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Meet the Dad Whose Spying Helped Put a Predator in Jail

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[body_image width='1080' height='720' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='meet-the-dad-whose-spying-helped-put-a-predator-in-jail-253-body-image-1418664519.jpg' id='11498']

Photo via  ​Flickr user OTA Photos.

Parents today have the daunting task of simultaneously fostering their kids' independence while needing to keep them safe from the legion of unseen dangers that lurks online. To deal with this responsibility, some parents opt to closely monitor their kids' virtual lives.

One Toronto father has taken a decidedly hands-on approach to his young girls' online interactions, and it resulted in him assisting in the arrest and conviction of an Ohio child pornographer. Cliff Ford says he and his then-wife decided to monitor what their 13 and 11-year-old daughters did online after one accidentally stumbled upon a porn link when she was eight or nine.

"The first thing we did was we got a software package that filters out the adult content and blocks being able to go to anything that is deemed too mature," Cliff told VICE. "And then as my girls started to get more involved online with social media and so forth, we put in rules."

Those rules include Cliff having access to his daughters' account names and passwords, and having their email accounts mirrored to his cell phone so he can screen their emails. But he insists he's not trying to oversee every aspect of his children's lives.

"I never read an email message from a friend of theirs that we know. I only scan message headers to understand who is sending it and what the subject line is. They are allowed their private conversations within the confines of actual friends they know."

While some may be concerned the behaviour is a bit overbearing, Cliff's supervision yielded an unexpected result earlier this year. In January, he saw an email from a stranger in one of his daughter's email accounts. The subject line read, "Hey Sexy." Rather than simply telling the man never to contact his daughter again, like many parents might, Cliff moved into action. He took over his daughter's account and, after realizing the man— later iden​tified as Nicholas Bowers, a 30-year-old living near Akron, Ohio—had been "grooming" his daughter on a chatroom for some nefarious purpose, began conversing with him in an effort to learn more about him.

"I could see that it was starting to escalate to become more of a sexual nature," Cliff said of the ongoing chat between his daughter and Nicholas. "Certainly the last couple of times just before he sent [the email], as an adult, you look at it and see that it's clearly trying to get something from the child."

Cliff posed as his daughter and continued her conversation with Nicholas, subtly drawing out information about his location and intentions. Nicholas had, foolishly, used his first name on his chatroom account, and there was a newspaper advertisement with a phone number area code in the background of his profile picture. He demured when Nicholas asked him to send a photo, but used the opening.

"At one point," Cliff said, "he started to ask for pictures or videos to be sent from my daughter to him and I responded back that I wasn't comfortable doing that, 'But why don't you send me a picture?' So I was then able to Google image search, which pointed me to his Facebook page, which gave me his full name."

Nicholas also sent a video of himself masturbating to what he thought was Cliff's daughter. That was around the time when Cliff decided to shut his amateur investigation down and turn it over to the pros. He contacted Akron police with the information he'd collected on Nicholas, and then Toronto police as well. The joint investigation led quickly to arrest and unearthed evidence that Nicholas was part of a child pornography ring.

In the matter of just three days, Cliff gathered enough evidence to push police into an investigation that resulted in Nicholas Bowers pleading guilty to child pornography-related charges and being sentenced to 22 years in prison.

While it's hard to question a father who detects and then stops a predator attempting to hurt a child, Cliff's level of oversight might actually be largely unnecessary. Danah Boyd, a visiting professor at New York University and author of  It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, has written extensively on privacy, the internet, and teens. In a piece for Psych​ology Today, Boyd writes that teens are usually sexually solicited by their peers and classmates.

In the rare cases where an adult successfully preys on a child they don't know—as might have been the case with Cliff had he not intervened—that child is usually dealing with other factors that put them at risk, from being abused to dealing with addiction or other mental health issues. For healthy, happy teens, sexual assault from strangers is not a significant risk of online life. This would suggest that better methods of detecting and treating those larger problems is a good way to cut down on the danger of strange men (and some women) on the internet.

Moreover, because the internet has in many ways replaced the public, curtailing kids' independence online can stunt their maturation. "What makes our national obsession with sexual predation destructive is that it is used to justify systematically excluding young people from public life, both online and off," writes Boyd. "Stopping children from connecting to strangers is seen as critical for their own protection, even though learning to navigate strangers is a key part of growing up."

For his part, Cliff says he plans to scale back his involvement in his girls' online lives as they age. They're just 13 and 11 right now, so they're still beginning to figure out the things Boyd wrote about. And Cliff has some suggestions for other parents as well.

"As a society, we have to adapt our typical style of parenting to still allow for kids to be kids but also to protect them. I may not have wanted to tell my parents everything growing up, but I certainly knew that I could if I needed them."

Follow Tannara on ​Twitter.

Comics: Megg, Mogg, & Owl: Everyone Got Herpes from Werewolf Jones

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[body_image width='1200' height='1728' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='megg-mogg-owl-everyone-got-herpes-from-werewolf-jones-000-body-image-1418656747.jpg' id='11459'][body_image width='1200' height='1724' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='megg-mogg-owl-everyone-got-herpes-from-werewolf-jones-000-body-image-1418656764.jpg' id='11460']​Check out Simon's blog ​here.

Can Elizabeth Warren Beat Hillary Clinton in 2016? Is She Going to Try?

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Last week, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren loudly and vigorously opposed a bipartisan compromise to the​ Dodd-Frank bill that would eliminate restrictions on "swaps," a type of transaction Wall Street traders used to sell risky loans, and ultimately, drive the financial markets into a tailspin from which the global economy is only now recovering. Warren spent all of last week telling anyone who would listen that the compromise, included in the $1.1 trillion spending bill that Congress passed this weekend, was a terrible idea.

"Who does Congress work for? Does it work for the millionaires, the billionaires, the giant companies with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers? Or does it work for all of us?" she asked in a ​speech on the Senate floor, blasting the provision as "the worst of government for the rich and powerful."

"People are frustrated with Congress," she continued. "Mostly it's because they see a Congress that works just fine for the big guys but won't lift a finger to help them. If big companies can deploy their armies of lawyers and lobbyists to get the Congress to vote for special deals that will benefit themselves, then we will simply confirm the view of the American people that the system is rigged."

The legislation may have passed, but Warren's relentless campaign against weakening Dodd-Frank is the latest piece of evidence that explains why the former law professor has become the darling of the progressive left. And thanks to stances like this—all part of her convincing anti-Wall Street, pro-consumer resume—a growing chorus of liberals are calling for Warren to be the party's next Barack Obama: a candidate who can get the people going, and defeat Hillary Clinton from the left.

Warren's rise began in the mid-2000s when, as a professor at Harvard Law School, she began to vocally oppose the growing income-inequality gap that would come to a head in the financial crisis. MoveOn.org, the progressive activist organization, first featured her in an email back in 2005, according to mailings forwarded to VICE by Ben Wikler, MoveOn's Washington director. 

In 2010, MoveOn featured her in another email, asking its members to sign a petition calling on Obama to name Warren as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency she had played a major role in creating. Convinced Warren could not overcome the virulent Republican objections to her appointment, Obama passed her over for the role, but she parlayed the momentum into a 2012 Senate campaign that made her one of the progressive movement's favorite members of Congress.

Since then, Warren has had to deal with the usual obstacles of being part of the most publicly despis​ed body in the American political system. But that hasn't seemed to hamper her own reputation, in part because Warren has continued to pursue the priorities that drove her ascent in the first place. In addition to going to bat to protect Dodd-Frank, Warren has also been a​t the forefront of resistance to Obama's recent nominee for treasury undersecretary, a 48-year-old banker named Antonio Weiss who is currently global head of investment banking at Lazard. It's always rare for Democrats to oppose nominations from their party's president, but Warren's opposition is particularly notable because she's galvanized a progressive uprising to push back against Obama's nomination.

All of this activism has crystallized into a strong movement to persuade Warren to run for president—an opportunity that, so far, she's expressed little interest in. The progressive organization Democracy for America, which has in the past partnered with politicians like Howard Dean and Bernie Sanders, sent out a mailer this week ​affirming their ​support for ​Warren against Wall Street and Lazard. DFA's executive director Charles Chamberlain told me that they've long been in Warren's corner, supporting her efforts to lead the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, as well as her Senate campaign in 2012.

"I hope what candidates for Congress and president, up and down the ballot, have learned from this week is that Wall Street Democrats don't have the support of the grassroots base," Chamberlain said. "The reality is that Wall Street helped get us into the mess we're in, and it's time that we have candidates who really stand up to the people and are fighting for what the middle class needs. Ultimately, that's why we see this growing movement for Warren to run for president. We unequivocally understand that she's been sent to Washington to work for the people, not Wall Street."

That confidence in Warren's convictions—and her fealty to her party's progressive base—seems to be the driving force behind the growing push to get her to run for president. Chamberlain said that even if Warren isn't a presidential candidate in 2016, whoever does run will have to acknowledge that Warren Populism is the future of the party, and that Democrats who did succeed in the 2014 midterms succeeded on the platform of fighting income inequality.

One of the biggest campaigns to get Warren to bid for the presidency is MoveOn's Run Warren Run petition drive. According to Wikler, the petition grew out of the overwhelming desire among MoveOn members for the Democrats' 2016 primary to be a contested election, rather than a coronation of Hillary Clinton, and for Warren to be the one leading the fight against the party's heir apparent.

"What we've seen since she entered the national stage is that Senator Warren speaks with such conviction and clarity about the central political issue of our time, which is an economic system that's rigged by special interests against regular people," Wikler said. "We just see that fight as absolutely central to 2016, and it's the fight of Warren's life."

The groundswell for Warren feels reminiscent of Obama's own candidacy, and it's starting to take on literal parallels: 300 former Obama staff​ers just signed a petition asking Warren to run. And Wikler thinks she shares the president's wide-ranging appeal, suggesting that her populism might appeal in red states as well as blue ones.

If Warren does run—and again, there's no sign that she's actually going to—her campaign would face the same task that Obama's did in 2008: convince the Democratic party that it's better off throwing its support behind a one-term senator with a gift for rhetoric and a message of reform than it is going with Clinton, the one of the most famous politicians in the country. And in contrast with the more centrist Clinton, Warren's liberalism is as aggressive as it comes. She'll have plenty of hurdles to clear in any campaign, not the least of which is a Wall Street bear that she misses no effort to poke.

Follow Kevin on ​Twitter

Toronto Rapper and Weeknd Affiliate Derek Wise Arrested on Human Trafficking Charges

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Photo via ​Toronto Police Service.

This weekend, Derek Bissue—better known to rap fans as Derek Wise, a member of Toronto's downtown-based rap crew Get Home Safe (GHS) who is affiliated with The Weeknd's XO crew—was arre​sted on 15 charges connected to a human trafficking investigation. The 22-year-old Mississauga native was taken into custody after allegations were brought forward by a 21-year-old woman, who was working as an exotic dancer and says she was forced into the sex trade by Bissue.

Bissue rose to prominence in the Toronto music scene after he released a number of rap singles and videos that garnered tens of thousands of views on his YouTu​be and Soundclou​d pages. He has been covered by North American music publications, including our music site Noisey. His video for "Kenzo" has amassed over 30,000 plays on YouTube and the Soundcloud release for his single "Lake" has been played over 40,000 times.

Bissue faces charges including: trafficking in persons, uttering threats of death and bodily harm, two counts of overcoming resistance by choking, robbery, weapons charges, and three counts of theft under $5,000.

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Bissue's old Twitter bio, via Google.

Bissue attracted the attention of XO earlier this year, which led to him appearing in The Weeknd's music video for "King Of The Fall," which has been viewed more than six million times. Until this morning, Derek's Twitter bio mentioned that he was a part of both the XO and GHS collectives. That bio has since been changed to remove all mention of XO. When reached for this story, a representative from XO refused to comment.

In a 50-page re​port published in June, the Alliance Against Modern Slavery named Toronto the "most common destination" of human trafficking in Ontario. Bissue is currently in police custody and awaiting trial. A spokesperson from GHS said that a formal statement on Bissue's situation is forthcoming. We will update this story as it develops.

