You might not know who Arjan Roskam is, but you’ve probably smoked his weed. Arjan’s been breeding some of the most famous marijuana strains in the world—like White Widow, Super Silver Haze, and many others—for over 20 years.

In 1992 he opened his first coffee shop in Amsterdam and has since crafted his marijuana-breeding skills into a market-savvy empire known as Green House Seed Company, which rakes in millions of dollars a year.

He's won 38 Cannabis Cups, and has even dubbed himself the King of Cannabis.

VICE joins Arjan and his crew of strain hunters in Colombia to look for three of the country's rarest types of weed, strains that have remained genetically pure for decades. In grower's terms, these are called "landraces." We trudge up mountains and crisscross military checkpoints in the country's still-violent south, and then head north to the breathtaking Caribbean coast. As the dominoes of criminalization fall throughout the world, Arjan is positioned to be at the forefront of the legitimate international seed trade.

Check back Monday, July 29, for part one of Kings of Cannabis.

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High Country

Sweet, sweet Adderall... Or, wait. No. via WikiCommons.

Canada is in the midst of an “escalating prescription drug abuse crisis.” Prescription drugs like OxyContin and Methadone have become household names, while the rise of prescription drug abuse in high schools is escalating at a crazy rate. The most recent drug study out of Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto showed that the abuse of prescription meds in high schools took home the bronze medal for most-used method of intoxication, right behind smoking weed and drinkin’ booze. 

Adderall XR, a drug used to treat Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in children and adults, seems to have become the new drug of choice for students who can’t focus properly. In 2005, Health Canada banned Adderall XR after 20 mysterious deaths were connected to the drug. That ban was quickly reversed, but there are still major concerns about the drug’s side effects, especially when it comes to its impact on children who are supposedly afflicted with ADD.

If you’ve been anywhere near a classroom in the past five years, you’ve probably already heard of Adderall XR. Known as the “study drug,” it’s not necessarily the worst thing you could do to yourself in the scary world of prescription drugs, but it is still an amphetamine that’s very similar to speed, and has some pretty terrifying side effects if and when it’s abused.

I decided to go out and talk to some people who have an Adderall habit—because I couldn’t get any solid answers from Health Canada, and CAMH wouldn’t return my calls. Everyone I spoke with said Adderall is extremely easy to get. People can either fake their way through an ADHD diagnosis to get a doctor’s note, or they can find someone who’s already done exactly that, and is looking to cash in on their pill supply. On average, an Adderall pill will run you about three bucks, but students have told me the demand around exam periods can raise the price of one pill up to $15. It’s also easy to wonder if what has been called the “ADHD epidemic” is even real—some would argue that it isn’t. To be fair, Adderall is a huge blessing for those who truly have Attention Deficit Disorder. But for a large amount of people, using Adderall has turned into a frightening addiction that can lead to extreme paranoia, bodily harm, or death.

Siobhan

I don’t have ADD but I played with Adderall for a couple months. It eventually made me feel totally schizophrenic, it was really bad. At the time, I was injecting cocaine and crystal meth, drinking in excess and smoking weed. Obviously I had a drug problem, but Adderall was the one drug that made me completely snap. I started believing my paranoia. It’s very addictive and at first you don’t even realize it. Because it doesn’t make you feel ‘high’ like other drugs, you’re just so focused and have all this energy; you forget you’re even on it.

That’s the problem. Aside from it making you hallucinate, you stay up for multiple days because you never feel like you need to sleep. A friend of mine was getting prescribed multiple prescriptions from their doctor, so we were just using her prescription. I would just binge on them. At one point my paranoia and hallucinations got so bad that I thought there were refugees living in my apartment hiding in my cupboards and in my closets. I’m not sure what they wanted, but I knew for sure eventually they were going to hurt me. I also thought people were climbing up trees to get on my balcony and this is when I called the police on myself. I was sitting on my bed with a friend looking at the Venetian blinds and it looked like someone was pointing a long barrel rifle through the blinds at me. The operator didn’t seem to believe what I was telling her and I yelled at her, “Your job is to serve and protect.”

Shortly after this I stopped using the drug, because I finally started to realize I had a very serious problem. It took a while for me to really believe I had imagined the whole thing. For days after I would stand outside my apartment looking up at my balcony, positive I’d see a refugee with a gun standing up there.

Karen

I’m not sure if I have ADD, but I have been on anti-depressants my whole life. I had taken an Adderall at a party once and had never felt so happy in my life. I told my psychiatrist about this and he put me on it right away. It felt like I was cured from depression for a little while. I was happy, social, and losing weight. I felt like I was on top of the world. Then over the next two years I started to feel an itch, something felt wrong. It got to the point where my whole identity was wrapped up in this drug.

I went off Adderall for 10 months because I didn’t like feeling addicted to something. I’ve never been so scared in my entire life. No one could ever have had any idea what I was going through. I had severe emotional withdrawal symptoms that didn’t let up. It was a constant hum of depression. I had expressed to my doctor on more than one occasion that I was developing a problem and he refused to accept that. It was really strange. His opinion regarding Adderall was slanted in a very strong way toward thinking that it was just good for you. But deep down I knew what I was experiencing was total dependency and so it was really bad. I also started to have severe Adderall anxiety. It felt like something was missing if I wasn’t high.

It got to the point where I once took too much and my heart started beating out of my chest and I couldn’t breathe. I knew I had taken too much. I fully blacked out for ten minutes and then came to. I honestly thought I was going to die. But the worst part is that I had an essay due and I did the same thing the next day. I was so focused on the essay I overlooked what had happened. It was like I was on another planet, and the next day I did the same thing and had the same reaction. It was then I realized how serious my problem was. I had to drop out of school because I was literally scared for my life. 

Sam

At $3 a pill, my roommates and I would go in on a whole bottle and divvy them up so we had like, 20 pills each. I started using it for finals, but then I started using it for papers too. I really loved writing on it, because it increased the flow and vibrancy of my intellectual processes to an ecstatic pitch. But then I would also become engrossed in things that weren’t school work, like the first stanzas of poems. I became obsessed with "DER ERLKONIG". I would write it out by hand over and over in German and inwardly recite it while doing so.

A big problem was that Adderall had totally exacerbated my existing sexually compulsive behaviors. There would be times I would show up at Library and then a half an hour later, be in the other end of the city sleeping with Romanian med student I had met on Craigslist. There were nights where I would stay up until dawn and go on the Craigslist's casual encounters section and go over all of them in every city, obsessively and it made me so horny—Portland, Montreal, New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago.

I got the point where I would be popping five at once and would be awake for three days. There would be times where I would be in a final exam, having not slept for three days and it would take me five minutes to write a single sentence. My brain literally couldn’t function. Things slept from my mental grip like a wet bar—I was paranoid, I would only eat a banana a day, and I was always sleep deprived. I had to force feed myself because I really didn’t want to eat. My life spun totally out of control, I always felt a sense of abject doom.

I was extremely addicted to Adderall, I’m trying to stay off the drug now, but it’s hard.

Follow Angela on Twitter: @angelamaries

More about drugs:

Legit Speed

Why I Love My Meds

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The Detroit Institute of Arts, Photo by Flickr User Quick fix

Four Van Goghs, one Caravaggio, and enormous Diego Rivera murals celebrating the industrial working class are amongst the estimated $2 billion in Detroit Institute of Art holdings the troubled city's creditors now hope to loot.

The Michigan attorney general contends the works are "held in trust for the public" and protected from sale by state law. But the emergency manager, who runs the city's business by fiat on behalf of Republican Governor Rick Snyder, says that no asset has been taken "off the table." In 2013 Detroit, the public trust trades for cheap. The city is bankrupt, a reality formalized via last week's Chapter 9 filing in federal court. It is the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. The debt is estimated to total at least $18 billion. 

