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Comics: Roy in Hollywood - 'Roy Makes Friends With Adolf Hitler and Richard Speck'

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Follow Gilbert Hernandez on Twitter and buy his books from Fantagraphics and Drawn and Quarterly.


'ISIS Hacker': I Didn't Just Use Google, I Hacked the Pentagon

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'ISIS Hacker': I Didn't Just Use Google, I Hacked the Pentagon

This British Satirical News Network Is at War with the Far-Right and Far-Left

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A typical BFNN news story

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

BFNN (British Fake News Network) is the new kid on the news block. The website reports on the sort of red-rag stories about the Muslamification of Britain that even the Mail would shirk at. About how Channel 5 is going to replace Peppa Pig in Muslim majority areas because pigs aren 't haraam. How the town of Keighley plans to cover a pedestrian precinct with sand to make it a "welcoming space" for incoming migrants. How JD Wetherspoons in Luton is going to have booze-free Thursdays in a bid to get the Muslim dollar into its bank account. Jokes, in other words. They're jokes. It's satire.

BFNN is run by the guys who bought you Britain Furst—the Facebook site that piggybacked on the social media genius of Paul Golding's far-right mob Britain First, to spin off a range of memes that were hugely popular in moron circles. From the Halaal sunglasses Ray Ban were supposedly bringing out, to rants about Willy Wonka employing "migrant labor" Oompah-Loompahs in his factory. BFNN is a similar deal, but it's less myopically interested in far-right tropes.

You're not doing it right if you haven't had a few death threats.

Originally, the plan by BFNN's two anonymous founders was to keep the blag going until the 1st of April. After that, they would pull the rug from underneath all the outraged people who have shared their articles without irony to make a quick point about the "bloody immigrants," "political correctness gone mad," or whatever. In a final punchline, all the links on the social media of anyone who's posted one of these stories are going to be re-directed to one article, telling these social media warriors that they've fallen for some cheap lies, and maybe they should check their sources once in a while.

But last week ASDA sent them a legal writ after a story called "Asda to Remove Pork And Alcohol in High Muslim Population Areas" wound up netting over 57,000 shares on social media, including from the likes of Bristol UKIP 's Twitter feed. They realized they might have to pull the walls down sooner than that. How are upwards of 100,000 people going to take their own public ridiculing? We'll soon find out.

Even bracketing the EDL/Britain First types who were BFNN 's original targets, the range of lazy/thick local councillors and candidates they've successfully trolled is impressive.

It includes:

UKIP's Rod Butler

UKIP's Chris Byrne

Kevin Riddiough, English Democrat NE Chairman

Cllr Ashna Yates

Cllr Muhammed Butt, Labour Leader of Brent Council

Even Tommy Robinson, allegedly-reformed former EDL kingpin, ended up falling for the booze-free Thursdays at Wetherspoons piece.

The key thing the BFNN scheme seems to prove is that, in the context-free tumble-dryer of social media, no one with an opinion has ever intersected with a checked fact. The BFNN team even hyperlinked parts of their reports to "sources" that didn't back them up at all—just unrelated World Health Organization journal articles and so on. Still they came. From February 17—when it was launched—to March 19, they racked up 295,000 page views, over 100,000 shares, 215,000 sessions, with 84 percent of their traffic coming from Facebook and Twitter.

Founder "Geoff Stevens" (not his real name because he doesn't enjoy being beaten up*) and his co-editor, "Oscar" (also not his real name because he also doesn't enjoy being beaten up), contacted me with a tip-off about what they were up to back when it was only a week old. Even then, they were surprised how well they'd done. There was, after all, a big chance the whole thing could've been rumbled instantly, ending up as a lame little coda to what had been their big hit, Britain Furst. I chatted to them about satire, why people are so quick to share bullshit, why left-wing people want to dent their skulls, meeting the leaders of Britain First, and what happens after the big reveal.

*Incidentally, Geoff tells me he got beaten up yesterday at a bar by a man in a gilet, but that was to do with an argument about George Osborne, not BFNN.

VICE: Were you surprised by how easily BFNN stories were picked up?
Geoff: By the scale of it, yeah. We knew it was successful because when we launched it, within ten minutes the server had collapsed under the traffic.

Do you both have proper jobs?
I'm a writer.
Oscar: I'm a wine merchant.

Have you had a lot of threats?
To be honest, the right-wing, they get angry at the news stories, but because they haven't really realized they're fake yet, they haven't come after us. I'm more scared of the far-left guys who think we're hate-stirring.

Really?
Geoff: 100 percent. Because the punchline hasn't been revealed yet, it does look like we're stirring hate, which I totally understand.

But there must be a lot of people who could potentially come after you?
There's one guy who threatened to oust me for tax reasons. It was funny, because I did no dodgy tax thing. On the back of selling some t-shirts. But I declared it all. I looked up the guy afterward and he was the former head of security for a right-wing organization. And his granddad had a profile on Wikipedia for, uh, being a racist person. So uh, probably involved with them in some way.

Oscar: A lot of people in the Yes Scotland group take umbrage with us for reasons I'm unsure of. We've had some not-so-friendly messages from them. No death threats.

Geoff: I've had a few death threats. You're not doing it right if you haven't had a few death threats.

Are you avowed anti-racist people, or are EDL type stories a target of opportunity you felt obliged to take?
Oscar: Honestly, if people want to go posting that crap on Facebook, that's fine, I don't have a problem with their right to. If you want to say something offensive, you should be able to. I've got no time for the Malicious Communications law. It's more about lampooning people like The Mail , The Mirror, and The Star, feeding stories that fit their established narrative to their audience.

Geoff: Basically, it illustrates that within a couple of weeks, with a bit of internet know-how, you can put this sort of crap out to feed a certain narrative.

Oscar: We actually never intended for every article to be about Islam. But we're not just hitting the far-right. The far-left are gonna get it in the neck too. No one's particularly safe at the moment.

So you're equal opportunity wind-up merchants?
One of the things I don't like on the site is when you get people going, "Can't believe this. Bloody Muslims." Those things you expect from people who don't realize it's satire—fine. But it's the next guy going, "You're an idiot, you don't get it do you?" What good's that going to do? They might not be the most critically-thinking of people, but you're never going to get them back into the mainstream of politics if you're just going to belittle them. The people who are going, "You people are bigots, you're racists, you're scum" are just satisfying their own egos.

Geoff—you've actually met Britain First's founders Paul Golding and Jim Dowson. How did that go?
Geoff: Yeah I've met Jimmy and Paul. What happened was, Britain First was doing a ten-date UK tour. I was in my hometown at the time having a beer. Long story short, I turned around and they all walked into the pub. I ended up saying hello to them. I hadn't told them who I was. We got photos with them, which was quite funny. Then they were ushered out of the pub. So I went to another bar, and then two of their security guards came downstairs, put their fingers in their earpieces, and said: "We've found the boy, we've found the boy."

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They said can you come round the corner and have a word with Jim Dowson. I said, "I've seen too many Hollywood films to go round the corner with you boys." Long story short, we said we needed to buy cigarettes. Jim Dowson said he did, too. We all got in a taxi together, went down to a Co-Op. Jim bought some Cafe Creme cigars. During the taxi ride he was telling me about all of his stuff. I've got the full audio: I just clicked record on my phone and put it in my pocket.

Is it worth listening to, or is it just the usual babble?
It's mainly just him talking through his story. Every now and then, there's some interjection from one of his minders, saying, "Don't say that Jim, don't say that." On New Year's Eve I was really drunk and rang him and said, "Happy New Year, Jim." He said, "Oh, Happy New Year, mate." He told me he was retired from politics, but if I ever wanted to go down to Belfast and interview him, that'd be fine.

What happens after the big reveal? Are you just going to leave this site where it is as a warning to all?
After that, it's just going to be a pure satire publication. I just want it to continue as some fake news and some real news—to blur the line between that. Because I think a lot of satire publications could benefit from that.

Is anonymity a curse? Would you like to be telling people who you are and what you're up to?
In some ways. But it's a level of anonymity. Believe me—when I go down the pub, after a few, I tell everyone what I'm up to.

Follow Gavin on Twitter.

Sorry, Kurds, Canada Has No Guns to Give

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Photo via Flickr user DVIDSHUB

After months of questions over why Ottawa won't wrap up some of its extra weaponry and send them to the under-equipped Kurds, Defence Minister Jason Kenney has finally offered a clear explanation: we have none to give.

"We do not have operable surplus equipment in our inventory that we can send over there," Kenney told VICE on Wednesday afternoon.

The Canadian government revealed Tuesday that Canadian planes would be expanding their mission against the Islamic State into Syria. Conspicuously missing from that announcement was additional humanitarian, defensive, or offensive aid for Canada's partners and allies.

Kinetic weaponry has been a big ask from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Their laundry list includes tanks, armoured personnel carriers, Humvees, anti-tank missiles, and more.

So far, about 1.6-million pounds of military aid has made it to Iraq, mostly small arms and ammunition, transported by Canada's C-177 Globemaster planes. Some of that is surplus defensive gear destined for the Iraqi Security Forces, while the rest of it is Albanian and Czech weapons, mostly Kalashnikovs and grenades.

The AK-47s that Canada is ferrying were on the brink of being decommissioned, given that they were stockpiled after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when they were tapped to be donated to the Kurds.

The KRG say those weapons are grossly inadequate to actually help them push back the Islamic State.

But the Kurds aren't the only ones who say that weapons are required to fight the Islamic State.

Mirza Ismail, Chairman of the Yazidi Human Rights Organization International, says Canada and the international community aren't doing enough to help his people. He was invited to a press conference with the Foreign Affairs minister on Wednesday morning and appeared behind Kenney as he spoke to reporters in the foyer of the House of Commons.

"We want Canada to supply direct arms," Ismail told media. He says the KRG hasn't done enough to protect the Assyrians and Yazidis from the Islamic State threat, and they have been loath to share their weaponry with other fighting forces.

While there was celebration when Kurdish forces liberated the Sinjar mountains in Syrian Kurdistan last December, there are still as many as 10,000 who remain on the mountain, some of them by choice. Given that Islamic State fighters still control territory at the foot of the mountain, Yazidi fighters have formed their own militias to defend themselves.

"We have more than 7,000 fighters now," says Ismail. He says that air strikes are helping—Canada will be joining those air strikes in a matter of weeks—but he says they still lack heavy weapons and bullets. "If you don't have ammunition, what can you do?" he says.

Kenney says Canada upping military aid to forces within Kurdistan isn't out of the question, it has simply become a question of logistics. Ottawa would either need to procure or purchase new weapons, or find a country with surplus and use the Royal Canadian Air Force's strategic transport planes to ferry the weapons.

"We are open to possibly providing further airlift to bring munitions to the Peshmerga," Kenney told VICE. "We're in ongoing discussions with allied countries about what further we can provide in that respect.

"We continue to be open to this," he said.

Kenney added that Canada has already contributed significantly, and that other states—ones that are sitting out the training or airstrikes missions—may be better suited to contribute arms.

Germany, for example, is contributing 40 troops to train Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, but it is not dropping bombs. It is, however, equipping some 4,000 Kurds with guns, anti-tank missiles, and armoured vehicles.

