[body_image width='1679' height='1121' path='images/content-images/2014/12/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/29/' filename='we-learned-very-little-about-canadas-cybersurveillance-agency-csec-this-year-214-body-image-1419877683.jpg' id='14731']CSEC HQ, photo via CSEC's media relations.

Since the Edward Snowden disclosures of 2013, much of the world has awoken to the issue of cybersurveillance, particularly as it pertains to the practices of the NSA. But as anyone who has followed these issues knows, the NSA is part of an information-sharing collective called the Five Eyes, which encompasses the surveillance agencies of the UK (GCHQ), Australia (ASD), New Zealand (GCSB), and Canada (CSEC, or CSE if you want to get technical).

The avalanche of NSA disclosures, along with a pile of reports about GCHQ, have taught us quite a bit about the intensely complicated spy tools that have been developed by the US and UK to suck up billions of communications from around the world, break encryption software, and manipulate targets of surveillance by hijacking their computers. But a comparably miniscule amount of information has been disclosed about Canada's own agency, CSEC.

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Photo via Flickr user WEBN-TV

On May 27, Jason Wescott was killed in a narcotics raid performed by Tampa, Florida, police, and set in motion by an anonymous informant. Anonymous until now, that is. The man who told police that Wescott, a small-time marijuana dealer with one misdemeanor on his record, had weed in the house has identified himself as Ronnie Coogle in a lengthy Tampa Bay Times story.

Coogle is just one of the unknown number of informants who report to police and set drug raids in motion. Some of the more notable SWAT raids of the past decade have been precipitated by informants. Most of the time, their credibility is something known only to police—or they don't exist at all, as in the fatal case of Kathryn Johnston. The public, and every other actor in the criminal justice system, is supposed to trust these people, who are often felons themselves, or who are receiving payment or other incentives for their reporting.

Ronnie Coogle, as the Tampa Bay Times notes, is not exactly trustworthy, even as he cries and explains how guilty he feels about 29-year-old Jason Wescott's death. Coogle is now somewhat like investigative journalist Clifford Irving, who wrote a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes, and then professed to be telling the real story in his follow-up, The Hoax. It sounds good and all, but, well, where's your credibility after everything you've done?

On the other hand, learning Coogle's identity helps us get a picture of someone who is not a monster—and might even be sincerely regretful—but who still helped cause a man's death. Coogle has a rap sheet, which includes beating a man with a bat, robbery, and threatening to kill his wife. Almost worse is the story he tells about stealing drugs, lying repeatedly, and setting up people like Wescott for a few hundred bucks reward. Wescott and his boyfriend sold a little pot, but they told Coogle that they had no idea where to get the heroin he requested. Coogle admits he told cops a different story.

Regardless of how we feel about Coogle as a person, shouldn't we be more concerned about the story he's telling now? As the article notes, the one undeniable fact is that the Tampa Police trusted Coogle enough to send a SWAT team into a home where Jason Wesott had a gun (ever since being robbed the previous year). For trying to protect himself, Wescott was shot dead in front of his boyfriend. This was ruled justified back in August, since Wescott allegedly pointed a firearm at Officers Officers Eric Wasierski and Edwin Perez as they rushed into his home.

Police found two bucks worth of pot at Wescott's home, and had precipitated maybe $200 worth of sales over months of undercover work. Not exactly worth anyone's life, that. But should Coogle's tale about $5,000 worth of pot and heroin connections have justified a SWAT raid in the first place? No, even though cops claim Coogle told them Wescott sold pot while carrying his gun each time. (Coogle denies this, but it was the final piece of the puzzle.) Drug raids are dangerous, and they are completely unnecessary.

Rare, already-violent situations call for SWAT—that is all. Yet the American Civil Liberties Union found that 62 percent of SWAT raids are carried out over narcotics. Seven percent of deployments are for a hostage situation. Residential raids on homes endanger cops, and endanger homeowners who may or may not be armed, and may fear that a SWAT team is actually a gang of private-sector home invaders.

The only thing worse than having this kind of deadly policy is deploying it at the word of people like Ronnie Coogle. But at least he seems to grasp his part in Jason Wescott's death, while the cops who shot him got off scot-free, and their boss blamed Wescott, suggesting the marijuana—or lack thereof—was irrelevant. Of course, marijuana is not irrelevant if cops think allegations of selling the plant is worth risking someone's life—and when this kind of lunacy is the status quo for policing in America.

Now onto this week's bad cops:

-Let's take it back to 1992, when NYC Mayor David N. Dinkins pushed for an independent civilian police review board for the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Thousands of off-duty cops blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge for an hour in protest, while the cops assigned to, you know, police them did nothing. This rather amazing event is a fascinating artifact to compare and contrast with contemporary police behavior towards protesters—even if you disagree with blocking traffic, knowing that an estimated 10,000 cops once did the same thing for their cause makes irritation seem a bit rich. And yes, this also shows that the NYPD warring with NYC mayors is nothing new.

Still, the backlash against NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is now so bad that hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of cops turned their backs towards him while he spoke at the funeral this weekend for one of the Brooklyn cops who was executed by a crazed gunman. And that, regardless of your feelings towards de Blasio, is not a good thing. Cops need outsiders to hold them accountable, because they keep proving they cannot be trusted to do it themselves. If they're this infuriated by timid comments from politicians, it doesn't bode well for their capacity to learn, grow, and reform their busted institution.

-Hell, NYPD officers even paid to fly an anti-de Blasio banner over the city on Friday. Which they can do, but Jesus Christ, why?

-On Christmas Eve, police in Greenville, South Carolina reportedly Tasered a 34-year-old autistic man. According to a complaint filed by his mother Carolyn, police Tasered Tario Anderson when they saw him walking through his neighborhood and he tried to run away when the cops tried to ask him about a shooting report. Anderson is a big guy, and he's an adult, but he also only speaks a few words, like 'Yes' or 'No.'

Officer Johnathan Bragg has a point that it's not police officers' job to diagnose someone with a mental disability, but they do need to recognize that such people exist, and that they will likely have a difficult time responding to police instructions. Carolyn Anderson also said that police threatened to Taser her if she didn't calm down after seeing her son on the sidewalk, and that he has been charged with resisting arrest and interfering with police work. The correct thing to do at the very least is drop all charges against Tario.

-The former police chief of New London, Connecticut will not be criminally charged for his 2013 solicitation of a then-18-year-old woman arrested for drinking and giving a fake name. A few days after the March 2013 incident, Chief David Seastrand allegedly told Janelle Westfall that if he could photograph her naked, these charges could go away so long as she kept her nose clean for two years. Westfall says she was scared, especially when Seastrand indicated she shouldn't tell anyone, but of course she told her father, who informed state police. Seastrand resigned a month later. He is barred from ever becoming a cop again, yet he hasn't been criminally prosecuted for his disturbing conduct and did not have to admit wrongdoing. Westfall got $70,000 from the city, but she's disappointed that Seastrand more or less got away with it.

-On December 26, a federal judge allowed a wrongful death lawsuit over a 2011 drug raid to go ahead. Framingham, Massachusetts police officer Paul Duncan accidentally fatally shot 68-year-old Eurie Stamps in the head during a raid over Stamps' step-son's alleged crack dealing. Duncan had neglected to turn the safety on during the raid, and he said he tripped and accidentally fired his weapon. The judge said Stamps' constitutional rights might have been violated. At the time, the warrant specified that the retiree was not a threat.

-Twenty-four retired and current black NYPD cops told Reuters about some of the racial profiling they've suffered from their fellow officers while off-duty.

-We picked the folks at the Nashville Police Department as the Good Cops of the Week before, but Chief Steve Anderson's Friday response to a complaint about the kid-gloves treatment dealt out to anti-police protesters garners him his own week of commendation. Maybe protesters shouldn't get taxpayer-subsidized coffee, but Anderson's plea for nuance, understanding, and a sensable police response to what might technically be lawbreaking—but doesn't deserve head-cracking and arrests—is extremely heartening to read. Anderson also manages to mention that the police are intended to be "merely a representative of a government formed by the people for the people—for all people" and then sneaks in a crack about how weird it is that the complainant is pulling the "Won't someone think of the children?!" card. If Anderson is this thoughtful in his everyday life, every damn police chief needs to look at him and start following his example.

Follow Lucy Steigerwald on Twitter.

[body_image width='1024' height='685' path='images/content-images/2014/12/27/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/27/' filename='chess-players-405-body-image-1419651123.jpg' id='14453']^{Chess players in Union Square, NYC. Photo by Damien Derouene}

Located on 14th Street in New York City, Union Square is one of the most diverse and hectic public spaces in a city known for being diverse and hectic. There's the group of Hare Krishna who congregate to dance and chant over a steady, thumping drum beat; the men selling toy, glow-in-the-dark helicopters that they launch in the air; the street performers of all kinds. There's the subway station that connects three train lines coming from completely different parts of the city. There's even a farmers market four days a week, and women peddling cats close by. And then, in the southwest corner, there are the chess players.

New York City is home to many public places populated by chess players, most notably Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, famously depicted in the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. In these spaces, people play for money. They set up a board and try to solicit passers-by for a game, for which they charge a few dollars. What's unique about the Union Square chess scene, though, is its integration into the city's landscape. Visible by people in cars, on foot, or just getting out of the subway, you don't have to be strolling through the park to see it.

[body_image width='1000' height='636' path='images/content-images/2014/12/19/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/19/' filename='the-chess-players-of-union-square-body-image-1419032309.jpg' id='13005']^{Carl, a chess player in Union Square (all subsequent photos by the author)}

A chess player myself, I've often stopped for a game or two when passing through Union Square. Over time, I formed a friendship with one of the players named Carl. Since there are so many players there at one time (perhaps 20 when it's busy), there is some competition for spots. Usually it's the most vocal or engaging player that gets the most games. But Carl is reserved and polite. His alluring edge on the day I met him was that he was stationed under a bright red umbrella right next to the subway entrance. When he called to me, I was only a few feet from him, and couldn't resist a quick game. That game turned into four, a long conversation, and the exchanging of phone numbers.

