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"Sam," a sex worker on Hull's Hessle Road

This post originally appeared on VICE UK

​ Last week, Hull City Council ​won a landmark ruling to create Britain's first "prostitution-free zone." The new orders mean that any sex workers or curb crawlers caught around the impoverished Hessle Road area—where 70 women are known to work—can be arrested and forced to appear in court. City Councillor Daren Hale said one of the reasons the zone was created was to give "a positive view of Hull," the 2017 UK City of Culture.

Problem is, the ruling isn't guaranteed to change all that much. Sex workers, activists, residents and even Councillor Hale have said the moves will simply create a red light district in another area. And despite pledges of a multi-agency harm reduction approach that will run alongside the injunction, the city's only sex worker outreach charity was "disappointed" local authorities had failed to inform them the new measures had been approved.

Sam (not her real name) was offering sex at the side of Hessle Road late on Friday night. The 23-year-old Hullensian has been a sex worker for two years and, along with two other women I saw that evening, has decided to ignore the new law.

"They've only started bothering [to crack down on the sex trade] since [Hull] got the City of Culture," she told me. "People have been doing it for years and years round here, and they've never done nowt about it. Now the City of Culture's here and that's it, they want to stop it. All [the injunction] will do is move people to a different place; I don't think they'll ever stop it. They've done town, they've done Hessle Road... it'll probably be further out on Anlaby Road next."

As a couple of menacing-looking men walked up and down the opposite side of the road,  Sam shrugged off the dangers of working the street.

"It's all right," she said. "The main problems are people trying to do business with you and not paying. There's all sorts of problems, really. Most of the [sex workers] do drugs. There's the support there to get off them, but it's a long process—most of them aren't going to do it. They should just make one place where they can put people so they can do it legally. That way they know where everybody is and there wouldn't be people complaining that they're stood all over."

The complaints are understandable. Residents are fed up of finding used needles and condoms outside their homes—or actually witnessing sex acts and drug-taking in public—with  ​some complaining that the rights of sex workers have been prioritized above their own. So, unsurprisingly, the local community is largely pleased with the crackdown. However, there is acknowledgment that the move is a quick-fix attempt to plaster over deeper issues.

Forty years ago, Hessle Road was a prosperous stronghold of trawlermen and their families. Now, it's one of the poorest areas in  ​one of the poorest regions in all of Northern Europe. There are plenty of proudly-kept homes and pretty gardens in the housing estates at the back of the road, but the proliferation of discarded scratch cards, lager cans, and cigarette packets bang outside tell a different story.

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A collage in Rayner's pub

Rayner's pub is in the center of Hessle Road, exemplifying an area both beloved and vilified. One half of the interior is dedicated to the heroes of the now-defunct fishing industry. Pictures of old trawlers adorn the walls: the Arctic Viking sunk in 1961, the St Romanus sunk in 1968, the Ian Fleming sunk in 1973. Black-and-white collages of fisherman on leave—most of them looking a bit like northern Goodfellas—stare out from beneath the glass of the tabletops.

These days, people prefer to gather in the other side of the bar, which has a rather less commemorative air. When I visited Rayner's one night last week it was full of lairy teenagers playing pool and listening to dance music, while the fishing bar was deserted. At around 9 PM, seven police officers filed into the pub, looking for a suspect. They were greeted with jeering and a collective chorus of: "It wasn't me."

Graeme and Tracy, both 47, were drinking in the pub the following afternoon. Bar a small group of old fisherman recalling better times, the commemorative bar was empty again, while the other side of the pub was busy. However, the drinkers represented a much wider spectrum of residents than the night before, and the atmosphere was openly communal.

Tracy said the sex workers are "proper Hessle Roaders and you'll never get rid of them," but admitted that she'd been attacked by a sex worker and didn't walk in the street at night any more.

Her partner Graeme was also conflicted about the situation, saying: "It is terrible, but I've naught against them. It's just the times and where they do it. When it starts getting dark early they're out earlier. Sometimes it's teatime—half four, five o'clock; not nice if you're out shopping with the bairns. They need an area like they have in Amsterdam. They also need help with the drugs. My brother died of a heroin overdose, so I know. People in those situations need more help. Not just round here, but most places."

The Criterion pub is at the end of Hessle Road nearest to the city centre, just next to Constable Street, which is known as the area's most popular place for sex workers to take their clients. Leo, 75, was at the bar the afternoon I walked in. He's lived on Constable Street for over 40 years and says that some of the sex workers live there, too.

"I was at the top of the stairs the other night and I could see some tart giving a fella a blowjob out the window," he told me. "We've had ten years of it. It's time for someone else to get it for ten years. What I mean is it's alright shifting them, but they're only being shifted to somewhere else. They should make it legal so there's no problems on the streets."

Debate continues to rage over whether the buying and selling of sex should be decriminalized and regulated, as it is in New Zealand; or whether selling sex should be legal, while buying should be illegal, as is the case in Sweden.

Two groups with often bitter ideological differences have been united because of the situation in Hull, with both camps pointing to root causes of poverty and deprivation, and decrying the criminalization of incredibly vulnerable members of the community.

On one side are the Christian charity Lighthouse Project, which favors an eradication of prostitution, but is still the only organization to provide an outreach service in Hull. The charity is worried that "the women will either be pushed to work off-street in more dangerous situations or move to other streets where the same problems will occur."

On the other side are the English Collective of Prostitutes, who lobby for the decriminalization of sex work. They said the zone will drive women into "more isolated streets where they will be more vulnerable to rape and other violence."

Local councillor Daren Hale said an "olive branch" had been offered to the women in the form of an industrial estate at the back of Hessle Road, which is deserted at night, but conceded that this perhaps wouldn't be a good enough substitute for most.

"Often the women want to ply their trade on well-lit roads or major thoroughfares, where they feel safer, and I can understand that," he said. "I do have sympathy for the women, but first and foremost I've got to have sympathy for those who live in my community, which is suffering because of this issue. I also accept that there's a risk [that the sex workers will move to other deprived residential areas]."

Councillor Hale said planned City of Culture events along Hessle Road were being affected by prostitution, adding that the prostitution-free zone would help to solve that issue. "We want people to have a positive view of Hull," he said. "But I'd hate to think people are thinking we're gentrifying just because of the City of Culture. It's not just about that; it's linked to regeneration."

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The docks near Hessle Road

There's evidence to back up Hale's claim; Hull is going through a period of major regeneration, with council-backed schemes being implemented around Hessle Road to renovate the dilapidated housing stock. The Humber region in general is also experiencing  ​an economic renaissance as a mecca for renewable energies. And, of course, the City of Culture title—which ​promises to bring $286 million worth of investment—is another massive boost for Hull. These achievements are undoubtedly helping the city's struggling communities.

However, to the women leading a life of desperation and danger on the streets of Hull, regeneration will not provide the immediate assistance they need. As a City of Culture, there is perhaps a responsibility for Hull's leaders to come up with more imaginative ways of dealing with the complex issues these women both bring and face. Instead of relying on a tactic that will inevitably just push the problem onto others, there could be provisions introduced to safeguard street sex workers and the communities they often work and live in.

In Zurich, "a sex drive-in" supported by the Swiss authorities has been  ​hailed as a success at protecting both street sex workers and the general public. UK laws might not allow such innovative schemes, but it's clear that sex work already exists in a grey area that the authorities and public are happy turning a blind eye to when possible. Hull's leaders have the chance to carve out a better way within that grey area. If they're brave enough, they could make the city a beacon of forward-thinking British culture, rather than a reflection of the mistakes we've made in the past.

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Photo via Flickr user  ​Rob and Stephanie Levy​

My Thanksgiving break was spent ​performing comedy in San Francisco, for mostly amazing crowds, and even getting paid to do it. By "getting paid" I mean I was given enough cash to spend immediately on whiskey, and gas for the drive home. However, even this small amount of compensation is rare, so I was happy to have it. And, after staying on a mattress in the living room of a friend's apartment for close to a week, I was excited to come back home. To my mattress in the living room of my apartment that I share with three other wall-privileged individuals.

As fun as performing non-stop was, it felt good to be back. Until I remembered that rent was due the next day. I reviewed the numbers in my checking account. The math was depressingly simple: what I have now, minus rent, leaves me with $40 until my next paycheck—something I am used to dealing with, yet am sick of having to deal with. The knowledge that I would have to go through another round of the pasta-and-refried-beans-diet for the next two weeks crept into my brain and attacked whatever part of it was happy to be me. Moments later, I noticed a mention from a stranger on Twitter. He said he was getting something I wrote in one of my articles tattooed on his body. 

I responded, asking him to clarify if he was serious or not. He soon assured me that he is indeed tattooing the words "I am a true 90s kid, meaning nostalgia is all I have left to live for in this world" on himself. A random sentence I spit out in  ​a thing I wrote about my relationship with my mother. Better to tattoo this sentence than the one I wrote about crying in a Panera. His reasoning for this tat is: "nostalgia rules" (true). He then added that my mom can finally be proud of me (we'll see about that). The excitement of me reading that, combined with the image of pinto bean stains in my microwave, threw my brain into a state of confusion. I stared at the wall (curtain) of my room (section of living room) and wondered: Is this success?

If I stopped everything now and took one of them new "cush" jobs created by marketing-obsessed start-ups, I'd probably be able to afford a room with walls. I could give this all up and turn to a life of running social media for some brand desperate to be relevant via memes, or write sponsored content for a shoe company that for some reason wants you to see a list of "totally epic fails." With a career like that, I might even get my own apartment. Not a studio, but a straight up one-bedroom. I'd finally have the kind of "fuck you" money I've always dreamed of. I could add avocado to my burger, and not care about the extra charge. I could buy full-priced clothing, and maybe even afford furniture. I could be the sort of person who thinks an Eames chair is something worth buying.

Can I make this be my new definition of success? Maybe at first, if I told myself that I'm not giving up on my "real future." I can still write and perform at night or on weekends. However, we all know this is bullshit. My mom, in an attempt to make me a lawyer, likes to tell me the story of some guy who wrote the screenplay for Finding Forrester while still working as a lawyer. I don't know if that story is true, but if it is, I do know that this sort of feat is rare. Over time, the dream dies or gets permanently delayed. I've seen enough mid-life crisis movies to know this. I don't want to run out of my office building in slow motion as Snow Patrol plays in the background, or be another white woman who has to find herself in India. If I go this route, I know for the rest of my life I'll constantly wonder, "What if?"

Right now, I don't see success as getting married, starting a family, or working a meaningless job solely for the money. It wouldn't be success, because I wouldn't be happy. Perhaps that's the real problem, thinking that the only way I can be satisfied with myself is if I get the huge book deal, or hit television show. It's funny, I used to think success was what I'm doing now. Performing, writing, and having three parody accounts made of me on Twitter. This is a dream come true for 20-year-old Alison. I have a large platform to talk about  ​armpit sex and a good enough following on social media to get me some real-ass haters (the fire that fuels me). If still living like a 20-year-old is the price to pay for such things, then why should I care? It could be worse. I currently may not have any walls, but at least I have a roof. The version of me that started this endeavor years ago would be jealous of me now, yet right now, I think I'm a failure—mainly because now my goals have become grander. On one hand, this is a good thing. It means I'm, like, more determined or some shit. 