Update: We have just received the following statement from Derek Wise's manager, Quincy Nanatakyi:
"The investigation against Derek is both shocking and offensive. These accusations, which we take very seriously were brought to the police after Derek attempted to end an unhealthy relationship with a mentally unstable individual. Derek's character would not allow him to commit any of the allegations he is facing. Unfortunately, the mental health of his accuser is in question as well. During their relationship Derek was a victim of physical abuse, slanderous accusations, and was threatened that his career would be ruined by the same person who has now made these erroneous allegations. Having had to deal with these abuses before the investigation, Derek would never put anyone through the same pain he was forced to experience. Derek would like everyone to please understand that all slanderous accusations against him are completely untrue and he empathizes with ALL victims of any and every form of abuse. GHS also known as get home safe members and affiliates of Derek Bissue also known as Derek Wise do not promote any of the negative and horrendous claims brought against Derek. As a young man raised by a single mother who Derek found love and endless inspiration, he would never put himself into a situation that would cause harm to a woman. It hurts me to see my best friend and business partner in this situation. People change when they see someone close to them elevating their mindset and focusing on positive routes to success. I want all of his fans, friends and loved ones to send positive energy for this tiresome, somber, and ridiculous situation. Lastly, I want to state that due to the legal process I cannot disclose any more information at this time. Also please understand that there are two sides to every story." 

Follow Slava on ​Twitter.

VICE Premiere: The Danger Boys Make Goofy White Boy R&B Sound OK with Their New Song 'Argentina'

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​Any schmuck can wire a condenser mic up to GarageBand and record himself alt-whining while a USB-powered fan makes ripples on his Abbey Road wall tapestry. But NYC-based band the Danger Boys use this as one of their many strategies (minus the tapestry) and actually come up with intelligent tunes that cross genres and poke fun at popular trends. It's not a gimmick, though. Their songs are genuinely great. 

The duo's first full-length record was mixed by Andrew Weiss, who's worked in the past with bands like Ween, Butthole Surfers, and the Boredoms. The album's single, "Argentina," is an introspective psych song with some goofy white boy R&B mixed in. Check it out, but be careful. Apparently, these boys are dangerous.

​Preorder the Danger Boys on Bandc​amp.

This New App Could Help Sex Workers Get Revenge on the Assholes Who Abuse Them

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Photo via Flickr user Chris Beckett

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

Last year, in the space of an hour, a paranoid schizophrenic in Manchester raped three sex workers and sexually assaulted another, before bragging to a friend that he'd had "the best night of his life."

The case was  ​splashed across the tabloids—but for many sex workers, violence isn't headline-worthy, it's a grim everyday occurrence. The prospect of being beaten, raped, or kidnapped is something they face every time they go to work. At least 75 percent of sex workers have been assaulted; more than half have been raped.

Right now people working in prostitution have two, often inadequate, options. Go to the police, where they run the risk of being ignored, blamed, or even threatened with arrest (selling and buying sex is legal in Britain—brothels, pimps, and solicitation aren't). Alternatively, they can report the crime using Ugly Mugs. Run by the UK Network of Sex Work Projects, this is a national scheme where sex workers can make anonymous online reports about an incident or the "ugly mug" perpetrating an alleged crime. It's a really valuable resource, but for those trying to stay safe on the streets, the information often gets out too late.

This is about to change, thanks to a new mobile app. The free app will let sex workers raise the alarm about violent clients by broadcasting a short message describing the person and the incident privately to other sex workers nearby. They can also opt to pass the info to the police. Nicknamed Safety Nets, the app uses similar geolocation technology as Tinder and Grindr, but is completely anonymous.

It's the brainchild of Manchester social enterprise Reason Digital, which has collaborated with Ugly Mugs, and is funded by the Nominet Trust. "This perfectly encapsulates what we're about," says Reason Digital co-founder Matt Haworth. "We're interested in how you can use technology to make people happier, healthier, safer—especially those who often get left behind. Tech is about so much more than just buying more crap off Amazon."

The starting point was Reason Digital's work with Manchester Action on Street Health, which supports female sex workers. MASH has a "dodgy punters" noticeboard, which is essentially a localized, paper version of Ugly Mugs. "There are some quite shocking stories," says Haworth. "It made us think that a technological version would be quicker and more effective."

Reason Digital developed the app with input from male and female sex workers, going to meet people working on Manchester's streets and saunas. They also went to drop-in sessions at MASH and The Men's Room. Some suggested making the app background black, so it doesn't light up your face, and including positive alerts about support services.

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Stills of the Safety Net app.

Ugly Mugs estimates that 10,000 sex workers have used their scheme since its online launch in 2012, with 1,250 incidents reported. So there's clearly a need to both report crimes anonymously and to access warnings that indicate where and who to avoid—surely tech to make that process instant is a good thing?

"I think it could really catapult what we do to another level," says Ugly Mugs director Alex Feis-Bryce. "We found that 16 percent of sex workers using our scheme had avoided an individual as a direct result of our alerts. That demonstrates that instant alerts and making them more widespread could save more lives."

But what do sex workers think? With violence so insidiously commonplace, could an app really be the answer?

One woman I spoke to, who wanted to remain anonymous, wasn't sure whether the app would make her profession safer. "There will always be dodgy punters," she told me. "But it would make me feel safer, to know who's out there and what you're dealing with. I work on the streets but I usually stick to guys I know so I don't feel threatened. But there are girls who get into [random] cars, they're not as clued up. If I had the app I could share information with them."

Jo Dunning, Reason Digital's project manager for Safety Nets, encountered some reluctance from girls who work in saunas. "They were really resistant; some of the saunas have security guards so they felt that they were protected enough. On the whole though, everyone was positive about using the app, especially female street workers."

Male sex workers also thought it was a good idea. "Some mentioned it would be useful as a backchannel way to report things to the police," says Haworth.

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The red light district in Sheffield. Photo by ​Chris Bethell.

The team still had some pretty big hurdles to overcome, however. "The side effect of using technology like Tinder would be inadvertently ending up with a database of where every sex worker in Britain is," says Haworth. "That's not a piece of data we want to be responsible for. No matter how much you try and secure something, if the data exists, there's always a risk it can be compromised." So they came up with a new mechanism to ensure the locations don't feed back into a database.

Dunning adds that anonymity is crucial (this is why we can't report the app's official name). "A lot of sex workers aren't actually out as sex workers. Having an app that's [obviously] to do with sex work could potentially harm them so a lot of thought has been put into making it anonymous."

Feis-Bryce's main concern is that the app alerts are descriptive enough to accurately warn sex workers of dangerous punters, but not so descriptive that there would be legal ramifications, like defamation or affecting the outcome of a court case.

"There is difficulty there, definitely," says Haworth. "It's a trade-off. We're moving from a situation where agencies like MASH and Ugly Mugs listen to someone describe what happened, type it up, ensure legal issues are dealt with, then send it out. We can short circuit that process and allow them to send something out instantly. That presents certain risks, but saving those days or weeks could literally be life-saving. It's worth that risk."

Recently technology has been credited with transforming the sex industry, making it easier for seller and buyer to connect. But Safety Nets is the only app of its kind, created to protect. It remains to be seen what impact it will have on sex workers' safety—it's currently being piloted in Manchester before a nationwide roll-out—but it's surely a good thing that some of society's most at-risk people now have a way to look out for one another.

Follow Clare Wiley on ​Twitter

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Weediquette: Weediquette: Baked Alaska

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On November 4, 2014, the state of Alaska was faced with a ballot measure to potentially make recreational marijuana legal. In this episode of Weediquette, we follow democracy in action through the eyes of Charlo Greene. 

Greene became the firebrand folk hero of the "Yes on 2" movement after she famously quit her job as a news reporter on the air to run a cannabis club. VICE travels to Alaska to follow Charlo, and along the way we meet a cast of Alaskan natives who all have something at stake in this election.

Magic Transistor Is the Best and Weirdest Thing to Ever Happen to Internet Radio

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If you're the type of person who spends hours on YouTube trawling through rare recordings, you may have happened upon Magic Transistor, an incredible resource for music nerds that's appallingly underpublicized. I stumbled across it while searching for the Willie ​Mitchell sample that ​GZA used in "Liquid Swords." That led me to YouTube user page for a guy named Ben Ruhe, the founder of Magic Transistor. His​ playlists were jaw-dropping. There were only six of them at the time (there are now many more), each with upwards of 100 songs, most from rare vinyl rips that listeners could have only dreamed of hearing before YouTube.

Ruhe's playlists led me to the Magic Transistor  w​ebsite, a seemingly-infinite internet radio player. It's a straightforward, four-station radio that plays hundreds of these wonderful relics of music history every day. The sequencing is determined by Ruhe and a few other team members based on an individual song's musicological relevance. It is the antithesis of Pandora's "here's more of what you like" philosophy—Magic Transistor's playlists aren't concerned with catering to personal taste. Listening to any of the radio streams is an essential lesson in audio history curated by Ruhe and his comrades. It doesn't hurt that the tracks are all lovable in some way or another.

As a companion to the streaming site, Ruhe has a podcast, exploring these different strains of music genealogy. The best part of this whole thing? There are no goddamn advertisements or solicitations. 

I assumed Ben Ruhe was some kind of Lester Bang-worshipping obsessive—a frazzled basement-dwelling archivist running on fumes and amphetamines, tossing records around his room, unpaid bills buried beneath dusty crates. I reached out to him, and it turns out he's a pretty level-headed dude, albeit one with a pretty serious mission. 

Ruhe is a mustachioed 45-year-old visual artist who grew up in Brooklyn and cut his teeth in the 90s Chelsea Hotel scene. After his artwork sold into private collections, Ruhe began devoting his days to digging up forgotten art for Magic Transistor. He also runs a popular Tum​blr blog that curates art images using Google, and a Faceboo​k group that revolves around the simple yet addicting game of pairing these images with songs.

His passion and devotion to the arts—specifically to recorded music—is rare these days. He's put everything he's got into this project, which is (as of now) a financial dead end, but has inspired thousands of art and music nerds to participate in the online practice of curating, sharing, and listening.

I sat down with Ben and talked to him about where Magic Transistor came from and where it might be headed.

VICE: Where'd this knack for music history come from initially?
​Ben Ruhe: It began as an idea of curating music at galleries and listening in my studio at the Chelsea Hotel in the 90s. As an artist, I wanted to listen to music that was authentic while I worked—the real thing, an undiluted flow of material that I could draw from. Whatever you play is going to influence your work in the studio.

From doing a lot of art theory reading and recognizing this post-medium condition where everything bleeds into everything else, I got really into curating music at openings and stuff and making iPods for people. I was doing iPods for Mark Ronson for a long time—he would pay me to provide him with songs to look at.

Back when people actually curated iPods.
Coming from the hip-hop generation, and having worked in hip-hop— I did the logo for The​ Source, for example—I was noticing how hip-hop was objectifying artists and songs as great samples rather than part of a broader history. There'd be a great recording and then someone would say, "Oh, yeah—Wu Tang sampled that!" And that's fine, but it's like, how can you not know that this is Eddie Harris, and how do you not care?

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/Svk7-7dHu08' width='500' height='280']

So this was born out of a dissatisfaction with how content providers were handling their shit?
Yes. I became more and more disturbed by the fact that there was nothing that really fit what I felt we needed—a filtration system for all the buried content on the internet that is so hard to sort through. 

This idea has been kicking around for at least a decade. It became more real as I exchanged ideas with a friend of mine who was in a position to finance it—I can't say who, but in the world of tech startups he's a big shot. This guy felt that it was something that could be created into an insider thing, and I'm really more of an outsider.

Insiders as in who?
You know, hipsters and people who are keeping their eyes on trends. I still think it's important for people to know the context of art and understand the history of where the things people are doing now in the arts come from.

I founded Magic Transistor as the idea of creating a more human filter for all this content, which is only possible because of the internet. I wanted to know about music in the way an entomologist wants to know where all the root species of creatures emerge from.

