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All photos by Michelle Groskopf

The Johnny Depps of Hollywood Boulevard are sweeter than the Spidermen, classier than the Elvises, and far less lecherous than the Zorros. They won't harass you, unlike Spongebob, and they're not as horrifying as the low-rent Freddy Krueger who once stabbed a real person with a real knife. No, the Johnny Depps aren't trying to con you or grab you or guilt you into giving them money. They're here for the art of it. They're the emissaries of Johnny himself. Sort of.

Among the characters who lurk in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater and the Hard Rock Cafe, there is no other actor as broadly represented, in all the shades of his quirky career, as Johnny Depp. There are at least five Jack Sparrows swaying slightly on their pirate boots. Edward Scissorhands emerges shyly from the shadows, hoping to cut your hair. The Mad Hatter occasionally pushes his way through the crowds with a blacked-out gap between his front teeth. And every now and then you'll spot what looks like the real thing: Regular Johnny Depp, chatting up the ladies in his fedora, tinted glasses, and silver rings.

But despite their prevalence, the Johnny Depps can be elusive. Even the people who work on Hollywood Boulevard will give you conflicting reports about their whereabouts. "There's only one Johnny Depp impersonator," a policeman tells me. "People think he's the real thing all the time." A man selling Hollywood tours claims that all of the Johnny Depps are in Vegas for the weekend. Cinderella says the Regular Johnny Depp is at a bikini contest in Beverly Hills. Elvis doesn't know where they are and doesn't care, either. To find what you seek—like so many other things in Los Angeles— you have to knock on the right door, or know the right password, or talk to the right Hollywood insider.

My insider turns out to be Dr. Frank-N-Furter, preening by the curb in glittery red heels and fishnet stockings. I trudge over to him, weary and disheartened. "Have you seen the Johnny Depps?" I say. He gives me a long smile. "Darling," he says, "sometimes I'm one of them."

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Dr. Frank-N-Furter is an aspiring actor and therefore wouldn't allow me to use his real name—I'll call him Gilbert—but he introduced me to the most dedicated and accurate portrayer of Jack Sparrow on the Boulevard, Joseph Ansalvish. The transplant from Delaware is so dedicated to his role that he's considered buying brown contacts to ensure that his eyeballs are the same hue as the real Johnny Depp's.

"Everybody kept telling me how much Johnny Depp looked like me—or that I looked like him," he says. "I put together a really good outfit and the next thing I knew I was being hired by McDonald's, I was being put in parades. So I came out to LA with $500 in my bank account and just made things happen. This job allows me to go to acting classes and auditions. I'm one of the only [impersonators] who actually travels and does a lot more than just standing here. [This gig] contributes a lot to giving me my freedom."

One day, while lunching in his Jack Sparrow outfit, Ansalvish was approached by the casting director for the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, who, Ansalvish told me, gushed that the resemblance between him and the real Depp was "uncanny." The only difference between them, she supposedly said, was his height (Ansalvish is significantly taller), but she took his contact information anyway, saying that she could "use him" for the film. It had all the makings of a big break, but that was over a year ago, and she never called. "I'd like to know if I didn't get the part," says Ansalvish, "and if so, why?"

His knowledge of the Pirates canon is astounding, and according to him he's spent almost $2,000 just to ensure that his costume is accurate. "The jacket is one of a kind; I've done all sorts of work to make it look the way it does," he says. "I've aged this gun to make it look 300 years old. Parts of the hair are a wig, but I've sewn some of my real hair into it. The boots alone are $450." He once heard an interview with the Pirates costume designers in which they said that Jack Sparrow wears a bit of lace around his wrist, a gift from some old paramour. So Ansalvish went out and bought a piece of lace too. You can't see it—it's tucked beneath his jacket sleeve—but the point is, it's there.

His mission, as he sees it, is to give tourists what they came to Los Angeles for: that sense of Hollywood magic, of illusion, of transportation, the thrill of a brush with fame. The mark of a good impersonator, for him, is looking like you "just stepped right off the screen." As we talk, a middle-aged woman interrupts us to tell him how much she enjoyed chatting with him the other week. Her eyes are shining. She tells me he was "so nice." She takes a new photo and presses a wad of bills into his hand. "I get my butt grabbed a lot," he says later. "I've gotten marriage proposals."

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But Ansalvish is not the only charming buccaneer on the block. Walk about 50 feet down the Boulevard and you'll spot a shorter Jack Sparrow whose costume is less elaborate but whose face is almost freakishly Sparrow-like. Bone structure aside, Edgar Arenas says that he didn't choose the pirate life—the pirate life chose him.

"I went to the West Hollywood Annual Halloween parade, and I got swarmed," he says. "People were freaking out, thinking I was really Johnny Depp." He told his friends about the insanity, and they urged him to impersonate for a living. "So I worked up the courage to come out here, and next thing I knew I was being swarmed out here and people were giving me money to do it." He haunts the Boulevard about once every other day for five hours at a time. "It's exhausting to do this all day," he admits, "especially if I stay in character."

The Jack who works the longest hours is Robert, who didn't want me to use his last name. He doesn't particularly look like the movie character, but he chose to dress up as the pirate because he's a fan of Johnny, of the Pirates franchise, and of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. He's also a veteran who served as a medic for 12 years before injuring his back. Today, he uses this job to supplement his monthly veteran's disability check. On an average day, he makes between $30 and $50, and often works from 9 AM until 11:30 PM to increase his likelihood of getting photos with tourists. He will not, however, directly ask anyone for money, despite the fact that by the time he finishes upgrading his costume, he will have spent between $3,000 and $4,000 on it. "I served my country," he says, "and now I'm serving my community."

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Money, day jobs, real names—these subjects tend to make many of the Johnny Depps skittish. Some of them don't want their names used. Some of them don't want their faces used. One impersonator backed out suddenly after being interviewed and photographed at length, paranoid that I was trying expose him, to make him look—what? Ridiculous? Un-Depplike? Maybe the hyper-performative nature of this hustle makes the Johnny Depps wary. Maybe the constant interactions with gaping, stingy tourists make them feel ashamed. Here they are—some of them highly trained actors—caked in makeup, saying the same movie lines over and over again for a distracted audience who would prefer the real thing. This isn't the Hollywood dream. Is it?

Gilbert, who used to dress up as Willy Wonka, is the most bitter of the impersonators. "Please don't show my face," he pleads. "I really, really don't want to be identified, as it can have severe recourse on my person." He's walked into auditions only to have the casting directors say, "Hey, aren't you the guy who dresses up like Willy Wonka?"

It took him two hours to dress the part, which included elaborate makeup, a custom-made suit that cost him thousands of dollars, and violet contact lenses. All this effort, and he says people would hand him a dollar and sneer, "Don't spend it on drugs."

"I would not recommend this gig to anyone," he says. "It's hard, and I am looking for an exit. As an actor, this has been my undoing." Recently, he switched over to another costume—Dr. Frank-N-Furter—because it nets more in tips. The Willy Wonka of Hollywood Boulevard is no more.

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Then there's the man who dresses up simply as Johnny Depp. Erez Peretz is a 27-year-old Israeli who's so convincing as Regular Johnny that even the most hardened Angelinos do double takes. All the signifiers are there: the ombré bob, the hat, the glasses, the leather bracelets, the silver rings, the necklaces, the facial hair. He is nearly perfect. He is also hard to track down. This is because he lives mere blocks away and wanders over to the Boulevard whenever he feels like it.

We finally arrange to meet at a coffee shop on the Boulevard, and he appears around the corner very suddenly, looking for all the world like a slightly thicker, slightly younger version of present-day Johnny. In fact, we only talk for about 15 minutes before we're interrupted by a young boy convinced that he is the real thing. "Sorry to bother you," the boy says, "but do you remember Shelly from Miramax?" It takes him a few beats to realize that he's talking to an impersonator. (Apparently Shelly from Miramax used to date the real Johnny Depp years ago, before Depp was famous.)

