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Stop Blaming Social Media for Making You Feel Like Shit

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[body_image width='640' height='480' path='images/content-images/2015/03/06/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/06/' filename='stop-blaming-social-media-for-feeling-like-shit-body-image-1425617776.jpg' id='33515']Image via Ben Thomson

Last month researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia released a study linking Facebook use to increased envy and depression. The work was quickly picked up in the media as many echoed the familiar message of too much time online turning our young people into melancholy, anxiety-riddled, FOMO-plagued train wrecks. But despite our fondness of blaming the internet for everything bad that's happened after 1998, many in the mental health field feel that this correlation is overstated.

Bridianne O'Dea is a postdoctoral research fellow at Australia's Black Dog Institute. She notes that while many of us are sensitive to likes, retweets, and shares, we shouldn't underestimate human resilience. "Sure, receiving negative feedback on social media can affect your self esteem," she says. "But remember, self esteem is something that starts developing from when you're a child. It's takes a long time to develop, and a long time to change."

Rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide at a ten-year high in Australia, and those rates have also been rising in America, so perhaps it's not surprising that social media has been blamed for people feeling meh. Who hasn't looked at someone else's Instagram and felt like a lonely sack of four-day-old pizza? But while statistics may reflect an anecdotal correlation between our social media use and our mood, it's largely circumstantial.

In reality, your biological chemistry likely has far has more to do with your age than your Facebook usage. Almost 50 percent of social media users are between the age of 18 and 29, the same demographic that contains the highest rates of mental illness. O'Dea explains that the trends of mental illness spiking in adolescence and young adulthood were established decades ago, with 75 percent of mental illnesses emerging before the age of 25. Depression's tendency to manifest around the same time social media use spikes is largely coincidental.

The figures are also skewed by our increased ability to talk about mental health. "You're going to see rises in these rates, which doesn't necessarily mean the number of [mentally ill] people are changing," O'Dea says. "It's just the number of people reporting is changing."

Professor Nick Titov, Project Director at MindSpot Clinic, agrees with O'Dea. He says that concern over new technology has been around as long as technology itself, and it's dangerous to assume the medium is the problem. "I'm sure previous generations were concerned about our parents watching television," he says. "I don't think it's necessarily about the medium, it's about how people are communicating."

Healthcare professionals have always been vocal about the internet and social media's role in allowing people to access more information to be positive. Surprisingly they also see our tendency to misrepresent ourselves online as less of an issue that you'd think, noting that for younger generations, the online world is increasingly similar to their IRL one.

Psychologists call our glossy online avatars our "hoped for possible selves," and have found the trend encourages personal aspiration. Our social media personas are us at our best, but they're still us. By curating this shiny world they suggest we're not fooling ourselves, but forming a picture of who we could be.

And although trolls and online bullying is obviously a very visual problem that undoubtedly needs continual attention, there are less obvious benefits social media use gives the mental health community. It provides individuals with access to support and information, but it's also a tool for researchers. Discussions that evolve through social media are increasingly developing research questions, and anecdotal reports of Facebook trends help calculate and formulate future studies.

You might feel bad when you're using Facebook, but your mood is likely more dependent on hormones, circumstance, and other people's actions—not by Mark Zuckerberg. That means that unplugging probably won't make you feel better. But on the bright side, at least your awesome Instagram feed isn't adding to someone else's problems.

Follow Wendy on Twitter: Twitter.


March Music Reviews

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BEST ALBUM OF THE MONTH

COURTNEY BARNETT: Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (Mom + Pop)

Aussie Courtney Barnett has a super-secret pocketknife that cuts cleanly through the bullshit of social norms. It neatly slices up the gnarled mass of convoluted dating games and traditions that need to be lifted to the light. The rest of us might be self-important, chests all puffed out, but Barnett's chest is concave. She uses that same knife to pop holes in our own chests, deflating us to proper size. Take, for example, "Nobody Really Cares if You Go to the Party." The title says it all, and, well, when a song tells me it's OK to stay in bed, away from people, I will take that shit as gospel.
B. GRIMM

WORST ALBUM OF THE MONTH

CLARENCE CLARITY: No Now (Bella Union)

Clarence Clarity is a creepy indie-funk guy who's on one of those "let's-make-things-weird-and-disruptive" kicks that aim to throw a seditious wrench into the works of boring old popular culture. And it's working, because Apple's latest big-name signing, Zane Lowe, has already declared him, with forthright vagueness, "part of the future—he's pushing the boundaries on every level, sonically and lyrically." Shit! What he didn't mention is that this is one of the top-ten most irritating albums this century. No Now? No thanks.
JENNIFER JUPITER

BEST COVER OF THE MONTH

ATA KAK: Obaa Sima (Awesome Tapes from Africa)

This is magnificent. Ata Kak is like the Ghanaian Sugar Man, except much better than that makes him sound. He recorded this mix of highlife, beatboxing, hip-house, electro-funk, and Francis Bebey–style minimal Afropop in 1994, but the tape—which was limited to 50 copies—vanished without a trace. When Brian Shimkovitz started the Awesome Tapes from Africa blog in 2006, this was the first find he shared, and it sparked a minor internet conniption, leading to Ata Kak becoming a word-of-mouth sensation. Any hype generated by this hectic, accidentally pitched-up, and slightly wonky slice of pop brilliance, though, is thoroughly deserved.
SPATULA FLANGE SKYWALKER

WORST COVER OF THE MONTH

TWO-9: B4FVR (Ear Drummer/Interscope)

Weed and skateboards are cool, but who ever learned something about human nature from weed or a skateboard? It's a good thing one of the Rae Sremmurd duo comes over to remind us what life is like by yelling he's a functioning member of society, or this could become one of those parties that you think is going to be lit but ends up being a few dudes in cool clothes sitting around and checking their phones.
DOUBLE EFF

BIG SEAN
Dark Sky Paradise
GOOD Music/Def Jam

You know when a meme has been shared so many times that even though you know it's dumb you have to admit you kind of enjoy it? That's Big Sean's career: He kept popping up, and for every two songs where he was cheesy or offbeat or vulgar, he had a third where there was a redeeming punch line or verse. And then it got to the point where he made the perfect DJ Mustard song with DJ Mustard and his album was actually weird and funny and cool enough that suddenly Big Sean was a rapper you looked forward to hearing on a song. It is 2015, and now Big Sean is good.
FAMTHONY FAMTANO

YOUNG FATHERS
White Men Are Black Men Too
Big Dada

Young Fathers are kinda like Scotch. Like, I feel as a semi-intelligent adult human I should like it. It's complex and smart, and a lot of complex, smart people like it. It takes a while to get. But guys. Scotch tastes like fucking garbage bacon. Young Fathers aren't exactly garbage bacon, but they certainly aren't... regular bacon. At times they seem genuinely on to something—channeling the more accessible TOTR discography, splashing around with playful pop. Sometimes interesting drumbeats happen. But in general, it seems all over the place and hell-bent on its complexity. Just be real and order bourbon.
B. GRIMM

TECH N9NE
Special Effects
Strange Music

Maybe it's my roots in the jaw-grindingly rural South, but I really, really like meth rap. What's meth rap, you ask? Anything by dudes who rap so fast and aggressively that it would be really funny if they ever made a love song. This is the kind of rap that dudes who do meth listen to, since the only way to take in all of the words at once is to be on meth. Tech N9ne is the boss don of meth rap, because he's from Kansas City, Missouri, which I'm pretty sure is one gigantic meth lab. Anyways, next time you blow a rail of crystal, slap on some Tecca Nina, you'll thank me later.
ERIC PUNDERMANN

BRODINSKI
Brava
Bromance

Who knew that you could take hard trap rappers from Atlanta and throw them in the studio with a French techno producer and end up with something that sounds like all the fun parts of the last Kanye album but on space meth? Brodinski, that's who. This record reminds me of all the movies in which a robot plays the hero.
JOHNNY BRUHVO

DRAKE
If You're Reading This It's Too Late
OVO Sound/Cash Money/Republic

I dunno, I'm kind of over Drake. Like, Take Care is some Marvin Gaye–level sad-egomaniac brilliance, but ever since then he's mainly just rapped about how dope it is to be Drake. Which I sort of get—every rapper raps about how dope it is to be himself, but when Drake does it, it's like he's emphasizing how dope it is to not be you. Which is kind of this shitty psychological warfare waged against everyone who isn't Drake. I already can't afford to get my car washed; I don't need Drake telling me every 30 seconds that he's going to steal my girlfriend. He used to be the greatest rapper in the world because he was relatable, but now he's just sort of a dick.
ROBESMAN

JAM CITY
Dream a Garden
Night Slugs

It's a noble aim, trying to rewire electronic dance music to address 21st-century anxiety and the corrosive effects of capitalism on the human spirit. Guess the problem comes when you get the finished record and it feels a bit like an 80s Prince album with a swirling black hole of depression where the thorny little penis should be.
LUIGI PATAZONI

