The Athens Polytechnic school

Every November 17, Greece gathers to pay tribute to those who lost their lives in the 1973 student uprising against the country's military dictatorship. The commemoration includes opening the Athens Polytechnic school—where the uprising began—for three days, allowing the public to lay flowers in remembrance of the 20 people who lost their lives, and ends with a demonstration each year.  

Last Saturday night, some 20,000 people marched from the Polytechnic to the city's US embassy to both commemorate the students' battle against the CIA-backed junta of the 70s and to link it to today's struggles against austerity and state oppression.    

This year's tributes included a solidarity march by Athens' immigrant community, attended by the brothers of Shehzad Luqman, a 27-year-old Pakistani migrant who was stabbed to death by Golden Dawn supporters last winter. And, for the first time, the LGBT community marched publicly alongside those groups whose members attend the protest every year: civilians exiled and tortured by the military junta, leftist, communist and anarchist groups and a whole raft of student associations.

Also demonstrating were the ex-employees of Greece's former public broadcaster, ERT, who were evicted from their former workplace and company headquarters last week after squatting there for five months. During their occupation, the ERT workers had continued broadcasting radio and TV shows via the internet and a satellite channel provided by the European Broadcasting Association (EBU). This year, they brought their radio transmitters inside the Polytechnic to relay shows from within the school.

Nikos Tsimpidas broadcasting on ERT from inside the Athens Polytechnic

During the march, supporters of the left-wing opposition party SYRIZA chanted, "In all of Europe, in every square, the people are struggling for the restoration of democracy." I watched on with Nikos Tsimpidas, the final journalist to be escorted out of the ERT building by riot police last week.

"More than 1.5 million people listened to our program from [inside] the polytechnic school [this weekend]," Nikos told me as we approached the demo. I mentioned that the broadcast had parallels with the temporary radio station set up by polytechnic students on the November 17, 1973. That night, an army tank knocked down the school's gates and armed policemen swarmed the institution.

An ERT sign near the polytechnic gates that reads: "ERT open. Shut down the government."

"There is certainly an analogy there," Nikos said, "but to us the most important thing was that we had our chance to actually participate in the celebration and host good conversations on the radio. Being representatives of the official public broadcaster over the previous years, we were obliged to cover events in a neutral and distant manner."

A couple of hours earlier, Nikos and I had left the ERT's makeshift studio inside the polytechnic with two Turks, who were protesting against the imprisonment of political activists in their country. They had given an interview about Bulut Yayla—the activist who was kidnapped in Athens' Exarcheia neighborhood and handed over to the Turkish authorities for detention—and the present condition of human rights in Turkey.

The makeshift ERT studio inside the Athens Polytechnic

Inside, Aris, a 55-year-old soundman who'd set up the studio, had told me about the preparations. "Students and professors were enthused to have us inside," he said, "but the dean of the school and the governing council were hesitant, due to a strict police threat not to host us—unless they wanted to risk a police operation inside the institution."

However, the event's organizing committee, encouraged by the students' enthusiasm, decided to defy police orders and give ERT the space they needed to get on air. "We're like a moving theater now," said Aris. "We show up here and there, but we're not giving up."

Following their eviction from the former ERT headquarters, the ex-employees have started to transmit whenever and from wherever they can. Last Friday, they organized live TV coverage of a concert inside the polytechnic; on Sunday, they transmitted a two-hour radio show from a city in Crete; every night they broadcast a TV show from the city of Salonica. And the general consensus seems to be that those still involved will continue to organize broadcasts like these as often as possible.   

Police dragging protesters to the ground in Athens

Despite police threats against the institution and heavy state surveillance—more than 6,000 riot police were deployed and authorities monitored proceedings by helicopter, making the whole atmosphere very tense—the demo ended peacefully for most people.

However, as is often the case with protests in Athens, things didn't stay peaceful for long. I returned to Exarcheia later on Saturday night to discover that police on motorcycles had invaded the demo, broken the windows of a coffee shop, dragged people outside for no apparent reason, and sent at least three civilians to hospital with their heads cracked open. The police claim that a minor incident had occurred after a group of protesters began throwing stones at them, but most of the people I spoke with were adamant the police had started the trouble. "They dragged people who were just having coffee, and when I started taking notes of the names of the detained, they threw me down and took my notepad," said one woman.

The legal team representing the demo also accused the police of unjustified violence against young Athenians. "A 23-year-old student was beaten up and taken to police headquarters, where his money was stolen, only to end up in hospital for absolutely no reason," said one of the team's lawyers. "His only crime was that he was in Exarcheia at the time."

According to an official police press release, 230 people were taken to police departments as part of preventive control methods, and 19 were arrested for minor offences.

While the future of the ERT is precarious, it's clear that it and other independent Greek media sources are needed now more than ever. The Greek government recently set up a new state broadcaster, and it's unlikely that they're going to watch the state and the police with much scrutiny.

Follow Matthaios on Twitter: @tsimitakis

More on the ERT:

After Five Months of Occupation, Greek Riot Police Finally Shut Down the ERT

The Greek Government Tried and Failed to Close Their BBC

The Lebanese army at the site of the bombed Iranian Embassy. Photos by Sam Tarling

Yesterday, at around 9.30AM, two suicide bombers attacked the Iranian Embassy in Beirut. The building is in Bir Hassan, a Hezbollah-controlled suburb in the south of Lebanon's capital. The location is no coincidence under the circumstances; Iran is a major supporter of Shi'a political and paramilitary organization Hezbollah, as well as embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. At least 25 people were killed in the blast—including the Iranian cultural attaché, Ebrahim Ansari. About 145 more were injured. 

Within hours of the bombing, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades—a Lebanon-based jihadist group with links to al-Qaeda—claimed responsibility for the attacks over Twitter. Sheikh Sirajeddine Zuraiqat, the group’s religious guide, described the twin bombings as a "double martyrdom operation carried out by two heroes from the heroic Sunnis of Lebanon." The attack marked the third time this year that areas in Beirut’s Bir Hassan suburb have been targeted, with previous attacks on July 9 and August 15 killing a total of 27 people.

Lebanese politicians were quick to present a united front in condemnation of the attack. Caretaker Prime Minster Najib Miqati described the twin blasts as a "cowardly terrorist" attack, suggesting that foreign agents were using Lebanon as a "mailbox" for their own agendas, while opposition leader Saad Hariri stated that "the blasts should become a new impetus to steer Lebanon clear of the fires in the region". Iran, as it does with everything from political instability to natural disasters, pointed the finger at Israel.

Making my way toward the scene of the blast, Lebanese army tanks flanked the road ahead of me and ambulance sirens pierced through the noise. Meanwhile, plain-clothed Hezbollah operatives, many holding AK-47s, and representatives of the Shi'a political party Amal looked busy as they barked into walkie-talkies and checked the IDs of anyone passing by, including children on their way to school. 

The blast site itself was heavily cordoned off by army tanks, making it difficult to see the extent of the damage. Many on the scene appeared to be in shock, struggling to come to terms with the attack. "I was just arriving to work down the road in Ouzai," said Khodr Ali, owner of a mobile phone shop close to the embassy. "I immediately got back in the car and drove here. My entire family lives in this area. I have spoken to my family—they are all fine, but I can’t get hold of my aunt." 

Ali continued, visibly concerned, "There are foreign powers backing these terrorist attacks and bringing them to Lebanon," he said, before being cut short by his cell phone, taking the call as he stepped across the shattered glass of windows blown out from buildings next to the embassy.

Nabil Houwary, a 27-year-old worker in the local municipality, was at home at the time of the bombings. After hearing the explosions, he rushed to the scene. Houwary was quick to link the attacks with Syria’s ongoing civil war, "Of course these attacks are a result of what is happening in Syria," he said. "But, in particular, they are linked to current events in Qalamoun."

Syrian government forces backed by Hezbollah are currently fighting the Syrian opposition in Qalamoun, a Syrian town bordering Lebanon's eastern mountains that has recently become an Islamist stronghold. In the last week, over 10,000 Syrian refugees have fled the town to Lebanon, and Lebanese media has reported a rising death toll among Hezbollah operatives fighting in the area.

Despite linking the Iran-backed Hezbollah’s presence with the twin bombings, Houwary stood by the Shi'a party’s presence in Syria. "Everybody has their own work," he said, somewhat cryptically, before clarifying his position. "There is no state here in Lebanon. Hezbollah protect the Lebanese people."