The bankruptcy will ostensibly redirect funds toward long-neglected infrastructure and services which, in a city where 40 percent of residents are profoundly impoverished, are a wreck. The city boasts one of the nation's highest murder rates but has an average police response time of 58 minutes. That's 47 minutes longer than the national average, but who's counting? Public transit has been cut to the bone, forcing the many who don't own cars to undertake epic commutes across the Motor City's often barren 139-square-miles. Schools are deeply underfunded and being shuttered. The population has declined from a 1950 high of 1.85 million to 700,000 today. The tax base continues to get smaller and poorer.

Detroit makes for a vivid tableau of urban decline: revived prairie, burnt-out homes, and empty high rises. Detroit, more than a mere metaphor, is a striking and large-scale instance of something that has become pervasively wrong in America. And make no mistake: this is no plan to save Detroit, where financial troubles are the fruit of an economic crisis decades in the making.

***

Presidential biographies and hagiographic accounts of the Revolutionary War populate the best seller list. The major political and economic forces that have shaped this country since World War II typically escape notice. Black people arrived by the hundreds of thousands to mid-century Detroit, escaping the Jim Crow South in search of work in a booming war economy. But they were limited to the worst jobs and confined to overpopulated ghettos. White neighborhood associations organized riots and fire bombings against those who tested the northern race line.

Government paid for highways that led to suburban homes paid for with publicly-subsided mortgages. These communities, in metro Detroit and nationwide, were typically reserved exclusively for whites. Business, hunting for cheap and non-union labor, followed suit, leaving for the suburbs or overseas as Democrats and Republicans supported global economic policies that failed to protect American industry while allowing competitors to protect their own. Good jobs vanished, particularly for black Detroiters. Between 1950 and 1960, the city's black unemployment rose from 11.8-percent to 18.2-percent, while the overall unemployment rate held nearly steady at 7.6-percent. Today, far-flung ex-urban office parks and factories make hyper-segregated metro Detroit's rate of "job sprawl" the nation's highest.

Detroit's McDougall-Hunt Neighborhood, Photo by Flickr User JasonParis

Civil rights victories in courts and Congress, and the 1974 election of the first-black mayor, Coleman Young, proved somewhat hollow. For black workers, the right to not be discriminated against on the basis of race provided little succor when there were simply no jobs.

The collapsing New Deal order failed to embrace the sort of economic and industrial planning that fostered growth in competing countries, and a shrinking demand for labor pitted white workers more fiercely against black. In 1972, Democratic presidential candidate and former segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace won the Michigan primary and carried every single majority-white ward in Detroit.

What was once called the "urban crisis" defined American politics from the 1950s through early 1990s: crime, suburbanization, "white flight," unemployment, civil rights, welfare, and riots. Federal support to urban America evaporated in the 1980s, but the Clinton years' thin economic boom provided a moment of distraction. A McMansion renaissance created exurbs distant from the urban core and gentrification revived choice city neighborhoods from New York's Williamsburg to San Francisco's Mission District.

The fundamentals, however, remained profoundly messed up: an economy dominated by high-end financial services and minimum wage jobs fostered historic levels of income inequality. The Great Recession revealed what was once perceived to be an "urban crisis" as a pervasively American one. America is hollowed out, and the combined employment opportunities at hospitals, universities, McDonald's and Wal-Marts won't save us.

MGM Grand Casino, Photo by Flickr User javYliz

This is clear in metro Detroit, where the decay that white Detroiters and business both set into motion and fled is now spreading to the suburbs—even to the hallowed Grosse Pointe Yacht Club. In 2012, Wayne County, home of Detroit, and two suburban counties levied a property tax increase to secure the newly-imperiled Detroit Institute of Arts. This spirit of regional cooperation will be necessary for the entire area's survival.

American politics is stuck in a stale and bipartisan ideology inherited from the late 1970s: big government can do nothing for big problems. In 1975, the New York Daily News famously surmised the president's hostility to assistance: "Ford to City: Drop Dead." Ford did ultimately extend loans. Today, federal abandonment is normal and does not merit a headline. The death wish is implicit. 

Detroit's bankruptcy, whatever its merits and faults, is the most recent in a long line of underwhelming saviors. Urban agriculture is wonderful but woefully insufficient. A sprinkling of hipster gentrification in neighborhoods like Corktown and the Cass Corridor is, likewise, nice but infinitesimally small-scale (immigrants have had a perhaps more significant impact). The auto bailout was critical to warding off disaster but fails to deal with metro Detroit's key structural issues. There is, after all, precisely one auto assembly plant entirely inside city limits.

Scrappers ply abandoned buildings for salable metals across Detroit. In Downtown, the city's three glassy casinos tower above rubble and devastation and lure gamblers with money to spare… or not. The MGM Grand, Greektown, and MotorCity casinos seem like some post-apocalyptic vacuum cleaner sent by global capitalism, extending down from the sky to suck up what little wealth remains behind.

***

Detroit's largest creditors include Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and JPMorgan Chase. JPMorgan Chase received $25 billion from the Wall Street bailout, while Bank of America, where profits are now up 60 percent, grabbed more than $45 billion. It also took over Merrill, which made sure to hand out $2.8 billion in bonuses first.

The emergency manager is right to demand that these banks, which declined its offer to take a bus tour of the city, accept enormous losses on their investments.

But the state is wrong to demand that public sector workers and retirees "share" in the sacrifice by wiping out 90 percent of their pension plans.

Downtown Detroit's Renaissance Center, Photo by Flickr User Patricia Drury

Detroit's working class built automobiles, the weapons that defeated fascist Axis armies, and created relatively broad-based affluence. The banks created opaque and highly risky financial instruments that brought the American economy to its knees. Go figure.

"The vast majority of Detroit’s 19,000 or so retirees receive modest monthly stipends derived from decades of public service patrolling streets, putting out fires, running crucial city departments, saving lives," writes Detroit Free Press columnist Susan Tompor. "It might be easy to blame them or say they expected way too much from a city job. But it’s wrong. Really wrong."

The city owes an estimated $3.5 billion to pension funds, plus $5.7 billion to retiree costs like healthcare. But most retirees rake in just $1,600 per month. And Detroit, like most other big cities, would have almost no black middle class without the public sector, which offered decent employment when many private sector companies shut them out. American political life has entered a pugnaciously libertarian phase. Beating up on public employees holds bipartisan appeal. It is likely particularly attractive to Governor Snyder, who has signed legislation making the cradle of the United Auto Workers a so-called "right to work" state.

The pension shortfall is likewise just an individual instance of a national problem: the retirement security created by the New Deal and the labor movement, while always weak compared to that provided in an actual social democracy, is in tatters. Many will now depend on Social Security, puny 401(k)s, or perhaps nothing at all. The Wall Street-created economic crisis wiped out pension funds nationwide, helping to create a shortfall that totals an estimated $1 to $3 trillion.

"If the resolution to the city's bankruptcy is going to be fair and just, we can't simply shred retirees' safety net," says Tom Sugrue, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the seminal Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. "The costs of a 'haircut' for municipal bondholders would be spread widely, but for Detroit's approximately 20,000 retirees, cuts would be deep and harsh and immediately devastating. It would set a dangerous precedent if bankruptcy releases Detroit from its obligations to those who spent their careers working for the city."

Local incompetence, corruption, and malfeasance are real, but fail to explain the vast majority of the city's problems. Columnist Margaret Wente wants to blame the whole thing on the "corruption, misrule, and Democratic-machine politics" of the city's black political class instead of "Republicans and rapacious corporations." Wente echoes a verdict on urban decline often rendered from white suburbia, which begins with black riots and political rule. But it is an account that denies history and so paves the way for future misery. Detroit and its people have received no bailout. Unlike Wall Street, they have earned one. And so have the rest of us.

