The writer, post gaybashing

Aside from being a part of the Southern California Jewish Karate Boom of the mid-90s, I’ve been about as non-violent as a dude can be. I can count on one hand the amount of punch-having situations I’ve been involved in—three to be exact. When I was in 6th grade, a bully shoved my sister to the ground. I punched him in the ear and he couldn’t hear for a few minutes and thought he was deaf so he started crying and it was hilarious. The other two times, I’ve been the fist-receiver. Once, I was blackout drunk in a hotel room in Vegas and woke up to see my friend fucking my other friend’s ex, so I, apparently, stood over their bed and mumbled “this is weird” enough times that we eventually got into a wrestling match which lead me to bleed all over the hotel room. The other time, I was blackout drunk in Anchorage and I, as a straight dude, got gay bashed. A group of teenage punks hurled all sorts of slurs at me like “Go back to where you came from, faggot!” I responded by getting close to one of them and, smiling, floated these words at their faces: “It’s a shame that such terrible things come out of your mouth... when such beautiful things could go in it.” Their fists broke my glasses but not my spirit, and I somehow blindly groped my way back to my hotel. The rest of my life has been a modest attempt at achieving social justice and just plain existing through exclusively nonviolent means.

After Prop 8 passed in California, I went door to door raising money for gay rights causes. During the Occupy Movement, I brought comedians to the steps of LA’s city hall to entertain and share ideas with the weary masses. I’ve marched on Mormon temples because of their involvement in the passage of Prop 8, the streets of Hollywood during multiple anti-whatever-fucked-up-thing-is-happening protests, and been a part of a human blockade of a Long Beach port owned by Goldman Sachs. I sat in a human chain on the penultimate night of Occupy LA, guarding a ceremonial tent in the middle of the park at City Hall. I had the national lawyer’s guild phone number sharpied to my arm in preparation of my imminent arrest. Bandana covering my nose and mouth from pepper spray, vinegar soaked rags in my pockets to combat the tear gas, I was prepared to do whatever it took for the cause. I saw thousands of my neighbors form a wall of life to protect us. Our arms were linked around a symbol of free expression, alone together in the park. They kept the cops at bay. We won that night. I’ll never forget the feeling of watching the sun come up over downtown. We’d done it.

I woke up the next afternoon more depressed than I’ve ever been. As soon as I opened my eyes it hit me—the LAPD was going to continue to raid the park, night after night, until the morale and resolve had shrivelled to the point where the cops could easily clear us out. I was crippled by that revelation. I drank two bottles of wine and couldn’t leave my bed. I watched live, on my computer, that very night, as the city achieved its goal of silencing the people.

In my life, that was the closest thing I’ve seen to the citizenry accomplishing major change, and it was an utter failure. Every form of activism I’ve engaged in has meant nothing—the war’s still happening, the banks continue to eat our future, and gays are only people in a handful of states. Protests have become glorified parades, following strict routes, with drums, music, and the vibe of a street festival. What we’re doing just isn’t working.

In the months and years since the fall of the Occupy Movement—though I was quite busy with drinking heavily, breaking up with my long-term girlfriend, and gaining close to 40 pounds—I found time to grow exponentially more cynical. Every single day, through innumerable drone strikes, Christopher Dorner, the GOP’s War on Women, the massacre of the Voting Rights Act, Trayvon Martin, Congress making it easier than ever for lunatics to get a military grade assault weapon—every single day, I take one step away from my pacifism. I started reading up on turn of the 20th century struggles of the workingman, like the Haymarket Affair, the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, and the May Day Riots of 1919. One thing that tied the vast majority of these together was the intense violence perpetrated by the state and retaliated by the socialists and anarchists. Could violence, in some way, improve our vain (in both senses of the word) attempts to fix our country?

The Haymarket Affair, for those unaware, is the basis for May Day (or International Worker’s Day) and is widely regarded as the turning point in the fight for the eight hour work day. A peaceful gathering of striking workers and supporters met at Haymarket Square in Chicago on May 4, 1886. Various speakers addressed the crowd of roughly a few thousand people, and it was so passive that even the mayor walked home early. Around 10:30 PM, just as the last speech was wrapping up, the police marched on the rally and ordered the crowd to disperse. Before the cops could advance, a homemade bomb was thrown and it detonated, ultimately killing seven policemen. The fuzz fired on the fleeing crowd, and though the numbers vary, many historians agree that approximately four workingmen were killed and 70 were wounded. One police source told newspapers that during the madness, because of the darkness and confusion, many cops actually shot their colleagues: “It was every man for himself, and while some got two or three squares away, the rest emptied their revolvers, mainly into each other.” To this day, nobody knows who threw the bomb. Cases have been made that it was a prominent anarchist, a Pinkerton agent provocateur, a hired goon from a wealthy industrialist, or simply an angry worker.

Illustration of the Haymarket Riot from Harper's

In the aftermath, the Chicago Police, objectively, acted like complete thugs: ransacking homes without search warrants, arresting hordes of workers with little-to-no ties to the bombing, and conducting an eight week shakedown of labor activists. The trial that followed was a complete circus. Judge Joseph Gary didn’t even attempt to hide his disdain for the eight defendants, and the lead investigator was eventually dismissed by the police force for allegedly fabricating evidence. None of this mattered to the press who called the defendants "dynamarchists," "bloody monsters," "cowards," "cutthroats," "thieves," "assassins," and "fiends." The fact was, seven of the eight defendants had legitimate alibis ranging from them being on the speaker’s wagon at the time of the bombing, to being at home playing cards. Facts weren’t important—all eight were convicted and seven were sentenced to death. Before the execution, one of the defendants, Louis Lingg, committed suicide by detonating a blasting cap in his mouth—which didn’t immediately kill him, instead turning his last six hours of life into utter agony. The governor commuted two of the accused’s sentences to life in prison, but four of the remaining leaders of the worker’s movement were to be killed by the state.

On November 11, 1887, the day of the hanging, the families of the condemned were arrested and searched for bombs. The four stood on the gallows and awaited their fate. The instant before their execution, August Spies screamed "The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!" The men were hanged, but they did not die immediately, instead they, ironically, slowly strangled to death in front of the horrified crowd.

The lasting effect of these tragic events served to unify the workers in Chicago and around the world, and the workers of America eventually won the eight hour workday. It would’ve never happened without violence—both by and at the citizenry. But this was the 1880s, when police and hired gorillas thoughtlessly mowed down workers by the barrelful—and the bullets in their guns were not made of rubber.

Despite the fundamental problems that plague modern America, we are not being categorically struck down simply for fighting for our basic rights. Therefore, when citizens aim to use deadly force as a form of protest against government oppression (McVeigh, the Unibomber, etc.) it not only spectacularly fails to spread the message, but creates a (rightful) outpouring of support for the victims. More than capable of possessing basic human empathy, what if instead of reckless violence against people, the modern protest movement utilized targeted, symbolic “violence” against property?

Watching thousands of people take to the streets last week to protest the institutionalized racism that lead to a trial acquitting a man who instigated a fight with an unarmed teen, lost the fight, then killed the boy with a gun, I couldn’t help but feel a confusing brew of emotions. I reached out to my friend, acclaimed comedian and union organizer Nato Green, and asked him his thoughts on incorporating violence into our current disheveld state of political unrest.

“I'm not a pacifist, but I think the goal of protesting is to broaden the movement.” He continued, “Violence and rioting only works if that's what people are ready for. If you have a million people that want to smash the windows at the bank, then by all means do so. If you have 20,000 people who want to march peacefully and 20 people who want to smash stuff, then those 20 people are dicks for dragging the rest of the group into their thing.”

1999 Seattle WTO protests, Photo via Wikipedia Commons

His words evoked images of the broken Starbucks windows and dismantled Niketown signs that dominated the airwaves during the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. “The Battle in Seattle” achieved about as much as any individual days-long direct action possibly can. The protests disrupted the meeting to the point where titans of globalization failed to adopt a single resolution, and the citizens made sure the WTO wouldn’t think about occupying their city again. However, if you ask the majority of activists, cops, and press, it was a failure. Why? Because the media narrowed its gaze on some shattered glass and burnt debris, instead of the protesters’ message. But is that entirely true?

According to the phenomenal, albeit slightly outdated, essay “From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the ‘Violence’ of Seattle” by Kevin Michael DeLuca and Jennifer Peeples, no, it’s not true. Their analysis shows that because, not in spite of, the symbolic “violence” of a handful of anarchists, coverage of the protests more than doubled. Let me be clear, not just the coverage of the vandalism, coverage of the entire affair. In order to explain the chaos happening on the streets of Seattle, the media were forced to inform the masses exactly why it was happening—and therefore shine a light on criticisms that the WTO is an “undemocratic organization with a pro-corporate agenda that in practice overrules national labor, environmental, and human rights laws.”

They argue that the internet and television’s “public screen” has supplemented and essentially eclipsed the old fashioned notion of the “public sphere.”  The nostalgic notion of politics as a civil, face-to-face dialogue has been replaced by a distracting, publicity-driven, image centric broadcast:

“Citizens who want to appear on the public screen, who want to act on the stage of participatory democracy, face three major conditions that both constrain and enable their actions: 1) private ownership/monopoly of the public screen, 2) Infotainment conventions that filter what counts as news, and 3) the need to communicate in the discourse of images.”

If young people, your regular Joe Mustache or Jane AmericanApparel, want their fair share of the Public Screen, DeLuca and Peeples say they should follow the old news motto “if it bleeds, it leads.”

“Since the civil rights and antiwar protests of the 1960s, activists have learned the lessons of images. They understood Seattle as an occasion not for warfare but for imagefare. The protesters’ chants of "The whole world is watching" clearly echo the 1960s. The whole world did watch—not because 30,000 protesters gathered in one location, but because uncivil disobedience and symbolically violent tactics effectively disrupted the WTO, shutdown Seattle, provoked police violence, and staged the images the media feed upon. An analysis of media coverage of the WTO protests reveals such tactics as necessary ingredients for compelling the whole world to watch.”

They conclude their paper with a sobering assessment of the obstacles inherent in our corporate controlled media landscape.

“The airwaves in the United States are by law the property of the public, but they are leased in such a way that media companies own them for all intents and purposes. The Walt Disney Co. need not grant us a soapbox from which to air our views... In addition, both theoretically and practically the very distinction between public and private has eroded. Still, the public screen, though privately controlled, is public. The complexity of the public screen warrants neither bemoaning a lost past nor celebrating a technological utopia. The charge for critics is not to decry a lacking present or embrace a naive future. The charge for critics is to chart the topography of this new world.”

While the lasting effects of the WTO protests were almost entirely consumed by 9/11, the following wars, and economic meltdown, the anger and frustration at corporate dominance remains and is, if anything, compounded by this century’s rollback of civil rights. Yet still, with few exceptions, violence, symbolic or otherwise is widely dismissed as ineffective.

Nato seems to believe that violent protest works better abroad:

“There are times and places where it works. In Europe there appears to be more mass support for more militant tactics. When I was in Guatemala, I met ex-guerrillas. Their villages were being destroyed by death squads no matter what they did, so they may as well have taken up arms. But here and now, we'll always be outgunned.”

Nato’s right, we will always be outgunned. The way to fight back isn’t by throwing rocks at local businesses or killing cops, but it’s also not by planning sterile, flaccid protest-parades that stay on the sidewalk along pre-approved routes. So how can we commandeer the public sphere without resorting to physical destruction?

One of the worst elements of my generation is that every meatmouth with a Twitter account feels they must craft a “personal brand.” This is how the dominant 21st century advertiser-controlled dialogue has affected the majority. I hate it, however, I feel that our current wave of activists can learn something from the companies we so hate—we must control our brand. That is the only way we can achieve the mainstream success on the public sphere it takes to accomplish our goals. According to Nato, that’s our biggest problem.

“We think it's better to be righteous than relevant, better to be smug than successful. We aren't developing strategies and organizations that are even trying to reach a majority of people. Most people know that [things] are fucked up. If you ask them, most people can imagine a better world. What they can't imagine, and what activists totally fail at offering, is a compelling story about how we get from here to there, and that the way we get from here to there depends on everyone pitching in. So people just drift into apathy and cynicism.”

A big reason why I think the Occupy Movement failed was because of a fundamental lack of organization. We couldn’t stay on message, so we certainly couldn’t broadcast that message to the masses. Part of the beauty of the movement was the rational, open discourse that harkened back to the days of the wobegon public sphere, but even within the sphere, there were too many conflicts of interest. Animal, LGBTQ, and immigrant rights all have a much-needed place in the national dialogue—but not during a months-long direct action about our criminal financial industry. Had we only focused on issues specific to banks such as reinstating Glass-Steagall, moratoriums on foreclosures, capping interest on student loan debt, etc. we may have accomplished something. Hell, at the time, I wasn’t able to see the forest for the trees, either. In a speech I gave to a rather large gathering of occupiers and supporters, I remarked, "Think of America as a car. Alright, so our car is in pretty bad condition—and by that I mean at this point it’s actually just an old wheezing dog wearing a saddle that somebody drew a frownyface on. Now… How do you fix that fucking car?"

If I knew then what I know now, I would’ve started by at least cleaning off the frownyface. Focusing on one goal, or a select few if they’re completely related, until that goal is met is the only way to affect change. If we couldn’t control our message in the realm of the public sphere, how could we protect it from being contorted on the public screen?

This is not a call to violence, symbolic or otherwise, but the fact remains that, right now, there is no more effective way to seize the public screen. If we want to abandon all violence in today’s America, we must use the same tactics the corporate state wields to find a way to connect to the people, while remaining sensational enough to seduce the media. We can do it, afterall it is we, the young and societally “hip,” who have been informing companies with our music, style, and lexicon on how to rip money from our own pockets. We can use these powers of persuasion for good, and if it doesn’t work, then I guess a few dudes can break some windows to bait the cameras.

@ShutUpAndrosky

More on stickin' it to the man:

Egypt's Black Block—An Exclusive Interview

Have the Skouries Protesters Really Defeated the EU, Goldminers, and Terror Police in Greece?

The Brother of a Turkish Protester Murdered by the Police Speaks Out

Art can reflect the soul of a nation. But for the past three decades, Afghanistan has been defined by the art of war that has painted its countryside in broad strokes of red and black.

Despite both the conflict and the former Taliban regime, who opposed the depiction of any human or animal forms in photographs, drawings, or paintings, art has not only survived in Afghanistan, but has re-emerged as a creative and provocative force in the capital of Kabul.

Painter and video artist Raharan Omarzad deserves much of the credit. Omarzad was a student of fine arts at Kabul University, but fled to Pakistan during the reign of the Taliban. While in Pakistan he started an art magazine for Afghans, keeping the creative spark alive in the middle of a national diaspora.

“There was nothing for Afghan artists during that time,” he says, “no way to share our work with others.”

When the Taliban government was forced from power by the Northern Alliance, who was backed up with US air power and special forces troops, Omarzad returned to Kabul and continued publishing the magazine.

With the help of several international organizations like the Open Society and Women of the World Foundations, he also opened the Afghan Center for Contemporary Art and the Women’s Art Center.

“This is a place where we can teach each other new skills and reflect on our country.”

The Center has also held joint exhibitions in Kabul, Germany, and France.

