[body_image width='1500' height='1000' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='i-opened-a-hostel-in-palestine-and-ended-up-getting-thrown-in-jail-body-image-1421260382.jpg' id='18135']

A view of Ramallah, in the West Bank. Photo courtesy of the author

After a few years working for foreign aid NGOs in the Middle East and bouncing from country to country, I got disillusioned. I began to think that starting a small business that employed locals would be the best way to help people, so I quit my job and set out to open the first backpackers' hostel in Ramallah, in the West Bank.

It was a simple idea: I'd employ some Palestinians and help bring foreigners to an isolated place that's often mischaracterized as a miserable piece of the third world. Everyone would win.

It took a year's worth of savings and 14 months just to find the right spot for the hostel and get it running. I called it Area D, and despite some initial hiccups—another hostel opened nearby a few months before and I had to fend off an extortion attempt—soon after opening we were packed with guests and making a profit.

But just when things were looking good, my business partner, Odeh,* a Palestinian friend I had taken on to help with translating and dealing with local matters went crazy and tried to take over my business.

Things gradually got weird between us; he wouldn't return my calls and would argue about small things; finally he ended up attacking me inside the hostel. That day, he told me that either I appoint him the new manager or he would make problems for me. Things escalated, he got violent, and I ended up macing him.

When the police showed up they let Odeh leave—at that point I realized that things were going to be a lot worse than just losing a friend and business partner.

I went to the police station thinking I was going to give a statement but next thing I knew, I was detained. Nobody was speaking to me in English and I didn't know what was going on. Luckily I contacted a friend of mine before they took my phone away. He showed up and told me that Odeh had gone to the hospital and told the police that I had been the one who attacked him. I was being charged with assault for defending myself.

Worse still, Odeh was legally my partner and I had given him authority over everything in case the Israelis wouldn't allow me back into the country. In addition to stealing money from the hostel's bank accounts, Odeh had also gotten one of my employees to turn against me. So this guy quits and the two start spreading rumors online—that I was normalizing with Israelis, exploiting the local labor, stealing from guests, and so on and so on.

I had invested about $100,000 setting up my business at that point, and all of a sudden I was in what was becoming like a little war. I soon realized that Odeh was in touch with the people we were supposed to get permits from and was now telling them to deny the permits.

I ended up hiring a local manager and put him in charge so I could go home over the summer. The day before I left, the police came to the hostel to search the premises. They looked all around but didn't find anything. Then they asked to search my car.

I knew the police were there because of Odeh—he was obviously escalating things but I didn't know what he was up to. We went down to my car, they started searching, and suddenly one of the cops opened up his palm and showed me a bunch of hashish. Right then I knew I was screwed.

The police took me along with the car to the station. As soon as we got there a cop reached under it and pulls out a massive brick of hash. It was beyond fishy, an obvious setup. Then they got a call and went back to the hostel, which they searched again, and, surprise surprise, more hash appeared as if by magic.

I was booked and moved to the central police station where they have some cells in the basement. It was one of the filthiest places I've ever seen. (Ironically, I had looked at Palestinian prisons before as part of my work with the NGOs.) In total they found 80 grams of hash worth around $1,000. It was enough to lock me up for up to three years. The next morning I was taken to court and told that I would be released, but I didn't have a lawyer.

There was only the prosecutor and he was speaking to me in Arabic and asking me to sign documents that I believe would have forced the hostel to close and who knows what else. I refused to sign anything and then got sent to the main prison near Ramallah. There was the whole process of getting checked in: a strip search, a medical exam, and mug shots. They stuck me in a cell with 15 people, in a space that was maybe four by 12 meters with a toilet in the corner.

All the prisoners were really nice to me, the typical Palestinian hospitality. They were offering me fruits and the food that they had. I didn't come with any supplies so someone lent me a towel and another guy lent me flip-flops. The cell was overcrowded—there were only 13 beds for the 15 of us—so they ended up giving me a bed instead of letting me sleep on the floor.

I spent a night there and then was checked out and brought to the courthouse with a bunch of other prisoners. It was waiting for our hearings—crammed into a tiny cell where the air was stale—when I really panicked. I started thinking about what would happen if I didn't get released. Someone had told me that the normal pre-trial detention period is 42 days.

Luckily I was freed after speaking to the judge and I was out of the country within 48 hours.

As this was going on, the hostel wasn't doing any business thanks to the war in Gaza. But today the hostel is safe, backpackers are coming through again, and Odeh, under legal pressure, finally signed away his stake in the hostel.

I've been back twice now to attend three hearings over the assault and drug charges that I'm fighting. I'm pretty confident that I won't be found guilty. I'm going back because I'm innocent—I've never had so much a s a speeding ticket in my life—and I'm certainly not going to agree to have a felony conviction on my record in any county. I think it's an opportunity for the Palestinian Authority to prove that it is running a serious state with some degree of rule of law.

Today the hostel is still open for business. I see my story as a cautionary tale about trying to start a business in a foreign country but I think I got really unlucky choosing a business partner who turned out to be mentally disturbed. That's not going to happen to most people, hopefully.

*Name has been changed.

Follow Daniel Tepper on Twitter.

[body_image width='1020' height='554' path='images/content-images/2015/01/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/13/' filename='blue-is-the-warmest-colour-is-the-film-that-made-me-body-image-1421174064.png' id='17849']

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Sometimes what I like to do is recall all my shatteringly painful life experiences. Often, my go-to is the time—while attending university in a grim coastal town—that I got my head kicked in outside a club by a balding, middle-aged thug in front of my then girlfriend. My head was split open and I had to go to the hospital, the physical pain accompanied by the humiliating realization that I'd been completely unable to defend myself.

My mind also occasionally returns to 1994—a youthful, more optimistic time in my life—when my dad took me to watch Chelsea vs. Manchester United in the FA Cup Final. I was ten and Chelsea hadn't won a trophy in 23 years. It ended up pissing it down with rain—Eric Cantona scored twice and Chelsea lost 4-0. I left in a flood of tears.

Finally, I recall when I had mumps in my early 20s. My nether regions swelled up to grapefruit-like proportions and I degenerated into a state of dehydrated delirium, a sweat-bathed figure talking in nonsensical riddles and vomiting for a fortnight at my mum's house. I lost a load of weight and my head felt like a giant, pulsing boulder. That really, really sucked.

I didn't get beaten up, lose the cup final, or get a viral disease watching Blue Is the Warmest Color, but I'd be lying if I said seeing it wasn't one of my most painful, draining experiences I've ever been through. Director Abdellatif Kechiche spends three grueling hours painting an incredibly intimate picture of a relationship, from the fuzzy beginning, through the wobbling uncertainty in the middle, to the dismal end.

[body_image width='887' height='524' path='images/content-images/2015/01/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/13/' filename='blue-is-the-warmest-colour-is-the-film-that-made-me-body-image-1421174107.png' id='17850']

Before its release, Blue Is the Warmest Color was hyped intensely. Many people focused purely on the sex , labeling the film a gratuitous lesbian romp. Some critics, though, lauded it for its power, honesty, and intensity. Either way, both column inches and word of mouth earned the film a level of infamy that put me in a state of anxiety before I'd even seen it.

After the opening credits rolled, I tried to figure out what I'd been scared of. I watched the film with my then girlfriend, and I suppose my initial and fairly pathetic concerns were that the intimacy between the two women, and the abject misery of their break-up, might make her decide that men simply weren't as good as women in bed, and that our relationship itself might not be the best on offer.

I was also worried that I'd see something far more intense and real than any lesbian porn I'd encountered on my trawls of the internet, and that—as a heterosexual man—I would somehow be eavesdropping. Then I remembered that this was a film, too. An incredibly intense and realistic one, but a work of fiction nonetheless.

[body_image width='738' height='433' path='images/content-images/2015/01/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/13/' filename='blue-is-the-warmest-colour-is-the-film-that-made-me-body-image-1421174168.png' id='17851']

Once I had left the theater, it dawned on me: What scared and affected me most about Blue Is the Warmest Color was its warts-and-all depiction of a human relationship. Its French candor, its unwavering camera, and the way in which it captures exactly what it feels like to ache for another human being.

Like most relationships, everything is taut and exciting at the beginning. When Adèle and Emma first meet in a Lille bar there's an immediate energy and spark. Yes, it's a romantic cliché, but the connection between the two characters is palpable and, as they fall in love, you can't help being reminded of how it feels to meet someone you really like: as though you are the only two people in the world. The strength of this connection radiates off the screen, and the sex scene—while explicit—is necessary to illustrate the passion between the two.

The good stuff doesn't last. Toward the film's end, when Adèle desperately tries to seduce Emma in an empty bar, begging in vain to rekindle their sexual and emotional connection, it becomes ever clear that this film really isn't about sexual orientation. The scene reminds us that, once we enter a full-on relationship, we emotionally put ourselves on the line. Gay or straight, if we lose someone and want them back, we will do whatever we can—we will forfeit our dignity, if that's what it takes.

The idea that two people who love each other that much can put each other through such pain really got to me. I thought of my parents, their terrible fights and eventual divorce, of my relationships and how it felt to hurt someone and be hurt by someone I loved. I was reminded of times I deliberately said things I knew would cut people, knowing how shit it would make them feel, but doing it anyway. I remembered cowardly trying to justify past actions while exes cried—or, in some cases, threw things at me. I thought of my incredulous anger, confusion, and frantic questioning when I myself had been mistreated, wondering how something that was meant to be good could make me feel so hopeless.

[body_image width='700' height='386' path='images/content-images/2015/01/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/13/' filename='blue-is-the-warmest-colour-is-the-film-that-made-me-body-image-1421174225.png' id='17852']

Watching Blue Is the Warmest Color , I realized that most of the time we treat each other like shit because we're terrified of relationships. It also occurred to me how often I've wondered whether long-term relationships are really worth the hassle, given that the bad times and break-ups are such an ordeal.

We live in a time where most of us demand instant gratification. We are accustomed to getting what we want, how we want it and when we want it. Living in the massive cesspool of ambition, greed, and "luxury apartments" that is London, everyone is obsessed with their jobs, their friends, and their incredibly important lives. Nowadays, if we want to have a relationship, we go on Tinder, have a swipe, have a chat, get drunk, have sex, fuck off.

We do a runner as soon as emotion rears its head, because that's not why we're here—we're here for a good time. We don't want anyone with "baggage," and we don't want honest assessments from others about our flaws. We want to ignore our own problems and avoid having our vibes killed by hearing about anybody else's. We want the fun of flirting followed by the endorphin rush of sex. Not the visceral tugging of heartstrings.

[body_image width='671' height='465' path='images/content-images/2015/01/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/13/' filename='blue-is-the-warmest-colour-is-the-film-that-made-me-body-image-1421174295.png' id='17853']

As a cynic, I never thought I'd find myself writing this, but the main lesson I took from Blue Is the Warmest Color is to seize the day and be unafraid of intimacy. It shouldn't be seen as a cautionary tale to put people off relationships, but rather an honest portrayal of their meaningful ups and downs. You can't be scared of relationships just because of their potential to cause pain when they end.

Adèle's pain is heart breaking to witness because it is born from the joy she felt when things were going well. Not getting involved in committed relationships, marriage or otherwise, because of a fear of them coming to an end is a cop-out. If we were to use this logic, what's the point in enjoying anything? We may as well be on our own, never meet anyone, or do anything we enjoy because we'll only end up being disappointed.