@DanielDenvir

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'Detropia': Prelude and Prophecy

El Dorado, the Canadian company that owns controversial gold mines in Greece's Skouries forest, has announced that it will stop all works in the area until at least 2016. According to a company spokesperson, the reasoning behind this decision is that the price of gold has dropped.

On the surface that might appear to make sense. But it's also important to note that this statement is coming from a company that condoned surprise night raids on the homes of people who opposed the mine in the nearby town of Ierissos. A company that watched as riot police who'd been drafted in to intimidate local people abducted high-school kids and fired tear gas into a school playground, leaving four children in the infirmary and a baby with a blood condition. A company that watched platoons of Greek counter-terrorism police arresting people at random and illegally taking DNA samples for their benefit, and that sided with one of the most controversial businessmen in Greece in order to protect their investment. A company that did all of those things, yet that is now—apparently—willing to just let the project go quiet for a little while.      

Unsurprisingly, all it takes is one look at some statistics before holes begin to appear in El Dorado's reasoning. The price of gold has indeed fallen recently (almost 20 percent since the beginning of the year), but it's still 33 percent higher than it was five years ago. Also, the initial investment in the area was actually made in 2003, by El Dorado's Greek subsidiary Hellenic Gold—the value of gold has risen even more since then. Any revenue the company makes from mining will only be taxed by a meager ten percent, and the gold and copper's total value in the area is calculated at more than $10 billion. It's worth pondering exactly how much a 20 percent drop in the price of gold should be bothering the company.

However, while El Dorado's announcement might seem like a win for antimining campaigners, Hellenic Gold has since sent out a message saying that hirings and general investment in the area will continue as planned. But that's no surprise, considering it's not costing them much of their own money to continue with these processes. Instead, they're financing their operation through the use of funds from the Greek state and the European Union.

Many of the 1,200 workers already hired have done absolutely nothing during their employment, as the mines have yet to function at full capacity, and the company still stands to make $3,000 for each and every "trainee" hired through the European funds. In fact, the only thing the company appears to be spending any of their own money on is ad placement in the Greek media, which comes in handy when the need to control popular discourse arises. And, of course, it has—on plenty of occasions.  

After the torching of the company's forest worksite in February—when 50 masked individuals burned machinery and buildings belonging to El Dorado and Hellenic Gold—the positive propaganda stories began to unravel. There was the introduction of the aforementioned counter-terrorism police, the tear gas, and the kidnapping and interrogations of locals without a lawyer present and the abductions of 15-year-olds and torture of university students.  

As if that wasn't enough PR hari-kari, in May riot police were sent in to block a demonstration that was planning to march toward the worksite in Skouries forest, where trees had already started to be chopped down despite the fact proper licenses hadn't been issued for them to do so. The male demonstrators splintered off, taking another route to the worksite, while the women were left behind to keep the police at bay. Unfortunately, the tactic didn't work; the police attacked the women before turning their attentions to the male demonstrators with tear gas farther up the mountain, arresting four people in total.

And that doesn't seem likely to be last trouble we hear of from Ierissos. When two of the four arrestees from the demonstration were taken to court, riot police surrounded the courthouse to contain any potential protests. Tear gas and violence were used once again and the 17-year-old son of one of the accused was detained.    

Thousands march against El Dorado in Alexandroupoli earlier this year. (Image via)

So is it perhaps the reality of near-authoritarian violence and unfairly quashed protest that has sent the Canadian mining multinational into retreat, rather than the faltering price of gold? Many Greek analysts appear to believe so. The company's stock has been falling for some time, and—as insiders who wish to remain anonymous have told me—half of the business around gold mining is conducted via inflating stocks. What the company didn't expect when announcing the deal, which would see it making enormous profits off the backs of Greek taxpayers, was a mixed bag of local resistance, international media coverage, and Canadian bloggers attacking it every step of the way.

With Hellenic Gold's announcement that hirings will be going forward as planned, the question—one already put forward by the blog antigoldgreece.wordpress.com—is: "What exactly will these new recruits be doing?" Will they just be shouting, "We're with you!" to Prime Minister Antonis Samaras? Shaking hands with Golden Dawn MPs, like their current union representative is doing? Staging counter-demos against the protesters where they're encouraged to bring their children along and make a family day out of hurling tear gas canisters at environmentalists?

A spokesperson for Antigold told me some of the organization's theories concerning El Dorado's announcement: "I don't believe they'll be going, at least not that easily. They'll keep working on the mountain in the background, but with less capital involved. The announcement gives them time to deal with legal issues without the stock holders hearing about them. How they're going to solve [those legal issues] is another matter. One of the studies has been filed since 2007 and they still can't get it approved.

"We have information that the company might be continuing its work inside the Karatzas gorge [an hour or so from Skouries]. Theoretically, they have no reason to do that—no reason to hurry. I'm almost certain they are trying to destroy as much as they can so they can say later, 'It's already done, why are you objecting?' The mountain now looks nothing like it did before; we go there and don't recognize where we are any more." 

The divide and conquer strategy El Dorado and the Greek government have adopted can't possibly go on for much longer. In that last incident a DIY grenade was used against the police, and, on another occasion, locals attacked the Ierissos police department with burning tires, leading the police themselves to protest the fact they're being deployed against the local population at great risk for their personal safety.

If El Dorado wants to use the excuse of falling gold prices, so be it. They can't concede that the resistance they've been facing in every project they've undertaken—be it in Ierissos, Turkey, Thrace or Romania—and the impact it's had on their stocks is the reason behind their decision, because that would be a sign that resistance actually works. And in this time of austerity, where resistance is becoming more and more prevalent, we can't have that, can we?

Follow Yiannis on Twitter: @YiannisBab

More from the fight in Skouries - A Gang of Greek Activists Torched the Skouries Gold Mine

Sick of taking responsibility for the shitty things that have happened to you in your life? Help is at hand, in the virginal and strangely vacant form of three bible-bashing teenage exorcists from Phoenix, Arizona. Eighteen-year-old Brynne Larson and her friends Tess and Savannah Sherkenback (18 and 21 respectively) claim to be able to confront the demons lurking inside traumatised people and draw them out using just the odd cross and a few choice words. But are the teenage exorcists really empowered by the Almighty, or merely by Brynne's father, a former televangelist named Reverend Bob?

In a new film coming soon to VICE, the girls and Reverend Bob give us exclusive access to their tour of Ukraine, during which they attempt to save the souls of recovering drug addicts and sexual abuse victims.

Watch Teenage Exorcists at VICE.com soon.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: skateboarders are the most creative people on the planet. Mark Gonzales, Ed Templeton, Chris Pastras, Jason Lee, Spike Jonze, Adam Wallacavage, Dave Carnie, Russ Pope, Jai Tanju, Brian Gaberman… those are just a few of the guys who the world owes a debt of gratitude to for making it a more beautiful and interesting place. It is the instinctive eye of a skateboarder in search of spots—or, rather, places to play with his toy—that allows him to look at the urban landscape from a different perspective. And so in a time when anyone with a cellphone is a "photographer,” it makes sense that any skater with a cellphone is a better photographer than the majority of the 328 million mobile phone users in America.

New Jersey’s own Gabe Angemi is a skateboarder with a cellphone. Gabe is a second-generation fireman in one of the poorest and most dangerous cities in America: Camden, New Jersey. The photos he posts on his Instagram are an unflinching look at the human (and often inhumane) conditions that exist in the once great city that Walt Whitman called home and often wrote so romantically about. Gabe’s photos are reminiscent of WeeGee’s in that he often arrives on the scene of a fire or crime before the police.