However, I'm left wondering: Am I giving myself more impossible goals, because I don't want to be happy now? Instead of redefining success, maybe I should redefine happiness. Maybe then I'll feel successful. Maybe. 

Follow Alison Stevenson on ​Twitter.

New York City tabloids briefly went berserk this weekend when ​reports emerged that the Black Guerrilla Family, or BGF—a powerful prison gang that got its start in California—might be targeting New York Police Department officers in the wake of the ​non-indictment of the cop who choked Eric Garner. 

Now it seems like the BGF is threatening Baltimore cops, which makes sense given that the group's historically firm stranglehold on that city's jail system is in doubt. 

Black Guerilla Family shot-caller Tavon "Bulldog" White testified in federal court last week, in the process describing his rise to power and the inner workings of the prison-based gang. Prosecutors say the BFG smuggled contraband like drugs and cellphones into various Maryland correctional institutions. Perhaps most inflammatory is the claim prosecutors have made involving sex between inmates and guards, which apparently led to four female officers ​being impregnated by White. He was the "city-wide commander" of the gang and allegedly sedu​ced the guards by buying them cars. In his testimony, White detailed how his agenda was to "make money" and "run the jail, pretty much. I wasn't trying to be some flunky."

By turning on his gang and serving as the prosecution's star witness, White has become what criminals detest the most: a snitch. Still, it's not clear how much one leader's defection will matter to a criminal enterprise like the Black Guerrilla Family.

White testified that he joined the gang in 1997 "because they was, at the time, pretty much running the institution." After reentering prison in 2009, he got involved with the gang again. "I stepped back for the first week, watched who was who, who was doing what, and I made myself into what I was. They put their stamp of approval on me."

What he did not explain was how the BGF ended up in Maryland in the first place.

The Black Guerilla Family was ​founded in 1966 by former Black Panther George Jackson, who wrote the seminal prison memoir Soledad Brother in California's infamous San Quentin facility. The late Edward Bunker, an ex-con author who found success in Hollywood, described George Jackson in his memoir, Miseducation of a Felon: "George Jackson, I remember plain as day, him and maybe six or seven others, ran down a tier and started stabbing white guys just because they were white." But like a lot of the gangs that were formed on strict racial lines in California's brutal prison system, the BGF turned to drugs to gain power inside the netherworld of corruption and violence.

The BGF took a particularly strong hold on Maryland's prisons, where in return for membership and status in the gang, prison recruits enjoyed power, prestige, influence, and protection. The Los Angeles street gang the Crips ​are strongly aligned with the BGF, along with other black gangs and organizations. The BGF acted as an anchor in prison to unite the street gangs on racial lines to stand tall against the Mexican Mafia and Aryan Brotherhood, rival California race-based prison gangs.

The BGF traces its roots in Maryland through Eric Brown, who was locked up in the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore in the late 2000s and oversaw the writing of The Black Book, a BGF manifesto intended to empower blacks in prison and in the community. As the book spread through the system, new recruits flocked to the BGF banner, and Brown became a very powerful man.

"Eric Brown was the one who started the BGF in the Maryland system," a prisoner and BGF member we'll call B-More says. "He's in the feds now, but when he was in the Maryland system, he was running shit. He started all that corrupting officers and bringing in drugs shit. He showed the brothers how to do it right and get away with it." All it takes is a single charismatic leader to bring a gang together and shape its reputation.

Prison officials were doing all they could to limit the gang's activities, but arrests did little to slow the BGF's rise. 

Using ​cellphones smuggled in by corrupt officers, Brown organized drug deals and authorized beatings of wayward members and enemies of the gang. He also had officers bring him meals of crab imperial and Grey Goose Vodka to wash it down, according to court documents. But Brown and two dozen associates were indict​ed in 2009 and pled guilty to racketeering two years later.

When Brown was shipped into the Federal Bureau of Prisons, White emerged as the new leader for the BGF in the Maryland system. Prison officials were doing all they could to limit the gang's activities, but arrests did little to slow the BGF's rise. "The BGF is strong in Maryland," B-More tells me. "It started in the jails and prisons and moved out to the streets. It was a movement from the inside out."

Right under the noses of correctional officials, the gang took root, with new prisoners recruited to serve as BGF couriers or to pay a monthly fee. "You gotta pay to play," B-More explains. "It ain't pretty. You either do what the BGF wants or it's your ass." Prisoners who refuse to play the BGF's game are targeted for violence. And correctional officers aren't immune to the gang's tactics.

"The problem is you got all these dudes in prison and all these females from the same neighborhoods working there," B-More says. "What do you think is going to happen? These dudes got power, even in prison and the home girls, correctional officers or not, are attracted to powerful men." Nearly 7 percent of inmates at the Baltimore City Detention Center report​ed having sexual contact with officers. Nationwide, the rate is less than 2 percent. "They are fucking in that jail," B-More says. "Everyone knows that." 

BGF members at the detention center used sex to secure the allegiance of some of the 13 indicted correctional officers, all of whom are women. The gang recruited prison employees and used hidden compartments in shoes to smuggle heroin, ecstasy, tobacco, cellphones, and other contraband.

It's been reported that over half of the approximately 650 officers at the Baltimore City Detention Center were involved in contraband smuggling. ​Court documents substantiated this, contradicting claims by prison officials that the majority of staff members at the jail were clean.

Authorities claim that the gang's revolutionary stance and rhetoric are a big attraction for those who want to be affiliated with the legacy of radical black insurgency. The tale of the Black Panthers and the BGF is romantic to many inner-city residents trying to fight their way out of poverty. The infamy adds excitement to an otherwise mundane existence. The American Gangster–type urgency is a strong influence for many in troubled urban environments.

But all the corruption has turned the Maryland state prison system into a haven for the gang. "The BGF run the Maryland system," B-More says. "Everyone knows that." 

As the Washington Post ​reported last year:

White bragged about earning $16,000 during a slow month. Percocet pills that cost $10 outside the prison walls, for instance, went for three times as much behind bars. One-gram bags of marijuana sold for $50, a profit of about $1,000 per ounce, according to court documents.

"It's all about the hustle. Dude had power for real," B-More says. "He talked real sweet to the girls and they fell for it. He was fucking like six or seven of them. He was having it his way. And all the homies were getting some too. We had that shit on lock. When they shipped me into the feds to serve out my sentence, I was mad. I wanted to stay in the city to do my time."

With nothing but time on their hands, it was easy to come up with new ways to circumvent every security precaution prison officials could implement.

When charges in the case were first made public in the spring of last year, a 98-page affid​avit filed in connection with the indictment detailed allegations of drug smuggling, small fortunes electronically laundered, and amorous encounters between inmates and jail officers. Lawmakers and corrections officials moved to boost security at the Baltimore City Detention Center, installin​g a $4 million system to cut off the contraband cellphones used to arrange drug smuggling and changing entrance security procedures. But as criminals tend to do, the prisoners adapted. With nothing but time on their hands, it was easy to come up with new ways to circumvent every security precaution prison officials could implement.

"It ain't change nothing," B-More says. "Niggas still getting shit in, niggas still getting pussy. The game don't stop. Only the players change. I be hollering at my little cousin who is there right now. He got a phone. He says you can get whatever you want."

The BGF in Maryland may be s​tronger on the streets now than the original chapter in California. In Baltimore, the gang has taken over many established drug markets just as they took over the city jail. And with its Maryland founder, Eric Brown, in the feds, the gang is now spreading into the upper tier of the American prison system. The recent hype surrounding the gang has fortified their already legendary status. It's increasingly clear that despite all the recent indictments, the mystique of the gang is only growing.

In other words, the Black Guerilla Family isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Follow Seth Ferranti on ​Twitter.

​ At the beginning of last week, the path forward for New Hampshire's new GOP-led House of Representatives seemed clear. The party caucus had chosen conservative William O'Brien as the state's new House Speaker, and, despite some internal disagreements, Republicans had rallied around the choice. "I don't think there will be lack of unity at all," New Hampshire-based Republican consultant Dave Carney told me before the vote.

And then, all hell broke loose. A session that was supposed to allow House members to formally ratify O'Brien before breaking for lunch dragged on into the evening, after O'Brien failed to secure a majority of the vote, Finally, after more than seven hours, Shawn Jasper, an 11-term Republican representative who only recently began making noise about running for speaker, was elected by a coalition of Democrats and anti-O'Brien Republicans. The vote ended up 195 to 178, with less than half of the Republican members voting for Jasper. (With 400 members, plus 24 state senators, New Hampshire, quite randomly, has the largest state legislature in the country.)

Conservative Republicans were furious. "I think the new speaker sold his soul to the Democrats because of a power position," said Al Baldasaro, co-chair of the conservative New Hampshire House Republican Alliance. "It's a disgrace. He's a disgrace to the Republican Party."

The state GOP said it woul​d not offer Jasper a seat on its Executive Committee, citing bylaws that offer the position only to a speaker chosen by a majority of the Republican caucus. In an email to executive committee members, stat​e party chair Jennifer Horn said that the party would discuss possible resolutions in response to the House Speaker election, to "make it clear to our grassroots activists that the State Committee does not condone what happened on Wednesday."

While the internecine spat may seem like a quirk of local politics—and, in many ways, it is—it also underscores deeper divides in the Republican Party, both nationally and in several states. Moderate Republicans are growing increasingly vocal in their criticism of the party's Tea Party wing, concerned that the party's far-right wing is excessively obstructionist and could hurt the party's chances in the 2016 general election. The divide is also partly a matter of style—some politicians would rather appear like hard-working border collies, while others prefer the angry pit bull look. In New Hampshire, the same dynamic is playing out on a smaller scale, with O'Brien playing the role of pit bull.

To understand why O'Brien became the center of the divide in the New Hampshire GOP, it helps to go back to 2011 and 2012, when he previously served as House Speaker. During that period, his record included, among other things, pushing to restrict voting by college students because they are "fo​olish" and tend to hold liberal positions; harassing a fellow Republican representative for opposing budget cuts to the point that members introduced legislation to ban bullying ​within the legislature; and barring a major state newspaper from a press conference after the paper ran a cartoon depicting O'Brien as Hitler. Under his leadership, the House also significantly reduced state spending, passing massive cuts to the state college system, hospitals, and social services.

O'Brien's rough leadership style was largely blamed for GOP losses in 2012, when New Hampshire voters kicked many of the Republicans out of the House and elected a majority-Democrat chamber that went on to reverse many of the previous session's actions. When Republicans took back control this year, O'Brien initially pledged to be more cooperative, but began the session last Wednesday by pushing for a change in rules that would have made it much harder for anyone else to win the Speaker election.

"Bill O'Brien was a lightening rod in his last term as speaker, but I think he was also feared because he was a man that could get things done that needed to be done in the state of New Hampshire," said conservative Republican state Rep. Leon Rideout.

But the move seems to have been the last straw for many Republicans, who ended up voting for Jasper. Like his national counterparts, Jasper's policies are still very conservative, and he has gotten endorsements and high ​marks from a range of right-wing groups. (One exception is gun right​s groups, which don't rate him particularly highly.) The biggest difference between the two is in style.

"I think he's a pragmatist, but I don't think his ideology is hugely different," said Tom Rath, a longtime New Hampshire political consultant. He added that Jasper is unlikely to be overly solicitous to Democrats, because the opposition didn't extract promises in exchange for their votes. "This thing was much more spontaneous combustion," Rath said.

