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Fight AIDS by Buying 'Dance (Red) Saves Lives 2' Today

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A whopping 35 million people across the globe live with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). And over the last three decades, AIDS has killed more than 36 million people, despite the fact that it's preventable and treatable. But it's not just adults who are impacted, everyday 700 babies are born with HIV. Without antiretroviral treatment, 50 percent of these babies will die before their second birthday. In other words, in this crazy and screwed up world, AIDS takes the cake as one of the most awful aspects of our existence and we need to do whatever we can to fight against it so little babies across the globe aren't being born with a death sentence. 

Since 2006, (RED) has lead the fight against the AIDS epidemic by coming up with an innovative model that generates a sustainable flow of money from the private sector. Their latest endeavor to further the fight against AIDS through our consumption is Dance (RED) Saves Lives 2, the second album in a compilation series that features the world’s biggest dance and pop artists. The record's 24 tracks of new music and exclusive remixes has contributions from artists like Katy Perry, Tommy Trash, Empire of The Sun, Calvin Harris, Tiësto, Coldplay, Swedish House Mafia, Robin Thicke, and Martin Solveig. 

We know dance and pop music aren't everyone's bag, but ALL of the album's proceeds go directly to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS. So even if you're into post-industrial psychosexual garage space anthems and you can't stand music that makes people happy and gets girls shaking their booties, you should still buy like ten copies of this thing to support the cause. 

Here’s the tracklist.:

Katy Perry - "Roar (DallasK Remix)"

Coldplay - "Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall (Swedish House Mafia Remix)"

Major Lazer ft. Bruno Mars, Tyga and Mystic - "Bubble Butt (Flosstradamus Remix)"

Empire of the Sun & Tommy Trash - "Celebrate (Tommy Trash Mix)"

Madonna vs. Avicii - "Girl Gone Wild (Avicii's UMF Mix)"

Bob Marley - "Sun Is Shining (Jesse Rose 'Bootleg' Remix)"

Calvin Harris ft. Ellie Goulding - "I Need Your Love (R3hab Remix)"

Dada Life vs. Josh Wink - "Higher State of Dada Land"

Robin Thicke ft. Kendrick Lamar - "Give It 2 U (Benny Benassi Remix)"

Capital Cities - "Kangaroo Court (Robert DeLong Remix)"

Banks - "Waiting Game (Kaytranada Edition)"

Baauer & RL Grime - "Infinite Daps"

Claire - "Broken Promise Land (Giorgio Moroder Remix & Vocoder)"

Bingo Players - "Buzzcut (Popeska Remix)"

Icona Pop - "All Night (Crookers Remix)"

Tiësto, Mark Alston, Baggi Begovic, Jason Taylor - "Love & Run ft. Teddy Geiger (MOTi Remix)"

Deadmau5 vs. Eric Prydz - "The Veldt (Prydz Festival Edit)"

Martin Solveig & The Cataracts - "Hey Now ft. Kyle (Pierce Fulton Remix)"

Gorgon City – "Voltage"

Felix Cartal ft. HAERTS - "Slow Motion"

Rebecca & Fiona ft. VICE - "Hot Shots"

Tritonal ft. Underdown - "Deep Into Black (Club Mix)"

Chuckie - "Skydive ft. Maiday (Candyland Remix)"

Far East Movement - "There Will Be No Rain (Kill Paris Remix)"

Buy it NOW on iTunes.


Florida State Football Fans Love Their Accused Rapist Quarterback

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Photo via Flickr User stab at sleep

There is no question that rape destroys lives.

But to be clear, I’m not talking about the hundreds of thousands of sexual assault victims per year, struggling to deal with the subsequent impact and attention, nor am I talking about the men who’ve lost everything—their careers, families, and friends—over unfounded rape accusations. This is not about the unwanted, violently conceived children, shattered families, horrified significant others, or even our overburdened legal system, because when it comes to rape, there’s an oft-forgetten group of victims: sports fans.

Local athletics are a big deal; they provide a sinkhole for taxpayer dollars, promote gender segregation, and remind kids that an affordable education is not for those who can’t dunk or tackle. So let’s maybe ease up on accusing athletes, at least until they’ve finished out the season. The local sports-worship community depends on it. Have you ever cherished something so deeply, and in one fell swoop had it ripped away and tarnished forever? Well, now you know how fans of disgraced athletes like Darrell WilliamsTroy Turner, Trent Mays, and Ma'Lik Richmond feel. One moment, at the top of their game, thanks to a mix of aggression, power dynamics, and maybe a little force, and the next moment they’re batting away curveballs such as DNA and video evidence. Don’t these guys already have enough on their plate without having to deal with “answering to the allegations?"


Accused rapist Jameis "Jay-Boo" Winston. Photo via Flickr User flguardian2

At least Florida is keeping it real, as usual. Florida State’s quarterback, Jameis “Jay-Boo” Winston, was accused of rape by a female FSU student all the way back in January, although due to the Tallahassee Police Department's incredible consideration, no inquiries, arrests, or even DNA samples were made at the time. This is because, as the detectives put it, “such activity would alert Winston and the matter would go public.” If there’s one thing more important than police competence, or the thorough investigation of an alleged felony, it’s college football. In fact, according to a statement released by the family of the victim, “When the attorney contacted Detective Angulo immediately after Winston was identified, Detective Angulo told the attorney that Tallahassee was a big football town and the victim needs to think long and hard before proceeding against him because she will be raked over the coals and her life will be made miserable." 

More potentially incriminating details have been revealed, such as Jameis’ DNA on the victim’s clothing. Through it all the community has held together in a breathtaking display of strength, pride, and camaraderie by showering Winston with unconditional displays of support. A recent game between the Florida State Seminoles and the Idaho Vandals began with a deafening ovation at the introduction of Jameis Winston to the field, where he helped his team score a record breaking 80 points, and according to Yahoo! Sports, a pair of fans, one in a “black peekaboo top that showed plenty of cleavage” held out customized jerseys for Jameis to sign, with “Jay-Boo” on one, and “Innocent” on the other. "We've looked at everything that's been released," the woman told the reporter. "We're confident he's innocent." Everyone in Florida is a cast member of Law & Order: SVU or something, since they've already solved the mystery. Of course, the fans at Penn State and Steubenville thought they knew the truth too. 


Photo via Flickr User flguardian2

The case is being investigated by Tallahassee State Attorney Willie Meggs, who will either charge Jameis before the holiday and prevent him from playing in the Gators game on Saturday, or note Thanksgiving's looming presence and postpone the case. The DNA evidence and eyewitness testimony might clear Jay Boo of all charges, if you ask his lawyers. What doesn't make sense is why they decided to wait until after the results came in to inform investigators and the press that it was not at all surprising that his DNA was found, and in fact they were “anticipating” it being discovered. Their omission-based semantic argument of, “we never, ever said he wasn't there" was met by the family of the victim releasing a second statement simply stating, “To be clear, the victim did not consent. This was a rape."

Considering the outcomes from Boston University, Notre Dame, University of Iowa, University of Missouri, Oakland University, and a whole bunch of other rape allegations against college athletes, it's unlikely that Winston will face jail time. Research suggests that athletes who have been accused of sexual assault are rarely convicted. Winston's guilt or innocence remains in question, but his ability to remain a hero in Tallahassee is not.

@jules_su

Meet Bob Gruen: Bugle Player for the Clash and Photographer of Rock Royalty

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The Clash, 1979

The most important thing about Bob Gruen is that he played bugle for the Clash. The second is that he shot a bunch of the most iconic rock and roll photos of the 20th century. John Lennon hired him as his personal photographer in the 70s, which resulted in that picture of Lennon in the New York City shirt that your dad probably has framed somewhere. He also took the picture of Sid Vicious bleeding from a cut up chest that you probably have unframed somewhere, and on one special night in 1975 he took a picture of Mick Jagger’s giant penis.

Bob Dylan, 1975

Gruen got into music photography in the mid-60s while living in Greenwich Village. He befriended bands that were part of the burgeoning folk scene at that time like the Lovin’ Spoonful and the Magicians, and in 1965 shot his first concert—Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival. Soon after Ike Turner personally selected Gruen to photograph Tina Turner, and from there his career exploded. Bob photographed rock and roll gods like the Stones, Bowie, and Zeppelin in their prime, but it was through his gig as John and Yoko’s photographer that he became involved with a group of mascara’d gentlemen who called themselves the New York Dolls.

Bob was the first photojournalist to document the Dolls in any real way. He took some of the earliest pictures of the band, and in 1973 went along with them on a West Coast tour. Now, Gruen is getting ready to release a documentary about that tour from the video he shot while on the road with them called New York Dolls, All Dolled Out. I called up Bob because I am jealous of his life and wanted to hear all about it.

New York Dolls on the Real Don Steele Show, 1973

VICE: How did you first meet the New York Dolls?
Bob:
John Lennon was working with the Elephant’s Memory band, and they were managed by the same company as the New York Dolls. So I was bringing pictures to their office when one of the guys was like, “You have to see this other band we manage.”

I went down to the Mercer Arts Center and was totally blown away. Over the next few weeks I took pictures and made some videos of them. We worked together for the next couple of years—they’re like family.

New York Dolls at Mercer Arts Center, 1972

What was the first live show you saw like?
It was one of the most wild, chaotic performances I’ve ever seen. They played what’s called the Oscar Wilde room, where one wall almost has like bleacher seating. People were surrounding them so the band was kind of in the middle of the crowd, just jumping around, playing chaotic, wild music—fast and wild versions of rhythm and blues.

Was it shocking to see a bunch of hairy rockers in drag?
Well, let me address that. First of all, the Dolls are not in drag. Being in drag is not shocking in New York City. The Dolls are some of the most macho guys I’ve ever met. They might have bought some of their clothes in the women’s section of the store, but if they were wearing dresses, they weren’t women’s dresses—they were men’s dresses. And really, they never wore dresses except for one show, which was at a cross-dressing sort of club.

See, they wore makeup, but not in a transvestite kind of way. That’s partly why they’re called the Dolls. They dressed like dolls. They wore rouge on their cheeks and bright frilly clothes. It was more a matter of trying to look like dolls because girls like to play with dolls. The New York Dolls were a bunch of macho guys who wanted girls to play with them.

New York Dolls, 1974

The documentary has a lot of scenes with people staring at them in disbelief. Did people ever try to fight the band?
Probably. They did attract quite a bit of attention. A lot of men were afraid of that kind of look. Whenever they went on stage people would jump up and bang into each other—one half would be running to the stage and the other half was running out of the theater. In the early 70s dressing like a woman was illegal and something that a lot of people were frightened by.

What was David Johansen [lead vocals] like at the time?
David was pretty over the top. As an example, I remember there was a bit of controversy because David Bowie had said that he was bisexual, and that quote went around the world. They interviewed David Johansen: “Well, are you bisexual?” And David Johansen said, “No, I’m trisexual. I’ll try anything once.” It was an idea of freedom and rebellion, of doing what you want.

Johnny Thunders, 1975

And Johnny Thunders [guitar]? He had quite a reputation.
Well, Johnny was a pretty tough character. He taught himself guitar, which is why he had such a unique style. He didn’t sound like anybody else because he didn’t learn from anybody else. Something that people don’t realize is that that he was a very intelligent guy.

Near the end of the documentary there’s a scene where the band says that they’ll always stay together. What does that mean to you now?
Well, when you’re young you always think there’s a bright future. In the case of the Dolls, alcohol and drugs kind of split them up. Arthur became uncommunicative and unable to function due to alcohol. Johnny and Jerry got deeply into heroin. You can’t really work with people who are in that state of mind, and they basically quit the band in order to go get high. David didn’t want to live like that so he went on to have a solo career.