Omarzad shows us the gallery space in the back of his building. It's a high ceiling, loft-like structure with a gravel floor and egg cartons paneling the walls. Inside are more than a dozen engaging works from a recent exhibit called Balloons.

“The balloons in this exhibit are the symbol of empty promises," he says referring to works in which balloons are depicted with burqa-clad women, balloons are surrounded by barbed wired, and even a skeleton holds a deflated balloon in a work called, The Balloon Seller.

While the Center offers Afghan artists a chance to create in a relatively secure environment, including speaking out artistically against government corruption and betrayals, Omarzad tempers his speech like a man who knows the threat to free speech never completely goes away.

“Freedom of expression all over the world has some limitations. You cannot find any country that has full freedom of expression and Afghanistan also has some limitations... ,” says Omarzad. “Working as an artist there is some risk, but you have to accept that risk. Without accepting the risk you cannot be a responsible artist.”

Here the risks have been embraced. While the canvas is small, Omarzad feels Kabul’s contemporary art movement has a chance to reflect a new Afghanistan, in promises both real and empty.

Here is a video tour of the Afghan Center for Contemporary Art.

All text and photos by Kevin Sites.

Photo by Cheney Orr.

Recently, I caught up with my friend Wilsonman. A member of the rap group the Stone Rollers Stone Gang, he’s spending his golden years cruising the streets of New York, laying down smooth rhymes, and frequenting the New York City party scene. Unfortunately, NYPD officers recently beat up Wilsonman when he was leaving a club. I called my man Wilsonman to talk about these cops, America's police brutality problem, and how this violence will effect his music. 

VICE: What is a typical day in New York City like for Wilsonman? 
Wilsonman: A typical day in the life of Wilsonman consists of recording with the homies of either the Krust crew or Elitetisc Records, smoking at parties that don't allow it, ratchet behavior at open bars, and skating in the hood or the Lower East Side. 

What does ratchet behavior at open bars entail?
Smoking in the cut, puking, getting kicked out, and waking up on the couch. Mostly just having a good time before you wake up and you're 30.

What went down the night the cops attacked you?
I dropped my plug ear gauge and was then kicked out of the club. When I went to retrieve my property from the club, the bouncer swung at me because I was refusing to leave without my belongings. Then the cops showed up. I told them that I have the right to retrieve my property from a residence or business I can't enter or occupy. However, they told me to leave the block, which I attempted to do by hailing a cab. They hailed one for me when I told them they were violating my rights. They then slammed the door on my foot, and then I opened it; my lace was stuck in the door. I was calling my friends that were inside the club, and the cops saw me on my phone, pulled me out of the taxi, and proceeded to savagely beat me after I was handcuffed. Then they pepper sprayed me, lifted me by the cuffs, and brought me to the hospital—without ever telling me what I was arrested for. When I tried to tell the hospital staff, they had me sedated. So basically, I was kidnapped by the NYPD.

Photo by Taji Ameen and Wilsonman.

Has this experience changed your view of the NYPD?
Hell yeah. It woke me up, and I now see New York as a police-run state of hell. I can't even enjoy law and order anymore.  

Has this inspired any of your new songs?
Yeah. I've been writing a lot of antipolice lyrics, because a lot of people have seen what happened with Trayvon. Personally having an incident like this can really push you. I mean, I can let this drag me down and lash out, or I can use this as fuel for my creative fire. I'm going to say there are a few good cops out there, but the NYPD seems to be plagued with a lot of fuckboy cops—especially in areas with high crime rates, like the East New York hood I come from.

Thanks for the full story, Wilsonman.

@RedAlurk 

Previously – Meet the Legends of the Lower East Side

Photo of recent war destruction in Lebanon by Flickr user Masser.

Before war broke out in Syria, Lebanese Sunni cleric Ahmad al-Assir was a respected figure in his country. But as the civil war in Syria has crossed over to Lebanon, Assir’s sermons have turned political, often criticizing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah for fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s troops. Although these views have caused some Lebanese Sunnis to stop following Assir, they have also inspired many others to support Assir’s crusade against Hezbollah. On June 18, Assir’s men clashed with armed members of the Resistance Brigades, local affiliates of the Shiite Islamist group Hezbollah.

I decided to find Assir and ask him if he was planning on bringing war to Sidon, a small Lebanese city that hugs the Mediterranean.

After clashes earlier in the week, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) set up a checkpoint a bit down the hill from the Bilal bin Rabah Mosque where Assir preached. I walked up an incline to the mosque, where I met a tall, stern looking man in his 20s. He led me up a flight of stairs to an apartment, located in the same complex as the mosque. There, he introduced me to a middle-aged sheikh, with a gray beard wearing a long white thobe.

This was not the sheik I had come to see.

“I’m sorry but you won’t be able to see the sheikh today,” said the sheikh who wasn’t Assir. “The army arrested two of our men this morning, and it looks like things are going to get fiery.”

Accepting my misfortune, I left the mosque and decided on grabbing a bite from KFC. As I sat down to eat on the outside terrace at around 2 PM, I noticed a sheikh talking to an LAF soldier.

The talks seemed civil at first till two armed men in body armor arrived and began shouting and pointing their rifles in the air. What had been quiet negotiations evolved into a shoving match between these men and the soldiers—and then, of course, came the gunfire.

I cannot say who shot first. Reports later said two soldiers were killed;  I saw a LAF soldier leap off an army jeep, as bullets barraged him and then watched the LAF take cover behind buildings as Assir’s men fired on from above—based off this knowledge and where the bullets hit the jeep, it seems Assir’s men were already in position when the shoving match began.

I rushed inside and took cover behind the counter as a stray bullet shattered KFC’s windows. Aside from the ten or so employees, there were a few young men in their late teens/early 20s, two mothers, and a few children. The oldest child was 11 years old.

With several KFC employees, I watched the battle unfold less than 50 meters in front of us. We saw windows shatter and balconies and cars catch on fire thanks to rocket propelled grenade fire; eventually, the smoke obstructed the view so badly, we could only see thick plumes of gray. The LAF quickly brought in Armored Personnel Carriers and reinforcements to support the initial 20 or so soldiers that had manned the checkpoint, and Assir called for Sunnis nationwide to rally to his side—going so far as asking Sunnis army members to defect. But the LAF was one of Lebanon’s few widely respected national institutions. The troops remained intact.

As the battle wore on, neither the LAF nor Assir’s men seemed to make progress. Assir’s mosque is located atop an incline on three directions; the fourth direction is heavily fortified with sandbags and faces residential buildings. The LAF’s soldiers couldn’t get into firing positions without risking exposure. From KFC we were unable to see Assir’s men, but we could see the LAF, and only one soldier made progress. The gray haired LAF soldier was positioned on a streets corner facing uphill, so he could fire before ducking back behind cover. After a few hours, Assir’s men targeted his position. After firing several rounds, the soldier turned around to return to cover, and two bullets shot straight through his back.  His body lay motionless as his fellow soldiers carried him away.

Hours passed and day settled in to night with no sign of the battle abating. At around 9 PM, the army announced a ceasefire. The soldiers said we could leave now or stay in the KFC for the night. Mostafa Harb, a 19-year-old English literature major at the Lebanese University, offered to take me down to the Sea Road since it was on his way. From there I could catch a taxi back to Beirut.

Mostafa’s mom, Em Mohammad, stepped into the driver’s seat, Mostafa sat in the passenger seat, and Bassam, his 11-year-old brother, and I climbed into the back. Em Mohammad quickly reversed from her parking spot and drove down a road before an army soldier stopped us.

“The road is closed this way,” he said.

Em Mohammad spun around and headed downhill in the reverse direction. As she drove down the winding road, her nerves started to set in, and the car picked up speed. We flew past a group of armed men who yelled at the car, “Turn off your lights!” In full panic mode, she obliged and pressed the gas pedal hard. We flew down the dark street. Oblivious to the two cars blocking the road, she barreled into them.

The next few moments are still blurry. I only remember the car stopping and blood running down my face. Seeing the two cars ahead, a deep fear set in—I checked to see if anyone was badly hurt and then jumped out of the car.

“Get back in!” yelled Mostafa.

I returned to the car. Em Mohammad tried to reverse but smashed into a wall instead. She pulled forward and went back into the two cars. She repeated this once more, and then I decided to exit the car for good.

From across the street, men motioned us over—Mostafa and his family decided to follow my lead. They left the car. We sprinted till we found a man in a balaclava—clearly one of Assir’s guys—sitting outside a house.

“Here, try to stop the bleeding with this,” he said to me, handing me a sweaty hat.

Afraid we might be hit, I hadn’t checked to see where the blood was coming from, and my fear didn’t subside upon seeing we were near Assir’s men—if the army had found me, they could have called an ambulance, but Assir’s men could do little. He told us to wait by bushes, while be brought around a car. While Em Mohammad prayed to calm her hysteria, I tweeted:

Still in Abra. Still fighting. Army said 1 hr truce. tried to leave but got into accident. deep cut beneath right eyebrow. Ok otherwise

— Justin Salhani (@JustinSalhani) June 23, 2013

As idiotic as this sounds, writing out the situation in a calm, journalistic manner forced me to keep my composure.

Shortly after, a car driven by one of Assir’s men arrived.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“We don’t know!” replied Mostafa.

“If we don’t know then why are we getting in the car?”

“You have no other choice!”

I realized Mostafa had convinced himself that his survival was out of his hands. But I knew I had a choice—my mind raced, weighing whether it was better to jump in the car or stay in the open with the armed men. Ignorant about Sidon’s geography and lacking good cover, I decided to jump in the car.

As the car started, the passengers—including the driver—began to pray. Hearing the driver leave his fate to God made me feel clueless, so I prayed too. I’m not sure what I said or if I just jumbled out a bunch of syllables at an attempt at forming English words, but I know an argument in the front seat interrupted my quasiprayer.

“Where do you want to go?” the driver asked.

“We want to go down to the Sea Road,” replied Mostafa.

“That won’t be possible,” the driver replied. “I’ve got a rifle in the car. What if the army stops me at a checkpoint?”

“Then what are we supposed to do?” asked Mostafa, his voice increasing in anxiety.

The driver suggested we find a friend’s building. He drove a bit further before stopping. “This is far as I go,” he said. “May God be with you.”

We exited the vehicle and then started to walk. I envisioned the two bullets that had hit the soldier earlier that day and worried I’d meet the same fate. I demanded to know where we would find safety.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Up ahead,” said Mostafa.

“Where up ahead?”

Mostafa pointed somewhere in the distance. “That building, there.”

Trying my best to keep cool, I said, “Describe it.”

He described the building, and then I ran ahead. Before I reached the building, an armed LAF soldier stopped me—we had just ran through the area where the two sides had exchanged gunfire hours earlier. I told the startled soldier that I wanted to take cover in the building.“

“Go! Go!” he said.

I reached the building and tried to open the door, but it was locked. Around this time, Mostafa surveyed the buttons for a name he recognized. “Just press all the buttons!” I yelled.

I’m not sure if it was because he didn’t want to bother people or if he thought they wouldn’t open the door because they were afraid of armed men entering, but he hesitated. “PRESS ALL THE BUTTONS!” I screamed frantically.

He obeyed. Someone opened the door; we finally made it to safety. Inside, someone cleaned my wound, a deep cut just below my right eyebrow, as Em Mohammad cried hysterically, and Mostafa tried to make sure Bassam was okay.

We tried to rest, but every time anyone fell asleep, an explosion went off outside the building. The army was stationed out front, and Assir’s troops fired at least six rocket-propelled grenades at us, by my count.

The next morning, Em Mohammad, Mostafa, and Bassam made their way to a relative’s house, as I found my way into a Lebanese Red Cross ambulance.

Laying on a stretcher in the back of the ambulance, I felt the car turn sharp corners and looked at the LRC volunteer beside me, who was decked out in body armor and a helmet, with sweat pouring down his face. Only when I saw the hospital roof cover our heads from inside the ambulance did relief finally begin to set in.

Meanwhile, June 24^th, the second day of battle, was more successful for the LAF. They changed tactics and fought their way into Assir’s mosque. Shortly afterwards, the Lebanese Army occupied the bullet riddled mosque, the clash ceased, the LAF took control over Assir’s mosque, shops opened, and civilians returned to the streets.

In the aftermath of the battle, the Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star reported 17 soldiers and at least 25 of Assir’s gunmen had died. I didn’t land my interview. Instead, I witnessed Lebanon’s bloodiest battle in at least four years. And chances are, I will now never interview the sheikh of Bilal bin Rabah. Ahmad al-Assir was reported missing after the battle. He still remains at large.

@JustinSalhani

More about the conflict in the Middle East:

Road to Ruin 

Paintballing with Hezbollah

A Syrian Proxy War Is Being Fought in Tripoli 

Photo by Wyndham Wallace.

Everyone’s got a great sauna story, right? I’m sitting in the hold of a whaling ship on the cusp of the Arctic Circle, where the Norwegian Sea borders the North Atlantic, telling mine.

“It was the launch party for Children Of Bodom’s 2008 album Blooddrunk in Finland. Their label Spinefarm had really pushed the boat out and flown the entire world’s heavy metal press out to Helsinki for a weekend-long playback junket. They’d hired out this big pine and chrome restaurant with huge floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Baltic. Their hospitality seemingly knew no bounds. They had a free bar and expert cocktail waiters on hand. I tested them hard and they knew their stuff.

“They could make Samoan Fog Cutters. So I had eight. Then they played the album a few times while I had five Long Island Iced Teas. It sounded pretty good. After a while the band turned up. They’re all Big Lebowski fans so we started drinking White Russians. There must have been about 40 people there representing heavy metal publications from every corner of the globe. If you had dropped a bomb on that restaurant that evening, heavy metal criticism would have ended overnight. One flash of light, a long haired German in a Nuclear Assault T-shirt saying: ‘Ja. How ironic,’ and then: nothing.

“But strangely, when the band asked if we wanted to join them in a sauna on the banks of the Baltic, only Nick Ruskell from Kerrang!, J Bennett from Revolver, and myself were stupid enough to say yes. We all grabbed as much beer as we could carry and trooped in. I was about to leave my shorts on but was roundly lambasted by the melodic death metal Finns until I got naked. Inside, we poured beer on the coals. It made the sauna smell like a bakery.

“When we were red like man-sized lobsters, the guitarist Roope—who used to be in a band called Spider Kicker—shouted: ‘Now, to the sea!’

“We had these tiny towels, not much bigger than flannels, to cover ourselves as we walked down the wooden pier until the sea was underneath us. The water was churning like five-degree-centigrade Guinness in the night.

“We all dived in and someone started squealing like a piglet on a rollercoaster. It was me.

“The hit was amazing. Like a crossbow bolt of liquid mercury shot straight through my brain. My body felt like it had been struck by lightning and then immediately numbed by a rush of opiates.

“Getting out of the sea I was as giddy as a kipper buzzing off the sudden flood of endorphins. I daintily picked up my little tea towel to protect my modesty as we walked back past the large glass fronted restaurant where all of our colleagues and peers were relaxing and drinking.

