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Why White Supremacists Love Donald Trump

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Just when it seemed the 2016 contest couldn't get any more caustic, the Donald Trump Show has taken another turn. In this week's episode, we witnessed the spectacle of a Trump security guard escorting a widely respected Latino reporter out of a news conference in Dubuque, Iowa. "Go back to Univision," goaded the leading Republican candidate to the journalist, Jorge Ramos, as he was escorted away.

What's gotten less attention is what happened when Ramos was eventually allowed back in to question Trump, who has said repeatedly that he doesn't have time for political correctness. Rebuking the suggestion that his calls for removing birthright citizenship enshrined in the 14th Amendment, deporting 11 million people and their children, and building a 'beautiful wall' along the US-Mexico border were cruel, Trump told Ramos "I've got a bigger heart than you." He then went on to blame gang violence on undocumented Mexicans, remarks inline with previous references to Mexican immigrants as murders and rapist.

The impact Trump's candidacy is having on the race cannot be understated. Dwarfed by the real-estate-mogul-turned-reality television star in poll after poll, Trump's competitors can't decide whether to attack Trump or latch on to his aggressive style as best they can. Jeb Bush, who entered the race amid expectations that he would be the candidate most able to appeal to moderate voters, appears to be trying both tactics. On one hand he has decried Trump's immigration plan as unrealistic, on the other he's used the slur "anchor babies" to refer to children of undocumented immigrants and told a reporter in McAllen, Texas this week, "I think we need to take a step back and chill out a little bit as it relates to the political correctness, that somehow you have to be scolded every time you say something."

Trump was quick to spot the imitation game Jeb was playing. "Sounds a little familiar," he told the New York Times. Meanwhile, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has boasted that he thought up mass deportations and a giant wall before Trump did.

More on Donald Trump from the VICE network:
Why Silicon Valley Is Fuming at Donald Trump's Immigration Policies
What Actual Mexican Criminals Think About Donald Trump
Explaining Donald Trump to the Rest of the World
The Noisey Editorial Board Is Proud to Endorse Donald Trump for President

Political analysts are wondering what will be left of the Republican Party once Trump is through with it, even as they marvel at how the candidate can be both divisive and appeal to a broad swath of GOP voters. Writing for his web magazine The Federalist last week, conservative blogger Ben Domenech fretted that Trump is pulling his GOP away from the core principles—free markets, limited government, et al.—that could broaden the party's appeal to a wider swath of the electorate, turning it instead toward what Domenech refers to as "white identity politics."

"It's interesting how broad Trump's appeal is across factions and I suspect that at least a portion of that is just attitudinal, because he is saying what people think about the political and media elite," Domenech said in an interview with VICE. "That's not toxic or dangerous. What is toxic and dangerous is wedding that populist frustration to the ethnic blame game, blaming the differently colored immigrants for the problems in your life and career without basis.

"There's a small but significant part of the country that has held to the view that mass deportation is a good thing," he added. "They have not had representation on the presidential stage—the political elites have ignored them for ages and when that happens, someone like Trump has a window."


Watch the new VICE News documentary "The Fruits of Mexico's Cheap Labor"


Political elites likely have ulterior motives for opposing the eviction of 11 million people from US borders and building a 1,954-mile border wall. Like, say, practicality— Trump's deportation could cost upwards of $100 billion—or a desire to win the general election. Still, along with a broad swath of voters—including women, evangelical Christians, and college grads, not to mention Dennis Rodman and Sarah Palin—it appears that there are quite a few outright racists for President Trump.

Like Craig Cobb, for instance, a white supremacist who been trying to buy up land in Antler, North Dakota with the goal of establishing a white-only enclave called "Trump Creativity." And those Trump supporters who chanted "white power" during The Donald's mega-rally in Mobile, Alabama last Friday. And then there's Scott and Steve Leader, the two Southie brothers who were arrested last week for beating and urinating ona homeless Hispanic man near a Boston train station, and later told police "Trump was right" about the need to deport "all these illegals."

"White supremacists all over this country see Trump as their best hope in many, many years," said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has been tracking Trump's support among white nationalists. "We are seeing this all over their online forums and their websites, as well."

In an interview with VICE, Potok attributed some of Trump's appeal to white angst over growing cultural pluralism in the US. "There's a large chunk of the population who think the country is lost," Potok said. "We were 90 percent white from the colonial-era right up until the 1950s. Now we're about 62 [or] 63 [percent] white and there's a huge group of people who believe that the country they grew up in has somehow been taken away from them."

Enter Trump, promising to "Make America Great Again." And while his remarks regarding immigrants (or women for that matter) might just seem like part his shoot-from-the-hip, tell-it-like-I-see-it style, the New York Times has pointed out that the real-estate mogul has used this divide-and-conquer strategy to his advantage before. In 2000, Trump secretly funded newspaper ads in upstate New York, warning that the Saint Regis Mohawk tribe, who represented potential competition for his casino business, had a "record of criminal activity" that was "well documented." When he was sued for housing discrimination by the Department of Justice in 1973, Trump argued "the government was trying to force [his company] to rent to welfare recipients."

Trump, for his part, has repeatedly insisted that he is not a racist, and doesn't condone racism. After the hate crime arrests in Boston last week, Trump immediately renounced their attack, calling it a "shame," and adding on Twitter: "We need energy and passion, but we must treat each other with respect. I would never condone violence."

But Potok warned that Trump's immigration remarks may continue to be used as fodder for hate crimes.

"A lot of especially young hate criminals see themselves as somehow standing up for their community in a heroic way, doing what everyone behind them really wants them to do but won't quite say," Potok said. "We see a direct correlation between the type of remarks Trump has made in the public square that get a lot attention and hate violence. Trump running around the country calling immigrants rapists and murders inevitably translates into hate violence against those people."

As for the fate of the Republican Party after it emerges from his vitriolic immigration swamp, Trump doesn't really seem to care. He's made it clear, after all, that he might still run as a third-party candidate should he lose the GOP nomination in 2016. In the meantime, though, he's building a firewall against level-headed political discourse—kinda like that wall he wants to build along the border.

Follow Pete Rugh on Twitter.


The Ethics of Watching and Sharing Violent Viral Videos

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Yesterday, two members of a local news crew in Virginia named Alison Parker and Adam Ward were murdered on live television. It was an event reminiscent of the time R. Budd Dwyer, a politician from Pennsylvania, shot himself during a press conference in 1987, or the 2012 incident when Fox News accidentally showed viewers a suicide at the end of a car chase it was broadcasting.

But video of the Roanoke tragedy spread more quickly than footage of those earlier deaths—it was not only broadcast live but recorded by the shooter himself, and soon these videos were appearing all over Twitter and Facebook, where some users couldn't avoid them thanks to autoplay features.

For obvious reasons, people found this upsetting. The internet is full of terrible, awful things for those who seek them out, but this video was not something you had to actively search for, like those of the Islamic State's atrocities, or use a special browse like Tor to pull up.

Related: Why I Had to Watch the Videos of the Virginia Shooting

Questions about whether to publish upsetting content used to be the purview of media outlets—the New York Daily News was criticized widely for deciding to plaster news anchor Parker's final moments on its front page today—but thanks to social media everyone gets to decide whether to share graphic, disturbing videos with their followers and friends. It's natural to have debates, internally or with others, about some pretty heady questions. Is it OK to retweet or "like" videos like these, or even to watch them in solitude? Is every click allowing Facebook to pocket money off a truly horrific event—or, conversely, do we have a moral imperative to share this news with others because it could spur meaningful change, like videos of police brutality have throughout the past year?

