Forget whiskey and women—when the lead singer of the grindcore band Hatebeak refuses to perform, his bandmates coax him back to the microphone with dried bananas. It's a rather wholesome indulgence for the frontman of a band that claims to thrash with "face-crushing guitars" and "bass so low, you'll vacate your bowels." But that's because he's a bird.

Waldo, a 21-year-old African grey parrot, is the world's only heavy-metal rocker with wings. The feathered frontman screeches brain-rattling songs for the Baltimore-based three-"man" studio project, whose first new album in eight years, Number of the Beak, dropped last Friday.

Aside from a rare interview with VICE in 2005, the band's human members have always been cagey about their bird-centric sounds, citing "trade secrets." But last week drummer Blake Harrison (who also plays keyboards in Pig Destroyer) hopped on the phone with me to talk about what it's like to collaborate with an animal, how they keep PETA from squawking, and why, after all these years, he still won't let the joke die.

VICE: Where did the idea for a parrot-fronted band hatch?
Blake Harrison: [Guitarist] Mark Sloan and I had known each other from playing music in different bands for a couple years, and basically both of us were between bands. So, you know, I'm kind of like a goofy guy, I like to have fun, so we thought up the concept and we were like, "How stupid would it be if we had a parrot for a singer?" It makes sense because of the mimicry, and the type of stuff that parrots can do. We thought up the name, drew up the logo, and it made us laugh. So we were like, "OK, let's do it."

And there's a spoof behind the name?
Yeah, there's a hardcore band called Hatebreed that is pretty popular. So Hatebeak was the perfect name for a parrot-fronted metal band.

It's been 12 years since the band formed, and you've put out four records. Why keep it going after the initial joke?
[Laughs] Because we kept thinking of things that made us laugh. Part of it is coming up with goofy song titles. Song titles that are puns on preexisting, well-known metal songs. I guess a better answer for an interview would be, "We still have something we have to say." But that's absolutely not true. As long as we keep having fun and keep getting a kick out of it, we're in good shape.

'[Waldo] likes to whistle the Andy Griffith theme song. A Lot. And Obviously that's cool, but it's not something I can use on a metal record.'

What is it like collaborating with a bird? Are there animal-specific challenges?
You know, there's the old Hollywood trope: "Never work with kids and never work with animals." It can be a little bit of a pain at times. Most of it is getting Waldo to relax. The mimicry is a form of play for him. So, to get him to do anything, he's got to feel comfortable. And then he kind of spouts out whatever. But he likes to bite your ear when he's on your shoulder sometimes. He likes to whistle the Andy Griffith theme song. A lot. And obviously that's cool, but it's not something I can use on a metal record. There are challenges, but I've been in tons of bands, and lead singers typically tend to have pretty big egos. I know because I sang for a band myself. So I would say it's not much different than working with a [human] lead singer because there are still challenges.

How do you encourage Waldo to perform?
He likes bananas—dehydrated banana chips. Stuff like that. That kind of makes him comfortable. Weird story: Waldo likes bananas, and he also likes crackers. So we got him dehydrated banana chips, and he pieced it together and called them "banana crackers" on his own. It's a little creepy. You're like, "What else do you know?"

So he's smart.
Oh yeah, they're really, really intelligent animals. Scientists mostly kind of say that they have the intelligence level of like a three- or four-year-old child. It can be a little weird.

What's his personality like? Does he have quirks?
He likes interaction. He will call in the dog using one of [his] owners' voices. And when the dog comes in the room—because it thought the owner had called it—the parrot will jump down and bite the dog's tail and jump back up real quick.

Can you walk me through how one of your songs gets made?
Either Mark or myself will come up with a riff—guitar usually is how we start it—and we will build. We bounce ideas off of each other, then we write the drums, then we kind of throw the bass in. We'll record that stuff and work with it. If we like it, then we will either put a microphone in front of Waldo or have someone else put a microphone in front of him, and get anywhere from ten to 40 minutes of him just doing what he does. And then we cut it up, move it around, shift it, put it over top of the music, and that's it. We put distortion on it, put various effects.

Do you put Waldo in a vocal-recording booth?
Yeah, kind of. We don't go to a studio to record this stuff—we do it in Mark's band room or a spare room. We have set up a microphone in front of him, like a studio setting, but it's not really a vocal booth. With modern recording technology, it's a lot easier to get stuff done than it used to be. So it's not like we have to put him in there with a bottle of Jack Daniels and whatever else, like—

A pair of tiny headphones?
Right, no headphones, no pop-screen. That's a funny image, but we don't really have to do that.

Check out our documentary True Norwegian Death Metal:

Have you ever caught flack from PETA?
No [laughs], not yet anyway. I mean, we're not doing anything wrong. A frequent question is if we would ever play live, and it's just kind of an impossibility. The decibel levels would be really unfair, to do that to any animal. And Waldo does what he does when he does it—not when we want him to do it. So we would look like absolute idiots up there, bashing away on these instruments and having a bird stand there. I would be upset if I paid money to see that and the bird didn't do anything. And that is a huge potential. I think PETA would be a little pissy with that.

You mentioned before that Waldo can be a diva when he's uncomfortable. How does he act when he's being high maintenance?
You know when a smoke detector makes a really loud, high-pitched chirp to tell you it's out of batteries? He will mimic that, and it's ear-piercingly loud, and it's really fucking annoying. Or he'll fly around and not really cooperate. You gotta talk in soothing tones, and try to get him relaxed, and maybe scratch his head a little bit. He's not really my bird, so I don't know if my interaction is as good as the owner's.

How did you meet Waldo?
We had the [band] idea, and we were talking to the guy that owns the record label that is putting our record out, Chris X from Reptilian Records, and he was like, "Well, I know somebody with a parrot." So I was like, "Hey man, um, how you doin'? I've got a really goofy idea, and you probably think I'm nuts, but what do you think of this?" And he was like, "Yeah, man. It's totally cool. Let's do it."

Trending on Noisey: Spotify Just Discovered That Heavy Metal Is More Popular Than Pop Music

A reviewer compared Hatebeak's sound to "a jackhammer being ground in a compacter." They've called it "unlistenable" and "ear-bleeding." Do you care what they think? Do they just not get it?
That's probably from our first one-sheet, which is like a promotional tool. Labels send them to reviewers, kind of describing the band and what the sound is. So, actually, that's something I think we wrote.

Wait, the jackhammer part?
Yeah, absolutely. I don't know about the ear-bleeding part. Like I said, it's been 15, 12 years, or something like that. But yeah, we want it to be kind of obnoxious-sounding. It's supposed to be kind of—not offensive, but irritating or grating. "Unlistenable" might be a little extreme; I think it's more palatable than that. It's about wanting to out-extreme other extreme bands, like, who can swing their dick the farthest and hardest.

Judging from your experience with Waldo, do you think that animals can be music fans?
I don't know if they can discern certain things, but people leave their TV on for their dogs when they're gone. There was a quote—have you ever heard of a band called Possessed? They are one of the first death-metal bands, and they recorded their first record on a farm. They said, "If you play death metal, 99 percent of everyone will hate you, including animals." So yeah, I think if you play some nice classical music, I mean, it kind of calms infants down. If you play really loud, obnoxious hip-hop or metal, it's gonna piss 'em off, or get 'em wound up. Just kind of different strokes for different folks. I think animals can be fans of music, but I don't think they have any say in the matter. [Laughs]

Mark Sloan, Waldo, and Blake Harrison of Hatebeak in 2005. Photo by Brian "Baby Leg" DeRan

Has Waldo actually heard any of his songs?
Oh yeah, of course!