"I always looked like him somehow, since I was a kid," says Peretz. "I was born with the name Johnny—I'm adopted. 'Little Johnny,' they called me." His look is so on-point that when he went to the courthouse to get married last year, the workers called TMZ, convinced that Johnny himself was about to tie the knot with a stranger. So many people showed up that it took Peretz an hour to get to his own wedding. The next day, both Peretz and his wife were back on the Boulevard again, working (his wife impersonates both a Playboy bunny and Elsa from Frozen).

Peretz has really hit the sweet spot of Johnny Depp impersonators, as his costume costs very little and takes almost no effort to put on. He used to own a pair of glasses that Depp himself wore, which were worth $10,000 and were given to Peretz for free by Depp's own glasses maker. But someone stole them, so now he wears a flawless imitation pair made by the same guy.

On a good day, Peretz will work four to five hours and make anywhere from $80 to $300. On a bad day, he makes $40 or less. He has an entire brood to take care of: his wife's two children, his mother-in-law, and his 19-year-old brother-in-law. Money isn't the only thing offered to him, though. "I get lots of naughty stuff, " he says. "There are lots of girls that say, 'I'm in this hotel, I will pay you to spend the night with me.' They don't care [that I'm not the real Johnny Depp]. It's totally normal, it's America, it's Los Angeles. I take everything as a compliment. A 12-year-old came up to me yesterday and said, 'You are so handsome,' and I said, 'You're 12,' and she said, 'Actually, I'm almost 12.' And then her mom came over and said, 'You are really handsome.'"

Depp's effect on women is well documented, and even Peretz's wife isn't immune to it. He admits that his wife's love of the real Depp "helped me get to her." Now she'll tell him, "I love Johnny, but I love you more." They have an ongoing joke: If Depp "came to her bed," he would join them. Why? "It's Johnny," he says, grinning.

But Peretz's experiences sort of beg the metaphysical question: What does it mean to "be" Johnny Depp, anyway? If enough people think that Peretz is the real Depp, then the line between celebrity and celebrity impersonator starts to blur. After all, celebrity isn't something inherent to Johnny Depp—it's a status that we, his fawning public, have conferred on him. So what happens when we confer that status onto someone else, even mistakenly? Peretz looks so much like the real thing that he says his very existence has affected Real Johnny, albeit mildly. Peretz told me a story about how, last month, TMZ saw Johnny Depp walking down Rodeo Drive and didn't take a single picture of him. Peretz believes they thought the man in the hat and tinted glasses was him.

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Like any in-group, the Johnny Depps have allegiances, secrets, and drama. Everyone gossips about everyone else. When Gilbert was Willy Wonka, he and the Mad Hatter used to be pals, but now they hate each other, possibly because the Mad Hatter was in denial about his own sexual orientation. Another Willy Wonka used to stand outside the candy mega-store in the Hollywood and Highland Center until he was fired for yelling racial slurs at customers. The guys who hold up those "$5 Sale!" signs mistakenly think that Peretz is Cinderella's "baby daddy." Jack Sparrow #3 tells me that some of the other Jack Sparrows are "panhandlers." Jack Sparrow #1 sniffs that one of the other pirates "looks more like Dustin Hoffman playing Jack Sparrow than he does Johnny Depp." Peretz laughs at the other characters who have tried to dress up like him: "One had a girly face, one was too chubby, and one talked too much like Jack Sparrow." And they all despise the sketchier characters, who wear cheap costumes and spin lies about having cancer to get bigger tips. "I hate the Halloween costumes," says Gilbert. "They require all the effort of taking a polyester rag out of a Kmart bag."

The job can be great, sure. Many Jonnnys tell me that making people happy—especially kids—is the biggest perk of the job. But when they're not making children's dreams come true, it's a rough gig. The characters of Hollywood Boulevard have a long-standing reputation as creeps, druggies, child molesters, and generally dangerous people. Spongebob has openly felt up women; Mr. Incredible once body-slammed Batgirl; a character from Scream was fatally shot by police for allegedly wielding a knife.

The Johnny Depps, as a whole, are a far classier breed than most of the other impersonators. Perhaps the type of person drawn to Depp's quirky, versatile oeuvre is just naturally more stable? I don't know. What I do know is that getting regularly scammed by tourists under the hot Los Angeles sun can get under an impersonator's skin, especially one who has already dropped $2,000 on a costume just so kids can have 30 thrilling seconds with someone they believe is the real thing.

"Most [of us] go crazy," says Gilbert.

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If you stand on Hollywood Boulevard for long enough, and you talk to enough impersonators, and you stare at the eyeliner melting around the eyes of enough Jack Sparrows, and you witness enough selfies, and you trip over enough tourists crouching on the Walk of Fame, you may start to wonder: Why Johnny Depp? Why Jack Sparrow? Why do people care?

Johnny Depp—the real one, age 51, born John Christopher Depp II in Owensboro, Kentucky—is the ultimate absentee here, the void that this strange little industry swirls around. The impersonators are constantly using the language of Johnny; they tell me that Johnny "would do" this or "wouldn't wear" that or "tends to act" this way or "would never" engage in that sort of behavior.

Any connection to Johnny Depp is prized here. Whatever makes the impersonators more like Johnny is valuable, both on a financial level ("movie accuracy" is the ultimate goal) but also on some sort of spiritual level. It's almost as though some of the impersonators see themselves as lesser Johnnys—not the real thing, but a fragment of his public persona. During one of my visits, Ansalvish places his hands and feet in the handprints and footprints of Depp himself to show me that their measurements match up. To do this, he has to kneel by Depp's star. Erez Peretz says that he and Johnny have the exact same face shape. These facts are presented as magical coincidences: What are the odds, they seem to say, that he and I are so much alike?

Ansalvish saw the real Johnny Depp outside of an event once. Depp was, of course, being ushered into some inner sanctum by a gaggle of security guards, while Ansalvish stood on the sidewalk in his painstakingly accurate costume. Ansalvish tells me that Johnny Depp looked over at his unauthorized doppelganger, pressed his hands together in a gesture of gratitude, and gave a little bow. Again and again, the stories come back to Johnny, who defected from this world of starving actors long ago.

Still, there's power in looking like a powerful thing. "I'm like the Godfather here," says Peretz, shortly after being mistaken, once again, for the real Depp. "None of the other characters will fight me, even if they don't like me. I'm the image of Johnny Depp." And then he lights up a cigarette and leans against a store window, waiting for someone to ask him for a picture.

See more of Michelle Groskopf's photography on her website and on Instagram.

Follow Tori Telfer on Twitter.

The conflict in Colombia has left 68,000 people missing since 1977, when the first official complaint of a forced disappearance was made. Photos by Andrés Vanegas

"I have had four relatives go missing since nineteen ninety-six," Jacqueline Orrego, 46, from Antioquia, Colombia, told me. Buried without mourning, markers, or prayers, her mother, stepfather, sister, cousin, and friend all disappeared, presumably killed by the Northwestern Bloc of the FARC paramilitary. The corpses of her mother, stepfather, and sister were discovered in August 2007, on the expansive grounds of a rural farm belonging to Guillermo Gaviria, father of the current mayor of Medellín, Aníbal Gaviria. Orrego is still hoping to find the bodies of the others.

"You always have this anxiety, the hope that they will be found alive, even though everybody tells you they are dead. You're in agony wondering where they are, and whether they are lost forever. Then, when you find the bodies, you rest," said Orrego, whose family had been accused by FARC of being guerrilla fighters. She maintains their innocence.

These five "disappeared" form just a tiny part of Colombia's harrowing statistics on missing people. According to the National Register of Missing People (RND), which collects information from various government institutions, the number of disappeared in Colombia stands at 85,000. Gustavo Duque, a national transitional-justice prosecutor, said that figure may now be close to 96,000.