Watching Blue Is the Warmest Color demands introspection and self-analysis. This isn't a film about super heroes, mafia bosses, or Wall Street traders. It's about everyday people, and banal scenes like the family dinner at Adèle's house—filmed with such care and intimate, close up camerawork—made me think this could very easily be my life, and that the same question applies to both me and Adèle: "Who wants to sit around risking nothing, feeling neither pleasure nor pain?"

The hysterical reaction to the film from people who haven't even seen it suggests it's not the sex that people are scared of, or the fact its story concerns two lesbians—it's the fact that, like all great films, it delivers a truth that many would rather ignore.

Follow Charlie on Twitter.

[body_image width='1200' height='784' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='ontario-is-re-examining-the-law-that-allows-doctors-to-practice-after-sexually-assaulting-their-patients-273-body-image-1421273667.jpg' id='18194']

Doctor's office. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Ontario's rules about health professionals who sexually abuse their patients are under review, after a Toronto Star investigation in the fall revealed some doctors were allowed to keep practicing after sexually assaulting their patients.

Officially, the self-regulating College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario has a "zero tolerance" policy for any sexual contact between doctor and patient, but the Star found more than 20 doctors who were allowed to keep practicing, albeit with some restrictions, after allegations of abuse. Of those, 20 aren't allowed to treat female patients without a chaperone, and one isn't allowed to treat male patients without a chaperone.

Doctors who commit crimes don't automatically lose their license under the law, but doctors who have sexual contact with a patient are supposed to. However, they're allowed to reapply to practice after five years—and in some cases don't lose their license at all. Dr. Sastri Maharajh was allowed to keep practicing after putting his lips on a patient's breasts, apparently because the law, the Regulated Health Professions Act of 1991, doesn't specifically mention breasts.

Another doctor, Kunwar Singh of Sarnia, is still practicing after 16 allegations of sexual assault. It's unclear why his license was never revoked, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons was not forthcoming with the Star during its investigation.

The College did not respond to multiple requests for comment from VICE.

In other cases, doctors are allowed to go back to work after a suspension, which is what happened with Dr. Eleazar Noriega. Noriega had already had his license suspended for sexually abusing a 17-year-old patient, and last Wednesday faced the College's disciplinary committee once more for allegedly assaulting a 15-year-old girl in his office in 1979. The teen had disclosed to Noriega that she had a history of being sexually abused.

After he pleaded "no contest" to the first charges, Noriega was suspended and allowed to keep practicing if he only saw female patients with a chaperone and posted a notice in his office explaining the situation. News reports sayhe had his license suspended again when the College found he was still treating female patients alone and hadn't posted any notice in his office about the charges. Then, six years ago, police laid and later dropped charges when a woman said Noriega molested her eight-year-old daughter in front of her.

There's a chance the current hearing still won't result in Noriega losing his license, because the alleged assault took place before the current law was passed.

Marilou McPhedran, a human rights lawyer and director of the University of Winnipeg's Institute for International Women's Rights, chaired the College of Physicians' 1991 inquiry that resulted in the current law. She then chaired the province's review of the law in 2000, and is now giving it a third try as the co-chair of the Ontario Minister of Health and Long-Term Care's task force to "modernize" the policy.

McPhedran's co-chairs are Roy McMurtry, the former chief justice of Ontario, and Sheila Macdonald, a nurse and the provincial coordinator of the Ontario Network of Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence Care and Treatment Centres. They'll review the current law, which applies to not just physicians and surgeons but psychiatrists, dentists, and any other regulated health professionals, and make recommendations for any amendments that should be added.

VICE spoke to McPhedran on her first day working on the review. She said their mandate is to "advise on various issues regarding sexual abuse of patients by regulated health professionals" and "modernize the province's ongoing commitment to zero tolerance of sexual abuse."

A 2008 document by the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Maintaining Appropriate Boundaries and Preventing Sexual Abuse, says the same thing. "The physician-patient relationship is characterized by a power imbalance in favour of the physician," it reads. "To maintain trust, a physician must avoid making or responding to sexual advances. Sexualizing the relationship is a clear breach of trust." Even the original Hippocratic Oath, written in the 5th century BC, forbids a doctor from having sexual contact with a patient.

On top of this power imbalance, the College must acknowledge the inherently gendered nature of sexual violence, says Andrea Gunraj, a communications specialist at the Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children (METRAC), a Toronto organization that works with survivors of sexual violence.

"The key thing is that we have a power imbalance between women and men, and not just women and men but folks who fall outside of those stereotypes of what it means to be a woman and a man in our society," she said. "Sexual violence happens in relationships. It plays out in institutions, in hospitals, in other healthcare settings, in schools, at workplaces, and really it boils down to the fact that... women don't get the rights and respect that they deserve, that they are entitled to as human beings." Gunraj added that in addition to women, young people and LGBTQ folks are also at high risk of gender-based violence.

When McPhedran started working on the 1991 report, which was requested by the College of Physicians and Surgeons itself, she said the number of survivors who came forward shocked her.

"I don't think anyone predicted when we started in early 1991 that we would literally have hundreds of patients come forward—on the phone, in person, in writing," she said. "We heard from patients of other health professionals. We had people come in who wanted to talk to us about their religious leaders, their professors, basically people in all positions of power, because they had nowhere else to go with their testimony."

At the time, McPhedran said those in charge of the College decided they were "done with" her and the study they'd hired her to write. After experiencing significant resistance from doctors and their lawyers, her office at the College was simply padlocked shut, and members of the task force were escorted out by security, she said.

"I can say this... there was no official reason given."

So McPhedran and her colleagues kept working as volunteers, finishing the report despite their demotion. When the Minister of Health came knocking in 2000 to hire her to conduct a review of the 1991 law, she agreed again. After giving McPhedran a larger mandate to look at all health professionals, not just doctors and surgeons, and on an even shorter deadline, the department told her they didn't have the budget to print the report they'd commissioned.

"Another member of the media asked me, 'Why did you agree to do this when you've already done it twice?' and I said, 'because the policy of zero tolerance is still not being implemented,'" she said. "Of course I'm going to try again. This is not something we ever give up on."

McPhedran and the task force will be reviewing the law for the next six months, after which they'll make recommendations for any changes to the province. She said she aims to find out why the implementation of the current policies "has often been inadequate."

Follow Emma on Twitter.

[body_image width='537' height='716' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='why-i-would-never-vote-for-a-feminist-political-party-367-body-image-1421248269.png' id='18065']

Mike Buchanan. Still via YouTube

This post first appeared on VICE UK

"Feminism is a hatred, and it should be a badge of shame," says retired businessman and talking quick-iron shirt Mike Buchanan, leader of the British anti-feminist political party Justice For Men and Boys (And The Women Who Love Them). "To call yourself a feminist should be no more acceptable than calling yourself a bigot or a sexist or a fascist. It is a deeply vile, corrupting ideology..."

Justice For Men and Boys (And The Women Who Love Them)—or J4MB for short—are running for parliament in May's general election. They've even whipped up an 80-page manifesto, which includes all sorts of colorful suggestions on how to fix things like abortion, fetal alcohol syndrome, fatherlessness, "restoring strong families," domestic violence, and sexual abuse. (Buchanan told Buzzfeed News he believed Ched Evans's rape conviction was "probably a miscarriage of justice.")

I first became aware of Buchanan—who acknowledges that, despite the cute caveat in his party's title, his "target demographic is more men than women"—when he included a friend of mine in one of his "Gormless Feminist of the Month" roundups. (We toasted the honor with some zeal.) More recently, I read that he was standing for general election, which evoked a series of responses.

First, I wondered, like the puerile fascist I am, how feasible it would be to squeeze out a tampon over a printed picture of his strange, owl-y face and paper airplane it into his office.

Second came laughter. Surely he—and the rest of his supporters (there is, as far as I can tell, a grand total of nine "Likes" on the Facebook subject page) were just having a giggle?

Third, having plowed through J4BM's proposals, there came a sharp decrease in laughter.

Fourth came pity. You wonder what on earth has to happen to a man to forge within him such contempt for women (look at the cover of his book)—particularly single mothers, who, he outlines in his manifesto, are "at the lower end of the social scale" and "choosing what has become known as 'bureaugamy'—marriage to the state." They are, he believes, "having children with no intention of being married, and seeking the support of the state as the surrogate father."

That a man—any man—would propose some of J4BM's ideas is frightening. That much is a given. Reading through Buchanan's "manifesto" is like falling onto your coccyx and knocking all the wind out your lungs. But its very existence—like any other factional interest party—is frightening, too. And if there were a woman leading a party looking only at women-specific issues, it would cause similar alarm.

I am a feminist and I would never vote for a women-only political party. Why? Because in the party I vote for I am looking for progressiveness, social justice, and the promise of legislation that will lead to greater equality. A zero-sum game is about as helpful to the wider cause as a rhubarb shoehorn. Prosperity for both sexes is woven together—not exclusive. As soon as you pit them against each other, things turn sour. Resentment is born, power is lost.

Buchanan has done an exemplary job of building ideological causes for his party, he really has. On abortion, for example, the manifesto says: "There comes a point at which the basic right to life of an unborn child overrides the right of a woman over her body. One person's rights end where another person's rights begin. In an age when contraception has long been readily available and highly reliable, women should be held morally accountable for the children they conceive. J4MB believes there's a point in pregnancy when society—and the law—needs to recognize the right of the unborn child to life."

A zero-sum game is about as helpful to the wider cause as a rhubarb shoehorn. Prosperity for both sexes is woven together—not exclusive.

Only, you don't even need to read between the lines to find the central interest here, which is: We know what women should be doing with their bodies better than they do. That his sentiment is confused—you can't suggest taking control of a pregnant woman's body if you, in the next breath, say they should be in control of it in the first place (you either trust us or you don't, Mike!)—is another matter, but the central interest is, in all of his policies, lifting control neatly out of women's hands, because those hands have become too greedy and grab-y, thankyouverymuch.

Buchanan would argue, if he got into parliament—remember: nine Facebook likes and counting, guys!—that approaches towards his own, very specific idea of gender equality would be multi-faceted, but, if you break down any one of J4MB's policy points, they all point to the same, toddler-crying-into-his-plate-of-fish-fingers-and-chips shriek of: "Well, women have got this, so why can't we have this?"

Even on an issue as sensitive as FGM, it's the same. "Male genital mutilation—MGM—is a human rights issue too, but boys are not accorded the same rights to protection as girls," his manifesto argues. "It is right to be concerned about girl's rights not to have their genitals mutilated, and it is right to be concerned about boys' rights not to have their genitals mutilated. If genital mutilation is illegal for girls, why shouldn't it be illegal for boys?"

"Everyone in a modern society should be accorded the same rights irrespective of gender," the manifesto continues. "MGM can lead to numerous physical problems. MGM results in a considerable reduction in the sensitivity of the penis, reducing circumcised men's pleasure during sex, just as some forms of FGM reduce sexual pleasure in women. MGM can also lead to mental health problems, when men become resentful and angry at the assaults carried out on them when they were babies or children."

He is right, of course. MGM is absolutely a human rights issue. The removal of a body part of any human being without their consent is a human rights issue. But while a man may wind up resenting his parents for having him circumcised, or have reduced sensitivity, FGM victims can die during childbirth as a result of their mutilation. The end point of FGM is, often, about life or death. Not resentment. Not sensitivity.

Single-interest parties are dangerous because, with the right sound-bites, they can potentially appeal to a particular pocket of the electorate who feel anger and disgust towards their current government—even if it is one that has done less for feminism than Mr. Blobby. (Blobby, for all his sins, did at least advance the idea that men could appear in public while wearing pink drag and the lip and eyelash makeup of a very naughty busty barmaid.) If you are disenfranchised, a public figure that offers a radical opinion on precisely what you're dissatisfied with is exciting. It's sexy. It gives you fire in your belly.