Do you think David was more career minded?
David lived a very rock and roll lifestyle, too. He just didn’t get as hooked on the drugs as Johnny and Jerry. To their credit, Johnny and Jerry went on to have successful solo careers, just with more problems. David didn’t want those problems—like having to worry about where to get drugs before a gig and traveling with people who have drugs.

The Clash, 1976

Your relationship with the Dolls enabled you to see the Clash at the beginning of their career, right?
Malcolm McLaren came to New York after the Dolls had been dropped by their management. He had a set of clothes for them to wear. He kind of pulled the band back together and got Johnny and Jerry cleaned up for a short time so they could play his gigs and wear his clothes. I became friendly with Malcolm, and when I went to England his was one of the only two phone numbers I had.

I didn’t know that a punk scene was developing over there because it was very small. Malcolm brought me to a place called Club Louise, which was where the nucleus of what would become punk was hanging out every night. The first night there I met Siouxsie Sioux, Sue Catowman, Billy Idol, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and people who were there with them.

Sid Vicious, 1978

During the Sex Pistols’ American tour, you took that iconic picture of Sid Vicious with his chest all cut up and bleeding. What was going  on there?
A bizarre incident led up to that. There was a girl at the front of the stage who called Sid down to her. He went over to her and leaned down and she punched him in the nose. He came up with blood dripping down his nose and a big smile on his face. Having worked with Alice Cooper and KISS before, when I saw him come up with a smile I thought he had a blood capsule. Then I realized it was real. He was spitting some of the blood at the girl and she was wiping it off and throwing it back at him. When the bloody nose started to dry up he went over to the amplifier, took a beer bottle off the top of it, smashed it, and cut his chest. He cut himself once or twice and a roadie managed to jump out and grab his hand and said, ”Sid, what are you doing?” He paused and had sort of an oh, I’m sorry kind of expression. He dropped the beer bottle and went back to play. Then the band started yelling that they couldn’t hear him, and it was because he actually turned his amp off when he hit it with a beer bottle.

So, it was kind of chaotic. You never knew what to expect. He was one wild guy. Always caught up in the moment.

Sid Vicious, 1978

There’s a lot of mythos surrounding Sid Vicious. What did you think of him as a person?
Sid was a nice guy, actually. The Sid I knew, he was a good actor playing the vicious part. He wasn’t mean inherently. He wasn’t a very good bass player either—by his own admission. That’s not him playing bass on the Sex Pistols records or even his own records, but Malcolm thought he was good on stage. He didn’t grow up to be a musician. He grew up to be Sid Vicious.

Is it true that you were briefly the bugle player for the Clash?
I learned how to play trumpet when I was a kid, and I learned bugle calls when I was in the Boy Scouts. One day I went to Paul Simonon’s [bass player for the Clash] house to get a ride to the show. I noticed a bugle was sitting there and, as I do from time to time, I picked it up and started to blow on it. He came over and said, “Wow, you can play the bugle?!”  I said, “Yeah, actually, it’s not very hard if you know the basics.” So he said, “Well, we want someone to open the show with a call to arms—a charge.” I said, “That’s easy, I can do it.”

It was really great fun because it was the only time I was in a band, and it was for one of the greatest bands. I often take pictures of bands in the dressing room and when we're done they’ll say, “OK, only the band in the dressing room.” But that time they said, “OK, we're going to talk about your part,” and suddenly I was in the band. I did it in England a couple of times and here in New York at Bonds. It was one of the biggest thrills I ever had, aside from being a photographer.

New York Dolls, All Dolled Up, will be released on January 14, 2014 through MVD.

An Interview with the World's Greatest Kim Jong-un Impersonator

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They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. If that’s true, the antics of one Hong Kong resident should be making North Korea’s babyfaced Supreme Leader's head swell even wider than its default bulbous size. Since landing a deal to star as Kim Jong-un in an ad for Israeli hamburger chain, Burger Ranch, earlier this year, a Hong Kong-born Australian named Howard has been carving out a side career as a professional Kim lookalike.

Howard, who, by day, is a jobbing music producer and band booker, doesn’t give his last name publicly. Which is probably wise, considering North Korea historically has a bit of a penchant for abducting foreign nationals who've wronged them in some way, before trapping them there indefinitely. But after getting his break in the burger ad—in which he launches a nuke at Washington DC to show his disdain for McDonald's, before eating an Israeli Burger Ranch patty and declaring: "How can I send the Israelis to hell with such a taste from heaven?"—global interview requests have been pouring in.

Howard agreed to give me his first proper interview to discuss how all this came about.

VICE: Hi Howard. When did you first realize you strongly resembled one of the world's most famous tyrants?
Howard:
When he first came on the scene, just before his dad Kim Jong-il introduced him and promoted him to the head of the army or something. I thought, Man, that’s my face. Apart from that, I didn’t think too much about it. Then a few people pointed it out and I thought about impersonators elsewhere making cash, and realized I could do that, too.

How did you make the world aware of your uncanny similarity?
I got that stupid haircut—it’s fucking horrible—and I already owned one of those Mao suits. Back in 1997, I wore it for the Hong Kong handover parties. Also, I’ve got his body shape and I eat a lot so I’ve got a double chin—no need for props. I took some photos, uploaded them to Facebook, and an Israeli production house found me. They were producing a commercial for the competitor of McDonald’s, Burger Ranch.

I’ve seen the ad on YouTube—it’s a fine debut performance. Can you explain your part for people who aren’t familiar with it?
They specialize in kosher burgers for Orthodox Jews who don’t eat meat with cheese. The night before my shoot, they hired the best Barack Obama impersonator, called Reggie Brown, [who made another video in the series about] how the president has one of McDonald's "Big America" burgers, which is a one-inch-thick meat patty. My role was to say, "Fuck you, Obama, we’ve got the better burgers at Burger Ranch." And I blow him up.



How do you follow that performance?
I got offered to go to LA and shoot a commercial selling pistachios with Dennis Rodman. They said they needed me there in two weeks, but couldn’t sort a US visa. In the end, they hired some random guy who looks nothing like Kim Jong-un. He’s got no charisma. But why get depressed over things out of your control, eh?

Do you have to go to a specialist for that haircut?
My hairdresser has done a few of these; he knows what I want. I take in a couple of pictures and say, "I want to look like him." But every time I go out, I wear a hat. My girlfriend hates it. It’s not the sexiest look.

What do you think of Kim Jong-un, the man?
He’s a puppet. He’s been put there by his aunts and uncles—the people really in charge of the country. He gets to live like an emperor. Why not? But the regime he represents is horrible, there’s no joke there. The propaganda… I remember going to the Shanghai Expo in 2010. I went to the North Korean pavilion; there was Iraq, North Korea and Iran right next to each other. The first thing you see on the North Korea board is a sign saying, "We’re the best country in the world."

Does it worry you that you're making a public mockery of one of the most dangerous people on Earth?
No, because I’m in Hong Kong and he’s in North Korea. What’s he going to do? Send his spies to kill a Chinese citizen? It’d be pretty unrealistic. They’ve got bigger things to worry about.

Finally, dictators always love having body doubles. Are you tempted to apply to be Kim’s official lookalike?
Who knows? Maybe he’ll consider it. But I don’t speak Korean and I’d have to make speeches, so I guess I’m not eligible. I could just point and wave and inspect factories, or whatever.

@jamiefullerton1

 

A Big Night Out at... the UK Twerking Championships!

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Time was, twerking was just an obscure, highly sexualized dance that you occasionally heard mentioned in Dirty South rap tunes. It really had no more impact on our collective lexicon than words like "lean" or "guap." Sure, JT said it in "SexyBack" and that was one of the biggest songs of the last decade. But it was a throwaway line, the word often mistaken for merely just "work." Chances were that, unless you knew the difference between Young Money and Cash Money, you probably wouldn't know what a "twerk team" was, either.

But when a young, white, American popstar awkwardly shook her Disney Club glutes against a goateed feminist folk devil, the word gate-crashed the lexicon of the middle class and middlebrow. Within seconds, Twitter was all over it like Bobby Thicke's hands on a groupie's ass. Even if you're the kind of person who just uses Twitter to check the football scores and make the occasional bomb threat, you can't have failed to notice the raging internet shitstorm of post-feminist criticism and BuzzFeed gif posts.

The journalists sneered and wrung their hands in an endless succession of think-pieces. Readers mostly wondered why. The Oxford Dictionary put it in this year's copy. Twerking has gone from being something that went on at Atlanta block parties to America's latest cultural export; the new Coca-Cola or "George W. Bush is stupid."

But when I heard about the inaugural UK Twerking Championships, I decided it would be the perfect way to put aside the bullshit and experience the culture firsthand. Even though I wasn't sure at that point if twerking really represented any kind of culture, or if Britain had one beyond people sharing articles about it on social media.

A highlights reel from the UK Twerking Championships

The event was organized by The Jump Off, a "Hip Hop Media, Sports & Entertainment destination" best known for their long-running series of rap battles at the same venue, the Scala in King's Cross, London. Presumably they'd grown tired of slightly fat guys in matching fitted cap and varsity jacket combos dropping alliterative verses about each other's parents and had decided to branch out, creating an arena in which people could go to war with their butts.

The Scala is one of those medium-size, multi-purpose central London venues that insists on metal detector searches at Decemberists gigs and pouring plastic bottles of Beck's into plastic cups for extra safety. Upcoming events include Har Mar Superstar, The View, and Ultimate Karaoke. I've had some great nights here, but it's not really a venue that suggests "highly sexed."

But tonight, girls were dolled up to the nines in that post-Rihanna, punk-meets-dancehall-meets-Fantazia-rave look. Belly tops, high-waisted black leggings, studs, spikey hats, and T-shirts adorned with slogans were the order of the day. If I were a fashion writer I'd probably say I felt like I was trapped in some nuts IRL Mad Max deathfight sequence with loads of Andre 3000-worshipping ghetto gents and their cyborg dominatrixes. But I'm not, so I'll just say it looked a lot like tumblr.

The anticipation was building as the girls began to pose and preen in front of the gathered cameras, like Formula 1 drivers stroking their cars and adjusting their wraparound shades before a race starts. Ostensibly a warmup, this part of the night was also a chance for the crowd to see the girls in a brief moment of tranquillity before The Scala descended into madness.

Presenting their hinds and rumps to the whooping, iPhone-clutching crowd, this wasn't a situation that'd get a whole lot of props in Jezebel's comment section. But the girls seemed more than up for it, and the crowd had a pretty even male-female split. To me, it seemed more about physical appreciation than objectification, but there's undeniably something a bit "problematic" about teenage girls in Lycra shaking their asses at smartphone screens.

This is "Team Lengman" warming up. They said they were wearing the balaclavas to save themselves from embarrassment (were their moms in the building?) but had actually stumbled upon a pretty good look, a kind of "high street paramilitary" swag dreamt up by RiRi and the Blac Block. Whatever the idea behind it was, the balaclavas worked perfectly for Team Lengman.

When's it's done properly, twerking is a sexually aggressive, affronting dance that only the most virile and confident of men will dare tangle with. It's not meant to be Miley Cyrus twitching like a dying fish in front of the Jonas Brothers. There's a physical, brazen skill that's been lacking in recent versions, which have about as much in common with the real thing as somebody's drunken body-popping cousin does to the original New York B-Boys.

Looking on at the pomp and ceremony surrounding the event, I wondered if twerking competitions had the potential to become international sporting affairs. Perhaps it could go the same way that disco did, rising from the underground, adopted by the fashionistas, landing in the mainstream, becoming a global phenomenon, and eventually stagnating in the back rooms of Vegas bars, only to be revived again years later by hip kids nostalgic for the music their parents made them listen to at family weddings.

