He was a good man, a decent man, respected by his peers, and the recipient of much-deserved professional accolades. It is sad that this is what makes him an exception to most comedic legends, but what can you do (other than, of course, hate everything)?

​His recent death affected me much more than I thought it would, for the simple fact that the tidal wave of articles that have been written about the horrific misdeeds of my former comedic idols has destroyed my ability to truly trust anyone I once admired who has XY chromosomes. If Bill Cosby, America's garishly sweatered rubber-faced dad, is capable of what over a dozen women claim he's capable of, the world is an even worse place than I thought it was. (And I've always been of the opinion that it's quite bad.)

With each revelation that someone I worshipped as a child allegedly molested a child, drugged and raped multiple women, beat his wife, etc., my desire to find a quick exit off this mortal coil increases, as does the love I have for men like Nichols. He proved you didn't need to be tortured in order to be an artist; he proved that well-adjusted people could still be funny, and that biting social commentary is best delivered through a wide, "Ah, shucks," grin.

In the late 50s, he and Elaine May, his comedy partner (and—hold your applause—comedic equal), performed subversive satire the likes of which have yet to be replicated. In my favorite performance of theirs, at the ​1959 Emmy Awards, he played a lowest-common-denominator loving television producer who accepted the first-ever "Total Mediocrity Award" from Mays (acting on behalf of the Academy); in doing so, they essentially shat all over the entire audience, who loved every second of it.

He could be biting, yes, but he was never cruel. He was, in spite of his success, ever humble. Nichols was one of a handful of people to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award, but never made a big deal of it. His humility, and his decency, always set him apart. It's also what made him fly under the radar in a way few other legends have.

If you're under the age of 35, the first time you heard Nichols's name may very well have been when you read of his passing. You've seen The Graduate, sure, but you probably didn't know he directed it (and won an Oscar for doing so). His lack of flashiness, his unwillingness to be self-congratulatory, always praising others before himself, is what made him special. 

In sharp contrast to most men of his era, he respected and celebrated the work of women. He was intimidated by May's talent, and never treated her as less than his partner. When their duo disbanded, they continued to work together; she wrote the screenplays for The Birdcage and Primary Colors, both of which he directed. He was best friends with Susan Sontag. He directed Gilda Live, the filmed adaptation of Gilda Radner's live show. He discovered Whoopi Goldberg when she was still struggling as a street performer and introduced her to a larger audience. He was, indeed, one of the good ones. And by "ones," I mean "straight white males who work in the entertainment industry."

Why is his capacity for basic human decency so exceptional? Why is the fact that he never did anything awful with his celebrity, never trapped a woman in his hotel room and jerked off in front of her, so noteworthy? Praiseworthy, even? What does it say about our society that he's a more admirable idol than his peers because he didn't commit monstrous acts? Is being awful part and parcel with being an entertainer? 

Most importantly, why are we so willing to let successful men revel in their awfulness? Do we feel as though their misdeeds somehow inform, even facilitate, their work? Or do we simply not care, so long as the work is artistically sound or they make us laugh?  

Nichols is gone now. I wish he weren't. Please don't tell me he did something atrocious during his short time here on Earth. I couldn't bear to hear it. Who, then, could I continue to respect?

Follow Megan Koester on ​Twitter.

Ronnie Bridgeman had been awake for days, but he didn't mind that his childhood friend wanted to pace. He was just happy to walk alongside him. Eventually, they batted away TV cameras and headed to a Cleveland-area Red Lobster. Ronnie, his brother Wiley, and Ricky Jackson were united at last.

"It was very emotional and kind of wild," Bridgeman told VICE. "I've been awake since hearing the news, but we had a lot of fun."

He had a pretty good reason to get so worked up over a simple lunch. After all, Jackson had served 39 years in a Cuyahoga County prison for a murder he did not commit—an egregious error of justice that amounts to the longest imprisonment prior to exoneration in US history. He was set free Frid​ay afternoon at the age of 57.

Jackson and the two brothers had been convicted solely on the eyewitness testimony of a 12-year-old boy with poor eyesight, and Cleveland police ignored almost an entire neighborhood's insistence that they had not been involved. As it turned out, the boy made up his story.

Ronnie Bridgeman, who spent 27 years and eight months years in prison as Jackson's co-defendant, came to reporter Kyle Swenson for help in 2009. (Wiley got out on parole in 2001 but re-offended and was also exonerated Friday.) He showed up at the Cleveland Scene with thousands of pages of court transcripts and claimed that his friend was still serving time for a murder they had nothing to do with. The case had already attracted the attention of the Innocence Project Ohio, a group that works to exonerate people through DNA testing, although they hadn't been able to dig anything up.

As he spoke more and more to Jackson, Swenson realized the man was telling the truth. The key came in revisiting court records, an extremely time-consuming task.

"The big challenge is that you're talking a city that has a third-world country's capacity for keeping records," Swenson told me. "It's a terrible place to get any kind of public records." He eventually found what he needed in a dank house that had been converted into an archive.

Besides digging up tons of records that showed Ed Vernon changed his story several times, Swenson canvassed for witnesses to contradict the 12-year-old's claims. He found plenty. "We found people from the neighborhood that he knew and people they were with at the time at the supposed time as well as Edward Vernon, the witness," he says.

The resulting story, "What The ​Boy Saw," caught the attention of some law students working at the Innocence Project and renewed their interest in the case. Brian Lowe, a lawyer at the organization, said the piece convinced him that the case was winnable. It also gave them something new to focus on: getting Vernon to admit he was lying and finding people to corroborate it. "It was one of the first things I read when I took on the case, and it really sort of sparked my passion ever since," he says. "We had students out there knocking on doors, looking for people who were there in 1975."

The big break finally came when Vernon signed an affidavit saying he made the whole thing up. The Innocence Project, armed with that piece of paper, filed for a new trial in March. They also had found five new people to testify that Vernon was lying. Now Ricky Jackson is a free man. 

