This article originally appeared on VICE Greece

On Sunday, Greeks will head to the polls for the third time in only eight months. The election comes in light of the resignation of Greece's youngest ever Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras.

In January, Tsipras's leftist political party SYRIZA came to power with a staunch anti-bailoutmessage opposing austerity measures proposed by Greece's creditors. "We will rip up the memorandum," former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras once told adoring crowds. However, in July, despite an overwhelming vote against new economic bailout measures, he and his party signed a new memorandumone that many claim to be the toughest to date. Not long after, Tsipras decided to resign, paving way for the latest general election.

On Friday night, Alexis Tsipras held a pre-election rally in response to one organised by his opposition, Vangelis Meimarakis of the conservative New Democracywhich took place only 24 hours earlier a few meters away in Athens' Omonia Square.

The rally, held in historic Syntagma Square, was literally painted red with SYRIZA flags andshirts, albeit not as many as January's final rally or the 'No' rally prior to July's referendum.Many viewed that vote as a choice between staying in or leaving the Eurozone. WhenAlexis Tsipras signed up for a third referendum, a lot of those who had voted 'No' felt betrayed.

At Friday night's rally, a gaggle of like-minded chums fromother countriesGregor Gysi (President of the German leftist party Die Linke), the Ska Keller (vice president of the European Green Party), Pierre Laurent (President of the FrenchCommunist Party) and leader of Spain's Podemos, Pablo Iglesiastook to the stage before Tspiras. Iglesias said that, on Sunday, the Greek people mustchoose between a lion (Alexis Tsipras) and a rabbit.

"Hasta la victoria siempre," he said as he opened the stage for the night's star attraction AlexisTsipras.

Tsipras got straight to the point. "On Sunday, the Greek people have to choose between the progress of SYRIZA and the conservatism of VangelisMeimarakis and Angela Merkel," he said, "They have to choose betweenthe harsh austerity of Mr. Schaeuble and the social solidarity SYRIZA."

In general he stuck to smaller themes, talking about change inEurope, leading the party, and passing the torch of the left to othercountries, such as Portugal and Spain. Tsipras also spoke of the murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas, who was stabbed by extreme right wing party Golden Dawn supporters in 2013. He criticized Golden Dawn leader NikosMichaloliakos's recent statement admitting that the organisation accepted political but not legal responsibilityfor the murder.

He also spoke about the deeply unpopular and harsh third memorandum that Greece signed with its creditorsor the "agreement"as he called it. "We reached an agreement. A difficult one, but it ensured the financing of our economy," he said.

He appealed to SYRIZA supporters to help him continue thestruggle and complete the program with a government firmly in place for acomplete four year term.

His final attack was against Vangelis Meimarakis, who he said preferred debating with friends and relatives rather than in the public squares of Athens. The only thing the two prospective Prime Ministers seem to have in common is the phrase "Greece moving forward"which both political leaders used in their respective speeches.

Tsipras's closing words went out to the country's young men and women, who he urged to vote with both heart and mind. He begged the youth not to abstain from voting, as abstinence would only give the green light to the old status quo.

As Bella Ciao pumped out of the loudspeakers, his four leftist comrades (Gregor Gysi, Ska Geller, Pierre Laurent, and Pablo Iglesias) bid farewell to the crowds, leaving the stage like pop stars before they walked down Ermou Street, where cars and colleagues were waiting for them.

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Impossibly cool and decidedly feminist, Francesca DiMattio is the only person I've met who makes ceramics with a forklift. (While wearing a perfect milkmaid braid, no less.) Her massive, twisted sculptures seem to vomit up feminine elementsthe word "pulchritudinous" comes to mindto subvert everything we think we know about a medium that is typically domestic, delicate, and decorative. Undervalued due to its gendered associations with "women's work," craft has traditionally been relegated to the bottom of the artistic totem pole, its makers anonymous. In the face of that fact, it's particularly nice to see DiMattio proudly taking credit for her work.

In 2010, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston commissioned DiMattio to make an "art wall," and in the summer of 2014 she had her first museum solo show, a major landmark for any artist, at the University of Houston's Blaffer Art Museum. Shortly thereafter, designer Tory Burch included a DiMattio ceramic in a curated Paddle8 auction. Now the New York-based artist is hard at work in the studio finishing up pieces for an upcoming show entitled Confectiona reference to some of the new ceramic works, which look thick with icing. The show opened yesterday at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in London in conjunction with the launch of a new book of her work. From her position at the forefront of the ceramics trend in the art world, DiMattio talked to VICE about making clay do what she wants, rebranding femininity, and finding beauty in instability.

VICE: First off, I have to say, I think your "Fetish Sculpture" is the most fantastic thing. It kind of resembles a post-apocalyptic mutant alpaca.
Francesca DiMattio: A what?

A mutant alpaca.
I can definitely see that.

It seems tied up with the Marxist description of the commodity fetish as this sort of grotesque animated object.
There's definitely a melting of desire and class that happens in the way the materials are handled and put together. Highly refined elements are handled really roughly, and in the process the whole object seems to melt or mutate into a new hybrid. The work I'm looking at right now is such a grafted object: A saccharine surface of cake icing is wrapped around a guttural form that looks like molten lava thrown on the floor. In fusing opposites like that, you break down any hierarchy.

DiMattio in her studio

It's all very postmodern, the way in which the disparate elements come together. Your source material is from all over the timelineFrench Rococo porcelain, Iznik pottery, dime-store kitsch...
Yeah, I pull from anywhere and look to combine different cultures and different references to high and low culture in each piece. As a starting point, I have piles and piles of images that I rip up from books, making the research more visual than linguistic. Everything becomes material. While I'm familiar with the histories underlying the images, I normally work with hundreds of images on the floorI literally just sit down and react to them, seeing what I want to use.

As well as different references seen in the glazing, I use a lot of contrasting techniques and surface variation in the form itself. Smooth, refined porcelain sits next to rough clay that's literally thrown onto the piece. Pinch pot passages that record the immediate speed of fingers squeezing sit next to slowly rendered Wedgwood relief. Both form and surface are made out of contrasting impulses.

How big are the parts you're working with? The final pieces are huge.
Yeah, they're pretty big. Most are in two or three pieces in the end because as a single piece they would be too heavy to ship or lift. I have an incredible miniature forklift that I use to move pieces around and it can lift about 2,000 pounds. And I installed a hoist in my new studio for hanging sculptures, which can raise and lower pieces up to 2,000 pounds. Tools are key.

I suppose that's what I'm after: that state of flux in which you can't pin anything down, or have an absolute feeling about anything.

The miniature forklift is pretty funny, because you're creating in such a traditionally feminine domestic medium with all of these dainty elements but you're twisting them, smashing them, making them monumental, and using a forklift on top of it all. So is that intentional, the disfiguring or breaking down of this feminine space?
Definitely. My initial motivation to work with clay was because of its association with the feminine. Objects made out of ceramics are typically small and pretty, an accent in a room. I wanted to use strategies to make them the primary action in a room.

The way that I use clay isn't the way it wants to be used. Clay doesn't want you to combine different types of clay and various treatments in an asymmetrical, oversized form. I have found the process more war-like than it is seductive. I like opposing materials or opposing references. I think the deeper motivation for all of it is to rebrand how we meet the feminine or how we think of it. By using something like cake icing and smearing it on this huge rough form you meet to it so differently than you would a small decorative piece on a table. You meet it frontally and the meeting is almost confrontational.

Black Confection. All images courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London; Photographer Karen Pearson

Contemporary ceramics are very trendy in the art world at the moment. Between their strong presence at Frieze New York a few months ago, the major Ken Price retrospective at the Met and LACMA, and the Ruby Sterling ceramics at the 2014 Whitney Biennial, people are saying that 2015 is the "year of ceramics." What do you think of the medium's current popularity, and has it affected your practice at all?
It was funny timing because I came to ceramics because of my family. My mom had done ceramics her whole life, and my father-in-law is a well-known ceramic artist. When I started working in the medium, it felt really personal and private; I didn't see it around in the art world. And then suddenly it was part of a much larger conversation.

At one point I wanted to make something for a group show that was going to be fabricated in Mexico. The place said that my proposal was too complicated or just not possible. My father-in-law told me, "Come out to Arizona and you can make it." And from that invitation the whole thing started; over the course of six weeks, he taught me everything I needed to know to make what I wanted to make.

Confection 3

You came to sculpture from painting. Is there a connection between the domestic interiors you paint and your ceramics?
I think they're completely connected, in both their structure and in what they're conceptually after. I have always been interested in using different modes of craft in unexpected ways. The structure of the paintings, for example, follows the undulation inherent to sewing and knitting as well as the stark juxtapositions found in quilts. I think of pattern a lot too. I paint a lot of floral patterns, but instead of staying contained on a curtain or bedspread, they move through the composition almost virally, as if the elements of a room were thrown up and painted out of order.

I'm always looking to defamiliarize the familiar, to take feminine modes of making and give them a more aggressive delivery. The unlikely pairings that result call into question notions of beautyeverything is broken and interrupted and ultimately unstable. I suppose that's what I'm after: that state of flux in which you can't pin anything down, or have an absolute feeling about anything.

Check out Francesca DiMattio's upcoming exhibition in London, opening October 12.

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Photo via Flickr user Iqbal Osman

Despite all the gloom and doom preached in teenage sex ed classes, getting pregnant when you're actually trying to can be shockingly hard. According to Dr. Dolores Lamb, a fertility specialist, in any given year, between 15 to 20 percent of all couples in America wind up seeking treatment for fertility issues, contributing to a $40 billion dollar global market. Although culturally infertility is often seen as a women's problem, 40 percent of the time a couple's difficulty conceiving is caused by an issue with a male partner or donorand 20 percent of the time, problems in both a man and woman's reproductive systems contribute to infertility. But despite the role men play in infertility, up until a few years ago almost every at-home fertility test or aid was marketed toward women. By some counts, only 20 percent of men in couples struggling to get pregnant actually sought basic fertility analysis at clinics, thanks in large part to the stigma that finding out a man is infertile will emasculate him.

These disparities and cultural hang-ups may seem like insurmountable challenges for many couples hoping to get pregnant. But earlier this summer, Aidmics, a Taiwanese start-up microscopic biology firm, announced its plans to release a new at-home fertility test for men. Aidmics hopes its test will help plug the gender gap in fertility tools and allow men to detect basic fertility issues discretely and quickly. The system will perform basic sperm analysis, and its results will display information about men's sperm count and motility, often touted in popular accounts as key issues in male fertility. These are issues that can supposedly be improved by simple lifestyle changes (eating better, exercising more, reducing heat and constriction on your balls) or by common surgeries and medications if the problem persists over several months despite lifestyle adjustments. Enticingly dubbed the iSperm, Aidmics's system could revolutionize the male fertility market, though it probably won't help many men actually overcome their fertility issues.

The iSperm got its name because it was (surprise, surprise) designed as a physical add-on to an app for iPad Minis. Basically, it's a microscope attachment (with a resolution of up to 1 micrometer) built into an iPad case that goes over the device's camera. Disposable semen sample collection tubes slip onto the microscope attachment, then use backlighting to create a Full HD video of a man's jizz, recorded onto the iPad and analyzed by the accompanying app to provide basic data and discretionary footage.

The iSperm system isn't just a pie-in-the-sky design, either. It's already used all over the worldalthough Aidmics has so far only marketed the system for use in livestock breeding. Boar farmers swear by it as a great alternative to more expensive microscopes and tests, with come claiming that they've seen a boost of up to 20 percent in their animals' pregnancy rates since adopting the system. And Taiwanese state institutions have given it their backing as well. The company says it's just been waiting for United States Food and Drug Administration approval to expand its usage to humans. But given the FDA's hands-off approach when it comes to home health tools, they're fairly confident that they'll receive approval within a couple of years.