Windows smashed by the blasts.

Just before noon, a number of cordons set up around the blast site were dismantled as several army vehicles left the scene. They were soon replaced by a greater Hezbollah presence, evident in the influx of men wearing yellow bands sporting the party's logo around their biceps. Civilians at the scene began to seem more apprehensive about talking to me, and after a few minutes one of the guys wearing an armband beckoned me over.

"What are you doing here?" asked the armband-wearer, a guy named Ali who looked no older than 21. I explained that I was a journalist reporting on developments, and he asked for my press card. I reached into my pocket and found nothing: I’d left my press card at home. Ali then led me to his superior—a man in aviators with a greying, manicured beard—who promptly escorted me to a black, plateless 4x4. A couple of members of the Lebanese army tried to interject, but were ignored. It was clear who was in charge.

Once in the 4x4, Ali, who was now beside me, pulled my cap from my head and held it over my eyes. We passed a checkpoint operated by the Lebanese army, but Hezbollah once again asserted their dominance and drove straight through. The car made a few more turns before I was taken from the vehicle and had my shirt pulled up over my head to ensure that I really couldn’t see where we were. Ali led me over to a plastic chair facing the corner of an airy room that I assumed was some sort of garage. He then whispered in my ear. "Ma bitkhayf." [Don’t be scared.]

Of course, there's nothing that reassuring about a stranger whispering in your ear while you're hooded, have no idea where you are, and can't see anything bar the vague outline of a man walking toward you with an assault rifle.

After 45 minutes of sitting around with my shirt over my face, Ali returned, explaining that my press credentials had been verified. He removed the makeshift hood and told me I could leave. As I walked away from what I could now see was a large, barren, concrete-floored marquee, I noticed seven others lined up against the wall, 50 feet from where I’d been sitting. From the way they were dressed they looked more Syrian than Western. I couldn’t help but think they were due a rougher time than me.

Debris from the twin bombs.

"Allah ma’ak,” [God be with you] said Ali as I left the facility. Near the entrance, some locals gave me a few strange looks before easing up and offering me directions to the best place to catch a cab back to downtown Beirut. Jumping in the cab, I felt more of an idiot than a victim, especially taking into consideration the morning’s events outside the Iranian Embassy.

"Ten thousand lira," said the driver, quoting a price five-times the average. I told him that I’d pay the usual fare. "After what happened today, there will be no work, no tourism," said the driver wryly. "This is not the end of it," he continued, accepting my fare.

Since the outbreak of Syria's civil war, this kind of thing has become a fairly common taxi conversation. While Lebanese politicians universally condemned today’s attacks, the dividing lines over the Syrian conflict were drawn long ago, both among those holding the reins of power and their supporters.

Days before the strikes, Hezbollah were nervously overseeing Ashura—the Shi'a commemoration of the third Shi'a Imam, who was martyred in the year 680—hoping that nobody took retributive action for their ongoing military activity across the border in Syria. Or, for that matter, the collusion of members of Tripoli’s Alawite community in twin car bombings in Lebanon’s majority Sunni second city in late August. Ashura passed by peacefully, but the strike came five days later.

Only the most optimistic would believe yesterday's attack to be the last violence Lebanon will suffer for its involvement in Syria. And with the Syrian conflict gradually edging its way further into the country, optimism is already increasingly thin on the ground.  

Skip to the one-minute mark into the video to watch footage of the blast.

@scotinbeirut

More news from Lebanon:

"Tripoli is Crying": Lebanon's Second City Is on the Brink of Battle

Twin Blasts in Lebanon Signal Intensifying Unrest

Hezbollah Stronghold in Beirut Bombed

Image via

It was during the first few weeks of my relationship with my boyfriend that I stumbled on to his porn. I was hanging out in his apartment for a few hours while he ran some errands. Bored, I decided to fire up his videogame system and kill some zombies. When I turned on the console, I discovered that he had been using the gaming system as a web browser and his previous searches were super specific and super peculiar. He was looking up stuff like "lesbian labia stretchers" and "Asian ass-to-mouth." I felt betrayed. With all the wanking he was doing with his virtual mistresses, I wondered how he even had time for me.

I mean, I put out like a high school girl on Degrassi. Did he really need to rely on internet porn that often to get off? When I confronted him about his secret Lubetube sessions, he opened up to me, sharing all of his porn fetishes. Although, I usually love honesty, the whole conversation kind of weirded me out and left me feeling a little pissed off. Realizing I needed to come to terms with my boyfriend’s porn promiscuity, I reached out to expert Allison Vivas. Allison is the president of Pink Visual, an adult entertainment studio, and the author of Making Peace with Porn, a book released last month that helps women understand the normalcy of viewing porn. Here's what she had to say about your man binge-watching porno like it's Breaking Bad and he's trying to catch up for the series finale. 

Allison Vivas.

VICE: What inspired you to write a book to help women understand porn?
Allison Vivas: A lot of the book is about my own personal experience. I definitely wasn’t pro-porn when I started working at the company. In fact, I had my own personal issues with it, but I learned there aren’t many guys out there who aren’t looking at it. After I saw the numbers and the data coming in, a lot of the misconceptions that I had about the porn industry and taking advantage of women, has subsided through my experience in the industry. More so, I got insight on why men are looking at porn. A lot of women like to think that they look at porn because they want their wife or girlfriend to have bleach blonde hair and big boobs and do all of these things in the videos. You have to realize too, that’s not why men look at porn. It is just entertainment.

So women should just think of it as watching a drama or something?
When it comes to all other forms of entertainment, people are able to distinguish between reality and fantasy. But all of a sudden, when it comes to porn, we have these fears that it’s really going to play into reality. I think there are a lot of women, especially in my generation, who didn’t grow up with the internet. All of these statistics about porn viewing give us the perception that our perfect man doesn’t look at porn, but that is not the reality.

Should I try watching porn with my boyfriend?
I have a chapter that I preface “feel free to skip if you don’t want to watch porn.” I think that the majority of porn is made for men. If couples are going to watch that type of porn, females aren’t going to enjoy it. Just like any other type of movie, you don’t want to sit through one that you aren’t going to enjoy. Save what they like to watch for their alone time. 

What are other ways women can make peace with porn?
The first part is women being honest with themselves. One of the studies that I ran into was about women and their fantasies. It said something like 80 percent of women have sexual fantasies compared to 99 percent of men. What distinguished between the two was that, the majority of women are actually fantasizing about a man they already know. Whereas for men, they are fantasizing about a faceless woman, someone that doesn’t exist or they don’t have access to. I think if the roles were reversed and women found out that our man was fantasizing about the woman two doors down, we would be livid.

What do you think has caused women to feel so uncomfortable about porn?
The porn industry itself. It’s not necessarily an industry that treated women well in the beginning. There are a lot of instances where women were coerced into participating. It was a male dominated industry. Now it is a lot different. The performers have a lot more power. No matter how socially acceptable porn might become, sex itself is still an intimate and private experience. A lot of people aren’t willing to vocalize that they like porn.

What if my man is looking at a very specific type of porn, like fisting, and it’s not something I would do?
It’s always good to have an open conversation about what you like. It shouldn’t be a one way of what the guy likes. It should be more of a compromise. You might be willing to wear stocking and boots, but not pull out the whip. It’s also important not to judge people on their fantasies. There are a lot of things that go into why people have fetishes, as long as it’s harmless, there is no reason to judge. Sex in the bedroom is a team effort. I don’t think just saying I am going to do whatever they are watching has to be done.

So I shouldn’t be looking at my boyfriend’s internet history?
No. I think it would just be better to have a conversation. It would save so much time if you just say what you are into. The other part is that 99 percent of men are going to choose sex if they have the choice between having sex or watching porn.

How do you hope your book will affect the women who read it?
I am hoping it will make women more confident and less self-conscious, not even just with porn. If you look at these porn stars, they are not perfect. The models that we are looking at in our fashion magazines are more perfect and unachievable than these porn stars. They might get dolled up a little bit, but sometimes an average woman getting dolled up can look just as good. We as woman judge each other, so we judge porn stars. If we are confident with ourselves, we won’t have a problem with our guy watching porn.