“J Bennett motioned to me: ‘Watch this.’ He went over to the glass and started rubbing his nipples on the glass in a circular fashion. Without hesitation I went and joined him. The thing is, though, J Bennett is a good looking man. He’s lithe and muscular, and at the time I weighed 266 pounds. But, high on adrenaline, I joined in, even though I looked like a walrus dipped in Immac. Roaring like an oafish farm hand on payday, I was splayed on the glass and wobbling like a huge death metal blancmange when a gust of wind blew my towel off. I looked round but Bennett had already scarpered, leaving me howling in the wind with a 0 degree retracted cock like GG Allin’s. I was aware that inside the restaurant sipping greyhounds was my entire professional peer group who were laughing at me and my tiny Baltic-blasted penis, which resembled a pink acorn resting on some brown moss. The look of hilarity and sympathy on the face of Louise Brown, then editor of Terrorizer, now editor of Bronze Fist, will haunt me until my dying day.

“’It’s the fucking Baltic! There has been high latitudinal, diurnal, and seasonal shrinkage!’ I howled pathetically to no one before starting the walk of shame back to the restaurant.”

A sauna at sea on the Vulkana. Photo by John Doran.

The hold of the Vulkana was once used to store row upon row of salted whale steaks stacked up to the ceiling but since it was converted to a spa vessel in 2007, it now contains sleeping quarters for the crew and a low-lit lounge decorated with scatter cushions, bonsai trees, and ornamental pebbles. At the stern end is a Turkish hamam, or steam room, complete with plunge pool filled with cold salt water pumped directly in from the surrounding ocean. Upstairs, built into the well where the harpooned whale used to be landed and dumped ready for chopping, there is now a wood-fired Finnish sauna and dining room with kitchen. On the upper deck there is a giant wooden hot tub. Out on the deck there is a well-stocked beer fridge and a little brass Buddha in an alcove. This isn’t the first time I’ve been on this beautiful vessel; in fact, it’s about the sixth.

You know that film Star Trek: Generations where Malcolm McDowell is romping across the galaxy chasing after a thin blue ribbon that travels really quickly through space and accidentally kills William Shatner in the process (clearly a metaphor for the damage caused by crack cocaine addiction)? Well this ship, the Vulkana, and Træna, the volcanic archipelago where it is moored, amount to my thin blue line.

On my first visit to the ship in July 2009, I sat in the same hold with the Swedish singer-songwriter Frida Hyvönen, while the DJ Ewan Pearson entertained us with a brief history of the evolution of the whale, which he told us was probably descended from a small, land-living badger. A few days later, I went back on board for a session in the sauna. In the wood-lined room with a window looking out directly to sea, I was relaxing with Sivert Høyem, the former Madrugada frontman, his backing singer Ingrid and Harry, the former drummer from Turbonegro, while they drank beer and chatted.

Harry told me who the best fishermen were out of the True Norwegian Black Metallers. Emperor are apparently quite good anglers, but no one comes close to Fenriz from Darkthrone. He related a crazy story about him, Fenriz and one of the world’s leading experts on Arctic moss having a jam in his snowbound hut. “You know, I was born to make men cry,” said Ingrid after a while. The other men in the sauna nodded sagely. Out of the window a whale broke the surface in the distance as if to underline just how surreal the experience was.

A thin blue line shooting through space and time, scoring the skies of the northern latitudes like Aurora Borealis.


Blood Command on the Vulkana. Photo by Halvor Hilmersen.

Today in the chill out room a log burns brightly in the wood stove casting an orange glow about the hold, but the atmosphere is a bit chillier. The emo/pop punk/metal band Blood Command are sitting opposite me in a tense, upright huddle. They are here to play the 11th annual Træna Festival, the remotest music festival in the world and, I would say, the most beautiful. I ask them how they came to be playing such a great event but they say they have a booker who takes care of these things. I ask them about what the success of their last album Funeral Beach has brought them and they tell me “new contracts to sign”. They tell me how they like to irritate people by doing things they shouldn’t, like combining “hardcore, rock and roll, and pop”. Their music is extremely catchy; though it is possible to see how some people over the age of 19 could be irritated by it as well. As for the ingredients that go into their rule breaking broth, it’s perhaps easier to discern the pop and the rock and roll than it is to locate the hardcore, but then, as always, this stuff isn’t written and recorded for bad tempered 42-year-olds. We don’t have youthful chest-pounding music in common, me and the band, so I ask them if they have a great sauna story instead.

Yngve Andersen says: “I don’t have any sauna stories.”

Silje Tombre says: “My parents actually have a sauna at home which they use for storage. But one time we actually used the sauna.”

Nikolas Jon says: “No. I have no sauna story.”

Sigurd Haakaas says: “No. Nothing has happened to me in a sauna.”

Simon Oliver whispers simply: “No.”

I decide it is best to leave the hardcore pop rock and rollers to themselves and come back to the Vulkana later. Outside on the quay I stop to pet an albino dog with David Bowie eyes.

Træna may have started as a music festival but over the years the breathtaking setting has come to be considered the headlining act. No mere band could upstage this sprinkling of one thousand islands and stony skerries—nhabited by more sea eagles, seals, otters and whales than actual people—right on top of the world.


The middle-aged man and the sea. Photo of the author leaping from the Vulkana by Maria Jefferis.

Erlend Mogård-Larsen, the owner of the Vulkana and the founder of the Træna festival, has a great sauna story.

In 2003 the Norwegian government decided to open up the transaction of fishing quotas between ships. Before this date any fishing ship that had a license had a set quota attached to it. The new transition of quotas was meant to help boat owners who owned a lot of vessels when some of them caught a lot of fish and others didn’t. The trouble was people cashed in their quotas and sold them on to larger trawlers. Fishing communities like Træna suffered overnight. There was no more money to be made in having a small fishing boat that caught a regular amount of fish to sell locally by going out every day. Now most of the seafood in Norway is caught by large factory trawlers. In 2006 the fisherman who owned the Vulkana sold his quota and left his boat harbored in Tromsø unused and basically ready to be chopped up. (Many of these vessels were scuttled where they were moored cause that was easier and more cost effective than decommissioning them.)

Erlend was out in a bar in Tromsø at 3 AM drinking with his best friend one night early in 2007. He was pushing 40 and wondering what it actually meant to be a man and all that shit that men going into their fifth decade stress out about. He had just discovered absinthe and by all accounts had drunk quite a lot of it. He and his friend hatched a merry plan. They would buy a small boat and put a tiny sauna on it and use it for afternoon fishing excursions. Then as even more absinthe flowed they got talking to a former whaler who was drinking at the next table.

The next morning Erlend said to his wife, Britt: “I had the most horrible dream last night that I met someone in a bar and bought a commercial whaling vessel off him for a quarter of a million without seeing it.”

And of course, he had.

Erlend and Britt by Wyndham Wallace.

Later, back on the Vulkana, after setting sail, I talk to the General Manager of the boat, a handsome, copper haired Josh Homme lookalike, Gottfried Gundersen. He tells me more about his boss: “Erlend is very much into saunas and bathing culture. He likes a hot tub but he is also into hamams. He travels a lot and relaxing in heat is a very fundamental thing in his life. And guys from up North like to buy a boat. It’s part of their culture. You need somewhere to get away from the wife and fix the boat.”

Erlend’s boat sounds like my dad’s shed. Well, with some fundamental differences.

The Vulkana was built in 1957 in Lista – a once thriving ship building community – near to the southernmost tip of Norway. It was constructed from weathered eight-inch oak spans and designed to stay upright in even the fiercest of storms. New regulations were brought in by the Ministry Of Fisheries in 1952, after one very heavy storm sank six boats of a similar size in one night, killing 70 people in the Arctic Sea. The frequency of storms, hurricanes and oceanic whirlpools known as maelstroms in this region no doubt gave birth to the local myth of the kraken – a ship destroying sea creature still widely reported as fact well into the 19th century. The Norwegian Sea once marked the extent of man’s cartographical knowledge: forming the edge of the map – the once genuinely terrifying “here be monsters” zone.

This vessel completed 59 seasons as a whale hunter and killed at least 500 of the large mammals.

Erlend may have felt remorseful after spending 220,000 Norwegian Kroner ($37,000) on the ship but that is nothing compared to the further 6 million NoK ($1,000,000) he poured into it. The beautiful hamam cost 660,000 NoK ($111,000) alone.

Gottfried continues: “Erlend is a very visionary man and when he started to think about this boat he had bought when he was drunk and what he could do with it, he worked with a designer to implement more and more spa facilities. And when he bought it? He didn’t know anything about boats. I mean, he had been fishing with his granddad here at Træna. He was quite a wild child and was kicked out of kindergarten and had to go fishing with his granddad instead for a year before he went to school. That was a very defining year for him and the love for Træna and the love for the ocean.”

Later, after a sauna, I dive into the Arctic waters. Again the hit is electrifying but this time, to the relief of everyone involved, my shorts stay on.

Of course were the Vulkana simply the exquisite by-product of a midlife crisis, I wouldn’t even know about it. I’m here because of the Træna Festival— another of Erlend’s grand, visionary schemes.

It's two o'clock, but two in the afternoon or two in the morning? Festival staff at Træna. Photo by John Doran.

Doubtless the year spent fishing with his grandfather was very important to him but when I speak to Erlend, it is his grandmother he first mentions: “I had the idea for the festival when visiting my grandma at her home on the island. I was 12 years old the first time I thought about setting up a festival at Træna. I had just discovered my brother's record collection and loved the triple album cover from the Woodstock festival. It inspired a young soul. It took another 22 years for me to actually make it reality.”

He is a good example of what the Norwegians would call havfolket, or people of the sea—strong, rugged, brooding—someone of few words. He is a constant presence in the background at the festival—mucking in, helping out. On the Sunday he and his wife wait on guests in the makeshift Fishy Fishy Nam Nam restaurant, staffed by a mixture of volunteer locals and some of Norway’s most celebrated chefs. The next day visiting journalists are desperate to get an interview with him before they leave for home but he frustrates nearly all requests because he is too busy helping take down the main stage and the bar tents.

The perceived inaccessibility of the yearly event is key to its success and he knows it. He started the festival 11 years ago and each year the 2,000 tickets sell out well before any of the line-up is announced. (Previous headline bands have included Damien Rice and Manu Chao. (And I have made it my aim in life to persuade Portishead and SunnO))) to play here.) He states bluntly: “I have never thought about the remoteness in a negative way, just positive.

“I knew I wanted to do a festival where people had to travel to get there. People who travel for 10-12 hours to get to here are focused and completely in tune with their surroundings. You could get from Oslo to Bangkok in the same amount of time. I hate city festivals. You take the bus for 20 minutes and go into an area with nicely dressed people. The travel and the experience on the way here is 50 percent of the festival experience.”

He is right, of course. After you’ve arrived in Norway, it’s another two-hour flight north from Oslo to Bodø, which—despite being the capital "city" of the Nordland municipality—is barely a town by UK standards, and marks the point on the mainland where the rail network stops. And then from there, you have to take a three-to-five-hour boat trip down a fjord and out to sea to reach the volcanic archipelago.

Although weather at this time of year is usually comparable to English summertime, a hurricane has just passed through, so the skies are gray for most of the weekend and our journey out by boat to the festival site was admittedly rough. This was a shame as we didn’t get to see Hestemannen, aka The Horseman, a mountain shaped gloriously like rider and steed, or Norway’s second largest glacier, the Svartisen, which sits way above the mountain tops, like a colossal amount of icing on the world’s biggest wedding cake. The ride didn’t improve radically when we hit open waters. The English press officer for the event, Wyndham Wallace, a Træna veteran of some six years, knew all the tricks and handed out chunks of fresh ginger for everyone to chew on. Out of those who refused, several were seen dashing for the boat’s facilities before we arrived at the harbour. Being in a boat mimicking the flight path of the wood framed roller coaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach isn’t for everyone and immediately on landing, British pop singer Charlie XCX cancelled her trip on a fishing trawler with me. “Yeah, she’s not really up for getting on another boat at the moment,” her manager said to me, grimacing.

Poor Clara Hill from Berlin performed her exquisite new album Walk The Distance on one of the boats ferrying festival guests from the mainland to the main island of Husøya. It was not entirely dissimilar to booking Annette Peacock to sing from a shopping trolley being pushed through Sheffield by angry crackheads. However she must be commended on the excellence of her performance because for the entirety of her beautiful set, no one on board vomited, which they certainly did before and after.

Once on land I have the pleasant sensation of being at sea, no matter where I am for the next eight days. When you experience Træna, it stays at the forefront of your mind for some time afterwards.


Line Møller (left) and Synne Sofie Reksten. Photo by John Doran.

People are drawn to the island. I hear of a bunch of hippies arriving in a barely sea-worthy tub packed full of herbal refreshment, lucky to actually return to dry land again and not end up the latest arrivals down at Fiddler’s Green. (It’s a spectacularly undruggy festival—the first year I attended I saw someone being taken off the island by police for smoking a joint. People do get drunk though. The combination of 24-hour daylight and an illegal homebrew called hjemmebrent is more than enough for most people to cope with to be honest. The second biggest casualty of the weekend is a punter so drunk by the Sunday morning he isn’t legally allowed to get on any boats and has to be airlifted by helicopter back to the mainland. The biggest casualty, however, was a punter who was unexpectedly and accidentally joined in his one-man tent by a boisterous seagull looking for food which then started panicking in its attempt to get back out. And the seagulls here are fucking massive.)

Perhaps making a better fit for Erlend’s vision thing are the two bikers I meet, Synne Sofie Reksten and Line Møller. They drove up from Oslo over a period of five days, camping in forests, slinging hammocks up in deserted barns, cooking by the roadside, making frequent stops to repair Synne Sofie’s careworn 1973 500cc Honda CB.

Line, who is driving a 2001 790cc Triumph Bonneville, used to work in the Norwegian film industry but jacked it in because of the long hours. She says: “It’s great driving along the roads this far North. Because you get the weather, you can feel the rain, you can smell the flowers and yeah, the cow shit as well, but the views are great: all of your senses are stimulated. The roads are great for motorbikes and terrible for cars so there isn’t much traffic. You can open up and drive really fast.”

Synne Sofie quit her job working with drug addicts a year ago and is now studying toward a master’s degree in biology. She says: “I want to be a mycologist. I’m very interested in the potential of mushrooms. The carbon chains you get in plastics are very hard to break down naturally because of their length but there are certain mushrooms that could do it.” When pressed, she adds: “In theory you could have mushrooms breaking down used plastic—it’s something I’d like to work on because the benefits to the environment could be massive.”

Like Erlend implies, it’s as much a journey of the imagination as it is a physical trip.


Slicing up some smoked whale. Photo by John Doran.

When I first came to this tiny fishing community, I stupidly tried to stick to my vegetarianism and became quite ill in the process after six days of essentially just eating bread and cheese. Now I eat anything the islanders do when I’m here. And I mean anything. I eat a lot of whale on this trip and am disappointed to miss out on trying seal for the first time. I’ve eaten raw whale, whale sushi with wasabi, smoked whale, pan-fried whale, whale burgers, whale stroganoff and grilled whale. All of it is deliciously gamey and rich in flavor. I can see why it’s not a particularly popular thing to do but, being a vegetarian for the other 360 days of the year, I’ll live. In the last ten years Norway has made leaps and bounds forwards in terms of conserving and protecting its marine stock and the number of minke whale hunted now comes in way under the quota. This allows for the 150,000 whale stock in Norwegian waters to keep expanding in size. (Norway can’t or doesn’t export whale produce, so the demand is kept well below a sustainable level.)