Kathy Sullivan, former chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, agreed. She said the danger for the Republicans is not that Democrats will gain positions of power in the new House—Jasper has pledged to assign Republican chairs to all committees—but that the majority party simply won't be able to present a united front.

"It kind of reminds me of what you see in Washington with divisions you see in the party," she said, "Republicans kind of scrambling to keep the Tea Party from shutting down the government, keep them from impeaching, doing crazy things that will only hurt the Republican Party."

If conservatives try to go around the new Republican leadership, said New Hampshire political analyst Dean Spiliotes, it would give the Democrats a clear target as state and national elections approach in 2016. O'Brien was known for tying his legislative goals to national efforts by Tea Party groups, something that might reflect poorly on the entire party in moderate voters' eyes.

"I think you have the same type of concerns among established Republicans nationally about the right wing of the Republican, whether we're talking about Ted Cruz or somebody else," Spiliotes said.

Follow Livia on ​Twitter

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Protesters gathering to stop Kinder Morgan from drilling at Burnaby Mountain could face prosecution under a new bill. Photo by Jackie Dives.

Federal Minister of Justice ​Peter MacKay says it "would be up to a judge" to decide whether or not to lock up protesters who stage blockades against energy pipelines or hold protests on railroad tracks if a bill introduced by a Conservative Party backbencher becomes law.

On Friday, I reported that Bill ​C-639 would slap mandatory minimum fines and up to ten years in prison on anyone caught damaging or blocking "critical infrastructure."

Critical infrastructure, the bill stipulates, is any public or private thing, "the disruption of which could produce serious adverse economic effects or endanger the health or safety of Canadians."

That could include hospitals, energy plants, or digital infrastructure—such as public transit systems, which rely heavily on the web—says Wai Young, the Conservative MP who introduced the bill. Young's reference to digital infrastructure also implies that her bill would be strengthening penalties for hackers who go after cyberinfrastructure or government systems, which is timely, given the ​recent hack of various government sites.

But outside Question Period on Monday, MacKay acknowledged that pipelines could also fall within that definition, leaving the door open as to whether or not this bill could be used to punish the protesters currently protesting a Kinder Morgan pipeline on Burnaby Mountain.

When asked whether the bill would apply to pipelines and railroads, MacKay acknowledged that both fall under the definition of critical infrastructure, adding that "harming that kind of infrastructure would be illegal."

MacKay left out, however, that the bill doesn't just slap fines on those who damage infrastructure—it also criminalizes those who block its construction and use. C-639 singles out anyone who "obstructs, interrupts or interferes with the lawful use, enjoyment or operation of any part of a critical infrastructure."

The Criminal Code already includes sanctions for "mischief,"which uses some of the same language as Young's bill, though police haven't bothered applying those laws, which usually doesn't come with any mandatory fines or jail time, with any sort of consistency.

C-639 mandates minimum fines of $500 or $3,000 and minimum sentences of two or ten years, depending on whether prosecutors elect to try a case as a summary or indictable offense.

VICE asked MacKay whether the protesters on Burnaby Mountain—which is located just a few kilometers from Young's riding—would have been arrested under this law. MacKay said that it "would have to be examined in the formulation and the interpretation of the bill, and it would be up to a judge to interpret if it would become law."

When the NDP's justice critic, Françoise Boivin, asked about the bill in Question Period, arguing that it paves over Canadians' right to free expression, MacKay would only say that his department examined the bill, and concluded that it's constitutional.

Private member's bills, of course, don't have to be examined by the Department of Justice to ensure that they're constitutional and, as the federal government admitted recently after getting sued by the former head of his legislative​ affairs division, it has no problem introducing legislation that has a 99 percent chance of being declared unconstitutional by the courts.

MacKay did say that a committee would analyze the bill and didn't rule out the possibility that it would be amended to ensure that peaceful protesters aren't rounded up.

​@Justin_Ling

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If you've ever heard a woman scream and thought, this is music to my ears, then Cantata in C Major is the fucked up short film for you. It's filled with screams, shrieks, howls, and dramatic fainting. The movie is underground filmmaker Ronnie Cramer's ode to fear and distress. Compiling 605 brief audio and video clips from various vintage motion pictures, he assembles an experimental cantata, which is basically a bizarre ménage-a-trois between Hollywood screams, actor's faces, and electronically synthesized versions of their terror. All of this is concurrently transposed on screen into traditional musical notation, which, if played, is the equivalent of musical masochism.

Cramer's no stranger to strange. A re-appropriator of perverse Hollywood and schlock art, he's made films where  ​100 celebrity mug shots morph into each other or hundreds of ​trashy romance novel covers blend into a hot mess. Cantata in C Major similarly references pop culture and society. The opening video clip is reminiscent of the ​Network's famous scene where Albert Finney's character demands everyone walk to their window, open it, and yell, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore." Functioning as catharsis, the screaming becomes almost hypnotic with the electronic drones amplifying the musicality of it. Then after it's all done, there's a calm, an apology, time runs out, and a woman announces she "feels better already." Classic happy Hollywood ending. ​​​

Ronnie Cramer first rose to (relative) popularity with his acclaimed feature film Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend, which was about a lonely security guard who spends all of his savings on call girls in under two weeks. Ten years later, he made his first feature documentary called Highway Amazon, which follows a female body builder who travels the country wrestling men in hotel rooms. These are weird films. You should check them out.

​Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as a film curator. He's the Senior Curator for Vimeo's​ On Demand platform. He has also programmed at Tribeca Film Festival, Rooftop Films, and the Hamptons International Film Festival.

​ [body_image width='1200' height='798' path='images/content-images/2014/12/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/01/' filename='debate-around-closing-javas-fuck-mountain-needs-to-be-social-not-religious-body-image-1417402705.jpg' id='7765']Image ​via Wikipedia

Gunung Kemukus in the Sragen Regency of Central Java, Indonesia, is a hill known to locals by the colorful name of Sex Mountain—a monicker that comes from it being the site of an ancient ritual involving extramarital sex between strangers. But after attracting unwanted attention from international media, a sex trade scandal, and some scolding from the local governor, the coitus has come to a screeching halt.

The ritual, which takes place every 35 days, involves pilgrims cleansing themselves in a nearby spring before having sex seven consecutive times in the hopes of conjuring wealth, good fortune, and a better life. The practice stems from an old story about a prince who was discovered having an affair with his stepmother; the couple was supposedly chased down and finally killed while they were in the middle of an ill-advised fugitive sex act, then buried on the mountain. Since then it's believed whoever can finish their lovemaking is afforded a life of abundance, and people have been traveling here to have sacred sex since the 16th century.

Traditionally pilgrims did their business in the open, but the area is currently furnished with shabby huts, vendors selling food and aphrodisiacs, and brothels. The site has always attracted sex workers, but ​this year's crackdown on Surabaya's Dolly neighborhood—known for decades as the region's largest red light district—has led to more prostitutes than ever making the mountain home.

This all seem at odds with Indonesia's modern Islamic core, and it hasn't escaped the Western media's attention.

"It's such a paradox, and it's hard to make sense out of," Patrick Abboud from Australia's Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) said in an interview about his recent documentary on the mountain. "It's a strange snapshot of an Islamic ritual which really asks how it's possible to exist, given they are devout Muslims."

This unwanted attention led the Governor of Central Java, Ganjar Pranowo, to ​ban the ancient ritual last month. In a statement to Indonesian media, Pranowo said, "The outside world knows about this. Isn't it a shame?"

Governor Pranowo is not alone in wanting to end the tradition. The Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), the country's primary Muslim clerical body, also believes the practice is immoral. PakCholil Nafis, secretary of the Commission for Assessment and Research at MUI, expressed his fear that the rite would lead people down a sinful path. "The government needs to protect its people," he said. "I hope the government shuts this place down."

Others say that the tradition is not just a veiled excuse to screw around—it's part of a culture that is vanishing from Indonesia.

"The ritual of having sex for the promise of good fortune in Java is more complex than being a practice that operates on a contradictory belief to Islam," Professor Pak Wawan Gunawan, a lecturer at Indonesia's National Islamic University and coordinator of Indonesia's Interfaith Network, told VICE.

The Sex Mountain ritual is part of a religious system that combined the country's many religions into a unified whole that included a belief that spiritual forces existed in everything, from the natural world and architecture to the Goddess of the Southern Ocean. "We had a symmetry between Sufism and Islam, and the Majapahit Empire's Buddhist and Hindu influences," said Gunawan. "That symmetry was the religion of Java, our people, our land."

It was only in the early 19th century that the sex ritual began to attract criticism, as Indonesia's population grew and changed and Islam became progressively more dominant in the country.

"Islamic revivalism, combined with a re-creation of a more respectable tradition, has meant that many aspects of the complex history of Islam in Indonesia have been erased," said Professor Adrian Vickers, who researches the cultural history of Southeast Asia at the University of Sydney.

But not every official in modern-day Java wants to take the sex out of Sex Mountain. Many who live in the area are not offended by the ancient practice as much as the modern ramifications of it. Sragen Regent Agus Fatchur Rahman, for instance, has said he does not want to close the site, just stop the sex trade there.

"The bigger problem is that the Governor of Surabaya banned Dolly from operating," said Gunawan. "Prostitutes have flocked to Gunung Kemukus so they can continue their work—the real issue in Sragen Regency has nothing to do with religion," said Gunawan. "The real issue is social."

Follow Andrea Booth on ​Twitter.

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Image via  ​Wikicommons​

Last week Justice Karen K. Peters of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court (in what we can only assume is a break from her usual job) took the time to declare that chimpanzees are not people, legally speaking.

This ruling follows deliberations over an October case concerning Tommy, a middle-aged ex-entertainer ape belonging to and living in a shed owned by Gloversville, New York resident Patrick Lavery. Filed by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NRP), the plaintiffs argued that, as chimps have near-human intelligence, Tommy should be guaranteed human or near-human rights, namely freedom from personal ownership by other sentient beings.

But whatever evidence of Tommy's ability to reason, intuit, or love was presented, Justice Peters found it unconvincing in the cold vacuum of legal reasoning. Although the US and many other nations protect apes from animal cruelty and limit experimentation on them, there's no precedent for granting apes human or near-human rights, the judge claimed. And besides, chimpanzees, she held, "cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities, or be held legally accountable for their actions."

Although the NRP plans to appeal the ruling to the New York State Supreme Court, this accountability-focused definition of personhood upholds and fleshes out the traditionally narrow legal definition of humanity just as the scientific and philosophic borders of our specialness come under fire. While no one ought to expect law to follow science's head scratching or philosophical masturbatory pacing on this issue, the legist's stubbornness does not bode will for the wider and active great ape rights movement.

October was not the first time Tommy's case appeared in the New York State court system. The NRP first filed a case for his liberation in December 2013, along with two other cases concerning isolated and privately held New York State apes: Kiko and her late partner, Chimp, two chimpanzees in Niagara Falls trained in martial arts combat; and Hercules and Leo, two chimpanzees used in university biomechanical research. After liberation, the organization argued, the chimpanzees should be released to live freely among other apes in one of eight habitats run by the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance (and partially funded by the federal government).

