For all the true crime junkies out there, the name Anthony Curcio might ring a bell. He’s the guy responsible for one of the most meticulously-planned armored truck robberies ever performed—as in, he put up a Craigslist ad to get unemployed landscapers dressed like he was to show up at the bank and confuse the cops. (I’m pretty sure he borrowed that tactic from the Thomas Crown Affair.) He actually got $400,000 off a Brinks truck during his heist, but an unlikely witness and some DNA evidence led to his getting caught and he got sentenced to six years in prison in 2009.

Now he’s on work release/hourse arrest, living again with his wife and two young daughters, and trying to get his life turned around by writing children’s books (you can see a bunch of ‘em on his website), including one aimed at kids whose parents are locked up called My Daddy’s in Jail. He also wants to be a public speaker to warn young people about the perils of prescription drug addiction, which was the devil that got him robbing armored cars in the first place.

I reached out to Anthony ‘cause I like speaking to other ex-cons, especially when they’re doing something good and I can document a success story. I got the sense that the five years he did in prison left him with a lot of bottled-up positive energy. I experienced the same thing when I was locked up: I became hyperactive, like everything was going to happen in the future and I needed to use every second as valuably as I could. Anthony puts me to shame though—he managed to write a memoir about his life of drug addiction and crime in prison called Heist and High and get it published upon his release earlier this year. He told me he mainly wants to make people aware of how dangerous prescription drugs are.

“It is crazy to me that the most addicting and damaging drugs are the ones prescribed to us by doctors,” he said. “I hope that by telling my story, it will help someone (and their families) from experiencing the hell that I did.”

Anthony was an all-American type of guy with a life that seemed pretty perfect from the outside—a good-looking football star who was dating his high school’s cheerleading captain. He was developing a drinking problem, but other than that everything was going perfectly. Then he got an injury that threw his promising football career into doubt and introduced him to prescription pain pills, which quickly became his new love. Before long he was running all kinds of scams so he could feed his addiction, including his failed heist.

This summer, he participated in a 20/20 special in which he tried to focus on spreading awareness about painkiller addiction, but instead got slightly ridiculed for the brazen nature of his crime. The reporter is kinda making fun of him for getting caught after doing all these ridiculous things, and you can see Anthony still takes a little pride in it ‘cause he almost got away with it. It’s tough to deal with a crime once you’ve committed it, ‘cause now it owns you; you are part of it forever. I don’t think Anthony wants to own this one.

When I spoke to him, he didn’t sound like a sociopath who would orchestrate crazy bank heists. Anthony says all the right things and seems to have a good grasp on reality—so how do you really explain him committing a serious, premeditated crime like that? There’s no logical explanation for why a criminal does what he does, which makes it difficult to explain our actions to anyone, let alone our children. This bummer of a video is only a little bit of a start:

A study from back in 2010 said that one in 28 kids has a parent in prison, and I bet all of them are wondering shit like, “Why did this happen?” and, “Does my dad love me?” It’s very difficult to answer those questions, but Anthony’s giving it a try with My Daddy’s in Jail.

"I originally created this book for my two daughters while I was in prison,” he told me.“I wanted them to know that it wasn’t their fault and that I loved them no matter what. It is now my goal that any child who is in a similar situation has access to this book.”

He hasn’t raised much cash on his Kickstarter page so far, but he’s still got a month to get $7,500. (The money, he says, is so he can distribute the book free of charge to places like elementary schools and libraries.) He’s also trying to put together the picture books he was working on while he was in prison—it seems pretty obvious that he made them to connect with his daughters, and I can imagine the pain he was going through behind bars for five years apart from his kids. It sounds like things are still pretty rough for him on that front.

“I’ll be with my family now, the four of us, sitting at the dinner table and they’ll be saying ‘remember when?’ and I sit there clueless,” he told me. “I missed out on so much. I will forever regret this lost time… Some day when [my daughters] are old enough to understand, I will have that talk and try to explain things: I was selfish; I was addicted to drugs and I made some horrible decisions.”

I can’t tell you how many people sit in prison and complain but don’t do anything to make it better. That’s the main thing that impresses me about Anthony: many people don’t do shit about their situation when they’re locked up, they just complain and complain, but he’s taken this awful event, where he tried to rob an armored truck at the ultimate low point of his life, and attempted to make it positive. If we accept that his actions were truly the result of a severely debilitating drug addiction, then it’s possible that Anthony’s moral compass was never really all that broken—maybe he’s just an example of what happens when a decent person falls prey to drugs.

I am sure some people will continue to write Anthony off as a con man or a crazy true-crime story, but he’s making inmates look good for a change. That’s not a small thing—whenever you tell anyone you were in prison they usually make an excuse to get the hell out of there. But Anthony’s got a great way of explaining his situation that a bunch of us ex-cons should probably write down: “I can never change my past and the crimes I committed, but the worst crime of all would be if I remained the same person I was. Today, I can look myself in the mirror and be happy with what I see. I am a good father and a loving husband and there is not a day that goes by that I am not thankful for being given a second chance.”

You can donate to Anthony’s Kickstarter here

Bert Burykill is the pseudonym of our prison correspondent, who has spent time in a number of prisons in New York State. He tweets here.

Previously: Just Close Down California’s Prisons Already

The super special September issue of VICE was exclusively culled from the archives of Bob Guccione Sr.—the legendary magazine publisher who built a media empire that started with Penthouse. This portion of the issue features a peculiar proposition for figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. 

For more previously unpublished documents visit the Guccione Archives Issue page. For even more unpublished archival material, please visit The Guccione Collection website, which is devoted to illuminating all the varied corners of Bob's legacy and creating new content in the spirit of the Guccione empire.

Richard Kern, the man who never stops working (maybe because he figured out how to get paid doing things that everyone else would happily do for free?), just sent us this music video he directed for Indochine's new song, "Black City Parade." Like most things he does, it contains many nubile babes (of both sexes) and you will probably be looking at it at work making sure that no one is watching you perv out on the slow-mo shots of butts and jiggling flesh. The very beginning of it was even shot in our Brooklyn office, which is sort of exciting if you’re into that sort of thing.

Ben Brooks is a 21-year-old Englishman who, during a recent tour with Tao Lin, was named One of the Best Young Writers in the World by our global editor, Andy Capper, who, as his title implies, knows a lot about the world. When Andy asked Ben for a piece of fiction, he sent this story, which Ben claims is 100 percent true. But we are of the "it's fiction if the writer says it's fiction" school. That is, we are of the "most writers who write about themselves just lie about it, and claim they made it up in their big brains" school. We also asked Ben to write a bio and he sent us this: "Ben Brooks was born in Gloucestershire, which is in the United Kingdom, in 1992. He is the author of Fences, An Island of Fifty, The Kasahara School of Nihilism, Grow Up, and Lolito. He was long-listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize and some other things and he has had like three girlfriends and other stuff."

I’m 18 and hiding from school. Ellen is 42 and in an office. She moved to London three years ago. She’s from Portugal. Her job is writing computer code. Her husband is in jail.

“Why is he in jail?” I type.

“Insider trading.”

“Oh, me too.”

“What? How old are you?”

