[body_image width='1000' height='625' path='images/content-images/2015/04/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/10/' filename='mouth-fashion-shoot-body-image-1428679676.jpg' id='45022'] Leather jacket: Schott, t-shirt: Rokit, visor: Beyond Retro.

PHOTOGRAPHER: CHARLOTTE RUTHERFORD
STYLIST: KYLIE GRIFFITHS

Stylist's Assistant: Thomas Ramshaw
Makeup: Lucy Wearing using MAC Cosmetics
Hair: Johnnie Biles using Bumble and Bumble
Models: Emerald and Stefanie at First Model Management, Magda at Premier
Special thanks to Vyne Wood Studios

[body_image width='1000' height='625' path='images/content-images/2015/04/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/10/' filename='mouth-fashion-shoot-body-image-1428679881.jpg' id='45025'] Jacket: Gogo Phiip Jackets, earrings: Ryan Lo.

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Hoodie: Rokit, hat: Lazy Oaf.

[body_image width='1000' height='625' path='images/content-images/2015/04/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/10/' filename='mouth-fashion-shoot-body-image-1428679893.jpg' id='45026'] Earrings: Gogo Philips, jacket: Ashish, beret: Rokit.

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Top: Illustrated People.

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[body_image width='1000' height='625' path='images/content-images/2015/04/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/10/' filename='mouth-fashion-shoot-body-image-1428680518.jpg' id='45035'] Top: ASOS.

Garage rock can be excruciatingly boring. It's always the same chords, the same swung beats, and the same skinny dude in Vans running through a reverb pedal. That said, there are sparks of genius in the garage rock genre—Black Lips and Thee Oh Sees both maintain Americana wild west spirit alive in the garage rock genre, which is otherwise basically just bad pop music with body odor and tattoos. France Camp follows in the lineage of Black Lips. They don't need to reinvent the wheel, but they're good at playing with established tropes in smart ways. This track, "Midnight," is from their new album Purge, which comes out May 19 on Forged Artifacts.

Preorder the album here.

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Photos by Chris Bethell

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

This is the first UK general election that I've been eligible to vote. However, as a young black person, pickings are slim. The last five years have hit the weakest the hardest and, depressingly, all too often that means members of black and minority ethnic (BME) have bore the brunt.

Meanwhile, the main parties have attempted to out-racist each other in the hope of a few votes, rather than doing anything to oppose entrenched institutional racism. From where I'm standing, it feels like the votes of a few angry bigots are given more weight than those of Britain's ethnic minorities.

Who, then, does the voter of color have to represent them in the upcoming election? Let's take a look at some of the key issues.

REPRESENTATION

The House of Commons is about as white as the pages of a UK Independence Party (UKIP) manifesto. In the last parliament, we had 27 MPs from BME communities, well shy of the estimated 117 that would be required to be descriptively representative of the UK population. Still, this figure was a record-breaking increase on the previous parliament. Yet that a governing party such as the Liberal Democrats didn't have a single BME member of parliament during their last term seems outrageous, and highlights a big concern around representation. This time around, 9 percent of their selected candidates are black, Asian, or come from a minority ethnicity. Labour and the Conservatives have done somewhat better in the past than the Lib Dems, but are themselves still far off from being truly representative.

All three of the major parties have selected a greater number of BME candidates to stand in May. Perhaps aware of their Oxbridge white-boy image, the Conservatives actually lead, with 11 percent of their MP hopefuls coming from a non-white background. That said, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron seems to be getting ahead of himself when he suggests that his will be "the party of the first black or Asian prime minister." Given Labour won a 68 percent share of the BME vote at the last election, Cameron's promise seems to be more about changing that fact than making a commitment to giving the UK its Obama moment.

Labour has always garnered the highest level of support from BME voters, as well as delivering the most actually elected BME MPs—as opposed to just fielding candidates in constituencies that won't be won.

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However, voters don't just want to be represented by people with the same skin color as them—they want their interests to be reflected in their candidates, too. For example, it will be interesting to see what happens to Labour MP David Lammy's support in Tottenham, where he was elected after the death of the much loved Bernie Grant MP. During the 1985 Broadwater Farm riots, Grant spoke out in defense of his community and against police brutality. On the other hand, after the 2011 riots, Lammy came out much more critical of his own constituents, rather than the police. This detachment from the community could well be reflected in the polls.

As has been widely reported, the Greens, despite their progressive leftist reputation, are fielding the fewest non-white candidates for seats. Even UKIP have more candidates. None of the candidates from either of these parties are standing in constituencies they are actually projected win, though. In fairness, they're not projected to win in many places at all, but the point stands—the Green Party is happy to have a black person in their broadcast, but they're not going to have any black representatives.

EMPLOYMENT

The headline figures say it all when it comes to employment. The Conservatives and Lib Dems claim a massive success, with two million more people in work, but while white youth unemployment has dropped by 2 percent, black youth unemployment has risen by 50 percent since 2010, according to Labour Party figures.

Add to this the trebling of tuition fees and widespread cuts to further and higher education, and any vision of the future for young BME people looks increasingly bleak.

Labour have rightly pointed out that many of these new "jobs" are actually zero-hours contracts. They promise to tackle this with an end to precarious contracts and an increase in the National Minimum Wage, as well as more opportunities for young people to get apprenticeships. But the Labour Party manifesto has only one reference to BME employment, relegated to a brief section on rights and equalities away from the headline economic policies. It doesn't mention the racial youth unemployment disparity, instead focusing on big name institutional jobs, such as police, judiciary, and civil service. People have been calling for greater representation in these fields forever, it seems. Perhaps it's time to examine what is barring young black people from jobs and economic equality en masse?

The Conservative manifesto's section on jobs doesn't mention black unemployment at all. Still, it's bursting with promises of full employment—seemingly to be achieved through more autonomy and tax cuts for businesses. Logically, full employment would have to include black people, so, like our white friends, we too can enjoy mandatory workfare schemes and jobs that don't pay enough to live on.