The only dose of luck Jackson's seen in this whole ordeal—up until now, anyway—is that the death penalty was abolished in 1975. He and his two co-defendants (who were also exonerated) had originally been sentenced to death by electrocution.

"If this had happened ten years earlier, these guys would be dead," says Swenson. "But what's kinda scary to me is that while we know about these three guys, who don't we know about?" 

Follow Allie Conti on ​Twitter.

​A recent UN report revealed that one in eight men in rural Bangladesh admit to having committed rape. Although it is a crime punishable by death, there are no accurate government figures for rape in Bangladesh, largely due to social stigma and a failure by local authorities to investigate alleged crimes.

VICE News correspondent Tania Rashid traveled to Sylhet and met with both perpetrators and victims of rape, as well as local police, to find out what is driving Bangladeshi men to rape and abuse women, and what steps the authorities are taking to put an end to it.

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To celebrate LGBT communities, we're creating a new photo column called "Being Gay Is Beautiful in..." A few times a month, the column will showcase photos of a different city's LGBT community, displaying how being queer is fucking awesome.

Our first installment of the column takes us to Saint Louis, Missouri. Jos​hua B​arton is a writer and journalist who focuses on queer life in the city, and we liked that her photos show many facets of her personal life, as well as a scene that includes beautiful drag queens, oversize jock straps, and some pretty outlandish piercings.​ "The photos featured here are pieces of evidence," Josh told us. "They prove that my city is one where queer and trans-people of color thrive, where sex is still dirty and delicious and dangerous, and where we summon the ghosts of children dead and gone."

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Joshua Barton is a writer, artist, journalist, and photographer documenting queer life and love in Saint Louis, Missouri. Follow her on ​Tumblr and ​Twitter.

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Ominous fliers are popping up in Portland. Photo by the author

Business owners along a trendy North Portland thoroughfare arrived at work recently to find some unsavory fliers taped to their shop doors and windows instructing them to vacate or else face what local news outlets ca​lled "sexual acts." The fliers—flimsy white sheets of printer paper embossed with bold, black text and clip art images of clown faces—ominously declared: "YOU HAVE BEEN TARGETED BY THE JUGGALO FAMILY TO GET THE FUCK OUT. VACATE OR SUCK OUR DICKS." So far, no group—Juggalo or otherwise—has taken responsibility for the fellatio threat.

As many as 14 businesses were targeted, but no one—including the Portland Police Bureau (PPB)—has been able to track down any leads. 

"At this point, I don't know if it was just a temporary moment of some guys having fun or what, but there haven't been any sort of follow ups or anything like that," Bruce Kehe, a spokesman for Hopworks Urban Brewery, a bar on N. Williams Street that got slapped with a flier last week, told me. "We've been in the neighborhood for three and a half years now, and we've been really well received in the time that we've been there."

But local and national media grasping for a motive have taken to ges​turing toward the idea that the supposed Juggalos are angry about the breakneck pace of gentrification in North Portland that's centered around the intersection of N. Williams and N. Shaver Streets. Newcomers have displaced minority communities and low-income families and are driving up the cost of living, the story goes. Juggalos are generally working-class folks, so they want these interlopers to "get the fuck out."

At a quaint print shop down the block from Hopworks on N. Williams, a woman named Melissa was unsure why the shop had been targeted, since the fliers had mostly appeared on newer businesses. The print shop, she said, had been there for seven years. "Don't you think that shops like this could be seen as part of a larger project of gentrification, even if it's been here for seven years?" I asked, glancing at the stacks of thick eggshell stationary with fragile outlines of Oregon and small hearts dotting Portland. "What do you mean 'shops like this?'" Melissa responded. "It makes me wonder," she continued, "are the [culprits] new to the neighborhood?"

Gentrification is always an easy way to explain urban unrest. That's especially true in this case, with all of the businesses targeted leaning toward the trendy, glorified aspects of the city you'd expect to show up in  Portlandia: a minimalist coffee shop with sharp-angled furniture, a yoga studio, and a store with a mixture of pristine vintage Pendleton sweaters and aged cocktail paraphernalia.

But local Juggalos don't buy this narrative. They've even gone so far to posit that the feds are carrying out an elaborate f​rame ​job on them. Hundreds of commenters on the True Juggalo Family Facebook page have intimated that the culprits are nothing but imposters trying to sully the good Juggalo name. "Its the new gen of juggalos that give us older ones a bad fucking name and is a reason we r watched by the fuckin fbi and im sorry im not n a gang im part of a family," ​wrote Samson Colvin. Another user posted a picture of the group's iconic Hatchet Man holding a rose where a meat cleaver usually is.

According to the Portland Juggalo Family, the de facto local affiliate and an obvious first choice for suspect, the fliers were an amateurish ruse. I asked for comment, and a man named Greg who responded via a Facebook message said that the group is upset to have been associated with the crude fliers:

"Aye man I'll say this, those 'Juggalos' that did that are either fake, or they are doing shit in our name making us look like we are criminals, they are nothing but little punks who probably got nothing better to do than make more people hate us, and it's a disgrace to our family name, all we do is sit around, chill, hangout with one another, party, or relax but it doesn't mean we won't protect one another, when I see my Juggalo family I look at em as a brother or sister, and those 'juggalos' doing that shit need to leave our family name out of it, because I sure as hell know they aren't a real juggalo, all we is, is family."

For their part, the police more or less back up the Juggalo's sentiments—both in Portland and elsewhere. According to a spokesman for the PPB, local law enforcement has "no reason to believe the threats are legitimate and are encouraging area residents and businesses to be aware of the flyers but to operate normally. We do not have any history of Juggalo activity in Portland to any significant degree."

None of the businesses I spoke to reported any follow-ups or other malicious activity in the neighborhood, aside from a spike in car break-ins. But the message of love and togetherness being offered by Juggalos nationwide in response to the fliers suggests that any self-respecting Juggalo is unlikely to stoop this low. 

Alex Mierjeski is a freelance reporter based in Portland, Oregon. Follow him on Twitter.