How does he react?
You know, bobs his head up and down. That's basically it. I don't know if he likes it or not. Typically, he's in a cage so he can't really do shit about it.

Is Waldo available for comment?
What do you think?

Aww.
I could put a phone up to him and he wouldn't do anything. Also, we want to keep him a little sheltered.

You once said your ultimate goal is to "raise the bar for extreme music." Is that still your goal, and what does that mean?
Absolutely. It's like a competition, almost. Not for everybody, but a lot of extreme music wants to out-extreme the generation of bands that influenced them. You have Metallica, and then you have Slayer, which is much heavier. And then you have death-metal bands that just want to be like, "Oh yeah, you're fast? Well, check this out, we're faster." Or, "You're heavy? Check this out, we're heavier." And I think that's engrained in the culture of heavy metal. So it's kind of like you want to do a little one-up-ship. It's also kind of a machismo, bragging, bullshit thing. When we thought of this I was like, "Well, no one's really going to be able to one-up this one." And if they do, more power to them.

Number of the Beak is out now from Reptilian Records.

Follow Natalie O'Neill on Twitter.

All photos courtesy of the author.

This article originally appeared on VICE France.

These photographs were shot in Burkina Faso and are a continuation of a project I began in Indonesia. There, the idea was to use local traditional crafts to reinterpret pop culture. In Bali and Java, I had a rather unique opportunity to work with some sculptors who could integrate graffiti into traditional houses, as well as a few hyperrealist painters whom I hired to re-imagine my photographs.

When I arrived in Burkina Faso in 2012, I wanted to continue that cultural overlap by merging African clichés with familiar symbols of consumerism and new technologies, thereby creating situations that question the images we see in the media.

My plan was not to anchor myself in my surroundings, but to play around with references that transcended borders. This series about superheroes came from a simple sketch—a Spider-Man boubou I had drawn on my notebook. Together with my colleague, Bruno Revert, we built upon that idea and decided to expand it to include other key figures of Western pop culture. We came up with three different outfits.

For models, I hired Kaboré (Spider-Man), who is part of a small organization that creates theater sets and with whom I've collaborated on several projects; Gedor (Iron Man), who had just finished his art studies and was looking for an apprenticeship; and Mathias (Batman), who doubled as our driver.

Related: Watch our documentary 'Heavy Metal Gangs of Wadeye'

To achieve that particular shine I was after, the costumes were made completely out of bazin. This particular fabric is quite popular and generally used for regalia, so it commands a certain respect. To reach its full glistening potential, you need to coat it in vegetable sap.

I chose to recreate superheroes for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, because of aesthetics—the costume's bright colors echoed that of the traditional local outfits. There was also something quite funny about swapping out the ultra skin-tight costumes of hyper-masculine superheroes with these baggy tunics.

I also made a Ronald McDonald costume. That was actually one of Bruno Revert's realizations, intended for another project of mine. We were quite surprised to find out that a lot of Burkinabé people didn't even knew who he was. I wonder how much longer that will last.

TDTF is a publishing house created by Alexandre Eudier and Matthew Noiret. Their first books Vermillion Coast and Super are out now.

This article originally appeared on VICE Greece

On Monday afternoon, thousands of people converged outside the Greek Parliament in Athens, in support of a no vote at this Sunday's referendum.

The question is whether or not to agree to a bail out plan proposed by Greece's lenders. A yes vote would mean accepting a deal from foreign creditors and submitting to more austerity. A no vote would mean shunning the cash and seeing what happens next.

As soon as the referendum was announced last Saturday, Greece was split into two opposing camps. Many people formed queues in front of cash machines to take as much cash out of their accounts as they could before Monday, when the banks closed up shop for a week and set the cash withdrawal limit to 60 Euros ($67).

This growing climate of fear and uncertainty wasn't palpable at Syntagma though. People were definitely troubled, but for the most part they appeared positive and determined. Banners calling for an end to austerity and opposing the European Union were everywhere, as were those expressing their opposition to further budget and pension cuts.

People of all ages gathered—workers, the unemployed, students, and pensioners. Governing party SYRIZA were there of course, as were leftist parties from outside the parliamentary spectrum, antifascist groups, and members of the anarchist movement. The Greek Communist Party, on the other hand, was absent, having decided to boycot the referendum. Their view is that, "the fraudulent no proposed by the government is essentially a yes vote for the SYRIZA memorandum"—believing the government's negotiating proposals to be near identical to those of their creditors.

Athina is a medical student and will be voting no.

Athina is a 19-year-old student at the Athenian Medical School. She came to the demo with friends and said that, "a yes vote, in my eyes, is a never ending cycle around the memorandum. We haven't really been told what a no vote entails, and I would really like some clarification on that. I'm voting no because I may not know what lies ahead, but I'm sure that a yes vote means allowing for years and years of more austerity. If we enter yet another memorandum, there is no way back. They'll suck us dry and keep imposing measures and cuts, until we're a third world county. By voting no we're showing that we're not going to back down. My no vote puts pressure on our lenders to work out a viable plan."

Aris, a 21-year-old student also told me why he is going to vote no: "The only thing that could make us look towards the future with a sense of optimism is a no vote for the dictatorship imposed by the European powers-that-be. The only thing that frightens me is a yes vote, although realistically I think that is what people will go for, because they are afraid."

Alexis is 30 years old and has been unemployed for three years. For the first two years of the crisis, he could still find some employment here and there as a graphic designer, but over the last year that has dried up. He has no money coming in and is unaffected by the measures imposed on the banks. "I'm voting no because we need to reject any form of blackmail. We are living in a state of blackmail and it has crippled this country and its people. Those that vote no are unafraid. They won't buckle under threats and won't back down, because over the last five years they have seen their wages, freedom, and options dissapear. I have already lost so much and we all stand to lose a lot more unless we fight," he told me.

Watch our documentary 'Immigrants Are Walking Hundreds of Miles from Greece to Germany':

Konstantinos is a 29-year-old actor, who supplements his income by working as a waiter. "Things are positive. This whole state of change should fill us with optimism and smiles," he told me. "Last month, I made 250 Euros [$280] and I have 30 Euros [$34] in the bank. Obviously, I'm not affected by capital controls and I can't relate to people queuing at cash machines. I think everyone should just chill. I'm supporting the no vote, because a no vote means a career. If the yes vote wins, we know what the next day holds. If we just accept more of the same, we know the shit that we're going to be forced to eat. A no vote gives us an opportunity to build bonds and relationships with other people and fight for something different to what we have been going through for the last five years."

Nektarios is 31 years old and said: "We are behind the no vote for three basic reasons: We don't want a new memorandum, because if you take a look at the measures being proposed you'll realize that they're worse than the previous ones. The second reason is that we want to provide people with the hope that if they produce a strong no vote, then the next day they can go on and fight. Thirdly, a no vote will open up a new route that will include a debt write-off, an exit from the European Union, as well as the state reclaiming the banking system and handing it back to the workers.