I wondered where the girls had learned these moves, and where they had practiced them. I couldn't help but feel that I was in the climax of one of those Step Up movies they show on cable in the middle of the afternoon. Was I seeing the culmination of years of hopes, dreams, and backbreaking training? Or was this just a hastily organized event riding on the coattails of a craze? 

But when the main event finally kicked off, I was left with no doubts. The duos were first up, scattering around the stage like Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation crew with a bad case of Saint Vitus' Dance. They shook, they rippled, they split... they looked utterly out of control and totally empowered at the same time. They were rabid and they were mean.

The audience lost their shit, hollering at every quick step change, throwing their iPhones up in the air like illuminated placards voicing their approval. Finally, The Scala became the closest thing I've ever experienced to the Christina Aguilera video I dreamed of being in as a teenager.

Judging the competition were a motley crew of music business people and dance experts. I couldn't make out their names over the crowd noise, but they included the woman who choreographed Lily Allen's recent twerking video, a guy who worked for Spearmint Rhino in some capacity, and another man from the music biz, who we were told had worked with "big name artists."

I got the impression it was availability rather than expertise that had gotten them the gig, but they were only really there to enhance the sense of pageantry, like the fake judges at the end of a PlayStation boxing game.

As the judges started announcing the winners of each round, the crowd began to understand the narrative. Eventually the MC started to speak to the twerkers. They were a fairly mixed bag of teenage girls from across London, with a Mancunian and a Lithuanian thrown in for good measure. As they repped their respective ends, the crowd revealed their allegiances. South London got the biggest response and, predictably, Lithuania got the least. I guess the good people of Vilnius ain't got no love for the twerk game.

The Lithuanian competitor had a take on twerking that was a little more pedestrian than some of the other ladies, but for some reason the crowd seemed to respond to her pretty well, despite the fact her moves only really consisted of shaking her hair around like a lion that had just stepped out of a kiddie pool.

Interestingly, the music soundtracking the night wasn't a sound traditionally associated with twerking. Despite the DJ offering the dancers a choice of "bashment or hip-hop," almost every girl chose bashment in every round. I wondered if what I was seeing was actually a much more UK-centric take on the form, like these girls had taken daggering and dutty wine and turned them into something more transatlantic, throwing a bit of twerking in for the crowd.

Something that I'd initially thought was merely an attempt to jump on a bandwagon was actually a kind of exercise in interpretation, like when the Royal Ballet takes on modern material. This was twerking, but with a British flava and, for that, it became much more culturally and musically interesting than it could have been.

So what did I learn? Well, I learned that when music is played loudly in a club environment, some people like to move their bodies to it in a way that befits the rhythms of the song. Often some of these people will be girls, but sometimes they will be men, too. Sometimes the men will try to dance with the girls. Some of them will be drinking.

Essentially, I didn’t learn anything. It’s a fucking dance. What could I learn? It’s people moving their bodies around to music in a club. Did the Macarena tell us anything about the immigrant experience in Clinton’s America? Did anyone learn anything about life in post-Franco Spain from Las Ketchup? Of course they didn't. Trying to find the answers to questions about gender and race at a twerking competition is like looking for the meaning of life at an Iron Maiden concert.

Follow Clive (@thugclive) and Tom (@tomjohnsonuk) on Twitter.

More big nights out:

A Big Night Out... at the Worst Club Night Ever

WATCH – The Gabber Night

WATCH – The People Vs Big Night Out

What Is the CBC Going to Do Without Hockey Revenue?

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A visual metaphor for Rogers laying the contractual smackdown on the CBC via

Two years ago, TSN made the shrewd move of snagging CBC’s famous Hockey Night in Canada opening jingle for every NHL game on their network. At that point, the cocky sports-only network practically told their publicly funded rivals they’d be gunning for their traditional television rights contract with the NHL once bidding re-opened for next season.

Well, yesterday Rogers sucker punched TSN, foiling their hockey domination plans, then gave the jersey treatment to CBC by taking the exclusive broadcast and multimedia rights contract from the clutches of both networks for a cool $5.2 billion paid over twelve years—a deal that fires up next season. Now the only major sporting league contract TSN has is with the CFL, while the iconic Hockey Night in Canada program will be under the complete editorial and monetary control of Rogers Communications—despite CBC maintaining production rights for two Saturday night broadcasts a week. In other words, both networks were just drained by a monopolistic vampire.

Under the terms of the new deal, Rogers exercises totalitarian control over NHL hockey broadcasting in Canada: exclusive rights to all NHL games, including the Stanley Cup Playoffs and Stanley Cup Final, on all of its platforms and in all languages. In fact, not only does Rogers become the Stalin of hockey broadcasting in Canada, it’s the first time ever that one of the big four sports leagues in North America sold their exclusive TV rights to a single entity.

As the dust settles on the deal, real questions are emerging about the future for both networks and whether or not they can survive the Rogers junta the NHL just decreed. Although Gary Bettman says this deal is a win for the fans, digital streaming rights to all CBC games are kaput: Rogers denied CBC the right to stream online.  Instead, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman insinuated viewers will get the chance to purchase paid-streaming packages with Sportsnet for unfettered access to most NHL games. A sample broadcast grid from last Saturday was provided Tuesday, showing what the current deal would look like for viewers next year, and 10 of 12 games were available.

For the CBC, losing their flagship program is a big blow to a public broadcaster that considers Little Mosque on the Prairie a laugh fest and national success. The demise of the 61 year-old HNIC show not only means the end of an era, but the loss of blockbuster hockey ad-revenues, coupled with impending job losses. Some critics say the Rogers coup could’ve just cost CBC $200 million annually and 50 percent of their total ad revenue.

After this season, HNIC will be CBC’s in name and in history only. They do get 320 hours worth of NHL hockey every year from Rogers, but will cede all editorial control of HNIC, meaning all rights to the big bucks from ads (even those airing on CBC) and the choice of staff. On top of that, the plan to preserve HNIC, something Bettman was trying to stress, will only last for four years. After that it will be up to both networks to renegotiate, meaning this could be a four year dance around shooting the old dog behind the shed. It also means the colorful HNIC crew (I’m looking at you PJ Stock) cease to be employees of the Crown Corp after this year.

Just as soon as this new Rogers deal was announced, people were already wondering if every Canadian’s favourite cantankerous, albeit slightly racist and sexist granddad—Don Cherry—would be surviving the guillotine. Early whispers are uncertain, he’s about to turn eighty and might’ve called it quits this year anyway, but indications are Rogers will extend him and even give his senescent rambling a seven network broadcast platform. Cherry himself, says he’s uncertain what the new deal means for him or whether or not he’s out of a job, but that could be more old-man confusion than fact.

As for TSN, the deal doesn’t neuter hockey from its broadcast grid, but it cripplingly reduces the number of games: They’ve got a regional deal with the Toronto Maple Leafs (TSN parent company Bell oddly half-owns them with Rogers) for 26 games a year, and a similar regional package with the Winnipeg Jets. That could mean a brain-drain from the likes of TSN, as their more talented and better connected hockey insiders (in my opinion), may choose to jump ship to Sportsnet for more work. Bob McKenzie, a trade mole among NHL GMs, has already pledged loyalty to TSN, but who knows what the plans will be for other broadcasters once TSN viewership and salaries take a nosedive. Perhaps the only consolation for the network is retaining broadcasting rights to the World Juniors, a huge viewers hog during the holiday season.

Ironically, over the last decade there’s been a well-documented media war between Sportsnet and TSN, having once been two networks under one owner battling it out for hockey viewers. CTV even sold Sportsnet in 2001, keeping TSN because it was deemed more successful and better established. Apparently Sportsnet was always considered the minor leagues of hockey broadcasting, getting the bottom feeder talent and losing the best to TSN. It’s fair to say they just reversed that script.

In the end, TSN was out hustled, and the CBC, according to its CEO Hubert T. Lacroix, just wasn’t in a position to spend taxpayers’ money into the billions like their corporate rivals could. Whatever your feelings are on the public broadcaster, it’s a sad devolution for a once powerful network. After this week’s new deal with the NHL, the CBC has been turned into a hockey-broadcasting carcass picked at by vultures: first TSN ate their theme song, and then Rogers flew away with Ron, Don, and every meaningful crumb of profit the network had built around Canada’s most beloved religious institution: hockey.

So will this mean more original series are coming to CBC to fill the gap? Will they start pushing lacrosse in primetime? Or will the lack of advertising revenue just mean we’ll be catching more reruns of Royal Canadian Air Farce? Hard to say.

 

Follow Ben on Twitter: @BMakuch

More on our national pastime:

Stop Whining: Hockey is a Crucial Part of Professional Hockey

Kuch’s Corner: Quit Poppin’ the Cherry

Veterans Are Being Threatened and Silenced by the US and UK Militaries

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Chris Vassey (right). Photos by Merle Jothe

After this month's Remembrance Day parade, I repaired to a central London boozer with fellow veterans to stew my brain in ale. Pinned to chests all around me were glinting banks of medals. A statistically improbable number of airborne maroon and commando green berets were on display. Groups of veterans bunched together, slurring war stories.

The soldierly clique is cultural. While trained to be aggressive we are also taught to be quiet, keeping dark deeds and informed opinions “in-house.” If spoken aloud to outsiders, our stories would make us appear—and for some, leaving the heroic fantasy intact allows one to continue living at the center of it. To break that tribal silence carries risks.

Many people say we have fought for freedom and democracy. Given this consensus one might think veterans are as entitled as anybody to contribute to the political discourse, as serving senior officers regularly do. Not so.

The American and British militaries clamped down on social media in the mid-2000s—on the grounds of security, they claim. The Canadian military currently is trying to stop wounded veterans from criticizing the military in public. There is only one hymn sheet in the military, and it is decided upon on high.

I was gagged by a military court in 2009 even though I had spilled no secrets. All I did was claim the Afghanistan occupation was an illegitimate, shambolic disaster. The keenest soldiers I know say the same, but I said it on television rather than in the regimental bar. I spent five months in a military jail over a banality. Others have faced similar or worse treatment.

Ben Griffin.

Ben Griffin was the quintessential British paratrooper, an SAS soldier and a founder of Veterans for Peace UK. He left the army after refusing to return to Iraq and later blew the whistle on war crimes being carried out in Baghdad. He was gagged in the high court and promised jail time if he ever spoke about UK involvement in rendition again. "I knew I would get in trouble for speaking about our activities in Iraq,” he told me, “but I felt then and now that the public needs to be told about the true nature of war.” Kidnapping and handing over non-combatants to the Americans while knowing they’d be tortured is fine; telling the public about it is criminal.

Recently, when I visited Toronto to help start a new project called Front Lines International, I met soldiers facing long prison sentences for speaking out. For me, Jules Tindungan, 26, and Chris Vassey, 27, were virtually impossible to tell apart from the average Canadian, but both of them are American soldiers on the run and applying for asylum in Canada.

They were experienced, door-kicking infantrymen in the US 82nd Airborne when they went to Afghanistan. After 15 months they returned home changed men. Both of them believed they had been involved in war crimes nad fled to Canada—Jules first, then Chris—where they would be able to speak out. Men like these do not refuse lightly.

Chris told me that whenever his patrol took incoming in Afghanistan "it was no holds barred... the day after, when people come to your base saying you shot up their home, tractor, farm… all we would say was, 'Well, the enemy was on the run... don’t let them fire at us from your backyard and this won’t happen again,' as if they had condoned it." He saw Afghan national army soldiers "butt-stroke" local women in the face with their rifles during raids. It was, he was told, how thing were done in Afghanistan.