“22. You?”

“35.”

Ellen writes about wanting to sit on the faces of the men she sees on public transport. She writes about wanting to be choked, and demeaned, and elbowed in the eyes. She says that her dad was calm and quiet, and that after he sat in them, chairs smelled of pine needles.

We spend afternoons writing emails and evenings on instant messenger. Ellen talks about her colleagues and her boss and how she feels. I invent several girls and a web of anxieties to go with each of them. It doesn’t matter. We talk to be listened to.

When we start to trust each other, we admit our actual ages and exchange genuine pictures. Nothing changes. School ends. She’s promoted.

She reads my first books and says that she likes them more than other books. Each one sells under a hundred copies. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want a job and I don’t want university debt. I’m not getting taller. I can’t grow a beard.

“Why don’t you move here?” she says. “There’s space. There’s too much space.”

“I don’t have any money," I say. "I don’t have a job. I wrote a CV, but I didn’t know what to put so I just put ‘Wall Street.’”

“You don’t have to pay rent. I can buy drink. You’ll have an Oyster card that tops up from my bank account.”

“Really?”

“It’s better than being alone.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

I close the computer, pile clothes and books into a suitcase, and drink until I’m asleep. 

***

On our first night, we take cocaine, drink Captain Morgan, and talk about hypothetical futures. She wants the Mediterranean. I want to live in Alaska.

After we have sex for the first time, she puts her cheek on my chest and whispers that I’m talented.

“Oh,” I say.

Something: on cocaine, I can get it up but nothing ever comes out. Same with Fluoxetine. My record for any other time is three and one quarter minutes.

“We can do this every day,” she says.

She begins to snore. Has this ever worked? This has almost definitely never worked. I press my thumb into the hollow of her cheek.

For three months, every weekday happens the same way. She leaves for work before I’m awake. I wake up, and read and write until she gets back. When she does, we drink and watch American comedies on her computer, balled up under a bare duvet.

I’m in the armchair trying to write something long enough to excuse me from a job for at least two years. Ellen can’t be my mum indefinitely. Does she want to? It almost seems like she wants to.

“Come here,” she says. “Sit on me.”

“I’m writing.”

Maybe she can be my mum forever. Maybe that’s OK. She’ll keep getting promoted and I’ll keep sleeping for 16 hour stretches.

“Write on my lap. Be affectionate. You’re never affectionate.”

I don’t move. She lights a cigarette, hikes up her skirt, and crushes it out into her thigh. The new ring joins four others, already green and flaking. They happen every time I refuse to sleep in her bed.

“You don’t love me,” she says.

“What?” I say. “What are you talking about?”

She raises her arms into fifth position, like a short, thick dancer. I look up from the computer screen, blinking. She’s unsteady.

“Wait,” I say. “I do.”

“You don’t.”

“I do. Loads.”

She tugs the laptop out of my hands and hurls it at the ground. It’s her laptop.

I grin dumbly and leave. I buy four Polish beers, drink them, and fall asleep behind a set of industrial bins, thinking of sealskins and the Ross Ice Shelf. 

***

In the morning, before leaving for work, she tells me I’m allowed back into the house. When I get there, she’s gone. A note on the kitchen cupboard says there are turkey sandwiches waiting in the fridge.

I go through the house, finding a box of dildos, three wraps of cocaine, and two bottles of red wine. I sit in the center of the living room carpet and drink both bottles while watching YouTube videos of cute animals. Ellen comes home when I’m halfway through the second.

“Those were my bottles of wine,” she shouts. “Get out.”

“OK.”

It’s hot and I only have six pounds. The oyster card automatically tops up from her bank account. I catch a train to somewhere central and sit smoking and reading in a park, feeling somehow like my body is dissolving. Two men with fluttering hands ask me for Rizla. We talk about how healthy everyone looks and pinch the folds of our bellies. They pick up crack. We sing the national anthem at the back of a bus and try to crush cans against our foreheads, leaving marks that look like we’ve fallen asleep on coffee cups.

One laughs, and points out of the window. “He lives on Murder Mile,” he says. “We’re going to Murder Mile.”

The other one lands an elbow between his ribs. “Don’t scare him.”

“No,” I say. “It’s OK. I think it’s funny.”

Ellen calls in the morning. I’m on an unfamiliar laminated floor. There are no curtains and the room feels like it’s being lit by a perpetual camera flash. Moving hurts.

“Come back,” she says. “Are you OK? Where are you?”

“I don’t know.’ I sit up. “Oh, I’m on Murder Mile. Some people got murdered here. It seems fine.”

“Come back. Right now.”

I remember being thrown out by my real mum, age 16, and moving in with a lanky Indian drug dealer who played Fifa all day and practiced to YouTube body popping tutorials all night. I remember that my mum called me three weeks after she threw me out and cried and asked me to come back.

“You said I had to go.”

 “And now you can come back.”

I remember that it happened once more that year, again when I was 17, and twice when I was 18.

***

The next night, I read an entire book out loud to Ellen while we sit at opposite ends of the bathtub, taking sporadic breaks for cocaine and cocktail making. I’m having rum screwdrivers. She’s having "everything."

“Just keep reading,” Ellen says. “Just keep reading and it won’t stop.” She sips from her pint glass. It contains three different spirits, two types of juice, and white wine. She’s calling The Ellenator.

“It will stop,” I say. “It has an end. There are like a hundred more pages.”

“Then we can read another one.”

“You can read another one. It’s six already. I’m taking an Alprazolam and going to sleep.”

“Lets have bumps. I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.”

I finish reading the book. My throat is sore. At the end, the main character decides to opt out of everything, and collapses on a bed of moss. I fall asleep almost immediately. Ellen arranges her legs on top of mine, mixes a new drink, and rereads the book until she has to leave for work.

***

Anne, a girl my age who I’ve known from the internet for four years, visits and sits next to me on the sofa. She says, “The Turner Prize isn’t fair.” She says that her boyfriend is a genius. She says he can speak six languages, including Russian and something invented by Tolkien. I listen. I wait.

We do sex on the sofa, underneath my parka.

Ellen comes home with plastic bags of wine and beers. She starts screaming. She hurls bottles and coins and keys.

Anne leaves.

Ellen locks herself in her bedroom. I picture her legs slowly disintegrating under the heat of cigarettes. I drink the surviving beers and fall asleep watching a documentary about Siberian prisons. That looks OK, I think. I could do that.

Anne calls the next day, after Ellen has left for work. I’m naked, lying on my back on the kitchen tiles, smoking and pedaling the air. Somehow, I’ve convinced myself that this is as healthy as actual cycling.

“She’s crazy,” Anne says. “You have to leave.”

“My thighs look fat.”

“What?”

“She’s not crazy,” I say. “I just don’t hug her enough.”

“You have to go home. Go and stay with your mum.”

“I don’t have any money.”

She hangs up. I drink a beer and repeatedly refresh various social networking sites. Ten minutes later, she calls back.

“I booked you a coach,” she says. “For tomorrow. I’ll print out the ticket. We can meet at the park.”

“Thank you.”

“Whatever.”