Opposition leaders Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau, who oppose the bombing campaign, both said that Canada should consider kicking in more military aid.

Mulcair took questions outside of the NDP caucus room on Wednesday, before Kenney spoke, and said he would like to see more of the Soviet weapons make it into the hands of Kurdish fighters, especially because United Nations resolutions have called for international aid to help fighters in the area defend themselves against the Islamic State.

Trudeau basically shrugged off the question after his Liberal caucus meeting, saying that if Canada doesn't have weapons to send, then it simply doesn't have weapons to send. He added that he supports sending whatever support we can.

Follow Justin Ling on Twitter.

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl Charged With Desertion and 'Misbehavior Before the Enemy'

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Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl Charged With Desertion and 'Misbehavior Before the Enemy'

We Watched British Bankers Beat the Shit Out of Each Other in a White Collar Boxing Match

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All images by the author

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

White collar boxing is where young British office workers train for just eight weeks, step into a ring, and pound the shit out of each other. According to the Facebook event page, thousands planned to cram into Bournemouth's Purbeck Hall this past Saturday night to watch over 40 contenders do just that, so I thought I'd go along to get a look for myself.

The birth of the culture is widely attributed to Gleason's Gym in New York, which has trained legitimate boxing champions such as Ali, Tyson, and LaMotta. Owner Bruce Silverglade started running informal fights for Wall Street city boys and, as the millennium turned, more and more started flooding through his doors. In 2000, Wall Street workers fought in a London event called "Capital Punishment," sparking an interest in white collar boxing in the UK.

The Bournemouth event was organized by the UK's largest white collar boxing promoters, Ultra White Collar Boxing Ltd. And with over 4,000 JP Morgan staff local to the area, many take part in the competition, meaning it was probably one of the best opportunities going to punch a banker without getting arrested. Mind you, more people seemed to be there to support Cancer Research UK—the charity the event was being held in aid of—than to watch the perpetrators of the economic crisis bleed in public.

The evening started early and ran until midnight, with batches of four new fighters brought to the two side-by-side rings every ten minutes, like a black eye production line. Each competitor had been told to sell 20 tickets to their mates. This lead to an atmosphere comparable to those charity runs and walks where everyone in the crowd is there to cheer on their friend as they sprint past, and then heads to the pub to get wasted.

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The opener in ring one saw two men with 16oz gloves, headgear, and slight beer guts go head-to-head. It was six minutes of lurching hooks, jabs launched from flat feet, and poor stamina. Occasionally one made contact, sending the opponent stumbling backwards and their head guard spinning.

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As the evening went on, the boxers got better and the audience got worse. A bottle thrown high in a looping arch came down on the table of some rival supporters 30 feet away, sending those seated there into a frenzied man-hunt through the standing audience. Men disappeared to the loos and came back with Polo nostrils.

In the foyer, a mass brawl surged in from the arena to the bathrooms, then back to the arena and finally to the smoking area. All that madness left blood-splattered security guards and screaming women in its wake, as men from both factions stomped, punched, and head-butted their way through the building.

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Outside, a man bleeding profusely out of his head stood wild-eyed and roaring. When a friend tried to hold him back, he tried to beat the shit out of him, too, covering the both of them in his blood.

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Whoever dealt the damage to this tuxedo-clad man takes the title of best punch outside the ring, but in the competition that prize would have gone to Charlie Malyon. Charlie (in the blue above) showed himself to be most capable competitor, his reactions impressive as he rolled out of jabs and swung back with fast, teasing shots, obviously disorienting his opponent.

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The match soon after was between Matt, a JP Morgan employee, and a man named David. Thanks to his height and size advantage, the audience favored Matt—and, for most of the first round, it seemed they were right. However, in the second round David came back, racking up the points with flurries of jabs and hooks. By the third round, wariness and weariness had set in and the pace slowed, prompting grappling and lighter jabs over the go-for-broke efforts of the previous rounds. The score closed with David winning 28 to 29, leaving Matt visibly disappointed.

A minute after the match I spoke to a remarkably upbeat Matt and some of the other contestants in the foyer.

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Matt just after his fight

VICE: Why white collar boxing?
Matt Elcock, JP Morgan: I've always done a bit of martial arts—always enjoyed keeping fit—and then I started boxing six months ago as a personal challenge. When this came along, I thought, Why not put it to use?

How have you been feeling today?
Yeah, mixed emotions. You're up, down, pumped, knackered, and then shitting yourself. Waiting to go through those doors, there's no feeling like it. Scary stuff.

You lost by one point. How do you feel about the result?
Yeah, obviously everyone wants to win, and I'm gutted I didn't, but I can hold my head up high. We went toe-to-toe, exchanged blows... to be honest, it could have gone either way. First round was mine, second was his, third was even Stevens. I think I had the better technique and was fitter, but he landed those hooks. They were devastating. Even with the guard up, it fucking hurts, mate. It fucking hurts. Kudos to him.

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Why white collar boxing?
Aran "The AK-47" Kennedy, Deep Motion UK House Events: I signed up after hearing about it on Twitter. I saw "eight weeks free training, raising money for cancer research" and thought, I'll have some of this.

How are you feeling about entering the ring in a minute or two?
Well, I've always had this saying: "There's no better feeling than getting punched and raising money for cancer research."

How important is winning to you?
We've won before we walk into the ring... but yeah, winning would be an added bonus. But the real reason there are 2,000 people here is for Cancer Research UK—it's a cause that affects all of us personally.

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Hi Calvin. What motivated you to fight today?
Calvin Brandon, self-employed property maintenance expert: I've always wanted to have a go at boxing, but I've always put it off. I'm 37 now, so I thought, If I don't do it now, I never will. I've raised over $1,500 for Cancer Research, so it's a really good feeling.

You're a bit bloodied, any regrets?
No, nothing hurts—but it probably will in the morning. It was a good fight. He caught me loads of times, especially in the first round in the face, but I got some good body shots and got a draw in the end.

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Why white collar boxing?
Adam Miyanji, Health-On-Line customer consultant: My workmate told me to get involved—he's a competitor as well. I thought, Why not? Fuck it. It's a bit of fitness and the best thing I've ever done.

How did you do?
I didn't win, but I tied my fight, stuck to my game-plan. But, more importantly, I got the adrenaline flowing.

Are you more Fight Club or Rocky?
I tried to be a boxer, but it ended up with a Fight Club kind of vibe. You can't help it—you want to stick to the game-plan, but if someone wants to brawl, you're gonna brawl. When someone punches you in the face, the natural reaction is to try and punch them in the face. It's the first fight I've ever had.

Follow Jack Courtez on Twitter.

I Took a Tour of Scientology's Los Angeles (and It Was Pretty Creepy)

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There used to be a lot of mystery surrounding Scientology.

But now, on the verge of the release of two major documentaries about the church (Louis Theroux's Stairway to Heaven and Alex Gibney's Going Clear), little of that mystery remains. It was chipped away over the years, by blogs and message boards, South Park episodes, and tell-all books.

Which is why it's odd to me that, as a resident of Los Angeles, the Scientology Capital of the World, I know nothing about what's happening in the many Scientology-owned properties around my city. And when I say many, I mean many. A quick poke around online suggests there are at least 30 Los Angeles-based buildings that are owned by the church or the various organizations they've set up to do their bidding.

I decided to explore as many of Scientology's properties in the city that are open to the public as I could (with the exception of the standard Scientology centers that every city has, because I refuse to believe there is a single person reading this who hasn't gotten drunk, stumbled into one, then giggled their way through a " personality test").

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The first stop on my tour was the Renaissance Restaurant, a high-end dining spot located inside the hilariously named Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre International in Hollywood, which, even without the Scientology association, may be the most sinister looking building in the entire city. Luigi's Mansion remodeled by Leslie Nielsen's Dracula.

I went for dinner there one recent evening with several friends. The inside of the Centre, like all buildings owned by the Church of Scientology, was generically nice and slightly dated. Like the Fresh Prince of Bel Air house, or the lobby of an airport Hyatt.

The menu offered the kind of food that I imagine rich people in LA like to eat. Dishes with names like "confit duck risotto," "gluten-free quinoa crepes," and "pan fried chilean sea bass" littered the menu. The waiters had thick Lumiére-from- Beauty-and-the-Beast French accents which matched the overall vibe of the restaurant a little too perfectly. More than one person at my table independently suggested that the waiters might have been faking their French accents in order to make the space appear classier.

The food was, by the accounts of all those present, "fine." It was also surprisingly cheap for a place with white table cloths and French accents (I had the quinoa pancakes and a beer, which came to about $20).

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Outside the restaurant, in the main portion of the building, was an office that a plaque identified as belonging to L. Ron Hubbard. Someone who worked in the building saw me checking out the room and explained to me that the church maintains offices for L. Ron at most of their churches so he'll have somewhere to work when he comes back to earth. Which is nice of them.

After dinner, we were offered a tour of the building, which we accepted. If you go here for dinner, DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE. The building that houses the Celebrity Centre used to be a hotel in Hollywood's glory days, where like, Betty Davis and Clark Gable stayed, so I thought it might be kinda interesting. But it turned out to be pretty much a solid hour of a church member talking at us about how great Scientology is as my dining companions shot me HOW THE FUCK DO WE GET OUT OF HERE looks.

One very odd thing happened while I was there, though. At the start of our "tour," the church member giving it asked everyone in my group what our names and professions were.

Not a single member of my party was honest about what they did. We all lied. This is because there's something about the Church of Scientology that makes people paranoid and nervous. Especially if they're a writer.

In the past, the Church of Scientology was able to pull off some impressively diabolical stuff against writers. Like the time they managed to frame a journalist they didn't like for terrorism by planting her fingerprints on a fake bomb threat.

Obviously, with all their recent (non-consensual) transparency, these kind of shenanigans are no longer possible for them. They're being watched by people, and these people have the internet. If they were to try anything on the scale of their previous actions in this day and age, it would destroy them.

For instance, it seems their response to the upcoming HBO doc about them has been laughably weak, seemingly limited to a Twitter account they've set up to tweet about the film and its subjects, which, despite paid promotion, only has 501 followers as I write this. A far cry from the fake terrorist plots of the past.

Anyway, back to the Celebrity Centre. I told our guide that I was, rather unbelievably, a "construction worker," to which he responded, "Really? Are you sure you're not a writer? Because you look like a writer."

If this had been any other place, with any other people, I would just shrug it off as a coincidence. I do look very similar to many of the images that come up when you google "male writer," and absolutely nothing like the images that come up when you google "construction worker."

However, this was not any person. This was a person who was a representative for a group that once framed a journalist in a fake terrorism plot. And, as such, I spent the next few days pausing in my day-to-day activities to audibly ask myself, "How the fuck did that guy know I was a writer?"

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This didn't stop me from returning to the Celebrity Centre a few nights later to watchJurassic Park, which was being screened as part of an event series the church does in the summer called Franklin Friday Night Cinema, where they screen classic movies in the centre's garden.