​The Hunger Games movies have become a sym​bol of covert defiance and political expression for protestors in Thailand against the military junta running the country. The newest film opened at the box office this week, and by the end of its first day, three activists had been arrested and the Deputy Prime Minister had to get involved.

Shortly after the Thai army staged a coup d'état on May 22—the 12th successful coup in the past century—protesters began flashing the three-finger salute seen in the Hunger Games to show their opposition to the military takeover. Characters in the Hollywood blockbuster also raise the salute as an act of rebellion against an authoritarian regime, but as anti-coup activists in Thailand will tell you, the struggle here is quite real.

Since seizing power, Thailand's military government has banned all political protests and criticism of the regime.

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On Wednesday, three student activists were arrested during their effort to organize a mass viewing of the movie's latest instalment, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part I, which opened in theaters across Thailand.

The students originally planned to watch the premiere at the Scala theatre in Bangkok, but the cinema pulled the movie from its seasonal lineup after it caught wind of the students' plans. Two activists showed up at the theater Thursday morning to explain to the press that they would not be deterred; they would watch the movie en masse at another surprise location.

"We just want to see the movie," Rattapon Supsopon, a fourth year Economics student at Thammasat University, told a gaggle of reporters and several dozen policemen who stood by idly. "There will be no three-finger salutes, no demonstrations, no politics," he promised. Minutes later, he was escorted off the premises by plain-clothed police, shoved into a silver SUV, and driven to the police station.

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His "comrade," as the students call each other, was arrested shortly thereafter for showing the press his copy of George Orwell's 1984—another symbol of coup resistance that has been banned by the junta. In May, the same student was arrested for reading the dystopian novel in public.

"I guess I'm in command now," Than "Rick" Rittiphan said as he waited for others at the surprise location: a movie theatre in Siam Paragon, one of Bangkok's most upscale malls. He and three other students purchased 200 tickets for the 12:40 PM showing of the movie, which they planned to distribute to whoever wanted one, press included.

"It's gunna happen," Rick said as he divided up the paper tickets. "We're going to mock them with Mockingjay."

Almost on cue, a crowd of reporters and security guards arrived at the scene. Their attention quickly turned to a first-year female student from Bangkok University who began flashing the three-finger salute in front of Jennifer Lawrence's larger-than-life face on one of the movie's billboards.

Police moved in to arrest her, just as they had done with five other students in northeastern Thailand who flashed the salute the day before. Meanwhile, Rick and dozens of other students managed to slip into the theater and watch the movie as planned. With only three comrades arrested, the event was deemed a success.

After the commotion subsided, Arnon Nampha, a prominent lawyer who regularly represents members of anti-coup political faction, shook his head while he ate ice cream inside the luxurious movie theater.

"It makes the military look silly when they try to stop students from seeing a movie," he said. "It's nonsense."

The arrests of the saluting students at the cinema forced General Prawit Wongsuwna, Deputy Prime Minister and a member of the Junta's National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) to make a statement.

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"If anyone disagrees with the NCPO, they have the right to think that way. But they cannot express that [disagreement], strictly," he said.

"I believe the students' symbolic protests that are happening in many areas at the moment will not escalate, because I believe the majority of the people understand what the NCPO and the government are doing. The NCPO is asking for only one year, which is not a long time, in order to reform the country and lead it to a new election. And then things will return to normalcy immediately."

The director of the movies, Francis Lawrence, had been relatively silent on the situation in Thailand until earlier this week, when he told ​The Sydney Morning Herald he was unsettled by all of the arrests.

"When people are getting arrested for doing something from your movie, it's troubling," Lawrence said. "It is sort of thrilling that something that happens in the movie can become a symbol for people, for freedom or protest. But when kids started getting arrested for it ... it takes the thrill out of it and it becomes much more dangerous and it makes the feeling much more complex."

Follow Sally on Twitter: ​@ss​mairs

All images by the author.

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Image by deviantart user wwu

​The United States of America is by many measures the most powerful and wealthy empire to ever squat on the face of the Earth. Ordinary middle-class Americans have access to luxuries that would have been ludicrous fantasies for much of human history: We can buy whatever food we like at supermarkets, devices the size of our pockets allow us to access nearly every bit of information we can conceive of, and our bodily waste is spirited away to treatment facilities by a series of pipes. Our country—which has had a more or less stable political system for nearly 250 years—is bordered on two sides by allies and on the other two sides by vast oceans, making it essentially impossible to invade us, and our military is so powerful that no one is likely to try anyway. We're so safe in America that one of our biggest day-to-day concerns is that we'll eat too much delicious food and get unhealthily fat. 

And yet Americans are terrified pretty much all the time. Sometimes we're worried about something in particular, but most of the time it's just a sort of free-floating anxiety that the country as a whole is a few flappings of butterfly wings away from being decimated by a horrible disease, or turned into an Eastern European-esque police state, or consumed by riots and flames.

Fear Digest is a new column that will attempt to keep track of all this. Each week I'll be doing a ranking of the top ten terrors—either credible or fueled by fearmongering—percolating in the American subconscious as measured by whatever the media and politicians are yelling about the most. So here we go:

10. Ebola
​Remember when people were so worried ab​out this disease that the governors of New York and New Jersey got together to basically place anyone brave enough to fight Ebola in West Africa under house arrest upon their return to the US? Yeah, me neither. Though Ebola continues to​ ravage Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone—and though a doctor ​died of the virus in Nebraska this week—there were far fewer headlines about the "Ebola panic" and thus, less Ebola panic. Funny how that works.

9. Uber
​The ride-sharing company that has convinced people it could c​hange the world and is worth $30 billion because it makes it easy for people with smartphones to get cabs attracted a lot of bad publicity this week. First an executive suggested something like, "Hey maybe we should dig up dirt on journalists we don't like? LOL," at a dinner he thought was off the record (Buzzfeed's Ben Smith thought diff​erently). Then it came out that Uber can track th​e location of its cars through something nicknamed "God Mode," and that it was sometimes cavalier in using this feature. Concerns about privacy, in combination with all th​e other sexist and ugly behavior the company has been accused of, was enough for some people to think about deleting the​ app. If the thought of some tech bro monitoring your cab ride for his own douchey purposes doesn't exactly inspire dread, it definitely doesn't make you feel great about the changes Uber is bringing to the world.