We decided to ask Randy Cohen, a former ethics columnist for the New York Times Magazine, for advice on what to do when grisly footage has news value.

VICE: Is there something inherently wrong with watching a video like the one of the shooting yesterday?
Randy Cohen: I don't think it does any harm to anybody if you watch; in fact, no one will know if you've watched. So in that sense it's not an ethical problem. It's certainly not a legal problem. We don't have laws about looking at illegal images, except for child porn. But I think it might be a psychological problem, depending on how you look at it, that a constant exposure to images of horrifying brutality coarsens us. I don't think you'll enjoy the way you develop as a human being if you make a steady diet of [these videos].

But it's tricky, because there's a thin line between viewing something to increase your understanding of your world and the human heart and wallowing in it—you know, when does education become pornography? I'm not suggesting that we should avert our glances from every disturbing fact of life. On the other hand, if you find that you regard human suffering as a form of entertainment, I think something really bad has happened to you.

What's more selfish: watching it out of morbid curiosity, or willfully insulating yourself from tragedy?
Well, really, it's hard to probe your own motives, and regardless of your motives. On the one hand you don't want to be the kind of person who has no idea of what's going on in your world—and much social good has come of watching these kind of images. What I'm thinking of here now is the enormous number of recordings of police misconduct. The only reason, I would say, that we're seeing widespread efforts to reform police conduct is because there was video that lots of people saw. So in that sense, it's really, really great, it contributes to the betterment of society that people really did have an understanding of, "Here are some terrible things that some police departments have routinely done, especially against minority, younger people." If those tapes hadn't been around—starting with the Rodney King tape—if those tapes hadn't been around, I think you would've seen far less effort to reform, so that's great. And you might even argue it's a duty to watch that. To have some understanding.

On the other hand, when does it become porn? And here's where I think it gets even trickier: Is there a meaningful distinction between fact and fiction? That if it's bad for your development as a person, do you continue to treat human suffering as entertainment? Why isn't it bad if you watch the fictional versions of that, too? And one answer is, well, in fiction no one's actually getting killed. But I say in good fiction, your visceral response to it is not making that distinction. If you're watching Saw movies, that's not good for you. And the fact that you know, in some abstract sense, "Well yes, no one's actually hurt, it's just a movie," psychologically it's not. It's powerful because it feels real. So if that's bad for you—if we agree, "That's bad, a society that entertains its young people by showing them all the sequels to Saw, that's not a society I want to raise my children in," or, "That's not the way I want to raise my children"—why is that bad, and watching this stuff OK?


Watch our documentary on guns in Florida:


Who should get to decide who watches these videos? Should it be up to the victims, or the media, or people from Facebook and Twitter, who tried to scrub yesterday's footage?
No, the only person who gets to decide is you. And I think that's as it should be. A news division is supposed to decide, Is this event significant? And generally what that means is, does this event have implications for people beyond the people to whom it actually occurred to? If I eat pie for dinner, that's not news. But if millions of people have suddenly switched to the all-pie diet, that's news. So news directors and editors of newspapers, they're supposed to make this decision not because of what will happen when people watch it or because it will make the victims feel bad, or any of that. They're just supposed to make a professional judgment: Is this news? They aren't supposed to censor what we see because they think it might have a bad effect on us. But we determine what we see. I mean there's a reason I don't watch Fox News. I don't think that will deepen my understanding of the world.

Because yesterday's video autoplayed on Facebook, people were upset about being forced, unwillingly, to see this thing that's horrible and disturbing. Is it unethical to hit "share?"
No, no, I don't think it's unethical to make it available in any way. Right now, it's an individual decision about whether you actually push play, and I think that's what it should remain. But it's not for Facebook or Twitter to make a distinction.

Would the world be a better place if we we didn't pull any punches and showed war zones and victims of violence on the front page of newspapers?
If you look at, say, the New YorkTimes coverage of the Iraqi War, you nearly never see a photograph on the front page of an American suffering. You don't see a mutilated body. And terrible things happened to young American soldiers. Just appalling things. And the Times isn't trying to clean up the Iraqi War, they weren't favoring the Iraqi War, and they describe this stuff in their reporting. But they don't show those images. And I can understand why they don't. But it has the curious effect of sanitizing the war, that images are different than print. Moving images, video images—like of the shooting—they're deeply disturbing in a way that a prose description is not.

But is there a difference between showing a mutilated soldier in a war zone and showing this video? Some people would say this is just a horrible, aberrant act that happened. It's not like our tax dollars funded the act of violence, unlike in a war.
Is there no news value? It depends what you mean by "news value." I think there are images that have changed the world because they convey the horror of [war] in a way that prose doesn't. So I don't know. Clearly, people think there's news value in the stories, we've already decided there's news value. No one's suggesting we not cover the story. The question is how you cover it.

In a way, the question is, "Well, what coverage is too vivid? Maybe we're covering the story too well." If the point of the news report is to convey the horror of this, or if that's part of the point—this terrible thing happened, and we want to let you know that this terrible thing happened—those images certainly convey that. So what's your journalistic argument against showing it? Do you want to make shooting look less appalling? We don't want to do that. No one wants to do that. It's hard.

It seems to me the bigger story here is, we live in a country saturated with guns. That story. The story isn't whether the image is disturbing, the story is whether you want to live in a country where it is our policy to provide guns to lunatics. That's what we do here. That's our national policy. I haven't heard a single Republican political candidate, a presidential candidate, argue that, "Gee, maybe we should do something about our guns for lunatics plan. Maybe we should shut that down." We know certain things. We know the more gun ownership in a region, the more suicide there will be, the more shootings of police officers there will be. We're all theoretically against those consequences, but some of us are not against the obvious causes of those consequences: guns. That's what this is about. It's about what it's like to live in a country where guns are routinely available.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Talent Agent Chuck Harris Turns Freakshows Into Stars

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All photos courtesy of Chuck Harris

Chuck Harris bills himself as the "largest supplier of oddities in the world." Harris, who is in his 70s, has a grey mop-top and always wears oversized spectacles. When he speaks of his clients, he says, "I treat these people like I would treat anyone else who, for lack of a better word, is normal."

Harris is an agent of the bizarre; the real-life incarnation of Broadway Danny Rose. The hard-nosed powerhouse is the talent-broker for such acts as performing flatulist Mr. Methane, Rubber Boy, Fat Elvis, and The Regurgitator. Need a guy who balances a refrigerator on his mouth, sticks nails through his arms, or has the ability to escape from a spinning washing machine? Chuck Harris is the man to ask.

"I represent the oldest, living conjoined twins—joined at the head," Harris boasts. "I inherited them because they were friendly with the mother who gave birth to the youngest set of conjoined twins." If he sounds callous, you haven't spent enough time with him. Harris adds, "I love these girls. I feel the pain for them. But I treat them like they're no different than anybody else." He feels a kinship with his clients. "They are no different than you and I," he says.