In March 2014, the National Forensic Service stated that there were about 68,000 missing people registered through official complaints, of which about 20,000 were victims of forced disappearance. Of those 20,000, 366 people were found alive and 818 dead, while there is no trace of the remaining 19,000 or so. Orrego's cousin Franklin is part of that number.

The fact that 19,000 people are still missing has generated questions about the methodology and effectiveness of the government's search effort. "Finding the bodies of Jacqueline's relatives was achieved through the testimony of a paramilitary commander who indicated the area where the bodies were buried. We dug within a five-hundred-meter radius using picks and shovels. Then the earth began to talk," Duque told me.

In 2000 Colombia enacted Law 589, prohibiting forced disappearances and defining set penalties for the crime. The law also created the National Search Commission, an agency to support and promote the investigation of forced disappearances. There is also the aforementioned RND, which aims to identify bodies and track cases of disappearance, as well as the Emergency Search Mechanism, which aims to encourage judicial authorities to take all the appropriate steps in searching for the missing.

Despite the work of these organizations, the statistics—and Duque's description of the search that brought Jacqueline's relatives to light—are a reminder that in many cases the government's techniques are basic, reliant on informants, and none too accurate.

Since 2006, Molina has been actively developing sophisticated means of finding mass graves in Colombia.

Find them. Find them all. That is the mission statement of Carlos Martín Molina, a 48-year-old resident of Bogotá who is the only forensic geologist in the country.

Forensic geology is a term that covers varying applications of geological scientific methodology to crime solving, humanitarian investigations, and the recovery of bodies in disaster zones—basically, it's the area in which forensics and earth science meet. Molina uses ground-penetrating radar, geoelectrical measurements, and electromagnetic induction frequencies that measure the conductivity and magnetic susceptibility of the soil. All of this can help point to disrupted soil and bodies beneath the surface.

Molina could use these same methods to find gold or oil deposits and make good money doing it. But as a sort of modern-day Sherlock Holmes, Molina has exchanged a pipe for a vueltiao hat, opium for sesame cookies, and Dr. Watson for his wife and mother, the only people who accompany him during his research. He has dedicated his life to looking for those whom violence has silenced. His dedication to finding the bodies, in a country where last year alone 4,539 people disappeared (99 percent of them disappeared forcibly, it's suspected), amounts to a lifelong vow of poverty.

"The focus of this work is the victims, and those with missing relatives whose quest to find them has been an ordeal. Helping to clarify these cases has great significance in legal terms too. It could help decongest the courts and reduce the levels of impunity," he told me. Molina's concern about impunity is not unfounded. According to the government body Justice and Peace, more than 20,000 forced disappearances recorded over 37 years have led to only 35 convictions for "crimes against humanity"—the UN designation under which such acts fall. Of the 3,551 guerrillas who have confessed to such crimes, only five were convicted. "If you know the corpses are there, you have to go and find them," Molina said.

Molina's initial interest in creating a new, more effective methodology and utilizing the technologies of forensic geology emerged in early 2000, when he visited several regions of Colombia searching for missing people with various officials. The expeditions, like those that uncovered Orrego's relatives, were based on the testimony of informants. On these trips, the only tool Molina had was a metal pole that he would push into the ground to literally feel for graves or anomalies in the soil. "The metal bar can be effective when the deceased is a recently disappeared person, but it's ineffective with a body buried ten or twenty years ago," said Molina, who returned from all of those missions without any positive results.

Rain alters ground composition and soil porosity, which can complicate the search for corpses.

Since 2006, Molina has been actively developing more modern means of finding mass graves in Colombia, and his current PhD program, which he studies at the National University of Colombia, aims to promote the use of geophysical techniques and technology to streamline the search for his nation's mass graves.

In a 240-square-yard plot of land in Mosquera, a town near Bogotá, Molina has created a laboratory. Since June 2013, he has simulated eight mass graves in the space. In two of them he buried the bodies of pigs, whose cadavers decompose similarly to humans', and he left the next two empty as a control. The third pair contains two complete human skeletons, while the last two are home to damaged and charred bones, simulating the mutilated and burnt corpses often found in Colombia's mass graves.

To take into account the country's varying soil types and climatic conditions, Molina set up a similar laboratory in the Eastern Plains. When earth is disturbed, as occurs with an excavation to bury bodies, the soil's physical properties change. "The magnetic susceptibility and conductivity, among other factors, are modified. To find and measure these alterations is the aim of my research," Molina said. "This research is intended for the whole country and for all the missing people. I am willing to go and search for any body, wherever it is."

Sadly, this quest has not yet started. Molina's project is still in the developmental stage, hampered by a lack of financial and official support. He has not been able to take his theories and methods out of the lab and into the fields and cities, where they could help find some of the 19,000 people who remain lost.

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When was the last time you did something for fun? Something with no practical value, something that you could define as "play"? The science continues to roll in about play's ability to shape and enhance people's lives. Just last week, TED released an excellent radio talk on the subject, the point of which was that free, spontaneous play is not only important in childhood development, but also something that we should indulge well into adulthood. In the immortal words of Peter Pan, "I won't grow up."

A new short documentary by director Liam Saint-Pierre titled The Reinvention of Normal profiles the living embodiment of that would-be Peter Pan. He's a British man by the name of Dominic Wilcox, who invents kooky impractical thingamajigs like a tea cup with a cooling fan, toothbrush maracas, and an umbrella with plant pots on top. His inventions seem like the physical manifestations of Jerry Seinfeld jokes, where the ordinary is reframed and given that extra little bit. One can almost see Seinfeld saying, "How do people stay healthy with such busy schedules? I'd like to see a soccer ball that you can fill up with fruit, kick it around until you build up a sweat, unzip it, and cool down with a fresh smoothie." (That's a real invention from Wilcox).

What's astonishing about Wilcox is the amount of work and resources he pours into his inventions, while spending almost no time thinking critically about them. His creative process is just going wherever his imagination takes him.

I dare you to watch this film about Wilcox and his wild creations and not want to go out and do something ridiculous yourself.

To see more of Liam Saint-Pierre's work visit his website.

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

Harragas is an Arabic word meaning "those who burn." Illegal immigrants from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya who attempt to reach Europe by boat are known as harragas because they burn their documents before leaving Africa, or when they're about to be arrested. The only way out of their home countries is to destroy their papers and lose their identities.

The objects photographed here were collected by Askavusa, a group that supports African migrants arriving on the Italian island of Lampedusa. Located between Tunisia and Italy, the island is a focal point for illegal immigration into the EU and has been the scene of numerous disasters involving ill-prepared and overcrowded boats that ferry immigrants to Europe. The most notorious shipwreck there occurred in October 2013 and claimed 366 lives.

All of these items were abandoned on such boats in the past decade. While observing and documenting the personal effects of those who tried to reach "the other side," I came to admire the migrants' desire to leave their troubled pasts behind and build new lives.

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This article was originally published on VICE Czech Republic/Slovakia.

Everyone is always trying to take advantage of the mystical and spiritual energies of Easter. Christians, pagans, chocolatiers—literally everyone has tried to take advantage of the fact that some guy was supposedly crucified roughly 2,000 years ago by inventing bizarre customs in an attempt to cleanse their bodies and souls before spending another year filling both with filth again.

In the Philippines, some people actually get crucified . In the Czech Republic, we chase women around with sticks instead. But that's not the only odd ritual we have.

Another visually interesting Czech Easter ritual has been kept alive in about a dozen villages between Holice and Vysoke Myto in Pardubice County. It's called " Vodění Jidáše," which in English roughly translates to "Marching Judas," and it's said to have its roots in the 16th century, though no one really knows exactly where it came from.

On the morning of Holy Saturday, each town's residents flock to the local cowshed to dress up their oldest teenager in sheaves of hay, while on his head they place a tall, pointy hat made of reed. That kid is supposed to represent Judas. Followed by a throng of children, he then has to walk around the village pushing a wooden cart and reciting a poem about Judas burning in eternal hell.