How do you think conversations about porn will change in the future?
It will be interesting to see the younger generation and if they are having these sexual conversations prior to commitments like marriage or engagement. Like what are their sexual fetishes, getting all of that out a head of time. Seeing if they are compatible ahead of time. I don’t think we are there yet, but it would make for healthier marriages if that conversation does happen. It is just one part of the relationship. 

More porn:

I Went to Porn School and It Was a Disaster 

Testing Seattle's Porn-Friendly Public Libraries 

Leg Warmer Porn Is Gross 

On Friday, the San Francisco Police Department took a brief respite from writing parking tickets and evicting minorities to facilitate a citywide act of goodwill; letting a little kid with cancer pretend to be the Batman. This pos-vibes fiesta lasted only a few hours before ending with the unexplained SFPD beating of 20-year-old D'Paris “DJ” Williams as he was biking home after the day’s festivities to his apartment in Valencia Gardens, in the city's Mission District.

The Gardens is a low-income housing project that was once a hotbed for gang violence until about eight years ago. Since major renovations and evictions in 2006, the neighborhood has become quiet, clean, and clearly safer than other areas in the Mission like the 16th St. BART station. These days, police cars often idle at the corner of Rosa Parks Lane inside the complex. The biggest problem in the Gardens is no longer its residents. The continued police presence and intimidation has become, at best, a nuisance, especially in light of this most recent assault. Photographer Travis Jensen, a friend of D’Paris, posted his account of the altercation on Instagram:

“Yesterday afternoon, while riding his bicycle home from the Make A Wish Foundation's "Bat Kid" happenings, DJ was confronted by two undercover police officers in an unmarked vehicle at the Valencia Gardens Apartments in the City's Mission District. Apparently, the officers said something to DJ about riding his bicycle on the sidewalk as he was pulling up to his home in the complex. It is unclear whether the officers identified themselves or not, but did proceed to get out of their car, grab DJ from behind as he was entering the home and beat him for no apparent reason. A police search uncovered a cupcake and juice that DJ had just purchased from the corner store. Nobody has spoken to DJ since the incident occurred as he was immediately taken to SF General Hospital for treatment, and then to the 850 Bryant police station. So far, it appears no charges have been made against DJ either. There is building video surveillance footage of DJ's confrontation w/ police, but it that has yet to be released by housing authority. Furthermore, three residents came to DJ's aid when they saw officers beating him up, only to find themselves also under attack by officers. By this time, uniformed backup had arrived on the scene. Including DJ, a total of four individuals were beaten and arrested by officers.”

After preventing DJ from enjoying his cupcake and juice in the comfort of his living room after a day of comity, police took the 20-year-old to the hospital, while news of the altercation spread through the projects. In the video below, you can see a beaten D’Paris struggling to walk, yelling “What the fuuuck?” and being taken into custody. As residents stepped outside in curiosity and protest, police cars began swarming the Gardens, ostensibly to prevent a riot.

Another video shows cops moving quickly to quell the crowd. One of the plainclothes cops boldly swings at a bearded man, Orlando Williams, before uniformed police take him down. The same bearded man is shown bloodied later on.

Once the dust had cleared, four individuals were placed under arrest, including a man with HIV whose cane was classified as a “deadly weapon," a semi-conscious D’Paris, and bloody, bearded Orlando, who told reporters from Uptown Almanac that D’Paris spent the weekend in the infirmary, looking like "he was in a bad car accident." By Monday, three of the men had been released, and D’Paris was charged with one felony for assault, three felonies for resisting, and one misdemeanor for the bicycle infraction that started off the whole thing. His bail was set at $143,000, and the SFPD released the following statement:

“At approximately 3:41 PM Friday, officers from the Violence Reduction Team, working a plainclothes assignment attempted to stop a bicyclist in the area of Maxell and Rosa Parks for a California vehicle code infraction. The suspect fled from the officers after they identified themselves as police. The suspect attempted to flee into a residence. The officers confronted the suspect near the doorway and requested additional units for assistance. The suspect failed to comply with lawful orders from the officers and continued to resist the officers. Reasonable force was used by the officers to effect the arrest. During this incident, multiple subjects came from the rear of the residence and formed a hostile crowd around the officers. One subject attempted to strike an officer with a cane, while another suspect bit an officer. Two officers suffered non-life threatening injuries. In total, four suspects were arrested. Two felony and one misdemeanor arrests resulted in bookings. One misdemeanor arrest resulted in a cite.”

It’s great to know that we have so little violent crime in this city that the Violence Reduction Team, which is officially defined as a “citywide team of officers that respond to violent crime and high priority calls in an attempt to reduce violent crimes," has nothing better to do than hang around Valencia Gardens in plainclothes, citing bicyclists outside their own homes on what is effectively a residential street. Despite the charges being dropped by Monday night, a protest was announced for Tuesday evening at the Mission Police Department.

The protest began in the middle of Valencia Gardens. I live closeby and I could hear it through my bedroom window. “What do we want?” a woman shouted into a megaphone, “JUSTICE!” answered the crowd. “When do we want it?” “NOW!” The sun had almost set and it had started to rain as at least a hundred protesters holding signs and banners began to make their way down Valencia St. Up ahead, officers surrounded the police station and blocked off the street. I asked one cop standing near the door what they were expecting, but got no reply. Protesters began lining the street and surrounding the front of the police station, the woman on the megaphone insisting that it was a peaceful protest, “And if one of you hurts my kids, you’re getting the smackdown!” she warned, before starting to chant, “Stop police brutality!” A group of protesters identified themselves as D’Paris’s teachers, and I spoke to one who gave his name as Math Maddox—as in “mathematics"—who’d come out all the way from Bayview.

VICE: We’re out here protesting, but what actually has to happen to stop police brutality in San Francisco?
Math: At this point I feel like it’s us against them, police against the brown and black community, so whether it’s sensitivity training, or if it’s going to be some type of mediation, or some type of way to resolve police fears.

What do you mean by "police fear" Is that exclusive to the SFPD?
Police fears is what keeps this going, fear that things are going to be escalating, and that they gotta bust heads before it happens. They feel the need to go for the jugular immediately so that they don’t have to worry about anybody else following up behind them.

How long have you known D'Paris?
He was in my class in the 6th grade, and years after that he still came to visit. So, he’s a good guy.

Do you think that he did anything wrong, or that the original bike citation was legitimate?
No. Not considering all of the other stuff that could be going on [for police to deal with], and DJ is a smart, smart guy. As a matter of a fact, I see myself in him. As one of the good guys or smart guys who’s not dealing drugs or bothering people, et cetera. I had people looking out for me, making sure I don’t get in trouble, and now that’s where D’Paris is, except now it’s too late. Brother’s going to school, he’s working, and there it is, it wasn’t enough for them.

@jules_su

More on police brutality:

Yet Another "Justified" Police Shooting

Canadian Cops Ambushed a First Nations Anti-Fracking Protest

Have Police Killed Ten Members of the Same Venezuelan Family?

The Asylzentrum Lukmanier asylum center in the Swiss Alps. Photos by Evan Ruetsch

The most remote asylum center in Switzerland is housed in an abandoned military bunker high up in the Swiss Alps. Standing outside the facility at the top of the Lukmanier Pass, you can see nothing but an endless amount of rocks and a strangely shimmering black reservoir that is so cold your skin starts to burn as soon as you put your feet in it. The only sound is the incessant buzzing of the high-voltage wires running through the small pylon that stands in front of the entrance to Asylzentrum Lukmanier.

The center usually houses between 50 and 80 men, sent to wait in the mountains to find out if they will be granted the right to live in Europe. The residents sleep in bomb shelters they share in groups of five and follow a strictly regulated daily routine—three meals a day, lights out at 10 PM, and if you want to leave the camp, you'll have to wait for the weekend. To an outside observer it would appear that the detainees are criminals, yet they are only looking for a better life away from their war-ravaged countries.

This isolation cell, which opened in July, is the first of many more to come. A law passed this summer essentially allows empty military facilities to be transformed into "integration zones."

Last month we hiked up into the mountains to pay a visit.

The first person we met was 18-year-old Narsi from Afghanistan. He has a good sense of humor, hates products from China, and loves cars, mentioning that the surrounding landscape and hiking trails would be perfect for a dirt rally. Narsi's Facebook profile is full of pictures of him wearing black blazers standing on the beach in front of his Lexus. Is he really 18? He claims he is, but the department of immigration is skeptical—a lot of asylum seekers pretend to be underage in an attempt to speed up the process.