Only, in his whining, desperate rattling against womankind, Buchanan has cleanly ignored one of the most key issues facing Britain's men and boys in 2015: unemployment. Particularly among our ethnic minority and working-class men. As journalist Ally Fogg points out, there is "no solution offered to the savagery of the globalized neoliberal free market which has deprived working-class men of the industries and culture that once offered respect, identity, and pride."

But why offer any real antidote to the ever-dissolving self-worth of our country's men and boys when you can try and make them angry with a consistent barrage of "IT'S NOT FAIR," eh?

Why educate men on how far both sexes have come in leveling the playing field when you can make them as resentful as you are of the women around them? A case in point, again, is the issue with single mothers. He is basically posing the angry question: "Why in God's name should taxpayers [read: us bloody hard-working men!] fund the lifestyle choices of women and girls they don't know from Adam?"

The answer is simple, really. If we value humanity over selfishness, we work together—with collective responsibility—to try to protect everyone from poverty and destitution. We don't start pitting pink against blue. And if a political party comes along one of these days that says it's a girls-only fight, count me out.

Buchanan's politics are the product of single-interest hatred. They should be a badge of shame.

Follow Eleanor Morgan on Twitter.

[body_image width='1024' height='680' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='bez-forgot-to-register-his-anti-fracking-party-so-now-no-one-can-vote-for-him-306-body-image-1421251729.jpg' id='18081']Vote for Bez! Photo via Kyle Plastock

This post originally appeared on VICE UK

Bez of the Happy Mondays, forgot to register his new political party with the Electoral Commission, meaning now nobody can vote for them. (Note for Americans: To quote Peep Show, Bez is sort of like the Flava Flav of Britpop.) Every time Bez does something that makes you go, "Well, this is peak Bez"—like that time he let Tim Westwood write "PIMP" on his taxi for an episode of Pimp My Ride, or that time he lost his teeth at Glastonbury while biting into a doughnut—he goes and tops it. It's a testament to Bez's longevity, really.

Last year, the Happy Mondays dancer announced his intention to run as an independent candidate for the Salford and Eccles constituency after the incumbent MP Hazel Blears made clear her intention to stand down. He formed the Reality Party, and Bez—along with two other candidates—were set to run as MPs for the group under the banner of "True Democracy," with Bez promising to "stir things up."

At the time, Bez said: "I've been saying we need a revolution. There's no good shouting about it when you're not actually doing anything."

If a few more teenage girls fancied him and he said "blessedly" a bit more often, then maybe he could be Russell Brand instead of Russell Brand. Bez looking distantly confused on Question Time while wearing an open shirt. Harrowing bit in that Katy Perry documentary where she hears the news that her marriage to Bez is legally dissolved. That sort of thing.

But as the Manchester Evening News reported today, none of that is going to happen any time soon, because Bez completely forgot to register with the Electoral Commission before the January 12 deadline. As a result, the Reality Party doesn't really exist—which is a shame, because they've printed up banners and billboards and T-shirts and everything. And, like, they are called "The Reality Party." The party's slogan is literally "It's Real." It couldn't happen to a worse-named party.

As the Electoral Commission confirmed, they wrote to Bez twice to inform him the hold up with his party registration—the name is too similar to that of "The Realists' Party," so can't feature on the same ballot lest it lead to voter confusion—but I'm just going to go ahead and assume those letters got torn up into roaches.

[body_image width='768' height='1024' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='bez-forgot-to-register-his-anti-fracking-party-so-now-no-one-can-vote-for-him-306-body-image-1421254110.jpg' id='18110']SHAKE THE MARACAS OF DEMOCRACY AND VOTE FOR BEZ. Photo via Neil Turner

"Following a review conducted last year," a spokesperson said, "we contacted The Reality Party on two occasions to tell them the party name they had registered, if seen on a ballot paper at a General Election, could mislead voters."

The spokesperson added that "we recommended what they could do to address this, and whilst the party indicated that it was looking at ways to alter its name with the Commission, it did not submit a revised name before our 12 January deadline and so was removed from the register of political parties."

The Reality Party was originally conceived just to be an anti-fracking platform, but they have since expanded their manifesto to include fewer tax breaks for big business and a zero carbon economy. Bez also wants to "end illness and get everybody back to an alkaline state," although it's not quite clear how.

Sometimes I like to idly imagine an alternate reality where Bez—who is still the same Bez, still with that haunted, thousand-yard stare, the air of a man who doesn't quite know what direction you're approaching him from if you say his name while walking up behind him at the bar—is our Prime Minister. In a way, it's a lot of fun. The national anthem is "Step On." There are a lot of maracas about. Everyone is sent a tab of acid in the post when they turn 18. In another way, it's chaos: Shaun Ryder is Chancellor of the Exchequer and Rowetta is in charge of schools. A lot of historical buildings are inexplicably on fire.

Bez for PM can still be a distant reality, though: The Electoral Commission has confirmed there is still time to submit a revised party name (suggestion: the Liberal Bezocrats) before candidates return their nominations papers to the Acting Returns Officers. Come on, Bez. Get your admin done.

UPDATE: In a Facebook statement, The Reality Party have confirmed that Bez didn't "forget" to register the Reality Party and say that they attempted to get in touch with the Realists' Party after the Electoral Commission flagged the possible name clash, but to no avail. "We feel that we acted in good faith when we chose the name of the party and have satisfied all the requirements set out by the Commission," the statement said. The party were unaware they had been deregistered and are working with the Electoral Commission to fix it.

Follow Joel Golby on Twitter.

Although it may sound like a warning to start off by saying The Tribe is told entirely in untranslated Ukrainian sign language, it's more of an invitation. Miroslav Slaboshpitsky's latest film is about a new student named Sergey's initiation into the gang that runs his boarding school for the deaf. The feature is a study of brutal power dynamics with graceful camera movements and blunt depiction of sexual and violent behavior.

This is the writer-director's first feature, and none of his four preceding short films garnered anywhere near the level of attention being lavished on The Tribe. It helps that the attention-grabbing sign language setup is more than a gimmick—it's an exercise in both watching and listening to a movie in a new way. But it's also a double-edged sword that could draw in as many viewers as it turns away.

It will be interesting to see whether the people who consider reading subtitles "work" find this less difficult or more. It's enough to make you reconsider the overused screenwriting guide idea that all dialogue is a failure of visual storytelling. In stripping away our inability to understand the dialogue, Slaboshpitsky underscores the primal nature of his Lord of the Flies–like characters. His approach is almost anthropological, like a field guide to understanding the extremes of human behavior that manifest in a closed environment.

The movie begins with the start of the school year, as faculty members and administrators lead a school-wide ceremony in a peaceful courtyard. Sergey meets the tribe shortly thereafter. The tribe's ruffians (all of whom are actually deaf—Slaboshpitsky cast nonprofessional actors) subsist on the lunch money of weaker students, stolen drugs, and the bodies of two female members. Complications arise when, after one of the pimps gets flattened by a truck and Sergey takes his place, the newcomer falls in love with an escort. She seems to be a willing participant in the selling of her body, but like most characters in The Tribe, she has little agency beyond her limited, predefined role. Power comes to those who take it by force, with everyone else left to take orders. Attempts to upend the established order can only be resolved in one way.

Slaboshpitsky is a great observer, but he's also an agitator. He ramps up tension gradually, never letting go of the feeling that something is fundamentally off. The action plays out with utmost nonchalance. No one questions the goings on, and the few adults who actually appear onscreen are either ignorant as to what's transpiring after class or actively involved in it. Valentin Vasyanovych has shot and edited the film with such impressive clarity that it's never difficult to understand what's actually happening. There's a cold lucidity to the group's increasingly out-there antics.

In its way, this is also the art-house answer to Gravity: The film is more active experience than a passive entertainment, with long, fluid takes filling in for the intentionally sparse narrative. Thinking of The Tribe days and even weeks after seeing it, the fact that it's all but silent barely even registers. It doesn't sit in the memory much differently from most "normal" films, which is a testament to how impressively crafted it is. Vasyanovych's work allows the story's beats to sink in, same with the place of each character within this makeshift hierarchy.

This isn't the only Ukrainian film to make waves on the festival circuit lately—Sergei Loznitsa's Maidan is a vital artifact to anyone seeking a ground-level, experiential take on his country's current civil unrest—but The Tribe is certainly the most flashy. The cinema of Ukraine has rarely received as much notice as nearby Poland and Russia, though these two auteurs suggest it may be on an upswing.

The Tribe premiered last year at Cannes (where it won several awards) and has since played the Locarno, Toronto, and AFI film festivals, in addition to its recent stop in Palm Springs, where it was showcased despite somehow not being Ukraine's official submission for the Academy Awards.

It was unlikely to have been nominated anyway, what with its grim subject matter and Oscar voters' tendency to reward foreign fare that closely hews to prestige-picture conventions. (To be fair, they did nominate Dogtooth, a similarly outré curio whose cult following will likely flock to this as well.) The Tribe is soon to receive a theatrical release courtesy of Drafthouse Films, those Austin-based purveyors of a great many other midnight-movies-in-waiting.

The film may be too disturbing and too hesitant to pass judgements on its characters to gain more than a self-selecting audience, but it will thrive among that niche. This is due in no small part to the eruption of violence that caps things off, which arrives with a sort of resigned inevitability. The climactic brutality is an exclamation mark at the end of a long sentence, whose lack of punctuation up to that point made it all the more thrilling. The Tribe remains a uniquely riveting experience sure to inspire an array of reactions—speechlessness included.

[body_image width='800' height='501' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='oklahoma-to-execute-inmate-with-same-lethal-injection-drug-used-in-botched-execution-114-body-image-1421273899.jpg' id='18195']

Clayton Lockett, left, and Charles Warner, right. Photo courtesy of Oklahoma Corrections Department.

Lawyers for four Oklahoma death row inmates are petitioning the Supreme Court to halt an upcoming execution on the grounds that one of the drugs to be used in the lethal injection led to three previous botched executions, thus constituting cruel and unusual punishment.

Barring an intervention by the Supreme Court, the state is set to execute a death row inmate Charles Warner by lethal injection on Thursday using a two-drug cocktail that contains midazolam, the same drug that left another Oklahoma inmate, Clayton Lockett, writhing on a gurney for 43 minutes before dying of a massive heart attack last year.

The Supreme Court petition represents Warner's last chance for a stay of execution after the 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his appeal last week. Warner, who is sentenced to death for the 1997 rape and murder of an 11-month-old girl, was originally scheduled to be executed in April 2014 on the same day as Lockett, but Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin halted all executions after that execution went south.

Lockett's execution was the first time Oklahoma had used midazolam in its lethal injection cocktail, and the gruesome result prompted Fallin to order a review of the state's policies. According to transcripts of Oklahoma's investigation into Lockett's execution, the former general counsel for the corrections department said his research on midazolam included the internet and "WikiLeaks or whatever it is." But although Oklahoma has since announced new policies and increased training for lethal injections, the new protocols allow the state to continue using the sedative midazolam, which is not approved for use as a general anesthetic, at higher dosages.

Attorneys for Warner and three other Oklahoma death row inmates now argue the drug isn't reliable and violates inmates' Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. They point to two other cases, in Ohio and Arizona, where there were serious complications from lethal injections that used midazolam. In Arizona, the execution of death row inmate Joseph Wood's execution stretched out for nearly two hours and required 15 doses of each lethal injection drug, including midazolam.