DJ SOTOFETT
Drippin' for a Tripp
Honest Jon's

If you've ever wanted to know what mysterious Norwegian DJ Sotofett is all about but were too afraid to ask, then the bumper Drippin' for a Tripp lays things out pretty sweetly. Between his fruity disco cuts and hectic junglist workouts, Sotofett hooks up with kindred spirits Jaakko Eino Kalevi, Phillip Lauer, and Gilb'r for several tracks of soft Balearic noodling and sunny calypso riddims. Listen closer and you'll realize it's the sound of bumming around a beach in Goa with some funny-looking Eurotrash who by the end of the trip are your best buddies.
THANIDE NEUTRON

ERRORS
Lease of Life
Rock Action

The wee Scottish island of Jura is where George Orwell lived when he wrote 1984 and where art pranksters the KLF claim to have burned $3 million in cash. Just in case its place in popular culture looked a bit shaky, we can now add that Glasgow's Errors recorded Lease of Life there, presumably in the hope that some of the island's radical allure would rub off on them. And it did, or they at least worked out how to use a synth properly and combined this with some meaningful life experiences and a choir, because this album is soulful and uplifting and satisfyingly weird. It might even be moving. Never thought I'd say this, but Errors are actually quite good.
GINGER ROGERS

JLIN
Dark Energy
Planet Mu

As exciting and weird as a lot of footwork is, let's have it straight: It usually sounds like it was made by accident because a dog pissed on a badly wired sampler attached to a sound system in a crack den. By harsh comparison, the luxurious debut by Jlin feels like a limo ride through all the frightening bits of Blade Runner on codeine and diazepam.
YOU'RE THE ONE FOR ME, ROY BATTY

PALE BLUE
The Past We Leave Behind
2MR

Grumpy New Jersey disco don Mike Simonetti cut ties with Italians Do It Better, the label he founded with Johnny Jewel. Now he's hooked up with another Mike—Mike Sniper of Captured Tracks—to found label 2MR, and he has this new band in the bargain. It's a collaboration with Elizabeth Wight of Silver Hands, and if I tell you their woozy dance-floor raptures aren't exactly light-years away from Glass Candy, that's certainly not to rain on anyone's parade.
EL PEE

RO MARON
Collected #1
Musique Pour la Danse

In the space of about 36 months at the end of the 80s and the start of the 90s, Ro Maron (real name: Rembert De Smet) holed up in a dark studio in Belgium and bashed out track after track of oozy, slo-mo proto-techno under names like Zsa Zsa La Boum, Sleepwalker, and Miss Nude. They called it new beat, it sounds like acid house after several large flagons of Trappist ale, and this 30-track compilation suggests that the little-known De Smet was one of its most skillful practitioners.
SHANTY MEDDLER

EAST INDIA YOUTH
Culture of Volume
XL

With his tweed jacket and side part, William Doyle looks like a chemistry teacher from a 1950s English boarding school, yet this has in no way hampered his progress as the bright young thing of bookish British synthpop. After last year's Total Strife Forever, East India Youth's second album is a glorious genre-smashing success that marries Scott Walker and John Foxx sci-fi balladry with Pet Shop Boys romance and Underworld-style techno transportation.
STRIFE SUPPORT

FÖLLAKZOID
III
Sacred Bones

Tossing around some pretty wild and unfounded assumptions here, but I'm going to state quite openly that I doubt Chile has a space program of any real stature. I'm fairly sure they do, however, have access to a shit-ton of pharmaceuticals that, when you think about it, are probably useful in the crafting of minimalistic space-rock jams that go on for more than ten minutes. Apparently German electronica dude AtomTM is on here playing one of Kraftwerk's synths, a nugget of info I can't wait to regale friends with while they desperately try to think of ways to change the subject.
WAKA FLOCKA SEAGULLS

HALSHUG
Blodets Bånd
Southern Lord

More vicious, nihilistic crust hardcore apparently out to reinforce the notion that Scandinavia is not in fact the liberal, egalitarian paradise with good knitwear of left-wing broadsheet fantasy, but a bleak and oppressive hellhole populated by depressed alcoholics. Halshug's name means "to decapitate," which completes the list of everything you need to know about this record.
PETE POLONEZ

UFO MAMMUT
Ecate
Supernatural Cat

The trouble with space is that if you go out far enough it eventually becomes featureless and boring, as UFOmammut inadvertently proved on their last song, "Oro," a 90-minute track spread over two separate albums in 2012. Luckily, the Italian trio of hairy astronauts have reined it in for an album packed with blink-and-you'll-miss-'em ten-minute apocalyptic doom dirges that sound like Christopher Nolan's colossal ego getting sucked out of his anus and straight into a black hole.
JAY DEE

LIGHTNING BOLT
Fantasy Empire
Thrill Jockey

There's no doubt that purists will hate this album. It doesn't re-create what it feels like to be confused and tightly packed into a throng of aggravating and sweaty bellends, trying to catch a glimpse of Lightning Bolt while some twat with dreadlocks named Jasper punches you in the back of the neck. It also pisses all over the Providence duo's two-decade legacy by providing something that doesn't sound like you've had a can of partially congealed malt liquor poured in your ears and been hit in the face with a shovel, instead revealing the fiendish complexity of what the two Brians are capable of for the first time ever.
BRI BRI BABY

POMBAGIRA
Flesh Throne Press
Svart

Obviously hippies are terrible, but funnily enough I don't mind a whiff of patchouli when it comes floating in on a tide of otherwise fetid doom metal. English duo Pombagira have named their new double album of cryptic dirge and shoegaze-tinged sludge after a post-burial process in which grave dirt intermingles with cadaverous flesh. On the bright side, in the photo Pete Giles appears to be wearing a paisley shirt. See what I mean? It's a nice balance.
LIL LOUIS

RYLEY WALKER
Primrose Green
Dead Oceans

He's an old soul in a young man's body—that's what they say about Ryley Walker. They're not talking, like, your dad, wearing slippers 24/7 and not really caring how loudly he farts. No, they're implying that this young Chicagoan fingerstyle dude is tapping the same cosmic folk vein as Tim Buckley or John Martyn, and that the swirling, orchestral folk rock of Primrose Green sounds like it's tanked up on cider and stamping its foot at God's own Sunday-afternoon get-together. In particular, "Summer Dress" is just about the bittersweetest thing since Nick Drake decided he was going upstairs for a nap.
FLORENCE RIDA

LOWER DENS
Escape from Evil
Ribbon Music

Perhaps you recall Jana Hunter as one of those crone-like twentysomething folk ladies in the vague orbit of Devendra Banhart, one with a voice that sounded like a crackly shellac record possessed by the spirit of an old washerwoman who fell over and died in a ditch in 1903. Well, forget all that, because now she's back with an alarmingly close haircut and a band that plays cinematic and serious rock music destined to be deemed "quite good" by couples who squeeze each other's hands while listening to the National.
DEAN FUNK

CHASTITY BELT
Time to Go Home
Hardly Art

The world is a mountain of shit. People are fuckwits. But hey, there are still a couple of things worth engaging with, and this record is one of them. Chastity Belt are the coolest sluts (relax—it's one of their song titles) in Seattle. They went through the old-fashioned indie grind—made good sounds, toured 'em, made better ones, put out a record, toured it—before getting to make this mighty-fine LP via Sub Pop's Hardly Art imprint. It's a smart, jangling riot from beginning to drunk, giggly end.
SALLY SEMIRAMIS

MARCHING CHURCH
This World Is Not Enough
Sacred Bones/Posh Isolation

Sorry, guys! Elias Bender Rønnenfelt is done with being your punk-rock jailbait. The Iceage singer is the hot mess at the center of this new Danish supergroup—also featuring members of Lower, Hand of Dust, and Puce Mary—and the mood is set to sweet, sweet soul. Along the way, there's Tindersticksy balladeering ("Dark End of the Street"), some ridiculously popping bass lines ("King of Song"), and, on "Hungry For Love," the best front-man-gets-himself-into-a-sexy-lather interlude since Nick Cave last loosened his collar.
CHARLES HANSON

CHILLY GONZALES
Chambers
Gentle Threat

Seeing Chilly Gonzales live is an intense experience, like watching the spirits of Erik Satie and Rowlf the Dog from the Muppets battle to control the soul of a big, hairy Jewish guy who's seated at a piano even though it looks like he just got out the shower. Chambers is effectively the third in his Solo Piano series, although, as the title suggests, this time there's some nice chamber-music strings. This does mean there's a notable lack of high-perspiration rapping about having three testicles and being the greatest, but y'know, next time.
HUEY MATESON

$HIT & $HINE
54 Synth-Brass, 38 Metal Guitar, 65 Cathedral
Rocket

The disconnect between $hit & $hine live and on record used to be stark. On paper they were simply one of the best live bands out there, while their records often fell under "easy to admire." Things changed after a series of releases on Diagonal, and now that they're with the hub of Brit psych, Rocket Recordings, things have gotten even better. This is the album Craig Clouse always threatened to give us, smashing together Brain Ticket–style Krautrock, Basic Channel techno, Rembrant Pussyhorse–era Butthole Surfers malevolence, Godflesh-strong industrial metal, and Black Ark dub. Don't get me wrong, it's fucking horrible—but that's what you were holding out for, right?
NO $HIT $HERLOCK

FAIRHORNS
Fuckup Rush
Kinda Rad!