Like many other Afghan refugees, Narsi spent the majority of his childhood in Iran but left for Turkey when life in the country started worsening. On the doorstep to the West, just before crossing over to Greece, he and the others he was with tossed their passports into the Mediterranean before going their separate ways. Although he did say he imagined Europe to be slightly more hospitable, he didn’t complain about the living conditions in the center too much, aside from it being boring and having crappy food.

This guy goes by the name "Beer Wolf" because his Ethiopian name is impossible for European people to pronounce. Beer Wolf didn't share Narsi's optimism; he hates the mountains and hiking, but he does like rappers who get shot like 50 Cent and Tupac. His wife and children live about an hour's drive away, in Buchs, St. Gallen, and he misses them every second. If his claim for asylum doesn’t work out he will be sent back to Greece, his first point of entry to the EU. He's heard that it's much easier to get asylum in Greece, but for now he's trapped up in the Swiss mountains.

The next man we spoke to was Joseph, a French-speaking Eritrean florist. The rest of the detainees at Asylzentrum Lukmanier call him "The Mafioso" and if they held Best Dressed contests there, Joseph would win every time. We found him furiously talking into his mobile phone—turns out he was getting deported that very same day due to "bad behavior." What this bad behavior amounted to, he couldn’t say, and he had no idea where he was being shipped off to, either.

His main gripe was that detainees don’t receive any climate-appropriate clothing other than their working clothes, which they are not allowed to wear outside working hours. For the asylum seekers at Asylzentrum Lukmanier, work consists of different community jobs, such as removing rubble from hiking trails or roadwork. When Joseph's not being kept busy with that, he wanders the mountainsides smoking in his crocodile brogues.

The situation we encountered in the Alps may seem weird, but it's not unique. If anything, it's symptomatic of the modern face of Swiss immigration policy, which seems to betray the country's humanitarian tradition. Back in August, for example, ten asylum seekers in the village of Solothurn protested against being forced to live in a bomb shelter with no sunlight or fresh air supply. You would think that those demands were fairly reasonable, but their demonstration was a disaster—some guy poured beer and milk all over the protesters and the Swiss authorities withdrew both the wages they were legally owed and their food. Four days into the protest, the police shut the whole thing down and the ten asylum seekers were split up and carted off in different directions.

Other stories include migrants being banned from swimming pools, sports grounds, schools, and churches; and of a place known as Minimalcenter Waldau, where detainees who have displayed "behavioral problems" in other centers are sent. In January, 32-year-old Lebanese-Palestinian Feras Motaleeb died there under mysterious circumstances. He had been brought to Waldau because of a fight at his previous facility, and also because he refused to put out his cigarette in the transit center in Cazis, which acts as a kind of asylum seeker sorting office.

Could this be the beginning of a new, shady era of European border control? When the Schengen Implementing Convention was converted to EU law at the end of the 90s, the EU's asylum policy was supposedly inspired by the German Idea of “safe third- and home-countries.” What this means is that people who have “unlawfully” entered Schengen territory can be sent back to their countries immediately. To avoid that, millions of migrants throw away their passports, creating a bureaucratic nightmare that keeps thousands of immigrants in the system interminably.

Despite its reputation as a country full of mountains filled with gold, this seems like an odd time for Switzerland to be spending so much money converting its old military centers into isolation tanks for people in need. Population growth is down, the unemployment rate has just nudged above a relatively high three percent, and certain companies are constantly understaffed. Even more absurd than this, however, was the image of dozens of hikers, faces smeared with suntan lotion, coming across the group of boulder-hacking migrants and not having the slightest idea who any of them were or what they were doing there.

More on how Europe is handling immigration:

Hunting For Illegal Immigrants With the UK Border Police

A Borderline Crisis

Silent Asylum

Photos courtesy of Luna, an American belly dancer in Egypt

At the Scheherezade club in Cairo’s downtown district, five paying customers and a dozen staff sat and gawped as the belly dancer shimmied across the stage, amid the peeling paint, chipped murals and dusty faux chandeliers of what used to be a very grand dance hall. The atmosphere is awkward and sad. When a member of the audience threw a handful of Egyptian pounds in the air, the club owner swiftly appeared and scooped it all up. When someone tucked a big bill into the dancer’s dress, she promptly handed it over to the aging pimp-like crooner on stage.

There’s no glitz or glamor in sight, only a tired and depressed-looking dancer doing one of the few things that might earn an uneducated woman a lot of money in Egypt. (Top dancers can earn up to $2000 to perform at a wedding.)

The past three years have been tough in general for most Cairo entertainers.

Egypt’s near-constant state of flux since the January 2011 revolution has deterred most tourists from visiting the capital, while its dire economic situation has made a significant dent in many Egyptians’ disposable income.

But for belly dancers—practitioners of perhaps Egypt’s oldest art—Mohamed Morsi’s yearlong Islamist presidency felt particularly threatening.

“They stole our country,” shrieked Madame Raqia, Egypt’s best-known belly dancing choreographer, in a fit of fury so sudden it sent her pack of Chihuahuas scurrying for cover under my legs.

“They broke our art and wanted to break everything we love,” she said from her gaudy apartment tucked behind the Iranian embassy. A troupe of young dancers arrayed at her feet obediently nodded their agreement.

During Morsi’s conservative rule all three belly dancing channels were taken off air, including el-Tet- (pronounced ‘tit’), which was accused of encouraging prostitution and condemned for advertising Viagra and escort agencies.

Morsi’s ultra-conservative Salafi allies sought to segregate beaches, ban bikinis, and abolish the ballet. It is “prohibited in Islam,” a member of the upper house of Parliament told a state-owned newspaper last year Belly dancing looked to be living on borrowed time.

“If ballet is not OK, what on earth would they think of us?” asked Scottish belly dancer Lorna Gow, who performs under the name Belly Lorna. She is one of a number of foreigners who moved to Egypt and developed a fascination with the traditional dance.

Even before the Muslim Brotherhood emerged on the political scene, belly dancing’s future looked uncertain.

“Nobody [in Egypt] sees this as an acceptable profession. It’s degrading for them. They go into it for the same reasons as a woman in the US goes into prostitution,” said Luna (whose real name is Diana Esposito), an American dancer and Harvard graduate who originally moved to Cairo to write a book, which she put off due to her successful dancing career.

Egyptian girls still dominate the dancing scene in Cairo, but an influx of Russian and Brazilian dancers in particular has heightened competition in the tourist-reliant Red Sea resorts.

A fierce current of social conservatism over the past few decades has hardened what were once relatively permissive attitudes and cast belly dancers as relics of Egypt’s “impure past.”

Across the Nile, through Cairo’s horrifically traffic-clogged streets and past one of the sites of the now-dispersed Muslim Brotherhood protest camps, lies Giza

The lights are brighter and clientele richer in the cluster of casinos and cabaret clubs that line the road to the Pyramids, but there’s still a vague sense of unhappiness hanging over the place.

The drugs trade is said to flourish here. Some dancers reputedly dosing themselves up to get through their performances, a few dancers confided in me. A couple of passing dancers dropped their business cards garnished with fresh lipstick on my lap, suggesting prostitution has established a foothold too.

Back in August, the Army’s dusk-to-dawn curfew after the bloody dispersal of the Muslim Brotherhood camps in August had played havoc with much of Cairo’s usually raucous nightlife, but not in Giza. At 6 PM, club owners locked the doors, dimmed the external lights, and customers partied until the early hours.

Most foreigners dance exclusively in the top hotels and tourist-friendly Nile party boats. Far from the grit and gloom, Scottish Lorna last week performed before a boisterous crowd of well-heeled Cairenes in an upscale club. “This is a high art and all Egyptians like it,” Doaa Sallam, a dancer and teacher, told me soon afterwards.

Regardless of how prosperous the clientele are, few dancers can entirely escape Egyptian society’s extreme prudishness. “They shower you with cheers, but they’d never take you back to meet their mothers,” said Luna, who is careful to conceal her job from most people.

Both Luna and Scottish Lorna have been previously evicted from their apartments by landlords who were fearful that their reputations would suffer were it to be known they rented to belly dancers. Luna’s landlord told her he was a “man of God” as he booted her out of the building, after his family had spotted her dancing at a beach resort several hundred miles from Cairo.

Luna dances in more conservative clothes to comply with the more strict police code.

