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Photo of CruiserCAM's body-worn cameras via ​CruiserCam on Facebook.

​According to the Canadian government's own directory of contracts and purchases, the RCMP has just bought 24 body-worn cameras as part of a pilot project to have their officers armed with video capturing devices.

This is of course an incredibly timely move on behalf of our federal police service. The RCMP's plan has been in the works for a while—the contract awarded in mid-October, but only announced on November 28. Yesterday, the Obama administration declared that it's ready to put up over $260 million to get body-w​orn cameras onto American police officers to prevent a future Ferguson.

It appears that the RCMP h​as awa​rded fo​ur contra​cts to firms in Newfoundland, Alberta, Michigan, and Quebec. In the RCMP's words, the pilot project aims to "determine the feasibility of implementing Body Worn Video Cameras for front-line officers. A larger, competitive procurement may be conducted depending on the results of the feasibility study."

This pilot project apparently only requires 24 cameras, all of which will be delivered to the RCMP in Saskatchewan. It's unclear if the pilot project will be occurring in Saskatchewan specifically, or if equipment will be routed through the province's depot. The RCMP did not immediately respond to requests for comment from VICE about this project.

While it does not appear that all four firms are providing cameras, the required equipment to get this operation off the ground (including recording and monitoring gear, to start) would certainly require a multi-company approach. The company that the RCMP selected in Alberta, CruiserCam Inc., is the self-described "Canadian supplier of Patrol Witness in-car camera systems, DragonEye Speed Lidar systems, BodyCam and FLIR cameras."

Aside from its body-worn cameras, CruiserCam sells an entire police car rig. That rig swaps the rearview mirror out for an LCD display that provides an overlay allowing police officers to control the video being recorded in-car. It appears that the rearview mirror display can talk to mounted cameras in the car, which may allow officers to control when they record and what they record. A full PDF brochure of ​CruiserCam's in-car system is available here.

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CruiserCam sold four cameras to the RCMP, and company president Danica Prpick told VICE that while Canada is lagging behind international policing surveillance trends, "it would be really beneficial for all of them to equip themselves with this kind of equipment.

"The benefit is, of course, to police officers for complaints against them, for safety. It's for enforcement so if something happens, they've got a record of it. And the record doesn't lie. [...] It holds people accountable. It holds police accountable."

The Toronto police are also on the lookout for a ​bod​y-worn camera partner, and anecdotally, it does seem like police officers are at least curious about the technology. Some are more optimistic. One comment on the CruiserCam Facebook page reads, "This is what my department needs for us."

According to the company's testimonials page, they've been in business with Canadian law enforcement from as early as 2007. A note from the fleet coordinator of the Miramichi Police Force in Redcliff, Alberta reads: "Over a seven year period we gradually purchased additional camera systems from CruiserCam and currently all ten of our first response vehicles are camera equipped... [CruiserCam has provided] us with video recording products with the best service on the market."

While the influx of body-worn cameras is certainly a good thing, even though it's happening little by little in Canada, police officers and police departments will need to be responsible when it comes to setting rules about when these cameras can be turned off and how this footage must be stored. If police officers are able to deactivate the cameras at will and footage can be locked away from the public—or, worse, deleted—then the whole system will be for naught.

As Prpick of CruiserCam said, "the threat of carrying a weapon deters a lot of things from happening, but a body-worn camera can become a weapon too." It's important to use such a powerful tool with care. 

This technology is opening up a new frontier for law enforcement that could be a huge win for society in general, but without the proper checks and balances, it might not be the improvement we are hoping for. As the story unfolds, we'll be covering it, and hopefully these added lenses will change policing in Canada for the better.

​@patrickmcguire

​On November 24, St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch announced the grand jury's decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of unarmed black teen Michael Brown.

In this new episode of State of Emergency, VICE News roamed the streets of Ferguson the day after widespread arson and looting occurred in response to the announcement, as the evening begins with a stand-off between protesters and police outside the Ferguson Police Department—now heavily guarded by National Guard troops.

This story was originally published on ​VICE France.

When I lived in Switzerland, I volunteered for a local organization called Aspa​sie, which campaigns for the rights of prostitutes. That's how I met Claudette, who was both a member of Aspasie and a prostitute herself.

I ran into her first in November 2011 in a café in Geneva and immediately got along well. Claudette was the one who suggested I photograph her story; I had thought about it, but didn't dare ask until we got to know each other better. Over the next weeks, I met her friends, her wife, her family, and finally, she allowed me to take some photos of her in her house.

Claudette is 76 and  ​intersex, which means she was born with male and female genitals. Many children who are born that way are ​operated on at birth, which means a doctor decides in an instant whether a baby will go through life as a man or a woman. But when Claudette was born in 1937, her forward-thinking parents decided to let her choose her gender identity. (They did legally declare her a boy since, especially back then, being male gave one certain advantages.) 

But she always felt like a girl and has lived her life in a space between genders—she doesn't really talk about that stuff though, and has often avoided the issue by wearing unisex sport clothes. 

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Claudette became a prostitute when she was 16 years old. Her family lived in Morocco at the time, which is where she fell in love with a neighbor, Carmen. Carmen showed Claudette the joys of sex and men, and when she realized how much Claudette loved both, she suggested that Claudette join the brothel she worked for in Tangier. 

In the mid 1950s Moroccans were increasingly demanding their independence from France, and Claudette's parents decided to ditch this unrest and went back to Switzerland while she was still at college. To help her out, Carmen gave Claudette all the money she had earned at the brothel, and it was thanks to that generosity that Claudette was later able to continue her architectural studies in Switzerland.

Claudette has always returned to prostitution when she needed money—or, she told me, when she needed to feel like a woman. But over the years she's had all sorts of other occupations: welder, architect, sales associate in an American company,  ​sophrologist, the list goes on.

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Later she became a father, so for a while she had to act as a man. In her private life, she never hid who she was, but she didn't want her children to have any problems at school so she was careful in public. Now that her children are old enough, she's stopped worrying about what people say and has become a prominent activist for sex workers' rights. Her wife, André, has always known about her dual nature and her job and supported all her choices.

Today, Claudette lives in Haute-Savoie, a French town that's a hour away from Geneva. She divides her time between her family, her job, activism, and cycling. She used to keep a studio where she received clients but in latter years she's mostly been going to people's houses. Sometimes, she also hangs around  Boulevard Helvétique in Geneva—an area that's traditionally known as a prostitute hangout. 

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To take this series of photographs, I had to earn Claudette's trust little by little. I wanted to show that prostitution is a complex job that can't always be described as exploitation. Claudette has been manipulated by journalists quite a few times in the past—they tend to focus on only one aspect of her life, reducing her to just her gender identity or her job. I managed to convince her (and hopefully to prove to her) that I wasn't going to the same.

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It is very touching to listen to Claudette talk about her clients. I remember one story about a man who ejaculated as soon as she placed her hand on his thigh. He was so embarrassed that he wanted to leave right away but Claudette convinced him to stay—he had already paid and she did not want to take him for a ride. They talked together and he finally admitted to her that premature ejaculation was a major obstacle in his relationships with women. She gave him some practical advice, which he followed right there and then, A few months later, she received an enormous bouquet of flowers accompanied with a card from that same guy—he thanked and told her that he was living happily with a woman.

I still stay in touch with Claudette. The last time I saw her was two months ago at my wedding. She came with her wife and proposed a toast. She met my family and friends. She knows my husband well, and his father—they both love cycling as much as she does.

Claudette is currently experiencing some serious health problems. She was diagnosed with throat cancer, but thanks to an operation that seems to have been successful, she's on the road to recovery. Her latest ambition is to beat the world record for cycling on track in the 80–84 age category within the next three years. 

Check out Malika Gaudin Delrieu's web​site here. 

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This man is not a victim of male rape. Photo by Flickr user ​Abd Allah Foteih

This post first appeared on VICE UK

Paul tried to scream when it happened, but couldn't.

Rubbing his crotch over Paul's back, the man on top of him pinned his arms to the bed, rendering him immobile. Breathing the stench of a dirty pub floor into his face, the man told Paul to relax, promising he "only wanted to give [him] a special gift."

Paul stops, stepping out to his balcony to regroup. He holds onto the rails, trying to control his shaking, crying into an old handkerchief. He walks back into the room. "I'm sorry—I've just shut [the memories] out for so long, it's hard to remember everything," he says.

For the past few months I've been meeting Paul in his London flat to talk about the sexual abuse he experienced as a teenager, and how a friend of his uncle's—a man he trusted; admired, even—eventually became his rapist.