While every other Johnny-come-lately is using his synth to make pastiches of John Carpenter soundtracks, maverick Brit Matt Loveridge runs in the opposite direction, with flaming pants on his head, gibbering wildly. This odd but ace, cheap-as-chips synth-punk album draws on Suicide, the Units, and ancient English folk and is more like the soundtrack to an ultra-violent gay porn film based on Judge Dredd's terrifying sub/dom relationship with Walter the Wobot.
BRIZZLE KICKS

GNOD
Infinity Machines
Rocket

After the heaviness of the Chaudelande anthology and a whole bunch of EPs, the world's finest psychedelic exploratory unit is back with a new studio album, and naturally it's a triple. The first third crawls past in a haze of Throbbing Gristle improv electronics, portentous spoken word, mid-90s post-acid ambience, and dubbed-out free skronk. The pulsating jewel in the crown that acts as a prism to be placed directly in front of your third eye as you stare directly at the sun is undoubtedly the colossal "White Privileged Wank," a juddering, overdriven acid dictator of a track that eventually collapses under the weight of its own awesomeness.
JOHN DORAN

PILE
You're Better Than This
Exploding in Sound

Sometimes I go to a rock show and wonder why an 85-pound androgynous vegan with pearly-white teeth and an expensive leather belt is standing feebly on a stage and whining over power chords about his romantic insecurities. Some bands shouldn't be allowed to exist, and I would be perfectly fine with a rock 'n' roll authoritarian coup if the guys from Pile were its Bolsheviks. This band fucking slays—Rich Maguire's voice sounds like he ate raw venison and then washed it down with two and a half liters of Wild Turkey, but he could still sing you a lullaby.
ARLIE CHAMBLER

YUNG GUTTED
Towers II
Earnest Endeavors

I don't even really know what this is—if it's hip-hop, R&B, or what—but it reminds me of a dream I once had in which I was a kid who grew up in NYC. I had a Really Cool Older Brother who got me into black metal, and my parents would smoke weed and listen to King Tubby on my dad's $10,000 stereo, which he bought with the royalties from the one Wes Anderson movie he co-wrote. If that were actually my background, I might be cool enough to make music like Yung Gutted.
BRUMPLE TUNGUS

Here Is the State Department’s First 'Official' Release of a Hillary Clinton Email

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Here Is the State Department’s First 'Official' Release of a Hillary Clinton Email

After Second Train Derailment, Ontario Town Worried It Could Be the Next Lac-Mégantic

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[body_image width='940' height='705' path='images/content-images/2015/03/09/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/09/' filename='after-second-train-derailment-ontario-town-worried-it-could-be-next-lac-mgantic-body-image-1425912087.jpg' id='34249']

Derailed train cars at Gogama. Photo via Glenn Thibeault, Twitter

You can forgive the people of Gogama, Ontario (pop. 300-400) if they feel they've had a little too much excitement this winter. Multiple rail cars containing Alberta crude oil are burning just outside of their town 200 km north of Sudbury, and the same thing happened a little further out of town just last month. Top of mind right now in Gogama is Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, another small Canadian town where 47 people died in July 2013 when oil-laden tank cars crashed, exploded, and burned much of the town's centre. The CN Rail line runs right through the centre of Gogama, just like it does in Lac-Mégantic.

At approximately 2:45 AM on Saturday, the crew on an eastbound CN freight train reported that cars had derailed. CN said five cars had fallen in a local river, but Natalie Gaudette, a local communications officer, told VICE on Sunday that only two were in the river. Booms had been deployed in the river to catch leaking oil. According to Gaudette, who spoke with VICE by phone, around 50 firefighters were spraying the fire with foam and trying to cool cars that had not ignited. A total of 37 tank cars derailed and all, except those in the river, were piled in a 100-metre space, she said. The water supply for the town and the nearby Mattagami First Nation has not been affected, she said, except for a few cottagers who are not connected to the municipal water system. A bridge over the waterway was damaged, according to an email from CN spokesperson Emily Hamer. Both women reported that air monitoring had shown no contaminants.

The CN train that derailed on February 14 near Gogama, set fire to material released from 21 tank cars. The fire was extinguished only after six days.

People in Gogama are "concerned," and are comparing their town to Lac-Mégantic, says Gerry Talbot, a 40-year resident of Gogama. With two local incidents in a month, and a recent third Ontario derailment, this one involving liquid propane near the northern community of Nipigon, residents are asking what the problems might be.

"Is it lack of inspections? Are the trains too long or too heavy, and are they damaging the wheels or the track as a result?" says Talbot.

CN Rail, in a series of tweets, said the company was investigating the accident and told residents not to worry, everything would be fine.

"CN is offering every assistance to [Transportation Safety Board] on-scene investigators. It is essential to have all the facts related to this incident known," the company said Sunday. "Residents likely to see some smoke plumes of [assorted] shades of black/gray/white; this is normal [and] poses no threat to the public or environment."

[body_image width='620' height='640' path='images/content-images/2015/03/09/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/09/' filename='after-second-train-derailment-ontario-town-worried-it-could-be-next-lac-mgantic-body-image-1425913009.jpg' id='34267']

Photo via Ontario Provincial Police

The rash of problems in northern Ontario highlights the growing hazard in Canada and across the US of shipping crude by rail, says American rail safety expert Fred Millar, who spoke with VICE from Washington, DC. People should be worried that "these Pepsi cans on wheels are blowing up all over the continent quite regularly," and are a "money-making windfall" for the rail industry, as the oil industry in the Alberta tar sands, and in the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota struggle to find ways to ship their product out as fast as they can extract it, says Millar.

Building pipelines is difficult, slow, and expensive, so oil companies are turning more and more to rail.

"This industry hardly existed five years ago," Millar says.

Crude oil rail shipments in Canada have increased massively in recent years, from only 500 cars in 2009 to 160,000 in 2013, according to the Transportation Safety Board (TSB), and data supplied by the Railway Association of Canada. Regulators in both Canada and the US just can't keep up with this kind of growth, says Millar. One of the most dangerous trends is having whole trains of flammable liquids, instead of having them scattered among other materials as used to be the practice, he explained. The Lac-Mégantic train and both Gogama trains were such "single-unit" trains.

This huge increase in transporting oil by rail has been named by the TSB as a "key risk" to Canada's transportation system.

The TSB is calling on the federal government to implement tough standards for new rail cars, and says the standards the politicians are considering since Lac-Mégantic are still not good enough. The new standard makes only "marginal improvements" to the older train cars, says Millar. Changes include "slightly stronger" steel, and an insulating blanket that can help slow the spread of fire from one car to the next, he says.

[body_image width='620' height='648' path='images/content-images/2015/03/09/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/09/' filename='after-second-train-derailment-ontario-town-worried-it-could-be-next-lac-mgantic-body-image-1425913025.jpg' id='34268']

Photo via Ontario Provincial Police

While many rail cars in the Lac-Mégantic disaster were an older form of what are known as the DOT-111s, the Safety Board says all the cars in the Valentine's Day Gogama derailment were built in recent years to the new standards, and performed no better than the older ones at Lac-Mégantic.

The cars in this weekend's Gogama incident were also built to the new standard, according to CN Rail.

It's been 20 years or more since regulators in both Canada and the US first tried to turn governments' attention to problems with the DOT-111s. Problems were first noted in Canada in the 1990s, says the TSB's Rob Johnston. "They've known these aren't safe for 21 years, and there's been no action from either the FRA [Federal Railroad Administration] in the US or Transport Canada," says Millar. There are still around 75,000 of the older DOT-111s on the rails transporting dangerous cargoes across the continent, he says.

As well as trying to improve standards for new cars, the TSB has also called on the Conservative government to improve the safety of the older DOT-111s still on the rails, to avoid punctures in case of accidents.

"The TSB has been calling for tougher standards for Class 111 tank cars for several years," said Jean L. Laporte, TSB's Chief Operating Officer on Feb. 23, in an update on the investigation into the first Gogama accident. "Here is yet another example of tank cars being breached, and we once again urge Transport Canada to expedite the introduction of enhanced protection standards to reduce the risk of product loss when these cars are involved in accidents."

The older DOT-111s were made to carry materials like corn syrup, not flammable materials, says Helen Vassilakos of the Toronto-based Community group Safe Rail Communities. She and her neighbour founded the group in 2014 after Lac-Mégantic and when they noticed an "alarming increase" in the number of long trains of DOT-111s chugging through her Dundas-Runnymede neighbourhood in west Toronto.

In spite of repeated efforts to get details on changes proposed by Conservative Transport Minister Lisa Raitt, Vassilakos says there is "no way" to find out if the government is following through on announced improvements to rail safety. They have even gone to the federal auditor-general to try and get full information, she says.

Following the Lac-Mégantic crash, Raitt's department issued an emergency directive for securing unattended trains. Trains with dangerous cargo were required from that point on to have at least a two-person crew. The train that crashed in July 2013 had a one-person crew.