And as if life wasn’t tricky enough, the fiercely competitive dancing scene has given rise to a number of bitter rivalries. A costume designer quit after she found all her clothes shredded and slashed in her dressing room. A number of dancers were reported to the police on fabricated charges after they had usurped other dancers’ business.

Sexual harassment makes Egypt the worst place for women in the Arab world, according to a recent Thomson Reuters Foundation survey , but female dancers’ problems often pale compared to those of their male counterparts, who are completely banned from performing.

Tito Seif is a star turn in the underground male dancing scene. Unlike his competitors who put on wigs and makeup like drag queens, he performs in a traditional Galabeya robe, but even that’s too much for some. He was once howled offstage by appalled members of the audience at a seaside wedding.

Tito’s family accepted his career (his significant earnings might have softened the blow), but even he recoils at the prospect of his daughter perhaps following in his footsteps. “No, no, no way,” he told me when we met in a Shisha bar. “In Egypt, men see differently.”

Most male dancers spend most of their time touring abroad, and recent events would suggest they’re wise to do so.

Two week ago the police raided a party in 6^th of October, a satellite city of Cairo, and arrested several men, including a male belly-dancing teacher. They were accused of “unmanly behavior” (part of the Egyptian code for homosexuality). During a court hearing several days later, the belly dancing clothes were held up as evidence of the party’s debauchery.

Female dancers aren’t safe from the police either. A belly dance inspection unit polices venues to enforce the strict dress code introduced as a salve to religious conservatives in the 80s. Bare midriffs, cleavage, and revealing skirts are forbidden, and many dancers told me tales of hurling themselves into closets and hurriedly changing into more modest clothing when the police arrive.

The police don’t specifically ask for baksheesh (a bribe), but “it’s just understood,” said American Luna. She is still facing a court case after a policeman reported her despite having accepted a bribe from her manager. The police aren’t the only ones to keep close tabs on dance sets: the musicians’ union frequently plants moles in the audience to ensure the bands that accompany the dancers’ performances have paid their dues.

It’s hardly a friendly work environment and a far cry from belly dancing’s heyday, when Egyptian King Farouk dated a dancing star and Madame Badia’s Cabaret thronged with German spies and British officers on leave during World War II.

But now, with little prospect of Muslim Brotherhood rule any time soon, belly dancers are hopeful of a return to better days.

Madame Raqia, for one, is bubbling with optimism and has even changed her music to reflect the changed circumstances.

“I was just so unhappy before, but now that those people are gone, what could go wrong?” she said.

More from Egypt:

Egypt After Morsi

'The Square' Shows the Rise and Fall of Egypt's Revolution

Sweeping Unrest Under the Rug in Tahrir Square

Photos by Arslane Merabet

On the outside, the McDonald’s in Laguna Nigel, California looks like every other store in the chain. There’s sad white walls, three kids running in circles while their parents beg them to stuff more fries into their faces, and the prominent golden arches luring you inside to get your weekly grease injection. Upon further inspection, this McDonald's was like no McDonald's I had ever been to, because it’s the tester restaurant for their new build-your-own-burger gimmick.

My first thought was “damn, this place is clean.” It was clean, you guys. The counter was shiny, and the walls were painted with stripes to look futuristic and European. What shocked me the most, however, was the sheer friendliness of the employees. Three teenaged girls in white button-up shirts greeted me instantly with big smiles. “Welcome to McDonald's!” They were like the Stepford Wives, but a fast-food employee version.

This McDonald's is the McDonald's of the future. I'm not saying that just because it's really clean and people are happy. I'm saying that because this McDonald's has iPads! What do these iPads do? They are the tool with which you customize your burger order. With this magic iPad, you’re able to order such exotic menu items as an “artisan roll,” and “guacamole.” Yeah you heard me, a McDonald's that serves guacamole. Welcome to the 21st century, fuckers. Obviously, little things like “clean dining areas,” “friendly service,” and “freedom of choice” are not features that can be rolled out to every McDonald’s all at once. No, those things have to be “tested,” and Laguna Nigel is the only place where you can enjoy the aforementioned amenities.

As I alluded to earlier, we were instantly greeted by a happy McWorkerBot who was eager to show us their new iPads. She then handed me a tiny menu that said “Build Your Burger” on the front. I didn't want to read no dumb menu, so I headed straight to the iPad and started ordering. As I looked at the screen, the McWorkerBot stood directly behind me. She had her own little computer wrapped around her hips. Every time I marked something down, she would mark something down on her computer. I asked, “What are you doing?”

“I have to write down your order.”

“Isn't that what I'm doing with the iPad?”

“Yeah, but I have to mark it down here too so it can get to the kitchen.”

“Okay...so what's the point of ordering off the iPad if you have to take down the order anyways?”

Silence.

Well, I kept ordering. Sadly, the only option for a burger to be enjoyed any way you want it is if you only want a beef burger (no custom Fillet-o-Fish for me). You can add bacon, choose from two different buns, add any cheese (sharp white cheddar, pepper jack, or American), and choose as many toppings as you like. The last step is adding sauce. I ordered a beef burger on an artisan roll with no cheese. I topped it with guacamole, jalapenos, grilled mushrooms, pickles, and red onions. I chose ketchup and mustard as my sauces. The employee watching my every move then looked over my order once more, and sent it out to the kitchen. My friend then ordered and she did the same thing. I decided to observe him. You can tell a lot about a person over whether they want grilled onions over red onions, special sauce over ketchup, etc. I concluded that my friend and I can never be on a charades team together.

When we both finished, I was charged $15 for both burgers and the woman working with us gave me a small buzzer to put on our table. “When the order's ready this will buzz.” My first thought was, Whoa—excuse me—but is this a Cheesecake Factory or something?! As my friend and I were walking to find a table, a waitress came out with our food. We hadn't even found a table yet, and the food was ready. What is this a McDonald's or something?! Yes, it was.

The next twenty seconds were really awkward, as the waitress followed us to the booth we picked. That’s twenty seconds I could have been silently farting, but no, I had to have some stranger directly downwind. After we found our seats, she served us our burgers on metal bins. Shockingly, the burgers were open-faced. What is this, a TGI Fridays? The fries were served on a regular plastic tray. Nope, still McDonald's.

I have to admit, my burger looked pretty damn good. I smashed the two halves together and chomped away. Two bites in and I knew immediately, the artisan roll was the real winner here. It tasted oddly processed, but it was still good. Everything else was decent, even the guacamole, which you’d expect a fast food restaurant to screw up. As we were eating, a manager who funnily enough looked exactly like Colonel Sanders came up to us and asked how our meal was. What is this, the Olive Garden?! I was very close to asking if I could personally give my compliments to the chef. You know, like how they do in the movies. I refrained. Instead, I asked for his take on this whole build you own burger nonsense. He said that in two years or so, every McDonald's might have pointless iPads and decent guacamole. He also explained that the beef patties are charbroiled, which is not how they cook the Big Mac burgers. I was scared to ask how they cook the Big Mac burgers, and he walked away to greet another table.

As I ate, I observed two men in suits working on their laptops and sipping on coffee. What is this, Peets?! Then a teenaged boy walked in with a Pikachu backpack and I didn't know where I was. I finished the burger, and though I ostensibly enjoyed myself, I also remembered why I stopped eating at McDonald's in the first place. You see folks, no matter how fancy you dress up the McDonald's burger, no matter what hoity-toity bun you give it or various sauces you splash on it, at the end of the day it's still a McDonald's burger. Meaning, I instantly felt like crap. My stomach seemed ten pounds heavier, as if the burger reassembled inside my stomach and spawned tiny burger children that wanted nothing more but to just chill in my body to watch my arteries clog and my heart freak out.

My friend was in a much better mood. “That was really good,” he said. He then followed by saying something about the burger tasting like the type you eat at a backyard barbeque. So, maybe I'm just a weak burger snob who can't enjoy the mass-produced, corporate-created, simple things in life.

If the burger was cheaper, I’d say it was great. Was it worth a two-hour drive? Not really. However, if this does become a regular thing at McDonald's I will likely get it again. I'll even order off the iPad, regardless of the fact that this feature is completely pointless and time consuming. Ambiance is everything, and goddamn did this McDonald's have ambiance.