The townspeople open their doors and give Judas eggs, sweets, and money in reward. Toward the end of the day, the children lead Judas to a hill outside the village (get the symbolism here?), take a few pictures with him, rid him of his suit, burn it, split the bounty, and go home to eat it for lunch. It's basically Halloween with a True Detective spin.

This past weekend, I visited a tiny village in Moravia called Stradoun to experience the festivities myself and take these photos.

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"Welcome to Parliament. Please sign in with our risk assessment team if you plan on fomenting rebellion in the great nation of Canada." Photo via Flickr user Tony Webster

What do you do when your populace rises up against you, throwing off the shackles of their oppression in an effort to replace your democratic government with a commune of like-minded proletariats, hell-bent on abolishing the class system by any means necessary?

That's exactly what the Government of Canada is hoping to figure out.

The Department of Public Works posted a tender to a government contracting site at the end of March, for "security consulting services" in order to develop threat assessments for government of Canada assets and infrastructure in Ottawa.

The federal government wants a rundown of all the ways its properties might be vulnerable to terrorists, spies, thieves, natural disasters, and the collective uprising of a disenfranchised people.

On top of having someone identify possible risks and security deficiencies, they also want the contractor to suggest improvements that could be made to the infrastructure, and to offer a consultant to oversee the implementation of the upgrades.

That means detailing every sprinkler system, alarm, door, safe room, generator, guard hut, fence, wall, parking lot, surveillance camera, tunnel, elevator, stairwell, and basically anything else relevant to assessing how government properties will react to threats.

Evidently, the request is being done with a eye directly to the chaotic response to the October 22 attack on Parliament. On top of the disjointed and confused police response, the assortment of government buildings in downtown Ottawa lacked coherent plans to deal with real-time threats. Many, including this journalist, were in lockdown for nearly 12 hours, well after the gunman was dead. Those inside the buildings were surprised to learn that there was no real warning system for terrorist attacks.

To that end, Ottawa is looking for a company to put together a plan how to prevent, flag, mitigate, and respond to terror attacks. Some example attacks provided in the report include "bombs, vehicle ramming, backpack, interior."

Part of the eventual report would include recommendations for "VIP Protection." The need for such a thing was highlighted when Prime Minister Stephen Harper was ushered into a broom closet during the Ottawa attack, as it was the closest secure room his ad hoc security detail could find.

The report that will be produced at the end of this will be classified. Any potential contractor will need to be vetted and screened. Every person working on the project will need secret security clearance (not, however, the highest level of "top secret.")

Terrorism isn't the only consideration for the report, however.

"Insurrection," number 17 on the "specific threats" list, is certainly the most curious.

While it's not clear just how worried Ottawa should be about a revolution, as Canada hasn't really faced an honest-to-god popular uprising since the Red River Rebellion, the fear appears to be ever-present.

It is also possible that Canada could be worried about the possible violent public backlash over a screening of one of the worst-ever Star Trek movies.

Other threats include environmental events, like foods or earthquakes; power outages; "magnetism damage;" "demonstrations/peaceful marches/building occupations/labour disputes; and even "key-employee sickness."

There are also concerns over "foreign intelligence, industrial/commercial intelligence," and "sabotage." Canada, of course, is no stranger to being the target of cyber-warfare and human intelligence directed by foreign governments. Also on the list is "social engineering" which is a favourite tool for affable hackers, and basically involves con-man-style tricks to obtain access to someone's system.

Some examples—like "penetration," and "misrepresentation"—are provided without example or context.

The document also lists "compromise/disclosure of sensitive information" as a possible threat, which is probably a tribute to the work of Edward Snowden and his clever efforts to collect sensitive data from within the NSA.

In the counter-espionage department, the report would also include information on how someone could gain access to a building's phone and internet systems.

"Where do communication lines enter the facility? (Identify both underground and/or above ground locations)," the report reads.

The government also wants to know its neighbours.

"Please identify any adjacent buildings (government or commercial) that could attract acts of aggression (i.e. protest/demonstration, terrorism, etc)," the report asks.

The eventual winner of the contract will also be asked to assess how to protect restricted areas from unauthorized access. The document asks that the contractor consider "physical, procedural and psychological barriers" for those areas.

The most important issues—which carry priority "A"—would be "a condition or vulnerability which exists which may be exploited by opportunistic person(s) or organizations with hostile objectives; a deficiency or condition which has already occurred and has already or will shortly result in the shut-down of a building or support system."

Follow Justin Ling on Twitter.

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This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

I grew up in the relatively posh suburbs of a very white, working-class seaside town—the kind where the biggest attraction is the knock-down price of mini-golf ($3) and where only people with metal detectors have a good time on the beach. The kind of place where hard nans go to die.

This was tricky, for me, given that my parents fall into that weird chasm where they're posh enough that I still don't know what saveloys are, but poor enough that they couldn't send me to private school. They're also from Norway, where all the clean air, fresh fish, and years of quietly progressive social engineering technically makes everyone middle class. Not that they'd know it—they're so Scandinavian and inherently left-wing that they couldn't even conceive of the British class system if they tried.

So, in my parents' eyes, all the schools in the UK were equally welcoming. Which they are, as long as you go follow the rules of that aforementioned British class system: People with ponies and long names go to private school, and people who wear non-breathable fabrics and don't know what a "peloton" is go to state school.

[body_image width='925' height='594' path='images/content-images/2015/03/30/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/30/' filename='growing-up-not-posh-body-image-1427725608.png' id='41083']What a good old-fashioned comprehensive school looks like. Photo via Wiki Commons

Problems begin to arise, though, when you're caught somewhere between the two: I went to the local comp, but I was aware that there are different types of mustard, so I was essentially a half-breed. Existing somewhere in the viscera of the middle class is really boring and lonely. I didn't live in an estate, where everyone had Sky and there were lots of benches to hang out on with fit boys drenched in wet hair gel. And I couldn't go to the parties people who go to private school have in the countryside, because they're constantly suspicious you'll nick their silverware or say something mildly pro-Labour, and my mom wouldn't give me the cab fare home from the suburbs anyway because, come on, I was 13.

READ: What It's Like to Go to an Elite Private School in the London Suburbs

So, faced with the prospect of being friendless forever, I decided to be a good little immigrant and try to assimilate. Off came my dungarees and on came white McKenzie trackies and velour zip-ups. I stopped eating rocket and got into fish finger and chip sandwiches. I perfected the messy bun. I convinced two bits of hair to lie slicked on my forehead, where they got all covered in No17 powder (shade: sand). Having literally just learnt English from Biff and Chip books, I had to unlearn it: saying "easy" instead of "hello" and "come" instead of "came"—as in: "He come round my house and I didn't even have my extensions in," rather than: "No, he did not come on my face, thank you very much."

After a few initial hiccups (you haven't known shame until you've been a year seven opening a lunchbox of leftover organic moussaka while you're sitting with a group of people eating Penguin bars) (a lot of people do not know what an aubergine is and get angry when confronted with the concept of one), I was in. Emboldened by cans of Vimto, I stalked the canteen with my gang of rude girls—in the manner of a pack of foxes investigating a discarded portion of chips—looking for boys to snog.

Because more than anything, I had learnt that the best way to forcefully integrate yourself in a foreign society is to go out with the scariest cunt in it. My first boyfriend was a scrawny traveler boy who called me one night to say he thought he'd killed someone with a brick (he hadn't) and spent his spare time practicing kicking stuff and eating beans from the tin. In private, he was a total pussycat though: He used to write me poems involving a lot of rhyming of "wife" and "life" and make me cups of tea after frenzied bouts of afternoon fingering. After I gave my first ever blowjob to him in one of the family caravans, our young love was cemented in semen and trackie-induced crotch sweat.

