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Is War Brewing in Niger?

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You may have heard of MUJAO—the West African jihadists who started a war in Mali this year. Well, yesterday they exploded two car bombs that killed dozens of people in Niger. One struck the remote town of Arlit, and another blew up in the nearby town of Agadez, where jihadists also stormed a military barracks and got into a standoff with Nigerien and French troops that ended earlier today. The region is a hub for uranium transportation, which could be why MUJAO—which stands for Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa—struck there. Or was it simply revenge against the French for trouncing the Islamists in Mali?

MUJAO spokesman Abu Walid Sahraoui offered a straightforward answer when he told Agence France-Presse, "Thanks to Allah, we have carried out two operations against the enemies of Islam in Niger... We attacked France and Niger for its cooperation with France in the war against Sharia."

But how do American troops fit into the equation? For over a year now the residents of Arlit have been noticing small contingents of American soldiers around town. Sometimes, they fly in and out by plane, which land at night in Agadez, which is about 150 miles north of Arlit at the edge of the Sahara. Dressed in khaki uniforms, they drive unmarked Land Rovers across the country’s unforgiving desert, populated by members of the indigenous, nomadic Tuareg tribe.

“They are very discreet,” says Azaoua Mahaman, an Arlit resident who works for the US relief organization Mercy Corps. “We can’t tell you what is happening because we are only civilians. But they've been here for a long time, around the extraction sites.”


A uranium extraction site in Niger.

Uranium extraction is one of Niger’s largest industries, and it's been helping fuel nuclear reactors around the world for the past 45 years. The country’s mines are mainly operated by Areva, the French state-owned nuclear company. Residents of the West African nation have long struggled against the company, and it has been accused of labor abuses and irresponsible environmental policies.

When the government of Niger announced in February that its president, Mahamadou Issoufou, signed an agreement with the United States allowing the Americans to build a drone base (located currently in Niamey, the capital), the news came as no surprise to the citizens of Arlit and Agadez. The US had already set up camp in their desert more than a year earlier.

US forces are now gathering and sharing intelligence with French forces in an effort to combat terrorist networks in the Sahel region, which separates the Sahara from Africa’s southern savanna. French troops have been in Arlit protecting Areva’s two main uranium mines since January; their deployment was part of the aftermath of the French-led war against armed Islamists in neighboring Mali.

Tom Saunders, an American military spokesperson, said that US Africa Command has had an ongoing relationship with Niger’s armed forces as part of a larger State Department-led effort in the country. Since January of 2012, small groups of US military personnel have taken part in short-term training and military-to-military engagements with Nigerien military members, he said, adding that “a small team of US military personnel are conducting training with Nigerian forces in the area near Arlit and may on occasion visit the city to purchase goods or participate in cultural events.”


A mining site in Niger.

Already, the locals have seen drones flying in the sky of Agadez. Since the French seem to be gaining traction against the rebels in Mali, the Islamists have started to regroup in the Sahara desert in Niger and neighboring countries, according to Aïr Info, a local paper based in Agadez. 

The military has tightened its security on the main roads leading to the Nigerien border and things are tense. Azaoua Mahaman, a relief organization worker in the area, travels from Agadez to his hometown of Arlit each weekend. But after hearing about gunfire exchanges between rebels and military convoys along the road, he stopped driving his car to Arlit and now takes a bus, which he says is less of a target.

Almoustapha Alhacen, an Areva employee and local environmental activist, said that the militarization and the security has become another wall secluding the town's activities from the outside world, and it is contributing to the area's woes. “After 40 years of exploitation, the poverty is worse here than in the 70s,” he said.

But Ibrahim Diallo, the editor of Aïr Info, is more worried about Islamist militant groups launching attacks in northern Niger, or even Bamako, Mail's capital, than he is about the Americans. 

“Al Qaeda is an enemy without a face. It could already be within our walls. Nobody can tell you that al Qaeda isn’t here. We believe in this threat, which is why the Nigerien authorities have put their pride aside although the Americans didn’t come with the clearest intentions,” said Diallo. “We are scared, we must regroup. We must pray in our mosques, in our churches, to prevent the worst from happening.”

For more on terrorism in Africa:

Al Qaeda Wants Africa

Mali - France Vs. Jihad

Africa's Biggest Film Festival Isn't Scared of a Little Jihad


VICE on HBO Outtakes: Kicking Heroin with an Ibogaine Ceremony

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Heroin is the most addictive drug on earth, and some people will do anything to kick the habit. Enter Ibogaine, a drug made out of the African iboga root, whose intense, hallucinogenic properties make it a type-A felony drug. But many swear it's the most effective way to kick heroin addiction—especially when combined with a voodoo-type ritual that involves face paint and chanting.

My Friend Is Wearing Abercrombie & Fitch for an Entire Year

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My friend Amanda Schmidt, who is wearing Abercrombie & Fitch for a solid calendar year

Back in high school, I avoided Abercrombie & Fitch like botulism. It seemed like literally everyone I hated (or at least was forced to tolerate) was dressed tip to tail in this stuff, and it defined their identity in a way that made my JNCO-clad ass a wee-bit uncomfortable. It's not even that the clothes look that bad—I have to admit, I'd absolutely destroy a croquet tourney in a Johns Brook Oxford Shirt. My problem with Fitchers was that they were seemingly able to efface all their racist and homophobic excesses simply by wearing the stuff, and still retain that hard-to-nail, Risky Business garden party sheen.

A few months ago, I noticed my friend Amanda Schmidt was wearing a sensible Abercrombie knit top to some dingy loft party. I just sort of assumed it was ironic and moved on—she's a musician, performance artist, and zinemaker, so chances are we were terrorized by the exact same people in our younger and more vulnerable years. Then I saw her a few days later at a party, this time sporting a staple A&F hoodie. I asked her what was going on, and she told me that she'd decided to wear Abercrombie & Fitch for a solid year as a sort of performance art/life project, and was currently documenting the whole thing on a Tumblr called AbercrombieAndFitchFierce.

To scroll through Amanda's Tumblr is to lull yourself into a deep and comfortable sleep: she looks pretty much the same in every image, barely ever smiling, rocking the 'Cromb. But a year? An entire year scooting around town in nothing but Abercrombie? I rolled this idea around in my mind for a few weeks. Even though I've got such a deep-seated prejudice against anyone who wears this stuff, in the words of LFO, I like girls that wear Abercrombie & Fitch. I can't help it; it's like Stockholm Syndrome. So I got over myself and decided to pick her brain to figure out what the hell she's doing to herself.

VICE: Hi Amanda. I've been following your Tumblr of Abercrombie photos for a while now and I think it's time that I talked to you about it. Where did this idea originally come from?
Amanda Schmidt: One afternoon last summer I was walking in Midtown and passed a guy wearing an Abercrombie & Fitch shirt. This happens all the time, but for some reason this instance struck me and I thought, "Maybe I'll wear Abercrombie & Fitch shirts every day for a year."  It was an amusing thought that stuck with me. I started the project in November of 2012 and called it "Fierce (Untitled)," after the A&F cologne. I love Tehching Hsieh and Linda Montano; their durational works are major inspirations for what I'm doing. I'll be doing this until November of this year.

What are the parameters of what you're trying to do?
I wear an A&F graphic shirt and their cologne Fierce every day. Fierce is that smell you pick up in the store. The shirts are all purchased new. I currently have six T-shirts and three sweatshirts. I sometimes wear non-A&F undershirts or sweatshirts, but any over shirt I wear is button-down or zipper-down so that the A&F shirt is always visible.

To highlight the project, I also aim to not resemble a typical A&F customer in the rest of my outfit. According to years of extensive field research, not looking like an A&F customer entails avoiding a variety of signifiers, such as thick horizontal stripes, plaid, floral jeans (I was surprised to see these in the store last season), clogs, Uggs, flip flops, short denim shorts, your standard tight jean, or any new-looking denim, for that matter, any earth-tones and pretty much any pattern reminiscent of après-skiwear. I also avoid canvas shoes, because all the male employees in the flagship store wear them.

I pair the shirts with more alternative dress. This means a lot of thrift store stuff and loud prints. This juxtaposition aims to highlight the A&F shirt as a conscious choice as opposed to a brand affiliation or lifestyle default. It also decontextualizes the shirt and isolates the practice of branding so that it can transcend the specificity of A&F. As you can see in the photographs, some outfits are better than others. I have to rev it up for summer. I also need to think more about my hair.

What does Abercrombie represent to you, or I guess to our culture at large? 
Abercrombie & Fitch is the king of teen mall culture, so to me it embodies low-brow elitism. I also associate it with early mornings on Black Friday.

Did you wear Abercrombie when you were a kid?
My big adolescent plight was that I wanted to wear it but couldn't afford it. The hierarchy was Abercrombie, American Eagle, Aeropostale, and then Hollister opened. Hollister was so cool that it didn't have a sign outside the store, but A&F remained the coolest. Maybe the haze of Fierce has something to do with it. Or the models.

What kinds of clothes were you wearing before you started wearing only Abercrombie?
On a good day, muted. On a normal day, boring. Black Urban Outfitters pants and an over-sized monotone shirt was my uniform. So this has actually taken me far outside my comfort zone.

Has anyone looked at you differently, or treated you differently than normal, since you started doing this?
Certain people notice my shirts, and a lot of women evil-eye the louder elements of what else I have on, depending on what aspect of the outfit is most out-of-context in a given situation. A couple people have asked what's up with the shirts, but aside from a bit more attention, not really.

Do you want Abercrombie and Fitch to know about you? 
Yes! Maybe we can work out a fiscal sponsorship situation. I hope that my daily tweets at them get some response, or at least a free shirt, but so far nothing yet. 

Has this project improved your life at all?
Yes. I've been reading fashion theory for the first time, and it's opened me up to a whole new world. And this revolution of my wardrobe has me feeling less self-conscious than ever before.

Are you sick of it yet?
Not at all, I'll be sad when it's over. All dress is inherently a performative choice, but not dressing for a specific project anymore will be boring. 

Why not J.Crew or some other brand?
Abercrombie is more ubiquitous. It's for young people, and it's less classy. J.Crew says, "I'm a professional living in Manhattan and I may go boating this weekend." Abercrombie says, "I live everywhere and I'm going to the mall." It says youth. The brand needed to be a middle school throwback. Branding rules in school. So why do this so long after my school days? In my immediate community, people no longer wear brands from middle school, but a lot of the general population seems to. And by otherwise wearing stereotypically "alternative apparel," I'm not only referencing suburban mall tropes but alternative ones as well. We're all branding ourselves somehow; it's inescapable. This really interests me!

 

If you'd like to see many, many more photos of Amanda in Abercrombie, you can follow her Tumblr, AbercrombieAndFitchFierce. She'll be doing this for the next year.

 

My Greatest Regret Is Not Making Out with a 500-Pound Woman on a Shitty Talk Show

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Illustration via Flickr user Christian Paparcuri

I’m writing this on my 33rd birthday. I’m sitting on my patio out in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, enjoying the quiet and fresh air. I’ve exceeded the expectations people had for me as an unconfident runt who grew up in North Jersey as well as the expectations I had for myself. I get to do comedy for a living. I have a beautiful girlfriend who is kind to me. My collaborators, my friends, and my community support me. I feel good. My life is good. I haven’t always felt like that, and I’m grateful that I can take the time to remind myself of it.