"As we edge closer to Sunday, the fear-mongering will increase. What we are seeing here today is that people aren't backing down, but they want answers and these answers must be provided by the Left. The no campaign reminds me of the anti-war rallies that surrounded the Iraq war. It's the only thing you can compare it to," he went on.

Hazel Graham and her husband are from England and are here in support of the Greek people.

Amidst the crowd, there were a number of tourists. Hazel Graham is from England and has been living in Greece with her husband and child for the past three months. As she notes, "We've been in Greece for three months now and we'll be flying back to England on Monday, after the referendum. We're here to support the Greek people in their fight against austerity. What's happening here is truly inspiring. These are tough times and I hope the referendum produces a no vote. I'm impressed with the energy of the campaign and the will of the people here. There are demonstrations in support of Greece in England as well, and I hope they are big enough and manage to break down the stereotypes of this country that are constantly being recycled by the English media."

A gathering of those in support of a yes vote is scheduled for tonight.

Scroll down for more pictures

Want some background? Read A Brief History of Greece's Debt

Image via Flickr user DonJinTX

With the US Senate banning post-9/11 interrogation techniques, I've been doing a little reading on sleep deprivation. As a recently declassified document notes, "At least five detainees experienced disturbing hallucinations during prolonged sleep deprivation." That got me wondering what those waking nightmares are like and why, scientifically speaking, staying awake for a long time will bring them on. To find out, I contacted Danny Eckert, an associate professor from Australia's University of New South Wales. Eckert is a specialist on neuroscience and sleep, and as he explains it, we need to sleep because respiring cells release waste chemicals throughout the day. There's debate over which of these byproducts contribute to fatigue, but there's some consensus over one called adenosine. "When people stay awake, adenosine builds up in the brain," explains Professor Eckert. "And too much of it can cause hallucinations."

If you studied biology in high school you might recall that cellular respiration is the process by which glucose is converted into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which the body uses as fuel. But what's really interesting is that adenosine—the molecular backbone of ATP—sends us to sleep. In fact, injecting lab animals with adenosine has shown to induce almost immediate unconsciousness, while stimulants such as coffee simply work by blocking adenosine's receptor pathways.

Despite this, a lot of scientists disagree on how adenosine might induce hallucinations. In fact, Dr. Sean P. A. Drummond, a neuroscientist from Monash University, insists it would depend on a genetic disposition. "If someone is vulnerable to psychosis, then sleep deprivation might lead to an exacerbation of psychotic symptoms," he said. "However, for everyone else, that simply does not happen."

Jess Vlaanderen, on day five of her experiment

Jess Vlaanderen is a New Zealander who has experimented with staying awake for prolonged periods of time. Back in 2012 Jess began researching lucid dreaming and watching a lot of videos by a lucid-dream YouTube enthusiast named Giz Edwards. Giz spent a lot of time discussing the intersection between sleep and hallucinations, which inspired Jess to keep herself awake for nearly 110 hours—around four and a half days—and then post a series of YouTube videos on her experience.

According to Jess, the experiment was mainly to test her own will power and see if it was possible to hallucinate without drugs. She discovered it was. "Some of the visuals reminded me of an ayahuasca experience," she told VICE. "I felt I'd seen this colorful, complex universe in front of me, although I was awake. It was very surreal."

It's like you're in a cartoon. People and objects become very comical.

Jess also told me she experienced something called a focal seizure, which is usually associated with epilepsy. The US National Library lists symptoms as "staring spells, sometimes with repetitive movements such as picking at clothes or lip smacking," as well as muscle contractions and memory loss. Indeed Jess admits she has no memory of the seizure, just that "My friend said I was out. Apparently I was shaking my head from side to side and talking to him at the same time. Afterwards I couldn't stop giggling."

When I asked her to encapsulate the experience, she said the urge to sleep all the time was crippling, although the visuals were pleasant. "The easiest time had to be the first 24 hours. After that it became harder and harder," she said. "It's like you're in a cartoon. People and objects become very comical, and I hallucinated a lot. Cars floated, shadows hung from trees, zombies ran at me in the street. I felt like I could control the clouds, as they appeared to morph and mutate. And when I went to the supermarket the items on the shelves appeared to follow me. The shelves also felt like they were leaning in and about to fall."

Jess said she wasn't afraid of any long-term damage, although she was aware of the risks. As the president of the Australian Sleep Association, Professor Nicholas Antic, told me, sleep deprivation "can certainly be dangerous." According to him, "sleeping expels waste products from the brain through the lymphatic system, and it's dangerous for these products to build up."

Related: Enjoying this? Then check out our documentary on sensory deprivation tanks, 'Tanks for the Memories'

Want more? Then take a look at Hamilton and the Philosopher's Stone

While the health effects of sleep deprivation are well known to any conscious being on the planet, most of us don't think of them as fatal. But In 2014 a devoted Chinese soccer fan died after staying awake for 48 hours while watching the World Cup. In the end a lack of sleep resulted in a brain hemorrhage, which caused a stroke.

The first person to scientifically document a fatal case of sleep deprivation was the Russian physician and scientist Marie de Manaceine. In 1894, she studied sleep-deprived puppies and found that the complete absence of sleep would kill them within days.

Despite these downsides, Jess says she recommends the experience. She says she learned a lot about herself, and her powers of perseverance. "I really didn't think my mind was capable of staying awake for 110 hours," she said. And every time I've hallucinated, I've become more and more familiar with my spirituality. As long as you have a close friend with you, to help you out if things get a bit warped, you should be fine."

The problem is that it's just so hard to stay awake, and there are easier ways to get high.

Abortion is legal in Canada and has been for more than 25 years, but in spite of that, access varies across the country. In this edition of VICE Canada Reports, Sarah Ratchford investigates abortion access in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. She attends a pro-life rally crashed by pro-choice activists, goes undercover into a pregnancy crisis centre, and talks to an activist helping people access under-the-counter abortions in PEI.

New Brunswick has few options for people in need of abortions, especially for the rural majority of its population. PEI, though, offers no official abortions on the island; a recent change to increase access saw the provincial government deciding to pay for abortions in New Brunswick. As the battle rages in these two conservative provinces over the right to access abortions, one pro-choice activist noted that people don't stop having abortions when access is restricted: they just stop having safe ones.

Check out Ratchford and producer Patrick McGuire talking about the production here, and stay tuned for the full-length video on Thurdsay.

Peter Singer speaking at the US Naval War College about real-world lessons from his new book, ' Ghost Fleet'

It's not like you need to make a bunch of stuff up to write a techno-thriller about how we're headed for the next World War. There's already that one Cold War with Russia, which was once thought to be over but in recent years has been heating up again. And there's another, with China, that's accelerating and could cause some serious problems on a global scale.

Throw into the mix all of these crazy nontraditional actors like the Islamic State, and all of the super-sophisticated military hardware and software that's out there, and you've got all the ingredients you need for a good suspense novel.

But to write something really terrifying, futuristic, and also entertaining and plausible, you'd have to do what Peter W. Singer and August Cole did. First, you'd have to spend a decade or so gaining expertise as an analyst and journalist, respectively, steeped in the minutiae of war, cybersecurity, and terrorism.