I bury my thumb in my bellybutton. My BMI is too high and I’m not qualified for Antarctic expeditions. I’m stranded.

***

During the bus journey back, I drink light beer, scratch the scabs on my scalp, and write. I add to a word document I started when I was 17 and trying to make my sister laugh. She said my other books were the most boring books she’d ever opened.

The word document becomes a book, which I finish while living with my nan. When it’s accepted for publication, I get an email from Ellen. It’s the first time we’ve interacted in three months.

***

"Congratulations on the book, I knew you could do it.

I’m sorry for not being in contact. Everything seemed difficult. I shouldn’t have invited you here. Don’t think I didn’t like having you around, I did, but I expected too much. You aren’t a husband yet. And I’m not a mum. I’m as lost as you are."

More fiction on VICE:

A Ghost Story

The Number

The Poet

Frames from Omar Khadr's interrogation. via Flickr.

Omar Khadr made his first appearance in a Canadian court on Monday. After an 11-year journey from Bagram to Guantánamo to Canada's Millhaven Institution, the Toronto-born man is now in Edmonton's federal prison. He was 15 when he was captured and tortured at Bagram. He turned 27 last Thursday.  

If you’re not familiar with the case it goes loosely as follows: When the Americans first arrested Omar in Afghanistan, he was accused of throwing a grenade that killed an American solider. For eight years he maintained his innocence, until he signed a plea deal in 2010 that got him out of Guantanamo. Omar was then convicted of five counts of war crimes for his actions, which were not recognized as such anywhere else in the world including Canada.  

Omar’s case is wildly complex. While the American solider he is accused of killing was certainly killed by a grenade, there is no evidence showing that Omar ever had or threw one. While Omar certainly did confess to these crimes, it was after eight years of torture and given his option to either insist he’s innocent and stay in Gitmo, or confess to the crimes and see a judge in Canada, it certainly sounds like the terms of his confession were problematic at best.

All of this is important to note, especially in light of the recent Hamdan appeal in the US—which refers to the case of Osama Bin Laden’s former driver whose terrorism charges were thrown out—that pointed out war crimes tried by the Commission must be internationally recognized. This verdict may end up being leveraged effectively in the Omar Khadr case.

The Canadian Supreme Court has even ruled that our government violated Omar’s rights, but left the remedy up to the Harper government who of course declined to provide any solution.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been making strong statements on the preferred outcome on the day of the trial, in an apparent attempt to influence the court proceedings. Harper has vowed to fight the case “vigorously,” and used almost the same phrasing as that of Steven Blaney, Canada’s Minister of Public Safety.

Omar's counsel, Dennis Edney, was in court to argue that he should be transferred to a provincial institution from a federal institution due to his age when the alleged crimes took place. In a confusing instance of legal doublespeak, the Crown’s prosecutors are arguing that Omar has not really been sentenced to eight years, but rather to five eight-year sentences served at the same time. Associate Chief Justice J.D. Rook has reserved judgment to a currently undetermined future date.

Heather Marsh, a journalist, was at Omar’s trial on Monday and wrote about it for us.

The media swarming Khadr's lawyer outside of Monday's hearing. Photo by the author.

On Monday, the court was filled with what seemed to be exclusively supporters of Omar Khadr. Many were wearing orange or orange ribbons and I spoke to several of them. There was a high school student who said she was done for the day, students from several different universities skipping class even though they had exams next week, and people of all ages and ethnic groups. After the media were moved to the jury box and people were encouraged to squeeze up, 120 people were in the court room and a live feed was set up for more in an overflow room.

A security guard told Omar’s counsel that Omar would be available to talk to them in a private interview room outside—but Edney insisted it was an open court and Omar could appear. After a brief altercation he was allowed to be present.

Contrary to earlier media reports depicting him as a “giant,” Omar is an average sized man with a soccer player build and a neatly trimmed beard. When he came home last year he wrote to Seger M., an 11-year old supporter, “I play soccer too, but I don’t think I’m as good as you. I usually play defense or goal keeper.” He looks it, although since he came home he has been almost entirely in solitary confinement instead.

The author discussing the insanity of the crown's arguments with Omar's former chief prosecutor from Guantanamo.

Omar wrote to me when he was finally transferred back to Canada last fall, "At least we have a proper legal system," and he told another correspondent this week that this would be his first appearance in “a real court.” He seemed composed and happy throughout the proceedings, smiling frequently at people. Most of the discussion I overheard during the breaks was regarding his appearance and demeanor, not the legal arguments. Omar and the gallery of supporters seemed equally amazed that they were finally meeting after 11 ½ years of hearing about each other.

During the afternoon, a man interrupted proceedings to rip off his shirt and say “Enough! He was 15,” and object to the endless paper shuffling and statute citing. He was escorted out with no acknowledgement from Omar or the rest of the court room. At the end of the day, after the judge had left and as Omar was being led away there was a spontaneous outburst from the room with people waving and calling “Good job, Omar!” and “Stay strong!"

After the hearing Edney met with media outside and told them Omar’s chances of parole would be much greater in a provincial institution as he would have access to the programs and the society he needs to rehabilitate himself. “If he remains in a federal penitentiary, where he doesn’t get any programs, where he spends most of his life locked away, where his life was threatened, he’ll never get out.”

An Omar Khadr protester in 2009. via WikiCommons.

As long as Omar is in federal prison he will probably be in solitary as necessary protection. As he wrote a friend last February about Millhaven, "My new place is different definitely. People are generally nice, but with a lot of bad habits. Life here compels you to live like an animal because it is like a jungle. I have to change a little to defend myself, but not lose my humanity and who I am."  

In order to be eligible for parole, Omar must prove he can thrive among those our society has deemed most unacceptable. During his trial the point was repeatedly made that he could not be released as he had been supposedly "marinated in jihad" as an inmate of Guantanamo and Bagram during his formative years. The catch-22 continues. 

Canada famously violated Omar Khadr's rights by interrogating him for the US when they knew he had been subjected to three weeks of severe sleep deprivation torture and other ‘softening up techniques’ prior to questioning. They also refused for eight years to provide even a pair of glasses to preserve the vision remaining in his one good eye or to provide any education for him to rehabilitate himself. After receiving no formal education past elementary school, he recently passed Ontario’s Grade 10 high school equivalency exams with more than 90 percent in all subjects, English, math, history, geography and science.

Solitary confinement is widely recognized as torture, and many years of studies have shown the permanent damage that can result. After over 11 years of almost entirely solitary, Omar appears to be one of the exceptions. He can even find benefit in the deprivation of experience, education and companionship. In April he wrote to Aaf Post in the Netherlands, "Usually we don’t appreciate the small things. We take them for granted. Once you lose these things like opening your window in the morning and taking a breath of fresh air or seeing a bird chirping, you really appreciate these things. Even though I’m in prison there are still a lot of small beautiful things around us. Seeing the sun rise or set or to see the snow fall.”  

"Being back in Canada is, as you said, a wonderful thing. As big or difficult as change may be, it's worth it. There are too many good things in this life (as hard as it might be) to worry or even care about the bad things. Things are what we make out of them. Prison can be a deprivation of freedom, or a time to enlighten ourselves. For me it is the latter."