"If everything goes smoothly," Jolanda Hsu, Aidmics' Business Development Manager, wrote to VICE in an e-mail, "we that could be in the realm of normal," says Dr. Lamb.

This doesn't mean that iSperm is a useless or utterly misleading system though. Up to four percent of men have no sperm in their semen whatsoever (usually due to some kind of plumbing problem), which the kit could help them to detect. Likewise, it could also help a man test whether his vasectomy has been successfulbecause they don't always stick.

More importantly, the iSperm can be used as a simple tool to send basic sperm analysis to a doctor digitally, without the shame, stigma, or hassle of going into the clinic. Advances in technology could allow doctors to make some basic calls and start a serious conversation about men's fertility issues.

"There's a huge move for using iPads for... home diagnostics that get sent to a lab," says Dr. Lamb. "That's going to be part of the future. And I'm sure this could be used for similar effects."

Even if iSperm isn't a cure-all (or even especially helpful) fertility tool, it will still sell in America due to our fascination with our own sperm.

"I think that lots of people would be interested," says Dr. Lamb, "if only to see their sperm swimming and what they look like."

Hsu acknowledges that getting to see your sperm is a big draw for Aidmics's customers. That's probably why they made it automatically save HD video of the swimmers after each sample.

Ultimately, iSperm will empower those with the right mindset to get a better frontline read on male fertility, and enable nervous Nellies to have serious conversations on the subject that they might previously have avoided. Just don't expect it to fix your junk in one shot.

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Matthew VanDyke. All photos courtesy of VanDyke

In 2013, VICE spoke to Matthew VanDyke, an American documentary-maker who decided to pick up a gun and fight against Gaddafi in the Libyan revolution. His story is extraordinary. Taking his place at the frontline in a recent Middle-eastern conflicts, Matthew lives a life that makes Hemingway's look a little dull. He's traveled North Africa and the Middle-East by motorbike, visited Bin Laden's home, and been taken as a prisoner of war. (He escaped when rebels and other prisoners freed him.)

In the two years since his last conversation with VICE, VanDyke has seen two of his close friends, James Foley and Steven Sutloff, murdered. He has set up his own private security firm, Sons of Liberty International (SOLI), an organization that is actively fighting ISIS in Iraq, and he's kickstarted humanitarian projects and trained hundreds of Iraqi militiamen.

VICE decided to catch up with VanDyke and learn more about SOLI; the lines between activist, journalist, and fighter; and what VanDyke believes it will take to defeat ISIS.

VICE: Hi Matthew. Can you tell us about Sons of Liberty International (SOLI)?
Matthew VanDyke: Sons of Liberty International is the first military contracting firm operating on non-profit principles, providing free security consulting and training services to vulnerable populations to enable them to defend themselves against terrorists, insurgents, and oppressive regimes.

We will step in where the international community has failed, reacting quickly to security crises and enabling local forces to defend their own communities.

Where is SOLI currently involved? What kind of impact is the organization having?
SOLI is currently active in Iraq, is in negotiations with a militia in Syria, and has received requests for our assistance in three other regions of the world. We were instrumental in the creation of the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU), an Assyrian Iraqi militia based in northern Iraq. We have advised and trained them since their inception, serving as their closest advisors from December 2014 through May 2015, advising on everything from personnel decisions to their force structure, right down to the small details like the design of their insignia and what camo pattern they should be using. We have trained an entire 330 man battalion of the NPU. fleeing Iraq, going from a population of around 1.3 million in 2003 to perhaps 300,000 now. Their entire existence is at stake. Northern Iraq is the homeland of the Assyrian people, who have been there for thousands of years, long before Arabs or Kurds. They are losing their ancestral homeland as their people flee to other countries because neither the Arabs nor the Kurds have protected them so they feel they have no choice but to leave.

SOLI is helping them form a military force to defend themselves so that their people will have the confidence to remain and not lose their homeland. Our support of the Assyrian people is about far more than just ISIS.

In addition, Iraqi Christians have suffered greatly during the conflict with ISIS, and are highly motivated. Morale and motivation are decisive factors when training an army, making this community ideal for doing so and fighting against ISIS.

You're first and foremost an activist, and show a relentless commitment wherever you're involved. Are you personally working with people on the ground, specifically in Iraq?
Yes, I was the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU) closest military advisor from December 2014 to May 2015. I worked very closely with their leadership to help establish and prepare the NPU for combat. I bring a unique perspective as an advisor, combining an academic background (a Master's degree in Security Studies with a Middle East concentration), with my experiences fighting in Libya in a conflict very similar to those currently taking place in Syria and Iraq.

Although my primary duties are leading SOLI and serving as an advisor to militia leadership, I also participated in training the NPU on occasion, and assisted with the development of the training curriculum and its implementation. The training programs, however, are designed and run by our ex-military trainers, as this is their field of expertise.

I also have contact with Assyrian Iraqi activists, assisting with humanitarian projects for the civilian population in Northern Iraq.

What challenges are faced by the people you meet there?
The Assyrian people and Christianity in Iraq are being erased from the country, both by ISIS and by other groups in Iraq that seek to marginalize and control the Assyrian/Christian population. SOLI stands shoulder to shoulder with the Assyrian people in the face of the myriad challenges they are confronting, which extend beyond just ISIS. These include political and security challenges that will affect them both now and after ISIS is defeated, which is why we are providing them with long-term, sustainable solutions for their self-defense.

Other challenges they face are internally displaced persons, refugees, the loss of their lands to ISIS, economic difficulty, and widespread traumatization of their community.

SOLI handing out presents on Christmas Day

What is the most powerful experience you've had helping those abandoned by international communities?
My most powerful experience was my military service in the early days of the Libyan Revolution, before the involvement of NATO. There I saw the best and bravest of the Libyan people stand up against all odds, grab a weapon, and jump in pickup trucks heading to the front lines to face Gaddafi's tanks and jets. It was an honor to serve with such men.

Many of those that help with SOLI's training program are army veterans with practical field experience and expertise. What motivates them to become involved?
So far all of our personnel have been US military veterans, though we have had applicants from the UK and Europe. We have nearly 1,000 applicants, most US veterans and some of whom are retired high-ranking officers.

Applicants also include former Special Forces and other exceptional candidates who could make a small fortune in military contracting but are willing to volunteer for SOLI because they believe in the cause of helping the defenseless to defend themselves and defeat ISIS.

SOLI is funded through the charitable giving and fundraising. Are there any groups of people that are particularly generous to the cause?
SOLI is not incorporated as a non-profit but operates on non-profit principles by offering its services for free to those who need them, and SOLI is funded by generous contributions from people around the world. Our contributors come from over 20 countries, but the vast majority are Americans.

American Christians have been especially supportive. Everyone who makes a contribution to SOLI is having a tangible impact on the fight against ISIS and is part of a movement that takes action when the international community fails. And every dollar counts. SOLI is more efficient than governments, but our budget depends mostly on contributions.

Is it surreal to return to the US or West after long periods in Iraq and Syria?
No, not at all. I enjoy my time in the USA and have no difficulty transitioning between the two worlds. I can be in camo working with an Iraqi militia, and the next day in a suit meeting with officials in Washington, DC.

The fight against ISIS feels, in some ways, like it has just started. Is frontline activism a life's work for you?
Sons of Liberty International is likely going to remain my life's work. SOLI is innovative and effective. It has the ability to affect change on the ground in conflicts around the world. We intend to expand SOLI over the next few years until there is no terrorist group or dictator safe from being in the crosshairs of a group that we're ready and able to support.

We're able to do this far more effectively and efficiently than the government. The US government spent $250 million to train 60 Syrian rebel fighters, while SOLI spent around $50,000 to train 330 Iraqi fighters. Our model is one for the 21st century and we intend to have a significant impact on conflicts around the world in the coming years. The West may get tired of Syria, Iraq, and ISIS, but it is a daily reality over there and it isn't going away.

A worker sews on buttons in Keraniganj, Dhaka, which she does at least 12 hours a day, six days a week. With their windows barred, these buildings, some of them seven stories tall, remain uninspected fire hazards. All photos by Larry Towell/Magnum Photos

This article appearsin the September Issue of VICE

Twenty years ago, as cheap clothing began flooding the global market, Bangladesh became a sweatshop for the world's top brands. On April 24, 2013, the eight-story, illegally built Rana Plaza garment factory collapsed. The building's workshops held contracts with a few dozen international companies, including Benetton, J. C. Penney, Carrefour, Walmart, Joe Fresh, the Children's Place, Mascot, El Corte Ingls, Cato Fashions, and Primark. The event killed more than 1,100 workers. Some 2,000 were injured, many seriously, and 104 people remain missing.

Investigations of the disaster show that the electric generators, located on the top floor, had begun to shake the building, eventually causing the concrete structure to give way. Garment workers who'd fled the tremors the day before the collapse were ordered back to work.

Rojina Akhter, who was maimed in the Rana Plaza collapse, holds her three-month-old daughter in the Savar slum in Dhaka.

Most of the factory's employees had migrated from poverty-stricken rural Bangladesh to sew for $2.00 a day, working 12- to 14-hour shifts six to seven days a week. (The minimum wage at the time was $38 a month.) A year on, half of the international brands associated with the largest disaster of its kind in history had yet to pay into the $40 million compensation fund set up by the UN for survivors and dependents.

By offering the lowest wages in the world, Bangladesh has become a powerhouse for the international garment industry, employing 4 million people and providing 80 percent of the nation's exports. In 2012, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimated that the country could double its apparel exports over the following ten years.

Just like Rana Plaza itself, the global garment industry is propelled forward with little regard for its workers' safety. The factories of the EPZ (Export Processing Zone), set among manicured lawns and operating under their own laws, are off-bounds to photographers, while many of the larger factories outside this area, employing as many as 10,000 workers each, provide stage-managed and guided "tours" for the international press.

I decided to visit some of the smaller, more accessible operations, the sweatshops that produce clothing under contract for local buyers. Among the adult laborers, I found children from impoverished rural villagessome as young as ten years oldworking for free under two-year training contracts. I also discovered children sleeping on the concrete floors. With clothing and fabric often piled to the ceiling and windows barred, these lesser-known, less scrutinized sweatshops continue to crank out their products amid uninspected fire hazards and with no regard for child labor laws.

A Keraniganj garment worker takes a nap. Laborers are paid per piece of clothing produced. Many come here from the impoverished countryside and sleep on concrete floors within the factories.

A child of unknown age works in Keraniganj, which is home to hundreds of small garment factories that produce clothing for regional distribution.

The garment district of Old Dhaka

Photo via Wikimedia Commons user Photographersnature

Read: Scientists Say Climate Change Is Making California's Drought Even Worse

Last week, water authorities in Los Angeles and Las Vegas announced that they were in talks to make a deal that seemed too outlandish to be true: Las Vegas was going to provide Los Angeles with water. Now, according to Southern California Public Radio, that deal is really happening.

On Thursday, Las Vegas signed off on a $45 million agreement to provide 300,000 LA homes with water from Lake Mead, the reservoir created by the Hoover Dam. Lake Mead, to refresh your memory, is less of a lake, and more of a "fuck you" to God that allows America's Southwest to have green lawns and golf courses for no reason.

But of course, now California is in the middle of one of worst droughts in its recorded history, and God is returning that "fuck you," as recent photos of Lake Mead suggest:

Photo via Pixabay.com

Lake Mead and other reservoirs along the Colorado River help keep cities like San Diego and Phoenixas well as Las Vegas and Los Angelesalive. Lake Mead is the largest of these reservoirs, and the drought ravaging the Southwest has recently brought it down to 38 percent capacity, its lowest level ever.