8. The NSA
​Speaking of people who might be watching you, the federal government continues to collect massive amounts of data on its citizens and make decisions about surveillance via sec​ret courts. This is low on this week's list because we've more or less accepted life in the panopticon, but it's worth noting that a reform-minded bill called the USA Freedom Act failed in the Senate this week, amid a bunch of screeching about 9/11 and the Islamic State. The good news is that it might not have helped all that muc​h anyway. Democracy in action!

7. Santacon
​There are SantaCon events all over the world where people dressed as Santa gather to drink and—well, they just sort of gather and drink—but the most notorious is probably New York City's. It's an annual shitshow of bridge-and-tunnel bros and broesses in Santa hats getting full-on hammered by early afternoon, then roaming the city's streets and bars while shouting, puking, crying, and making out and fighting with one another. It's fun for the drunken Santas but a nightmare for everyone else. Last year the cops cracked down on the bacchanalia in Manhattan, so the organizers were going to head to Bushwick, Brooklyn, this year—except those bars don't want to deal with the messy revelry, as they have ma​de clear.

6. "Text Neck"
​Hey, remember how people used to be worried that cell phone​s cause brain cancer? Well, don't worry about it—worry instead that the strain of constantly looking down at your mobile device is going to perma​nently bend your spine.

5. Chinese hackers
​On Thursday Admiral Michael Rogers, the head of the NSA and US Cyber Command, stopped by a Congressional panel to inform them that America's power grid is vulnerable ​to attack from China and "probably one or two other" countries who might want to shut the US down. According to what one expert told​ Fox News, "There is a 'huge risk' that America's own power utilities could be turned into a weapon used against US citizens and controlled from another land." Of course, anyone who saw the fourth ​Die​ Hard already knew all that.

4. The Islamic State
​The fundamentalist Islamic group continued its run of almost cartoonish evil this week, as militants reportedly beheaded Army Ranger–turned–aid worker P​eter Kassig, then released a prop​aganda video of another hostage, John Cantlie, telling the US and the UK that their military operations to rescue their captured citizens were foolish and that they should just pay ransoms for them.

3. Ferguson
​The Islamic State remains terrifying, but this week Americans' top anxieties remained close to home. A gr​and jury still hasn't decided whether to bring charges against Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Missouri, cop who shot and killed teenager Michael Brown and sparked a chain of massive protests and a national shouting match about race and policing. An indictment—or lack thereof—is expected soon, and Governor Jay Nixon declare​d a state of emergency on Monday in preparation for the violence that might follow the grand jury's decision. Meanwhile, business owners in Ferguson who anticipate looting and riots h​ave moved their guns and gold to more secure locations, and a group of enraged protesters called for Wilson's death on​ Thursday.

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A Walgreens buried by snow in the Bufalo area. Photo via Flickr user ​Anthony Quintano

2. The Cold
​Remember when we used to have "winter"? Those quaint days are long gone—we now have to contend with a yearly "polar vortex," a fun tabloid term for when it gets really, really cold all over the place. Western New York is probably the worst-hit region, with te​n p​eople dying after a half-dozen feet of snow got dumped on the area. The band Interpol was t​rapped on​ their bus for nearly 50 hours, major highways were​ closed, and the NFL even moved a football game from Buffalo to Detroit—and the NFL doesn't delay games unless a major natural disaster or 9/11 happens, so you know this is serious.

[tweet text="The "president who thinks he's a king" starter pack. cc:@BarackObama pic.twitter.com/yUJz5uZI2c" byline="— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul)" user_id="SenRandPaul" tweet_id="535500005562650625" tweet_visual_time="November 20, 2014"]

1. Obama's Coming Dictatorship
​On Thursday evening, Barack ​Obama announced that he was issuing an executive order that would allow nearly 5 million immigrants who had come to the US illegally to stay under certain conditions. Congress has failed for years to pass any bills to reform a terrible immigration system, Obama and his supporters say, so the president needed to take unilateral action to deal with the problem. The anti-Obama crowd naturally responded to the move by critiquing the substance of the president's policies, by which I mean, "Ha, ha. No, they just went off the rails as usual." The Indianapolis Star ran an editori​al cartoon of brown people invading a white family's Thanksgiving, R​ush Limbaugh started talking about how the "regime wants to fly immigrant children here for free," and Republicans all over the country said the executive order meant that Obama was one step closer to turning into a dictator. Senator Rand Paul tweeted the above joke about how we are about to become a monarchy, Senator Tom Coburn said that we could see "anarchy" and "violence" in an interview with​ USA Today, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach darkly hinted on a radio show that we were on a slippe​ry slope to "ethnic cleansing" or something—"Things are strange and they're happening" was how he put it.

You can dismiss this sort of hyperbolic discourse as the deluded byproduct of a media bubble that encourages politicians (especially those on the right) to say the most extreme things they can think of to galvanize their bases—but what if they're correct? That would mean the first installment of this column would also be the last, for one thing, since we'd all be dead or fleeing gangs of bandits in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. See you there!

Follow Harry Cheadle on ​Twitter. 

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​At some point during the summer of 2003, someone with stars or birds on their collar decided that since we were going to keep soldiers in Iraq for a year or more, it might be a good idea to institute a rest and relaxation program. Qatar, it was decided, would be the destination. There was already a sprawling military base there with good amenities.

When our infantry company got a couple of slots for the trip, me and another soldier from my platoon were selected to go on the first round. We had no idea what to expect, but were happy to be getting out of miserable Baghdad.

My platoon mates scribbled lists of things they wanted me to buy for them and handed them off to me before I loaded the truck to Baghdad International Airport. Once there, we took off our body armor and handed our rifles to our buddies who would take them back to the base until we returned. We suddenly felt very helpless. No weapon and no armor. We were completely at the mercy of other soldiers who still had their gear.

