Miss Gay Lady Venezuela contestants and the towns they "represent"

This article originally appeared on VICE Mexico.

From crowning the prettiest person in school all the way up to grown women battling for the right to host sporting events, looking good is extremely important to Venezuelans. In recent years, the LGBT community have also hopped on this competitive beauty tradition and started organizing their own contests. One of them is called Miss Gay Lady Venezuela, a beauty pageant held in the northwestern port town of Maracaibo.

After reaching out to hear more about the competition, I was invited by organizer Carolinawho prefers to call herself "Conejita Ramrez" (Bunny Ramrez)to guest judge it. I was so excited by the prospect that I managed to show up at the venue a few hours early.

"You came early, honey. I'm so glad you're here," she told me as I walked in. Within a matter of moments, we got to talking about the fact that she was transgendered and what sort of role that played in her life. "I've undergone surgery from the hips up. I guess I shouldn't give away all of my secrets, but yeah, I consider myself a woman."

It wasn't long before the club began filling up with guys, who, in a few hours, would be glamorous women.

One man told me: "You'll see. You won't recognize me. I'm going to prove just how feminine I can be." He began laughing when I asked him whether or not he would like to live his day-to-day life a woman. "No, papi. I'm a real fag. I don't want to be a woman."

Entering Miss Gay Lady Venezuela is relatively easyall you really need is the participation fee and a desire to win. As all of the contestants were from the state of Zulia, the different regions they claimed to represent were actually nothing more than letters hung on a sash around their chests.

Just before the show, I was allowed to enter the dressing rooms to talk to the participantsall of whom seemed completely comfortable being naked in front of me. In one of the corners, a woman was helping some of the men cover their bodies with transparent insulation tape. This tape isn't only used to tighten their bellies, so they resemble that of a 15-year-old girl's, but also to help tuck their junk in between their buttocks. It was hard to imagine that there was ever even a penis there when everything was set in place.

My curiosity got the best of me and I had to ask the tape-girl whether or not she had been born a woman.

"No. I was born a man but I'm a woman now," she smiled. "I haven't had surgery; I still have a dick but I don't really use it for much."

Around about midnight, all glammed up and standing atop toweringly tall stilettos, the contestants took the stage and started to perform some sort of choreographed dance routine. The Miss Lady Venezuela theme song came blaring out of the speakers and the entire crowd got involved.

"On a night as beautiful as this / Any of us could win / Being crowned Miss Venezuela / On a night as beautiful as this..."

Related: Watch our documentary, 'Young and Gay in Jamaica'

The runway show lasted for hours. First the swimsuit competition (which, to be fair, was the most interesting thanks to the immense skill involved in hiding everyone's genitalia), then the evening wear, and, finally, that bit where the contestants explain their hopes and dreams to the crowd.

A contestant named Genesis was the first to hop onstage and take the mic. Sporting a garish blue cocktail dress, she misstepped, stumbled, and almost fell over. Luckily, she managed to regain her balance before addressing the crowd.

"I don't want to be a woman. But women are the most important thing in our lives. Especially our mothers. I'm here and dressed like this to honor them, adore them, and tell them they are the best. Women kick ass!" she screamed as the crowd collectively lost their shit.

In the end, a winner was crowned, the ladies became men again, and the entire event rapidly devolved into a dance partyone that was still going when I left at 3 AM.

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Police crime scene tape surrounds a house in Wilno, Ont., Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2015. Photo courtesy Fred Chartrand/The Canadian Press

Three women were shot to death in a killing spree that took place in the Ottawa Valley Tuesday morning.

Anastasia Kuzyk, 36, Nathalie Warmerdam, 48, and Carol Culleton, 66, were gunned down at various Eastern Ontario residences over several hours.

Suspect Basil Borutski, 57, is now in custody in relation to the crimes and is scheduled to appear in Pembroke court today.

According to reports, the women had each been romantically involved with Borutski at some point.

Tuesday's dramatic events included a manhunt that spanned three townships along the Upper Ottawa River and resulted in the lockdown of schools, neighbourhoods, a courthouse, and a law firm.

Carol Culleton. Photo via Facebook

At about 9 AM Tuesday, Ontario Provincial Police found Kuzyk dead in a house on Szczipior Road in Wilno, a village located a few hours west of Ottawa. Information then led them 26 km south, to the town of Cormac, where they located Warmerdam's body at a house of Foymount Road. She too had been shot.

According to news reports, a man in that home fled the residence prior to the shooting and called the authorities.

Witnesses reported a heavy police presence on scene, including dozens of police cars, tactical officers, a K-9 squad, and a drone flying overhead.

Shortly after 11 AM, OPP officers found Culleton dead at a home on Kamaniskeg Lake Road in Bancroft, located about 90 km away.

The manhunt widened with cops describing their suspect as armed and dangerous and advising residents in Cormac to stay inside.

At around 2:30 PM, officers found Borutski hiding out in a treed area in Kinburn, about 130 km south of Wilno, and arrested him without incident. Police told the Ottawa Citizen they also recovered a gun at the scene. Borutski is expected to be charged today.

Anastasia Kuzyk. Photo via Wilno Tavern

The victims are being mourned by friends and family members today. Warmerdam was a mother of two and a healthcare professional and Kuzyk, a budding real estate agent and bar server who loved horses.

Corrine Higgins, Kuzyk's boss at the Wilno Tavern, told the Citizen Borutski had "an angry intensity to him."

"She tried to separate herself from the relationship," she said, adding Kuzyk wanted to have Borutski charged with abuse. "It wasn't like she was still involved with him. She had severed that relationship. He couldn't let go."

According to the Citizen, several of the Borutski's acquaintances told the cops they'd received threatening phone calls from him in the days leading up to the killings. One person reportedly said he'd publicized a list of names of people against whom he sought revenge.

Borutski had a lengthy rap sheet, according to CBC News, including a 19-month jail stint for assault, weapons possession and theft. He was recently released and is under a lifetime weapons ban.

A former mill worker, according to the Citizen, Borutski has suffered multiple severe injuries in his life. When he was younger, his right hand was severed and reattached and a 1994 car crash left him permanently disabled.

He had three children his first wife Mary Ann Borutski but their marriage broke up in 2011. The divorce was messy, according to reports.

During the proceedings, daughters Candace and Amanda characterized Borutski as "violent, easily agitated, and tyrannical toward his family members."

The presiding judge reportedly said Borutski's relationship with his wife was "wretched."

His daughters also testified that their dad was physically abusive toward their mother, attempting to push her from a moving car on one occasion. He also allegedly threatened to burn down their family home if it was awarded to his wife.

The family's property at Round Lake did burn to the ground, but an OPP investigation yielded no charges.

Borutski claimed his wife had falsely accused him of domestic violence over the course of their relationship.

His brother William Borutski told CBC he was estranged from Borutski and that his family is "devastated" by the news.

Autopsies of the victims are slated to be conducted Wednesday.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Mass Effect's 'FemShep' actress Jennifer Hale is amongst those supporting the strike action

We've seen the making of both movies and television shows disrupted in the recent past by the striking of key creative talents, be that writers or actors or any other group whose presence in the production process is essential. And now video game fans should ready themselves for delays in their most-anticipated titles coming out, as several high-profile voice actors working in the industry are threatening strike action.

As reported on a number of gaming websites, including VG 24/7 and Destructoid, performers who are registered with the union SAG-AFTRA are taking themselves out of work in protest against conditions they feel are unreasonable. Wil Wheaton, Jennifer Hale (Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect games), and Tara Strong (Harley Quinn in several Batman games) are among those who've posted their support of strike action on social media.

VG 24/7 reports that 75 percent of SAG-AFTRA members support the action, the reason for which is grounded in some pretty out-of-date paperwork. The Interactive Media Agreement is the document that outlines the requirements video game actors must meet when on the job. Its words remain binding, despite it being introduced in the mid-1990s. The job, of course, has changed dramatically, with motion capture work increasing exponentially over the intervening years and today's voice actors recording a lot more dialogue per game than they did 20 years ago.

"We're looking to bring this long-standing agreement into the 21st century," states the SAG-AFTRA website. It outlines what it wants to see factored into a new agreement, such as bonuses based on units sold, "stunt pay" for stressful sessions, and much greater transparency regarding what developers are going to need from an actor prior to them signing on the line. It also highlights fines that voice actors and their agents could face if the Interactive Media Agreement isn't properly modernized. As it stands, an actor could be fined $2,500 for as little as checking a text during a booking, for being "inattentive."

Naturally, there's a hashtag on Twitter to help you follow developments: #performancematters.

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.

All photos by the author

It's no secret that the San Francisco housing market is ludicrous. The average apartment in the city rents for $3,500 a month, and the median housing price just reached an all-time high of $1.2 million. To illustrate how laughably out-of-control this has become, someone is trying to sell this 765-square-foot dilapidated shack, located on the border of San Francisco and Daly City (technically within SF limits, but barely), for $350,000.

For comparison's sake, you could buy this 4,500-square-foot, six bedroom, 3.5-bathroom colonial mansion in Columbus, Ohio, for the same price. Walk across the street from the dilapidated shack, though, and you'll pay twice the price for a similar houseso I guess the shack is really a bargain. As the realtor told me, "It's the cheapest property in San Francisco, and it's a great buy!"