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It was with him that I first discovered the joys of spending a night out sitting on a bench in a council estate throwing chips at people and drinking Red Square before giving each other smileys and being sick. One memorable afternoon, after we had been to his cousin's funeral, I had to drive home because his whole family was too hammered and he was busy trying to restrain his dad's new girlfriend in the back seat. She had gone a bit loopy off a potent combination of grief and Bacardi Breezers and was trying to simultaneously climb out the car and scratch everyone's eyes out.

When I got home my mom was listening to Kate Bush and making aioli. I decided then that it was best if I never had those people over.

[body_image width='741' height='324' path='images/content-images/2015/03/30/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/30/' filename='growing-up-not-posh-body-image-1427726161.png' id='41097']Seasonal vegetables and aioli. Photo via Wiki Commons.

But there was still plenty of fun to be had round other people's houses while I was hiding the fact that my parents don't like eating vegetables that are out of season. My mate Prangy Dan once had his family's flat to himself for a week. It was about the time that we had discovered that smoking weed was a pleasant way to pass the time, meaning that everyone had within months replaced their ADHD diagnoses with a passion for potato smileys and sitting down.

We all piled in to Prangy Dan's front room and sat in a silence broken only occasionally by a muttered "your mom," addressed to no one in particular. It gets a bit blurry round about the second day, but I distinctly remember waking up with my foot in a box of cold curry from the night before and deciding it was probably time to head home—where I cemented positive relations with my mom forever by eating about eight portions of saffron-infused halibut stew.

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But if my parents were unwittingly A-OK with the weed, they were less cool with the fact that I treated school as a kind of makeup counter-cum-fight club. By Year Nine, I had decided I had spent enough holidays in the Dordogne to warrant bunking off French for pretty much an entire year. Instead, I took to sitting on the girl's toilets floor throwing water-dampened toilet paper on the ceiling to try to make it stick and smoking Sterlings. In one of the worst architectural decisions ever made, a school of about 2,000 had only one mirror to service a female population with a lot of acne to be covered and fake eyelashes to reattach. This obviously meant that almost every day someone's extensions would get ripped out when we were battering the shit out of each other to reach it.

Whatever that might have lost me in class time, deciding not to hang out with the few other posh kids in my year definitely made my life more pleasant. They spent all of their time looking for their "lost" iPod minis (Kayleigh in the year above ran a burgeoning cottage industry where she'd change the covers and sell them on) and hiding in the IT department. Which, incidentally, was where I'd sneak off to study while telling my mates I was off to see my (at this point totally fictional) boyfriend. "He's older," I'd explain, proudly. "He has a van."

So when that lying paid off and I passed my exams, my parents finally took a long, hard look at my inability to name more than about seven countries and packed me off to boarding school, where I learnt that real posh people say things like "she was on really good form," and think throwing wet bog roll on the ceiling "probably damages the paint."

Now I have definitively turned, and work in a job posh enough they would probably take offense at me sharing the stories of blowjobs past with the internet. Most of my girls from back home have kids and flats and friendly builder boyfriends. Pictures of their package holidays to Turkey are posted on the same social media sites where we spent our youth furiously undermining each other's confidence. Whenever I visit, I spend most of my time trying to hold their children the right way up.

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Flowers laid in Westminster in January for the victims of child abuse (Photo by Susan G Crocombe)

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

In January I reported as survivors of child abuse were invited into Parliament for the first time. The historic visit seemed to show that the voices of victims would finally be heard in the corridors of power. At the time, Phil Frampton, former victim of abuse and Founding Chair of the Care Leavers Association, told me, "My childhood and working with child abuse survivors has taught me to be realistic, but right now, I don't believe this can all be swept under the carpet anymore." He had just led one of the largest Public Parliamentary meetings the House of Commons had ever seen.

But today Phil's view, and that of other survivors, is far less optimistic. As the UK gears up for a general election, accusations of negligence and cover-ups over pedophilia operating in the heart of government is an issue barely being discussed amid the endless photo ops of politicians in different workplaces, schools, and hospitals. As far as some survivors are concerned, that cover up is still going on.

This weekend, demonstrators will take to the streets outside Parliament and around the UK to ask why, three months after John Mann MP handed police and parliament a dossier of 22 politicians named by victims and informants as child abusers, nothing appears to have moved on. Mann's Labour colleague Simon Danczuk MP, who is compiling complaints of alleged pedophile rings, recently warned that if survivors who have come forward are denied justice, they would resort to direct action.

This was echoed by Nigel O'Mara, founder of The Survivors' Helpline. "Some groups are already considering that direct action may be the only way forward if there is no movement on local inquiries which would offer closure and justice, as well as the national inquiry into systemic failures," he told me. "People feel that they are being stymied by officials and police services all over the country."

On Tuesday, Phil, Nigel, and other survivors, traveled to London to present a letter to Home Secretary Theresa May, calling on her to reverse the decision to exclude survivors from the national inquiry into child sex abuse.

The survivors' letter, also signed by prominent human rights lawyers such as Michael Mansfield QC, and child protection experts, warns that the inquiry into historical child abuse in England and Wales lacks credibility amongst those it is supposed to be representing.

It says: "If the inquiry panel cannot be trusted by those who have been abused then its findings will never be accepted... survivors will once more feel abused by government and the establishment and paedophiles left to threaten our children."

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Phil Frampton

Phil Frampton spent his childhood in care homes, and at age 14, blew the whistle on the sexual and physical abuse he and others were subjected to in a Barnardo's children's home. "I wrote a letter on behalf of the children to Barnardo's," recalled Phil. "The abuse continued until the children staged a revolt like civil rights activist Rosa Parks, refusing to get off a bus until police were summoned. We told them what was going on. Barnardo's had to sack the abusers. The kids had won!"

Forty-six years later, Phil's fight for justice continues, and he thinks it should be a bigger part of the election debate. "Whoever gets elected in May they will have to deal with the fact that there has been an attempt to cover up the role of establishment figures that is still going on," said Phil. "We should ask election candidates what they and their parties' leaders have done to root out child abusers and those who cover for them."

New Zealand judge Justice Lowell Goddard and four permanent panel members have been appointed to run the Home Secretary's abuse inquiry after two previous chairs resigned, tainted by establishment ties.

Phil told me that he thinks in its new form, the long-awaited inquiry could still be a whitewash. A Victims and Survivors Consultative Panel is to be appointed, to which Phil hopes to be elected, but he doesn't think that's enough. "We are arguing that at least one survivor on the consultative panel should be elected as a permanent inquiry member. Otherwise it will remain an inquiry of those with no experience of child abuse sitting in judgement on victims and survivors." Today it was announced that the victims' panel would need to be available to work on the inquiry for only two days per month, including for a meeting of half a day. This is because Justice Goddard, heading up the inquiry, thinks victims of abuse are not "impartial."

Phil warned that the current permanent panel is not trusted by survivors to do the extensive investigating needed to uncover high-level failings and cover-ups that allowed children all over the UK to fall prey to organized pedophile rings. "There are no panel members with expertise of crime investigation, forensics, or working with child sex abuse," explained Phil. "It's in danger of becoming an academic exercise which will report in five years time what everybody already knows."

The government recently voted against a Labour-supported amendment to protect child abuse whistleblowers from prosecution under the Official Secrets Act, legislation many say has been used to silence allegations against high-powered pedophiles. "There are many examples of police saying they were not able to speak out about abuse because they were threatened by the Official Secrets Act," said Phil. "It raises serious questions about whether the Conservative and Lib-Dems are serious."

The PM's office told me, "Anyone worried about whether people will be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act for coming forward should be reassured by the assurances given by the Attorney-General and the Home Secretary. It is in everybody's interest that we get to the bottom of what happened."