Then you'd have to spend a few years traveling the world and interviewing dozens of people who would be actual players in the next war, and ask them how it might happen, what it would entail, and whether any of us would survive it—or even want to.

The new book that emerged from their efforts is Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War, a novel that reads like science fiction but bristles with rich detail about how the next World War could be fought.

It won't be fought just on land, at sea, and in the air. This one, they write, will take place in cyberspace and even outer space, where trained soldiers will do battle not only with one another, but with teenage hackers and stealth drones and other weapons—hands-free, eye-tracking virtual reality shooters and tiny military robots, for instance—that seem right out of a fever dream.

Add the long-mothballed warships from the navy's "ghost fleet" and a serial killer who is carrying out her own vendetta, and you get a book that the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, Admiral James Stavridis, calls "a startling blueprint for the wars of the future [that] needs to be read now!"

We reached out to Singer to ask him what he's learned doing all that field research, why the next war will be so much scarier than past ones, and whether there's anything we can do about it.

VICE: Your book is about the next world war—how it starts, the very colorful cast of characters involved in it, and the terrifying consequences. What gave you guys the idea at the heart of the book?
Peter Singer: The title of the book, Ghost Fleet , isn't just cool, it's the nickname of the real fleet of old "mothballed" ships we keep in the places like Suisun Bay near San Francisco. It's the Navy's equivalent of the Air Force's "Boneyard" of old retired fighter jets in the desert. We grew fascinated by the idea of, Why do we keep these old ships around? What would ever cause us, in the real world, to have to bring them back into service? Well, the answer would be the kind of major war that we haven't fought since World War II. That then offered up the idea of exploring that: Could such a major war happen again? What would a 21st century world war look like? Who would fight it, not just the nations, but the people?

Without giving anything away, one of the main "bad guys" in your book is China. How realistic is this scenario of a new Cold War of sorts between the US and China, especially one that escalates?
The scary thing is that we started on the project years back, so the idea of exploring such a "big war" between the "great powers" was a bit out there. Everything in both the policy world and the best-seller rack in the bookstore was Middle East– and terrorism-focused. Then the real world started catching up to our fiction, what with Putin and Ukraine and arms races in the Pacific.

Indeed, it's not just the overall trends, but recently a US Navy P-8 patrol plane over disputed waters in China literally lived out the very second scene in the book, even though it's a novel turned into the publisher months back! You can see these trends looming in everything, from the two sides' military strategies that are sparking an arms race, to that gamesmanship the planes and warships are playing over disputed islands, to the rhetoric.

Just a short bit ago, a Chinese regime newspaper point-blank said that "war is inevitable" if the US didn't change its policies. I don't think it's "inevitable," but these are dark trends that I do think will shape geopolitics for the coming years.

This appears to be a unique and possibly unprecedented hybrid: a work of fiction but one that is "inspired by real-world trends and technologies" and one in which you did a lot of reporting and research (and even included footnotes).
Yes, we think it's something new, the way it melds two classic book genres, the techno-thriller and the nonfiction wonk book. In that, it's a risk, but it reflects our backgrounds and interests. It crosses storytelling influences from our work [as consultants] with Hollywood ( Call of Duty, Dreamworks, etc.) with nonfiction research from our journalist and defense-policy backgrounds. So the book was built from both imagination of various what-ifs to Pentagon war games that we organized.

Peter Singer talking to Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus

A big key to both the fiction and nonfiction were meetings we had with the wide range of real people who would fight in such a war, from US Navy destroyer captains and fighter pilots to Chinese generals and Anonymous hackers.

Our hope was to build a new kind of "novel," in the spirit of early Tom Clancy, where you can read it at the beach, but with the research to show how real it all is, including revealing everything from new Chinese drone prototypes to how certain US weapons have already been hacked, so that it can take a place in real-world debates. In fact, early copies of the book made their way into the hands of several senior military leaders—a few who read it at the beach!—and it's already having policy influence, shaping debates/plans inside the Pentagon on everything from strategy to robots and 3D printing.

Check out the VICE News documentary on the uncertain future of amphibious warfare.

Some experts say that while the United States has spent trillions of taxpayer dollars in recent decades acting as the world's police force, intervening in (and starting) numerous expensive and deadly conflicts, China has quietly been building economic and political ties to dozens of developing nations in Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere. Is China making itself stronger while the United States is overextending itself like other empires before it? And if so, what are the consequences?
If you are looking at this from the geopolitical side, who has been the "big winner" of the last decades? Well, it's certainly not the US. We've expended a lot of blood and treasure but lost global standing. And while it's hard to predict where exactly Iraq War 3.0 will end, it's not likely to be another big security gain. I think there are a lot of the parallels to Great Britain and how it got into the Boer Wars with enthusiasm, but this supposedly "small war" becomes incredibly draining and Britain ends up just trying to figure out how to extricate itself without looking like it had lost. But all the while, it has this immense rival of imperial Germany. As Mark Twain put it, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

But it's important to frame this from both sides. China's growth economically, politically, and strategically also creates a dilemma and a contradiction in our global strategy. We keep asking China to step up and take on more of a global role and responsibility. But when and if they do, it drives threat perception. "China, why is it only us that's policing the seas against Somali pirates?" China then sends warships off Somalia and then "Ah, China is extending its global reach!"

"The rule for the book was no alien space power packs and no teenage wizard hormones—only real tech already here or at the R+D or prototype phase."

The book focuses a lot on 21st-century warfare, and how the next war will be fought not only on land, sea, air, and in cyberspace, but also in actual space. So... is this a good thing, or bad? Will the next war be a protracted one, or something with so much "shock and awe" that it will end badly, and quickly, for everyone?
That's what would make any 21st-century conflict between great powers so different than the wars of today against ISIS or the Taliban. We would see battles in places other than just on the land, and maybe even with the other side having the same or even better technology, something the US hasn't wrestled with for literally decades. But, in turn, it is these two new realms of battle that didn't exist back in the 1940s, conflict in space and cyberspace, that could determine the winners or losers. Many believe that their side will have the edge here, but I think that is the danger for us all. The leaders in the two sides often use words like "short" and "sharp" to describe how they see any war playing out. So did the leaders back in 1914.

So describe the weapons that will be used. What's already out there, and what did your sources (and imagination) tell you is next on the R&D horizon?
The rule for the book was no alien space power packs and no teenage wizard hormones—only real tech already here or at the R+D or prototype phase. That's also why we had the endnotes, to show, no matter how sci-fi it might seem, it was all drawn from reality. There is just a wild range of cool/scary gear that looms for war, from the USS Zumwalt, a new, stealthy version of a battleship that is right now under construction in Maine, to the Divine Eagle, a (well, now not) secret Chinese drone shaped like a massive kite, which can hunt down stealth planes and ships... like the Zumwalt.

There's also going to be a mix. All the old gear isn't going away completely. We're seeing the introduction of autonomous drones like the X47 that recently landed on an aircraft carrier. But the plan is for it to fly alongside manned jets. So what will a future dogfight look like, but also what does that pilot think about it? It's not just things that are clearly weapons, but we'll see all the varied "next tech" that's going to be in the civilian world also be used in war, akin to what happened with the jeep or computers. Things like tattoos that use electronic ink, the next gen of Google Glass, or "smart" rings instead of computer mouses.