Cases like Paul's are more common than you might think. According to ​official figures, around 9,000 British men and boys—​roughly 12 percent of all rape and sexual abuse survivors—are subject to rape or sexual abuse each year. However, just over 1,000 cases are actually reported. Most of the time, men who report their abuse do so years—or decades—after the act was committed, with many survivors citing fear, embarrassment, and shame as the main reasons for staying quiet.

Paul, 24, was raised in Scotland. His father died when he was a child, and though he still lived with his mother, he spent most of his time with his uncle, who became a sort of father figure. Paul's uncle lived close to his school, meaning he'd usually go there before heading home, occasionally sleeping over.

One night, his uncle invited friends over. That was the first time Paul met Max, the man who became his abuser. According to Paul, Max had first appeared to be a decent guy—friendly and easy to get on with. He was part of his uncle's five-a-side team, a regular drinking buddy, and, at the time, considered "almost family" by the man who'd taken Paul under his wing.

"I remember times when Max would ask me to help him take things from his car and slide me over a bit of chocolate or something," says Paul. "He'd often rub my back under my T-shirt, or brush my leg every so often. I didn't really think anything of it at first—he seemed like that with everyone."

But as Max visited and slept at his uncle's house more often, instances of forced intimacy became more frequent. Paul recalls a time when he was around 16 that Max, who was looking after him while his uncle was away, asked him about girls and why he'd never had a girlfriend before.

"He said that I wasn't sexually confident and that I needed to know how to 'treat a girl' before I could get one," says Paul. "Then he put a porno on and told me I should watch it with him because I needed to learn 'how things worked.' As I was watching it he was rubbing against me and undoing his trouser zipper. I became uncomfortable, got up and told him I was tired and wanted to sleep. But really, I just didn't know what to do."

It was a few months later that Paul experienced the worst. He was asleep when his uncle and Max got home from a night of drinking. His uncle passed out cold, leaving Max to enter Paul's room, climb on top of him and aggressively remove his clothes. Despite all attempts to resist, Paul was crushed under Max's bodyweight. He tells me, through teary eyes, that, despite trying to fight back, he was unable to stop what happened next.

"It only lasted a few minutes, I think. But it's still the most terrifying... it wasn't just my body that was taken away by him, but also my self-respect," says Paul. "For years I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror, I was that ashamed."

"IT'S NOT JUST THE PHYSICAL ABUSE, BUT THE LASTING MENTAL TORTURE. IT'S SOUL DESTROYING."

Like many male survivors of sexual abuse, Paul didn't tell anyone about that night, and spent years trying to forget what had happened to him. He stopped visiting his uncle's house, avoiding Max and his friends at all costs. Bottling up his emotions throughout school and college, he found himself becoming more introverted, less talkative and gradually more erratic. In the absence of available help, he turned to drink and drugs to try escape from his problems, but, according to Paul, "All they did was make things worse."

"It was only when I lashed out at my now ex-girlfriend that I realized I couldn't live like this any more," he says. "That was when I got out of Scotland and told myself I'd get through this."

Paul is now receiving help from a private therapist, who he started visiting a few weeks before we first met. It took him nearly ten years to come to terms with what happened to him. 

"I didn't know what to say—I mean, I knew about rape, but I didn't actually think men could be raped," he tells me. "I didn't think that men wanted to rape other men. I realize why so many women and men don't want to talk about it. It's not just the physical abuse, but the lasting mental torture. It's soul destroying."

Paul's experience is not unlike other male victims of sexual abuse. According to Duncan Craig, psychotherapist and founder of ​Survivors Manchester—an organization that helps male survivors of rape and sexual abuse—around 80 percent of male sexual abuse survivors report the incident years after it happened, while a large number don't seek help until more than 20 years after it took place.

"As a male, there's a myth that you should be able to protect yourself," Craig tells me, adding that while the psychological impacts of rape and sexual abuse vary, in most cases such abuse has a huge impact on a male survivor's sense of masculinity, and that they're often afraid to speak out as it makes them feel "less of a man."

Duncan, who experienced sexual abuse at a young age himself, says that more activism and an "inclusive" language accounting for male sexual violation is needed to help men speak out. "As a society, [we are] not very good in making the space needed for men to talk," he says.


It's only fairly recently that the British government has made a visible effort to help male victims of abuse. At the beginning of this year, ​the government pledged half a million pounds (about $784,000) to organizations helping male survivors—including those of historic child abuse—and promised that they would receive "unprecedented access to vital help."

However, a number of social workers and academic researchers told me that, despite the increase in funding, little had been done to effectively tackle institutional failures that allow rape victims to be ignored.

Ali Javaid, a PhD candidate at the University of York and an author of several papers about male sexual abuse, tells me that, in spite of greater awareness of the issues, many police forces in the UK didn't have the training needed to deal with the emotional issues underlining male sexual violence. He suggests that a "highly militarized police culture produces and reinforces a 'gendered style' of police work that perpetuates, arguably, masculine practice and values."

Ali also explains that a broader understanding of rape and sexual violence is needed in order to help male victims of rape. According to his research, the general understanding of rape was one in which "females were [predominantly] viewed as victims; males [predominantly] as offenders." Looking at the statistics—which estimate that around nine of every ten rape victims are female—it's an understandable conclusion to come to. 

However, says Ali, such perceptions foster a mentality that "male rape is not considered 'real rape,'" resulting in male victims becoming "aberrant, relegated, and marginalized within [a] specialist archive of news."

"It's important to remember that male rape is not motivated by sexual gratification, but, like female rape, by dominance, power, and the enhancement of masculinity," says Ali. "In societies still structured around male supremacy, the most predominant hegemonic masculine stereotype continues to support the notion that 'real men' control and dominate. Rape is one way of achieving this domination and control."

"Things are better now," Paul tells me during our final meeting. Though he's yet to disclose everything that happened to him to his mother and uncle—a moment he still "dreads to think about"—he says support from his therapy group and, more importantly, the "unconditional love" given to him by his now long-term girlfriend has made him view his abuse in a different light.

I ask him how he feels about what happened to him. He sits up tall and, for the first time, smiles.

"I used to think I was weak—pathetic—because of what happened. That, somehow, I deserved it. But now I've realized that I can't think like that. I won't let myself think like that."

Follow Hussein Kesvani on ​Twitter.

​Rahm Emanuel has never given a damn about his reputation. The short-fused Chicago mayor is an angry little monster, and he's happy that way. But that mobster disposition that earned him the nickname "Rahmbo" may finally be coming back to haunt him as he faces reelection this year. Chicagoans are frustrated with the former White House chief of staff, and a crowded field of candidates is chomping at the bit to oust him when voters go to the polls this February.

Most people assume that Emanuel—who has a $9 million campaign w​ar chest and a long list of famous friends who owe him favors—was unbeatable. But Bob Fioretti, a middle-aged alderman with a Donald Trump-style head of hair, believes he can slay the giant. After formally filing a petition late last month to challenge Emanuel in next year's race, Fioretti has been making public battle cries against the mayor, attacking Rahm for his record on jobs and crime.

With his approv​al ratings sinking and a seemingly unending and systemic crime problem, Emanuel's reelection has been looking less and less inevitable. With labor leader Karen Lewis's decision not to run for mayor, Fioretti is now the most high-profile challenger who can take on Emanuel from the left. But can he win? VICE caught up with Fioretti last week to talk more about his beef with Rahm, and why he thinks he can topple Obama's former right-hand man.

VICE: Why are you the person to beat Emanuel?
Fioretti: Four years ago, Rahm came into town and said he was going to get tough and all we got was tough luck. The mayor's policies have divided Chicagoans. We have two different cities. And we need to take things into a new direction and make one city. I believe with the help of the citizens we will become mayor and we will occupy the fifth floor [of City Hall].

You've acknowledged that it's going to be near impossible to match Emanuel's financing. How do you plan on addressing that?
I think [the] war chest that he has is obscene, absolutely obscene. He's brought Washingtonian politics to the city of Chicago. With what he has, he can feed thousands of homeless in the city of Chicago. He can give bulletproof vests to every police officer. He can open mental health clinics. And instead, he's already spent $2 million as of this date—on TV ads. We will raise the resources necessary to strategically fight, get our message out to the people and keep doing what we've been doing—knocking on doors in every ward and every community.

Do you think Karen Lewis exposed the mayor's vulnerability? Did that influence your decision to run?
I had had discussions with her before and I think she did help bring out some of the problems of this leadership, if you call it that. This [Emanuel's] is a leadership that divides this city and ignores the struggles of the majority of its citizens. The access to City Hall is by special interests and big money friends, not the small person.