When I interviewed Carl for this article, he'd only been playing at Union Square for a month and a few weeks—a relatively short time among the park players. Like the vast majority of them, Carl has had no formal training. But playing with Carl, it's clear he's a natural, developing attacks and lines of play far beyond anything he could have been taught. I asked him if he was one of the better players in Union Square.

"Oh certainly," he replied. "I've made it my business to play them all. Trust me. I've been honing my skills, because I figured if I'm going to come into the field to benefit financially, I have to be on top of my P's and Q's. I can't come into an environment charging people or asking for donations and not know what I'm doing."

Carl came to New York from American Guyana at the age of 12. As a teenager, he was fascinated with transportation, and began driving an ambulette. But one day when he was driving, he hit and killed a child who had run into the street. As a result of the incident, Carl lost his license. After the traumatic event, chess took on a greater importance in his life.

"Right after the accident, this game of chess was like therapy for me. It soothed me, it helped me collect my thoughts and reflect and think about things in a positive and productive manner. So every opportunity I got, I would be playing chess or brushing through certain books in Barnes and Noble."

I assumed that was when Carl discovered the game, but he quickly corrected me.

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"I graduated from Erasmus Hall, in Brooklyn, 911 Flatbush Avenue," he said. "And anyone who's anyone in the field of chess knows that Bobby Fischer attended that school. During my senior year of high school, I found out that information and I just fell deeply in love with chess. Once I realized that Mr. Fischer walked the halls of Erasmus and breathed the same air as I did, that was like nitrous in my lungs right there man!"

I asked Carl again a couple times in amazement and he confirmed: Once he found out he went to the same high school as Bobby Fischer (widely regarded as the greatest chess player who ever lived), decades apart, he decided to take up the game himself. It seemed almost novelistic—a character compelled to alter the course of his life after hearing a piece of information that would amount to trivia for most. You could almost imagine him feeling the presence of Fischer's ghost in the hallways of Erasmus.

[body_image width='1000' height='907' path='images/content-images/2014/12/19/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/19/' filename='the-chess-players-of-union-square-body-image-1419032830.jpg' id='13009']

Carl's reality, though, is something different. He told me he was unemployed and having difficulty finding full-time work. Despite his initial dreamy inspiration, playing chess is now a practical decision—a way to try to make ends meet. But as one would imagine, it's not easy. Carl estimates he makes $50 to $100 during the week—a bit more if he works on the weekends. Talking to the some of the other men at the park, it seemed this was a fairly typical experience.

Each player more or less charges the same per game (five dollars), a kind of de facto price regulation that has developed over time. The games are generally timed, with each player given five minutes on their clock to complete their moves. (If your clock runs out, you forfeit.) This time constraint keeps the games short, allowing for more games to be played per customer, and per day. Indeed, they're so short it's hard to play just one. But the quick games are also an advantage to the park player—inexperienced players will not have time to formulate their moves, and players who are schooled in chess are mostly taught to take their time and not rush. Since the park players play under these circumstances every day, the lack of time is not as big a detriment.

In fact, many have tailored their game to fit the time constraint. One strategy is to lock up the board with a strong pawn structure that stifles the opponent's ability to attack and forces blunders. Another is to produce a line of play that the opponent has likely never seen before and thus takes more time to process.

[body_image width='1000' height='750' path='images/content-images/2014/12/19/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/19/' filename='the-chess-players-of-union-square-body-image-1419033024.jpg' id='13010']^Twitty

This was the preferred tactic of Twitty, the second man I spoke to. Twitty, who goes by Twitty from the City, grew up in the Marcy projects in Brooklyn. He is African American, and probably in his forties, though he wouldn't tell me his exact age. He works security at John F. Kennedy Airport and comes to Union Square on his off days. Playing chess was a way of life in his family growing up; his sister taught him when he was just seven years old:

"Well, see, I was forced to play. I wanted to box, but my mom didn't want me boxing, so she said, 'You're gonna learn to play chess.' You know why she wanted me to play chess? Living in the projects is dangerous. My younger brother had already got killed. See, when you play chess, you don't go outside a lot."

[body_image width='1000' height='750' path='images/content-images/2014/12/27/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/27/' filename='chess-players-405-body-image-1419654699.jpg' id='14455']

But it was also a means of survival. Twitty and his siblings—"We had eight people in the family so we were better than a chess club," he said proudly—soon began using chess as a means to earn money.

"We would go out and play for money and bring it back to buy food. When we come in, we always gonna play each other, we were in the house a lot. Then people come to our place and want to play and my mother said, 'Yeah, it'll be one dollar to come in to play.' So we ran it out of the house."

Twitty's Union Square operation was probably the savviest I encountered. Unlike Carl, who is quiet and decidedly respectful, Twitty is a one-man show. He dresses loudly, often wearing red and black, matching the color of his board (one of which he hand-painted), and wears two watches at once. His riddle-like quips persist throughout the game.

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"You know why I wear two watches?" he asked me. "Because it's all about time."

Twitty sits near the sidewalk and can be heard bellowing, "Chess playaaaaas," a call to the passers-by. Correspondingly, of the players I faced, he played with the most bravado—as highlighted by the time he tried to join his junior high school's chess club.

"I remember when I was in Montauk Junior High School 223, the whole team was white. So I came in and asked if I could play some chess and they said, 'Nah this is only for chess players who could real, play good,' and I say, 'Well I could beat everybody in here, so it's no problem.' And they said, 'Nah, I don't think so.' So I said, 'Well, let's play some chess.' Boom! Crush 'em, crush 'em, crush 'em, crush 'em. And we were playing without a clock but I was moving quickly to make them feel like there was a clock. And they didn't know what to do. So I told them, 'Just because I'm black and you're white doesn't mean I can't play chess. That's what you thought, that's why you rejected me when I walked in the door. I just came here to play chess, I didn't come here to play your color.' "

I couldn't help but point out what was fairly obvious—chess is a black and white game. Of course, this was apparent to Twitty, too, but in the moment, I couldn't tell whether he was talking about skin color or the pieces.

To Carl, chess was something that immediately gave him a sort of cosmic purpose, and later brought him solace in a trying time. To Twitty, chess likewise represented something more than a game. Although he didn't state it directly, it provided a place for him to self-actualize. The discrimination he faced in life was something he could defeat on the chessboard—and not only defeat, but defeat poetically, allowing his opponent to think he had an advantage by playing white (white moves first in chess), and then exploiting that overconfidence.

[body_image width='1000' height='750' path='images/content-images/2014/12/27/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/27/' filename='chess-players-405-body-image-1419656348.jpg' id='14461']^{Alfred (right)}

The third man I spoke to, Alfred, seemed to share this sentiment, only more overtly. Alfred was soft-spoken and looked a bit older than Twitty, although when I asked how old he was, he responded, "Oh, I'm there, I'm there." He had a sort of lanky grace about him that was only emphasized by the slight drawl in his voice.

I asked Alfred what drew him to chess.

"It always fascinated me, things that could boost your ego, self-esteem. And it's always good to be good at something in life, anything, whatever it is. If you're a janitor, be the best janitor. It's the same thing with chess. What better way to do it than to meet someone who was born with a silver spoon in their mouth. You don't have to be jealous of him, but you could take your frustration out on him in chess. It's an equalizer, man, it brings us all to the same level, you know? Which is what you know, not who you know."

Like Twitty, Alfred viewed chess as a meritocracy. There was metaphor in Alfred's perspective, to be sure, but it had none of Twitty's heroic racial subversion, or even Carl's spectral compulsion. He was all too aware of the justice he wanted to mete out on the chessboard, to the point where it hardly seemed symbolic. I was almost disappointed with how direct he was about it.

But Alfred was also more mysterious than the other men I'd spoken to. So I asked him what he'd done for work before coming to Union Square. His response simultaneously told me nothing and everything about him.

"Oh I've done many things," he began. "I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a pawn and a king," he started, staccato. Before recognizing that these were the lyrics to "That's Life," famously sung by Frank Sinatra, I couldn't help but imagine that Alfred was creating his own personalized chess set with his different personas as pieces on the board. It wasn't until that moment that I realized the song even contained a chess allusion ("pawn and a king"); I wasn't sure if he did either, but that was part of his sly charm.

[body_image width='1000' height='1333' path='images/content-images/2014/12/27/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/27/' filename='chess-players-405-body-image-1419656321.jpg' id='14460']

[body_image width='1000' height='750' path='images/content-images/2014/12/27/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/27/' filename='chess-players-405-body-image-1419656420.jpg' id='14462']

"I've been up, over, down, and out. But I know one thing. Each time I find myself flat on my face," Alfred continued. As he went on, I understood that his relationship with chess was more than just a way to work out frustrations on the privileged. Playing chess, the game itself, was a way of playing out his life story.

Here he accented every quarter note. "I pick, myself, up, and get, back, in, the race. Because?"

And then he paused.

"That's life."

Giancarlo T. Roma is a Brooklyn-based writer, musician, and former competitive chess player. Follow him on Twitter.

[body_image width='1024' height='683' path='images/content-images/2014/12/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/29/' filename='the-government-of-canada-keeps-losing-blackberries-cash-and-weapons-921-body-image-1419881662.jpg' id='14742']

Photo via Flickr user Paul Gorbould

Last year, the government managed to lose $370 million in cash and equipment, including weapons, cases of BlackBerry phones, and tons of cold, hard, cash. Most of the disappeared assets still haven't been recovered. A good chunk of it is simply gone for good.

According to federal public accounts for the 2013-2014 fiscal year, the government has a real problem looking after its stuff. And that raises both issues of security and privacy.

Across just about every department, bureaucrats have been losing government resources and writing them off. The taxmen and taxwomen at the Canada Revenue Agency lost $600 in "petty cash." The Department of Foreign Affairs wrote off $70,000, blaming it on the loss of "content of official mail." National Defence is by far the worst for misplacing its equipment—$2 million in lost "military specific equipment," another $2 million in lost technical equipment, over $500,000 in lost combat clothing, and 353 lost computers, worth more than $500,000.