The maiden legal action for the organization, founded in 2007 by Animal Legal Defense Fund co-founder Steve Wise, the activists involved believed New York's legal history made it the most likely to entertain their cases. Instead, one case was tossed out offhand and the other two failed in the courtroom. In Tommy's case, his owner successfully argued that his "shed" was actually a state-of-the-art $150,000 habitat and that the case for his liberation was null and void as he'd been on the waiting list to join a sanctuary for three years.

Although legal precedent (like our shockingly and necessarily clear laws against willing property to pets) weighed against Tommy in America, beyond our shores there have been several prominent, if very uneven, cases setting international precedents for ape rights. In 2005 a court in Brazil freed a chimpanzee named Suiça using a personhood argument, although a similar argument failed Jimmy the chimp five years later in Rio. And in 2007, the autonomous Balearic Islands of Spain guaranteed apes personhood, although the same year an Austrian judge denied a British woman the right to adopt Hiasl the chimp like a human child to protect his interests after his zoo home closed.

These cases stem from a movement spawned in large part by animal rights philosopher Peter Singer's The Great Ape Project, a 1994 declaration of the rights of chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans to equal core rights with humans, including life, liberty, and (setting the bar pretty fucking low on comparison to their hairless kin) the freedom from torture and abject imprisonment. The movement rests on a solid body of evidence—beyond the 98.7 percent genetic similarity between apes and man—showing that apes practice behaviors only recently believed to be exclusively human. Apes (and even birds) have demonstrated tool use, rudimentary spoken language and grammar, and, in a truly chilling potential precursor to a certain 1968 vision of the future, the ability to create 19,305 square mile common cultures, then fashion spears and patrol their territory, organize hunting parties, and wage war against different chimp cultures.

Going above and beyond all expectations or desires, chimps have also shown their ability to use currency— and then to use that currency for pornography, gambling, and prostitution. Questionable experiments by even more questionable psychologists have also shown they're able to partially integrate into human households and more than willing to get freaky with us after some exposure.

Symbolic thinking and abstract art, some believed, was the last real unique human feature we had going for us. Even though there are chimp artists, it's debatable whether they're just playing or not. But earlier this year the discovery of abstract art carved into a Neanderthal site at Gibralter—alongside earlier signs of pre-human burial, jewelry making, and face painting—took high art out of the strictly human realm. At a loss for something uniquely our own, it's beginning to feel like we might just be more persony than apes, although the border is squidgy.

Whether or not that fussiness makes its way into legal codes isn't just a matter of contemplative beard stroking. There's money on the line. Back in 2005 three paintings by Congo the Chimp, an artist praised by Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso, sold at auction for $26,000. Although Congo's long dead, similar sales in the future may inspire debate as to whether or not the artist has rights to the proceeds. And earlier this year photographer David Slater initiated legal action to claim ownership over a selfie taken in 2011 by a crested black macaque in Indonesia with his camera, raising questions about whether a primate can have intellectual property rights (the US copyright office says no). More importantly, Slater's arguments on the issue, if heeded, may set a precedent for treating animal artists as tools used by humans to create a marketable and profitable product, rather than as competent and creative beings.

For now, aside from the selective and restricted cases in the Balearic Islands and Brazil, the most progressive legal protection for apes is that proposed (but still pending) in the Spanish Parliament in 2008. This law would treat apes like unaccountable humans—humans, but not legal people—such as children or the mentally ill, in need of guardians. They could not be owned, like Tommy, but would have very restricted rights beyond that.

Why, with this six-year-old Spanish precedent and a host of smaller legal victories, chimpanzees like Tommy can't at least secure rights equal to unaccountable humans remains a huge question. It's more puzzling considering we're more than willing in this country to give a form of personhood to corporations that not even every human is entitled to. No one's saying we should set every chimp wild in the streets. But maybe this is a sign that we need to sit down and have a long think about the way we perceive the core of human nature through a legal lens. 

Follow Mark on ​Twitter.

​Delhi has been referred to as the rape capital ​of India, a distinction it earned in December 2012 when a 23-year-old woman's death from injuries sustained during a brutal gang rape shocked the world. In January of this year, the city ​made headlines again when a Danish tourist got lost and asked a group of men for directions. Instead of leading the woman back to her hotel, they led her to one of Delhi's many secluded areas.

Suffice it to say women in Delhi have a problem getting home safe at night. As one might imagine, a self-imposed curfew makes holding down a job difficult—among emerging economies, Indian women's participation in the workforce​ is dismal. Yet for many working women, there was a seemingly safe transportation option in ride-share services like Uber, the New York Times ​reports. But now that a woman has accused an Uber driver of rape in New Delhi—a crime to which he has already confessed—officials in the region have banned use of the app, leaving these ladies right back where they started.

On Friday night, a woman in her late 20s working in the financial industry was reportedly headed home from work in New Delhi in an Uber car. She fell asleep and only woke up after her driver had diverted from the route home, allegedly parking the car near a garbage dump. That's where he proceeded to rape her, the woman later told police.

Shiv Kumar Yadav, who has confessed to raping the woman, did not undergo a background check before becoming an Uber driver—if he had, the company might have noticed that he had been accused of raping a taxi passenger three years earlier. Not only that, the home address Yadav provided the company was fake and he didn't even have a GPS in his car as required by law.

Now the Transport Department of the Delhi region has banned Uber outright. Founder Travis Kalanick might have plans to take over the world, but growing concerns about the general lack of safety inherent in skirting taxi regulations could make things difficult. Uber's detractors have a ​long list of reasons not to like the company, and the India rape case may just have jumped to the top of that list.

Follow Allie Conti on ​Twitter.

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​Photo b y Jason Bergman

In Oakland and Berkeley—both centers of liberal and left-wing activism, both focal points for massive protests against police brutality in recent weeks—there's a pattern for every demonstration that hits the East Bay like a wave. I live in Oakland, and I've seen it happen many times:

• Act I: Protestors gather downtown.
• Act II: March down streets, pick up some steam.
• Act III: March all over. Shut down streets and some highways. Demonstrators in Berkeley ​​shut down the Transbay BART​ on Friday in an act of civil disobedience, which was kind of extraordinary.

• Act IV: Cops, for whatever reason, are told it's time to wrap it up. So they begin getting more aggressive with their dispersal methods. This generally occurs around 10 PM, and most protestors take it as their cue to scurry off.
• Act V: A window gets broken.
• Act VI: Cops start trying to get rid of the crowds by any means necessary.
• Act VII: Pretty quickly afterwards, the crowd's gone for the night.

This is the script. Maybe some marches are more purposeful with their routes, maybe a few more windows get broken in some instances, maybe some stores get trashed—Sunday night's demonstration in Berkeley saw a bunch of  banks​ and a Whole Foods get it. Sometimes the cops use tear gas, sometimes they don't. But this is generally how things go down.

I'd like to focus on Act V, the "broken window" one, because that's what everyone seems to lose their shit over. Here, for instance, is what San Francisco Chronicle reporter Vivian Ho tweeted at around 10:40 PM during Friday night's protests in Oakland:

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When that first window breaks—and this is nearly inevitable anytime the shit kicks off—it's the beginning of the end. But maybe it's an ideal end, since both protestors and cops get to close out the night's festivities without losing much face. The police get to take out their toys because "things have turned violent!" And the protestors get to claim that cops ran off a peaceful protest. No one loses, see you all back out here tomorrow night. 

The problem is, when Act V occurs it changes the narrative for viewers at home.  After the above tweet was posted, Twitter's #Oakland thread was no longer about #EricGarner or #MikeBrown, it was about how anarchists downtown are destroying our city, how embarrassing it is, how they should be ashamed, with plenty of smh-ing. 

For those living outside the Bay, it became undeniable proof (once again) of how wretched and animalistic Oakland's residents are. The next day's news reports about the protests used those broken windows as the headline, the lead image, the backdrop their reporters-on-the-scene stand in front of.

I have some advice for everyone: Calm the fuck down. They're broken windows.

On Friday, there was also that bloody hand, and a rightfully angry store owner, and all that. Which, hey: I'm no fan of bloody hands, I don't like violence—I am not condoning window-breaking or looting. I'm all for detectives going over the surveillance footage and arresting looters, and let's get that man some stitches. I'm not patting the back of whatever loony masked person got riled up and decided to take his (it's always his) frustration out on an inanimate object.

It's just the conversation of what the protest is about shouldn't be drowned out by small acts of property damage.  It's time to stop crying about windows and cry over the dead.

Back in 2009, during the protests/riots that occurred after  ​Oscar Grant's murder, downtown Oakland was ravaged. Cars were burned, shops were looted, and the historic Fox Theater ​suffered $20,000 worth of damage. In what proved to be the act most cited by those sick and tired of the protestors, the offices of Youth Radio, a downtown-based nonprofit youth media organization, was smashed up terribly. It wasn't fun. Plenty of folks back then looked at those events as a death knell for the burgeoning downtown revitalization, more evidence of why Oakland just can't have nice things, and the same apocalyptic predictions pop up now after a window gets smashed.

But guess what? Downtown didn't die in 2009. Businesses didn't leave. In fact, the East Bay is thriving.  The Fox Theater is fixed and has a full calendar of acts. Youth Radio has rebuilt and is still broadcasting out of the same space (and, by the way, has so far been untouched during the latest protests, perhaps due to the self-policing of protestors who understand how harmful the previous smash-up was to their cause). Sears, a store that was dying the slowest of deaths, sold their six-story building in the heart of downtown for ​$25 million. All of the Bay's property values ​have soared, and Oakland is not immune to that. (Hell, if you want to get more micro about it, there are even anecdotal stories of downtown bars getting more business after or during protest nights, which isn't hard to understand, seeing as they bring in an influx of people, some of whom surely want to drink.)

Frankly, businesses are not being run out because of broken windows—you can even get  riot insuran​ce, an option that covers damage due to "civil unrest or riot." If you've opened a downtown business since the Grant protests and have not gotten that kind of coverage, you're just not doing your homework.

If you're a member of the media, it's easy to be distracted by a few moments of heated action after hours and hours of repetitive marching. Broken windows and boarded-up storefronts are visceral, full of violent aesthetics, way better than poorly-lit crowds and muffled chants. So those become the story. And if you're watching the news at home, it's easy to see those visuals and focus on the asshole protestors harming local businesses. It sucks. They'll have to sweep up! They'll have to paint over the graffiti! They'll have to reorder supplies!

But don't let that become the central story. As the great Susie Cagle put it during the Mike Brown portion of the Oakland protests:

Just a reminder that spray paint, broken windows, and trash fires, while messy, will not destroy Oakland's social fabric

— Susie Cagle (@susie_c) Novem​ber 26, 2014

These are relatively small, easily cleaned-up messes. They're minor annoyances. They are not reasons to turn against the entirety of the protests, nor to condemn the those taking part. The momentary loss of property is not equivalent to the permanent loss of human life. 

Follow Rick Paulas on ​Twitter.

When TGI Friday's announced their "mobile mistletoe" drones—a fleet of flying robots towing mistletoe that flew around the restaurant and prompted diners to kiss, kind of like a kiss cam but with drones—it was not met with much fanfare. Tech blogs universally panned the idea, calling it out as ​uncool; other publications chalked it up to a holiday ​gimmick. And then there were the logistical problems: What if the mistletoe drone landed above, say, you and your boss? What if you were out to dinner with your parents? Or, ​as one guy pointed out to the ​New York Daily News, "Some people might be on a date with their side chick and wouldn't want their face up on the screen."