How did Emanuel create this division?
I think when he closed fifty school​s in our communities, when he fails to make better streets, [when he] closes mental health clinics. This is not the mayor for this city.

Why are so many candidates jockeying to take Emanuel's spot?
People want change. They want new leadership and the folks that have filed come from all different parts of this city. I think it shows folks crying out for new leadership now.

How will the recent gubernator​ial election affect the election?
I think we need a very transparent, open and accountable administration. What I've seen from this administration, that does not happen. And in the gubernatorial race, I think we'll see changes but I'm very concerned that Rahm Emanuel's good friend [Bruce Rauner], the person who made him a multimillionaire is now occupying the governor's mansion.

Do you think that could negatively impact the financial future of Chicago?
Not only that but the state of Illinois. Absolutely.

You take issue with the mayor's policies on crime and education. How do you specifically plan on targeting those issues?
First of all, as to crime, I want to put more police officers on the street. But we can't police ourselves out of the problem we have. We have to reopen our mental health clinics. We have to bring jobs into our neighborhoods, which is crucial. That's what we need to do here. At the same time, we need a holistic approach towards crime. We need to have very active and involved community policing in our city. We cannot disassociate crime from poverty, lack of education, lack of hope in our city. That's what this administration tends to gloss over. As for schools, when [Emanuel] closed fifty schools, he turned his back on our communities, communities of color, black and brown. And those communities then suffer from the closures. 

Follow Gideon on ​Twitter

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Photo via Flickr user ​starr61

This post originally appeared on VICE UK

As any connoisseur of British-made porn ​now ​knows, the Audiovisual Media Services Regulation 2014 that came into effect yesterday now means British pornographers are banned from depicting the following: fisting, spanking, aggressive whipping, verbal abuse ("Cor blimey, you ain't 'alf a crap shag"), caning, and strangulation. That sort of thing. Pack up the camcorder and the lube-proof tarpaulin, lads. Fun time is over. Put the cane away, Linda. Not now. Not anymore.

As many have pointed out, the new law is pretty sexist. Men are allowed to jizz where, when, and in whatever high, arcing trajectory they like, but for some reason female ejaculation is now outlawed in case someone confuses it with an especially loud, screaming piss. Face-sitting is forbidden but face-fucking is A-OK. The dividing lines between what is and isn't an OK thing to get off to seem arbitrarily drawn and really moral judgement-y. 

Why can't two consulting adults have a big, sexy wee together on camera? Who are you to stop them, EUROPE?

It's not like the outlawed sex acts are even especially weird. Bondage is now banned, despite 52.1 percent of women and 46.2 percent of men having fantasized about it before. Same goes for spanking and whipping, which 23 percent of women and 39.6 percent of men have fantasized about. I personally have a fantasy where Kim off of How Clean Is Your House? comes to my house and firmly makes me tidy my room while telling me what an idiot I am, and even that couldn't be made into a porno now, because it would constitute verbal abuse.

It was the ejaculate ruling that was most baffling, though. What, precisely, is the difference between a squirting vagina and a jizzing cock? Are we not all human? If you cut us, do we not bleed? If you arouse us, do we not make a damp stain with our junk? What makes one vaguely viscous sex liquid more acceptable to spray around the room than another?

Well, we asked the Jizz Police, aka the ​British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). As part of the new amendment (the new Audiovisual Services regulation is in fact an amendment to the 2003 Communications Act), video-on-demand services are the ones most affected, as they now have to be brought in line with the BBFC's previously standing rules on R18-rated DVDs – ones that have been in effect for a while, but are under sudden scrutiny now everyone's porn suddenly has to be diluted down and piss-less. 

So, essentially: What's the difference between male and female ejaculate, in BBFC terms?

"The BBFC is required to seek to avoid classifying material that is likely to be considered in breach of the Obscene Publications Act," the BBFC told us. "According to the advice we take from the police and the CPS, sex works featuring ​urolagnia [the gaining of sexual pleasure from urination] are likely to be considered obscene. 

"Therefore, unless it's very clear that what is being shown is indeed 'female ejaculation,' as opposed to urolagnia, the Board's position has to be that scenes of this nature featuring liquid that might be urine have to be cut. The situation is further complicated, for us, by the fact that medical advice we have taken has suggested that some scenes submitted to us that purported to show 'female ejaculation' were, in fact, urination."

Basically, some scientists in lab coats and BBFC board members in suits gathered in a lab together, and they still couldn't make out from the 80-minute emotional roller coaster that is XXX British Hardcore 32 which bits were pissing and which bits were squirting. I mean, they were tapping at clipboards and looking through books. "Is that piss?" they're saying. They're squinting in and pausing. "That looks a bit pissy to me. Can't have piss. This is a jizz-only country. No pissing, no swearing. Look, that man there; he isn't covering that lady in his semen in a very polite way. And that is unacceptable."

As the BBFC tells us, a lot of the judgment being passed on squirting is because, in the sample porn they've seen, they've come across a lot of smoke-and-mirrors disguising of piss as squirt juice in an effort to circumvent obscenity laws.

"It can indeed be difficult to distinguish between the two," we were told. "The problem with urolagnia is that it's likely, in the case of sex works, to result in a work being found obscene. That's a legal test rather than a matter of BBFC judgement." But, come on. Jizz comes out of the same hole as piss. Why can't the same logic that is applied to penises also be applied to vaginas? What does this all mean for your porn? 

You can still watch porn. It's just, if you paid for it and it was manufactured in this country, it's going to have a lot less verbal abuse and spanking in it. What does it mean for your sex life? No new laws have been passed on that. But censorship-wise, we've just taken a really big step backwards and reclassified some pretty vanilla sex stuff as offensive. Apart from double anal, weirdly. Double anal is still safe and sound. Double anal: It's your time to rule the Western world.

Follow Joel Golby on ​Twitter.

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William Gibson. Photo by Fred Armitage ​via

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Standing in the corner of a Foyle's on Charing Cross Road is William Gibson, the father of cyberpunk. This place—a clinical, strip-lit bookshop—is light years away from the seedy, dystopian underworlds depicted in his novels. A shitty bar somewhere in Rotherhithe would be a more appropriate venue—or, at the very least, the Computer Exchange around the corner on Tottenham Court Road.

At 66, Gibson is a slight man, softly spoken, affable, and clearly drained from endless rounds of interviews for his new book, The Peripheral. He's the man, not the legend, standing in the corner while a hired pianist knocks out generic filler music to the milling crowd.

Thirty years ago Gibson changed sci-fi writing forever with his breakout hit, Neuromancer, spawning a new genre: cyberpunk. His novel was a crazed, delirious trip through cyberspace (a word he's famous for inventing) about a down-on-his-luck hustler and ex-hacker named Case who lives in the Sprawl, a Megalopolis of urban decay with a sky "the color of television, turned to a dead channel."

The plot weaves through a blitz of networked computers, where junkies surf through a digital hallucination, hacking away precious information from global corporations for a fee. Gibson describes the enduring success of the book to me as like "having an adult child that you don't see very often, but is doing well in a field that you aren't that into."

To a generation of hackers, phreakers, computer programmers, and punks who knew their way around a computer terminal, Gibson was a prophet—a man who would predict the digital world we now inhabit. The legend, he is happy to admit, is exaggerated. Yes, he may have coined "cyberspace," predicted the effects of technology saturating every aspect of our lives and foreseen the rise of reality TV, but he also missed a lot.

"If I was to add up the time that I have spent in interviews either qualifying or denying prescience then it would total more than anything else I have ever spoken about," Gibson tells me. "There's an ancient tendency to account for the alleged soothsayer's hits and ignore his misses. I've missed multitudes of things about imaginary futures. The hits are just clickbait, and they have always been clickbait."

His image as the "noir prophet" may be blown out of proportion, but the so-called "clickbait" has kept his readers ever hungry. He's written over ten novels, numerous essays and articles for WIRED, as well as short stories. Like it or not, the image of technological soothsayer continues to be his legacy. 

But if  Gibson is tired of being asked what the future is, perhaps it's because his greatest success was mis-sold. It wasn't necessarily his envisioning of the future that made Neuromancer resonate, but how it spoke to the emerging tech world, giving the oft-ignored sci-fi lovers, programmers, and nerds of the 1980s a voice with Chandleresque prose. 

Throughout our interview he's keen to set the record straight—he may have written about fantastical futures that blur the digital and physical lines, but that doesn't mean he spends his nights soldering motherboards or hacking government databases. 