I paid $5 to get in, and was told the money was to benefit some organization with a title so generic I assumed it was one of the nonprofits that the Church of Scientology sponsors (like " the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights" or "Applied Scholastics") to help the Church do its bidding. HOWEVER the website for the organization being benefitted suggests they're a legitimate charity. So that's good.

Given the seemingly innocuous nature of the event series, and the fact that its name does not contain the word "Scientology," I'd assumed this would be some kind of subtle brainwashing session.

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But the vibe was totally fun and decidely un-brainwashy. There was even free popcorn and a dino photo booth set up. Unfortunately, due to my previous Celebrity Centre encounter, I was too scared to give the photographer my real contact details so she could send me the photo (duh), so I never got my dino photo. Boo.


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Also, if you have aspirations of stardom, the Celebrity Centre hosts regular "talent showcases."

Their website doesn't really specify what the purpose of the talent showcases are. It just says they're "seeking singers, dancers, comedy acts, musicians" with no mention of why they're being sought. I called the woman who organizes the showcases to ask what she wants from these people, and she said that the showcases were "auditions," but wouldn't elaborate on what exactly the auditions were for. Which is pretty ominous.

The Church has previously been accused of using free acting workshops at the Celebrity Centre as an excuse to solicit people disguised as a "legitimate industry event." A claim the Church denies. "There's so much interest in Scientology," Greg Leclaire, vice president of Celebrity Centre, explained to the New Yorker in 2008, "We really, really, really don't have any inclination or the time to talk to someone who's not interested."

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Next on the agenda was the Hollywood Christmas Parade, an event that has been happening in LA since the 20s.

The parade route goes past several buildings owned by Scientology on Hollywood Blvd, which may be why the church takes part in it every year.

Though various attempts have been made by the city of Los Angeles to make the parade a competitor to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, you've probably never heard of it (unless you live in LA and have been stuck in the traffic generated by its road closures).

I attended the most recent one, which featured a Church-sponsored parade balloon (of a pirate, for some reason), a float promoting The Way To Happiness Foundation, as well as Nancy Cartwright walking alongside a car that had the words "Nancy Cartwright" written on the side (Nancy, who provides the voice of Bart Simpson, was recently named a "Patron Laureate" by the church in recognition of a $10 million donation).

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We've written about the Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Museum before. It's a museum founded by The Citizen's Commission on Human Rights (an organization established by Scientologists to "investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights" (i.e. to push the Church's anti-psychiatry agenda). As in all instances of the Church taking a stand against something, there is absolutely no chill on display here.

It would be quite easy to make a measured case against psychiatry, as the psychiatric industry has been responsible for some fairly fucked up things. But, as the name would suggest, the Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Museum has zero interest in measured. The exhibits in the museum attempt to blame the psychiatric industry for pretty much every bad thing that has ever happened. They have displays on how psychiatry is responsible for everything from Columbine to slavery.

Much of it is based on exaggeration or outright lies (for instance, they claim that 9/11 is the fault of the psychiatric industry because al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is a psychiatrist, when he's actually a surgeon). But it's presented in such a dramatic, breathlessly over-the-top way that it's DEFINITELY worth a visit.

Also, to add to the museum's feeling of general creepiness, you have to give your name and occupation when you enter the building, and also leave your bag at the front desk. When I got my bag back from them to leave, I noticed it was partially unzipped. Had it been partially unzipped when I handed it to them? Almost certainly. Did I let this stop me from having a paranoid meltdown over it? Definitely not.

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A little farther north is another Scientology-owned museum, the L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition. Which, as the name suggests, is an exhibition dedicated to the life of L. Ron Hubbard.

When I arrived at the museum, I was told that I would have to wait for an hour before being able to go inside, as nobody is allowed to tour the space without a guide, and the lady at the front desk would have to find someone to cover for her so she could show me around. It didn't suggest to me that this is a place that gets many visitors.

The exhibition itself was surprisingly (and exhaustingly) in-depth. It had about 20 different exhibits, each dealing with different chapters in L. Ron's life.

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All of the unsavory stuff that you already know about L. Ron—for instance, the time he said that the problem with China was " too many chinks"—was left out.

Though I had been a little annoyed about having to wait an hour to get in to the museum, the above life-sized diorama depicting a scene from Battlefield Earth made it totally worth it.

A mile to the west lies another Scientology-owned attraction, the L. Ron Hubbard Theater, which hosts weekly live performances of short stories L. Ron wrote.

The theater is located inside the headquarters of Galaxy Press, which is yet another company set up by the Church, this time to publish and promote the written works of L. Ron.

As I walked into the building, I was stopped and told I needed a member of staff to escort me through the building to the theater space at the back. As the staff member was leading me through, he turned to me and asked, "Are you an actor? Because it feels like you're acting right now." As he said this, I noticed that all of the other guests were walking through the building on their own, sans escorts. Now, admittedly, I am a very paranoid person. As I write this, there's part of a Post-It note stuck over my laptop's webcam that's been there since I read an article on webcam hacking about two years ago. But this definitely made me a little freaked out.

To enter the performance, I was offered the choice of paying $10 for a ticket, or buying a book "that we donate to charity." I went with the option of donating a book to charity, as I wasn't super into the idea of giving my money to Scientology.

Once inside, I found out that the book I had purchased to donate to charity was actually a book by L. Ron Hubbard, and the charity it was being donated to was Toys for Tots. I know this because before the evening's performances started, a man came out on stage to brag that the Church is the world's biggest donor to Toys for Tots.

Just let that sink in for second: A spokesperson for the Church was boasting that they are the biggest donor to Toys for Tots, because they make their members buy books that they themselves publish, which are then forced upon needy children.

Sorry, underprivileged kids of America. I'm gonna donate some Nerf Guns or something to make up for this.

As I sat waiting for the performance to begin, I listened in on the conversation happening at the table next to mine. There was a young girl who seemed to be a new recruit. "Do you ever read other fiction?" a senior-looking church member asked her, while gesturing to some of the L. Ron Hubbard books that were on sale in the room. "I only read L. Ron Hubbard," he went on. "And you'll find most of the other people here do, too. It's got everything you need."

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Before the main event, there was a performance by the Jive Aces, a British jive/swing band who are known for giving out Scientology literature at their performances.

After the Jive Aces had finished playing, some actors took the stage to act out one of L. Ron's Western stories. Did you ever do that thing in school where the teacher was talking, and you would do everything you could to concentrate on not zoning out, but then you'd realize that you were concentrating so hard on not zoning out that you hadn't been listening to anything the teacher had been saying? That was my experience with the radio play. I tried with everything in my being to pay attention to what was being said. But it was so, so, so, so, so, SO boring that it was impossible. I guess when a writer has over 250 pieces of fiction published over the course of his career, some of them are going to be duds.

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Over in Glendale lies another property the Church manages, The Way to Happiness Foundation. The building is in a pretty retail-heavy section of Glendale, and houses a publicly-accessible exhibition space, as well as some offices.

After spending about 20 minutes inside the building reading their pamphlets, looking at the exhibit, and chatting to their staff, I still had no fucking idea what they do. So I spoke to the woman working the front desk. She explained what the foundation did for about ten minutes, but was somehow never actually specific about what the foundation does. Which was genuinely quite impressive. From what I can tell, they print booklets containing a moral code that L. Ron invented, and they give those booklets out to people for free.

The woman made lots of claims about the good the Foundation has done around the world. One thing that she said stuck in my mind because it seems very, very untrue, but I have no idea how to fact check it: She claimed that the crime rate had dropped by 50 percent in Colombia after the foundation had provided the country's police with their educational materials.

It should be noted that, with the exception of a couple of pictures of Nancy Cartwright, I didn't see anything in the building that made it clear the foundation was related to Scientology. I had a quick look around online just now and saw that the Church has been accused of starting the foundation as a way of getting their literature into schools without anyone noticing it's related to Scientology.

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I rounded off my tour at the Pacific Cafe, which is located in the basement of the Church's Hollywood headquarters (a.k.a. the Big Blue Building). The Pacific Cafe, as you may have guessed from the title, is a cafe. It sells pretty standard office-canteen type stuff. Drinks, granola bars, sandwiches, etc. This is unimportant. What is important is that as I was making my purchase (Scientology-branded lip balm and a cup of coffee), the woman serving me greeted me by USING MY FIRST NAME.

After a full 30 seconds of reeling in horror, I managed to say to her, "How do you know my name?" (in the exact voice that Drew Barrymore uses when realizing the phone voice knows her boyfriend's name in Scream). The lady responded, "Didn't I serve you in here this morning? No? Must have been someone who looked like you."

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Which means one of three things: One, the woman genuinely mistook me for another person who has the same name as me (unlikely). Two, she was psychic (also unlikely). Or three, I have no idea. Genuinely have no idea how that woman could have known my name. All I know is it was incredibly creepy and confusing and I became so paranoid that I convinced myself there was poison in the coffee I'd bought so I threw it out without even taking a sip. And now I have to get plastic surgery to change my appearance and find a new place to live. Bye!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

Edmontonians Are Putting Pictures of Themselves in Their Underwear on Facebook

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Illustration by Destiny Lalana Davidson

"Body acceptance is so fucking important."

The line comes from Sarah Culkin. She is one of the participants in a growing Facebook art project called This Is My Skin.

The new Edmonton-based group involves ordinary people of all different squishy shapes and sizes posting Facebook photos of themselves wearing just their underwear. But it's not sexy, and it's not intended to be.

The group's popularity has grown substantially like what creator Patrick Sullivan calls a "social media fungus," in recent weeks, from having only 75 Facebook likes in late February to a touch over 600 now.

The Facebook group aims to promote body acceptance on both a personal and societal level by posting the photos with an accompanying passage detailing the subjects' individual struggles with body image.

The write-ups are relatable and push against any negative connotations to do with body image. So far, all of them have contained anecdotes of intimate truth, conversations we've all had with ourselves in the mirror.

All passages end with "My name is [insert name here] and this is my skin."

Culkin's post touched on being a girl in high school who was constantly surrounded by body image "conditioning, marketing, and pressure."

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Sarah Culkin. Photo by Patrick Sullivan

"I was too tall, my boobs were too small, I was carrying weight in the wrong places, whatever," she wrote.

About a year ago, Culkin discovered a "begrudging acceptance" towards her body. Basically, she came to the simple realization that life is too short.

"I just got fucking tired of worrying all the time about my body and how I looked," said Culkin.

While Culkin came to this realization before participating in the project, she still had to consider facing the obvious obstacle in the project: anyone could view her semi-nude photo on a public Facebook page.

The photos on This Is My Skin, however, aren't meant to be sexualized. "I'm not trying to be sexy. It's just a body," said Culkin. "If anybody tries to sexualize my body for me, that's their perversion and weirdness and not my problem."

This Is My Skin is the brainchild of 21-year-old Edmonton resident Patrick Sullivan. While working a full-time job as a Second Cup barista, Sullivan decided he wanted to pursue something that was more involved than grinding beans.

"I wanted something to do with people and something that sparks conversation," said Sullivan.

After bouncing through a bunch of ideas, Sullivan landed on something he knew needed to be talked about publicly—body acceptance. But he knew that he didn't want to create another "accept yourself," Dove-like campaign. He didn't want to display or sell a product. He wanted to create a "megaphone or a stage," for conversation about body acceptance.