So what scares you the most?
For me, maybe the spookiest scene in the book was drawn from the real-world work on brain-machine interfaces. This kind of tech, where you connect your thoughts to software, has been used to help the paralyzed move robotic limbs, is being tested to aid veterans in recovering from PTSD (even changing memories), and is coming soon to video gaming. It will also be used to torture people in an utterly scary new way.

One of the story lines in the book is about how a murderer sneaks her way through a very high-tech world of the near future. Do you think crime will get easier or harder in our increasingly networked surveillance state? And what about someone's ability to cover their tracks, or create fake ones?
There's never been more surveillance and data gathered on us, not just in our online behavior but in the real world. They include high altitude drones that carry not one camera that can pick Waldo out of crowd from a mile overhead, but systems like Gorgon Stare that the military first used in Iraq that do wide area surveillance able to track 92 different Waldos at once. Or it might be tracking not just your visuals, but your very genetic makeup, such as rapid DNA readers, again first used by Navy SEALs and now coming to police departments.

It's like the Panopticon and Orwell crossed with William Gibson. But despite all this technology, there are still workarounds, still ways to trick the system, to use the assumptions of machine intelligence, or even more so, the assumptions of its designers and users, against it.

Check out Ghost Fleet's official website, where you can buy the book, out Tuesday, June 30.

Peter Warren Singer is strategist and senior fellow at the New America Foundation, founder of NeoLuddite, a technology advisory firm, the author of multiple award-winning books, and a contributing editor at Popular Science.

Josh Meyer is an award-winning journalist and author specializing in national security and terrorism issues. A former staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, he works at the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative in Washington, DC, and is co-author of the 2012 book The Hunt For KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Follow him on Twitter.

Image via Wikipedia

Brandon Wade is a 44-year-old MIT grad with a receding hairline and glasses. He's not what you'd automatically expect when you imagine a relationship entrepreneur. But in recent years the former software engineer has founded WhatsYourPrice.com (where men bid on first dates), CarrotDating.com (where men offer "incentives" in return for a rendezvous), and original sugar daddy hub SeekingArrangement.com. Now, he's taking advantage of a growing public interest in polyamory with his latest venture, OpenMinded.com.

Polyamory is when a relationship involves several people and couples. It's not cheating because everyone is in on it, nor is it a basic open relationship, as all those involved are emotionally invested. Brandon noticed and capitalized on this cultural shift by creating a site to match couples who want to keep it tight while playing fast and loose, and not let their network of open relationships interfere with their marriage. Although guilt-free open relationships sound like a pretty sweet deal, he's quick to point out that getting everything you want actually takes more work and communication than just sticking with one person. We talked with him to find out more.

Brandon in 1989, while a student at MIT

VICE: Hi, Brandon. Are you married?
Brandon: I am. I've been married for three years, and I speak to my wife very openly about where I think our relationship may end up some day. We're monogamous, but understand eventually, at some point, it likely will turn monotonous, and we might want to involve other people.

How do you manage being in a relationship with that frank idea it'll probably turn to shit one day?
It's about taking a more intellectual approach to things. Once you start rationalizing at that level, you start to think feelings of jealousy, selfishness, the love for just one person are a type of selfish love. You open your eyes to the idea you could love more than one type of person, and it's not wrong to do so. I look at relationships not just from a purely emotional perspective, but with an intellectual rationale.

Brandon and his wife, with whom he is currently monogamous

But how do you rationalize jealousy?
That's the trickiest part of polyamory. There are many things that motivate jealously: the biggest one is the fear you might lose somebody, or the person might abandon you for someone else. You need to feel secure not just with that person, but with yourself. Feelings of jealously result from feelings of insecurity.

So if you went home today, and your wife said she wants to have sex with your best friend, you'd be fine with that because you believe in yourself?
Um... well, in our case we would be talking about this openly. I would realize she was perhaps unhappy or bored, and we would already be discussing this. In that sense, I wouldn't be caught by surprise, but I'd want to find out her motivations behind it, and see if we can reach some sort of consensus on approaching and solving her issues, as well as mine. Perhaps my insecurity might be the real issue, if I feel jealous that she wants to sleep with my best friend.

What do you mean by "consensus"?
Privacy might be a concern. As innocent as it might seem, it could embarrass the other person. Safe sex would be an important point to discuss. Of course, what happens with emotion after the act is important, because the question is: Is the act purely a physical need to exercise, or is there more of an emotional connection she's looking for?

Open relationships are really not simple. People think, Wow, these are hippies sleeping around like nobody's business. There's a lot of communication, and a lot of emotional consideration, as well as mental processes before people can successfully engage in open relationships. You go back to the basics of brutal honesty: communication, communication, communication.

How is all this different from a mutual "Don't ask, don't tell" situation?
That's called a monogamish relationship: You give each other permission to date and sleep with other people. Not everyone is involved in your relationship, so it's certainly not polyamory. That is actually a growing trend. I think it's a very modern approach to the problem that people feel, the monotony that comes in after being with one person over a period of time. Monogamish is one way to solve that issue.

At an event for one of his online relationship websites

So polyamory is unique because it's more about building a sort of community, rather than just each person having a series of relationships. But I feel that connectivity would bring so many issues.
Well, you'll be interested to know I'm working with my legal team on a pre-dating agreement. It's like a prenuptial agreement that we'll be making public, hopefully by the end of the year, so that people who are about to start dating each other can negotiate the conditions and terms and put them on a piece of paper. That way, when they do break up, things can be done in a cordial and organized manner.

How is that going to make things less of a clusterfuck?
Think about it this way: When two people date today, they share a lot of things. It's not just financial stuff or the pet dog, they also take pictures, send love letters to each other, and these things can be misused if the relationships doesn't work out. If you break up with a girlfriend, she may get jealous and start posting the naked pictures you took together on Instagram and the next thing you know, your privacy has been violated.

It's best to put these things on paper and negotiate these things upfront before you're too emotionally involved.

Related: Interested in breakups? Watch our documentary on the divorce industry:

Ultimately, are you saying the traditional model of marriage doesn't work anymore?
I think when you look at the history of marriage, it was created for a lot of reasons that had to do with the survival of the human race back then. Life was hard, so it was important to group together in family units. Today it's really different. Men and women are very self-sufficient. We can survive without "the other."

The concept of a marriage is not necessarily a crucial part of human survival anymore. In today's society, marriage as an institution is not completely necessary to how we exist.

Via seekingarrangement.com

Will monogamish take over?
There are people who believe in monogamy and are happy being with one person. But when you look at the other dating sites I run, and the fact 50 percent of the members are married people cheating, it makes you think. Given a choice, most people would subscribe to the monogamish method of being in a relationship.

Were you surprised to learn that?
I don't think so. I went to MIT, and across the river is Harvard—they did an analysis by polling all the alumni to find out how many of them would cheat. Over 60 percent of them admitted to having at least one affair, if not more. It's just human nature.

To expect somebody to be with one person for the rest of their life is an unnatural requirement. In this case, I think more and more people would find the monogamish mode of relationships far more acceptable as opposed to being monogamous and then cheating.

Follow Toby on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user.

This article originally appeared on VICE Alps.