The author would like to thank the Free Omar Khadr group for research assistance. 

Follow Heather on Twitter: @GeorgieBC

More about Guantanamo Bay:

It Don't Gitmo Better Than This

Inside a Guantanamo Bay Prison Tour

Mohamed Nasheed addresses his supporters.

Contrary to popular belief and stunning Google image search results, the Maldives isn't an island paradise. The network of nearly 1,200 islands off India's coast is hard to get to, even more difficult to govern, and, as it turns out, nearly impossible to hold an election in without everyone accusing everyone else of corruption.

On September 7, Maldivians went to the polls to vote in the country's second democratic presidential contest, and a runoff election between the top two candidates was planned for September 28. But the country's judges have now postponed the runoff after the third-place finisher, the Jumhooree Party, claimed the results were tainted by widespread voter fraud. Considering that the last president, Mohamed Nasheed, had his term cut short by an alleged coup last year, it's unlikely anyone will be having a parade celebrating democracy in the Maldvies anytime soon.

The country's problems start with Abdul Gayoom, the autocrat who used to run the Maldives and who has been accused of corruption and human rights abuses. He's still politically infulential—he recently got awarded the country's highest honor and is the "Honorary Leader" of one of the major parties. In fact, his younger brother, Abdulla Yameen, finished second in the general election to Nasheed, who was a political prisoner during Gayoom's reign before forming the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) upon his release.

Though the MDP won in 2008, the victory was short-lived, and Nasheed was forced to resign after the police joined a protest against his rule. His supporters maintain that he was ousted in a coup—MDP spokesperson Hamid Abdulla Gafoor told me, “Soldiers and police loyal to the former regime entered the presidential buildings and told him to voluntarily resign or face violence.” Nasheed complied, stating, "It will be better for the country in the current situation if I resign. I don't want to run the country with an iron fist."

The protests and their aftermath show what a tangled web of allegations and counter-allegations Maldivian poltics has become. The anti-Nasheed demonstrations began after he supposedly imprisoned a judge without due legal process. The judge, Abdulla Mohamed, had been part of Gayoom's cabinet; according to Gafoor he had "repeatedly released members of the opposition who had committed various crimes in the previous regime." Nasheed's resignation sparked a new wave of protests, this time from MDP supporters, who were assaulted by police and accused of violence themselves. 

Last September Nasheed was put on trial on charges of abusing his power. Crucially, he was barred by the court from leaving the capital city, Malé, which prevented him from campaigning for the 2013 elections. But after his case stalled in a higher court, Nasheed returned to the presidential race and ended up with 45 percent of the vote, 20 points ahead of Yameen.

MDP supporters campaigning in Malé, the capital of the Maldives.

When I called Gafoor, the MDP spokesman, to discuss the second round of voting, he told me that I was lucky to have gotten through to him. "I'm being prosecuted in two days for alcohol possession and drinking," he told me. "I’ve never been to court before and I’ll have an AK-47 pointed at me."

The majority of the Maldivian population is Muslim and the country's legal system is based on sharia law, meaning alcohol is nominally banned in the country. That said, it's not hard to have a quiet drink among friends without getting caught—unless you're running for election against one of Gayoom's friends, in which case you should be prepared to be caught and defend yourself in a politically-motivated court case.

"A third of MDP politicians have a case against them during the elections—it’s just utterly ridiculous," Gafoor told me, adding that he and his friends had been brutally assaulted by the cops. "I was having a meeting and the police came over to the island. They knew we were there, it was all premeditated," he said. "They put a bag over our heads and pushed us into the sand. They then started to kick us like footballs. Later, they took the bags off and I saw my friend—a man who must be over 60 years old—beaten until he was so bruised and swollen that I thought he was going to die. I’m scared for my life, even now. They took pictures and videos of us with the alcohol and gave it to the media. They wanted to defame us."

Protesters clash with police after Nasheed's resignation in 2012.

The other parties are also tossing accustations around. Yameen's spokesperson Ahmed Maloof told me, "We don't think that the elections were fair, so we'll be taking the issue to the courts," and the Jumhooree Party continues to fight the results in court, producing witnesses who claim they saw evidence of voter fraud. Transparency Maldives, an NGO that was monitoring the election, saw no such funny business, however. Nasheed's supporters worry that the Maldives' judiciary—which is full of Gayoom's old allies—will overturn their candidate's victory, a point of view that is shared by some analysts.

"The courts and judicial system have a longstanding legacy of impunity and corruption," said Abbas Faiz, Amnesty International’s Maldives expert.

Many MDP politicians are also dismayed at the lack of international concern over the Maldives’ democratic transition. Despite David Cameron's calling Nasheed his “new best friend” in 2011, the UK prime minister didn't exactly rush to help when the MDP leader was ousted in 2012. Gafoor told me, “We are alone here, playing a game where we're fighting the referee as well as the opposition."

Whenever it happens, the runoff election will be a major moment in Maldivian history—a chance for democracy to conquer the corrupt power structure that has dominated the Maldives for decades. And despite all that's happened, there seems to be a strong public will for free and fair elections. As a hopeful Gafoor told me, "When the tide has turned, it’s very hard to swim against it."

Follow Philippa on Twitter: @PipBaines13

More elections from around the world:

How I Rigged the Russian Elections

Robert Mugabe Won the Zimbabwe Elections, Again

I Spoke to a Rejected Iranian Presidential Candidate

Westfield Mall in Nairobi. Photo via Getty.

When I left Somaliland (northern Somalia) a few weeks ago, after two months spent listening to the chatter and news in cafes and ministries, I’d come to believe that the Somalia-based violent jihadist group al-Shabaab, while still dangerous, was fundamentally shattered. During my stay I chatted with former Shabaab supporters and even an ex-Shabaab soldier, Qawdhan, whose stories of infighting between older members, who believed in a limited, nationalist agenda, and the younger recruits who advocated international jihad, led me to believe that the organization, though swollen with manpower, had descended into paralyzed bickering, limiting its ability to act.

Today the president of Kenya announced the siege carried out by members of Shabaab on the Westgate Shopping Center in Nairobi was over. Still, the attack, which began on Saturday when armed militants stormed the mall, killing civilians and taking hostages, made it clear my assumptions were incorrect. As of this writing, the body count sits at 67—61 civilians and six soldiers—with almost 200 wounded, at least ten of them officers, and the news remains dominated by images of bodies splayed on the ground and a plume of black smoke rising up from the mall.

Qawdhan was a member of the old Shabaab guard. During his time the group was composed of Somali nationalists pushing for an Islamic state as a means to end foreign interference in the country’s politics. He fled shortly after Moktar Ali Zubeyr (a.k.a. Ahmed Abdi Godane), a member of Qawdhan's Arab clan and Shabaab's current leader, officially affiliated the group with al Qaeda in early 2012, ushering in a new level of chaos and violence between the nationalist and international jihadist camps. By the end of this June, there were signs that the chaos might be tipping in Godane’s favor; Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the group’s longtime spiritual leader and advocate of limited, nationalist goals, fled Shabaab and surrendered to Somali government custody. In another recent boost to his authority, Godane’s forces purged two of his most vocal and visible opponents: Abu Mansoor al-Amriki and Usama al-Britani (the American and the Brit).