Jules explained that after one firefight his platoon recovered remains—bodies and body parts. These were strapped "to the hoods of trucks and driven through local towns as a sort of warning."

Both men have been vocal in the Canadian antiwar movement. They will suffer for their words if deported. “Dudes who speak out get harsher punishments," Jules told me. "Statements made to the media, as well as in social media, are used as evidence against you when you are sentenced."

Jules also told me that one soldier who ended up back in the US phoned him from military prison, warning him to clear his Facebook posts and emails of any criticism of the military or the war. “They compiled a very thick docket of his Facebook statements and emails as evidence against him,” Jules said.

Chris is now an ironworker but easily slips back into telling expletive-filled soldier stories about his long months spent doing “illegal shit” in “A-stan.” He confirmed what Jules had said about the risks of speaking out: “Video or audio of you speaking out is used against you—usually guaranteeing a stiffer sentence.”

Soldiers who just go AWOL are often simply “shit-bagged” (discharged) from the army, but those who speak out like Chris and Jules get longer sentences. One got a 25-month sentence after the prosecution at his court martial “showed the videos of his public speeches.” But it’s not just war resisters like Chris and Jules who face threats.

Heather Linebaugh.

Heather Linebaugh came to Canada from the States a few weeks later, joining us at a rural veterans' retreat. Heather served in the US Air Force in drone intelligence from 2009 to 2012 and was honorably discharged. She was good at her job, earning the nickname “Harbinger of Death” from her comrades. Not every assignment went smoothly, though: “One mission in particular, I remember that we were told to keep quiet about, and to this day, I can still not discuss it.” Like Chris and Jules she fled to Canada, a place she felt safe to speak out from.

Heather says she challenged an officer of more senior rank on the issue. She asked what would happen if people spoke out about “sloppy strikes.” She was taken to her commander and warned about “talking recklessly” and asking “stupid questions.”

In her unit there was a watchword used to keep people quiet: Manning. “If we spoke out about certain missions to the general public, and definitely the media, we would 'end up like Bradley Manning.'" The effort to instil fear was being ramped up around the time she was leaving the military. "I saw quite a few posters going up with an image of the typical soldier sitting in a jail cell in handcuffs."

Heather still honors the non-disclosure agreement that came with her security clearance. Having been involved in numerous kills she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, but she says that she cannot claim the veteran’s benefits she is entitled to because she can't detail to doctors the missions that saw her develop the condition. If she does, she risks jail. Heather is 24 years old.

Nick Velvet.

I approached older vets, wondering if today’s silencing tactics were novel. Nick Velvet fought in Vietnam. He rebelled against the war and went on to help found the Old School Sappers, a radical antiwar group made up of veterans. The Sappers endure. For a new kid like me, they are a kind of elder council.

I asked how the military silenced soldiers back during the Vietnam era, and he explained that Vietnam vets were harder to silence because they had the advantage of numbers. Military prisons were overflowing and the government simply didn't have enough resources to clamp down on all of the antiwar veterans. Some organizers went to prison or were given bad discharges, but when his own subversive activities came to the attention of his commanders, Nick laughed in the Army’s face. He would have “welcomed a court martial” because he had “keen movement lawyers who would relish [fighting] the case, gratis.” Nick got away with it because he had support. He fears for the new generation of rebel soldiers. “I wasn't alone,” he says. “These guys are.”

Freedom and democracy are rights that extend to veterans only conditionally. If we speak ill of the war, we are ignored and sometimes we are silenced. The military and—I personally suspect—a percentage of the population in countries like the UK and the US derive comfort and a perverse sense of gratification from praising us. But, as Jules suggests, they flinch at the idea of soldiers “thinking critically about the global impact of what we are doing.” Nothing can be allowed to puncture the war dream and woe must betide those who stray from the script.

Joe Glenton is a writer, journalist and Afghanistan veteran. His book Soldier Box: Why I Won't Return to the War on Terror, is out now from Verso Books.

Follow Joe on Twitter: @joejglenton

Blowfly Is a Filthy Old Man

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The author with Blowfly, the filthiest 74-year-old rapper alive

This weekend, a 74-year-old man pointed a wriggly finger at me and asked me my name. I nervously laughed and told him it was Deenah. “Inez!" he said. "Do you know what?" Then he started to sing: “Last night I fucked somebody who looked just like you / She smelled like you too, I thought it was you!”

Generally, when old men say things like that to me, I walk away. But this was no ordinary geriatric—this was the legendary Blowfly, né Clarence Reid, the self-styled “world’s first dirty rapper,” and the man behind such time-tested parodies as “Hole Man,” “Shittin' On the Dock of the Bay,” and “My Baby Keeps Farting On My Face"—that last one's a take-off of "Raindrops Keep Falling on my Face," BTW.


Blowfly's ABC's of pussy

Blowfly was born in 1939, and started his career in the 60s, writing and producing for R&B legends like KC & The Sunshine Band, Bobby Byrd, and Betty Wright. He also wrote his own hit songs like “Nobody But You, Babe,” which was later sampled by the Wu Tang Clan, and “Living Together is Keeping Us Apart," which found its way into a Dre and Snoop track. But his alter ego was Blowfly, a filthy rapper who released parody songs so dumb and disgusting they make 2 Live Crew look like the Rock-afire Explosion.

I met Clarence this weekend at the WFMU Record Fair in New York, and he immediately selected me as a target for well-meaning sexual humiliation. I followed him to his second show at PS1, an institution that should be commended for curating a show with a 74-year-old man screaming obscenities in a superhero costume. Over the course of the day he told my boyfriend he had a puny dick, directed him to go down on me by singing a version of Weird Al’s “Eat It," and sang “Silent Night, Hole-ey Night,” while pointing at an unmentionable part of my anatomy.

He was one of the weirdest old dudes I’ve met in a while, so I tried to interview him while his band was loading out of the show. He didn’t exactly answer my questions, but mostly used them as a launching pad for random musings and songs that were only sometimes comprehensible. Sometimes he would launch into stream-of-conscious, multi-voice digressions where moments of clarity were sandwiched between fragments of folkloric storytelling, recitations of biblical psalms and passages, dirty sing-song vaudeville sketches, memories of being a country boy in the deep south, and even a tender song directed towards my own mother. This interview is almost unintelligible, so I’ll apologize in advance for what a lovable lunatic this guy is.


Photo by the author

VICE: Hi Blowfly! Can you tell me your life story in one sentence?
Blowfly: Well, I was born in the Ku Klux Klan area in Mississippi. All of the blacks around there liked the blues, and I was the only little boy who hated the blues. I would do hillbilly songs and change them around with dirty lyrics. I did it to piss the white people off, but they liked it. One of my first songs was for Minnie Pearl and Ernest Tubb. I took this Ernest Tubb song, “Walking the Floor Over You” and I changed it around to "I'm Jerking My Dick Over You." The lyrics went like this: "I'm jerking my dick over you / I keep telling myself it ain't true / I jerk it so much, oh, it turned black and blue / jerking my dick over you, Shoop, doo doo." I love that.

I'd sing it at clubs, and the white people, they'd say, “You're the nastiest little fucker,” and then they'd give me money. I'd go home with about $200. You’re making $5 a day in the country back then and you’re doing great. I got home with almost $200 and my grandmother said, “Where did you get this money from?” She think I stole it. When I told her where I'd got it she said, “You’re a disgrace to the human race and you ain’t no better than a blowfly?”

What the fuck is a blowfly? I remember the blowfly lays eggs on dead things and I started crying. They ain’t never see me cry because I’m a mean mother fucker. But a white girl told me, "When comets struck the earth and killed all the pre-historic dinosaurs and everything, human life could have never evolved, too many germs, but blowflies came and laid eggs and turned into maggots who ate up all the germs.”

That’s how I started as Blowfly.
 
Wow, OK. Well, you played a record fair and a museum today. Those are pretty different shows. Where do you feel more comfortable?
I’m gonna tell you. I learned to be confident in both of them. Be yourself and keep up the laughing. People love to laugh, like this old white lady, I thought, I wish I could do something to make her laugh. I told her, “Miss. I went to your house to deliver a present last night.”

“What did you say?” she asked.

“I said, you wouldn’t come to the door and I heard a noise coming from the bedroom and I was shocked at what I saw.”

“What did you see?”

“I saw you fucking Santa Claus underneath the mistle toe last night!” She started to grin.

“Ah, take this.” She gave me $100 and I said I need it, but I can’t take it. “You’re a good person,” she said.

I said, “How dare you say that to me? I’m a scumbag fucker.” She cracked up.

Erm... Why do you dress as a superhero? Tell me about being a superhero.
It started when I was real young. I used to watch Superman and change it around: “Dick of steel would not ignite. Lois Lane filled his dick up with kryptonite.”

I don’t care how old I get, I still watch cartoons. “Oh Minnie was super freaky, super fruity. What happened to Mickey made her suck the dick off old Goofy!”

OK. How do you feel when somebody is offended by what you do?
It’s very seldom they’re offended. The preachers say, change one word in the original bible, and it’s an unforgivable sin, you’re going pay for it. Most people that come around me, they end up laughing. The most righteous stuff in the world is dirty stuff. When I went to Germany in the 60s, they booked me on the Berlin stage. I pretended to be Hitler: “I did my time, I paid my dues, I spent my life killing niggers and Jews. I’m the baddest motherfucker in Nazi nation. Watch Adolf Hitler do the funky Haitian.” Oh, they cracked up. The Germans tried to get mad, but they couldn’t help it. Don’t matter how dirty the shit is, it be truthful.

Anyway, you’re special. Your mama still around?

Yeah, she is.
What’s your mama’s name?

Her name is Shirah.
Here’s a song for Miss Shirah: “You’re more special than anyone can imagine. You’re the queen of my special pageant. I say this with all my heart. Angels from heaven knew from the start. Miss Shakira, there’s no one more special than you, thank god.”

That’s sweet.
She gonna crack up.

@dee3nah


26 Things 'Rolling Stone' Readers Have Never Heard Of

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26 Things 'Rolling Stone' Readers Have Never Heard Of

American Walmart Employees Have Nothing to Be Thankful for this Thanksgiving

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Anthony Goytia, whose yearly income is only $12,000 as a Walmart associate.

When Anthony Goytia sits down with his wife and three children for Thanksgiving dinner in East Los Angeles, he's going to be chewing out of one side of his mouth. With every bite he takes of his meal, provided by a local food pantry, he will be thinking of his employer.

Anthony makes about $12,000 a year working nearly full-time as an “associate” for Walmart. With worldwide revenues totaling $443.9 billion in 2012, Walmart tops the Fortune 500 list, yet Anthony can't afford the $20-a-month premiums on the insurance plan Walmart provides. So, when his molar started to make him moan this October, a root canal operation wasn't an option.

That's not all. To scrape by, he's taken out payday loans just to pay-off other payday loans. When his car radiator busted earlier this fall he began bicycling 13 miles a day to and from work, because he couldn't afford the repair bill. Anthony even sells his plasma at $55 a pop and participates in clinical treatments for his psoriasis in order to earn extra cash and feed his kids.

“My mother taught me how to stretch meals with potatoes,” he told me, but canned tuna and ramen noodles are the staple foods in Anthony’s household.

Anthony is not alone. He is one of the hundreds of thousands of Walmart associates who earn wages that leave them surfing the poverty line. The pay is so abysmal that one Walmart manager in Canton, Ohio, recently asked employees to contribute to a holiday food drive for its own staff.