"When I wrote Neuromancer, the only personal computer I'd seen was the American version of a Sinclair ZX, hooked to a thrift shop television set that an eccentric friend of mine had in the 70s. He was painstakingly trying to program it to do a really simple task using this cheap deckle keyboard that looked like a low-grade cable box. It was a leap of faith to see them as they are in Neuromancer, as these sexy and powerful beasts."

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Photo via  ​Wiki Commons

Gibson and his work have inspired a slew of sci-fi hits (and misses), including Ian Softley's skateboarding cyber-thriller Hackers. How did he feel about being referenced, with the movie's super-computer being dubbed "the Gibson"? 

"Oddly, and for no particular reason, I have never seen Hackers," he tells me. "It never angered me, nor did it make me leap with glee." 

His experience of films also includes penning the box-office flop Johnny Mnemonic, starring Keanu Reeves with a military-grade haircut as a courier who transports data in his head. The film was a critical disaster and Gibson told me why: "It was made in a way that would be completely impossible now. The director [Robert Longo] and I began by trying to raise a million dollars to make a black-and-white short, and no one would give us the money. One of Robert Longo's biggest collectors happened to be a Hollywood big shot, and he turned around and said, 'No one is going to give you a million dollars—you have to ask for ten!' So he did, and he got it. It went rolling on from there. It was about five years from conception to release, and it was all wonderfully peculiar."

But why was it a flop? Wasn't he annoyed? "I was really fond of the film that I wrote and that Robert shot, but that wasn't the film that Sony Image Works released. It's a really extreme example of not being the director's cut. It was written to be comic in its own way, and be a commentary on sci-fi films and how they are made. Keanu never played any of it straight because we didn't want him to."

For years it's been rumored that  Neuromancer will be made into a movie. "If I were the director, which fortunately I will never be, I would update it conceptually," Gibson tells me. "I would not use the word 'cyberspace'­­—I think that word is on the brink of anachronism. In 1984, it was necessary to name the arena in which these events were taking place, because it didn't exist. Whereas, today, that arena is, in effect, the world we live in. No one, anywhere in the world, watching a film of Neuromancer needs the realm in which Case operates to be named. That in itself would be anachronistic. I think I've made that point with everyone who has ever considered a film of Neuromancer. 'Cyberspace' is a word that's increasingly long in the teeth as the reality becomes more ubiquitous by the day."

Gibson's abandoned sci-fi in his past three books, preferring to focus on the contemporary world in his Bigend Trilogy, the best known of which is Pattern Recognition. This book is as equally delirious as Neuromancer, but set in a world much closer to our own, where marketeers have developed psychological sensitivity to logos. It reads like a healthy kick in the gut to the modern religion of data analysis. 

The author's latest novel will once again see him placing his characters in a dystopian future-scape, one that's been  ​billed​ as "a brave new world of drones, outsourcing, and kleptocracy."

Weirdly, Gibson seems keener to talk about his past works, and when I come on to the topic of Peripheral, he tells me he's tired of talking about it. I guess, like the rest of his fans, I'm keen to press Gibson on what the future holds. But, once again, he insists that he simply doesn't know.

Follow Joseph Walsh on ​Twitt​er.

In a case that begs  comparisons to that of Michael Brown in Ferguson, a Staten Island grand jury on Wednesday decided no​t to indict the NYPD officer whose chokehold caused the death of 43-year-old father of six Eric Garner in July. The grand jury was convened in September, and has been weighing evidence that included a video of Garner's last moments that went viral over the summer.

To indict, at least 12 of the 23 jurors were required to reach the relatively low threshold of "probable cause" that a crime had been committed.  ​Instead, according to the New York D​aily News, "a majority on the panel, which sources said consisted of 15 white and 8 black or Hispanic jurors" concluded evidence of manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide was insufficient. Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who administered the chokehold, is white; Eric Garner was black.

Video of Garner's death, which sparked outrage across the country, shows NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo questioning an incensed Garner for allegedly ​selling "loosie" cigarettes. Moments later, Garner gets taken down in a chokehold, a restraint tactic that has been banned by the department for decades. In one of the most disturbing moments of the video, Garner pleads with officers, uttering the phrase "I can't breathe" at least eight times before he goes limp. Paramedics arrived seven minutes later, but could not resuscitate the man. His death certificate was issued that day.

The medical examiner's office ruled Ga​rner's death a homicide, noting that "compression of neck (chokehold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police" caused his demise. But as Jonathan Blitzer ​wrote for the New Yorker earlier Wednesday—and as was driven home by the non-indictment of Darren Wilson in Ferguson—"prosecutors have notoriously wide latitude in terms of what they choose to present to a grand jury."

Garner's family plans to file a wrongful death suit against the city, and federal civil rights violation charges are still possible. Protests against the non-indictment are planned for this evening and tomorrow in both Staten Island and Manhattan.

Follow Kristen Gwynne on ​Twitter.

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Photo courtesy of ​Texas Defender Service

On Wednesday, less than eight hours before the scheduled lethal injection of Scott Panetti, a US federal appeals court ​halted the execution of the paranoid schizophrenic man, who his lawyers say is too mentally incompetent to be killed by the state.

I've been following this case closely, and I was pretty sure that the next time I wrote about Scott Panetti, he would be dead. After all, on Monday the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 7-0 against granting clemency to Panetti, and in Texas, a ​governor can't grant clemency without a recommendation from the Board. So even if Governor Rick Perry had wanted to spare Panetti—and I'm pretty sure he didn't—the man's hands were tied.

But after denials from lower courts, and in fewer than 40 words, the Fifth Circuit Court ​blocked the execution.

"We STAY the execution pending further order of the court to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter. An order setting a briefing schedule and oral argument will follow," reads the court order.

Panetti's lawyers maintain that their client, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia for the first time in 1978—and killed his in-laws in 1992—should not have been allowed to represent himself in his original trial. For starters, he was hospitalized over a dozen times over the 14 years leading up to his arrest. During his trial, which observers described as a circus and a farce, Panetti called on 200 witnesses and wore a purple cowboy suit. But Panetti's lawyers are focusing on his mental state right now, which seems to have deteriorated considerably. (He apparently believes his execution is the result of a conspiracy between Texas and the Devil to stop him from preaching the gospel.)

But the stay isn't about whether or not Panetti is competent—instead, it's about whether he has the right to lawyers with the tools to litigate his incompetence.

Panetti's attorneys are pro-bono. As his co-counsel Katherine Kase told me last week, "Due process demands that he be given resources so that he can be effectively represented. And without an investigation and psychologists, Texas can't say that he's been given due process."

Panetti hasn't been evaluated in seven years—even though, in theory, he can't be executed unless he's known to be competent. His lawyers want to be officially appointed as his counsel so they can hire a forensic psychologist to evaluate their client. The legal team has also issued a stay request to the US Supreme Court, arguing that because of Panetti's mental illness, his execution would violate the Eighth Amendment's protection from cruel and unusual punishment.

Though the lower courts denied this stay, a dissenting judge on Texas's Court of Criminal Appeals not only agreed that the severely mentally ill should be categorically protected from execution, but that the capital punishment should be abolished. It is ​expected that the Supreme Court won't decide whether to hear the case until after the Fifth Circuit reconvenes and reaches a definitive conclusion of its own. We don't know when those hearings will begin or end.

Follow Katie Halper on ​​Twitter. 

The abortion rate in America has reached a record low, according to a new "abortion surveillance" report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Does that have anything to do with the raft of anti-abortion legislation that conservatives have passed across the country in recent years? Pro-life activists would certainly like to think so.

In 2011, the CDC counted 730,322 abortions in 49 states and districts, the lowest number recorded in 40 years. That's slightly lower than the number reported by the Guttmacher Institute earlier this year (1.06 million), but both surveys indicate that the US abortion rate has been plummeting for the past few decades. 

It's difficult, if not impossible, to determine what, specifically, has caused this decline. According to the CDC, there are myriad potential factors:

Multiple factors influence the incidence of abortion including the availability of abortion providers; state regulations, such as mandatory waiting periods, parental involvement laws, and legal restrictions on abortion providers; increasing acceptance of nonmarital childbearing; shifts in the racial/ethnic composition of the U.S. population; and changes in the economy and the resulting impact on fertility preferences and access to health-care services, including contraception. However, because unintended pregnancy precedes nearly all abortions, efforts to reduce the incidence of abortion need to focus on helping women, men, and couples avoid pregnancies that they do not desire.