As with anything to do with animals, sentimentality rules the day. Whales are giant creatures, relatively social and clever and on top of this we invest them, anthropomorphically, with plenty of human characteristics; perhaps even fairly in some cases. I’m not a sentimental person however, and am not vegetarian because I subscribe to an animal rights-based philosophy; it's mainly for humanist reasons. I don’t eat meat because I can’t afford to buy flesh that has been raised and slaughtered humanely outside of the factory farming system. I don’t care about the life of one whale that much more than I care about the life of one badger or one cow. It is the factory farming system that is wrong; that is inhumane; that causes sickness and obesity in the working classes and the poor the world over.

Recently, after a long period of ill health I had some tests done, and it turns out that I’m allergic and intolerant to about 15 different food stuffs. This is hardly surprising. It seems to be a regular occurrence these days. I have a feeling that we could learn something about the way food is gathered and cooked in communities like this one by people who just take what they need—I don’t have any scientific reasoning or data behind this assumption. Let’s call it a gut feeling.

This isn’t to say that I’m blind to how whales are killed. I’m not. It’s violent and deeply unpleasant. But without wanting to be too glib, luckily for me I’m not a giant tasty minke who lives slap bang where whaling has been a traditional way of life for 1,200 years.
And come on, let’s have it straight: meat doesn’t get much more free range and organic than whale.

A woman emerges from the sea with a slice of salmon on her head. Photo by Maria Jefferis.

The focus of the Træna Festival is as much on food as it is on music. At a pop-up sushi restaurant inside a shipping container by the main harbor, I speak to the chairman of the board for the festival, Sverre Hyttan. He says: “I can understand why people think that humans shouldn’t kill whales. Sometimes when they are shooting it, it can take a while to die. And it’s a huge animal with a big brain and a very large central nervous system. But if you are thinking conservation of the stocks of fish and the whole sea, it is sensible to kill some whales in my opinion. And if you look at the whole picture, it is not just the minke whale but most species of fish here are increasing. I think in time as well there could be a problem with illness between the whales. We have seen it in the Barents Sea and we have seen it outside America, a lot of seals have died because there are too many whales. But also the sea is very big so you never know what will happen. But also… the whale meat? It is very good! My favorite way to eat it is to cook it in various spices and then have it in a fondue. This is very nice.”

There isn’t a consensus on eating whale meat in Norway. Blood Command tell me that it is uncool to eat it. I ask them to elaborate on why this is cruel but eating dangerously depleted forms of cod isn’t but when they don’t—or can’t—I get the sneaking suspicion that they literally mean, eating whale meat “is uncool”, meaning not fashionable, rather than morally indefensible. However, they’re just sticking up for what they believe in and even five years ago I would have agreed with them whole-heartedly, facts or no facts.

Later, in the brilliant restaurant where festival workers and performers eat breakfast and dinner, the Rorbuferie—one of my favorite places on the island and right next door to the herring factory where I am staying—I ask a lot of people how they like to cook whale and my straw poll suggests it is a very versatile meat. My friend Sondre Sommerfelt, who I always seem to run into when in Norway and who is definitely an urban, Southern, middle-class Norwegian, isn’t that keen on it for example, but he says his grandfather who was a whaler used to swear by braising chunks of the flesh in Newcastle Brown Ale. He regales everyone with whale facts: “The blue whale’s penis is three meters long but relatively speaking very thin… it only has 50 centimeter girth. And when it, ah, what is the English? When it spends, it produces a bath tub full of semen.”

I push my potatoes in béchamel sauce to one side of my plate. No one ever laughed at the blue whale after it swam in the Baltic.


Erling Ramskjell. Photo by Wyndham Wallace.

What the future holds for the festival or the local fishing industry or indeed the entire community is unclear. When I talk to the festival manager Anita Overelv she brings up the potential dark clouds on the horizon. Oil reserves were detected in the region a few years back and now corporate scientists are based nearby doing research into potential drilling sites. She says: “The difference between the sushi at Træna and the sushi you’d get in London or Tokyo is here you can just stick your hand into the clean ocean and pull out some great fish. It is bad that they’re going to start drilling for oil here because the ocean is clean now but for how long? The local kids have a saying: "Let the cod fuck in peace." The scientists say they’re just checking but we know that now they have passed the point of no return.

“The thing you learn when you live on Træna is you just take what you have around you. This is an important lesson but I re-learned it when I moved here. You take what you have and you give back what you can. Our neighbors have a farm so my boyfriend takes care of the sheep while they are away. And my boyfriend is a vegetarian—well, he eats fish but you know what I mean. However, I am not a vegetarian so I get a sheep to eat when they get back. It is not about money. It is about friendship and relationships.”

Her boyfriend is Erling Ramskjell, a musician who sometimes goes by the name of 
Ær Ling or even just Æ, who when not creating skewed folk/prog/pop is a part-time fisherman and festival handyman as well as an occasional vegetarian sheep farmer.

I ask him how this works and he says: “I look after the sheep and I think that maybe it’s a bit of an odd thing for a man who doesn’t eat meat to do. But I think the sheep are quite lucky. I would like to just go around eating and fucking, minding my own business and then suddenly [brings down hand like chopper] I am dead.”

I comment that you couldn’t really ask for more from existence, and he agrees: “No. It sounds like a good life to me.”

Like a lot of people who move to the island, Erling isn’t interested in taking the easy route through life. He performs most of his music in an obscure provincial dialect of Norwegian called saltsdakas only spoken by about 5,000 people who live in one Northern agricultural valley. Which hasn’t stopped him from carving out some popularity for himself in Hungary, Russia, and the North of Norway. His latest album—Fraillaments (by Erling And The Armagedonettes)—is a departure for him in that it is sung in English but a very poetic, fractured form of our language full of neologisms, unusual contractions, and fantastical grammatical and linguistic inventions.

Erling, more than anyone else I meet, represents. Erling is living ekphrasis.

Erling Ramskjell. Photo by Wyndham Wallace.

He has made his life his art and he represents the art and life of the island and the islanders. And like the island community he is stoic, charming, slow moving, deep, inscrutable, and occasionally very funny.

When I call round his house, he ushers me in to sit at his kitchen table. “This is the most important place in a Norwegian’s house,” he tells me. “When families sit down to have serious conversations, not just chatting about their day, it is called a kitchen table conversation.”

Our chat, he reassures me though, won’t be a kitchen table conversation, merely held at one.

He stresses out about making me a cup of tea because I am English. He suffers under the false impression that all Englishmen have amazingly sophisticated taste in tea despite my protestations to the contrary. He continually laughs off my suggestion that I will just have a cup of PG Tips as if I am making a ridiculous joke. In the end it takes him nearly ten minutes to select what he considers to be the optimum tea leaves to make me a brew. It is a very good cup of tea. When I nod my approval he punches the air and makes himself a mug of Nescafe instant coffee.

Then he lights himself the first of about 20 cigarettes.

He begins talking at a glacial pace. (It’s probably best to imagine him leaving a lengthy gap after every third word rather than me liberally applying ellipsis to signify his geological pauses while speaking…) “My first experience with this festival was an interesting one. My band Schtimm were asked to play here in 2006 and we didn’t know anything about it before setting off from Bodø on the boat. The sea was like a mirror. Totally, totally flat sea. And totally sunny and warm. You could sit out on the deck of a fast moving vessel in your shirt sleeves.”

He nods out of the window at the rain beating down and the choppy water we can see outside. He says: “The weather was a little bit different from how it is today. And of course, that was the only time the weather was ever like that… so God tricked me into moving here! I have been sent here by dark, dark forces...”

I ask him when he moved to the island, and he replies: “The darkest time of year. It was on the first of February. My birthday.

“We do get some hours of near light during winter. This island is very open, so luckily you get a sense of space. We don’t actually see the sun during this period because of those god damn mountains over there but yeah, it gets lighter for about four hours a day. Then when darkness falls it is pitch black. It is pitch black for 20 hours a day. I am barely even aware at this point. All I am aware of is that I should try and see some of this light. I mean, the further north you go, the darker it is. If you get to the top of Norway there is no light at all. Maybe you get a tiny bit for half an hour. I was up there playing a few weeks ago and there you get a fleeting glimpse of daylight and then in seconds it’s gone again.

“As a child I grew up along the same line of latitude, so I was born into this life. Still, it is very hard to get used to it. Some people, they find it difficult but you have to roll with the punches. When it’s very light and you don’t have any blackness in your bedroom it is also a source of confusion. You can tell it is night time but still your brain doesn’t care when your eyes see the light."

The Træna harbour globe. Photo by John Doran.

I ask how many people stay on the island for the full winter: “There are 500 people here and there are more during the herring season in the autumn but I don’t know how many. It’s not very many. It could be as low as 40. We have a lot of people who move here from places like Poland and Latvia. This is because Norwegians are lazy and they won’t do the very hard work. I think we are going in the wrong direction when it comes to work. I don’t mean we should be all Catholic and punish ourselves to death with work but the truth is we are rich. We are richer than the rest of Europe and pretty much the rest of the world. We can live off that. Coming at this from a personal level, when you have financial security you can commit to something you find important, dig into other non-material questions in life or you can be a miser and complain about immigration and how gasoline has gone up by one Euro cent and don’t settle for owning one car but claim you need two cars. But maybe this is not just a Norwegian thing but a human thing. We’re all like hamsters in that we fill our mouths full of stuff that we have no use for.”

When I ask him about how extreme life for the modern inhabitants is in other ways, he says: “The weather can be extreme. There are so many good stories about the weather and I have seen extreme weather here. The roof of the sports hall blew off in a storm a few years ago. And of course the old timers say, ‘This is nothing compared to the winter of 1856 when the whole island was moved three meters to the right.’ The risk if you’re a fisherman is still there. The second most dangerous job in Norway is offshore worker and then you have fisherman as the most dangerous job. The people working on the factory ships are exposed to a lot of danger. I think the mortality rates among those on the smaller trawlers is something like 20 or 25 times higher than that of the average non-seabound Norwegian. Time changes, technology changes, the world moves forward. You will survive not going out for ten hours every single day even when the weather is really bad so things do improve. But my neighbor, he is a fisherman and he used to go with this other guy and each year they’d go a bit further up together. Well, on one trip the other guy just disappeared. They found his boat but some monster wave had just hit him. It’s very easy to be romantic about the tough old sailing days that give us this idea that we are tougher than the rest of the world but there is actually a big uncertain element in your everyday life if you’re a fisherman.”

He points out of the window at the inlet that leads in from open waters and says: “That little gap out there is called 'Hell' in Norwegian. Helvete. You will understand why it is called this when you see the bad weather. And the weather I am talking about has literally blown people away in the past. Have you been up to the Nato Base [a Cold War intelligence facility built on a mountain ridge] on Sanna?

When I nod, he says: “So when they were building the gondola cable car lift up there, there was a construction guy sheltering in his truck from a hurricane. He was safe even though the vehicle was rocking like hell in the wind. But then he opened the door and was sucked straight out of the vehicle. He was holding on by the door handle. If he hadn’t been holding the door handle he would have been blown away, literally. And of course Nato don’t mess about so they had a gadget measuring the wind force and it was some insane number. Rough winds in the North Atlantic usually measure at 32 knots in speed and this was at recorded at 89 – he was on top of a mountain, out at sea in the middle of a category two hurricane, holding onto his truck door handle. So it is charming to have the possibility to be blown away. Here on Træna your metaphors become reality.”


Photo by John Doran.

On Sunday, everyone at the festival sets off for the second most heavily populated island, Sanna, in a flotilla of fishing vessels, ferries and speedboats. (Forty people live here during summer and only one hardy soul during winter.) This is the most rugged of the Træna islands and the one that provides the distinctive skyline, which, as you approach it, looks like the top one third of the Wu Tang Clan symbol sticking up out of the sea. The weather is still miserable but we’ve been promised blazing sunshine at midnight tonight. In the meantime, entrepreneurial kids line the route up to the foot of the middle of the island’s five distinctive peaks, selling cups of tea and freshly cooked waffles with jam and cream.

There is a unique way to get to the mountain ridge and the huge, golf-ball-shaped NATO base. Built at the height of the Cold War to keep an eye on the Russians, the facility is reached via a tunnel drilled up through the heart of the mountain. The tunnel starts from the road at one side and emerges just below the middle peak on the other side.

In the last ten years I’ve been stabbed during interviews, I’ve been beaten up on tour buses, the job has seen me end up a mentally ill, alcoholic and drug-wracked depression case, but still nothing about my work is as terrible as having to walk through this fucking tunnel. It’s only when your heart is threatening to burst through your rib cage when you’re not even half the way through that you realise that when the locals call it the “tunnel of love” they’re being ironic.

You would think that if you genuinely had the money and technology to drill a tunnel through the heart of a mountain and put atomic bomb proof doors at either end, you would do so at a slightly more gentlemanly incline.

Luckily inside the tunnel I can’t see the look on the faces of Baby In Vain, the band I’ve made accompany me on this fool’s errand. They are an excellent young rock band from Copenhagen who sound like a trainee Boss Hogg meets youthful Sonic Youth meets junior team Melvins. (Their gig later that night suggests that while they’re not quite there yet, when they are, they will be astounding.) When we’re out in the daylight the scowl on guitarist Andrea Johansen’s face says it all. She says: “I feel like I’m on drugs right now. I can’t feel my body or my head.” And it’s obvious from her angry and stunned look and running mascara that she doesn’t mean this in a good way either. It took three planes, two boats and two days for them to get here, their equipment was lost en route, they had a really rough sea crossing, they all have road colds and now some English journalist has made them walk through the middle of a mountain in the pitch black to do an interview which they quite easily could have done back stage or by email. I apologise profusely and we start walking back down through the tunnel immediately. To make matters worse when I listen to the recording later on to transcribe the conversation, the noise of the wind at the summit has made our talk incomprehensible. All I can hear is disorientating condenser mic white noise with the occasional female Scandinavian voice saying things like: “Thurston Moore… Long way to the top if you want to rock and roll… lost my distortion pedals.” I’m thinking of releasing it as a Hair Police CD-R and seeing how many people buy it.

The view from inside Kirkhellaren. Photo by John Doran.

Everyone is on the island to visit the 30-meter tall striated limestone cave, Kirkhellaren, in order to watch Susanne Sundfør. The natural cathedral-like space housed Træna’s first settlers, nearly 10,000 years earlier. Again, the landscape is the star. You could put Mumford & Sons or Reef on in this cave and it would become a beautiful, transcendent experience. (No disrespect to the shoegaze inflected, Julie Cruise-influenced singer-songwriter Susanne, who has everyone in attendance eating out of her hand in what must be the easiest gig of her career to date.)

Back at the festival site when the sun finally shows itself at 7:22 on Saturday night there is rapturous applause. It then carves a lazy lasso shape in the sky above us, like a halo cast over the islands.

This celestial turn around bodes well for local band Maud's oceanic synth gaze, post-rock pop. And they are the best new band I see while I’m up there. They open their set as the synthesizer playing duo of Sara Bjelvin and Kristine Hoff and then toward the end, as they build in intensity, they are augmented by a guitarist and drummer.