Yet on this birthday, I am sitting around thinking about regrets. Maybe it’s because birthdays are a time for self-reflection, and I’m the type of person who looks for any opportunity to ponder life. Probably it has to do with the fact that I had a dream when I was a freshman in college that I would only live to be 36, so a small part of me views this as the tail end of things since I’m neurotic and can’t forget a death dream. (It was very weird. I was lost in a forest, panicking, when a being of pure light who emanated serenity stopped me in my path and said, “Don’t worry, you’re halfway there.” I immediately realized that he wasn’t talking about being halfway out of the forest, he was talking about being halfway through my time on earth. I then realized that he was me post-death and was letting me know things ended peacefully. I woke up screaming, severely disturbing my roommate, a man known far and wide as the Russian Bear. Anyway, hearing about other peoples’ dreams is the fucking worst.)

As a largely unsuccessful comedian, I’ve become someone that younger people sometimes find and ask for advice, which I’m happy to give, even though it makes me feel old. I find myself dropping the same pearls of wisdom over and over: “Don’t feel shame about taking antidepressants, it’s an outdated stigma.” “Seriously, please don’t kill yourself.” “No credit is worse than bad credit.” “Leaving pee on a toilet seat is the worst thing you can do to your fellow man.”

But most of all, I tell people that they have to avoid living with regrets. They’ll eat you up inside. I know they eat me up. “What if?” is just about the worst question I can ask myself, and I want to avoid it at all costs for the rest of my life. And I have some huge what ifs that still bug me:

“What if I’d kissed Shelli on the banks of the D&R canal?”

“What if I’d stayed in Los Angeles in 2004?”

“What if I’d followed my gut and dropped out of Rutgers after my sophomore year?”

But my biggest regret, the one that haunts me to this day, the one I think about more than any other, the one that sends me into cold sweats is, “What if I had agreed to appear on that sleazy talk show pretending I dated a 45-year-old 500-pound woman back in 2001?”

Some background: I started performing at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater when I was 20 years old. There were a lot of other manic, creative people there who were uncertain what they wanted to go for, let alone how to go for it, and it felt like home. It changed my life. Starting out so young was great—I was too dumb to be intimidated by the people around me. When I was 21 I was on a team with Rob Corddry and Jack McBrayer and I was sharing the stage with people like Rob Riggle, Rob Huebel, and Paul Scheer on a semi-regular basis. It was the most challenging, exciting shit in the world. I immersed myself in it and just tried to keep up.

Back then, I was known as a promising young comedian. People wanted to do stuff with me. I had a run in with a shady manager at one point who sent me out on a hand modeling audition without telling me that’s what it was, despite the fact that I have a skeletal deformity that gives me claw-like hands. I would occasionally get asked to be in other comedian’s videos, or to do shows with people I respected. It was a good time.

One thing you should know about me is that I have always looked very young for my age. Only now am I starting to look age-appropriate. For example, here’s me at 13, looking about nine:

That baby fat would stick around well into my high school years. I didn’t hit puberty until my junior year, and the process wouldn’t complete itself until I was in college.

So when I was 21, I was fresh-faced and tiny. My first paid acting gig was playing teenagers in sketches on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Casting me meant they wouldn’t have to pay child labor wages.

I still don’t know who tipped off the booker of that sleazy talk show about me. I was still living with my parents at this time, and early one morning their phone rang. My mom came downstairs, excited.

“It’s a producer,” she said. “Fun!”

Now, in my memory, the show this person worked for was Rolanda, starring Rolanda Watts. But a quick google search tells me that that show ceased production in 1997, meaning it couldn’t have been hers. In any case, this producer was from the type of talk show that got popular in 90s—the ones hosted by wannabe Jerry Springers where KKK members would fistfight Black Panthers, or GG Allin would be a panelist talking about how getting raped by him would make a teenage girl’s life.

“We’re working on a piece here and we thought you’d be great for it,” the producer of the undefined show said.

“OK,” I said, already sensing a bizarre situation.

“We want you to come on our show and claim you date a 500-pound black woman. We’ve already got the 500-pound black woman.”

“Wait,” I said. “This is a talk show, right?”

“Yes.”

“So aren’t the things supposed to be real?”

She burst out laughing.“Oh, almost none of it’s real. At best, people are lying and don’t think we know. We always know. We make most of it up.”

“OK,” I said. “Sorry, I’m a little confused. Can you explain this whole thing to me again?”

“Basically, you’re a scrawny white kid,” she said. “I hope that’s not insulting. It’s just true. And we have this 500-pound black woman. And we want you two to say that you date.”

“Why?”

“So the whole crowd can yell at you,” she said. “The 500-pound black woman is also 45 years old. We want people to tell her she’s ruining your life and stuff like that.”

“Wow,” I said.

“I know, right?” she said, her excitement mounting. “I don’t know if you’d be into this, but we were hoping you would make out with the 500-pound black woman in front of the crowd. That will really drive them nuts.”

“I have to think about this,” I said. “When do you need to know by?”

“An hour or so would be great.”

“Can you call me back then?”

“Sure,” she said. “I really hope you can do it! We can pay you three hundred dollars.”

I hung up and trudged upstairs to my kitchen, where my mom sat at our table, excitement washing over her face.

“Is it something good?” she asked.

“A talk show wants me to make out with a 500-hundred pound black woman,” I told her.

“What?”

“A talk show wants me to—”

“I heard you,” she said. “That’s not acting. That’s not what you’re trying to do.”

“I know that,” I told her. “I’m not sure if I should do it.”

“Why would you?” my mother asked.

“Because it’s a chance to be on TV,” I said. “Maybe it will be good for a reel? And it would be kind of amazing to have footage of myself getting booed by a talk show crowd.”     

“I don’t know, Christopher,” she said.

“I mean, like in a pro wrestling way, that would be really fun.”

We sat there, my mom sipping her tea, me staring at the ground. I ran over all the possibilities in my head. It would be hilarious to tell my friends to watch. But I’d only been on television once or twice before. What if this got in the way of the rest of my career? What if this was the last thing I ever did on TV? That would be a bad legacy to leave.

And worst of all was the emotional side of it. I’d watched enough talk shows to see what they were going for. People were going to yell at me and tell me I was crazy. But worst of all, they were going to mock this poor woman for her size, her age, and, knowing the intelligence level of these shows, probably for her race. It would be pre-supposed that it would be insane to love this woman.

It felt hurtful. I tossed the idea around in my head —she was a grown woman, able to make her own decisions. Maybe she was the most confident person in the world and would find the situation as funny as I would. But maybe she really needed that $300. Or maybe her self-esteem was so low that she was ready to wander up there knowing she was a lamb being led to slaughter.

Then there was my mental state—at the time, I was pretty consistently depressed and full of self-doubt. And I had social advantages. I was male and Caucasian, the things that are easier to be. This woman had to put up with enough already. If she was going to head up there, I didn’t have to be a part of it.

“That poor woman,” my mother said.

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

The producer called back a little later. I told her I couldn’t be a part of it.

“Oh no!” she said. “How come?”

“It just feels far away from what I do,” I said. “It makes me nervous.”

“I get it,” she said. “Maybe next time.”

I hung up, and I regretted it immediately. I still regret it today. What a dumb fucking choice. If I had footage of myself screaming at an unruly crowd who was mad I was making out with a beautiful big-boned woman, I could die happy. What an over-thought, over-sensitive, regrettable, piece-of-shit decision. Not a day has gone by when I haven’t wished I was less of a sad-sack melodramatic turd.  

I could have been on a skeezy exploitative talk show making out and yelling at white trash audience members. I could have had my heel turn. I could have spent a glorious afternoon telling dirtbags with opinions to fuck off and let me live my life. I would have been lying through my teeth. I would have been good at it. And I would have had video of the whole thing.

I’ll go to my grave knowing I missed one of the greatest opportunities ever offered to me. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Take your chances, go into the unknown, don’t think too hard about the dumb shit life brings to the table sometimes. Make out with your metaphorical 500-pound black woman and leave regrets behind.

@ChrisGethard

Previously by Chris: The Strongest Dwarf in New Jersey

Weediquette: Getting Busted in New York

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In most places in the world, weed is still an illegal substance. But despite that illegality, some law enforcers tolerate it’s use. An understanding exists between weed smokers and many police: as long as you’re discreet about it, you won’t get hauled in for smoking a joint.

Before I came to New York, I lived in Philadelphia where I was perceived by the Philly PD as a “college student” and also “probably not black,” which meant that I could freely smoke anywhere in the city and get away with it. Blazing while in transit was nothing. When I took the subway at night, I would walk down to the far end of the platform and smoke the half a blunt from earlier in the night while waiting. When I got a car, I had a little chillum that permanently sat in plain view in my beverage holder. At some point my mom witnessed my carelessness, which led to a running debate about how much trouble my overt smoking could actually cause me. That ended when I was in a car with her and our realtor, a former Philly cop, and a waft of blunt smoke flowed in through an open window as we cruised through South Philly. The realtor made light of it with a chuckle. My mom turned to him and said, “Steve, my son smokes marijuana. Can he get busted for that?” Before I could say, “What the hell, ma!?” Steve gave her a definitive no. “No cop is going to bust a kid just for smoking unless he wants to be a dick.”

As we all know, lots of cops want to be dicks, especially in the suburbs where they’re bored, but the recent tangible shift in the American public’s perception of weed and weed-related penalties tells us that most people don’t think you should really get in trouble for smoking a small amount. That is, unless you live in New York.

Before I moved here, I knew it was over. Along with all the other quality of life laws that have kept New York lovely since Broken Windows policy came into effect in the 90s, smoking weed remains an arrestable offense. What’s the point of a beautifully maintained public park if you can’t smoke weed in it?

As the rest of the country warms up to the idea of legal marijuana, our biggest and awesomest city remains the narc at the party. Not only will New York cops bust you if they happen upon you while you’re smoking, they actively patrol in paddy wagons looking to pick up actual drug criminals alongside poor souls just trying to sneak in a couple of puffs. That’s what happened to my friend Judy Runt. Her story is a typical one, except that she managed to snap off several photos on the day of her hearing. Let it be known, this is what happens when you get caught smoking in New York.

I'll start off by saying I've been a regular marijuana smoker for 12 years. I smoke three to five times a week, sometimes every day, and I use it to help manage stress and migraine headaches. I have no previous convictions or criminal record. I'm also self-employed and work in the photo industry. On April 19th, 2013 around 3 PM, I stepped outside of my studio in the industrial section of Greenpoint for a smoke break. Just as I had taken a hit, two undercover narcotics detectives approached me. They had been watching me with binoculars from a navy blue undercover van. I didn't put up a fight and willingly handed over my one-hitter and weed.

Right off the bat, they were apologetic, insisting that they wouldn't usually waste their time bringing me in for a weed ticket, but because they had a quota to fill, their sergeant was going to order that they place me under arrest. At that point, they ran a background check and cuffed me, saying they were going to try to make me as comfortable as possible. I had to sit handcuffed in the back of a windowless paddy wagon for three hours while they drove around baiting and arresting actual drug dealers. When we arrived at the precinct I was placed in a gender-separated cell for another two hours. Throughout the entire fingerprinting and mugshot process, I was surprised at the attitude the officers were taking towards me. They were actually being nice, making small talk about my work, googling my website, and giving me candy and cigarettes through the bars. Maybe they were just flirting. Either way, I was repeatedly told that my arrest was "not a big deal" and that the case would get thrown out as an ACD (Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal) so long as I don't get arrested again for six months. I received a Desk Appearance Ticket, stating that I MUST APPEAR in court on May 22nd, 2013.  