So if you imagined that this new deal means water will be piped to Los Angeles from a big water tower in Las Vegas, that's not right. Instead, imagine that water not being piped to Las Vegas from a rapidly-drying lake in the middle of the desert, and instead being piped to Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles area Metropolitan Water District board still has to vote on the deal this coming week, but since Los Angeles desperately needs the water, it looks like the vote is just a formality. If the deal is approved, LA will essentially be buying 150,000 acre-feet of water, and since one acre-foot translates to approximately two house-years, that's 300,000 households that don't have to die of thirst in the next year.

John Entsminger of the water authority in Las Vegas says his city has water to spare because since 2002, residents there have cut their use by almost a third. Nonetheless, the chief of Metropolitan Water District, Jeffrey Kightlinger says that the deal is temporary, and insists that Los Angeles will sell all this water back the minute Las Vegas needs it.

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It's a harrowing time to be young and brown in America. Our blood is spilt and our bodies are sacrificed often before we even get a chance to know the world or ourselves. And even when we survive adolescence with our bodies intact, our minds are left battered by the psychological war that's been waged against us. Artists of color deal with this bullshit in different ways. Some veer into unrepentant angst, some escape the pain through excess... But for Destiny, there's beauty and hope in the struggle and she expresses that bright optimism in the face adversity all over her new album, Honeysuckle.

Fittingly, the record reaches back to the late 60s and 70sanother time of social upheavalfor inspiration. With a varied genre palette of disco, blues, folk, and soul, Destiny explores the plight of people of color in the 12-bar album closer "Brown Girl Blues" and lifts up her sisters with what KRS-One would call "confidence sandwiches" in the braggadocios "Sugarplum." Altogether, the album is a feminist, socially conscious, sonically adventurous, and extremely confident effort.

It's also a new direction for an artist we've always had a hard time pinning down. We first met Destiny Nicole Frasqueri back in 2013, when she went by the name Wavy Spice and had just released the anti-social banger "Versace Hottie." But just as quick as the blogs and fashion magazines started to take notice, she switched gears and became Princess Nokia. It was under that name that she released her breakout, afro-futurist album, Metallic Butterfly, last year.

In a phone conversation I had with Destiny last week, I asked her why she had decided to change her name again and ditch the techno-terrorist aesthetic for a new Soul Train-inspired look and sound. For her, the answer was pretty simple: She grew up.

"I tried to make a Metallic Butterfly part two, but it just didn't feel representative of my life. I was speaking at Harvard and touring around the country. I had become a grown woman and a professional musician... I had surpassed all the things in my life they said I couldn't."

" like who I am as a woman. I am still a young girl, but this is my coming of age. I feel very independent and full of attitude and I sure as hell have a lot of things to say."

Honeysuckle carries the same DNA as her previous records (including production from frequent collaborator, OWWWLS), but it definitely reflects the evolution of an artist who's found her own voiceone that can be sweet, alluring, or defiant at a whim. Of course, she's not Beyonce. But why would she even want to be when she can be Destiny? As she told me over the phone, "I am not the best singer in the worldbut this is about art and what art truly is, is when you can make your disabilities beautiful."

She's definitely accomplished that with Honeysuckle. But the music isn't the only thing that is beautiful, her message is, too. We're living in a time when young black and brown people have to remind those in power that their lives actually matter. Although we have to continue to fight those battles, Destiny's songs go at length to impart feelings of fun and good times with the hope that we don't forfeit our happiness when we face off against oppression.

"As a people, we have to challenge ourselves to escape the negativity. We can't succumb to the darkness. I'm trying to push the boundaries of spreading peace and love and positive ideas."

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Who are they?
Johnetta Elzie, known as Netta, is a 26-year-old field organizer for Amnesty International. Deray McKesson, 30, grew up in Baltimore, and was a public school administrator in Minneapolis before becoming politically active. Both are leading civil rights activists in the Black Lives Matter movement.

Do you know them?
That depends. If you've been paying attention to the rise of #BlackLivesMatter over the past year, or you're plugged into the teeming cultural force that is Black Twitter, then Netta and Deray have definitely come across your radar. As a generation of young black people take to the streets to protest high profile police killings, these two have become the leading sources of information on, and for, the movement. As with many new movements, Black Lives Matter doesn't have designated spokespeople, so activists who can access organizers and share information from the field have often become the de facto leaders themselves.

Both Netta and Deray have been involved in the movement since the summer of 2014, when, in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown, they began the "This Is The Movement" newsletter, which became the go-to source of information on the protests in Ferguson.

As the movement swelled, Deray and Netta expanded their efforts, startingWe the Protesters, an online resource aimed at supporting protests against police violence nationwide with features like a map of all police killings in the US, and toolkits on how to protest effectively.

By acting as a sort of bat-signal for the movement, Netta and Deray have gained a national profileearlier this year, Fortune ranked the pair at No. 11 on its list of the World's Greatest Leaders, 12 spots ahead of Elon Musk. Speaking to Wolf Blitzer from Baltimore during the protests over Freddie Gray's death this year, Deray's polite but righteous smackdown went viral, resonating with those angered by the media's focus on misbehavior by the protesters.

Election Class of 2016: Ted Cruz Is Crazy Like a Fox

Why are they important in 2016?
As the Black Lives Matter evolves politically, Deray and Netta have been at the forefront of the movement's efforts to shape the Democratic Party's presidential primaryefforts that could help determine the winner in 2016. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have dealt with highly publicized disruptions of their campaign events by Black Lives Matter organizers, who are calling on the black community to make sure their votes are not taken for granted by the Democratic Party.

The incidents have left Democratic candidates scrambling to speak to the concerns of the movement. After a series of embarrassments, Sanders eventually responded by posting a "Racial Justice" plan on his campaign website, and hiring a young black civil right organizer as his new press secretary. Clinton, meanwhile, has gotten a mixed response to remarks she gave in a private meeting with Black Lives Matter organizers in New Hampshire, a video of which was leaked online.

WATCH: VICE HBO Host Thomas Morton's Debriefs Our Episode on Police Militarization

The Establishment Left has similarly realized that it needs to pay heed to the movement. At its annual summer meeting this year, the Democratic National Committee passed an official resolution in support of Black Lives Matter. Now, as the 2016 primary race tightens up, and candidates compete more fiercely for the support of black voters, the movement's influence is only expected to grow.

Despite their repeated insistence that Black Lives Matter is leaderless, Netta and Deray have increasingly been asked to represent the movement on the political stage. Increasingly, they are using their media popularity and access to candidates to include a push for serious policy reform. Last month, Netta and Deray, along with fellow activists Samuel Sinyangwe and Brittany Packnett, unveiled Campaign Zero, a ten-part policy proposal to "end police violence in America." It's the most specific policy agenda released by members of the movement to date, and leaves the 2016 candidates little wiggle room when it comes to racial justice. The Campaign Zero website even includes a section that tracks where presidential aspirants stand on the movement's agenda.

The political world has taken note. Last week, the plan's four authors met with Sanders in Washington, DC, before sitting down with Obama's senior advisor Valerie Jarrett at the White House.

What do they want?

Photo by Guillaume Paumier via

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

There are few certainties in this life. However, one thing we can know with almost absolute certainty is that, before today, nobody with any regard for their own happiness had ever imagined what it might look like if British Prime Minister David Cameron put his penis inside the mouth of a dead pig.

Until this morning. Because this morning, the Daily Mail reported an allegation that while at Oxford University, the Prime Minister took part in an initiation event for the notoriously debauched Piers Gaveston Society that apparently involved inserting "a private part of his anatomy into the animal's mouth." And just like that, imageshorrible, traumatizing imagesbegan to enter our minds: Cameron, red-faced and perspiring, glancing furtively around the room at all the older boys, grinningbut a sort of rigid, not-quite-letting-loose grin, like when you're just about to beat someone at Mario Kart but still need to concentrate quite hardas he desecrates the animal's motionless face, his paper-white ass tense and sinewy as it pounds back and forth in a drafty Oxford chamber. We're not saying this is what happened, of courseor that anything happened. But it is what some people might be imagining.

Downing Street has issued a statement saying they "do not recognize" the allegations, made in an unauthorized biography of the Prime Minister by peer Lord Ashcroft. So far, that's the only kind of response they've given, and it's a disappointingly brief one. So what we thought we'd do is ask some PR experts what else Cameron could be doing now that he's taking a ribbing in the press. Unsurprisingly, a lot of them didn't want to talk to us, presumably because having your company name associated with pig fucking on Google isn't a great way to win clients.

WATCH: Our documentary about the new wave of young Conservatives:

However, here's what the ones who spoke to us would say, starting with Chris Rogers, Head of Public Relations at Whitehouse Consultancy:

"No comment" can come across quite badly and can be seen as a tacit acceptance of allegations. Given the nature of the allegations made against the Prime Minister, it's important his team issued as strongly worded a denial as possible. They will also need to establish what, if any, other accusations might be made within the book so they can be ready to respond to these as well. But any statement has to be carefully worded. If it emerges that even part of the allegations could be substantiated, a very strongly worded denial could lead to accusations of lying and would prolong the story.

I then spoke to Adam Powell, Senior Director at Ogilvy PR. He fired over an email, laying out a pretty comprehensive plan:

There has not been an outright denial from No.10instead, the oblique description that "we don't recognize" the account is used, which is never convincing.

Labour and not have used "does not recognize" as a response. That is too well established as a PR wriggle sometimes used by people who can't actually look you in the eye and say it's a pack of lies.

His best strategy will be to say as little as possible. Let the media, political opponents, others have their fun. It will pass. Maybe not a seven-day wonder. Perhaps 70 days. The lasting impression will simply be that Cameron may have been fairly wild when he was a student. Um, thank God! The thought that he might have always been a squeaky clean and shiny "head boy" type all his life would be too depressing to think about. Most of us did wild, tasteless, stupid things at uni. Then we grew up. We expect to be judged as we are, not as we were.

So there you have it: expert advice from a group of experts about what to do if you ever find yourself in the position Cameron has found himself in today.

Follow Sirin on Twitter.

Uyen Vu

If you get arrested and charged with a crime in America, a judge will people get arrested in America, a judge will generally set your bailthe amount of money you can put down to stay out of jail until your trial. Many people can't afford bail, a situation which has led to some calls for reform, but it's generally possible to get a bondsman to put up bail for you. If you don't show up for court, a warrant will be issued for your arrest and the court sends a notice to the bondsman saying they have 180 days to produce you or forfeit the full bail amount.

That's where Uyen Vu comes in.

Vu is a Las Vegas-based bounty hunter who says she's been shooting guns since she was three and says she got her second-degree black belt from the Shaolin Temple in China; according to her, she's the only active female bounty hunter with a license in the state of Nevada. Bondsmen hire her to bring in the criminals who've skipped bail and sometimes left town.

In the past, she's chased sex workers across state lines in the company of their pimp, and once witnessed an elderly lady scale a six-foot wall. We caught up with her to discuss the ins and outs of her odd career.

VICE: Howdid you become a bounty hunter?
Uyen Vu: I grew up watching Bruce Lee movies and I becamea martial arts instructorI owned my own school. After I sold it, I waslooking for a change. My friends in law enforcement suggested I try working with them, but Ididn't want to wear a uniform, drive a cruiser, or work my way up.

I have a hard time taking orders frompeople, especially if they're dumber than me. I've been shooting a gun since Iwas three years old, so they said: "Have you ever thought about being a bounty hunter?" I did some ride-alongs with bounty hunters I got connected with to get the feel of itandI was hooked!

Howdo you become licensed as a bounty hunter?
In Nevada it's an 80-hour course. It's eighthours a day, until the hours are upno days off. There's a lecture part thatlasts three or four days, covering criminal law, how bonds work, and how to workwith bail bond agents. Then there's training in firearms and hand to handcombat. I went on to become the instructor for those classes.

How did you start building a name for yourself in this profession?
When I first started, I went around the bondsmen's offices and they gave me the cases they'd given up on. It was no risk to themif I didn't solve the case, I wouldn't get paid. So I worked the cases no one else wanted to work anymore and I produced results. That weeds out a lot of people getting into the industry because they can't afford to spend their own time and gas money working these cases. There's a big portion of people who don't make it.