When we spoke over the phone, the realtor explained that the house is so trashed that no bank is willing to finance a mortgage. That means the offer must be made in full, and in cash. Just to reiterate: This collapsing structure, not even fit to film a budget porno in costs $350,000 in hard currency.

Of course, it's obviously the land that's worth those beaucoup bucksthough for some reason the realtor repeatedly advised against burning the whole thing down and building something else, saying instead that whoever buys it should just renovate and expand the existing structure.

I went out to the property to see it for myself, and noticed immediately that half of the house's foundation is cement; the other half is collapsing into rotted underground posts. The bathtub has clearly collapsed through the floor into the foundation. One potential buyer, who was touring the house with me, said he thought he could sink "a buck fifty" into the property after buying it and turn it into a cute little Airbnb. According to the realtor, two people have made offers already.

Below, you'll see what I saw on my tour of the property, and the startling reality of $350,000 gets you in San Francisco these days. And if it looks like the house for you, act fast! Final offers must be submitted by noon on Thursday.

Follow Jules Suzdaltsev on Twitter.

Read: Why New Yorkers Love New York

In the most heartwarming viral video to come out of the five boroughs since a rat was caught on video attempting to drag a pizza slice down some subway stairs, a white man got into a one-sided street altercation with some other white people and claimed to have "settled" the neighborhood for them before shouting "white privilege! White fucking privilege!"

Thankfully, Queens man Luis Solareswho was working at the construction site across the street from the caucasian volcano of ragefollowed the NYPD dictum "if you see something take out your smartphone and start filming" and now the entire internet can enjoy the video of the guy Solares dubbed the "Christopher Columbus of Brooklyn." The whole video is, like any great work of art, worth viewing in full, but here are some choice excerpts from the upset pale man's rantwhich, it should be noted, occurred while a cop was standing between him and the target of his rage:

"Don't fucking come at me dude, I'll kill youwith one punch!"

"You're messing with the wrong guy! I fight for a living!"

"You push your stroller into peopleyour baby could get hurt! Your baby could get hurt!"

"I fight babies like you... baby!"

"The only reason white people like you are living here is because I settled this fucking neighborhood for you!"

"Fuck you, white trash!"

The neighborhood in question, by the way, is mostly office buildings and condos these daysDowntown Brooklyn gentrified a long time ago. And though people have been "discovering" the borough since a few Dutch settlers built the village of Breuckelen, it takes a world-class asshole to actually claim, out loud, that he made the neighborhood safer for other white people.

As of press time, no one appeared to know the identity of this mysterious porcelain fountain of fury, but he's probably not having a very good day, wherever he is.

The fourth-annual LA Podfest. Photo by the author

The line in the Sofitel Hotel in Beverly Hills already ran the entire length of the second floor hallway and coiled down the foyer stairs into the lobby. This wasn't a queue of excited fans waiting for a pop-up concert, book signing, or early film screening. These people, all of whom had paid between $30 and $120 to be here, were waiting to watch comedian Doug Benson and his yet-to-be-named guests play movie-centric word games as he recorded another episode of his hit podcast, Doug Loves Movies.

This was the fourth annual LA Podfest, a congregation of podcasters, sponsors, and ardent podcast fans who gather to celebrate and discuss the industry. For the first time this year, the event had a festival-wide sponsorAudible.com, a subsidiary of Amazon.

As someone who listens to podcasts daily as a zen escape from LA's traffic, I was excited to catch live performances by the people I've listened to year after yearbut the cynic in me wondered if the medium sits precariously on a bubble that could burst at any moment. After all, some have argued that podcasting won't survive, since the medium hasn't exactly gone mainstream and no one's making millions on them.

Podcasts have existed in their current form for a little over a decade, starting with small-scale shows and growing to include quite a few breakout stars. What was once a cottage industry is now a full blown Big Business, with major movie studios buying podcast networks and A-List celebrities making appearances on podcasts to promote their new shit, the same way they flood the internet with mandatory Reddit AMAs.

But it wasn't until last year's murder-mystery series, Serial, that the general public figured out what the podcast medium really was. With over 80 million downloads since it launched in November, Serial seemed to signal that the medium had finally arrived. It was as if one day your mom, boss, and middle-aged neighbor came up to you and said, "Hey! Have you ever tried this stuff called 'su-shi?' It's so good! You have to check it out!" People were going nutsTIME even published the handy "You Asked: What Are Podcasts?" to explain the medium beyond Serial's fame.

After the initial buzz wore off, podcast listenership continued to grow, nearly doubling between 2008 and 2015but content on the medium still falls short of becoming the stuff of water cooler talk.

"Podcasts are never on unless you're choosing to listen to them." Justin McElroy

Then, in June of this year, comedian andfor lack of a better comparisonthe Oprah of Podcasting, Marc Maron, pulled off the coup of interviewing Obama. If this couldn't legitimize the medium, nothing would. But, as with Serial, Obama's visit to chat with a comedian in his garage didn't seem to pull podcasts into the zeitgeist. Maron, who performed at Podfest over the weekend, told me that "it was an honor to do itand then you kinda get back to business as usual."

Marc Maron at LA Podfest. Photo by the author

So what's the problem? Public ignorance about what a podcast even is remains one of the challengesif not the biggest challengefacing the industry as a whole. As Doug Benson put it, "You type the word 'podcasting' on your computer and a red line goes under it like it's not even a word."

That's not to say the medium isn't growing. The television was invented in 1926 but it took three decades before everyone had one in their living room. Just a decade into its existence, podcasting has already made impressive strides: There are now over 75 million unique monthly podcast listeners, compared to 25 million in 2006, so there's clearly consistent growth happening.

But Maron and others say it's difficult to attract new listeners, since listening to podcasts isn't intuitive. If podcasts are ever going to go the way of television, Maron told me, "one of two things will happen: People will get into the habit mainly concerned with maintaining independence. There's 'big podcasting,' but we're more concerned with owning everything because then we don't have to worry about delivering to investors," Marshall told me.

Sure, money and popularity are great. Nobody I talked to wouldn't love to make the next Serial. But it's the intimacy, earnestness, and creative freedom that seems to be the main reason podcasts inspire such passion among both listeners and producersand that's why they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

"I'm going to do this whether I make money or not," Tompkins said. "I really enjoy the form. I really enjoy the medium and I like that you can do whatever you want. You just have to buy your equipment and put it up."

Thumbnail photo via Flickr user David Martn.

Follow Justin Caffier on Twitter.

Okay, Jennifer, sure. Photo via Tumblr

I've always despised having big boobs.

While most teenage girls look forward to shopping for a prom dress, for me the process was rife with stress. The reason? I couldn't stuff my massive breasts into anything with a tight bodice.

This was particularly frustrating because I have a small frameI am 5'2"so while my lower torso was basically a size small, the top half was an XL. Bikinis meant a guaranteed nip slip (still do, tbh). I never had a proper bra fitting, but my largest was a DD.

On the shitty-metre, all of that paled in comparison to the unwanted attention from teenage boys. At a party once, I was standing in the kitchen with a pretty cute dude and he started giving me a look like I was some sort of baked good that he wanted to consume. He leaned in, breath reeking of Bacardi, and proclaimed, "Your tits are HUGE." Then he bit my forehead. This was a common occurrence (minus the forehead part).

During Christmas break of my senior year, I went through with a breast reduction. I was keen on a B cup but my surgeon was all "no, no" and insisted on Cs. Even though there was a pretty intense recovery process, I was much happier post-op. My shirts fit, my boobs didn't chafe, and guys paid slightly more attention to my face.

So when I see campaigns like the #youdontneedthis hashtag telling women they "don't need" cosmetic surgery, I can't help but think they're misguided.

In a Toronto Star article published yesterday, Jennifer Dawson, a digital marketing prof at Seneca College, talked about her beef with Toronto Cosmetic Clinic's TTC advertisements.

"As a woman, it can be bit infuriating to have to ride a subway on your daily commute and look at these posters," she said.

In response, she's taken to defacing signs promoting things like liposuction and boob jobs by writing, "You don't need this" across them and posting photos of her work to social media. As of yesterday, the hashtag was trending and similarly defaced ads were seen in NYC.

Dawson, whose Facebook feed features professionally shot images of her, is an attractive woman. She is clearly confident and that's great. But I'm not convinced she's in the best position to judge what other women do and don't "need" when it comes to how they feel about their bodies. And inadvertently, messages like that reinforce negative stereotypes about those who do opt to have a lil nip/tuck.

"You're naturally beautiful so it's not even fair!" one commenter wrote in response to the story about Dawson. "Anyone who knows me, knows this small town boy finds (plastic surgery) gross and insecure. It's just easy to tell someone they don't need to look beautiful when you're already in the 'chosen' few, beautiful people."

This guy sounds like kind of a douche, but he illustrates both of my points. It's easy enough for people who don't have self-image issues to tell others that they shouldn't worry about that stuff. Meanwhile, people who do get work done, which can include anything from Botox to labiaplasty, often feel ashamed of it.

A few years ago, I did a story about the rise of plastic surgery among teens. Despite my past, I went into it thinking the piece would take a stance against the trend and that parents who let their kids go through it were irresponsible. Then I met Sandra Annan, 18 at the time, who had her nose altered in the summer between Grade 11 and 12. She had a bump that had bothered her since childhood and had been subject to bullying both online and in person.