In contrast to Anthony and tens of thousands like him, Walmart executives will be sitting down to plush meals with their families in the wealthy enclaves surrounding Bentonville, Arkansas, near the retailer's corporate headquarters. Mike Duke, who this week announced he is stepping down as the company's CEO, will now get to tuck into a $113 million retirement package—that's 6,000 times what the average Walmart employee has in his or her 401(k) account.

Mike and his family say they are very grateful for all the blessings God has bestowed upon them. In an interview appearing in Celebrate Arkansas this month, Mike's wife Susan said her family lives by Luke 12:48: “To whom much has been given, much will be expected; for whom much has been entrusted, much more will be asked.”

Through their local church, Susan said she and her husband support numerous charities including The Jesus Film Project—which sponsors screenings of the 1979 movie Jesus—and Feed My Children. As Anthony bikes to work his 12-hour shift at Walmart this Black Friday, he will be hoping for just that: to feed his children.

“We're approaching the season of giving,” said Reverend Holly Beaumont, the organizing director for Interfaith Worker Justice New Mexico, in a conference call that included many community and religious leaders who have joined a campaign for a living wage of $25,000 a year at Walmart. “But charity can never replace justice and when it does it becomes a sin.”

“It sickens me,” added Sarah Halverson, pastor at Fairview Community Church in Costa Mesa, California, “that Walmart is using the image of Christ to make money and they refuse to share that money with their employees.”

On Black Friday last year, protests from associates like Anthony broke out at Walmarts nationwide.

At first, Walmart dismissed the rallies and strikes, labeling them “made-for-TV events” in a press release while asserting that the number of AWOL associates was “more than 60 percent less” than Black Friday the year before. But, much like Anthony's toothache, the calls for reform at Walmart have refused to dissipate and now they are starting to cause the retail giant financial and PR pain.

On November 18, the National Labor Relations Board ruled in favor of 117 employees who were terminated for participating in strikes and protests against their employer. Unless an independent settlement is reached, the decision will likely see Walmart reinstating and providing financial compensation to make up for the lost wages of the renegade associates it let go.

The strikes are back again this year. Walkouts ahead of this year's Christmas shopping bonanza have taken place at Walmart outlets this month in Los Angeles, Dallas, Sacramento, Miami, Seattle, Chicago, and, on Tuesday, in Washington, DC.

“Going on strike wasn't an easy decision for me,” said Anthony, who in addition to walking out on November 6, also took part in a sit-down protest on Cezar Chavez Boulevard in LA that led to his arrest. “My ability to pay rent and feed my family is at stake. I want Walmart to look me and my kids in the face.”

Kalpona Akter, who worked in a Dhaka sweatshop as a child and now heads the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity.

Dorian Warren, a labor analyst at Columbia University, argues that the labor battles at Walmart this holiday season could impact the fate of America's future economy. He compares the strikes shaking the mega-outlet with post-WWII labor battles that rattled General Motors, which was then America's largest employer, as Walmart is today.

“Walmart is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with America's economy today, just as General Motors was back then,” he said. In November 1945, approximately a quarter-million members of the United Automobile Workers union walked off the job, starting a strike that would lead to a 17.5-percent wage increase at GM plants by the following March and inspire strikes in other sectors—coal, oil, steel—that helped ensure more Americans got a slice of the post-war boom.

Today, as the stock market dances upon record bluffs, the median US household income is 8.3 percent lower than what it was before the 2008 Wall Street crash, according to the latest census data. The bulk of jobs recovered in this recession have been low-wage service sector jobs, like those Walmart. With 1.3 million associates under its thumb, what happens at Walmart could have implications far beyond the sliding glass entryways of the box stores.

Striking Walmart associates are not only going up against the world's largest company but also one the globe's shadiest. A report released Wednesday from the Center for Media Justice accuses the retailer of collecting personal electronic data on 145 million American consumers, tracking online purchases and using shoppers smartphones to monitor their movements in Walmart superstores. The Center for Corporate Policy, earlier this week, cited Walmart as one of a number of corporations that have engaged in espionage, noting that the company has tailed activists seeking to raise wages.

Meanwhile, Walmart is under fire from environmental groups for emitting 21 million metric tons of heat-trapping greenhouse gases per year, while Mike and other execs are under investigation from the Justice Department and the Securities Exchange Commission for bribing officials in Mexico. Amid growing labor unrest in Bangladesh, garment workers, too, are shaking their fists at the retailer.

“We want the same thing workers in this country want,” said Kalpona Akter who worked in a Dhaka sweatshop as a child and now heads the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity. “We want dignity. We want a decent wage, a living wage, and we want safe working conditions.” Many garment factories in Bangladesh are “death traps,” Kalpona said.

She is among a number of labor leaders calling on the Walmart to compensate the families of the 117 garment workers who burned to death in the Tarzeen factory while filling clothing orders for the retailer and other US retailers one year ago, and for Walmart to sign an international labor practice agreement that will raise pay and safety standards at its suppliers. So far, however, said Kalpona, “Walmart has given us nothing to be thankful for.”

@JohnReedsTomb

The New Slums of Baghdad

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Photos by Dylan Roberts

Huddled in the back seat of our convoy, I got a blurred view of Baghdad as we passed through the city center. It was hard to catch a glimpse of anything when our car was topping 90 miles an hour. The reason our driver was gunning through the area like a demon was simple—four bombings in the area that morning, and more happening every day. Our fixer in Baghdad said in broken English, “If the news says a number of dead, double it. Then you maybe have a number near the death." Most of the blasts here are carried out by Sunni militants against the Shiite population huddling in their cars or out shopping for food in the markets.

Gone are the days of suicide bombers with vests. These days, the explosions are timed meticulously and set off in conjunction with peak traffic. The old school move of ripping off your jacket and screaming, “God is great” just doesn’t fit anymore. Try six parked cars packed full of explosives, nails, and other nasty shit; all remotely detonated by a man sipping a coffee from his apartment far above the blast radius. Welcome to modern, post-US-withdrawal Baghdad. Boys with toys, breathtaking anger management issues, and religious zeal that would make Gary Busey look sane.

We hurtled through the dirty, charred streets on the outskirts of the city on our way to visit some families struggling with day-to-day life in one of the nine districts in Baghdad known as Al-Jidida or “New Baghdad." Our guide through the city was Canon Andrew White, an Anglican priest living in the city's red zone. He was making his weekly parish visits, complete with a three-car convoy and Iraqi soldiers with more guns than Texas.

Coincidentally, most of the soldiers actually come from the United States. Canon White very calmly informed me that the streets we were speeding through were the most dangerous in the city, and not just because of bombings; they also happen to be hotbeds for gang activity. This explained why the soldiers in the pickup truck in front stopped joking around and looked like they were in the first stages of slowly rethinking their career choice.

We drove past endless rows of sheep being decapitated in the street, and a severed head getting cooked with a blowtorch by a young kid. There’s nothing quite like waking up to the smell of incinerated sheep skulls in the morning.

As we passed into the residential area, there were shacks and tool sheds masquerading as houses and power lines strung up like a drunk spider decided to get artsy. The wires hanging down practically invited everyone to come and shake hands with 10,000 volts of electricity.

In between the homes were open sewers. Shit overflowed and steamed into the streets.

Garbage was piled waist-high on all sides, and a makeshift swimming pool had been erected in the middle of the trash pile. It had rained for two days and nights that week, so the local kids used the new god-given facilities to go paddling in the diseased sewage water. When asked why, they simply said, “Where else can we play?”

We arrived at the first stop on our parish visit tour: a single room, with 12 people living in it. It was dark, with pictures of Iraq’s past leaders hanging on the walls. The television set in the corner spit static, and a prerecorded prayer clashed with an invading music station bleeding through 70s hits.

As we made our way in, Canon White greeted the people as the security outside scrambled to form a perimeter and kept a watchful eye on the rooftops and alleys.

It became clear as we sat with the people in the room that something wasn’t quite right. We found out that the inhabitants of the house were all mentally ill, and the products of incestuous encounters between their parents.

Circumstances like these have made them a shame to the government. There are many families in similar situations. So, as any self-respecting government would do, they shipped them off to the deepest, darkest, most dangerous cesspit in the city and shoved them all into a room together with no hope for food or help other than an Anglican priest from Cambridge, England.

One of the women was at least 300 pounds and had stumps for legs. She'd just given birth to a child by her relative, also in the house with her. The baby cradle was made of an old box on wooden legs.

The floor was covered in bird shit, with pigeons walking on the baby and fighting each other on the floor. The others in the room were screaming or laughing hysterically at each other. Canon White calmed them down and prayed over each one. After the last prayer, the power to the whole house cut off theatrically. Giddy squirming and giggling ensued. After everyone settled, Canon White proceeded to offer them all communion in the darkness. One by one, they all slowly made their way to him, some crawling; others hobbling, waddling, or limping.

Once communion was finished, we dropped off some food and White blessed the house and the new baby. We left through the back as security began to sink into paranoia. They all called Canon White “Daddy” in Arabic and waved enthusiastically as he left. Some cried.

We piled into the convoy and moved on to the next house. Canon White visits as many homes as he can during the week. Security or no security. Tomorrow will be no different.

Check out more of Christian and Dylan's work at FSProductions.

VICE Canada Premiere: The 6th Letter - "Chain Smokin'"

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If you watch every video and read every article that VICE and Noisey publish, you may remember The 6th Letter from his cameo in the short doc we made on his rapper pal, Raz Fresco, where we went vintage shopping and ate jerk chicken poutine. If not, you might remember the only slightly hyperbolic headline "The 6th Letter Is Bigger than Canada" that ran on Noisey when we profiled 6th last month.

Anyway, the past is the past, today is today, and we're thrilled to debut the incredible new 6th Letter video for "Chain Smokin'" where 6th flows smoothly in a hazy weed daze over Raz Fresco's spaced out production. Evidently, "Chain Smokin'" is all about keeping it within the ΒΛΚΞΓ$CLUB inner circle. 6th is also part of the Prime family/crew/collective/organization who are having a big month after one of their artists, Eric Dingus, dropped an official "Worst Behaviour" remix on the OVO blog.

Anyway, "Chain Smokin''" is off 6th Letter's upcoming NorthernPlayalisticGetHighMuzik project which will surely be more than just an Outkast homage. It's 6th's first real release in over two years, so look out for it.


Follow 6th Letter on Twitter: @The6thLetter

Death and the NSA: Motherboard Meets Bruce Schneier

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Death and the NSA: Motherboard Meets Bruce Schneier

Australia's Refugee Situation Is About to Get Even More Bleak

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Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Photo via

Unsurprisingly, revelations that Australian intelligence agencies spied on the Indonesian president and his wife haven't done wonders for the relationship between the two countries. Last week, in response to the spying news, it was announced that Indonesia's national police force and immigration departments were readying themselves to halt all cooperation with Australia in monitoring refugees travelling through the country to seek asylum in Oz.

This isn't the best of news for refugees. Indonesia might be easing up on people smugglers, meaning refugees will have an easier time crossing over to Australia, but those caught trying to seek asylum in the country will be sent to detention centers in either Nauru, Papua New Guinea (PNG), or mainland Australia until their claims are processed. And the stories coming out of those "prison-like environments" don't make them sound like they're worth the treacherous and often deadly journey to asylum across the Timor Sea.

Indonesia's announcement also comes after the government of recently elected Prime Minister Tony Abbott implemented Operation Sovereign Borders—an anti-immigration scheme designed to uphold Abbott's campaign mantra of "stop the boats."