Like during most military operations, we eventually found ourselves waiting, laying down on the concrete under some slowly shifting spots of shade, using our assault packs as nylon pillows. We drifted in and out of a hot sleep, conversations buzzing about what we'd do once we got there and whether today counted as one of our four days or not. Military aircraft took off and landed with regularity. It was comfortable.

A sergeant from our group approached after walking out of a nearby trailer. "We're waiting on a return trip from Qatar," he said, "Once its lands we'll quickly load up and then be on our way."

Shortly thereafter, a hulking grey C-130 landed and taxied nearby. The ramp dropped and a bunch of paratroopers from our unit walked out towards us. This was the Qatar bird and they just returned.

They came over to us and we all paired off with someone we knew, exchanging information. I found a platoon sergeant from another company. This platoon sergeant was actually one of my Drill Sergeants from basic training a couple of years earlier. Back in the States, he showed up to my unit a few months before we deployed. I saw him in the hallway one morning as we passed each other. We both stopped and stared for a moment, remembering terrible days dripping sweat in the hot Georgia sun.

"Ho-ly shit!" he said as he stared at me with a cocked head, incredulous that I was there.

Infantry drill sergeants like to remind their trainees during training that the reason they train you so hard is because one day—just maybe—they'd be fighting together with you somewhere in the future. I remember struggling to stay in the push-up position, muscles failing, listening to him say those exact words, calling bullshit in my mind. That was back in May 2001, and the idea of ever fighting somewhere overseas was a foreign one. And to actually be in a war there with one of my drill sergeants seemed an impossibility.

Yet, here were were. Not really fighting, per se, but here in the war.

He approached me. "Gomez! Qatar is a blast, man." The engine of the C-130 he just got off was still roaring and he had to shout to be heard. "Hey, pull out a piece of paper and write down this number, quick."

Our lead sergeant screamed over the roar of the engine and all the chatter. "Get on the C-130! There is a mechanical problem with the engine and the pilot is afraid that if he shuts it down, it won't come back on, so he wants to fly out now! Move!"

My peers quickly got up and grabbed their gear, forming a line heading to the C-130.

My drill sergeant–slash–new friend rattled off a phone number and I dutifully copied it down. "That's the number of a Marine Major at the base there. He's ex-Army and loves paratroopers. He can sign you off post and take you out. You'll go to this rooftop restaurant. They have this super hot Brazilian belly dancer. It's crazy! You have to go. Trust me."

I nodded and thought about how cool it would be to check this out, but felt completely strange about the idea of cold-calling some USMC Major and asking him to take me to dinner. I was just a junior sergeant at the time, and officers were strange creatures to us. I barely spoke with my own lieutenant, and he was just a couple of years older than me.

I caught up with the rest of the guys and got onto the C-130, strapped in, and went to sleep.

It was about a three-hour flight. We landed in Qatar and were funneled into a large hangar where were received a short brief on our vacation from a cheerful Army staff. They read off a bunch of rules.

We'd be here for three full days. We were allowed three beers a night. The bar (a giant, empty hangar) opened at 1800 and closed at 2000 daily. To drink, we would have to purchase tickets and then exchange those tickets for the beer. Your ID card was linked to the ticket; this way they could try to control how much each person can drink.

During the day, we could go on scheduled trips to a local mall or beach. While on the small base, we could use a pool, a giant dining facility, high-speed internet, phones, games, go shopping, get massages, and more. The big draw was a Chili's restaurant next to the pool. The uniform here was civilian clothes, a welcome break from our torn and dusty desert fatigues. I brought a pair of jeans with me and a New York Fire Department shirt my dad had given me before the invasion.

We were warned that this was a working military installation and that the Uniformed Code of Military Justice still applied to us. That meant just because we were on vacation, we could still get in trouble. We were also told that we could not leave the base with the exception of the planned Army-led excursions if we wished, or if we had someone who was stationed at the base sign us out and take responsibility.

The guy up front telling us all this finally warned us against trying to find a love interest while in Qatar. While most of the people there were male, about 10 percent of the folks on R&R were female soldiers. Before we even left the hangar rumors were flying about where to go if you were interested in finding love in three days (inside the sandbag bunkers or the porta-potties). Some guys (and girls) made it their number one priority.

Day 1. Ten hours of sleep, hot showers, shopping, good food, cold air conditioning, boneless buffalo wings at Chili's, weightlifting, video games, three beers in the evening, more sleep.

Day 2. Having done everything there was to do at the small base on day 1, I stood there in the morning, wind and dust blowing around me, staring down at the piece of paper with the Major's number on it. I wanted to check it out, but I didn't have the guts to make the phone call.

So, I did what anyone would do—found a guy who didn't give a fuck and made him make the call.

He spoke with the Major on the phone and confirmed the trip. In order for us to go, we'd need ten people and $100 each for the dinner. We were also warned that we had to be on our best behavior. Our instructions were to get the people and cash together and meet up at the front gate at 1830 tonight.

Me and my buddy split up, finding other guys we knew and enlisting them in our adventure. Anyone we talked to was in—it was all a matter of finding them before 1830.

By 1745 we were all there. The sun was beginning to set and our pockets were stuffed with foreign bills fresh from the ATM. Combat deployments are generous on the bank account and we hadn't had the ability to withdraw any money for months.

At 1800 we each bought three beer tickets and turned them in all at once. We had 30 minutes to down our beer ration before heading out.

Drinking wasn't allowed in Iraq and the combination of no alcohol for months, weight loss, and constant stress meant that our tolerance was extremely low. The effects of one beer were felt immediately. Getting three beers down in 30 minutes wouldn't be easy, but there was no way we were going to leave the base without using our beer ration.

I slammed the beers, one after another. I felt bloated, gross, and gassy as I put down the can of my last beer.

At 1830 we made our way to the front gate where we met up with the Major and two of his friends, a Marine Corps Sergeant Major and a Gunnery Sergeant. They were friendly and happy to see us—which was kind of odd. We exchanged pleasantries. They said how proud they were of us and it was their pleasure to take us out to let off some steam. This was still early in the Global War on Terror, and the feeling in the air was one that this whole thing was going to end pretty quickly. We felt like a rare breed of animal that was going to be extinct soon. They treated us like royalty.