The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, which deals with many high-profile organized crime and terrorism cases, lost ten control access cards in the 2012-2013 fiscal year, which isn't great.

And that's just the accidental losses—about $59 million, all in all, and only about $2 million of that has been, or is expected to be, recovered.

The government gets taken each year for another $1 million in theft and vandalism.

Someone stole a plasma television from the National Research Council of Canada ($361), while some no-goodnik made off with two beaver pelts from Aboriginal Affairs ($800), and yet another dastardly character lifted a carpet from Foreign Affairs ($2,123).

Most worrying overall, however, is how much weaponry goes AWOL from the Canadian military.

National Defence listed more than 11,000 cases of lost or stolen weapons and accessories this past year, valued at over $50,000. They managed to find some of their missing weaponry this year, but only about $10,000 worth.

Beyond merely being real Mr. Magoos with government weaponry, Canadian bureaucrats also have a bad habit of causing huge privacy breaches.

In 2013, Ottawa had to investigate after the Canada Student Loans Program misplaced a hard drive containing the personal information of some 580,000 students. That same month, a drive containing the personal information of 5,000 pensioners also went missing. Both programs were run by Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC). According to the public accounts, those losses might just be the tip of the iceberg.

The various departments and federal agencies lost at least eight flash and hard drives, 18 tablets, 182 cellphones, and a staggering 670 laptops and computers in just one year.

Health Canada couldn't find a USB key, Industry Canada managed to lose five servers, and National Defence couldn't find 376 computers.

But perhaps one of the most painfully ironic reports comes from none other than the Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners. Between the two offices, they lost two BlackBerrys, two iPhones, and, worst of all, a top-of-the-line LaCie hard drive, which was never recovered. Given that it was valued at $300, it was likely a model with a capacity of two or three terabytes.

Now, you may be thinking: at least the Government of Canada is smart enough to secure hardware that might house large volumes of personal information, right?

Apparently not. When the privacy commissioner looked into the case of the missing student loan hard drive, which had could hold a terabyte of data, the office found that "the information contained on the hard drive was not encrypted and was not protected by a secure password."

The department supposedly changed its policies after the incident and began requiring encryption for anything containing personal information. Here's hoping, seeing as ESDC lost more than a dozen laptops and BlackBerrys last year.

It's not clear if other departments are following ESDC's lead and securing their information equipment.

Ottawa has also proved itself a real sucker when it comes to fraud. Hundreds of millions go down the drain every year thanks to tax fraud, fraudulent Employment Insurance claims, and general graft.

The government is out over $130 million thanks to pension, loan, and EI fraud. While the Harper government has talked a big game about cracking down on those who abuse the system, they still only managed to recuperate about one fifth of the loss. (The department says it's hoping to recover the remainder in future years.)

This whole thing isn't exactly a new problem, though—the government lost almost exactly the same amount of stuff five years ago, give or take $10 million.

Follow Justin on Twitter.

Mohamed poses for the camera while Ibrahim takes a hit from a glue bottle behind him.

We know you're busy. You probably didn't have time to read every article we published on VICE.com this year. So we've compiled a list of some of our favourites and will be re-featuring them on the homepage through the end of 2014. This one was originally published on January 21.

On an ordinary night, after the sun sets over Hargeisa, Somaliland, Mohamed packs up his shoe-shine kit and heads to the storm drain where he lives when he's not working. All things considered, it's a good spot for the 12-year-old to sleep—the discarded snack wrappers and plastic bottles help keep him warm, and when the sun creeps in each morning the shadow of a nearby skyscraper shields him from the heat.

The skyscraper, which was built in 2012 and houses a company whose business is to bring high-speed internet from neighboring Djibouti, is one of the many symbols of Hargeisa's relative wealth. The city itself is the crown jewel of Somaliland, a self-declared republic in northwest Somalia.

Although Somaliland's sovereignty has yet to be formally recognized by any other country or the UN, it has its own democratically elected government and a 30,000-strong military. Its nascent borders contain valuable natural resources—the Turkish oil company Genel plans to drill for oil there in the next two years—and the bustling northern port city of Berbera, which are two good reasons Somalia doesn't want the region to secede. The government in the terror-torn capital, Mogadishu may also be clinging to the hope that Somaliland's peace and prosperity could spill over into the rest of the region. But whatever the contours of this convoluted political landscape, at the very least Somaliland feels like a separate nation; houses in Hargeisa fly the tricolored flag the region adopted in 1996 instead of Somalia's sky-blue standard.

Just a few decades ago, Somaliland was a broken place. Under the rule of Siad Barre, a ruthless dictator who took control of Somalia in 1969, nine years after the end of European colonial rule, Somalilanders were brutalized and disenfranchised. Barre forbade any explicit mention of the clan lines that have long divided the region from Somalia, and his troops infamously opened fire on protesters outside Hargeisa's soccer stadium in 1990. After Barre was ousted in 1991, Somalia fell into a deadly civil war that is still being fought 23 years later. For over a decade, Hargeisa remained a tattered, smoking shell of a city.

Slowly, however, things started to change. The city has been bombing-free since 2008, which by the standards of its geopolitical neighborhood is a minor miracle. The region's relative safety has persuaded thousands of wealthy Somalilanders who fled the unrest for the US, Europe, and Asia to return to their homeland, bringing their Western cash with them. The now autonomous region has its own currency, 16 universities, and more than 200,000 students enrolled in primary and secondary schools. If southern Somalia is a nation by name only, then Somaliland is its antithesis—a country in all but name, at least officially.

No matter how prosperous Somaliland might become, it's doubtful that any of that good fortune will trickle down to Hargeisa's homeless children—young outcasts living completely on their own who are at best ignored and at worst abused and treated like vermin. They are a near-constant presence, crawling around the shadows of alleys and squares in a city where poverty and wealth butt heads on nearly every street corner: shiny new office blocks sit beside ancient shacks, currency traders have set up open-air stands where they display piles of cash, Hyundais brush past donkeys down the city's sole paved street.

Behind that street is a café that serves up coffee and soup to midmorning breakfasters. This is where I first met Mohamed. "Salam," he said quietly after I introduced myself.

Mohamed told me that if he sleeps too close to the skyscraper that shields him from the light of dawn, a security guard beats him with an acacia branch until he bleeds. I noticed that he had an old lemonade bottle tucked under his filthy sweatshirt. It was filled with glue, perhaps the only escape he has from his harsh existence. He took huffs every few minutes as he spoke to me: "I could stop. I could definitely stop. But it's hard... And why?"

According to the Hargeisa Child Protection Network, there are 3,000 to 5,000 homeless youth in the city, most of whom are Oromo migrants from Ethiopia. Around 200 a year complete the voyage through Somaliland and across the Gulf of Aden into Yemen, where they attempt to cross the border to Saudi Arabia and find work; many more don't make it.

For more than four decades the Oromo have been fleeing persecution in Ethiopia, where they have long been politically marginalized. Mohamed arrived in Somaliland as part of this ongoing migration. Five years ago, he told me, his family made the 500-mile trek from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, to Hargeisa. The Somaliland government claims up to 80,000 illegal immigrants—mostly Ethiopians—reside in its territory. Many of them trickled in through the giant border of Ogaden, a vast, dusty outback on the edge of Ethiopia's Somali Region (the easternmost of the country's nine ethnic divisions, which, as the name implies, is mostly populated by ethnic Somalis). Some travel in cars arranged by fixers. Others make the long journey on foot. Almost all won't make it past the border without a bribe. Given their options, a few bucks for freedom seemed liked the best deal for Mohamed's family. But after their migration, things only got worse.

Outside downtown Hargeisa's central market.

A short time after his family arrived in Somaliland—he's not sure exactly when—Mohamed's father died of tuberculosis. Quickly running out of options, he left his mother in a border town called Borama to try to eke out a living, working whatever job was available some 90 miles away in Hargeisa.

Instead Mohamed ended up where he is now, wandering around the city with his friends and fellow Ethiopian migrants Mukhtar and Hamza (all three have adopted Muslim-sounding names to better blend into the local population). Their days mostly consist of shining shoes for 500 Somaliland shillings (seven cents) a pop and taking many breaks in between jobs to sniff glue.

On a good day, the boys will combine their meager earnings and pay to sleep on the floors of migrant camps on the outskirts of town, where persecuted people from all over East Africa live in corrugated shanties in the desert. If they don't shine enough shoes, it's back to the storm drain. "I live in the walls," Mukhtar said. "No one knows me."

Though they fled Ethiopia to escape persecution, the Oromo migrants often endure even worse treatment in Hargeisa. The first time I met Mohamed's friend Hamza he was plodding through the crowd at an outdoor restaurant, offering shoe shines in the midday sun. An older man dressed in a cream apparatchik suit like a James Bond villain sitting next to me shouted at the child, who cowered, turned, and ran away. "Fucking kids," he said to me in perfect English. "God can provide for them."

Reports by the local press on Hargeisa's growing homeless- youth population have done nothing to help the kids' reputation. The authorities have told journalists that street kids are the city's gravest security threat amid a backdrop of tables covered with gruesome shivs, shanks, and machetes supposedly confiscated from the wily urchins. "The grown-up street children have become the new gangsters," local police chief Mohamed Ismail Hirsi told the IRIN news agency in 2009.

Officials are similarly apathetic to the notion of helping the young migrants get out of their rut, likely because Somaliland and Somalia are already dealing with enough horrific humanitarian crises without having to worry about another country's displaced people—in 2012, the number of Somalis fleeing their own country topped a million.

Somaliland boasts "a vibrant traditional social-welfare support system," according to its National Vision 2030 plan—a grand scheme unveiled in 2012 that aims to continue to improve the region's standard of living. The plan also acknowledges that "there are, however, times when vulnerable groups such as street children, displaced people, young children, and mothers are excluded from traditional social safety nets [and] the government... has a responsibility to intervene." So far, the only evidence that the government intends to follow through with the plan is a struggling 400-capacity orphanage in Hargeisa. Unsurprisingly, government officials in Somaliland refused repeated requests for comment on this issue or any other issues pertaining to this article.