On that day, I arrived at the downtown Brooklyn courthouse on Schermerhorn Street right on time, 9:30 Am. There were already hundreds of people there waiting to get called to the bench. I did my best to sneak off some photos while one thug youth after another got called up for "Marijuana ACD." There were juvenile delinquents, businessmen, elderly ladies, and all types of pothead humanity in court that day. My public defender didn't even get my file until 1 PM, at which point the court had to break for lunch and I was told to come back. By 3 PM I was one of the last people in the courtroom, and was told that my file "slipped through the cracks" because someone transcribed my name wrong. The judge looked like he could not care less that I had been waiting all day and hardly looked up as he mumbled the familiar ten-second spiel dismissing the case under the circumstance that I not get arrested for the next year (not six months as the cops had said). The whole ordeal was a waste of almost 12 hours of my life I will never get back in addition to some bruises from the handcuffs and the trauma of being detained like a criminal. Was it really not a big deal?

Shitty right? And this isn’t nearly the worst story I’ve heard. If you’re unlucky enough to be caught blazing on Friday night, you could be in booking until Monday. You’d think that in a big city the cops would have something better to do than hassle people smoking one-hitters on the street, and the truth is they probably do.

@Imyourkid

I Interviewed Toronto's Most Popular Transsexual Model

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Before the Canadian news cycle was inundated by a series of political scandals, resignations, and smoke-outs, a decidedly minor controversy occurred within the pages of Canada's Sun Media newspaper chain. On Tuesday, Xtra revealed that one of the papers “SUNshine Girls” (the scantily clad women that appear on Page three of every issue) was actually Amelia Maltepe, a transsexual model from Toronto by way of Bangladesh.

To their credit, Sun Media seems unconcerned with the revelation, even though they were unaware of Amelia's sexual identity. Sun Media may have a contentious history with Canada's LGBT community, but, as Toronto Sun's editor-in-chief Mike Wallace told Xtra “she's cute and we ran her photo.” He also let it slip that Amelia was not the first trans woman to become a SUNshine Girl.

Unfortunately, not everyone sees things that way. A petition titled “KEEP SUNSHINE GIRLS AS WOMEN NOT TRANNIES” originated at the white supremacist internet forum Stormfront (as noticed by Toronto Standard) and has so far gained a staggering 30 signatures. Nonetheless, I had a chance to talk with Amelia, who is evidently not bothered by the haters.

VICE: When did you realize that you wanted to live as a transsexual?
Amelia: It was on Halloween, a year and a half ago. I dressed up as a girl, and after I dressed up I started getting attention. I just thought, that's what I want to be.

How did your friends and family react to the news?
Oh my. I had a problem with my family in the beginning when I told them. Probably for two or three months I had problems. Then after my mother told me: “Well, If you like it, then do whatever you want to do, whatever makes you happy.” So now I have no problems with my family. They are very supportive and my friends are all the same. I have very good friends, and my boyfriend especially. He's very supportive.

Are your family still in Bangladesh, or do they live here in Canada?
I don't have any family here in Canada. They're all back home. Every two or three days I am in contact with my family. My father called me last night. I don't have any problems with my family.

What’s your relationship with your boyfriend like?
I dressed up as a woman on October 31st in 2011 and I met him in the first week of November, so he knew me as a transvestite. Like, when I was dressed up, but not living as a girl completely. Then we started dating and we have been together for a year and a half now. He already told his family about me and they are OK with it.

So when you met him, would he have identified as gay or bisexual?
No, I don't think he would have called himself gay. I am the first transsexual relationship he's had. Before, he was in relationships with girls. This is the first time he's gotten together with somebody like me. I would call him maybe bisexual, but still, he doesn't go with men.

How did you end up becoming the SUNshine girl?
I saw some of the newspapers. Afterwards, when I saw it, I said “Oh, why don't I try to do it.” So I filled out the form, and then I emailed it to them. And they replied to me and I went and I did the photo shoot. I didn't know it would be controversial. I didn't have anything like that in mind and they didn't ask me about my sexuality or whether I'm transsexual or not. If somebody doesn’t ask me, I don't have to tell, right?

Were you worried that they might find out and pull the plug on the shoot?
I'm confident about myself. I am never afraid in public, and I know that people don't know. People don't realize, so I was not afraid that something like that would happen. So I did the photo shoot.

Was the transition to doing that as a transsexual fairly easy?
I'm very happy that I did it and I don't have any problems because I'm more confident. When I was a guy, I wasn’t very confident. I was a cute boy. I was still beautiful, but after I did my sex change, it changed my life.

So, excuse me for asking this, but are you pre-op or post-op at the moment?
I still have my thing.

Were you worried, during the photo shoot, that the photographer might notice?
No, no. There is no way they could notice. How could someone notice? I could do a bikini shoot. I go to the beach, people don't notice. They don't see. I have my own underwear I can put on. Nobody would see.

Have you heard about the “KEEP SUNSHINE GIRLS AS WOMEN NOT TRANNIES” petition that your photo inspired?
I don't who made that, but I think this is very stupid whoever is doing it. It doesn't really bother me or make me feel bad. I know about myself, I am a very confident person. It didn't bother me for one second.

Are people ever shocked when they find out you're a transsexual?
My close friends know and they are my friends, so it's not a problem. In public, I go to the gym, I go to clubs, I go out, and people never realize. They see me as a beautiful girl. You saw my pictures, right? In real life, people never even think that. I don't need to tell anybody. If they ask me, I don't need to tell, because I have a boyfriend, so I don't need to get into that with anybody.

Do you end up surprising people?
With my close friends' friends, sometimes I say “Well, you know I'm transsexual” and people get shocked. They think I'm joking, but no, I'm not joking. I'm serious. But I have a few friends who are transsexual, and they talk about how they feel, so I know about that. People look at them a certain way. When they walk down the street, people make comments. I understand what they're going through, but I've never had that feeling.

On the SUNshine Girl bio, you say you want to be Miss World, were you inspired at all by Jenna Talackova's bid to be Miss Universe?
Yeah, I always wanted it, from the beginning, but I was not sure if I could do it. But after she came out, yeah, she inspired me.

Do you plan on having a full sex change later?
Honestly, I'm not thinking about that presently. I don't know what's going to happen in five years or ten years. I really don't know what's going to happen, but I don't think about that right now. I talked to my doctors, I talked to my friends. If I did that, my sex life would be finished. I won't have an orgasm and I won't feel like a real girl feels, even if I have a vagina. I won't feel it, so why do I need to do it?

 

Follow Alan on Twitter: @alanjonesxxxv

More on LGBT Issues:

The VICE Guide to Being Trans

The Canadian Government Gave $544,813 to a Bunch of Homophobes For Africa Relief

Give All the Drugs to the Gay Boys

Shorties: We Went to the Toronto Thaw Fest

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At the beginning of May 2013, Telephone Explosion Records celebrated the return of not-awful weather with the aptly named Toronto Thaw Festival. For four nights, the Thaw packed four different venues with a shoegazey night, a hardcore night, a somewhat garagey night, and just to top it all off, a freaks-only party in the infamous Comfort Zone after hours space. We filmed the whole thing for you just so we could publish a highlight reel, so you can pretend like you were there, even though you maybe weren't. Enjoy!

VICE News: Triple Hate - Part 4

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NEWS

The Wizard of the Saddle Rides Again

Is a Park in Memphis, Tennessee, the Epitome of Racism in Modern America? The KKK Say It’s Just History, Many Others Disagree  

By Rocco Castoro


A cross-lighting ceremony that took place near Tupelo, Mississippi, in late March following a Ku Klux Klan rally in Memphis, Tennessee, that was organized to protest the renaming of three parks in the city built in honor of the Confederacy. It is a “cross lighting,” not “cross burning,” because these Klansmen “do not burn, but light the cross to signify that Christ is the light of the world.” Photo by Robert King.

I

n the middle of an unkempt park in Memphis, Tennessee, stands an oversize bronze statue of a Confederate lieutenant general astride his mount. Its subject, Nathan Bedford Forrest, is considered by some to be one of the most infamous and powerful racists in American history. The first official leader of the Ku Klux Klan, some historians allege that Lieutenant General Forrest’s most heinous act was ordering his troops to slaughter hundreds of surrendered soldiers at 1864’s Battle of Fort Pillow, more than half of whom were African American. Others celebrate him as the physical manifestation of the South’s ethos during the Civil War and beyond: a rebel hero who relentlessly campaigned for his cause until it became untenable; he never gave up, even after his death.

Unveiled in 1905, the Memphis News-Scimitar reported that the masterfully sculpted monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest (or NBF) would “stand for ages as the emblem of a standard of virtue.” And today it seems the newspaper’s prophecy was correct, except for perhaps the “virtue” part. As of 2013, “that devil Forrest,” as he was infamously nicknamed by Union General William T. Sherman, is still sprinting across a Tennessee ridge on his stallion, kicking up dust in a city with historically tense racial relations. 

Pink granite tiles and modest bronze headstones that look like plaques skirt the sculpture. General Forrest and his wife, Mary Ann Montgomery, are buried underneath. NBF’s more celebrated moniker, at least in some circles, is the “Wizard of the Saddle,” a nickname he earned for his wondrous equestrian talents in battle, and one that calls to mind the highest modern-day rank of the KKK—the Imperial Wizard. 

The latest controversy surrounding the park and statue came to a head in early February, when the Memphis City Council unanimously voted to change the name of Forrest Park to Health Sciences Park (at least temporarily; a special commission is still in the process of deciding its final name as of press time), in line with the downtown medical-student facilities of the University of Tennessee that surround it. Two other Memphis parks—Confederate Park and Jefferson Davis Park, named after the president of the Confederacy—were also renamed by the City Council, with the reasoning that they were publicly funded reminders of an era that could be considered offensive and unwelcoming to the majority of the city’s residents, 63 percent of whom are African American according to the 2010 census. 

Shortly after the City Council’s decision, a man identifying himself as Exalted Cyclops Edward announced that his chapter of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was planning a massive rally to protest the renaming of the three parks. “It’s not going to be 20 or 30,” he told local NBC affiliate WMC-TV. “It’s going to be thousands of Klansmen from the whole United States coming to Memphis, Tennessee.” Later  in the month the city granted the Loyal White Knights a permit for a public rally to be held March 30 on the steps of the county courthouse in downtown Memphis, one day before Easter and five days before the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination at the Lorraine Motel.  

It was an eerily familiar scenario for Memphians. On January 17, 1998, around 50 members of the KKK held a rally at the very same courthouse in what they claimed was an attempt to protect their “heritage” in the lead-up to MLK Day and that year’s 30th anniversary of his assassination. Outnumbered by counterprotesters, the Klan’s vitriolic screeds incited a small riot that resulted in looting and the ill-prepared police force teargassing the entire crowd. 

One Memphian and self-proclaimed member of the Grape Street Crips seemed to take the Klan’s threats to return to his city very seriously. Following the announcement of the planned rally, 20-year-old DaJuan Horton posted a video on YouTube in which he states that he’s organizing a consortium of local gangs—some rivals—to unify and show their discontent on the day of the rally. Local and national media suddenly became very interested in the impending event, whipping a diverse cross-section of the city into a frenzy.