We walked into an orderly room and the Major signed us all off post.

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We piled into two cars and sped away from the base. It was dark and we got to see Doha at night, city lights blurring past. We parked somewhere downtown and split into two groups. We had an hour to kill before the dinner started at the hotel. Me and a couple of other guys broke off and went with Gunny.

We walked around a jewelry district. I was already drunk, but holding myself together pretty well. I enjoyed people watching as we moved about. It felt so strange to be there, wearing jeans and a plain black T-shirt I bought at the base store earlier that day. No weapon, no body armor. Me among the people. Some women wore what I would consider then to be very "Western" clothing—jeans and T-shirts—while other women wore the full abaya and niqab, the traditional long black robe and face veil. No one ever looked at me twice, even though I felt very out of place. I was completely ignored. I both liked it and hated it.

I wandered in and out of shops, buying things for my girlfriend (a palm tree necklace and an Indian dance CD) and some things for buddies back in Baghdad (a power converter).

Eventually, we made our way to the hotel. We walked inside and into an elevator, getting off at the top floor, the "penthouse." Our escort, the Major, collected our cash and slipped away for a moment as we were seated by a waiter at a large, rectangular table. I took a few pictures on the rooftop overlooking Doha.

Inside, there was a large dance floor separating our table from the others on the opposite side of the room. Seated there was a small party of Saudi businessmen wearing long white robes and headdresses, just like we pictured they would. I felt kind of uncomfortable, like we were ruining their evening.

There was a band setup in the front and one of our guys went and sat on the drums and banged away for a minute, grinning widely before returning to the table. The Saudi businessmen watched, unamused. A waiter came by and one of us tried to order a drink. The Major interjected: "Guys, it would be better not to drink." The waiter said, "You can order drinks at the bar." There was a one-second pause as we all looked at one another and then every single one of us stood up and walked to straight to the bar. This is the point that the Major lost control of us.

At the bar, we each ordered the strongest thing we could handle. We opened a group tab. I ordered a Jack and Coke on infinite repeat.

Back at the table, we sat and talked. The Major asked questions about Iraq and what it was like "on the streets." We told him war stories about exotic places like the city of As Samawah, the al-Doura neighborhood, the al-Bayaa mosque, and late-night raids. He ordered himself a beer and watched us with a slight smile as we slammed our drinks. He wanted to be closer to the war and this was how he did it.

Food arrived. We started to snack and before we knew it another course came. It was a no-shit 21-course meal, nonstop. We kept eating and ordering more drinks. A Qatari family arrived, mom, dad, son and daughter. They sat on the side with the Saudi businessmen. We were getting louder and more American with each drink.

"Where's the belly dancer?" I shouted to no one in particular.

The Major looked to me and grinned. "Don't worry."

Shortly after that, the lights dimmed and the large room became very dark. A drumming, Arab-pop beat began to play and out she came. She was attractive, and everyone at the table locked in their gaze, only breaking to go back to their alcohol. She danced and we continued to eat and drink. She twirled and writhed and contorted. She coaxed one of the Saudi businessmen to get up and dance with her. Then she came to us and coaxed two of our guys to do the same. I pulled out my camera and snapped pictures, my vision becoming fuzzier and fuzzier after each round of food and drink.

She kept dancing, the music got louder. Laser lights were shooting in all different directions, cutting the blackness with vibrant colors. The Major said things that we couldn't hear.

The night went on and I never made it to whatever the main course was supposed to be. I was full on drinks and appetizers. I watched the dancing and observed, eyes getting heavy. People were smoking now and a thick grey cloud hung over us.

Time passed and the dancing stopped. The lights came on slightly. Everyone squinted and suddenly realized just how drunk they were. The Saudi businessmen and the Qatari family were gone.

Before the dancer could escape, one of the guys pleaded with her to let us take a picture. She allowed it and we posed around her while the Major snapped pictures.

Everyone was sloppy. I couldn't see very well but I was cognizant enough to know we needed to settle our bar tab. I walked to the bar and the bartender handed me a slip of paper with our tab. I struggled to focus my eyes. It was in the range of $1,400. I laughed at how ridiculous that was. The lights in the place came on the way they do when a bar is closing and they're trying to kick everyone out. I quickly moved around the room collecting money from everyone. In their drunken state, they eagerly handed me whatever they had. I made my way back to the bar to settle up. I could hear the Major behind me laughing. The guys were still taking pictures with the belly dancer as she tried desperately to escape to her dressing room.

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I settled the tab and left a generous tip with the extra cash. As we made our way to the elevator, the owner came out and expressed his gratitude for our visit and wished us back whenever we wanted. We spent a lot of money that night, after all.

We got back into the cars and made our way back to the base. It was well after midnight. Our escort driving turned back to us in the rear and told us to straighten up as we approached the checkpoint. They were obviously nervous about how unruly we'd become. We tried to stop laughing and look professional but started giggling like idiots whenever it got silent. We managed to hold it together as the driver handed his ID card to the military guard who let us through with no problems. One of our guys in the other car threw up just as we got to the gate, we'd learn later. The guard waved them through anyway.

The Major signed us back in and we all scurried back to the barracks, eager for sleep. I didn't even say goodbye or thank you to the Major. I just wanted to go to sleep. The barracks were dark and cold. The other soldiers there were already asleep and snoring loudly.

I stumbled to my bed and lay in it, grinning. I was one of the lucky ones who found a way to really get out and have a good time while the other guys had a sanitary, Army-sanctioned good time. My head was still pounding with the music of the night. I smelled like cigarette smoke and felt like I was definitely going to be sick. I fell asleep.

I woke up with no hangover, just wild memories. I spent my last day in Qatar relaxing like it was Sunday after a night of parting, looking for people to go brunch. I got the pictures developed from the evening. I lifted weights and ate at Chili's one last time. I prayed that our plane would break and we'd get to stay another day in Qatar. It didn't, and we left the next morning.