I recently caught up with Gabe to discuss his photos and life in Camden. The stories he told rattled my cage.

VICE: You were a sponsored skater back in the mid-90s. How did you get into photography?
Gabe: I’ve been an artist my whole life—since before skateboarding was introduced to me. I can remember drawing comic book pictures on the kitchen floor as far back as second grade. Like many skateboarders from my generation, though, the arts are connected… maybe even one in the same. I’m self-taught in just about everything I have ever done; skateboarding from the age of 12 will do that to you. I prefer to figure things out for myself. I had point and shoot film cameras from around my late teens on, and was always shooting. Then, when I became a fireman at age 24, I had to put a lot of things on the back burner to learn my trade. Then, after probie school (new fire fighters are probationary) I just never fully went back to those things—but I had a camera of some kind all along. I used to keep one at work with me up until recently, but on-duty personnel are no longer allowed to have cameras. Now I shoot on my days off more than I ever did before.

I feel like you’re the modern day Weegee—always on the scene before anyone else. How is that possible?
A lot of them were taken while I lived in Camden. A city of about ten square miles, if there was a job nearby I could get up and go shoot. If you’re listening you can go—you gotta be where the interesting things are happening if you want interesting photos. Back then I had a camera on me constantly, so with no family or responsibilities I would just hang around the firehouse on my days off. Since I moved out of the city, though, a family and young daughter keep me busy and I can’t go as often. I still shoot regularly, but I can’t do it while I’m actually on duty anymore. When I’m not playing fireman, I get busy.

Why do you shoot primarily iPhone photos? Are you strictly an Insta guy for fun, or do you have aspirations to do more with these photos?
Dude, the iPhone is incredibly fast and easy to use. What’s the saying? Something like the best camera is the one you have with you at the time? I have 20” x 20” prints from an iPhone at my house—they look just fine.

I guess I have aspirations, yeah, but not delusions of grandeur. I never was good at selling myself to the art world. We’ll see, I really do want to publish a book, but only under the right circumstances. I was in my first group show, 99 Days, at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, and have been talking to a bunch of people about future shows. I have a few good friends as mentors that I can reach out to for help. I’m going to try selling prints soon. If I’m lucky enough to sell any I’ll be donating some of the proceeds to the Heart of Camden, or Hopeworks in Camden, two non-profit organizations based in the city that I like.

Camden has been the poorest city in America for years, but last year it was also named most dangerous. How do you view Camden?
I view it on a daily basis with my own eyes, my cameras, the fine people I work with, and the rest of the city—many of whom, like me, understand how it got this way. We all know it’s a very complex situation to dig out from under; it’s hardly just one issue. I don’t have the answers, but I ask the questions. If you try, you can see through most of the political bullshit going on there, but the culture is decades in the making and to purvey another, you really have to be willing to try and get the message out, handling many setbacks along the path. There are a great deal of positive things going on in Camden—many of which I’m probably not even aware of—and unfortunately those things are always trumped by the stigma that’s attached to consistently being one of the most dangerous places in our country. For me, viewing it through my cameras and showing people what’s going on is my way of telling the story and asking for help, I suppose.

Ever seen a dead body?
Lost count. Ballpark figure, I guess 50 to 60? I really don’t know. They come one at a time or in bunches from all sorts of mishaps—from fires to industrial accidents. I’ve been assigned to the two busiest companies my whole career, so I typically deal with it one way or another. I’m assigned to our Rescue Company, we do all the extra stuff an urban fire department handles; vehicle extrication, structural collapse, confined space, high-angle rope… basically any other discipline that’s outside the realm of standard fire department operations. One of my wilder mornings involved a triple homicide, if I remember correctly. The assailant tried to light the house off where these folks were all shot up. I can remember masking up about to follow the line in a back door that led through a kitchen, listening to a police officer standing there telling us to “Try not to disturb too much shit.” Three-feet later I’m slipping all over the kitchen floor in blood and casings with several bodies all shot up—shirtless men with holes. We knocked the fire down before it really took off. The department sees this regularly enough, perhaps a bit more in Camden than other fire departments, obviously, but it is the nature of things. It really blows when they’re alive when you get there to help and don’t make it. That usually takes a hard toll on guys—a bigger toll then any of them admit. Kids are the worst. I can still smell an incident close to a dozen years ago that I dealt with involving three kids trapped in a car like it was yesterday; that smell was horror. People really have no respect for how delicate human life is—it really is by a thread.

Recently Camden removed its police force. Can that city, once known as the ‘City Invincible’ ever possibly recover?
Walt Whitman coined that term: “In a dream I saw a city invincible...” Who knows, man. I’d love to see it prosper, that’s what brings me to work, to try and help make that happen. The place has great energy and great people. What happened to the Camden Police is both a travesty and an injustice, but that’s a whole other interview. My answer is yes it can and will recover, but it needs help. It needs people and positivity. The stigma attached to it is perpetuated by people who never spent any time there. The surrounding suburban folks bash it and its people to no end. This South Jersey area really is one of the most hateful, pessimistic, and self-righteous places around. Regardless, I have hope. I’d like to help.

Tell me a couple stories of gnar that you’ve witnessed working in Camden.
This year alone I’ve seen a severely burned, slashed, and decapitated woman set on fire with lighter fluid in a home, and a man fall through the roof of a local commercial facility to his death, taking off some of his head on the way down. These things happen. Accidents are constant. There’s been a bunch of filler in between these things, but I only remember the crazier stuff these days—you kinda just go numb to it. The start of the year was busy. We had six fire fatalities fairly consecutively and I worked four of them. Mike Mercado and I humped a guy out of a fire from a second floor middle bedroom right around new years. I could tell his face had been beaten but it wasn’t easy to see him through the smoke and my mask. Thought he maybe had a chance, but he died. Apparently he had a dispute earlier that day with neighbors. The building he lived in was vacant, as most of ours are. A little late night arson revenge, I suppose. Gnar is the daily agenda for Camden. Fire, police, and EMS folks deal with it every shift there. God Bless them. I’m not sure how repeated exposure to certain things takes a toll on people—we’re all different mentally—but you just gotta tune it out if you want to come into your next shift sane. Or go home to your family without being an asshole.

Previously - Tony Hawk's Son Is a Stoner

Follow Gabe on Instagram for more photos of Camden @Ange_261

And you can purchase prints to hang in every room in your home here.

More stupid can be found at Chrisnieratko.com or @Nieratko

A French Bulldog named Satchmo, dressed as Michael Jackson. via Flickr.

We don't mean to be the one to break the bad news, but it's almost August, which means it's almost September, which means you might as well start doing your Holiday shopping because the year is basically over. The good news is that you can celebrate the season shift with some new clothes to make yourself feel better about the inevitable progression of time.

That's why our friends at H&M have a $500 gift card to give away, which is an insane amount of cash, and if you win, you'll basically be able to throw out all your clothes and start over. All you have to do is take a picture of yourself in an outfit that was inspired by your favourite musician or band or album. Get creative. Tape a print-out of Axl Rose's face to your face and throw on an Appetite for Destruction t-shirt. Whatever works. Upload your photo to this site and get your friends to vote. The most votes wins. Simple. Good luck.

Cry-Baby #1: Margie Rhea Ramey

(via Reddit/image via Hawkins County Jail)

 The incident: A woman thought some people were about to pull into her driveway to turn their car around. 

The appropriate response: Nothing. Putting up a gate or something if it's a recurring problem. 

The actual response: She shot at them with a gun. 

Last Sunday, a man named Oscar Scott was driving with his wife and five children, aged between 4 and 12, in Bays Mountain Park, Tennessee.