"I didn't have great self-esteem," Annan told me. Looking at her, no one would guess she'd had a nose job, but she said her confidence bloomed because of it. Her dad agreed.

That's when it dawned on me: who the fuck am I to judge? Yes, it sucks that there's societal pressure to look perfect, but people undergo cosmetic procedures for a number of reasons, including their personal health and happiness. Being told by outsiders that they shouldn't want that only enhances stigma and ultimately might do more harm than good.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

London doesn't have the best of reputations. That might be because it's full of toxic smog, statistically one of the most dangerous places in the UK, andas you may have read about literally anywhere at any point in the past decadea ludicrously expensive place to live.

Want some more depressing facts? OK: social housing residents are being carted out of London, splintering families and communities, while developers build floating swimming pools in luxury apartment blocks nobody will ever live in. Gentrification is making the whole of inner London look like Guildford. There's a massive M&M's store in Leicester Square that has somehow managed to become a cultural landmark. We've written about all that, as has pretty much everyone else, because it's all stuff that's impossible to ignore.

However, for all its council-mandated social cleansing, novelty cafes, and Keep Calm souvenirs, London is still an incredible place. For Londoners, their city is unique, incredibly diverse, and defined not just by landmarks or statistics, but people. Although it's not perfect, to them it's the best city in the world.

Here are the stories of eight Londoners:

Visitors and volunteers at The Bike Project (Photo courtesy of The Bike Project)

The Immigrant

Britain's response to the refugee crisis in Europe has been pretty poor. With the government doing the bare minimum to help, volunteer-run organizations like The Bike Project in South Londonset up a couple of years agoare offering refugees and asylum seekers the support they need when trying to build a new life in a strange city. The project fixes up old bikes and donates them to refugees, teaching them mechanic skills and offering them support along the way.

Tam, 19, came to London from Ethiopia a few years ago, arriving in a bitterly cold March to join his dad, who'd arrived in the UK a few years before. He lives with his parents, brother, and two sisters, and although he spoke almost no English when he arrived, he's now studying Sports Management at Lewisham College. He found it difficult to talk to people at first, but he's now made friends at college and through The Bike Project, and can't imagine moving back to Ethiopia any time soon.

For him, London is a place of opportunity:

Starting life in London is one of the best things that can happen. If you work, you can get everything that you want. At the beginning it's hard, but afterward, once you get used to it, things get easier. Going to college, you get the support that you need. There's a lot of support here in London if you lookeverywhere you go there are people and places that can help you. There are a lot of organisations, like this got a big building round the corner from where the Roxy was, just in what is now the grand square in Covent Garden. It was a bomb site, and they started putting on gigs. They had rehearsal rooms, and people like Chrissie Hynde, Steve Strange, various American punk bands that came over, would rehearse there, and we rehearsed there. They put the first ever gig of The Slits on there; 15-year-old Ari Up jumped up on stage and had a pair of knickers over her jeans. Sid Vicious famously shouted out: "You're only up there 'cos Johnny Rotten's knobbing your mum!"

Without The Roxy, punk wouldn't have happened the way it did. They created that focus. It really was like a magnifying glass; it took all that energy and set the whole thing on fire. And everybody who was going to be anything in punkincluding managers and agents, stylists, photographers, filmmakers, journalists, fans, whateverthey all went to the Roxy. Ninety percent of that whole revolution happened because of that focus.

Sheldon Thomas (Photo courtesy of Gangsline)

The Former Gang Member

Sheldon Thomas has been involved with London gangs for over 30 years. As a member of one in the 1970s, he witnessed shootings and experienced racism at the hands of the police and the National Front. After Bernie Grant, one of Britain's first black MPs, helped Sheldon find a way out, he started to help other gang members build a life away from crime.

Now he runs Gangsline, a charity dedicated to engaging with gang members and helping local authorities understand the problems they face. Sheldon knows that life as a young black person in London has never been easy; he says a lack of jobs and opportunities makes it hard for new generations to see any alternative to joining a gang, and with gangs controlling London's drug trade it can offer easy money, too. However, Sheldon still sees London's young people as special, a generation worth investing in:

"I think the uniqueness of London is, among young people, racism is almost non-existent. I think white kids and black kids do not see color, whereas white adults and black adults see colorbut I don't think children see color like we used to; like I did when I was young.

So if you're gonna say, 'What has London got that many cities like New York don't have?' I'd say we're more integrated than America. The reason why we should invest in young people is because they don't have the hangups we as adults have."

N Quentin Woolf

The Writer

London being a city of incredible culturaland as a cultural influence on the worldis a point often made. But when you're trying to work, eat, sleep, and find some time to enjoy yourself, it's easy to miss the absolute wealth of things on offer. As the host of the Londonist Out Loud podcast, N Quentin Woolf spends his days seeking out the hidden culture and history of the city. He recalls first coming to London as a kid, sitting on a Routemaster bus with his granddad and struggling to take in the diversity and life unfolding around him. Now, he's a novelist, and uses the city's rich creative scene to bring his work to life.

It's easy to take for granted the fact that London is a global hub for so many creative worlds: fashion, dance, theater, art, television, literature, and so on. Any one of these would be something special, but the fact that they all intersect here acts as a multiplier. If you want to shoot a film, it's so much easier to find yourself in the orbit of great costume designers, or sound engineers, or actors, and for there to be enough of them that you can find co-collaborators on the same wavelength as you, who are willing to give something a try.

Artists are highly entrepreneurial, and London is a great place to make stuff happen; it's also diverse enough for you to find an audience, and small enough to stay connected.

Asifa Lahore

The Outsider

Asifa grew up in Southall, West London in a traditional Muslim family. He knew he was gay from an early age, but there was no one in his conservative community who he could to turn to. At 16 he convinced his parents to let him attend the BRIT School for Performing Arts in south London, and it was there he finally felt truly comfortable.

Clubs like Heaven have become mainstream enough to attract straight clubbers on a Saturday night, but London's gay Asian scene is still a refuge for those who can't come out in their own community. Asifa started performing drag a few years ago at nights like Club Kali. Appearing under the name Asifa Lahore, he's Britain's first Muslim drag act.

Asifa points out how London can be whatever you want to make of it.

I'd go between Southall and Croydon and start to make up excuses to my mum and dad about where I was going at the weekends. They weren't aware that I was going nightclubbing at gay venues, so, I mean, at the time, definitely in my late teens, the center of London was like an expression of who I was. It allowed me to be myself, because I was away from family and community eyes.

You've got gay Asian nights all over the place in London. There's North London, where Club Kali is, then I actually set up a night in Ealing in West London. East London has its gay Asian drag parties left, right, and center in places you'd never imagine. You'd see just a normal Indian restaurant in, say, Ilford, and in the basement they'd be having a gay Asian drag party, with 100 or 200 people.

It's interesting; for me, London is all about what's behind everything. What you see in the daytime is totally different in the night time.

@bofrankln

Photo by Flickr user WyoFile Wyo File

Earlier this year, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a nonprofit law firm founded to "fight lawlessness in Americanelections," issued a report with what, on the surface, looked like alarming statistics: accordingto US census data, in 141 counties, across 21 states, the number of peopleregistered to vote far outnumbered residents who were eligible to votein somecases, very far. In Franklin County, Illinois, for example, voter rollsoutnumbered eligible voters by 90 percent. Inother words, if you are registered to vote in Franklin County, there is a goodchance that you are dead, or don't live there anymore.

There's no actual law against these imbalancesfederalelection law prevents counties from removing voters from the rolls withoutconfirming that they aren't actually ineligible. But PILF is nevertheless threatening to sue the counties if theydon't clean up their books. Claiming that their report's findings are soegregious that they constitute a threat to the integrity of the country'selections, PILF argues that the counties are violating a section of 1993's National Voter Registration Act, which requires local officials tomake reasonable efforts to remove dead or ineligible voters from their rolls.

All this hue and cry is a little shrill, and it's unlikely thatPILF's legal haranguing will actually come to anything. But the problem thegroup points out is real, and widespread. And while these ghost voters may not posethe existential threat that PILF suggests, they are signs of a systemically badbureaucracy that has the potential to cripple the democratic processnationwide.

PILF is just the latest in a long line of organizations toname, shame, and even sue counties for having more voters on the books thanresidents over the past five years or so. In 2011, a similar campaign called out 14 counties in Illinois; another grouptook 24 counties in Iowa and 20 in Colorado to task the next year; and in 2014, Judicial Watch put 11 states and the District of Columbia on noticefor having voter rolls overloaded with people who didn't exist.

A more expansive survey of the problem, conducted by the PewCenter on the States in 2012, found that about one in eight voter records inthe US are inaccurate, out-of-date, or duplicates. Contrary to whatconservative groups like PILF suggest, Pew found that these errors did notappear to result in incidences of voter fraud. But they nevertheless wereinefficient, and put a drag on taxpayer time and money.

J. Christian Adams, PILF's president, believes that the problem is even more widespread. Adams, who served in the Justice Department's Voting Section from 2005 to 2010 and who has since been involved in a number of campaigns to rectify voter rolls, believes that while his team only caught 141 hyper-inflated counties in their recent report, there maybe more than 200 counties nationwide with similar imbalance figures.