Though he is the creator of This Is My Skin, Sullivan doesn't think of himself as the head of the Facebook community. He merely sees himself as an aide working towards "igniting conversation."

That group members have recognized they share similar beliefs when it comes to their weariness of being told how they should look.

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Joel Dinicola. Photo by Patrick Sullivan

This Is My Skin's first poster, Joel Dinicola, knows he has been influenced by society to look at beauty in a specific way. "I've been socialized to objectify women based on their physical appearance as a result of society's normative representation of beauty," said Dinicola.

"This is something that I hate about myself and try to constantly change."

Dinicola believes that This Is My Skin is the perfect a way to tell "beauty standards to fuck off."

While the concept is straightforward, the community is definitely something different for every individual.

"It's a really enlightening thing that brings positive aspects for something that most people think of as shitty and negative," said contributor Haley Pukanski.

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Haley Pukanski. Photo by Haley Pukanski

As a teenager, Pukanski went through some intense and grim situations. She used to feel a self-loathing towards her body—so much so that it resulted in alcoholism, bulimia, and an eventual suicide note.

But a lot has changed in her life and she's has been cruising on the recovery road since those trying times. Her post on This Is My Skin has been an "empowering" release for her.

For Alexander Trivellin, This Is My Skin was the right place at the right time. He remembers having a conversation with someone very close to him about their struggles with body image. Trivellin realized that he had no advice to give because he was going through the same situation.

After posting, he felt an immense weight lifted off his shoulders.

"Since everyone I know has seen me with my top off, and I'm not dead yet, I don't really have to worry about it anymore," said Trivellin.

"Now, every time I get a thought like that I just think, 'They've already seen me.' It's pretty great."

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Alexander Trivellin. Photo by Alexander Trivellin

One aspect that Sullivan had to establish with the submission process for This Is My Skin is age. Recently, he decided it would have to be an "18 and over" group due to the obvious reason of legality issues with youth and semi-nude photos.

The actual submission process is where Sullivan becomes the most physically involved. Whenever someone wanting to participate messages him, he takes time out of his busy schedule to try and meet with them and, most importantly, thank them.

Sullivan accepts submissions from people who would like to remain anonymous or wish to post a photo and passage on their own without a meet and greet.

During the meet and greet, Sullivan has a conversation with the participant about their personal story. He does this to really get to know them and to have them reflect on what they want to write in their submission. After the chat, Sullivan makes sure the participant is comfortable and they move on to the photo shoot.

Wherever the location (his place or theirs), Sullivan makes sure the participant is relaxed during the photoshoot in their underwear. He does this by keeping an open dialogue with the volunteer to keep the shoot organic.

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Artwork by Destiny Lalana Davidson

For Sullivan, his progress with This Is My Skin has been a huge learning experience."This project really liberated from that male objectification that I, like many males, fall for," said Sullivan. "Now I can just see someone in his or her underwear and there is no sexualization of it."

Even though the project is very fresh and based in Edmonton, Sullivan has received messages from across Canada. He has no idea what's next for This Is My Skin, so he is not setting any wild goals. "Whether it survives is irrelevant. What is important is that body acceptance is being talked about with positivity and support."

Follow Stephan Boissonneault on Twitter.


The Harper Government May Have Bullied a Pro-Gun Group into Dropping its C-51 Criticism

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Photo via Flickr user Stephen Z

Canada's foremost pro-gun lobby group backed down from criticizing the Harper government's anti-terrorism legislation out of concerns that the Conservatives would screw them over on changes to new gun laws, VICE has learned.

The National Firearms Association (NFA) was scheduled to testify on Monday night before the Public Safety committee alongside OpenMedia, its partner in the Protect Our Privacy Coalition.

But Sheldon Clare, the NFA's President and CEO, pulled out just three days before he was scheduled to testify.

According to emails provided to VICE, Clare withdrew after pressure from the Conservatives over a different piece of legislation—Bill C-42.

That bill aimed to lessen paperwork for gun owners and to allow them to transport weapons more easily. Gun advocates called it "tinkering."

The NFA proposed a whole suite of amendments to the legislation. They want the bill to go much broader, and asked that the Conservatives to re-craft the bill to remove barrel length restrictions that determine whether a weapon will be restricted, axe storage and transportation regulations, and generally reduce policing for lawful gun owners.

But, at present, it does not even seem a much milder version of the bill will have much of a future. Originally slated for debate on October 22—when Michel Zehaf-Bibeau opened fire on Parliament—the legislation has been shelved, with no clear sign of when it will come back.

Yet given that there are only nine weeks left for Parliament to debate and vote on bills before the summer break—which will be followed immediately by an election—it means that it's now or never for the legislation. If Stephen Harper is replaced in next October's election, there's a better chance that gun owners will see laws around their ability to possess guns tighten, not loosen.

It's with that deadline for action firmly in mind that the NFA backed out of the committee hearing.

In the emails shown to VICE, the NFA specifically cited C-42 as a reason for the withdrawal, and tacitly acknowledged that pressure had been applied by the Prime Minister's Office. In the emails, a representative from the NFA suggested a replacement for Clare who would also oppose the legislation.

The emails were provided by a source who wished not to be identified, as they were not in a place to comment on the NFA's decision.

VICE spent much of Monday trying to reach Clare or a spokesperson, to no avail. Clare finally answered on Wednesday afternoon.

Initially, Clare said that the NFA never had any intention of testifying. When asked about the emails, Clare responded that he's said all he's going to say on the matter, adding that they've already commented on the bill.

Clare had previously told the Ottawa Citizen that C-51 has the trappings of a "creeping police state bill." Other than that, the NFA has made no public comment on the legislation.

VICE has asked spokespersons for both the public safety minister and the Prime Minister's Office for comment about the matter. Both refuted the story, but would not offer further comment.

When asked about their partner's decision to step down, OpenMedia Executive Director Steve Anderson told VICE in an email that "it's a pity the National Firearms Association withdrew from participating in the Bill C-51 committee hearing. We know that gun owners see C-51 as the long gun registry on steroids."

He said the government allegedly pressuring gun owners to muzzle themselves over C-51 is "very troubling and frankly disappointing.

"The government should come clean on what exactly happened here," Anderson said.

The committee hearings have not, thus far, been kind to C-51. Anderson, when he testified, brought a petition signed by over 100,000 Canadians, opposing C-51. He testified alongside the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (who called parts of the bill "shocking") and a founder of conservative political website FreeDominion, who replaced the NFA on the panel. (They called it "broad and vaguely worded.")

First Nations activist and Ryerson University professor Pamela Palmater, who testified to already being targeted by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the RCMP, said C-51 will exacerbate the problem. Former Supreme Court Justice John Major said the bill is devoid of proper oversight without the creation of new powers to examine how CSIS' new powers will be used.

Perhaps the most withering criticism of the bill came from former Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, who has long been an advocate for increased oversight of Canada's spy bodies.

"Attempts to keep Canadians safe, the number one job of any government, should not include provisions that make us resemble those we are struggling to defeat," Segal told the committee.

Anderson says the fact that opposition to the bill has expanded past the usual suspects and into the general public and even the conservative camp, has worried the government:

"It appears that the government is panicking because public opinion has so decisively turned against them."

Follow Justin Ling on Twitter.

VICE on City TV

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Still from the episode

Anyone looking to stave off boredom during the cryogenic hellscape that is our Canadian winter knows that the TV situation in this country is pretty bleak. And for every decent show, there are like 13 Republic of Doyles making you want to scratch your eyes out and run screaming into the cold, dark night.

Well, television watchers, there is a shimmering tropical island of awesome in the murky sea of bad Canadian TV. If you hadn't already heard, City TV has been airing some of VICE's best docs and news reports every Wednesday at midnight. Tonight is our look at West Africa's Ebola outbreak.

The current Ebola outbreak began in Guinea in December 2013. From there, it quickly spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Cases also appeared in Senegal and Nigeria, and there was another outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Today, Liberia is at the centre of the epidemic, with more than 3,000 cases of infection. About half of them have been fatal.

As President Barack Obama announced that he would be sending American military personnel to West Africa to help combat the epidemic, VICE News traveled to Monrovia to spend time with those on the front lines of the outbreak.

Tune in tonight and every Wednesday at midnight for more.

A Japanese Engineer Allegedly Committed Suicide Over a Bridge Collapse

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The scene of Kishi Ryoichi's death on Monday. Photo by Erhan Erdogan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

This Monday a group of school children in the town of Altınova , Turkey discovered the corpse of 51-year-old Japanese engineer Kishi Ryoichi at the entrance of a local cemetery. Ryoichi had slashed both of his wrists and cut his throat, leaving a suicide note that the Turkish press has used to label his death a harakiri-style suicide, committed as punishment for his self-proclaimed role in the collapse of an unfinished bridge.

To anyone familiar with historical Japanese harakiri (better known to some as seppuku), classifying Ryoichi's death as such might seem odd. A ritualized form of suicide that took root in 12th century Japan amongst the samurai warrior class, harakiri evolved over the ages—sometimes it was an impromptu affair on the battlefield, sometimes a judicial sentence, and sometimes a voluntary act planned out over months and accompanied by a great public ceremony. But no matter the variations, the basic actions were the same: a samurai or daimyo warlord would cure the shame caused by his defeat, cowardice, wrongdoing, or some other social failure by plunging a ritual knife into his abdomen (the number and direction of cuts varied). Sometimes he would then stab his own throat as well, bleeding to death painfully to show resolve. Sometimes someone else would chop off his head as soon as he'd completed the incision.

At the height of the samurai period, about 1,500 people voluntarily practiced harakiri every year in what they considered an attempt to free their souls, as well as restore their honor and the honor of their families. Although the practice was outlawed as a legal punishment in the late 19th century, a few people continued to practice harakiri. But many saw them as anachronistic and even shameful in their turn away from modernization. Harakiri saw a brief revival during the intense nationalistic era of WWII , with a line of soldiers committing suicide outside the Imperial palace upon Japan's surrender to the US in 1945, but thereafter was largely phased out.

Yet harakiri is still practiced from time to time in modern Japan. Yukio Mishima's is probably the most famous, since it took over a year to plan, was very public, and doubled as a form of protest.

Mishima was a popular writer who ran a paramilitary organization dedicated to protecting the Japanese Emperor and opposing Western influences and the modern Japanese constitution. On November 25, 1970, after dropping his last novel at his publisher's offices, he and four associates worked their way into the office of Lieutenant General Kanetoshi Mashida in the Tokyo headquarters of the nation's constitutionally restricted Self-Defense Forces. They tied the general up and Mishima plunged a knife into his own guts. At that point, his disciple Masakatsu Morita was supposed to behead him, but after three chops, Morita still couldn't get Mishima's head off. So Hiroyasu Koga, another one of his disciple, stepped in to finish the job. Koga then decapitated Morita after he in turn decided to commit (another botched) harakiri for his failure to behead Mishima. Koga served four years in prison.