Related: Coalition: When Alan Met Joe

Unlike the two other main parties, the Liberal Democrats do dedicate space to black people and the economy. They promise to develop ways to increase BME applications for finance to set up small businesses; to monitor and tackle the BME pay gap; to encourage businesses to have at least one place on their board filled by a BME candidate; and to outlaw caste discrimination. All of this is very admirable, and it's nice that the Lib Dems have actually bothered to consider issues of race in their employment policies. Their ideas are necessary steps towards racial economic equality—but they won't get us all the way there. And whether the Lib Dems can stand by these promises long enough for them to take effect remains to be seen.

The Greens say much the same in their own manifesto, and go further with proposals such as introducing anonymized CVs and increased public sector employment of non-white workers. That would make sure any racist—or even subconsciously racist—bosses can't not hire you because you're black. Their promises include increased investment in treatment, tailored support with job searches for people with mental health problems, and a commitment to tackling the general stigma associated with this particular kind of disability.

However, most distinct is that the Greens, as well as the Lib Dems, deal with the issue of mental health in relation to work and race. This is a big deal, as people from black and ethnic minority groups are more likely to be diagnosed with mental health problems.

Mental health issues have an impact on access to society in general, and access to employment in particular. Taking these intersections seriously is crucial for anyone hoping to promote racial equality.

UKIP have a load to say about "immigrants" and "jobs," but unfortunately none of it's to do with helping BME people out.

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JUSTICE

Black and minority ethnic communities suffer doubly under the criminal justice system. On the one hand, they are more likely to find themselves criminalized by it, and because of this are also more likely to fall foul of the state's well advertised inability to hold itself to account when people have been wronged.

Young black people are 26 percent more likely to be stopped and searched and 20 percent more likely to be sent to prison than a white defendant. Given that both Labour and the Conservatives stand in opposition to giving prisoners the vote, this means a disproportionate disenfranchisement of black people in our society.

The main parties have one solution they all agree on when it comes to criminal justice and race: more black police officers. Unfortunately, this policy doesn't seem to have made much difference over the 20 years or more that politicians have been calling for it. In any case, police forces are still coming under fire from their own black officers, who have said the Metropolitan Police is still institutionally racist—which doesn't come as a huge surprise. So do the parties have any other solutions?

The Greens and Lib Dems make specific promises to look at stop and search in their manifestos, unlike Labour and the Tories. The Lib Dems go as far as to suggest that officers should wear body cameras when the blanket section 60 stop and search power is used. Some Labour parliamentary candidates—most notably Diane Abbott—have also promised a sober review of stop and search, separately of the wider party.

But other than this (now quite hackneyed) debate around stop and search, the party manifestos are surprisingly bare when it comes to crime and BME communities. Race and criminal justice are hardly mentioned in connection with one another. In a country where a quarter of the prison population is from a BME background, you'd think there would be more of a discussion about this during the election.

Of course, superficially, the Conservatives are for tougher prison sentencing, Labour for expanded community sentencing, and the Greens for restorative justice, but who is looking at why BME communities are so heavily and disproportionately criminalized in the first place? Meanwhile, UKIP think they have the answer, which is—SPOILER ALERT—to point out that lots of crimes are the fault of all those bloody immigrants.

The greatest oversight of all seems to be that after decades of injustice and hard fought battles for recognition, not one party mentions the 509 BME deaths after contact with the police since 1990.

Like with many of these issues, the lack of mention of BME communities' rough treatment at the hands of the justice system seems to be linked to our lack of representation in politics.

–

So, what have we learned? Well, in asking which party the voter of color can choose in this week's election, it becomes clear that the choice is a difficult one. I'm not scratching my head because there's so many great options. In fact, the opposite is true—it's a hard choice because all of the parties are shamefully weak when it comes to racial politics.

Follow Wail on Twitter.

I took these portraits at various rallies and demonstrations in Baltimore over the weekend. People are literally dancing in the streets, coming together over Marilyn Mosby—the prosecutor who just charged six cops with various crimes relating to Freddie Gray's death—as a symbol of hope. We'll see what happens next, but right now it's hard to describe this moment as anything but positive.

Follow Theo Anthony on Twitter
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From "Bottle Blondes" shoot. Photo by William Yan

As an Asian American, I rarely get to see reflections of myself in popular media. When I'm lucky enough to spot a face similar to mine in a movie or a magazine, they're often relegated to stereotypical characterizations like the mathlete or the martial artist. However, two fashion insiders are working hard to change that with a new magazine called Banana that highlights the duality of experience that comes with being of Asian descent and growing up in America.

Kathleen Tso and Vicki Ho started working on Banana in 2014. The name is a sardonic nod to a term used to describe the new generation of Asians in the United States who've assimilated to American culture. One of the key inspiration for the magazine came from Eddie Huang's memoir and recent television show, Fresh Off the Boat,which has helped broaden the representation of Asians in media beyond karate chops and Uncle Chans. Although Tso was raised in Texas and Ho grew up in New York, they both related to Huang's stories of having immigrant parents and developing an identity born out of his American and Asian experiences.

Tso and Ho called on their friends to help put together the publication that would take the fight Huang is waging on prime-time TV to the realm of fashion and culture magazines. They hosted monthly meet ups over dim sum with their friends and colleagues, where they would throw around ideas and concepts. Ultimately, they came up with a sharp mix of fashion editorials, recipes, personal essays, and features showcasing the lives of Asian American cool kids.

Designed by the founders, the debut issue's shiny purple cover and elegant editorial pages are something that anyone would be proud to have on their coffee table. But, most importantly, it's a stepping stone towards the duo's goal of building a community around their content. The inaugural issue boasts stories on the hypersexualization of kawaii culture, Ramen recipes, and a photo essay on how to go blonde when you're Asian.

I recently sat down with Ho and Tso to find out more about Banana and how it's creating an outlet for young Asians to express themselves and tell their stories.

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Banana magazine cover.