@JustAboutGlad

For more on fast food dining:

But the McRib Is Delicious

My Doritos Locos Taco Gave Me a Boner

What Celebrities Eat at Golden Corral

This is still, to date, one of the craziest travel stories we've ever had the pleasure of posting onto our website and allowing you to watch. Here, our Editor-in-Chief Rocco Castoro finds himself in the middle of a Siberian forest to speak with a man who looks like Jesus and thinks that he is God's mouthpiece on Earth. This Siberian Jesus, who leads a Church called the Church of Vissarion, teaches Rocco all about his Godly ways in an area where meat and tobacco and alcohol are forbidden. It's not exactly a party town, and yet this is still an excellently immersive travel doc that fits right in with this here Travel Week. Prepare to be a bit mindblown.

Smoke-spewing makeshift refineries dot the desert landscape around Deir ez-Zor.

Deir ez-Zor, Syria’s sixth-largest city, is also the country’s oil capital. For four decades, the al-Assad regime (first run by Hafez, and now by his son Bashar) struck deals with Western oil companies like Shell and Total that resulted in the extraction of as much as 27,000 barrels of black gold from the sand every day. A pittance compared with other Middle Eastern countries’ production, but it made Syria a bona fide oil-exporting nation. At least this was the case until international sanctions were imposed in 2011 in response to the regime’s crackdown on the antigovernment protests, which quickly morphed into a civil war.

Located in the middle of the desert and less than 100 miles from the Iraq border, Deir ez-Zor dominates the eastern portion of the country and has had a long, fruitful relationship with the petroleum industry: before the war, its 220,000 inhabitants often worked for oil companies as engineers, technicians, and laborers.

Downtown Deir ez-Zor is still home to many modern glass-walled buildings erected by Western firms, but in the past two years, they’ve been largely abandoned as the battles between the rebels and al-Assad’s forces, each of whom hold portions of the city, have left them pockmarked, windowless, and scarred.

When I visited Deir ez-Zor in September, there were snipers lurking on roofs as combatants exchanged fire from Kalashnikovs, mortars, and heavy machine guns below. Beyond the city limits the suburbs give way to the mostly empty desert where the oil wells are located and where the rebels—most of them hard-line jihadists, and many of them with ties to al Qaeda—are in complete control. It’s a very different place than it was prerevolution, but it is still an oil town, albeit one of an entirely new sort. Instead of multinational corporations, it’s now the Islamist rebels who are providing jobs to the locals.

One such local is Ahmer, a 15-year-old I met on his way home from work. His face and clothes were stained with oil. “I never took part in the past year’s clashes,” he told me, suspicious of my question about the extent of his involvement in the revolution. “I only helped my father bring ammunition here and there in Palmyra, 135 miles away from Damascus, where fights are still going on.”

Ahmer lives with his mother and two younger brothers in a room they rent from the man who owns the makeshift kerosene refinery where all three of the siblings work. The refinery owner buys his crude oil from the rebels and distills it into kerosene; Ahmer and his brothers earn just enough to pay for the room and food while enduring horrifying conditions.

All day long, Ahmer helps to move barrels, which can weigh more than 200 pounds when full of crude, to and from a converted water tank suspended above a fire. The oil is heated until it begins boiling into vapor, after which it is pumped through pipes and into water-filled underground pits where, over time, it condenses into kerosene. It’s as rudimentary as the refining process gets, but the result is usable fuel.

Krahim splashes crude oil on a rudimentary refinery tank to keep it hot enough to boil kerosene. He’s ten years old and works nine hours a day.

Krahim, Ahmer’s ten-year-old brother, has been tasked with perhaps the most hazardous assignment: his job is to throw and coat the inside of the tank with oil to keep its temperature above the necessary boiling point. For two hours I watched him at work, his feet inches from the flames, his head engulfed in crude oil fumes.

His supervisor (whom I only spoke with momentarily and looked to be in his late teens) explained the process: “The higher the temperature, the higher the extracted kerosene’s quality,” he said, taking drags from a cigarette. The thing he didn’t mention is if the temperature rises too high, the gas could compress and violently blow up the tank.

These explosions happen on a weekly basis, according to Abu Mahmoud, one of the few doctors in the area who haven’t closed their practices to get into the oil-refining game. Between home visits to patients, runs to the Iraq border to buy medical supplies, and responding to emergencies, Dr. Mahmoud is perhaps better informed than anyone of the entire scope of the Deir ez-Zor oil trade. He told me that approximately 6,000 people were working in the refineries, and that by his estimates somewhere around 2,000 of them were kids like Ahmer and Krahim—many of them displaced war orphans whose parents were killed either by the regime or the rebels.

“All the families [I knew] left Palmyra,” Ahmer said. “Sometimes, I recognize a kid or two I used to go to school with. They’re here, hidden amid the oil fumes. It’s weird—I don’t want to talk to them today, really.” Ahmer told me his father aided the rebels, and lots of the kids his age had parents who were pro-Assad. To avoid potential workplace conflicts, he said, it’s safer to avoid talking at all. In the landscape of Syria’s convoluted civil war, this makes Deir ez-Zor a sort of no-man’s-land where hard workers are accepted without much interrogation. It doesn’t matter much because odds are that most of these workers have sealed their fates.

This is a fate all too real for Krahim, who was careful to pour the crude oil evenly across the tank’s sides to minimize the risk of blowing his head off. Every hour, he takes a second to wash off the layer of black dust that accumulates on his face. “I’ve seen many mutilated people, burned bodies destroyed by explosions,” he told me. Our conversation was soon interrupted by his coughing fits.

While an official diagnosis would be the only way to be certain in Krahim’s case, oil-related illnesses are spreading in Deir ez-Zor. Thanks to the smoke and dust kicked up by the unregulated, unclean extraction and refining operations and the leakages that pollute the precious groundwater, the crude refineries’ pollution is spreading to the surrounding desert villages. Common ailments include persistent coughs and chemical burns that, according to Dr. Mahmoud, have the potential to lead to tumors. He said that those who live in the immediate region are increasingly at risk to develop cancer, and some villages have now become uninhabitable thanks to all-too-frequent accidents. This contamination doesn’t just affect humans; in July, at the beginning of Ramadan, herds of goats died after drinking from a contaminated water table that was the only source of drinking water for three villages.

“Oil-related disorders are only starting to appear among the desert inhabitants,” Dr. Mahmoud told me. “I sometimes feel overwhelmed,” he said. “What I learned in medical school is no longer enough to understand all the pathologies caused by oil and its exploitation in the region.”

A young refinery worker suffering from chemical burns. Photo by Dr. Abu Mahmoud

East of Deir ez-Zor, near the Iraq border, lies the real money pit: the industrial oil fields. It’s here that Islamist rebel groups, including the al Qaeda–backed Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), extract the crude oil from the ground and bring it by truck to the hundreds or thousands of makeshift refineries scattered throughout the surrounding desert. Offices and dorms constructed and once owned and operated by Western companies have now been converted into dorms for radical jihadists.

One afternoon during my trip, I made the half-hour drive out there with two members of the Free Syrian Army who aren’t directly aligned with the Islamists running the show, but have had no choice but to band together against the government.

As we passed the village of P’settin, a set of giant white storage tanks appeared on the horizon. We pulled up to a roadblock, and my FSA guides advised me to stay in the car. “Even our generals are not welcome here anymore,” one said.

After two hours of waiting, I was allowed past the barricade. I noticed the unexploded shells and craters lining the wall surrounding the compound—the regime had been carrying out weekly air strikes against these fields for the past several months. Silent men in camo pants lurked in the shadows, and I could tell my FSA companions were nervous, even as they showed me the bullet-hole-riddled pipelines that they swore were operational.

Information about such activities in present-day Syria is dubious as best, but locals and my FSA contacts reported that these groups earn between $170 and $240 per refinery each month. I also heard there could be as many as 3,000 tanks, and based on the information available from reports released earlier this year on similar operations in Syria, my sources and I estimate the jihadists bring in somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million every month. Of course, no one but the principals of Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS know exactly how much money they make from their makeshift refinery operations.

Profits may pale in comparison to what the oil giants running the place were raking in, but the new management may be taking the long view. If and when al-Assad falls, the al Qaeda–supported rebel groups are aiming to still be in control of the fields, where they will be free to build a much more efficient and profitable refining operation. Their goal is a bleak proposition for everyone else involved: a future where the oil money that used to line the pockets of Shell executives goes toward constructing an Islamic state that will bubble up from the ashes of the old regime.

More from this issue:

Did Robotraders Know the Financial Crisis Was Coming?