When we landed in Baghdad, I did the same thing my Drill Sergeant did – I found a friend and told him to call the Major. I learned later that when my friend gave him a call, no one ever picked up.

Follow Don Gomez on ​Twitter.

More from Don:

​High Dives and Manicures at Saddam's Presidential Palace

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It hopefully hasn't escaped your attention that one of the best—if not the best—games of 2013, Grand Theft Auto V, is about to complete its transfer from previous-gen systems to the visual razzle-dazzle of the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC platforms. To those who never played it the first time, who have hung on for these beautiful-looking ports, I promise you: so much fun. GTAV is a deep game of epic exploration, funny dialogue, intense action and frenetic car chases. And so much more.

And yet, not everyone who enjoyed the early hours of GTAV stayed for the duration—just as only some ​70 percent of those with internet-connected systems actually involved themselves in the game's separate GTA Online component. On its release, in September 2013, Forbes ​asked: What percentage of players will actually finish GTAV? Google isn't forthcoming with a verifiable stat on that, even a year and more on, but the campaign completion percentage for its predecessor Grand Theft Auto IV was under ​30 percent.

What makes us put the pad down and turn attention to what's next on our to-play list? Here are five obstacles that every gamer will face—but how we tackle them depends on time, patience and perhaps a certain type of masochism.

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'Dark Souls II': hard as hell, but rewarding too

The game is too difficult

Step forward Dark Souls II, one of the most critically acclaimed games of 2014 but one that I simply haven't made an inch of headway with. I know that if I really tried I'd be able to get somewhere, but with a stack of Other Things to take care of, I haven't powered up From Software's action-RPG since its springtime release.

Difficulty, in and of itself, shouldn't be an obstacle though—when it's properly handled. Mike Laidlaw, creative director on BioWare's recently released Dragon Age: Inquisition, is a fan of Dark Souls IIfor the way in which its punishment serves as a lesson to the player.

"I find the hard games that are the most successful are not hard for the sake of it," he tells me. "They're hard, but brutally fair. Dark Souls and its sequel are great examples, where the initial contact can be severe, but you learn lessons. Dark Souls teaches you valuable lessons, constantly, and does so in a way that's built into the gameplay—dying and resurrecting is all part of the game's mechanics, and its makers celebrate it. They're transparent as to what their challenge is, why it's hard—your equipment isn't good enough, perhaps. But it tells you that you can improve, and before long, the game is pushing you to be a master of it, and that's really satisfying."

As a BioWare game, there are people coming to Dragon Age: Inquisition for its storyline over any testing gameplay, and Laidlaw recognizes that it's a title with dual appeal.

"A chunk of our players are in it for the narrative, rather than the challenge. And we respect that—but we also have these hardcore players who want a dragon fight to be a 30-minute endurance test. So in the story sections, we have to be careful—we don't want to trap people, so there's always a save before you're locked into a story event. But in the wider exploration space, I have no problem with presenting overwhelming encounters, because at any point you can just turn around and run, right? I know players don't like that, but you can, and then come back when you're at a higher level."

There's no shame whatsoever, so far as I'm concerned, with playing a game on its easiest setting. I did that for my first playthrough of The Last of Us, because it was sold to me as a narrative experience over anything else. It's a move that the Guardian's games editor ​Keith Stuart understands.

"Playing on easy is fine in a narrative experience," he says. "You are not going to fundamentally misjudge the brilliance of The Last of Us because it took a couple fewer shots to take down enemies. But nowadays games like The Evil Within feature dynamic difficulty settings. I pretty much always play on intermediate and just struggle on [with games] until I beat them. If I'm replaying a game to enjoy the story, I'll put it on easy, and then if it's something I'm really invested in, I'll crank up the difficulty for the extra achievement points. I finished every Call of Duty game up to Modern Warfare 3 on veteran difficulty. I have no idea why I did that."

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'Dragon Age: Inquisition': something special, if not always a dragon, in every corner

The game is too long

The last game I completed—in terms of its solo campaign, anyway—was Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. I enjoyed its wholly obvious but nonetheless compelling story of power and politics, of a private-company arms race where greed soon clouds over any ethical agendas. It was silly and loud and, here's the thing for me, brief. The whole thing can't have taken me much more than six hours to shoot my way through, even allowing for the various cock ups along the way—and unlike Keith, I never play CoD on veteran.

Actually, that's not true: Just this morning (at the time of writing, obviously), I played through Journey, from start to finish, simply because I fancied revisiting thatgamecompany's wonderful little title. Time spent: 70 minutes, maybe. I dallied a little to point a newbie in the direction of some scarf-extending upgrade symbols.

Point being: I like succinct but complete games, those confident enough to pack everything into a campaign length that won't require matchsticks propping eyelids to see out in a weekend. I have never agreed with the perspective that length equals value for money, and while I did invest over 50 hours of my time in GTAV last year, one of my very favorite releases of 2013 was Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Platinum Games' over-the-top entry to Hideo Kojima's long-running Metal Gear series. It took under six hours to finish, but not a second of its time was wasted: Platinum constantly gave the player something to do, somewhere to go, someone to slice.

I've never finished the story of Skyrim, though, or seen Metal Gear Solid 4 through to its closing credits. It's not because these are poor games, but they go on for bloody ages. And at some point during the 30th hour of the former, I simply got distracted, and haven't returned. With reviewers for Dragon Age: Inquisition putting between 80 to 100 hours into the game prior to publishing their thoughts, Laidlaw knows that keeping the player occupied within a massive virtual world is key to avoiding detachment:

"In terms of size, we knew that we wanted an epic, and we wanted to build these big stages. We wanted variety, and to be able to fill each area to the extent where you always had something to do, every couple of minutes or so. And then these spaces developed over time, informed by play testing. We tracked heat signatures internally, to see where people visited, and where they went first. We tried to put a little something special in every corner."