In April 2014, the government responded to initial recommendations from the TSB by removing the least crash-resistant DOT-111 tanker cars from circulation. At the time, it also required the industry to do more route planning and make sure emergency response plans are in place for the transportation of high-risk hydrocarbons like petroleum products.

A spokesperson with Transport Canada says officials were unavailable to comment on detailed issues regarding the DOT-111 cars during the weekend.

Canada's railways have called for dangerous goods tank cars to be built to a higher standard, according to documents from the Railway Association of Canada. They believe all non-pressurized dangerous goods tank cars should be built or retrofitted to meet enhanced design requirements, or be phased out, the group states on its website.

Rail companies have also trained more than 17,000 railway employees, industrial plant personnel and firefighters on dangerous goods handling and emergency response in recent years, according to the RAC.

Canadian or American, rail firms know further accidents are inevitable, and could happen in a major city, says Fred Millar. They've even tried to put a cost on such a disaster in the US—a cost they estimate could result in damages in the billions, he says.

Meanwhile, people in Gogama are just hoping the next accident won't be any closer to home.

Follow Colin Graf on Twitter.

VICE Meets: VICE Meets Ulrich Seidl

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This post originally appeared on VICE Alps

Austrian director Ulrich Seidl loves tradition just as much as he loves the people of Vienna. If you're only vaguely familiar with his work, you might think this means "not much at all," but you'd be dead wrong. His office looks like a university professor's study and comes with a kitchen that has all the porcelain dishware you'd expect at your grandma's house. He also offers the best plum cake and has the smallest coffee cups this side of Alice in Wonderland.

Which makes it even more fascinating that Seidl's work is actually famous for deconstructing traditions. If you have a soft spot for dark documentaries and the quirky side of human-interest stories (and I'm talking about the side that involves animal love), chances are you've already stumbled upon Ulrich Seidl's oeuvre. In his home country of Austria, people were quite skeptical about his art and—as is mostly the case in Austria—only started to accept him once he became famous overseas. Now, with his non-documentaryParadise trilogy still resonating with most of the art-house crowd, Seidl has become sort of a star at home, too.

The director of Dog Days and Animal Love, Seidl is known to be straightforward, but at the same time poetic—he laughs, because the world is ridiculous at times and, most importantly, he has honest compassion for the people around him. Actually, the director is sort of what Austria wants to be—and what it can be when it channels Seidl.

Follow Markus on Twitter.

Artist Paul McCarthy Designed Surreal Skate Decks for Charity

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Photos by Nick Gazin.

Here at VICE we're fans of absurdist artist Paul McCarthy, skateboarding, and introducing new people to both. So when we heard that the man who recently installed an 80-foot-tall inflatable butt plug sculpture in the middle of Paris (and called it Tree, no less) was designing skate decks to raise money for a charity that aims to create a skate school in Johannesburg, it seemed in our best interest to check the goodwill event at MoMA over the weekend.

In collaboration with the Skateroom and Skateistan, McCarthy created a run of 250 skate decks using images from his 1991 project PROPO. The boards on display at MoMA included pictures of gnarly old bottles of ketchup, creepy doll heads, and other cultural detritus that looked as if a Mike Kelley exhibition was uncovered from a landfill near a nuclear waste site. Through sales of this collection, organizers hope to raise $200,000 in order to fund what could be the African continent's first skate school.

Regardless, the boards are cool and buying one could help other kids shred, so head over to the Skateroom's site to donate.

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Follow Zach on Twitter.

Inside Graphene City, Birthplace of a Wonder Material

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Inside Graphene City, Birthplace of a Wonder Material

Why Does Everyone Hate the Björk Retrospective at MoMA?

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Why Does Everyone Hate the Björk Retrospective at MoMA?

VICE Vs Rolling Stone: ​Gus Wenner, I’m Coming for Your Blood

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Me and 14-time Swedish champion Malin Pettersson, my table-tennis coach. Photos by Ryan Willard

I have hired one of the world's greatest table tennis players to help me defeat Rolling Stone's head of digital operations, Gus Wenner, in a massive table tennis charity grudge match.

The United States doesn't take table tennis very seriously, which is why we don't produce any of the world's best players. The vast majority of the real talent comes from China, where the athletes train from childhood and are treated like superstars. In this country table tennis (or ping-pong, as it's insultingly referred to by children) is generally relegated to teen centers and summer camps. Which is a problem, because by the time our youths discover the sport they are already too old. The grooming of a true table tennis master needs to begin at around four years of age.

That table tennis is infinitely more difficult than regular tennis is a given, based on scale. Everything in table tennis is miniaturized: the racquets, field of play, and balls. With this comes a smaller window of opportunity to turn a point in your favor and bring the match home. Micro-changes in grip and stance are the difference between winning and losing, and the necessary reaction time is a fraction of a fraction of a second. Tiny details have massive implications. A good match is edge-of-your-seat, white-knuckled entertainment, but Americans just don't have a built-in national industry for the serious development of the sport, which is why we need to find other reasons to play.

In my case, I play for hate. I only hate two people on this planet. One of them is Gus Wenner.

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My opponent, Gus Wenner

Gus Wenner, if you're not familiar, is the son of Jann Wenner, founder of Rolling Stone. He is a media celebrity and I hate him more than an ingrown beard hair. My hatred for Gus began two weeks ago, when I was asked to compete against him, in public, in a game of live table tennis.

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Given his lineage, Gus is probably the type of guy who's never faced a truly formidable opponent in the sports-leisure arena. Most people probably throw the game when they realize Gus is about to lose, lest they blow their shot at working at Rolling Stone. Well Gus, I'm not most people—I'm your worst fucking nightmare. I will rain down all 215 pounds of my being onto that table and you will crumple underneath the power of my kill shots like the little bitch that you are.

To be fair, I've never been good at any sport in my entire life. As a pimply, fantasy-obsessed pre-teen, and then a pimply, punk-obsessed high schooler, I learned to wear this inability as a sort of badge of honor. Now I'm almost 31 and it's just embarrassing. I've been told by close friends on several occasions that I'm the worst athlete they've ever met. On top of that, I'm cursed with another, related character flaw: I'm a terrible loser.

But my approach to table tennis, and this game in particular, has been different than that of other sports I've tried. Mainly because I've employed one of the best table tennis players in the world to be my personal coach, to train me up and turn me into a paddle-wielding hellbeast with a thirst for the blood of Gus Wenner.

Meet my coach, Malin Pettersson:

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Malin Pettersson

Malin is a strong offensive backhand player from Norrköping, a small city in Eastern Sweden nestled at the mouth of the Motala ström. She began playing table tennis at three years old, standing on boxes to reach her father's table. At seven, she joined the Norrköpings Ungdoms Pingisklubb (Norrköping Youth Table Tennis Club), and began competing against older kids at age nine. At 12, she was drafted into the highest league in Sweden, where she competed against 20-year-old men, and at 16, she was drafted onto the Spanish national team, and then later, the German national team.

Between 2002 and 2010, Malin won the Swedish National Championships 14 times, and in 2010, she tells me, "I was, all ages, the best in Sweden." She no longer plays professionally, but she recently co-wrote a book on table tennis with Jan-Ove Waldner called Mental Strength, in which she outlines her techniques for mental training in table tennis.

Now, she's my coach. In case you doubt her prowess, here's a video of her absolutely annihilating the German Amelie Solja at the Portugal Cadet U15 Open, back in December 2004:

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/34vrtBbY32w' width='420' height='315']

Last week I started a three-week intensive-training regimen, which began with Malin ascertaining my technique. According to her, my backhand is natural and strong, and my followthrough is solid. For this reason, I've decided to perfect my backhand before my match with Gus.

In the next few weeks, Malin will be working with me on my footwork and forehand, running a series of training drills three nights per week. I'm adopting an aerobic exercise routine (heavy on jump ropes and sidestep drills), along with a high-protein diet. I'm also in the market for anabolic steroids, if anyone has a hookup.

Next week, Malin is going to help me build my own racquet, which is the sign of a serious player. I've decided to name it "Walter," after Walter White, who destroyed a nemesis, also named Gus, by detonating a homemade bomb in a nursing home.

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Look into these eyes, Wenner, you little bitch.

I know I'm going to have to work for this, but I want to fucking beat this kid. And when I win, it won't just be for me. It will be for everyone who has thrown a game to him in the past, it will be for justice and righteousness, for sportsmanship and the American idea that if you work hard and try your best and maybe do a little steroids you will fucking annihilate the son of a media mogul in table tennis one day.

Gus, come March 27, you're going to be entering a world of pain.

A world. Of pain.

Suck my dick.

Ben is playing Gus at SPiN, at 48 East 23rd Street in Manhattan, on Friday, March 27. The match is free and open to the public. If you want to shit talk him, hit him up on Twitter.