At least three cases of full-on harakiri have occurred since: One in 1989 when a cook was found dead in a cemetery, leaving a note commemorating the death of Emperor Hirohito that year. One in 1999 when a 58-year-old employee of Bridgestone Sports, Masaharu Nonaka (described as a generally sane guy), got into an argument over corporate restructuring with the then-Bridgestone CEO before disrobing, pulling out a 14-inch fish flaying knife, and stabbing himself (after a few minutes' delay) in front of several employees in the CEO's office (the latter man fled before the cut was made). And one in 2001 when judo star turned construction company CEO Isao Inokuma gutted himself for his failure to keep the company out of debt.

Japan doesn't have the largest suicide rate in the world (at 21.4 suicides per 100,000 people, it's the seventh most self-destructive nation). But the fact that suicide happens up to 70 times a day and has become a leading cause of death in many demographics in Japan is still shocking.

Many of these suicides stem from common, global problems : mental health issues, feelings of stress sans coping resources, and ( especially recently ) economic decline and unending debt.

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"Seppuku" by Rev. R. B. Peery. Image scanned by Wikimedia Commons User DopefishJustin

"The most common factor behind suicide in Japan is depression caused by a failure to cope with [social pressure]," Yuzo Kato, Director of the Tokyo Suicide Prevention Center, told The Guardian in 2010, "either because of poverty or the demands of work."

These pressures get a boost thanks to the fact that there are fewer social stigmas against suicide in Japan than in the West. The nation's two most common and influential faiths, Buddhism and Shinto , for instance, do not consider suicide a sin like Judeo-Christian religions. The state's refusal to engage with or even acknowledge suicide as a social problem until very recently ( Tokyo only got funding for prevention programs and started using the term actively in public documents at the end of the last decade) also removes friction from the decision to end one's life.

But some of Japan's suicides are likely tied to romantic ideas of suicide-as-atonement influenced by the harakiri tradition and linked to public displays of regret for failures . Some commentators observing these non-gut-stabbing but still honor-bout deaths even explicitly link them in their memorials to samurai honor and to the old, anachronistic self-disembowelment.

"The idea [in Japan] is that one can take responsibility for the situation of your life by committing suicide," Larissa MacFarquhar, the New Yorker author of a 2013 profile on the Japanese Buddhist monk Ittetsu Nemoto's suicide prevention campaign, told WBUR's Here and Now that year, referring to the persistence of harakiri sentiment in many suicides.

"Death puts an end to everything," Yukiko Nishihara, the founder of the Tokyo branch of emotional support service group Befrienders Worldwide, told Psychology Today of this old-school romanticism and absolution in 2014. "And the victim becomes a god, and becoming free of criticisms [sic]."

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This accounts for the skewed demographics of Japanese suicides , which are most common amongst 51- to 61-year-old men, often with high-ranking government or corporate jobs. Famous cases include a top secretary of Prime Minsiter Noboru Takeshita, Ihei Aoki, who slashed his wrists and legs and hung himself in 1989 to atone for a public bribery scandal; right-wing nationalist Shusuke Nomura, who shot himself with a pistol in a meeting with the editors of the Asahi Shimbun in 1993 in protest at the dishonor done to his cohorts by a mocking political cartoon the paper had run; and Agriculture Minsiter Toshikatsu Matsuoka, who hung himself in a Tokyo government building in atonement for an embezzlement scandal in 2007. In the case of Matsuoka, the nationalistic governor of Tokyo at the time, Shintaro Ishihara , talked at length about the samurai spirit and the minister's dedication to the restoration of honor through suicide.

Romantic, dramatic, and somehow both private and public suicides amongst officials seeking redemption for dishonoring (but not in many parts of the world life-shattering) transgressions became so common that in 1989 they inspired the Pixies' " Wave of Mutilation ." In Japan, there are even national Meccas for such suicides, like the Aokigahara forest on the slopes of Mt. Fuji.

It's unclear what Ryoichi's state of mind was when he killed himself in Turkey. Perhaps he was just suicidally depressed by his failure rather than stoically seeking atonement and honor. But the strategic and public placement of his body, the slashing of his own throat as well as his wrists, and the explicit mentions of grief and responsibility in his suicide note do make it sound like part of a wider and endemic pattern in Japanese culture. To call it harakiri may be a bit facetious, but it may well have been one of the many modern suicides inspired by similar values and impulses.

If you are struggling with depression or having suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

'Jauja' Is a Mystical South American Western

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In South American folklore, Jauja is a paradisiacal land of milk and honey. Travelers are drawn to it like moths to a flame, but all who seek it get lost along the way. In Lisandro Alonso's Jauja, Viggo Mortensen is a Danish captain named Dinesen scouting the Patagonian coast of Argentina in the late 19th Century.

The plot is as sparse as the landscape, with both containing a great deal of overwhelming beauty. Dinesen works alongside a lecherous lieutenant who's taken a liking to Ingeboreg, his teenage daughter. But the multilingual army man protects his only child like a hawk, of course, and will have none of it. While trying to keep the older man as far away from young Inge as possible, she absconds with a soldier closer to her own age under cover of nightfall. Dinesen goes against everyone's advice by chasing after her once he realizes what's happened and (spoiler alert) gets lost along the way.

What follows is an exploratory western in the same spare, philosophical vein as Meek's Cutoff. Brightly colored dresses and drab army coats alike stand in sharp contrast to the volcanic beach that Dinesen and the rest of his unit are initially stationed on. Grave danger awaits among the elements, past the point where encroaching civilization has exerted its influence, and yet there's always time for a tall tale or long-winded discussion.

Oftentimes, in these conversations, people speak in hushed tones of a man named Zuluaga, the way Colonel Kurtz is alluded to in Apocalypse Now—the wild has absorbed him and turned him into a beast, a fate that could just as easily await Dinesen. Alonso takes great pains to make us aware of all the things that could go wrong while only showing brief glimpses of these eventualities.

With its boxy aspect ratio, contemplative pacing, and elliptical narrative, Jauja is very much a film that requires viewers to adapt to its wavelength rather than the other way around. Doing so proves surprisingly easy, not to mention rewarding. Many subtitle-averse fidgeters won't take to Alonso's minimalism kindly, but there's a staying power to his meditative approach that may take some by surprise: Jauja washes over you like a gentle wave, forceful yet soothing.

Ugly behavior notwithstanding, it's also a film of great beauty. Every shot is picture-perfect, which makes sense considering the rounded edges give the impression of an old photograph found tucked between the pages of an old album. Though we're very aware that what we're watching took place long ago, Jauja also feels unstuck in time. Families, countries—all must start somewhere, and a craggy, harsh landscape like this will work as well as anywhere else.

Time really is a flat circle in Jauja, whose ending loops back to its beginning in a simple, quietly powerful way.

Mortensen (whose fluent Spanish is one of the movie's many unexpected rewards) lends a soft-spoken authority to the role of Dinesen. Left to his own devices and alone in the elements, this man used to order and control is forced to confront both himself and the possibility that he may never find what he's looking for—his daughter. Rational explanations are scarce in the uncharted vastness, while increasingly unexplainable happenings abound. The further Dinesen gets from home, the more intriguing his story becomes.

Late in the film, Dinesen comes across a wandering dog. The majestic canine leads him to a cave holding a sagacious old lady whose cryptic musings point Dinesen in the right direction spiritually, though not necessarily physically. The immediate impulse is to think her a figment of either Dinesen or Alonso's imagination, an ambiguity that, like most others in the film, goes unaddressed. She's like an agent of his own subconscious there to remind him of what he knows to be true about himself and his failings but can never say aloud. Our hero is lost in more ways than one.

"What is it that makes a life function and move forward?" the woman asks as her visitor leaves her rocky abode. Though we don't get an explicit answer from either one of them, the dreamlike ambiguity of the closing interlude provides certain clues. Time is really a flat circle in Jauja, whose ending loops back to its beginning in a simple, quietly powerful way. There's a sense of loss to be sure, but also a feeling of having returned to something primal and familiar. For Alonso, there are traces of the past to be found in the present—some comforting, some melancholy, all enchanting.

Follow Michael Nordine on Twitter..

This Is What a Night at One of London's Adult Baby Parties Is Actually Like

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This is a screen shot from this video. This guy wasn't at the party, but he probably would have had a good time.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

"Your first nappy is free," says Joe. "After that, they're a quid each. There are two rooms with changing tables for customers' use. And a playroom for cuddles."

It's Saturday night at the Adult Baby Club, a monthly party held in a basement round the back of London's King's Cross station, where, despite the council's best efforts, there's still quite a seedy vibe. According to ABC's website, tonight's event is a "safe place for ABs [adult babies], DLs [diaper lovers], their daddies, mummies, and friends to play".

Joe guides me through the gloom into the main room, where a group of blokes stand around chatting and drinking bottled beer to soft rock. It's a pretty normal scene, like staff drinks at an IT firm, except everyone's wearing disposable nappies.

Joe's been helping out at the party for seven years.

"I do the spanking night on a Thursday as well," he says. He shakes my hand. He's small with East End cabbie glasses, but he has a ferocious grip, no doubt honed by all that paddling.

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Some of the baby wipes on offer at the party

Speaking of which, in the corner of the room, beneath an intimidating-looking crucifix (which presumably gets more of a work-out at the venue's other parties), there's a paddling pool on the floor filled up with colored plastic balls. Two guys lay in it, chucking them at one another. One wears a romper suit and the other, in his 50s, has grey, mad-professor hair, a blue gingham dress, white socks, and Mary Jane-style shoes. Above them are lampshades with pictures of aeroplanes on them. Around the room are teddy bears, boards with animal stickers, rubber play mats, and a toy box containing plastic Fisher Price-style games.

Adult babies have hit the news recently, with the new "adult nursery" Nursery Thymes—run by Derek and Maxine Ventham—featured on Mail Online and The Jeremy Kyle Show as a result of locals in Bootle, Liverpool kicking up a fuss about this unconventional new business. The Venthams moved there from Portsmouth to escape abuse from neighbors. Some people wrongly assume that adult baby fetishism is connected to paedophilia. In fact, paraphilic infantilism, also known as autonepiophilia, is the desire to return to an infant-like state, and infantilists are not attracted to children.

"As soon as you mention adult babies, they say, 'You're a paedophile.' But it couldn't be further from the truth. We don't want to be with children, we want to be the child. This is my relaxant. Half an hour in a nappy and my stress is gone," Derek was quoted as saying in the Liverpool Echo.

This is certainly borne out at the club, which is strictly for over-18s, where grown men are "playing," chucking balls, chasing one another around, and whooping to pop music, including, appropriately, Baby Spice's "Maybe."

"I'm not into the sex side as much as the playful side," says Simon, a tall, skinny coding guy from Croydon.

So when did he get into wearing nappies?

"When I was a kid. I like the dressing up. And the feeling of wetting yourself."

A guy in both a diaper and a leather dog mask takes a running jump at the paddling pool and lands on his stomach with his feet in the air, before joining in the fun with the balls. I wonder whether, in assimilating two fetishes in one outfit, he's being greedy?

"There's a lot of crossover between ABs and other scenes," Simon says. "Some of us are furries. He's into pet play."

It all sounds quite complicated.