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David Cameron has been accused of trying to suppress evidence of what former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher knew about child abuse among MPs (Photo via the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills)

Phil argues that these assurances do not cover whistleblowers and officials talking to investigative journalists. "People are beginning to realize that this is not about 'conspiracy theorists' as David Cameron called us. This is about real cover-up and real politicians involved in the worst sort of crimes," added Phil. "It's now become quite clear the Cabinet Office—David Cameron and Nick Clegg attempted to suppress evidence about Margaret Thatcher's role in covering up what Cyril Smith got up to. The Cabinet Office tried to block Freedom of Information requests on the subject on four occasions."

A Cabinet Office Spokesperson told me that, "There is no cover up, nor was the Cabinet Office forced to release information by the Information Commissioner. This is a sensitive and complex case. It is right that we considered advice from a range of officials. After considering the advice, the Cabinet Office decided to disclose information."

An Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigation has now been launched into why police child sex abuse operations into figures of power including Brittan were stalled.

"We've heard many stories alleging huge pressure on MP's not to speak up about child abuse and there is concern that parties themselves have been corrupted over these issues," said Phil. "The government is now in the habit, like cat with mice, of presenting us with dead scapegoats—Jimmy Savile, Cyril Smith, Leon Brittan. If they were brought to justice while alive they might squeal about other pedophiles. Dead men can't squeal."

Ultimately, said Phil, if survivors fear that the inquiry is a "whitewash" as he puts it, people will go through less orthodox channels to get the justice that they demand. "There's danger that if people lose faith in the inquiry they'll express their anger in other ways and that will be the responsibility of Theresa May," he said.

Follow Ben on Twitter.

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The App Store's just taken receipt of another endless runner. Big deal, indeed. But this time it's an offering bearing a very familiar face.

Having flogged over a million copies of latest mixtape-cum-album-cum-contract-fulfilling-piece-of-crap If You're Reading This It's Too Late (and I say that as someone who likes him), Canadian rapper-actor Drake has now moved into mobile gaming. Sort of.

Runnin' Through the 6 is yours to download for free to your iOS device—if you hate yourself. The basic-looking rooftop runner features a cartoon caricature of Aubrey Graham, the simple objective to collect floating "6"s while avoiding disabled signs, which prevent the Degrassi alumnus from double-jumping from building to building.

All the while—well, for as long as you keep running—Drake's song "Know Yourself" plays in the background, its opening line of "running through the 6 with my woes" evidently comprising the entire conceptual core of this appropriately miserable experience. It's not the worst track on its parent LP, so that's something, I suppose. Programmed by Nico Uribe, Runnin' is the kind of crap that must infuriate mobile developers actually looking to do something innovative in the medium—like Flappy Bird, only, more Cash Monied. And here we are, in the press, writing about it instead of Much Better Games. Sorry.

I've played Runnin' five or six times. I get it, and now I'm done with it, thanks. If you're a Google Play user and completely insane, you can actually pay money for the game.

The "6" in question refers to Drake's hometown of Toronto, a city with two area codes both featuring said number, 416 and 647. (There's also a third, 437, but I guess Drake never went there.) When the rapper first started calling the place a number instead of, you know, a name made up of actual letters, residents got pissed: He was accused of being "attention seeking" and giving the city an identity crisis. Sheesh.

Uribe's not as dumb as his game is, though. On the title menu he's provided an option to "get IG followers," directing users to another of his apps, GramFamous, which does just that. "Wish you were Instagram famous?" its store description asks. Not really. But you can bet more people than ever are about to have a go, thanks to Runnin'.

Of course, this isn't an artist/management-sanctioned Drake product—at least, it doesn't look like one—so the man behind such hits as "Over" and that one with Rihanna that took Jamie xx's "I'll Take Care of U" remix and made like it was a new song isn't joining Katy Perry and Kanye West as a pop sort genuinely pursuing new opportunities in the mobile market.

Something tells me that search engine of his isn't his, either.

If you're really desperate for an endless runner on your iPhone, right this minute, may I suggest some alternatives to the Drizzy-starring Runnin'. Alto's Adventure. Jetpack Joyride. Canabalt. Robot Unicorn Attack. Temple Run 2. Impossible Road (it counts, right?). Punch Quest. Any one of the numerous Flappy Bird clones. Have fun!

Follow Mike on Twitter.

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English Bay. All photos by the author

For oil-tanker critics, it was only a question of "when" not "if" an oil spill would occur. Their worst fears became reality in the waters of Vancouver, British Columbia when toxic fuel spilled Wednesday afternoon.

"I have oil in my fingers. It actually breaks my heart that I thought my Salish Sea would ever be protected," said Shirley Samples, from the group We Love this Coast, as she looked onto the oily sheen covering a large part of the formerly pristine waters.

Approximately 2,700 litres of bunker fuel had spilled into English Bay, downtown Vancouver's most popular beach, but by Thursday night a majority of it, about 80 percent, had been cleaned up. The feds confirmed Friday morning that the spill came from grain tanker Marathassa, anchored in the middle of Burrard Inlet. A boom was placed around the vessel in question about six hours after the spill had occurred.

Transport Canada said Friday morning their appears to have been a malfunction on the Marathassa but their investigation is on-going.

Samples cried when she heard toxic fuel had spilled out into English Bay. It's an incident she believes proves the risk of an oil spill is not low.

"We could lose our whole coastline. There are so many creatures in our coastline that have no say in what happens," she added. Brian Falconer, marine operations program coordinator at Raincoast Conservation Foundation, agrees about the immense dangers this spill poses to wildlife. He says any birds that come into contact with the oil will die.

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"Virtually any bird [that] encounters it... is going to die. It only takes a few drops of oil to destroy the thermal insulation of a seabird. Once their insulation is gone they freeze to death."

It's a troubling scenario considering the heron population is nesting at this time of the year and thousands of seabirds are migrating near the spill site.

"It could be disastrous for the herons. Couldn't come at a worse time."

An emergency response team was called in to deal with the incident around 5 PM on Wednesday, but the City of Vancouver was not notified until about 6 AM the following day, almost 13 hours later.

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In a news conference Thursday afternoon, Capt. Roger Girouard, head of the Canadian Coast Guard western region, said a communication review would now be conducted. "Certainly not our intent to leave the city in the blind." The material, he said, is being treated as a bunker fuel or raw crude in a "worst-case scenario" fashion until the test results come back. According to protocol, the spill falls under the federal government's jurisdiction.

The City of Vancouver is asking people to stay away from the spill and the Park Board is urging dog owners to keep their pets out of the water as the cleanup effort continues. Despite those warnings, there were a number of children and dogs playing in the water. When asked why, the general response was they were unaware of the situation. There was not a lot of visible signage warning of potential dangers. Capt. Girouard admits "in absolute sense it could have been better."

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Shirley Sample

"It's a warning that if we're not going to be able to deal really well with this one how are we going to deal with a big one in a remote area?" said Falconer.

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[body_image width='640' height='360' path='images/content-images/2015/04/09/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/09/' filename='one-of-ukips-candidates-is-a-porn-star-called-johnny-rockard-909-body-image-1428590507.jpg' id='44601']Screenshot via Vimeo

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

A senior UKIP party official and candidate for Bristol has been "outed," if that is the right word, as being porn star Johnny Rockard, star of such classics as The "Real" 50 Shades (of Johnny Rockard), Ashley Rider Foot Wank at Johnny Rockard HQ, and a lot of other films that are embarrassing to google when you work in an office. But there are some with Hungarian girls in, if you're fans of irony and double standards. They come over here, these Hungarian girls, and take our jobs, don't they? They come over here and get paid to blowbang the vice chair of the Bristol branch of UKIP, and it's not on. Vote for Nigel Farage: and get these goddamn Hungarian girls out of my lap, is what Johnny Rockard is saying.

As the Bristol Post reports, 49-year-old Rockard—who goes by the civilian name "John Langley"—is running to be a councillor in the city's Stockwood constituency, as well as being Bristol UKIP's vice chair. He's also surprisingly blasé about the whole "being outed as a porn star" thing. "This is no big deal," he told the paper, with a sort of triple X–rated shrug. "It is just electioneering and it is the type of thing you expect in the run up to any election. I have never made a big deal out of what I do and I am not breaking any laws."