“They gonna come to Memphis, Tennessee… where Martin Luther King got gunned down,” DaJuan says in the video. “You’re going to come here and rally deep—really, really deep, in my language, just to talk? No, it’s not gonna happen like that. When you come to Memphis, Tennessee, we’re gonna rally right across from you, and it’s gonna be Young Mob, Crips, Bloods, GDs, Vice Lords, Goon Squad… I’m getting on the phone with them daily. I’m talking to the big guys, the big kahunas. I’m talking to the Bill Gates of the gang wars. You come to Memphis, we’re going to be waiting on you. It’s versatile down here. We got every gang you can think of; we’ve got the fucking Mob down here. Bring your ass on.” 

Had the City Council’s decision to rename the park sparked a potential showdown with what many law enforcement agencies consider America’s oldest terrorist organization and a mega-alliance of the country’s most violent gangs? Or was the Klan struggling to retain relevancy in an era when race relations have progressed so much that the US has elected a black president twice over? I traveled to Memphis about a week before the rally to meet everyone involved and find out. 

Continue reading on page two.


How Corrupt Will Montreal’s New Ruling Party Be?

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Montreal's former mayor, partying in white gloves. via.

Union Montreal is now dead, its putrid corpse being danced over and pissed on by scandal-sick Montrealers. Goodbye and good riddance, you rotting whore of a party.

Under that party’s decade-plus reign, the city of Montreal’s rep sank under a constant barrage of sleaze, from bottom to almost the tippy-top itself. As a result, people have written off Montreal as a corrupt and fucked up city. Toronto may be hogging all the limeight right now with their potentially murderous mayor, but that kinda shit is nothing new to the citizen's of Canada's most European ville. Former mayor Gerald Tremblay was never directly implicated in any crime but continues to lamely claim he made the mistake of surrounding himself with people who betrayed him. People like his number two guy, Frank Zampino, who buddy-buddied with mob bosses in return for payoffs and home renos. Corruption-watchers are now getting 24-hour boners with the Charbonneau Commission, with its hit parade of city scumbags telling the world how they fucked over taxpayers.

With the city finally coming to grips with a corruption problem that’s seemingly part of its DNA, there’s no question it’s going to be the number one question come this November’s election. And with three big parties, locals have options. (The current mayor is Michael Applebaum, an anglo Jew who was elected by city council after Gerald stepped down. He says he isn’t running, and with zero chance of winning, who blames him?)

So how does each party stack up?

Projet Montréal

Strengths: Runs on a platform of sustainable urbanism, advocating improved and greener public transportation, slowing family exodus to the suburbs and better housing. Artsy left-wing types love them.

Weaknesses: Still not fully trusted by voters outside its strongholds like the Plateau and neighbouring Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie. Both ‘hoods are densely populated, gentrified or gentrifying and largely French-speaking. Many voters consider them hostile to car owners and businesses, including nightlife. While the party is making inroads into other boroughs, anglo suburbanites will need a lot of convincing.

Perceived likelihood of being corrupted: Low to medium. The people running for PM aren’t career politicians, and those closest to the party’s founding core have been working for low pay and little recognition for at least two election cycles. None of its elected officials have come close to scandal, but if they do win big, rot may find a way in. So far, they’re campaigning on having clean hands.

Vision Montreal

Strengths: A core loyal following in some neighbourhoods and an experienced party machine. With a lifetime spent in politics, former PQ cabinet minister and current opposition leader Louise Harel is well connected and knows the game, even if her party is currently ranked third in polls. Her party has been out of power for over a decade, so she has brought in new faces that aren’t linked to corruption.

Weaknesses: A few big ones. First, finances. The party’s over half-a-million dollars in debt, and there is speculation that the party won’t be able to overcome its financial hole. Second, the party’s perceived lack of, well, vision. Unlike PM, it doesn’t really have an identity outside of Louise Harel. Third, Louise Harel. Her long career with the PQ makes many people uncomfortable. Federalists and anglophones won’t vote for her on principle.

Perceived likelihood of corruption: Medium. Louise has been in the biz long enough to know where the stink is. And while she’s been outspoken about corruption in city hall as opposition leader, she’s offered no reason to believe that her party would be any different if they were running the show.

Équipe Denis Coderre

Strengths: Denis is certainly well connected. He’s been in Ottawa as a federal Liberal MP since 1997 and was for a time the Liberal lieutenant for Quebec, so he knows the city and its players well. As an outsider, he has no connection to the rotten construction industry. An avid Habs fan, tweets about them constantly.

Weaknesses: He was involved in the sponsorship scandal of a decade ago and while he wasn’t directly implicated by the Gomery Commission’s final report, he did attract some flak for being close to some of the names involved. He’s a federal Quebec Liberal, which is as akin to being dogshit to some francophones as Harel’s PQ past is to most anglophones. Plus, if, as the opposition parties suspect, he absorbs much of the party machinery and even some of the candidates left over from the Union Montreal heap, the opposition and the media will go berserk. In fact, the launch of his campaign was a fiasco, as housing protesters turned the event into a circus. But according to a recent poll, 33 percent of voters would choose him as mayor.

Perceived likelihood of corruption: Medium to high. Denis’ background with the federal Liberals and his cozying up to elements of Union Montreal isn’t generating a whole lot of faith that he’ll scourge the filth out of city hall. He’s got two badly tarnished brands to deal with here, and his opponents won’t let him forget it.

But no matter who wins, they’re still going to have a big ass problem on their hands. When bureaucrats, engineers and unions are considered strategic assets by colluding Mob-related interests, elected officials are always going to look bad. As they should.

The good news is, the Charbonneau Commission’s been given an 18-month extension, meaning the final report is due in April 2015. That means the shit parade isn’t going away and whoever’s in charge will be under a microscope.

 

Follow Patrick on Twitter: @patricklejtenyi

More on rotten Montreal:

Dr. Arthur T. Porter IV Got Very, Very Rich From Ripping Off Canadians

The Bloody Return of Vito Rizzuto: Canada’s Mob Boss

Quebec’s Mafia Corruption Is All Out In The Open

Moronic English Fascists Marched On Parliament in London

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Since Lee Rigby's murder in Woolwich last Wednesday, there has been a surge in Islamophobia in the UK. The English Defence League – long-time opponents of Islam, given that they're basically pound-shop Nazis – have attempted to capitalise on this by organising a series of marches and demonstrations across the country. No matter that the bastards who butchered the soldier while screaming “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great) have been unanimously condemned by all sane Muslim groups and leaders – moronic ex-schoolmates have still been posting dodgy, grammatically awful status updates on Facebook, ten mosques have been attacked and the number of anti-Muslim incidents has spiked since Rigby's horrifying murder.

Before the events of last Wednesday, England’s street bigot patrols had been having a torrid time of it. They'd gotten used to having their arses handed to them wherever they went, which in turn led to infighting and disunity. Fortunately for the English Defence League (EDL) and unfortunately for anyone with a scintilla of decency or intelligence, a man’s tragic death at the hands of fanatics proved just the shot in the arm they needed to put their petty differences behind them and morph back into a cohesive Islamophobic machine, like the T-1000 reforming itself in Terminator 2, if the T-1000 was a drunk racist.

After taking to the streets of Woolwich in the immediate aftermath of Rigby's death and holding a demo in Newcastle on Saturday – where a speech that consisted of “send the black cunts home” was enthusiastically applauded – the EDL was on the march in London again on bank holiday Monday.

We turned up at Leicester Square where the EDL were congregating. At this stage they were defending Western civilisation from an Islamic fundamentalist landgrab by getting tanked up on Jacques fruit cider at a Yates’s wine bar. They passed the time by imploring children queuing to get the last ever tickets for the Spice Girls musical to “stick your fucking Jihad up your arse”.

Along with several screaming newspaper front pages, many members of the EDL were angry that David Cameron is currently holidaying in Ibiza in the middle of what the media are determined to label a “terror crisis”, chanting, “Where the fuck is Cameron?” I’m not sure how having Dave standing around trying to look important for the cameras would help the situation. Has nobody considered that he might have been orchestrating all ten arrests connected to the murder from the poolside, in between pints of San Miguel?

After a while they set off towards Downing Street, joined as they went by more supporters. If you've been paying attention, you can probably tell from this picture that this was the biggest far-right street party for some time. I longed for the last time the EDL came to Westminster, not so very long ago, when they only managed to rouse about 85 people whose love for spending their weekends shouting stupid things at bored police officers was truly hardcore. Unfortunately, misplaced anger at a soldier's death and the hot weather combined to bring out the dilettantes.

As the march made its way down Whitehall, it was met with the jeers of some anti-fascists who didn’t want to let the march happen unmolested. For some reason, these guys didn’t buy the EDL’s line that they’re not racist.

I’m finding it hard to put my finger on exactly what it was, but something gave me the impression that the anti-fascists might have had a point. Having said that, it would be unfair to look at the maniacal behaviour of one or two people and suppose that their actions represented the will of a whole community.

Not that Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxely-Lennon), the EDL’s head honcho, extended that courtesy to Muslims during his speech. He castigated them for not condemning Lee Rigby’s killers, conveniently ignoring the fact that 5,000 of them congregated in a Morden mosque to do exactly that on Friday. He also must have missed the numerous unequivocal statements from British Muslims to the same effect.

Then he quoted Martin Luther King, the political equivalent of saying you’re not racist because you have a black friend. In a sublimely ridiculous rhetorical flourish, he then equated the thousand or so drunken bigots in Whitehall with the army of the Holy Roman Empire who beat the Ottoman army at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. It was like the drunken rant of a taxi driver channelled through Foucault's Pendulum.

Then it was the turn of Kev Carroll, another EDL top boy, to say something stupid. He decided to go with the claim that the demonstration in Newcastle had been attended by 7,000, massaging the real attendance figures up almost fourfold. Then he equated hatred of the EDL to hatred of Lee Rigby. Which is too absurd for words.

When the speeches have stopped, the chants of a group of anti-fascists became audible and the two groups, separated by the police, started jeering and chucking bottles at each other. Which looked like this (check out Robinson's army camo jacket):

A few bottles met their knuckleheaded targets with bloody effect, which will probably be cold comfort to antifascists who, having been on a solid run of form in embarrassing the EDL, were outnumbered and unable to pull off the trick again.

Throwing match over, it was back to Yates’s for the EDL, chanting “Lee, Lee, Lee Rigby” – creepily turning him into a martyr for the far-right, chucking bottles and cans everywhere and scaring tourists in his honour. Eventually this led the wine bar’s staff to admit that plying these guys with alcohol hadn't been the best idea and they shut up shop.

Bereft of booze, a small group decided to head back to Downing Street, because having a protest in modern Britain just doesn’t feel complete until you’ve screamed at some riot cops to complain at them about how they’re kettling you.

And that was pretty much that, so we went to have a well-earned sandwich on the patio of a cafe. We were left choking on our pastrami when an EDL supporter walked past and, referring to an Asian family sat on the table next to us, spat, “I fucking hate Muslim paki brown cunts” (I mean, come on, for fuck’s sake), visibly enraged by their presence. He walked on, angrily twitching, leaving us, a pair of white guys, feeling the need to apologise to the family on behalf of non-brown people everywhere.