As one might expect, pro-life organizations are happy to point out their contribution: "Though the CDC does not seem to put a lot of weight on factors such as pro-life legislation... and does not appear to consider that the lower numbers may reflect changing public attitudes towards abortion," ​wrote National Right to Life News, "these developments do seem to offer an explanation coherent with the data."

But there's some fairly compelling evidence that pro-life legislation actually didn't have all that significant of an impact on the abortion rate. As Joerg Dreweke ​argues in the Guttmacher Policy Review, the recent surge of abortion restrictions started in 2011, the last year for which the CDC has data. Since most of the anti-abortion polices passed in 2011 didn't take effect until late that year, it seems odd to credit them for the decline in abortion rates—a trend that, according to the CDC numbers, began around 1990. Moreover, according to the Guttmacher data, the abortion rate has declined in all but six states, even those with no restrictive laws in place. 

That's not to say that those laws haven't had any effect. From 2011 to 2013, state legislatures enacted ​205 restrictive anti-abortion laws, more than were enacted in the entire previous decade. Particularly popular among the pro-life crowd are laws meant to regulate abortion clinics out of existence through harsh standards and requirements that pro-choice advocates argue are medically unnecessary. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has ​condemned these measures, commonly known as Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, or TRAP laws, for needlessly singling out abortion providers. 

In the South and Midwest, TRAP laws have caused dozens of clinics to close, leaving hundreds of thousands of women more than 200 miles away from their nearest abortion provider. Coupled with ​waiting-period laws—anti-choice legislation adopted by 35 states that requires women to have an in-person appointment with a doctor, and then wait between one and three days before going back for the procedure—the restrictions have forced many women to make several-hour round trips twice in order to get an abortion.

Of course, the recent spate of restrictions disproportionately affects lower-income women. Studies ​indicate that such restrictions only have a measurable impact on the abortion rate when they raise the cost of getting an abortion past what some women can bear. Even then, some women will sacrifice paying rent or utilities to afford the procedure.

This troubling trend was particularly evident in Texas, where a TRAP law passed in 2013 shuttered half of clinics in the state and all of the clinics in the Rio Grande Valley, one of the poorest regions in the nation. In the entire state of Texas, the abortion rate ​fell 13 percent within a year of the law taking effect. In the Rio Grande Valley, the decline was much steeper—the area experienced a startling 21 percent drop in its abortion rate. Not coincidentally, ​reports have found an increase in women purchasing and using black-market abortion drugs smuggled from Mexico. (Data ​shows that blocking women's access to safe and legal abortion doesn't decrease the frequency of the procedure, but it does make it more likely that women will resort to unsafe and illegal alternatives.)

It's telling that the same organizations so zealously bent on "protecting unborn life" by hampering women's abortion access are not all that bothered with preventing unwanted pregnancy, which, as the CDC notes, is "the major contributor to abortion." As Dreweke points out in the Guttmacher Policy Review, "U.S. antiabortion groups'... positions on contraception range from outright hostility to, at best, proclaimed neutrality, and their political allies have slashed—or attempted to do so—funding for family planning services."

When pro-life organizations and activists attempt to take credit for the decline in the abortion rate, they are effectively insisting that their insidious tactics are more effective than services that increase women's access to affordable contraceptives and family-planning services. That's demonstrably not true. Women should not be treated as collateral damage in their own pregnancy outcomes, and it feels nearly dystopian to think that there are people in this country who would celebrate coerced birth as a victory.

Follow Callie on ​Twitter.

Illustrations by Thomas Pitilli

I had been working as a trader at a hedge fund for a little more than a year. I noticed one of our outside lines ringing. "Galleon," I said, after one ring. The voice on the line was muffled. "Galleon," I said again, and this time I could barely make out: "Is Gary there?"

"No," I said. "He's out of the office." A few silent moments went by.

I was just about to hang up when I heard the whisperer's voice again: "Is Raj there?"

"Sorry," I said. "He's off the desk—can I help?"

I could hear him breathing. His voice made me imagine a trench coat and a phone booth. Very mysterious.

Finally, Mr. Whisper's voice grew a bit more intelligible. "Jefferies is going to upgrade Amazon in six minutes," he said. Then I heard a click, and just like that he was gone. I had no name, no phone number, and no idea whether the information was correct. I glanced at the clock on my computer. It was 12:59 PM. I didn't know whom to tell or even whether I should tell anyone. Mr. Whisper could have been some kind of whack job, or maybe this was one of my boss's sick jokes. I checked the clock. It was one sharp. Thoughts started to swirl in my head. Maybe I could just buy some AMZN and see whether they upgraded it. But then, just as quickly, I decided not to. Who calls in the middle of the day and talks like he's out of some Russian spy novel? The minutes on my computer clock moved like seconds. 1:02. But if I didn't buy any AMZN, and he was right, would Mr. Whisper call Raj or Gary later, expecting a pat on the back? Fuck. 1:03. Two minutes to decide. 1:04. Screw it, I said. I bought 100,000 shares of Amazon and pushed back in my chair, hoping Mr. Whisper knew what he was doing.

Exactly at 1:05 PM AMZN stock started to move up. At first it was a quick 50 cents, and then, seconds later, it was up $2. The Jefferies light started to ring, and I picked it up. He told me they were upgrading AMZN. I wanted to say I knew, but I thanked him and hung up. I kept watching the stock go up, and the idea that I might have done something illegal seeped into my thoughts. But only for the briefest of moments. This is how it's done, I reassured myself. Every day, my bosses pounded it into my head that I needed to get edge. This was what they were talking about. From then on, I said, every time the outside wire rang I was going to pick it up. I wanted to talk to Mr. Whisper. The stock was up $5, and I thought to myself that if I got this call every day I'd be a great trader.

When I arrived on the Street in 1994, insider trading was as commonplace as jaywalking.

I don't remember the first time I jaywalked, but it was probably somewhere in Cleveland in the early 70s. I'm sure I was holding hands with one of my parents and that we looked both ways. Not for the authorities, but for oncoming traffic. I know what you're thinking: This joker is going to try to compare insider trading to jaywalking. Fair enough. But the truth of the matter is that when I arrived on the Street in 1994, insider trading was as commonplace as jaywalking. There were things that might have seemed a bit questionable to an outsider, but they qualified as part of the game. We called it edge. In the span of two years I went from making about $40,000 a year as a sales assistant at Morgan Stanley to making $300,000 as the head trader on a billion-dollar fund at the Galleon Group. Edge was what got me there. Maybe the late 90s and beyond can be compared to the steroid era in Major League Baseball—if you want to put an asterisk next to my earning statistics, that's fine. I was never getting into the Wall Street Hall of Fame anyway. It's how things were done, maybe how they still are. Get an edge or get cut from the team.

I'm not sure I'd have been able to stay at the Galleon Group if I didn't try to get every available edge. For me the landscape shifted in August 2000, when the Securities and Exchange Commission introduced Regulation FD—which required that all public companies disclose material information to all investors at the same time. It was an effort to put an end to selective disclosure. The change didn't happen overnight. It took years for companies and investors to comply. What we were left with was, on paper, an even playing field of no disclosure.

But somebody needed to start talking. So on the Street we saw the emergence of "expert networks." Let's say an old source from Pfizer wouldn't tell us what was going on. Well, in that case maybe we could find a doctor or a lawyer familiar with Pfizer. They could be paid a consulting fee, like any other expert hired to help us understand a company or sector. Then we could use their information to formulate a trade. It was a new reworking of an old game: This sort of thing has been going on in every country club in America and all over the world forever. Another primary source of insider tips comes from within the very walls of Wall Street. Analysts know about upgrades before they become public, bankers work on deals before they're announced, and traders see massive order flows. Not everyone is doing this sort of thing, but it's not exactly unheard of, either.

"We're going to upgrade XYZ in ten minutes" or "We've got seventeen million shares of XYZ to buy at the close from our program trading desk" hardly makes you feel like Charlie Sheen posing as a janitor and stealing files from a law office. It's just a great call—it's edge. And the end result is a couple of fist bumps, maybe a smile from your portfolio manager (they're hard to come by), and more money. The guy on the other end of the phone gets more order flow, more commissions, and a few gold stars next to his name.