They’re as a fresh as anything living in the clear, coastal waters. They only formed four months ago, they don’t have a Facebook page, SoundCloud, Twitter account, or even any YouTube videos. They don’t even know what kind of music they play. They’re hoping to talk to the audience afterwards to ask them what genre they think it is. (Although I’m rather taken with the Norwegian description in the program: “Hard Elektronikk og softe vokalharmonier.”) Kristine is 20 and it is her third time on the island. The first time she was working on one of the smaller stages. The second time she came back as a punter and now she is playing in a band. And this is despite the fact she has a serious fish allergy.

Maud members Kristine Hoff (left) and Sara Bjelvin. Photo by John Doran.

She laughs: “I get an allergic reaction to it. I’m hyper allergic to it. It could actually kill me if I had it. I have an epi pen with me. The first year I came here I could only eat lentil burgers but they had hazelnuts in them and I’m allergic to them as well. Luckily it wasn’t peanuts, though. I am really, really, very allergic to peanuts.”

Sara jokes that she is having to live off bread, chips, and beer only to be corrected by Kristine: “No. I’m allergic to beer as well. I am living on just bread and chips.”

Nature, as always, abhors a vacuum and British duo the Correspondents appear on the main stage to help fill another piece of the void with a Romo, electroclash, big band swing, Barrington Levy, scat, hip-hop, Noel Coward, Camden indie ska, Skrillex, mambo hybrid. The madman’s breakfast of noise is created by a DJ in a comfortable sweater called Chucks and a gyrating, effervescent, cake-eating rake in Harry Potter spectacles, bright white brogues, diamanté encrusted tails, and an extravagant wet suit, called Mr Bruce. They are an aesthetic abomination and insanely enjoyable. During a track bemoaning the lack of opportunities for scoundrels in modern Soho, the electro Gussie Fink-Nottle nips off stage only to return wearing a black and white latex ruff and break into an energetic Charleston. Good show, old boys—don’t expect any coverage in The Wire any time soon, though.

People take advantage of the finally great weather to wander over to the edge of the island to watch the sun skating along the horizon at sea level, casting mile-long shadows behind them. Others dance the night away in the campsites. I take the opportunity to have one last walk round the islands.


Spot the forlorn elk. Photo by John Doran.

Down by the harbor it’s deserted. I look at the large metal globe made from steel girders that greets all ships that dock here. A local artist made it out of scrap, by all accounts. I remember what Anita said about the islanders just taking what they have. Her boyfriend Erling told me about the old man who made it who is now in his mid-70s. He recently created a statue of a stoical elk which stands on a hilltop on the Western side of Husøya, looking forlornly out to sea. But this is no metaphorical elk. This is the statue of a real beast that swam all the way from the mainland —supposedly—in search of a partner in the mid-1980s. Trouble was, when he got to the archipelago, he was the only animal of his kind here. He spent some time trying to befriend local cows but was driven away by a heartless farmer who wasn’t progressive enough to consider interspecies fraternization. The unfortunate elk took to standing on a hilltop (where the statue is now) and looking out to sea pining for the soulmate he never had. And then one day, without warning, he disappeared. Some say he went back into the ocean to carry on his quest on islands further out to sea or further down the coast.

“Still,” said Erling, “this story has hope. Did he find love with a lady, this elk? Did he reach dry land again? There is hope that he did. Either way, I like to think that he went to a better place.”

Now the big statue is framed against the gold and salmon 2 AM sky. An “elk in sunset” is Norwegian shorthand for kitsch. An oil painting of such a scene is the Nordic equivalent of Bruno Amadio’s The Crying Boy or Vladimir Tretchikoff’s Chinese Girl. This old sculptor had a good sense of humour. I love this big brass reindeer standing glumly on the hill, willing to chase his own blue line all the way up north no matter what. Even if it kills him.

Erlend, the festival's founder, was a child when he first fished these waters with his grandfather. He was a child when he first stood in Kirkhelleren and thought, “Imagine how cool it would be to play an electric guitar in here.” He was only 12 when, obsessed with the Woodstock triple LP, he first fantasised about putting on a festival for the island.

Thinking of these three things makes me think of the Albert Camus quote translated into English on the sleeve of Scott Walker’s Scott 4 LP: “A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.”
 
I walk back to the herring factory for one last sleep before heading regretfully down to the harbor to leave.

A photo of the author by Wyndham Wallace.

John Doran writes a regular column for VICE UK called MENK. You can find previous editions of it archived here.

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Anti-Morsi demonstrators gather outside the presidential palace as helicopters fly overhead.

The first bloodied victims began to arrive at the crude field hospital behind Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in the early hours of Saturday morning. To begin with, the main causes of the injuries were birdshot and tear gas, inflicted when security forces fired on protesters nearby.

A little after 4AM, casualties started to flood in with bullet wounds from live rounds fired by police and gunmen clothed as civilians. Many were already dead by the time they were carried in, others fatally wounded. The small, under-equipped facility was quickly overwhelmed. “I was shocked to see the chaos of the field hospital – I cannot forget the scene there,” said Dr Mohammad Elatfy, who had rushed to help when he saw an appeal for medics on local TV. “All of the beds were occupied and the floors were covered with blood, the injured and the dead.”

When Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president, was overthrown on July the 3rd, Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque became the centre of a sit-in staged by the Islamist supporters demanding his reinstatement. The surrounding streets were transformed into a brick-barricaded tent city housing tens of thousands of men, women and children.

Up until this weekend, Egypt’s new military rulers had accepted the encampment. However, when General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, head of the Egyptian armed forces, called for his supporters to take to the streets on Friday to give him a “mandate” to fight “terrorism”, violence in Cairo seemed inevitable. (Senior Brotherhood figure Mohamed el-Beltagy even claimed that Sisi was "calling for a civil war... to protect this military coup".)

Friday began relatively peacefully. By early afternoon the mood in Tahrir Square, the rallying point for anti-Morsi protesters, was bordering on festive. Tanks were lined up on the approach roads and senior military officers supervised the civilian checkpoints. They were clearly a welcome presence; orders were followed instantly and smiling demonstrators – who see the Egyptian military as comrades in their fight against the Brotherhood – posed for pictures next to personnel and vehicles.

More anti-Morsi protesters demonstrating outside the presidential palace.

Inside the square, flag waving, face-painted protesters carried placards bearing pictures of al-Sisi and slogans such as, “I authorise you against terrorism.” Army helicopters circled above, frequently getting so close that the backdraft blasted dust and small stones into the crowds of demonstrators. Unfazed, many raised their arms, cheered and embraced the dust storm.

“We’re here to confront terrorism and to act against the Muslim Brotherhood,” said one protester. “They only want power and [we stand] against them – we support our army.”

The exact nature of the “terrorism” being confronted varied depending on who you asked. Some accused the Muslim Brotherhood of involvement in attacks on tourists committed over the years, such as the Luxor massacre. Another, who introduced himself as Joe and said he planned to join his wife in Birmingham after Ramadan, suggested that Morsi’s followers had let Hezbollah and Hamas fighters into Egypt via tunnels that led from Palestine to Sinai.

A less pissed off group of mixed Christian and Muslim demonstrators told me that, to them, the protest was about unity for the Egyptian people. “We are the same and the Muslim Brotherhood won’t separate us,” they said, gesturing at the wrist tattoos some of them were sporting, which are common in the country’s Copt population.

Joe’s brother suddenly interjected. He wanted to talk about America and was very upset that the US government had delayed a delivery of F-16s in response to Sisi’s call to the streets. “There’s something I want to say,” he spat. “Fucking Obama – he stopped supporting us. He won’t help the military because he wants Morsi back. The [June 30th] revolution has ruined their fucking plans for the Middle East.”

Morsi supporters at the sit-in outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque.

Anne Patterson, the US Ambassador to Egypt, came in for even more vehement abuse: “The fucking ambassador, we want her out. She’s doing a fucking deal under the table with the Muslim Brotherhood.” Patterson must have one of the most thankless jobs ever inhabited; pro-Morsi supporters often make a similar claim regarding her relations with anti-Islamist groups.

Hostility towards the US was generally high in Tahrir. Arriving alongside an American journalist, I was only able to get into the square thanks to an army officer’s intervention. Others reported being turned away at the checkpoint entrance. Later, being Scottish netted me a far more positive reception: “Aha, you guys are tough, strong,” said one protester, proffering his fist. “Freedom!”

That night, pro-military marches from all over Cairo converged on the square. Fireworks were let off and cheering demonstrators climbed on tanks. There was a mock trial, too, in which Morsi was fake-sentenced to life imprisonment to a rapturous reception. Back in reality, it turns out that he's been held in secret detention for the past three weeks and will be investigated for charges that could potentially lead to a death sentence.

A man breaks down as the bodies of Morsi supporters are carried out of a makeshift hospital.

At the peak of this merriment, the military invited many of the more prominent Western journalists in town on a helicopter sightseeing trip over Tahrir. Coincidentally – or perhaps not – over at Rabaa, this was around the time that police first attacked Morsi supporters at the fringes of the sit-in. Eyewitnesses reported that a group of demonstrators had been moving out from the mosque towards October 6th bridge but found their way blocked by security forces, who then opened fire on them with tear gas and shotguns. Hassan Ali, an Arabic teacher, said the police were backed by armed men in civilian clothing, although it is unclear whether they were undercover police officers, local residents or hired heavies.

Protesters say they only threw rocks, fireworks and tear gas canisters back, although some journalists on the scene reported outgoing fire from the demonstrators, too. There were no deaths among the police, according to the interior ministry.  

An injured Morsi supporter is taken to a makeshift hospital for treatment.

I arrived at Rabaa soon after the shooting finished. The wounded were everywhere. Less serious cases were collapsed on the floor of the mosque itself, while people held up drip bags and used needles were left in empty drinks bottles. Volunteers clutching plastic bags full of medical supplies passed by, pausing to remove their shoes at the door and rushing through to the field hospital where the most critically injured cases had been taken.

There, the influx of patients and bodies had been almost too much to bear. “We can’t continue,” said Dr Ahmed Fawzy. “Patients died here, here and here,” he told me, gesturing at three different spots within a foot of where he stood. “I didn’t even have space to work.”

Fawzy and others said that many of the injuries were bullets to the head, chest, neck and abdomen, seemingly indicating that lethal force had been intended.

Once the chaos had subsided a little, a corridor was cleared among the crowds in the makeshift emergency room to move bodies from a temporary morgue to local hospitals so that relatives could claim them. The hospital staff made sure that journalists and photographers had the best possible view for this grim photo opportunity. 

We waited for a while as exhausted-looking men in hi-vis jackets, many still with their surgical gloves on, helped to keep the channel open. After some time a procession of bodies shrouded in bloodstained white sheets were rushed through to waiting ambulances accompanied by chants of “Sisi leave”, “Sisi killer” and “Allahu akbar”.

As the stretcher-bearers hurried back and forth, men linked arms and sobbed while women wiped their eyes through tear-stained Niqabs. Outside, as the bodies were loaded into ambulances, blood spilled onto the concrete.

A memorial for a killed Morsi supporter.

Doctors at the field hospital reported as many as 120 dead, while the official body count stands at 72 and Human Rights Watch estimated at least 74. Either way, it is the greatest single loss of life in a mass killing since Hosni Mubarak was deposed in January 2011, worse still than the Republican Guard’s club shootings in which 51 Muslim Brotherhood supporters died earlier this month.

In the aftermath, Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said security forces had used nothing but tear gas against the protesters, but based on the number of bullet wounds and deaths this seems extremely unlikely.

Back at Rabaa, the mood was defiant; the massacre seemed to have only strengthened the protesters' resolve to stay, particularly as many felt it was the only way to avoid future persecution of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the afternoon sunshine, a group was constructing another brick barricade across one of the entrance roads.

A Morsi supporter sits in front of a barriacde where clashes took place.

“We don’t have a choice. If we leave now, our neck will be the price. If they keep killing us, we will never go home again,” said Abdul Abraham, a journalist usually based in the UAE. "You might come back here in an hour, a day or a week, and we may be dead,” shouted another man. “But we’ll keep fighting.”

On the military side, resolve also remains strong. Ibrahim has made his intention to disperse the sit-in as soon as possible very clear, and many expect the armed forces to make good on this threat soon. Meanwhile, the National Defence Council said yesterday that non-peaceful protests would be met with "firm and decisive" action.

Attempts are being made at mediation; EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton is now in Cairo for talks with leaders from both sides. However, unsurprisingly, neither looks likely to back down. And with Egypt now divided in a manner that seems almost unprecedented, further bloodshed seems sadly inevitable. 

Follow John on Twitter: @JM_Beck

More stories from Egypt:

The Egyptian Army Massacred 51 Pro-Morsi Supporters

A Divided Egypt Battles with Fireworks, Rocks and Guns

In Nasr City, a Demonstration Ends in Bloodshed

WATCH – Egypt After Morsi

Alejandro Cao de Benos holding a pin of Kim Il-sung. (All photos courtesy of Alejandro Cao de Benos.)

This weekend saw the 60 anniversary of the Korean War Armistice. While you no doubt spent Saturday toasting the memory of the fatherland's eternal victory over the US, it's unlikely that you rejoiced with quite the same vigour as the DPRK's biggest fan in the West.

Alejandro Cao de Benos—a 38-year-old Catalan aristocrat—is the head of the Korean Friendship Association (KFA), an organization that works with North Korea's Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. He's North Korea's unofficial ambassador to the rest of the world, and the only Westerner to be awarded the position of special delegate in the country.    

His organization represents nearly 13,000 people internationally who want to be friends with the DPRK, whether that be out of a genuine sense of solidarity, or because they thought it would be funny to sign up to his website when they were high. As head of North Korea's international fan club, Alejandro was able to celebrate the big day by flying out to Pyongyang last week and meeting Kim Jong-un and a coterie of his top ministers at the Arirang Mass Games, later going on to watch a huge military parade at Kim Il-sung Square.

I caught up with Alejandro before he left for the festivities.

VICE: Hi, Alejandro. How did you end up as president of the Korean Friendship Association?
Alejandro Cao de Benos: I was 16 years old when I had my first North Korean delegation in Madrid. I founded the KFA, organized by the Justice Ministry of Spain, which then expanded internationally with conferences, cultural exchanges, and many visits to North Korea. Since my passion was always Korea, I got my official position as a special delegate from the Foreign Ministry in 2002.

Was it difficult to obtain the position as a non-Korean?
Yes, it was. It was the first and only time in history that a foreigner was appointed this responsibility. It took about ten years to earn their confidence. It's a great honor since my main interest was to live and work in North Korea. My Korean name is Cho Son Il, which means ”Korea is one.” I’ve always believed in the Korean Revolution and General Kim Jong-il, who I met several times before his death, and even accepted gifts from.

You’re also in charge of the DPRK’s official website?
Yes. I proposed the first-ever DPRK website in 2000 to our minister because there was no information about it, and he agreed. I was given responsibility not just for North Korea’s publicity, but to act as a multi-ambassador to the country and to all countries that don't have a North Korean delegate. So my work includes giving a lot of media interviews, since obviously most North Koreans abroad will not give interviews to foreign journalists. When something happens and they want an official DPRK point of view, they call me.