At the Somaliland government's last count, in 2008, the region's population was 3.5 million, but with so many people flooding in from the south and Ethiopia each year, it's impossible to say how many hundreds of thousands more live there now. It's hard to assign all the blame to the burgeoning nation's embattled and overwhelmed authorities; there's simply no room and too few resources to think too deeply about glue-addicted kids roaming the streets.

One claim that the government can't make is that these kids have chosen to live in squalor; for them, there are no viable alternatives. Somaliland offers no government-funded public education—schools are generally run by NGOs, and other private groups rarely accept Oromo children as students. Even if they did, enrollment would be a nightmare because the vast majority of these kids are without identification, homes, or relatives living nearby. They're often left on their own to scratch out an existence in a city that hates them and offers them next to nothing.

Ismail Yahye, who works for the Save the Children campaign, used to be a Somaliland street kid himself. He despairs at the pipe dreams they are fed before relocating from Ethiopia—many leave home believing the rumors about how life is so much better in Somaliland.

"The main reasons they come here are for economic prosperity and job opportunities," he said. "They pay bribes at the border and come by foot. They can't return. They're trapped."

The Hargeisa Child Protection Network reports that 88 percent of the city's homeless children have suffered some form of sexual abuse or harassment. All of the boys I met denied having been raped or abused during their time on the streets, but my fixer told me he strongly believed that they were too ashamed and scared to admit to any such incidents.

Mukhtar stands outside the Ethiopian café where he shines shoes every day.

In this very unfriendly and inhospitable city, a Somali American named Shafi is one of the few residents who goes out of his way to help the kids. In another life, Shafi was a drug dealer in Buffalo, New York, a job that landed him in prison before he cleaned up his act and decided to return to the city of his birth to do good. Now he provides Hargeisa's street urchins with the occasional meal, helps them organize games of soccer or basketball, and finds safe places where they can stay at night. But he is only one man and knows he can't save them all. Most still end up sleeping in the drains, left to die of starvation or diseases like tuberculosis and typhoid fever. "I've carried quite a few dead children through these streets," he told me.

Many kids earn small amounts of cash doing menial tasks like shoe-shining and washing cars. Others find work running alcohol, which is illegal in the Muslim state. If you ever find yourself at a party in one of Hargeisa's sprawling, plush villas, chances are the gin in your gimlet was smuggled into the country by a kid who sleeps in a gutter.

It was with Shafi's help that I was first able to meet Hargeisa's Oromo children. He told me the best place to find them was around the convenience stores they visit daily to buy fresh glue. On our first attempt and without much searching, Shafi and I found a couple of kids who appeared to be homeless hanging out in an alley near a school. We spoke with them for a bit, and when I felt that everyone was comfortable I pulled out my camera. Before I could take their photos, a guy who said he was an off-duty cop appeared out of nowhere. He approached us, shouting at me in gravelly Somali and quickly confiscating the bottles of glue from the kids.

"He called you a pedophile," Shafi translated, adding that it would benefit me to reimburse the boys for their stolen solvents.

After the cop left, one of the boys grew somber. "I hope I stop using," he said. As he spoke I noticed the painful sores etched across his face. "I just miss my family. I haven't seen them in years. I'm alone and no one helps me."

The stigma that surrounds these children is such that even those trying to help them are treated with suspicion—as are reporters hoping to tell their story, as I found out the hard way one night while Shafi and I were trying to track down Mohamed and his friends.

It was a typical breezy fall evening, full of the usual scenes: men sipping tea and debating loudly, women and children hustling soup and camel meat, a mess of car horns cleaving the air. Shafi was sure the kids were nearby, but that didn't mean much because they usually try to remain hidden so as not to cause a scene.

It didn't take much time to spot Hamza's tattered bootleg Barcelona soccer jersey peeking out from behind the edge of a wall. As we approached, more kids appeared from behind parked cars and emerged from alleys, and some even popped out of a nearby storm drain. Within minutes more than two dozen homeless children had surrounded us, clamoring for cash and posing for pictures. An empty square in the middle of town had suddenly transformed into a glue-sniffers' agora.

Our time with the kids didn't last long. A couple minutes later an old man who was lounging outside a nearby café decided he'd had enough, sprung to his feet, walked over to us, and began hitting me and the kids with his walking stick.

Some of the children scattered. Others stayed, presumably with the hope that holding out for the payout from the Western journalist would be worth the licks. In a surreal moment, as the old man continued to swing his stick and scream, one boy, who said his name was Hussein, walked over and, huffing on his glue pot, told me about his hopes and dreams. "I want to be a doctor," he said, staggering about and staring straight through me. "Sometimes I dream when I get hungry. But there's no food here, no help. I expected a better life. I don't now. But sometimes, I wish."

Just then, a scuffle broke out—the old man had lured a couple of his friends into the argument, and they came to the collective decision to grab me and smash my camera. Shafi and my driver, Mohammed, struggled to hold them back.

Two cops arrived on the scene soon after the scuffle. Instead of punishing the old man for attacking the kids and trying to destroy my camera, they dragged me off to a festering cinder-block carcass covered in graffiti that serves as the local jail.

"You cannot photograph the children without their permission," the more senior cop said, pointing to my camera. "They do not want you to photograph them."

Shafi translated as I tried to explain to the policeman that that the kids were clearly desperate for someone to be interested in their plight, and that they were even posing for pictures. That's when I stopped, realizing that the subject wasn't up for debate. It was clear that writing about or photographing these street children was taboo.

In the end, I compromised by deleting most of the photos I had taken and then sat in a corner of the jail while my driver, Mohammed, and my captors read one another's horoscopes outside the gates.

A couple hours later I was released. Mohammed was waiting for me outside, and he immediately pulled me aside to tell me something that I had already accepted the moment I entered the jail: my reporting on the children had come to an end.

Mohammed looked unnerved. "We can leave now, Insha'Allah... The kids thing is over. They are invisible."

According to a recent story in the New York Times, consumers in Los Angeles spent 118 percent more than the national average on funeral services from 2007-2012. However, one need not look to surveys by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to find evidence of mortuary largesse in the City of Angels. The Funeral Consumers Alliance of Southern California (FCASC) assembled a survey of the roughly 40 percent of LA funeral homes that made their price lists available, and it shows some fairly steep prices being charged for even basic services. For example: In funeral parlance, "direct cremation" consists of the bare minimum services of body transport, refrigeration/storage, cremation without a viewing, and ashes in a cardboard box.

According to the 2013 prices surveyed by the FCASC for Los Angeles, a direct cremation at the Alpha Society in Burbank costs a reasonable $695, while in Santa Monica it could set you back as much as $3,345. Many other establishments charge upwards of two grand. When I asked what is considered expensive, Funeral Consumers Alliance national executive director Josh Slocum advised, "For a direct cremation, anything over $1,000 or so is edging into unnecessary territory. $2,000 and higher gets into the unconscionable."

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Photos by Elizabeth T. Vazquez

Of course, it's not just LA residents on tight budgets who are being made to shell out cash as they try to do right by their loved ones. (Unclaimed bodies in LA county are a whole other story.) Expensive cemeteries are sometimes called "memorial parks." This euphemism—and the concept behind it—was coined in 1917 by Hubert Eaton, the then-general manager of the Forest Lawn cemeteries (there are seven Forest Lawn locations today in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, plus three in nearby Coachella Valley).

In a 1929 talk before a meeting of the Association of American Cemetery Superintendents, Eaton detailed his vision for a place where "the visitor rarely recognizes that he is entering into a so-called 'cemetery.'" One of the slogans (his word and emphasis) would be, "We shall depict life, not death." Consistent with his Christian beliefs, Eaton asserted that "the cemeteries of today are wrong because they depict an end, not a beginning" and that the "memorial instinct" driving his vision was the same one that brought the world the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal.

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Eaton's business savvy and the rise of the American film industry didn't hurt either, as his vision proved quite popular with Hollywood celebrities. According to a 2007 Forbes article, a "distinguished property" at Forest Lawn can cost up to $825,000. Court documents showed that Michael Jackson's crypt at the Glendale location was priced at $590,000. Forest Lawn cemeteries are not the only locations featuring extravagant final resting places. The Al Jolson Memorial Shrine at Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City is perhaps the most grandiose celebrity grave in the country. The $84,000 price tag from 1951 works out to nearly $763,000 in today's money.

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While these luxury cemeteries have yet to qualify for UNESCO World Heritage Site status like the Taj Mahal, they do have one thing in common: tourists. Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but there are several sites devoted to providing information on visiting celebrity graves in the LA area. While one can certainly find famous people buried elsewhere, according to A.J. Marik, an LA resident and senior administrator of FindAGrave.com, "LA has far and beyond the most celebrity burials, especially in terms of the entertainment industry."

Cemeteries in Los Angeles have varying policies when it comes to dealing with tourists. According to one site that specializes in giving tips to celebrity grave visitors: "The friendly folks at Pierce Bros. Westwood Memorial Park, for example, will gladly point out a particular star's grave if you ask them, and at Hollywood Forever they will even give you a detailed map showing the locations of the stars' graves. On the other hand, those in charge of the Forest Lawn parks tend to discourage star-gazing, and they refuse to give out any information about the final resting places of the many celebrities buried there."

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When I asked Marik—who is a huge cemetery aficionado himself—to suggest some noteworthy locations, he recommended both understated and lavish sites.

"Celebrity monuments in LA range from the incredibly ostentatious and expensive (Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and especially Al Jolson) to modest and even discreet. Some of the true superstars with unassuming graves include Humphrey Bogart, W.C. Fields, and Errol Flynn."

Most of the aforementioned famous people (with the exception of Errol Flynn and Al Jolson) are located in areas of the Forest Lawn in Glendale that are accessible only to family members and not the general public. In effect, one might say that Forest Lawn has created gated communities for the dead. For those looking to avoid trespassing, Marik recommended the Freedom Mausoleum in the same location, which is "far less patrolled" and features some pretty big names like George Burns, Gracie Allen, and Nat King Cole.