Harris is himself a former child star, stand-up comic, and veteran of movies and television. He first graced the stage alongside his father at the age of five with the family act Miller's Mighty Minstrels. (Oaky Miller is his given name.) As an actor, he made appearances in That Girl, Family Affair, and My Three Sons. But by the age of 50, with four kids, two ex-wives, and a mortgage on his hands, Harris considered himself washed up.

"My life was over," he says, as he remembers overhearing an agent say, "Oaky Miller? He's finished! He's over with! I don't want to talk to this loser!"

It was painful to feel like yesterday's trash; not knowing what to do. He complained about it over the phone to his mother, who verbally bitch slapped him. "What are you crying about," she scolded. "You have your life ahead of you!"

Harris took her advice and, overnight, he reinvented himself. Oaky Miller changed his name to Chuck Harris and decided he would carve his niche representing those on the outskirts of show business. Now, he is most successful agent/producer of oddities in Tinseltown.

"My showbiz background taught me tolerance of other people," Harris says about working alongside some of the most bizarre acts on the planet. "A lot of these people are just nice tender, and—for lack of a better word—a normal person. Except maybe they have hair all over their body or maybe they turned themselves into a tiger or have a split tongue like the Lizard Boy."

Fortune took a spin for Harris with the first act he signed, The Amazing Christopher—a man who, by Harris's description, "comes out onstage with four full-sized puppets attached to his body by long poles and does an act like the five different Village People."

The two of them have been together for 20 years, and Harris boasts that "there hasn't been a year since we've been together where this man—who only does a six minute act—hasn't made over $500,000 a year."

Harris has booked The Amazing Christopher for such luminaries as Carlos Slim in Mexico, one of the wealthiest men in the world. He also booked his prized variety as Eddie Murphy's opening on the legendary Raw tour, which became his first big break. Harris landed him the gig after putting him on the Arsenio Hall Show, succeeding a barnstorming performance, and the talk show host hooked him up with his comedian buddy. Harris, who was then still a newbie, tried to keep his composure when dealing with Murphy's manager, asking for $1,500 for his client. The amount was intended to be a per-week rate. But when he got the contract back, "I swear to you, it said $1,500 a day. That's how things happened: You learn to keep your mouth shut, you be honest with people, and wow, it went through the roof."

Harris now commands $8,500 per TV appearance for such clients as a woman who can make 500 million volts of electricity surge through her fingertips (the electric bolt then flies across the room and lights a cigar) or a guy who can put his finger into a socket without getting electrocuted. "He was born with a disease where his skin doesn't sweat, so there're no conductors for electricity," Harris explains. "If he touches you with both hands, he can shock you if he wants to. He has this power."

With his oddity acts, Harris makes money, but not the kind of cash he does from such variety performers. His bread and butter are acts such as a man who can fit his entire body inside a balloon, a one-armed juggler, or a guy who gets into a spinning washing machine while wearing eight pairs of handcuffs. Harris follows the business tenet that he'd rather book ten acts for lesser money than two acts for greater money. "My acts are thrilled because I'm keeping them working, so they're more loyal to me, and they'll stay with me, and they know I can make the deal happen for them."

It's through this loyalty to Harris that his clients make more money than many of them could ever have made without him. "The Wolf Boy used to give interviews and be on television for free," Harris squawks. "Rule number one: If you work for free, guess how much Uncle Chuck makes? What's a percentage of nothing? Nothing! You don't work for free—have I made myself clear?!"

Harris dismisses television stations that try to lure his acts to perform sans cash, claiming the payoff is exposure. Harris states his favorite line: "The Donner party died of exposure when they tried to discover California. This is a living!"

One particular client that Harris took under his wing, and handled with special care, was Cat Man. Dennis Avner became famous after he spent thousands of dollars on operations and tattoos to transform into a tiger. Adopting his Native American name "Stalking Cat," Avner had his lip surgically split, his ears pointed, and underwent silicone implants in his cheeks and forehead. His teeth were shaped into fangs and he sported claw-like fingernails.

"I always felt that Cat was bullied as a little boy," says Chuck. "That's one of the reasons he transformed himself to look like a cat: He was hiding behind a mask, while at the same time it empowered himself to bully people back. It empowered him but he was a very, very sad person; it made him happy to look different."

Harris recalls how angry his client would get when people would take his picture without asking him: "I said, 'Cat, you look different than everyone else. If they want to take your picture there's nothing wrong with that.'"

Avner mostly made money from TV appearances and signing autographs at tattoo conventions. When he helped open the Guinness World Records museum in London, he was the most sought after person amongst Harris' roster of eccentric clients, making the front cover of several newspapers. "An average year he'd make $6,000 to $10,000," said Harris. "But he was happy he was working."

Then, in 2012, Avner committed suicide. The 54-year-old was found dead at his trailer home in Tonopah, Nevada.

Harris believes Avner's lasting legacy is that he went from being bullied as a kid to doing what made him somewhat happy.

"He did something no one else ever did. His other legacy is: don't bully people—we're all equal," said Harris. "I liked the Cat Man. He was a tortured soul, but he was a nice, sensitive human being. I really felt sorry for the guy because I know I was his best friend. And I am not the best friend for many people—especially someone I only see two or three times a year."

In his business, Harris has outlived the competition. "I'm proud to say this: I really have no main competitors," Harris says. His youngest son, Adam, now works alongside his father to help run the agency. (Harris poached him from his previous job by promising, "whatever you make, I'm going to give you $5,000 a year more, because you're going to bust your ass for me!")

Since Adam has Chuck's legal last name, Miller, not everyone recognizes them as father and son, and they have markedly different approaches to the business. "Adam is from a different school," says Harris. "I'm from a hard school and he's from a generous, giving-type school of learning. I'm really excited about seeing him go as far as he's gone."

Certainly, Harris needs help with the operation. He treks over 150,000 miles per year on business. Most recently, Harris returned from Brazil, where he's producing a popular TV variety show. "Fortunately, or unfortunately, they want me there every week. I don't want to go every week, so I try to keep it down to once or twice a month."

Harris also makes yearly pilgrimages to Columbus, Ohio, to assist Arnold Schwarzenegger with the Arnold Sports Festival (formerly known as the Arnold Classic), the Terminator's annual bodybuilding competition.

When not on the road, Harris relaxes in his West Hollywood home, which resembles a virtual shrine to show business. Glass cabinets are filled with vintage memorabilia and collectables: toys of classic comedians, dolls and figurines from Hollywood's golden era, a cinematic sanctum that would bring a tear to the eye of even the most prolific collector. He has massive collections of both theatrical artifacts and Charlie Chaplin memorabilia. A few years back, he claims Sotheby appraised his collection at over $1 million.

Harris' clients are, of course, his most valuable collection. It's clear that they're much more than just a business to him.

"Once in a while, someone will come to me needing a $1,000 to pay the rent," he says. "I tell them: 'I'll do the favor if you do me the favor: Never tell anybody that I'm a nice guy. If you do, you'll ruin my reputation—and I'm finished in this business."

Follow Harmon Leon on Twitter.

Rehtaeh Parsons’ Death Inspired a Cyberbullying Law in Canada—But Does it Hurt Free Speech?

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Rehtaeh Parsons’ Death Inspired a Cyberbullying Law in Canada—But Does it Hurt Free Speech?

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Oxford Dictionaries Added 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl,''Butthurt,' and a Ton of Other Words Last Night

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Thumbnail image via WikiCommons

Read: Help! I Can't Stop Thinking in Emojis!