"We know that midazolam does not satisfy the constitutional requirement of preventing cruel and unusual suffering and that it does not reliably anesthetize prisoners during executions," one of Warner's lawyers, Dale Baich, said in a statement to VICE. "We know this because of Clayton Lockett's execution, where he struggled for over 30 minutes; and because of Dennis McGuire's execution [in Ohio], where he made snorting noises for more than twenty minutes; and because of Joseph Wood's execution, where he gulped and gasped for almost two hours. We will ask the US Supreme Court to prevent the scheduled executions from going forward due to the substantial risk of harm."

Last week, Ohio announced it would no longer use midazolam in lethal injections. But Oklahoma state prosecutors and officials are charging forward with Warner's execution. "The staff at the Oklahoma Department of Corrections has trained very, very hard, and I'm very confident in their abilities," the state corrections director Robert Patton told the Associated Press.

"The citizens should not see their criminal justice system derailed and subverted by criminal defendants who have completely exhausted the entire range of appeals and processes required by the US and Oklahoma Constitutions due to baseless speculation of theoretical harms," state attorneys wrote in a brief filed this week.

It's the latest controversy in the long-running saga over the hidden provenance of lethal injection drugs used in states nationwide. In recent years, the political stigma surrounding the death penalty has led drug companies to distance themselves from the practice, resulting in a shortage of drugs used in lethal cocktails. The crisis began in 2011, when the European Union banned the export of sodium thiopental, the main drug used in lethal injections in the US. As supplies of sodium thiopental dried up, states that still administered the death penalty began using less reliable combinations of sedatives and paralytics from compounding pharmacies.

In turn, those states began working hard to hide the details of where the drugs came from, how they were used, and their efficacy. Although First Amendment groups have pushed states to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding lethal injection protocols, so far, states that employ the death penalty have been reluctant to go public with details about how inmates are executed. Late last year, the Ohio legislature floated a bill to hide the identity of compounding pharmacies that produce lethal injection drugs.

In December, a federal judge rejected a lawsuit by Oklahoma media outlets and the Associated Press seeking greater access to executions. And the state's new protocols cut down the number of media witnesses allowed at executions from twelve to five.

On Tuesday night, Atlanta rapper 2 Chainz appeared on Nancy Graceto talk pot legalization. Like nearly every other interview on the mind-numbingly melodramatic show, this "debate" devolved pretty quickly thanks to the former prosecutor-turned-host going off the sensationalistic deep end.

"I've seen a video of you smoking a big fat doobie!" Grace exclaimed to the rapper, who sat in quiet bewilderment. 2 Chainz absorbed barbs like these with the kind of cool that only comes with regular cannabis consumption. Then, to further yank at the heartstrings of Middle America, Grace played a video of a mother giving her toddler a blunt. Although she probably hoped this would get a rise out of 2 Chainz, the artist formerly known as Tity Boi kept his cool and just stated the obvious: Moms giving kids pot shows the dangers of parental abuse, not weed legalization. "She might have mental issues," he said. "It might be something deeper than a joint, I believe."

Grace segued awkwardly from the sensational "pot tot" to a straw man argument. "If this is legalized, then everyone is going to have unlimited access to pot," she said. In reality, however, every state with medical or recreational marijuana has placed effective limits on access—save for California, where medical marijuana has been loosely regulated since voters embraced it in 1996. Both new recreational marijuana states (Oregon and Alaska) and every new medical marijuana state (Maryland, Minnesota, and New York) stringently monitor the production, prescription, and possession of cannabis. And as 2 Chainz pointed out, most Americans already have access to pot because it is illegal, unregulated, and everywhere. The rapper also made the case that the only thing that prohibition does is waste taxpayer dollars and increase incarceration rates.

2 Chainz's relaxed and matter-of-fact demeanor made Grace look ignorant and crazy to most discerning viewers. Of course, modern America is full of non-discerning viewers who might actually be receptive to Grace's dog and pony show, which makes this hilarious display actually concerning.

Grace often argues that she is an informed individual when it comes to cannabis, claiming a year ago on CNN that she formed her opinion "after studying and reading every shred of scientific and resource data out there." As it happens was a prosecutor in Georgia, the very state where 2 Chainz came up slinging pot.

There's evidence that she was just as aggressive back in those days as she is on TV. The Georgia Supreme Court reprimanded Grace in 1997 when overturning a verdict in one of her cases, citing "a pattern of inappropriate and, in some cases, illegal conduct" during the trial. Today Grace's efforts to incriminate defendants don't carry the force of law, but as the clip above shows, she tends to rush to judgment and rarely backs down—a trait she presumably has in common with a lot of her viewers.

As we wait for Grace and everyone who shares her steadfast ignorance to die of natural causes, let's remember that there is some semblance of sanity in this world to combat her blind vitriol. In this case, it came to us courtesy of a rapper with an appreciation for big bootys and True Religion Jeans.

Follow T. Kid on Twitter.

There's one last chance for Adnan Syed, the improbable star of the podcast Serial whose story has captivated NPR-loving American hearts and minds for months now, to overturn his murder conviction.

The only problem is the prosecutors with the state of Maryland who stand in the way.

For those who haven't been tuning into the hit podcast, Syed was convicted of murdering his high school ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 1999, and has spent the last 15 years in prison, all the while maintaining his innocence. The show, which was created by the people behind This American Life, revived interest in his case by serializing 12 episodes worth of interviews and investigation. Lurking beneath the surface of this pop culture phenomenon has been the idea that the wave of fresh scrutiny might help Syed finally win his freedom.

But prosecutors urged a Maryland court to deny his request for appeal on Wednesday, rejecting Syed's claim that his lawyer was ineffective and didn't help him negotiate a plea deal.

Toward the end of the series, Serial creator Sarah Koenig enlisted the help of the Innocence Project Clinic at the University of Virginia Law School, and volunteers with the group told her that the evidence against Syed was shaky at best. (The Innocence Project has been pressuring the court to look at potential DNA evidence.) As Koenig illustrated, the state's case hinged upon the testimony of a single star witness: Jay Wilds, a local Balitmore pot dealer who testified that he helped Syed bury Lee's body.

Wilds now feels like he was demonized by the show and that Koenig was an advocate for Syed rather than an impartial reporter. He's not the only one who was unhappy with the case that Serial built: In interviews with the original prosecutor, Natasha Vargas-Cooper and Ken Silverstein of the Intercept have essentially argued that for all its gross flaws, the American criminal justice system nabbed the right man.

Syed's last-ditch appeal claimed that his now-deceased attorney didn't interview a schoolmate who might have given him an alibi, and that she didn't help him plea out to a lesser sentence for murder and kidnapping. But in a recommendation released Wednesday afternoon, Assistant Attorney General Edward J. Kelley wrote that there was no evidence that the court would have even accepted a plea deal. In other words Syed's attorney didn't help him secure a deal because no such offer was ever on the table.

Syed is now 34 years old and living in a West Maryland prison, where he is presumably the most famous inmate around. It's unclear when the court will rule on his appeal, but the man whose story has been listened to by millions is likely to see his last shot at redemption pass him by.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

[body_image width='900' height='600' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='i-went-to-an-illegal-pig-killing-party-839-body-image-1421261932.jpg' id='18137']

WARNING: Some of the pictures in this article are graphic photos of a dead pig, but you probably should have thought about that before clicking a link titled "I Went to an Illegal Pig-Killing Party"

This post originally appeared on VICE UK

I'm standing in a blood-filled garage holding a pig's foot. Behind me hangs the foot's owner—an enormous 550-pound swine—being lovingly dismantled by an assortment of Czech men with lots of facial hair. It is 10 AM and I'm already drunk.

I pick up a knife and begin to shave the trotter free of bristles as instructed, when a beaming man who strongly resembles Bob Hoskins suddenly slaps a piece of bread in my hand—bread generously topped by something that looks exactly like vomit.

"What's that?" I ask.

"Brain!" he roars, his brother arriving on cue with a tray loaded with plum brandy. Brain bruschetta in one hand, pig's trotter in the other, the two brothers gawp at me, waiting for me to eat. I bite in, swill it down with the shot one of them has handed me and let out a girly teenage cough. The men chuckle, give me a patronizing slap on the shoulder and hastily return to slice up the carcass.

[body_image width='900' height='1200' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='i-went-to-an-illegal-pig-killing-party-839-body-image-1421262402.jpg' id='18145']

I'm in a small village in the Moravian part of the Czech Republic, celebrating zabíjačka. Loosely translated as "pig slaughter," this rural tradition sees families and friends come together in a boozy, carnival atmosphere to butcher, cut up, and prepare every single part of the pig for consumption. Face, trotters, elbows, the lot. Held any time between December and March, its original purpose was so that villagers could stock up on meat for the winter. But with mini-marts now parked conveniently on every corner, these days it's more about getting your family and friends together to eat a shedload of meat, while also getting really, really wasted.

Bizarrely, the event is technically illegal. As of January, 2012, the EU decided that a pig slaughter party wasn't very ethical and stamped a £10,000 ($15,000) fine on anyone caught holding one (yet foie gras remains totally OK). The Czechs, in typical Czech fashion, responded in the best way possible: by completely ignoring Brussels and carrying on exactly as before.

"Zabíjačka is not some barbaric act," Mr Sehnalik insists. "It is a bedrock of Czech culture and very much part of rural life. The killing is completely humane, and if the EU board had actually seen zabíjačka with their own eyes, they'd all be embarrassed about such a stupid ruling. I honestly don't know anyone who has taken any notice."

[body_image width='900' height='600' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='i-went-to-an-illegal-pig-killing-party-839-body-image-1421262134.jpg' id='18141']

Today's festivities begin at 7 AM on a snow-covered farmyard, and despite it being -10°C, a gaggle of men in chunky pullovers are waiting anxiously for the pig to emerge. And then he does.

Led out by the butcher—a huge Brendan Gleeson figure of a man—the pig is positioned in the middle of the yard and everyone takes up their positions. Then in seconds, it's all over. The butcher shoots the pig in the head with a stun gun, the men dive on him like an onrushing rugby pack, and the butcher slits the pig's throat. Swift, painless, professional.

Delving his hands into the pig's neck, the butcher then scoops its warm blood into a bucket, and an unlucky brother-in-law is given the grim task of stirring it with his bare hands to stop it congealing (to make blood soup with later). Then it's a quick shower and a shave for the pig, and a few shots of slivovice (the plum brandy) for the boys, before the animal is strung up in the garage to disassemble.

[body_image width='900' height='1350' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='i-went-to-an-illegal-pig-killing-party-839-body-image-1421262004.jpg' id='18140']

Once inside, every man, woman and child mucks in with the various tasks—chopping the head up with an axe, pulling out the intestines (the lining is used for sausages), slicing the meat off the carcass, mopping the blood off the floor, mincing the innards and scrambling the eggs for the brain toast. I'm given the much more difficult task of entertaining a three-year-old girl, which mostly involves trying to stop her from seeing the Tupperware box full of discarded body parts. Once the pig has been completely de-bristled—my foot shaving is just a small contribution—the various edible organs are thrown into a vat of water and boiled. And next? More beers and slivovice, of course.

With the organs all nicely boiled, the revelers gather round a table for a quick, meaty snack ( ovar), and as their honored guest, I'm treated to a generous nibble tray of liver, kidney, pancreas and heart. Beautiful. As I wash down the last of the porky treats with my eighth shot of slivovice, I'm praying that the pig's liver I ate will start soaking up the alcohol mine normally would.