What kind of requests do you normally deal with?
Landing permit issues from Australia and Russia, for example. I’m not a decision maker. My work is to forward the requests to the relevant ministry or department in North Korea, unless it's related to the government website, which I run, or the KFA.

If you have a North Korean passport, why not live in Pyongyang?
If I lived in Pyongyang I could not have this interview with you today and attend to foreign requests. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter—there is no internet access in the DPRK. My work would be quite limited and useless inside the country.

Which Western media misperceptions of North Korea do you feel are too often portrayed?
There are so many, I don’t know where to start. But the main one is that North Koreans are forced into the "Juche" communist idea—that’s totally wrong. The ideology of single-minded unity comes from Korea’s cultural roots. This is why the political system continues, even under the strong pressure of US blockades. Even though the DPRK has been through terrible times—and economically collapsed from 1995 to 2000—politically, they never gave up on the belief of a society based on equality. It's a big mistake for Westerners to believe that the DPRK will collapse—it's never going to happen under the current leadership.

I’ve read differing accounts of Juche. Do North Koreans believe in their destiny as a racially superior nation?
No, no, no. That is American propaganda to give a false image of North Korea. Juche means socialism, Korean-style. Our own version, developed by Kim Il-sung. How can North Korea be racist when they have given years of support and alliance to African countries from the heart, without asking anything in return? It's Japan that is convinced of its racial superiority, in invading other countries. Or even America, which believes in its own superiority by forcing its decadent culture onto other nations.

If North Korea continues its nuclear development, do you expect another civil war with the South?
First, the Korean War was not a civil war at all. South Korea did not sign the armistice agreement in 1953, but was and still is just a puppet army under the military control of the US. So that’s another problem: people don’t know that the Korean War was only between North Korea and the US. South Korea had nothing to do with it and can’t sign a peace treaty today because the US won’t let them. So it's up to the US to leave Korea to the Koreans. If they go back home, everything will be solved.

Which countries have the strongest "friendship networks" with North Korea?
Traditionally China, as a neighbor, because their people are very communist. And Russia, since there are many North Koreans living there. Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam as well. But things are changing. Nowadays we have a lot of supporters in Europe and the US. 

Alejandro with Kim Yong-nam, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea.

Really? How many international members are there?
Near 13,000. Since the US is the most developed in terms of internet capacity, it's number one right now in terms of members. Second is the UK. To join as a member is free, and it's very important that no one earns any money.

If you don’t earn any money, how do you survive?
We are all volunteers with day jobs who dedicate our free time to our passion for North Korea. I haven’t received a single cent for my work since I started.

I see that you believe in the reunification of Korea. How do you envision that occurring?
It depends entirely on South Korea right now. If the current president backs the idea of the true Korean identity, we will see reunification in ten to 15 years. If she just follows the interests of the US, there will be more confrontation. How will reunification happen? Based on the model of one country, two systems. It would be a confederate model, keeping communism in the north and capitalism in the south, but with open borders and a parliament that would agree to work together on projects like the Korean DMZ. But the US has to leave first, of course.

Don’t you think the huge economic disparity between North and South will cause too much tension and mass migration?
Well, in South Korea there are a lot of beggars, too—a lot of people who are being exploited at criminally low salaries. I invite anyone to look up the definition of democracy on the internet or even Wikipedia. They call South Korea a democracy, but just look it up: national security act. It was a law originally imposed by the US during wartimes that used to be called The Anti-Communism Law. You can’t read anything about communism or North Korea in the South. If you do, it is punishable by three years in prison, up to even being executed. Obviously after reunification there will be some North Koreans influenced by the neon lights and marketing from the South’s capitalism. But there will also be thousands of underpaid Southern workers and union trade fighters who will move North and be supportive of communism.

Okay. Does this national security law also exist the other way round? If North Koreans are caught with capitalist material, do they also face the death penalty?
No, not exactly like in South Korea. As long as they are not involved in any criminality or challenge the government, there is no problem.

Alejandro with Yang Hyong Sop, ex-chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly.

Which countries invest most heavily in the DPRK? Which attend these IKBC trips you organise?
China, obviously. And Eastern Europe, because in the past they were once socialist countries. We have some third party agreements in the US with private investors and in the UK. They are usually interested in exporting, mining, heavy machinery, ship building and IT. In many international contests recreating artificial intelligence, North Korean engineers have won over Japan. But the US blockade still prevents North Korea from developing itself economically.

Aren’t the US embargos in place because North Korea is guilty of human rights violations?
No, not at all. For us, human rights mean housing, food, water, free healthcare and education. We believe that the US and UK are the first not to accomplish that. I’ve been to the UK many times and seen hunger and poverty and so many social problems that they don’t have the right to judge anyone until they solve their own problems first. Not just provide a McDonald's every 200 metres.

But what about widespread claims of North Koreans starving or suffering from food shortages?
No, you're mistaking this with what happened from 1995 to 2000. Now there is not a single person suffering from this in all the DPRK, because the state provides for all their necessities. In North Korea we don’t have prostitution, crack addicts or beggars. In the UK, and even here in Spain, I will show you people who are starving in the streets – white children without food. But then you’re going to have to promise me that you will publish that!

Sure. Anything to add?
People should see with their own eyes by visiting North Korea, not by listening to mass media. If possible, come with the KFA. Why? Because you will be coming as a friend of the country, directly invited by the Foreign Ministry. You can talk to the North Korean people in schools and factories. We bring diplomats, doctors and anthropologists who are keen to learn about the daily life and reality of the DPRK, not just to take pictures. There are many places that we provide exclusive access to, like Parliament and the Ministry of Defence. 

Okay, great. Thanks, Alejandro.

Follow Christine on Twitter: @ChristineCocoJ

More stories from North Korea:

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WATCH – The VICE Guide to North Korea

Thursday

I dream I’ve been placed in an impossible situation in which suicide is the only appealing option. Not because of immanent physical destruction, as in the case of 9-11 when people jumped from obviously fatal heights to escape incineration, or because of incurable medical problems, but because the prospect of extreme, permanent immiseration appears in the dream as a virtual certainty. And in the dream, at least, I have no heavy emotions or hesitation about snuffing myself, and wake up in the middle of pondering the quickest, easiest way to buy the farm. I’m so surprised to find that I don’t have to kill myself that it takes several minutes for me to consider that when I did want to kill myself for real, I never did figure out the least awful way to do it—Final Exit recommended something involving helium cannisters, Nembutal, industrial strength rubber bands, and plastic dry cleaning bags, and I went as far as buying a couple helium cannisters of the type used to inflate balloons at childrens’ birthday parties. I couldn’t figure out how you would manage to get the rubber bands around your neck to keep the plastic bags tight after releasing the helium if you were supposed to pass out first from the Nembutal—I have very little mechanical aptitude, so I decided to try therapy.

I suppose it’s natural that I have this dream in Sofia, Bulgaria. Every night for 36 nights, mass demonstrations have started small at one end of the city, in the square in front of the Bulgarian Government Offices, and built to crowds of 50 to 70,000. They march down Tsar Osvoboditel Boulevard, stopping in front of the National Assembly, swelling numerically in Battenberg Square, proceeding past the Bulgarian National Bank, Alexander Nevsky Place, and the National Theater, two miles or so to the midpoint of Borisova Gradina, the gigantic park where funfair rides for kids, cafes and restaurants for grown-ups, and cul-de-sacs for outdoor sodomy abound in equal profusion—an amazingly sustained protest, when you think about it, and nothing new for Bulgaria, where such demonstrations have often forced the government in power to fold its tents and hold new elections.

The current wave of “unrest“ really began in January, sparked by a huge spike in utility and commodity prices as well as (literally) the self-immolation of an unemployed father of five in the village of Radnewo, followed by the self-incineration, in front of the presidential palace in Sofia, of an unemployed blacksmith. There have since been four other self-immolations, one of which, surprisingly, caused the mayor of Varna to resign—would Bloomberg resign if someone made a bonfire of himself, along with, perhaps, a bunch of those Citibike monstrosities and a jumbo utility bill, in front of Gracie Mansion? (Oops! I forgot—the mayor doesn’t live in Gracie Mansion, he doesn’t consider it big enough for him.) The early protests brought down the center-right government, but the recently elected Socialist government is seen as equally odious, another bunch of Communist leftovers aping politicians in more stable parts of the eurozone, beholden to the organized crime syndicate TIM—the specific object of protest by Plamen Goranow, a 36-year-old activist who set himself ablaze in front of Varna City Hall in March, and has become a posthumous folk hero. (In the ambulance, Goranow told a paramedic that he hadn’t intended to kill himself, just to set himself on fire briefly. Oh, well.)

TIM is an acronym for the first initials of its three kingpins, Tihomir Ivanov Mitev, Ivo Kamenov Georgiev, and Marin Velikov Mitev: a fairly standard, oligarchical mafia of ex-communist bosses and their business sweethearts, controlling 120 companies run by exactly 12 individuals. The gang started out in gambling, prostitution, drug smuggling, car theft, and human trafficking, and has since branched into “legitimate“ enterprises with the help of high-placed government associates. It now owns Chemo-More, the widest-circulation newspaper in Varna, two national cable television stations, the nationally broadcast station Alpha Radio, as well as a chain of restaurants, movie houses, sports clubs, and Internet ventures; it also controls a large chunk of Bulgarian agriculture, grain storage facilities, poultry farms, and SUHINDOL, the country’s largest winery. It recently took over the Central Cooperative Bank and the insurance company ARMEETS. TIM isn’t the only organized crime cabal serviced by the Bulgarian government, just the biggest. It is currently developing grotesquely huge hotel and entertainment complexes on the Black Sea waterfront in Varna, having secured a ponderously big chunk of beachfront property that legally belongs to the Bulgarian national trust.

Bulgaria is the poorest country in the EU. Journalists covering the protests say that unless the government falls and real systemic changes occur, at least half the protesters under 30 will leave the country, as they have no future here. The marchers are stunningly heterogenous, young old and in between, married couples with baby carriages, hippies and punks and Mr. & Mrs. Normal, many accompanied by their dogs (in Sofia, at least, everybody seems to own a show dog), all pouring into the street until human bodies completely fill the visible landscape. None of these people looks especially poverty-stricken and everyone hastens to tell me the protests aren’t strictly about economics, but about corruption and social control. The poor don’t hang around the center of Sofia.

I wish Americans could force their own government to resign—every member of it that I can think of, except Elizabeth Warren and Al Franken. Failing that, I think, I agree with the person who said that non-violence is a tactic, not a philosophy.

Saturday

There was a baby cockroach in my lemonade at lunch.

Edward Snowden is still languishing in the airport in Moscow. That horrible creep who’s Obama’s spokesman, the aptly named Jay Carney, reiterating the theme of the Administration vis-a-vis Snowden and whistleblowers generally, ADMIT NOTHING, BLAME EVERYONE, BE BITTER.

Every movie that isn’t in Bulgarian on television is dubbed by a gravel-grinding, baritone male voice talking over all the actors. I have no idea if this voice is reciting translated dialogue or, like the benshee in early Japanese silent movie houses, explaining the action onscreen. The effect is extremely unnerving, as I suspect that whatever this unpleasant voice is saying, “he“ is somehow distorting the actual plot of the film, making it “more Bulgarian,“ or, who knows, maybe “less Bulgarian,“ according to his whim, or that of the station managers.

Sunday

A very unhappy-looking man, tall, thin, with a thin black beard like a heavy pencil line along his jaw, wearing an “I (heart) Paris“ t-shirt.

Monday

Stefan—please come to hotel at 6-6:30 Alabin 67 off Vitosha Blvd please do not fuck anybody else this afternoon I want you to write yr name in cum on my face w yr cock (not yr patronymic just yr first name)

Sent from my iPhone

Tuesday

Leaving tomorrow for Bucharest. I am trying to finish Vasily Grossman’s Everything Flows before I go so I can give the book to someone, not that it weighs that much in my suitcase. This is what one of the characters says: “There is no evolution. There is one very simple law, the law of the conservation of violence. Violence is eternal, no matter what is done to destroy it. It does not disappear or diminish; it can only change shape. It can be embodied in slavery, or in the Mongol invasion. It wanders from continent to continent. Sometimes it takes the form of class struggle, sometimes of race struggle. From the sphere of the material it slips into religiosity, as in the Middle Ages. Sometimes it is directed against colored people, sometimes against writers and artists, but, all in all, the total quantity of violence on Earth remains constant.“

CODA is a studio for architectural and urban research and design established by Caroline O'Donnell in New York in 2008, and now based in Ithaca, New York. Caroline is currently the Richard Meier Professor at Cornell University and has many awards and competitions under her belt. Along with a team of Cornell University architecture students, teaching associates, and alumni, she recently entered the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program, an annual series of competitions that gives emerging architects an opportunity to build projects conceived for PS1's space in Long Island City, Queens.

CODA's winning design, Party Wall, provides visitors with a unique and refreshing experience. It's a large structure that creates shade for visitors, as well as cooling pools and floating mist. VICE and Ray-Ban had the opportunity to meet Caroline and her team while documenting the construction of Party Wall for the Ray-Ban Envision Series, an event and video series that features individuals who have found their purpose in life and stay true to their vision.

Geography rules in eastern Afghanistan. Rugged mountains and rocky plains make it a difficult trek for people, but well-suited for donkeys and drones. And these days the region has its share of both.

On NATO’s Forward Operating Base Shank in Logar Province, US Army Staff Sergeant Kane Featherston and Specialist Torrin McDougle, both of 4-3 Brigade’s Special Troops Battalion, prepare a battleship gray drone for launch.

The Shadow 200, made by the AAI Corporation, is the width of a garage door. Depending on its configuration, it can weigh as much as 425 pounds.

While at first glance this unmanned aerial vehicle or UAV doesn’t look much different than a hobbyist’s radio controlled plane, it’s sophisticated guidance, flight, and surveillance technology put it in the price range of approximately $1 million.

But officers here believe the small package is worth the price, considering the intelligence it provides Task Force Vanguard.

“It’s the smallest of the big drones and biggest of the small drones,” according to Lieutenant Mark McConnell, the platoon leader in charge of the Shadow’s operations here.

While it can be mounted with weapons, McConnell says that’s not it’s purpose for Task Force Vanguard. The drone is used to gather intelligence about Taliban movements as well as provide and “eye in the sky” overwatch for US and Afghan National Army troops while they’re out on patrol.

Within minutes after Featherston and McDougle load the Shadow onto a hydraulic, nitrogen-powered catapult, the Shadow will accelerate from zero to 70 before it hits the end of its ramp, airborne and scanning the region around Logar and Wardak Provinces.

Pilots operate the drone from a Ground Control System based in the back of a vehicle, moving the aircraft with a computer mouse. Flying the UAV can be a challenge in Afghanistan, winds, updrafts, mountains, and other obstacles mean the pilots need to be on highly alert during the six to nine hours the Shadow can remain airborne.

Because American and Afghan troops are patrolling so frequently, a squadron of million-dollar Shadows are logging 36-40 hours of flight time every day here, over the inhospitable and often dangerous terrain below.

Watch the Shadow in action:

All video, text, and photos by Kevin Sites.