Physical Singularity

Afternoon Delight

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, Cairo

The second anniversary of the 2011 Mohamed Mahmoud Street clashes was a confusing day of demonstration. Hundreds gathered in Cairo Tuesday to pay tribute to protesters killed by riot police during a crackdown on the Egyptian revolution two years ago, but wanting to commemorate those who lost their lives was about as close to an overall common ground as it got. Demonstrators included people who support the army, people who support the Muslim Brotherhood, and people who support neither and don’t want to be ruled by either a military junta or Islamists. 

Thankfully, the scenes of November 19, 2011 weren't repeated, but small scuffles did break out near the Egyptian Museum just off Tahrir Square as pro-army groups exchanged verbal—and then physical—threats against their opponents. For the most part, it was a peaceful day of demonstrations dominated by the "third square" movement that opposes both the army and the Brotherhood.

In the build up to the day’s events, various groups released statements outlining their plans for the day. The pro-Brotherhood "Anti-Coup Alliance" made it clear that they had no intention of going anywhere near Mohamed Mahmoud Street or Tahrir Square, "so as not to give a chance to the conspirators to fabricate violent incidents and blame them on the [Anti-Coup Alliance]." They kept their word and their protests were mostly confined to areas away from central downtown Cairo.

Overall, it was the incongruous plans of the pro-army groups that seemed to irk the majority of Egyptians. They called for mass demonstrations in remembrance of the martyrs killed in Mohamed Mahmoud, but also in support of the Interior Ministry, the police, and the army. Ironically, it was the police who'd killed the martyrs being remembered, but I'm guessing the pro-army groups just chose to forget that minor detail.

A "coffin" of one of the Mohamed Mahmoud martyrs

After the deaths of around 50 people in the 2011 Mohamed Mahmoud crackdown, the Ministry of Interior released a statement condemning a "third party" in a vain attempt to shift the blame. In response to such a flagrant shot at rewriting history, the groups that identify themselves as the "Third Square"—a mix of Muslims, Christians, Islamists, moderates, and secularists who reject both the Muslim Brotherhood and military rule—called on their supporters to flock to Mohamed Mahmoud to remember those killed, while also opposing the pro-army groups.

Their work started the day before when a new Third Square group called "The Way of the Revolution Front" held a demonstration in Abdeen, not far from Tahrir Square. Speeches were given and video from the 2011 tragedy played on a screen. The mothers of those killed during the fighting also joined the group.

Afterward, they ventured down Mohamed Mahmoud Street and into Tahrir Square, where a monument "in memory of those that died in the January 2011 and June 2012 revolutions" had just been erected. The monument didn't go down particularly well. Considering it was built by the current government, many believe it taints the martyrs' memory somewhat. Less than 12 hours after it was inaugurated by Prime Minister Hazem El-Beblawi, it was being taken apart and sprayed with graffiti that read: "Down with those who betrayed us: Brotherhood, remnants of the old regime, and the Interior Ministry."

A man who supports General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi—the First Deputy Prime Minister, who led the coup against former President Morsi—watching from the periphery turned to me and whispered, "This is a disgrace, for the martyrs and all Egyptians. These dogs are not real Egyptians."

On the anniversary itself, a rare criticism of the incredibly powerful army could be seen and heard throughout downtown Cairo. Until Tuesday, the pro-Brotherhood groups had a monopoly on anti-army chants and the pro-army groups dominated the anti-Brotherhood chants. Now, members of the Third Square were—almost in the same breath—chanting against the Muslim Brotherhood and the army. "Down with military rule!" could be heard alongside calls against former President Mohamed Morsi.

It was noticeable that there wasn't much of a security presence, especially given that the area is often inundated with police and armoured vehicles (APCs). Clearly aware that their presence would likely cause more problems that it would prevent, security forces had evacuated the area.

A take on the old chant of, "Aysh horreya, adala igtameya" (bread, freedom, social justice) was modified to, "Aysh, Horreya, Tutheer ad-Dakhleya" (bread, freedom, remove the Interior Ministry) in a special mention to the feeling that impunity is rife in the security forces. Mohamed Fatthi, a member of the Way of the Revolution Front, explained, "We won’t allow [pro-Sisi groups] to stain the memory. We want justice and the Interior Ministry needs serious reform before that will be possible."

The entrance to Mohamed Mahmoud Street from Tahrir had a banner that read: "No entry—army, Brotherhood, remnants of the old regime." Several coffins lay at the entrance to the street, symbolizing those martyred two years ago.

The pink camofuflage graffiti lining the walls of Mohamed Mahmoud

Up on the wall was a large new piece of pink camouflage graffiti—an apparent slight against the armed forces and their supporters who'd intended to occupy the street. In Tahrir itself, there seemed to be a blend of allegiances happily mixing among one another. In fact, it was only clear from the signs they were carrying as to what their affiliations were, with some flourishing portraits of General Sisi and others wearing Third Square T-shirts.

An odd development of the various groups being among one another was the sudden influx of hand-signs depicting allegiances. Occasionally, the famous four-finger "Rabaa" hand sign—a symbol of remembrance to the Rabaa al-Adawiya protest camp—was held aloft, countered by the two-finger peace sign now claimed by pro-army Egyptians. Meanwhile, the Way of the Revolution Front and other Third Square groups were using the three-finger hand sign, showing an allegiance to neither the army nor the Brotherhood. The sheer amount of hand signs, all meaning representing opposition to each other, made the otherwise peaceful atmosphere slightly surreal.

However, the weirdest part of the day arrived after sunset. As well as being the second anniversary of the Mohamed Mahmoud clashes, the 19th of November was also the second leg of Egypt’s World Cup qualifying match against Ghana. They had lost the first leg 5 to 1, so needed to win by a five-goal margin in order to make it to the World Cup. That wasn't exactly likely, but nevertheless, as soon as the match began on the screens set up around Tahrir, the hundreds of chanting demonstrators suddenly fell quiet, squeezing up against each other to watch the match. Egypt won 2 to 1, but failed to qualify.

After that, as though the previous 90 minutes had never happened, the chanting continued and small clashes broke out by the Arab League building on the edge of Tahrir Square. For the first time that day, some tear gas was fired to disperse the crowd, a man was killed after being hit by birdshot and the back-and-forth between protesters and security was once again in motion.

Follow Adam (@aporamsey) and Amanda (@mustardphoto) on Twitter

More from Egypt:

Meeting the Syrian Refugees Being Persecuted by Egypt's Government

The Chaotic Start of Mohamed Morsi's Trial

WATCH – Egypt After Morsi

Sometimes when I’m bored I like to go to the grocery store or the mall and stand around trying to figure out who people are. Or I’ll try to guess where someone might have been before they came to the store, where they are going once they buy whatever they buy. Every person could have several thousand personalities or disguises inside them, and yet somehow they are here, currently in the persona of “random person shopping,” passing through the same space, meeting my eyes and then looking away.

I imagine something of this feeling came from being a teen who learned to masturbate to the internet, talking to strangers in chat rooms while assuming false identities for the thrill of feeling you could become anything without moving from your chair. Trisha Low’s The Compleat Purge might be one of the most complete internet-age archives of that feeling.

The book consists of three primary modes: a series of last will and testaments written and rewritten yearly in the author’s name; a number of hyper-stylized cybersex logs with indie rock fantasy icons; and a novelized envisioning of the author in a somewhat more daily life, riddled with narrative tricks and interruptions somewhere between Kathy Acker and what it might feel like if one of the Bronte sisters had lived to see Wi-Fi. The end product reads like an encyclopedia of fantasies and self-destructions, each with countless little tricks and traps and windows. The lists of DVDs and albums the author wants to be given away after her suicide at age 17 somehow bleed against the Tumblr-like self-reportage as she attempts to clear her mind a final time. And that mind clearing, in turn, melds into endless sadistic contortions of ongoing internet sex and confession, continually shifting wishes for life to be altered at one’s will.

Trisha was kind enough to answer some of my questions about the book and give us a short excerpt.

VICE: I’m not sure if the content in this book is real, or if it is a confabulation made to look like something real, or some synthesis of the two. Ultimately it doesn’t really matter, though, because reality is a waste. I think what I’m trying to ask is how you began working on (or building the concept of) this book?
Reality is a waste is a good place to start. Or maybe more specifically waste is a good place to start. Right now I’m dealing with an ex-boyfriend who is harassing me because he had a psychotic break and is threatening to kill himself if I don't call him back, which is, I guess, in the simplest way, what the book is. I don't think I can say that Purge is a “meditation” on anything, but it's definitely a revenge fantasy.