Even though that felt like the right thing to do, it’s kind of silly really, because we hadn’t racially abused the Asian family any more than all Muslims had killed Lee Rigby. That’s a point that will need to be repeatedly made by anti-fascists as the ever-lovely EDL capitalise on Islamophobic sentiment to try to keep some momentum going after what was, in truth, a red letter day for them. A group that was looking like an utter joke a week ago isn't quite so funny any more.

Thankfully, these guys have a history of ineptitude that makes a blundering ministry in an Iannucci penned satire look like a well-oiled machine. So, with any luck they’ll screw things up for themselves somehow. In their speeches they hinted that their next move will be some kind of tour around the country's war memorials. EDL leader Tommy Robinson’s credibility has already been dealt a blow as Help for Heroes – the armed forces charity whose slogan was on Rigby's T-shirt when he was murdered – announced that they wouldn't be accepting EDL money (Robinson had been planning to do a sponsored walk for them).

Perhaps some of the attendees were the kind of fly-by-night racists that will skulk off home, satisfied at having tarred all Muslims with a murderous brush just the once. If not, this summer is looking like it might bring the British far-right and those who oppose them into contact on a regular basis.

Follow Simon and Henry of Twitter: @SimonChilds13 and @Henry_Langston

More of VICE's extensive coverage of this shower of bastards:

I Watched the EDL Bring Chaos to Newcastle

We Photographed a Drunken EDL Hate Mob Attacking Police Last Night

English Fascists Took their First Beating of the Summer in Brighton this Weekend

Walthamstow, Where Fascists Go to Die

Watching Fascists, Anti-Fascists and Police Fight Each Other at Bristol Gay Pride

The Subterranean Scene

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The subway authorities move passengers to different cars so that the Sikarios will bother the least amount of people possible. Photos by Mauricio Castillo.

It’s Saturday morning in a Mexico City subway station, and the members of the Panamiur gang are headed to a party. Their leader, Cidel, is wearing huge sunglasses, a fauxhawk slathered in hair gel, cargo pants, and a T-shirt with a giant 2 and 6 airbrushed across it—a reference to November 26, 2010, the date the Panamiurs were founded. 

The four dozen kids surrounding Cidel are similarly adorned in fake gold chains, oversize shades, brightly colored baseball caps, and tight jeans. They shout chants at a member of a rival gang on the other side of the platform. “Jori’s fucking mom is taking a bath, eh, oh!,” they holler. “She’s very close to our territory, eh, oh! With a huge dick in one hand and a rag with PVC glue in the other, eh, oh! And the gang says, we are gonna rape her, we are gonna rape her. Hard, hard in the ass! Fucking bitch!”

They are laughing because it’s all a joke, but the rest of the passengers look anxious. Panamiur is one of a group of local gangs known as combos made up of reguetoneros (“reggaeton fans”) in their late teens and early 20s who haunt the subway stations of Mexico City. Like all of the combos, Cidel tells me Panamiur is first and foremost about music, partying, and supporting the crew no matter what. From the perspective of the passengers, however, it’s also about huffing pipe cleaner and industrial-strength glue from rags, throwing up gang signs, and yelling obscenities about raping someone’s mother, so any nervousness is understandable. Especially considering the stories about the combos that have been circulating in the regional media over the past year. 

The combos first made headlines last July, when more than 600 disgruntled reguetoneros, diverted from a canceled reggaeton show, decided to go wandering around subway stations in trendy neighborhoods instead. Signs were torn off the walls, fights broke out, and more than 200 kids were arrested and taken to jail for a bit before being released. A few weeks later, on August 4, a full-scale battle broke out at another station, when 50 combos were ambushed by 150 members of a rival, reggaeton-hating gang. Surveillance videos of that brawl, which depict improvised bombs exploding on the platform, went viral, and Mexico City suddenly had a new youth trend to worry about that had the public wondering if they were living in some Spanish-language remake of The Warriors.

While most combos are undoubtedly guilty of general rowdiness and huffing chemicals in public, like American greasers in the 50s and heavy metal fans in the 70s, they’re not as threatening as their media profile might suggest. According to many combos there’s been a concerted effort on the part of the gangs themselves to organize and avoid serious conflicts, mostly thanks to the efforts of a soft-spoken 20-something known as Brenan. In 2011 he founded FU Antrax—a sort of United Nations for glue-sniffing, subway-riding teenagers. 


The Sikarios pose for a photo outside the Garibaldi subway station before heading to a club to celebrate their third anniversary. Their jersey incorporates the logo of the subway station where they hang out.

Brenan first interacted with the combos while working the door of a dance club popular with the reguetoneros. He noticed that attendance would dip whenever word spread that a certain group had a beef with a rival gang, and figured that he could organize better, bigger, and more peaceful parties.

“In the first meeting, they were all tense and skeptical,” Brenan said, “but we talked out our differences and started with a clean slate.” Later, some combos broke off from FU Antrax and formed a second federation of combos named La Familia. Brenan told me that although some of his people wanted to attack this splinter group, he talked them out of it. “People see me not as a leader, but more of a coordinator,” he said. “I coordinate the people. I try to guide them so they don’t do things they shouldn’t be doing.”

The occasion for this Saturday-morning gathering of combos is Brenan’s birthday party. And while the event is intended to be entirely peaceful—just 300 of his closest friends from various combos getting loaded and dry-humping to reggaeton in a warehouse—its details are shrouded in secrecy. 

We arrive at the venue, which is nondescript and without signage. At 4 PM the doors are locked. “The government calls our parties clandestine, but it’s just because we can’t have our own space,” Brennan says. “If the government saw us getting together, let’s say at a house party, immediately a bunch of police cars would show up to shut us down. Even if we weren’t doing anything bad. People are scared of us.”

There’s no doubt that the authorities are keeping a close eye on the combos’ activities. Jose Alfredo Carrillo, who oversees security for Mexico City’s subway system, said that on an average Saturday his employees keep a close eye on 3,000 reguetoneros, soccer hooligans, and other potential troublemakers who ride the trains to parties or sporting events. “During the last few years, these groups started to represent a problem not only for the trains and our facilities, but also for other users and for themselves,” he said. “They have become increasingly violent and aggressive, and we have to prepare operatives to be able to transport them and guarantee their security and the security of the rest of our users. Once they come in, we can’t mix them with other passengers. We’ve seen them robbing people or fighting between them.” Often, police officers in riot gear monitor the combos on the subway, clearing out train cars to separate them from other passengers. 

I asked Carrillo if he thought the combos were criminal groups or just rebellious kids looking to have a good time. “We understand it as a cultural phenomenon,” he said. “They are young people looking for a way to express themselves. Fortunately, they’re not all the same; we’ve seen many of these groups that behave themselves. The problem is when they cross the line between what’s legal and what’s illegal.”


The Sikarios, the biggest combo in Mexico City, celebrate their third anniversary at a club near the Ciudad Azteca subway station.

Some combos play into their stereotype as violent troublemakers, like the Sikarios, the biggest and most notorious subway gang in Mexico City. Boasting hundreds of members, its name is a play on the Spanish word for “hitman,” and its logo features a graphic of an AK-47 where the k should be. But the Sikarios aren’t associated with drug cartels or organized crime and aren’t as dangerous as their reputation might suggest. Regardless, the authorities often target them. In December, they celebrated their anniversary by doing what they do best: bringing together 400-odd kids at a club and dancing, drinking, banging drums, and sniffing glue all night until the cops spoiled their fun. 

“The police said that we had robbed a bakery, but that wasn’t true,” said Micky, the Sikarios’ leader. “We were outside with our drums, and they just didn’t understand what was going on. They took some of our guys, put them in the police car, drove them around, and stole their money and their cell phones… We have been stigmatized; they have made up their minds that we are drug addicts, violent people, and thieves. But that’s not true.” When I brought up the high-profile combo brawls reported last year, Micky blamed them on smaller, less-organized groups whose leaders can’t control them effectively.

At his birthday party, Brenan agrees that the combos are unfairly profiled. “Just because of how we dress, [people] see us on the streets and think we’re gonna rob them, when we’re just on our way back from school!” he says. “Many think that we don’t [work], but we do. For example, I have a degree—I’m an electrical engineer.” 

I ask about his friends huffing glue all around us, but he shrugs it off. “People don’t do drugs because they belong to a combo or listen to reggaeton. Many have family problems and end up doing drugs to escape from that. And just because one of us does drugs, it doesn’t mean all of us are drug addicts; just because one of us steals, it doesn’t mean we are all thieves. There are politicians who do drugs, there are celebrities that do drugs, but I’m not gonna say they all do drugs… I’m not one to judge.” 

Watch our documentary about the combos of Mexico City, coming soon to VICE.com

Read more about gangs on VICE:

Street Gangs in Papua New Guinea Look Terrifying

The Illegal Dirt Bike Gangs of Baltimore

Heavy Metal Gangs of Wadeye

How the Internet Ruined 'Arrested Development'

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How the Internet Ruined 'Arrested Development'

The Facebook Comments Rob Ford's Staffers Don’t Want You To See

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A crack pipe word cloud, because, why not?

The comments on the Facebook page of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford are, on the whole, positive and congratulatory. Even in the wake of the ever-evolving ‘Crackgate’ scandal, Fordites have been posting a plethora of supportive comments to the Mayor’s wall:

“Rob. Hang on. you are doing the best job. We love you…Burden is on star to provide proof. There was no video released, so it does not exist. Not even short ten seconds teaser trailer. as to create attention. all this screams from pinkos are unsubstantinated. They have no video, you do not need to explain any further.”

“Mr ford I just want to say I have alot of respect for you and your visions for this great city of ours. Keep up the good work and remember there are alot of people rooting for you.”

It shouldn’t come as any surprise to you that the comments on the mayor’s Facebook page are heavily monitored and screened. For any high-profile politician, online comments are like town hall forums: both appear spontaneous but are actually highly choreographed. In the case of Ford’s Facebook page, negative comments are systematically cleansed from the mayor’s Facebook wall.

This practice came to my attention last week when Gawker first broke the Crackgate story. As the controversy reverberated throughout the digital space, I wanted to gauge Torontonians’ reactions.  And what better place to share your support or dismay for your elected official than their public Facebook page? I noted a couple of particularly disparaging remarks about Mr. Ford and mentioned them to a friend in passing a couple of hours later.

When they tried to look them up, they’d already been deleted.

Now some of these comments are out-and-out personal attacks or abusive comments that the Mayor’s office can arguably justify deleting from what is a key tool in the management of Mr. Ford’s public brand.

But in deleting negative comments more generally, isn’t the Mayor projecting an image of overwhelming support that is misleading to the public who elected him in good faith?

So I decided to monitor exactly what Mr. Ford’s staff was deleting from his Facebook page. I programmed a webscraper utility (using the Python programming language and Facebook’s Graph API) that ‘scrapes’ or scans this web page a few times a day. On its initial run this computer code created a copy of all comments and inserted them into a database. On subsequent runs, the same code now looks for new comments - but more importantly - checks each comment stored in the database is also still on the latest scanned copy of the Facebook page. If it’s not, that comment is marked as having been deleted.

But enough of my nerdspeak—what are the comments that Ford’s staff didn’t think you should see?

The results, below, are from a ‘live’ and real-time stream of the censored comments. This feed is automatically refreshed several times a day.

Since the creation of my FordScraper on May 20th—just one week ago—more than 70 comments have been removed from Mayor Ford’s Facebook page.