Do any of your past cases stand out as especially interesting?
There was a prostitute from Reno who skipped bail on a $10,000 bond. I called the guy who'd put up her bail. The file said he was her boyfriend, but I said to him: "Let's be realyou were her pimp." He didn't want to help me find her, but I said, "Right now, you're on the hook for $10,000just for the bond. I haven't even given you a bill for my services yet." When I investigate people, I charge by the hourthe longer I spend looking for her, the more my fees are going to rack up.

He agreed to help me look for her. I drove six hours to Reno to pick him up from his mother's house. I was wearing my badge, with my gun on a holster. We drove to San Francisco but when we got there, we heard she'd moved on to Santa Maria in California. We drove another six hours. I was tired but it wasn't like I could say, "Hey, you mind taking the wheel for a minute?"

As we were getting to Santa Maria, I started getting frustrated and began wishing to myself: Dear Lord, please, I just want to get there and see her walking around! The funny thing is, a block from the exit, the pimp saw her. We drove towards her, but she saw the pimp and started running. We began to chase her and then the police stopped the car. I told 'em I'm a bounty hunter and I showed them the case file. They said, "You know the rules, you're meant to call us when you're coming into town." I said I just got off the exit and they let us carry on.

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So I'm back on the chase and I saw her running ahead. She hops into some random stranger's truck and the pimp says, "What do we do now?" I say, "Dude, she's hopped in some random guy's truck, what's she going to do?" He goes, "She'll probably offer him some services."

The pimp said the girls use a website when they work where they post their pictures, what area they're in, and their rates. So we went to the motel she was staying at and waited for her to show up. Forty minutes later, the truck pulls into the motel. I speak to the motel owner and show him my badge and my case file and ask if this girl was renting a room from him. He points to her room and I said, "I need the keys. If you don't give me the keys, I'm gonna kick your door down and you're gonna have to repair it, so which one d'you want?" The owner's like, "Here's the keys!"

So I go to the door and listen to her talking the guy through her rates. I wait 'til she's into the act, 'cause that way she can't run as fastthen I open the door. She's on her knees and I say, "This is not a good day for you." Then I say to the guy, "Sorry bro but you ain't getting what you think you're getting!"

For more on crime, watch our doc 'China's Elite Female Bodyguards':

Arethere any other cases you won't forget?
I had a traffic warrant for a 60-something-year-oldlady. She didn't stop at a stop sign, she made an illegal lane changebasicstuff. So we go to this lady's house and I told my partner to cover the back. There's a brick wall at the back of her garden and mypartner says, "She's in her 60s and this wall's six feet tallwhere's she gonna go?"

So we both go to the front and knock on thedoor. There's movement in the houseI see the blinds moving. We get into the house but she's run out theback, jumping the six-foot wall. Why would a 63-year-old lady run away from some traffic warrants?

We search the house and upstairs we found a sealedoff room where she was growing weed inside. The police confiscated all theweed; she could have avoided that if she didn't hop a wall.

Howdo you charge for what you do?
I can charge by the hour, plus a flat rate of $350, or 10 percent of the bondwhichever's greater. As you build up your clientele, you cannegotiate your fees. I send an itemized list of my expenses and when I travelout of state, my rate automatically doubles.

Once the defendant is in custody, my paymentis due on demand. My clients know I get results. They put a blank check in themail when I take on a case. If I have a new client, I tell them, "You gotta have thecash when I show up with the defendant in cuffs. If you don't have my money, Iturn around and cut 'em loose." I set the tone. Some clients ask me to send apicture, to show I've caught 'em, and I'll say no, they can see them when we physically get there. I'm not here to take pictures for you to post on Facebook.

"I've had people kneel on the ground and grab me by my leg, begging me. But it would have been easier if you went to court. That's all you had to do."

Howdo defendants react when you catch up with them?
They all put on a hard exterior, at first,but the longer the ride to the detention center, the more they simmer down. I'vehad people crying. I ignore 'em; I don't care. "You want a napkin?" I've hadpeople kneel on the ground and grab me by my leg, begging me. But it would have been easier if you went to court,that's all you had to do.

How do you feel about working in such a male-dominated industry?
When I first started doing ride-alongs to learn about catching defendants who'd skipped bail, the male bounty hunters would try to spook me out. They'd always tell me to take the back of houses we'd be searching for people, so I'd be stuck in the dark, in the middle of the night every time. They were trying to scare me off and they got kicks out of it. But I dealt with it and I earned their respect. I don't shy away from challenges.

Are the people you go after surprised to meet a female bounty hunter?
Yes, and that works for me. In the beginning, I would knock on the door and go, "Hey, I'm the girl from the officethey sent me to get some paperwork signed." They'd open the door and then I'd say, "Right, I need you to turn round and put your hands behind your back!"

People underestimate me, but that can be good for my job. I've been told my tattoos make me look intimidating and that's not just for show. If you try me, you'll find it's real. I've told guys before: "This is your first warning, it's also your last. You want to mouth off and be a jerk to me, I'm gonna Taser you. Fuck you prickI warned you!" I don't mess around. I'm not there to play games.

What's your plan for the future?
I just opened up a bail bonds , so now I don't just take people to jail, I get 'em out, too. In the future I'd like to open offices in other states. I've kind of got this industry covered.

Follow Samantha Rea on Twitter.

A screenshot of something possibly not going right in 'Kerbal Space Program,' via Steam

The worst thing about obsessive-compulsive disorder is that it lies to you. For something called a "disorder," it convinces you that you're doing things over and over again to create order, rather than chaosto stave off a lack of control in your life. Terrifying lacks of control, like becoming unwell and having your body rebel against you, or having your house burgled. Turning that light switch off and on again 30 times before you leave for work just feels... right. It makes sense to you, because you lack the life-saving objectivity of a third party.

I've had severe OCD since I was a child, and was only formally diagnosed and treated for it as an adult. Six months of high-intensity cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) helped me get to a point where I had a series of coping strategies to prevent me from becoming Mr. Lightswitch. But what was interesting was the way in which I noticed my interaction with video games starting to changeareas of my life in which I had far more control than normal, where I could be found building rockets, planning cities, saving soldiers, and finding treasure. In a land where I could live as a god, my behavior was starting to veer away from the benefits of omnipotence.

For someone like me, a game like Kerbal Space Program is a minefield of Things That I Have to Control or Everything Goes Wrong. The thing about OCD is that it's a disorder that forces you to avoid ever looking at the forest, crushing your face into the bark of a single tree so hard you can't hear your own common sense. Kerbal Space Program functions similarly, as a space agency simulator in which you build intricate rockets, planes, and other aerospace tech and pilot it using a variety of incredibly intricate controls. A single tap of a button can cause a crash. A badly placed release mechanism can kill three brave astronauts.

The parallel here, for me, is leaving the house. I lock the door. I check the windows. I lock the door again. I check the door. I realize people might be staring at me if they've noticed, but I keep checking the door. I start to panic, and tears start to make their way out of my ducts. I become a shaking, nervous mess, and it's because I'm trying to make sure we don't get robbed and nobody dieseven though I know I locked the door.

I didn't check the ship. I didn't alter the design. I launched, I watched it crash, and I kept going. I forced the guilt down and I did it over and over again.

CBT taught me that actually, an unlocked front door is not the sole cause of burglaries, and over time, I stopped checking the front door as much. I started walking away and living my life. When it came to launching rockets in Kerbal Space Program, I realized that, realistically, my desire to see what happens when I hit the launch button was so great, my desire to live, to experience things, that I was willing to take the risk. I didn't check the ship. I didn't alter the design. I launched, I watched it crash, and I kept going. I forced the guilt down and I did it over and over again.

When it comes to environments that we can design, those with OCD, you'll find, tend to organize things slightly differently. Not noticeably, but they will set themselves up in a way that minimizes their anxieties. Creating areas in games in god sims and real-time strategy titles has long been the same for me. Obsessive behavior relating to symmetry and counting often led to me wasting time, resources and doing worse in games. Everything had to fit. Nothing could feel out of place. It was frustrating, and difficult to work through.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's short film from the Guide to Mental Health, 'Maisie'

Playing Cities: Skylines has helped me face up to this problem and push past it. Sure, I still like pretty, organized cities, and at first, I was carefully planning things out before realizing that as a city expands, it needs to change, rewrite itselfbuildings must come down in favor of highways, and houses must make way for apartments. It forces you to accept change or failits consequences, rare for a video game, can feel as severe as those in real life, in that sense, for those with this kind of anxiety.

But it also teaches you a similar lesson to the one you'll learn as you slowly start to cope and deal with your OCDto let go and see what happens. Kerbal Space Program is similar, with both titles encouraging you to just hit the button, and let your greatest adventure become the simple act of finding out what will be. The most important lesson I've learned when dealing with my disorder is that I cannot always control what happens, but I can control how I react to it.

Video games become therapy of a sort, enabling you to put yourself in anxiety-causing situations and push through them as a training simulator for the risks, trials, and tribulations of reality.

Jamie Madigan, psychology and games design theorist and author of Getting Gamers: The Psychology of Video Games and Their Impact on the People Who Play Them, tells me that games can be a good environment in which we can learn to take greater risks and explore without the danger. "We can not only set our own goals, but take whatever paths we want to get to them. What city planner in the real world could simply bulldoze a high-income suburb simply to make room for a football stadium? Real life is full of compromises and restrictions, and for good reasons. Video games are much more less so by design and let you experiment and experience more meaningful choices."

This is the important thing about video games for people with a lifelong fear of risk. By constantly showing you that taking considerable risks can lead to great rewards, it encourages you to start pushing yourself that little bit more in real life. In that sense, video games become therapy of a sort, enabling you to put yourself in anxiety-causing situations and push through them as a training simulator for the risks, trials, and tribulations of reality.

A screenshot from 'Cities: Skylines,' via Steam

I ask Jamie what he thinks of taking risks in games, and why we do it, when real-life risk is scary enough to put the fear in us even when we realize these fears in the media we engage with. "Because they let us," he replies. "Consequences are generally less severe and often don't involve complicated things like reputation or opportunity costs. And they pay off quicklyminutes or hours instead of months and years." This constant, accelerated feedback format can be helpfulwe're seeing the long-term benefits in games and it can help us to perceive them in real life.

Read on Motherboard: My Game of Life

It's possible to push the concept of irreversible risk even further, by playing games that remove your option for manual saves and enforce permanent choice. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a great example of this, with its Ironman mode making every soldier's death permanent, and refusing to allow you to undo your mistakes, but allowing you to continue forward and learn from them. It's a good life lesson in general, but when you're trying to physically force yourself to use the same hand for your wallet that you used to hold onto the escalator handrail, lest you look like you're reaching for a gun in a train station, it's a vital one.

We're used to using games as something to alleviate depression, but when it comes to disorders like OCD, it's easy to think of them as too complex to address with a bunch of bullets and space aliens. But using video games to train those with OCD that risks can be adventure, and that you can't control everything save for how you react, is important. We're allowing people to find their own healthy way of using media to treat problems, and for me, launching rockets and building suburbs has allowed me to explore ongoing issues I still face and treat them with little experiments in pushing my fear of risk. I am not my illnessjust an aerospace engineer working on his nerves, and a city planner deliberately placing something asymmetrically and gritting his teeth.

If you feel that you are experiencing mental health problems, there are many organizations and charities that you can turn to for advice. For US readers, visit the Mental Health America website.

Follow Christos Reid on Twitter.

All photos by Lazarus Marinkovic unless otherwise stated

This article originally appeared on VICE Serbia.

Yesterday, Serbia hosted its annual Gay Pride parade, as well as the country's first Trans Pride march. Overall, the atmosphere in Belgrade felt far more relaxed than previous years, which seems a like strange thing to say, given that the city was filled with thousands of riot cops, undercover police offices, armored vehicles, water cannons, and helicopters.