Everyone likes secondhand shops. Whether you're broke and trying to furnish an apartment or just like weird, kitschy crap, it's easy to spend hours perusing the oddities in their dust-filled aisles. But have you ever wondered how those shabby-chic kidney tables, 1980s shoulder-pad blazers, and smoke-stained landscape paintings ended up there?

Sure, some of them are donated, but just as many are delivered by estate liquidators from dead or bankrupt people's homes. Unsurprisingly, being a liquidator isn't always fun. There's a lot more to dead people's apartments than vintage collectibles and cupboards filled with expired food. From time to time, you have to deal with some really horrendous shit, too.

I had a chat with a professional real estate liquidator (who wanted to remain anonymous) to try to understand some of the problems he and his colleagues face on a daily basis. This is what he had to say.

Photo of a toilet that's slightly cleaner than some of the ones that our liquidator has had to deal with. Photo via Flickr user

Mouse Shit

We deal with a lot of hoarders and their squalid apartments. These poor people are usually pretty lonely and have no one to take care of all the stuff they leave behind when they die, so it's up to people like me to clean up their earthly belongings. I remember this one apartment that nobody wanted to deal with, except the company I work for. It was a four-room flat on the third floor of a housing block. Normally, my boss visits each property first to see how much time and effort it'll take to clear and then sends us out to get the job done. When he came back from this particular apartment he told us, "Whatever you do, don't go into the bathroom."

The flat was in really, really bad shape. The entire floor was covered in a ten-inch-thick layer of trash. My boss had ordered a container to be delivered to the garden, for us to fill with all the filth. We got to shoveling all the grime into bags and throwing them off the balcony so we wouldn't have to run up and down the stairs.

There was a mountain of blankets and mattresses in the bedroom—so many that it was difficult to tell where one mattress ended and the other began. As my colleague started separating them, we heard a bunch of scratching and squeaking. All of a sudden, about 40 mice ran out and scattered in every direction. To this day, we don't know whether this hoarder had brought them in himself or not.

Of course, I ignored my boss's instructions and decided to go into the bathroom. Luckily, I was fast enough to tear my dust mask off before vomiting everywhere. The hoarder hadn't flushed his toilet in years. There was a pile of shit emanating from the bowl that was about twice as high as the toilet seat itself. I slammed the door behind me and ran off shuddering. Trust me, my vomit was but a drop in the ocean of bodily waste in that room.

Testing Beds

This one actually happened to my boss. I believe him, too—he is not the kind of guy who makes things up. The story also makes sense given how the guy looks. He's this kind of bodybuilder/gigolo guy who owns a flashy car that more or less embodies his personality.

One day, he went to look at an apartment where someone had just died. The wife and daughter of the deceased were there to show him around. When they got to the bedroom to check whether or not they could sell the bed, the wife asked, "Why don't all three of us hop in? It'll be easier to see if it's worth selling." According to my boss, both of them—mother and daughter—started groping him and trying to wrap themselves around him. He had to physically force his way out of the room to get away from them.

Photo via Flickr user Alan Stanton

The Violent Farmer

Another time, an older lady who owned a house in the Swiss countryside called. She said that her house was situated on a piece of land that weirdly also belonged to a farmer, who supposedly held a grudge against her because he wanted the property for himself. She explained that he had threatened her and said that she wouldn't be alive for long if she ever went there again. Given that she wasn't there often and there was a farmer trying to kill her, she decided to liquidate the house and sell it.

My boss and I drove to western Switzerland to check out the place. Even though the woman seemed shaken, it was hard to tell if her story was entirely true.

As soon as we turned the corner onto the farm, we met the farmer and his tractor. He was driving full throttle toward us and obviously had no interest in braking. It wasn't possible for us to make way for him—our car would have rolled down the hill—so I just stuck it in reverse and started backing up as fast as I could. My boss jumped out of the passenger door and rolled down the hill because he was convinced we were going to die.

Luckily, the farmer stopped about a foot in front of us. He was fuming and cursing in French out of his tractor window. I hadn't a clue what he was saying, so I just shouted back in English. In the end, he let us through.

Related: You Don't Know Shit

After we assessed the house and collected what we could sell, we headed home. We were barely a quarter mile away before our car got stuck in the mud. We had to call the farmer for help.

He came, but instead of helping us, he just stood a few feet away and laughed. I began cursing at him in English, and while I'm sure a lot of the subtleties were lost on him, he understood the word "motherfucker" and didn't like it.

My boss tried to play the bigger man and reason with him in broken French, asking what we could do to get him to help us. He said that I needed to apologize. Begrudgingly, I told him I was sorry.

Photo via Flickr user Alan Stanton

The Window

The company I work for owns a secondhand store, situated in an old industrial building that looks like a garage. Its facade isn't a proper wall—it's a big door made of aluminum and plexiglass panels. I was sorting things out in the shop and staring out of the plexiglass windows one day when I saw a car coming. I wasn't particularly frightened because there's a parking lot right outside, so cars drive toward the building all the time. But this one wasn't stopping. I didn't realize what was happening until I heard this monstrous crash, and I only fully comprehended the situation when I saw the car coming at me in slow motion.

It was like something from a movie: The store exploded. The car just plowed all the contents of the shop right up to my feet. I didn't move at all—I just stood there and watched it happen. When the car finally rumbled to a halt, an old man and his wife stumbled out. They were confused and very apologetic. Turns out, they had mixed up the gas pedal with the brakes.

Today at 12:20 PM in Melbourne, an estimated 60 prisoners at the Metropolitan Remand Centre tore down an internal wall and started fires from plastic bins. Tweets from a Channel 7 helicopter observed rioting prisoners covering their heads in clothing and marauding the inner yards with what looked like homemade weapons. Within an hour this had escalated to include more than 300 prisoners, and apparently the riots were all because of cigarettes.

Beginning on Wednesday, every one of Victoria's 14 prisons will be smoke free. Around 84 percent of Victorian prisoners smoke, against only 12.6 in the general population, which is why Corrections Victoria approved a cigarette ban at the start of last year. Now, 18 months later, Corrections Commissioner Jan Shuard described prison staff as "very ready" for the change. Prisoners had been participating in programs to quit, while as The Age reported, a special menu of steak and seafood was on offer to mark the ban's inauguration.

Me in the media pen

When I arrived there seemed to be a lot happening inside, but not much outside. Amongst the media circus, there were 50 police cars, around 40 fire trucks, and a dozen ambulances. I could see smoke lofting over the center, to which a police officer remarked, "looks like they've found something else to burn." There was also a whole lot of barking from dogs waiting with a crowd of heavily armed riot officers. And then, after several prison employees were herded out of the way, the riot squad went in with tear gas.

According to a brief statement, given out by Victorian Corrections at the scene, parts of the prison were locked down, all staff were uninjured and accounted for, and all emergency services were at the scene. Radio station 3AW also reported that the destroyed internal fence had been designed to separate rival bike gangs.

By 5 PM it seemed the situation was coming under control. There were reports that most prisoners had surrendered. This was reiterated by a press conference hosted by Corrections Commissioner Jan Shuard, who admitted she couldn't recall a larger riot in Victorian history.

The last riot to occur at the Metropolitan Remand Centre was in August 2012. Five prisoners scaled an internal fence to throw rocks at prison guards and break security cameras, causing $320,000 worth of damage. All five inmates received further jail time last year, after spending around 23 hours per day locked in their cells awaiting trial.