It’s hard not to suspect that Godane has just completed a purge of pure nationalists and jihadist dissenters from the ranks of Shabaab and launched this attack on the heels of his power consolidation to demonstrate a new agenda. Yet some reporters and analysts are reading this as a nationalist attack, taking Shabaab statements and Tweets—which claim Saturday’s incident is primarily a retaliation for the 2011 invasion of Shabaab-held southern Somalia by Kenyan troops—at face value.

And perhaps it is, but Shabaab was already retaliating in Kenya through small bombings, mainly on public transportation and in bus stations, from the time of the invasion onward, while it focused the bulk of its terror operations on the UN-backed Somali government in Mogadishu. The situation at Westgate recalls the sophisticated, coordinated tactics of, for instance, the 2008 Mumbai hotel attacks by the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. These tactics appear to be a Godane specialty, given his self-proclaimed role in the coordinated bombings in Kampala, Uganda—the first large-scale international attack by Shabaab—in the summer of 2010. And the targeting of a mall, protection of potential Muslim victims, and duration of the attack are all striking new tactics for Shabaab that suggest long-term, image-conscious policies.

Whether intentionally or not, Godane has placed himself in a good position to remodel Shabaab as a regional arm of al Qaeda rather than just a Somalia-centric affiliate. A network of recruiters bringing Muslim Kenyans into the Shabaab fold already exists—five Kenyans from the largely Muslim coast were arrested Saturday while trying to cross the border to join Shabaab—and Kenya has its own al Qaeda–affiliated organization, al-Hijra, which is a logical partner for Shabaab’s expansion into the region. It’s also farfetched to believe this attack could have been coordinated entirely from the marshes of southern Somalia, meaning it’s likely that local cells or Shabaab collaborators were already active in Kenya.

For Nairobi, the challenge to its security, both governmental and private, may have resounding effects. The city, nicknamed "Nai-robbery," is a place in which I've had the side mirrors stolen off the car I was in, while sitting in traffic, more than once in a single month. But the presence of private security companies, fences, and well-policed areas have created an image of safety and security—a feeling totally undermined by the ease with which one of the fancier establishments in town was taken over by terrorists. Further deflating Nairobi’s sense of self-sufficiency is the participation of Israeli, British, French, and American security experts in the retaking of the mall, which will provide fuel both for Shabaab’s rhetoric and for detractors of Kenya's security agencies. And with a number of foreigners killed in the attack, the large tourism sector will suffer while economic and political actors put Kenya under a new level of scrutiny.

Perhaps, as he claims through proxies and as many analysts seem to accept, Godane’s Shabaab is striking out at Kenya with the sole intention of pushing limited goals in southern Somalia. But if Godane were looking for a way to strike a quick and jagged blow at Kenya—to undermine the state’s security, plant the seed of reactionary violence and discord, and open it as a new front for Shabaab’s expansion into a regional power—he picked a tragically effective target.

Anyone who looks at the attack on Westgate and sees it as an act of desperation may be underestimating the possibility that this group has consolidated its power over a large, more idealistically homogenized and ethnically diverse core of power. By token of that diversity, anyone who believes this Shabaab attack is just a Somali problem is running the risk of both incorrectly singling out Somalis for backlash, and ignoring the fact that Shabaab has far and violently outgrown its original, more localized mission. Similarly, the idea that a withdrawal of Kenyan forces from Somalia will resolve this issue is naively misguided. The fact is, whether he’s thinking strategically or just firing wildly, Godane appears to be changing the nature and calculus of Shabaab—its ideology, composition, and strategy—calling for authorities to brace hard and react fast.

More on Somalia and al-Shabaab:

Al-Qaeda's Somalia Cell Is Fractured and Dangerous

Rapping for Peace in Somalia

Fishing Without Nets with Pirates in Somalia

Anabel Hernandez

On January 19, 2001, the head of Mexico's largest drug cartel escaped from his maximum security prison. According to Mexican investigative journalist Anabel Hernandez, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloas cartel, was escorted through the prison dressed as a government official—accompanied by conspiring government officers—and out to a helicopter that whisked him away to sweet, sweet freedom. The official government report, however, claims that El Chapo escaped in a laundry bin, which—given he's only 5 foot 5 inches and looks like Super Mario—seems plausible, albeit slightly unlikely.

If what Hernandez found while researching Guzmán's escape is true, it's pretty much the pinnacle of the government corruption that she alleges has aided Mexico's drug cartels throughout their long and bloody grip over the country.

Hernandez was looking into El Chapo's escape as part of the research for her new book, Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and their Godfathers, which investigates the Mexican government and business elite's ties to the country's drug cartels. In the book, she claims that ex-president Vicente Fox started the war between Mexico's cartels, and that—since El Chapo's release—the government has continued to conspire with the Sinaloa cartel, allowing the web of corruption that keeps Mexico's cartels thriving to keep on growing.  

We spoke to Anabel earlier this year after another discovery led to the Mexican chief of police allegedly instructing his men to make her disappear by any means necessary. Now that her book has had its English-language release, I thought I'd get in touch again to talk about the discoveries Anabel made while investigating the Mexican government's complicity in their country's drug trade.  

Ex-Mexican president Vicente Fox. (Photo via)

VICE: Hi, Anabel. How would you describe the Mexican government’s war on drugs?
Anabel Hernandez: Ever since the 1960s in Mexico, the war on drugs has been fake—it has never existed. In the 60s, the federal government provided protection to all the cartels, letting them grow and continue their business while they paid money to the government. It wasn’t a bribe, it was like a tax; the Mexican government used that money for government projects. So, in the 80s and 90s, these medium-sized drug cartels and criminal organizations started to grow with money from cocaine. Mexico started to increase the scale of the cocaine that came from Colombia, then the Mexican cartels moved that drug into the USA.

Then what happened?
[The cartels] said, "Well, we don’t want to make an arrangement with the government—we don’t like the government telling us what we can do and what we can't." So, instead, they paid bribes to members of the government and the government started to lose control over the cartels. The cartels started to buy judges and congressmen, started to buy governors, police chiefs, and generals, and started to create their own world, on their terms.

Are there any events you came across in your research that really summarize the level of corruption in Mexico?
In January of 2001, something happened that changed the drug cartel game: the federal government helped El Chapo to get out of jail. So in that moment, the federal government started to protect just one cartel and fight against the others, which is when the war between the cartels started. Before that, Mexico was a relatively peaceful place. So it was [then-president] Vicente Fox who really started the cartel wars. His government wanted to take the Gulf Cartel's territory and let the Sinaloa Cartel keep it.   

Is it fair to say that Fox knew about all of the corruption?
Yes. I can say that because the general prosecutor has all the testimonies. His government had the testimonies that said it was happening. He can’t say it was a surprise because his general prosecutor knew it. His government has a paper that proves it.

Do you think it'll ever be possible to rid the corruption when it’s so embedded within the political system?
Well, what I've learned in this investigation is that corruption in Mexico works from the top to the bottom, not from the bottom to the top. If the government really wants to clean the state, they have to put the top people in jail. We have the chief of police, and you have hundreds of police under him. If he is honest, these police will be honest. If he is corrupt, these police will be corrupt. The sad thing is that everyone [involved] wins with corruption, so no one really wants to clean the state.