VICE: What inspired you to start Banana?
Kathleen Tso: Basically, we had this huge community of creative Asians who were just friends, and that lead to us noticing a lack of a greater community or even a platform for all of us to really showcase us. So we brought everyone together to develop a platform [we could use to] celebrate [the Asian American experience] and work with our friends.

How did you choose what to include in the first issue?
Tso: For the first issue, we were relying a lot on our own inner community that we had in New York. So a lot of it was friends and friends of friends. We held these dim sum meetings where we invited a few of our friends that we admired and picked their brains on whether the magazine was something they wanted to see exist and also the kind of content that could shape it. Basically, it became kind of word of mouth. It became all of our homies writing for us and taking pictures for us.

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From "Ramen Reimagined." Photo by Tyna Hoang

Why did you choose the name Banana?
Tso: We came up with the idea before we came up with name. I was just chatting with my sister one day and I told her we didn't know what to name it. She jokingly said, "Why don't you name it Banana?" That was something that my parents called us growing up because they raised us in an all white suburban town. She suggested it and I ended up loving it.

How did you develop the magazine's sleek design?
Tso: Initially, we just thought about what magazines we really liked the look and feel of. I gravitated to these skate culture magazines that were just our tipping off point. But, the imagery was really important to us, so that dictated how we designed it, which was pretty simple.

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From the "Peir Wu" fashion shoot. Models Simon Chung an Daniel Li. Photos by Trinh Huynh

Do you have a favorite story in this issue?
Ho: The first story we did was "Bottle Blondes," which is what really drove us to follow through with this idea. It had the most people involved and we shot so many different models. Their support and opinions that we should keep going with the magazine was a catalyst for us.

Tso: I think another one that we love is the little vignette of growing up with a Taiwanese grandmother in a suburban city. Growing up can be very alienating when you have such a different household than all of your friends at school, so that one was really powerful.

You mentioned your Asian American families, how did they respond to your idea?
Ho: For me, my parents were always very strict, but they were very liberal when it came to what I wanted to do with my career. I feel like they never saw me as really appreciating my culture. Every Asian family who has immigrated here has such a strong, and often sad and hardworking way of how they got to America. I feel like they didn't know how much I appreciated them for it and the culture they grew up in until they saw the magazine.

Tso: I think with me, in terms of my immediate family, it was hard because I grew up in an all white city. I think it scared my dad growing up that I wouldn't identify with Chinese or Taiwanese culture, and that I was trying to shed it. Maybe at a point, I was, because it's so hard when you are a kid because you don't want to be different. I think finally with this product and me reflecting and celebrating my heritage, he finally understood that I actually cared.

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From the "Peir Wu" fashion shoot. Models Simon Chung an Daniel Li. Photos by Trinh Huynh

What role did Eddie Huang's work play in developing the concept?
Ho: We recently read his book Fresh Off the Boat. Everything he speaks about is very aligned with our beliefs and Asian American culture and this new wave of creative Asians. He is the prime example of going outside of the regular boundaries and doing your own thing on your own terms.

Tso: There was a quote I heard from him, where he said something like "during the time I was growing up there was never anything made specifically for who I am, an Asian American." I feel like with him and his book, it showed people that we are coming to place where there are things made for Asian Americans. Hopefully with Banana, we are adding to that list.

Visit the Banana magazine's website for stockists.

Follow Erica on Twitter.

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The Royal Family. Image via Wikipedia

Ordinarily the announcement that a baby is getting a name is not given the BREAKING NEWS treatment by the BBC, but it's not every day that an honest-to-God, bona fide princess is named. Yes, after a frenzy of speculation and people actually betting on this, Prince William and Kate Middleton have picked out a name for the tiny person they created: "Charlotte Elizabeth Diana."

This is, apparently, a nod to Royal Family history or whatever—but from an American perspective, "Charlotte" is the most boring Sex and the City character, "Elizabeth" is unoriginal, and "Diana" is so, so 90s. "So you could do better?" I hear you asking. Yes, I could:

1. Princess Lottie Eve Aitken
See, I spent two seconds on the Princess Name Generator website and already I've got something spunkier and more exciting than "Charlotte Elizabeth Diana." According to the site, this is a name for "a very short princess indeed, but she is very beautiful."

2. Princess Georgina Malkmus Hayward
If you're going to remember the 90s, at least remember the slacker-rock-floppy-hair part of the decade rather than the soft-focus- Vanity-Fair bit. Or go "full 90s" and christen the child Diana Malkmus Clinton Pete and Pete Pluto Was a Planet.

3. Louisa Thyra Victoria Stevedore Kingsbridge Turnpike
This would be a princess who could parachute out of a plane and still have incredible hair. She'd be rumored to be the next Bond girl at one point, but Thyra would publicly turn the role down in a way that would make everyone happy.

Related: Watch our documentary on the Royal Wedding

4. Princess Brigitte Margaret Adamantium Carter
Real classy. Rolls right off the tongue, but also projects an aura of strength. It makes you think of Jay-Z and Wolverine, but in a feminine way.

5. Princess Jasmine Rapunzel Belle the Little Mermaid Mulan
A princess for the BuzzFeed generation.

6. Princess Grace Jacqueline Francis Bathildis Lennon
Simple, elegant, to the point. Bathildis Lennon is a princess who exudes class without being classist. Bathildis Lennon can be trusted to look after your children and teach them French words for things.

7. Princess Biscuit Football Lager
The Royal Family can feel, well, a little aristocratic. How are they going to appeal to the common man in the 21st century? More appearances at ribbon cuttings? Vlogging? Not dressing up as Nazis? How about a name that tells working-class British people, "We understand what you like. We're with you. This is your princess, a princess who isn't afraid to eat a doner kebab in public."

8. Princess Peggy Olsen Daenerys Margaret Sanger
Can you say "feminist icon"? Tumblr would be all over this.

9. Princess Esther Numbers Romans Epistle Deuteronomy 5:16
According to OK! magazine, "quirky biblical names" are on the rise, so little Epistle should fit right in at whatever exclusive rich-people school she attends.