The command center truck

Just before I left an unusual looking police truck arrived. I asked an officer what it was used for. He said he hadn't seen it since the Black Saturday bushfires. "It's filled with computers and communication services," he said. "We use it as a command center." To me, this signified they were preparing to be there for a while.

Follow Dan on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Tattoos—they're a great idea when you're sober, and an even better idea when you're drunk. If you've ever got one, you'll know that the apprehension is almost more painful than the flickering needle being scraped slowly and repeatedly through your skin. The handy thing about alcohol is that it's extraordinarily good at magicking away any of those feelings—which is also why people climb scaffolding when they're drunk, or "like" three-month-old Instagram photos with no fear of being singled out as a massive creep.

Where better to capture some of this exact thing in action than Magaluf, long-considered a rite of passage for young Brits who've just learned how to pronounce "Jägerbomb" properly and want to apply that knowledge while sunburnt and dehydrated?

This wasn't my first time visiting Magaluf at the beginning of the party season. Judging from prior experience, I assumed taking photos of people who'd just been tattooed—and asking them why they'd got that tattoo—would be an easy enough job; people are generally very willing to chat on the strip. However, in light of all the stories to emerge from here over the last year—stories that have been emerging for a decade, but have only recently provoked a fuss—it's clear that the place is changing.

The majority of local workers were pretty hostile towards me when they saw my camera, as were local non-uniformed police, who were quick to interrogate me about what I was shooting and for which magazine.

However, in between those bouts of questioning, I was able to ask a number of tourists why exactly they got their holiday tattoo.

This guy was part of a large group, all of them shirtless, all of them holding large lurid drinks, all of them freshly tattooed with "It's irrelevant tho!!!"

I guessed the phrase stemmed from something one of them had said at some point in their life, but every time I asked for more context I got, "It's irrelevant, though!" in response. So, I mean, that's that, I suppose.

This guy was the most lucid of everyone I spoke to. He got "Max" tattooed on his forearm because it's the name of his godson, who's the child of his best friend, who was there partying with him that night.

This man just grunted when I asked him for an explanation, but I'm going to go ahead and assume he does OK with the ladies, so he wanted something discreet and classy to signify that.

I stopped this shirtless guy in the middle of Punta Ballena street, which is the main strip, the part where British tourists aren't allowed to drink between 10 PM and 8 AM any more because they kept getting shit-faced and simultaneously giving blowjobs to 24 men at a time.

I asked him why he'd got a griffin tattoo, worried that he'd say something about the sorting hat, but he answered: "It's Chelsea's lion!" He wandered off before I could get him to elaborate, but I'm presuming he's a QPR fan.

This guy didn't seem sure of why he'd got his tattoo. Our conversation after he left the shop was as follows:

Me: Is that a new tattoo?
Him: Of course!

What's it of?
I don't know.

Why did you get it?
Why not!

And then he ran away.

Want to party some more? Watch our doc 'The Party Island of Ibiza':

This guy works in a perfumery. I have to say, I wasn't expecting to meet anyone who works in a perfumery outside Tokio Joe's or Crystals Bar—I always figured those kind of people went on riad holidays in Tangier and wore kaftans on nights out and didn't get nautical leg tattoos. Turns out I couldn't have been more wrong.

This perfumery worker has three weeks of holiday a year, and spent all of them this year partying in Ibiza and Magaluf. The anchor, he said, symbolizes the trip and the days he "wants to remember forever." If I wanted to define three weeks in Magaluf and Ibiza in one single image, I probably would have gone for a portrait of a guy called Dean in a neon green "Keep Calm and Get Mortal" vest fist-pumping to Avicii with one hand and holding a doner in the other. But to each his own.

These guys are from Scotland. The guy on the right's tattoo says, "Quiero a mi hermana," which means "I love my sister" and sounds amazing in a Glaswegian accent.

See more of Patricio's work on his website.

Photo via Flickr user Waiting for the Word

Read: Sorry Religions, Human Consciousness Is Just a Consequence of Evolution

University of Kentucky professor and self-proclaimed wine connoisseur Will M. Gervais recently published a research study in Cognition where he tried to get to the bottom of why so many people don't believe in evolution even after the pope said he was cool with it. As it turns out the folks who don't believe in evolution are just not really thinking hard enough about it.

Gervais's study claims that the difference stems from two kinds of thinking: people who are prone to think intuitively and rely on immediate gut reactions are more likely to reject evolution. But those of us who "engage in analytical thinking"—a more deliberate, calculated form of cognition—are better able to override our initial intuitive response and understand the facts behind evolution.

To test his hypothesis, Gervais rounded up a bunch of University of Kentucky kids to talk about their beliefs in God, political conservatism, and creationism. After questioning them, Gervais found that "intuitions regarding teleology, order, and agency may serve as initial stepping stones for creationist beliefs, but stumbling blocks for endorsement of evolution," because they easily influence intuitive cognitive thought.

The general point of the whole thing basically says that when we let institutions and beliefs override our ability to parse stuff out analytically, we are less likely to be able to let go of our first instinct and be convinced by the great wealth of evidence pointing to evolution as truth. The genuinely-not-boring study is available here. If you can't access it, find a lazy college student with a university login who can.

A Cal Mac ferry. Photo by Robert Orr

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

From "Balamory" to Benbecula, the quaint seaside villages along Scotland's west coast aren't typically associated with scenes of labor unrest, but that may have changed after last Friday when hundreds of furious ferry workers walked out on strike.

At the heart of the dispute lies fears that the Scottish government are priming state-owned ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne (CalMac) for privatization, with outsourcing giant Serco vying to take over services from 2016. With uncertainty over whether this could lead to a worsening of terms and conditions or redundancies, members of the RMT union took industrial action at the end of last week, in a bid to secure further guarantees from the Scottish government. They shut down services to numerous islands in the process.

The first time I ventured aboard a CalMac ferry, I was less than a week old and—in common with most others who have ever lived on an island off the west coast of Scotland—they've been an unavoidable part of my life since. The whole rhythm of life on the islands they serve is dictated by the ferry timetable, from what time there'll be fresh bread or newspapers in the shops, to when the post is delivered, or anything that involves travel to what islanders know as "the mainland." The iconic black and white livery of the ferry fleet is a familiar site along the west coast of Scotland, with the company's ships carrying nearly five million islanders and visitors every year.

Unlike much of the UK's public transport network, CalMac remains in public hands—at least for now. In part, that's because there isn't much profit to be creamed off when you're obligated to run year-round sailings to far-flung islands where the entire population could probably fit in one room. But over the past decade, a gradual process has been afoot which both ferry workers and the islanders who rely on the lifeline services alike fear could lead to its privatization.

Earlier this month, that seemingly moved a step closer, after it emerged that Serco are CalMac's sole competitor to take over the £1 billion [$1.5 billion] contract, beginning in 2016. Serco, who run everything from school inspections to immigration detention centers, have been caught up in a number of controversies in the UK over recent years, including an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. The tendering process is set to take a year, with the Scottish government attempting to rush through changes to employee pensions prior to the new contract starting. Another union, the TSSA, is now also balloting its workers on strike action, meaning a summer of unrest could be ahead on Scotland's ferry network.