True that. But for all the bad press about the mistletoe drones, no one anticipated that they would turn violent until one of the drones ​crashed into a diner's face last week.

The victim was Georgine Benvenuto, who was at Friday's as a photographer for the Brooklyn Daily, along with a team of reporters checking out the drones on their New York debut in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. When the drone made its way toward their table, one of the Brooklyn Daily reporters apparently flinched and the drone soared into Benvenuto's face.

"It literally chipped off a tip of my nose," said Benvenuto.

A spokeswoman for the chain brushed it off as an "​isolated incident" and said that while "safety is our first priority," TGI Friday's stood behind the drone's licensed operator.

David Quiones was the guy operating the drone at Friday's that night, and he also brushed it off, saying, "If people get hurt, they're going to come regardless. People get hurt in airplanes, they still fly." It's worth noting that ​Quiones has a history of flying these quadcopters indoors and annoying people. If he's trying to spread the gospel for indoor drones, he's not doing a very good job.

Follow Arielle Pardes on ​Twitter.

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This is what the land around Browning, Montana, looks like. Photo via Flickr user ​Tim Gage

Browning, Montana, has a population that hovers around 1,000 and is in the middle of absolute now​here. For most people, it's probably best known as the setting for the 19th episode of The X-Files, in which Mulder and Scully investigate the death of a Native American man. It was 92.7 percent Native American in 2010 and is currently served by the Blackfeet Tribal Police.

It's also where a man named Martin Marceau runs a car repair and towing business. And according to a lawsuit filed earlier this month, it's where bored tribal cops nearly blinded the business owner with BB guns confiscated from local kids, laughed about it, and then tried to convince victims to sign paperwork absolving them from blame. Now he's suing the United States for damages and medical costs.

According to a complaint that was filed last week, two uniformed police officers showed up to Marceau's Advanced Automotive in August of 2012. They fired BBs into the side of the shop, hitting the owner and causing "extreme physical pain, agony, emotional distress, trauma and fright." Several people were hit and Marceau himself was nearly blinded after one pellet hit him in the eye. "The two tribal officers laughed at the individuals who were shot," the complaint continues.

"It sounds like the cops got some guns from kids and decided, 'Oh, let's go tear up the town,'" Paul Gallardo, the lawyer who's handling the case, told me. "I think they just wanted to have a little fun."

Marceau had to seek treatment at a Missoula medical center for his injuries, which included temporary blindness. After he returned home, he was allegedly met by one of the offending officers, who asked him to sign a piece of paper saying he wasn't involved in the shooting. Marceau didn't sign the statement—and as a result, his attorney claims, Advanced Automotive experienced a decline in income. A good chunk of the operation is towing for the Blackfeet Tribal Police, because the town's not that big, and Marceau relied on the cops for business.

So now he's suing the US government for an unspecified amount of money because the department is under the control of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In 2003, the feds took over the police force because it had become lax: A government report showed officers were poorly trained and they often let politics interfere wit​h policing. A decade later the Missoulian reported that the Blackfeet were not reporting DUIs to​ the state.

If Marceau's complaint is to be believed, there is some fairly baroque small-town corruption going on here—it references one of the cops in question previously taking a police dog to a "drinking party" where he "instigated the dog to bite a person."

Ultimately it's unclear why the officers decided to shoot up the garage—or how details were collected about the confiscated guns or the shooters' laughter. No one could be reached at the Blackfeet Tribal Police, and Martin Marceau did not return a message left by VICE. But Gallardo says that Browning is small enough that the whole town knows the story.

"As far as this case is concerned, I don't think anyone denies it happened the way we say it did," he says. "Three or four people got hit. And the cops thought it was real funny."

Follow Allie Conti on ​Twitter.​

From the semi-exclusive Executive Club Lounge at ISC E​ast, which bills itself as the largest security trade show in the northeastern US, the floor of the Javits Convention Center in New York City looks like it would for any other industry expo. Aisles lined with booths distributing branded swag stretch ove​r the size of one and a half football fields. The PA system plays several Billy Joel songs back to back. Thousands of people, mostly men, mill around and catch up on what's gone on in each others' lives since last year's show like kids at summer camp.

Don Erickson, the CEO of the Security Industry Association, the trade group that sponsors the conference, takes the stage minutes before 10 AM. After introducing a half-dozen distinguished guests, he raffles off two tickets to a Billy Joel concert at Madison Square Garden, which helps to clarify the DJ's setlist. "Are you ready to get the show started?" Erickson asks the assembled crowd of salespeople, IT experts, private security company executives, and law enforcement officers (including at least two FBI agents), whose response to Erickson's question is muted.

With that, the International Security Conference and Exposition has begun.

Of course, this is not just any other trade show. The two-day extravaganza serves as a rare window into the world of physical surveillance that usually remains hidden behind locked doors in secret command and control centers. It's a world many Americans are unfamiliar with, even if they sense that it lies just behind every security camera, every fingerprint ID scanner, every vaguely understood piece of software that can track an individual across much of the world. Former NSA contractor  ​Edward Snowden showed the world how precarious privacy is in the digital age, a lesson that's impossible not to think about at this convention.

The impressive capabilities of the software and hardware on the convention floor are only underscored by the pedestrian ease with which vendors discuss their products' power. Don Hines, the director of business development at Identytech Solutions, happily tells me about his facial recognition software without a trace of concern the tool could be abused. According to him, Indentytech recently ran a test in a stadium in Argentina filled with 60,000 people, and the system correctly identified 98 out of 100 targeted faces. Display screens in his vendor booth show how even a partial capture—say, of a person's profile—can be turned into a full-on positive ID. "If [a camera] catches a 2D image, it makes a 3D image in real time," Hines tells me.

[body_image width='2000' height='1500' path='images/content-images/2014/12/08/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/08/' filename='the-banality-of-selling-total-surveillance-1207-body-image-1418007341.jpg' id='9490']Identytech software also offers a feature their promotional material refers to as "non-voluntary" facial recognition. "I can enroll your face without you ever knowing it," Hines tells me. The example he offers is of a school administrator tagging the face of a possible sexual predator hanging out near a playground without ever having to confront the suspect. Then, whenever the tagged person returns, the administrator gets an alert.

When I ask him how many companies use his product, he laughs knowingly. "It's more widely utilized than you'll ever know," he responds. "Airports—just about everybody uses it. You just don't know it because it's not widely publicized."

A few steps away at the Honeywell kiosk—a major installation—a promotional sign promises that the company's "Total Connect (TM) Tracking Service" is "a great way to keep tabs on family members and employees, know if speed limits or predetermined geographic boundaries have been exceeded, and recover lost or stolen valuables." A sales representative named Tommy tells me that the vehicle tracker, as it's called, is a tiny device that plugs into a car's diagnostic port and alerts a parent or boss in real time if a vehicle's speed exceeds a set limit or departs from a set route. The diagnostic port in cars is under the dashboard, and when I ask if it's possible employees wouldn't see it plugged in, he says yes, it's possible. As I leave he begins to hand me his business card, then, seemingly for the first time, sees the word "press" on my badge. He retracts his card, and says if I have further questions he can connect me with the corporate communications department.

Later in the day I'm drawn to a booth sporting an NYPD streetlight camera, similar to those found in most​ major US cities. The display belongs to a company called SW24, founded 14 years ago by former NYPD narcotics detective Desmond Smyth. The camera is simple to use out of the box—"plug and play," as it's called—and runs for between $8,000 and $20,000. Depending on the price, the camera is capable of running facial recognition technology, abandoned package alerts, and loitering detection, just to name a few options, a sales rep named Gene tells me.

But SW24's real claim to fame is what Smyth describes as the largest cooperative agreement between a private contractor and a city in the nation. Through his company, the NYPD gets access to more than 8,000 cameras mounted outside commercial and residential buildings throughout the five boroughs according to Smyth, all at no cost to the city. It's called the Citywide Safety Initiative, a program that landlords can opt into and that Smyth says turns ordinary security cameras into "an enormous force multiplier." From a "Real Time Crime Center" located in NYPD headquarters at One Police Plaza, cops can automatically access the footage of cameras on buildings whose landlords have chosen to participate in the program. "The only access they don't have is random-use access," Smyth tells me. "If there's no investigation, they can't access the cameras."

When I ask if the NYPD need probable cause to trigger access to the footage, Smyth says there's a memorandum of use that lays out the criteria governing the restrictions on cops, and re-emphasizes that investigators can't use it for random surveillance. He says narcotics detectives love the program because it results in a "perfect investigation" and minimizes chain-of-custody issues, among other benefits. 

Though a description of the products and services offered by vendors here sounds like something out of a spy novel, the atmosphere is as much Glengarry Glen Ross as Enemy of the State. Over the two-day expo, attendees can sit in on hour-long panels called "Educational Theater," many of which promise insider tips on getting ahead in business. At one session, billed as offering strategies to ensure your company is around ten years in the future, a panelist tells the several dozen audience members that to survive, "we must all become innovators." Passing one of the booths that houses a security camera distributor, I see a saleswoman chase down a young couple after one of them grabs a brochure and continues on their way. "You can't just take the promo material and keep walking!" she yells good-naturedly—you have to hear the spiel.

The final installment in Wednesday's "Educational Theater" is a seminar on how surveillance cameras help solve on-campus crimes. The two presenters are from George Mason University in Virginia, and lay out investigations aided by cameras that range from a collision in a swimming pool that nearly resulted in a lawsuit to a bomb scare. By next year, the campus will have roughly 1,500 cameras across over 140 buildings, according to Jim McCarthy, director of phy​sical security at GMU. During the course of the presentation he says several times he'd love to have facial recognition technology campus-wide, and has gone so far as to get an estimate for costs. He did the same with automatic license plate readers, another popular tool at the conference. Both, however, simply cost too much money. "If someone wants to give it to me for free, I'd be happy to use it," McCarthy says with a laugh.

There has been some concern on campus about privacy issues, McCarthy concedes, but he largely brushes them off. "When people talk about privacy, I don't care," he tells the audience. "We've saved lives." Beyond obvious advantages like quickly identifying a perpetrator who assaulted a professor in the hallway of an academic building, the cameras have brought other changes McCarthy sees as clear benefits. "It cuts down on vandalism," he says. "We don't have vandalism."

It's not just cameras, either. The campus had been having a problem with students duplicating dining hall entry cards and gaming the system for free meals. GMU has since installed iris scanners at some cafeterias on campus, which the u​niversity's website says will offer students "a hygienic and hands-free entry method."

Campus privacy guidelines forbid monitoring of political or religious activity, and when I ask if a student organization can have a meeting in a place they know they won't be surveilled, McCarthy gives me an unequivocal yes. Virtually none of the classrooms, for instance, have cameras in them. But all building entrances and exits do, as do many hallways. Guidelines aside, it's not hard to imagine investigators could determine who was in attendance at an extracurricular meeting if they needed to.

In response to my question McCarthy waxes philosophical. "We are becoming Big Brother," he says. "Privacy is gone, whether you like it or not." 

Follow John Knefel on ​Twitter.