10. Princess Samantha
Or go another way and name your kid after the most entertaining Sex and the City character if you're going to go down that route. Also, people with one name are always successful. Look at Prince, or Madonna. Or the Rock.

Follow Mitchell Sunderland on Twitter.

Uncertainty breeds conspiracy theories, and we live in uncertain times. Thanks to the internet, there's more information available to the public than ever before, but it's often hard to sort out how accurate that information is, and we're left with nagging suspicions that the people telling us things—the government, corporations, the media itself—are lying or omitting key bits of context. That's how you get widespread, persistent rumors of the military imposing martial law in the Southwest or chemicals being secretly dumped on the populace from planes.

So it wasn't surprising that last week's unrest in Baltimore over the death of an unarmed black man, Freddie Gray, at the hands of local police unleashed a flood of suspicious accusations, some more legitimate than others, from people on both sides of the issue: Do our police routinely and fatally target black citizens? Is there a systematic plot to conceal their crimes and allow them to escape justice? Are criminals and professional agitators conspiring to foment a race war?

Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced Friday that charges are to be brought against the six police officers involved in Gray's arrest. But protesters in New York City who staged a rally against police brutality the same day seemed largely nonplussed by this turn of events. Stony-eyed members of the New York City Police Department kept a watchful eye on the procession, which made its way through the East Village. Besides the now-familiar cries of "No justice, no peace" and "Shut it down," I heard "Shoot the pigs!" and other such sentiments hurled at the observing officers. It seems only one person was detained by the police at Friday's rally, in contrast to Wednesday's protest, which netted a whopping 140 or so arrests.

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All photos by the author

"Fuck these barricades," complained Travis Morales of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and Revolutionary Communist Party, as the protesters marched in Union Square with relatively little drama. "They're bullshit. I told [protest leaders] not to get a permit... This is what happens when people have a permit and march. They try to control it and corral it, and take the energy out of it as much as possible."

I asked if that meant everyone was still pissed, even though charges have been brought against the officers in Baltimore.

"I think we have to understand that charges were brought against the killers of Amadou Diallo, and they shot him 41 times," Morales responded, listing other deaths of unarmed men of color at the hands of police. "They shot at Sean Bell's van over 53 times. Oscar Grant, who was murdered down in Oakland—the cop got a slap on the wrist. Our demand is indict, convict, and send the killer cops to jail because the whole damn system is guilty as hell...The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people, it's to protect the relationship of exploitation and oppression that rule over the people."

All the protesters I spoke with expressed frustration with the justice system and a belief that cops who kill black men are systematically overlooked by the law. Everyone involved in this latest "national conversation" about race and policing seems to share that sort of anger, though in many cases it's directed not at the cops but the protesters themselves. As you can imagine, this rage has blossomed into conspiracy theories, some plausible, some not. A brief round-up:

There's an anarchist/activist. social media plot to provoke violence.

According to a Fox News exclusive, an anonymous "data mining" firm with government ties has uncovered a social media network of anarchistic "professional protesters" responsible for stoking violence in both Ferguson and Baltimore.

The firm, which asked to remain anonymous because of its government work, found between 20 and 50 social media accounts in Baltimore that were also tied to the peak period of violence in Ferguson. While further analysis is being conducted on the data, it suggests the presence of "professional protesters" or anarchists taking advantage of Freddie Gray's death to incite more violence.

The protests were staged or condoned by the government to distract from an imminent military invasion.

I think the Baltimore Riots are a government orchestrated outbreak to take our minds off a potential military invasion https://twitter.com/hashtag/jadehelm15?src=hash">#jadehelm15
— Beauford T. Justice (@doritobandito55) https://twitter.com/doritobandito55/status/5928974...">April 28, 2015

The idea was to strengthen the feds' grip on local law enforcement, InfoWars insisted:

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who gave rioters "space to destroy" property and reportedly told police to stand down, was a key player in the Justice Dept.'s plan to expand federal control over local law enforcement

[body_image width='2000' height='1333' path='images/content-images/2015/05/04/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/04/' filename='the-most-absurd-conspiracy-theories-spawned-in-the-wake-of-freddie-grays-death-504-body-image-1430763531.jpg' id='52457']The Crips, Bloods, Black Panthers, and Black Guerrilla Family have united to kill cops.

Fish swim, birds fly, and the New York Post prints stories like this:

Police officials announced Monday they had received a "credible threat" that rival members of the murderous Bloods, Crips and Black Guerrilla Family street gangs "have entered into a partnership to take out law enforcement officers. Photos and videos on social media showed thugs decked out in their typical blue and red gang colors wreaking havoc in the streets while demanding "Justice for Freddie."

The Islamic State is in the mix.

No one knows whether the Middle Eastern jihadists have actually recruited any Baltimorians, but why let that get in the way of a story sourced from far-right site WorldNetDaily?

As civil unrest and violence over the death of a young black man continued in Baltimore this week, ISIS reportedly has its eyes set on dissatisfied Muslims among the American black population, including in Baltimore. Abu Saqer, leader of Jihadiya Salafiya, an Islamist militant group in the Gaza Strip that has made pro-ISIS statements, told WorldNetDailythat ISIS was taking advantage of a "growing movement within the black community toward Islam and the racist policies of the U.S. government." Saqer also said he did not know if ISIS had successfully recruited black American Muslims or if any jihadist cells had been established.

This is all about the Nation of Islam—or Muslims in general.

Want proof of nefarious connections? Look at these photos of protesters in Baltimore and Islamic State militants—both are making the international "We're #1 sign"!

"The cops are intentionally targeting people. They feel like it's an attack on them personally." –A protester in New York

In cities like Baltimore and New York, protestors and cops simmer in a stew of mistrust and mutual dislike, and this wild speculation isn't helping anything.

"If there are good cops, then they need to speak out against the bad ones; just like they want people in the community to speak out against those committing crimes, they need to speak out against those committing crimes against the people," one middle-aged man told me as he marched. "They're required to serve and protect. It's like the Italians call it, the Omerta. They need to break down that wall of silence. Until that happens, the people of the community and the police are never going to have a relationship."