Oxford Dictionaries added 1,000 words to its lineup late Wednesday night, including "mansplaining," "NBD," "cat cafe," "bitch face," and "wine o'clock."

They also included film critic Nathan Rabin's phrase "manic pixie dream girl," which refers to those quirky female rom-com leads who always seem to save the white male protagonist from a suburban existential funk.

Rabin first used the phrase in 2007 during a review for Elizabethtownand has regretted coming up with the term ever since, but that hasn't stopped Oxford Dictionaries from immortalizing it this week in their hallowed internet pages.

To be clear, Oxford Dictionaries isn't the same as the historical Oxford English Dictionary. It's the branch that focuses on informal language found in pop culture today, meaning some will disappear from our lexicon eventually—at least if Nathan Rabin gets his wish.

Some other great gems making the cut are "butt-dial," which has definitely solidified its place in the public consciousness; "pwnage," which also probably deserves preservation; and "cakeage," which is that thing where a restaurant charges you money to eat the cake you brought from home.

In other word news, Merriam-Webster still hasn't responded to a bunch of college kids in Virginia who want the dictionary to change its definition of "success" to make the word more applicable to their own lives.

The Decomposed Bodies of Up to 50 Migrants Have Been Found in a Truck in Austria

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The Decomposed Bodies of Up to 50 Migrants Have Been Found in a Truck in Austria

Why I Had to Watch the Videos of the Virginia Shooting

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A Glock that's not unlike the one used to kill Alison Parker and Adam Ward. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

This story originally appeared on The Trace.

It was a Glock. The Austrian pistol maker's characteristically blocky slide has been imitated by plenty of other gun companies, but its sights are unmistakable: The front bead on the business end, the blocky, white "U" on the rear end. Once wrongly vilified as metal-detector-proof, futuristic slaying tools, now praised as a savior of police agencies and self-defenders, Gaston Glock's pistols constitute one swelling immigrant population America has always welcomed. And Wednesday morning, you could watch one tear into three unwitting human targets.

I understand wishing not to see video of people having their lives violently stolen. But on Wednesday morning, after an angry ex-WDBJ reporter shot journalist Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward outside Roanoke, Virginia, killing them and maiming their interviewee on live TV, I watched the station's footage. When the killer uploaded a video of the incident from his perspective to social media, I watched that, too, even as others in the media understandably attempted to have the video taken down. (Stills can be seen here and here.)

I sympathize with the view that says that to watch the shooter's footage is to abet his fantasies of infamy. And I absolutely sympathize with the loved ones and colleagues of Parker and Ward and local chamber of commerce boss Vicki Gardner, whom the journalists were there to interview for a feel-good story on the 50th anniversary of a popular reservoir ringed by the Blue Ridge Mountains. They should not have this footage replaying in their minds, clawing itself a place amid happy memories. But for the rest of us, a case can be made for sitting through the videos—and, yes, especially the second, even more awful one. Gun-lovers, gun-haters, those of us in between—maybe we should not be so quick to look away from this rare time when the gun violence that we all condemn can be so directly observed. Maybe we even had an obligation to watch, just once, and then do our own mental recording.

One moment in the shooter's footage in particular sticks out as terribly important. It is not the moment when he finally opens fire. It is the long seconds that lead up to it. In the video, the killer approaches, reaches his three victims, pauses, raises the Glock into the frame. He levels the gun at them, point-blank, and waits a few more beats. Then he appears to inch even closer and briefly thrusts the gun farther forward. Like he wants to be noticed, there, with his gun. Like it was as important to be seen as to be killing.

Parker and Ward, his back to the killer, do not notice. They are too busy doing their jobs, filming their stand-up. Perhaps they are aware of a figure shuffling into their periphery, something that anyone who does live TV gets used to. But the work at hand is their focus.

So for this long moment, the shooter is just background, a man with an unnoticed gun. It reminded me of a moment in The Silence of the Lambs: mid-climax, the psychopath, wearing night-vision goggles, beholds Jodie Foster helpless in the dark, brandishes his weapon, relishing his potency.

I thought, too, of a line from Santa Barbara mass-killer Elliot Rodger's long-winded manifesto, on buying the first of the guns he'd use to murder or wound 20 people: "After I picked up the handgun, I brought it back to my room and felt a new sense of power," he wrote. "I was now armed. Who's the alpha male now, bitches?"

There can be no crazier feeling than that, and no more depraved act than the one this killer took in his next moments, as he proceeded to pull the trigger, squeezing off eight or nine rounds.

But here in this country, such thoughts, such actions, such moments—they are not abnormal. They are in fact entirely commonplace. And they are a product of what guns have become in America: not sometimes-tools, not peacemakers, but magical signifiers to "good" guys and "bad" alike. There are gun critics to whom the weapon is inherently malevolent and worthy of banning outright, capable only of murder and never of sport, of discipline, of legitimate defense. There are gun owners to whom it is a talisman, a bringer of protective mojo that must always be available privately and without fetters: It made America; it won the West; it preserves civilization; it defeats evil. To both sides, the firearm is power incarnate.

Of course we have to reconsider how and when we as a society allow access to guns. We also need to strive as a culture to combat the idea that you can write your story's ending, your way, with violence. In Charleston, in Santa Barbara, in Newtown, and now in Roanoke, violent men are trying to be the heroes in their own real-life first-person shoot-'em-ups. Other citizens are trying to be the heroes that will shoot the killers.

So many twisted narratives, all competing for airtime. The murderers have crafted their manifestos, taking pains to rationalize their brutality and celebrate the weapons that empowered them. But in the Roanoke video, we have a new and terrible kind of chronicle. One hopes, against all reason and evidence, that it will be the last.

Follow The Trace on Twitter.

G20 Commander Found Guilty of Unlawful Arrests, But Many Questions Remain

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Photo via Flickr user andrewarchy

Five years after he was detained for hours in downtown Toronto, soaked in rain and certain that his civil rights—the ones he'd left Iran in search of—were being trampled on, Shervin Akhavi finally has some peace of mind. But it's not enough, he said.

The civil engineer is one of hundreds of Torontonians who was arrested by Toronto police without cause during the G20 summit in June 2010. The two-day event was marked by a massive police presence and numerous concrete barriers throughout the downtown core, which exacerbated tensions between authorities and lawful protestors, resulting in torched police cars, roving platoons of riot cops and many civilians being unlawfully detained.

On Tuesday, following a long drawn-out disciplinary hearing, Supt. Mark Fenton of Toronto Police Services was found guilty of discreditable conduct and unlawful or unnecessary arrests. He is the highest ranking officer to be disciplined under the Police Services Act for the handling of G20. His sentence has yet to be determined.

But for Akhavi, who along with a handful of others filed a complaint to the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, the punishment matters little.

"I'm happy about the decision, that at least one person has been held accountable, but...what he gets, that's not important to me," he told VICE.

"Really, I think that we're missing a public inquiry that would shed light on how everything came about."

The "arrests"
Fenton was found guilty of two counts of unlawful or unnecessary arrests. One related to the mass arrest of 260 people in front of downtown Toronto's Novotel hotel Saturday, June 26, 2010. It was the first of two times that weekend police would employ a tactic called "kettling" to box citizens in and detain them for an extended period of time.