Oscar wanted to take a scenic route, so took a turn down a road called Bays Mt. Road. He soon realized it didn't lead anywhere, "We got pretty far down that road and you could see where it turned into an old log road, so I put the vehicle in reverse to turn around."

Which is when 72-year-old Margie Rhea Ramey (pictured above) began shooting at them.

According to Oscar, she shot at them at least twice, with one shot hitting the running board of his car, near to where one of his children was sitting. 

In an interview with the Old Time News, Oscar said "I hadn’t even begun to turn my wheels to pull in her driveway, I just put my vehicle in reverse, and just as quickly as I put it in reverse I heard her hollering and my little boy said, ‘does she got a gun?' About that time she started shooting.”

Sgt. Michael Allen, of the local police department, told the Old Time News, “During a field interview Mrs. Ramey openly admitted to shooting her rifle towards the vehicle because she has had a continuous problem with people tearing up her driveway.”

Margie was arrested and charged with seven counts of felony reckless endangerment. She was released on bail, and is due back in court for a preliminary hearing in September. 

Cry-Baby #2: Olga Rozhoav

The incident: A teacher saved a class of children from a burning building. 

The appropriate response: Congratulating her. Possibly even giving her some kind of award or a medal or something 

The actual response: She was fired. 

Last week, Michelle Hammack was working at Little Temples Childcare in Jacksonville, Florida. 

While her children were taking their afternoon nap, Michelle smelled burning and went to investigate. In the kitchen, she discovered a small fire in the oven. When she opened the oven door, the smoke cause the fire alarm to go off.

She went back to her classroom, woke up her kids, and led them outside to safety. 

While other teachers did a head count, Michelle went back inside the building to make sure there were no children left. While inside, she realized that the fire was small enough for her to deal with, and extinguished it herself. 

Upon returning to work the next day, she was fired. 

Speaking to Action News Jackson, Olga Rozhoav, the owner of Little Temples Childcare said, “I fired her only because she left her room. Even though children are sleeping, the teachers are supposed to be there. It’s not acceptable, and if anybody else does the same thing, I will fire again. I will fire them. No question.”

The Department of Children and Families is currently investigating the incident.

Which of these grumpy old gals is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll plz:

Previously: A guy who called the cops on someone for singing "Happy Birthday" Vs. Some people who beat up a guy for blowing a whistle

Winner: The birthday guys!

@JLCT

Photos by Henry Hargreaves, Cakes by Amirah Kassem of Flour Shop

Watch this short video of Amirah Kassem's cakes being destroyed:

More photo stuff from VICE:  

Interfearance

The ‘LBM Dispatch’ Brings the Good News

Exogenesis

Much of the news cycle earlier this week was dominated by the birth of a baby that has absolutely nothing to do with your life, apart from the fact that he'll be raised with an obscene amount of tax-provided resources. Meanwhile, actual things were happening that were worth talking about, even if it was hidden under an avalanche of headlines about baby names and the relevancy (or lack thereof) of the monarchy. For instance, the Canadian Press used the Access to Information Act to obtain the results of an internally-commissioned Harris-Decima poll on the government's Economic Action Plan advertising campaign. The results are pretty pathetic.

The Action Plan, in case you're wondering, was the stimulus package introduced by the Conservatives after the 2008 recession. The first Action Plan was in 2009, when the economy actually needed a boost, but since the Conservatives won a majority government in 2011 “Economic Action Plan” has been the official name of the annual budget. As Macleans' Paul Wells' explains, “Harper's Economic Action Plans, by contrast, are carnivals of fantasy,” more useful as a way of hiding government spending than controlling it. As Wells points out, the Economic Action Plan 2013 doesn't even provide spending information for the Canadian military, let alone potentially harmful spending cuts.

Thus, the EAP ads are no longer informing Canadians of a stimulus package, they're simply spinning the budget itself. As the ad embedded at the top of this article shows—and by the way, it has less than 8,000 views on YouTube at the time of this writing, and a disabled comment section—the campaign promotes some of the government's more partisan policies. This includes developing “safe and responsible resource development” (or continuing the environmentally hazardous exploitation of the Alberta tar sands), finding “new markets for Canadian exports” (or opening up trade with countries that don't have a particularly good record of protecting human rights, like China), and creating “more efficient government, to keep taxes low” (Conservative talk for cutting services and programs).

In other words, those over-produced, utterly uninformative advertisements you've been seeing on TV and hearing on radio are propaganda, out there to convince Canadians that the government—the Conservative government—is doing stuff to make their lives better in this slowly recovering economic climate. Little do they know that the Action Plan isn't a specific program or service. It's just the government's own fanciful budget, dressed up in positive buzzwords. So it's a little ironic, and a little satisfying, that these ads have failed in capturing any sort of public mood.

The Harris-Decima survey obtained by the Canadian Press gathered responses from 2,003 participants about the cycle of advertisements that aired from February to April this year. It's important to mention the amount of participants, because some of the numbers here are embarrassingly small. The EAP ads prominently encouraged viewers to visit the Action Plan website at actionplan.gc.ca. Out of 2,003 people, only three survey participants actually followed through. The ads also encouraged viewers to call 1-800-O-CANADA. Zero participants called the number. Not just statistically zero percent, but zero participants in total. The margin of error on this survey is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points (19 times out of 20), but with results these small, only the plus seems to matter.

These dismal results continue a quantifiable decline in interest since the government began purchasing these ads in 2009. So far, they've spent a total of $113 million of Economic Action Plan advertising, but they're planning to keep rolling them out until at least 2016 (depending, of course, on the results of the next federal election). But the real reason these results are so low is because these ads are not meant to encourage feedback or action. They're meant to promote, not inform.

The website and the phone number aren't things that need to be called. They're an excuse, a made up purpose, invented by the Conservatives so they can fill airwaves with self-promoting advertisements purchased with taxpayer dollars. Even if hardly anyone responds to the Action Plan ads, the likelihood that someone approves of the government's performance is five percent higher from someone who has seen the ads than someone who has not.

When Liberal leader Justin Trudeau attacked the campaign in a parliamentary Question Period earlier this year, Stephen Harper defended the ads by saying “Canadians understand and are very proud of the fact that Canada's economy has performed so much better than other developed countries during these challenging times.” This defense doesn't even try to claim that the ads are informing citizens about programs and services, which is a requirement of the Treasury Board. Instead they simply promote the government's intentions with a Conservative-blue colour scheme that sometimes has to contradict reality to stay consistent.

Of course, the government is required to occasionally spend money on advertising, but an unwarranted increase in spending has occurred across several agencies under Harper, often to accommodate the EAP campaign. Like the Albertan government spending $30 000 on a half-page New York Times ad to promote the Keystone XL, this is not an acceptable use of public funds. The government has taken their responsibility to inform Canadians, through advertising, of programs and services, but they've used the words “inform,” “program,” and “service” so loosely that they fail to have any meaning at all. Harper may as well be “informing” us—objectivity be damned—that he's a pretty good guy and government is doing a swell job. Sure, Treasury Board regulations and campaign laws don't technically bar advertising like this, but they damn well should.

Follow Alan on Twitter: @alanjonesxxxv

More Canadian Politics:

Filtering Out Porn is a Dumb Idea

Setting Up a Safe Injection Site in Canada Shouldn't Be Such a Nightmare

Our Government is Withholding Documents Concerning the Torture of Native Children

Clive Stafford Smith spent years working as a death row lawyer in the southern states of the US before becoming the legal director of the UK branch of Reprieve. Reprieve is a not-for-profit organisation that has long campaigned for the rights of death row prisoners. However, since 2002 it has helped release prisoners from Guantanamo Bay – a campaign led by Stafford Smith himself.