While Trans Pride attracted roughly 100 or so people earlier in the day, media estimates for the Gay Pride march vary from 500 all the way up to 2,000 attendees. The only thing that people seem to be able to agree on is that the Serbian gay community represented the day's lowest demographic turnout. Instead, the parade was mostly populated by journalists, local and foreign politicians, absurd amounts of plain-clothes police officers, and activists from abroad, while the Serbians themselves stayed at home.

For safety reasons, participants couldn't come within 500 yards of the march, unless they used one of the official entranceswhich were basically police checkpointsat very specific times. Not far away from the parade route, about a dozen supporters of the fringe Real Serbian Orthodox Church were praying and shouting about how "homosexuality must be punished."

The protesters were held outside the cordon, but following the march were permitted to march along part of Pride's route to, as they say, "consecrate and cleanse" the streets, remove any leftover flags, and then declare a pitiful victory.

Related: Watch VICE News's documentary, 'Young and Gay in Belgrade':

According to media reports, 54 peopleincluding a notorious football hooligan once sentenced for pushing a flare into a police officer's mouthwere preventatively detained for "planning to attack the parade."

The police were able to keep order throughout the day, but, unfortunately, it's an illusion of safety. While the parade went off without a hitch, Serbian homosexuals still live in fear of attacks and oppression every day.

Scroll down for more photographs of the day:

Trans Pride

Journalists filled the area

International gay rights activists

Gay Pride

Local activist Ms. Mira

Members of the Real Serbian Orthodox Church. Photo by Stefan Veselinovi

Holy water. Photo by Stefan Veselinovi

Police holding back anti-Pride protesters. Photo by Stefan Veselinovi

Friendsor, to use its proper stylization, F.R.I.E.N.D.Swas a cultural phenomenon so powerful that a decade after its launch thousands gathered in parks across New York to watch the finale on big screens. The show, which ran for ten seasons, featured six quirky friends who acted as mirrors for your own gaggle of pals and associates. Stupidity, sarcasm, anxiety, ditziness, paranoia, affability. These are the Friends, your friends, all of our friends. Friends.

I never really got Friends. To me it was just a TV show with some OK jokes. I imagine, when it comes down to it, that's what it was for most people. So I didn't really understand the logic of FriendsFestan exhibition on East London's Brick Lane featuring real-life recreations of the apartments and coffee shops that Ross, Rachel, Bilbo, Mr. Floppy, Trev-Trev, and Marmalade used to frequent, like an IKEA that had suddenly been deserted sometime in the mid 90s.

I went down to talk to some friends, people, lovers, cohortsI lie, they were all strangersto find out what all the fuss is about.

Jody, 22, Florence, 21, Becky, 21

VICE: What brought you here?
Becky: We are massive Friends fans.

I see. When did you first start watching it?
Florence: I dunno.
Becky: I think I started watching it in 2004 when it ended. That's when I got into it because it was the whole hype about the ending, so I started watching it.

What do you like so much about it?
Becky: It's timeless and it's relatable because they do actual things!
Florence: It's kind of the dream New York apartment.

So did you all start watching it after it had finished?
Jody: But it started in '94, didn't it? So we were kind of 0

Do you think it's better than Seinfeld, then?
Jenni: What's Seinfeld? I don't even know what that is.

And with that they invited me outside so I could take their picture next to the famous intro credits fountain, in the drizzle, on a Wednesday night. Though these people may not have come together through Friends, their friendship simply is Friends, and all the schmaltzy, hackneyed fun that comes with it.

Friends is you and your friends. It's sticking together, for better or for worse, laughing, crying, smiling, fighting, kissing, sharing, loving. It's the genesis of a hundred feel-good memes, tumblr image macros of chilling with your bros and broettes. It's what we turn to when we need to make sure our shaky quarter lives are steadily on track. These people showed me that, and for that I thank them.

I'll be there for you
(When the rain starts to pour)
I'll be there for you
(Like I've been there before)
I'll be there for you
('Cause you're there for me tooooooo)

Follow Joe Bish on Twitter.

Screencap of 'Empire' via Fox

Tomorrow night, Empire returns to televisions, Hulu accounts, and however else people watch TV shows these days. It is difficult to explain how popular this show is, other than to use plain numbers: Empire's season-one finale garnered over 17 million viewers. That's hugefor comparison, Mad Men's much-anticipated series finale only drew in 3.3 million. I've already had a sneak peak at Empire's second season, and I can confidently say that the show carries on the great traditions that it established in the first season. Season two will be full of bombast, ripped-from-the-headlines plots, elaborate musical set pieces, eye-popping cameos, pop-culture tie-ins, and more melodrama than you can shake a stick at. Millions of people will watch it, and regardless of why they tune in, they will be extremely happy.

When it debuted in January of this year, Empire became a full-blown pop culture phenomenon, accomplishing the rare feat of building its viewership week over week. After two episodes, the show was renewed for a second season, another rare feat.

Empire's first season was, well, a lot. It managed to touch on sex, lies, murder, secret love children, the Nation of Islam, drug addiction, cuckold fetishes, and an extended arc involving Courtney Love inexplicably playing a blue-eyed soul singer. Characters displayed a Glee-ish tendency to resolve personal drama by breaking out into song. If a bad decision could have possibly been made, you bet your ass a character was more than willing to make it and relish in the resulting fallout. It was pure, pulpy perfection wrapped in a hip-hop sheen.

Taraji P. Henson's Cookie is one of the most entertaining TV characters since The Fonz.

Empire starts off by introducing us to Lucious Lyon, played by Terrence Howard, the head of Empire Records, the biggest rap label in the known universe. He announces to his childrenthe hotheaded Hakeem, the introverted musical genius Jamal, and the scheming Andrethat he's got ALS and is going to die soon, but needs an heir to run the label once he takes it public. Just then, his wife Cookie, who's been in the slammer for years, gets released, and all biblical hell breaks loose. By the end of season one, more members of the family are murderers than not, everyone has made strategic alliances with each other and then gone back on them, and each character has become entangled in a web of deception so complex that even they themselves don't know what's true any more.

With popularity comes influence, and as Empire became a cultural juggernaut, it became less of a reflection of popular culture and more of an active projector of it. A lot of this had to do with its musicsuper-producer Timbaland served as the soundtrack's guiding hand, and though none of the songs from its soundtrack ended up becoming the anthemic hits that they were in the show, they sounded close enough to the real thing that it didn't matter. Star after star popped up throughout the show, which did the same neat trick that Entourage always did, where the cameos led to the suspension of the viewer's disbeliefit's easier to buy that Empire Records is the greatest label in all the land because hey, there's Snoop Dogg onstage, playing himself and performing his new single, talking about how great Lucious is.

Even though it's certainly a smart show made by very smart people, it's safe to say Empire's not shooting for minimalism here. Rather, it's of the Gossip Girl school of doing way too much, spinning artlessness into high art, and generally ricocheting between "self-aware hot mess" status and just plain old "hot mess" in the most enjoyable way possible. Terrence Howard's Lucious Lyon is a musical icon of Jay Z's status with the business savvy of Diddy and the ruthlessness of Cash Money impresario Birdman. But his wife Cookie, played with panache and flair by Taraji P. Henson, has a bit of Suge Knight's behind-the-scenes savvy in her: It was her drug money that funded Empire, her vision that crafted Lucious's signature sound, and it was her who took the fall when the heat came down on both of them. Youngest son Hakeem is a clear stand-in for Kid Ink or Tyga: a technically skilled if ultimately uninteresting also-ran who struggles to find his voice and sense of self underneath the trappings of wealth and the crushing weight of his Boosie Fade. Middle son Jamal has the pipes of Usher and the mystique of Frank Ocean, and his conflicted relationship with his own homosexuality closely mirrors the attitudes of hip-hop at large towards the subject. And though the bitter eldest son Andre's lack of musical talent makes him the clear black sheep of the family, his greed and Machiavellian business savvy suggests he's at least inherited something from his parents.

Where Gossip Girl essentially took the backstabbery and romantic mishaps of Shakespeare and applied it to wealthy Upper East Side teens, Empire draws liberally from MacBeth, King Lear, as well as Oedipus Rex. The three sons are driven by their desire to take Lucious's power and more or less possess Cookie. This is especially true for Hakeem, who pursues sexual relationships with older women and goes so far as to bed his father's fiance Anika.

Like any great Greek tragedy, much of Empire's action has already occurred: Lucious and Cookie were an impoverished couple with big musical dreams, dealing drugs on the streets of Philadelphia just to get by. When the heat came down on them, Cookie took the fall so that Lucious could make it big. But in his rise to power, Lucious made more enemies than he could count, including pretty much everybody in his own family. He never visited Cookie in prison. He emotionally and physically abused Jamal, whose sexuality he couldn't quite comprehend. He more or less ignored Andre, who despite his intelligence and loyalty, can never quite do enough. Hakeem is his clear favorite, but the constant pressure to follow in his father's footsteps slowly destroys him from the inside.

As the company prepares to go public, Lucious's past sins return to haunt him, one by one. Still, what binds the Lyons might be their warped sense of loyalty to each other: Even when at their most selfish, everyone in the family has managed to conflate the interests of the family with their own. When you think your success trickles down to everyone around you, even betrayal becomes an act of love.

Screencap of 'Empire' via Fox

Part of why Empire works so well is Lucious's lingering creepiness and total amorality. Terrence Howard inhabits the character with such ease that it can't help but make you recall his recent Rolling Stone profile, in which the actor revealed himself to be as crazy as he is abjectly shitty. Amid his claims of having invented a new form of mathematics, he also shows he isn't really above any of Lucious's double- and triple-crossings. Luckily, there's way more to Empire than Howard, and by the beginning of the show's second season, he's effectively taken a backseat to Cookie and his kids, only periodically baring his teeth or committing some sort of unthinkable crime in order to advance the plot. Meanwhile, Taraji P. Henson's Cookie has quickly become one of the most entertaining TV characters since The Fonz. She's a chaotic neutral who irrevocably alters the air whenever she enters a room, and Henson manages to imbue her with an essential humanity that makes her feel real despite constantly referring to herself in the third person, rocking gowns that look like seeing-eye puzzles, and doing stuff like challenging a rapper to a drinking contest in order to keep him at the family's label.

On Noisey: A Tribute to the Gloriously Crappy Mall Rock of the Past

There's a certain balance you've got to maintain in a show's second season, between giving viewers more of what they want and not simply hitting the same beats over again. To his credit, Empire showrunner Lee Daniels seems to understand this, promising to Vanity Fair that in season two, "We show Cookie and Lucious's family and friends that are still in the ghetto, and their sense of loss to a community that they were once associated with."

Still, Daniels also knows what his show does besthe also told Vanity Fair, "There's fashion! Sex! Intrigue! Fights! Catfights with weave pulling and pearls dripping to the floor! Bloodshed! And more sex!" In a world where more is more, Empire is king.

Follow Drew on Twitter.

The second season of Empire premieres Wednesday night at 9 PM on Fox.

Pope Francis meets with President Obama at the Vatican in March 2014. Photo via Official White House Flickr feed

This story was co-published with the Marshall Project.

Your Holiness,

You are preparing to visit the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in northeast Philadelphia, where on Sunday morning you will speak to a group of jailed men and women. We assume you know that your visitlike the one made a few months ago by President Barack Obama to El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahomacomes at a particularly acute moment of focus on the country's criminal justice system and its problems. Although much of the press coverage of your visit has been about the chair you will sit in (prisoners are building it), a local magazine has wondered whether your visit will "shame City Hall into fixing its atrocious prison problem."