"It is. There are plenty of divisions, even among the groups. Furries can be into it because they like the art, because they enjoy the feeling of being encased in fabric, or because they like wild sex parties."

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What is striking about tonight's event is the lack of sex. We're in a dank gay dive bar, where, judging by the hooks in the ceiling, some pretty heavy meat-grinding takes place on a regular basis. For a fetish event, things are pretty tame. Perhaps that has to do with the clientele. Rather than the ball gags and medical restraints you might expect here on other nights, it looks more like a Games Workshop meet-up, full of skinny white boys with doughy muscles, potbellies, fluffy goatee beards, and straggly ponytails.

Standing by the bar, where "Breast Milk: £1" has been added to the shots menu beneath the tequila and Jägerbombs, I watch dog mask guy suck water from a bowl through a straw. I then get chatting to Kevin, a programmer from Greenwich in a Hobbit T-shirt with the loud, confident voice of someone who's skilled in devising highly technical algorithms and doesn't care who knows it. I ask him why so many of the men here are nerds.

"If you're young, intelligent and socially awkward, then there's a good chance you'll end up in IT," he says. "And generally people who are into kink are more intelligent. Then there's the whole Freudian thing that we were isolated as kids and so we recreate that isolation through niche interests as adults."

Presumably, out of all the hobbies you could have, being an adult baby is one of the most isolating?

"I live with a vanilla housemate. When you're a total pervert, people tend not to mention it. Except when they're drunk. Then they might ask why you make a crinkling sound when you sit down for breakfast in the morning. Or why you have a massive pile of nappies in your room."

Simon hovers into view.

"Are you going to try a diaper on?" he asks.

To be honest, I'm feeling a little out of place in my jeans and shirt. I look round, taking in two guys in nappies sitting on the toy box daubing a coloring book with green and yellow crayons. The only other person in normal clothes here is a creepy Brazilian man in a leather jacket who looks a bit like Tony Montana and who's spent the night freaking out a crowd that must be pretty immune to weirdness.

"I'm tired," I say. "I'll probably go soon."

"You don't need much energy to have a nappy put on," says Simon.

His logic is unassailable. But, call me a square, the idea of wearing one—let alone having someone else put it on for me—just isn't all that appealing, so I make my excuses. My stance is not shaken later when, pushing back the curtain of one of the "changing rooms," I see dog mask guy lying bollock-naked, his legs held above his torso by one man while another sponges his arse with a wet wipe.

Thank god there's a strict no "booty-cake" rule in operation here.

"I love putting on a nappy, going down the supermarket and shitting myself in front of everyone."

By 10.30 PM, the party (which only runs until 11 PM) is winding down. I talk to the guy in the Gingham dress, who introduces himself as Kiki. He tells me he's straight, although most of the guys here are gay or bi. I should check out an event down in the country near Farnham, where apparently several women attend.

Where did you get the dress?

"BHS basic school range," he says. "I have it in three colors."

Thus far, the people I have met have dispelled any prior suspicion that adult babies are simply a bunch of oddball pervs. As odd as a preoccupation with wearing polymer polypropylene against your adult genitals may be, the guys here have been pleasant and, for the most part, normal-acting, if you don't look below the waist. But Roy, a red-faced, 45-year-old, is a little more forthcoming about his leisure time tastes. He fixes me with intense eyes and enthusiastically describes exactly what it is he's into.

"There's no bigger turn-on than shitting yourself in public," he says. "I love putting on a nappy, going down the supermarket, and shitting myself in front of everyone."

Any particular aisle?

"It's the humiliation I like. I reckon most people are into it, if they're honest. Shitting themselves. Me and my wife used to wear nappies together. She liked it, too, 'til we split up.

"There's loads of people into it. I go cruising with a wet nappy on. There's always at least one guy who thinks it's really hot. I'm coming back down here later for the after-party. Last time I wore a soaking nappy and got in an orgy with ten guys."

"You only live once. If you want to shit yourself, you should be free to."

Presumably he's disappointed by the strict no hot-bombs rule in operation here?

"Well, it's a bit silly, isn't it? You only live once. If you want to shit yourself you should be free to."

Fortunately, Tony Montana moves in on the conversation. I wish Roy luck for later, giving him a wave in lieu of a handshake, and then leg it out into the cold King's Cross night, where the only changing I plan on doing is from the Piccadilly to the Central line on the way home. Adult Baby Club hasn't made me want to break out the Pampers any time soon, but for the guys who frequent it, it's certainly a much more welcoming place to do it than in the Morrisons veg aisle.

Follow John on Twitter.

Previously:

My Evening at a Bisexual Orgy in a South London Sauna

A Pint and a Wank: The Men Using South London's Porn Cinema as a Special Kind of Social Club

I Went to a Posh Orgy in a West London Townhouse

The US-EU Trade Deal Could Make the UK Election Mostly Pointless

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[body_image width='670' height='447' path='images/content-images/2015/03/25/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/25/' filename='does-ttip-render-the-uk-election-pointless-327-body-image-1427295972.jpg' id='39651']An anti-TTIP protester (photo by Lilly Rose Thomas)

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

Picture the scene: It's November 2015, and fresh from his unexpected election landslide in May, a smug Prime Minister Ed Miliband (bear with me) is admiring himself in the mirror of his office suite in Parliament, as he prepares for the Queen to deliver her annual speech in the House of Lords unveiling the new government's policies. Top of the page is Miliband's plan to bring the National Health Service back into full public ownership. This radical move has already had weeks of positive press coverage, even from the papers that usually hate Labour, and now it's time to seal the deal.

The phone rings. It's an urgent call from the Attorney General, the government's chief lawyer. "It's, um, about the NHS thing, Prime Minister. I'm afraid we can't do it—we haven't got the legal powers."

"What... What are you talking about?" stutters Ed. "We're the government, we can do whatever the fuck we want... Can't we?"

"Well, not quite, Prime Minister. Remember TTIP?"

TTIP, or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, is the latest in a long line of boring-sounding international trade treaties drawn up by the European Union. Unlike the other ones, however, TTIP has turned into a bitter ideological dogfight between the business lobby on one hand and Guardian readers on the other. The European Commission and the US, who are negotiating the deal insist that TTIP will boost the economies of both sides by allowing businesses freer access to hundreds of millions of extra customers. It's fans include the Tories, the Lib Dems, and Labour (but they want an opt out clause for the NHS). Critics, all the way from UKIP to Greece's Syriza via the Green Party, say it's a shady power grab by grasping corporate elites that will allow them to privatize everything, overrule legislation they don't like, and sue governments which pass laws that dent their income.

So rattled has the Commission been by the criticism that it's gone to the bizarre lengths of posting meaningless video footage of the TTIP negotiators in their meeting room on its website—presumably to reassure anyone who expected to see bureaucrats cavorting in a giant silver gravy-boat filled with champagne, rather than rows of suits sitting on swivel chairs in grey offices.

If the boo-boys and girls are right, and TTIP really does take power away from democracies and hand it over to big businesses, a new government elected in May could find itself unable to carry out the policies in its manifesto. In that sense, a lot of the parties' policy making is wildly uncoordinated—supporting one policy that stops your other policies from happening. When you think about it like that, you wonder if there's any point in the election happening at all. But is this really such a big deal? Are the critics right? And if so, what policies could be threatened? Here's a look at the issues, via a small selection of the election's hot-topics:

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Striking NHS workers (photo by Jason Demetriou)

KEEPING THE NHS SAFE FROM GREEDY CORPORATIONS

"We will repeal the Government's Health and Social Care Act, ensuring an NHS based on collaboration and integration, not competition and fragmentation" – Labour policy document, 2014

"I don't want to hand faceless private sector companies control of our health service. We've now had two successive governments that have done that and its' clear that it doesn't work" – Nigel Farage, November 2014

Ed Miliband has vowed to abolish the Health and Social Care Act, which increased the range of NHS services that can be outsourced to the private sector, from a hip operation to running a whole NHS trust. His shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, has vowed to make the NHS the "preferred provider" of services ( whatever that means). Nigel Farage is less specific but wants to end the use of PFI in the NHS, in which private companies build and look after hospitals in exchange for ginormous fees that have driven some NHS trusts to near-bankruptcy.

TTIP could stop that. The treaty is set to include a so-called "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) clause, which basically means that private companies who think they've been harmed by a government's actions can sue the government in special tribunals, where corporate lawyers are drafted in as judges. The mere threat of getting taken to the bank is enough to put governments off passing laws that risk upsetting The Man, critics argue.

A Dutch company, Achmea, has already used a separate ISDS deal to win $33 million off the Slovakian government after it tried to renationalize its health insurance system. When the government said it would try again, Achmea tried and stop them passing the new law. Could the British government get sued if it tried to re-nationalize NHS hospitals or services?

Commission bosses have responded to the panic and said, basically, no. As long as the NHS is publicly funded, they insist, the government is free to bring outsourced contracts back in-house without worrying about getting sued, because public services are usually excluded from private competition under EU treaties. "If a future UK government would like to change the way these [NHS] services are run today, TTIP or any other EU trade deal will not stop them," a source at the Commission tells me.

There are at least two possible catches here. One is that in order for the NHS to be excluded in this way, the government needs to actually ask the EU negotiators to exclude it. "They could have said 'We completely exempt it... They've refused to do that again and again," says Nick Dearden, director of pressure group Global Justice Now.

To understand the second catch, it's worth looking at other party policies that could be threatened by ISDS—because far more is at stake than the NHS.

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Photo by Tom Johnson

PLAIN FAG PACKETS

"We will be bringing forward legislation for standardised packaging before the end of this Parliament" – Jane Ellison MP, Conservative health minister, January 2015

All three main parties want to make fag packets plain because they think what drunk kids in parks love about smoking is the handsome blue cardboard on a fresh pack of Pall Malls. The Coalition has promised to bring in a law before the election. But if it's delayed and TTIP were to come into force first, the ISDS clause could make that rule more expensive than it's worth.

In 2011, soon after Australia brought in a law requiring plain packaging, tobacco giant Philip Morris sued under a trade treaty between Australia and Hong Kong, which features an ISDS clause. The company claimed that its Australian business was being "expropriated"—i.e. valuable assets like the packaging design were effectively being taken away by the state—as a result of the policy. The jury's still out on the case. The same Philip Morris have already threatened to take Britain to court over plain packaging regardless of TTIP. Could the treaty make it that bit easier?

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Anti-Fracking protesters. Photo by Chris Bethell

ELECTRICITY THAT DOESN'T KILL THE FUTURE

"Labour will set a legal target for decarbonising electricity by 2030" – Labour policy document, 2014

All three parties plus the Greens (obviously) talk a good game on doing something about the fact that all the power we use might end up making the planet uninhabitable. Labour and the Lib Dems want to wean us off fossil fuels with mandatory targets. The Tories' plan to save the planet involves ending subsidies for new wind farms. But that's OK, because it's up to each EU country to decide how it wants to decarbonize its energy—for now.

American oil and gas firm Lone Pine Resources is currently suing the Quebec government for $190 million after they banned fracking for oil and gas under the St Lawrence river, using—yup—an ISDS clause in a trade treaty between the US and Canada. Even if that case fails, many critics fear that TTIP would make this kind of legal action easier and, again, put governments off regulating—stopping fracking for instance—for fear of being handed a massive bill. Could all Vivienne Westwood's campaigning be in vain?