The program is overseen by immigration minister Scott Morrison (who once encouraged his colleagues to push fears of Muslim immigration as an election strategy) and coordinated by Lieutenant General Angus Campbell. Some elements of the government’s new approach, while definitely questionable, are merely semantic tweaks: changing the name of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, for example, or directing public servants to call asylum seekers "illegals." Other measures, however, restrict the release of information concerning asylum seekers and impose harsher conditions on refugees living in Australia or asylum seekers being detained in immigration centers.

One preventative action that's set to affect up to 30,000 refugees currently living in Australia is the reintroduction of temporary protection visas (TPVs), which remove the rights of refugees to work, apply for Australian citizenship, or help family members join then. The problem is, this policy isn't likely to discourage refugees from seeking asylum in Australia. In fact, there's a good chance it will just make the situation worse for those already living in the country.

“It is unlikely that the idea of being sent to Nauru or PNG, or being placed on a TPV, will deter people who are running away from a threat,” explained Paul Power, chief executive of the Refugee Council of Australia, a nonprofit that works on behalf of refugees. "At best, the government’s policies may shift the problem elsewhere, but it's not a problem that can be sustainably solved through deterrence alone."

The refugee camp at Manus, Papua New Guinea. Image via

Despite successive Australian governments using detention as a punitive means of deterrence, there are now more than 6,400 people held in Australia’s immigrant detention network. Paul said the psychological effects of detention on asylum seekers are devastating to their mental health. "The indefinite and mandatory nature of the detention turns resilient and hopeful people, who have already been traumatized by their refugee journey, into damaged people who require ongoing mental health support to continue with their lives," he said. "Immigration detention should be used only as a last resort and for the shortest practicable time. The policy setting should be to allow asylum seekers to live in the community while their application for refugee protection is being determined."

A process known as "enhanced screening," where refugees are interrogated by authorities before being able to request asylum, has been expanded, resulting in summary deportations without applications for asylum even being lodged. Recently, a mother was prevented from seeing her newborn baby and a young girl was apparently sent to a detention facility (where there have been numerous reported cases of sexual assault) by herself. Meanwhile, Morrison has described the level of care available in the detention centers as "appropriate."

"It doesn’t matter how much education you’ve had, it doesn’t matter where you’ve come from—Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, anywhere else—it doesn’t matter whether you’re a child, it doesn’t matter whether you’re pregnant, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a woman, it doesn’t matter whether you’re an unaccompanied minor, it doesn’t matter if you have a health condition," he told journalists earlier this month. "If you’re fit enough to get on a boat, then you can expect you’re fit enough to end up in offshore processing."

Prior to Operation Sovereign Borders, the Department of Immigration had announced each boat of asylum seekers as they arrived in Australian territorial waters. Under the new regime, information is delivered at weekly press conferences conducted by Morrison and Lieutenant General Campbell, and journalists making enquiries to the department are now told to put their questions to the minister at his weekly briefings.

While he provides briefings to the media, Morrison has refused to detail information of asylum seeker arrivals in parliament, claiming "operational matters" prohibit the release of facts. Earlier this month, the minister refused to admit a boat carrying asylum seekers had arrived in Darwin when questioned in parliament, despite the arrival being reported in the media.

It's clear that the government hasn't got a handle on immigration—in July, ousted prime minister Kevin Rudd announced deals to transfer all asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat to Papua New Guinea and Nauru for processing and resettlement. Cash incentives were provided to facilitate the agreements and the policy was initially credited with a decline in arrival numbers, but it hasn't stopped people from risking their lives to journey to Australia.

A solidarity vigil outside an immigrant detention center in Melbourne. Image via

Many Australians oppose their government’s treatment of asylum seekers and refugees. Following the 2010 federal election, Justine Davis established the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) as a way for likeminded people to meet and effect change at community and national levels.

One of DASSAN’s initiatives was to hold regular vigils outside a Darwin detention center in order to demonstrate to asylum seekers that members of the community are concerned about their plight. These were held in coordination with Serco, the company contracted to provide security within the facilities. But following an Australian Broadcasting Corporation interview with asylum seekers through the wire outside the facility, those in detention have since claimed that guards began recording the names of detainees who approached the fence to speak to those holding the vigil.

"While the Department [of Immigration] says it’s a coincidence that people who spoke to the media were sent to detention on Christmas Island in the days immediately following the media reports, people in detention tell us they are hearing a very different message," Davis said. "The actions of Serco—taking photos and writing down the names of those talking to their friends—terrifies people. A peaceful and positive event has been turned into a cause for fear."

Unfortunately, the news that the Indonesian government will stop preventing people smugglers from shipping refugees over to Australia means that many more will likely end up in these centers.

"I wouldn't have believed it at the time if someone had told me that the policies and the discourse around asylum seekers would get consistently worse month by month over the past three years," Davis said. "The successful dehumanization of those fleeing their homelands and coming here seeking safety—as is their right under international law—disgusts me."

Follow Nigel on Twitter: @nigel_oconnor

More stories about refugees in Australia:

Australia Is Sending Refugees to Abusive Detention Camps in Papua New Guinea

What's It Like Pulling Refugees Out of Australian Waters?

Why the PNG Solution Is What Australia Wants

I Visited Tacloban Soon After Typhoon Yolanda Hit

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On Friday, November 8, the day Typhoon Yolanda hit, I was in Manila, where I’ve been living for the past few months. I was filing breaking news reports for public radio in the US, and while it was windier than usual, it felt a little underwhelming for what was being called “the strongest storm on earth.” Then I heard that the journalists who were sent to the path of the typhoon hadn’t been heard from in more than 16 hours. I hadn't planned to go to Tacloban, but the less we knew, the more it seemed like I had to get there. Until that point, the only other storm I had covered was Hurricane Sandy in New York—which I thought was bad as it was. It did nothing to prepare me for what I would see in Tacloban.

On Saturday, the island provinces of Leyte and Samar were out of contact. No phones, no electricity, no internet. No one knew if they’re just sitting around drinking beer until the lights come back on, or if they were all buried under a landslide.

What we did know was that a massive storm surge ten feet deep and as high as seventeen feet in some places had devastated the city. A local official told some news outlet that he thinks the estimated death toll was 10,000. It was widely quoted in the media. People with family in the area started freaking out. There was still no electricity, no cell phone service, and no internet. The media had satellite dishes to file footage of the flattened city scattered with dead bodies, but people still had no way to find their families.

By Monday, the military couldn’t get us on a C-130 plane to Tacloban. Right now, they are all full of relief goods. I took a flight down to Cebu and hooked up with some locals, young kids in their twenties who work in the city and were taking an overnight ferry, then going overland to bring food and medicine to their families in Tacloban. One girl, Shev Lira, is twenty years old. She’s lanky and beautiful. She wears her hair to one side and her nail are done up in neon green. She was going to Tacloban to find her parents and her four-year-old daughter.

The next day we drove into Tacloban just as the sun was going down, in an ambulance with the curtains drawn. Everyone was peeking out of the windows, not talking as the scenes of destruction got worse and worse. Before we got to Leyte, the island where Tacloban is the capital, we already felt bad. We’d seen the footage and heard the reports. But actually being in the presence of the destruction is much different. It never ends. It’s not a minute-long video clip before the newscaster switches to a different story. There were piles of rubble covered in mud on either side of the road. There wasn’t a single house that wasn’t damaged or completely destroyed. Coconut trees and cement lampposts were snapped in two. This coast was in the direct path of Typhoon Yolanda, and the few people left were living in the rubble of their old homes, starting fires for light, and waiting for someone to show up with food or water.

Shev was the only who hadn’t heard from her family. The last time she heard from them was at 6 AM on the day of the typhoon, when her mom texted to say they were fine. That was four days ago, before media started reporting death tolls at 10,000 and she caught a glimpse of her house on some aerial footage. Nothing was left except the cement floor. Shev didn’t look out the window. She pulled a blanket over her head and put her face in her hands.

November 6, two days before the storm hit, was Shev’s daughter’s fourth birthday. Flights were already getting cancelled, so she couldn’t get home to celebrate with her. Shev showed me a video on her iPhone from the last time they saw each other, of a special handshake they made up where they clap palms, bump fists, and make little explosions with their fingers. Her daughter laughs, takes a sip of soda, and then the video ends.

The next morning, the first thing Shev said to me when we woke up in Tacloban was that she’s not ready. After seeing how bad things were, she’s not ready to go to her neighborhood and try to find her family. But when we got into the truck to go to San Jose, her part of the city, and the part that was the most destroyed, she was right there with us.

We all wore surgical masks to block out the stench of death. It’s been six days since the storm hit and there were a lot of dead bodies baking in the sun. They’re lying on the side of the road, black and bloated with their fingers liquefying. People have draped sheets on them to cover up their faces, but there’s no one to collect them. The smell was sickening. I walked by at least a hundred dead bodies that day. I can still smell them, on my clothes and in my mask. Another journalist told me it’s a phantom scent. My mind was playing tricks on me. Of the team I’m with, I’m the only one who was here early enough to see so many of the dead, and I would complain about the stench, even when no one else could smell it. I was afraid to go anywhere without my mask. I think about their corpses every night before I go to sleep.

We got off the truck at Barangay 88, a neighborhood called Costa Brava. It’s a narrow strip of land, with the sea on one side and a river on the other. That day, the sun was shining and waves are lapping up against broken coconut trees. Someone had to tell me that this used to be a densely-packed place. Houses right up against houses, narrow walkways instead of streets. The place is completely flattened now, and it’s impossible to imagine what it could have been before.

One man sifting through the rubble of his old house told me that he didn’t evacuate. When the storm surge came, he managed to get a hold of some wood. He was picked up and swept away by the sea. He doesn’t know how many hours he held on, but by the end, his muscles were convulsing and his lips trembling. The surge dropped him off over the river into downtown Tacloban, a forty-five minute walk away. If it were in New York, it would be like getting picked up by a flood in Wall Street, and deposited in Downtown Brooklyn.

Another woman, Jocelyn, was sitting by herself in the rubble. She fought with her husband about going to an evacuation center. In the end, she went with their two kids while he stayed to protect the house. She told me that the bottles of nail polish and kids bicycles strewn around what used to be their living room don’t belong to them. It was just deposited there by the flood. Now, she says, she doesn’t have her husband, or any of the belongings he was protecting. She still believes he’s alive somewhere, but she came here to cry where her kids can’t see her. Through tears she kept asking me, “kaya ko ‘to diba? Kaya ko ‘to?”—I can handle this right? Can I handle this?

We kept making our way to Shev’s neighborhood. We walked through Fisherman’s Village, which was blocked off from the road by a putrid, ten-foot tall pile of rubble. There’s an elementary school there that was used as an evacuation center. It flooded, and twenty or thirty people drowned, their bodies still piled up on the desks and in the courtyards.

When we got to Shev’s neighborhood, my heart sunk. It was just me and Shev and the photographer, at that point. We walked past a woman weeping. The photographer whispered to me, “Please tell me this isn’t her neighborhood.” There are so few buildings left standing.

Shev tells me that she doesn’t want to see any more dead bodies, but again, the gap between what she wants to do and what she has to do is wide. We walked past so many on the way to her house. There was a man lying in the centre of the road, he hadn’t been covered up. Shev gripped my hand as we walk by, less than a metre away from him. No one mentioned it.

As we got closer to her house, she was very calm. Everything was in ruins. She pointed to an exercise gadget that her daughter liked to play on. She pointed out her dad’s prized mountain bike. She picked up a cross-stitched clock face her mother made and tucked it under her arm. She sighed when she came across her red taffeta prom dress, which her mother was saving in case Shev’s daughter wanted to wear it to her prom.

The photographer probably broke some kind of fucked up journalistic code of ethics and took a piece of cardboard to cover up the bloated corpse of the family dog before Shev could see it. 

Shev left without knowing anything new about whether her parents or daughter survived.