That's not a huge number, given that there are 3,143counties or county equivalents in America, so 200 only accounts for 6.4 percent.But national averages show that only about 70 percent of eligible voters are actually registered, a figure against whichmany more counties may be implicated in voter roll inflations. Withinindividual states, the proportion of counties with more registered than eligiblevoters can be quite high. PILF's report identifies 24 offending counties inMichigan, for example, or nearly a third of the counties in the state.

PILFand other organizations concerned with this issue claim that the errors andoversights on the voter rolls make it easy for people to commit fraud at the ballot,diluting ballots, disenfranchising citizens, and corruptingthe electoral system at the core of our democratic government. There'soften a conspiratorial or paranoid tinge to these warnings, suggesting that thecurrent Democratic president and his allies on the left are opposed to cleaning up voterrolls because it allows them to cheat their way into power. Implicitly, andin at least one campaign explicitly, the conclusion is that as long as voter rolls remaincluttered and inaccurate, there's a reason to enact new voting restrictions, like the voter ID laws that have been shown to disenfranchise many eligible voters, many of whom are poor or minorities.

In recent years, most direct claims of voter fraud,by any means, have proved false. And where people do vote as someone they'renot, the issue was usually a clerical error, like signing a voter roll on thewrong line, usually as a relative whose name would show up proximate to yourown, rather than a vote by an illegible voter or a double vote by anyone. So itseems we're pretty well protected against fraud by existing measures, with or without dead voterson the rolls.

And despite a few reportedly successful cases against countieswith inflated voter rolls, it's actually pretty hard to prove that a voterregistration system isn't making due efforts to keep up with changingpopulation. Taken together, it's easy to see PILF's report as overstated and attention-mongering, and dismiss the issue of inflated voter rolls as anodd but ultimately innocuous consequence of outdated record-keeping.

In reality, inflated voter rolls are a problem, for reasonsfar less sexy than voter fraud and fundamental electoral legitimacy.

"If you have someone on your list that should no longer beon your list, and you're still sending them information in the mail, you'restill drawing precinct boundaries thinking they live in a particular place,"said David Becker, director of Election Initiatives at the Pew CharitableTrusts. "There are costs that go along with that... ."

This suggests that, when ERIC and similar tools are used,they can adequately and thoughtfully solve the legitimate problems of voterroll inflation, and eliminate a grounds for paranoia about voter fraud (andsupport for worrying polling restrictions), all at low, pay-for-themselvescosts. So promoting ERIC may be a better tactic, for anyone legitimatelyconcerned about the functionality and legitimacy of American elections, thanthe PILF's lawsuits, and alarmism.

"We've seen in three years that at least the ERIC states areseeing a real benefit," said Baker. "And as more states continue to join, Ithink were going to see that this problem is not entirely solvedbut is getting solved... And we can move on toother issues."

Follow Mark on Twitter.

Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

Congratulations! You'vesurvived your first few weeks of college. From a teary departure on move-inday, to your first taste of vodka out of a plastic jug during welcome week, toyour first use of "problematic" or"heteronormative" in class last week, you're a bona fide college student now!

But does it feel likesomething's missing? As you read this, are you eating dining hall lunch to-go,holed up in your dorm downloading a proxy so you can watch Black Mirror on UK Netflix?

Are you lonely? That's OK. Iwas lonely once, too. There's some good news and some bad news. The good news:the first few months of college are when you'll meet some of the worst peopleof your life and get a ton of karmic nonsense out of the way. The bad news, andI think you already know this: A lot of the friends you're making now will notbe your friends for the long haul. They are comical blips on your timelinewhose names you won't be able to match with their faces after they delete theirFacebook accounts. Years from now, you will stumble across pictures of yourselfwith them and wonder who the hell these people were and what they meant to you.The answer will almost certainly be "not much."

That said, you're stuck inthis hellhole away from home until December, so you might as well getacquainted with the people you'll be spending the next few months of your lifewith.

The Insider

This person has an olderbrother/sister/cousin/stepmom who goes to or recently graduated from yourschool, so they already seeminglyknow the ropes. They know the clubs to join, the bar where the bouncer acceptsfake IDs cause he was "super tight" with their brother/sister/cousin/stepmom,and the place to get "dank falafel" after anight of partying. But here's the thing about the early weeks of college (and,well, probably the rest of your life): leaders are not to be trusted.Confidence is great, but it's also something that people even less secure than you will hide behind. Justwatch how this little shit's bravado-filled voice begins to tremble and crack whenthe bouncer snatches the ID he borrowed from his sister's boyfriend.

Your final interaction: Senioryear, he's sneaking a beer into the library and snacking on a dry falafel,asking if you've already donated to the alumni fund and if you're coming to thereunion.

The First Love

You probably met on the Classof 2019 Facebook group. Maybe you're from nearby towns or, better yet, from asfar away as two people could be. Now, I don't want to sound like an old man,but back in my day (approximately two years ago)we didn't do all this "sexting"there was no Snapchat, you couldn't AirDropyour nudes to unsuspecting strangers. If you wanted to show someone your dick,you had to do it in person. And I encourage you, dear youths, to leavesomething to the imagination. Hell, maybe leave everything to the imagination. If you spent the last few weeks of Augusttalking to John from Toronto over Facebook chat, there's a good chance you've dreamilymapped out your lives together.

But all of these fantasieswill be shattered when you do finally meetyou're in the same required litclass, maybe even on purpose? You hear their voice, ahint more vocal fry than you imagined, reading at a suspiciously slow clip fromThe Illiad and you'll realize thatsomething is not quite right. But you'll still both get tipsy and kiss at aparty in front of people, and you'll think that this is the moment everythingchanges. Unfortunately, you can't go back to his placehe gets a text from hisroommate that the room's already reserved. And your room is full of yourroommate's bros going ham over some throwback Halo 2 SWAT matches and waterfallbong rips. Instead, you make out awkwardly in a dorm hallway then go home totake a long shower and reflect on that magical party kiss with your futurebeau. In the other room you hear someone bellow, "head shot!" but you know theymeant "heart."

Your final interaction: Thenext morning, you remember a cute little debate you got into about bagels (NYCvs. Toronto) and text him a picture of B&H's storefront"Breakfast?" He'salready eaten, and you don't speak again for the rest of college. Youeventually forget most details about this person (were they really fromToronto? Or is Montreal the bagel city up north?) until the year 2065. You'reat the retirement home, scrolling through Facebook on your iRespirator and seea notification that says this person posted in the Class of 2019 group. Yourheart fluttersyou have trouble remembering almost everything past 2055theexcitement triggering a massive, fatal heart attack. The first love "Likes" theFacebook status your kids post on your wall about the funeral details.

Image via Flickr User Matt Nazario-Miller

The Dorm Weed Dealer

You cansmell the weed and incense billowing out from their room the moment you get outof the elevator. You can hear him poorly freestyling with his friends overDanny Brown tracks a full floor away. He's harmless, but in five years you'llremember how much time you wasted humoring this bucket hat-wearing clown as hewaxed poetic about that Berenst(E)ain Bears conspiracy theory just so he'd smoke you up beforeselling you an awfully light gram of "the dankest Cali kush" and feel a hugerelief that you now use a delivery service for your drugs like a real adult.

Your final interaction: If we're being optimistic here, adispensary opens up within driving distance and you never have to talk to thisdude again. Realistically, you're gonna go pick up a $20 bag one time andaccidentally kick over his triple-percolator bong, putting you $400 in the red.You'll awkwardly apologize, and realize that smoking weed kinda sucks.

The Masturbator

There is a widely understoodrule that if two or more people share a spacenamely a dorm bedroomfor anextended period of time, one person's masturbation habits will grow to greatlyaffect the other. Let this serve as a reminder that it is NEVER OK to masturbate while someone else is in the same room asyou unless you have explicit consent. It's also not OK to spend over 20 minutesin a bathroom shared by five people. Wait for times when you know yourroommates will be gone (Physically gone. GONE. Not asleep. Jesus). This sucks a lot, but you should be savingyour sexual energy for mistakes you make with people who actually opted to seeyour still-relatively-hairless genitals.

Your final interaction: Youget caught the one time you decide tobreak your own rule and take a risk by going to town on yourself while unsureof your roommate's whereabouts. The two of you don't make much eye contact therest of the semester but you're verypolite (almost unbearably polite, the tension building up just like yourneed to masturbate) to one another.

The Person You Have History With

You may learn, with terror,that the guy or girl from your rival high school who you made out with at seniorweek is in your 8 AM French lecture, or your new best friend went to camp withthat asshole who pissed on your parents' bed at theparty you threw at your house that one time. Whatever the case, the world isvery small, and while you may think college is a clean slate, the universecertainly does not. All you can do is keep your head held up high, say smartthings in class, and if you end up at the same house party, let him get drunkerthan you before reminding the jerk about how his mommy made him replace yourparent's duvet cover that he ruined in high school along with a hand-writtenapology note.

Your final interaction: Agroup dinner with a disaster check-splitting gone wrong. That bitch will unknowinglyowe you $15 and you'll never let go of the grudge you've held for so long.