It's like a cultural Noah's Arc.
Exactly. It's like, "Let's get two or three of every kind and start organizing it in some way." There's so much out there and all you need are individuals to get involved and sift through it. I don't really want to do this alone, but I am. I'm still figuring out how to monetize it.

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The problem with the internet now is that people only seek out content that they want to learn about. If you only pick what you want to look at, you're going to keep returning to what you recognize. We are the opposite of Pandora. I have to take people into the woods to find new stuff.

How'd you expand into curating visual art online in addition to music?
I quickly recognized that I couldn't just curate music, I had to curate art in general. And this is where I parted ways with the nameless friend and investor. It's almost like if I adapt to what people want or expect, then I can't give them what they need. I would just be giving them more of what they're comfortable with. You can explore Magic Transistor and, within half an hour, find one thing that's gonna make you want to spend the rest of the day learning about that artist and what they did.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/8vtW-8Fokak' width='500' height='280']

It's not about personal taste, it's about important stuff.
Exactly. The way people navigate music history doesn't take that history into account properly. If you're relying on genre in order to go through stuff, you're going to miss a lot of important things that don't fit into one particular mold.

I play stuff that's weird not because I'm trying to be weird, but because these recordings are sublime and eloquent and important. For Magic Transistor, I'm just going around the internet, turning over rocks. I'm not looking for salamanders, but if I turn one over and there's a big golden salamander under there, I'm happy.

Click ​he​r​e to check out Magic Transistor.

What We Learned About Geopolitics in 2014

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Whenever the world goes to hell in a family-size hand basket, we're always surprised that something so surprising has happened. Yet somehow, we find ourselves turning back to the confident graybeards on TV telling us what will or won't happen next, even though they're the same old white dudes who failed to predict the fall of the Berlin Wall, the financial crisis, and the Arab Spring. In fact, the very people who bob their heads around on cable news, making grand predictions about the direction the world will spin next, are the ones who keep getting proved wrong by actual events.

In 2014, geopolitics turned out to be predictably unpredictable. Big powers behaved weirdly, regions that seemed to be on track fell apart, and global markets moved in mysterious ways. Here's what we learned:

VLADIMIR PUTIN IS VERY, VERY HUNGRY 
Tanks rolling across international borders, armed men storming police stations, and great powers battling over the future of Europe—it all sounds like the script of a History Channel special. In fact, it was Ukraine in 2014. The crisis began last November, when pro-Western Ukrainians took to Kiev's central square to protest a government they considered too corrupt, too authoritarian, and too interested in its own self-preservation at the expense of national interest. Ukraine's president, Viktor Yan​ukovych, had refused to sign an agreement to build closer ties with the European Union and instead accepted a $15-billion bribe from Russia. By late February, as winter athletes competed in a sno​wless Sochi, some 100 demonstrators had been killed in Kiev. Before the Olympic flame went out, the opposition had taken power in Ukraine, and Yanukovych had fled to Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wasn't happy about what he saw as a conspiracy to thrust Ukraine into the West's orbit. So he did what any reasonable strongman would do: he grabbed Crimea, a peninsula belonging to Ukraine that was already home to a Russian naval base and an ethnic Russian majority eager to secede. Then he played on local grievances to stir up trouble in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists declared their own confederation called "New Russia" and almost certainly shot down Malaysia Airlines' second lost plane of the year. They were backstopped by thousands of Russian forces crossing the border in unmarked vehicles. Absurdly, the Kremlin has refused to admit their presence and has buried its dead soldiers in se​cret.

The main lesson here is that Putin is a bigger risk-taker than almost everyone expected. It's worth asking, however, whether he was provoked. Russians argue that the West has been expanding the NATO military alliance and the European Union up to Russia's doorstep, and some say his reaction was predictable. But Europe was supposed to have moved past this kind of old-school realpolitik, and Russia's thuggish behavior is very hard to justify. For the people living in Putin's war zone, the question is irrelevant: despite Western sanctions against Russia and an official ceasefire between Moscow and Kiev, the fighting grinds on.

JUST WHEN IT LOOKS LIKE THE MIDDLE EAST CAN'T GET ANY BLOODIER, IT DOES
The turmoil in the Middle East also looks like it belongs to another century, but a much scarier, bloodier one. Jihadists in Syria, not content to merely hijack the revolution against Bashar al-Assad, linked up with their Sunni brethren across the border in Iraq and declared a caliphate they call the Islamic S​tate. The terrorists gained territory at lightning speed, taking over hundreds of square miles and even managing to get within 16 miles of Baghdad International Airport. In addition to killing untold numbers of Iraqis and Syrians who resisted its rule, the Islamic State beheaded three Americans and shared the videos on social media.

President Barack Obama, who wants desperately to rid himself of the mess his predecessor left behind in Iraq, has responded reluctantly. Over the spring and summer, the Islamic State's victories awakened Republican hawks in Congress, who called f​or an aggressive intervention. It took until August, after the Islamic State drove thousands of civilians up a mountain range in northern Iraq, for Obama to relent and jump back in Iraq. He authorized airstrikes against the Islamic State, humanitarian aid for civilians, additional support for the Syrian rebels, and military advisers to train Iraqi troops.

Now that the GOP has taken Congress, Obama will have even less room to back out of the Middle East. And so a president who campaigned on ending the war in Iraq will likely leave office with that war still raging—to say nothing of the growing chaos in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Somewhere in the White House, Obama is having a Michael Corleone m​oment: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

EBOLA ISN'T THE WORST OF AFRICA'S PROBLEMS
While the Ebola outbreak in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone made the biggest Africa-related global headlines this year, a longer-running and equally deadly crisis reached new heights in Nigeria. There, as in Iraq and Syria, Islamic extremists made life miserable. Like other countries at its latitude, Nigeria—Africa's most populous country and its largest oil exporter—suffers from a split between a politically powerful Christian south and an alienated Muslim north. Enter the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, the name of which translates as "Western education is forbidden." It imposes sharia law from town to town and picks fights with government security forces, which have a well-earned reputation for responding indiscriminately. Although the conflict has simmered for years, the death toll s​hot up in 2014, with more than 10,000 people killed.

Most Americans heard about the mess only after Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls in the town of Chibok in April, spiriting them away into a forest and shrouding them in black and grey robes. The tragedy spawned the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOu​rGirls—and a shambolic response from the Nigerian government. President Goodluck Jonathan waited three weeks after the abduction to mention the girls in public, and his wife, Patience, outed herself as a Chibok truther when she insinuate​d that the whole thing was fake. There have been several false reports of the girls' imminent release, but as of mid-December, they remain in captivity, "married" off to fighters.

OIL CAN GET CHEAP
Most industry experts d​idn't predict it, but since June, global oil prices have been tanking, falling 40 percent to a five-year​ low at the beginning of December. The reasons are varied: US supply has increased (yes, thanks in part to fracking), Asian demand has cooled, and oil-producing states (led by Saudi Arabia) have refused to cut production to prop up prices. At the pump, the average gas price in the US started 2014 at $3.26 a gallon and now stands at $2.63. Consider the savings an early Christmas present.

Unless you live in Houston. American oil producers are panicking, because the price for a barrel of oil has dropped so low that it might not be profitable to pump it out of the ground, especially in the case of harder-to-get-at shale. Already, Big Oil has started scaling​ back investments and laying off employees.

If American oil producers are starting to sweat, petro-states like Russia, Nigeria, Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia are positively shvitzing. Their budgets depend almost entirely on oil revenue, and spending cuts won't keep the people happy, raising the risk of insta​bility. The scariest prospect is the collapse of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom paid off its inhabitants to stave off revolution in 2011, but if oil prices stay low, it might not be able to afford to do the same thing next time. Many Russians support Putin because he improved their living standards, and with the Russian economy poised for a recession, he will have little reason to abandon his popular Ukraine gambit. Venezuela's economy, meanwhile, is in a tailspin, as is its president's approval rating. Your flight to Caracas will be cheaper, but you might not want to get off the plane.

CHINA CAN GET PRETTY AGRO
America's biggest rival wasn't messing around in 2014. At home, China's leader, Xi Jinping, ordered a crackdown, sacking high-ranking Communist Party officials in the name of fighting corruption, rolling out new laws restricting Internet freedom, denying visas to foreign reporters, and clearing out Occupy Hong Kong protesters. Abroad, he has literally redrawn the map, making aggressive maritime claims off China's coast. This May, China sent Vietnam into hysterics by sending a fleet of ships to accompany an oilrig operating in disputed waters. In June, Chinese fighter jets set off an international incident by flying within 100 feet of Japanese surveillance planes.

China didn't manage to overtake the US this year, and there's little chance it will do so anytime soon—the Chinese navy commissioned its first aircraft carrier (a Ukrainian hand-me-down) in 2012, something the US Navy accomplished 90 years earlier. Still, the close calls in 2014 came at the same time that the Obama administration was trying to "pivot" toward Asia, raising the odds of a scuffle. No one wants a naval war in the Pacific, but as China continued to translate its economic power into military muscle, it looked like even minor dustups might escalate into an all-out international crisis.

NOT EVERYTHING IS AS TERRIBLE AS IT LOOKS
As bad as the world appeared to be in 2014, every terrifying lesson had a silver lining. Putin's power play in Ukraine was really an act of weakness, a reaction to the desire on the part of most Ukrainians to abandon Mother Russia and join the West, where the future looks brighter. The Middle East got ugly and bloody, but any 18th-century Frenchman will tell you that such is the journey from dictatorship to democracy. The violence in Nigeria (and the viral outbreak to its west) should not obscure the economic progress that much of the continent is making. Low oil prices, adding to the bite of sanctions, may keep Iran at the nuclear negotiating table. And China, despite the racket it's been making among its neighbors, has no reason to stop buying into the global capitalist order.

Plus, when it comes to geopolitics, it's all about the long game. And in that sense, things didn't look so bad in 2014: Cars are more fuel-efficient, computers are faster, and humanity is healthier, richer, and freer than ever before. Keep that in mind when 2015 starts getting real.

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Post Mortem: Funeral Directors Share Morbid Stories About Death During the Holidays

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We're in the thick of the the holiday season, and many articles will no doubt be written once again about the alleged spike in suicides during this time of year. According to the Centers for Disease Control, that's ​a myth. However, there actually is an annual uptick in non-suicide deaths starting on Thanksgiving and running through December. (Recently Dan Diamond at Forbeslooked at the data and found is that there is a consistent pattern of more heart attacks and more traffic accidents that occur compared to the rest of the year.)

How does that affect morticians? Are they dealing with a lot more bodies? If so, does that sort of ruin the festive season for them? I put these questions and others to several funeral directors, and three of them found time in their busy holiday schedules to respond.

Caitlin Doughty, Los Angeles

VICE: What's it like working with corpses at Christmas?
Caitlin Doughty: You want to be home with your family during the holidays, but death doesn't stop because you like to hit the eggnog with your Uncle Hank. I remember the first time I had to tell my mother I wouldn't be coming home for Christmas because I had to work. She was not pleased. But you have to remember that while Christmas at work isn't great, Christmas after your husband dies is a million times worse.

Do people die differently during the holidays?
Anecdotally I've always had more deaths of all sorts around the holidays, so maybe there's more... general giving up? I'm not sure. There's definitely more drunk driving deaths around this time.

Do any stories stand out?
One year my job was to drive a van that picked up 11 bodies at a time and deliver them to a high-volume crematory. I got a call on Christmas Eve that there were so many deaths that the body refrigerators in San Diego were about to run out of room. We can't leave any bodies out of the refrigerators, so I had to come pick them up that night. So at midnight on Christmas Eve I was driving from LA to San Diego and back with 11 corpses. I was Santa Claus and they were my reindeer. In a sad, sad alternate universe, anyway.