Later we ran into her cousin. He was with her family when the storm surge came in. He grabbed on to the trunk of a banana tree to stay afloat. He says that when it started, there were fifty other people holding on to the tree. By the time he washed up across town, he was the only one left. He couldn’t say much more, and I felt bad for asking him even that much. He helped Shev keep searching every evacuation center and gathering area until they find her family.

The next day the Mayor of Tacloban, Alfred Romualdez, announced that there would be a mass burial. He’d gotten around some red tape from the Department of Health, and would be allowed to dig two trenches in the municipal cemetery to bury the bodies. I hired a motorcycle to take me to the cemetery. We passed the hillsides of Tacloban—stripped bare and dead—the moto driver said that a week ago, they were green.

When I arrived at the cemetery, I was the only journalist. I missed the first group of cadavers, the mayor’s speech for the cameras, and the PR-friendly version of the mass burial. The sun was starting to set, when two diesel dump trucks piled with body bags unceremoniously rolled up. I was doing a recording for an NPR correspondent, and he reminded me that because of the kind of mic I had, I needed to get up close to whatever was making the sounds. I stood there with my mask on, at a technically correct distance, about eighteen inches, and pointed my mic to the sound of bodies being slid off the truck. Then I walked across the cemetery grounds and recorded the sound of another stack of other bodies being dropped off—it was a light thud. Thinking about the technical stuff helped me forget how fucking morbid it was. I left when the zipper to a body bag burst open. It was dark and I didn’t think I could take any more.

That night, I fell asleep at about 8 PM on a pile of donated clothes at City Hall.

This was hard to write. It would be easier to keep filing the news. The President’s visit. The logistical disaster of delivering relief goods. Some story about the long lines for fuel. But this is what a disaster is. A bunch of people waking up in the morning trying to find an answer to the question: what the fuck am I going to do now?

 

Follow Aurora on Twitter: @auroraalmendral

More Yolanda/Haiyan coverage:

What We Shouldn’t Be Doing in the Wake of Typhoon Yolanda

Typhoon Haiyan Turned We from Tourist to Medic

How Remote Islands Are Coping with Typhoon Haiyan’s Devistation


Shitting Dicknipples Is the Weirdest Porn Category on the Internet

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This is what shitting dicknipples are. via Encylopedia Dramatica user "i Can't."

Everyone knows the internet is full of photos of shit, people doing things with shit, and people making things that are critically considered shit. Since I fancy myself to be well versed at digging up crap that’s hidden in the trenches of the internet with the foulest of stenches, and shove it in people’s face with my writing, I believe it’s time to unveil the holy grail of online shit.

While researching the micro-fetish world of furry quicksand videos (don’t ask), contemporary digital artist Jon Rafman tipped me off to GUROchan.net with the warning that it was “a fucked up extreme fetish website.” When a guy whose life’s work includes years of trawling the darkest reaches of the Deep Internet for inspiration warns you that a fetish website might be intense, you know it’s going to be crazy.

GUROchan is home to a lot of twisted, ridiculous anime hentai porn (GURO stands for grotesque). There’s something for everyone from erotic literature, gore, death, and of course furry porn. You name an obscure and potentially offensive fetish, and GUROchan’s got content for you. The site is designed like an even more basic version of 4Chan, and it’s very friendly to its users. For me, the most fascinating part of GUROchan is the request page, where its users can ask for anything. Really, anything. The request page is the last stop on the internet porn train. This is a place where shameless, anonymous people demand to see “saggy pants scats,” and other requests seek out giant balloon-like tits that can lay eggs, or some good ol’ fashioned belly button penetration.

Even though these twisted fetishes don’t really do it for me, my brain is still capable of wrapping itself around the potential sexiness of seeing a woman lay eggs, or watching a guy get pooped on. Because I guess, it’s not that crazy. Especially in comparison to the one request on GUROchan that makes scat porn and egg-laying human females look like vanilla softcore: shitting dicknipples.

What are shitting dicknipples, you ask? That’s a valid question—and it’s one I had myself when I first heard of the phrase. But it only took about one click on GUROchan to figure it out. Shitting dicknipple porn is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a cartoon depiction of dick-shaped female nipples expulsing violent streams of poop.


A teenage, shitting dicknipples prank.

Once I made this discovery, my world stopped spinning for a minute. I had to deal with the realization that I live in a world where shitting dicknipples exist in a cartoon reality, and where people seek them out on perverse 4chan spinoffs. I was now faced with tons of pictures posted by shitting dicknipple enthusiasts, but the scarier part was that I knew there were more. In fact, there’s a song about them on YouTube. How can someone go from enjoying regular porn to this? I couldn’t shake the thought that somewhere, there is a group of fat hairy scat-loving dudes fapping to diarrhea coming out of a woman’s penis-shaped aerolae.

My brain filled up with voices screaming on top of each other: “WHY?” “WHAT THE FUCK?” “WHO KNOWS ABOUT THIS?” “IS THIS LEGAL?” I started laughing hysterically as if my mind had given up. I had finally snapped.

Shitting dicknipples could have easily blended in with all the crazy shit that’s out there if it weren’t for the fact that the concept is so surreal and bizarre. I’ll be straight with you. I can deal with shitting dicks and I can picture dick-like nipples. But to combine both was an act of perverted genius. I was being trolled. Internet porn was being trolled. But more importantly, our collective dicknipples were being trolled.

Shitting dicknipples were born on 4chan’s /b/ page. The random image board has been fittingly described by some as “the toilet bowl of the internet” and “a place where you go to become your inner asshole, or, live out your sickest fantasies.” In this sort of context, shitting dicknipples make perfect sense. They’re used as an extreme cliché of how bizarre sexual fantasies can get, especially when it comes to hentai and guro. Shitting dicknipples combine so many fucked up things at once that it’s almost impossible for anyone to find them sexually attractive. They become conceptually attractive, instead. Or maybe that’s just me. People could be developing raging dicknipple shit-boners as I write this. I’m not sure.

What I can say for certain, however, is that shitting dicknipples are a rare oddity. It’s up to you if you find them repulsive or fascinating. You can even find them sexually arousing, but if you do, you should probably seek help. All that being said, once you’ve spent countless hours staring at them like I have, you might come to realize how beautiful and ludicrous they are no matter how grossed out you may be. Shitting dicknipples truly are the unicorns of internet porn.


@smvoyer

Pen Pals: Prison Gerrymandering Is Absolute Bullshit

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A lot of the time, when someone in New York City says they’re going “upstate” it means they’re going to prison. Most of the state prisons are north of the city, some practically on the Canadian border, and songs like Mobb Deep’s “Up North Trip” have helped some slang terms about New York lockups spread to other states—so in some places, “up top” won’t actually be in the frozen north, just an area where some country corn-and-cow-christ-on-a-stick bullshit is going on. In NYC, city folk call pretty much anything north of the Bronx “upstate,” even spots in Westchester County like Yonkers... some crackers have no clue that New York extends seven hours north to Montreal and eight hours northwest to places like Buffalo—and when you’re way the hell out there, it’s like you’re in the Midwest.

There will forever be conspiracies about why the powers that be house inmates people so far away from their families, because it seems so easy to lock us up close to home. In 2011, Governor Andrew Cuomo closed the Arthur Kill Prison in Staten Island, which was the only real prison in the five boroughs... Before that got shut down, inmates used to bust their asses behaving like good prisoners so they could transfer close to home.

Whatever the reason, it’s true that prisons are usually in very rural, rundown areas where the factories, mines, or farms that used to prop up communities collapsed long ago. Prisons fill that void, becoming economic engines that support a lot of small towns. When large populations are removed from cities and locked up in the podunk regions, they are affecting the economy a whole lot. When I worked outside the wall at Clinton Correctional in Dannemora, doing jobs such as burying dead inmates, there was an insane amount of laborers, machinery, and unfinished-looking projects all over the place. I had a cool CO boss back then who talked to us like real people (dare I say even “friends”?) and he explained that Clinton had seven contracts with various construction companies going on at once. It looked like they were literally digging holes and then filling them again. That’s gotta make some former factory worker a pretty good bit of cash.

Then there’s the prison commissary, where we’d buy food, hygiene supplies, and other random bullshit. It may not seem like it would have that much of an effect on the local economy, but for a shitty little area like Clinton Country, where there are a bunch of prisons holding maybe 5,000 inmates total, it can add up. I spent about $100 a month at the commissary, and maybe 1,500 other prisoners were doing the same—that’s $100,000 a month that gets pumpe into the county that wouldn’t be there without prisons.

More so than the money, though, prisons give “upstate” areas all over the country political power. I’m talking about the ridiculous practice of the Census counting inmates as part of the local population—with higher population comes more seats in state legislatures and the House of Representatives, and more seats mean more power. Maryland recently changed this policy so prisoners could count as residents of the communities they came from, but that was only after lawmakers figured out that “inmates were nearly a fifth of the ‘residents’ in one legislative district,” giving a rural municipality much more political power than it should have been afforded.

Convicts can’t vote anyway in most states, but it adds a whole fucked-up layer to imagine that inmates are potentially giving extra legislative seats to the places where the prisons got built. That’s important because if you give the prison-building communities power, they sure as shit aren’t ever going to vote to put less people behind bars. I learned about the Three-Fifths Compromise back in seventh grade and I remember getting pissed off about it. Slaves couldn’t vote but they got counted as three-fifths of a person to give the slave states more say in Congress? What a crock of shit. But today, with the prison population being so heavily black, you gotta look at this system of prison gerrymandering and wonder if it all comes to the same place.

Obviously, the only reason to count inmates as the Census does is to transfer power from the cities where inmates come from to the rural regions—from the prisoners to the prison guards who would be unemployed if the incarceration industry ever dried up. Especially in New York, there’s a never-ending battle between urban and rural political entities. The state legislature is pretty much split between urban Democrats and rural Republicans. More bluntly, places where blacks and latinos live vote Democrat and lily-white regions are pure Republican. Even a butt-fucking duck could see that if the mostly brown-skinned prisoners are counted as residents of their prison’s counties, it transfers power to the white folks whose policies are often all about abusing those same brown-skinned people. That’s not just silencing prison inmates’ voices, that’s treating them like damn sock puppets.

I am proud that New York is one of the few states that has taken a stand against this unjust policy, but I suspect that’s only because Democratic politicians from the city realized they were losing some of their juice. Other states should follow suit just for the sake of fairness, but who the fuck knows if they will? How the supposedly educated, refined, responsible people who are the leaders of our country continue this act of dishonest gerrymandering is beyond me... One thing for sure is that the prisoners have no say in this.

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

Previously: A Reminder That Sheriff Joe Is the Worst Lawman in America

Thumbnail courtesy of Flickr user Rupert Ganzer

Isa Muazu Would Rather Die Than Be Deported

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Isa Muazu is currently languishing, emaciated, in an immigration detention center next to Heathrow airport. Barring a last ditch legal challenge, he will be on flight EDC684 back to Abuja, in Nigeria where he is originally from, at 8 AM on Friday morning. I was allowed to visit him yesterday and ask him what would happen to him in Nigeria. His answer was immediate: “I will be killed.” Isa says that two members of his family have been murdered by Boko Haram, an Islamist militant group, and he fears the same fate should he return. His advocates fear that it might not even come to that because, having been on hunger strike for almost 100 days, he could die in the detention center or on the flight.