Kevin Sites is a rare breed of journalist who thrives in the throes of war. As Yahoo! News’s first war correspondent between 2005 and 2006, he gained notoriety for covering every major conflict across the globe in one year’s time and fostering a technology-driven, one-man-band approach to reporting that helped usher in the “backpack movement.” Kevin is currently traveling through Afghanistan covering the tumultuous country during "fighting season" as international forces like the US pullout. Keep coming back to VICE.com for more dispatches from Kevin.

More on VICE from Kevin Sites:   The Enduring Art of Afghanistan

Follow Kevin on Twitter: @kevinsites

And visit his personal website: KevinSitesReports.com

Finding it hard to come to terms with the shitty things that have happened to you in your life? Help is at hand, in the virginal and strangely vacant form of three bible-bashing teenage exorcists from Phoenix, Arizona. Eighteen-year-old Brynne Larson and her friends Tess and Savannah Sherkenback (18 and 21 respectively) claim to be able to confront the demons lurking inside traumatised people and draw them out using nothing more than the odd cross and a few choice words. But are the teenage exorcists really empowered by the Almighty, or merely by Brynne's father, a failed televangelist named Reverend Bob?

In our new film, the girls and Reverend Bob give us exclusive access to their tour of Ukraine, during which they attempt to save the souls of recovering drug addicts and exorcise people's "sexually transmitted demons".

If you're like us, this Saturday's Grove Festival at Fort York in Toronto is already making you crave the weekend for about 50 different reasons. One of which is, of course, Phoenix's triumphant return to Toronto. To get you even more hyped to see them play the city for the first time in four years, check out this video (on our friends over at Budweiser's Facebook page, or on the top of this post, whichever) where they discuss the inspiration behind their hit "If I Ever Feel Better," the combined sadness and happiness of the track, and all the fan mail they've received from mental institutions.

BUT WAIT, we didn't put this blog post together just so you could watch a couple of charming French gentlemen discuss their creative inspiration in such a pleasant manner.  We also have some tickets to give away for the Grove Festival. So instead of leaving these freebies draped around our office as decorations, we want to give them all to you. All you need to do is write us at contests.canada@vice.com with a one liner description of why you want to go to this festival so badly and you might just win a pair. Good luck, see you out there.

To see more, click through to the next page.

More from our 2013 Photo Issue:

Manic Botanic

Place of the Inside Out

Terram Tenebrosam

Last night, nearly a thousand people marched in honour of Sammy Yatim, the 18-year-old who was gunned down by the Toronto Police Saturday morning on an emptied streetcar. The crowd rotated through multiple, impassioned chants like: "No Justice, No Peace!" "Justice for Sammy!" and "Fuck the Police!"

There were hundreds of people Sammy’s age who had come out to show their support. They organized chants, made posters, and screamed in the faces of on duty police officers. Neighbours along Dundas Street W, where the rally was taking place, stood on their stoops taking pictures of the massive crowd as it passed.

The rally began in Dundas Square shortly after 5PM, and marched to where the shooting occurred. A chalk body outline was drawn on the ground and candles were lit, while Sammy’s mother and sister held each other and wept.

Police led the way, as they always do when there's a public demonstration. In this instance, however, it was a surreal juxtaposition between the cops and the crowd, because the rally was basically an anti-police protest. People held signs in their faces that said “Stop Killer Cops,” and others continued to shout: “Fuck The Police,” into loudspeakers while standing just a couple feet away from uniformed officers. 

One man held up a sign that listed victims of police brutality who had been killed in Toronto since 1988. Sammy’s name was at the top. Meanwhile in Vancouver, the first mountie charged with perjury over the death of polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, at Vancouver National Airport in 2007, was being found not guilty.

“We are the new generation and we are not going to take this. We have the power to change what is going on,” shouted a young girl from a loudspeaker shortly after a vigil was held at the scene of the shooting. The crowd responded with a wild "Yeah!"

I spoke with Jamal Francis, a 24-year-old student from Toronto, who summed up a feeling many in the crowd were experiencing: “It could have been my cousin or my friend. It makes me scared. It’s crazy what has happened and really amazing that so many people came out to support Sammy. I’m so mad this happened. Police abuse their power and it has to be stopped.”

The march ended outside of the Toronto Police’s 14 Division station—the divison who sent out the officer that ultimately killed Sammy—a couple of blocks away from the crime scene. 

“For me, the saddest thing is that he came from Syria five years ago to get away from a tumultuous country. To flee genocide. Only to end up here in Canada and to get shot by police. Canadians pretend we’re morally superior, but clearly we’re not,” said Samira Sayed-Rahman a 22-year-old grad student. 

“I have an issue with how it was dealt with. I’ve watched the video repeatedly, there was no one trying to talk to this kid and that’s wrong. This is a symptom of aggressive power,” said Caroline Shaheed.  “This is not a war zone. It’s downtown Toronto.”

As Shaheed said this, protestors continued to shout at police who had formed a human wall outside their division. Beside her, people were writing “RIP SAMMY” in chalk on the walls of the station. A shirt with fake blood all over it, as if it had been worn by someone who was shot nine times, was making its way through the crowd. Others chanted "Cops, Pigs, Murderers!" And a few people yelled at the stone-faced cops blocking the station's entrance to: "Make a statement!" But of course, they remained silent.

While the Special Investigations Unit does what they do, Torontonians (and by now, much of Canada) are likely to grow more angry while waiting for answers that might not come for a long time. The SIU is not known for being speedy.

In the meantime, there is a Facebook page people can visit to show support and the next rally is set for August 13^th at 1p.m. at Toronto Police Headquarters.

Previously:

Why Did the Toronto Police Kill Sammy Yatim?

Was Adam Nobody, a G20 Protester, Assaulted for Carrying an Explosive Water Bottle?

Conveniently for those who like to understand things through false dichotomies, and frustratingly for everyone else, the government has come up with a narrative that differentiates between the “strivers” and "shirkers" in British society. "Strivers" are those who struggle to provide for themselves by working like slaves and “shirkers” are those who struggle to provide for themselves because they're too busy wanking on the couch, cackling as they drag the rest of us down into their mire of jobless largesse.

However, this idea is revealed as fallacy when you look at the figures, which show that even if every unemployed person in the country spent their every waking hour looking for a job, they wouldn’t be able to find one. There simply aren't enough to go around – there's no hidden well of endless jobs that someone has been sneakily hiding from us. The latest Labour Market Survey showed that while there are nearly half a million vacant positions, there are 2.5 million unemployed who want them. Not to mention the 7 million underemployed making the stats look a bit nicer as they wallow in a personal purgatory.

Despite this, Chancellor George Osborne used his spending review at the end of June to add another 144,000 public sector workers to the unemployment list. He gave those who are already out of work a kicking too, by making them wait a week before claiming benefits rather than the three days they'd been used to. For good measure, jobseekers must now attend the dole office every week rather than fortnightly, which, if we're lucky, will merely be a logistical nightmare.

Of those new jobs that are out there, 75 percent pay peanuts. Feel like complaining? It'll cost you. From now on, if you want to take your beef with your boss to an Employment Tribunal – a service that's been free since the Victorians were employing kids to huff chimney soot all day – you'll have to pay for it up front.

The day after the spending review, I heard about a jobs fair in Watford. The idea of a jobs fair is a novel one. "Fair" is a word I would usually associate with a) fun, b) equality or c) justice, none of which spring to mind when I consider the UK jobs market. Then there was the fact that it was organised by a Tory MP – was this just political PR, as suggested by the numerous references to the MP on the event’s literature and signage, or a rare case of a politician doing something practical to help his constituents?

In my mind's eye I'd imagined the jobs fair to look like one of those abandoned fairgrounds you see in films, the kind that have lain dormant for a decade since some horrible accident shut them down. Instead, what greeted me was a busy conference hall with expensive looking carpets and modern light fittings.

In front of me swarmed a sea of people from various walks of life, all united by their lack of gainful employment. Some wore suits and marched briskly from table to table, handing out laminated CVs. Others shuffled around looking uncomfortable. Giggling teenagers in crumpled shirts just out of sixth form were followed by stern mothers snapping at them to “be serious”.

The effect of the government's rhetoric became clear soon after I arrived, in the form of James. "I don’t like the idea of jobseeker's and people who sit on benefits for the sake of it," he told me. "I’m so opposed to it that I end up putting myself in even more debt because I try to avoid signing on to jobseeker's allowance. I just picked up a leaflet about debt management because it really has hit rock bottom for me."

Then I met Michael, 22, George, 17 and Rachael, 19. They seemed fairly representative of young people looking for work today. Michael was hopeful that he could find a job that was in any way related to the Chemistry degree he'd just graduated from, but was considering sales as a plan B. Underemployed Rachael told me that she was on the hunt for a full-time job "that I actually want”. It was as if she didn’t realise how lucky she is that, thanks to people even poorer then her scanning through burgers as “onions” on self-checkout machines, her 12 hours a week on a supermarket till haven't been completely stolen by a robot.

Poor George had been on the hunt for a year. How had that year been? “Hard.” How many jobs had he applied for? “So many.” Is there anything out there? “Nothing at all.” What kind of work was he looking for? “Anything. I just want money. That’s it.” Was there anything he wouldn’t do? “No.”

Perhaps his years working in a warehouse had jaded him, or maybe it was because he was old enough to remember a time when bosses would jitter at the mere mention of industrial action, but Gerry Norwood seemed to lack that winning combination of fantastical optimism, acute desperation and masochistic subservience required to make it in the modern jobs market. Since being laid-off he has been offered temp work but, “They wanted me to do shifts at 5AM. The buses around here don’t start until seven or eight in the morning. So what you earn you would be spending on a taxi fair – it’s stupid,” he moaned, ungratefully.

Young and unemployed? No prospects, qualifications or contacts? Not to worry, here’s Richard Harrington, your local Tory MP, vice chairman of the Conservative Party and Oxford alumni, talking to you on your level about how he’s “been there”. “This event is nothing to do with politics,” he told a room full of desperate and impressionable young people of voting age.

For the purposes of this article, I had been hoping that he would be an archetypal Tory toff, the kind of ranting officer-class loon that makes you understand why it's not George Osborne they keep hidden away from TV cameras out in the shires. Alas, according to his speech he did seem to have some fairly legit real-life experience, having worked as a cab driver and a market stallholder before becoming a wealthy businessman like the rest of his parliamentary colleagues.

“Get an objective and don’t let anyone say you can’t achieve it,” he said.

Unfortunately, Richard’s message was somewhat at odds with the one being conveyed by some of the advisors at his event.

“Some of them are saying, ‘Give up on your dream,’” David (pictured right) told me.

“Some of them have been saying, ‘There are no jobs, good luck with that!'" added James, who is now recalibrating his dreams of becoming an aeronautical engineer, looking instead for plumbing apprenticeships.

Of course, hardheaded cynicism from employers was often matched by the job seekers themselves. He may look like a relentless go-getter with a can-do attitude, but Chaka here confessed that he was merely going through the motions. He told me he'd been unemployed for about a year, using his time living at home to gain the experience he needs to get his dream job as an Android app designer. I asked him if this was really the best place to look for opportunities in app design, since as far as I could tell, there were absolutely no stalls relating to that in the hall. “No,” he replied matter-of-factly, admitting that he was here on pain of losing dole money. “I’m only here because I’m on a work programme and they made us come today. It’s a waste of my time.”

This is Paul Jenkins, who dubs himself a “job search expert”, grinning maniacally at a room full of people in a seminar about how to get back into work when you’re over 50. When his talk began, it became clear that being insanely upbeat was kind of his MO, as he said things like “there are even jobs in Spain”, a country where more than a quarter of the population are out of work.

His key advice was that “nothing positive ever comes from negative thinking” and “the biggest reason most people don’t get jobs is that they don’t apply”, which was just about vague enough to be impossible to disprove. Unalloyed positivity comes at a price, though. According to his website, it’ll cost you £950 if you want Paul to re-write your CV for you, or £97.50 for an hour-long chat over the phone to improve your job-seeking prospects.

Then I caught up for a chat with Richard Harrington, the Tory MP who, in case you hadn't noticed, had set up the jobs fair. After he had assured me once more that this event had absolutely nothing to do with politics, I asked for his opinions about the world of work. He seemed less upbeat than he had been in his earlier speech, telling me that, “I would like to see people thinking that we live in a society where sometimes you have to accept a job you don’t want or weren’t qualified for.”

Then I asked him whether, rather than demonising the unemployed, the government could make work a more appealing prospect by, for a start, not spanking workers’ rights quite so hard.

“It’s very peripheral, that stuff,” he said dismissively.

As for the simple maths about the number of people who want jobs versus the much smaller number of jobs available, he admitted that the numbers were “indisputable”, but added, “Watford is not Liverpool. In Watford if you want a job, I’m not saying you can pick and choose, but there are opportunities available.”

The jobs fair’s literature claimed that there were over 1,000 jobs and apprenticeships up for grabs on the day. Richard revised that down to 700 when I spoke to him. With around 4,000 people coming through the door, I thought that figure spoke for itself – at least 3,300 people would be going home empty handed. (Somebody offering ten paid internships told me she had had well over 100 applications.) As well as that, there were plenty of organisations offering training and volunteer opportunities rather than actual jobs. When they did have positions available, they often came with caveats. There were lots of jobs going for those willing to uproot their entire lives and move elsewhere for an entry-level position, but those too attached to their homes, families and communities were out of luck. For instance, a construction firm had 139 vacancies – but only four or five of those were anywhere near Watford.

One warehouse employment agency were offering people jobs with one of the country’s leading online retailers. Weirdly, though, they didn’t want me to report it. Suffice to say it was a retailer that avoids tax and has been no stranger to labour controversies – controversies like using a bunch of neo-Nazi security guards to keep its immigrant workforce under control in Germany.

Then there was the temporary seasonal work. And the endless offers of zero-hours contracts – the type that see part-time workers paid an average of £6 less per hour than their full-time colleagues by billionaires like Mike "Cockney Mafia" Ashley. Even this government has a suspicion that zero-hours contracts are unfair, with Business Secretary Vince Cable set to launch an investigation into them. But they were more than welcome at the jobs fair.

Richard had told me that he thought it was important for unemployed people to be treated with "dignity", which is why he got sponsorship to make sure that the event took place in, "the best venue in Watford. This is a proper place with carpets. It’s not a dusty old community hall with a couple of trestle tables and black boards."

In truth though, to anyone who'd gone along looking for work, it must have felt like rocking up at Byron and getting served a Big Mac. The duplicity of the event summed up the nature of the job market today – the Tory government's aspirational rhetoric encourages everyone to believe that they're not an exploited call centre worker, but a temporarily embarrassed Duncan Bannatyne in the making. It's easy to see why the "strivers" who buy into this myth would despise the "shirkers" who don't, or who do but couldn't get that call centre position, or that zero-hours contract at Sports Direct, or that job driving a forklift truck around a warehouse for Amazon.

In truth, the only reason the government have reached for such divisive language is that they know that all types of people are swimming around in the shit. Look at those I ran into at the jobs fair – young and old, qualified and unqualified, in credit and in debt, wannabe aeronautical engineers and would-be app designers. It seemed a fairly decent cross-section of the job seeker's market to me, yet I came away feeling bewildered not by the variety of people in attendance, but by the array of methods that seem to have been devised to screw those people over.