Chechen Officer Admits Guilt in Opposition Leader Nemtsov's Murder

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Chechen Officer Admits Guilt in Opposition Leader Nemtsov's Murder

The Florida Lawyer Who Convinced a Jury His Client Needs Weed to Function

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Florida lawyer Michael Minardi. Photo via MinardiLaw.com

Last week, a Florida pro-pot lawyer named Michael Minardi successfully argued that a man arrested on charges of growing weed needed the drug for medicinal purposes. It's the first such decision in a Florida jury trial—ever.

Following an anonymous tip in 2013, Broward County Sheriff's Deputies found and confiscated 46 plants and arrested Jesse Teplicki, a 50-year-old suffering from chronic anorexia. He passionately testified in court that he needed the weed to be a productive member of society.

A jury agreed.

The case sets a precedent for future trials and also highlights Florida's inch-by-inch slog toward acceptance of weed. Last November, 58 percent of Floridians voted to permit medical marijuana in Florida, narrowly falling short of the required 60 percent threshold. In the Florida legislature, a bill is snaking its way through the Senate that would allow doctors to use cannabis to treat patients with illnesses such as ALS, AIDS, Parkinson's disease, and Crohn's disease.

Minardi, a passionate and battle-tested attorney, is on the front lines of this fight. He's used the medicinal necessity defense successfully before, but never in front of a jury of Floridians.

I caught up with him on the phone as he made his way to court on Friday.

VICE: It looks like you just won the first medical necessity defense ever by a jury. Tell me a little about the case.
Michael Minardi: Mr. Teplicki suffers from severe chronic anorexia, a condition he's had since he was nine years old. He was underweight and malnourished as a child. In four years of high school, he only gained ten pounds. He discovered cannabis at 17. He gained 13 pounds in the first six weeks of use. He had a desire to eat (for the first time) and actually started to enjoy eating. He was able to control his anxiety and his illness—that's how it started for him.

What happens when he doesn't have his medicine?
Over the years, he'd been without cannabis on numerous different occasions and suffered. He even ended up in the hospital, where they were unable to find a diagnosis (for his symptoms), or do anything for him. We had the medical records for one stint—between 2004 and 2005. He had to take a drug test to get clearance to do marine mechanic work, so he stopped using for a month. During that time, he lost 20 pounds. He went in the hospital and lost 15 more pounds. They discharged him with no diagnosis.

Have any doctors figured out what's going on with him?
Well, when he was a child he was told by an endocrinologist that there was a misconnection between the brain and his body. The signal from the brain regarding eating, desire to eat, and things like that was not being transmitted correctly to the rest of his body.

How was that fact used in the case?
What we know today, and what Dr. Denis Petro, who was our doctor, testified to, was that now we know the pharmacology of the endocannabinoid system. That system regulates a lot of the vegetative functions of the body. Research shows that receptors in our brain control appetite, control nausea, and regulate our system. That's why chemo patients [who use marijuana] want to eat, because the cannabis activates that part of the brain.

Did your client ever tried any other medications?
He's tried over 16 medications. Nothing worked for him. One caused loss of motor control in his arms. That won't work. This is a man that wakes up nauseous every morning and won't eat. Cannabis is the only thing that's worked for him.

Tell me about the trial.
It took us two days to get a jury. The state threw around a big bag of cannabis, they had all 46 plants in one bag. The state's doctor, from my experience, was uneducated on the endocannabinoid system. The state said Teplicki hadn't been to enough doctors and he hadn't tried everything before choosing cannabis.

While Mr. Teplicki was testifying, he really hit it home when he explained the effect his illness had on him, and why he felt he had to use to be a productive member of society. And he is: His daughter just graduated from medical school. One of his sons is in college and the other is on the way to law school. He wanted to show that these are the people he lived for each and every day.

Was there a moment where you felt things were turning your way?
I like to think as a confident and competent attorney I always feel like I'm going to win. I'm a competitive person, but I was cautiously optimistic. During his testimony, the way he answered a question about how he felt and why he was fighting, it was so powerful that I just had to stop. There was a part of me that thought, I don't know how any jury could look at this and say, "I'm going to punish a hard working man who isn't a criminal." He's just using this to survive.

The jury recognized it was a disease he's had since he was a young child, and they had compassion for the fact that he's been suffering his whole life. Who are we to say he hasn't?

How did you get into marijuana-based law?
It's something I actually had knowledge of and wrote about in law school. I joined an organization called NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws). Growing up I read High Times and they exposed a lot of the hypocrisy of the government and the lies about cannabis.

I had numerous friends in high school affected by drunk driving. My mom passed away in 2003 from lung cancer. When I was young, I knew I wanted to be an attorney. I'm Italian—I used to argue with everybody. I've always had a distaste for authority, I think. And seeing what this is doing to our society, people being locked up and their lives lost from cannabis, it's just ridiculous to me. It's a plant.

Do you have any advice for people out there?
Everyone should know their rights. Go to Florida Cannabis Action Network. People should be educated and prepared. Knowledge is power and knowing what you can do and being confident is important. Remember, cops can lie and they can tell you anything they want to get into your house, your pockets, or vehicles. Get active. Get vocal. Contact your legislators. Let's get relief for the sick and suffering people of Florida.

Follow Jon Silman on Twitter.

Israel, Politics, and the Curious Case of Tennis Pro Malek Jaziri

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Israel, Politics, and the Curious Case of Tennis Pro Malek Jaziri

Cheers to the Dude Who Wants to Turn Winston Churchill’s Blood into Gin

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Who wouldn't want a piece of this in their drink? Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Late last month, Duke's auction house in Dorset, UK, announced that it would be auctioning off a vial of Winston Churchill's blood, taken from the Hitler-hating, Indian sovereignty-dismissing head of state's busted-up 87-year-old body while he was recovering from a broken hip in Middlesex Hospital in London in 1962.

So, naturally, when Berlin-based crafter Marcus O'Shea heard the news, he decided he'd try to buy Churchill's blood and make gin out of it. With only a couple of days left to go before the auction, O'Shea—who, aside from handcrafting spirits, is a visual and performance artist who has exhibited in Berlin and New York—is still raising funds via GoFundMe to try and purchase the vial, which the auction house estimates will sell for up to £600. We caught up with him last week to find out how and why he wants to turn the remains of the man BBC viewers voted "The Greatest Briton of All Time" into something you can mix with tonic.

VICE: Where did you find out about Winston Churchill's blood coming up for auction?
Marcus O'Shea: I think the Onion actually had one of those fake people's reactions on the street things about it. And I realized the fake reactions were to a real news story about Winston Churchill's blood.

Why did you decide you wanted to turn it into gin?
I've always had an undying thirst for the blood of the ruling class, so, you know, I just wanted to turn it into the most palatable form of liquid I could drink it as. And pay homage to an old dead guy—I'm gonna make it a London Dry.

I guess a big question is, how do you turn blood into gin?
There's two ways I can do it: either I can ferment the blood into essentially like a low-alcohol kind of blood wine and then I'll distill that, or I can dry the blood into a powder and essentially turn it into a botanical which I will use to flavor the gin.

How did you find out that it was even possible to use that as the base for a spirit?
It's actually been a running project with me and certain friends of mine that, whenever we're really bored at parties, we have really loud discussions about the most disgusting things you could technically distill into an alcohol. At a garden party, we were actually coming up with in-depth plans for how to harvest enough cum to make a semen alcohol.

Can you give me some other examples of grody shit you could turn into alcohol?
Sweat, you could definitely do. You'd have to get a lot of people and a lot of rags. Tears, obviously. You'd get a very salty mix from that one. Those are the main bodily fluids you could do. Anything where you can get enough sugar in it, you can technically turn it into some form of booze and then you can distill it into a high-proof spirit.

Do you expect the blood is going to make a difference with regard to how the gin is going to taste?
If I ferment the blood and distill it through my refraction still, it's going to actually come out as quite a smooth, tasteless alcohol, aside from whatever botanicals I put in it. That's why I'm thinking of using it as a flavouring instead, because I really want to know what that old guy's blood tastes like. Maybe even soak a bunch of juniper berries in his blood and kind of do a blood-berry thing.

Is turning blood into gin legal, or is there anything that would make it illegal?
If I was selling it for consumption, it's illegal. Since I'm doing it as an art project, I'm distilling a small amount. Under German law, it's technically legal.

How much research did you have to do to find out whether this would be legal?
I actually already knew about German distilling laws and what technically counted as legal or not because I also make—I have a series of undrinkable gins that I do as sculptures where instead of herbs and spices I use things like rolls of film, photographic slides, bits of paintings.

When you say "undrinkable," that's because they're toxic.
Yeah, they'd be super poisonous. They're sculptural, kind of thing.

Do you think drinking gin that's flavoured with Winston Churchill's blood is cannibalism?
That's a hard one. Yeah, you might get the Wendigo spirit. I don't know how much human you have to eat before you really get cannibal madness.

So you're saying, "I need to drink enough that I puke."
That's a good idea maybe.

Have a 17-year-old's first-time gin experience and then purge the cannibal taint from your system.
That's probably the best way to do it. Personally, I'm kind of leaning into it, I'm going to embrace Wendigoism.