Not only has Stafford Smith seen first hand the inside of the prison, he’s also maintained relationships with former detainees and built relationships with those currently on hunger strike. The hunger strike in Guantanamo began on February 11th, 2013 and it's got to a stage where some prisoners being force fed, arguably in violation of their human rights.

VICE Meets discusses Guantanamo and the future of drone warfare – which Reprieve condemns as "the death penalty without trial".

Hopgood's Foodliner is the brainchild of Geoff Hopgood. Situated in the middle of Toronto's Roncesvalles neighborhood—a historically Polish area that's now been gentrified—Hopgood's imports the energy and flavor of Canadian Maritimes cuisine and chefs it up slightly. We took the Hopgood's crew out to one of their favorite restaurants, Chantecler, a popular spot in Toronto's Parkdale neighborhood that alternates between decadent tasting menu sittings and a more subdued, lettuce wrap Sunday meal. After that, we headed up north to the Junction neighborhood for drinks at Hole in the Wall. The night ended back at Hopgood's for a seafood party. It was dizzying and delicious. Hope you enjoy it.

More Canadian food adventures:

Bar Isabel

Joe Beef

Guu Izakaya

That D.A.R.E. Lion is really making me feel like getting high. via Flickr.

I had never really thought much about drugs until Grade 8 rolled around. Back in the day, when I was a wee lassie, I was a pretty good kid. All of that changed quite quickly, and soon after my fascination with drugs began, I found myself running into trouble or away from authorities. How can someone do such a complete and thorough 180? Well, I blame drug prevention programs. When my high school brought in ex-football player Alvin Powell—who runs the anti-drug, Saving Station Foundation in Montreal—that’s when everything changed. He gave my whole school a lecture on how he destroyed his life with crack cocaine and all I could think was, “that guy is the coolest guy ever.”

It was something about the way he described being high that grabbed my attention and made me listen. It was intriguing to know that you could change your entire psyche by ingesting different chemicals. The way he talked about smoking crack cocaine from a little glass pipe seemed so magical. It was all in his tone of voice and enthusiasm. One of the things that really stuck with me was when he said something along the lines of: “I had so much sex with so many beautiful women, and the all-night parties were incredible. I mean INCREDIBLE!” I wanted to party all night and have a bunch of weird crazy sex with my face covered in cocaine, too! I wanted to experience the craziness that he was describing. I wanted his life, and at that point, I didn’t give a shit about the consequences.

Basically, everything television and my elders had told me about why drugs were terrible just made me want to get super fucking high even more than I already did. I know I’m not the only one who felt like this. In a study that came out in 2004 from the United States’ National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, it was discovered that anti-drug TV ads were “associated with weaker anti-drug norms and increases in the perceptions that others use marijuana.” Clearly, their fear tactics failed. What bugs me about this is, since the study was conducted, these antidrug bureaus have not revamped their angle. We still see all those fucked up ads that suggest complete and utter destruction is a couple of bong rips away.

Not all prevention programs are horrible, though. Take a look at the alternative “Frank” program from the UK that has been in operation for the past decade. Their ads consist of honest information that shows the positive effects of drugs, like happiness and confidence—but also tells you the downsides as well, like dependence and health risks. These ads are genius, and I wish they would air in North America. They have trashed the scare tactic angle and replaced it with actual information. Interestingly enough, drug use in England has decreased 9% in the past decade. That may not be directly because of Frank, but I would like to think their smart approach to drug education has had an impact on England’s youth.

Back here in Canada, according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, 60% of illicit drug users are in between the ages of 15-24; but clearly the drug prevention ad campaigns in North America are having trouble communicating with the kids. As a way to brainstorm some new advertising strategies, I sat down with a couple of my compadres that I used to party with (all of us are seasoned addicts or ex-addicts) to discuss how existing drug prevention campaigns could be improved. If we were in charge of North America’s antidrug strategies, here’s how we would keep kids from becoming regular users.

Well, this is effective. via Flickr.

All names have been changed to pseudonyms.

Sean Kavanaugh: Male, 21 years old
Drugs of choice: Heroin, Ketamine, PCP and Acid.
Started using: I started using drugs when I was 14 years old.
Sober since: I’m in and out of rehab and whatnot.

What did you think of the anti-drug campaigns when you were a kid?
I didn’t think I would ever have to worry about getting involved with drugs, so I didn’t pay attention to the ads. By the time I realised that I had become the person they were using as an example for young addicts, I didn’t give a shit anymore.

How would you keep kids off drugs?
They should make a simulation game that you “play” in groups of eight or ten kids at a time. The game would be played near a derelict building or somewhere equally as disgusting. They would be supervised at all times obviously, but they're on their own when it comes to finding a good place to sleep. They can eat twice a day, but the food will be shit and they have to walk 45 minutes to a dumpster before they can eat. They won’t eat out of the dumpster because that’s not safe, but they can’t eat until they thrash around in the dumpster for a bit. They have to walk around outside for at least five or six hours a day. Their socks would be taken away and their shoes would be filled with gravel or something else hard. Then they would have dirt and bugs and shit in their hair and clothes. They would be humiliated at metro stations and outside grocery stores. No washing, no brushing their teeth, no clean clothes, give them nothing.

Basically, these kids would experience what my every day life used to be.


Ben Smith: Male, 21 years old.
Drugs of choice: Heroin, ketamine, cocaine.
Started using: When I was 13.
Sober since: I’ve been sober for four months and four days.

What did you think of anti-drug ad campaigns when you were a kid?
When you’re a kid—and the possibility of using drugs is inconceivable—those ads seem really stupid. Then when you reach a point when you are susceptible to becoming addicted to drugs and those ads could actually apply to you, your opinion of them is still ingrained… so you can’t relate at all.

How would you keep kids off drugs, knowing what you know now?
It's tricky, because if you try and scare kids, the ones who aren't prone to addiction will get scared, but the ones who are will get curious. Showing the consequences of heavy drug use doesn't really work, because kids don’t give a shit, long-term or short-term, and their power of denial is a lot higher than your power to convince them. I think the best way would be to show kids how becoming a drug addict turns you into a social outcast. Since every kid is terrified of being a social outcast, they could relate to that.


Janet Fields: Female, 21 years old
Drugs of choice: My drugs of choice are cocaine, speed, MDMA, ecstasy, ketamine, acid, mushrooms, alcohol...
Started using: 15 years old.
Sober since: I’m not sober per se, but I have been through therapy and I’m trying to cut down. Some weeks are better than others.

What did you think of the anti-drug campaigns when you were a kid?
I thought they were bullshit. I didn’t get them. They were just these little weird ads on television that made me feel uncomfortable because they were so vague. I wanted to understand what they were talking about, but no one could seem to answer my questions in a satisfactory manner. No parents, no teachers, nobody. It was annoying, and then they would always get so weird and paranoid when you pushed them to tell you answers. It wasn’t until I got older that I figured it out for myself, and by then it was too late.

How would you keep kids off drugs?
There’s a big difference between doing drugs occasionally and being an addict. I don’t think schools and parents should be teaching kids that if you do drugs you’re going to be a complete waste of space and that you will absolutely become an addict. I think that the system should teach kids that if you are going to use it’s ok, but in moderation. Drugs are frowned upon in this society but alcohol is ok, which to me is fucked up because you can get way more gnarly on booze than a bit of blow.

I unfortunately didn’t think about moderation when I was doing drugs, and became super addicted. It took me a while to clean myself up. I wish people would have advocated moderation more, instead of just telling me not to do it. People told me not to do it so I did it. I felt like rebelling. If someone would have said: “Drugs are fine. In Moderation.” I probably would not have touched them. If we educate our kids about moderation it will change everything, I’m 100% positive.