[body_image width='900' height='600' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='i-went-to-an-illegal-pig-killing-party-839-body-image-1421262225.jpg' id='18144']

The next few hours, I watch all the preparations with a mixture of disgust and wonderment, and am especially fascinated by the making of the sausages ( jitrnice). All the meat offcuts (knuckle and face), and offal (tongue, heart, and liver) are mixed together with a load of fat. After being boiled up into some kind of weird meaty broth, the resulting sludge is shoved into bits of intestine lining, which looks a bit like sewage being thumbed into a condom.

[body_image width='900' height='675' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='i-went-to-an-illegal-pig-killing-party-839-body-image-1421262168.jpg' id='18142']

In the next room, I find blood soup being prepared in a child's bathtub. This soup ( prdelačka)—pig's blood mixed with groats—isn't my preferred choice, but in the absence of any tinned Heinz, and not wanting to offend my hosts, I tuck in. It tastes like a Bloody Mary with some Cheerios dropped in, but it's strangely good. Beer in hand, I watch the final zabíjačka product being prepared—a kind of gelatine-filled meatloaf (tlacinka) shoved in a cylindrical bag.

"It needs to be cooled for a few days," Eva Mensikova, our host's daughter, tells me. "Then you cut it up into slices and eat it with a bit of vinegar. Washed down with a glass of Czech beer, it's delicious."

With no time to ponder this culinary tip, I'm told to join the rest of the gang for the party to "really start." I've already had 12 shots of brandy and five beers; this is worrying information.

[body_image width='900' height='600' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='i-went-to-an-illegal-pig-killing-party-839-body-image-1421262187.jpg' id='18143']

The uncle's 80-proof homemade brew immediately comes out, and everyone laughs as he fills up a half-pint glass. I'm terrified he will make me drink it, but luckily he just dispenses a shot's worth into my cup and skips on to the next person. As Mr Sehnalik starts up a sing-song of old Czech folk on guitar, I'm handed a final soak-up-the-alcohol snack ( skvarky)—a piece of bread smeared with lard and bits of fatty bacon. It looks pretty vile, but it's not—it's like a packet of Mr Porky's melted on toast, and it tastes amazing.

As the two brothers serenade me at midnight with a Czech rendition of "Let It Be," I decide that now is the time to make my exit. My eyes are red, my stomach is burning, and my legs can barely function. With drunken farewells despatched, the experienced zabíjačka crowd watch the awkward British man stumble out with a mixture of pride and amusement.

I am half-man, half-pig, but I've just about survived. It's been the most surreal degustation of my life, but one that I'm looking forward to repeating all over again next year.

[body_image width='640' height='347' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='there-is-not-going-to-be-a-jewish-exodus-from-the-uk-544-body-image-1421259917.jpg' id='18134']

An anti-Semitic pro-Palestine banner in London in July, but such attitudes are not as prevalent as a new report suggests. Photo by Oscar Webb

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

On the front page of yesterday morning's Independent was a story suggesting the majority of Briton's 290,000-strong Jewish community fear they no longer have a future in Britain. It's a stark and worrying figure, particularly at a time where debates about Jewish safety in Europe are being re-opened. But is it accurate? Are Jewish families in the UK really "at a tipping point"? Are we about to see a mass exodus?

The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA)—the group behind the survey—is a grassroots organization that formed in July 2014 during Israel's war on Gaza. At the time there was a perception that mainstream Jewish institutions were not doing enough to protect the community and the CAA aimed to fill that void, holding rallies, raising awareness, and forging links with local authorities and the government.

Statistical analysis doesn't seem to be their strong point though. Today's research—which has now been reported on across the internet—is an alarmist, hysterical, methodologically flawed, amateur survey that makes almost no effort to represent the voices of the British Jewish community it claims to.

For starters, it was based on the opinions of around 2,230 people on Facebook as a self-selecting online questionnaire. It therefore targeted precisely the kind of people most likely to already have strong concerns about anti-Semitism; Jews that had sought out the CAA online, that knew about its Facebook group and were most likely to express anxieties when they came across the survey.

Then there's its deliberately leading questions and its assumptions biased in a way that bring about the very fears fear it was designed to gauge. One particular question—"Do you think that media bias against Israel fuels persecution of Jews in Britain"—assumes the existence of a "media bias" and encourages people to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

The inclusion of Israel in a survey on anti-Semitism is particularly revealing. I'm a Jew and I have taken part in protests against the actions of the Israeli state. The CAA, which positions itself as an anti-racist campaign group seems to have its own very specific political agenda. Last year the group invited Douglas Murray, a man who described the summer's pro-Gaza rallies—which were largely to do with innocent Palestinians not getting bombed to pieces—as "a disgusting anti-Semitic spectacle," to speak at a rally in London. Their director of communications, Jonathan Sacerdoti, is a former director of public affairs at the Zionist Federation. The group also recently met the home secretary, police, and crown prosecution survey to discuss adopting a definition of anti-semitism which includes criticism of Israel and "taking enforcement actions" against demonstrations that "become threatening," whatever that means.

The CAA survey was bolstered by further research by YouGov, which as Anshel Pfeffer points out in Haaretz—the liberal Israeli broadsheet—has its own problems. 3,411 members of the British public—so not just British Jews—were asked whether they agreed with statements that are meant to be anti-Semitic. Some of them—"in business, Jews are not as honest as most people"—clearly are. But others are more contestable. For instance the statement, "Jews talk about the Holocaust too much in order to get sympathy," would not be seen as anti-Semitic by, say, American-Jewish academic Norman Finkelstein. In his book, Beyond Chitzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, he argues that anti-semitism, and the Holocaust, are routinely used as an excuse for the injustices inflicted on Palestinians.

Thankfully, mainstream Jewish organizations seem keen to distance themselves from both surveys. The Jewish Leadership Council and the Board of Deputies, the chief representative bodies of British Jewry have, this afternoon, criticized its "methodological flaws."

There is still, of course, reason to worry about anti-Semitism. The results of the CAA survey may not represent the majority of the Jewish community but they do certainly represent the voices of some. And that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. Many of today's anxieties seem to stem from this summer where outrage at Israel's war on Gaza affected Jewish communities around the world.

In the UK, the Community Security Trust, putative "guardians" of British Jewry, reported 250 anti-semitic incidents in July alone—when Israel was attacking Gaza once more—a huge average increase for the month. At a cemetery in Rochdale, vandals smashed through Jewish gravestones and in Surrey, Kingston, and Surbiton an A4 note with the words "Child Murderers" was stuck to the front door of synagogues.

I experienced some of this myself. Alongside tens of thousands of well-meaning demonstrators taking to the streets of London to protest Israeli aggression, were people engaging in deliberate anti-Semitism. I saw devils horns strapped onto Netanyahu's head, Stars of David (a symbol of Jewish identity) dripping with blood and all kinds of causal equivalences drawn between the Nazis and the Jewish state.

These things are disturbing and need to be challenged as much as possible by anti-racists. But they shouldn't be exaggerated either. Nobody is expecting a mass exodus of British Jews who have lived here uninterrupted since the 17th century. The community may not be central to global Jewry but it's an extremely well established and well integrated group, fully participant in all forms of mainstream social and cultural life. There is no state-sponsored incitement, no media hysteria, and no limitations on what Jews can do in their public and private lives. From my experiences, albeit anecdotal, most Jews feel an extremely strong connection as Jews to where they live.

More methodologically sound polls seem to bear this out. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center last year found that 83 percent of British citizens hold "favorable" views towards Jews. It's not 100 percent but it's a long way away from the alarmist 45 percent figure for people agreeing with anti-semitic statements.

Another bit of work by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research, an organisation with more experience than the CAA in statistics, concluded that, "there is evidence to indicate that most British Jews feel fully integrated into British society, and that discrimination against Jews is largely a thing of the past."

It wasn't always like this of course. There was a time during the 1930s and 40s, where racism was an unavoidable part of British Jewish life. The CAA's research attempts to draw connections between that period and today. Fifty-three percent responded that contemporary anti-Semitism echoes that period in our history. But that comparison is simply ludicrous. Back then, black-shirted fascists could be heard trudging through Dalston chanting "The Yids, the Yids. We gotta get rid of the Yids." Words like Perish Judah were chalked onto the walls of East London. Swastikas were drawn onto synagogues from Bethnal Green to Burnt Oak. The British far-right still exists—but the target of its racism has moved on from Jews to other immigrant groups.

Again, that's not to say anti-Semitism doesn't exist in the UK. It does and it probably always will. Last weeks attack on a Kosher market in France, was a reminder that anti-Semitism in Europe has not gone away either. In 2014, 5,000 Jews emigrated to Israel from France, the largest exodus in over four decades.

But the message should be clear: Jews have a future in Britain, they have a future in Europe, and they have a future all over the world. Netanyahu, far-right bigots, and those happy to promote poorly designed surveys may not like or accept it, but the Jewish Diaspora isn't going anywhere.

Follow Philip on Twitter.

[body_image width='1200' height='877' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='welcome-to-speeden-762-body-image-1421235875.jpg' id='17980']Ängby camping, Bromma: Adidas cap, Adidas T-shirt, Palace X Adidas jacket, and Adidas sweatpants and shoes.

This post originally appeared on VICE Sweden

PHOTOGRAPHER: Felix Swensson
STYLIST: Fiffi Jenkins

Producer: Hugo Anderholm
Model: Björn Winiger at Nisch Management

Thanks to Sara Brolin

[body_image width='1200' height='1760' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='welcome-to-speeden-762-body-image-1421237127.jpg' id='17989']
Brommaplan parking lot, Bromma: Adidas jacket and T-shirt, Palace X Adidas sweatpants, Manhattan fanny pack.

[body_image width='1200' height='805' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='welcome-to-speeden-762-body-image-1421236528.jpg' id='17988']Alley next to Magnus Ladulåsgatan, Stockholm: All items by Adidas.

[body_image width='1200' height='1728' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='welcome-to-speeden-762-body-image-1421237165.jpg' id='17990']Council estate at Södermalm, Stockholm: Oakley sunglasses, Adidas jacket and sweatpants, Ralph Lauren shirt, Nike trainers.

[body_image width='1200' height='1649' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='welcome-to-speeden-762-body-image-1421237193.jpg' id='17991']Solstrålens Pizza, Stockholm: All items by Adidas.

[body_image width='1200' height='1674' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='welcome-to-speeden-762-body-image-1421237244.jpg' id='17992']Palace cap, Stutterheim jacket.

[body_image width='1200' height='1765' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='welcome-to-speeden-762-body-image-1421237279.jpg' id='17993'] Ängbyplan tube station, Bromma: Palace bucket hat, Adidas jacket, T-shirt and bag.

[body_image width='1200' height='804' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='welcome-to-speeden-762-body-image-1421237302.jpg' id='17994']The Swedenborgsgatan viaduct, Stockholm: Palace bucket hat, all other items by Adidas.

Miners crush rock containing gold ore at the La Roca mine in Antioquia, Colombia. Photos by Stephen Ferry

When people in Segovia, Colombia, a dusty gold-mining center 125 miles northeast of Medellín as the crow flies and six hours away by road, talked about what was happening there, they said the explosion of violence in the town had started with the massacre. Four members and associates of a family had been ambushed at a meeting to decide the fate of a successful local mine, called La Roca. Behind the killings, they said, was a prominent local figure. He was rarely spoken of in anything much louder than a whisper. He was known simply as Jairo Hugo.