That’s an average of 10 comments a day—including the weekend—being deleted.

This figure could well be greater but, because the webscraper is only run a few times a day, it’s possible a comment is posted and deleted before the code is next run.

Nonetheless, these deletions illustrate the extent to which resources are being utilized to protect the Mayor’s public image.


Rob Ford with a finger puppet? via.

However, there seems to be little consistency in censorship policy and it’s unclear who decides which comments should be removed. Comments don’t seem to be confined to the internet’s trash just for being partisan or vulgar. Rather it seems comments from varying classes of Facebook user are deleted:

The Supporter

“Ford if you ever need some defiant City Council members roughed up you let me know.”

“Mr Ford, you are a great major but I think its time to pack it in or take the drug tests and sue the life out of the star. I think you have enough support to raise some funds for legal fees”

The Denouncer

“positive public role model? HA! You can be in a seat of power while hanging out doing drugs with drug dealers, gangsters and thieves. Wow what a positive message for the kids. He's in the public spotlight which means he is held to a high standard to represent himself and the city. Next you'd say if he raped someone or molested a child it wouldn't matter so long as he does a good job as mayor. ludicrous!”

“Resign Rob... and cut your losses.”

The Pragmatist

“why doesnt the mayor comply with a blood test, urine , or even offer hair (maybe not) and put all this to rest??????”

“If Mayor Rob Ford was a crack addict you would not see him for days. But as it stands he is seen doing one thing or another. He would not be a functioning mayor and he would be slimmer than he is. Sorry about that but its very true. Someone wants to cause issues to force him to resign.”

The Poet

“CRACK IS WHACK!”

The Historian

“crack is actually a pretty old invention.”

The Archivist

“Even if the crack story turns out to be a total hoax, how do you explain the rest of these mishaps?”

This exercise opens a debate on a grey area of social media: should critical comments be deleted from the Facebook or Twitter accounts of a publicly elected official? The town hall forum aside, social media is one of the only direct ways dissatisfied Torontonians can voice their frustrations with and support for Ford’s leadership.

And yet this public record is sanitized on a daily basis—one Facebook user was even reportedly banned from Mr. Ford’s page—prompting the question of whether or not citizens deserve greater transparency when it comes to the social media profiles of their elected officials.
 

 

Marc Ellison is a data and photojournalist. He has a Twitter account and a website.

More on Robbie Ford:

We Spoke to a Former Crack Addict About Rob Ford

Rob Ford Might Be a Crack Smoker

Rob Ford Has a Terrible Photographer

Femen Are Being Attacked by Nazis and Sent to Prison

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It’s been a hectic couple of days for Femen: As we speak, their Paris headquarters is under siege by 300 neo-Nazis seeking revenge for the events of two weekends ago, when they interrupted a yearly nationalist gathering to commemorate Joan of Arc. And yesterday, they found out that Tunisian Femen activist Amina Tyler, the 19-year-old who was drugged and given a virginity test after posting topless protest pictures of herself on Facebook, might be facing up to two years and six months in jail. Her crime: spray-painting "Femen" on a wall near a mosque in Kairouan where the Salafist movement Ansar al-Sharia were gathering.

I just called up Inna Shevchenko, one of the original Ukrainian Femen who is now based in Paris, for a quick catch up.

VICE: Hi Inna, are you OK?
Inna Shevchenko:
We’re OK. We haven’t been attacked yet, maybe they will come later, I don’t know. We’re just surrounded by police.

How did you find out that 300 neo-Nazis were heading to your HQ?
Suddenly, in the morning, we saw 16 police buses drive up, blocking the door of the theatre that our HQ is in. Police came from all the surrounding streets, and put up metal fences and everything. We asked them what was going on and they told us Nazi groups were preparing an attack. Nothing has happened since. The police are still outside.

You’re having a crazy weekend.
It’s always like that.

Are all the girls with you at the HQ? It’s your weekly training today, right?
Yeah, we’re all here. The police let them through as we told them who could come in. So we did our training as usual.

Do you think they’ll just give up now, with the police there and all?

I don’t know, they’ll either give up or change the strategy. They’re angry not only because of the last action we did against them that you filmed, but also the Notre Dame action we did recently. And tomorrow there will be a big anti-gay demonstration here in Paris and the Nazis have announced 20 places they are going to attack, and one of those places is the Femen office. Maybe they’ll try to do something again tomorrow. But you know, I think that if they announce something, it means that nothing will happen.


The Femen HQ in Paris, surrounded by police. 

Do you consider changing the location of your HQ?
No no, we’re staying.

I guess that if they actually do something it would reflect very badly on them in the media.
Yeah. I think they understand that. Maybe they’ll come at night. Who knows. It wasn’t announced today however, and suddenly the police showed up at our door. If it’s 300 neo-Nazis that must mean they come from many different groups. I heard rumours that GUD are planning something, too.

This is a good example of what you told me the other week, that your actions provoke them to show their true faces. They try to come off as pro a safe and family-friendly France, and all it takes is a little non-violent provocation for them to retort with violence.
Today it felt like I was in Russia or something, not in France.

I also have a few questions about Amina. Can you tell me what happened?
Amina protested against a Salafist meeting that was forbidden by the government. During their meeting she spray-painted Femen on a nearby wall. Of course there were police there so they took her. I’m sure that if she wasn’t arrested, she could have been killed in the square, because the Salafists were really mad. In pictures from the action we can see a woman wearing a hijab applying black paint over the word Femen, trying to hide it. It was painted over just a few minutes after Amina was arrested on May 18th. The Tunisian Interior Ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui said, "Our society is Muslim and we do not accept this marginal behaviour.” She will be kept in jail until her trial on May 30th.

And she did this action all alone?
Yes. She came alone. It was not a planned Femen action.

Were you aware?
She acted on her own. She wanted to be alone. It was Amina’s act, I would say.

The first action Amina did was writing “my body belongs to me” on her naked body and posting a picture of it online, and that caused a lot of commotion in Tunisia. She was kidnapped and drugged by her own family…
First, after we posted the picture, she received public death threats from a Tunisian imam. After that she disappeared. And we didn’t know where she was. She disappeared for around three weeks. During this time we tried to find out where she was and what happened to her. She was kidnapped by her family and taken out of Tunis to a small village; they kept her in a house, with members of her family around her. She told me afterwards, when she escaped, that she’d been forced to read the Quran and take big doses of anti-stress medication so that she slept all the time. She said it was hard to remember things about what happened when she woke up. She couldn’t use the internet or communicate with anyone except for members of her family who tried to brainwash her.

How did you try to help her?
When she was kidnapped, we started an international campaign to support Amina. We called women all over the world to send their pictures in the style of Amina’s topless picture. To write a message: "Free Amina." To support her. During this campaign we got more than 1,000 pictures from many countries, including Arab countries. There were a few women who wore hijabs but they did it topless, to support Amina.

Have those pictures and the Topless Jihad Day worsened her situation in any way?
No. Once she disappeared, we didn’t know what was going on. For us it took quite a long time to find out what happened; if she had disappeared or just didn’t answer. She was in real danger because no one knew what had happened, and no one was talking about it. And once we started to scream as much as we could, once we asked for international support, the world started to make noise about it. And this is what saved her. This is our own practice, when we’re arrested or kidnapped or nearly killed. The only reason we haven’t been killed yet is because we make noise about everything, we let everyone know what’s going on with us, and this way we protect ourselves and our activists. We have only one protection: the media world and spreading information. If we kept silent about Amina, she would not have been set free. After we made noise that she got kidnapped, her family let her go. They didn’t want to give her her passport and documents, so we started to push publicly and they gave her all her documents. So Amina was free after that. I cannot agree with anyone who would say that the public campaign did something bad for Amina. It was the only way.

Have you been in contact with her since she was released?
Yes. Once she escaped from her family house, she called me. It was the same day when we did an action when we attacked the president of Tunisia to support Amina here in Paris. He was here in Paris presenting his book. And we attacked him. And a few hours after she called me and told me that she ran away from her house and explained what had happened. She wanted to let the world know that Amina is kind of free. And what happened to her.

I read in the news that after the Topless Jihad Day you held in her honour, she distanced herself from Femen?
She was very clear that she wanted to continue Femen activity in Tunisia. For us it was a question about her safety. We decided she had to leave the country for some time and prepared documents so that she could come to France. Because she still gets a lot of death threats, as well as support from Tunisian people. It was dangerous. We were thinking that she should leave. But she was very clear that she wants to continue her activity. Then she did an action, writing the word Femen on the wall of the Mosque.

And was arrested and will be held in jail until her trial on May 30.
Yes.

You said in a press release that you’re planning a naked rematch. What’s in the making?
Of course we have to answer and protect our activist. She can get two years in jail because she wrote a word. It’s clearly a political protest now. The Ministry woman in Tunisia says that Femen existing in Tunisia is an open provocation and she’ll do everything to stop it. I cannot tell you what we’re planning. It will be much bigger than the Topless Jihad Day. Now Amina is in real danger. She’s a big symbol of the liberation of Arab women. And she’s not giving up.

Follow Milene on Twitter: @Milenelarsson

More stuff about Femen:

I Spent the Weekend Watching Topless Feminists Piss Off Neo-Nazis 

Happy International Topless Jihad Day!

The Egyptian Feminist Who Was Kidnapped for Posing Nude

Noisey Canada Premiere: Tasha the Amazon ft. Cola of Wifetaker - Scallywags

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Noisey Canada Premiere: Tasha the Amazon ft. Cola of Wifetaker - Scallywags

Dogmageddon: People Who Love God Also Love Porn

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Photo via

Very quickly, before we get into the roundup: Hey, look! The residents of “religious” cities watch just about the same amount of porn as us godless heathens in progressive cities like San Francisco and Boston.

The study is the result of adult website PornHub crunching the numbers of where their users are located and when they're using it. The when part is actually an interesting difference between the believers and the nons:

“The biggest differences between the two grew directly out of religious observances or beliefs. For example, the very religious folks were far less likely to indulge on Christmas, which makes sense (or maybe it’s just harder to sneak away from loved ones on holidays).”

As a person who grew up Catholic, I can assure you that the reason for such holiday abstinence is most certainly the latter explanation.

A final fun result from the study: those living in religious cities just love squirt videos!

Onto the roundup!

- Two Islamist fundamentalists armed with butcher knives attacked a London military barracks and killed one soldier, all the while shouting “God is great” in Arabic and announcing they performed the attacks in retaliation to British soldiers killing Muslims in Afghanistan. In response, there's been a pretty big anti-Islam backlash in the country, with far-right groups marching in the streets in a mob-like protest. Maybe related? A French soldier was stabbed in the neck by a North African wearing an Arab tunic.

- The Pope has decreed that God even likes the atheists out there. Hooray! Also, that “this Blood makes us children of God of the first class.” Creepy!

- Dominique Venner, a 78-year-old far-right Catholic activist, went to the altar at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and committed suicide, reportedly in protest over same-sex marriage. A Vatican rep responded by saying the suicide makes opponents of gay marriage look like “kooks.”

- A school board in Springboro, Ohio is mulling over whether or not they should be allowed to teach creationism in their schools, in order to tell both sides of the story. (Evolution being the other side.) Which means maybe on top of teaching about gravity, they should also teach an “alternative science” theory where there's a giant magnet embedded in the Earth's core?