Part of your project is explicitly you getting smashed on this.
Yeah, but in the morning I will be sober and Winston Churchill will still be dead.

Follow John Cameron on Twitter.

VICE Speaks to a Canadian Commander Fighting ISIS in Iraq

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Major-General Dean Milner in an Aurora aircraft in Kuwait. Photo via the Canadian Forces

If Canada's CF-18 Hornet fighter jets are the muscle in the nation's war against ISIS, then its CP-140 Auroras are the eyes and ears.

The high-tech surveillance aircraft are arguably the most advanced manned reconnaissance aircraft in the world, and they're Canada's secret weapon in outsmarting ISIS' evolving tactics.

VICE reached the Long-Range Patrol Detachment Commander—the man responsible for the Auroras—from his base in Kuwait. For security concerns, VICE was not provided with the commander's name.

The commander spoke with VICE the morning before Sgt. Andrew Doiron was killed in action after Kurdish soldiers accidently opened fire on his unit in northern Iraq.

Doiron was in Iraq as a special forces advisor to the Kurdish Peshmerga. The Aurora commander is part of the airborne portion of Operation IMPACT—code for Canada's mission against ISIS—which is doing the intelligence work behind the bombing campaign.

As part of IMPACT, Canada has contributed seven CF-18s to the bombing campaign against the so-called Islamic State, as well as two of the CP-140s and three other support aircraft. Canada has also sent 69 advisors—of which Dorion was one.

The commander painted a picture of high morale and optimism in Kuwait, where the pilots and crew for the aircraft are stationed. That mood has no doubt been dampened by the friendly fire death on Friday night.

Notwithstanding the accident, the commander underscored the successes of the mission.

Criticism had been levied at the mission from the opposition NDP and Liberals, who've said that the mission is ineffective, accusing the governing Conservatives of jumping into a mission without a plan. They've argued that ISIS' evolving tactics mean airstrikes are of marginal effect, pointing out that Canada's CF-18s have dropped relatively few bombs.

"Are we in danger of being ineffective in a very short period of time?" asked NDP defence critic Jack Harris in a Parliamentary committee in November.

The Aurora commander says it's quite the opposite. One of the main purposes of the high-tech aircrafts is to monitor ISIS' movements and help develop counter-tactics to outsmart the versatile fighting force.

While he says it's obviously a challenge, the Auroras are being used to track vehicle movements through the long stretch of desert, and can help discern whether it's a local merchant, or an ISIS convey posing as one.

"It's striking that right balance between surveillance and reconnaissance that really makes the difference in actually countering these sort of tactics," he says.

That sort of utility can be of great use to the Iraqis, Kurds, and coalition forces on the ground.

"Mostly what we'll do is we'll collect information from a variety of different sensors from the platform and provide it in as near real time as possible and from there it will be synthesized with a lot of other information from other platforms," he says. That cocktail of intelligence is mixed by the coalition, and can then be shared with forces on the ground.

The commander couldn't get too far into the specifics of the aircraft, what sort of data is being collected, or exactly what coalition's changing tactics are—it is, after all, an ongoing war—but he did provide context about Canada's contribution with the mission. An interview with media from the theatre is an incredibly rare occurrence.

The commander also gave a sense of the personal aspects of being deployed—the food, the facilities, and connecting back home.

Evidence of the fact that he's been pretty far removed from his life back home, the commander bragged that the base has all the latest movies, such as the latest installment of the Hunger Games franchise (five months old) or the last of the Hobbit series (four months.)

"Maybe they're not the latest anymore," the commander adds on reflection. "I haven't been back in Canada."

He does have internet access, though, which means he can see his wife and kids via Facetime every few days. That's a good boost to morale for everyone.

"I'll be honest, it's been remarkably smooth sailing because there has been such good support here," he says.

The commander still isn't sure if he'll be in Kuwait for another six months, but most signs indicate that Defence Minister Jason Kenney plans to extend Operation IMPACT beyond its current mandate, which ends on April 7.

While communications between Canada and the base in Kuwait are quite good—VICE has been in touch with Canadian Forces personnel on base for weeks—they're not perfect. The interview ended abruptly when the commander's satellite connection cut out.

VICE: What's the day-to-day like, over there?
Commander: Every single day, except for planned maintenance days, we launch the Auroras on a mission. While the time of day varies, the whole idea is that we try to provide the capabilities that the coalition needs, when they need it. So every single day we launch a mission. It means long days for the air crews, and for the ground crews that are preparing the mission—typically the air crews are going to work an 18-hour day. That's not just the flying, that's everything that goes into it. They tend to work themselves pretty hard.

What role are the Auroras playing in the coalition?
The Auroras are a surveillance and reconnaissance platform, so they can be used on a wide variety of tasks: everything from being at the cold face of a fight, so to speak, to where you're actually supporting people on the ground, to reconnaissance operations where you're looking for where the fight will be, not so much today, but tomorrow, the next day, maybe a month out. You'll spend a lot of time assigned to an area, where you'll be given a list of objects or points of interest to observe, but then we'll also get a certain amount of freedom based on our training that allow us to, if something of interest comes along or if we see something out of the ordinary while we're out there, to pursue that as a lead, to gather more information and then report that back. The missions vary quite a bit. Sometimes, you go out and mow the lawn—you go and watch points that you've been to before to develop a better sense of what is going on—and at other times you're being more dynamically employed to look at very specific things that might be time sensitive, and you need to get there and do your job at a prescribed time. It's a wide variety of things, but it's very rewarding work when you do it.

How unique are the Auroras?
The big thing that the Aurora brings to the table is that it's a manned platform. There's always a requirement for both a manned and unmanned platforms—coalition members have both of those platforms in theatre. The value of the Aurora, in being a manned platform, brings is that it allows you to then go out to an area that's difficult and react really quickly. As a bigger platform, it has bigger engines, it's much more robust, and you can fly a lot faster from one area to another to be more reactive and responsive. On top of that, the Auroras have gone through their upgrades in the last couple of years. We actually have absolutely cutting edge equipment on-board the Aurora right now and I would argue, from my perspective, we are one of the best equipped assets here to do a surveillance mission. I would easily put us on par with any of our coalition assets out here.

[body_image width='1200' height='900' path='images/content-images/2015/03/09/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/09/' filename='vice-speaks-to-a-canadian-commander-fighting-isis-in-iraq-273-body-image-1425920861.jpg' id='34341']An Aurora, escorted by two CF-18s, flies off the coast of Hawaii. Photo via Canadian Forces

What sort of data are you actually collecting in these missions?
The Aurora has a wide variety of sensors, some of which are recently upgraded, as part of our upgrade program. Everything from highly complex imaging radar systems to electro-optical systems that allow you to view objects from a great distance away at day and night, to other systems that collect electronic emissions across a broad spectrum that allow us to then, from there, be able to actually create a picture of what's happening on the ground, either with an actual camera-type picture, or with a radar image that allow us to look right through clouds. Once we synthesize all that information together, even aboard the aircraft, you can create a really good picture of what's happening, whether you can actually see the object with the camera, or if it's with a radar or you're actually listening in to the electronic emissions that are coming from it.

How do the Auroras reduce the likelihood of civilian casualties or collateral damage?
One of the key tasks that we'll be assigned is that we'll go out and we'll look at points of interest. Sometimes, for those points of interest, we're looking at developing a really solid understanding of the pattern of life that's around that object so that you can better determine whether or not it's actually a target of interest, and when you might prosecute a strike on it both to achieve your objectives and also to minimize collateral damage. So I can think of several missions that I've personally been on, where we've spent hours circling a target of interest—getting a feel for the traffic flow for a targeted area, the number of people walking around, the activity in and around buildings or whole towns—in order to better understand what's going on. And that can be quite a laborious process, and quite time-consuming, because if you don't fully understand everything that's going on in the vicinity of a potential target, you potentially expose yourself to having unintended consequences. So that's where the Aurora pays its dividends, because we really have the ability to linger over an area for a long periods of time and go back to it on a repeated basis and help develop that pattern of life.

What sort of challenges are posed by the landscape?
The predominant challenge that we experience now is that the characters of the battlespace have changed even since Canadians arrived. Last summer when ISIL was moving in large formations it was very much a conventional warfare battlespace. You had large troop movements, large movements of equipment. In large part due to the coalition presence of airpower, that has forced ISIL to change their tactics. They no longer move in these large groups, they have to be much more cagey about what they do. And that's ultimately the challenge. They now go to great lengths to mix what they do with the local population, to try to confuse us and make it difficult to ascertain whether something is enemy or neutral or even friendly, for that matter. They're spending most of their time moving in smaller groups making and concealing their activities in and around large population centres, so they can make it the most difficult for us. That's the predominant challenge.

Couple that with the fact that the population centres in Iraq are sometimes distributed sometimes across large open desert. So you have some spaces, especially along the river, where there are lots and lots of population. But then there are parts out in the middle of the desert where there are towns that have developed along trading routes. So you can actually have trucks in the middle of the desert driving from one town to the other. It can be quite difficult to determine, sometimes, whether that truck driving through the desert just happens to be a local merchant driving from one supply point to a local town that he services, or whether that's something of interest—ISIL has adjusted their tactics to mimic those local movements, which makes it a challenge. So you have to go linger in an area to gain lots of information but also be able to go wide ranging in order to cover a wide area of space.