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Jeff Jorgensen, Seattle

VICE: Is the death business different around the holidays?
Jeff Jorgensen: Yes, definitely! Much like retail, there's a real push come the holidays. Granted, we aren't exactly the "Tidings of Joy" bunch, but it definitely picks up in November and December. There's a little bit of a lull right in between the two, but for the most part, it's nuts. Many funeral homes have a no-vacation policy for the two months. July and August can be used for that. The other main difference is the same as any other workplace—there is a never-ending parade of high-calorie desserts showing up to do violence to our waistlines.

What about deaths themselves? Are they different?
Recently I had to go through and review all of the cases from the past few years, and just for giggles, I included cause of death because I was curious about this specific question. I was completely disappointed to find that, anecdotally, at my funeral home the deaths are distributed just the same as other times of year, there's just more of them. Morbidly, I wish I could give you something fabulous like, "Oh yeah, there's 234 percent more turkey asphyxiations than May." Unfortunately it's an equal distribution of congestive heart failure [and] pneumonia in cancer patients, with an occasional chronic ethanolism. 

Why might that be?
In all honesty, I have my own hypothesis about why the increase is so substantial. Most of the people who pass away are old and have been in failing health for some time. I think that the holidays provide a time when people come together for one last time, and it is a time where the person can close the chapter. Knowing that they won't make it another year, they have had the opportunity to see everyone one last time, and it's their time to go. I'm a firm believer that we have way more control over the end of our lives than people believe or accept.

Have you ever had someone die from a freak Christmas-related accident?
Like, "Guy dressed as Santa impales himself on mounted buck head while stringing Christmas lights?" No. I think that would probably show up on a death certificate as a completely disappointing "perforating trauma to abdomen." Honestly, as funeral directors, we don't get much in the way of details unless the family offers it up. Although, as soon as you get this posted, I'm pretty sure I'll get the call, "So my sister died this weekend choking on peppermint bark." If so, I will most definitely be following up with you for an addendum. On some level though, it is comforting that there isn't a glut of crazy seasonal deaths. Death is horrible to suffer at any time of year for families, and the fact that most deaths don't involve a menorah, eggnog, or a reindeer is probably a good thing for seasons to come.

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Caleb Wilde, Parkesburg, Pennsylvania

I've talked to some other morticians, and they had theories as to why sick people die around the holidays. Do you have one? 
Caleb Wilde: ​
For many terminal people in their end stage of life, "the holidays" often represent a final goal. "If I can only make it to the holidays, see all my family and friends one last time, watch a Lawrence Welk Christmas special rerun again, my life will be complete." So they push through the pain and disability like the Little Engine That Could. They chug along until they reach the other side of the mountain. Some make it to the other side of the holidays, and some don't. 

So there are more deaths because their trains just tire out?
In addition to the start of the flu season. That's my best attempt to explain why there seems to be an influx of death during the holidays. Those that are "hanging on for the holidays" while battling cancer or some other long, terminal sickness run out of fuel and end up parked at the funeral home.

So the holidays suck for you? 
The combination of a heavy holiday social calendar and the seemingly inevitable influx of deaths creates a difficult balancing act between the personal and professional lives of funeral directors. It's a hard season for us, especially when that death call comes right in the middle of a highly anticipated Lawrence Welk Christmas special rerun.

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Here's How Conservatives Freaked Out Over the CIA Torture Report

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It's been nearly a week since the Senate Intelligence Committee release​d its report on the CIA's enhanced interrogation program, and predictably, neocons have not been happy. Like the climax of any halfway decent Jerry Springer episode, the 500-page executive summary revealed that the government lied​ a lot, to everyone. In no uncertain terms, it explained how intelligence officials were living a double life in terms of what they told the White House, Congress, and everybody else, and what they actually did.

Besides peddling some gross inaccuracies, intelligence officials were engaging some pretty gross torture tactics. No one who read the report will ever be able to forget the term "r​ectal feeding." Prisoners were made to stand on broken feet and deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours. They were also kept in a cell that the report describes as a "dungeon" so cold, one detainee died of hypothermia.

Everyone already knew the interrogation program was awful. But still, many people were glad—although sickened—to learn the grisly details. Republican war hawks, on the other hand, have spent the past six days slamming the report, arguing that its release was ​political and potentially deadly to American​s overseas. They said its timing was a calculated move by outgoing Democrats to take one last swing at the Bush administration before the GOP takes over the Senate. They also thought the details would lead to anti-American sentiment, possibly driving attacks against American embassies and fueling the ranks of the Islamic State and other terrorist groups.

Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein and the fellow Dems in her committee are about to get ousted from Congress, so it was kind of now or never. And people who hate us already kinda knew we were torturing people. Basically, those two reasons for freaking out over the report don't hold much water. Still, it's important to give credit to Republicans who at least tried to articulate arguments against the report. Others simply lost their minds and spewed word salad on national TV. So, let's examine how conservatives felt about releasing the report. Here's a roundup of their thoughts, ranging from reasonable to not at all reasonable. 

Dick Cheney
The former Vice President and ornery architect of the interrogation program has predictably been spinning out since before the report was released. When it finally became public, he went on Fox News to call the report "full of ​crap." "The CIA did one hell of a job and they deserve our gratitude," he went on. Later, two ABC reporters analyzed the appearance, calling it "vintage Cheney" and "classic Cheney." It was kind of weird, like a couple of siblings describing their alcoholic relative who shows up for Thanksgiving and flips over the table in a drunken rage as "classic Uncle Dan."

Cheney was at it again yesterday, in an ​appearance on Meet the Press, where he defended himself again, saying, "I would do it again in a minute." He refu​sed to acknowledge that keeping someone in a coffin-shaped box for 11 hours was torture, and instead just denied everything that the report ostensibly revealed, even as host Chuck Todd read direct quotes from it.


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John McCain
The Arizona Republican is not the biggest fan of torture, given that he's been subjected to it. As such, McCain was one of the few Republicans to ​praise the release of the report. He acknowledged it's a scourge for our international reputation, but also that we already kinda fucked up that up, so who cares, really. I mean, it's pretty clear that everyone knows what waterboarding is if it's been given a l​itany of sexual meanings by teenagers on the internet.

"Will the reports released cause outrage that will lead to violence in some parts of the Muslim world?" he a​sked in a passionate speech on the Senate floor, according to CNN. "Yes, I suppose that's possible...perhaps likely." He added the other Republicans were just mad about the report saying torture being ineffective, considering we justified these practices by calling them necessary. Turns out they just gave us bad info. Oops!

Rush Limbaugh
Unsurprisingly, Rush Limbaugh ​​weighed in with ​a conspiracy theory, claiming that Democrats wanted to stir up a bunch of shit with the report at the expense of national security. The talk show host claimed the goal was to make Cheney and his cohorts look "mean," drawing a strange comparison to the TV show Madame Secretary, in which a teenager grapples with a politician mom who presided over torture. "There's only one purpose for this, and that is to do damage to this country, and that is to harm somehow the image of this country," Limbaugh told listeners who tuned in to his show last week. In this metaphor, America is one big, mean mom.

"When the Republicans are in control, the Democrats want as much chaos as they can manufacture," Limbaugh ranted on. "The Republicans are gonna control the Senate, they're gonna control the House, and the Democrats want as much chaos going on here and around the world as they can get." Surprisingly, this was actually relatively low on the crazy spectrum, particularly given that Rush Limbaugh is a man paid to say crazy things.

Illinois Senator Mark Kirk
According to the Republican senator from Illinois, the Senate Intelligence Committee members are behaving like "lit​tle zombies." Instead of a metaphor about a mean mom, he likened his political opponents to stage moms, wreaking havoc in the quest to establish their legacy. "They wanted so desperately to be relevant and they reached up from the political grave, like [Secretary of State John] Kerry, to do this harm to our troops overseas." This idea is relatively nuts coming from someone who isn't paid to stir up shit on talk radio, and who is usually pretty reasonable. 

Fox News
While other Republicans variously claimed that people already knew the CIA was engaging in torture, or that letting the enemies know about the torture would fuel animosity towards the US, the hosts over at Fox News claimed that they simply didn't want to know what the intelligence agency was up to.

"I don't wanna know about it. I think people do nasty things in the dark, especially after a terrorist attack," correspondent Jesse Water​s said in a roundtable discussion on Fox's Outnumbered.

But it was Outnumbered's host, Andrea Tantaros, who absolutely devolved into patriotic babble. "The United States of America is awesome, we are awesome," she proclaimed. "But we've had this discussion. We've closed the book on it, and we've stopped doing it. And the reason they want to have this discussion is not to show how awesome we are. This administration wants to have this discussion to show us how we're not awesome."

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Win an Autographed Copy of Ghostface Killah's '36 Seasons'

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These days, you've got to pay for everything. Want some extra BBQ packets at Mickey D's? That'll cost you 50 cents. Want to check a bag at the airport? Pay up another $25 on top of your ticket price. Bleeding profusely out of a major artery and need a ride to the hospital? Fork over $1,500 or die, you fucking sucker... 

Here at VICE, however, we strive to hook you up the good stuff without hurting your pockets because we love you guys. This week, we're giving a handful of New Yorkers copies of the new 36 Seasons CDs by Wu-Tang Clan member Ghostface Killah autographed by Tony Starks himself. To enter, tweet your favorite Ghostface Killah lyric at us using the hashtag #VICE36seasonsIf you're a lucky winner, we'll direct message you where in NYC to pick up your signed CD and a few other dope-ass goodies. 

(Unfortunately, this contest is only for New Yorkers because we're intimidated by post offices and snail mail.)

Hit VICE up on ​Twit​ter with the ​#VICE36seasons and your favorite ​Ghostdini ​lyric to win.



A Tour of the Spots Where Officers in LA Killed Unarmed People in 2014

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Photos by Michelle Groskopf

This past year saw a lot of anger over police brutality. In July, people were angry about the death of ​Eric GarnerIn August, people were angry about the death of ​Michael Brown. In the past month, decisions to not indict cops in either of those deaths—and a ​couple other high-profile ​police shootings—have resulted in protests all over the country. 

Los Angeles, where I live, witnessed its fair share of police shootings and violence, and I wanted to learn more about them than I could from simply reading the news—I wanted to understand the context in which these men (the victims were all male) had died. So along with a photographer, I visited six sites where ​LAPD officers killed unarmed civilians in 2014—I think these are all the spots where such deaths occurred, but as ​others have pointed out this year, reliable sources of data for these kinds of fatalities is hard to come by. 

For some reason I suspected that these locations would disproportionately be in low-income neighborhoods with high concentrations of black and Hispanic residents. Turns out I was right.  

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April 10: Palm Avenue off Santa Monica, West Hollywood – John Winkler

On the evening of April 10, LA County sheriff's deputies were searching for a man who was holding several people hostage in a West Hollywood apartment building. Thirty-year-old John Winkler was one of those hostages. He had heard a commotion from his neighbor's apartment, gone over to see what was the matter, and ended up a hostage himself. When Winkler and another victim fled the apartment, the deputies shot Winkler in the chest, mistakenly be​lieving him to be the suspect. They also shot the other victim, but not fatally. Winkler and died later at a nearby hospital.

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July 25: 6700 block of Hayvenhurst Avenue in Van Nuys – Luis Jobell

Around 3:30 AM, police responded to a disturbance call about a man​ allegedly throwing rocks and vandalizing property. The officers stated that when they arrived on the scene, Jobell was indeed throwing rocks, though they did not say at what or whom. The officers reported that they shot Jobell after he refused to surrender. It is unclear what happened in the moments immediately leading up to the shooting. Witnesses said they saw three men arguing and kicking cars, then heard several gunshots and police sirens. The dead man's brother Victor believed Jobell, who had been arrested earlier in the week for disobeying an ex-wife's restraining order, was drunk at the time of the incident. LAPD Sergeant. Albert Gonzalez told KTLA that "a rock can be a very deadly weapon."

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August 1: 9000 block of Rosehedge Drive in Pico Rivera – Frank Al Mendoza

Around 5 PM, police were searching for 24-year-old Cedric Oscar Ramirez, who was wanted on felony warrants for vehicle theft and being a felon in possession of a firearm. In his attempt to flee the deputies, Ramirez broke into Mendoza's house. When the 54-year-old Mendoza appeared at the door, a deputy mistook him for Ramirez and shot him tw​ice. Mendoza was pronounced dead at the scene. Ramirez took Mendoza's wife hostage, and around 1:30 AM, police fatally shot Ramirez.