It can happen in person, too. I remember once in the early 2000s, at the Marquee in Chelsea: The club was at capacity, but VIP was spacious. It was darkly lit, to perfection. My feet vibrated from the booming bass, the bottles in front of me reflected the candlelight, and beautiful women fluttered about. It was hedge-fund mafia up in there, with a few dot-com clowns mixed in. Sitting across from me was Lance. Like me, Lance was a hedge-fund trader. He had an in at a few research boutiques like Avalon. Lance always got a wink or a nod before they put out a scathing research report on a company. Over in the corner was Michael—he was on the sell side and good for an early heads-up on upgrades and downgrades from his firm. He was sitting next to his client Pesto, who knew on Thursday what was going to be on the front cover ofBarron's on Saturday. A few tables down were some bankers with knowledge of some imminent takeovers. The guy trying to get into the VIP section was a Frenchman from UBS; Lance told me that he'd leaked all of their program-trading flow. That's a nice call. If you know a billion dollars of S&P is coming to market, adjust accordingly. The VIP host was playing defense, so I made my way over. "He's with me," I said. The Frenchman smiled and went to shake my hand. I don't usually like to share my cocaine, but for him I made an exception. I slid the tiny bag from my pocket into his hand with the skill of a professional pickpocket. "We should talk," I said.

One of the many things I learned doing this sort of stuff at the Galleon Group was how to not get caught. If you want to play it fast and loose there are certain rules you must abide by: 

• Never trade options on a sure thing; it's the first place the feds look. 
• Always have a paper trail—e.g., an email pitching you the idea for every reason except the inside information. 
• Buy more than you want and then sell some before the announcement. It shows misperception. If you knew about the announcement, then why would you sell some right before? 
• Never have anything in print. Only use the phones (this one is changing). 
• ​Find the derivative stocks that will benefit from the news—play those big. If your info comes from Exxon but it helps Exxon suppliers as well? Play the suppliers. 
• Be prepared for a phone call with the SEC. Play dumb, but have your story straight. 
• Discuss the trading idea with other employees but withhold the secret sauce. 
• Reward your informant handsomely.

This is the thing about jaywalking, though. Chances are pretty low that you'll get a ticket or pay a fine: That's not the risk. Even if you do get caught, you'll probably just be told not to do it. The real risk is getting run over by a Mack truck. And in the past five years that risk has increased dramatically. It starts with a knock on the door as you're getting the kids ready for school, or a tap on the shoulder in line at Starbucks; the feds will want to know everything. And even if you stay out of prison, your résumé won't be worth any more than a paper airplane. Gary left Galleon just months before the indictments came down, and now he's out in Texas riding in amateur rodeos. Raj is in prison in Massachusetts. So if you're still planning on jaywalking—look both ways.

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This story was originally published on ​VICE Serbia
​
​​The Chinese Shopping Center on Block 70 in New Belgrade is a kind of mecca for both Serbs looking for a bargain and nostalgic Chinese immigrants. Smiling Chinese women welcome you into shops packed with clothes, underwear, bedding sets, Tupperware—all sorts of random, seemingly useless, cheap items you can pick up at wholesale prices. Belgradians storm the stores on a daily basis, convinced that they're saving, not spending, money.

Photographer Aleksandra Ajdukovic hung around the mall for a while and made friends with the Chinese women who tend the stores while their children sleep behind the till. After spending a few days with them, she discovered what some do to escape their daily routine.

Every evening, for a couple of hours, a group of Chinese shop attendants meet in a warehouse space on Surčin road to dance. The group's leader is named Li, but her Serbian name is Vanja. "It is all about music, dance, recreation and exercise but what matters the most is feeling like being part of a team," she said. "China is covered in concrete these days and green spaces are hard to find, so people rarely work out."

"We dance to Chinese pop songs, but also Western music—we love Madonna. There are no rules to our dance routines. The need to express yourself through dance must be universal," said Shen Hong, the manager of the Chinese Shopping Center.

"We are a diverse city—stronger for our diversity—8.4 million people, representing all that is good about the United States of America. We're the nation's media capital, and capital of so many other parts of our economy and our society. And we're a city moving in the right direction, and that's important. We're a city that's more inclusive than ever. We're a city that's moving forward. That matters to the decision makers in this process." – Bill de Blasio, November 24, 2014

If the mayor gets his way, New York City will play host to the 2016 Democratic National Convention next summer. De Blasio continues to enthusiastically endorse NYC, specifically his home borough of Brooklyn, for the honor. By his telling, New York is a shining beacon of progressivism and prosperity in a country that's going off the rails; he touts the modernity of Barclays Center, the unionized workforce, and the short distance CNN and Fox News trucks will have to travel for their special brand of 24-hour coverage. Surprisingly, the hosting committee seems to agree,  ​selecting New York as one of three finalist cities being considered host the convention, along with Columbus and Philadelphia.

Let's just get this out there: Holding the DNC at the Barclays Center in downtown Brooklyn would be a shitshow. An absolute, unequivocal shitshow. It would take the traffic-snarled, congested subway hub around the Atlantic Center and force multiply the chaos in innumerable and unimaginable ways.

But that doesn't mean it would be a disaster. Living in New York City and Brooklyn is to constantly be assaulted by shitshows. Residents would get by, just like they always do. We would be inconvenienced, but only for another day or three. And the money might balance the equation, or at least swing it slightly. De Blasio cites the $250 million economic impact the 2004 Republican National Convention had on New York as a starting point for the injection he expects from the 2016 DNC, arguing the benefits will be felt across all five boroughs. This may or may not be true—I asked the mayor's staffers how exactly the convention would benefit Staten Island and the Bronx but they didn't respond—but past conventions across the country have given local economies a short-term boost.

Logistically, a DNC in Brooklyn isn't the best idea. But it's not the worst idea, either. The question, though, is whether it's a good one for Democratic Party that is still reeling from its midterm thrashing? A convention in Brooklyn will be about two people: the nominee, of course, presumably Hillary Clinton, and Bill de Blasio. It's a profile-raising move by the populist mayor who wants more. 

"I don't think it's any secret that the mayor has ambitions outside of Gracie Mansion," said Austin Finan, senior vice president at the political consulting firm Mercury. "This is a great way for him to raise his profile as a leader on the national side of things. It's an opportunity for himself to draw parallels between himself and Brooklyn, which is a borough that's been on the up and up for the last several years."

In short, it's a power play by de Blasio—an exercise in vanity that seems to echo Mayor Michael Bloomberg's coming out party during the 2004 RNC. "The convention has turned into an opportunity for lesser-known folks with political ambitions to get their five minutes of fame," Finan said. "I think he's doing what any mayor would do, which is that this is the ultimate political exercise in self-promotion. You really can't fault the mayor for doing that."

Although there's some sense that conventions should be held in politically important states, it's worth pointing out that the choice of a site doesn't have much of an effect on actual elections. Still, the location of the DNC is about the future of the party as much as anything. Choose Columbus, and the Democrats are telling the country that they haven't given up on Middle America—and the  ​white, working-class voters who are abandoning the party in droves. Pick Brooklyn, and the party will embrace its most progressive elements.

On the other hand, hosting the DNC at the Barclays Center could provide an injection of youthful energy to the party after its dismal turnout​ efforts in the 2014 midterms. It might get younger people excited in a way that Columbus or Philadelphia would not. 

"Brooklyn represents an opportunity to involve the next generation of politicians," said Allison Kopf, vice president of the Manhattan Young Democrats. "We need to have a strong youth delegation at the DNC in 2016. To do that, we need more young people sitting on the delegate selection committees. And we need to have young people involved in every aspect from the beginning to the end."

Ultimately, however, the decision will—or at least should—come down to the optics the Democratic Party hopes to showcase. And Brooklyn the borough is different than the national perception of Brooklyn the brand. 

"Brooklyn is not the  New York Times Style Section version of Brooklyn," said political commentator and longtime Brooklyn resident Glynnis MacNicol (who also happens to be my former boss). "When we talk about a tale of two cities, we see that exemplified in Brooklyn in terms of the poverty versus the sky-high real estate prices. And in between, there are still very livable parts of Brooklyn. I think that even though New York City gets pegged as not representative of the country, Brooklyn is more representative of an America in terms of culture, economics, and lifestyles."

The question then becomes whether this distinction is too subtle or complex for Democrats to make in the limited time constraints of a three-day convention.. The notion of "Brooklyn" will no doubt turn off some voters who see it as a sign that the party has capitulated to the East (and West) coast elites and abandoned the middle of the country. In 2008, Obama caught endless flak for simply mentioning arugula. Hosting the DNC in Brooklyn would basically be devoting the entire nominating convention to arugula, and kale, and every other overpriced leafy green vegetable.

"Holding the convention in New York does nothing to broaden the party's appeal," said Finan. "That's a given."

And yet, the party might not need to broaden its appeal. The two previous presidential elections proved that the Democrats have expanded the electoral map enough to win the highest office in the land. The next election is more about repairing damage and recruiting past Democratic voters who failed to turn out in the 2014 elections, for whatever reason.