[body_image width='1800' height='1200' path='images/content-images/2015/03/09/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/09/' filename='vice-speaks-to-a-canadian-commander-fighting-isis-in-iraq-273-body-image-1425921029.jpg' id='34343']Two Aurora pilots walking away from an Aurora. Photo via Canadian Forces

In a personal sense, what's it like on-base out there?
It's a very well-appointed base that we have here. We've done a fairly remarkable job in making it comfortable for the folks that are here. Everyday I have access to gym facilities, both right where the Canadians are, plus shared facilities where we have other coalition partners that we work alongside. We probably have more food than we should have, which means on a daily basis we have to encourage guys to get out to the gym. The mess hall we have here is actually quite outstanding. It is a menu that rotates every two weeks, but hey, you can get crab legs every two weeks, so that's not half bad.

But is there a Tim Hortons?
There isn't a Tim Hortons, but there is a chain of coffee shops you can go to that are here. They produce a Starbucks-like cup of coffee. We have had the odd Timmies run. In fact, I think just yesterday, the senior leadership organized a Timmies run from the local Tim Hortons in Kuwait City, which was a huge boost to morale for everybody. I think the last one that we had was on Christmas Day. Both were extraordinarily well-attended by people and there was far more donuts and coffee that we could shake a stick at. It's been very good.

Are you hunkered down for the long haul?
Certainly the Auroras have always been ready to deploy. It's one of our standing tasks: always be ready to deploy internationally. Back home, that's the job I have: commanding a squadron to make sure that that happens. So we are ready to go, if the government decides to extend the mission. What it really comes down to, is that when the government makes its decision, we always have prudent plans in place to react to whatever decision that they come up with. We give them options, they make the decision.

What sort of preparations need to be made if your mission is extended?
I think the big thing is helping the families of those who have to come back for future deployments. Obviously, as with any military, you have a limited pool of people. In the Aurora community, we've had quite a number of folks who've been exposed to theatre, who've been on deployment here. The longer we go on, the better the chance that we'll have to start bringing people back to theatre, which would be considered a normal thing. This is ultimately the job people people train for.

This interview has been edited for style, clarity, and length.

Follow Justin Ling on Twitter.

Comics: Megg, Mogg, & Owl - 'Gunky Claws'

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Follow Simon Hanselmann on Twitter and look at his blog. Also buy his books from Fantagraphics and Space Face.


Rich Homie Quan Is Going in More than Ever

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Rich Homie Quan Is Going in More than Ever

VICE Vs Video Games: ‘Max Payne’ Was the Game That Understood My Depression

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Used to be I couldn't sleep. I was 17, had girlfriend trouble, test anxiety—all that shit. I lived on my own, so most nights it'd just be me and my thoughts, pottering round the house together from midnight until nine. There were a few films I'd re-watch to steady my nerves, things like Mean Streets, Oldboy, and The Godfather, but they'd only a last a few hours, and after about ten viewings each, they got a bit stale.

The same could be said for my game collection. From about 3AM through the rest of the night, I'd slump it in front of the PlayStation. But the big hitters of the time—Stranglehold, Resistance: Fall of Man, Dead Rising—weren't much, and, inevitably, my mind would start to wander. I'd just been diagnosed with depression and I was on SSRIs. Even the myriad distractions afforded a middle-class white kid weren't helping.

Except for Max Payne. This older game, first released in 2001, spoke to me at this point in my life, firstly because its main character, the eponymous Max, was having such a hard time. In a classic example of that awful narrative trope "fridging," Max's wife and infant daughter are killed at the beginning of the game and he sets out to avenge them. It's dumb and big and comic book–esque, and it was hardly comparable to the life of a teenage boy getting ready for tests, but it meant Max and I were, in a roundabout way, on the same wavelength. He was suffering.

In my own way, so was I. Plus, all the characters in the other games I owned were gorgeous, uncomplicated heroes. In the same way that the constantly fucking, constantly getting high-off-their-balls teenagers from Skins made me feel alienated, I found the square-jawed protagonists in Modern Warfare and Uncharted intimidating.

Max Payne, despite its stupid, sexist narrative setup, was a bit nuanced, a bit dialed down. It wasn't a game where everybody was having a fucking good time, all the time—alongside Max, the ex-alcoholic widower, the characters in Max Payne were variously drug addicts, prostitutes, and murderers. Maybe it was genuinely the illness, or maybe it was just the adolescence talking, but I felt more at home in this virtual world. My life wasn't as bad as the characters', but we were all, respective to our situations, having a pretty poor time.

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And then there was the setting. Again, a lot of the games I owned at this time, excluding, perhaps, The Darkness, were sunshine-y and "fun." Even the blood-soaked action-horror hit Gears of War was pretty shiny—the colors were deliberately desaturated, but the monsters were big and the guns were loud, and aesthetically it wasn't such a downer as Max Payne.

Max Payne took place across nightclubs, motels, drug dens, and car parks. It was a low game. A base game. A grubby game. In hindsight, the adulteration feels shoehorned, piled on, and a bit desperate. But if you've ever had depression, you'll know that, more than you want to get better, you want to roll around in your filth. It's a masturbatory slash masochistic impulse, this desire to imbibe the world in all its fecundity, but I remember very specifically deciding that if my life and the lives of a lot of other people were bad, there was no use pretending otherwise—it was my responsibility to confront the world and its various shittery, and not back down.

Max Payne, in its cartoonish, video game way, helped with that. It let me explore a world where vice, ruin, and death predominated, a world that wasn't all right. Playing it, I felt like I was starting to understand life, and my problems and my illness a lot better. I felt less like I'd been chosen, specifically, to suffer, and more like the world generally was just a bad place a lot of the time. I'm not sure thinking that way was necessarily helpful, or hopeful, but it certainly helped me stop feeling alone. Looking back now, I can see that Max Payne doesn't really "get"—or care about "getting"—the kind of world it represents, but it certainly got me as a teenager, and was good company when I was low.

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And of course, I loved that it was all set at night. I was playing Max Payne while I had insomnia, so the constant darkness, and Max's remarks about not being able to sleep, ingratiated it to me very quickly. Again, it felt like it was there for me—like the game had somehow been designed around when and why I'd be playing it.

I don't want to credit Max Payne with much grandeur or artistic credibility, because it is after all a game where you can use hand grenades to blow up drug addicts, or shoot a man to death while he's got his pants around his ankles. But there's a quote from Alan Bennett that reflects largely how I feel about the experience: "The best moments in reading are when you come across something—a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things—which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours."

When I turned Max Payne on at night, I was in a deep, dark place. By the time I switched it off, I'd seen reflected a place that was similarly deep and dark, and I didn't feel so alone any more. I'd never go so far as to say Max Payne cured, or even helped cure me of depression, because it was doctors, tablets and the support of friends and family that did that. But on the long nights, by demonstrating to me that not everyone was happy, not everything was good, and that I wasn't being singularly punished because I was an especially bad person, Max Payne was the game that helped me sleep.

Follow Ed on Twitter.

VICE Premiere: VICE Exclusive: Listen to Benoit Pioulard's New Song, "A Shade of Celadon"

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Thomas Meluch, a.k.a Benoit Pioulard, is somehow managing to pull off a career as an experimental songwriter without it feeling forced or being all pretentious about it. His new album, out March 30 on Kranky, is built from kernels of songs generated from looped field recordings and found sounds, which he then tried to replicate on guitar. These loops grew into fuller, fleshed-out compositions, and pretty soon Pioulard had an album on his hands. It's called Sonnet ,and the record is a dreamy exploration of little nuggets of sound. Some of Sonnet's songs bring to mind Deerhunter, and others land in John Cage or Charles Ives territory, which is a pretty solid balance.

Preorder Sonnet here.

We Went to the Fifth Birthday of the Protest Camp Demonstrating Against the Heathrow Airport Expansion

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The entrance to Grow Heathrow. Photos by Ashton Hertz.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Nearly a decade ago, the Labour government announced they were backing proposals to build a third runway at Heathrow.

This news—being, as it was, also news that CO2 emissions would be hugely increased—didn't go down too well with climate campaigners, who've done all sorts of things to demonstrate against the plans, including: setting up a weeklong protest camp in 2007, climbing on top of the Houses of Parliament, and unfurling two large opposition banners in 2008, and chucking custard at Peter Mandelson in 2009.

The most enduring protest action, however, has been that of Grow Heathrow, a collective of activists and campaigners who have spent the past five years both promoting sustainable living and demonstrating against the Heathrow expansion. In 2010, with support from locals, the group occupied a derelict plot of land in Sipsom, a village that will be completely tarmacked if the plans go ahead.

Since moving in, they've transformed the space—which used to be a bit of a shithole—into a ideal example of sustainable living and community spirit. When I arrived for the birthday celebrations last week I saw the plot was packed with fully-functioning DIY greenhouses, thriving workshop spaces and a bunch of innovative creations that allow residents to continue living off-grid, like a bike-fueled washing machine and their well-maintained "humanure" system.