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Of course, not everyone interested in graves is in it for the browsing. What's the pricing for more modest options at these well-known cemeteries? Marik advised that "the large, multi-section cemeteries are very expensive, although all of them have relatively fair pricing for those who might have difficulty footing the bill." How about for those who aren't as concerned about having their remains in the same graveyard as Hollywood royalty? He responded reassuringly, "Fortunately, there are hundreds of lesser-known, modestly priced cemeteries, each with their own history and charm (and price scale). A good example is the lovely Mountain View Cemetery in Pasadena. Modest and fairly priced, but in a beautiful setting close to the San Gabriel mountains. There are many other cemeteries much like it to be found throughout Southern California."

Follow Simon Davis on Twitter.

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Photo via Flickr user Tim Snell

A few days before Christmas, a court in Argentina ruled that non-human persons can't be kept in cages. Sandra, a 28-year-old orangutan born in a zoo, will now likely be transferred to a sanctuary, unless the Buenos Aires zoo appeals the decision. The Association of Officials and Lawyers for Animal Rights filed a writ for habeas corpus on the ape's behalf, and this is the first time the tactic has worked, offering a new strategy for activists to follow in the years to come.

It's not surprising that the landmark case emerged in Latin America. After all, Costa Rica became the first Western country to ban public zoos last year. "There's more momentum there than in any other part of the world," says Merritt Clifton, a journalist who covered animal issues for 45 years. Of course, he and many others are wondering if the United States might be next.

After the American non-profit Association of Zoos & Aquariums was founded in 1924, parks with animals were generally divided into two categories: accredited institutions and roadside attractions. In 1975, the moral philosopher Peter Singer set the monkey-rights ball in motion. He asked, in his first book, Animal Liberation, "If we think that all human beings, irrespective of age or mental capacity, have some basic rights, how can we deny the great apes, who surpass some humans in their capacities, also have these rights?"

At the time Singer was writing, Latin Americans were already forming groups dedicated to animal rights. "Many of the nations involved [in fighting zoos today] were run by military dictatorships up until the 90s," Clifton told me. "That means there were very few channels for activism for young people to join a cause without the risk of disappearing. Animal advocacy was conducted with more or less impunity."

Those groups focused almost exclusively on closing zoos and circuses even while their counterparts around the world spent energy protesting biomedical research and promoting veganism. But according to Clifton, the Andean diet in Peru doesn't rely on a ton of meat as is, and with the exception of Brazil, there isn't all that much biomedical research conducted on animals in the region. So almost by default, organizations active in the region like Animal Defenders International were compelled to focus on zoos, which have salience with the local population.

That isn't to say US organizations aren't trying to do the same. In the past, they've burned through a ton of cash trying to sue circuses under the Endangered Species Act. In 2011, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) unsuccessfully sued SeaWorld, claiming that keeping orcas in a tank violated their 13th Amendment rights.

More recently, a group called the Nonhuman Rights Project has been fighting for the release of a 26-year-old chimp named Tommy, who's been locked up for decades in New York. If it works—the latest court ruling did not go their way—that means activists have finally found an effective tactic for liberating critters. (The Association of Zoos & Aquariums declined through a spokesperson to comment on the ethics of keeping animals in captivity, or about the decision in Argentina.)

But Jared Goodman, the director of animal law at PETA, is hopeful. "That group that filed the New York lawsuit spent many, many years figuring out what would be the most favorable jurisdiction," he told me. "And while the courts here are certainly not gonna rely on a foreign nation's decision, it's a great precedent."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Dan Allegretto's 2014 sucked. He bounded from job to job, gained weight, fucked a handful of "mediocre dudes," and lost his hair. "Basically, I just got drunk constantly with my friends," he told us. "Something about this year seemed especially bleak." Still, he managed to find some beauty amid all the other shit. Like most people these days, he captured every detail of his entire year—from a sad, homemade meal of spaghetti for one (topped with what appears to be ketchup) to an alarming foot fungus—on his iPhone's camera. To present his year as a photo essay, Dan has edited his photo collection down from 13,000 pictures to, like, slightly fewer pictures than that.

This is Dan Allegretto's unemployed year in pictures.

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Follow Dan Allegretto's sad life on Twitter.

Over the weekend, Russia decided to swap a dozen all-weather, supersonic, laser-guided attack aircraft for a load of Argentine beef and wheat.

The deal, in the works since Russian President Vladimir Putin's July visit to Buenos Aires, is not the first such exchange between the nations. Argentina, which has long sought to upgrade its air force, received two Russian Mi17 assault helicopters in 2010. The latest trade is not exactly going to revolutionize Argentina's military, either, as the 12 Sukhoi Su-24 "Fencers" are aging craft. Yet the deal is noteworthy in part because you don't often see major powers bartering staples for weapons systems, and also because some observers expect the new fleet to be used to patrol and pressure the British-held, Argentine-claimed Falkland Islands—just as a series of provocations have raised tensions and UK defense cuts have left it vulnerable.

Nations do sometimes trade food for firearms, but these exchanges are typically internal and focused on disarming militants or criminals. Russia's decision to put weapons in people's hands across the globe in exchange for food reflects its need to reestablish food security and build new non-European partnerships all while dealing with its flagging economy and widespread embargoes.

Following a series of mutual embargoes on major foodstuffs between Russia and Australia, Canada, the European Union, Norway, and the United States, consumer prices in Russia have soared, especially for staple goods. 2014 has seen a 25 percent increase in food costs, while prices for the country's signature staple, buckwheat, increased by 65 percent. And these prices only seem set to rise at increasing rates as the national currency falters. Although we're not about to get a repeat of Soviet-era breadlines, Russians have reportedly begun hoarding buckwheat preemptively, demonstrating doubt in the Kremlin's ability to provide food security.

Almost as soon as the embargoes went into place this summer, Latin America nations stepped in to fill the void, massively increasing their food exports to Russia. A storied history in the region of governments exchanging food for oil and industrial goods means that powers like Argentina have few qualms about working with the Russians.

A year ago, Russia might have leaned on its oil exports in this sort of trade. But as oil prices plummet, Putin and friends seem to be turning towards a reliance on their weapons sector. Russia's arms sales have increased by 20 percent over the past year—while sales in the rest of the world decreased—and they now possess ten of the top 100 weapons export firms in the world. This weekend, Putin also pledged $108 million in support for these exporters over the next two years. Between these increases in weapons production and dissemination, the Argentine deal, and Russia's history of flexible terms for arms sales, it seems likely that Moscow will enact more food-for-firearms deals in the near future, especially in Latin America.

In the process of bolstering food security and cementing ties with Latin America, the Russians have given the Brits a bit of a black eye by stoking the cold conflict over the Falkland Islands, a small chain near Argentina composed of 3,000 people who are mostly self-supporting sheepherders. Argentina and Britain have disputed ownership of the territory for over a century, leading to a thwarted Argentine invasion in 1982 that left hundreds dead on each side and flecks of minefields across the islands. Spurred by the recent discovery and development of oil off the islands and a 2013 referendum (deemed irrelevant and invalid by Argentina), in which all but three Falkland voters chose to remain part of the UK, the past year saw increasingly hostile posturing over the strategic South Atlantic bastion.

Back in the spring, Argentina denounced British military drills in the Falklands as a provocation on usurped territory, then started the fall with a failed bid at procuring 24 Saab Gripen fighter-bombers as part of a Brazil-Sweden deal. In November, Argentine lawmakers snuck an addendum into a public transit reform bill requiring all public vehicles in the country to bear a sign stating "Las Malvinas son Argentinas,"— The Falkland Islands are Argentine. And earlier this month, an Argentine diplomat gave the (Argentine) Pope a book on the nation's claim to the islands as a Christmas gift and used America's Cuban concessions as leverage to try to nudge the British toward the negotiating table.

The British, in turn, closed out this year by awarding the entire island chain the South Atlantic Medal in recognition of the Islanders' fight for self-recognition. They also announced that on January 10, they will unveil a $62,000 bronze statue of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who led the British in their 1982 defense of the islands. The statue will be centrally located and placed under constant video surveillance against any Argentine or pro-separatist defacement.

This resurgent sniping over the islands comes during a window of British weakness. Although the UK hopes to deploy a massive new aircraft carrier to the region in 2020, recent budget cuts have reduced regional defenses to a half-dozen old typhoon fighter jets and surface-to-air missile batteries, some visiting warships, and just over a thousand troops. Although no one's really worried about a repeat of 1982, Argentina's bullish stance on the islands suggests its leaders may take provocative actions with their spiffy new(ish) Russian planes. If nothing else, it's hard to believe that possibility didn't factor into Moscow's decision to provide the jets in exchange for food.

It's tempting to interpret Russia selling off old jets for some slabs of beef as an act of desperation, but this may actually be a sign of dastardly genius. The Soviet legacy has left Putin with excess killing machines and a thriving defense industry, and the wily bear is well aware that the West has been neglecting whole swaths of the world—like Latin America—whose leaders are unimpressed by European bluster and eager to unload their commodities for Russia's special wares. In one fluid motion, Putin has managed to shed old equipment, bolster food security, tamp down his economic woes, create problems for his enemies without lifting its own fists, and even make useful new friends along the way. Whether or not you agree with his actions, this is savvy stuff, and doubtless pretty damn frustrating for the Western politicians trying to put the squeeze on the Kremlin.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

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Photo via Wikimedia Commons user Tonicthebrown

The South China Morning Post reported Monday that 15 people were arrested when the police broke up a prostitution ring in Beijing that gave adults the opportunity to drink human breast milk, which is regarded by some as having healing properties.

Lin Jun, owner of a domestic services Xinxinyu, a TaskRabbit-like company that also provides the service, told the International Business Times that clients "can drink it directly through breastfeeding, or they can always drink it from a breast pump if they feel embarrassed."