At best, the strivers versus shirkers dichotomy is an over-simplified take on a complex situation. At worst, it is socially injurious propaganda that seeks to remove the blame for the economic lull from the government and big business, and reassign it to Britain's unemployed.

Follow Simon on Twitter: @SimonChilds13

More about not having a job:

How to be Happy, Young and Jobless

Smile, You're Fucked! Photos of Dole Queues in Thatcher's Britain

Would You Rather be Ginger or Unemployed?

Photo via

Last Wednesday, at least four medical marijuana dispensaries in Washington state—where even recreational use of pot is legal in small amounts—got quite a scare when the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) came calling. The clinics, all of which had been targeted back in 2011, were supposedly not abiding by state law, which is the often cited, albeit quizzical, justification for a federal raid.

In Washington, one dispensary owner initially worried he was being robbed. Other owners throughout the state feared this was the beginning of an official federal crackdown—the Department of Justice had decided to deal with states where recreational weed use is legal by sending in the DEA. But a source told Seattle’s King-5 that the raids took place because those specific marijuana outfits had the same problems they had in 2011, not because of any new federal policy.

In lieu an official federal policy toward states that have legalized medical marijuana, this ad hoc, willy-nilly method of policing has become the norm, and you might not be too off base if you assumed that the DOJ’s unspoken strategy was to kill the industry by a million paper cuts.

According to Americans for Safe Access, the Obama administration has spent $300 million on medical marijuana raids since 2009. Crackdowns have lead to serious jail time for dispensary owners in Michiganand Montana. No arrests were made this week in Washington, but several thousand dollars in marijuana was seized, along with cell phones, papers, and computers. The DEA also started the process of seizing a boat through asset forfeiture. Supposedly these dispensaries were laundering money and providing marijuana to nonpatients, which is possible. It should also have been up to the state to decide if state law was being broken.

Really, allegations from the DEA shouldn’t hold much weight. Their job—their only job, differentiating them from regular federal, state, or local law enforcement—is to enforce drug laws in America.The DEA is just the federal arm of the 40-year, trillion-dollar human rights nightmare known as the war on drugs. If drug laws continue to loosen, sometime in the next few years or decades, all their agents will be out of work. When that happens, it won’t be a second too soon.

Now on to the week’s bad cops:

- In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Moreno family is suing the city and the chief of police, alleging that back in December,2010 an 11-member SWAT team busted down their door, threatened them, and spent 45 minutes yelling and trashing their home. The complaint says police even pulled a ten-year-old child out of the bathtub and pointed guns at him and his four-year-old sister. Why? The family says it was a Mafia-esque exercise in intimidation because the father, William Moreno, argued with a drunk, off-duty cop the night before.

- Police in Fort Worth, Texas claim that “poor lighting” lead to the shooting of an innocent homeowner. At 1 AM on May 28, police were called to the scene of a reported break-in began searching a neighbor’s yard instead by accident. That home actually belonged to 72-year-old Jerry Waller, who came outside armed to investigate the lights and noises. According to police, Waller pointed his handgun at officers, and they were forced to shoot him dead in his own garage. A police investigation into the shooting is ongoing.

- After an informant purchased heroin at the house, a drug task force raided a home in West Tarentum, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday and arrested four people. No one was injured, but everything about the raid sounds like routinely bad, potentially dangerous policy: the use of SWAT on low-level offenders, cops busting in at six in the morning, and their use of a flash-bang grenade, even though the home contained four young children.

- A July 28 article in the Advocate reports that in the last two years, sheriff’s deputies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have entrapped a dozen men with offers of gay sex, then attempted to have them prosecuted under unconstitutional antisodomy laws. Thankfully, the reasonable District Attorney has yet to press charges, but the LGBT community wants to know what the deal is.

- Nevada state troopers have been ordered to return $1 million they took from a woman named Tara Mishra during a traffic stop in March 2012. As previously described in Bad Cop Blotter, forfeiture laws allow for this kind of seizure to take place on no more than suspicion. After pulling Mishra over for speeding, police searched her car and found the aforementioned million in cash. Arrested on the assumption that this was drug money, turns out the 31-year-old had been working as a stripper and carefully saving for more than a decade to buy a nightclub with her business partner, who was present. Mishra and her friend were delayed more than a year in their plans, but a federal judge ruled in mid-July that the cops must return the money with interest.

- Initial reports of robbers impersonating Detroit police turns out to be real police officers going rogue. One officer—a sergeant—was arrested by his on precinct when he tried to go to work on Saturday. He, and at least one other Detroit cop, is suspected of robbing and pistol-whipping customers at a Citgo gas station.

- In Pensacola, Florida, on Saturday at 2:40 AM, 60-year-old Roy Middleton went outside to look through his mother’s car in order to find a cigarette. One of his neighbors decided there was a break-in and called the police. Escambia County sheriff’s deputies arrived while Middleton was still in the car. They told him to put his hands up, which Middleton says he did, but they still fired. A teenage witness says Middleton, who was hit but is expected to make a full recovery, didn’t do anything wrong.

- The US Department of Education’s Civil Rights Division is investigating the complaints of more than 13 students from the University of Southern California who claim that the university—including campus public-safety officers—dismissed reports of sexual assaults. One woman says a campus officer swore she couldn’t have been raped since her attacker didn’t ejaculate. Another complaint states that a campus cop responded to a sexual-assault report with the comment that women can’t “go out, get drunk, and expect not to get raped.” The investigation will try to ascertain whether these women’s civil rights were violated by the university’s failure to address such serious allegations.

- An unnamed law enforcement source released audio recordings relating to a grisly Hartford, Connecticut, home invasion that killed three in 2007. The recordings show that cops and dispatch told a hostage negotiator he wasn’t needed because they didn’t believe Jennifer Hawke-Petit when she told a bank teller she needed to withdraw money because her family was being held captive. Hawke-Petit and her children were both murdered half an hour after cops arrived at the home and set up a perimeter. The police department hasn’t reviewed its response to the tragedy and isn’t answering questions.

- In May, undercover cops in Salt Lake City, Utah, busted a bar for selling so-called bootleg beer—meaning it wasn’t purchased at a state store, or from a licensed seller at the correct, regulated price—and was probably illegally bought out of state. Cops also confiscated several other “unauthorized” beers. The owners of the bar, The Spot, now face prosecution and up to $25,000 in fines.

- This week’s Good Cop comes via the Huffington Post: the tale of a Reddit commenter probably named Brianna who was “buzzed” one night, and wrote a note on her car which said as much, but that she promised she would move the car first thing the next morning, and to please not ticket her. The traffic enforcement officer left an answering note that read, “I appreciate you being responsible,” and politely advised the woman to try to avoid parking there in future. Good work, everyone. High-fives for all.

Lucy Steigerwald is a freelance writer and photographer. Read her blog here and follow her on Twitter: @lucystag

Previously: Routine Raid Terror

Three Chiefs from the Piegan Blackfeet, a tribe from Montana and Alberta. via WikiCommons.

The current governing structure on First Nations reserves in Canada has done a very good job in keeping the Indigenous population of this country internalized and dependent. While the Idle No More movement has worked to get land claims back in the national discussion, few people take notice of the governance system that is dividing our First Nations. As an Aboriginal, I’ve seen how this faulty system has become the norm and it’s discouraging to see no clear alternative in development. First Nations identify as a sovereign culture living within Canada, yet we’re expected to govern ourselves in a non-traditional, Western manner. The results are leaving our reserves underdeveloped.

Some will say that this is how our government wants our Natives to be. The relationship between the Federal Government and the First Nations of Canada does nothing but reflect that. It seems these days Stephen Harper avoids the issue like a guy avoiding his divorced wife. Submitting only to brief “negotiations” and the giving of the monthly cheque. However, for the Aboriginal people of Canada an apology is not enough to heal this proverbially scorned woman. After a long, hard, winding history of colonial oppression it’s a wonder that First Nations people are still around to play the political game at all, let alone win it.

As you can imagine, First Nations communities, prior to contact, did not have legislation, Prime Ministers, or even a court system. Yet their people existed harmoniously. It was understood that there was little to no warfare occurring between tribes. Aboriginal folks were living in communion with Mother Nature. It’s an idealism that borders on a utopia. Still, “What did this governing system look like?” is an over-generalizing question, as Cassandra Opikokew, Associate Director at Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Centre, points out: “Each community did it differently. Some had a group of decision makers, who may have all been women, who we would now call elders. They held the ultimate decision making authority in the community and appointed Chiefs.”

Unfortunately, one of the off shoots of colonialism is that cultural knowledge can be scarce, almost to the point of extinction. Today, First Nations struggle with an identity frozen in a historical perception, rather then being seen as a culture alive and kicking. One reason being is that today, their governing system holds only shallow echoes of how it once was. As Cassandra told me, “today, we have a Chief and Council system. You’ll have one councilor for every 100 people on the reserve. Each one works on a certain aspect of that reserve such as housing, health, public works etc. The Chief is a part of that circle but their role is focused on taking care of the elders and basically representing the tribe as a whole. So when we hear about Chiefs in the media, they are being held accountable for many people’s actions.”

Rarely do we hear a media story about Indigenous folks that isn’t riddled with accusations of fraud and mismanagement. Attawapiskat stood out as being one such financial nightmare. In the 2010-2011 fiscal year, Attawapiskat received $17.6 million in federal funds and still that community is dealing with poor socio-economic conditions. For the average Canadian, it’s ridiculous to hear that sort of money should be spent with little results. In her article for the Huffington Post, Chelsea Vowel does a great job breaking down exactly where that money came from and went. She helps diffuse the accusations that someone is irresponsibly trifling with taxpayer dollars. The federal government eventually sent in a “third-party manager” into Attawapiskat, who was by all accounts non-Native, to sort out the trouble. Isn’t that what governments are for? Chief Theresa Spence refused the help and appealed to the courts for a solution to such belittling behavior. The response was to send another cheque. Drew Hayden Taylor points out in his article that this incident was what helped spark the Idle No More movement..

Surely Aboriginal people are able-minded enough to run a Chief and Council system properly, so why is it not working? Second Chief Joe Katt, from Temagami First Nation, was one of the few Chiefs who were willing to speak on this subject. After 22 years in his position, he sees the issue quite clearly.  

“In traditional government, the Chief and Council was not elected to make decisions for the people but on behalf of the people. That’s a heck of a big difference. The people have to be in agreement. I hear it in my council all the time: ‘We have to mandate!’ That’s one of the biggest faults with the democratic system. Anybody who is going to run can make all the promises in the world, and yet once they get their power, do whatever the heck they wish. You’ll find some Chiefs who pay themselves an outrageous salary meanwhile their people are suffering from lack of housing, poor education, so on and so forth. The people hold the power and not a group called Chief and Council.”

I asked Chief Joe for a picture of himself. He sent me this.

Inside the reserve, the issues of the day can look strikingly close to a soap opera. In fact, you can find tales of corruption dramatized in the TV series “Blackstone First Nation”. As it is, the federal government only recognizes an elected Chief and Council. Which means folks of that reserve have to vote for whom they feel should be in power. This approach can leave much of the population uninterested, and the voting soon becomes biased. The general feeling is that First Nations should be allowed to self-govern themselves with a hereditary system as Chief Joe points out.

“Under the Indian Act system, it’s a popularity contest. It’s a very destructive system because it puts family against family, and divides communities right across this land. A hereditary system is when the right to leadership is passed down from one generation to the other. If my great grandfather were a Chief then I would be a hereditary Chief. If you look at the Six Nations Confederacy, what makes their system so strong is that clan mothers (elders) still appoint the Chiefs. They don’t look and say ‘oh this guy over here, he is really handsome and he’s from so-and-so’s family.’ They look at the person’s ability, knowledge, and understanding of the traditions and the values.”

Some people might think that because Aboriginals live on reserves they are completely self-governing. However, every decision that Chief and Council make has to be brought to Indian and Northern Affairs Canada for finalization. The truth is that, if the Minister of INAC really wanted to over turn a decision made on a reserve, he could.

“Our right to self-government does not come from the Constitution of Canada or from our Majesty the Queen. Our right to self-government comes from the Creator who gave us our land bases and our brothers and sisters right across it. The government says, ‘we want to sit down and negotiate self-governing arrangements with you.’ As far as I’m concerned self-government is non-negotiable.”

Land is essentially what First Nations are after and they have to appeal to the federal level to be heard. Here we see some contradictions arise. The federal government is in charge of protecting our rights and our interests, yet land and resources fall under provincial jurisdiction. First Nations reserves deal only with the federal branch so who is actually looking after these issues?

To say this is the only issue would be ill informed. The affair between Aboriginal folks and the remaining citizens of Canada seems to be, from the Aboriginal point of view anyway, a moral one. Treaties were made long ago, back in the times when the colonialists first made contact, and that acted as agreements to keep the peace and share the resources. It was never understood that we, as Aboriginals, were expected to give up such a large amount of what the Creator gave us. In essence, we feel cheated and deeply disrespected. That respect is what Aboriginals are really fighting to regain. The wonderful thing is that tribes across North America have been ready to discuss this matter for decades, but unfortunately, they are met with bureaucratic jargon and finger pointing. So can you see why it’s so hard to appeal to Harper on such a personal level? They should be willing to assimilate a bit of our culture as well.

This topic of discussion is, admittedly, deeply depressing. So for the sake of positivity and hopefulness, I’d like to point out some of the good things that are happening on the reserves. Cassandra seems to think there is a lot we, as a modern society, can learn from the earliest of First Nations practices.

“Within the last twenty years or so this idea about ‘going green’ has become huge. Natives have been doing that long before contact. Groups had to figure out how to hunt buffalo to sustain our livelihood, but at the same time ensure sustainable use of the buffalo as a resource. I think what we are seeing now are concepts that people don’t recognize as being traditionally Indigenous. These communities tended to account for gender. [We even had an accepted term for LGBTQ people, which was] two-spirited. Two-spirited people were understood to have a connection between two genders in one body. That was highly respected. Another one was accountability. We hear about accountability being so important today, particularly with the senate scandals. Indigenous communities thought in an intergenerational manner. ‘How is this going to affect us ten or twenty years from now? How is it going to affect our children and grandchildren?’”

Clearly the identity of Aboriginal lifestyles has been deeply ruptured by the artificial insemination of a Chief and Council system. But instead of throwing one’s hands up in the air and claiming defeat, Chief Joe is one of many people who have ideas on how to fix this problem.

“We have to create one Native organization that should take care of our status, our non-status, and our Metis peoples on reserve, off reserve, right across Canada. We’re in a whole new economy, a whole new technological age so we have to adapt to that system. I sat down with an OPP officer a number of years ago and I told him, what you’re fighting is a new generation. If the Canadian government still does not wish to acknowledge our rights then I think the next generations that are following are going to say: ‘Well what choice do we have?’ You’re going to find confrontation in places you never figured you would. His reply to me was that he was amazed it hasn’t happened yet.”


More about First Nations Issues in Canada:

A Toxic Tour of Canada's Chemical Valley

Idle No More Is about the Environment, Too

Ontario's First Nations Deserve More of the Diamond Industry's Cash