Activists, civil rights lawyers, and many of the men incarcerated at Curran-Fromhold hope your visit will call attention to the jail's woes, which include published videos of beatings by officers, as well as much-litigated conditions of overcrowding. Jail commissioner Lou Giorla hopes your visit will help promote the jail's goals of "community ties and family reunification," parts of his attempts to make sure men and women who leave jail do not return.

The two sides to this story are broadly reflective of the current national conversation on criminal justice. Since you have added your voice to that conversation, at least for the moment, we'd like to share with youand the audience that will be following your every stepwhat we have learned about this jail. Although it houses only 3,000 of the 2.2 million Americans currently incarcerated, Curran-Fromhold is as clear an illustration of the current issues facing the American justice system as you could ask for.

Beginning in the 1970s, policymakers around the US responded to high crime rates by lengthening sentences and toughening enforcement, inaugurating what the National Research Council recently called a "historically unprecedented and internationally unique" rise in incarceration. Philadelphia played a role in this story through Mayor Frank Rizzo, a former police commissioner nicknamed "Rizzo the Raider." First elected in 1971,he trumpeted harsh policing, and once said during a campaign, "I'm going to make Attila the Hun look like a faggot."

Ever since the 1970s, the city has faced lawsuits from civil rights attorneys on the subject of overcrowding in the facilities, arguing that inmates are subjected to "dangerous, unsanitary, severely overcrowded, degrading, and cruel conditions of confinement." The latest of these is Williams et al. v. City of Philadelphia, resolved in 2008 and then reopened in 2012. Right now, a federal court is allowing investigators for the plaintiffs to assess conditions. "I'm sure they'll clean up for the pope's visit," David Rudovsky, the lead lawyer on the overcrowding lawsuit, told us.

Ironically, Curran-Fromhold was opened in 1995 in part to deal with overcrowding. But by 2001 the Philadelphia Inquirer was reporting the system could no longer "keep pace with arrests," a problem, the newspaper noted, that had hit jails in Los Angeles, Indianapolis, and other large cities as police focused on making frequent arrests for low-level crimes. Many of the men and women arrested for these lesser crimes could not make bail, so they stayed. From 1999 to 2008, according to a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts, "the percentage of bed-days in the Philadelphia jails consumed by pretrial inmates on an annual basis rose from 44 percent of the total to 57 percent." In 2009, the Philadelphia Prison System, designed to hold roughly 8,000 people, was holding more than 9,000.

The numbers don't capture how these jails feel, though. Lawsuits against the conditions at Curran-Fromhold have described how three prisoners are sometimes housed in cells designed for two. The odd man out sleeps in a plastic cot on the floor called a "blue boat." One inmate, Everett Keith Thomas, scribbled on a handwritten federal complaint in October 2014, "I awakened to find mouse feces on my face and blanket in the blue boat." Jail officials say they are careful never to keep an inmate in a triple-cell for more than 45 days.

The jail has set up bunk beds in the storage rooms. The overcrowding is a concern for the correctional officers. "When you can't secure the inmates, anything can happen at night," Lorenzo North, the head of the Local 159 union, which represents correctional officers, said in 2006.

"It's still dangerous," he told us last month. Curran-Fromhold, built to hold 2016 prisoners, now holds 2894. One man currently incarcerated at Curran-Fromhold, Sylvester Paskel, vented in a letter to us about the conditions at the facility and enclosed a handwritten poem called "Will Things Change???" Here are a few of his lines:

"So don't be fooled by the powers that be, Pope Francis, it's all a facade, They may pull the wool over those who rule, But they can't hide the truth from God!"

You are probably aware that over the last few years there has been a major shift in the politics of criminal justice throughout the US. Philadelphia is no different, and city officials have begun to look at criminal justice reform for its own sakenot just to satisfy judges and civil rights lawyers.

Last year, the city received $750,000 from the US Justice Department to improve services for former jail inmates as they reenter the community. In May, the city was one of twenty to receive a grant of $150,000 from the MacArthur Foundation as a part of their Safety and Justice Challenge, which the city is using to analyze its criminal justice data and try to find ways to reduce the jail population. (If MacArthur is impressed, the city may be selected to receive up to $4 million for this project). In July, the city's likely next mayor, Jim Kenney, indicated that he might push for Philadelphia to eliminate cash bail for some pretrial defendants, allowing them to be supervised in the community rather than locked up, further easing the burden on the jail system.

"There's overcrowding and abuses, and you can find that in any agency, but there's also a lot of innovation going on, and it's having an impact," Lou Giorla, the commissioner of the Philadelphia Prison System, told us. "As you know, Philadelphia had a persistent and stubborn high crime rate, and we're not where we want to be, but...we looked at various subsets of the population, veterans, mentally ill, probation violators, areas where we thought people didn't need to be confined, or not for as long."

The city has increased use of house arrest and GPS monitoring and created specialized courts for veterans and people with mental health problems that aim to connect these groups with services in the community so they are less likely to commit more crimes. Giorla also touted district attorney Seth Williams' pilot program, called The Choice is Yours, which "offers nonviolent felony drug offenders a chance to avoid prison sentences and instead receive education and workforce training, along with social services and supports."

It is hard to imagine a bigger divide in rhetoric between Rizzo, the onetime mayor who talked about criminals as "vermin," and Giorla, who worries that "people want the criminal justice system to fix all of our problems" and believes "we've got to take a look at what's criminal in this country; a kid puts his hand in the shape of a gun and they say 'lock him up.'"

You happen to be catching our country at a particularly rich moment of reassessment, and manyboth jailers and jailedhope you will contribute to that moment.

Sincerely,The Marshall Project and VICE

This article was co-published with the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow the Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

Photo courtesy Don Knight

Don Knight is one of three attorneys trying to save Richard Glossip's life. Last week, Glossip, 52, was granted a two-week stay of execution by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals about two hours before he was set to die.

Knight is a Colorado-based attorney with 15 years of experience in death penalty cases. In June, Sister Helen Prejean, the famous capital punishment abolitionist who tried to spare Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and wrote the book Dead Man Walking, asked him to help with Glossip's case.

Glossip is on death row because of a murder that occurred on January 7, 1997, when a man named Justin Sneed entered Room 102 at the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City and beat owner Barry Van Treese to death with a baseball bat. Sneed, then a 19-year-old maintenance man at the motel, testified at two trials that Glossip, the motel manager, paid him to carry out the murder. But Glossip has always maintained his innocence, and Sneed's word has been the only evidence against him.

Knight, who has been working the case pro bono with fellow attorneys Kathleen Lord and Mark Olive, released new evidence earlier this month they say exonerates Glossip. Among the new evidence is a signed affidavit from Michael Scott, a former inmate who claims he heard Sneed say "he set Richard Glossip up, and that Richard Glossip didn't do anything." They also have a signed affidavit from Richard Barret, who frequented the Best Budget Inn to sell drugs to Glossip's brother, Bobby Glossip. Barret witnessed Snead trading items he stole from motel rooms and parked cars for drugs. Other new evidence includes analysis from Dr. Richard Leo, a false confessions expert who believes police pressured Sneed into blaming Glossip.

There might have been physical material that exonerated Glossip, but the Oklahoma City Police Department destroyed a box of evidence in 1999, before the appeal.

Still, not everyone is convinced that Glossip's case deserved another look. Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater called the claims of new evidence a "bullshit public relations campaign"and accused Glossip's legal team, which has the support of Barry Scheck, Susan Sarandon, former Oklahoma football coach Barry Switzer, and Senator Tom Coburn, of running a campaign to "abolish the death penalty in this state and throughout the country."

Knight, 57, said he has never worked a case that has received this much media coverage. VICE spoke with him about the case's national importance, Glossip's previous attorneys, and the moment when Glossip found out about the stay of execution that, for now at least, has saved his life.

VICE: You've been working on this case for a few months, and you've uncovered enough new evidence to warrant a stay. Why wasn't any of this brought to light during Richard Glossip's first two trials? How bad were his attorneys?
Don Knight: Wayne Fornarant, his first attorney, a privately retained lawyer. I believe he charged $2,500 to do the whole case. That's worse than a public defender. That's horrible. I wouldn't charge that for a DUI. He was an incompetent boob, is basically what he was. So the whole first trial meant nothing. It truly meant nothing. It was so horrible that it really meant nothing, and it's hard for me to keep explaining that to people, to tell them Richard Glossip really didn't get two trials. He didn't. That first one was not a trialit was just an accusation with evidence. There was no defense put up to it at all. It was just terrible, and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals found it to be so and wiped it off the map.

So this canard that people put out there that there were two trials is just thata canard. There's just nothing to it. There was one trial, and it was conducted by public defenders Breyer's dissent in Glossip v Gross, you'll see how he talks about that. It hasn't worked because it can't work, and I think this case is a perfect example of why the death penalty can't work. Not when you have people like Bob Macy, who will seek it at any opportunity, who will always find a reason to seek it.

If they wanted to charge this as a murder case, then charge it as a murder case, but then that brings in the second problem with the death penalty: the fear of death as a hammer to get a plea deal. And prosecutors do that all the time: "Hey buddy, you better take this life deal and plead guilty or else we're going to seek the death penalty against you." Now, they offered Glossip a chance for a life plea, which basically means they didn't really think he deserved to die. Why offer it to him if you do? If you honestly believe that he is the worst of the worst, cannot even be safely housed in prison, if you honestly believe that's the kind of person he is, why would you give them the opportunity to plead guilty?

But also what they do is get a better jury. They rig the system in their favor. Because a death-qualified jury is a convicting jury. They're already past conviction and only worried about whether they're going to kill the person as a penalty. So the prosecutor wins both ways. Either you take the deal and we don't have to go to trial, and you go away for life even if you're innocent, or we get a better jury and are much more likely to get a conviction.

VICE News talks to people around the world about capital punishment.

What do you make of District Attorney David Prater's accusations about all of this being a bullshit PR campaign to abolish the death penalty?
I let Sister Helen Prejean and Susan Sarandon and those kinds of people worry about that stuff. They're the ones being accused of running the PR campaign. I'm representing my client. The larger question of the death penalty can be on everyone's mind if they want to, but all I care about is my client. But even those who support the death penalty should be looking at this case and saying, "Not this case." If you have a dirty, stinking, rotten child killer, then that's what you want your death penalty for. You don't want this one. This makes the whole thing look bad. If you love the death penalty, this is the worst case in the world for you.

What was is it like when Glossip learned about the stay of execution?
We had been talking with him for an hour and 20 minutes. He's a very light-hearted guy, even in the face of death. He was joking about how he shared his last meal with the prison guards. He said, "I got plenty of food here. Let's make a party out of this." He's got a way of staying light in the moment. He told us his mom said he came into the world smiling and by God he was going to make sure he left the world smiling. We were having this conversation with him, and it was almost 12 o'clock. He kept wondering, "When is this court going to rule?" Kathleen and I both said, "I don't know." Then I said, "I do. They're going to rule right now." And they looked at me and said, "How would you know that?"

I said: "It's noon. It's lunchtime. They're going to get this done at lunchtime one way or another." They both looked at me funny and laughed.

Five minutes later, a knock on the door came. We hadn't been bothered before. The knock was certainly unexpected, and my heart jumped a little bit. They asked us to step out of the little room that we were in, and the associate warden told us, "There's been a stay." The next words out of his mouth were, "Now you have to go." They don't give you any time; well, my jacket was inside the room, and so was Kathleen's pad and pencil. So we had to jump back in the room, and we told him, "There's been a stay," and he yelled: "Hell yes!" He jumped up and down, and he hit the glass, and we hit the glass back. He was just so happy, but then we had to leave the room. Then we proceeded to leave the prison, not knowing the reason for the stay or how long it was; just knowing for the moment that there was a stay.

What would have been his last meal?
Pizza Hut pizza, pepperoni, I think, Long John Silver's fish and chips, and a Wendy's Baconator. That's why he said he could share it. I also don't think he was worried about watching his waistline.