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Step outside your front door. Winter isn't coming—it's been here for weeks. And now that staying in of an evening is immensely more preferable to braving a chill just to spend two pints in the company of people you only pretend to like, game-makers have the ideal opportunity to sink their claws into denizens of digital worlds. Here's where new addictions that won't be shaken with any resolutions take hold, and I've found mine: Telltale's new graphic adventure series for HBO's Game of Thrones.

If you've followed either said TV show or the Song of Ice and Fire novels on which it's based, you're probably well aware that all prior attempts to video-game it have flopped. The PC-only Genesis, a strategy title, came first in 2011, stinking shelves up with its depressing micromanagement and dull trading requirements. 

The Cyanide-developed Game of Thrones of 2012, which I tried to play on 360, aimed its sights at mirroring the style of the TV series. But while its plot was neatly woven around the HBO happenings, its confusing battle system and dog-ugly visuals hamstrung its appeal from the first hour onwards. I soon enough tossed it.

Californian studio Telltale Games has some solid history when it comes to adapting popular movie franchises and TV shows, though, so it wasn't an enormous surprise when word emerged that they would be tackling Game of Thrones in their established, point-and-click-indebted graphic adventure style. Their episodic takes on Back to the Future and Jurassic Park were flawed but respectfully atmospheric, evidencing a palpable appreciation of the source material. 

But it was their first "season" of The Walking Dead, issued across five parts in 2012, that truly made their name. Exquisitely written, more than competently acted and genuinely affecting at times, The Walking Dead is the high point of Telltale's development catalogue—and the marker that their Game of Thrones will need to aim for.

The launch trailer for "Iron from Ice", episode one of Game of Thrones

And, with one episode down—the just-issued "Iron from Ice"—things are looking good. The complex political environment of A Song of Ice and Fire isn't wholly touched upon, and neither is a great deal of the TV show's bloody, exciting, anyone-can-die-at-any-time action. (Which is fine, as most players will know exactly what's going on.) 

Instead, "Iron from Ice" is the foundation from which the series' next five episodes will, hopefully, flourish—five episodes that I'm already very eager to play through, as the climax to this two-hour-long debut leaves its central house utterly torn apart. And here is where I state the obvious, but I'll state it anyway: spoilers follow.

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Telltale's Game of Thrones' focus is on House Forrester—a house that has only barely been mentioned in the novels, and hasn't factored in the TV show at all, as yet. Based at a fortress named Ironwrath, in Westeros's northern woodlands, the Forresters have served as loyal bannermen to (former) local rulers House Stark for thousands of years, their speciality being the harvesting of ironwood trees, the wood of which is particularly retardant to fire and can withstand point-blank dagger blows from maniacal (literal) bastards.

Events begin around where series three of the TV show wraps up—at the Twins, outside the Red Wedding. And if I need to explain anything about what happens at that particular get-together, you're reading the wrong article. But in a nutshell: shit goes south for the Forresters pretty quickly, and it's up to you as Gared Tuttle, squire to Lord Forrester and one of five playable characters promised in the Telltale series (we get three in episode one), to leg it back to Ironwrath with the bad news, sword between your legs.

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This fresh-of-face man is Ethan. Naturally, he won't stay this clean-cut.

What follows draws clear parallels with the family migrations and heads-rolling misfortunes that have beset the Starks: One daughter is a handmaiden at Kings Landing, effectively an analogue of Sansa Stark; her brother Ethan assumes the leadership of the Forresters in a move that's comparable to Robb Stark's elevation to King in the North; and Gared's behavior between the Twins and the hoped-for sanctuary of Ironwrath sees him packed off to The Wall, inevitably to meet the late Ned Stark's illegitimate son (or ​is he?) Jon Snow, who took the road north himself in 1996's A Game of Thrones and hasn't felt the warmth of the sun since.

Ethan's initially unsure of assuming a position of leadership—but this being a Telltale adventure, the player gets to define much of each playable character's outward traits. I played Ethan as a confident lord, shouting down an unruly, military-minded loudmouth and facing the flay-happy Ramsay Snow/Bolton (played with wicked zeal by his TV actor, Iwan Rheon) in my great hall, rather than at the gates of Ironwrath. Come at me, enemies of mine. Whatever. Here's some bread and salt. Except Ramsay declines said sustenance—and fans of the series will know that might be a Bad Thing. I'm saying nothing more.

Prior to Ramsay showing up at Ironwrath at the climax of "Iron from Ice" (it's the Forrester motto, FYI)—after an introduction to the man's unashamed sadistic side at the expense of a pretty uncomfortable looking prisoner (not Theon)—we get to play as Mira Forrester, handmaiden to the soon-to-be-queen Margaery Tyrell in King's Landing, the capital of the Seven Kingdoms. It's through her that we meet some familiar faces: Margaery, of course, voiced by her HBO actor Natalie Dormer, and the Lannister siblings Cersei and Tyrion—again, finely portrayed by Lena Headey and a post-Destiny Peter Dinklage, respectively.

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On the left here, Ramsay Snow—easily the most malevolent of GoT's cast.

A throne room scene pitting the player's wits (and quick-thumbed QTE reactions) against the poison-tongued Cersei is an episode highlight, and really exemplifies how the greatest dangers in the Game of Thrones world aren't always fire-spitting dragons, magical menaces, or shiny, pointy things. The right words, spoken by the right people, can be deadly, and Cersei is clearly going to be a substantial thorn in Mira's side in coming episodes.

There's no actual physical combat in the capital—that's saved for the sections where we play as Gared. A fair few nudges of the analogue stick (I played the game on PS4) are needed to get through the Red Wedding massacre, and it just might be that the man's homeward-bound misdemeanor had much to do with sticking a sharp thing into someone rather softer. Again, your decisions play a part: I figured Gared wasn't about to take any shit after what he'd witnessed at the Twins, but you might choose a more conservative approach.

As is the Telltale trademark (alongside the stiff animation), we're told at the beginning that our choices have consequences, and following the mold of The Walking Dead, you can bet that they will. 

It remains to be seen if my bullish Ethan's standing up to Ramsay Snow will affect how the relationship between the Forresters and the new wards of the north, the Boltons, plays out in coming instalments. I don't know if being combat-keen with Gared will mark him as the ranger type when he reaches the Wall and its Night's Watch occupants. And painting Mira as Tyrell-loyal over acknowledging the sovereignty of the Lannisters, while amusing to (potential ally) Tyrion, might not go down so well the with renowned little shit currently parking his backside on the Iron Throne, Joffrey Baratheon.

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Gared is sent away to the Wall. He's pissed now, but at least he'll survive into episode two.

The teenage king of Westeros isn't seen in "Iron from Ice," but his short temper is: Margaery goes to see him, about the Forrester situation, and returns visibly shaken, with her dress torn. That said, I don't suppose we'll have to worry about Joffrey's wrath all that long—Game of Thrones covers the period from the end of the third TV series to the beginning of its fifth, meaning the king has his own wedding to enjoy before we're through with Telltale's story. (And by "enjoy" I obviously mean "survive"—and he won't.)

Episode one ends with its own spoiler of sorts—it confirms the fate of one of our player characters with a "next time on Game of Thrones" trailer, when it might have left their future unspecified. We know, too, that Asher Forrester is to return to his homeland—the family's second-born and battle-hardened son had been exiled to Essos, but the latest head of House Forrester will become a playable character in "The Lost Lords," which ​might be released as early as the first week of February.

It'll still be bloody bitter outside then, so you can count me in for another single-session sit-down with Telltale's Game of Thrones—the first video game adaptation of this fantasy success story that's got its cruel and uncompromising tone lethally spot on. 

Follow Mike Diver on ​Twitter.

Previously:

​The Importance of Aimlessness in G​aming

​Games That​ Scare the Shit Out of You Are Having a Renaissance

​'I Am Bread' Is the Weirdest Vid​eo Game of 2014

On Sunday, Bulgarian Health Minister (and probable evil clone of Alan Tudyk) Petar Moskov announced that emergency medical services would no longer respond to calls coming from Roma communities unless local Roma leaders could guarantee their safety. The Minister claims his decision reflects a threat to medical practitioners' safety, as 174 of 225 recent attacks on first responders occurred in predominately Roma areas.

"I am under no obligation to guarantee the right of somebody to beat up doctors," said Moskov during his briefing.

But from the outside this looks like the latest in a local and regional trend of increasingly aggressive anti-Roma discrimination. It may also be an attempt to justify previous failures of medical personnel to respond to Roma calls by using a common European rhetorical trope: blaming the Roma for their own marginalization.

Some online commenters have sided with the Moskov's decision, citing standard paramedic safe-scene protocols (the principle that responders should not rush into an unsafe environment). But by declaring all areas inhabited by a certain ethnic minority unreasonably dangerous, Moskov's decree moves beyond due prudence into what could be considered harmful bigotry.

"Such a public stance on the part of a doctor, who has taken the Hippocratic Oath, is loathsome," said the local human rights watchdog Bulgarian Helsinki Committee in a press release. "[It is] a gross manifestation of misunderstanding of the principle of rule of law and incitement to racial hatred."

The Roma, often known by the pejorative term "gypsies," are the European Union's largest and most diffuse ethnic minority, with 10 to 12 million individuals living in member states. Ever since arriving in the continent some one-and-a-half millennia ago, these dark skinned and linguistically distinct peoples have been on the edges of society, associated with crime and violence. The Nazis eventually used this reputation as a pretense to exterminate 70 percent of their Roma population in the Holocaust, and even in the post-Communist era to sterilize Roma by force in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Pew polling data this year found that across Europe the Roma were the most negatively viewed ethnic minority—only Spaniards had more positive than negative perceptions of Roma. This othering tends to correlate to poor living standards, including a lifespan on average ten years shorter than national norms and massively increased rates of diseases like tuberculosis.

With 750,000 Roma constituting 10 percent (and the fastest growing element) of the population, Bulgaria has Europe's largest ratio and second largest absolute population of the ethnic group. (Although  ​the state rejects this number, claiming they only have 325,000 Roma, or 5 percent of the population). Between 40 and 60 percent of them live below the poverty line (versus an 11.6 percent national average in 2013). Living in squalid conditions—50 percent of Roma homes in Bulgaria lack a bathroom—they are in desperate need of state health services.

On paper, Bulgaria's making every effort to help the Roma. They have received over $17 billion in international funding for Roma inclusion and integration programs. But they have a poor record of following through on programs or achieving all their goals. Despite joining the European Union in 2007, Bulgaria did not comply with EU law and fully lift travel restrictions on its Roma until earlier this year.

Part-and-parcel with this miserable track record, the European Roma Rights Center has collected reports of non-response by ambulances to calls from Roma areas since the early 2000s. In a 2006 report entitled " Ambulance Not on the Way," in which the organization lists numerous incidents of selective disengagement by emergency responders, the organization quotes a general practitioner from Novi Pazar, Bulgaria as telling them:

"Roma do not use the regular medical services. They do not come for examinations and prophylactic checkups. They prefer to use the emergency services because it is free of charge. That is why the emergency services does not send ambulances to the Romani neighborhood."

Across Europe, it's very common to lay the blame for Roma ails on supposedly inherent Roma characteristics or behaviors—like poor education or thieving. Earlier this year, while watching the demolition of a Roma ghetto in Hungary, a non-Roma local told reporters that he agreed with the state's removal-without-relocation strategy.