That day, Akhavi and his friend had been protesting a climate change policy; on the Sunday they headed downtown to check out a security fence that had been erected for the conference and on their way back, encountered a group of protesters at Queen St. West and Spadina Ave. They stopped.

"Maybe 20 minutes later we were...boxed in," said Akhavi. Police formed a barrier around the intersection, preventing anyone inside, including peaceful protesters, journalists and bystanders, from leaving.

Erin Cauchi, a producer with Al Jazeera America, was president of Canadian University Press at the time. She had rushed to the area to vouch for a couple of reporters who were being detained and wound up inside the kettle herself.

"I just immediately said 'Don't worry about it, they'll let us out...We're press, this is obviously not for us'."

But Cauchi, then 22, didn't have G20 media accreditation—she wasn't a field reporter—and without it, the officer wouldn't let her leave.

"He said 'You can step up to be arrested right now or we'll take you by force in a few minutes'."

She was detained until the end, furiously taking notes all the while and later writing about her experience.

Akhavi was eventually handcuffed but never charged with any crime.

"I was born in Iran. My family was persecuted and issues of civil liberty are very important to me," said Akhavi, who has a copy of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms hanging in his kitchen.

"I knew I was going to take this and see someone held responsible for it."

Who walked away clean?
As a major incident commander during the G20 weekend, Fenton was responsible for policing in the downtown core.

Though he testified that he wouldn't change his actions, his lawyer issued an apology following Tuesday's judgment.

"He deeply regrets that some of those decisions led to the arrest of people who were not involved in the violence and that some people were held in the rain for hours," it said. "He would like to personally apologize to all those innocent parties that were negatively affected."

But some are asking why officers more senior to him haven't taken any of the heat, in particular former police chief Bill Blair and then-deputy chief Tony Warr.

Despite being top cop at the time, Blair was not subject to any disciplinary action nor was he called to testify during Fenton's hearing.

Toronto lawyer Adrienne Lei, who represented Akhavi and two other complainants, told VICE her team brought forth an application to summon Blair and Warr, "partly because Fenton was running a Nuremberg defence that he was following the orders of [his] supervisors." It was denied.

Akhavi said the flawed disciplinary process allowed Blair to "dodge the whole thing."

"The (OIPRD) report is handed over to the chief and he appointed the judge and...set up the whole disciplinary hearing. [Blair's] the guy that set up the whole thing and washed his hands of it."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Federal Connection
The G20 was originally meant to be held in Huntsville, ON, along with the G8, but that location was deemed to be too small, and was moved to Toronto.

"We never saw an apology from politicians who made the decision to host the G20 in Toronto," Laura Berger, interim director of public safety for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association told VICE.

"I think it would have been appropriate after the G20 to hear from federal leadership what happened on that weekend. A tremendous number of innocent Canadians were arrested and detained."

An investigation into the RCMP, who were present throughout the G20 weekend, more or less cleared them of any wrongdoing.

Kettling isn't part of RCMP policy, but the report found that because the RCMP was essentially taking orders from Toronto police, their actions were "reasonable under the circumstances."

Berger of the CCLA said it's far more complicated than that.

"This was a decision that involved the RCMP. There were a wide range of bad decisions that were made," she told VICE.

"This is why (the CCLA) called for a broad scale public inquiry, which we never saw."

Future implications
Toronto was in a police state during the weekend of the G20 summit. Though their memories are unpleasant, some of those who lived through it are more disturbed at the thought that this kind of large-scale abuse of power could take hold again.

"It's distressing for me from a democratic perspective that this is how we police people, this is how we run this place," said Cauchi.

"This is happening in Ferguson, this is happening everywhere," added Lei. "You have police come in and they don't ask questions, they just take these stances that make it appear that Martial law is actually something that can be done and that isn't the rule of law."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.


Court Orders Montreal Cops to Pay Anarchist $15,000 for Wrongful Arrest

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Court Orders Montreal Cops to Pay Anarchist $15,000 for Wrongful Arrest

The Guy Behind the "WHAT ARE THOSE?!" Meme Is in Jail

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Image via Young Busco's Facebook fan page

"What are those?!" is undeniably the meme of summer 2015. The short clip of a man inquiring about a cop's offensively drab footwear has been reenacted, remixed, and remix-reenacted past the point of ubiquity. The funniest and most SMDH-inducing version is probably this Vine (46 million loops and counting) which syncs the catchphrase to the the Jurassic Park theme song as dinosaurs wearing Yeezy Boosts walk by. No one is better at beating, pulverizing, and incinerating a dead horse than the internet. Just when it looked like its 15 seconds of fame were up, a ballsy kid reignited the commotion by blindsiding Michael Jordan with the infamous question, leaving the most notable shoe-shiller of all time completely bewildered.

"That's really crazy," says Young Busco (real name Brandon Moore), a 28-year-old father of five from Oakland, California. "I got the whole world making fun of people's shoes." Busco was reveling in his meme glory until he was arrested on the evening of July 17, 2015—a month after he dropped his now-famous video—for a narcotics charge as well as a probation violation.


Busco (pronounced BOOSE-co) is currently in detention at Santa Rita jail in Dublin, California, a Bay Area suburb located 20 miles southeast of his hometown. According to Alameda County records, Busco faces felony charges for transportation for sale of a controlled substance and for violating the terms of his probation. Speaking with me from Santa Rita via collect phone calls, Busco tells me that the situation is a result of a "miscommunication" between him and his parole officer, and jokes about moving next door to her, presumably so she can better keep an eye on him. His hearing is set for September 11. He tells me he expects to be released.

Though Busco says he's been behind bars in the past, he's never experienced a 180 like this before, in which he was in the center of a meme firestorm one day, only to find himself completely cut off from the internet the next.

The inciting "What are those?!" incident occurred just outside the Ashby BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station in the city of Berkeley, California. Busco says he was hanging with his friend Myesha at the nearby Berkeley Flea Market when the BART police wrote Myesha up for drinking in public. The situation quickly escalated, and Myesha ended up getting arrested. After the officers put her in the back of the squad car, Busco—who had been documenting the incident on his phone—popped the most important question of his life. "What are those?!" was a phrase he and his friends "grew up saying to each other." He had no idea "What are those?!" would blow up like it did.

(It's worth mentioning that scenes of Busco's own arrest were captured on his Instagram as well.)

Busco got his fill of "What Are Those?!" before his arrest and tweeted that he was over the whole saga. "To be honest," he says, "I'm sick of that shit." Before going inside he was already coming up with fresh ideas. "I'm thinking of new good shit every day that's gonna be better than 'What are those?!' It's gotta be organic. It can't be premeditated."

When I ask Busco how he feels about the meme's popularity in light of the fact that many don't know who its creator is, he says, "It's not at all frustrating. It's actually cool in a sense. Everything I do, I do for the people anyway. That's where my fulfillment comes from. That's how I got my payment."

Busco has already had a taste of celebrity in jail. One day out in the prison yard, he and a friend were hanging out and noticed a couple of inmates eyeing them and talking amongst themselves. On alert and anticipating something serious, Busco and his friend went over to confront them. It turns out the pair were just trying to figure out whether or not that really was the Young Busco of "What are those?!" fame. "They couldn't believe it was me!" he laughs.