To understand Jairo Hugo Escobar Cataño—his rarely used full name—you have to understand the gold. Colombia's gold reserves were a formidable prize for Spanish colonists, who eventually imported African slaves to work the colony's rich veins. It has always been a profitable industry, but perhaps never so much as when global gold prices began to rise steadily in the last decade. Between 2000 and 2007, the average price of gold more than doubled, from $279 to $695 an ounce. By 2011, it had more than doubled again, to $1,572 an ounce. A gold rush swept through swaths of Colombia, and narco-trafficking groups—both guerrillas and paramilitary organizations—turned to the precious metal to make up for lost profits in the drug trade. In many parts of the country, gold became the new cocaine.

Much of the country's production is still the work of traditional miners—often prospecting without official permission on the margins of big companies' legal claims. The rest comes mostly from the larger wildcatting outfits that popped up across the country as the market exploded, dynamiting hillsides, dredging up entire riverbeds, and tearing through pristine landscapes with backhoes, leaving moonscapes in their wake. These operations are often intertwined—voluntarily or otherwise—with Colombia's criminal underworld. Many mines pay an extortion tax to whichever armed group is in charge of the region. Sometimes outlaws act as shareholders in a mine. The result: A portion of gold sales goes directly into the coffers of militias.

In few parts of the country was this as obvious as the region where Hugo had risen to unofficial power. Hugo had worked for a time as a miner, then served for five years as an auxiliary policeman in a settlement near Segovia. In the 1990s, he made his first foray into the business of gold trading—buying gold directly from mines, then refining and melting it down into bars to sell to big exporters in Medellín.

Hugo was a wise businessman, and soon he branched out on his own, starting two gold-buying shops. Then, in 2008, he persuaded a large mining concern to lease him one of the company's abandoned properties. His mine, La Empalizada, quickly became one of the most profitable in Segovia's history. He also seems to have developed links at this time to the powerful Rastrojos, a drug-trafficking and paramilitary organization spun out of one of the country's most powerful cartels.

I was told that in his hardscrabble hometown of Remedios, about 30 minutes from Segovia, "they saw him as a king, as a god."

The owners of La Roca, the mine that sparked the massacre, were a family called the Serafines, and they were emblematic of the class of smallholding miners who had been excavating the Colombian countryside for generations. For 18 months the Serafines dug, blasted, and hauled rock on an illegal claim until finally, in the spring of 2011, they struck an incredibly rich vein. When I visited, La Roca was producing about $700,000 worth of gold a month, making it one of the richest independent mines in Segovia. The Serafines went from poor church mice to gods overnight.

Shortly after the Serafines struck gold, two armed men showed up at a family member's house. The men, as the family later told the story, were members of the Rastrojos. Not only did they demand an extortion tax—they claimed that Hugo wanted the mine. Later, at a riverside meeting, the Rastrojos told them that Hugo was offering the armed group $60,000 to forcibly take over the mine on his behalf. "No one leaves until we settle this," the Rastrojos' head commander said.

But the Serafines refused to budge, and the following December two family members and three of their associates were brought to a meeting outside Segovia, in a place called Altos de Muertos—the Heights of the Dead. Four of them were shot almost immediately. A police investigator at the scene described them to his colleague as re-muerto, or very, very dead.

About a month beforehand, the Rastrojos' national commanders had made a deal with a group called the Urabeños—the only other criminal organization of national scope. They were a group of ex-paramilitaries that had expanded beyond their base, and in doing so they had come into conflict with the Rastrojos over drug-trafficking routes and territory. Growing weary of bloodshed, the two groups decided to negotiate a truce. The agreement handed the Urabeños control of the northeastern gold-mining region in exchange for a reported 6 billion pesos, or $3.3 million.

After the massacre, local Rastrojo dissenters, distrustful of the deal and wary of the Urabeños' intentions, broke away to form a new militia. The dissident Rastrojos levied a new tax on the region's inhabitants and mines and used the proceeds to buy machine guns, mortars, and grenade launchers through their contacts in the Colombian army. Soon their ranks swelled to almost 200 fighters. A war erupted between the Urabeños and the dissident Rastrojos.

As they fought for control of the northeast, civilians were caught in the middle. The militant groups both demanded absolute loyalty, and assistance, from the people who lived in their territories. Anyone could be accused of being an informant—a store owner, a lottery vendor, a cab driver, a miner—and anyone could be a victim.

Police patrolling the streets of Segovia

The surviving Serafines remained a major, if not the major, target of the dissident Rastrojos, whom the Serafines accused of serving Hugo's wicked desires. After the murder of their family members, the Serafines realized they had two options. They could lose a lot of blood and money in outright conflict. Or they could employ a cold-war strategy—weakening their enemies not with bullets but with the strategic exchange of intelligence, letting the police and military fight the war for them. The Serafines opted for the latter, though they still hired a protective army of 30-plus armed men.

In the attorney general's office in Medellín, the task of dismantling the mutating monster of the dissident Rastrojos in the northeast had fallen to a state prosecutor. Among the many ongoing investigations that landed on his desk was the case that police investigators had been building against Hugo. Finally, on November 11, 2012, an arrest warrant for Hugo was quietly slipped in amid those for 17 dissident Rastrojos. Regional police apprehended him shortly thereafter.

When I returned to Segovia less than three months later, in February 2013, I found the town in an unofficial state of emergency. The war had raged on without Hugo. By the end of 2012, Segovia's gold production had nearly doubled, and its murder rate had quadrupled. Remedios and Segovia now had the highest and second-highest homicide rates, respectively, in the country.

The fighting seemed like it would never end—and then, one day, it did. At the beginning of May 2013, copies of a communiqué fluttered down onto Segovia's streets, announcing "the end of the war" in the northeast. "We sat down at the table with only one intent," it read: "to stop the barbarity of blood. Today, thanks to GOD, we are breathing Peace." The Urabeños and the dissident Rastrojos, the leaflet explained, had decided that they were better off joining forces than fighting each other. The newly unified outlaws invited "everyone who fled their land to return."

Several dissident Rastrojos said Hugo was convinced that the Serafines were behind an earlier attempt on Hugo's life, and that that was his motive for ordering their deaths. Some pointed to his desire for La Roca. Other dissident Rastrojos told prosecutors that shortly after recovering from an assassination attempt, Hugo had met with several of the group's commanders and negotiated a price of $400,000 to kill the Serafines.

Meanwhile, the Serafines had their own secrets. Months after the Urabeños had taken control of the region and the gold mines, three jailed dissident Rastrojos told me the Serafines had been financing their enemy, the Urabeños, during much of the war. It was a claim the head of the Serafines' security team eventually confirmed to me, after telling me that he and his colleagues had also provided the Urabeños with information—photos, names, and other forms of intelligence—to help squash their rival. "I put the information about the bandidos on a plate, and they killed each other," the security chief explained to me on a visit to the mine one sleepy summer day.

I thought back to a conversation I had had with a state prosecutor in June 2012, when his office was in the midst of its campaign to crush the dissident Rastrojos. "They sometimes say that we are useful idiots," he told me, a note of sadness in his voice. He knew as well as anyone that in Colombia crime abhors a vacuum. "In a way, you could almost say we are giving this territory to the Urabeños," he said.

Perhaps the Serafines were no better than Hugo, backing a bloodthirsty militia to serve their own ends. Or maybe it was naive to think that anyone in Segovia had the luxury of not choosing sides. Trying to stay above a conflict when power shifted as capriciously and violently as it did in Segovia was an impossible business. As one Rastrojo commander told me, there was only one law that held in the town—"the bigger fish eats the smaller fish."

For the full story behind Segovia's gold war, check out The Devil Underground at Atavist.com, reported in partnership with the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.

[body_image width='1200' height='800' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='photographs-of-chinas-cancer-villages-body-image-1421205452.jpg' id='17930']

Children in east Beijing

UK-based photojournalist Souvid Datta learned about Chinese air pollution at a young age. While at boarding school, a good friend's younger brother died of lung cancer at age 16. The family was Chinese and their doctor theorized that airborne particles known as PM2.5 (meaning they are 2.5 micrometers or smaller) contributed to his death. When inhaled, these tiny and often toxic particles pass through lung membranes and enter the bloodstream. While they don't always cause cancer, they are a ubiquitous byproduct of burning coal. And in China, PM2.5 has become a part of life.

Souvid's lesson in pollution terminology stayed with him, and years later, when he began documenting the problem, he stumbled across another strange term sadly unique to China: Cancer Villages. Souvid subsequently spent months traveling these tragic areas and returned with these photos. We talked to him about pollution, cancer, and hope.

[body_image width='1200' height='800' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='photographing-of-chinas-cancer-villages-body-image-1421203125.jpg' id='17926'] A Shuogang Group steel factory on the edge of Beijing pumps waste into a dry lake

VICE: Can you explain what a "cancer village" is?
Souvid Datta: Cancer villages, by virtue of being surrounded by chemical plants or coal-fired power plants, are villages with soil and water supplies that are contaminated, usually with heavy metals. These are entire villages where every other house contains someone dying of cancer or some sort of respiratory problem.

Bleak. How did you find these places?
I did a lot of research through NGOs and some places I found on local news reports, social media, and Google Maps, but then as soon as I arrived the plan began to change. A lot of the people and NGOs dropped out and I realized just what a big deal it was to speak up.

[body_image width='1200' height='800' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='photographing-of-chinas-cancer-villages-body-image-1421203188.jpg' id='17927']
Mourning a dead brother on the edge of Xintai

So what did you do?
Xingtai (in the northeast) was named China's most polluted city in 2013 [pdf] so it was one of the first places I went. I didn't have a fixer or translator. There was just one girl at the hotel who could speak some English and she agreed to walk me around. When we got to the edge of town we found this guy named Zhang Wei crouched by his brother's grave, who'd died from lung cancer and chromium poisoning. Speaking with this man and hearing his story made sense. It just vindicated my reasons for being there. I felt like I had something important that I had to share with the world.

Did the pollution make you sick yourself?
I'd sometimes get hay fever in the summer. But after just a few days in Xingtai, I was coughing up weird stuff. If I looked at my spit it had a brown sediment in it. I can only imagine what it's like to live there.

What did the locals have say about it? Were they open to talking?
Yeah, a lot of people are angry and want their story told. I was actually surprised about this. Before I left, I was told locals wouldn't talk, but as soon as I went out into the rural areas, where these issues are the worst, people are furious. Everyone knows someone affected.

[body_image width='1200' height='800' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='photographing-of-chinas-cancer-villages-body-image-1421203285.jpg' id='17928'] Since Guan-yin's husband died of stomach cancer two years earlier, she's been pushing for change. She says she's been harassed by authorities constantly

Are there repercussions for speaking out?
Well, people are either faced with intimidation or are just stonewalled, which is kind of characteristic of how the Chinese government has handled this for the past 15 years.

Did you see examples of people being silenced?
I was working with a woman named Wei Dongying who's been campaigning against wastewater dumped in her village for the past 17 years or so. She's kept track of who's got cancer, where they live, and where companies have been dumping waste. She's got evidence—photos and bottles of sampled water that are ridiculous. They're all blue or green in color. So when I went to meet her I got lost on the way. I came up to a fire station thinking they'd be helpful. And they were, initially, but then I mentioned this woman's name and they called out some senior officials who told me she was dead. They told me to leave and if I was found contacting her there'd be trouble. Later I actually found her house. I was there for five minutes when the police arrived and confiscated my equipment.

Let's talk about the photos. Something that I think is unique is that you've focused more on people than the poisoned landscapes. Why is that?
I focused on people because I think very few people my age particularly care about pollution. I think that's because we're bombarded with disaster imagery—babies wearing filter masks, apocalyptic smog, that sort of thing—and that distances us from the story. When I thought about what motivated me to go there, it was the human experience of what happened to my friend. I was more drawn to how people are being treated. That was the story for me.