Kopf spoke about the importance of uniting the Democrats again, of standing as one group to the left of the nominee, in the way that Tea Partiers and social conservatives have taken over the GOP's nominating convention.  Finan agreed that some return to the party's progressive roots might be in order. 

"The party recently took a serious licking in the midterm and you can argue that's because Democrats didn't run as Democrats and that they failed to claim credit for things like the improved economy and lower unemployment," he said. "I wonder if selling progressive policies and accomplishments may make more sense with a Brooklyn backdrop as opposed to a Columbus stage."

Given that, Barclays might be the play. Traffic on the road to the White House was always going to be hell anyway. 

​VICE News and the New York Review of Books have teamed up to create Talking Heads, a series about the big issues of the day as seen by the Review's most renowned contributors.

In this episode, Mark Danner discusses his New York Review of Books essay "Iraq: The New War," which he wrote in mid-2003, in the process outlining how American policy during the Iraq War effectively helped incite what was then an emerging insurgency.

For starters, the occupation of Iraq created a broad front to which militant jihadists began to flock. The mishandling of the Iraqi army sent thousands of highly trained and angry men into the streets with no jobs. And photos of Iraqis being tortured by American personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison provided telegenic images that helped these groups recruit from an increasingly indignant public.

Danner's analysis of the insurgency forecasted how it evolved into what we know today as the Islamic State over a decade before the jihadist group came to be so feared.

VICE News sat down with Danner to discuss how the invasion of Iraq and the ensuing war provided what he described as a warm petri dish in which insurgent elements would grow.

Earlier this year, Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi said it was her dream to make a life-size "pussy boat" and "set sail across the ocean." Unlike most of us, she actually achieved her goals: She went on to design and create a kayak using a 3D mold of her own vagina. But yesterday things took a turn away from the whimsical when she was ​arrested by Japanese cops on obscenity charges for distributing the digital blueprints for her boat.

There's nothing obscene about Igarashi's kayak, which is banana-yellow and covered with neon-green and orange writing. When you look at it with a vagina in mind, you sort of see the way the intricate folds near the center  ​resemble a vulva, but not any more than if you looked at, say, a taco with a vagina in mind. The difference, of course, is that Igarashi's kayak was designed using a mold of her own vagina and created by a 3D printer.

But the kayak itself isn't what got her in trouble. It's the source material—the digital images from the mold—that is the problem.

Japan's strict obscenity laws ban actual depictions of genitalia thanks to an archaic part of the Japanese Penal Code known as Article 175, which prohibits the sale, distribution, or display of "obscene" materials. Although the law is enforced sparingly, you can't legally buy porn in Japan if the genitals aren't censored. (This is why if you happen to watch Japanese porn the performer's private parts are rather absurdly blurred out.) The pornography industry has skirted the issue by selling fetish-y porn that doesn't show P's and V's and by offering services that claim to ​remove the pixilation on genitals in porn.

In 2004, there was a case that challenged Article 175 by arguing that it violated freedom of expression, which is protected by the Japanese constitution, but the country's Supreme Court ultimately upheld the law. Igarashi's obscenity charges—which could earn her two years in jail and a fine of about $25,000 if she's convicted—are expected to force discussion about the law again.

Igarashi describes herself as a "vagina artist," and her works includes elaborate dioramas made from molds of her vagina, including a scene where little dolls are playing golf on a putting green made from a mold of her genitals. Unsurprisingly, given that her work is basically illegal in the country she calls home, she's been arrested on obscenity charges before. Back in July she spent five days in jail because she sent 3D-printable files of her vagina to potential donors for the kayak project. At the time, she told reporters that the goal of her art was to destigmatize and demystify female genitalia in Japan, where she has said the vagina is "overly hidden."

Follow Arielle Pardes on ​Twitter.

In this episode of VICE INTL, VICE China heads to Sitong Village to visit the People's Primary School—where kids learn reading, writing, and the wonders of Communism.

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The Cleveland cop who fatally shot a 12-year-old because the kid was holding an Airsoft gun last month should never have become a police officer, according to his own personnel file. Northeast Ohio Media Group ​reported Wednesday that Officer Timothy Loehmann was known at the academy as an emotional wreck who was terrible with a gun.

Loehmann worked as a cop in Independence, Ohio, before moving to the Cleveland Police. Now the Cleveland PD is ​saying they never bothered to check their applicant's record. If his bosses had checked, they would have seen a troubling pattern of clouded judgment—and possibly prevented a child's death by keeping him off the streets. 

From his earliest days at the Cleveland Heights Police Academy, Loehmann performed poorly. He would fall asleep in class. He showed up "sleepy and upset" for a gun qualification session and eventually had a meltdown during a training exercise. Independence Police Sergeant Greg Tinnirello said the officer couldn't follow simple instructions. Deputy Chief Jim Polak said he was immature. Ultimately, the Independence Police Department decided to part ways with the troubled wannabe.

So Loehmann transferred this March to Cleveland's Fourth District, which has the highest homicide rate in the city. "He loved the action," Loehmann's father would ​later explain.

On November 22, Loehmann got the action he was apparently craving—the chance to investigate someone who was potentially carrying a lethal weapon. But his encounter with Tamir Rice lasted less than two seconds and ended in Rice's ​tragic death. The 12-year-old, who was carrying a toy weapon with its orange tip removed,  was buried Wednesday​.

Loehmann hasn't been fired. But based on his personnel file, many are asking why he was ever given a badge and a gun in the first place.

Follow Allie Conti on ​Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE Greece.

Last Tuesday afternoon, I made my way to the Monastiraki area in Athens, Greece, to attend a demonstration in solidarity with imprisoned anarchist Nikos Romanos. Romanos has been on hunger strike since November 10, demanding he be allowed to attend college from prison. The 21-year-old ​was arrested last year after a failed attempt at a bank robbery. 

When I arrived at the demonstration's meeting point, I was a bit disappointed with the weak turnout. But after an hour or so, the scene had changed completely. It wasn't just anarchists, but also representatives of most leftist fractions—men and women, young and old, all joined together to support Romanos.  

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The march began at 7 PM, with a crowd of over 7,000 people making its way to Omonia. As we walked down Stadiou street, the riot police made their first appearance. "I'm afraid the riot police will tear gas us without any provocation, just to break up the protest," said a girl marching with the anarchist bloc.

The aim of the march was to pass by Syntagma Square, the central square in Athens. More than 200 Syrians have been holding a protest in the square for the last couple of weeks, demanding that they be allowed free and legal passage into the EU. The Syrians have also been on hunger strike since last Monday.

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With a bust up between the left-wing protest on the cards, the Syrians begun to organize themselves to hold their spot. "We aren't leaving here unless the police decides to move us by force," said Khaldoon.

"We aren't afraid," said Khaled, who has been on hunger strike for the past nine days. "We know that the demonstration is in is solidarity with Nikos Romanos, who has also been on hunger strike. We know his story. We don't understand why they won't allow him to go to college. But we stand beside him—it is a matter of humanity."

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As soon as the march reached Syntagma Square, squads of riot police closed the street in front of the Grande Bretagne hotel, which overlooks the square. The protesters shouted slogans in solidarity with the Syrian refugees, while the Syrians cheered for them. "They support us!" said Khaled.

A few demonstrators decided to get sarcastic with the riot police. They shouted, "Do you want a bottle of water, guys?" and "aren't you stealing any water bottles today?"—referring to the night of November 17, when a rally marking the 41st anniversary of a student uprising against the junta ​turned violent. That night, a protester threw a bottle of water at the riot squad and they unleashed a torrent of tear gas.
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​The march ended in the middle of Panepistimiou Street. Most of the protesters rolled up their banners and many left from the nearby streets, but a few of them headed towards the Athens Polytechnic University for a speech by Romanos's father. The school has been occupied for the last couple of days by students holding general meetings about what should happen at another demonstration planned for December 6—the anniversary of the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old gunned down by police in 2008.

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Trouble soon broke out on Solonos Street. Luxury cars were turned upside down, bank fronts were shattered, and trashcans were set on fire by protestors. As I headed down Stournari Street, tensions outside the Polytechnic began to escalate. The doors closed. Everyone started to panic. We knew that any moment now police would start the tear gas party.