Photo via Flickr User Brian Rosner

The Sexual Amnesiac

Known to some as a Friendwith Benefits, the Sexual Amnesiac embodies a very particular, albeit sexpositive, flavor of psychopathy. This is someone with whom you develop adefinitely-flirtatious friendship with, do the deed, and continue beingfriends. Sounds simple enough, right? But it gets confusing when the SexualAmnesiac tells you about their latest and greatest exploitsyou are friends, after alland you're kind oflike, "Do they even remember that we hooked up?" And then you hook up again andthere's always kind of a lingering air of "Oh, we shouldn't do this... wereally shouldn't do this..." Whereas you know that, scientifically speaking, amistake only causes half as much psychic damage each time you repeat it, somight as well go for broke, right?

Your final interaction:You outperform them in a threeway and, their confidence shot, they stop answeringeven your most platonic of texts.

The Fun Alcoholic

This person is eitherEuropean or from New York/LA or both. Whatever the case, they actually drank in high schoollike, theyknow what an Negroni is, they already have a fake ID, their parents send themwine, and they know how to roll a mean cigarette. As age sinks in, this willmean that they know when to stop, or how to hold their liquor, or generally howto maintain a maybe less-than-healthy-but-basically-normal alcohol habitwithout embarrassing themselves. But in those early months of collegeand, hell,really all through collegethis means knowing how to push yourself so thatyou're fun. Because, let's face it,18-year-olds are lame, and the things you're doing in college are generallyboring if you aren't drunk. Sorry!

Your final interaction: Idunno, this one might be a keeper.

For more college stories, watch our doc on the white power campus safety patrol, the White Student Union:

The New York Kid

A cousin (perhaps literally)of The Fun Alcoholic, this guy (and I say "guy" because, regardless of theirgender, this person is a guy) either grew up with or is the child of famouspeople, but he wants to make it (probably in his parent's field) without theirhelp. (Except for their financial help. He'll totally take their financial helpand probably live in some property they own after college.) He went to anelite private school, and he's tried lots of drugs. Being around this personwill always make you feel like Brittany Murphy in Clueless ("You guys talk like grown ups."). But, if you play yourcards right, you may get to go home with him for fall break and meet one of thekids from NYC Prep.

Your final interaction:The New York Kid will, undoubtedly, drop out to pursue "a directing project"sometime around your sophomore year. After you graduate and move to New York,you'll make several attempts to meet up, but his parent's penthouse is kind offar from Brooklyn.

The Cool Professor

Oh, rightI guess you alsohave to go to class at some point? Keep your eyes peeled for The CoolProfessor. Depending on how cool theyare, they might smoke with you on breaks or even throw a little shindig at theend of the semester with top shelf booze and stories about the time they didcocaine with Bret Easton Ellis. If you really play your cards right, thisperson could be a creative mentor and life-long ally. Or, you might get toodrunk at that party, vomit in the bathroom, and never forgive yourself when youoverhear the Professor tell his T.A. about your faux pas with a chuckle("Definitely a freshman, that one!") as you wait outside his office clutchingthe hardcover book that took you hours to pick as an apology gift.

Your final interaction: You'llkeep in touch with The Cool Professor, and maybe even take a few more of theirclasses. By your senior year, they take a position somewhere else. You're sadto see them go, and it's not until years later that you catch the littlewaysyour love of bourbon, the affected way you say "Walter Benjamin"in whichyou've grown to emulate The Cool Professor. Shoot them an e-mail every coupleyears. I'm sure they'd love to hear from you.

There youhave it! Here are the monsters who will haunt your (hopefully forgettable)first few months of college. I know the prospects may seem grim. But it'simportant to remember that four years is a long time, and it does get better. Just be sure to neverask what it is about you that mightbe attracting these undesirables and maybe start looking into affordable,off-campus housing for sophomore year.

Follow Ken on Twitter.

Ronnie Massaro speaking at San Francisco State University. Photo by the author

VICE is exploring America's prison system in the week leading up to our special report with President Obama for HBO. Tune in Sunday, September 27, at 9 PM EST, to see his historic first-ever presidential visit to a federal prison.

During my final year of imprisonment, I wrote a monthly update letter and addressed the envelope to the federal probation office in San Francisco. I had no idea which probation officer would be keeping tabs on me, but I coveted the highest level of liberty possible, and hoped to influence the officer who would be overseeing my release.

Shortly after surrendering to the halfway house in San Fran, I asked Charles, my case manager, if he knew which probation officer I'd be working with. He flipped pages through his thick red file.

"Looks like you've got Christine."

Charles gave me Christine's number and I set up an appointment, where we spoke for an hour. Although she hadn't received any of my letters, she said, she listened to me speak about my adjustment plans for building a career around my journey. Christine expressed support. Although I wasn't obligated, Christine invited me to attend a group meeting she held with other men who'd been released from prison.

I met Ronnie at the first and last group meeting I attended.

By then, many years had passed since I'd left a high-security prison. But when I was among the 2,500 men inside the 40-foot walls that surround the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta where I began my term, you could expect violence to break out on any given dayand when Ronnie walked into Christine's group-counseling session, I instantly recognized him as a shot caller, or gang leader. He had a shaved head. Lightening bolts and demons and swastikas sleeved out his arms in fading blue ink. He sat at the head of the table with a "Don't fuck with me" expression on his face.

Ronnie didn't have to say a word for me to know that he'd served his time in high-security facilities, and probably had done a few sordid deeds to earn his place as a shot caller on the yard. Something that was said often to me was, "It's easy to get respect in the penitentiary, so long as you're willing to pay the price"Ronnie looked like he'd paid the price.

Christine introduced me to the group, telling them I'd been transferred to the halfway house after 25 years in prison.

"I was at that same halfway house," I remember Ronnie snarling. "Didn't last a week."

"Why not, OG?" someone asked. Clearly, the other men looked to Ronnie as a leader.

Ronnie went on to explain how, from the minute he got there, he felt out of sortsor "out of pocket." People were slinging dope, women were turning tricks, and he didn't have a knife or pistol!

The other guys laughed.

Ronnie went on to explain how in In the penor federal penitentiaryeveryone knew exactly how to act. The "big homie" on the yard laid down the law. People stuck to their own kind and adhered to established hierarchies. But none of the rules he'd been living by seemed to matter anymore. When he felt disrespected by a man touching his coffee and threw him inside of a locker, US Marshals showed up with the cuffs and chains.

That act of violence sent Ronnie back to prison.

Christine cut in and told us about the growth Ronnie had made since then and how proud she was of his adjustment. He concluded his sentence four years previously, and she considered him a role model because he'd been holding steady employment, an accomplishment few former prisoners can pull off.

Ronnie grew up in Richmond, California, a working-class community just north of Oakland. From the time between his 15th birthday and his release from prison at 49, he'd never experienced more than 12 consecutive months in free society. His last stretch kept him locked up for 20 years.

"Each time I got out before, I just kept doing the same ol' thing. Slinging drugs, doin' what I knew how to do, handlin' business," he said. "When I got out this time, I wanted to do right. Jus' didn't know how. I got a son who starts and quits jobs all the time like it's nothin'. I couldn't catch a job nowhere. Didn't even know how to look. When I go by a spot lookin' for work, they tell me to fill out some application on a computer. Never learnt how to use no computer in prison! Walmart wouldn't hire me 'cause the manager said I didn't exist in the credit world, said I never paid taxes, said I didn't exist. Couldn't believe that I couldn't get a job at Walmart."

"How'd you end up getting hired where you work now?" one of the men in the group who'd been discouraged by the job market asked.

Ronnie explained that a buddy turned him on to a temp agency. "I didn't even know what a temp agency was. Said they give day jobs. I'd been out of work for 18 months and was just trying to do right, trying to get my feet up under me. No one gave me a break. Kept asking about the gap in my resume. Wasn't nothin' there for 30 years. Didn't have no experience, no references.

"Finally got sent out on a couple of labor jobs, making 'bout eight, nine bucks an hour. When I did some dirty work hauling boxes in the hot sun that no one else'd do, I got asked if I wanted a full-time spot. Been working there for two years now, still can't earn a livable wage. Just don't know how to get along in a way to move up."

"What do you mean?" I asked. Like the other men, I was eager to learn more about the challenges of reentry.

"No one out here in society gets me," Ronnie said, leaning back in his chair. "In prison you learn how to carry yourself in a certain way. I don't know how to smile. I'm not madit's just the way I look. Certain facial expressions frighten people out here. I didn't want people approaching me in prison, so I had to look a certain way. That's just the way I am. Don't even realize that I'm doin' it out here. In prison I didn't want people comin' near me. Out here, people take me the wrong way."

The other guys laughed. They could relate.

"See, I can walk into any prison and I'm instantly gonna know what's going on. Don't even got to know no one in the room. I'm gonna know who's who and what's up. Out here, if I walk into a room of people I don't know, I'm uncomfortable. Don't know how to act. Feel like everyone's lookin' at me, judgin' me. That's why I just keep workin' the job I'm on. Even though I ain't earning much, don't want to go through the whole process of havin' to explain myself and my background all over again."

Ronnie told the group that he wasn't alone. He communicated with a few other guys who served long stretches in the penitentiary. They were the same way. The adjustments they made inside made them feel as if they'd missed something when they returned to society. He's as well-adjusted as he'll ever be, Ronnie said. But he told me that he felt more comfortable in prison than he would ever feel in society. "Those are my people in prison and I know how to handle myself in there. Don't know how to act out here. I missed a generation or something, and it's still a shock. I can't relate."