[body_image width='1200' height='800' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='photographing-of-chinas-cancer-villages-body-image-1421203327.jpg' id='17929'] A worker beneath a scale model of Beijing's vast Central Business District

How have people reacted to these photos?
I think the main reaction has been anger, which I'm quite glad about. This is what it should provoke. When you see these people up against incredibly abstract, corporate forces, which are stripping them of basic rights to drink clean water, people should be angry.

And your friend who lost his brother, what was his reaction?
He was encouraging. He's living in Beijing at the moment and it's affected him deeply but he can't do much about it. But he also comes from the affluent part of China where people live in nice houses with air filters. They don't have cause to find out about what's happening to people in smaller villages. He was glad that I got this info out.

Interview by Julian Morgans. Follow him on Twitter.

[body_image width='2000' height='1091' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='behind-anonymouss-operation-to-reveal-britains-elite-child-rape-syndicate-273-body-image-1421249154.jpg' id='18070']

Anonymous protesters. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

As last week's horrifying news from France dominated the European and global news cycles, much of the media's attention toward the growing allegations of British political elite being involved in a ring of child rape has notably subsided. Online, however, a group of activists—some associated with the hacktivist group Anonymous—have been pushing for more attention to be brought to this deeply unsettling issue percolating in the UK. Their efforts are being organized under the hashtag banner of #OpDeathEaters.

In December, Scotland Yard made the shocking admission that new allegations pertaining to the rape and murder of young boys by so-called VIPs in Britain's political world are true.

A man who goes only by the pseudonym Nick came out to the media and the authorities to allege that he was the victim of rape and abuse by high-profile political figures in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. According to Kenny McDonald, the detective in charge of the investigation into Nick's claims, "Nick has been spoken to by experienced officers from the child abuse team and experienced officers from the murder investigation team. They and I believe what Nick is saying is credible and true."

Nick went on to tell the BBC that children who were swept up in this VIP ring were brutally abused, and would be attacked if they did not obey the men who were holding them hostage. He also describes what appears to have been a fairly brazen operation: "People who drove us around could come forward. Staff in some of the locations could come forward. There are so many people who must have had suspicions. We weren't smuggled in under a blanket through the back door. It was done openly and people must have questioned that and they need to come forward."

Just as Britain was processing the shocking news of child rape and murder by its political elite, in January, Prince Andrew was accused of having sex with a minor who alleges she was the "sex slave" of a billionaire. A lawsuit brought against the US Department of Justice by a woman named Virginia Roberts has alleged that Jeffrey Epstein—a disgraced financier and known friend of Prince Andrew who, in 2008, pleaded guilty to "felony solicitation and procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution"—had forced her to have sex with Prince Andrew.

Epstein himself is no stranger to allegations and lawsuits pertaining to sexual crimes involving children. Three 12-year-old girls were allegedly brought to Epstein from France as a "birthday gift." He has also been sued over a dozen times by girls who claim they were abused while underage, all of which were settled out of court. A former Palm Beach Police Chief whose department investigated Epstein in 2005, after complaints were brought to them by the parents of a 14-year-old girl, told the Daily Beast that Epstein's case was "minimized by the State Attorney's Office, then bargained down by the U.S. Department of Justice."

The core of Roberts's claim against the DOJ is that they should throw out the plea deal given to Epstein in 2007.

[body_image width='1200' height='800' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='behind-anonymouss-operation-to-reveal-britains-elite-child-rape-syndicate-273-body-image-1421248917.jpg' id='18066']

Prince Andrew. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

As for Prince Andrew, he and Buckingham Palace have categorically denied that Roberts's claims are true. He may even be immune to the lawsuit, as it was filed in American courts. Prime Minister David Cameron, however, has so far refused to defend Prince Andrew publicly.

A photograph of Prince Andrew, with his arm around a 17-year-old Virginia Roberts, has since appeared in various media outlets.

In her suit, Virginia Roberts claims she was used "for sexual purposes to many other powerful men, including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister and other world leaders." Photographs have placed Stephen Hawking and Bill Clinton on Jeffrey Epstein's private island—which has been described as an "Island of Sin"—though no such allegations have been brought against either man.

VICE contacted Heather Marsh, an activist who, in her words, "set the objective [for #OpDeathEaters] and brought the initial research and story to the Internet where it has been taken up by Anonymous and others." Marsh does not identify as a member of Anonymous.

According to her, the central objective of #OpDeathEaters is to "establish independent, internationally linked, victim-led inquiries into high-level complicity, obstruction of justice, and cover-ups in the paedosadism and child-trafficking industries." Its targets are: "Those in positions of power who control or enable the industry, globally."

When asked about the media attention to this issue so far, Marsh rated it "ridiculously low," adding that this is "the biggest story to break in the UK in centuries."

She continued: "What media coverage there is from the more prominent outlets is a diversion instead of investigation. Media has consistently depicted the rape, torture, murder, abduction, and blackmail of children as 'child sex' or a 'sex scandal' and the child victims as 'prostitutes' or even 'rent boys.'"

The connection between Epstein and Prince Andrew, Marsh believes, "could potentially implicate members of the royal household and others in their circle in not just complicity in the crimes of child trafficking and rape but also in obstruction of justice and influence peddling in criminal networks."

To be clear, Prince Andrew is being accused of having sex with Roberts when she was a minor, who claims she was forced on him by Epstein as part of "an orgy with numerous other underaged girls." He's not being accused of child trafficking itself.

In critiquing the media coverage of the Prince Andrew allegations thus far, Marsh pointed out that it is often "presented as a 'salacious' story about 'Prince Andrew's personal life' instead of the matter of urgent public interest it is." She went on to say: "The equally urgent stories [about high-profile human trafficking rings] in other countries are also ignored in both their own and international media, and all of these stories are presented as isolated incidents instead of the interconnected global network of influence and potential blackmail they are part of."

While Marsh's claims of an "interconnected global network" of human trafficking by high-profile politicians and powerful figures are impossible to prove, it is true that much of the reporting on the Prince Andrew allegations fails to contextualize it against the Scotland Yard-approved claims of a British VIP child rape and murder syndicate, which, at the very least, is believed to have operated in the 1970s and 1980s.

Marsh told VICE that Britain's new #WeProtect internet filter, meant to keep child porn off the web, is also making research into this subject difficult for her counterparts in England. She also is very clear to distinguish the seriousness of the crimes of Epstein, the proven allegations against British VIPs in the 70s and 80s, and the potential wrongdoing of Prince Andrew, as different than just "lonely men in their basements," adding: "They were officials with drivers, security, an army of staff, secret services, courts and police covering for them and years of victims and they belonged to international networks."

When asked about the success of #OpDeathEaters thus far, Marsh told VICE: "My initial goals were to have a core group of researchers, journalists and activists accept the validity and scale of the story and begin looking further, to change the propaganda in the way the story was covered, and to have the momentum unstoppable by Christmas. I believe those things have been successful. Having this fairly unbelievable story widely accepted was the biggest hurdle, and one I had to bank all of my credibility on, but it is not questioned by anyone who has seen the data."

Follow Patrick on Twitter.

[body_image width='800' height='510' path='images/content-images/2015/01/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/15/' filename='british-prisoners-are-dying-378-body-image-1421323895.jpg' id='18293']

HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs. Image via Wikimedia Commons

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Prison is the last place you want to be if you fall ill. Patterns of substandard treatment, medical negligence, and misdiagnosis are abundant. Even if you are transferred to a prison ward in a regular hospital, you'll probably be handcuffed to your bed, no matter how intimate the examination. You are an inmate at all times. Even if you're dying.

In 2013, a report on end of life care, the UK Prisons and Probation Ombudsman's office found that over a quarter of prisoners in its sample facing death had no palliative care plans. It also found that support for families was inconsistent. More inmates needed to be granted compassionate release—allowing them to die with dignity, around family and friends.

As the British prison system has been cut by $400 million and lost 28 percent of its staff in the last three years, more and more hospital appointments have been cancelled due to a lack of officers to escort prisoners. If you have chronic chest pain, for example, you might have to wait months to see a doctor. By which point the prognosis of the cancer you may have been incubating will become far less promising.

Jason Grant experienced the ills of prison healthcare firsthand. For months, he requested to see a doctor about pains in his chest but failed to get an appointment. "There was a long delay in complaining and being seen by doctors," Jason's sister, Jessica Grant, tells me. "If he'd been able to walk into a doctors like we can, maybe he'd still be here now, who knows."

Jason—on an IPP sentence (indeterminate imprisonment for public protection) for attempted robbery, unlawful wounding, and possession of an imitation firearm—was told he had terminal cancer, while handcuffed to a prison officer, last March. "They didn't even warn us or let us know we could go with him to the hospital to be told the news," his sister explains. Without treatment, it was thought that he would live for three months. With treatment, eight months.

While in prison, Jessica says the healthcare Jason received was sub-standard. He had to wait all night for his painkillers—not an unusual occurrence in prisons, as night officers don't have the authority to administer drugs. "I remember one day he wanted to go the hospital, but there was nobody to take him so he had to sit in agony for two days without his proper medication," Jessica explains.

[body_image width='700' height='409' path='images/content-images/2015/01/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/15/' filename='british-prisoners-are-dying-378-body-image-1421321752.jpg' id='18273']

Jason Grant. Image courtesy of Jessica Grant

In light of this, Jason and his family decided to apply for compassionate release—a process that grants prisoners early release, allowing them to die at home. His first two applications were rejected because the doctor said he might live for a couple more months, meaning Jason no longer met the "critical" category that warrants release.

By this point, however, Jason's chemotherapy treatments had taken their toll and began to make him very ill. In the end, he made the difficult decision to stop the treatment. "He said, 'I'd rather die quickly and be with you than have my life last longer and die in here alone,'" says Jessica.

Nevertheless, Jason's request for compassionate release was beset with bureaucratic obstacles. "They would ask for impossible certainties," says Jessica, "like the doctor promising he would not reoffend while he was out." His probation officer—the woman who was in charge of deciding whether he came home—hadn't been to visit Jason once during the whole time he was in prison. In the end, when she finally did meet him for the first time, Jessica says: "She cried with my mom and said, 'I'm so sorry that I've done this, I didn't realize how ill he was.' But it was too late."

Whether it's a migraine or a heart attack, the long chain of actions involved in receiving treatment overburdens the system. Inmates may have to sit in pain for hours. Days, even.

Eventually, the family decided to start a campaign for his release, gathering thousands of signatures for a petition and writing to MPs. Finally, Jason was released in September. By this time, though, he was gravely ill.

"By the time they let him home, he had no quality of life whatsoever," says Jessica. "He was so ill he couldn't even make it down to my house a quick drive away. He was in so much pain that he couldn't be away from the hospice for more than a few hours to have his medication."

After less than two months at home, Jason died on November 11, 2014. He was 46. Born and bred in Hackney, the father of two had served nine years, despite the fact that, when he was sentenced, the judge had recommended a sentence of three years, three months. IPP sentencing—introduced by Labor in 2003 and designed for serious violent and sexual offenders, rather than those convicted of theft, like Jason—has no fixed length of time, i.e. there is no date set for the individual to be released.

Only, more than six years after his recommended release date, he was still inside. Jason was given the IPP sentence in the first place because, according to Jessica, he was "deemed a danger to the public." At the time he was sentenced, though, countless people were given IPP sentences for non-violent and sexual assault crimes. It appears to have been mis-used in many cases during the period. The case of mobile phone thief Leroy Douglas is another example.