The DEA's wanted poster for Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán

Didn't the CIA allegedly help the Mexican cartels rise to power, too?
Nicaragua started to become a communist country at the end of the 70s, so the Reagan government decided they couldn’t let it grow. They had Cuba and they didn't want something else, so they asked Congress to give them money to fund a group of rebels, called the Contras, to fight against the communist Nicaraguan government. [After Congress support for this was removed], the CIA made a deal with drugs lords—the US government opened their doors to let the cocaine inside the country, but the condition was that [the cartels] had to use part of that money to support the Contras. There is something inside my head that asks me, If the US government did it once, how can we be sure that this is not happening now?

When El Chapo escaped prison, what did people believe at the time? The "official" version about him escaping in a laundry cart?
When the president and his wife received the news [of the escape], some guys who work for him said, “Sir, that can’t be possible.” Because this prison was built really well. I mean, it wasn’t a joke—it really was maximum security. This prison has sensors even in the laundry carts—this prison has sensors everywhere—and automatic doors. It wasn’t possible. One guy said to the president, “Sir, I was involved in the construction of that prison and I know that this is not possible—someone is lying to you.” And the president said, “Be quiet.”

And the people of Mexico?
I think that society really believes that El Chapo escaped in a laundry cart. If you ask the Mexican people, of course they believe the official version. Also, many journalists in the world believe and repeat that official version, but that’s because they haven’t had access to the official documents that I have.

Your book describes the luxury that El Chapo enjoyed in prison. Tell me about that.
He received money at prison, so he could bribe the bottom level of staff. Then, eventually, he had the director of Puente Grande [the maximum security prison] in his pocket. In the official file about his escape that I have, I read that the director participated in parties that El Chapo organized inside the prison—Christmas parties that lasted five days. He invited his family in, like a luxury hotel. He asked for food from outside, he could put Christmas decorations all over the prison, he invited groups to perform music, he ordered his cell to be painted a different color. He really was able to do whatever he wanted to in jail.

Wow. And the prostitutes?
He was a sick man—he has a sex addiction. The director let prostitutes into the prison to be with him almost all the time, but when he needed something urgent, he took the jail's female workers. He was able to do whatever he wanted.

Z-40, who led Los Zetas cartel before being captured recently.

Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales—AKA Z-40, the leader of Los Zetas—was captured recently. Will that change anything in the war?
The sad thing is that it doesn’t matter. Los Zetas has a structure where, even if the leader is murdered, it doesn’t matter because there's always someone to take his place. When the Mexican government caught El Chapo and put him in jail, they never confiscated his money. They never do it—their properties, their money—never. So who cares if he’s still in jail if the money is still driving their cartel?

True. Other cartel leaders have "disappeared" or "died," suspected of quitting the drug game and retiring with their fortunes. Do you think El Chapo will do that soon?
Well, I think El Chapo is currently too important for the drugs market. He’s a symbol of establishment—he really controls the business. He’s important for the drug business because he [creates trust] for the people who are involved, for the Colombians who are producing the cocaine. He makes the business stable.

OK.
So I really don’t know what will happen there, but I’m sure nobody really wants to catch him. Neither the Mexican government or the US government want to catch him. His wife’s daughters were born in the USA, and people say he was there in California with them. Who really wants to catch him if he can be where he wants to be?

And what about you? Will you continue reporting on Mexico's drugs war?
I really think it’s necessary. Right now in Mexico, there’s censorship—many journalists and media sources don’t want to say some things. The media receives too much advertising money from the government, but I think there are still many journalists in Mexico—not just me—who want to keep fighting for freedom of speech, because society needs information. If society doesn’t know the truth about what's happening, who will resolve this mess? I really think society has enough power to change all this, but first they have to know what's happening.

Thanks, Anabel. Good luck.

Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and their Godfathers is out now.

Follow Sam on Twitter: @sambobclements

More stories about Mexican cartels:

Murderous Little Boys Are the Future of Mexico's Drug War

The Fugitive Reporter Exposing Mexico's Drug Cartels

Los Zetas Drug Cartel Have Their Own Radio Network

The front page of the website of Bangladesh's Daily Star right now reads "RMG Workers Go Berserk," RMG being local shorthand for the Ready-Made Garment business. This reads funny to a Western ear, but in all likelihood "berserk" isn't a totally inaccurate description of the state of the workers whose protests demanding a raise in the local minimum wage have now shuttered more than 400 factories in and around Dhaka, the capital. The protests are being covered by international media to an extent that had never been true for earlier, similar minimum wage riots—the events of the last several years, including the arrest and murder of labor leaders, the giant fire at the Tazreen Fashions factory in Ashulia, outside Dhaka, and the collapse of the Rana Plaza complex, which killed more than 1,100 workers, have made the poor labor protections, low wages, and dangerous conditions in Bangladeshi garment factories an international story that—unike many of the workers there who suffer as a result of awful labor standards—simply will not die.

As many as 200,000 people seem to be participating in the current strikes, protests, and riots, according to local police officials. They are demanding a minimum wage of 8,000 Bangladeshi Taka, roughly equivalent to $100 per month—a huge increase from the $37 per month minimum wage that currently prevails in the country. Workers have attacked at least one police station—seizing assault rifles— burned cars, and damaged at least ten factories. Western media have essentially reported events as they've appeared on the ground: as a possibly regrettable but reasonable and worker-led rebellion against low wages and abuses.

This is probably only partly true, though. Worker unrest in Bangladesh is only occasionally started by the workers themselves. Reporting in VICE has already shown that earlier minimum wage protests and riots at factories under the umbrella of the Nassa group, a large Bangladeshi supplier to companies like Walmart, were probably instigated and were certainly condoned by the local National Security and Intelligence service. "Men," one activist told me on a trip to Bangladesh earlier this year, "would come into the factories and start smashing the machines, and then the workers said 'oh, it's a rebellion!' But they had no idea what any of it was about!"

Bangladesh has a special history and culture of mob violence, one that politicians, security officials, and industry leaders occasionally use to cover high-level political and economic plays. "You can send two thugs from your political party," one analyst told us, "and say one takes a stick and smashes a car. Then all of a sudden 20 people are doing it. You do it in ten neighborhoods and you have a riot! Then you remove the local police chief because he can't control the area." In the case of the last major minimum wage unrest, the protests and violence were used as cover for the arrest of several prominent labor activists—one of those activists was later murdered, and the charges against the others are still pending.

It's hard to say now who or what instigated the current protests, but it's surprising to hear Western media, at this late date, declining to even speculate. Bangladeshis seem to have no doubt at all that there's a high-level game behind the latest unrest. The understanding for the moment seems to be a truly bizarre (to an outsider) machination by Shajahan Khan, the government's Shipping Minister, a blustery mustachioed pol accused of playing a violent game to build support in upcoming elections. Shajahan has described getting involved in worker grievances, which he said he had to do because the Labor Minister, whose brief actually includes worker grievances, was out of the country. Then it turned out that the labor minister had only been out of the country since yesterday, and even then he was in Kolkata, which would make it like saying that someone had to take over as Secretary of State because John Kerry was in Winnipeg.