It might not be simple shyness that makes them embarrassed, according to Wendy Haldeman, co-founder of the Pump Station, a breastfeeding resource center in Santa Monica, California. It might be clumsiness. "In general, adults are not very adept in drawing milk from a breast," she said. "One does not simply suck, as on a straw—rather it is a sophisticated motion known as suckling. Babies are really good at this. Adults, not so much."

It's not all that strange for grown-ups to seek human milk. "I am aware of men with cancer drinking human milk as a form of treatment," Haldeman said. It seems that Western men will find any excuse to drink breast milk. At some point most new dads ask to try some, according to a recent Time article.

The Chinese Ministry of Public Security was far from blasé about adults suckling from women's teats though. They say they teamed up with law enforcement in Beijing, and several eastern provinces in a coordinated effort to stop people from drinking from boobs.

Beijing law enforcement had been aware of the rising tide of breast milk drinkers for a while; the Chinese reported on the trend last year. The Telegraph commented when the story came out that it was "capitalism gone mad."

In the US, a lot of people are willing to discuss their "lactophilia" openly. Sites like OnlyTheBreast.com cater mainly to parents looking to give their babies supplementary milk, but they don't seem to shun fetishists, or at least not coy fetishists like the one below who wants to suck the milk out of your nipples but is "not interested in anything sexual."

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Screenshot from OnlyTheBreast.com

An International Business Times article pointed out that the Chinese women involved in this "only breastfed their babies once a day or stopped breastfeeding them altogether in order to provide for clients," but it also mentioned that, just like everywhere else on earth, there are also legitimate wet nurses in China who provide the service at much lower prices without the erotic component. Some women just produce a lot of milk.

Does sucking milk from a human breast come with any risks? Haldeman pointed out that there's a slight disease risk if the circumstances are just right: "If these men were breastfeeding, the mother had an open wound on her nipple, [and] the man carried blood-born pathogens, I guess it is conceivable the mom could contract a disease and then transfer to her baby." She also mentioned that "if the man had active hepatic lesions in his mouth, [that] could be a concern."

So the simple fact that breast milk is being squirted into the gaping maws of China's wealthy isn't all that disturbing on the face of it, assuming no diseases are being spread, but there something to the Telegraph's "capitalism gone mad" assessment. When some women are apparently so desperate that they're selling their bodies and their breast milk, that should concern authorities more than some odd men wanting a nipple to suck on.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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Check out more of Simon Hanselmann's work on his blog here.

A strip-mall happy-ending spot in Phoenix, Arizona, one of nearly 5,000 Asian erotic massage parlors across America. Photo by Todd Huffman via Flickr

We know you're busy. You probably didn't have time to read every article we published on VICE.com this year. So we've compiled a list of some of our favorites and will be re-featuring them on the homepage through the end of 2014. This one originally published on March 20th.

From the outside, Oasis Spa looks like any drab Brooklyn bodega. To an untrained eye not accustomed to seeking out storefront massage parlors, the grimy red awning is virtually invisible among the artisanal coffee shops and Duane Reades in Park Slope. But to an online community of hand-job connoisseurs, the spa is a destination, one of thousands of neighborhood "rub-'n'-tugs" that have swarmed into suburban strip malls and commercial thoroughfares across the United States, opening up a brave new frontier in the Middle American sex industry.

Of course, "happy-ending" massages have long been the worst-kept secret of the sex trade. Operating as legitimate businesses, Asian erotic massage parlors—most of which are run by Chinese or Korean operators—charge a house fee for a massage, and customers then pay an extra tip for whatever sex acts are performed. Intercourse isn't usually on the menu, although some of the seedier establishments do offer "full-service" options and blow jobs.

And evidently, there is no shortage of men willing to fork over $80 for a 30-minute massage and a hand job. Asian erotic massage parlors, or AMPs, have proliferated across the US in recent years and now make up a significant share of the sex industry in several major American cities, according to a massive government-sponsored study on the underground sex economy released last week by the Urban Institute. The landmark report, which examined the size and structure of the commercial sex trade in eight metro areas, found that the number of parlors in the US jumped to 4,790 in 2013, up from 4,197 in 2011. Once concentrated in coastal cities like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, the report also found that massage parlors are rapidly expanding into the Midwest and the South, facilitated by highly organized networks that transport Asian women—many of them brought to the US illegally—through a "circuit" of massage parlors around the US.

Image courtesy of the Urban Institute

Researchers for the study did not attempt to explain the explosion of massage parlors. But the growing popularity of AMPs is clearly visible online, in a growing cottage industry of review boards, forums, and blogs that cater to the men who frequent erotic massage parlors, a strange internet breed who refer to themselves as "mongers." Dudes who previously relied on word of mouth to learn where they could get a good rub-'n'-tug can now find all that information on sites like RubMaps.com, EroticMP.com, and SpaHunters.com, which basically act as Yelps for massage-parlor hunters. Users on the sites post updated locations, review women, and recount in graphic detail the services rendered. (Yelp actually has search results for "happy ending massage," at least in New York, but the results are much less detailed.)

Like most creepy internet sects, "mongers" have their own social code, and many of the users appear to know each other and even track the whereabouts of their favorite massage providers. In a review for one of the top-rated spas on EroticMP.com, for example, one commenter notes that he received a hand job, a blow job, and kissing (no tongue) from a masseuse named Coco, adding, "The breasts were big w/ awesome nipples. The lights were dimmed very low but the kitty felt nicely groomed and not bald. Bald kitty is so easy to do. Getting a creative groomed one is my preference. I will repeat before heading north." In the comments, another user asks whether the provider is "the same Coco that was at Palm Tree some months ago, or is it Coco from the closed Star Therapy?" Another responds: "You know it's not OUR Coco because Fritzy saw her this week!" And so on.

"It's a fascinating world that operates legally on the internet," said Meredith Dank, the lead researcher for the Urban Institute study. "But when you delve into it, it is quite disturbing how openly these men comment on this stuff. Sometimes you'll even see a man comment that [he] thinks [the woman] might be compelled into this, that she looked like she didn't want to do it."

Naturally, mongers have their own language, apparently designed to subvert law enforcement. A glossary of monger slang on RubMaps details an extensive coded language, including expected terms like "FOB" and "mama-san," but also "babyback" for "petite, young attractive Asians," and "Italian" for "penis rubbing between buttchecks." Men also share personal details about their lives, with a surprising number of users discussing how their wives and girlfriends would feel about their penchant for happy endings. "Many of us got into this hobby, because things dried up at home," one RubMaps user wrote in a blog discussion on whether "mongering helps or hurts a marriage." "Many of my married friends complain how blow jobs is the 1st thing to go when they got married. It even goes before the paycheck in some cases. When we go massage parlors, these needs get taking care of. There is no judgement from these ladies [sic]. They will tend to our needs with no strings attached."

Mongering sites have "helped tremendously with guys looking for info on where they are going, provided you are willing to wade through the bullshit," one prolific massage-parlor blogger, who would refer to himself only as Spanky, told me in an email.

But Spanky added that the sites could be unwelcoming to those outside of the mongering community. "One of the problems with monger sites is that they are ridiculously cliquish," he wrote. "So if you ask a question, you are basically going to get [a] 'fuck you' response... A lot of what is being asked has been answered so many times that the old-timers get tired of seeing it and turn inward instead of remembering how they at one point were new themselves. You must grovel for real help or be vouched by someone. If not, good luck."

But even for amateurs, the sites make it remarkably easy to find a local erotic massage parlor, lowering the barrier of entry for a new crop of men with disposable cash and an hour to spare. A quick search on RubMaps revealed 90 open erotic massage parlors in Brooklyn, at least 10 of which were in walking distance to my apartment. Interested to see what goes on inside the parlors, and perhaps get a glimpse of the famous table showers that mongers rave about in their forums, I selected Oasis Spa, which had gotten decent reviews and which users described as "clean and friendly," and walked over on a Sunday afternoon.

Oasis Spa, one of 90 Brooklyn rub-'n'-tugs

At first, the place looked closed, despite RubMaps' promise that it would be open until midnight seven days a week. The door was locked, and the windows were boarded up, although I could see dim mood lighting behind the screens. After a couple of knocks, though, a suspicious middle-aged Korean woman answered the door and reluctantly let me in. The parlor was quiet, with a bed right in the front room and four closed doors along the hallway. Human trafficking aside, it seemed like a decent place for a massage, although there were no cash registers—or customers—in sight. But apparently, Oasis Spa is interested in neither women nor reporters, because, when I asked about a massage, the woman told me that she didn't understand English and proceeded to force me back onto the street.

My experience aside, the openness with which the mongering community discusses these massage parlors—and with which the parlors themselves offer their services—is surprising when you consider that most of these places are viewed as fronts for prostitution by law enforcement. While non-sexual massage parlors are usually regulated by state and local public health codes, the addition of a hand job is usually interpreted as solicitation, even if sex itself isn't on the menu. "Where the general activity 'prostitution' is illegal, every conceivable form of commercial sex can be treated as illegal," said Laura Agustín, the author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labor Markets, and the Rescue Industry. "It doesn't make sense, but it happens because, where prostitution is demonized, society fears all forms of commercial sex as leading to prostitution."

The extent to which massage parlors are involved in sex trafficking is largely unclear. Most of the women working in the parlors are smuggled into the country illegally from China, Korea, Thailand, and other Asian countries and are forced to use their tips to pay off exorbitant snakehead debts. But while some of the women are thought to have been brought to the US under false pretenses, Agustín points out that many women are aware that they will be working in the sex industry.

The setup puts the erotic massage parlor trade squarely in the gray area of sex trafficking, with law enforcement unable to determine which women are being coerced into performing sex acts in massage parlors and which women are having sex with customers voluntarily. "All undocumented women in commercial sex are not trafficked," said Agustín, who has spent 20 years researching the commercial sex industry. "Migrants weigh up many factors when undertaking risky life projects." While there is no formula for preventing employers from exploiting sex workers, she added, legalizing and regulating erotic massage parlors would at least give the women working in the parlors legal recourse to go to the police, change jobs, or quit.