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August 2: 6900 block of South Main Street – Omar Abrego

Thirty-seven-year-old ​Omar Abrego was driving home in the evening after work when he was pulled over for driving erratically. According to a statement issued by the LAPD, Abrego then "attempted to flee," and a physical altercation with the cops ensued. The altercation left one officer with a broken hand, and Abrego with "a severe concussion and multiple facial and body contusions," according to the ​Los Angeles Times. Abrego was transported to a local hospital, where he died early the next morning. An initial coroner's report suggested that Abrego was on cocaine at the time of the incident. As of November, the LAPD still hadn't released Abrego's autopsy results, so an official cause of death is still not known. Eyewitnesses described seeing officers beating Abrego with their fists and with a baton. "They were beating him real bad," Omar's brother Yair Abrego told KTLA. "He died of the wounds."

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August 11: South LA, 200 block of West 65th Street – Ezell Ford

A little over a week after Abrego's s death and only four blocks away, the LAPD ​shot and killed Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old mentally ill black man. According to an ​LAPD press release, officers were conducting an "investigative stop" and detained Ford, who was unarmed. During that stop, the release states, "a struggle ensued." In a ​later statement, the LAPD claimed that "during the struggle, they fell to the ground and the individual attempted to remove the officer's handgun from its holster." Leroy Hill, an eyewitness to Ford's killing, claimed he witnessed the officers jump out of their car to detain Ford, proceed to beat him, and heard them shout "shoot him!" before shooting Ford three times. The LAPD news release states that "it is unknown if the suspect [had] any gang affiliations," but Hill and other neighbors say Ford had none. They say they knew him as a "good guy" who suffered from an unidentified mental illness.

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Dec. 5: Hollywood and Highland - Name Withheld

Just last week, police ​fatally shot a man near the busy Hollywood and Highland intersection. The officers were responding to a call from someone who said they were stabbed by a man with a knife. However, they were unable to find anyone who had been stabbed. The officers claimed the suspect, whose name has not been released, was not complying with orders. They also claimed he was "swinging a knife around" and threatening bystanders. In an unusual move, the LAPD later ​tweeted a photo of a small pocketknife that was found on the ground near the unnamed man. The tweet said "...[suspect] armed w/ knife."

Follow Allegra Ringo on ​Twitte​r.

See more of Michelle Groskopf's photos ​here.


(Note: A previous version attributed the Palm Avenue and Pico Rivera incidents to the LAPD. The department involved was actually the LA County sheriff.)

Pauly Shore Misses Acting and Knows He's Going to Die Alone Someday

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All photos by the author

At one point in ​Pauly Shore's new Showtime documentary, ​Pauly Sho​re Stands Alone, the actor, comedian, and one-time MTV host says, "Just because Hollywood stopped giving me movies doesn't mean I stopped being Pauly." But what does that mean for a celebrity better known today for starring in some of the most critically mocked movies of the 90s and catchphrases like "I'm weazin all your grindage" than for his comedic prowess?

Shore, now 46, was once the star of thought-provoking classics like Biodome and Encino Man, but as time went on and people started laughing at him rather than with him, he began making failed mockumentaries like Pauly Shore Is Dead. Now he's down to doing stand-up pretty much wherever he can, as Pauly Shore Stands Alone demonstrates. The documentary, which he directed and produced, follows him through bumblefuck Minnesota and Wisconsin as he performs in strip clubs and movie theaters, openly talks about his mother's battle with Parkinson's (as well as his own prostate issues), and wonders if getting married and having kids will make him happy.

Though it's sprinkled with eye roll–worthy shots of Shore helping elderly women carry their luggage and fans saying he changed their lives, overall it's a surprisingly earnest portrait of a middle-aged man trying to figure out how to develop an adult life while being defined by his past.  "What brings you to this little town?" a fan asks at one point. "Karma, bro," he replies. 

I met the hey buuu-ddy actor at a fancy hotel in Manhattan where we hung out for a couple hours and chatted about how he misses acting, what comes next for him, and how he wants to open a restaurant called Weasel's Bar and Grill.

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VICE: Why did you choose the Midwest to be the setting of your documentary?
Pauly Shore: It just happened to be the start of the tour. I'm booked all the way, pretty much, through 2015. I'm glad I chose that stretch of the tour because visually, I thought it was interesting.

Plus, while I shot the footage that ended up becoming the Showtime doc, I was like, Fuck, this is dope, there's a story here. What's going to happen to my mom? What's going to happen to my love life? What's going to happen with my pissing problem? And I had such a good time shooting that I bought a new camera called a C300. And I kept shooting. So I have over about 200 hours in the can of new footage, including when I move my mom out of her house and sell it. I filmed the whole thing. And that house is crazy because it has been in my family since I was a baby—40 years. Depending on how Pauly Shore Stands Alone does on Showtime and what the response is, I'd like to make a sequel. Or a documentary series.

Do you still think of yourself as an actor?
I think that's what most people know me as... I think I'm a good actor. What I'm doing now is mostly stand-up. But if my agent called and said, Hey, we want you to act, then I'll shift into that. But then producing, editing, and putting this documentary together makes me a filmmaker, too, in a way.

I got forced into doing Pauly Shore Is Dead because my career slowed down in the late 90s and early 2000s. Chris Rock's going through that right now, it's the same thing, though at a bigger level because he's got a bigger film coming up than I do. I'm gonna be 50 in fucking four years. I've still got good hair, but my point is that I'm a man. I'm not a fucking kid anymore. I have man experiences. I've been through it all. And, ultimately, I love acting. I really do. I miss it, to be quite honest.

When I go on tour and people just talk about the movies, or if I see the movies on cable, I get a little sad. I really like acting. It'll happen again.

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You had total creative control in your documentary. Why wouldn't you make another film?
I can't wait for the phone to ring, man. It's a lot of work, dude, to fucking call and... I mean, I have agents, but, I don't know, it's tough. It'd be cool to make my own thing again, but I'd love to just get cast in something. It's got to be the right thing, though.

Give me a recent movie that you could have seen yourself starring in. Something that would be the right fit.
I loveThe Wrestler.Something like a redemption piece.

What do you think is your best role?
I like Pauly Shore Is Dead. I've got to be honest. It was emotional, and it was real and funny and dark and relatable, and it wasn't goofy, and it was just really fucking funny. Have you seen it? You gotta watch it. You're going to fucking die.

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You do seem enthused throughout the film. Are you happy at this point in your life and career?
Yeah! Yeah. You know what I mean? I'm sad because of my mom. You know. I'm sad because of that.

Would you ever want to follow in your mom's footsteps and open your own comedy place?
I was thinking about opening up a Weasel's Bar and Grill, kind of like my version of [Sammy Hagar's] Cabo Wabo, you know? Have you ever been to Cabo Wabo? It'd have crusty fries, Weasel soup, you know. It would be called Pauly Shore's Weasel Bar and Grill and the menu would say "Grindage." You know, you'd open it up and it'd say buck burger, stony fries, crusty salad. And it would be like, a theme. But I don't know. Maybe I might start a Weasel Juice Bar first. Start off small. You know? Right?

I can't tell if you're joking.
No, I'm serious. I think it would be dope. Think about it. Weasel Juice Bar, dude. The Weasel Juice is from Encino Man.

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How do you think Pauly Shore the public figure is different from Pauly Shore the individual?
My public persona is already defined because my movies hit so hard and they're so big, and I was so popular in that style, so everybody thinks that's who I am, and that's who I was. And this is who I am now. I like being alone. I like channel-surfing, sitting in my bed, and relaxing. I'm used to being alone now. And I still think I'm just as funny now, or even funnier, because I think my style is more relatable now than it was back then, which was very kind of niche to the kids.

Do you smoke weed? I mean, you live in California.
Yeah, now and then! A lot of people think I'm stoned all the time. Maybe because of the way I perform and do my thing. And I'm actually not stoned. I like to smoke pot if, like, I go away on a trip with a girlfriend to Hawaii, or if I'm just away on a beach and I've got my reggae on and I'm in my Speedo.

So what's next?
I have a ​podcast that's out right now and it's actually going to be on ​Podcast One soon. So this week's [guest is] Chris Rock, which is cool. I always wanted to do a movie with him, like The Little Rascals where I play Alfalfa and he plays Buckwheat. I think that would be really funny, like, for real, dude. No, but seriously. I've talked to him about it—I'd play Alfalfa and he'd play Buckwheat.

Within your repertoire of stand-up right now, what's a joke that kind of captures what you do now? What's the bit?
It's probably the one called "When I Was Your Age." It's basically a run that I do where I start by talking about being older now and that I'm at a place where I like to stay home and baby-powder my balls and watch TV.

Then, I talk about not getting laid and preventing wear and tear on your dick—because you have to save your semen. Next, I talk about when I was your age, like, whoever would have thought that Pauly Shore would actually utter the words, "When I was your age?" A lot of my audience and fans are in their 30s and 40s, so they remember that time. They can relate.

You talk about being content with your adult life, but also how you want other career success and human connection—a partner, a child. There seems to be a stark juxtaposition between wanting to be alone and wanting people to empathize with you and be understanding. 
It's not that I want to be alone. I just am alone. My point is that we're all alone. There are people in marriages that are alone. We're all going to die alone. We all came in here alone. Everyone around us is just [in] relationships for periods—not all of life. And my documentary captures that. It's really about a guy who's in his 40s who's alone: His mom's sick, he's not talking to his siblings, he's on the road, but he's optimistic and he's not cynical about where his life's at. 

Follow Zach Sokol on ​Twit​ter.

​How Sydney and Australia Reacted to the Cafe Hostage Crisis Online

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Photo via Flickr user Cle0p​atra

It started when a man with a gun entered Lindt Chocolate Café in downtown Sydney​It ended with the cops storming the place, leading to a shootout that left two hostages and the gunman dead. In between was a long night of tension that had the whole country abuzz online.

It was a tragedy for the victims and their families. It also ended up being a PR disaster for Uber. The ridesharing company has had a presence in Sydney since 2012, and clearly it doesn't quite have things figured out here yet. In New York, Uber has had a policy of c​apping prices during emergencies since July—but last night, the Sydney Uber Twitter account tried to make it seem as though an automated surge pric​ing policywhere rates increase during "the busiest times"—was an act of charity.

[tweet text="We are all concerned with events in CBD. Fares have increased to encourage more drivers to come online & pick up passengers in the area." byline="— Uber Sydney (@Uber_Sydney)" user_id="Uber_Sydney" tweet_id="544319760809222144" tweet_visual_time="December 15, 2014"]

Less than an hour later, amid a social media backlash, the company reversed its stance and decided the situation might warrant an actual act of charity. ​(Uber did not immediately respond to VICE's request for comment.)

[tweet text="Uber Sydney trips from CBD will be free for riders. Higher rates are still in place to encourage drivers to get into the CBD." byline="— Uber Sydney (@Uber_Sydney)" user_id="Uber_Sydney" tweet_id="544329935943237632" tweet_visual_time="December 15, 2014"]

At least two news organizations came under fire for their responses to the crisis as well. ​Pedestrian Daily, a youth-oriented online news site, used a silly photo of a what appeared to be a Lindt chocolate bunny as their banner image for coverage of the situation. Readers reacted with distaste, naturally, and online media and marketing site Mumbrella called attention to the tone-deaf p​icture. The site subsequently changed the photo to one of the scene in Martin Place and apologized for the lapse in judgment. 

Meanwhile, The Daily Telegraph, a local tabloid newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, released a 2 PM edition specifically to cover the hostage crisis.

[tweet text="Sydney's Daily Telegraph has printed a special 2pm edition - "Death cult CBD attack" #MartinPlaceSiege pic.twitter.com/smU3gg3RSS" byline="— Tom Steinfort (@tomsteinfort)" user_id="tomsteinfort" tweet_id="544334477011349505" tweet_visual_time="December 15, 2014"]

The paper was promptly lambasted for the link to the Islamic State when no such association was established and the authorities were purposely avoiding that sort of innuendo. The outlet was further criticized for speculating about the number of hostages.