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'Wolfenstein: The New Order': a shooter that freshens up its genre

The game is too boring

The man behind the Mario and Zelda franchises, Shigeru Miyamoto, has bemoaned a boring "​sameness" in modern video games. "What the other companies are doing makes business sense," he told The Telegraph, "but it's boring. The same games appear on every system. At Nintendo, we want an environment where games creators can collaborate and think of ideas for games that could have never happened before."

I'll grant the Nintendo legend that, a few years ago, gaming was certainly suffering from first-person-shooter fatigue. But that's a genre that, in 2014, has undergone some serious improvements: Wolfenstein: The New Order is just one of this year's standout stare-at-a-gun-all-game affairs that's brought a little heart to the usual array of explosions and headshots, and Far Cry 4 is an intoxicating blend of colorful surrealism and straightforward pyrotechnics, where it's perfectly okay to ride an elephant into battle while brandishing a bazooka.

Honestly, one of the most boring games for me in 2014 was a Nintendo exclusive: the Zelda and Dynasty Warriors mash-up, ​Hyrule Warriors. It was fun for a while, sure, but after the seventh stage of identical gameplay, with the identikit masses of single-strike-kill minions and charmless bosses of rather more hit points, I was done with it. Whereas the comparably hack-and-slash ​Bayonetta 2, also for the Wii U, avoided stirring boredom by being, well, completely fucking nuts. Again, it's a Platinum production that layers entertainingly monstrous enemies on top of sumptuous environments until the whole thing explodes like a firework full of halos and gore.

What you find boring and what I do is, inevitably, different. I expected to find the new CoD campaign dull—but it wasn't. Innovation isn't always the answer to keeping a player's attentions locked to a screen—but fun certainly is. Which is why a game like Mario Kart 8 sings to me, but the more serious-face GRID Autosportreally doesn't—again, it's a game of 2014 that I haven't not been able to spend too much time with on account of being assaulted by a dizzying sequence of menus each time I start it up.

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'Destiny': a game that is actively responding to player feedback

The game doesn't reward the player

The power of today's consoles allows for the creation of massive game worlds – but if they're merely gorgeous shells bearing only the merest of pearls, who cares? For Dragon Age: Inquisition, Laidlaw made sure that players would always receive perks for the hours they put into the experience. "We wanted more content that you didn't have to be careful of spoiling," he says. "Like, you could come across a really cool sword. That's part of the gameplay experience, but it's not spoiling the story."

​Destiny, for a time, was giving out its purple treasures for barely any effort at all. Its lucrative "loot cave" was quickly enough patched out of proceedings, but sure enough another opportunity for perk-farming arose—just 24 hours after the first "loot cave" was sealed, so another was ​discovered.

Destiny, Bungie's $500 million gamble, is a game of no set finished state—what you bought back in September will be built upon in the coming years, up to ten of them if its makers carry out their promises. Just a few days ago it implemented ​voice chat, while its ​Iron Banner 2.0 update introduced refinements to a competitive multiplayer mode that initially attracted criticism for poorly implemented ​level advantages. This is a perfect illustration of a developer rewarding its audience, repaying patience and responding to criticism in the right way.

For games that aren't Destiny, with a massive team brandishing the power to make changes effectively on the fly, the key is to make the experience one that can, theoretically, last forever without compromising on stuff-to-do front. Far Cry 3 was magnificent, but after clearing out its numerous enemy outposts, and once the main campaign was finished, offered little but some attractive sightseeing. Its follow-up allows these base camps to be restocked with plenty of NPCs—meaning you can enjoy the view while painting it a fresh shade of blood red.

The generally excellent Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor rather falls flat when its content has collapsed down to mere trinket finding, as writer Yannick Le Jacq ​noted for Kotaku: "Why on earth am I playing a video game set in one of the most visually rich fantasy worlds, and collecting pieces of a basket? It was around this time I decided I didn't want to make it to 100 percent."

The 100 percent completion target that some players strive for has led to some boring-as-hell side quests and collectible-acquiring in even the very best games. I mean, do you really care to find all 50 spaceship parts in GTAV? It doesn't really matter, does it?

"There's so much bloody machismo wrapped up in this sort of [100 percent-ing] argument," says Stuart. "There's a whole, 'I'm a real gamer, and you're not' mentality." And if that's the case, I'm quite OK with not being a 'real' gamer.

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Assassin's Creed Unity: One ugly mother

The game is broken

I only just received a finished copy of Assassin's Creed Unity—you can read a preview of it ​here—but some reports of the final code's bugs have been hilarious. Screenshots have depicted characters whose features have not fully loaded, while disappearing architecture and instances of the game's hero falling through the floor have been documented. That might not be enough to completely put people off the game, and it hasn't dramatically damaged ACU's critical reception (although frame-rate issues certainly have), but it's definitely not the kind of coverage that makers Ubisoft will have wanted.

But at least they're not alone in putting out a broken "end" product. Sonic the Hedgehog games have been shit for years, and Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric for the Wii U is the latest entry in the series to make no attempt to switch things up. A buggy mess, IGN ​concluded that it "fell well below already low expectations." Some of those bugs are funny in isolation, but one that allows for ​infinite jumping makes it beatable in ​under an hour.

Bugs can be patched, but something that pisses me off—and that I consider just as much a qualifier of brokenness as any glitch—is unexpected and flat-out unfair difficulty spikes. To go back to the first point, hard games done right can be magnificent, and the accolades for Dark Souls II serve as proof of that. But when something like a boss battle proves completely unbeatable after several attempts, you have to question the play testing.

So, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, consider yourself called out. A character called Deadlift is the 2014 shooter's first real boss, and a browse of YouTube shows that I'm not alone in struggling with his hefty shield, electrified floors, and legion of supporting enemies. "I've died like 20 times," ​says one commenter ; "I got my ass handed to me so fast," ​wrote another. Turns out there's a 'cheat' way to do it, but will I be going back to Pandora's moon for a war of attrition complemented by the same few, annoying sound bites? Will I hell.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is out now for multiple platforms. The PS4 and Xbox One versions of GTAV are released on November 18, with the PC port due in early 2015.​

Follow Mike Diver on ​Twitter.