Previously:

Adderall Can Really Fuck You Up

The title, Never Like the First Time! refers to just what you'd expect—losing your virginity. Back in 2006, acclaimed artist Jonas Odell animated four true stories on the subject of popping cherries, which were recorded in 2002 by his colleague Benjamin Wolff. The loss of one’s virginity is universally considered a milestone moment in people’s lives, one that Odell manages to convey with range and depth. There's the standard stuff like boning at a party or the methodical succession of heavy petting to finally knocking boots. Then there's the more troubling sex that involves peer pressure and abuse.  Each interview is recreated with an animation style that suits its tone and serves its story, which makes each piece feel singular. However, when you see all of the stories together, you walk away with a powerful sentiment you wouldn't get if you just saw one by itself.

While watching the film I can’t help but reflect on my own experience crossing that seminal finish line. My story is pretty typical, although I had to wait until I was 18. It wasn’t that I was afraid of pussy, I just was one. There were many missed opportunities that will forever stick in my mind as mistakes, but in the end, I lost it to a girl I thought I loved. That was a lesson in itself—discovering that my dick can make big decisions without consulting me. Regardless, we were both virgins and wildly unprepared for the deed. I pawed her breasts and she poked my penis, things went this way and that and I came in the condom quickly. Emotions got heavy and we thought our relationship was redefined. I realized that things are very rarely about the actual moment, but more about the memories created. We rely on our memories to shape each future decision and action, but as emotional creatures we know they shouldn’t ever be fully trusted. But what else do we have? Without memories we are destined to make the same mistakes over and over. I’ve pined over lovers who were wrong for me, but after we split I could only remember the good stuff or vice versa. Odell’s film is as much about getting laid for the first time as it is about recalling yourself, your feelings, and who you were at a specific point in time. None of us are the same as we were when we lost our “purity,” but none of us could be and that’s something to remember. It’s never going to be your first time again. Each day is new and there are always more firsts to be had, plus great seconds, thirds, fourths, and fifths. 

Never Like the First Time! was Jonas Odell’s first animated documentary. He made the film back in 2006, where it won the Golden Bear Award for best short subject at the Berlinale Film Festival, as well as a Guldbagge in Sweden, and other prizes  He followed up the film with the equally successful short animated doc Lies in 2008. Both before and after these forays into non-fiction he has been animating fiction shorts, commercials, and music videos, even getting a Grammy nomination and winning an MTV Music Award for the Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" video. 

I wanted to know how one decides to make a project about losing your virginity, without including your own tale of getting a piece of tail. Jonas was nice enough to answer.

VICE: How did this project come to you? 
Jonas Odell: I felt for a while that a lot of animation was becoming quite self-referential, at best referencing other films, at worst referencing other animated films. Doing something based on real people's personal stories felt almost like opening up a window to let some air in. I was also interested in how several stories on the same subject add up to something more than just the sum of the parts when put next to each other, so I wanted to let a group of people each tell the story of the same event in their respective lives.

How many interviews did you have to go through before you found the final four?
About 30 interviews were made in total, and then we went back to do additional interviews with some of the people who we felt might work in the film. The final selection was done based on which stories we felt might work best together and complement each other.

There are an infinite number of cherry-popping stories, why did these four stick out to you?
We really picked stories based on whether we thought we could do them justice in the film. All the stories people told are of course worth retelling, so the selection wasn't about the quality of the stories. Rather, it was about the balance in the film and about what we thought we could do with the stories.

How did you develop the style of animation for each interview?  
I knew early on in the process that I wanted the style of each story to come out of the mood of the story itself, rather than to predefine the style of the film. We used a mix of live action and animation in a couple of the stories where we felt the motion of real people rather than animated ones would provide the right feeling for what we wanted.

What are you working on now?
Apart from commercials and music videos, there is another short based on interviews in production.

Any plans to ever make a feature?
I have one project that we are trying to get financed at the moment. No animation in it, though.

Thanks Jonas and good luck.

Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as an art and film curator. He is a programmer at the Hamptons International Film Festival and screens for the Tribeca Film Festival. He also self-publishes a super fancy mixed-media art serial called PRISM index.

@PRISMindex

Previously - I'm Short, Not Stupid Presents: 'Madame Tutli Putli'

Last week’s capture of Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales made news all over the world, and was celebrated in the mainstream press as a blow against Los Zetas and a decimation of their leadership. The New York Times went so far as to claim his capture could represent a “crossroads” in the four-decade war on drugs.

These media reports are mainly based on anonymous official sources and analysts who spend too much time on YouTube. Thankfully, there are still some people out there whose bullshit detectors work. These are the folks who can help us get beyond the official line and understand the on-the-ground impact of apprehending a guy nicknamed Z-40 and putting him in jail.

First, it’s important to have a sense of Treviño’s true role in the organization, a nuance that seems to escape even the most hardened stay-at-home keyboard warrior analysts. I asked Guadalupe Correa Cabrera, who teaches in the governance department at the University of Texas in Brownsville, across the river from Matamoros, Tamaulipas, if the mainstream media has oversold the importance of men like Treviño Morales and the role of hired killers within Los Zetas.

“The problem is the media is looking at the lil sicario as if he were the whole organization,” said Cabrera. She’s writing a book titled Zetas Inc., where she compares their structure and operations to that of a corporation. The way she sees it, the assassins who work for the Zetas are basically like a marketing department, and, far from a cartel overseer, Treviño Morales was more like a top salesman.

“[Los Zetas] generate terror through the news media and social networks with the decapitations, dismemberment, hanging people from bridges, the narco-banners... all of it is a strategy that for them generates a brand. And then you add extorsion, kidnapping, the ‘taxes’ on businesses... that makes them an incredible threat,” the professor said. “But that’s just one part of the organization.”

Correa Cabrera insists that Los Zetas is much more than a drug trafficking organization, having branched out long ago into extortion, pirated DVD sales, control of migrant routes, and more. But on top of mimicking a corporation, the Zetas still follow a military model, and perhaps much more closely than we think.

She points out that the increased military presence in Tamaulipas State, home to Nuevo Laredo, the border city where Treviño Morales was killed, has done little damage to the Zetas and has instead spread the group’s reach.

“It’s taken away very little from them. I mean, it’s made them expand into [the states of] Durango, Coahuila, which are states where there is no trafficking of drugs,” said Cabrera.

If you’ve been paying attention to the drug war in Mexico since Felipe Calderón started his term in December 2006, you’ll probably agree that it is no surprise that using the army to chase around criminal groups is a futile way to slow down the drug trade.

Shannon O’Neill, a US government policy wonk who supports the drug war wholeheartedly put it well when she testified in front of US senators about the Merida Initiative, a US antidrugs aid package, earlier this year. "When the Merida Initiative was signed in 2007, there were just over 2,000 drug-related homicides annually; by 2012, the number escalated to more than 12,000,” she said. “Violence also spread from roughly 50 municipalities in 2007 (mostly along the border and in Sinaloa) to some 240 municipalities throughout Mexico in 2011, including the once-safe industrial center of Monterrey and cities such as Acapulco, Nuevo Laredo, and Torreon."

Data like that makes it clear that violence and bloodshed in Mexico has spiked alongside US funding programs designed (in name, at least) to combat drugs and violence. How does this connect to Z-40, you’re wondering? Sean Dunagan, a jovial former Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence analyst in Monterrey, Mexico, and Guatemala, thinks US policy is what creates people like Treviño Morales, who is said to have killed over 2,000 people.

“The one thing that really stands out, that really isn’t reported, is that we created Miguel Treviño,” said Dunagan. “I mean he is entirely a product of American drug policy. Without our current drug policy he wouldn't exist. He might have been a car jacker who probably would be sitting in a Mexican jail right now.”