- Whenever a huge natural disaster hits, like last week's Category 5 tornado in Oklahoma, it's a race to see which religious nut claims this was a message from God. The winner this time out, pastor John Piper from Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, who tweeted out some mentions about Biblical hero Job's plight.

- This was from last week, but certainly deserves a mention: Anna Pierre, a mayoral candidate for North Miami, proclaimed she got a ringing endorsement from one of the biggest movers-and-shakers in all of politics, Jesus Christ. Oh yes, she lost the election.

- Yemen's main oil pipeline was attacked by a group of “subversives,” all signs of which point to al-Qaeda. Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a leader of al-Qaeda, also claimed responsibility for a pair of suicide bombings in Niger that left at least 30 dead.

- Attorney General Erik Holder had admitted that US drones killed four Americans since they began being used in 2009. This is the first acknowledgment by the Obama administration. Obama himself, meanwhile, got heckled during a speech regarding the use of drones and how Guantanamo Bay is being handled.

- It's not yet clear what the religious beliefs are of the man who shot 32-year-old Mark Carson in New York City's Greenwich Village last week for being gay, or the beliefs of those responsible for the subsequent anti-gay attacks in the city, but if you're playing the odds here, what are you going to choose?

- A Catholic priest in Florida was sentenced to life for having sex with a 14-year-old boy. Also fun: The church paid $1 million to the boy's family in a civic suit, which is really where all those collection plate donations are going, folks.

- Want to see a naked man riding a scooter carrying a crucifix? Of course you do.

- Anti-gay activist John Stemberger has created a campaign called “On My Honor” that attempts to keep the gays out of the Boy Scouts. In addition, he wants people to stop using the word “gay” because it's inappropriate. By the way, the Boy Scouts finally lifted their ban on gay members. (Although gay scout leaders are still big no-nos.)

- According to insane Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachmann, God is going to answer our prayers by repealing Obamacare. Because one thing our Lord would certainly just fucking hate is our brothers and sisters getting medical care. Another thing the Jesus doesn't like, according to Republican Representative from Tennessee Stephen Fincher? Food stamps.

- And Our Person of the Week: Rebecca Vitsmun, a survivor of the Oklahoma tornado, who responded to CNN's Wolf Blitzer's not-really-a-question-at-all question about if she “thanked the Lord” after being saved, she responded “I'm an atheist.” (Glenn Beck, hilariously, thinks she was planted by an atheist-leaning CNN.) In response, a group of Atheists started an Indiegogo page to help get the family back on their feet. So far, it's raised over $80,000.

- And Our Bonus Person of the Week: Juan Mendez, an Arizona state representative, who decided to forgo the normal pre-assembly prayer session by asking his fellow reps to not bow their heads. Instead, he spoke a bit about secular humanism. “I hope today marks the beginning of a new era in which Arizona's non-believers can feel as welcome and valued here as believers,” Mendez said. Well done, sir.

Previously - Don't Bet on the Apocalypse

Motherboard: High Country - Trailer

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Denver, Colorado. The Mile High City. Call it America's Amsterdam. Ground zero for cannabis legalization, and home to a budding tech sector in what could be called the Silicon Valley of Weed.

In High Country, Motherboard heads West to see about the new green rush. We'll visit some of the key players working to scale up tomorrow's smart, low-footprint grow and extraction technologies, inadvertently crash a harvest of cartoonishly dank medicinal AK-47, check the pulse on a fast-growing dab scene, and crack open the promising, if scant science of weed, a knowledge base that's expanding amid ongoing federal prohibition as casual citizen botanists/stoners crowdsource what they know about what they're picking up. Which is all to say there's simply no arguing that America's No. 1 cash crop—to say nothing of a budding weed-support industry, or the millions of people who use herb today as medicine or for recreation (or both)—is being taken to sophisticated and dizzying new heights.

The VICE Reader: An Excerpt from Tao Lin's 'Taipei'

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Over the past month or so we've been publishing a whole slew of iPhone photos Tao Lin took on a recent visit to Taipei, the place from which his new novel takes its title. Pictures are all well and good (and we'll be publishing another batch of them tomorrow), but to give you a real idea of what Tao's new book is like, we thought it fitting to publish an excerpt. This is the first glimpse of Taipei Vintage has released, and it concerns the main character, Paul, and his difficult upbringing in Florida.

Taipei will be released on June 4 from Vintage and is available for pre-order now.

Paul’s father was 28 and Paul’s mother was 24 when they alone (out of a combined fifteen to twenty-five siblings) left Taiwan for America. Paul was born in Virginia six years later, in 1983, when his brother was 7. Paul was 3 when the family moved to Apopka, a pastoral suburb near Orlando, Florida.

Paul cried the first day of preschool for around ten minutes after his mother, who was secretly watching and also crying, seemed to have left. It was their first time apart. Paul’s mother watched as the principal cajoled Paul into interacting with his classmates, among whom he was well liked and popular, if a bit shy and “disengaged, sometimes,” said one of the high school students who worked at the preschool, which was called the Discovery Center. Each day, after that, Paul cried less and transitioned more abruptly from crying to interacting with classmates, and by the middle of the second week he didn’t cry anymore. At home, where mostly only Mandarin was spoken, Paul was loud and either slug-like or, his mother would say in English, “hyperactive,” rarely walking to maneuver through the house, only crawling, rolling like a log, sprinting, hopping, or climbing across sofas, counters, tables, chairs, etc. in a game called “don’t touch the ground.” Whenever motionless and not asleep or sleepy, lying on carpet in sunlight, or in bed with eyes open, bristling with undirectionalized momentum, he would want to intensely sprint in all directions simultaneously, with one unit of striving, never stopping. He would blurrily anticipate this unimaginably worldward action, then burst off his bed to standing position, or make a loud noise and violently spasm, or jolt from the carpet into a sprint, flailing his arms, feeling always incompletely satisfied.

Paul’s first grade teacher recommended he be placed in the English-as-second-language program, widely viewed as for “impaired” students, but Paul’s mother kept him in the normal class. His second grade teacher recommended he be tested for the “gifted” program and he was admitted and began going every Friday to gifted, in which most of the twenty-five to thirty students, having begun in first grade, were already friends. Paul felt alone on Fridays, but not lonely or uncomfortable or anxious, only that he was in a new and challenging situation without assistance or consequence for failure—a feeling not unlike playing a difficult Nintendo game alone, with no instruction manual. Paul played chess one Friday with Barry, who suggested Paul’s second move. Barry knew more about chess, so was being helpful, Paul thought, and did as suggested for his third move also, then watched an extremely happy Barry dash through the rectangular classroom telling groups of classmates he’d beaten Paul in a four-move check-mate. Paul told three classmates Barry had “tricked him,” then returned to the floor and put the chess pieces away and, with a sensation of seeing a spider crawl out of view inside his room, felt himself reassimilating Barry into the world as a kind of robot-like presence he would always need to be careful around and would never comprehend. In third grade, one morning, Paul finished telling something to his friend Chris, who was strangely unresponsive for a few seconds, then with an exaggeratedly disgusted expression told Paul his breath smelled “horrible” and “brush your teeth,” then turned 180 degrees, in his seat, to talk to someone else. Paul mechanically committed to always brushing his teeth and adjusted his view of Chris to include him, with Barry and 90 to 95 percent of people he’d met, as separate and unknowable.

In fourth grade Paul spent two days with Lori, a second grader in his neighborhood. Lori kissed Paul’s cheek in a tree, then in her room showed him a Mickey Mantle card from her father, who’d said Mickey Mantle had the record for most RBIs. Paul, who collected baseball cards, said Hank Aaron had the record for most RBIs. Lori said he was probably right, because he was really smart. At dusk, the next day, rollerblading on the longest street in the neighborhood, Lori said she needed to try harder than Paul to go the same speed, because her legs were shorter, which Paul thought was insightful.

Entering middle school, sixth to eighth grade, Paul wanted to play percussion like three of his friends, including his “best friend,” Hunter, but his piano teacher said percussion would bore him, so he chose trumpet, which he disliked, but continued playing until the summer before high school, when he switched to percussion on the first day of “band camp,” which was ten hours of practice every weekday for two weeks. During lunch break, that day, Paul was practicing alone by silently counting and sometimes tapping a cymbal with a soft-headed mallet when a senior percussionist, the section leader, began teasing him from across the room, saying he was “so cool” and something about his baggy jeans, which his skateboarding brother, at college in Philadelphia, had left in Florida. Paul was unable to think anything, except that he didn’t know what to do, at all, so he committed to doing nothing, which the senior incorporated into his teasing by focusing on how Paul was “too cool” to react, continuing for maybe thirty seconds before commenting briefly on Paul’s hair and leaving the room.

Believing that all the senior’s friends and acquaintances, which included almost every person at band camp, now viewed his main effort in life as wanting to be “cool,” which he did want, to some degree, but which now seemed impossible, Paul became increasingly, physically, exclusively critically, nearly continuously self-conscious, the next few days, in ways he hadn’t been before—but probably had been in latent development since preschool—and which affected his musicianship. His middle school friends, including Hunter, among whom he’d been most fearless and at least equally competent at whatever sport or video game, watched him fail every day to play the simplest parts, usually tambourine or triangle, of each piece. The percussion instructor that year punished everyone with push-ups if one person, usually Paul, played something incorrectly more than once. Paul’s friends—subtly, then openly, with confusion and frustration—began to express disbelief at Paul’s inability to count to a number and hit a cowbell or cymbal. Paul was too embarrassed, by the end of the first week, to speak to his friends—all of whom seemed to have easily befriended the section leader and other upperclassmen—and by the second week had begun committing, in certain situations, to not speaking unless asked a question.

Two months into freshman year he had committed to not speaking in almost all situations. He felt ashamed and nervous around anyone who’d known him when he was popular and unself-conscious. When he heard laughter, before he could think or feel anything, his heart would already be beating like he’d sprinted twenty yards. As the beating slowly normalized he’d think of how his heart, unlike him, was safely contained, away from the world, behind bone and inside skin, held by muscles and arteries in its place, carefully off-center, as if to artfully assert itself as source and creator, having grown the chest to hide in and to muffle and absorb—and, later, after innovating the brain and face and limbs, to convert into productive behavior—its uncontrollable, indefensible, unexplainable, embarrassing squeezing of itself. To avoid awkwardness, and in respect of his apparent aversion to speaking, Paul’s classmates stopped including him in conversations. The rare times he spoke—in classes where no one knew him, or when, without knowing why, for one to forty minutes, he’d become aggressively confident and spontaneous as he’d been in elementary/middle school, about which his friends poignantly would always seem genuinely excited—he’d feel “out of character,” indicating he’d completed a transformation and was now, in a humorlessly surreal way, exactly what he didn’t want to be and wished he wasn’t.

He ate lunch alone, on benches far from the cafeteria, listening to music—his sort of refuge that was like a tunneling in his desolation toward a greater desolation, further from others and himself, closer to the shared source of everything—with portable CD players and earphones, feeling sorry for himself, or vaguely but deeply humbled, though mostly just silent and doomed. Sometimes, thinking of how among fifteen hundred classmates only two others, that he’d noticed, were as socially inept as he—a male in his grade, an obese male one grade lower—Paul would feel a blandly otherworldly excitement, like he must be in some bizarre and extended dream, or lost in the offscreen world of some fictional movie set in an adjacent county.