"It's like dogs—if they are in a pack, they will bit you, but not if they are separate," said Ioan Albescu. "When there are a lot of Roma together, they can be aggressive."

"All too often European leaders have pandered to the prejudices fuelling anti-Roma violence by branding Roma as anti-social and unwelcome," John Dalhuisen, the Europe and Central Asia Program Director of Amnesty International, explained to reporters this April. "The European Union has been reluctant to challenge member states on systemic discrimination of Roma that is all too evident."

This discrimination has increased to outright and frightening anti-Roma violence across Central and Eastern Europe in recent years. A study by Harvard University this year highlights this trend in Hungary, but even in the seemingly tolerant Czech Republic crowds marched down the streets in 2013 chanting "gas the gypsies."

That trend holds in Bulgaria. Just this summer, the town of Stara Zagora sent 1,000 riot police against a human chain of Roma protesting the destruction of their 55-home shantytown, illegally constructed on public land. The aggressive demolition, lacking a resettlement plan and contravening European Court of Human Rights rulings on due process, escalated into rock throwing. An ambulance and emergency responders were involved in the incident, meaning such violence is most likely included in Moskov's alarmist report of Roma anti-doctor brutality.

None of this is to say that the Roma cannot be violent independently. Clashes that we might term gang fights in America break out regularly, catching police and medics in the action.

But using these incidents, and common state and police initiated riots, as an excuse to cancel medical services to a marginalized population under the pretext of protecting doctors is absurd. That's telling people that because they've been down and out for centuries and are living out the consequences they have to bare further consequences. It's the health equivalent of destroying Roma homes without providing transitional programs. And it will only create new and exceptional health and order problems down the line, which inevitably some future minister will shrug off again, continuing the circle.

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The front cover of Demented (1980). All images courtesy of ​Clout Communications

This article originally appeared on VICE UK​

Last week, ​a lo​ng list of sex acts were banned from British video-on-demand porn. "Ban this filth!" seemed to be the underlying message. "Think of the adults! All the fully grown men and women who'll be corrupted by this smut!"

Of course, moral panics—those phlegmy cries of outrage from society's self-appointed moral guardians—are nothing new. And one in particular is echoed in the UK's latest piece of ban-this-gross-abhorrence legislation: that over "video nasties."

Today, the hysteria, misinformation and censorship of horror films in the mid 1980s seems comically stupid. It's almost unbelievable that corner shops were raided and people went to jail over films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Evil Dead; films that are regarded today with benevolent admiration, in the same way we remember GG Allin or that kid who used to bring his snake into school.

The early 80s were halcyon days for people who liked their movies blood-splattered. The VCR had been invented! You could watch films at home! Better still, while cinema releases had to make it past the BBFC (now known as the British Board of Film Classification; then as the British Board of Film Censors), home video came under no such restriction.

Suddenly, everyone was selling or renting videos. Horror fans could pick up a copy of Blood Feast when they popped out for cigarettes or filled their car up at the garage. Teenagers gathered at each other's houses to watch glitchy videos whose tracking damage would turn images into snow at the only bits you really wanted to watch—the sex and the violence.

Earlier this year, horror director Jake West (Doghouse with Danny Dyer, Razor Blade Smile, Evil Aliens) released the second part of his ​in-depth documentary about the era, ​Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide. A teenager at the time of the video nasties panic, West was a fan from the word go.

"Because video was unregulated, we had the chance to see crazy movies from all over the world that British audiences had never been exposed to," West told me. "For teenagers, it was a wonderful time, but those over 40 or 50 were highly offended. There was a huge cultural gap between what people found acceptable."

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The Executioner (1978)

As the video industry competed to produce the film that would finally make an audience throw up bile into their mouths, content became more and more outrageous. Covers were increasingly explicit—bodies impaled, heads slashed off, entrails consumed—often far overselling the shock value of the actual film. Between 1972 and 1984, 10,000 titles were issued on VHS, Betamax, and V2000. It couldn't last.

Mary Whitehouse—moral crusader and leading figure in the Christian anti-fun brigade Nationwide Festival of Light—was early on the scene. Although she admitted to never having watching one herself, Whitehouse had no doubt that horror videos would lead society into ruin. Tabloid newspapers fanned the flames and, before long, the term "video nasty" was coined, a phrase so appealing it was adopted by moralizers and teenagers alike, because who wouldn't want to watch a video nasty?

As the country reeled under mass unemployment, riots and messy overseas conflicts (sound familiar?), tabloids, campaigners and the powers that be were quick to agree that, yes, gory horror films were absolutely the biggest threat to national stability.

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Invasion of the Blood Farmers (1978)

The hunt was on for any video that might contravene the Obscene Publications Act. Across the country, police raided corner shops, warehouses and retail outlets—including HMV—looking for filth. They found it. Thousands of videos were confiscated. Juries were made to sit through screenings of films like I Spit On Your Grave, Cannibal Holocaust, Driller Killer, The Evil Dead, and Faces of Death. Often never having watched anything scarier than Blazing Saddles, many were outraged.

Within a short space of time, 72 films were added to the Director of Public Prosecutions' list of banned videos. This quickly became the ultimate movie bucket list for teenagers. However, for many small business owners, it was the end. Shop owners and distributors were fined and sometimes jailed for profiting from "obscene publications."

Gleefully reproducing the goriest covers, tabloids spouted pseudoscience. Much as porn is now regularly linked to "addiction" and "permanent changes to the brain," so were video nasties. A study was commissioned and quickly ​found that 40 percent of children had seen a video nasty. Never mind that this study only included 47 children and that only three of them had claimed to see such a film; the fate of the video nasty was sealed.

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Wrong Way (1972)

The final nail was hammered in when Whitehouse teamed up with ambitious Tory MP Graham Bright, who introduced a private member's bill calling for tighter controls on home video. Video nasties were an easy target. On passing Bright's bill, which eventually became the Video Recordings Act 1984, then Prime Minister  ​Margaret Thatcher said, "There must be no place in Britain for the video nasty."

With the introduction of the Video Recordings Act, videos would now be classified by the BBFC before going on sale or hire. However, the moral panic was not over. Into the 90s, horror films continued to be portrayed in the media as the source of all evil. In 1993, the murder of toddler James Bulger was linked to Child's Play, although his killers denied ever having watched the film. This was one of a series of atrocities blamed on the video nasty.

From the moment the BBFC were appointed gatekeepers, the home movie industry changed. There's a strong argument for age-rating, of course; most parents don't want their ten-year-olds watching people being eviscerated. But who will think of the grown-ups? If only we had some breed of people whose redoubtable character made them capable of watching this dangerous material without harm, whose moral superiority allowed them to deem what was safe for the rest of us.

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Bloodlust (1977)

Just as the new ruling on porn smacks of paternalistic superiority, so too did attitudes around video nasties. In the class-crazy 80s, then-secretary of the BBFC James Ferman ​told reporters after a screening of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: "It's alright for middle class cineastes to see this film, but what would happen if a factory worker in Manchester happened to see it?"

Parallels with the new regulations around porn abound. Again, the state steps in to decree what's good for porn-loving factory workers and the like; again, small-scale niche businesses will suffer while corporations will toe the line and flourish; again, seemingly arbitrary criteria are used to judge what is fit for human consumption.

The video nasties panic offers a glimpse into the future, says Julian Petley, professor of journalism and screen media at Brunel University. We should take heed.

"This is how these things always start," Petley told me. "People said, 'Oh, you don't need to be worried about new video legislation, it's just being brought in to get rid of a few video nasties.' Oh yeah? So by 1984 we had the Video Recordings Act, which required every single feature film on video to be classified and, if necessary, cut or banned by the BBFC.

"They're starting off by targeting obvious things like protecting children and fighting terrorism. But gradually all the mechanisms are being put in place—and I mean both literal mechanisms and more metaphorical legal mechanisms—to control other parts of the internet as well."

Video nasties may not be your thing. Fetish porn may not be your thing. Somewhere along the line, though, given the right set of circumstances, moral panic might be focused elsewhere. Today, fisting porn; tomorrow, Countryfile.

"What people have to learn is that freedom of expression has to be defended at its weakest point," says Petley. "And that might mean defending material you don't like."

Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide parts 1 & 2 ​are out on DVD.

​@frankiemullin

More stuff about this kind of stuff:

​British BDSM Enthusiasts, Say Goodbye to Your Favourite Homegrown Porn 

​A Short History of Female Ejaculation 

​We Called the UK Ejaculation Police to Find Out Why Squirting Vaginas are Illegal and Jizzing Cocks Are Fine

Illustrations by Giulia Sagramola

By the time of George Washington's first inauguration, held in 1789 at Wall Street's Federal Hall, people had been trading in stocks and bonds under nearby shade trees for more than 100 years. Early American businesses had little access to capital of their own, and they generally turned overseas to get it. This activity soon centered on Wall Street, a convenient location because of its proximity to New York City's ports. The system was simple: Companies would either sell ownership shares or issue bonds (loans that they promised to pay back with interest) as a way of raising hard currency. Owners of those stocks and bonds could then sell them to other investors, ideally at a profit.

These days the system works roughly the same way—it's just bigger, richer, and infinitely more complex. The overriding function remains the same: to distribute capital efficiently. But the system has become increasingly byzantine over time, adopting a language all its own, and effectively creating an ecosystem in which those who control the flow of money can take advantage of its intricacies to siphon funds for themselves.

Wall Street can therefore seem like a very private club. But in fact anyone can participate; the barriers to entry are as much linguistic as they are financial. With that in mind, here's a primer on the A to Z of the financial multiverse.

ART: "Well, Chuck, we could have bought a Rothko with your lottery winnings, but you had to blow it all in the stock market because you thought you were a master of the art of asset accumulation."

Depending on whom you ask, finance can be an art, a science, both, or neither. The 2013 recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences won theirs for an analysis of asset prices. Traditional sciences, however, are built on testable hypotheses. Not so with economics. As the influential former hedge-fund manager and author Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes, in economics you "can disguise charlatanism under the weight of equations, and nobody can catch you since there is no such thing as a controlled experiment."

But economics isn't really an art, either. Some investment managers claim a special ability to "generate alpha" (to earn a higher-than-expected return), but their claims are rooted more in clever marketing than in actual evidence. What we're left with is a field that is neither art nor science but has elements of both.

BULLS AND BEARS: "The market was behaving bullishly before the Supreme Court scandal, but now that we all know that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is actually undead it's become a bear market."

If you visit Wall Street, you'll notice Charging Bull, a 16-foot-long bronze sculpture standing a few blocks from the New York Stock Exchange. The statue was installed in the wake of the 1987 stock-market crash, and it illustrates well why the bull is the traditional symbol of a rising stock market: It appears to be charging forward, head lowered, nostrils flaring, eyes wide and angry. Stocks surge mostly in unison, sometimes in great leaps and often for no discernable reason. If the bull represents a rising market, the bear symbolizes a market in retreat: A falling market is like a slumbering bear.

CONCEPT OF MONEY: "My dad never believed in the concept of money, but growing up in the woods did teach me a lot about forestry."

In prison, inmates often use postage stamps as currency. The system works because everyone trading the stamps agrees a stamp has value beyond that of a simple stamp. If one day prisoners decided stamps were worthless and that they were going to trade cigarettes instead, the guy with a pillowcase full of stamps in his cell would be hosed. It's proof that modern money is a mental construct.