Rockard previously stood for Brislington East, and has 30 years experience in the sex industry as an on-screen porn star and former escort. He runs his own talent agency and production company (Johnny Rockard Global Media), and he wants to improve the play space in the Callington Road/West Town Lane area of the town. He once got in trouble for filming a porno on the campus of the University of West England, and he wants to give local people a voice in how their services are run. He is chalk and he is cheese. He is the yin and he is the yang. A three-bird roast of riddles wrapped in mysteries wrapped in enigmas. The first male politician in the history of the known universe who has been paid for his sex and not the other way around. Who are you, Johnny Rockard? How did you happen?

"UKIP is a working-class party which appeals to working-class people," he told the Post. "Normal people go to the pub and enjoy a pint and then probably go home and enjoy adult entertainment. What people do in the privacy of their own homes is nothing to do with politics and I cannot see why there should be any problem with any of this."

There's something simple and beautiful about the three central columns of Rockard's Britain: work, pub, wank. We go to work, we salt-of-the-earth British people, then we have a pint, and then we head home to beat it, and we don't like the EU. Is there really anything else to it? Common Sense Britain. Porn and pints and keeping the pound.

But what more can we learn from the philosophy of Johnny Rockard? What happens when we get behind that dick and into that mind? A quote, on the rigors of his labor: "I had to keep it rigidly hard for a period of nine hours, and this was way before Viagra had even been thought of—and fire off bang on cue!" He's all about giving the power back to the people!

Another thought, this time on a 24-year-old teacher who was banned from the classroom for having an affair with one of her former pupils: "Realistically what red-blooded, testosterone-fueled male with even half of a brain cell wouldn't look at those eyes and that smile without getting an erection!" Let's be real, Britain! Who wouldn't pop a nine-hour semi over that! Ban bureaucracy!

The only fear is—if UKIP winning the European elections last year is anything to go by—that other parties follow suit. Like: Remember how everyone came out a bit more anti-immigration when it turned out UKIP might have some real supporters? What if, now Johnny Rockard is a thing, what if they all get a bit rough and porny? Labour spin doctors are this very minute chucking around the idea of leaking a grainy video of Ed Miliband having a sad, flat wank. Over at Number 10, David Cameron is shaving his chest, concerned. "Is there any way we can—tastefully, mind you—film me having a go on Sam and put it on YouTube?" And poor old Nick Clegg, with his sad eyes and his little lost face, casting models for the Nick Clegg's "No More Than 30" Lovers: REDUX!!! party political gangbang video, wondering what Miriam is going to say.

"Mr. Langley is not doing anything illegal and it is a little bit unusual but at the end of the day he is a businessman," a UKIP spokesperson said. "Nothing is being hidden and there is no issue as far as we are concerned with him standing for UKIP in the election." And that's ultimately it, isn't it? There's no shame in a 30-year career in sex work. There is shame in being the Bristol vice chair for UKIP.

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[body_image width='640' height='390' path='images/content-images/2015/04/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/10/' filename='speaking-to-the-woman-behind-facesofprostitution-body-image-1428649392.jpg' id='44766']

Image via Tilly Lawless

Last week Sydney sex worker Tilly Lawless posted a photo of herself smiling on Instagram with the hashtag #facesofprositution. The post was a response to an article on the Australia women's website Mamamia titled "Think the fantasy of prostitution in Pretty Women is harmless? Think again." The piece, originally posted on an anti–human trafficking site in the US, presented images of bruised, emaciated, drug-addicted sex workers.

When she woke up the next day, Lawless discovered she'd inadvertently started a social media earthquake. In the days that followed sex workers from all over the world shared photos of themselves under the hashtag—in some cases outing themselves as sex workers for the first time—to protest against the stereotype that sex workers are intrinsically victims who need saving.

Since then both Lawless and the hashtag have received mixed reactions; many have assumed that the 21-year-old history graduate is some sort of authority on Australian sex workers, something she says is an inaccurate presumption. I called her up to see how she's feeling in the wake of the post, and what she hopes the movement has us thinking about.

VICE: Before we get to the craziness of this past week, I wanted to ask you about the use of the word empowered. I always find it interesting how much it's used when talking about sex work. No one talks about other jobs needing to be empowering. Is that word relevant?
Tilly Lawless: It might mean something to another woman—and if it does, then wonderful—but I hate being asked all the time if I'm empowered. There are plenty of people who aren't empowered in their jobs—people working maybe as a bank clerk, or in a shoe shop—but for some reason as sex workers we're asked again and again if we are empowered. I mean, is that a prerequisite? Why should I have to thrash out an entire speech proving that I'm an empowered woman before anyone takes me seriously or considers my job a real job?

[tweet text="Inadvertently began #FacesOfProstitution this morning when I responded to the Mamamia article via my instagram pic.twitter.com/bHIjC1K3k2" byline="— Tilly lawless (@tilly_lawless)" user_id="tilly_lawless" tweet_id="582119812693786624" tweet_visual_time="March 29, 2015"]

And you don't have to be empowered to be safe or satisfied with your job.
Exactly, it's a buzzword that's used all the time. People want you to say you're not empowered, they want you to say you hate your job because then they can say, "We knew it all along, it's not possible to like sex work." I'm just not sure why it's a necessary question.

I've never worked in the sex industry, but when people talk about the dangers and the risks I keep thinking—those issues aren't about sex work. They're related to women, and the way women are treated in the workplace and in general.
Oh my God—so there was a woman who came around to one of the parlors I work at. I didn't meet her, but she asked all the girls about their histories of sexual abuse and published a book about how all sex workers have been sexually abused. That really angered me because you could ask a room full of lawyers, or uni students, a woman on the bus, or any woman, and chances are she's been sexually abused or harassed.

The thing with sex workers is that because of the changing legality of sex work and the stigma around it we have less recourse for legal action when it happens to us. But in terms of sexual abuse in general, that's the reality of being a woman, not the reality of being a sex worker.

But we have to acknowledge that you are arguably more vulnerable than a girl making coffees—whether it's because your work is out of sight, or because you can't report abuse as easily. How do we talk about those vulnerabilities without demonizing the industry and suggesting all sex workers are victims?
The main way to address these issues is to allow sex workers to speak for themselves. I really think that's what it will come down to. Sex workers will only be humanized and seen as individuals if people are aware of us as individuals.

Which is probably a good way to get back to #facesofprostitution. One thing some people may have misunderstood was that although Mamamia took a lot of the heat for their article, it was originally posted by an anti-trafficking organization. Does context change the message?
I probably never would have seen it if it had only been published on that website. The reason it came to my attention was because Mamamia published it. But that angered me because Mamamia presents itself as a progressive feminist website, and it packaged that point of view to the mainstream as feminism.

If people just read that on the website exoduscry.com they would have seen it in the context of a religious website with moral motives. But by republishing it gave it legitimacy, that's what was so frustrating.

[tweet text="I live on a farm, have purple hair, wear cat t-shirts, have 5 cats lol don't judge me!! #FacesOfProstitution pic.twitter.com/920aOhCgfP" byline="— Holly In Griffith (@HollyInAlbury)" user_id="HollyInAlbury" tweet_id="586015031931711488" tweet_visual_time="April 9, 2015"]

An argument that's come up repeatedly is that while there are many, many women like you who are in control of your work, there are also many who aren't. The article presented that point in a pretty crude way, but it is still a reality.
A lot of the response from anti-trafficker groups has been: Oh, women are coerced and abused. And that's entirely true, I'm not denying that and by no means trying to detract from the fact that there are people who are trafficked into the industry. But by giving sex workers rights, whether they're proud of their job or not, giving them labor rights is not going to adversely affect people who are trafficked into the industry.