On the ground outside the café, things were apparently fairly quiet. Some people on the scene took selfies and some drank beers—and others said that it wasn't appropriate to be doing either.

[tweet text="People taking selfies at #MartinPlace while the hostage situation still going on http://t.co/AOQCfrsaoE pic.twitter.com/x23qI2YRxY" byline="— Kety Shapazian (@KetyBrazil)" user_id="KetyBrazil" tweet_id="544432248653881344" tweet_visual_time="December 15, 2014"]

[tweet text="Some people are taking selfies and others are drinking beer in Martin Place as the #SydneyCafeSeige enters its 7th hr pic.twitter.com/jujaOPeyOO" byline="— Juliette Saly (@julesaly)" user_id="julesaly" tweet_id="544369697274089473" tweet_visual_time="December 15, 2014"]

Most of these responses can be attributed to confusion or a lack of consideration. But for a few, the siege inspired actual malice.

Extremist nationalist groups such as the Australian Defence League posted updates and comments like this one on Facebook: " Here it is folks, homegrown islamic terrorism in our backyard, courtesy of successive australian governments and their brainwashed voters."

Some even showed up to the police barricade to shriek racist slurs.

[tweet text=".@Atozai @Asher_Wolf ADL's leader has been banned from the area by police for chanting racist slurs. via @HeyASIO pic.twitter.com/sPIDNViUPu" byline="— Kiera (@KieraGorden)" user_id="KieraGorden" tweet_id="544419972370280448" tweet_visual_time="December 15, 2014"]

In reaction to that malice, and in anticipation of possible persecution, Sydney Muslim communities condemned the actions of the gunman and  offered whatever help th​ey could. Forty Muslim groups said in a joint statement, "We reject any attempt to take the innocent life of any human being or to instill fear and terror into their hearts." Religious leaders from around the nation uni​ted in prayer.

A Sydney commuter, Rachael Jacobs, apparently saw a woman silently taking off her hijab and told her, "Put it back on. I'll walk with you." Rachael then posted a series of Facebook statuses describing the event.

[tweet text="Be more like this. pic.twitter.com/qoa2kVe15g" byline="— GenErik (@ErikVeland)" user_id="ErikVeland" tweet_id="544362306105143296" tweet_visual_time="December 15, 2014"]

Then Twitter user Sir Tessa offered a similar service and suggested a hashtag for those who wanted to do the same: #illridewithyou. 

[tweet text="If you reg take the #373 bus b/w Coogee/MartinPl, wear religious attire, & don't feel safe alone: I'll ride with you. @ me for schedule." byline="— Sir Tessa (@sirtessa)" user_id="sirtessa" tweet_id="544363242655449088" tweet_visual_time="December 15, 2014"]

[tweet text="Maybe start a hashtag? What's in #illridewithyou?" byline="— Sir Tessa (@sirtessa)" user_id="sirtessa" tweet_id="544363674505199616" tweet_visual_time="December 15, 2014"]

By 2:15 AM local time, ​police had stormed the cafe. The hostage situation is over, though #illridewithyou tweets ​are still circulating—they've become more about religious tolerance in a broad sense. A trending topic might not be much of a silver lining, but at least some people are thinking positive thoughts in the wake of all this. 

What We Learned About London in 2014

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Photo by Luke Overin

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

London: it's a weird place right now. A sucking wound of a city, a massive black hole in the bottom right of the country that seems hell-bent on inhaling everything within a 200-mile radius into its dark, expensive bowels. It's a city that exists in a permanent state of critical mass, just about avoiding a total implosion by pushing its brokest residents further into the peripheral sprawl and freeing up space for clueless rich people who'll keep the city on life support.

The media, sensing a good human tragedy story, have become obsessed with the narrative of the city, and in many ways it seems that recently the people in charge have started playing up to the panto villain image that's been created for them; shutting down, economically cleansing, bulldozing, and redrawing the image of the city at a rate that you have to applaud for its determination, if not its decency.

But among all the luxury developments and estate agents where you can have a Peroni while you seal the deal on a sweet two-bedroom just off the Lower Clapton Road lies a city that stands at the forefront of world culture. For as New York becomes little more than the set dressing for a Saturday Night Live sketch about hipsters, and Paris continues its admirable mission to create a staid, beautiful dreamworld where it is only ever 2008 or 1898, London retains a young, angry, bitter molten core that often rises to the surface. And 2014 saw perhaps more of this conflict than any year before it.

Here's what we learned about the greatest city on Earth in 2014.

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Photo by Luke Overin

"​GENTRIFICATION" IS THE WORD OF THE YEAR
​Fuck what the ​Oxford Diction​ary says; the word of the year is not "vape." Nobody calls it that, it's a word that means nothing and is said by nobody. No, the word of the year is surely "gentrification." A term that has groaned out of the Guardian comment pages to become almost completely inescapable; utterly integral to London's narrative, as the battle between natives and developers gets fiercer, and as the stakes become higher for both sides.

It's a phenomenon that can be seen all over the Western world, but it's in London that you see it in perhaps its most vicious, undiluted form. From our "Che in Chelsea boots" vs. ​the landlords​ of the New Era estate, to the ​Deptford Rise proje​ct, to ​Yup​pies Out, ​Woodberry D​own, and people who eat cheeseboards in pubs, London is a battlefield right now. A battlefield where one side wears scarves from Reiss, and the other wears the weight of a city that doesn't want them there any more.

To the victor, the spoils. A safe, vibrant city with more restaurants than an Egon Ronay anthology, a place where you can take your children anywhere, a place where you can get wi-fi in kebab shops. But to the loser, the nightmare. An unaffordable, unmaintainable bastard parent desperate to put an iron ball through your roof and price you out of your very existence. In a way, the conflict only serves to make London more fascinating, more on the edge than it's ever been. But how long can we really stick it out for?

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Photo by Jake Lewis

ALL THE CLUBS HAVE BEEN CLOSED DOWN
​Alongside the gentrification of housing and lifestyle comes what is perhaps for those beyond London's physical boundaries an even more worrying threat. The gentrification of our nightlife culture; the eradication and sterilization of establishments that are somehow seen as unviable, or distasteful in Evgeny Lebedev's nu-feudalist vision of London. In hindsight, it's clear to see that 2014 was the year of the long knives for pubs, clubs, gay bars, and anywhere that won't sell you a ham and cheese croissant via a man with a funny hat. What happens when arguably the world's most important cultural city starts killing off its culture?

For locals, the results are already there to see. At one point this year, you could have had a night out consisting of a few pints at the Griffin, before heading on to the George Tavern and then the Joiners Arms, before landing at a lock-in at one of the many ​estate or hardman variety pubs that now haunt the city's street corners like pissed ghosts. Or a trip to Madame Jojo's and its neighbor Escape, before heading North to Peoples Club till eight in the morning. Now, all those places have either closed, or are under threat of closing.

While, on a surface level, it'd be tough to find establishments more diverse than a Shoreditch boozer with vinyl-only DJs, a gay bar that became a fashion crowd speakeasy, a central London indie disco/drag queen hang out and an Afro-Caribbean all-night basement club, there is a common denominator between them. They were places that felt organic, casual, different. Places you could just turn up to and have a great night. Places that didn't involve E-tickets, wristbands, or retina scans. They were just "there" and they always had been, which exactly is why they've fallen into the capitalist crosshairs. You worry that, by 2016, all London clubs will look like David Guetta's airport lounge club.

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BUT LONDON IS STILL THE HOME OF EXCITING MUSIC
​Luckily, the music scene is fighting back against this onslaught, and perversely London has become a more dynamic, playful city at night. The rigid tyranny of deep house and snapback techno, with all their attendant RA message board dust-ups, advance sell-outs and muscle dancers, has started to fade. The previous glut of DJs and producers who called the city home seem to have headed off into the monied Croatian sunset, banging out their hits to blonde kids in ASOS sunglasses, and a new breed has sprung up to replace them. The vibe is artier, yet nastier; more conceptual, yet more authentic; rowdier, yet more sexualized and camp. More Paradise Garage than new media Christmas party.

From PC Music, to the enduring Night Slugs, to Evian Christ's massive Trance Parties, to sweatbox slamdowns like Endless and Eternal, there is a sense that London is a place where things are happening right now. Everyone is dressed to impress again after dubstep, the DJs don't seem to be blessed with Emerson, Lake and Palmer egos and the punters aren't there to screwface at the slip-ups. The vibe is live, the music is lairy and most importantly people are there to have fun, look good and get fucked in whatever way they desire. I mean, it'll all be gone in a year, but make the most of it while you can, because London's party scene is on a high right now.

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Photo by Jake Lewis

RENT IS EXPENSIVE AS FUCK
​Boris "Upper Street Noriega" Johnson is not a man who believes that the rate of rent rising in London should be controlled. He believes it should be left in the trustworthy hands of the landlords. Don't mistake him for a man who doesn't care; he cares about lots of things, from the teaching of classics in schools, to buskers' rights—but to impose a system of rent control, he says, would be " de​vastating."

Which is odd, because that's how every single person who lives in London apart from him feels. This is of course not providing any kind of new insight; sadly, it's just a fact of life in London right now. And in 2014, what we learned was not the fact that it's expensive, but that there is no end in sight to just how expensive it can get. The "less than 500 a month room" has become the "less than 700 a month room" in a year, and as it stands there is literally nothing to stop that other than the vague hope of David Lammy getting in and actually managing to pass the anti-rip-off rent legislation that Boris claims he doesn't even have the right to pass.

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Photo by Luke Overin

THEY'RE TRYING TO PUSH US OUT
​But, if you don't like it—and who apart from landlords does?—there are plenty of other options for you. Like ​Birming​ham. Or ​Ber​kshire. Places with entirely different identities, accents, neighborhoods, and values; places that are further away than Manchester is from Liverpool, yet are destined to become our new Hitchins and Guilfords as commutability is pushed further and further away from Charing Cross.

As Crossrail errs towards its evil finish line from West to East, crushing the odd nightclub in its path, another operation from North to South kicks up. One that will fuck you off to another part of the country in half an hour, cementing the idea that London is slowly becoming Paris without the all the Haussman charm and strange indifference towards homelessness. We're further becoming a city of concentric circles of wealth, with an inner citadel of money and an endless sprawl of near-poverty; oddly, the exact opposite of the ​Metroland​ dream. Suburbs originally designed for middle-class families—Edmonton, Hayes, Thornton Heath—have become all-but ghettoes as Hackney and Peckham overflow with first-time buyers. Why? Because living in a city is cool, and living in the suburbs isn't.

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Photo by Jake Lewis

THE CELEBRITIES ARE ALRIGHT, THOUGH
​But for all the chaos going on in London, there seems to be one group that will forever be relatively unaffected: the "celebs," those evergreen, ever-up-for-a-party demigods and demagogues who sit at the stop of the ES Magazine Mount Olympus, chowing down smoked salmon starters and tequila cocktails at TopShop launch parties, walking round Primrose Hill in expensive leather jackets, laughing at the rest of us for going to places where they don't have ice in the urinals.

They live lives of achievable glamor, lives that make us jealous even though we often end up at the same parties. They get PPQ jeans for free, they have Uber Exec accounts, and they do boardroom cocaine. They exist as paragons of a better world that's only just beyond us, sprawled across the pages of our lives, pretending to be lesbians and ​dropping bags of ra​cketon the same pavements we walk on. The message is simple: they are shit, but we are shitter.

PEOPLE STILL LINE UP FOR BURGERS
​Yep, that still happens.

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Photo by John Lubbock

YOU CAN'T GET A FOSTER'S ANYWHERE ANY MORE
2014 was the year when fancy beer finally defeated the humble session lagers at the taps. For years it was just those and a few ales. Ask for a Kronenbourg in most East London pubs these days and you might as well be asking if they've got the fucking Dead Sea Scrolls to browse along with the Observer supplements.