MAYBE WE DON'T HAVE TO WORRY

No problem, says the Commission to these types of concern: This ISDS will be more tightly defined in the treaty text than previous examples of that clause, so companies can't sue just because they've lost profits. They also promise that TTIP will protect the "right to regulate and to pursue legitimate policy objectives." Both the Philip Morris and fracking lawsuits wouldn't be allowed under TTIP, the Commission source tells me.

[body_image width='670' height='447' path='images/content-images/2015/03/25/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/25/' filename='does-ttip-render-the-uk-election-pointless-327-body-image-1427296040.jpg' id='39653']Nick Dearden from Global Justice Now

According to Nick Dearden of Global Justice Now, however, these caveats risk being interpreted out of existence in investor courts. "It doesn't make any difference what the EU says. That's the problem. It doesn't even matter what's in the treaty in some cases, because essentially ISDS hands all power over to the adjudicators. 'Right to regulate' is almost always protected in these treaties but it evidently doesn't work, because regulations are regularly challenged."

"I have no doubt at all that the Commission does not want Philip Morris to sue them for passing laws... but they're going to, it doesn't matter what they say!"

CONCLUSION: YOU REALLY CAN'T BE SURE

These policies are just a snapshot. There are plenty of other party proposals whose intended effect could, in theory, be blunted by TTIP. Take online privacy—Nick Dearden says current protections are threatened by the deal, but my Commission source says, "oh no they're not." And even if the existing rules are safe, where does that leave the Lib Dem proposals to tighten current protection even more? It's not clear.

So would a new PM really have his hands tied? Thanks to the opaque nature of the negotiations, we don't really know. We don't know what TTIP is going to say, and we may not know until the deal is signed off by the Commission, whereupon the treaty will have to be approved by every EU member country. And even if that happens, the final test will be in court.

For critics, that very uncertainty probably means TTIP shouldn't happen at all. On the other hand, if you believe my European Commission source, the UK has never actually been forced to pay compensation over one of its existing investment treaties, so why should this one be any different?

I don't know, sorry—we'll have to wait and see.

Follow René Lavanchy on Twitter.

This Nevada State Assemblywoman Wants to Throw the Feds in Jail

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Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore first found her way into the public eye when she defended the unapologetically racist rancher Cliven Bundy during the standoff at his Nevada ranch in 2014. Fiore joined Bundy supporters at the ranch and spoke out against the feds in a bonkers interview with MSNBC's Chris Hayes that earned her high praise from noted rhetorician Sean Hannity. Fiore quickly found herself a poster politician of the whole sensation.

One year later, Fiore is still cashing in on that Bundy buzz. In response to last year's standoff, the assemblywoman is sponsoring a new bill that attempts to bar the federal government from owning land in Nevada, unless the state says it's okay. Right now, the federal government owns over 80 percent of the land in Nevada. As Esquire's Charles Pierce points out, the "Nevadan's Resource Rights Bill" definitely doesn't gel with the Constitution. Regardless, during a Judiciary Committee hearing Monday Bundy's son, Ammon Bundy, joined Fiore at the state capital yesterday to drum up support for the bill, and has summoned his hordes to join him in Carson City next Tuesday, when Fiore and Co. are scheduled to present the legislation at an Assembly hearing.

This isn't Fiore's only controversial position, however. Earlier this month, she attracted some attention after congratulating Assemblyman Harvey Munford on "being the first colored man to graduate his college" during a committee hearing on a voter-ID bill. This was really Fiore's version of "I have black friends, so..." as to negate an incoming nugget of racism. Sure enough, she continued:

"We're in 2015 and we have a black president, in case anyone didn't notice. The color and the race issue, I think it's time that we put that to rest."


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But Fiore—whose office did not respond to interview requests—has become well-known in Nevada for the bills she sponsors, as well as the outlandish rhetoric she uses to promote them. However, long before the 44-year-old started making her fellow Assembly members uncomfortable with weird comments about race, the self-described "conservative, Catholic, gun-toting, Second Amendment, strong-ass woman" was causing trouble.

In 2006, Fiore got her first taste of being in front of the camera when she wrote, financed, and starred in a musical drama titled Siren. (Judging by its trailer, it looks like Tommy Wiseau's take on Mariah Carey's Glitter.) According to the Los Angeles Times , Fiore put on 20 pounds and then lost 30 more to prepare for her role as Storm Fagan.


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Fiore submitted Siren to the Sundance Film Festival, but the film was rejected. Spunky go-getter that she is, Fiore didn't let that stop her. She went to the festival anyway and handed out flyers in Park City promoting screenings that she personally put on inside a vacant real estate office.

Fiore eventually gravitated toward politics. In 2013, she was elected as Republican member of the Nevada Assembly, after campaigning on platforms of education reform and job creation. Then, last year, she became the first female GOP to serve as the Majority Leader of the Nevada Assembly and caught the national eye when she first supported Cliven Bundy in his attempt to not pay his government grazing bills.

But all of that's small potatoes to what Fiore has set out to accomplish in her second term. Right now, she has two big issues in her crosshairs: Cancer and Rape.

Just by looking at Fiore's PR photos, it's clear that she loves three things: guns, horses, and family. But mostly guns, judging by the gold AK-47 lamp in her office. So it's no surprise that Fiore is a huge proponent of the Second Amendment, and is currently sponsoring a bill that would allow guns on college campuses in Nevada. Specifically, Assembly Bill 148 would allow concealed weapon permit holders to carry firearms on school grounds, including college campuses, K-12 schools and day cares. Currently, 20 US states ban guns on campuses, 23 allow schools to decide (though most have chosen not to allow guns), and seven states have provisions allowing concealed carry weapons on campus, although several are considering bills to reverse that ban.

Fiore's explanation for the bill was best articulated in an interview with the New York Times in which she said, "If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them. The sexual assaults that are occurring would go down once these sexual predators get a bullet in their head."

To support her argument, the assemblywoman has enlisted Amanda Collins—a concealed weapons permit holder who was unarmed when she was raped on University of Nevada, Reno campus in 2007—to testify on the bill's behalf. Collins, who has become the NRA's poster-girl for campus carry—contends that had she been carrying her gun, she would have been able to fend off her attacker.

"As someone that carries a firearm on me like my panties and bra," Fiore noted in a speech to the Assembly, "I do break the law because I generally carry my gun in places where they say is a gun-free zone, because I'm not going to be a victim of a stupid law."

This is the third attempt by Nevada Republicans to pass a so-called "campus carry" bill—it didn't pass in 2011 and the Assembly Judiciary Committee refused to hold a vote on Fiore's first bill in 2013. However, earlier this month, the committee voted to approve the legislation, and the bill heads to the full Assembly next for a vote. With Republicans in control of both chambers of the Nevada Legislature, Fiore said she is optimistic this time around.

Just when Fiore has administered her coup de (Nancy) grâce, she keeps going. Now she's also gunning for cancer. Fiore, who operates a home healthcare business, has announced she is sponsoring a bill that will change "provisions of our health care system" by basically allowing terminally ill patients to access non-FDA-approved treatments.

The proposed "Right to Try" law didn't garner much attention until Fiore elaborated on her radio show "Walk the Talk" (emphasis added):

"If you have cancer, which I believe is a fungus, we can put a pic line into your body and we're flushing with, say, salt water, sodium cardonate [sic] through that line and flushing out the fungus. These are some procedures that are not FDA-approved in America that are very inexpensive, cost-effective."

Fiore continues on to say she knows a California-based doctor who "kinda coordinates" to fly people to Italy and Germany to have this procedure. "It costs more for the flight and the hotel than it does for the procedures," she said. "These are some of the things we have to be able to do here. I mean, Nevada [is] the capital of entertainment. Why not make it the medical capital of the world too?"

Naturally, Fiore's remarks sent ripples through the Internet. Not so much from rejoicing cancer patients, but from national news outlets blasting Fiore for plugging a widely debunked theory that the American Cancer Society specifically warns about. However, through it all, Fiore has stuck to her guns and continues to push for the bill.

In fact, the assemblywoman seems to thrive off her haters. Fiore also seems to thrive on defying logic and reason, and acquiring haters. She brushed off the recent backlash from media and her legislature peers in a recent post to Twitter, saying: "If they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left."

Follow Alex Pompliano on Twitter.


Black Pussy and Viet Cong: When Is a Band Name So Offensive It Should Be Changed?

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Black Pussy and Viet Cong: When Is a Band Name So Offensive It Should Be Changed?

Is Legalizing Marijuana Going to Make Americans Stupid?

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Image via Flickr user brookehoyer

America seems to be on the verge of legalizing marijuana nationwide, and with that comes a whole host of questions. Some are boring, some are misguided, but some—such as how legal weed will affect students—are extremely important.

A study released earlier this month sheds some light on how legal marijuana might impact academic performance, and it doesn't look good for fans of kush. The authors examined the situation of Maastricht, a town in the southern part of the Netherlands that, in 2010, enacted a law barring those without proof of Dutch residency from purchasing marijuana at any of the local cannabis coffeeshops. The measure was meant to cut down on drug tourism from foreigners.

Researchers from the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and Political Science seized on the town's unique drug market as an opportunity. They compared the academic output of students enrolled in Maastricht University who still had access to legal weed with that of students who didn't. The study, which collected data from approximately 54,000 students, found that test scores among those who retained their access to marijuana remained the same, while, on average, test scores among those who were freezed out of buying legal weed went up. Younger students, women, and those who were already prone to low scores were the most impacted, with the starkest changes seen in mathematics-heavy courses. That correlates with pre-existing evidence that weed may impair math skills.

So what now? Should we be worried that legalizing marijuana is going to destroy American academics? Should we call the whole thing off? Not so fast, according to Randy Cohen, the former ethicist at the New York Times.

"Even if that were true," Cohen told VICE of the study's findings, "it's just one more factor to be considered in the legalization of marijuana." Cohen added that lowering tuition rates or improving the quality of public schools could affect college test scores in a way that might negate any negative effects that emerge from allowing college students access to legal marijuana.

Dr. Greg Eells, director of counseling and psychological Services at Cornell University, told VICE, "The US, from its inception, has not made education available to the full population. Any broader societal shift that would allow the greatest access to education would be huge." He went on to point out that alcohol abuse is rampant on college campuses, and almost certainly has a negative effect on academic performance.

Cohen pointed out if we're only considering test scores, "The same argument"—albeit in the inverse—"could be made for Ritalin. There's no doubt that study drugs help academic performance."

"The question of legalization is too complicated to be reduced to any factor," Cohen continued. "There are medical, political, and criminological questions to be considered." He argued that legalizing marijuana might have a positive effect on our clogged legal system, offering those who mess around with pot a chance to succeed later in life—and keeping police free to concentrate on genuinely destructive criminal activity.

Cohen advocates for keeping a level head whenever evidence about such a contentious issue as the legalization of marijuana arises.

"There is no more dubious phrase than 'studies have shown.'" he told me. "Five minutes from now, studies will show something different."