"The feeling among the workforce is that they're caught up in what can only be described as a debacle of a tendering process," explained an RMT union rep at CalMac that I spoke to. "The Scottish government allege this to be necessary to comply with European legislation."

The services run by CalMac were initially opened to competition between 2005 and 2007, although the only private bidder then dropped out. The effect of this was that £15 million [$23 million]—then more than half the annual subsidy for the ferry network—was spent on a complex tendering process that resulted in the Scottish government effectively awarding a contract to themselves, all in the name of competition.

Months ahead of the decision, CalMac's operation was portioned off into different segments, with the human resources arm offshored to Guernsey—a tax haven. It might seem crazy that the Scottish government—at the time a Labour/Lib Dem coalition—would register their own employees in another tax jurisdiction to avoid National Insurance payments, but it was argued that CalMac had to do this to properly compete with private sector shipping companies, all of whom have similar arrangements.

However, some have questioned whether the tendering process has ever been necessary, even under rigid European competition laws. Both the RMT union and a leading economist, Professor Neil Kay, have stated that there are loopholes which could be exploited to ensure Scottish ferry services remain in public hands. At the very least, it's argued, the Scottish government could mount a challenge to the legislation, based on precedents elsewhere in Europe.

CalMac workers picketing. Photo courtesy of the RMT

The current set-up means that every few years the routes will be open to competitive tendering, a process which is likely to see the service end up being run by a private operator, or even a foreign government, eventually. The alternative is that the Scottish government keep awarding it to themselves in perpetuity, which raises the question of why they bother going through with it in the first place.

Scottish National Party (SNP) Ministers have found themselves in an awkward trap. Having recently positioned themselves as "united" with trade unions against Tory austerity and attacks on employment rights, they're now accused of ducking the issue when it most matters, and hiding behind EU legislation. The Scottish government have even insisted that handing the contract to Serco wouldn't amount to privatization, because the vessels and piers would be state-owned and leased out, and the operator still answerable to ministers. In effect, though, not owning any assets would leave Serco free to up sticks and walk away if it felt it wasn't going well, as National Express did on the East Coast railway in 2009. In such a scenario, the lifeline island services could be thrown into chaos, with CalMac having presumably dissolved by that point, given it wouldn't have any ferries to run.

"It looks like the whole tendering process has been created to help the private operator step in. Many of our members feel that what Serco wants, Serco gets. They got the Northern Isles contract and the Caledonian Sleeper contract," explained the RMT rep I spoke to, referencing two transport contracts that the Scottish government have awarded Serco over the past few years. The first of these, the North Link Ferries service to the Orkney and Shetland Isles, was awarded to the outsourcer in 2012 over the existing operator CalMac. Last month, it was revealed by the Shetland Times that CalMac's bid for the service, reported to have been the cheapest, wasn't even considered—it was returned unopened on a technicality.

Watch: Boy Racer:

It's Serco's record in running the Orkney and Shetland service which has CalMac staff fearing for their jobs. "On day one of them taking over the Northern Isles contract, they announced 36 redundancies from quite a small workforce," said the RMT rep. "They then tried to attack pensions, and it was only when the RMT balloted [for industrial action], that they backed off."

CalMac are by no means perfect, and moaning about them—whether it's ferry fares, timetabling, or cancelled sailings whenever it's a bit windy—is part of daily life in every one of the communities they serve. But they're also a service that people rely on year round, connecting some of the most isolated parts of the country, and play an essential part in island life. Often, crew members go above and beyond their duties when it comes to public service, like earlier this year when a stranded ferry crew opened up their ship to a storm hit village on Harris, that had been without power for two days.

Whether Serco—an outsourcer which has been accused of mismanaging public services—is up to running the contract is now going to be decided by an impenetrable tendering process. Conveniently for the SNP, the winner won't be announced until next June, avoiding any backlash ahead of May's Scottish elections.

Follow Liam on Twitter.

Image via Flickr user zipporah.

This post originally appeared on VICE Australia.

Tasmania is the pregnant smoker capital of Australia, according to a study by the country's National Health Authority carried out between 2009 and 2012. The study found 22 percent of pregnant Tasmanian women were smokers. For context, the national average is around 12 percent.

Looking at pregnant smokers under 20 years old, that figure jumps to 35.7 percent. And while women are three to four times better at quitting when they're pregnant than on average, the relapse rate of lighting up once the baby is born sits at 80 percent.

But the state's figures are more complicated than women being shitty towards their unborn kids. They're tied in with the state's ongoing battle with comparatively high rates of unemployment and lower education opportunities. They also make it the best place to trial a progressive anti-smoking program.

Dr. Mai Frandsen from the University of Tasmania has been given a three-year scholarship to try and reduce the rates of expectant moms smoking cigarettes. And she's pretty confident she can do it—by paying them to quit.

Related: For more about kids and smoking, watch our documentary on stoned kids.

Starting in northern Tasmania, but extending statewide in the next couple of months, she'll invite any woman in her first trimester who has smoked in the past seven days to join the study. They'll be monitored over 12 months, having check-ins through their first and second trimester, and then three months after the birth. She'll also follow up 12 months after that, to see if her system was effective long-term.

Over those 24 months, traditional support services like counseling and patches will be available. But every month she'll invite them into her lab to have their carbon monoxide levels measured. Dr. Frandsen explains if their reading comes back negative, "I give them a 50 dollar gift card to a shop where they can buy nice things for their baby or themselves. They can't use it on groceries."

The decision to not allow the cards to cover groceries was to ensure that the women were participating in the program purely by choice, with the pay off being a luxury as opposed to it being an avenue to buy essentials which could serve as a means to support themselves.

Paul Grogan, Director of Advocacy, Cancer Council Australia points out that although Dr. Frandsen's approach is an Australian first, money has always been a primary instigator in encouraging people to quit. "The most effective policy levers have been tobacco tax, which uses price as a motivator," he explained to VICE. "There is some evidence that shows incentives to avoid the harms of smoking can work particularly well for pregnant women compared with other population groups."

But the Cancer Council support hasn't prevented the program from drawing skepticism. People have asked if a $50 gift card is going to be enough of an incentive, when years of medical advice and scare tactics didn't convince these women to quit. But Dr. Frandsen argues the program will be successful because it's based less on money and more on validation. "The incentive is a token of positive reward. It's a little way of boosting your confidence that people are in your corner," she explains.

When asked if we should be rewarding women for stopping a behavior they know is dangerous to their child, Dr. Frandsen isn't bogged down in the ethics of it. "As a researcher I'd like to reward every mom, but I'm in the business of trying to get people to quit smoking, that's why I've focused on women who need our help most."

She pressed that ultimately the program is about shifting the automatic shame we place on anyone we see smoking with a swollen belly. Because as uncomfortable as it is to pay someone to stop a dangerous behavior, Tasmania's dreary smoking statistics show the fear approach simply isn't working.

Paul Grogan notes that smoking is still "The number one preventable cause of cancer and other diseases in Australia," and Tasmania's rates in particular are as high as they've ever been. Despite issues some have with offering incentives, he concluded that "any study that showed potential to reduce the harms of smoking should be investigated."

As for Dr. Frandsen, she is more cheery about her experiment. "I'm very much trying the carrot approach," she says. "And rather than them being told how to do it, I'm saying you can do this whatever way you want and I will support and reward you."

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