What are your expectations for the next couple weeks? Where do you go from here?
I'm heading out to interview another witness. I think it's a pretty good witness, and if he pans out, we will be making another filing with the court. We have a response to file, a reply to the government's response to our petition. We'll make another filing with the court. From there, I don't know. I'm very much taking it one day at a time.

What's the outlook for this case?
Well, if I didn't have hope, I wouldn't be getting on a plane tomorrow morning and heading back to Oklahoma. I totally have hope. I always have hope. All I know how to do is keep working right up to the last minute, and that's all I'm going to keep doing.

Follow Gavin Jenkins on Twitter.

Didn't deliberately pick a stock photo of a pig that just happens to have Boris Johnson's eyes but apparently the stars just aligned. Photo via prof. Bizarro

Heh, yeah, bit of a weird one: Allegedlyand you always have to specify "allegedly" when someone may or may not have fucked a pig, because you can get sued for saying someone fucked a pig, especially when they didn't fuck a pigbut allegedly, our noble and honorable leader, prime minister David Cameron, once fucked a pig. Well, "fucked." "Fucked" contains magnitudes, doesn't it? "Fucked" encompasses a whole gamut of sexual experiences. Would I say putting your limp penis in the mouth of a dead pig for a sort of jovial Tory uni-dare constitutes "fucking" it? I would not. But on days like this the English language feels like a blunt tool with which to describe the sharp majesty of events, like trying to perform open heart surgery with a piece of flint, or split the atom with a brick.

And so we find ourselves enjoying arguably the greatest day in British history. For the uninitiated: Last night the Daily Mail published extracts from Conservative donor Lord Ashcroft's unauthorized biography of David Cameron, which alleged that, at Oxford, he took drugs (listen, we've all been young), listened to Supertramp (listen, we've all been young) andand remember that we've all once been youngput his penis in the mouth of a severed pig's head while someone took a photo, as some sort of initiation into the Piers Gaveston Dining Club.

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"The authors report an account of an 'outrageous initiation ceremony' at a Piers Gaveston event at which the future prime minister 'inserted a private part of his anatomy' into a dead pig's mouth," the Mail reported. "The story was recounted to them by a contemporary of Mr. Cameron who went on to become an MPand who claims that another member of the group has photographic evidence to prove it." That's Gideon, isn't it? That has to be Gideon. Question: How often do you think Gideon gets that photo out of the loft and just gazes at it, tumescent and delighted? I'm saying it's weekly, minimum. Hold on, wait: allegedly.

Imagine: Samantha Cameron, arms firmly folded while sitting primly on a chaise longue, just absolutely furious. Imagine: David Cameron, keenly ignoring the phone, on his hands and knees. "No, Samantha," he's saying. "I never fucked a pig." Imagine: the year is 2017, and David Cameron's son uses the internet for the first time. Imagine: the entire Conservative press team at 11 PM last night, all drawing straws to see who will make the phone call. "Hi, David," an intern is saying. "Yeah, I know this is when you usually watch your Antiques Roadshow re-runs. It's just... Lord Ashcroft told the Daily Mail you fucked a pig?" They are trying to spin this, they are gazing at a whiteboard saying "PIGFUCKING = AUSTERITY?" and undoing their ties, they are imagining a world where Tessa Jowell is PM instead, and there are tears.

Thing is, did Cameron really do this? Exhibit A: Lord Ashcroft is an exceptional example of a billionaire who has very publicly soured on Cameron since he failed to give him a significant government job after rising to power. Now, if I were a billionaire with a grudgeand here's hoping I will be one day, having just this morning put my penis in the mouth of a severed pig's head and taken a shiny photo of it in line with a pact I made with the devilif I were a billionaire with a grudge, capable of batting off even the most expensive libel legal bills, would I as a joke say the prime minister once fucked a pig's head? I absolutely would do that thing. Because there is no way Cameron can wiggle out of #piggate without publicly calling a press conference and saying, "I, David Cameron, never put my penis in a pig." If he doesn't do that, we will forever have him down as a pigfucker. History will have him down as a pigfucker. Jeremy Corbyn will breeze into the next prime minister's questions and lean close to the microphone and whisper, "But David, you put your dick in a pig." And here's the best thing: Cameron can't even resign his way out of this, because then he would forever be the prime minister who fucked a pig so hard he had to quit. Burn your copies of Catch-22 and buy Lord Ashcroft's book about pigfucking instead. This is better.

Personally, I have my doubts. David Cameron is a ruddy-faced Tory bred in a lab to become prime minister. Every single decision he has made in his lifeevery lesson he attended, job he tookhas been made with the end goal of becoming PM. Cameron strikes me as a man who agonized for an hour-and-a-half before taking his first toke on a joint in case it one day got out that he once got mildly high. Would that same man blithely put his penis in the face of a pig skull while someone took a picture? I'm not sure.

But look at Cameron, closer, at his little eyes and his pink face; his high hair line and his tiny Thomas the Tank Engine mouth. All them photos of him hugging pigs. You can imagine it, can't you? Hear inside your head the high, fluttering peaks of his vocal range: "Samantha, can you get the piccalilli out of the cupboard, please?" It's that tiny little shred of doubt that will always make us look sideways and go, maybe. David Cameron fucking a pig is no longer beyond the realms of your human imagination. The idea of David Cameron fucking a pig is, finally, something this country can believe in.

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Ashcroft knows this. Ashcroft knows. Ashcroft just Lyndon Johnsonned him. This is the most baller power move a billionaire will pull in this country until Richard Branson finally explodes the moon. Last week, Chelsea FC called an amnesty on training ground banter, and we thought the concept of it was finally dead. But it wasn't. Lord Ashcroft just resurrected banter from out of the cave in which we buried it three days ago and elevated it to heaven. Lord Ashcroft just made banter into high art. Lord Ashcroft just put the idea in 64 million people's heads that David Cameron fucked a pig.

This is it: Satire is dead. Charlie Brooker already imagined this scenario four years ago as the most absurd hook an episode of Black Mirror could be hung on, and now it's real. Satire is never getting up from this. It's a knockout blow. Even if he did not stick his dick inside a pig, there is no way any of us will ever forget about it until he says the words, "I did not fuck the severed head of a pig." He can resign, refute, write a book about Lord Ashcroft doing something lewd with a swan, it doesn't matter. We will forever look at the prime minister of the United Kingdom and think, that is a man whose penis smells of bacon. Allegedly.

Follow Joel Golby on Twitter.

A Golden Dawn supporter. Photo by Menelaos Myrillas-Nick Paleologos/SOOC)

Last night, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras celebrated his second parliamentary victory in less than a year. With nearly all votes counted, his left-wing party, SYRIZA, had received a little less than 36 percent of ballots, while the right-leaning New Democracy came in second with roughly 28 percent. The third-largest party in Greece remains the neo-Nazi organization Golden Dawn, which swept up about 7 percent of votes.

It's estimated that roughly 500,000 people voted for Golden Dawn, one of the most far-right political parties in Europe, whose leader is currently facing proceedings for directing a criminal organization. The latest polls show that 16.6 percent of the country's unemployed voted for the party. Golden Dawn's popularity has also doubled in islands like Lesbos and Kos, where thousands of refugees have been arriving daily. Before the Greek financial crisis, GD were only receiving 0.5 percent of the vote, but this vote, with Greece feeling the effects of economic despair and the refugee crisis, they managed to become the only party that didn't lose any power in terms of absolute numbers of voters.

Last week, the organization's leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, publicly accepted the political responsibility for the 2013 murder of left-wing rapper Pavlos Fyssas. Many believed that such a confession would lead to a nosedive in the party's ratings, but, on the contrary, the far-right party managed to gain more power than in January's electionsfrom 6.28 percent all the way up to about 7 percent.

"Golden Dawn is now a movement of power. It's no longer a protest movement," Ilias Kasidiaris, Golden Dawn's spokesman, told Star TV. That said, in April, most of Golden Dawn's leadership were arrested for running a criminal organization.

"There haven't been any unsuspecting Golden Dawn voters since Autumn of 2013, when the press concentrated on the criminal activity of the organization," Dimitris Psarasauthor of The Black Book of Golden Dawntold VICE last Thursday.

Related: Watch our documentary, 'Greece's Anti-Fascist Uprising':

Golden Dawn aside, what was noticeable in last night's election was the rate of absence; voter turnout was the lowest in Greece's history. Only 56 percent of those eligible to vote showed up, compared to 63.6 percent last Januarya fact that alludes to the public's increasing distrust in politics and a growing sense that the country has lost its sovereignty to its international creditors.

Earlier this year, Tsiprasafter months of intense discussions with the country's creditorsmade a U-turn on his initial promises and accepted a new package of budget cuts, tax increases, and other austere measures in return for about $96.8 billion in aid. However, even if many commentators suggest that the lower turnout helped SYRIZA win, everybody agrees that it's a huge personal victory for Tsipras, especially after the chaotic conditions of this summer that saw the implementation of bank withdrawal limits.

Yesterday, Tsipras renewed his party's alliance with the right-wing Independent Greeks and its leader Panos Kammenos, who received 3.69 percent of the votes. Within the next three days, they will form a new government. Together, the two parties will hold the majority, with 155 of a total 300 Parliament seats. According to the Guardian, EU officials reacted to the news of Tsipras's win with thinly-veiled comfort; sources claimed there was relief that the left-wing party would remain in government and apply policies, rather than rabble-rousing in the streets.

Want to know more about Golden Dawn? Here's some of the things they are into.

A police officer stood in front of the "real-life drug den" in Bridgend, Wales. Photo: police handout.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Last week, police in South Wales uncovered and destroyed what's been described as a "real-life drug den." Camouflaged with branches, the woodland structure in Bridgend boasted a tarpaulin roof and, according to police, a "dealing table," which looks a lot more like a bench carved into the trunk of a fallen tree. This, apparently, was proof enough that the little wooden hut had been a base for local degenerates looking to buy, sell, or smoke a bit of weed.

However, because the real-life drug den looked more like a Famous Five hangout than a Maryhill shooting gallery, police didn't get quite the reaction they might have expected. The story was greeted with cynicism by most locals on South Wales Police's Facebook page; some accused officers of doing nothing more than ruining a children's den, while dog walkers mourned the fact they'd no longer have somewhere to smoke a quick fag in the rain.

Since the dawn of prohibition, from opium dens and reefer-fueled jazz dives to today's crack and meth houses, the "drug den" has always been portrayed as a sort of private member's club for the sewage of society; peeling walls flecked red with syringe-squirts of blood, someone with a massive gun standing over a guy with a needle jutting out of his arm, a shit flat bearing significantly heavier doors than your average shit flatGuy Ritchie's vision of a crack house.

But nowadays, because there are fewer empty properties in urban areas, your standard "drug den" is more likely to be a "cuckoo" flat, the homes of vulnerable tenants taken over by dealers in order to sell drugs. Or, for that matter, just the home of a particularly accommodating user.

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Peter's one bedroom flat in a North East London low-rise is one of the more easy-going crack houses around. There are two huge black mastiffs taking up half the space and barking more than anyone wants them to, but it nevertheless operates as a secure, mildly cosy place for a group of crack and heroin users from the local area to gather and buy and take drugs.

Peter is 46 and has been using class A drugs for 24 years. He's missing an eye and has a big scar on his cheek. Tonight, there are five people sitting on sofas smoking crack, two of whom later head to the bedroom to inject heroin.

"I like this place because it's more settled than the streetit's easier to get caught out there," says Elvis, 21, who has been injecting heroin and crack since he was 14. He spent some of his youth in Russia, where he once had a job cleaning up bits of human skin from the floor of a krokodil den. Two years ago he was thrown into a dumpster in East London after overdosing at a stranger's crack house.