So lucrative have these beers become, that even tax-dodging former coke barons ​have gotten ​in on the act, perhaps realizing that in terms of the quality:sale price ratio, craft beer might be the one thing that's more of a rip-off than cocaine.

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Photo by Nick Pomeroy

EVERYONE'S ROCKING SPORTSWEAR
Perhaps as a reaction to the legions who seem to think that mid-length beards, slightly too-tight chore jackets, and Rough Trade tote bags are acceptable things to wear in a European city, many young Londoners have adopted a more wearable, looser silhouetted style. Clubs have had to re-evaluate their "no sportswear" policies as Adidas trackies, Nike sliders, Reebok Classics, and all sorts of other JJB Classics (as well as more high-fashion offerings from the likes of Cottweiler and the ever-present Nasir Mahzar) have come back into fashion. It's a look that is resolutely urban, clothing that's designed to be worn and lived in, clothes for the club and for the roads, clothes that make sense in a city like London.​

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Photo by Bruno Bayley

IT'S STILL THE MOST EXCITING CITY IN THE WORLD
​For all the tragedy and the madness, London remains a vital, fascinating place that's at the apex of modern culture. Most of the interesting things that are happening in the world today are happening in London, and no matter how much the bastards try to co-opt those, it's still hard to fathom living anywhere else for most of its residents. If there's one thing that those who are fighting to remain here prove beyond the power of money, it's that London gets into your bones.

Follow Clive Martin on ​Twi​tter.

More from VICE:

​What We Learned About Drugs in 2014

​A Bittersweet Love Letter to the London Suburbs

​Reasons Why London Is the Worst Place Ever

Kill the Banker

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Aftermath of the Wall Street bombing of 1920. Photo by New York Daily News via Getty Images 

A little violence can sometimes work to defend against predatory bankers. Consider the farmers of Le Mars, Iowa. The year was 1933, the height of the Great Depression.

A finance bubble on Wall Street had crashed the economy, the gears of industrial production had ground to a halt, and 13 million Americans had lost their jobs. Across the Corn Belt, farmers couldn't get fair prices for milk and crops, their incomes plummeted, and their mortgages went unpaid. Seeing opportunity, banks foreclosed on their properties in record numbers, leaving the farmers homeless and destitute.

So they organized. Under the leadership of a boozing, fist-fighting Iowa farmer named Milo Reno, who had a gift for oratory, several thousand farmers across the Midwest struck during 1933, refusing to sell their products. "We'll eat our wheat and ham and eggs" went the popular doggerel of the movement. "Let them"—the bankers—"eat their gold."

They called it a farmers' holiday and named their group the Farmers' Holiday Association. In speeches across the Midwest, Reno inveighed against "the destructive program of the usurers"—by which he meant, of course, the ruinous policies of Wall Street and the banking industry. Farmers, he said, had been "robbed by a legalized system of racketeering." He said that the "forces of special privilege" were undermining "the very foundations of justice and freedom upon which this country was founded." He compared the farmers' fight to that of the Founders, who had taken up arms. He warned that the farmers might have to "join hands with those who favor the overthrow of government," a government that he considered a servant of corporations. "You have the power to take the great corporations," he said, and "shake them into submission." One of his deputies in Iowa, John Chalmers, ordered FHA men to use "every weapon at their command." "When I said weapons," Chalmers added, "I meant weapons."

In Le Mars, the weapon of choice was the hanging rope. On April 27, 1933, in a series of incidents that would become national news, hundreds of farmers descended on a farm that was being foreclosed under the eye of the local sheriff and his deputies. They smacked the lawmen aside, stopped the foreclosure, and dragged the sheriff to a ball field in town, where they brandished their noose. Instead of hanging the sheriff, however, they went for a bigger prize: the county judge, Charles C. Bradley, who was presiding over the foreclosures.

Bradley was seized at his bench, dragged from the courtroom, driven into the countryside, dumped on a dusty road, stripped naked, "beaten, mauled, smeared with grease and jerked from the ground by a noose as [the] vengeful farmers shouted their protests against his foreclosure activities," reported the Pittsburgh Press. According to one account, the mob "pried his clenched teeth open with a screwdriver and poured alcohol down his throat." An oily hubcap was placed on his head, the oil running down his face as the farmers smashed Iowa dirt into his mouth. "That's his crown," they said.

The judge was hauled into the air on the hanging rope, until he fell unconscious, and was then hauled up again. When he revived, the farmers told him to pray. "Only a prayer for Divine guidance which Judge Bradley uttered as he knelt in the dust of a country road sobered the mob," reported the Pittsburgh Press, decrying the event as a harbinger of "open revolution."

The farmers, knowing they were about to involve themselves in murder, spared Bradley. He was bloodied, covered in filth, humiliated, and this was enough.

The threat of continued unrest fomented by Reno and the FHA had its intended effect: State legislatures across the Midwest enacted moratoriums on farm foreclosures. By 1934, the country was seething with revolt. Industrial laborers in Toledo, Ohio, and Minneapolis, Minnesota; dockworkers across the West Coast; and textile workers from Maine to the Deep South mounted strikes and protests demanding fair pay, worker protections, and union representation. They encountered brute force at the hands of local authorities and thugs in the pay of business interests. The strikers in Toledo and Minneapolis responded not by peaceably dispersing but by fighting back with clubs and rocks. According to the newspapers, a savage battle unfolded between autoworkers and the militia of the Ohio National Guard in Toledo, with the tear-gassed strikers unleashing their own gas barrage against the authorities, "matching shell for shell with the militiamen." Truck drivers fought in bloody hand-to-hand combat against the enforcers of the pro-business Citizens' Alliance in the streets of Minneapolis. A prominent corporate leader in the city was said to have announced, "This, this—is revolution!"

Indeed, it was in part the specter of violent revolution during the 1930s that spurred Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Congress to legislate the historic reform of capitalism called the New Deal. The government protected labor from the cruel abuses of big business, legalized unions, established the social security system, and put the usurers on Wall Street under the thumb of the Securities and Exchange Commission and other federal watchdogs, locking them in the regulatory cage where they belonged. The people had spoken and forced the government to listen.

Milo Reno of the Farmers' Holiday Association speaking at Cooper Union in New York City in 1934. Photo by Bettmann/Corbis

Following the Wall Street crash of 2008, which sent the country into the debacle of the Great Recession, I began writing a futurist novel inspired by my readings about the Le Mars revolt. I titled it Kill the Banker, in honor of William "Wild Bill" Langer, two-time governor of North Dakota during the 1930s, US senator from 1941 to 1959, and staunch supporter of the Farmers' Holiday Association. During a campaign stop at the height of the Depression, he told voters, "Shoot the banker if he comes on your farm. Treat him like a chicken thief." We don't have politicians like Wild Bill anymore.

In the novel I imagined a cabal of terrorists who wage a campaign against Wall Street. Like the Red Army Faction—Marxist maniacs who from the 1970s through the 90s spread terror across Europe—my terrorists, who call themselves the Strangers, assassinate members of the elite banking class who have escaped justice. The Strangers go after Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, and Credit Suisse. They bomb the New York Stock Exchange. They have no ideology except slaughter of their perceived enemy, killing for the sake of killing, much as a man makes money for the sake of money—as an expression of power.

The Strangers take their hapless captives from Bank of America to a basement in the mountains of upstate New York, where they hold mock trials that they post to YouTube, passing judgment before the American masses: death by torture. The Wall Streeters protest their innocence as mere cogs in the machine. The Strangers strap them to a steel chair bolted to the floor, piss in their mouths, tear off their fingernails, spear out their eyes, smash their testicles with a ball-peen hammer, remove their intestines with a pair of pliers, string their guts like Christmas lights, and behead the sobbing victims with a rusty saw.

It was a lousy novel from the start, more agitprop than storytelling, and I abandoned the project after 30,000 words of gore, concluding that terrorists are as tediously predictable in fiction as they are loathsome in real life. The farmers of Le Mars would have wanted nothing to do with the Strangers.

Part of my research for the book was the historical precedent of terrorism against Wall Street. Until the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995—eclipsed only by the attacks of 9/11—the Wall Street bombing of September 16, 1920, was the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil. At noon, a horse and buggy, laden with 100 pounds of dynamite and 500 pounds of cast-iron sash weights for shrapnel, pulled up in front of 23 Wall Street, the offices of J. P. Morgan, the richest, most powerful, most ruthless investment banker of his time. Morgan had manipulated the national economy to his benefit, exploited workers, and destroyed lives. He was, like our current crop of financiers, a vicious bastard, and he was the likely target of the bomb.

The driver fled, and minutes later there was a terrible explosion. A "mushroom-shaped cloud of yellowish, green smoke," said one observer, "mounted to a height of more than 100 feet, the smoke being licked by darting tongues of flame," as "hundreds of wounded, dumb-stricken, white-faced men and women" fled in panic. Instantly, bodies were "blown to atoms"; a woman's head, hat still on, was sent hurling into a concrete wall, where it stuck; and "great blotches of blood appeared on the white walls of several of Wall Street's office buildings."

Thirty-eight people were killed, 143 wounded. No group ever claimed responsibility, and the crime was never solved. It was likely the work of Italian socialist revolutionaries who had been on a bombing campaign across the US during the previous year, hitting elected officials and law enforcement. The Wall Street bombing was supposed to be their finest hour. Mostly they killed clerks, stenographers, and brokers—lowly office workers. J. P. Morgan wasn't even in town that day. The attack, which caused $2 million in damage (about $24 million in today's money), produced in the public only fear and revulsion and a newfound sympathy for Wall Street.

The ideology of revolutionary terrorism targeting big finance in the US originated with a Bavarian-born immigrant named Johann Most, who, upon his arrival in New York in 1882, observed—as accurately then as today—that "whoever looks at America will see: the ship is powered by stupidity, corruption, or prejudice." He denounced Wall Street and the ruling class as "the reptile brood." He wrote that "the existing system will be quickest and most radically overthrown by the annihilation of its exponents. Therefore, massacres of the enemies of the people must be set in motion." In 1885 he published a book, Revolutionary War Science, to bring on the massacre. It had a helpful subtitle: A Little Handbook of Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitroglycerine, Dynamite, Gun-Cotton, Fulminating Mercury, Bombs, Fuses, Poisons, Etc.

Most was a deformed runt, his days spent in a fever of resentment, and in the end, though he traveled the country making speeches and fostering hatred, he didn't throw a single bomb. He did, however, inspire others to eliminate the reptile brood. In 1892, Alexander Berkman, an anarchist agitator, tried to kill Henry Frick, partner of Andrew Carnegie in the Carnegie Steel Company, which was notorious for its maltreatment of workers. Later, Berkman was allegedly involved in the failed 1914 plot to kill industrialist John D. Rockefeller, who had presided over massacres of his striking employees. It was a catalogue of failures, whose sole result, perversely, was to turn public opinion in favor of the enemies of the people.

In the 1970s, carrying the banner of revolutionary destruction, the Weather Underground, a radical offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society, bombed a Bank of America branch as part of an anti-capitalist campaign whose targets included military installations, courthouses, corporate headquarters, the State Department, the Pentagon, and the US Capitol building. The Weathermen, as they were known, were gentlemanly in their attacks: Prior to detonation, they often issued an anonymous warning to evacuate the targeted site, in order that no person would be harmed. The scores of bombings in the 70s proved totally ineffective in achieving the Weathermen's main goal: "the creation of a mass revolutionary movement" for the overthrow of the US government.

An unidentified man stands in the blown-out doorway of a downtown Oklahoma City business after the bombing in 1995. Photo by Rick Bowmer/AP 

On September 29, 2009, a 64-year-old Phoenix resident named Kurt Aho, who was suffering from cancer, stood outside his foreclosed home with a .357 Magnum and shot out the tires of two trucks sitting in his driveway. It was three years after the bursting of the housing bubble, and almost exactly one year after the onset of the Great Recession. Millions of homeowners, desperate and fearful, without jobs or revenue, couldn't keep up with their mortgage payments. And the banksters came calling to kick them out.