Dunagan was collecting intelligence in Monterrey before leaving the DEA and joining a group of ex-cops against the drug war known as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

“Our policy of prohibition is what creates people like that. It incentivizes violence to a tremendous degree, so we shouldn’t be surprised when someone rises to the top and commits 2,000 murders to get there, because in the scheme that we’ve created and forced on the Mexican government, that’s necessarily going to happen,” Dunagan told VICE Mexico from his home in Washington, DC. “If we want people like him to stop terrorizing Mexico we need to stop our policies. He’s just a logical product of what we’ve done.”

But instead of focusing on how US policy is at the root of the violence taking place in Mexico, the official story says that by arresting a capo, the Mexican Marines might just have undone a criminal organization that is spread out through vast swatches of Mexican territory. Stratfor, an Austin, Texas, based think tank, did a lovely homage to this version of events by running a headline asking: “Will Los Zetas Unravel Without Their Leader?”

I asked Carlos Resa Nestares, a professor of applied economy at the Autonomous University of Madrid in Spain who has written a series of critical texts on the myths of drug trafficking in Mexico, for his opinion on the intelligence created by groups like Stratfor.

“Stratfor has no fucking clue what is happening. Which is to say, I’ve interviewed Stratfor people and they seem to have no fucking clue. They simply copy what is said in the papers and more or less give it some analysis,” he said, putting strong emphasis on the word fucking (or puta in this case) both times. “It doesn’t seem to be that Stratfor is a serious source of information.”

Resa Nestares insists that the Zetas are in fact a paramilitary group that is more focused on extortion than drug trafficking. He claims that the DEA plays up the links between the Zetas and drugs in order to keep US funds flowing to the drug war.

“Narcos’ principal activity is the sale of drugs, buying drugs cheap, and selling drugs at high costs,” said Resa Nestares in an interview from Madrid. “Los Zetas doesn’t do that. They extort people. They extort other drug traffickers, cantinas, a wide range of things, but they do not dedicate themselves fundamentally to drugs, not even to exporting them,” he said.

Resa Nestares doesn’t think killing Z-40 will create a traditional power vacuum as is known to happen when the heads of traditional drug cartels are murdered and lower ranking members vie for power, attempting to re-create the contacts and routes of their former bosses. He compares the Zetas to a mafia, whose main income source is extortion or providing protection to people trying to avoid it. Recreating this following the killing of a higher ranking member is another story altogether. “What happens when you behead a mafioso? Well, the situation gets much more complicated.”

A ministerial source who asked to remained anonymous confirmed to VICE Mexico Monday afternon that Treviño Morales, aka Z-40, was being held at the Altiplano Maximum Security Prison in Mexico State. “The two charges for which he was detained are use of illicit funds, and storage and possession of weapons that are for exclusive use of the armed forces,” the source said.

More Mexican drugs:

The Zetas' Leader Has Been Captured, but Is That Really Such a Good Thing?

Los Zetas Drug Cartel Have Their Own Radio Network

Murderous Little Boys Are the Future of Mexico's Drug War

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Welcome to another edition of This Week in Racism. I’ll be ranking news stories on a scale of 1 to RACIST, with “1” being the least racist and “RACIST” being the most racist.

-You might have heard that George Zimmerman saved a family trapped in an SUV. The family canceled a planned press conference fearing blowback regarding being saved by the newest "Most Hated Man in America." I'm going to ignore that and focus on the happy part of this story. George Zimmerman saving a family from certain death finally proves once and for all that he is not a bad person. We’ve been waiting for proof, and we finally have it! On a related note, I saved the last slice of pizza for my girlfriend last night, so based on my knowledge of the “Good Deeds Reward Scale,” I now have carte blanche to give a minor head wound to a middle-aged Korean man wearing bifocals. 3

-A black family in San Bernardino, California, woke up last Sunday morning to find the cutest little wooden swastika burning in the street near their home. One wonders how a person can procure a wooden swastika these days. Is there an Etsy store that sells items for the DIY bigot? Maybe you have to carve them yourself? If so, that must take weeks of whittling. I’ll say this for those of you out there who are racists, you are all very committed to hating people. Sometimes I can’t even commit to wearing underwear, so you’ve got me there. RACIST

Photo via Death & Taxes Magazine

-If there’s one thing I actually hate, it’s Facebook memes, specifically the text-heavy ones that your friends really need you to “share” because they’re “so important.” A meme going around right now is a testimonial from a dead baby named “Antonio West.” The meme describes Antonio as being murdered by a rabid pack of teens in a “73 percent non-white neighborhood.” Since black people don’t care when white people are killed, President Black Hussein Omammy (a.k.a. the Ebony Devil) did nothing when these teens were not charged with the death penalty. The meme goes on to say [all sic'd]:

“I am one of the youngest murder victims in our great Nation’s history, but the media doesn’t care to cover the story of my tragic demise, President Obama has no children who could possibly look like me—so he doesn’t care and the media doesn’t care because my story is not interesting enough to bring them ratings so they can sell commercial time slots.”

Sounds like this baby just wants his 15 minutes of fame from beyond the grave. What has this country come to when dead babies are trying to get on TV? Now, that’s macabre.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the sentence that actually says, “There is no White Panther party to put a bounty on the lives of those who murdered me.” There is, it’s called the KKK, the Neo-Nazis, or any number of other hate groups, who, as you can tell from the above swastika story, are still around. 9

Photo by Flickr User GageSkidmore

-Noted power bottom Ann Coulter receives this week’s Ann Coulter Award for Excellence in Racism for her article, “Unsung Black People.” These “black heroes” are the people who dare to be happy when a person is killed. Ann has had it up to here with all the black folk sticking up for their race. They should be glad when a black criminal gets shot. Also, she really wants you to buy her book, as you can see below:

“You'll never hear a peep about any of these courageous black people, unless you obsessively research every "race" case of the last 30 years, as I did for my book Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama. (All these black heroes appear in my book.) “

Black heroes mentioned in Ann's book include:

• Blade, the vampire hunter
• Ernie Hudson from Ghostbusters
• Fat Albert
• The guy who saved the women in Cleveland who loves McDonald's
• Darryl Strawberry
• Shaft
• Mace Windu
• Idris Elba
• Clarence Clemons from the E-Street Band
• T.I.

If this sounds amazing to you too, then please rush out and purchase Ann Coulter’s sensational new book where she solves race relations in America forever. It’s priced to move… your bowels! RACIST

@YesYoureRacist’s Ten Most Racist Retweets of the Week [all grammar sic'd]:

10. @Walttty717: I'm not a racist, but after being at the social security office I believe all black people know each other #familyreunion

9. @andrew_kuras: There will be a f*cking world war before the government will take our guns away. F*ck you Obama you shit looking ni**er.

8. @Jeremy_Pannoni: Some black people are just allergic to doing work. #notracist

7. @TommyToes: I'm not racist but I'm pretty pissed at the African American race for allowing Tyler Perry's career to happen..

6. @sherlocke2: I'm not a "racist" but of course I will laugh at a funny-looking asian.

5. @themanabraham: If you don't hate Michael after watching Lost you're black. Damn ni**ers whoops not racist, but I do dislike the blacks

4. @getreil1991: I can't listen to JIGABOO music all the time #notracist

3. @patriot4USA: back during segregation a lot people were true racists Whites aren't like that now.

2. @codylashen: My grandma just called Obama a ni**er. #TooFunny

1. @JewishJaguar: you don't see a lot of native americans in high school why are they lazy? not racist but why don't they attend education?

Last Week in Racism: George Zimmerman Isn't White

@dave_schilling