Some labor leaders—themselves of dubious credibility—accuse Shajahan of organizing a rally that sparked the riots, timed in advance of a meeting between the board of trade executives, government officials, and labor activists that sets the minimum wage to decide on an increase. “There was no need to hold a rally while an independent wage board was working to set the workers’ salary. The rally was called on the minister’s advice,” one labor leader told the Daily Star. It will take some time to sort out. It always does, when you're dealing with the Bangladeshi RMG business. The protests look organic. It's hard to believe this is the case—it seems unlikely that grassroots activists or authentic labor leaders would have thought it was possible the minimum wage board would raise payments all the way to 8,000 Taka. It would be fair if wages climbed that high, but we're a long way from fair in the global economy, and even sympathetic observers would have to wonder if the Bangladeshi economy would face a pullout of RMG buyers and eventual total collapse if wages jumped so far so fast. But maybe they will, at that. This business has remained such a huge story for such a long time by almost never making sense.

More on disgruntled workers:

Disasters Made in Bangladesh

I Punched My Boss in the Face

Fast Food Workers Fight for $15 an Hour

All photos by Lens Young Homsi

In the summer of 2012, an image of a cat, apparently wounded by shrapnel, dragging its hind legs, went viral. Hundreds of people commented on the picture in blogs and on Facebook, saddened, outraged, demanding that something be done to help the creature. Days later, the messages were still coming. The photographers—a group of young people in Syria—managed to locate the cat again and have it treated in a field hospital, publishing a photo as proof. Later they posted another photo of an FSA rebel with a gun in one hand, petting the now-healed cat.

Recently, I went to a downtown Cairo café to meet two young people, Ahmed, 19, and Salma, 28, who are responsible for the photo of the wounded feline. “We don’t have medicine for people but we went and helped a cat,” Salma told me, rolling her eyes. The pair are one half of a four-person team operating a Facebook page, 100,000 followers strong, called Lens Young Homsi, dedicated to documenting—in addition to their cat-photo work—the destruction of the Syrian city of Homs, which has been under siege by regime forces for more than 500 days.

While the international press's full attention only turned to Syria recently, the volume of citizen-recorded media pouring from country is staggering. From the earliest moments of the uprising against Bashar Assad’s regime, huge numbers of Syrians used camera phones to document protests. They documented the security forces opening fire on protesters. They filmed "martyrs" funerals. With the Assad regime now waging all out war on parts of the country, and the opposition shattered into a galaxy of warring factions, citizen-journalists may be the only people who are cataloging the destruction of entire cities.

I recall one day last September watching a YouTube video of three Syrian men digging a tiny child's grave. I was Viewer Number One—the sole audience. "You see," the dead child's father says to the camera, "what is happening to us?"

Ahmed, of Young Lens Homsi, is a quiet student with a scruffy beard. He left Homs a year ago to accompany a relative who needed treatment in Egypt for a gunshot wound. He was unable to return to Homs due to the siege.

Salma is 28, a photographer and filmmaker. Born to Kurdish communist parents in Syria’s north, she was arrested twice during the uprising, once in July 2011 for joining an artists’ and intellectuals’ march against the regime in Damascus.

In December 2011 she was detained at the airport en route to a film festival in Dubai. She fled the country in December 2012. (Because of safety concerns, "Salma" is a pseudonym.)

Salma sits with straight posture, smoking throughout the interview. The two are friendly, joking, but both have a sadness about them. Egypt’s new military regime introduced harsh new visa rules for Syrians. Due to the restrictions and the wave of xenophobia gripping Egypt, both are planning to leave Egypt soon.

The group also includes two photographers, Diaa and Basel, who still live in Homs and roam the city each day. Ahmed and Salma administer the page and handle media and communications with the outside.

Lens Young Homsi began with ordinary people using camera phones documenting early protests against the Assad regime in March 2011. People across Syria spontaneously did the same. Some were haunted by the memory of 1982, when Assad’s father Hafez Assad crushed an uprising in the city of Hama, killing some 20,000 people. The catastrophe was poorly documented, remembered instead through oral history passed from person to person.

“There’s a terror we have as Syrians, because we live under Assad and because we knew what happened in 1982 in Hama,” the Syrian American writer Amal Hanano, told the website Syria Deeply. “When the violence started in 2011, people knew that if they didn’t film it themselves, then nobody would believe what was happening.”

The fact that Syrians are documenting the disintegration of their country is a natural result of a technological shift that places a camera in the hands of almost anyone with enough money to buy a cheap mobile phone. It's a new chapter in the history of the documentation of war—Bosnians and Rwandans did not have YouTube.

Homs has been gutted by more than two years of war. The photos produced by the group these days are melancholy tableaus from a crippled city: deserted streets, children playing among leveled buildings, a spent artillery shell repurposed as a flower vase containing a single rose. The group’s mission is half documentary (Which areas of the city are still standing? Which are destroyed?) and half artistic. “People don't give a shit about politics,” Salma says. “So maybe through art you can do something."

As the regime’s attacks on Homs went through several periods of escalation and more residents left the city, the group began receiving more and more requests from exiled Homsis. People wanted to know if their houses, schools, and businesses were still standing. “We always have to reply to these people, and also to discuss with the team if this area is dangerous,” Salma says. “Sometimes you take the risk, but sometimes it’s too dangerous. You can’t lose a photographer to take a photo for someone who is living in Washington.”

The results of these excursions has ranged from the perilous to the poignant. “Sometimes you take a photo from far away and say, ‘Here, there’s a sniper so we couldn’t go in,” Salma says. Other times they’d find the Free Syrian Army operating in the house. Sometimes all that remained of the houses were piles of rubble. On the floor of one bombed-out house the photographers found a couple’s framed wedding photo. In a musician’s house, they found an FSA fighter sitting in a corner, strumming a left-behind guitar.

But for every touching moment Diaa and Basel captured, they documented a dozen tragic ones. In January the group posted a photo of a brother and sister standing in a sunlit alleyway in a besieged section of Homs. In the image, the boy, Yaseen, is sitting on a red bicycle. The girl, Maryam, is holding a cat. Half an hour later, the photographers reported the two were killed by a mortar shell fired by government forces.

More about the Syrian civil war:

Ground Zero - Syria

How Jihadists Are Blackmailing, Torturing, and Killing Gay Syrians

Strolling the Champs-Élysées with 120,000 Syrian Refugees

Last night we were invited to the W New York to experience Casino Diabolique—the hotel's latest collaboration with world renown artist Desi Santiago who's also worked with Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton, and Alexander McQueen. In the W's case, Desi has transformed several spaces within the W to create an interactive multi-sensory casino experience that manipulates light, sound, scent, and performance.

We usually try and steer clear of PR circlejerks, but Casino Diabolique's clever narrative kept us entertained long enough to run through a couple bottles of Veuve Cliquot. The dim lighting was reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless cover art, the dealers resembled something out of Twin Peaks, and the wardrobe was curated by Hood By Air. So much so that we sat and waited for a midget to appear through the red velvet curtains and tell us that our favorite gum was back in style.