Busco's girlfriend tells me the meme has paid off in the form a contract with Best Vines, a popular Youtube channel that makes Vine compilations. However, Busco's aim is not to get rich off a meme. "I'm like woah, woah. Everybody's telling me I gotta copyright this," he says. Instead, he encourage the proliferation of the joke. "I made a public statement saying, 'I want you to copy and remix [What are those?!] a million times.'"

The fast food giant Burger King exploited the phrase on Twitter without crediting him. One company, he says, reached out to him seeking to buy the rights to the catchphrase wholesale.

On Noisey: The Best "WHAT ARE THOOOOOOSE?!" Songs, Reviewed

For the time Busco is staying calm and collected despite his inability to seize upon this golden opportunity. He credits the many visits and calls he's received from family, friends, and fans to helping him weather the perils of being locked up "I don't know how I would be if I didn't have that support system. The support from my fans helps a whole lot."

At the end of our last phone collect call I ask Busco if he's got anything else he'd like to say, to which he responds "I'm bigger than 'What are those?!' Stay tuned."

If you'd like to contact Young Busco, you can write to:

Brandon Moore
BFI-915 Unit 32
5325 Border Blvd
Dublin, CA 94568

Follow George on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Donald Trump Says Gun Violence Isn't a Problem—Crazy People Are

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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Read: The Man Who Killed Two Journalists on Live TV Is Now Dead

On Thursday, one day after two Virginia journalists were shot to death on live television, presidential hopeful and hubris incarnate Donald Trump said gun violence isn't a problem in America—the real problem, he argued, is one of mental health.

"This isn't a gun problem, this is a mental problem," Trump said in an appearance on CNN. "He snuck up on them—whether it was a gun or a knife, he would have had something." Rather than stricter gun laws, Trump said, mental institutions, like ones from "the old days," could've helped prevent the tragedy.

"He was really, definitely borderline ... and should have been institutionalized," he added. "At some point somebody should have seen that; the people close to him should have seen it."

So far, Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are the only 2016 candidates who have explicitly called for stricter gun laws in the wake of Wednesday's shooting. Trump, on the other hand, said that stricter gun laws will lead to more gun violence.

"You're not going to get rid of all guns," he said. "I know one thing: If you tried to do it, the bad guys would have them ... and the good folks who abide by the law would be hopeless. It would be a hopeless situation for them."

So now we know where President Trump would stand on the whole gun issue, if and when his time ever comes.

The Fight to Unmuzzle Canada's Scientists

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The Fight to Unmuzzle Canada's Scientists

Expectations Must Be Tempered, but Don't Count Out Marcus Stroman

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Expectations Must Be Tempered, but Don't Count Out Marcus Stroman

The VICE Guide to Right Now: People Are Literally Cutting $20 Bills in Half to Make Two Tens In This Quebec Town

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Photo via Flickr user Chris Gerty

Read: The Best Place to Stand: What I Learned Hitchhiking Across Canada

Some residents of a city in Quebec have apparently decided that they can do whatever the fuck they want, and hence, have begun cutting regular Canadian bills in half in a move to create their own currency. Some merchants and customers in the city of Gaspé, located on a peninsula in the eastern Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine region of the Canadian province, have recently started using said currency, known as the "Half."

So far, only a handful of businesses are known to be accepting the made-up form of money. According to those using the Half in Gaspé, the implementation of the cut-up bills encourages people to spend locally.

"Retailers who accept these are making a promise to buy local...They have to know about it to use it, and that creates a tighter network," Michelle Secours, a retailer in Gaspé, told CBC. "It's a way to keep circulating the money locally."

Currently, it is not known how many of the halved bills are in circulation, nor is it even clear how exactly this economic initiative will actually benefit the city. However, as the Canadian dollar becomes increasingly weak, it's no wonder some feel the urge to literally cut up their money.

Though it is not a criminal offence in Canada to cut up money the way some of those in Gaspé are, the Bank of Canada does discourage the mutilation of bills, including marking, writing, and maiming.

Follow Allison Elkin on Twitter.

​Who Will the Jury Believe in the New England Prep School Rape Trial?

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Owen Labrie testifies during his trial in Concord, New Hampshire. Labrie is charged with raping a 15-year-old freshman. Photo via AP Photo/Charles Krupa, Pool

Over the past week, national media outlets have been swarming over a quaint New Hampshire courthouse as a jury deliberates on a case involving two students from an elite prep school and the time-honored sex game that may have resulted in the rape of a 15-year-old girl. Owen Labrie, a 19-year-old St. Paul's graduate, is charged with raping a freshman two days before graduation, when he was 18. The encounter, which the girl said she at first entered into willingly, was part of what students on campus call Senior Salute—a tradition where in the last weeks of the school year, seniors reach out to younger students to hook up with them. The girl says she went with Labrie to the roof of a school building with the expectation that they would kiss.

Instead, she says, Labrie violently raped her in a room in the attic.

The case has pulled the curtain away from a sordid culture at one of the nation's most elite institutions. Senior Salute encounters, or "slays," as some members of the St. Paul's soccer team called them, were tallied on a school walls. And Labrie's statements to police and testimony from his classmates on the stand suggest some male students had turned the Senior Salute into a competition. Yet UNH Law Professor Buzz Scherr says the national fascination with the trial may boil down to a more basic curiosity.

"We're curious whether rich people, smart people, behave differently to us," he told local news station NH1.


Watch our latest documentary, on the truth behind a disturbing urban legend:


But if you take away the pricey tuition and the decades-old ritual objectification of young girls, the St. Paul's trial essentially boils down to a standard acquaintance—or date rape—trial. These cases, legal experts say, are notoriously difficult to prosecute. Without witnesses to attest to specifics of the sexual encounter, the jury is essentially left to decide whether the alleged victim consented based on he-says-she-says arguments—a gut decision. And a juror's gut may have an ulterior motive. Although lawyers and judges try to weed out jurors with ingrained biases, the jury's assessment of whether or not the alleged victim is telling the truth, or if they even qualify as a victim, is frequently based on factors like gender.

Often, jurors will make a decision based on their own interest of self-preservation. In other words, they'll believe what they want to believe.

"Most jurors come in with a bias [of] not wanting to believe it could happen," says Carla Carlstrom, a prosecutor who specializes in assault cases in King County, Washington. "It's easier to think that it didn't happen or it's somehow the victim's fault."

Believability is a hurdle all alleged victims of date rape face in the courtroom. The now 16-year-old blonde teenager in this case, who spent much of this trial in tears, is no exception. Ultimately, the jury in New Hampshire v. Owen Labrie, consisting of nine men and three women—mostly white and middle-aged—will have to make a decision based on which teenager they think is full of shit.

Labrie faces up to 20 years each for three felony sexual assault charges.

Previously: A Rape Trial Is Revealing the Details of a Competitive Sex Ritual at an Elite New England Prep School

Before closing arguments on Thursday, prosecutors presented physical evidence, as well as testimony from students, school employees, experts, and police. The defense presented only one witness: Labrie himself.

At least until Labrie's testimony Wednesday, it seemed almost impossible for the defense to come up with a believable argument that he didn't penetrate the girl—which, because of their age, meant Labrie would likely be convicted of misdemeanor sexual assault under New Hampshire law.

A nurse testified that the alleged victim had a vaginal tear. Criminologists who examined the underwear she wore that night testified they found Labrie's DNA and sperm on the inside of her panties. Four of Labrie's friends took the stand and testified that Labrie told them he had sex with the girl. Before that, jurors heard about how Labrie made a list of the girls he wanted to "slay" and the girl's name was at the top in capital letters.