Fortunately, IPP was scrapped and ruled unjust by the European Court of Human Rights in 2012. But with over 5,000 IPP prisoners still locked up and only 400 released each year, it could take nearly a decade to clear the backlog. Last year, it was thought that 3,500 prisoners were behind bars for longer than necessary.

For Jessica, there is no consolation to be found. "Everyone can take a wrong turn," she says. "It was disgusting the way Jason was treated."

Jason isn't alone, though. Most UK prisons have basic, overstretched healthcare departments with no internal hospital facilities. In most cases, prisoners must be sent to local hospitals for appointments. However, as Jason discovered, the shortage of prison officers to escort inmates means waiting lists are long and appointments are frequently canceled.

When prison healthcare was taken over by the NHS in 2005, it was thought that quality of care would radically improve. Prior to that it had been managed by the Prison Medical Service—an institution famed for negligence. Healthcare has improved under the NHS, but the secure and bureaucratic nature of the prison environment means it cannot compare to what those on the outside receive.

Prison bureaucracy is iron-clad. Unlike us, inmates cannot simply head to their local doctor or emergency room when they fall ill. Instead, they have to first wait for the prison healthcare department to respond to their query, then arrange an external hospital appointment and then free up some officers for the escort.

Access to medication is an issue, too. Ibuprofen is the only drug sold in prison canteens, and prisoners must wait for prescriptions to pass through various departments. So, whether it's a migraine or a heart attack, the long chain of actions involved in receiving treatment overburdens the system. Inmates may have to sit in pain for hours. Days, even.

A very small minority of prisons do have palliative care units, but there are no national standards on what an end of life care unit has to provide. What's more, there is no aggregate data on prison palliative care units—particularly surprising when you consider that older prisoners are the fastest-growing group in the custodial population.

Since 2002, the number of prisoners aged 60 and older has more than doubled—a direct result of increased sentence lengths, stringent license conditions and the recent surge in historic sex abuse cases. As the prison population has aged, more have died while inside. In 2013, 100 people over 50 died of natural causes in prison—a staggering 79 percent increase in the last decade.

Recent research indicates that older prisoners have a physiological age of ten years older than they actually are—a result of bad diet, insufficient healthcare, smoking, poverty, alcoholism, and substance abuse while incarcerated. But in a prison system built to punish young criminals, older prisoners are often denied proper healthcare and end of life palliative care plans. In addition, the number of prisoners who are granted compassionate release has slowly been falling for the last five years, because—as Jason and his family found out—prison policy only allows prisoners to apply for release once they've been given three months to live. In turn, slow paperwork means people often pass away before it's granted.

Alex Cavendish, who served five years in prison, worked as an "Insider" during his time sentence. This involved working as a peer mentor and helping prisoners draft complaints about medical negligence to both the prison service and solicitors. We spoke at length about some of the upsetting cases he witnessed.

"One time, someone got injured while playing football. It was put down as a bad sprain even though it was definitely a compound fracture—the guy's bones were coming through the skin, but healthcare was doing nothing," Cavendish explains. In the end, one of the gym officers who happened to have worked as a medic in the army noticed the injury. "He was finally taken to hospital in an ambulance, otherwise he would have had all kinds of other complications."

Recent research indicates that older prisoners have a physiological age of ten years older than they actually are—a result of bad diet, insufficient healthcare, smoking, poverty, alcoholism, and substance abuse while incarcerated.

On another occasion, a prisoner was prescribed the wrong medication—even though it clearly stated on his file that he was allergic. "He arrived at the education department where I was working and took his medicine. Within five minutes, we had a code blue and he was unconscious and not breathing. It took ten minutes from the code blue to healthcare getting to him because of all the communication and all locked doors. Luckily, a number of us were trained in CPR to keep him alive while they waited. But he could easily have died or suffered brain damage."

Despite stories like Cavendish's, the issue of prison healthcare does not look set to be improving. In fact, we've seen a clear drop in individual prison performances over the last year. The number of prisons whose performance is "of concern" and "of serious concern" rose from 13 percent in 2012-2013 to 23 percent in 2013-2014.

Prisons exist to keep potentially harmful individuals away from the public. Inmates are confined as punishment—not to be punished. You don't become a sub-species when you hand over your personal documents at the prison gates. Every human being deserves access to proper healthcare when they need it.

Follow Maya on Twitter.

[body_image width='1200' height='900' path='images/content-images/2015/01/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/14/' filename='its-time-to-come-to-terms-with-my-anxiety-135-body-image-1421247030.jpg' id='18048']

The author

I remember watching Annie Hall for the first time when I was 12 years old. It instantly became my favorite movie even though I didn't understand half of what was going on. The drug jokes, sex jokes, and repeated references to some guy name Freud consistently went over my adolescent head—but the the hypochondria, the self-deprecation, and the constant worrying captivated me.

I was a California preteen in the early 2000s who finally found someone she could identify with: a balding man in his 40s living in 1970s New York. He called it being "neurotic," which essentially means a functioning crazy person. The movie made all these character flaws seem charming; desirable, even. For a long time, I prided myself on my so-called neurosis. I told myself at an early age that it was OK for me to carry around the constant worry and never-ending feelings of fear. It's what makes me funny, like Woody Allen. To an extent, this is true, which is probably why I've ignored the fact that what I really have is severe anxiety.

My earliest memory of catastrophic thinking happened when I was around nine years old. I tried to fall asleep, but my mind would wander. I'd often start talking to God in my head. I would beg him to make me skinny, but I'd also ask, Can you hear my thoughts, God? From there, my next thought would be, Fuck you God, I hate you. Then I'd freak out and apologize to God. I'm sorry God, I'm so sorry. I don't know why I said that. Then it would happen again. Fuck you God, you suck. I kept sabotaging my own apologies. In the same thought that I'd beg for forgiveness, I'd keep cussing him out. God, please. You know I don't mean that. I don't know why I keep saying this. Fuck you. Fuck you, God. I hate you. It was a vicious cycle that could only be stopped by me opening my eyes and turning on the TV.

Even though I no longer believe in God—or at least no longer care that he can hear me cuss him out—I still can't be alone with my thoughts for too long. No matter how pleasant they start out, my brain finds a way to make even my happiest fantasies turn into something like, What if I babysit someone's kid and accidentally kill them? Then an image of a toddler I'm looking after appears in my head. She's grabbing a knife in the kitchen while I'm distracted by something else. I see her stab herself and die. It's all my fault. The thought of this makes my heart race, and my body gets tense. I feel an immense wave of guilt.

Of course I tell myself this is stupid, and that it's pointless to think about. Why the hell am I making myself worried about being responsible for a fictional toddler's death? I try to think of something else, but everything goes back to that goddamn kid stabbing herself with a big kitchen knife. That's when I open my eyes and turn on Netflix. Thanks to this child, I watched every episode of Cheers in one week. Thanks to convincing myself I have an undiagnosed brain tumor and/or am going to be murdered by a vicious stalker, I've seen every episode of Frasier. The list goes on. I've even watched every episode of How I Met Your Mother—that's how desperate I am to not be alone with my own mind.

Sure, having trouble sleeping at night and watching classic American sitcoms as a result of it doesn't seem so bad. However, there have been two particularly extreme incidents in my life that made me feel like this "neurotic" thing might not be so cute anymore.

It was my senior year of college. I decided to drive home at 3 AM from a friend's house. I had had a few drinks, but was desperate to sleep on my own bed. It was my first (and only) time ever driving after having consumed alcohol. I wasn't drunk, but knew that if I got pulled over I would get a DUI. It was late at night in my small college town, and the roads were completely empty. I told myself I was fine to drive the two miles to home, but as I started driving, that confidence went away. What if I'm really drunk, and don't realize it? I stopped at a 7-Eleven to get a bottle of water and a taquito. Then I pulled out of the 7-Eleven parking lot and got home safely.

The next morning, I replayed the drive home in my head—but as I did so, I convinced myself that when I backed out of that parking lot, I must have hit someone with my car and not realized it. I grew so consumed with the fear of this being true to the point where I had to call the 7-Eleven and speak with an employee. Someone picked up, and I asked, "Did anything at your store happen last night? At around three in the morning? Like a car accident or something?" He paused to think, mumbled a bit, and ultimately said no. I was relieved, but also terrified. This was the first time a catastrophic thought of mine had entered the physical world. I knew the whole time that I was being paranoid. I knew that I didn't hit anyone with my car in the parking lot, but this time I needed the confirmation from a source that wasn't me: a confused 7-Eleven employee.

For the rest of that year—almost every time I drove—a brief image of a dead body stud to the back wheels of my car would enter my mind. For a split second, it would feel like I might actually be dragging a corpse behind me. As idiotic as this is, it made me realize that I have a pretty messed up way of dealing with guilt, the emotion that figures in my destructive thoughts the most. Any time I do something I regret, which happens more often than not, my anxiety doesn't let me forget it.

This brings me to incident number two. In my early 20s, I was at a hardcore punk show, and in my drunken state of mind I had sex with a guy I had just met. The condom broke. The next day, I convinced myself I had gotten AIDS. Not a lesser STD like gonorrhea, chlamydia, or even pregnancy. Full-on AIDS. I knew the chances of this were very low, but the thought kept eating away at me. Whenever I had time to myself, away from friends or other distractions, it returned. I imagined getting the diagnosis and having to tell my parents. I kept seeing the same image of my mother bursting into tears, followed by an image of God saying, "Fuck you, Alison!"

I was so terrified, I refused to actually get tested for several weeks. Instead, I texted the guy from that night: "Hey, you're clean right? Like, no STDs?" As I typed the words, I knew what I was doing was foolish. He responded a few hours later, having no idea who I was. He hadn't even saved my number. This intensified my guilt. I told him it was me, that chick you fucked. He finally said that of course he was clean. I didn't believe him. Rather than go get tested, I texted him a second time the following week, knowing full well I was just making myself look worse. He said, yet again, that he was clean. He also asked that I stop contacting him. Wait, so you don't want to hang out again? I thought you liked quirky girls! I finally just got tested, and was indeed STD-free. I knew I would be, but what I was really searching for was punishment. I felt like I needed to suffer some consequence for letting a man who didn't even bother to save my number in his phone inside me.

Those two incidents are the only times my anxiety got out of hand, but I've always been scared to tell anyone about them. I knew that they weren't examples of me being a funny character in a Woody Allen film. (Although I will admit that I do find them kind of funny in a really dark, humiliating way.) Fortunately, getting older seems to have calmed me down a little bit. Meaning, the catastrophic thinking, worry, and fear is not as intense as it was then. However, they are all still present. I still frequently envision my death, and have trouble saying certain words like "cancer" or "schizophrenia" out loud. When people I don't remember meeting say hi to me, I assume I have some sort of early form of Alzheimers, or got roofied the night I met them and didn't even notice.

Then there's the ever-present anxiety around my career and fear of failure. I genuinely feel panic thinking that I can easily lose, or have already lost, my ability to write and create jokes. When I perform a new bit that bombs, I think about things from my past and tell myself that I must have peaked at 17, or taking shrooms twice in one month when I was 22 must have rewired my brain to make me less funny. I've convinced myself that going on a certain medication, or really just changing anything about myself, will make me a completely different person, a talentless hack. I fear that getting into a serious relationship will make me less motivated to succeed. I fear that having more money will make me lose my work ethic. Really, I fear feeling content, which is why I've ignored my anxiety up until now.

I've scheduled my first appointment with a therapist and am hoping he'll have more constructive ways to deal with this than I do. Maybe I'll even get some of that so-called "satisfaction" all you well-adjusted people seem to rave about.

Follow Alison Stevenson on Twitter.