Six years have passed since Ronnie was released, and he's now finished with supervision from probation. I called him recently to see how the adjustment has progressed. He's 55 years old now, he told me, and somewhat concerned with retirementhe doesn't know what he'll do. He doesn't take vacations, sick days, or any time off. He recently got promoted from working in a warehouse to driving. He's been able to purchase his first house, he said, but had to take in four roommates to make ends meet.

"Now just got to hope that nothin' they're doin' brings me problems," Ronnie says.

His is a fairly typical story. The adjustment patterns that many people find necessary to cope in a "correctional" setting contrast with the adjustment patterns that tend to produce success in society. That's another reason we must reform our nation's sentencing and prison systems: They're designed to perpetuate failure, rather than create functional members of society.

Some former inmates like Ronnie succeed in overcoming anyway.

Follow Michael Santos on Twitter and check out his website here.

VICE is exploring America's prison system in the week leading up to our special report with President Obama for HBO. Tune in Sunday, September 27, at 9 PM EST, to see his historic first-ever presidential visit to a federal prison.

Fixing the System, VICE on HBO's special report on the American criminal justice system, was screened earlier today at El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma for a group of inmates. In attendance were the six inmates who met with President Obama this past Julythe first time in history that a sitting president has visited a federal prison. We spoke to various inmates and captured their reactions below.

Read: Black Lives Matter

Police are calling bullshit on a Texas family who filed an insurance claim alleging that supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement graffitied their truck earlier this month, according to the Washington Post.

Scott Lattin and his family made a police report, a Dallas-Fort Worth Fox affiliate said, claiming that the damage was in retaliation to the words "Police Lives Matter" written on their truck's rear window. The vehicle was keyed and spray-painted with "Black Lives Matter" across the side.

After the Lattin family's claims made headlines, they were able to raise about $5,500 in donations through an online fundraising campaign and spur angst and vitriol against the Black Lives Matter movement across the internet.

Screenshot of comments on the Blaze.com

But when the police began investigating the crime, things just didn't add up. The Lattin family's report said that there was no damage done to the interior of the truck, but when Fox interviewed the family, someone had slashed the car seats and torn up the inside.

"The damage didn't look the same... the story wasn't quite thesame," Police Chief Chris Bentley told the Post.

Scott Lattin, his wife, and his son were all taken into custody on charges of providing false information to the police. Lattin, however, maintains he is innocent. Bentley is not so sure.

When the Post asked Bentley if he believed that Black Lives Matter actually graffitied Lattin's truck, he bluntly replied, "No."

Via YouTube

Douglas Williams, perhaps the most prominent foe of the polygraph test in the United States, is going to prison for helping people beat it. The 69-year-old former Oklahoma cop was indicted last November on two counts of mail fraud and three counts of witness tampering. He pleaded guilty in May and got sentenced to two years behind bars on Tuesday.

Williams is the second person to go to prison for helping people fool the test after Chad Dixon, an Indiana man, was sentenced to eight months in September 2013. The two men were among the first targets of what seems to be an Obama administration crackdown, and they might not be the last given that there were about 30 people or groups in the United States offering similar services as of 2013, according to McClatchy.

On his website, Polygraph.com, the silver-haired Williams wrote that he went from "cop to crusader" and offered guides and private lessons on gaming the test. And although he claimed that his goal was to prevent the innocent from being incriminated, undercover officers found that he wasn't all that discriminating about his clients.

Back in the 70s, polygraph tests were a relatively normal screening process for people seeking private-sector jobs. Cops also used them to elicit confessions. It was in that era that Williams started working for the Oklahoma City Police Department and administering them himself. After seven years, though, he was drinking a pint of whiskey per night, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek profile, and couldn't take it anymore. He decided the tests were bullshit, and quit the job.

But when Williams's sister needed advice on how to pass the test in order to work at a nightclub, he wrote her a guide. And after President Ronald Reagan signed a law in 1988 saying private-sector employees, like Williams's sister, shouldn't be subjected to the tests, he set his sights on helping wannabe government workers trick the machine.

As Williams was building his business, evidence mounted that the tests were useless, or worse. Len Saxe, a researcher at Brandeis University, presented a report to Congress in 1983 showing there was no evidence that they actually worked. In a 1998 Supreme Court case, the justices acknowledged as much, allowing states to ban polygraph results as evidence in court.

But 14 years after that decision, law enforcement agencies were still using the test to determine employment eligibility. So in October 2012, an undercover Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agent called up Williams and claimed to be under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for helping a friend sneak contraband through an airport. The undercover officer said that he was guilty and intended to lie.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing dumbass?" Williams said over the phone. "Do you think, do you think you have like a lawyer confidentiality with me?"

"I haven't lived this long and fucked the government this long, and done such a controversial thing that I do for this long, and got away with it without any trouble whatsoever, by being a dumbass," he continued, before helping the man anyway.

On February 13, 2013, another undercover officer inquired about Williams's services, saying he was a cop looking for a job with US Customs and Border Patrol. "If I tell them that I sold drugs in the jail when I was a jailer, can they use that against me?" he asked, according to the indictment. The cop also casually mentioned a past sexual indiscretion with a 14-year-old he'd once interviewed.

"Keep that shit to yourself," Williams replied.

Douglas Williams Indictment

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Image by West Midlands Police via Flickr

Earlier this year, the United States government admitted it had been subject to a massive data breach in which the personal information for 21.5 million government employees and former employees was leaked through a hack of Office of Personnel Management security clearance applications. The Washington Post quoted FBI Director James B. Comey as calling the stolen data "a treasure trove of information about everybody who has worked for, tried to work for, or works for the United States government."

Then, earlier today, OPM issued a statement acknowledging that their initial estimate of 1.1 million fingerprints was inaccurate and that more than 5.6 million people's prints had been compromised in the June breach. "Federal experts believe that, as of now, the ability to misuse fingerprint data is limited," the agency explained. "However, this probability could change over time as technology evolves."

OPM is responsible for the staffing of government agencies, providing security clearances, and many other services concerning civilian government employees. Those affected by the breach included current and former government employees, as well as their spouses and partners.

Though US investigators have said they believe China is behind the hack, the Chinese government has denied it. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Chinese President Xi Jinping flatly rejected the accusation, saying that, "the Chinese government does not engage in theft of commercial secrets in any form" and that his nation is "ready to strengthen cooperation with the US side on this issue."

The news of the fingerprint hack comes just days before the Chinese president is scheduled to arrive in Washington, DC, for a state visit with President Barack Obama. It's safe to say that the theft of millions of federal government records will be on their agenda.

Five In-Depth Stories About Cybersecurity

1. Mr. Robot Argues that Real Life Is a Dystopia
2. A Hacker Sent a Woman Creepy Pictures of Himself Taken Through Her Own Webcam
3. We Spoke to a Researcher Trying to Stop AI from Killing Us All
4. Is Changing Your Teacher's Desktop Wallpaper Really a Felony?
5. The FBI and Obama Are Calling Out North Korea for the Sony Hack

Follow Drew on Twitter.

The story of Jimmy "Orion" Ellis is either one of the greatest cons to be forged in the history of American music or it's one of its greatest unsolved mysteries. It's the story of a masked man with a voice so close to Elvis's that even the King's most die-hard admirers couldn't tell the difference.

The similarities are staggering: Ellis was born to a woman named Gladys (as was Elvis) but was soon adopted, meaning his true identity was never known or discovered. If you then throw in the legendary Sun Records (Elvis's label) as a recording outlet for the singer (his debut album even being called Reborn) and dress him up with a fictional identity, you have Orion: an artist who managed to convincebe it inadvertently or under instructionthousands that he was indeed the King hidden behind a glitter-strewn mask.

However, behind Orion's elaborate jumpsuits, face masks, velvet-drenched vocals, and sense of enigma was a real, non-Elvis person, a confused human trying to figure himself out while locked into the faade (contractually) of having to live the life of someone else.

Ellis was a simple Southern gent in many ways but also an idiosyncratic oddity in others; his penchant for the ladies over the years ran to such an extent that he carried around with him a suitcase full of polaroids of vaginas taken from sexual encounters he had had with women on the road whom he called "Lucys."

All of this is captured in a new documentary called Orion:

The doc is by Jeanie Finlay, a rising star in British documentary filmmaking, having previously made excellent films like Sound It Outabout the last remaining record shop in Stockton on Teesor The Great Hip Hop Hoax,the tale of some Scottish chancers taking on the music industry.

After picking up a record of Orion's in a bargain bin, Finlay set about telling his story. I caught up with Finlay back at this year's Sheffield Doc/Fest, where the film received its UK premiere, and attempted to gently skip around any spoiler alerts about the filmwhich is kind of hard.

VICE: When you picked up that Orion record, were you drawn to make a film based on the story and image of him or did the music grab you too?
Jeanie Finlay: It was more the story. I thought the music was interesting. Some of the songs, like "Honey"used in the title sequenceare amazing. It could be from a David Lynch film. It's haunting and the production is really good but then there are super cheesy songs like "Washing Machine." It was definitely the story.