Even in the absence of looser prostitution laws, law enforcement officials are opting not to waste resources on busting ostensibly consenting adults who decide to trade sex behind closed doors, said Dank, the lead researcher of the Urban Institute report. "It's clear that there is a lot of smuggling, but as far as women voluntarily doing this, when [the police] do actually do raids and arrest these women for prostitution... these women are not saying that they are being compelled, for the most part," Dank said.

As a result, federal and local law enforcement agencies still know very little about the way that Asian massage parlors operate, except that the networks are highly organized and adept at stashing their money. Officials quoted in the study described a nationwide network of massage-parlor operators who bring women into Flushing, Queens, or Los Angeles, and then rotate them through various AMPs in Atlanta, Seattle, Denver, and across the Midwest.

"We've seen cases where a woman is quite popular with the clientele; then they will transfer her to a different spa depending on what events are going on in that city," one federal law enforcement agent in Atlanta said in the report. "[In] Dallas, they are home to the Dallas Cowboys, the big stadium there, and if they have some event there they'll transfer their money earners to those clubs. Whereas Atlanta has the SEC championship going on, they'll have more girls come here."

Meanwhile, the money earned by the parlors is eventually wired overseas, making the networks difficult to trace. "The question..., and I don't know the answer to this, is, How organized is the system across all of the cities?" said one Dallas law enforcement official. It's a "very similar scheme you can see across all of the major cities around the country. Then the money goes back and we can pretty much get it to Hong Kong, but we're not going to get it to China."

And clearly, the business model is working. Without any real law enforcement action to crack down on erotic massage parlors, AMPs are continuing to multiply, expanding their tentacles into untapped markets of mongers. "Guys get horny and know they can roll into an AMP and get a known quantity," Spanky explained. It's "not rocket science. Where there is demand there are always enterprising people willing to provide a service."

All illustrations are re-creations of four-hour-workday flyers from the 1930s and 40s. Original images courtesy of Industrial Workers of the World

We know you're busy. You probably didn't have time to read every article we published on VICE.com this year. So we've compiled a list of some of our favorites and will be re-featuring them on the homepage through the end of 2014. This one originally published on March 20th.

Alex is a busy man. The 36-year-old husband and father of three commutes each day to his full-time job at a large telecom company in Denver, the city he moved to from his native Peru in 2003. At night, he has classes or homework for the bachelor's in social science he is pursuing at a nearby university. With or without an alarm, he wakes up at 5 AM every day, and it's only then, after eating breakfast and glancing at the newspaper, that he has a chance to serve in his capacity as the sole US organizer and webmaster of the Global Campaign for the 4 Hour Work-Day.

"I've been trying to contact other organizations," he says, "though, ironically, I don't have time."

But Alex has big plans. By the end of the decade he envisions "a really crazy movement" with chapters around the world orchestrating the requisite work stoppage.

A century ago, such an undertaking would have seemed less obviously doomed. For decades the US labor movement had already been filling the streets with hundreds of thousands of workers demanding an eight-hour workday. This was just one more step in the gradual reduction of working hours that was expected to continue forever. Before the Civil War, workers like the factory women of Lowell, Massachusetts, had fought for a reduction to ten hours from 12 or more. Later, when the Great Depression hit, unions called for shorter hours to spread out the reduced workload and prevent layoffs; big companies like Kellogg's followed suit voluntarily. But in the wake of World War II, the eight-hour grind stuck, and today most workers end up doing more than that.

The United States now leads the pack of the wealthiest countries in annual working hours. US workers put in as many as 300 more hours a year than their counterparts in Western Europe, largely thanks to the lack of paid leave. (The Germans work far less than we do, while the Greeks work considerably more.) Average worker productivity has doubled a couple of times since 1950, but income has stagnated—unless you're just looking at the rich, who've become a great deal richer. The value from that extra productivity, after all, has to go somewhere.

It used to be common sense that advances in technology would bring more leisure time. "If every man and woman would work for four hours each day on something useful," Benjamin Franklin assumed, "that labor would produce sufficient to procure all the necessaries and comforts of life." Science fiction has tended to consider a future with shorter hours to be all but an axiom. Edward Bellamy's 1888 best seller Looking Backward describes a year 2000 in which people do their jobs for about four to eight hours, with less attractive tasks requiring less time. In the universe of Star Trek, work is done for personal development, not material necessity. In Wall-E, robots do everything, and humans have become inert blobs lying on levitating sofas.

During the heat of the fight for the eight-hour day in the 1930s, the Industrial Workers of the World were already making cartoon handbills for what they considered the next great horizon: a four-hour day, a four-day week, and a wage people can live on. "Why not?" the IWW propaganda asked.

It's a good question. A four-hour workday with a livable wage could solve a lot of our most nagging problems. If everyone worked fewer hours, for instance, there would be more jobs for the unemployed to fill. The economy wouldn't be able to produce quite as much, which means it wouldn't be able to pollute as much, either; rich countries where people work fewer hours tend to have lower carbon footprints. Less work would leave plenty of time for family and for child care, ending the agony over "work-life balance." Gone would be the plague of overwork, which increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer's.

Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt, a historian at the University of Iowa, has devoted his career to undoing the "nationwide amnesia" about what used to constitute the American dream of increasing leisure—the Puritans' beloved Sabbath, the freedom to ramble that Walt Whitman called "higher progress," the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Hunnicutt's latest book, Free Time, traces how this dream went from being thought of as a technological inevitability, to becoming the chief demand in a century of labor struggles, to disappearing in the present dystopia where work threatens to invade every hour of our lives.

Hunnicutt himself has the bearing of a Whitmanesque sage, with a thick gray beard and a full-bellied chuckle. "These dreams seem to be completely forgotten, lost in a mad scramble for work and money," he laments.

There's a hint of what happened in an essay that the renowned British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote in 1930, titled "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren." By 2030 he expected a system of almost total "technological unemployment" in which we'd need to work as few as 15 hours a week, and that mostly just to avoid losing our minds from all the leisure. In the meantime, however, "avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still," Keynes believed. "For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight."

With this, he proposed a deal with the devil: Trust in greed for a while more, and it would save us from itself. To illustrate, Kenyes made the rather anti-Semitic observation that, just as the Jew Jesus brought access to eternal life into the world, the Jews' genius for compound interest would produce so much plenty as to deliver us all from wage slavery forever. Keynes didn't expect, however, that like most deals with the devil, the devil had the upper hand: Greed managed to suck up most of the benefits of almighty progress for itself.

Hunnicutt has spent much of his career detailing exactly how. Over the course of the Depression, pressure from the captains of industry turned President Roosevelt against shorter hours. He made sure that the Black-Connery Bill for a 30-hour week, which had passed in the Senate, would die in the House. With the help of Keynes's own notion of deficit spending, FDR's New Deal set the goal of employing everyone "full-time," and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 enshrined the eight-hour day as the norm. That was to be the last in a century of reductions. The onset of the Cold War meant that those in the labor movement who kept calling for shorter hours were derided as subversives and communists. Fewer and fewer workers were able to join a union at all. Every hour of work became more and more productive, while the owning class gobbled up an ever greater share of the benefits.

A new American dream has gradually replaced the old one. Instead of leisure, or thrift, consumption has become a patriotic duty. Corporations can justify anything—from environmental destruction to prison construction—for the sake of inventing more work to do. A liberal arts education, originally meant to prepare people to use their free time wisely, has been repackaged as an expensive and inefficient job-training program. We have stopped imagining, as Keynes thought it so reasonable to do, that our grandchildren might have it easier than ourselves. We hope that they'll have jobs, maybe even jobs that they like.

The new dream of overwork has taken hold with remarkable tenacity. Hardly anyone talks about expecting or even deserving shorter workdays anymore; the best we can hope for is the perfect job, one that also happens to be our passion. In the dogged, lonely pursuit of it, we don't bother organizing with our co-workers. We're made to think so badly of ourselves as to assume that if we had more free time, we'd squander it.

The more we are told to value work, meanwhile, the less it's actually worth. When women began entering the workforce, two incomes started to be necessary to support a family, and women are still stuck doing the bulk of housework and child care. Overtime has become mandatory for many people, and having a part-time job usually means having to work one or two others.
"Some workers got shorter work hours, but what they didn't get was stable pay," says Karen Nussbaum, who directs the AFL-CIO affiliate Working America. In what's left of the labor movement, nobody is even bothering to ask for shorter workdays; it's hard enough to win a living wage, paid sick days, a bit of vacation time, and parental leave. Compared with when she began organizing women workers in the 1970s, Nussbaum says, "the crisis is different—more acute and more widespread."

You've heard of The 4-Hour Workweek, surely. Or at least you've seen it in an airport bookstore, with businessmen glancing sidelong at the cover as if it were a lingerie catalog. It's a lonely yet best-selling fascination, the hope that by working smarter, not harder, one might join author Timothy Ferriss among the "New Rich" with some solid investments and a modicum of maintenance. And it can happen—but only to a lucky few among the million-plus suckers who've bought the book.

The idea of the four-hour work day that workers imagined a hundred years ago was different. It was for everyone—the natural consequence of advancing technology. But in the decades since World War II, capitalism has not handed over a shorter workday freely. The coming kingdom of leisure used to be considered a mainly technological problem; it has turned out to be a political one.

The Industrial Workers of the World considered shorter workdays with no cut in pay to be, in the words of one pamphlet, "THE Revolutionary Demand." The so-called Wobblies recognized that fewer hours would make sure workers reap the benefits of progress rather than let them trickle upward. To win an eight-hour day around the time of the First World War, IWW-organized loggers in the Pacific Northwest blew a whistle and walked off the job when eight hours had passed. A recent IWW pamphlet suggests another tactic to highlight the impact of long workdays on families: Have workers' children picket outside the job, carrying signs about how much they miss their parents.