Maybe I’m also just interested in being ventriloquized by those I'm supposed to be grateful or indebted to (those are my daddy issues talking, duh). So for me there's this tension between alienation and exclusion, victimization and aggression that I wanted Purge to live in, or rather, that the feminine needs to live in by default.

The sense of ventriloquism is strong, I think. Besides using yourself at various ages as a speaker, there are also the sections where you took another text and annotated it with a wilder, more violent tone, like the spells in the Book of Spells, and the <life hack> bits. Can you talk about some of your sources, and what kind of process you used to synthesize them into the voice in the book?
Speaking of ventriloquism, I have a friend who used to just bring me to parties and talk for me—like literally speak on my behalf. It was the best thing, but I think she got too confused about whose stories belonged to whom after a while.

I pick texts on a whim, but also for how much fun I can have in the process—I like things that seem wasteful, or frivolous, or “messy,” but have a process that they can be ciphered into inherent in their underlying structure. So, for example, with the spell poems, the end goal is “love,” this abstract thing, but I used a ton of text from a book of voodoo spells where the ingredients are materials. I think the sort of “annotative” process you allude to is apt, but maybe a better word is an oversystemization. I want to keep making people fall into buckets and buckets of tears, or blood, or fluid, even if they start from a formula or at least mess up their chicken and egg sense about which comes first. Once I actually ate some pages from some texts and barfed it all up along with some milk.

All of these ciphers are interesting, I think. The book makes it seem as if it’s all you—your life, your wills, AIM chats, etc.—or at least it pretends to. I wonder how much of yourself you see in the speaker, and the resulting sort of mythos that automatically surrounds it?
Well that’s the thing, right? I don't want to make you understand the book per say, or even necessarily identify a speaker. I'm saying a ton of shit—both in the book and now—some of which probably makes sense to you and some definitely doesn't and is misleading. I was at this rope bondage workshop the other day and the instructor was like, “it's so funny because rope bottoms, before they're tied, always try to assume the position—hands behind back, clutching opposite elbows… but that's so silly and contradictory to the fundamentals of the S&M scene, because your partner is supposed to handle you and put you into the position they want you in.” I kind of feel that way about interviews, I guess, or answering questions like this one. I want to be handled, kind of—like there is no position I want to assume apart from your assumptions to begin with. Do you really feel like there's an automatic mythos? But it's all so banal! I guess the voyeurism always yields in that way, though. Fetishistic disavowal and motel vacancies, or something.

An Excerpt from The Compleat Purge

Last Will & Testament of Trisha Low
Article I
Preliminary Declarations

dear mom and dad,

i’m afraid this isn't going to be a very interesting letter. it might even border on scary. i would like to pretend like i'm doing well, but i don't really have it in me to front. you’re probably not even going to get this letter, but i can't really tell anyone else this stuff,  let alone you guys in ‘real life’ i guess, because everyone's just as stressed out as i am, or more emotionally traumatised, and it's rubbing off a little, if anything. if you’re reading this, then somehow i’m gone – maybe something awful happened or maybe one day i broke, or someone broke me, but this is just in case – maybe so you’ll have some answers, or explanations, or maybe you could even just imagine a little bit of what my life has been since i’m so often so far away.

damn. i'm tired, i can't sleep (and i've tried everything). I've taken to making assorted baked goods and custards in the dead of night and giving them away for brunch in the mornings. i take a shower at two am and then i laugh hysterically at myself because my next thought is usually something like 'maybe i'll make crumb cake. maybe gabe will want some to take to school tomorrow'. i've turned into a parody of myself, and it feels a little raw around the edges, like when my lipstick has blurred and that couple of milimeters of colour changes me from 'put together' to 'crazy, possibly a slut'. i don't know, things are going well work-wise. tonight i will probably make tapioca cake. maybe i will finally figure out how to make a perfect sixty degree egg. i’m tired of having to talk to other people about their lives - i'm tired of talking about all that. man, even hal freaked out the other day and she's the calmest most evolved human out of anyone i know. show me the drugs already, anything that’ll get me to sleep.

i've been having strange dreams, but not bad ones; between the magpies scrabbling beneath my skin to find some microscopic treasure and infant beauty pageants and being stabbed in the belly by a clan somewhere between the westboro baptist church and a group of hairy biker men,

i walked to work really wanting to listen to iggy pop, so i did. street-walking cheetah/with a heart full of napalm and all - i never understood why that's always been the canonical iggy pop lyric, but recently, thinking about entrance wounds/ text/ no exits, fragments and glass growing arduously through performative skins, perhaps things are coming to a head and i should just sit down and write something. searching and destroying always seemed mindless to me, and searching-to-destroy such a masculine sentiment. searching is destroying, already, maybe, who knows. 

“to study the way with the body means to study the way with your own body. It is the study of the way using this lump of red flesh. everything which comes forth from the study of the way is the true human body. […] The coming and going of birth and death is the true human body.”

my piece on BDSM went up on carnal nation today, which i could barely believe – and i guess if you’re reading this i know you’ll end up finding out some things about me that you might not understand, or want to understand – things like swapping out razors for other kinds of bruises and going to work at a place where there’s bad industrial music, too-young girls giggling at men with scary eyes and a lot of money under the table. i guess i never really had a bad experience there, but never a good one either - i always just felt compelled to go, like it would make me older or wiser, or at least teach me something about someone i didn't particularly care for, and if not then being paid to try felt good. someone's little fetish toy for an hour or so. A denial of one’s own ‘real’ body for a dream is also to open yourself up to an intense awareness of the emptiness of a flesh-core.

“in themselves, no. each one of them is a mirror, dedicated to the person that I particularly want to look into it. but mirrors can be arranged. the frightening hall of mirrors in a fun house is universal beyond each particular reflection.” it is not about making mirrors, for me, or bringing people to them, it is to refract into vitrious membranes (and so the maze becomes a labyrinth, warped and unpredictable, but escape never crosses the mind).

“she'll be losing her mind to a tricky voice and a full moon, and like as not, i'll be saddled with the consequences.”

i have been reading a lot of badly written detective fiction - i like the idea of a macguffin, this absent thing, this weird hole that entire plots are constructed around, when it is barely a glimmer, and because of it, stories falter and firmer surfaces give way. things resolve upwards, not downwards into some kind of interior, some kind of core (value).”'first, you find a little thread, the little thread leads you to a string, and the string leads you to a rope, and from the rope you hang by the neck. what kind of a girl was she, this friend of yours”'. but the implications of this stretch beyond the theory of gravity all the characters maintain - instead, steamy dissipations. 0ne absurd logic debunking another, exhuming stories from a hybridised flesh. the thing about noir is, everyone is a fugitive from the laughing house and the ashtrays are always full.

i've been thinking a lot about old friends and how much i've changed - some of them probably wouldn't recognise me. but hey, i'm not sure i'd like them too. i like my different worlds, but it's good for them to scrape at each other once in a while. i guess i’ve moved around a bunch and it's always this sense of feeling like a ghost-person before i decide i want to walk on the ground instead of just above it and anchor yourself in something, someplace, for me, usually someone.

it feels like the world is going to swallow me whole.

if you’re reading this, i just wanted to say – i’m sorry if anything i ever did ever hurt you. i’m sorry if i’m so selfish so often. i’m so grateful for everything you’ve done for me. i really am. and never doubt that i loved you because i did, maybe more than i ever let you know.

Trisha.

PS. If you need to get into my email, the password is stayBeautifu1

My house/mailbox/bike/everything else keys should be in the dish on the coffee table by the door

The bank account numbers are in my wallet and in case you need it, my ATM PIN code is 2028 (UK and US)

Buy the Compleat Purge

This week Reihan sits down with unconventional non-profit extraordinaire Nancy Lublin, who thinks that all social change should be rebellious, loud, and fun. She's the founder of Dress for Success, an organization dedicated to helping disadvantaged women find jobs, hold jobs, and look good doing it. She's recently shifted her focus to youth and technology and became the CEO of dosomething.org and founder of the Crisis Text Line for teens (and older people, too).

Previously on the podcast - Sketching Rebellion with Molly Crabapple