A groups of protesters that stood on the side of Stournari street stopped an empty bus. The driver climbed out, and Molotov cocktails were tossed inside, igniting the whole bus in flames. Trash cans were set on fire and used as barricades to prevent the police from approaching. A tear gas canister was thrown into the university, just a yard away from where I was standing. ​

Inside, most people weren't wearing helmets or masks. Everyone was coughing and in tears. The air was stifling. Riot police surrounded the building from the outside and the tensions continued until the early hours of the night. There were reports of beatings, detentions, and arrests. 

I headed to the auditorium for the 10 PM meeting. As I entered, I heard Nikos Romanos's father say: "The prosecutor has rejected our requests for Nikos to be granted leave to attend technical college. We will wait until tomorrow to see if there is any change." 

"What does Nikos intend to do?" one student asked. 

"Nikos will fight to the end."

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When I left a few hours later, the situation had calmed down somewhat—but there was a hangover from the earlier chaos. The smell of tear gas was lingering in the air. I could feel it in my chest. Firefighters were trying to put out the remaining fires outside the college. The night's riots had been intense, but I think they're only a small taste of what will take place this coming weekend—the six-year anniversary of Alexandros Grigoropoulos's death.

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Photo via Simon Johnston ​via

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

On Monday, the laws governing British VoD porn changed. A whole range of sex acts (which you can  ​read about here) were banned by the government, but the takeaway is this: Women have, yet again, been dealt a crap hand.

The new guidelines state that it's fine to depict a woman gagging on a dick but not acceptable to film a man having his face smothered by her vagina. Bukkake is A-OK; squirting is outlawed.

In fact, female ejaculation can be shown in short sequences, but it cannot "land on anyone" and must not be "consumed." And really, what's the point of showing it in the first place if nobody's going to end up covered in the stuff? This is in stark contrast to jizz, which can be fired liberally over any part of a woman and may be guzzled on camera in unrestricted quantities.

Like everything pertaining to women and sex, perceptions of squirting have a long and politically charged history. 

Were you to educate yourself on sex by watching porn, reading medical journals, and perusing literature alone, you'd walk away a little confused. For straight, cisgender men, sex would appear relatively simple. For women, the picture would be fraught; at some times associated with mental illness, at others with demonic possession. Here, they'd be reduced to one-dimensional spunk-receptacles; there, feared as power-wielding nymphs. Squirting may seem like nothing more than a muscularly impressive porn trope, but it is, in fact, at the apex of a centuries-old shitstorm surrounding female sexuality.

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Saskia Squirts

Porn star Saskia Squirts, as her name suggests, is a pro when it comes to expelling large projectile secretions. She's part of a genre that, according to PornHub, Brits are 16 percent more likely to search for than any other nation, and holds her talent up as a perfectly natural bodily thing that regulators really shouldn't be worrying themselves with.

"I discovered I could squirt about three years ago," Saskia tells me. "I didn't have to practice; I just knew how to do it. It's hard to describe, really, but you feel it and hear it before it comes. It's a bit like a trapped fountain leaking dribbles before the explosion. Squirting is a natural body function—totally harmless and enjoyed by endless guys. But my ideal person to squirt on? Jason Statham."

Estimates as to what proportion of the female population is able to squirt vary depending on what definition of squirting is used. And while the nickname is recent, the phenomenon has been documented for thousands of years, cropping up, for example,  ​in fourth century Chinese Taoist texts. 

In the West, squirting was first mentioned in about 300 BC by Aristotle, and later in the second century by Greek philosopher Galen. Over the next few centuries other middle-aged white men chimed in and, in the 16th century, Dutch physician Regnier de Graaf identified the periurethral gland as the female prostate and apparent source of the squirt.

Roll on to the 19th century and fear about female sexuality is at a fever pitch; the woman who squirts is now officially—in the eyes of British law, at least—a full-blown menace.

"In the 19th century, Richard von Krafft-Ebing—the first modern 'sex doctor'—described female ejaculation as related almost exclusively to homosexuality in women," says Alex Dymock, a lecturer in criminology and criminal justice at Lancashire's Edge Hill University, and a researcher into the history of sexuality.

"It was linked to fears of the degenerate, whose 'weakness' was owed to their sexual aberrance. Krafft-Ebing was working in a context in which fears of degeneration were rife, where mankind was perceived to be under a constant struggle between animal lust and moral behavior. Female ejaculation functioned as yet another locus for fear of sexual excess or aberration in women, which not only symbolized their failure to conform to sexual passivity but also their failure to fulfill their reproductive function."

With the UK's latest ruling on VoD porn, it's questionable how far we've come. The problem lies in the fact that, despite centuries of documentation and hours of what is surely rock-solid evidence on YouPorn, people are still split into two schools of thought: that women can really ejaculate, or that it's actually just piss.

The British Board of Film Censorship (BBFC), for example, argues that its hands are bound by the Obscene Publication Act, which doesn't allow sex works featuring "urolagnia" (deriving sexual pleasure from urination). The board isn't allowed to pass scenes showing people consuming or being covered in piss, so, to be safe, similar scenes of squirting are also cut.

"Unless it's very clear that what is being shown is indeed 'female ejaculation,' as opposed to urolagnia, the Board's position has to be that scenes of this nature featuring liquid that might be urine have to be cut," a spokesperson  ​told VICE on Tuesday. "Medical advice we have taken has suggested that some scenes submitted to us that purported to show 'female ejaculation' were, in fact, urination."

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Myles Jackman

Myles Jackman, a lawyer specializing in obscenity law, believes that this fuzziness reveals how out of touch legislation really is. "It's entirely sexist and unreasonable," he tells me. "Historically, censors refused to accept female ejaculation exists. Now they accept its existence but don't want to acknowledge its practical reality."

Annie Sprinkle would be one of the first porn stars to confront viewers with the practical realities of squirting in her 1981 film Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle. As the 1980s progressed, squirts would become a litmus test of increasingly divided feminist viewpoints. For some, female ejaculation was a male fantasy, casting women's bodies as lesser versions of men's. For others, it was empowerment incarnate.

In 2001, when  ​Ben Dover's British Cum Queens (originally submitted as British Squirt Queens) was sent for classification, demands for cuts by the BBFC were met with strong opposition from Feminists Against Censorship, which offered medical testimony that female ejaculation does exist and is not urine. The group labeled the BBFC's objections discriminatory.

The most high-profile battle to keep squirting on camera, however, was fought by porn producer Anna Span. In 2009, the BBFC requested that Span cut scenes from her Women Love Porn DVD that they called urolagnia and Span argued were female ejaculation. In response, Span sent the BBFC a deluge of medical reports proving, she said, that the squirting was legit. Alongside the academic publications, Span wrote:

All members of the crew, including myself, witnessed the ejaculation and knew that the speed, volume, viscosity, smell and sight were all very different from urine. To be honest, we were all very shocked by it! Especially Dean, who received the ejaculate in his mouth.

Span was victorious, but her win didn't clear the way for a free-for-all in squirting porn. In fact, the BBFC still seemed unwilling to cede that the scenes in Women Love Porn were not urolagnia. At the time, a spokesperson said:

In this particular work, there was so little focus on urolagnia that the BBFC took legal advice, and the advice was that, taking the work as a whole, there was no realistic prospect of a successful prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act and therefore the BBFC passed the work.

Still, the win was important and heralded the beginning of at least a grudging concession. "Anna Span's win was a big moment," says Chris Ratcliffe, head of Television X. "The BBFC began with a position of complete prohibition, and now squirting is allowed in isolated sequences. It's a chink in the armor."

Today, most sex educators and experts are likely to enthuse about squirting, offering advice on how to achieve it and encouraging women to go ahead and just drench those sheets. 

"Female ejaculation is most likely to happen when you are very turned on, at the peak of passion, and usually at the receiving end of some pretty hearty G-spot stimulation," says the team at London's Sh! sex boutique. "Female ejaculation has been clinically analyzed and found definitely not to be urine. It is, in fact, an ejaculate fluid—like male ejaculate, but without the sperm. Why is female ejaculation the cause of so much anxiety? Why do we hold back when, if we learn to let go and female ejaculate, it will send ourselves and our lovers wild with delight?"

The crux of it is that, even if the jets of liquid we see emanating from porn stars are sometimes piss, does it really matter? Female ejaculation exists and, as such, surely any depiction of it is fair game. The laws that govern our porn-viewing habits are not only patronizing and out of touch, but deeply misogynistic—a relic from the days in which visible female sexuality was seen as a terror-filled abyss of madness and mayhem.

Squirting, as the most visible form of female sexual enjoyment, should be a welcome change from the dutiful smiles and mechanical moans of mainstream porn actresses. Ladies, keep on squirting.

Follow Frankie on  ​Twitter.