Drew Millard is on Twitter.

How to Make a World-Class Cocktail Out of Berlin’s Convenience Store Booze

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How to Make a World-Class Cocktail Out of Berlin’s Convenience Store Booze

Is It Fucked Up That the Guy Who Wrote 'Robocop' Is Making a Movie About the Boston Bombing?

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Via Flickr user Rebecca Hildreth

The trial for admitted Boston Bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev is underway right now, and a courtroom full of reporters are furiously scribbling notes and tapping away on iPads. Meanwhile, sketch artists are rendering images of the now-21-year-old defendant looking unconcerned, or like a teenager who just woke up and got high. That's because, for the most part, cameras haven't been allowed in federal court rooms since 1946. Although many judges say they'd have no problem with the transparency, others, like Supreme Court Justice David Souter, have famously quipped that they would be allowed "over [his] dead body." The justice said that cameras would affect his behavior in the courtroom and warned that the judiciary isn't "part of the entertainment industry."

And while you could probably make a compelling argument that Americans should be able to see one of their three branches of government at work, it's also a good thing that we keep certain things off of Court TV. For instance, right now we're preventing the Boston Bombing trial from becoming more of a media circus than it already is. Rather than make Tsarnaev the focus of a new reality show, reporters have to work with the facts of the case as laid out by attorneys and witnesses. And because the coverage isn't just close-ups of his reactions, it is more respectful of the victims' friends and families.

What's more, considering the case isn't about guilt or innocence at this point—its sole purpose is deciding whether or not the bomber should live or die—showing it on TV would basically be a tame version of The Running Man.

All of which begs the question: Why is Hollywood commissioning an on-screen adaptation of the Boston tragedy by a writer whose career highlight so far was remaking Robocop?

The book Boston Strong, two journalists' account of the attack's aftermath, was published this past January. Even before it hit the shelves, 20th Century Fox scooped up the film rights, and on Tuesday, the Hollywood Reporter broke the story that Robocop (remake) writer Joshua Zetumer would be penning the script.

Just because the bombing has been described as "like a horror movie" doesn't mean film execs should spring at the chance to turn it into one. And the fact that Boston Strong is being written by someone with no experience crafting complex dramas is troubling. Then again, when the director of the Bourne trilogy, Paul Greengrass, made a film about United Airlines Flight 93, it was lauded as one of the best films of the year and nominated for two Academy Awards. So there's hope this won't be a total disaster.

But Greengrass's film was made with the permission of the victims's families, and people have proven very touchy about giving Tsarnaev any sort of individual attention. Back in July 2013, when Rolling Stone put Tsarnaev on its cover, people accused the magazine of making him look more like Jim Morrison than a terrorist. But the piece of reporting it accompanied did much more to humanize rather than glamorize him. That he looked sweet—and could still fill a pressure cooker with shrapnel with the sole purpose of killing people—was entirely the point. The fact that homegrown, lone-wolf terrorists look like any other college kid is terrifying. And as Matt Taibbi rightfully pointed out in response to theRolling Stone uproar, understanding terrorists is the key to stopping them. The people who flipped out about the cover didn't understand that depicting someone isn't the same thing as endorsing them.

Of course Hollywood is cashing in on the Boston Bombing attack by making this movie. Production companies aren't charities. But if United 93 proved it's possible to make a film about a terrorist attack without being gauche, and Rolling Stone showed that writing about what makes terrorists tick can be a worthy pursuit, maybe that doesn't matter. Then again, if the spectacle of the early days of the trial has been sufficient to rip open the hearts of Bostonians, one can only imagine how they'll react to a full-length movie.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

​Former Gang Members Are Trying to Snuff Out Violence in New York City

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The opening of Gangstas Makin' Astronomical Community Changes' headquarters in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Photo by the author

If you tell Big Herc that you want to become a Blood he will stretch his palm out and kindly ask you to repeat yourself. If you are stupid enough to do it, he will slap you in the face. "You still wanna be a Blood?" he'll ask, and then keep slapping if he senses you can't make up your mind. "I want to see where your heart is," he might say.

Herc is short for Hercules, but his real name is Shamar Thomas. He's a 29-year-old former marine who did two tours in Iraq, including a stretch in Fallujah in 2004. According to Herc, it's those with weakness in their eyes—"The ones with no hearts"—who go out and commit most of the senseless shootings that kill so many people in his neighborhood of East Flatbush, Brooklyn.

"Those guys are just tryna get their weight up," he told me. "They think people are gonna respect them more if they hear that they shot this guy here, but that's not a real gangster."

[body_image width='640' height='480' path='images/content-images/2015/03/25/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/25/' filename='former-gang-members-are-trying-to-snuff-out-violence-in-new-york-city-325-body-image-1427318453.jpg' id='39818']

Shanduke Mcphatter talking to Flatbush residents. Photo by Sadhbh Walshe

On Friday, Thomas and his longtime friend and boss, Shaduke Mcphatter, 36, officially cut the ribbon at the new headquarters of the anti-violence organization Gangstas Makin' Astronomical Community Changes (GMACC), in East Flatbush. This is one of the first locations to receive a chunk of the $12.7 million Mayor Bill de Blasio has devoted to deploying "violence interrupters" to troubled areas. By the end of the expansion, 15 New York City neighborhoods will have this breed of anti-violence operation. The new, " holistic" approach to combating gun violence means that six city agencies are involved, providing job training, youth programming, mediations, trauma counseling, legal services, and, of course, violence interruption.

Most important to the new(ish) model is that the people providing these services are members of the neighborhood. The city calls them "credible messengers." Think ex-gang members, the formerly incarcerated, and anyone who has enough street cred that someone reaching for a gun might actually listen. With the NYPD reporting a 20 percent spike in gun violence this year, the program could be a valuable asset that requires absolutely zero police involvement.

GMACC operates under the "Cure Violence" model for fighting gun deaths. The idea emerged from the University of Illinois at Chicago's Dr. Gary Slutkin, who had been studying tuberculosis, cholera, and AIDS epidemics in Africa when he realized that incidents of gun violence seemed to cluster geographically in a similar way. His innovation was to treat gun violence as a public health problem rather than a public safety one.

Outreach workers doing Cure Violence work try to locate the source of gun violence and stop it before it starts. They do this from the inside out. They try to spot the shooters, learn the hot spots, and constantly check in on both. Outreach workers have a caseload of up to 15 of the highest-risk community residents they are constantly checking in on. They also walk around their neighborhoods, checking in on the housing projects, barbershops, corner stores, and other locations. (The NYPD is even getting in on the action by hosting pizza parties for gang members, as MUNCHIES reported Tuesday.)

There are currently over 52 Cure Violence sites around the US, and they say their approach is proven to reduce the number of shootings in targeted areas. Man Up!, a site in East New York, set a record in 2013 when they went 367 days without a shooting in the chunk of the neighborhood they patrolled. (In 2011, East New York's 75th precinct had the most murders of any precinct in the city.)

Crown Heights saw a 6 percent decrease in shootings monthly after implementing the The Save our Streets (SOS) program, while comparison areas (with similar demographic profiles and crime statistics) saw increases between 18 and 28 percent, according to an evaluation conducted by the Center for Court Innovation. Members of SOS interrupted over 100 conflicts, affecting over 1,000 people.

Rather than reducing violence, traditional policing may actually be part of the problem in these areas, according to Elijah Anderson, professor of sociology at Yale University and director of the Urban Ethnography Project.

"The cops are arbitrary. The cops are not your friends," Anderson told me. "The civil law has eroded and when the civil law erodes, street justice comes into play."

When that happens, the rule of the street is based on who can puff out their chest the most, Anderson said. This leads to a cycle in which insignificant personal "beef" is exacerbated quickly.

"People are getting killed over five dollars," Anderson said. Almost all gun violence occurs between people who know each other, according to a CDC study. Cure Violence, as an approach, recognizes this system of street justice and that seemingly minuscule scuffles are rooted in something much deeper: basic survival.

"It's like going into the DNA of a cancer and being able to disrupt it," Anderson said.

Mcphatter saw how the cancer would kill him. On the street, his name is Trife. Big Herc would never put his knee in Trife's chest, and not just because he's got huge, gym-built, pectorals and biceps bulging out of his beige sweater. (There's also the scar next to his left eye from his days gang-banging on what he calls his "reign of terror.")

Mcphatter was one of the first Bloods to hit the streets of New York in 1994. The Wyckoff Houses in Bed-Stuy are still referred to as the "Shan-koff Houses" after Mcphatter (real first name Shanduke), who used to rule the housing project, according to people who knew him from back then.

While in state prison, serving the second of his two three-year sentences, Mcphatter saw a little boy running into the jail to meet his father for the first time. He still cites this as the moment he realized he needed to break the cancerous cycle in his life and in the lives of so many of the people he knew. He did not want his kids to meet him in prison. He wanted to be a positive fixture for them. (Big Herc told me he doesn't know a single Blood who knew their father.)

So when he got out in 2008, Mcphatter and his brothers started GMACC with nothing. They just began canvassing the community and trying to stop fights from escalating. They are the only Cure Violence operation to start as a totally grassroots movement, according to Mcphatter.

Something that makes New York City's roll out of Cure Violence programs innovative is the emphasis on the hospital responder. Ledrell Johnson, 31, a violence interrupter with GMACC, was on Facebook when he saw that his 19-year-old "little buddy" was coming out of the coma he'd been in and out since being shot through his leg, arm, and shoulder. Ten surgeries and a lost lung later, the doctors were taking the tube pumping oxygen through his body out of his throat. Johnson rushed to the ER. He walked in and saw the boy's mother and sister watching as the doctors wiped blood from his neck with a paper napkin. The boy's arm was in a sling and his leg elevated in a cast.

"I'm fucked up," the boy rasped up at Johnson, who had watched him grow up.

"Yeah, you look it." Johnson said. Johnson knew who had shot the boy. He said everyone did. The boy was livid, ready to get out of the hospital and find revenge in whatever way he could.

"You lost a lung and you may have lost your pride but you still have your life."

Johnson kneeled down next to the gurney. "I understand you are angry," he recalled telling the boy. "But what do you think is gonna happen? The police already know you and now you are talking about going after your friend."

"You lost a lung and you may have lost your pride but you still have your life," Johnson said.

It worked. The boy was convinced. With three kids at the age of 19, he now has a job and is committed to taking care of them.

Jumaane Williams, the Council member for the 45th district of East Flatbush, said that the Cure Violence approach, ideally, would represent a shift in the way that we talk about inner city violence.

"If you look at someone shooting up a preschool or a movie theater, people always talk about what is going through their minds," he told me. "In inner city violence they never talk about that, they say these are animals, I think the same conversation needs to be had."

Jimmy Knight, 28, who is enrolled in a job training seminar at Man Up!, feels like the organization saved his neighborhood of East New York. He told me there are fewer people just milling around the street corners, and just less foot traffic generally. In 2012, he used to go to funerals almost every weekend, and now can't remember the last one he attended.

Samuel Lieberman is a New York City-based reporter. He covers crime, immigration, poverty and squirrels. Follow him on Twitter.

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