Later, I ask a friend of mine in the NYPD what he thinks about this. "Everyone is allowed an opinion," he writes in a text message. "You just have to be able to defend it reasonably. I just read the indictment. They are going to have a hard time proving it. It looks like a knee-jerk reaction to calm the crowd."

[body_image width='2000' height='1423' path='images/content-images/2015/05/04/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/04/' filename='the-most-absurd-conspiracy-theories-spawned-in-the-wake-of-freddie-grays-death-504-body-image-1430763229.jpg' id='52455']Aiden, a transgender male protestor covered in tattoos and piercings, has his own theory.

"We are not trying to hurt anybody, regardless of what mainstream media says," he explained earnestly. "The protests in New York City have been nothing but peaceful... The cops are intentionally targeting people. They feel like it's an attack on them personally."

But, I tell Aiden, I've heard people yelling "Pigs" in their faces. I can kind of understand why they would get annoyed.

"Anyone who's a part of that system is a pig. They don't protect and serve anyone but themselves. I think anyone who isn't angry about this isn't paying attention."

Follow Sulome Anderson on Twitter.

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Dad helping me butcher my catch ☺

While I was covering the Clyde River story last week, I came across Niore Iqalukjuak's photography and instantly became obsessed. Not just with his photography, but with Clyde River and the Arctic itself.

Last month, Clyde River took the federal government to court over its decision to allow seismic testing in Baffin Bay. The tests would blast high-powered air guns into the ocean floor 10-15 seconds at a time, 24-hours a day for weeks or months on end.

The companies say the tests won't affect marine life. But the town is worried the blasts, which are said to be 100,000 times louder than a jet engine, will disrupt the migration patterns of marine life. Baffin Bay is home to 90 percent of the world's narwhals and many other animals Clyde River residents rely on for food.

Niore agreed to share his photographs and Facebook comments to help draw attention to the issue and show what life is like around Baffin Bay.

To get started, we had a long phone conversation where he confirmed my suspicion that he's a huge Maple Leafs Fan. He also told me about his adventures exploring the Baffin Bay area and the time he photographed dozens of polar bears hanging out together.

We also talked about how his photographs depict Clyde River as a calm and idyllic place. But in reality, his shoots often last for two or three hours in the freezing wind while he watches his back for polar bears. It's also a place that is battling food insecurity, poverty and a massive lack of infrastructure.

After seeing his pictures and his Facebook comments, you might find yourself thinking, "I want to go to Nunavut."

Everyone makes mistakes on the job from time to time. Waiters drop plates, data entry employees enter the wrong data, baseball players strike out, teachers spill wine on their students' essays. But when you're a porn star and your job is to have sex in front of a camera, fuck ups tend to be extremely intimate and can involve things that no one ever thinks about, like, Did I make that person feel bad after he accidentally pooped on my face?

I hopped on the phone with six top adult stars (recommended to us by our friends at Pornhub) to take a stroll down the X-rated memory lane. Their stories of sex gone wrong ran the gamut from a Spongebob parody with some technical issues to a few scatological surprises.

Keiran Lee: The GILF Who Couldn't Handle Her Shit

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Image via Keiran Lee's Instagram.

When you film in England, you always get one or two directors who used to be performers and can't let it go. I was working with this one director, who may or not have been jealous of his performers, and he says to my mate and me, "OK, I have this amazing MILF lined up for you guys outside the city. Do you want to do the scene?" We were early in our careers and said sure.

So my friend and I drove three hours to get there, and the woman was no MILF. She was about 68, but looked at least 78. The drive was so long that I said, "Fuck it. We might as well do the scene."

We flipped a coin to decide who would fuck her first, and Danny lost. He said he'd do three positions: doggie, reverse cowgirl, and spooning, so he didn't have to see her face. They get into it, and during one position, she pulls him out and goes to kiss him, but he says, "None of that!" and goes upstairs and actually starts vomiting in the bathroom.

For some reason, though, my johnny was hard as a rock. I was ready to go. We start doing the scene, and I keep it up. I was ramming her so hard that everyone on set was afraid I was gonna give her a heart attack. We were having normal sex, penis in pussy, but I was fucking her so hard that she ended up shitting herself. There was shit all over her, the bed, and me. It happens. I look back on that one with a laugh.

Follow Keiran Lee on Twitter.

Skin Diamond: The 'Spongeknob Squarenuts' Cockblock

I think one of the funniest scenes I've ever shot was a Spongebob parody. I was Sandy the Squirrel and the guy was "Spongeknob Squarenuts." We were doing the voices, badly, and it was so hard to keep a straight face. They had made the Spongebob costume out of cardboard, but it was heavy. There was a hole cut out for his dick, and the guy could barely maneuver in the suit. He couldn't really fuck me while wearing it, so we tried to do an oral scene first. We did this cute bit where his dick hits my glass helmet, but once we got past that we couldn't keep it together. He was holding up this heavy box with his arms and kept losing his hard-on because the costume was so straining. It still cracks me up to think about.

Follow Skin Diamond on Twitter.

Michael Lucas: The Scene Must Go On

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Image via

So this isn't a story that happened to me, but I filmed it happening. In the gay adult film industry, we deal with fucking up the ass, and when you deal with fucking up the ass, things happen. It's like people who used work in the swamp: you get used to shit. We were doing this sensual scene—it was romantic, loving, and full of kissing, caressing, and intimacy. The men were beautiful. One was this dark-featured Argentine man, and the other was this all-American guy with blonde hair and muscles. It was going so well. They started with kissing, then they moved to sucking, and then they moved into rimming. It was very sensual.

As they were rimming each other, we asked the receiver, the Argentinian guy, to open himself really wide so we could see everything. Right as the American performer was going in to rim, the guy projectile diarrhea-ed into his mouth. Then the American guy projectile vomits immediately on to his ass and back.