Towards the end of the day I had a chat with Cameron Richardson, a Grow Heathrow activist, to talk through the project and the threat of eviction.

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Cameron Richardson

VICE: Hi Cameron. Can you run me through how Grow Heathrow came to be?
Cameron Richardson: It came from [the Heathrow] Climate Camp in 2007. There was a group of activists there who were really inspired by that, and they decided they needed to fight this fight. They moved into a rented house down the road and started Transition Heathrow with the local community, against the third runway. They were invited by the local residents to squat this bit of land that was originally an illegal scrap yard and source of antisocial behavior. Over five years we've transformed it into this amazing community project.

We have a great relationship with the local residents from Sipson, Harlington, Harmondsworth, and all the Heathrow villages. We run workshops and we actually use this space, where it was disused before. Neither us nor the local residents want a third runway; it would destroy this area and it would be a climate catastrophe. That's what binds us all together. The local people have been fighting this Heathrow expansion for 60 years and more—Some have been living here since before mechanized flight.

I understand this as a protest site, but it also feels a bit like a human experiment.
It's an alternative on your doorstep. We're trying to develop a life without reliance on oil. All of our heat is produced by wood; our shower is wood; there's the straw bale house, which is carbon negative as opposed to carbon positive, which most modern buildings are. We're not confessing to this being "the way," we're just showing examples of things that could lead to living a life without dependence on oil. In the space of where they want to build a climate disaster, we have built something that is the exact opposite.

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Has anything changed with the legality of you being here?
There are two land owners here. We were meant to be in court on February 19, for this back bit of land with Lewdown Holdings Ltd, a faceless company registered in Guernsey. But we got a three-month adjournment so we're definitely here for another three months. We've been to court about the front bit of land and there's an eviction warrant on it, but when we were supposed to get evicted the bailiffs didn't show up. Residents from all of the surrounding villages came down to support. When we go to court in May we have local people with witness statements, as well as ourselves, going along. We've always had fantastic local support.

So the bailiffs are letting you off for now?
Well, they could come any time. We're not under any illusions about that. We have our preparations for that. But [squatting] isn't the main focus of Grow Heathrow; that's not our primary thing. We are here as a community project. The local residents and us want it to stay, and that's why it's been here so long.

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Can you talk me through some of the sustainable features you have here?
We use a lot of bikes. Bikes are really good for using your energy efficiently, getting a lot more out of what you put in. One of the best examples of sustainable building is our shower; it's fed by the mains but has a radiator on top of a fire, which heats the water through convection, much like a boiler does to a tank in your house, but we use fire instead of gas. It's completely green; we use zero carbon. It's all built from materials that were found or donated to the site. This is just one of the many ways that you can live off-grid and still be clean and warm.

A lot of it appears to be foraged bits and pieces of trash.
It's upcycling and recycling. It's creating something positive out of society's waste. We take something that's negative for a community—waste, and what was essentially a car breaker's yard—and we turn it into something positive, where people can learn how to live sustainably. The straw bale house was built through a series of workshops where the community came and helped us build it. As a result, there are a lot of people in the villages that know the basic principles of building a straw bale house.

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How do you keep it safe?
Interesting question. We have an ethos of working together, fighting the third runway and living sustainably. This is the difference between a squat and a project. To live here you have to buy into what the project is about. We all live and work through consensus, where we find the middle-ground between everyone collectively. So everyone is happy. We keep it safe by working together, and everyone needs to agree on whether someone can live here or not, based on the fundamental values behind the site. It's a working project; it's not somewhere you just come and live.

Do you ever get in fights with each other?
Yes, of course, sometimes. In the real world, if you fall out with somebody at work you can go home and forget about it, whereas here you see them all day and have to work together helping each other out. So you have to learn to get along and be patient.

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How has your time here been?
My time here has been great! It's so nice to live communally and work communally. It's a different way of living. The benefits here aren't just for the community, they're also for yourself. It's about how you interact with the world. It's a different way of interacting with space and with people. Everybody tries to help each other out here all the time, which doesn't always happen in the real world. It's a great place to live. I would encourage anybody interested to come down to Grow Heathrow, or similar spaces like Yorkley Court in the forest of Dean. They're facing eviction on March 12 for doing something very similar to us.

What have you got to say to the heads of Heathrow?
They've been trying for decades to get a third runway and it's been rejected every time. It's got to stop. The wider community don't want it. There's a way of life that has been here since way before the airport. The residents aren't asking for the airport to be shut down, they want to live with the airport. We are not a threat to the airport, but the airport is a threat to the climate and the people that live here. You can't have an expanding aviation industry, which is what the government are planning, and meet our 2020 or 2050 CO2 targets—it just doesn't work. It's time to stop bullying the community. On environmental and community grounds, this runway should never be built.

Follow Jak on Twitter.

Cops Chased Climate Change Protesters Dressed as Polar Bears Around London on Saturday

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Photos by Aliosha Cheyko

Last September, 40,000 people took to the streets of London for one of the largest climate change marches in history. In the time since, it doesn't really feel like the political agenda has been ratcheted up in quite the way it should have, considering the world is becoming an uninhabitable mess of drought and despair before our very eyes.

So on Saturday, a bunch of people decided to have another go at it. The Time to Act climate change march failed to surpass last year's protest in numbers, but upped the ante in terms of angry, if not entirely successful direct action tactics.

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When I got there at about midday, there were already loads of people buzzing around Lincoln's Inn Fields. Hare Krishna devotees were handing out free food to the large crowd. There were a lot of familiar scenes from last year: parents with push chairs containing children who will never be allowed to eat fast food, evangelical cyclists in latex and banners making clever puns about how "frack" sounds almost like "fuck." Compared to last year, however, there were a few more aggy looking protesters in black bloc gear. They hung around awkwardly in the shade beneath the central bandstand, eager for the march to begin.

As we spewed out of the square, the full expanse of the crowd became clear—later estimates said there were probably 20,000 people present. Ironically, most of the march was spent crawling between snaking lines of traffic, around idling engines spewing extra carbon into the atmosphere.

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This guy honked his horn at the march, and quickly found himself surrounded by stern anti-capitalists—"the rich, the rich, we've got to get rid of the rich!" they chanted. The guy clammed up and feigned a smile, which saved him from any lynching that might have been about to happen... or at least more chanting from upset protesters.

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As the march reached Downing Street, a black bloc of anti-capitalist protesters squared up to cops in front of David Cameron's house. Another group split away and headed down the side of Downing Street, charging past the Foreign Office, and spilling out into Parliament Square.

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It was here we met a group of activists dressed as polar bears. They told us they had just come from Heathrow, where they had spent the morning in Terminal 2 giving holiday goers pangs of guilt with a flash mob. Now they were dancing around in front of an unimpressed warden while the march dutifully passed by toward its anticlimactic conclusion at the House of Commons.

Eventually, a bear called Owen told us that there was a plan to break into Shell HQ, on the other side of the river. "We're looking to take the energy and actually do something," he said.

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After blowing up a large black balloon as an esoteric figurehead, a large group broke from the main march. Immediately a group of riot cops came out of one of the dozens of vans lining seemingly every side street. One polar bear got slammed into some fencing and cuffed. Their habitat destroyed by global warming and now getting grief from the cops, polar bears really can't catch a break. The guy in the above photo laid into people with his baton before being restrained by his colleagues.

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The sun beat down as the breakaway crowd crossed Westminster bridge, with a rank of cops briskly marching to contain them at the other end. The group we were with broke into a run, and ended up down the side of Shell HQ. The plan was to find an entrance, but the convoluted instructions of various leaders took us to a dead end. We ended up running back around the building, through crowds of confused tourists.

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Since there was now no chance of getting in, the crowd milled around outside; eventually someone halfheartedly spoke about the Ogoni people of Nigeria and their battle against Shell. There was a mixture of standoffishness and amiable chats between and activists and cops.

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As people left, a few arrests were made, and activists threw themselves to the ground in order to obstruct the police vans containing their comrades. For the better part of an hour we waited in the sunset as polar bears strategically lounged in front of the vans, almost goading them to slowly drive over them, and then claim it was an unavoidable traffic accident.

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That hour was mostly made up by the quiet, passive-aggressive chit-chat between cops and protesters that characterizes British dissent. This foreplay eventually turned into a scrum. Someone got dragged to the ground by her hair as the remnants of some 1664 cans flew through the air.

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As the protesters who were left drifted back toward Parliament Square and then home, I reflected on the day. Activists did not seize Shell HQ. Owen's plan to "actually do something" hadn't quite paid off—they didn't really do a whole lot. But they had made it clear that climate change is becoming a real concern for people who will probably still be on the planet in 50 years. A political change occurring to reflect this seems more a matter of "when" than "if." Then there's the question of "How?" A "Green Surge" at the election seems likely, but will that be it? Or will people—perhaps dressed as polar bears—increasingly take matters into their own hands?

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