Orion's son, Jim Jr., who features a lot in the film was initially reticent to speak with you. How did you turn him around?
He agreed, I think a bit reluctantly, to do an interview in person. He assumed that we must be rich and I explained that it was done on a wing and a prayer. Our Nashville-based cameraman had a car and goodwill, we had some development money and bought cheap flights, and one of the guys shooting the film was my husband, so we could split costs. I think he couldn't quite figure it out. He ended up liking us and, when I went back to film on his land, he welcomed us.

What was Orville like to film at and stay in?
You have to remember that Orville is a town with 112 people and people are quite isolated. Somebody's nearest neighbor might be two miles away. It's a very different atmosphere but I think ultimately being a strange, ramshackle British crew in this odd place helped because you can ask stupid questions. It's so small that there wasn't anywhere for us to stay so we had to go to Selma and stay there.

It's very beautiful in a lot of ways but also a place that used to be quite rich but has lost a lot of money over the last 50 years post-segregationit's an area that used to produce cotton. It's odd, as I was thinking that this film in many ways is about the death of the south. It's not overt but thinking about somewhere like Orville I could really understand why Jimmy wanted to break out and be Orion. You have all these houses that have just been taken over by nature or have no money to put into them anymore and then things like the whites-only schools have been bulldozed. It made for interesting scenes, lots of cotton fields, buildings, and outhouses taken over by vines. That felt really important to show... how it's a place that was not what it once was.

There seems to be a real strand of humanity in your films and you work with people that could be victims instead of heroes. Is that a really important aspect to your filmmaking?
It's massively important to me. I want to make films with all of my heart. I want people to recognize themselves when they see the film and that's for good or bad. I think it's good to challenge your expectations of people as well; we'll often structure the edit so that you feel one way about someone at one point and then differently by the end and you challenge your preconceptions.

Because I make independent films I don't have to answer to anyone and if I had the pressures of a broadcaster or an agenda of those things then it would be a lot more difficult to do that. The freedom of doing that myself means that I am now in a much stronger position to say "this is how I do things."

If you want people to recognize themselves in your films, is there any character within this film, or any of your others, that you most closely see yourself in?
Sound It Out is definitely my most personal film, so I feel like a character in that. It started off as my love/hate letter to the North East but the process of making the film made me really love the area again. I got my head kicked in in Stockton, like really badly, kicked in the face and beaten up by five girls on a night out so I was always really wary of it there. But I spent a lot of time going home because my mom was ill with breast cancer and Sound It Out Records was the only place worth going to, so I just felt compelled to make the film.

WATCH: VICE Talks Film with Shane Meadows:

Combined with your last film, The Great Hip Hop Hoax, you've had a good root around in the various corners of the music industry. What are your overall feelings on the music and film industry from your experiences?
I thought about it a lot because of the rise of programs like the X Factor and The Voice, I hate them, I can't watch them. They break my heart, I feel like you can see people's hearts snapping. It's about the industry, it's got nothing to do with if you're a good singer or not. I find them really difficult to watch but it's always been the same.

I've not been purposely going out to make these music industry films but I've been compelled to do so because they're portraits of layered identities and about maintaining who you are when you're doing what you want to do. That's got a lot of resonance for me as a filmmakerhow do you get your story out there without having to compromise it, to get money?

Orion was something of a victim to the mechanics of the music industry. Did you come away liking him after making the film?
It kind of waxed and waned throughout the process. He loved the ladies and everyone kept telling me that over and over again. Quite often I would be told 'oh, he'd have loved your hair' and I was like 'am I supposed to take that as a compliment?' He certainly didn't make some of the best life choices, but I felt utterly compelled about his situation.

There are a lot of unanswered question in the film overall. Was it always your intention to leave things unanswered or where you left without answers yourself?
The film is about rumor and story telling, not to do with belief. I didn't push that side of things too hard, like trying to get his birth certificate. All the American screenings people were like, 'why didn't you get the DNA' but that would be a different film and not the one I wanted to make.

Lastly, any idea of what happened to the bizarre suitcase of polaroids?Apparently it was burnt. It is no more.

Orion: The Man Who Would Be King is in cinemas from Friday, September 25.

Photo via Flickr user Renegade98

With the country's provinces divided in their approach to student loans, one of the most pressing issues in this federal election to young people is how each party plans to tackle education.

Unfortunately, the outlook is not that good.

Out of the three frontrunner parties, only the Conservatives (we know!) have proposed anything semi-tangible in regards to students on the campaign trail, with Stephen Harper promising an increase to the money returned on every dollar invested into a child's RESP fund for low and middle-income families.

Up from 10 to 20 cents for middle-income households and 20 to 40 cents for low-income families, the Conservatives pledge they will give up to $200 back on the first $500 invested by families making under $44,000 annually, and $100 back on the same amount to families making under $88,000.

This proposal is said to affect 900,000 students who received the RESP bonus in 2015, out of a total 2.59 million that received the most basic Canada Education Savings Grant, according to a Conservative press release on the announcement. Some critics say that it's still not enough, however, as most low to middle-income families can't contribute to an RESP in the first place, not to mention that the proposal does nothing for student loans.

Although not on centre stage (so much so that she wasn't even invited to the second debate), the boldest offerings this campaign have come from the Green Party's Elizabeth May. She has said that she would not only eliminate university tuition nationwide by 2020, but would also cap all student debt at a maximum of $10,000 and reduce loan interest rates to zero.

"Canada's economy depends on investing in our brain, investing in our youths, and ensuring that no Canadian gives up on their educational dreams because they can't afford it," she said at a campaign stop last week at the University of Guelph.

May also called out other parties for not doing enough on the front, doubling down on her belief that Canadian youth are, believe it or not, the future of Canada.

"If we ignore our youth, society will begin to fall apart," she said.

While the NDP and the Liberals have both yet to announce their education platforms or make any significant statement on student loans, they have proposed youth-focused initiatives to increase job availability.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair has offered $200 million over the next four years to improve youth employment conditions, with a focus on stimulating apprenticeships and paid internships via the private and nonprofit sectors.

On the other hand, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has proposed $1.5 billion in youth job initiatives over the next five years to create 120,000 positions in science and technology-focused sectors. He has also promised to create 5,000 "green" jobs, as well as additional investment in placements for co-op students and those travelling to do community-building projects.

When contacted for direct comment on their educational platform, an NDP spokesperson told VICE that they would be unveiling their plan soon, but could not go into any specific details.

Instead, a quote from Mulcair's stop at the University of Ottawa on Tuesday was provided to VICE via email to supplement a direct statement.

"Young people today have the largest student debt that there ever was, as I went across the country I met lots of young people who are thinking of having a family but they look at the cost of that conciliation, balancing their life and their family and their work, it's extremely difficult. So we would make sure we would put more money in their pockets with quality, affordable child care and we would bring in as a model for others and with regard to the hundred thousand people that it would give a raise to a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour."

(For the record, the $15 federal minimum wage pledge has been thoroughly criticized.)

Alternately, Liberal Party candidate Francis Drouin told VICE that the party will be trying to address post-secondary needs through indirect routes, such as making it easier for the middle class to thrive and providing economic opportunities for First Nations people and veterans to receive higher education.

When asked whether the Liberal Party would be proposing anything similar to that of the Green Party's plan to restructure student debt, Drouin said that he doesn't believe the Green's plan is economically feasible.

"As much as we'd love to offer free education, what we want to do is to attract the best talent," he said. "I'm not sure the Green Party plan is affordable, but what we want to do is continue helping families pay the rising costs of tuition."

Drouin could not confirm when the Liberal's full education platform would be announced.

Canadian Federation of Students' national chairperson Bilan Arte said that while they have made numerous suggestions to the federal parties, including initiatives to lower tuition and improve working conditions so graduates can find jobs to pay off their student loan debt, it has been "a waiting game" on their end.

"We are still anticipating and waiting on the position from the but we hope that they will take our ideas on student loan conditions and post-secondary education into consideration," she said to VICE.

Of course, there is the issue that provincial action on education (it is their jurisdiction after all) has been more progressive than that of the federal government.

Earlier this year, Newfoundland and Labrador (the province with the lowest tuition fees in the country) became the first province to eliminate student loans in order replace them with grant-only educational funding.

Similarly, the Alberta NDP held true to a campaign promise last week when they froze tuition fees for all Albertan students for the next two years.

When asked whether talks with government on the provincial or federal level has been more successful, Arte said that they both tend to point the other way.

"When we talk to the provinces, they tell us postsecondary education is a federal issue, but when we talk to politicians federally, they tell us it's a provincial issue. I would say it is both a federal and provincial issue and as a country, we are seriously lagging behind in making that relationship work."

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

VICE is exploring America's prison system in the week leading up to our special report with President Obama for HBO. Tune in Sunday, September 27, at 9 PM EST, to see his historic first-ever presidential visit to a federal prison.

It was Monday morning,April 23, 2012, and a friend named Cedric Dean and I had just entered our unit after eating themorning meal. We walked straight to the inmate computer system, hoping that SISthe prison's special investigative supervisorshad released our emails early. Wewere both writers who had caught the attention of the media, and among the executivestaff at our federal prison in North Carolina, we were public enemies number one and two.

About a month earlier, an SIS lieutenant had stopped Dean and me in the middle of the compound, saying he'd just come out of a meeting where we were the main topic."Someone, somewhere will eventually do some creativewriting and get rid of you both," hetold us. "I predict you'll both be shipped out of heresoon."