Here's the interesting part, though. They cleaned themselves up, we changed the sheets, sprayed the room, opened the windows, and decided to pick the scene back up from where we'd left off. Everything went smoothly this time around, until the all-American actor started crying. It was the Argentinian guy who'd had the accident. I said, "Why are you crying? It's not your fault." He replied, "I'm a professional, and I shouldn't have vomited." He felt bad that he might have made the other performer feel bad or uncomfortable, when he was the one who was shit on! It was amazing. He was so mature in such a difficult situation.

Follow Michael Lucas on Twitter.

For more on sex, watch our doc "The Japanese Love Industry":

Nikki Benz: The Slip 'n Slide

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Image via Nikki Benz's Instagram

I remember this one scene we were shooting in Hawaii. It was beautiful and we were overlooking the water from up on a grassy hill—exactly like how you'd imagine Hawaiian paradise. It was supposed to be all sexy, but as we started filming, we realized we couldn't fuck without sliding down the hill. It was uncomfortable, sure, but I was legitimately afraid I was going to slip, roll down that massive slope, and die. I think the guy I was shooting with felt the same, too, because he kept getting soft as we began sliding down. It looks incredible now, but at the time we didn't think we'd be able to even finish the scene.

Follow Nikki Benz on Twitter.

Eva Angelina: Mud to Mouth

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Image via Eva Angelina's Instagram

My most embarrassing scene happened right when I started doing anal. Let me start with this: We ended up needing to re-shoot the scene at a different date and time.

At that point, I was still getting my routine down on how to prepare for an anal scene. Typically, I'd eat a light dinner the night before, and then take ammonium pills, which stops your digestive system. Then, I'd do an enema. In the morning, I'd take another ammonium and clean out my ass more so I can coast. Then, I go through the whole day with a butt plug. My ass is really tight and the second you take out the butt plug it gets tight again. So the plug helps make it a little looser.

So at this early point in my career, I was familiar with enemas, but it wasn't working right on this one shoot. I wasn't getting shit. I was getting muddy water. No matter how hard I tried, the water wouldn't run clear. It got to the point where there was so much water in my intestines it was as if I had received a colonic. We were doing an anal scene, and it was supposed to include ass to mouth. I had already been leaking throughout the shoot, but when we got to that point, we realized there was muddy water all over my face. There was no way they could edit that shit to make it look normal. We called it a wrap. Some days you should just not do anal. I learned the hard way.

Follow Eva Angelina on Twitter.

Johnny Sins: Burning Love[body_image width='797' height='501' path='images/content-images/2015/05/04/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/04/' filename='pornstars-share-their-most-embarrassing-stories-666-body-image-1430754422.png' id='52376']

Image via

The worst scenes are always whenever you almost get injured on set. There was this one time I was playing a fireman and I was supposed to rush into this house and save Nikki Benz. Budgets on porn shoots aren't that high, though. This production assistant had a lighter and a can hair spray to create the fire effect. I was supposed to run into the house and he'd blow a fireball behind me, but this kid did it right as I was running in. He blew a fireball at me, and I hit the deck. It was like everything went into slow motion. I was terrified that I had my eyebrows singed or my face was burnt off. I counted my blessings and luckily only my shirt was singed. Looking back, I can't believe we did that—a scene with real fire. We didn't do the shot again, to say the least. There's a lot that happens on set that ends up in blooper reels. I would love to see that footage now.

Follow Johnny on Twitter.

Follow Zach Sokol on Twitter.

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What are they looking at? You know it's creepy because the smoke machine is on. Promotional photo

The X-Files is coming back! Fox has greenlit a mini-series, bringing back Mulder, Scully, and series creator Chris Carter. I am so freaking pumped. When I was a kid, my family and I would watch new episodes together every week. My favourite episodes were always the monster-of-the-week ones. The creepy LA goth vampire episode, the one where insectoids took human form and only Mulder could see them, the redneck incest episode that only aired once but everyone knows is the scariest one. The show illuminated my brain with tantalizing, scary possibilities. All of a sudden, every news article held a deeper mystery and every shadow hid unspeakable terror.

A return of The X-Files is very appropriate for the world we live in today. The late '90s were a time of optimism, while the early goings of the Aughts were a time of cynicism. Today, we assume that our institutions are lying to us, that official stories aren't revealing the whole truth, and that the "truth" is indeed "out there," probably on 4chan. On top of that, conspiracy theories have never been more mainstream. The rise of Google has made it possible for everyone to find a government cover-up that suits them, whether techno-geek or soccer mom. Conspiracy theories are not just for people with newspaper clippings on their apartment walls anymore, and the new season of The X-Files will likely reflect our present state. That certainly seems the case from the leaked episode synopsis list that "Frank" (certainly not his or her real name, if we knew who "Frank" was) gave us while we were drinking Colt 45s in that abandoned parking garage last week.

Episode One: "Reunited"
Owing to an increase in strange events, Skinner reforms the X-Files. Returning to the FBI from a sabbatical spent attempting to be a writer, Fox Mulder, along with his partner Dana Scully, head to Alaska where mysterious explosions have been heard by locals. Scientists tell Mulder that these explosions come with the released methane gas caused by a warming climate—but Mulder thinks something else is going on. Those weird lights in the sky can't just be a coincidence... can they? Scientists tell Mulder they can. But can they, really?

Episode Two: "2Canines"
There have been strange animal attacks around the FBI headquarters in Virginia. The official explanation is black bears. Mulder is not convinced, especially after he is bit by a dog in the park. Scully thinks he was antagonizing the dog, but only Mulder knows the truth. He was antagonizing that dog. But he was only doing it for the purpose of finding out the dog's true intentions. There's something bigger going on here. Scully is just happy to have the Agency's dental plan back.

Episode Three: "Roots"
Trying to contact Mark Zuckerberg to find out the truth about Facebook, Mulder accidentally clicks on a friend's Facebook link and is introduced to the troubling world of GMOs. Hoping to avoid the mind control of pesticides, Mulder starts a community garden on top of his apartment building. After a disappointing first harvest, he is convinced that shadowy forces are ensuring his cucumbers will not grow. Scully thinks cucumbers are just out of season. Mulder knows there's something bigger than the weather at work here, but what?