Then there are the Facebook messages Labrie sent to his friends.

"How'd it go from no to bone?" asked Tucker Marchese.

"Just pulled every trick in the book," replied Labrie.

The girl took the stand over the course of three days, and described in graphic detail how she says she was raped. Labrie was someone she only knew in passing, a friend of her big sister's, she said. After the cajoling of a mutual friend, she agreed to Labrie's request that she come with him to the roof of a school building for a Senior Salute.

In her testimony, the girl said she blamed herself for not being stronger, and for not saying no more forcefully.

After they spent a few minutes taking in the view, Labrie brought her back inside to the attic, a dark room roaring with the sound of the building's industrial machinery. Though she claims she said "no" three times and insisted on keeping her underwear on, the girl alleges that Labrie proceeded to finger her, "scraping" the inside of her body. When he began to lick her vagina, she says she "froze" and that he then proceeded to penetrate her with what she thought was his penis (she deduced this because she could see his hands). He then stopped to spit on her when wasn't able to get all the way in, she claims.

Later, when she messaged Labrie about wearing a condom, he replied that he wore one, and asked if she was on the pill. She was not.

"Praise jesus I put one on halfway," Labrie replied.

In her testimony, the girl said she blamed herself for not being stronger, and for not saying no more forcefully. Instead, she said she was polite to Labrie, before and after the alleged assault, because she didn't want "to come off as bitchy" to one of the most popular boys in school. Later she said she replied to his flirty messages because she was in denial, and didn't want him to contact her in person. "I wanted to tell myself that I had the control in this situation," she told the court.

Labrie has changed his appearance from last spring, when he was a shaggy-haired 18–year–old. He got a haircut, and at the trial wore a collection of navy and tweed sports coats, along with a pair of thick-rimmed glasses.

When he took the stand, Labrie told the court he was the only child of a broken family, that his mother is a school teacher, his father a landscaper. He had a full ride at St. Paul's, and had been on his way to Harvard, where he had won a scholarship and planned to eventually study divinity.

Perhaps it was because of those humble beginnings, at least compared to his trust fund baby peers, that Labrie became so devoted to steeping himself in St. Paul's culture. He was a prefect. He won a character award for his "selfless devotion to the school."

He also tried to excel in the school's more unseemly traditions, according to testimony from students at the trial and the messages they exchanged on Facebook.

What Labrie said next on the stand will either make jurors think he is a real-world version of the protagonist in The Talented Mr. Ripley or the victim of an elaborate plot: His invitation to the roof of the deserted Lindsay building wasn't really a Senior Salute, he said. "It was my understanding that Senior Salutes were between two students who sort of missed each other and hadn't had time to connect." This was different, because he knew the girl, he said, and they were "friends."

"I wanted to ask her out," he told jurors.

Except for a "romantic" scene that Labrie painted of the couple exploring old school artifacts, up until the point of alleged penetration, Labrie's and the girl's stories more or less match up. There was kissing, and dry humping, though the duo's interpretations differ. Labrie "thought she was having a great time," while the girl insisted she he was petrified. He described romantic foreplay, and she said he was "chewing" on her breasts.

But where Labrie's story and the alleged victim's really diverge is on the question of contraception. He says sex was something the two of them "talked about performing"—before he had second thoughts. When Labrie first spoke to police last year, before his arrest, he described it as a moment of "divine inspiration," and said he had "sprinted" off with the condom still on.

In court, he added that he may have also prematurely ejaculated.

"I had a second thought while I was looking down trying to put on a condom," he said. Though he claims the girl seemed interested in going to the next step, he decided sex was not a "smooth" thing to do in that situation. "I lost of little bit of my erection standing there," Labrie added.

He went on to say he suggested to the girl that they should "check the time," that they realized they were late for an acapella concert, kissed, got dressed and left. As he was walking to the concert, Labrie said he realized the condom was still on and discovered his "shorts were wet."

When the girl later asked him about birth control, Labrie told jurors, he was just trying to comfort her, and thought she may have felt some of the precum too.

In a classic defense move in rape trials, his lawyers says the alleged victim is simply not credible.

In his own way, Labrie accounts for all the evidence. And in a classic defense move in rape trials, his lawyers says the alleged victim is simply not credible.

The girl's roommate told police that before the encounter, she said, "I'll probably let him finger me and at most I'll blow him."

The defense attorney recalled to jurors that when he asked her about this, she told him, "I don't remember." This, Labrie's high-powered defense attorney Jay Carney said in his closing statements, was evidence that she "deliberately and intentionally lied to you under oath."

In his closing, prosecutor Joe Cherniske responded, "So what? Does that mean she can't change her mind?

"She can agree to kissing without being fingered," the prosecutor added. "She can agree to taking off her pants without taking off her underwear."

Carney dealt with the most damning testimony against his client—the accounts from four of the accused's friends who testified that Labrie told them he had sex with the 15-year-old—by saying that the young man had lied to his buddies. Sperm got on the girl's underwear because he prematurely ejaculated while dry humping, said Carney; it was embarrassing, and his client didn't want to tell his friends, "I think I might have prematurely ejaculated in my shorts, [and] then when I got up to get a condom, my penis was losing my erection, so I said I don't know I think we better head out."

Carney also conceded that Labrie exaggerated about his sexual escapades regularly while making nice with the mostly male jury.

"I'm not trying to be a traitor to my gender here," he said, adding that lots of men exaggerate about these sorts of things.

But will playing a diluted " boys will be boys" argument—that they brag about objectifying minors but don't actually do it—work with a jury that's 75 percent male? One might argue Carney—and Labrie—would have been better off with a majority female jury.

"Women are harder on other women, they're just much harder," Lisa Friel, the prosecutor in charge of New York City's Sex Crime unit from 2007 to 2011, said in a 2011 documentary called Sex Crimes. The National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence reports that many prosecutors share this belief as well.

A 2004 study by the American Journal of Criminal Justice—"Women's hostility toward women in rape trials: Testing the intra-female gender hostility thesis"—found that more than any other factor, the gender composition of a jury can predict which way its members will rule in rape trials. And female jurors are significantly more skeptical of women who allege rape than male jurors are.

The reason for this bias, the study suggests, is because of an unconscious desire not to believe sexual assault could happen to them. "Because women find rape threatening, they may try to increase the psychological distance between themselves and the victim," the authors conclude. Women who have experienced some form of sexual assault without realizing it may try to diminish their own trauma by diminishing the impact that a similar event may have had on someone else.

Carlstrom says that in her own work, she tries to look for "individual jurors" and weed out biases in both men and women. Her main concern trying date rape cases involving young people is looking for jurors who "know what kids do and don't do." Most worrisome are "old-fashioned people," or those who don't understand the modern-day hook-up culture.

(Save for one youthful-looking man with a shaved head, the jury in New Hampshire appears to be entirely middle-aged, and it's not clear the nine members are as excited about this case as the national media is. One juror reportedly fell asleep during the testimony of an ER doctor. Another asked for a bathroom break during the prosecution's closing arguments.)

Earlier in his direct examination, Labrie told the court "scoring" was synonymous with dating. And "slaying" a girl didn't mean sex, it could be as innocent as a kiss.