Rights would hopefully work in favor of people who are trafficked because it would perhaps bring the sex industry into the open and allow more exit paths for people who didn't want to be in the industry.

How would it provide exit paths?
It would hopefully eliminate some of society's stigma so they would have more people to turn to and not have to feel ashamed. Also if it was more out in the open hopefully police would take reports more seriously. I know girls who have gone to police after being assaulted at work and basically had the police say they weren't going to do anything.

But I really don't think I can comment on trafficking because I'm not educated on it and a lot of what's written is about European trafficking. My experience is purely in Sydney. I haven't spent my life studying the patterns of trafficking.

That feels like a slippery slope, saying one part of sex work is OK, but not another.
I don't think it's ever OK to say one thing is OK and another isn't. I don't think it's my place to draw a line. My comment was that anti-trafficking rhetoric is often used to disadvantage migrant workers who do want to be working. It's far more complex than the way it's generally presented.

Why do you think #facesofprostitution took off the way it did?
I think social media allowed it to move in a way it wouldn't have ten years ago. I also think it was a simple and effective hashtag, I mean #facesofprostitution—any sex worker can get behind that and interpret it in anyway they want.

Is inclusion among sex workers an issue?
Sex workers sometimes try and highlight how respectable and normal they are as a way to try and gain rights. You hear things like: "Oh, well, I don't use drugs, I'm not a street walker, I'm a respectable member of society, I pay my taxes—therefore I should have rights like other people."

That feeds into the whorearchy—the hierarchy of sex work. By proclaiming you don't do drugs you're making the argument at the expense of the sex workers who do use drugs. And it suggests they're then less deserving of rights because they're not as much of a normal member of society.

Save me if you can! Or you could just get yourself a real job like I have done. #facesofprostitution #SwedishModel pic.twitter.com/Ot9b0haNpA
— Pye (@PyeJakobsson) April 7, 2015

There's often talk of the need to normalize sex work and recognize it as just another job. What's your take on that?
I think it's oversimplifying it because it's asking people to toe the line in order to deserve labor rights. It says to sex workers, if you stop doing drugs, or you don't go party on the weekend, or if you dress like everyone else and maintain a monogamous lifestyle outside of work, then we're happy to give you rights.

But the images under #facesofprostitution are largely of happy, well-adjusted looking women—which seems to make that argument.
I think with #facesofprostitution, at least when I started it, it was about saying, we are people and we're all individuals and unique.

Also, I use drugs, I'm not going to go around saying I don't do all these things. Once you start saying that, it allows people to take away rights from sex workers who do use drugs. And then we're doubly stigmatizing them: They have the stigma of being a sex worker and a drug user. Does that makes sense?

You're saying you shouldn't have to earn the right to be heard—it should be a given.
Yes. These rights are needed regardless.

It's been a pretty weird week for you, right?
Oh my god, I've have over 200 messages in my inbox and most of it has just been dick pics and disgusting propositions from men describing how they want to fuck me. I mean I've always got messages like that, all girls on Facebook have, but it has increased exponentially.

How do you manage that kind of bombardment?
I've been getting back to some of them. I got sent a prayer for redemption by a Brazilian pastor and I just sent back, "thanks babe xxx."

What about the non-dick pic, non-prayer-related interactions? The attention has spilled into the mainstream media too.
It hasn't been enjoyable. I'm the kind of person who likes being in control of my life, so it was intense to wake up on Monday morning to all this media and suddenly be treated like an authority. There are plenty of more educated opinions out there.

I think you're handling it all pretty well.
Well I have to take advantage of it because the more talk there is about sex worker rights the better. And amongst all the gross and inappropriate messages there have been some really nice ones. One of those outweighs 50 awful messages.

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[body_image width='640' height='357' path='images/content-images/2015/04/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/10/' filename='a-texas-judge-got-arrested-for-smuggling-guns-across-the-mexico-border-410-body-image-1428678808.jpg' id='45013']

Photos via Flickr user Frank Kovalchek/Williamson County, Texas

If it seems perfectly normal lately for American cops to shoot and kill unarmed suspects, it's still news when a judge decides to start running guns across the Mexico border.

That's what happened in Austin, Texas, this week, where a federal ground jury indicted a judge for smuggling guns, selling guns to a convicted felon in the state, and lying to federal agents. The Tuesday indictment followed a raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on the judge's home late last month, where they found dozens of weapons.

The judge, Timothy Wright III, lied when buying guns at two different businesses in Williamson County, claiming the guns were for him when he intended to sell them to a convicted felon, according to the nine-count indictment. All nine charges are federal felonies.

The case brings to mind the scandal that plagued Columbus, New Mexico, when the mayor, police chief, and city trustee were found to be smuggling guns across the border in 2011. That case was wrapped up in ATF's infamous Fast and Furious operation and involved at least 200 high-powered guns.

Wright turned himself in to US Marshals in Austin on Wednesday morning and was out of jail by mid-afternoon on an unsecured bond, meaning he didn't have to pay the court anything. Usually, a person has to pay 10 percent of the total bond amount to get out of jail, which many people—especially minorities—cannot afford. That can mean remaining in jail for days, weeks, or even months, which translates to losing jobs and more money.

Wright was out within hours, but had to hand over his concealed handgun license and passport, and his movements are confined to three counties in central Texas. He also isn't allowed to be around firearms or sell any guns through a third party.

Initial local news accounts suggested Wright would be back on the bench Thursday, but Texas's State Commission on Judicial Conduct suspended the judge indefinitely without pay.

"Judge Wright is disappointed that the commission took the action that it did but he intends to fully and firmly comply with its orders," Wright's attorney, Jeff Senter, told VICE.

Less than two weeks ago, Wright's neighbors watched as ATF agents carried stacks of long cardboard boxes and black plastic cases out of the house and into vans. At the end of the day, they drove away with 51 confiscated firearms and Wright's Ford F-150 pickup truck. The seized weapons were mostly handguns, along with a few carbines. The agency had been keeping tabs on Wright since at least September, when agents visited him, according to the indictment, though it's unclear whether that was the agency's first contact with Wright. (ATF referred all questions to the US Attorney's Office, and that office's spokesperson would not answer any questions related to the case.)

By that point last fall, Wright had allegedly been smuggling guns to Mexico for about four months. But a few months after ATF agents visited him, he inexplicably began smuggling again, and the indictment suggests he didn't stop until the raid in March. Senter says everything in the indictment is an allegation at this point, and that he can't comment on whether ATF contacted Wright in September.

Judge Wright lives in Georgetown, about four hours from the border with Mexico. That a county judge in the middle of the state would be involved in running firearms south of the border is shocking even in gun-loving Texas, where the state legislature is currently well on its way to allow guns to be carried on college campuses. The indictment contains no mention of Wright's motive for allegedly committing these serious crimes, though it says he raked in at least $42,604.

It's not as though Wright didn't know what he was doing—the 70-year-old has been a judge since 2003, and was an attorney for decades before that. He's one of four court-at-law judges in Williamson County, where he oversees the DUI and drug courts. If convicted of all nine charges, Wright could face up to 70 years in prison—ten years for each of the five firearm charges, and five years for each of the false statement charges. His lawyer maintains his innocence, and says Wright has a license to sell guns. The indictment says Wright did indeed obtain a license in January, but that he began selling—to a convicted felon—nearly a year ago.

On the day of the raid, Wright apparently told an ATF agent that he had not sold any weapons since the agency last visited him in September. The indictment adds that he falsified paperwork to change a December sale date to August. He also told the agent that he hadn't sold any firearms to a person identified as "J.C." in the indictment since finding out that person was a convicted felon, but the grand jury was told that Wright "sold firearms to 'J.C' in person on three occasions after he learned that 'J.C.' was a convicted felon."

Only the Texas Supreme Court can remove a judge from the bench. Wright's arraignment is set for next Wednesday morning, and his attorney says he will plead not guilty to all counts.

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