Episode Four: "11-13-33"
Mulder's walkman finally breaks, causing him to give in and sign up for a music streaming service. While investigating his options, Mulder becomes convinced that Jay Z is a member of the Illuminati, especially after seeing a YouTube video where someone overlayed a dollar bill over Jay Z's hands. Is Tidal his mind control plot, allowing him access into the mind through the ear canal? Mulder knew that was always the best way into someone's mind, and now it seems that Jay Z knew it too. Something bigger is going on, and someone needs to do something before it's too late. Scully, meanwhile, prefers Spotify's interface, and thinks that it's nice that all famous people are friends with each other.

Episode Five: "Vaxx'd"
Scully's sister is having a baby, and she is overjoyed to be an aunt. Mulder is happy for her, until one afternoon he watches an episode of The View. When he finds out Scully's niece is being vaccinated, Mulder warns Scully of the potential side effects. It's obvious to Mulder that autism, which he knows is caused by vaccines, is actually a dangerous mutation in humanity's evolutionary chain. Scully continues to cite statistics and facts proving Mulder wrong, but she doesn't see that there's something bigger at work.

Episode Six: "Reptilian"
While flipping around his satellite radio in search of what the voice in his head calls "the signal," Mulder stumbles on an interview with David Icke. Confirming his suspicion that the world is run by a secret elite of reptilian humanoids, Mulder doesn't know who to trust. After Scully starts complaining about constantly dry skin, Mulder knows that there's something bigger at play. Going straight to the top, Mulder asks friends in the Secret Service about the President's moisturizing habits, only to learn that the POTUS uses baby powder. Just like Mulder knew he would.

Episode Seven: "Bitconned"
While trying to buy a bluetooth betablocker pill on the Silk Road, Mulder stumbles onto the existence of Bitcoins. It's not long until he realizes that this currency was created by the Federal Reserve, which used this imaginary money as a vehicle for government control. To escape its grasp, he must invest in the only currency with real value: gold. Not having enough money due to some outrageous data charges as a result of his feelings on Wi-Fi (doesn't trust it), Mulder tries to convince his friends to go in on a pile of gold bullion. Skinner and Scully refuse, citing how "fucking stupid" the request sounds, but Mulder knows that something bigger is going on.

Episode Eight: "The Truther Is Out There"
Mulder eats what he assumes are the bluetooth beta blockers he ordered on the internet, only to have them turn out to be meth. After staying up for a week in his newly constructed blanket and cutlery fort while watching Loose Change and Zeitgeist, Mulder comes to the FBI headquarters fixated on finding out what really happened on that fateful day in September. He opens the computer, his yellowish brown fingernails prying apart the laptop as his soul screams for more meth. He browses his emails, scrolling back to several unopened ones from the CIA in August 2001. He sees one email in particular titled "Fwd: Suspicious Flight Schools." He opens it. He eats a little more meth. He knew it would end like this, he always knew. Scully contemplates retirement.

*These plots are a work of satire. Any resemblance to actual plotlines is a very unfortunate coincidence.

With additional reporting from Slava Pastuk

Follow Jordan Foisy on Twitter.

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Having a blast with the guy who kidnaps and "deprograms" kids: from right, Bob Moore, Ted Patrick, and Mia Donovan. Photos by the author

Over the past ten years, the Toronto-based Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival has expanded from its humble beginnings as a small, local event to one of the premiere documentary festivals in the world, and with that increased prestige came parties. Sure, Hot Docs may be hosting films about trailer parks full of sex offenders, addiction and homelessness, or the militarization of American police departments, but it's also a place for filmmakers to get together, share a few drinks, celebrate their accomplishments and (most importantly) get their film seen by as many people as possible.

Of course, it makes sense for the producers of Tig Notaro's new doc to throw a party—she's a very funny lady and the film is going to appeal to a lot of her fans—but we wondered what the afterparties might be like for less crowd-pleasing documentaries, where the idea of drinking and dancing might clash with the serious topics explored in the film themselves. So we explored the Hot Docs party scene to find out how filmmakers feel about throwing a big ol' shindig right after they've depressed the public with their essential story about the plight of refugees in the EU or the neo-Nazi scourge of a small town in North Dakota?

The first party we checked out was the Blue Ice Party at SPiN, which served as a de facto host party for a number of documentaries. SPiN is "that ping pong bar co-owned by Susan Sarandon" in Toronto's bougie King West district. Given that you probably won't escape the place without getting hit in the head by at least half a dozen (mercifully painless) ping pong balls, it's hardly the kind of place where you want to think about the need to de-radicalize young people from dangerous cults and extremist organizations, but here we were, talking to Mia Donovan and Ted Patrick, the director and star of Deprogrammed, a doc about Patrick's controversial practices of kidnapping and confining young people in order to save them from themselves.

"This is my first party with ping pong, but I think it totally fits," says Donovan, "especially if it's a very serious topic, you want to loosen up." The 85-year-old Ted Patrick was flown in from San Diego for the festival, but after 40-odd years of "deprogramming" kids, he's gotten used to the parties that tend to follow: "I've been to many of them, many, around the world," he says, "when [people are] deprogrammed, they always have some kind of celebration."

After that, we ran into Sophie Deraspe and Sandra Bagaria, the director and subject of The Amina Profile, who were engaged in a fierce game of ping pong. The film documents Bagaria's online relationship with a blogger in Syria, the so-called "Gay Girl in Damascus," and a major twist that develops when Bagaria gets involved in an attempt to rescue her new friend from a supposed "abduction." Despite the geo-political weight of their film, both women seemed to be in good spirits. "If there's no party, then how can you dramatize a serious situation?" asks Bagaria, "you can go to the poorest neighbourhoods in Haiti and they still have small games they create on their own, so I guess you need to [have an] escape no matter your situation."