In the past few months there have been small indications of progress. After much pressure from organized labor, President Obama announced stricter federal rules on overtime pay; meanwhile, the government estimated that millions of workers might switch to part-time rather than full-time jobs because they can buy their own health insurance through the new system. Congressman Paul Ryan quickly expressed fears that, with affordable coverage, "the incentive to work declines." Just the thought of the non-rich working less than all the time, and still having health insurance, was an affront to his idea of the American way. He actually said, "It's adding insult to injury."

In this way, the most practical approach to winning shorter workdays may be to detach necessities, like insurance, from employment. Peter Frase, an editor of Jacobin magazine and one of the shorter workday's most capable advocates, calls for a universal basic income. People able to cover their essential needs could choose for themselves how much they want to work as a supplement to that. But unless there are powerful, disruptive movements demanding such measures, politicians and other elites will keep on claiming that there isn't enough to go around.

Workers in countries with stronger labor organizations know better. Gothenburg, Sweden, is experimenting with a six-hour workday for municipal workers, while in France, where a 35-hour week is already common, unions are trying out a rule against checking work email after hours.

The time-saving gizmos that Benjamin Franklin hoped for are here. But rather than liberating anyone, they've become a clever disguise for corporate greed to sneak ever more into our days and nights. Few subcultures revel in staying at the office after hours so much as Silicon Valley engineers. But who really benefits from their late nights of coding?

It's probably the same people who prevent Silicon Valley's underlings from forming a union, who don't mind a single mother working two jobs, who expect you to check email at all hours, who say we need more growth rather than let the unemployed lighten whatever work already needs to be done. Those who believe these profiteers from on high, and who neglect to organize with their co-workers, are stealing the four-hour workday from themselves.

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Right after I published my list of the best online shorts of 2014, Dustin Guy Defa released his excellent short Person to Person on the internet. Upon initial viewing, it might be hard to see why it's one of the best short films of the year. It's a slow burn, but you have to let it play out. It premiered at Sundance this year and went on to play Berlin, SXSW, New Directors/New Films, and more.

The film tells a simple story, relayed in earnest by Bene Coopersmith, who plays a version of himself—classic Brooklyn guy, accent and all. At his grungy record store, he tells a tale, depicted in flashbacks, to an eclectic group of friends and customers about a girl who passed out in his apartment after a party and refused to leave the next morning. It sounds like every guy's dream to have a beautiful girl splayed across your floor and it was—at least, while she was dreaming. Bene chats up his neighbors about his luck and preemptively buys her an egg sandwich and a coffee, because, you know, he's a nice guy. When the unnamed woman (Deragh Campbell) eats the food but declines to leave, Bene inadvertently finds himself serving as a babysitter—a grown man taken advantage of. The back and forth by the characters reflects their different perspectives and exacerbates their misunderstandings. They stay in place, while the audience's reading of them shifts around. Line after line, the film earns more credibility, revealing a dude and his feelings honestly, with nuance and humor.

Check out the film below and then read the short interview I did with director Dustin Guy Defa.

VICE: Has a girl ever passed out in your apartment after a party? Did you get her a coffee and an egg sandwich?
Dustin Guy Defa: No. This never happened.

You structured the film as a series of flashbacks. Why add that extra layer, instead of just telling it in the present?
The storytelling device is based on my friend Bene, who plays the lead. I love to hear Bene tell stories. The way he tells them is so cinematic.

Bene is actually played by your real-life friend Bene Coopersmith. Was he always the guy who was going to play this role?
I wrote the film for Bene. We've known each other for about six years, and during the last four or so I've been trying to understand how to write for him. This was the breakthrough.

Bene's character is so real. He comes off so natural, with his little quirks and Brooklynisms. How much did he bring to the role through improvisation and how much was written?
I wrote the film so Bene could essentially play himself, which he does for the most part, though he wouldn't necessarily act the same way in this situation. We adjusted some stuff during rehearsal. But for the most part, it was completely written before that. The first few minutes in the record shop, before the story really kicks in, is improvised with Bene's friends. Bene is a natural character in real life—he is so vibrant and unique. What became exciting was realizing that he could memorize his lines and then not only deliver them as himself, but in accordance with what was happening in the film. This makes him not a non-actor, but a true actor. He can believe in the scenes, and that's what matters. And to me, Bene is New York.

What are you working on now?
I'm working on my feature, an ensemble film also set in New York with similar vibes as this one. Bene is one of the main characters.

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

[body_image width='737' height='486' path='images/content-images/2014/12/30/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/30/' filename='canadas-environmental-impact-damaged-our-reputation-in-2014-202-body-image-1419962234.jpg' id='15030']Protesters march through the tar sands at last summer's final healing walk. Photo by Michael Toledano

A recent editorial from the Canadian Press penned by Alexander Panetta examined the changing reputation of Canada to our lovely American friends. The central thesis of the piece is that Canada, once known as a liberal haven for free health care and dank BC bud, is now being regarded as a conservative stronghold where corporate tax breaks make running Burger King easier, whereas our oil export industry has provided us with the leverage of being a global economic player. While this is certainly an accurate depiction of how our reputation stands to corporate-friendly conservatives, for many other onlookers, Canada's reputation has also slipped into a place of environmental recklessness and aboriginal disrespect.

Panetta's editorial does overlook the damage that's been done to Canada's popular reputation by our increasingly all-in approach to resource extraction. The Keystone XL pipeline, as Panetta notes, has obviously opened up a major rift in the United States. Panetta cites a Montreal-based firm called Influence Communication that found the Keystone pipeline was the most talked about Canadian story in the American news media with over 9,400 items published and broadcasted.

Given November's shift in the United States Senate to be even more Republican-heavy, the Wall Street Journal reported recently that Republicans are "likely to easily pass... legislation next year" that could get Keystone XL flowing. It can't hurt that the Koch Brothers, who heavily finance Republicans, are the biggest foreign leaseholder in the tar sands. Given that oil prices are likely to remain low "for the indefinite future," some experts suggest the price of extracting oil from the tar sands isn't going to be overly profitable for Canada.

With a diminished economic incentive, the Harper government's resource extraction-heavy strategy is starting to seem a little thin. And while I can already hear the comments section of this article exploding with armchair commentators pointing out that I must have taken a gas-filled car to work (I didn't) to type on my computer that was made with oil and gas products (you got me there)—we're beginning to look a bit reckless as a nation to many of our friends in the United States for going balls to the wall with tearing up the earth and pulling out the sweet gooey black stuff that lays below.

In March, the New York Times ran an editorial entitled "Is Canada Tarring Itself?" with a striking illustration of a mountie whose face is covered in oil, right above the fold. Written by Jacques Leslie, he describes our government's relationship with the oil industry as a "headlong embrace of the oil industry's wishes." Regarding Canada's changing reputation itself, Leslie writes: "Forget the idea of Canada as dull, responsible and environmentally minded: That is so 20th century. Now it's a desperado, placing all its chips on a world-be-damned, climate-altering tar sands bet."

Alongside press like this, which illuminates Canada's changing reputation as environmentally destructive, Leonardo DiCaprio has been gallivanting in the tar sands, hard at work on a documentary about Canada's environmental impact. He even challenged Stephen Harper to an ice bucket challenge while standing alongside the people of Fort Chipewyan, the closest First Nations reserve to the tar sands, whose population's rare cancers have been linked to oil sands pollution.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Bill Nye the Science Guy this year, and we discussed the tar sands and the Canadian government's relentless support of resource extraction. In his words: "The government in Canada is currently being influenced by the fossil-fuel industry... The thing that's gone badly is that the people who want to maintain the status quo of fossil-fuel burning have managed to introduce the idea that scientific uncertainty [on climate change] is the same as doubt about the whole thing. And that [trend has] justified in many legislators' minds, both in the US and especially in Canada, particularly Western Canada, that It's OK, the science of climate change isn't proven, and let's just carry on. And that's just not in anybody's best interest."

Bill Nye's no-holds-barred opinions on Canada aside, 2014 also gave us the media clusterfuck that was Neil Young's Honour the Treaties tour, where Young, alongside representatives of Fort Chipewyan and Aamjiwnaang—a First Nations reserve beside the Chemical Valley in Sarnia that we made a documentary on in 2013, where 40 percent of Canada's petrochemical industry resides—Young called for a critical look at Canada's environmental impact. Unsurprisingly, Young was attacked by conservative media across the country, along with Ethical Oil, an advocacy group for the tar sands that launched a campaign called "Neil Young Lies" and pointed out that his excessive rock star lifestyle makes him a hypocritical candidate to defend the environment.

While the Honour the Treaties tour did turn into a bit of a mess in the Canadian media, it did gain traction in the US and the UK, with coverage popping up in CNN, the Guardian, Salon, and Al-Jazeera America.

Intrinsic to this issue of environmental impact is the Canadian government's relationship with our aboriginal peoples. Both DiCaprio and Young, Hollywood defenders whose modi operandi are easily skewered, have put the aboriginal conversation front and centre in their campaigns of awareness about the Canadian environment. It's possible, through movements like Idle No More, and, like it or not, with documentaries like DiCaprio's, that the plight of aboriginal communities in Canada will become a more internationally known dilemma. Especially with global attention being drawn towards our missing and murdered indigenous women.

So, while Canada is certainly gaining brownie points from American conservatives for our tough-on-environment but lax-on-Burger-King strategy, the popular conception of Canada as a green space with highly breathable air is falling by the wayside. As the price of oil drops and the hunger to appease the oil industry rises, responsible resource extraction is not likely to be part of the big picture formula going forward.

2014 saw the US and China signing off on a deal to lower their emissions, but Canada has so far stayed silent on making such a promise. On top of that, we signed off on a deal with China that will allow them to sue us secretly if one of their investments in our resource extraction industry goes sour, say, for reasons due to an aboriginal land claim.

With all this in mind, and given that 2015 is right around the corner, it's obvious we're not going to be putting the right foot forward to improve our country's growing reputation as an environmentally irresponsible nation. As more international media attention comes onto the tar sands, and with the Keystone XL pipeline sure to cause a lot of noise among environmental activists in 2015, it seems as if this reputation can only get worse from here.