After a failed appeal, he was due to return to Nigeria this evening, but for reasons that aren't yet clear, the Home Office unexpectedly delayed the trip. While they said this morning that they "do not routinely comment on individual cases," they maintain that Isa is fit to travel. The Home Office's claim might be more convincing if they hadn’t already drawn up an “end of life plan” for him which, it has been suggested, means that the decision to allow him to die has been taken at ministerial level. I guess if your imminent death has been accounted for, the meaning of "fit to fly" shifts a little. I went to meet Isa at Harmondsworth removal center, one of the more hostile parts of the “hostile environment” that Home Secretary Theresa May is determined to create for immigrants to this country.

After arriving at the center, I made my way through the airport-style security. The guards relieved me of any recording devices, and cameras, patted me down, and advised me very strongly not to lose my passport while inside. Then I met Lord Roger Roberts of Llandudno, who was there to meet Isa in his capacity as a Lib Dem peer and who had kindly invited me along.

We were led through a couple of locked doors and a courtyard with tall barbed wire fencing, up some stairs and past waiting rooms full of non-white people sitting on plastic chairs, who looked up hopefully at us as we walked past the door. The place feels very much like a prison, and it’s in depressing places like this that asylum seekers are kept in the purgatory of indefinite detention, as they wait years for a decision to be made on their claim.

As we waited in a meeting room, Roger asked one of the burly security men if they get many people on hunger strike. “Not many, no,” replied the guard hesitantly, looking a little embarrassed and dabbing sweat from his brow.

Isa was wheeled in on a wheelchair, as he is too weak to walk. We shook hands and he nodded. He looked gaunt and spoke very softly. We sat around him in a circle, craning our necks to hear. It was like visiting someone frail in an old people’s home, but Isa is only 45 years old.

He was clearly exhausted, as you might expect from someone who hasn’t eaten properly since August 25. He hadn’t slept properly for two months, either: “I can only lie on the bed, but sleep is not coming.” It wasn’t surprising, then, that he was only able to muster short sentences. Nevertheless, he was able to spell out in no uncertain terms his thoughts on returning to Nigeria: “I feel devastated. I’d rather die than go back. If they can take my body and bury it, that would be the only thing. I’m not going back, I’m telling you. There’s nothing there for me.” As for friends, family or anyone else who could look after him, “For more than two years I haven’t heard from anyone.”

Isa applied for asylum after a visa he was in the UK on ran out. His application was turned down in just seven days. He is understood to have started rejecting food after the centre failed to cater for his dietary needs—he has hepatitis B, kidney problems and stomach ulcers—but continued refusing to eat in protest at the asylum application process. He said he was 180 pounds before his detention and that when he was weighed that morning he was 110 pounds. He had been to hospital for an operation but he was too ill for it to be carried out. They tried to give him a sandwich, but “I vomited. It won’t stay in my stomach. Even with water, I vomit. Sometimes with blood. Even urine comes out with blood,” he said.


Isa Muazu

Roger asked if Isa would accept some kind of plan to get him eating again, put together by a nutritionist. “Not in detention,” said Isa. But in hospital? “I can try.”

An independent doctor has said that Isa has mental health problems and he was declared medically unfit for detention in October. On the other hand, a Home Office appointed doctor declared him well enough to travel: “He didn’t even touch me or take my blood or sugar level. He just looked at me.”

We asked him if there was a message that he would like to send to the government. “I need them to forgive me for anything I’ve done wrong. It happened without my intention. I want the government to temper justice with mercy.” That seemed like an admission of guilt of some kind, but when it was put to him that he was being punished for something he hadn’t done, he said, “That’s how I’m looking at it,” adding that he had never been in trouble with the law before.


Lord Roger Roberts of Llandudno

After a while it felt like an imposition to keep such a weak man chatting. We said our goodbyes to Isa and left the centre. “What’s the adjective that strikes you when you consider our detention system? ‘Brilliant’ or ‘inhuman’?” asked Roger as we walked along to catch the bus back to the station. “If the Home Secretary is trying to set up an inhospitable country with an immigration policy that is harsh and inhuman towards many people, then the sooner she goes the better.” Roger is meeting her today to lobby for Isa, and a letter has been published, signed by over 100 organisations and public figures. So far, it seems May and the Home Office aren't prepared to listen.

Later on, I called Kate Blagojevic from Detention Forum who helped explain how Isa ended up in this situation. “You declare yourself to the immigration authorities and say you want to claim asylum—they immediately lock you up in a centre where you don’t have any money, you might not have any phone credit, you might not have a lawyer and so you’ve lost your freedom and you have absolutely no way of getting out,” she told me. “It’s very difficult for you, while you’re sitting in your cell, to think about the evidence that you might need to claim asylum. The fast-track system allocates a solicitor to you, usually who you meet a few minutes before your interview with the Home Office officials. That’s the meeting when they decide if your asylum claim is credible or not. 99 percent of people on this fast-track system are refused.”

Isa said he feared for his life if he is made to return to Nigeria, but that he fears for his life if he is kept in detention as well. “I am tired of staying in this place,” he said, “All the time I have been here, I’m in pain.” A judge who backed Isa’s detention as lawful in spite of medical evidence showing that he was unfit for detention commented that, “It is important to appreciate that those who use a hunger strike to manipulate their position will not succeed in doing so, provided they have mental capacity.” In other words, if you let one man’s hunger strike sway the decision about whether or not to let him stay, all the "illegals" will be at it soon, downing forks in an attempt to pull on bleeding liberal heartstrings.

I suppose that could happen, but it would be a pretty high stakes way to game a system—a system which ought not to let things get to that stage in the first place. The Home Office will have to decide whether or not it is willing to allow someone like Isa to die in its care in order to call their bluff.

@SimonChilds13

Epicly Later'd - Season 1: Geoff Rowley

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In part three of the Geoff episode, we talk about the Sorry trilogy, his forward-thinking pro shoe and the Vans video he's working on at the moment.

But we're not done yet: We're also putting together a little bonus adventure episode that comes out next week, plus Geoff will be doing a Reddit AMA next Thursday, December 5th at 1 PM EST. Cheers mate!

More Epicly Later'd:

Eric Dressen

Arto Saari

Antwuan Dixon

I Fuck, Therefore I Am

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Beware of Satan! via Tumblr user "fecskelaszlo."

A few months ago I published a piece about a torrid, semi-relationship I had with a cuckold fetishist on this other website. Before the article went public, my editor sent me an email warning me not to read the comments on the piece unless, of course, I could take insults lightly. I was no stranger to shitty, nonsensical comments littered with the word “whore”. After all, I’ve been writing for VICE for three years.

The cuckold piece was as explicit as editorial would let me be. A writer I once interviewed told me that to be successful by the age of 25, you have to live your life as though you do not have parents. I have parents, and they learned very quickly to not read most of my published work.

I didn’t read the comments on my cuckold piece, but a friend of mine did. He gave me the Coles Notes: “The comments aren’t so much about your writing, but just people calling you crazy, a whore, or damaged,” he said. “They are telling you to get therapy. Also, LOL at five pounds worth of comments from people who gobbled your story up just so they could poop out their insecurities all over the page.” I laughed, because what other reaction is there? One man even went so far as to tweet at me and tell me how messed up I was.

In a piece by Ann Hirsch titled, “Women, Sexuality and The Internet”, she argues that the internet has opened up a new place for women to self-represent. However, instead of taking power in this space and subverting the archaic standards of beauty and sexuality presented to us by mass media, most of us often mimic the same conventions. The places women can be represented are limited, says Hirsch, and, more importantly, for “a woman to be taken seriously, she cannot be seen as wanting sex or asking for sexual attention.”

So, where can we exist without people assuming we are suffering extreme objectification? Are we bringing this on ourselves? Is it truly willing objectification or are we affected, manipulated so deep in our psyches we don’t even notice that our Instagram “selfies” are manicured to duplicate something that Hustlermight publish? Is it considered objectification if we want to be in Hustler? Moreover, can one truly objectify herself if the decision is conscious? And for who are we doing this? Our 1,000 followers? Creeps who search hashtags like #bathroom or #twat? Ourselves? Our confidence? Is that healthy confidence? What is healthy confidence? I could go on forever here.

Furthermore, Hirsch asks why sexuality still exists separate from intellect? “One who exerts his or herself in an overly sexual manner is rarely taken seriously.” I hate this notion because it discredits my mind the minute I am objectified, the minute I objectify myself (which according to most people would be something like by drawing attention to my physicality, through a well written piece about the psychology of blowjobs or even something as simple as wearing lipstick and knee socks on stage) and just reduces me to a “slut” who “needs therapy” simply for having a sex life that I feel completely secure talking about in print, or a woman who’s choice of dress is victim to the “male gaze."
 


Meredith Chivers talking about sex.

Meredith Chivers is doing incredible research on female desire and sexuality. She works at Queens University. In an academic landscape where almost all scientific research about sexuality has been conducted by men, about men, (thus considering only male arousal), Chivers is pioneering new discoveries that have changed our socially constructed gender roles. Basically, Chivers discovered that the “specificity” of sexual arousal—whether sexual response in the body is specific to the things people claim turns them on—was much different for women. Chivers went to the lab and conducted an experiment on both men and women. She discovered that, contrary to common belief, women were not only physically aroused by their sexual preference, but by watching non-human, heterosexual and homosexual acts, where as men tended to only respond to images that aligned with their sexual orientation. So, Chivers continued to dig into the mind and body connect of sexual arousal asking, “Where are these models of sexual response coming from? Why are we using them to try to understand a woman’s sexuality when it’s obvious they don’t work?” Chivers’s work is a huge stride forward.

Beyond that, in other instances, scientific vernacular and research has been so blinded by socially constructed gender stereotypes that it affects what we know as scientific fact. Consider the language surrounding impregnation: the sperm swims aggressively to the egg, which sits passively waiting to be wakened. Think about how we commonly talk about straight sex: A man fucks a woman, while she gets fucked. The penis penetrates the vagina. Why doesn’t the vagina engulf the penis? It’s the same reasons a real lady keeps her legs crossed when wearing a skirt.

Chivers is helping us relearn the female body and the mind and what turns us on. Her research is making enormous progress in the way enlightened people regard sexual orientation and desire. She’s fucking with the old science. And my God, we need Chivers to fuck with the old science. 

I write publicly about my sex life because my sex life matters to me. It is what makes up such a large part of who I am as a writer, a musician, and a human being. It does not, in any sense, reduce me as an intellect. I am not an idiot for wanting to detail the way someone’s dick felt inside me. This is my feminist statement. If I want to tuck the shirt into the back of my jeans to display my ass a little more obviously, that is self-objectification, I guess, but it is myobjectification. I like my ass. It took me years to overcome the illogical notion that my ass was “fat” or “unattractive” and now that I have, I embrace that—and it does not make me a “stupid whore.” It makes me a sexual human being who has an ego, just like anyone else on the planet. So why would embracing that dissolve my intellectual credibility? How many times have beautiful women had the authenticity for their work discredited simply for their looks? I can’t even count. If you are an attractive woman who is intelligent, you must have had some help you with your work. If you are an attractive man who is intelligent, you are the whole package. Sexist double standards run deep in the bloodline of the world more often than I would like them to.

I encourage women to talk about desire. I encourage everyone to, in fact, because when it comes down to it our society is nothing but confused about the one thing we can all do: fuck. The only way to get over this deep confusion is to write about it, to talk about it, to not be afraid of it. You want to throw my sexuality in my face as an insult? I am going to shine it right back at you like a shield.

Let’s crawl back in time to a decade when philosophers connected women to the body and men to the mind. We were “The Second Sex”. In some ways, we still are. The reality is that these two things are interconnected. Mind and body make one working human being. “Our brain and our genitalia operate together to help form our sense of self.” I fuck therefore I am. Make this into a sticker, put it on my bumper, then I will fuck you in my van and I will feel completely alive.


@myszkaway

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