DIVERSIFICATION: "Diversify your bonds."—GZA

When investing, it's a good idea to spread your money around instead of concentrating in a single company or sector. A good way of diversifying is by buying into a variety of categories called asset classes. These include American stocks, international stocks, and government bonds, among others. The idea is that these will gain and lose value at different rates and times, keeping your portfolio stable.

EQUITY: "I paid thirty dollars for this T-shirt, but then Karl Lagerfeld spat on it, so it's now worth two hundred. I guess my equity increased a hundred and seventy?"

There are around 5,000 publicly traded companies in the United States, ranging from multinational corporations like Apple to low-value stocks like Zoro Mining. They are divided into shares, which are a form of "equity security." The total value of a company (i.e., its market capitalization) is determined by multiplying the current stock price by the total number of shares.

FEDERAL RESERVE: "I don't really know what the Federal Reserve Bank does, but I read on the internet that it's impeding my ability to build an underground bunker to protect my family from the apocalypse."

The Federal Reserve is the United States' central bank. It occupies a singular position in our economy: In addition to serving as the bank to the federal government, it's tasked with managing the growth of the economy. It accomplishes this by setting short-term interest rates through open-market operations and by issuing credit to private member banks—effectively creating money out of thin air.

GREED AND FEAR: "My greed led me to invest in a chain of artisanal barber shops, but fear that the haircuts were subpar led me to sell my shares prematurely."

These are the two emotions that drive the markets. When the market rises, investors are tempted to jump in and get their share of the gains; when stocks fall, those same investors tend to unload.

HEDGE FUND: "I managed a hedge fund until 2008, but then the recession hit and now I mow lawns for a living."

The degree to which people talk about hedge funds is inversely proportional to how good an idea it is to invest in one: Hedge funds are opaque private investment funds designed mostly for the very wealthy and run by high-profile investment managers. Historically, they've been largely unregulated. Managers often exercise wide latitude, utilize exotic strategies, and collect outsize fees.

INDEX: "The economics student burst into tears after discovering an alternate index that contradicted his entire thesis."

Wall Street measures everything, including growth and shrinkage in the economy and financial markets. Indices are the instruments they use. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is perhaps the most familiar index—it measures the second-by-second stock-price movements of a group of 30 giant companies. There are dozens of lesser-known indices, measuring employment, bond markets, individual sectors, and markets in countries and regions around the world.

JOB: "Your job could be the foundation of your savings, if you'd just stop ordering Seamless every single night."

Assuming an annual growth rate of 5 percent, a 25-year-old currently making $30,000 can expect to earn upward of $3.5 million over the course of a 40-year career. By comparison, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein received compensation totaling $23 million in 2013. While such immense remuneration is the domain of a tiny fraction of the populace, most Americans living beyond hand-to-mouth are largely responsible for creating and managing their own savings plans.

KEYNES: "That was very Keynesian of your parents to pay your rent this month so you could pursue your dreams of being a conceptual haiku poet."

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) was a British economist who argued—as his adherents still argue—that government intervention can bolster economic activity in times of stress. The massive stimulus package in response to the global financial crisis of 2008 was an example of Keynesian economics.

LIQUIDITY: "I can't find someone who'll take all of this Coca-Cola stock off my hands. Guess it's not very liquid."

A liquid asset is one that can be turned into cash quickly. A bank account provides constant liquidity because you can turn it into cash at the nearest ATM whenever you want. Real estate, conversely, is illiquid: It may be worth a million dollars, but turning it into cash via a sale can take months or years. Stocks and other securities are usually considered to be highly liquid—but some stocks are more liquid than others. Fifty-five million shares of Apple change hands every business day: Apple has high liquidity. Thinly traded stocks may be illiquid because a seller may not find a ready buyer. Sellers far outnumber buyers during a panic, creating a liquidity problem.

MARKET CYCLE: "The market cycle dictates that, ultimately, there will be consumer demand for a nu-metal revival."

Stock prices tend to follow a pattern: They rise for a few years, peak, then retreat before turning around and rising again. These market cycles are related to business cycles: Rising employment, production, and trade indicate a period of expansion, which may last for years before peaking at the onset of a recession—a contraction lasting half a year or more. The two most severe contractions of the last 100 years have been the Great Depression of the 1930s and the so-called Great Recession of 2007–09.

NOISE IN THE SYSTEM: "I took advantage of all the noise in the system to cherry-pick the data points I needed to empirically prove that Seinfeld should still be on TV."

Wall Street thrives on data—economic data, market data, as well as data from corporations, governments, and institutions. Every day large amounts of data points are heaped onto an already staggering pile of historical statistics. Add to all that the constant flow of information and opinions from the financial press, as well as the chatter from thousands of participants, observers, and analysts, and you have one massive, extremely noisy system.

OPTIONS: "Norm Macdonald optioned the sitcom rights to my Tumblr, and now Cats That Look Like Janet Yellen is stuck in development hell."

An option contract gives the holder the right to do something—or not—for a certain period of time. The two most common forms of options are calls and puts based on stocks. For a fraction of the stock price, you can take an option to call (buy) or put (sell) a stock at a predetermined price until the option's expiration date, when it becomes worthless. Until that time, you can trade the option contract just as you would trade a stock. Most investors never venture near this specialized corner of the Wall Street ecosystem.

PRODUCTS: "I had a panic attack trying to decide which product best suited my needs as an investor and ended up with a low-yield mutual fund concentrating in the cheese sector."

There are other investment vehicles beyond simple stocks and bonds. Mutual funds are ready-made portfolios, professionally managed and conveniently packaged for the ordinary investor. Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are similar, but while most mutual funds are actively managed, ETFs are usually designed to simply mirror an index. ETFs are usually less expensive to own.

Brokerage firms are the stores where investment products are bought. Full-service firms like Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch (owned by Bank of America) are staffed by highly paid salespeople inhabiting plush surroundings and pushing products from the firm's inventory. Discount firms like TD Ameritrade and E*Trade offer a wider selection but leave the investor to choose his own products. Registered investment-adviser firms offer a hybrid model: The adviser typically designs a portfolio, populates it with products from a discount broker, and maintains it with periodic rebalancing trades.

QUANTITATIVE EASING: "Thanks to quantitative easing, my bank suddenly had money to lend, but I decided to stay hidden in my underground bunker anyway."

When the country plunged into recession in 2008, one action taken by the Federal Reserve to inject liquidity into the banking system was the policy of quantitative easing. This involved buying trillions in assets from member banks. QE had the effect of supplying ready money the banks could use to lend out or bolster their own cash reserves. Through three rounds of QE, the Fed pumped an estimated $4.5 trillion into the economy. Some observers claim QE created the monetary equivalent of a drug habit and warn that another crisis will occur when the Fed tapers its buying.

RISK/REWARD: "I risked it all by investing in a line of iPad cases made from Bernie Madoff's old clothes, but no one bought them and my reward was losing all of my money."

One of the few universally accepted laws of investing is that risk and reward are roughly equivalent. Holding stock in a corporation offers the possibility of appreciation—but the company could also go bankrupt and render the stock worthless. A less established company runs a greater risk of crashing and burning, but there's also the possibility it could become the next Apple and make you rich. Bonds are generally considered to be safer but offer a more limited upside. Cash in the bank is guaranteed by the FDIC, but it's also guaranteed to do next to nothing in the way of growth.

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION: "The SEC ignored my repeated requests to investigate Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, even though it's their express job to do things of that nature."

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is the federal agency responsible for enforcing the country's securities laws and regulating the securities industry. In addition to overseeing the investment markets, it is tasked with protecting investors by forcing public companies to disclose meaningful financial information about themselves to the public, allowing all investors access to the same facts so that they might make smart investment decisions.

TACTICAL VS. STRATEGIC: "Last year, I invested tactically and spent hours each day trading. Eventually, I decided I should invest strategically so I could have more time to go outside and walk my dog."

Modern investment strategies are governed by two opposing methods: tactical, which involves frequent short-term trading in response to the market and economy, and strategic, which is more of a set-it-and-forget-it approach. Proponents of tactical investing claim that well-timed moves can reduce risk. Adherents of the opposing view point out that frequent trading increases costs and that market timing has never been proved to work consistently.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: "The United States of America remains the powerhouse of an increasingly global economy."

The US represents less that 5 percent of the global population but 49 percent of world stock markets by value. (Great Britain and Japan are tied for second place with 8 percent each; China represents 2 percent.)

VANGUARD: "I recently bought some Vanguard funds and took the money I saved by not having to pay commission to buy my dog a diamond-studded collar."

According to the Investment Company Institute, there were 801 mutual fund companies operating in 2013, offering an array of more than 15,000 individual funds. The largest of those companies is the Pennsylvania-based Vanguard Group, which offers 123 separate funds of its own. Vanguard sells no-load funds, which aren't sold by brokers because they don't carry a commission. Load funds, on the other hand, pay brokers a commission—an extra cost borne by the investor.

WORLDWIDE ECONOMY: "The worldwide economy was vastly affected by the Irish Potato Famine, as it led to a diaspora that spread young Irish people throughout Europe and America, disrupting the supply of labor in those countries."

For centuries, each individual country's economy was seen as a stand-alone entity. It was only recently that we understood that independent economies do not exist. Information, capital, and material goods move around the Earth at speeds unforeseen just a few decades ago. No single country or region is now immune from global impacts: China, to offer a stark example of interdependence, owns more than $1.2 trillion in US government debt, and its vast and cheap labor force builds a significant portion of the products we use. But if China stopped buying bonds or selling electronics—or if we stopped buying those electronics—both countries would be in big trouble.

X CHROMOSOME: "There was no line for the women's bathroom at Goldman Sachs because of all the humans with only one X chromosome in the building."

It's hard to deny that there is a gender gap on Wall Street. There are no female CEOs at major financial firms, and only 17 percent of top executives at those firms are women. Meanwhile, only 22.5 percent of new first-year analysts in 2013 were female. It's not just a gender gap: 65 percent of the new class were white, 29 percent Asian, and only 6 percent were black or Hispanic.

YIELD: "The value of the family cow was a thousand dollars, but its yield was four hundred dollars' worth of milk per quarter."

There are two elements to an investment's return: capital appreciation and yield. Costco stock was trading at around $112 a year ago and, as of this writing, was hovering around $127, reflecting capital appreciation of $15. Yield is the current income the asset produces; it comes in the form of a dividend in the case of a stock, interest if it's a bond. Costco's most recent quarterly dividend was 35.5 cents per share. With a share price of $127, a year's worth of $.355 dividends translates to a dividend yield of 1.1 percent. Do some quick math and you come up with a total return of $16.42, or 14.7 percent.

ZUCCOTTI PARK: "Why are your boots so muddy and smelly?" "I was protesting with the rest of the 99 percent at Zuccotti Park!"

This is a privately owned park in lower Manhattan where Occupy Wall Street protesters camped out to decry income inequality in America and to critique the way in which our financial system operates. It provided a place that stood as the philosophical antithesis of Wall Street—anyone could occupy its space, and instead of complicated terminology it offered direct chants in the face of power. While exploring the world of finance, it's important to remember that Wall Street is not an abstraction: It's a power center whose actions affect real people.

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