A couple days later, I inquired about the party for The Shore Break, a South African doc about a traditional Pondo community that's threatened by a planned mining town on their homeland. One of the directors, Ryley Grunenwald, informed us beforehand that "the South African party... is quite famous (or infamous) at doc festivals—mostly because it's a real dance party." Held at Revival Bar on College Street, the party got crowded pretty quickly with filmmakers and industry delegates while the DJ played South African dance music.

We met up with Odette Geldenhuys, Grunenwald's co-director, at the party, who suggested that showing up to a party was a great way for filmmakers to celebrate all the hard work they've put into their projects. "It's a fantastic chance to celebrate and it's also a release of lots of tension from waiting to hear if you've been accepted [into the festival] our not," Geldenhuys says about the party, but concedes that she might have felt weird about celebrating like this if she were younger. "Maybe, because I'm older I understand contradictions in life. If I was 20-years-old I think it would be harder for me."

The last afterparty we went to was for the premiere of Fractured Land, a doc about First Nations environmental lawyer and activist Caleb Behn and his struggle to inform people about the dangers of fracking in northern British Columbia, because nothing says "good times" quite like fracking.

"[Parties] are generally pretty safe. They stick to a pretty similar formula, which is throw out a bit of free food and give out a couple drink tickets," says co-director Damien Gillis. "We're like, why can't you have an actually really cool party and something that actually celebrates the film?" So they turned the party into a concert, and enlisted the services of several First Nations performers, including rapper JB the First Lady, hip-hop group Mob Bounce, and spoken word artist Whisper Kish.

According to Behn, who suggested Mob Bounce for the party, "they're going to be bigger Tribe Called Red, guaranteed! These homies are legit!" For Behn, the party is the culmination of four and a half years work on the film "The tension that exists, such as it is, between getting intoxicated and dancing around and having a good night versus the seriousness that comes with ceremony and protocol," he explains. "It's the modern manifestation of an older tradition of celebration and coming to together in a good way." The party isn't just a chance to network and promote the film for Behn, but can also be good way to celebrate indigenous culture, "and as long as it doesn't get too rowdy tonight and someone gets shanked up, it should be all right!"

Follow Alan Jones on Twitter.

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Photos via Wikipedia

The first two things that need to be said when discussing the presidential bids of Dr. Ben Carson and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is that they will both fail. Neither of the duo, who both just announced they are officially entering the race to become the GOP nominee , have of a chance of becoming president, though they may spend a lot of money in the process.

Their failure is assured, but why they will fail is a little more interesting, and it has to do with the candidates themselves, the nature of the political system, and the priorities of the Republican Party.

First, a little background on the two candidates: After becoming the youngest-ever director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Carson built a long and respectable career in medicine; he was the first doctor to separate twins conjoined at the head. His rise to political prominence began at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2013, where he complained about political correctness, taxes, Obamacare, and other conservative hobbyhorses with Obama sitting on the dais with him. Overnight, he became a Tea Party hero, and he's continued to play to that crowd, comparing progressives to the Nazis and so on.

Fiorina served as the chief executive of HP from 1999 to 2005, becoming the first woman to lead a Fortune 20 company, though her tenure is widely recognized as having been disastrous for HP, resulting in a more than 50 percent decrease in its stock value by the time she left with a $21 million golden parachute.

The two relative political outsiders—neither of them has ever held office before—have starkly different strategies. Carson tends to find the far-right edge of the GOP and cannonball off of it; so far, he's staked out positions on evolution, climate change, gay rights, healthcare, and immigration that are brazen even for the Tea Party. Plying a different brand of conservatism, Fiorina is trumpeting her business acumen — on Good Morning America, she said she's the right candidate because she "understand[s] how the economy actually works. I understand the world; who's in it."

Fiorina is also the GOP's Benghazi candidate, repeatedly trying to hammer inevitable Democratic nominee Hilary Clinton for her role in that incident. That can be seen as part of her effort to establish herself as a sort of antidote to Clinton—a move that takes advantage of her position as the only woman running for the Republican nomination.

Both Carson and Fiorina are in the bottom rung of candidates in Real Clear Politics' latest polling average. Iowa is still a year away, so those numbers are pretty much meaningless at this point, but climbing out of that hole will mean more than overcoming their individual quirks that might relegate them to the fringe—it will require them to run good campaigns, and it's far from clear either one can do that.

Carson has never run for office before, and Fiorina's only campaign, a 2010 bid for Barbara Boxer's Senate seat in California, resulted in a ten-point loss. That campaign is mostly remembered for producing one of the worst political ads ever made. That's in stark contrast to their main opponents, who are all either sitting Senators (Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul), sitting governors (Scott Walker, Chris Christie), or former multi-term governors (Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee). They'll be competing with those candidates not just for votes but for deep-pocketed donors, meaning they'll have to convince members of the 1 percent that, despite never having won political office before, they can outmaneuver Hillary Clinton—arguably the savviest politician in the United States—in a general election.

As Fiorina made clear by comparing herself to Clinton on the day of her campaign announcement, the Republican primary is as much about establishing your chances of topping the Dem favorite as it is beating your fellow conservatives. In that respect, Carson and Fiorina are as competitive as you or I or your cat would be. In an already crowded GOP field, they join the handful of likely candidates, also including Bobby Jindal and John Kasich, who don't even have a sliver of a shadow of a chance. All they have to look forward to is a concession speech after a few primary states, a return to their "regular" millionaire lives, and a nice slot on Fox News or the Blaze.

Follow Kevin Lincoln on Twitter.

Brett Morgen is the director responsible for one of the one of the most highly anticipated music documentaries in recent years, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. The Oscar-nominated filmmaker was allowed unfettered access to the Nirvana singer's archives, stitching together an unflinchingly intimate portrait of a man which includes never-before-seen artwork, journal entries, and incredible home videos that track Cobain from childhood until mere months before his death. Montage also features interviews with the singer's family members on camera for the first time ever. VICE's Kim Taylor Bennett talked to Morgen about the legacy of Cobain, the musician's paradoxical nature, the women in his life, and the daunting task of accurately portraying a man so revered.