His girlfriend, Catherine, is also 21. She says she was born addicted to heroin because her mother was a dependent user while pregnant. "I wouldn't do this around people I don't trust," she tells me. "I use drugs here because I don't want to be judged and it's safe." Catherine's lost count of the amount of ODs she's seen, while Peter says there's only been four in his house in seven years.

From what I can see, Peter looks after everyone and they share cash, drugs, and food. He cooks "ready, steady, cook" dinners from the bags of supplies Catherine and Elvis sometimes bring back from shoplifting trips.

"It's out of sight of the public. That's important to me," says Peter as he takes a lung-full on his pipe. "I don't like it when kids see people taking drugs. It's not right. And it's a safe place to take drugs for us. If there's an overdose, I'll call the ambulance; I won't chuck someone in a bush."

Ten years ago, crack houses like Bristol's infamous Black and White cafa front for one of Britain's most prolific and violent drug densreceived much more press than they do these days. They were the cannabis farms of the early-2000s, one after another being busted by police, the cops' photos plastered through the press the following day.

Images from a Manchester drug den. Photo: police handout

While drug dens are still being raided regularly, they don't tend to make the press all that much, unless they're somehow linked to a government adviser and his alleged crack smoking (allegations he wouldn't comment on). But professionalized places run by gangstersthe spots with entry buzzers and metal shutters where visitors are frisked and can buy large amounts for wider distributiondo still exist.

"Two years ago I went to one in Shepherd's Bush because my dealer told me they had good gear," says Elvis. "He said, 'Be careful what you say or do, otherwise you might not come out.' They forced me to use some of the heroin and crack on the spot in case I was a cop. The floor was covered with plastic sheeting so they could easily get rid of blood from stabbings and wrap people up and dump them if they overdosed."

Catherine had a bad experience at a similar place. "People were looking at me, thinking I was some kind of crack whore, like they could buy me," she says. "I was shaking after I came out."

Earlier this month, Bradford Crown Court heard how heroin user Krysia Truskawecka was locked in one of these fortified crack houses and forced to sell drugs through a metal hatch in order to pay off her debt to dealers. Unsurprisingly, these places also tend to look pretty grim; there are even "extreme cleaning" companies that specialize in clearing them up.

Photo by Jake Lewis

On the gentler end of the drugs scale, underground cannabis dens have operated under the radar in various guises since the 1960s, long before crack arrived in Britain. Commonly found behind unmarked doors in industrial units, under the guise of "social clubs"or, in some cases, selling from under the counter in busy high street shopstheir MO is to keep things quiet and attract customers by word of mouth. Most are fly-by-night operations that end up rumbled after six months by police, or robbed of their cash and stash. However, some have been serving up weed for years.

Lynval's place, behind a heavily-bolted door in a small north London trading unit, has been selling imported Jamaican weed since 2008. When I arrive, there are about 12 people milling aroundmainly Africans and Jamaicans, but also a few Poles. Some are watching football on the TV; two Jamaicans in their mid-fifties, like Lynval, are playing pool; and a group of younger men are queuing in the kitchen, the buying and selling zone.

I ask Lynval why no one is smoking weed, because the last time I was here the place smelled like the Monday of Notting Hill Carnival. He says he's banned it for now because of a bit of heat from the police, who've been sniffing around after noise complaints from a business next door. Even so, Lynval still gets a steady 200-plus buying off him every week.

His walls are covered in Rastafarian imagery and murals, mainly of the Lion of Judah and Haile Selassie. There is a photo of which he's very proud, of the Emperor meeting the Queen, and a large panel showing prominent Africans in history.

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"People invite their friends, but if their vibe is no good, or if they are a cantankerous person, we tell them no way," says Lynval, sitting in his office, which has a monitor showing the CCTV feed from every room. "But this place has always been about bringing people together and selling good herb. We don't sell skunk that makes you go crazy; we sell herb that gives you more consciousness. As Bob Marley sang: 'Excuse me while I light my spliff / Good god, I gotta take a lift / From reality I just can't drift.'"

Lynval, a committed Rastafarian, says most customers are men in their thirties, although he has one group of women who are regulars. It's also a gathering place for Africans in London, he says, who have arrived from Ethiopia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria. "For some people it's the closest thing they have to a family. Most of the community centers are closed, and here people talk about family matters, music, Jeremy Corbynwhatever they want. We have solved many problems here."

If drugs are banned, it follows that people who take them will try to find secretive places to get high, out of sight of the law.

What this means in a wider sense is less straightforward. Weed's not such a worry (though the government are potentially losing out on billions by not opening their own shops), but the harder drugs are. From a harm reduction viewpoint, it makes sense that if you're going to take something that could make you overdose, you're surrounded by people who would try to ensure you don't die, rather than literally throw you away. So, context very much taken into account, surely places like Peter's are a good thing.

WATCH: 'Krokodil Tears', our documentary about a flesh-eating bootleg heroin popular in Russia:

In a more progressive world, however, things could conceivably be taken one step further. In 2012, Danish officials opened five "fixing rooms"places where users could inject themselves with clean needles under the supervision of trained medical personnelin Copenhagen. Earlier this year, figures from Denmark's Health Ministry revealed that there wasn't a single death from any one of the 301 overdoses onsite; that more users have sought help breaking their addiction than in previous years; and that the volume of used needles lying around in the district of Vesterbro, where the fixing rooms are located, has fallen 80 percent since they opened. A similar facility in Sydney, opened 15 years ago, has seen the same kind of success.

In a drug underworld that by its very nature must operate in the shadows, what's happening in Copenhagen appears to demonstrate pretty convincingly that bad things are more likely to happen if drugs are kept behind closed doors.

The latest relevant figures from the British government revealed that there were more drug-related deaths last year in the UK than any other year since records began. Coincidentally, our current drug policy remains the same as it always has: stubbornly regressive and wildly ineffective. If the Home Office wants to see fewer people dying, perhaps it's time they offer addicts an alternative to the covert, sometimes actively harmful, environments they've had to resort to.

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Photos author's own

Last week was an emotional one for supporters of Scottishindependence, with Friday marking exactly a year since the referendum that saw Scotlandvote to remain within the UK. The Yes badges and posters that were impossibleto avoid in 2014 have started to reappear, while social media has experienced adeluge of everyone reminding themselves exactly what they were doing a yearago.

But with the notable exception of seven members of UKIPwho spent Friday launching a campaign to see September 18rebranded "Union Day"supporters of the union have kept themselves prettyquiet over the past few days, perhaps because it still doesn't feel like theyreally won.

With the SNP continuing to dominate Scottish politics, pollsshowing a majority backing independence, and even Scottish Labour moderating their opposition to it, for some Yes campaigners, Scotland breaking from theunion seems more like a question of when rather than if. It was in GeorgeSquare in Glasgow on Saturdaythe same place that provided many of the iconic images of the referendum campaignthat thousands of nationalists gatheredfor a "one year on" rally. Having got over both their initial grief and aonetime obsession with conspiracy theories about how Yes had definitely won, mostindy diehards are now focusing on one thing alone: securing a secondreferendum.

The SNP, however, are taking a cautious approach to a secondbid for independence, and although they'll continue to make noises about it, are unlikely to rush into anything until they're positiveit can be won. But in delaying the dream of indy, particularly if they don'tinclude it in their 2016 manifesto, they're risking the wrath of a sizableminority of their own supporta nationalist subculture that was out in forceon Saturday.

The rally was billed as "Hope Over Fear, One Year On" andfronted by Tommy Sheridan, a disgraced former MSP who spent most of the dayshouting on stage as he introduced the dozens of speakers, bands, and Gaelicrappers we were treated to over the course of the eight hour nationalist marathon.Having been embroiled in a sex-and-lying scandal in the mid-2000s, Sheridan'strack record includes destroying the Scottish Socialist Party, going on Celebrity Big Brother and being jailedfor lying in court. He's since enjoyed an indyref revival and built up asubstantial fan base, mostly through a lot of shouting and telling his audienceexactly what they want to hear (although the subtext usually involves votingfor him in next year's Scottish elections).

Tommy Sheridan

I arrived a couple of hours into the rally. Thankfully, thiswas just in time to catch James Scott, the leader of the Scottish Resistancegroup, whose speech angled in on what are surely the most pressing concerns ofScotland's electorate: being proud of the facts we "repelled the Vikings, theDanes, and the Anglo-Saxons" in centuries gone by, casting out "traitors," andstopping the "robbery" of "water, whisky revenue, and oil" that's flowing overthe border to England. It was like a parody of everything people say todiscredit the independence movement, except it was really happening. This kindof dodgy pseudo-ethnic nationalism was never given any prominence ahead of thereferendum, and certainly never given a platform, so it was alarming to see itbeing cheered along on the fringes of the Yes movement.

Scott's speech wasn't the only contortion of history onshow, although the other examples were fortunately more innocuous. Visible formost of the day was a sign alleging to feature a quote from William Wallace abouthaving the courage to follow your heart. Having been unaware that the 13th-century warrior had a sideline in Instagram-friendly quotable wisdom, I lookedinto a bit further, and it turns out to have been something his dad saidatleast his fictional dad in the film Braveheart.

Early in the afternoon, some real-life invaders did appear.Two former BNP candidates (although now members of hugely successfulelectoral outfit the Britannica Party) arrived at the back of the square,waving union jacks, and trying to goad the crowd into a reaction. The policeintervened and despite, an initial reluctance to leave, the fascist double-actthat appears to form the vanguard of unionism in Glasgow were soon forced towander up a hill at the side of the square.

Of the rest of the day's speakers, most stayed on safeground, with loud boos every time David Cameron, Iain Duncan Smith, or GordonBrown had their name mentioned. There were familiar references to nuclearweapons, illegal wars, food banks, and child poverty, a repetitive buzzword bingothat, while listing off real problems in our society, rarely listed solutionsother than breaking off from Westminster, something which may not be on thecards for the foreseeable future. But the event was as much about spectacle asit was the substance of what was said onstage, which helps explain theappearance of the "Bikers for Yes," whoroared into "Freedom Square" in a cavalcade of a hundred or so motorbikes inthe middle of the afternoon.

There aren't many political movements in the UK that havetheir own biker gang, but then the movement gathered around Hope Over Fear ishardly typical. It bears a fractious and awkward relationship with themainstream Yes movement; on Saturday, the only Scottish newspaper to support aYes vote last year, the Sunday Herald, was "banned" by organizers from covering it. There was no official SNP presence,although last month it was reported that one of the party's branches "descended into chaos" when the rally was discussed. Other prominent Yes backers, likeWomen for Independence and the Scottish Green Party, have also shunned Hope OverFear, in part because of its association with Tommy Sheridan.

Largely abandoned by the mainstream Yes movement, Hope OverFear has developed into a formidable subculture of its own accord, with alargely working class base who were deeply invested in last year's referendumand now want independence at all costs. It's a movement with its own uniform of"The 45" T-shirts and saltire V forVendetta masks, its own soundtrack of acoustic songs about "Westminsterpaedos," its own memes and in-jokes, and its own folk heroes and legends. Atone point, a marriage proposal was even carried out on stage.

As the rally trundled on for two hours past its scheduled5PM finish, it became obvious that most of the crowd were hanging on for onereason. Sadly for Sheridan, it wasn't to hear him, but rather Gerry Cinnamon, asinger-songwriter whose Hope Over Fear song has emerged asthe "Anthem of the independence movement." Cinnamon stormed T in the Park this summer, with hundreds cramming into the T Break tent tocatch him. Little surprise, then, that he was the star attraction at the rally,with the crowd erupting as they belted each line"Tell Westminster Tories that Scotland's no longer yer slave"backat the stage, and a smoke flare was let off to welcome him.

Nationalism in Scotland feels stronger than ever, as much abadge of cultural identity as anything substantively political. But how eventslike Saturdayswith their inward, tribal focusare meant to win anyone overto supporting independence seems almost to be an afterthought.

Follow Liam Turbett on Twitter.