The cars belonged to two real estate investors who said they had purchased Aho's home out of foreclosure from Bank of America. Now they wanted to see their new property. Aho was in shock. He had lived in the house for 29 years, had raised his children there.

According to his daughter, Tammy Aho, he was experiencing financial troubles. He was a construction contractor. Unable to find enough work, he was living off credit and struggling with his illness. In June 2009, Aho had contacted Bank of America to ask for a loan modification. Bank representatives told him—"not directly," said Tammy, "but in a roundabout way"—that he needed to fall behind on his payments. "They told him that if you get six months behind on your mortgage they will help you modify the loan."

It would be a strategic default. He followed the advice. Bank of America assured him the modification was being processed. They assured him of this up to the very minute the property was sold at auction on September 29, when Aho found the two investors standing on his lawn.

Aho asked the investors for proof of ownership, but they had none at hand. They claimed the paperwork was still being completed. He told them to get off the property. They refused. That's when the gun came out and the tires went flat and the two men fled. Aho, for the moment, had stopped the taking of his home.

Aho was responding not simply to his own personal crisis but to the widespread perception that the banks were coming after everyone. Starting roughly in 2000, more than a dozen financial institutions, Bank of America most prominently, colluded with mortgage lenders to extend home loans to anyone who could fog a mirror—basically a long line of suckers who were told they could own a big house with only a waitress's tips. These risky loans, pooled into mortgage-backed securities that the banks knew to be lousy investments, were marketed as AAA-rated bonds and sold to institutional investors worldwide for trillions of dollars.

The banks, flush with cash, pumped more money into more shoddy home loans, with the lenders on the Street scamming to get more warm bodies to sign on the line. Real estate prices skyrocketed in the largest financial bubble in history. And when it burst, producing this country's most severe housing-market collapse ever—worse than during the Great Depression—homeowners like Aho were left holding overpriced mortgages on houses whose real value had plummeted.

Between 1990 and 2014, the finance, insurance, and real estate sectors spent $3.8 billion lobbying Congress, and it was during those years that lawmakers in both parties increasingly did the bidding of their buyers by massively deregulating the finance industry. Congress overturned FDR's banking reforms of the 1930s, allowing mega-mergers of banking, securities, and insurance companies. It relaxed the laws governing the operations of the mega-banks and opened financial markets to the abuses of instruments like mortgage-backed securities. And in the revolving door of corporatocracy and government, by the mid 1990s the bankers themselves had nailed jobs heading up the very institutions—the Federal Reserve, the SEC, the Department of the Treasury—mandated to enforce what few laws remained to keep the industry from preying whole-hog on the public.

Bank of America eventually settled at least 21 lawsuits from investors and regulators over securities fraud related to its peddling worthless mortgage-backed securities. The gamut of its frauds ranged from the obscene sophistication of junk mortgage bonds to the paper-pushing thuggery of predatory lending and unlawful foreclosure. According to the National Association of Attorneys General, Bank of America was among five mega-banks that organized the infamous "robo-signing" of illegal foreclosure affidavits, producing forged and fabricated documents to speed the eviction of homeowners so that the properties could be re-sold for more profit.

The bank played cruel games with homeowners, routinely promising them loan modifications—as in the case of Kurt Aho—only to claim to lose the paperwork, bullying ahead with the foreclosure. A class-action suit settled last February found the bank engaged in a "kickback scheme inflating the cost of insurance that homeowners were forced to buy." The Department of Justice reported that one of the bank's subsidiaries "wrongfully foreclosed upon active duty servicemembers without first obtaining court orders." According to investigative journalist Matt Taibbi, the totality of Bank of America's corruption and venality meant rigged bids in 2008's multitrillion municipal bond market, dubious arbitration disputes with its credit-card holders, and rampant charging of account holders with bogus overdraft fees, robbing its own customers of $4.5 billion.

And this is just Bank of America. At least a dozen other large banks and mortgage lenders have been implicated in similar frauds.

Instead of handing out prison sentences, the government gave bailouts to Bank of America and its allies. The company would have flushed itself down the shitter after the 2008 crash if the Department of the Treasury hadn't stepped in with a $45 billion infusion of cash in 2009. By 2011, according to Taibbi, the Federal Reserve had put taxpayers on the hook for as much as $55 trillion of the bank's bad investments.

The tens of billions of dollars in fines forced by federal regulators on Bank of America and a dozen other financial behemoths were pittances measured against the real cost to the economy of the bank-created bubble and crash, which the US Government Accountability Office has conservatively estimated at $12.8 trillion. The government nevertheless crowed victory over a chastised Wall Street. Congress's own specially appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission found that executives at the highest level likely knew about—and possibly even condoned—the frauds committed by their companies. Yet only one executive went to jail. In a nation whose government has been captured by its bankers, this farce of enforcement, effectively a legalized system of racketeering, is the accepted norm.

Liberty Plaza in New York City on September 11, 2001. Photo by Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

Yet those who fought back against Wall Street did go to jail, or worse. In May 2009, for example, Daniel Gherman defended his home in Riverside, California, by booby-trapping it with phony bombs after it had been foreclosed. The bombs were ineffectual, but the homeowner was charged with four counts of possessing facsimile explosives.

In July 2010, a homeowner facing foreclosure drove his car to a PNC bank branch in Illinois late one evening and ignited a bomb, destroying the car and shattering the windows of the bank. No one was hurt, and the homeowner, David Whitesell, waited across the street for the cops to arrive. It's been reported that his intention was to make a political statement. He was charged with arson and criminal damage to property with an incendiary device.

In February 2011, a man named Elias Mercado, of San Marcos, California, drove his car into the front door of a Bank of America branch at 4 AM. According to news reports, he plowed through two sets of glass double doors and hit a coffee table, a wall, a cubicle, a teller counter, and several plants. He backed up two times, hitting more furniture, and departed via the newly created exit where the double doors had stood. His car left a trail of bank parts, and he was later caught and charged with burglary of a building and evading arrest.

In April 2012, a man named James Ferrario, armed with an assault rifle, gunned down and killed a sheriff's deputy and locksmith in Modesto, California, as the two men served an eviction on his apartment. And so on. A man in Florida, charged with arson and attempted manslaughter, set his home on fire when it was foreclosed. Another Florida man bulldozed his home to the ground before the bank could seize it. A California man fearing homelessness and suffering from a fatal illness robbed a Bank of America of $107,000 to fund his 17 percent mortgage.

It's a depressing litany. No citizens came to their aid, no farmers with a rope rallied at their door, no Homeowners' Holiday Association had their backs. The acts of defiance were rabid, isolated, hopeless, and ultimately meaningless.

Foreclosure #2, St. George, Utah, 2007. Photo by Steven B. Smith

In September 2011, Occupy Wall Street erupted on the scene. Here was a movement that held out the promise of uniting against the banking industry. I spent a good deal of time at Zuccotti Park—the protesters' headquarters—as a reporter, though I was also a believer in the movement. When I saw a young woman holding a sign that said WALL STREET: THE ENEMY OF HUMANITY, I wanted to hug her. I wanted to tell her about Milo Reno and Wild Bill Langer.

The postmortem offered by the media was that the movement's inability to formulate tangible goals, its lack of demands, its steadfast adherence to the principles of "non-hierarchy," its refusal to elect or bow to a leadership, its unwillingness to embrace the traditional system of interest-group politics—all resulted in its self-destruction. Occupy, we were meant to believe, committed suicide because of its untenable framework.

This was not the whole story, of course. A movement that vowed to undo Wall Street was undone, at least in part, by federal and state and local governments bent on protecting Wall Street. We know this because of the work of the nonprofit Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which in 2012 obtained a ream of documents from the US Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security—memos, emails, briefings—detailing how Occupy was targeted for destruction. The documents show that the FBI, the DHS, and local police departments coordinated to surveil, infiltrate, and undermine Occupy encampments across the nation.

"From its inception the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat," said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF. Anti-terrorist branches of the FBI swung into action to deal with the threat of the Occupiers—who, it should be remembered, avowed and practiced a philosophy of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience. The heavily redacted documents even state that members of the Occupy movement in New York, Seattle, Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, Texas, were targeted for assassination by a person or persons the FBI refused to identify. According to the documents, "[name redacted] planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles." The FBI never informed Occupiers of the danger.

According to Verheyden-Hilliard, instead of protecting citizens from possible assassination, federal law enforcement ended up as "a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America." And when the final blow came, as journalist Dave Lindorff reported, the FBI and DHS helped local law enforcement plan and execute the raids on the encampments that drove out the Occupiers in Zuccotti Park and in dozens of other cities. Those raids were characterized by a terrific show of force. Beating, tear-gassing, mass arrest of peaceful protesters: This is how Occupy came to an end. The Occupiers offered no organized resistance. They scattered like leaves.

Sociologist Max Weber once observed that "the modern state is a compulsory association which organizes domination. It [seeks] to monopolize the legitimate use of physical force as a means of domination." This monopoly on violence is the distinguishing characteristic of the modern nation-state, according to Weber. But Weber warns that the state's use of physical force comes with a caveat: The state must prove its legitimacy by protecting the interests of the public—say, when police defend a crowd against a gun-wielding maniac.

The maniacs on Wall Street, of course, have friends at the highest rungs of government—a bought-and-sold government whose work as a servant of the wealthy and the powerful is unexcelled, but whose legitimacy as a protector of the public interest looks increasingly suspect. The people have a moral right to rise up against such a government and, ultimately, to question its monopoly on violence; this is the imperative of revolution. Good luck with that in the age of crowd-control devices, militarized police units, Hellfire drones, mass-surveillance systems, and the panoply of domestic laws that render even peaceful protest a potentially criminal act. The apparatus of state domination has grown ever larger, more powerful, complex, effective, and terrifying—at the same time, the domination of the state by corporate interests has been perfected as never before. One doubts the farmers of Le Mars these days would survive ten minutes with their pathetic length of hanging rope.

Police arrest demonstrators of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Photo by Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos

When Kurt Aho shot out the tires of the cars of the two investors, a swarm of Phoenix police officers descended on his residence, including an armored-car unit, a SWAT unit, and sniper teams on adjacent rooftops. According to police, Aho was told to come out of the house, drop his weapon, and approach the armored car with his hands over his head. He appeared in his doorway, half-dressed, pistol in one hand, a beer in the other. There was a round of negotiations. Aho refused to depart from the premises. "You're gonna have to kill me," he said.

Tammy Aho raced to her father's house and pleaded with officers to let her talk with him. She had recently lost her own house to foreclosure, and she was in the process of moving in with her father. "Not only would he be homeless if we lost this place," Tammy told me—"my kids and I would be homeless."

The cops rebuffed her. "I told the police, if you're gonna shoot him, shoot him in the knees—buckle his knees. But they didn't listen."

An hour passed in the standoff. Kurt drank his beer. What happened next is disputed. Police claimed that Kurt opened fire, and the police answered with rubber bullets, hitting him in the arm and knocking him down. Tammy Aho says the cops fired without provocation, and that only then did Aho squeeze off several rounds, hitting the armored car. A well-placed bullet in his chest killed him instantly on his front lawn. "After they killed him," Tammy told me, "the cops sat around eating pizza and taking pictures of each other and laughing like it was no big deal."

But the officers were totally unprepared for the chaos that followed. An armed crowd, shouting curses about "police murder," emerged like grubs out of the ground and opened fire. The two investors who had taken Aho's home, accompanied by a Bank of America vice president, were shot in the back, and men from the neighborhood carrying axes and shovels leaped on them and finished the job by crushing their skulls. The armored car was overwhelmed, its officers fleeing. Thousands of citizens converged at the Aho home, armed with shotguns, AR-15s, Kalashnikovs. The police, surrounded, outgunned, outnumbered, surrendered within minutes, and not a few of them—more than we'd like to admit—joined the nascent Citizen Homeowners' Militia, which declared the neighborhood a Bank-Free America Zone.

You didn't hear about this revolt on the news. Because of course it never happened.

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