In Paul’s sophomore or junior year he began to believe the only solution to his anxiety, low self-esteem, view of himself as unattractive, etc. would be for his mother to begin disciplining him on her own volition, without his prompting, as an unpredictable—and, maybe, to counter the previous fourteen or fifteen years of “overprotectiveness,” unfair—entity, convincingly not unconditionally supportive. His mother would need to create rules and punishments exceeding Paul’s expectations, to a degree that Paul would no longer feel in control. To do this, Paul believed, his mother would need to anticipate and preempt anything he might have considered, factoring in that—because Paul was thinking about this almost every day, and between the two of them was the source of this belief—he probably already expected, or had imagined, any rule or punishment she would be willing to instate or inflict, therefore she would need to consider rules and punishments that she would not think of herself as willing to instate or inflict. Paul tried to convey this in crying, shouting fights with his mother lasting up to four hours, sometimes five days a week. There was an inherent desperation to these fights, in that each time Paul, in frustration, told his mother how she could have punished him, in whatever previous situation, to make him feel not in control—to, he believed, help solve his social and psychological problems—it became complicatedly more difficult, in Paul’s view, for his mother to successfully preempt his expectations the next time. Paul cried and shouted more than his mother, who only shouted maybe once or twice. Paul would scream if his mother was downstairs while he was upstairs, in his room, where some nights he would throw his electric pencil sharpener and textbooks—and, once, a six-inch cymbal—at his walls, creating holes, resulting in punishments, but never exceeding what, by imagining their possibilities, he’d already rendered unsurprising, predictable. The intensity of these fights maybe contributed to Paul’s lungs collapsing spontaneously three times his senior year, when he was absent forty-seven days and in hospitals for around four weeks.

One night, standing in the doorway of his parents’ bedroom, when his father was on a months-long business trip, crying while shouting at his mother, who was supine in bed, in the dark, Paul heard her softly and steadily crying, with her blanket up to her chin in a way that seemed child-like. Paul stopped shouting and stood sobbing quietly, dimly aware, as his face twitched and trembled, that he felt intensely embarrassed of himself from the perspective of any person, except his mother, he had ever met. He said he didn’t know what he was talking about, or what he should do, that he was sorry and didn’t want to complain or blame other people anymore, and felt an ambiguous relief, to have reached the end of a thing without resolution and, having tried hard, feeling allowed—and ready—to resign. He didn’t stop blaming his mother, after that, but gradually they fought less—and, after each fight, when he would revert to his belief about discipline, he would apologize and reiterate he didn’t want to blame anyone or complain—and, by the last month of senior year, had mostly stopped fighting.

On one of Paul’s last days of high school he and Lori were both getting rides home from Hunter, who due to a difficulty in refusing requests from people who could see him—in elementary/middle school, whenever a mutual friend rang his doorbell, he and Paul would pretend no one was home—sometimes spent ninety minutes driving classmates home after school. The past eight years, since Lori kissed Paul on the cheek, they’d spoken maybe three times (the day after they rollerbladed together she had begun hanging out with a boy with a “rattail” hairstyle), and the most intimate Paul had been with another girl was a ten-minute conversation, at an “away” high school football game, with another percussionist.

Lori repeatedly asked Paul why he wouldn’t speak and, not receiving an answer, began provoking Paul to “say anything,” seeming as committed to eliciting a response as Paul was to not responding. Lori was loudly asking, with genuine and undistracted and bemused curiosity, which Paul felt affection toward and admired, as he stared away from her, out his window, why he couldn’t speak—and if he could just “make any noise”—when Hunter, who’d been talking to someone in the front passenger seat, sort of forced Lori to stop by aggressively asking about her current boyfriend. As he had consistently, the past eight to ten years, Paul felt endeared by Hunter, who used to be an equal, but now—and for the past three or four years—was like an overworked stepfather or sensitive uncle to Paul, the mentally disabled stepson or silent, troubling nephew.

Taipei will be released on June 4 from Vintage and is available for pre-order now.

More Tao Lin:

Tao Lin Talks to Tyrant Re: Taipei

Relationship Story

Tao Lin's Apartment: A Review

Follow Tao on Twitter @tao_lin

Hey Montreal, Your City Has an Escaped Murderer In It

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via CBC & Correctional Service Canada.

Have you seen this recently escaped murderer? His name is Jean-Pierre Duclous, and in 1991, he beat a woman, shot her through the heart, wrapped her body up in a sheet, and tied it in a knot. In Canada, a brutal murder like that will land you in a Quebec prison for 25 years with no chance of parole. Unfortunately, Jean-Pierre just pulled the ol’ go to the hospital for a visit then escape from police trick. Yeap, that’s correct. The cops brought him to the hospital to treat “an unspecified medical condition,” from there he somehow evaded their watch, and he is now on the loose.

While a spokesperson for the prison told the CBC that prison escapes do not happen very often, there were four escapes from federal prisons in Quebec in 2012. That’s not nothing. And that doesn’t include detention centres like the one in Saint-Jérôme where two prisoners with ties to the Hells Angels escaped in March by organizing a helicopter to pick them up with ropes out of the prison yard James Bond style. Police did end up catching those guys, but not before one called a Montreal radio station 98.5 FM to say that he would rather die than go back to jail.

Some people have placed the blame on overcrowding in local prisons as a reason why prisoners might feel the need to risk it all to get out. With new laws in place from the federal government—like the one that can send someone away for six months if they’re growing six weed plants—the overcrowding only stands to get worse.

In this case however, it really just sounds like the police need a better system for taking prisoners to see the doctor. Did this guy ask to go to the bathroom then hop through a window? How does a murderer just slip through the cops’ fingers like this? Should someone be getting fired for this unsettling fuck-up? The answer to all of these questions is, at the moment, “who knows.”

So anyway, if you are in the Montreal area and you do see Jean-Pierre, make sure you give 911 a call. Or call Info Crime Montreal at 514 393-1133. Be careful out there!

Offbeatr, the Kickstarter for Porn, Is a Furry Playground

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Screenshot via Offbeatr

Ben Tao and Eric Lai aren't furries. They aren't deeply embedded in the culture of hentai or porn video games or any of the other odd cum-drenched communities that have grown and multiplied in the odd corners of the internet. Yet Offbeatr, the site Ben and Eric founded to  crowdfund sex-related projects people are passionate about, has become the quickest way to create the video games and art projects of those subcultures' wet dreams.

The two came to the porn industry in a roundabout way—Ben told me he was working in marketing with Eric when the duo discovered that there were some cam models who made thousands of dollars stripping for strangers and, inspired, they started ExtraLunchMoney.com, a cam site that quickly faced financial challenges.

“We didn’t have friends who would take their clothes off and sell content,” Ben said. “We couldn’t just tell our friends, ‘Hey, we have this site, can you do this?’” During this time, they realized that services like Amazon Payments and PayPal don’t allow users to buy “adult” products and crowdsourcing websites Kickstarter and Indiegogo won’t let you fund porn projects—the problem is a lot of porn purchasers cancel the charges when their spouses find out that they bought Two Dudes Doin’ It Volume 16 or whatnot.

“[We] saw a loophole and exploited it,” Ben said. They launched Offbeatr last year, charging campaign creators a premium of 20 percent for projects that require over $10,000 and 25 percent for projects that require less that $10,000. The twist is that before projects can even get to the funding stage, would-be pornographers have to pitch their ideas to the Offbeatr community—only after enough users vote in favor of the project can it start receiving donations. This distinguishes it from GoGoFantasy.com, another “Kickstarter for porn” whose homepage is full of mundane mainstream porn enterprises, some of which don’t really seem to require crowdsourced funding. (Why do these guys need $1,000 to jack off in a hotel room together and film it?)  

Ben and Eric assumed users would want to make traditional pornography, but most of the successfully funded projects have been the stuff furries dream about. Where users have so far failed to raise $10,000 for Got Mormon Milk?—a chronicle of “the (very secret) rituals that are performed as a rite of passage” into the “very secret” gay Mormon society that has “definitely touched Mitt Romney”—Trials in Tainted Space, an “erotic, ultimately customizable, textual adventure game” has raised nearly $200,000. To make its intentions and audience clear, the game's Offbeatr page features illustrations like this. (That link is NSFW because it shows an alien-looking dude with four huge cocks.)

Trials in Tainted Space (or TITS) will feature a character who travels through the universe in a spaceship encountering “mysteries of the universe” that are “curvy, well hung, or both.” Along the way, the game’s “perk system” rewards users with “abilities in combat and bed,” which include “SSTD's—Sexy Sexually Transmitted Diseases. Examples: the Futa Flu, the Dick-Thickening Tremors, or the Sneezing Tits.” The game will allow users to design the protagonist’s hairstyle, eye color, and height and will include several “sex scenes that are short stories in their own right and mold themselves to your appearance using dynamic descriptors to ensure that your unique body is perfectly described.” This is something people really, really want—among its funders are 11 people who have donated more than $600, and two people chipped in over $2,000 apiece.

Many other successful Offbeatr projects cater to fans of, uh, offbeat erotica. Users have contributed over $60,000 for Poni Parade, which is described as an “adult fan book drawn by some of your favorite r34 artists. Poni Parade features 9 Comics and dozens and dozens of pinups for a total of 110+ pages,”—in other words, high quality illustrations of the (non-human) characters from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic having sex. 52 Pickup, which raised $4,480 after asking for $2,500, is an adult comic book created by Zambuka, a 25-year-old woman from New Zealand. She pitched her idea to the Offbeatr community like so: “I want to draw you some porn. Porn you say? What kind of porn? Well, the kind of porn with dicks in it. Lots and lots of dicks (and some ass too). The dicks will be attached to various anthropormorphic [sic] animals. Wolves, dragons, cats, horses, bears, and many many more!”

Through email, Zambuka told me she discovered Offbeatr on Furoticon, an online furry game community. A full-time furry artist, she saw Offbeatr as a tool to help her create her more ambitious, personal projects. “I usually make most of my income off of commission work,” she said, “which is nice, but sometimes it can be very restricting as ultimately what the client says, goes.” She placed advertisements about 52 Pickup on FurAffinity, a popular furry site. “Without [FurAffinity], I seriously doubt the project would have gotten past the voting stage,” she said. “I'm very lucky to have people who are willing to support an artist, even if they do not get something specifically tailored to them.”

Ben believes the furries have found success on Offbeatr because they know how to promote their work. “If you think about the furry community, it is a community,” he said. “Your traditional porn viewer might like girls watching sex, but he’s not going to go on forums, talk about it, and go to conventions. Traditional porn is in the shadows. These [furry] guys like talking about it.”

Offbeatr’s model seems to attract erotica that engages its audience so much that they’re inspired to discuss it, share it, and support its creators, rather than traditional porn—which is consumed in shame and solitude and kept private. Some in the industry, like Jake Jaxson, the owner of the successful gay porn site Cocky Boys, see this as a positive trend. “I think anything that creates more creativity and possibility is a good thing.” Jake told me over email as he jogged on a treadmill. “I am constantly inspired buy DYI pornographers and erotic artists. In fact, my muse is a beautiful man on Tumbler, BiteMarks.”

“The ones who can make it and do it are the ones who can make it and build a following,” Ben said. “Every artist needs to build a following. It’s the natural filter of all things.”

@mitchsunderland

More on furries and other sex fetishes:

Edgeplay Isn’t Your Grandmother’s BDSM Scene

Bed & Breakfast & Fisting

Enter the Dragon

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