The prosecution pulled up a letter to his friends asking them to join him on "an exploration into the innermost meaning of the word sleeze-bag."

"You would agree that it would take a sleeze-bag to take advantage of a 15-year-old girl?" asked Prosecutor Joe Cherniske.

"Yes," said Labrie.

"It would take a sleeze-bag to have sex with a 15-year-old girl?" asked Cherniske.

"Yes," said Labrie.

"It would take a sleeze-bag to slay a 15-year-old girl?"

"Not necessarily."

"Right," retorted Cherniske. "Because that would mean a walk in the park."

Follow Susan Zalkind on Twitter.


Booking for Mr. Right: Is This Korean Dating Method Patriarchal or Practical?

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Booking for Mr. Right: Is This Korean Dating Method Patriarchal or Practical?

The VICE Guide to Right Now: The Cops Desperately Need Your Help to Catch the 'Portland Pooper'

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Read: Portland's Iconic Old Chinatown Is Overflowing with Human Shit

A man in Portland, Oregon, earned an incredible nickname this week after he got caught on camera shitting all over a local business owner's property, and now the police are looking to lock him up.

Apparently the mysterious guy, dubbed the "Portland Pooper," has been dropping deuces in public for about a month now, KOIN 6 reported Wednesday. When the business owner (who's elected to remain anonymous, possibly to avoid copycat crappers) watched the serial shitter do his thing near the office one too many times, he set up a video camera to catch him in the act.

Now, there's footage of the Pooper pulling off his belt, whipping out a roll of toilet paper, leaning up against a wall outside the office, and, well, pooping on it. In the long, uncomfortable scene, it looks like the Pooper notices he's being filmed, but just kind of keeps on going anyways.

"He's got to know something is going on," the business owner told KOIN 6. "He squints and he's paying attention."

Along with all the other weird shit taped up across the city, Portland is now covered with flyers bearing a picture of the Pooper's face, asking anyone who happens to notice him to contact the police. If he's caught, the culprit could face "offensive littering" charges.

"You just don't really know what to expect around here," a local resident told KOIN 6. "People, they like do their own thing, they kind of march to the beat of their own drum."

The VICE Guide to Right Now: On Monday, the LAPD Will Start Wearing Body Cameras

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A police officer in the UK reviews footage from an officer's body camera. Image via Flickr user West Midlands Police

The Los Angeles Times reports that on Monday, Los Angeles Police Department officers stationed in areas of the San Fernando Valley will be equipped with body cameras. Over the rest of September, 860 cameras will be distributed to LAPD officers, with plans for a total of around 7,000 body cameras to be given to officers in the coming months.

In March of this year, the ACLU issued a report stating, in part, "The challenge of on-officer cameras is the tension between their potential to invade privacy and their strong benefit in promoting police accountability." The ACLU suggested that:

People recorded by cop cams should have access to, and the right to make copies of, those recordings, for however long the government maintains copies of them. That should also apply to disclosure to a third party if the subject consents, or to criminal defense lawyers seeking relevant evidence.

The LAPD announced in April that while they planned on implementing body cameras on officers, footage captured by them would not be released to the public, and that officers would be able to access that footage before speaking with internal investigators. A rep from the ACLU told the Times that the proposed policy "[fell] short on most of the issues that we thought a body camera policy had to address." Following the LAPD's announcements of their specific body camera policies, the ACLU withdrew their support for the program.

Though LAPD commissioner Robert Saltzman told the Times today that he had reservations about the policy, he was generally in support of equipping officers with body cameras. He told the paper, "This is a big deal."

Five In-Depth Stories About the LAPD

1. Is #100Days100Nights Just a Threatening Hashtag or a Call for Full-On Gang Warfare?
2. Is Filming the LAPD Driving Up Crime in Los Angeles?
3. Activists Say the LAPD's Body Camera Program Is Full of Problems
4. What I Learned Writing About Bad Cops for a Year and a Half
5. Will Police Cars Start Watching Their Officers?

Thumbnail Image via Wiki Commons

Follow Drew on Twitter.

Australian State May Force Convicted Pedophiles to Undergo Chemical Castration

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Australian State May Force Convicted Pedophiles to Undergo Chemical Castration

Cry-Baby of the Week: A Woman Faked Being Kidnapped to Get Out of Going to Work

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It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Beverly Brooks

Screencap via Google Maps

The incident: A woman didn't want to go to work.

The appropriate response: Finding another job or complaining about your current job until you retire or die (whichever comes first).

The actual response: She pretended she'd been kidnapped.

According to a report on Panama City's News Herald, Beverly Brooks (pictured above) failed to return from a break at her job as a nurse assistant in an area hospital early in the morning last Monday.

A concerned coworker reportedly called Beverly to ask where she was and if she needed a ride back to work. According to police, Beverly told the coworker that she was not returning to work as she was being held against her will by her boyfriend. As she said this, the coworker could allegedly hear the boyfriend in the background telling the woman she was not allowed out of his car.

The coworker called 9-1-1. This led to a reported six separate law enforcements taking part in a search for Beverly that lasted several hours.

She was eventually found in a car with her boyfriend. According to police, Beverly admitted that she had made up the kidnapping as she didn't want to return to work.

She and her boyfriend were both arrested on charges of false reports of commission of crime. So, presumably, she should get a few more days off work, at least.

Cry-Baby #2: Some students at Duke University

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The incident: Some students at a university were asked to read the graphic novel Fun Home as part of a summer reading program.

The appropriate response: Reading it. Or Wikipedia'ing what it's about then pretending you read it.

The actual response: Several students refused to read the book, claiming the sex depicted in the book violated their religious beliefs.

As part of their annual summer reading program, Duke University in Durham, North Carolina provided incoming freshmen with a list of recommended books. One of the books on the list was Fun Home, an autobiographical graphic novel by Alison Bechdel which focuses on the author coming to terms with her homosexuality, as well her relationship with her father, who was a closeted homosexual.

According to a report on the Duke Chronicle, an incoming freshman named Brian Grasso made a post on the school's Class of 2019 Facebook page explaining why he was not willing to read the book. "I feel as if I would have to compromise my personal Christian moral beliefs to read it," Brian wrote.

The Chronicle reports that another student "could not bring herself to view the images depicting nudity," and another told the publication that he would not read it due to its "pornographic nature."

Brian, the student who made the Facebook post, also wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post earlier this week where he went into more depth about his decision not to read the book.

"After researching the book's content and reading a portion of it, I chose to opt out of the assignment," Brian wrote. "My choice had nothing to do with the ideas presented. I'm not opposed to reading memoirs written by LGBTQ individuals or stories containing suicide. I'm not even opposed to reading Freud, Marx, or Darwin. I know that I'll have to grapple with ideas I don't agree with, even ideas that I find immoral."

He added that he would not be reading the book because the Bible forbids people from looking at pornographic images. "My beliefs extend to pop culture and even Renaissance art depicting sex," he wrote.

Brian also believes that his professors have a duty to warn him when he might possibly be exposed to a boob: "And I believe professors should warn me about such material, not because I might consider them offensive or discomforting, but because I consider it immoral."

Who here is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here, please:

Previously: A school who sent a girl home because her collarbone was showing vs. a bunch of people who didn't get a car seat for cheap because of a pricing error.

Winner: It's a draw!!!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

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