Desi Santiago

Instead of spoiling the entire narrative for you, enjoy the pictures above and read what the W's General Manager had to say about it:

Casino Diabolique
November 15 - 17 
at The W New York
541 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Casino Diabolique is free and open to the public. To check availabilty and RSVP go here.

To stay up to date with the latest news on the installation follow The W on Twitter.

If you can’t wait for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is slated for release in March of next year, then you can satiate your senses with his newest short film Castello Cavalcanti. Starring Anderson’s long time collaborator Jason Schwartzman, the film tells the tale of an American-born Formula race driver Jed Cavalcanti and his failings in the 1955 Italian Molte Miglia rally. Per the jacket, car, and other subtle hints, the short was sponsored by Italian fashion house Prada. Despite the sponsor, the film is a Wes Anderson production from the centered framing and vibrant colors to the caricature acting and quick-witted dialogue.

Jason Schwartzman is bringing up the rear of the race when an improperly attached steering wheel and a slow leak in his back left tire cause his to crash into Christ. The totaled car doesn’t slow him down, and he speaks at a million kilometers an hour until he discovers the village he smashed into isn’t random—it's the home of his ancestors. In typical Wes Anderson fashion, his main male characters act like children and the women act like women. The men are fools and the women are wise. With a shot of hooch and a bowl of spaghetti, he settles in for a bit of history.

Darius Khondji, who also shot Anderson’s other Prada commercial, Candy, starring the unbearably beautiful Léa Seydoux, shot Castello Cavalcanti. The cinematography works wonderfully, functioning as another character in the film, full of hesitations and interests all its own. These fashion houses using the styles of auteur filmmakers to promote their own brands is nothing new and will undoubtedly blossom bigger in the future—Proenza Schouler funded two shorts by Harmony Korine over the last few years with Act da Fool and Snowballs. Anyways, check out the short below and let me know how branded you think this badboy is or if it’s another worthy addition to Wes’s canon.

Castello Cavalcanti will premiere this weekend at the Rome Film Festival. It appears to be tied into the release of Wes Anderson’s newest feature The Grand Budapest Hotel—similar to his other Schwartzman-starring short, Hotel Chevalier, which preceded The Darjeeling Limited.

Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as an art and film curator. He is a programmer at the Hamptons International Film Festival and screens for the Tribeca Film Festival. He also self-publishes a super fancy mixed-media art serial called PRISM index.

@PRISMindex

Previously – 'Dumbass from Dundas'

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is a tumor on America, a sack of poison with the reptilian instincts of the worst ad salesman you've ever met. Fuck him. Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

It’s obvious America’s prison system has got a lot of problems—from the horrific number of people behind bars to the folks who are serving life without parole for nonviolent crimes to the sick way corporate suits profit off human misery. Those are systemic issues that get debated all over the place, but we could make incarceration more humane for a lot of folks if we just got rid of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

You probably know who Sheriff Joe is already—he’s been the most “controversial” figure in American law enforcement for two decades, which is a nice way to say he’s a vicious, small-minded cocksucker who loves publicity, being arbitrarily cruel to the inmates in his charge, and racial profiling. A list of bullshit he’s perpetrated can be found here, if you’re curious (“highlights” include unconstitutional conditions in the county jails and the time a SWAT team set the house of an innocent man on fire), but it’s important to note that this 81-year-old sideshow wields a lot of power: he’s served six straight terms as the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, which is the fourth most populous county in the US and bigger than 23 states. He’s wielded this authority most recently by pressing charges against a Canadian teen who left some jokey threats on his website, and by putting inmates in county jail on a bread-and-water diet for being “unpatriotic,” a.k.a. he put American flag stickers in 8,500 cells, and punished anyone who defaced them.

Sheriff Joe has publicly said his jails are meant to punish their inhabitants, who he considers criminals. This is fucking INSANE when you realize these inmates are mostly being held before their trials and are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. Not that Sheriff Joe gives a shit about their legal status or the constitution; in his infamous “Tent City” jail inmates freeze in the winter, roast in the summer, and only get served two meals a day of substandard jail slop. There’s no doubt in my mind that that’s torture. In the jails I’ve spent time in, even three meals a day is not even close to being a decent diet.

Meanwhile, the percentage of Hispanic inmates has steadily been on the rise during Sheriff Joe’s reign, likely due to the massive amounts of racial profiling his deputies have been doing.

How does this fat waste of carbon stay in power? Mostly because the elderly voters who live around Phoenix love him; he’s one of their own, a conservative borderline racist who will work tirelessly to save them from the brown people. Thirty percent of Maricopa County residents are Hispanic, but unbelievably they haven’t been unable to unseat him, maybe because of alleged shady efforts to disenfranchise the Latino vote.

I can just imagine retired guys sitting in their air-conditioned homes—with plastic covers on their couches and shit—reading the newspaper, Veteran’s Day still fresh in their minds, and seeing Sheriff Joe on the front page again. “You hear what Arpaio did now, honey? He’s punishing the un-American criminals! He’s making ‘em listen to “God Bless America” and the national anthem every dang day and makin’ ‘em sing along to it! That’ll show ‘em!”

Making inmates sing is such petty BS, but petty BS is pretty much the prison experience. It’s not unusual for jails to have flags all over the place or to play the national anthem over the loudspeaker. At least in New York State, one of the tickets that correctional officers like to dole out is the “destruction of state property” violation, which can be used to punish inmates for things as inane as tearing up socks to use as blindfolds to help them sleep at night. This sort of behavior is not something new from the pork-chop patrol, this is just Sheriff Joe acting up on Veteran’s Day and reminding the public that he’s all that stands between them and a bunch of anti-Americans from south of the border, and hard-working Americans’ tax dollars will not go toward nourishing these men and women. Thanks, Joe... You’re really making a difference.

By the way, I’m sure some inmates prefer bread and water to the new all-vegetarian diet he recently implemented. "Vegetarian" in this context means either rice, instant mashed potato flakes, or pasta with slop on top of it. This highly unbonerable slop is called “textured soy protein” (TVP for short), and it’s worse than grade FF meat. On top of everything, Sheriff Joe is charging inmates a dollar a day for their own meals. He blames budget problems, but you know what a real cost-cutting measure would be? Not locking up these cats in the first place.

To me it’s pretty clear that Sheriff Joe is an evil man, but he’s not completely insane—he knows what his constituents want, and he gives it to them. Fortunately, I think his style of law enforcement will disappear with him. Things like pinstripes and pink underwear, the chain gang, and other bogus tough-on-crime tactics are cruel but they’re also unfashionable. The US is locking up fewer people than it once was, there’s a backlash against “three strikes” laws at last, and there are more and more stories about how fucked up the system is. Sheriff Joe is gonna make a few more headlines before he dies or loses an election, and it’ll be around that time a lot of his supporters will kick the bucket too. Thank Big Baby Jesus...

Bert Burykill is the pseudonym of our prison correspondent, who has spent time in a number of prisons in New York State. He tweets here.

Previously: Screwed by Antigun Laws