He was not wrong.

I logged onto my inmate account that Monday and in the top left-hand corner it read, "You have five new messages and areject message."

Oh fuck, I thought.

It was common practicefor the Email Police, as we called them, to reject my incoming and outgoing messages. They were especially hard on Dean and me. I once had all of my emails rejected for 72 hours straightemails that said things like,"I love you mom," "My foot hurts, Carly," and "I'mgoing outside for a walk."

Typically, my emails would be rejected after Iwrote a story or posted comments on social media that officials didn't like.

I went to the reject menuitem and clicked. The email in question was actually my most recentarticle, a piece that I had attempted to send out the night before.

The article was about Sean Hannity and how the FoxNews commentator kept airing incendiary soundbites of the New Black PantherParty. This was soon after the killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, an incident that was causing some tension among a bunch of black and white guys who normally gotalong very well inside. According to the Email Police, the note was rejected becauseit posed a problem to the "good orderly running" of the facility.

"You need to get your assdown to the library and make a copy of this before it's deleted or something," I remember Dean saying. "How can an articleabout what's going on in here cause a safety problem? It can't. You need to fight this, Rob. Otherwise they justgonna keep on fucking us."

The truth of the matter is thatI was well within my rights to write that article and have it published. A court ruling that very month stipulated that prisoners were permitted to write manuscripts, publish under bylines, and haveuncensored contact with the media. Even before that, most prison officials would let your average inmate do this. For example, from 2008 to 2010, while I was housed in thesame North Carolina federal prison facilityFCI Butnerthe staff were some of my biggest fans. I can't counthow many times they commented on one of my blog posts, or asked when my nextprison story was goingto be posted. When Ponzi scheme kingpinBernie Madoff hit the compound, I started writing blog posts that clashed with what the New York Post was publishing about him. The guards loved it.

But all that changed the moment I was unexpectedly transferred to FCI Butner II, anadjacent facility.

Now I was a threat.

On the 7:30 AM movewhen inmates are allowed out of their cellsCedric andI headed straight to the library, one of two places that had printers. Myintention at that point was to make a copy of the Hannity article, in the eventI needed it as a part of a broader civil rights suit I hoped to file related to writing.

But no sooner did I take thecopies out of the printer than a group of correctional officers headed for thelibrary.

"Grab Rosso's legal folderand take it to the lieutenant's office," a CO said. "SIS saidthey want every single of piece of paper that he has on him, and everything inhis cell. He's not to have any property in his possession whatsoever."

For the third time in 15months, I was being taken to the SHU (special housing unit, a.k.a. solitary or "the hole"). The first time it happened was January 27, 2011, the day that officials learned that I had interviewed Madoff. In a piece published in NewYork magazine, Steve Fishman recounted what happened to me: "Then, suddenly, mycommunication with Rosso stopped. I soon learned that prison officials hadthrown him in the holesolitaryconfinementforconducting the interview."

Eightmonths later I was back in the hole again, only this time SIS claimed they didit for my "own protection." According to an SIS techthe officials who track inmate emailan article I wrote about the illegal tobacco trade inside could cause me bodily harm.

"I want the articledown," the SIS officer said. He wanted it off every blog that it was posted on. Nolonger was the article a "safety concern," as they originally lockedme up for, he admitted. Now I was just embarrassing the prison.

He also mentioned a woman named Michelle Heckner and how she had no business writing me.

Heckner was someone Ihad never met, an ex-con on probation who started writing me after she heardradio host Bob Garfield talk about me during On the Media, a segment onNational Public Radio. She started reading some of my blog posts aboutcriminal justice reform, and reached out. But because this official washolding and reading all my mail, he made it his mission to have her sent backto prison for writing me, which was technically a violation of her probation.

On the evening of November 1,2011, I called Carly Halla woman on the outside who ran my blogfrom a phone in the SHU and had her take down thearticle about the illegal tobacco trade. During that recorded phone call, I alsomade it clear that as soon as it came down, I would be released from the hole.

That didn't happen for two moremonths.

When I was released from thehole on January 2, 2012, the first thing I did was have Carly repost the tobacco piece on all of my blogs. Next, I began researchingcivil lawsuits based on "retaliation" and "First Amendment violations." In the short time that I'd been at FCI Butner II, I had beenthrown the hole twice for writing, several of my media contacts had beenblocked for various reasons, three journalists requesting to interview me hadbeen denied, and my mail and emails were constantly being fucked with for noreason.

As we were being taken to thehole from the library, officers made it clear that Cedric Dean was sent to solitary because he was suspected of having an inappropriate relationship with afemale staffer and I was going because of"some article" that I wrote.

On or about May 25, I receivedofficial notice from the SIS tech as to why I was in the hole. Itread as follows:

The email's subject lineis titled'Sean Hannity Radicalizes federal Inmates.' The email is sent to Carly Hall who has created theweb page Convict International at your direction. It is one of several websites created by you that allows you to air your personal reports concerningthe on goings of FCI Butner II as well as multiple subjects. Specifically inthis email, you interviewed black and white inmates concerning the radio talkshow Host Hannity's latest segment of racial ideology. You attempted to send outthe above mentioned email to numerous media outlets alerting them to themovement that is taking place within FCI Butner II.

From April 23 until the end ofOctober, I remained in the hole. During that stretch, my mail was held for weeks at atime and I often wouldn't receive it at all. On oneoccasion, only one of three pages showed up. Perhaps the worst thing that prisonofficials attempted to do to me due to my writing was to have me transferredbefore my cancer was removed. (In September 2004, I wasdiagnosed with Transitional Carcinoma or Bladder cancer, a disease that recursoften. As a prisoner who is in need of chronic medical care, I am considered a"Care Level 3 inmate," meaning I must be housed in a Care Level 3institution. They range from 1 to 4, 1 being the worst.)

In October 2012, I was toldto collect my belongings because I was being transferred to FCI Forrest City, a Care Level 2 institution. When I explained to the SHU lieutenant that I was a Care 3bladder cancer patient currently awaiting surgery, hesaid it didn't matter. I was taken to R&Drelease and dischargeplaced in chains, and headed forthe airlift. On a stroke of luck, Warden Angela Dunbar happened to be walkingout of her office as I was on my way out of the prison and asked thetransport officers what they were doing with me. When she learned that I wasbeing transferred, she flipped out.

"Get him back into the prison now!" she demanded.

Check out the moment President Obama meets with federal prison inmates as part of our upcoming HBO special on the criminal justice system.

Prior to leaving Butner, I wasinformed by a staff member that someone had changed my Care Level 3 to a Care 2 without proper authorization in an effort to expedite my transfer. I couldn't help think that this was in some way related to my writing.

On November 1, 2013, I wastransferred from Butner II to FCI Terre Haute, the Indiana prison where I currentlyreside. Today, my life is very differentand the SIS doesn't bother me so much, though my email continues to be monitored. When I send a message to my fiance, she's sometimes not sure if I am talking to her or the Email Police.

Robert J. Rosso is a federal prisoner serving life without the possibility of release. Born and raised in San Pedro, California, he has been in prison over 18 years straight and currently resides at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana. Robert writes for VICE, The Fix and Gorilla Convict, and is working on a prison novel. Follow him on Twitter.

A Greek refugee camp. Photo via International Rescue Committee.

Last night, European politicians met in Brussels to discuss Europe's biggest-ever refugee crisis. All the government leaders were called into the emergency talks but in the end, little came out of it other than a decision to spend a whole bunch more money trying to stem the flow of people. That and a decision to up the surveillance and be more strict with fingerprinting in Greece and Italy. The chairman of the summit warned that the situation was going to get a lot worse before it would get better.

As more and more refugees continue their journey through the continent, we wanted to know how these peoplewho are fleeing from their war-torn homelandswere being treated at their final destination. In order to get an overview, we reached out to our European offices and asked how refugees should expect to be treated when they arrive.

Sweden

Refugees are offered help immediately after arriving in Sweden. Police officers, migration agency workers, social services, and Red Cross volunteers are at the main train stations 24 hours a day. There are also civilian volunteers offering people food, clothes, and hygiene products. The social services take care of all unaccompanied minors while the migration agency look after the rest. If you are a refugee and want to apply for asylum in Sweden, the migration agency will pay for a taxi to the nearest migration board to deal with the paperwork. After that, they will sort you out with temporary accommodation or a lift to a relative or a friend that you can live with.

Naturally, there's also the usual right-wing idiots but who think that refugees are going to ruin the country, but luckily their numbers pale in comparison to those willing to help. Camila Catalina, Online Editor

France

This year, France will accept 24,000 Syrian refugees. Numerous towns have said openly that they are ready to welcome those arriving. Refugees are also given temporary social benefits of between 3 and 11.45 euros ($3 to12) per day. But things aren't all that simple when it comes to social integration in certain parts of the country that are struggling with employment. Refugees should also be aware that finding work in France is quite difficult right now. A survey conducted in September listed 3 million people as unemployed.

Unfortunately, In recent years, the extreme-right wing Le Pen family has grown in popularity amongst moderate voters and there is a good chance that Marine le Pen will do quite well in the next presidential elections. There's also reports of growing racial tension in places like Calaisa town hit hard by the refugee crisis. milie Fenaughty, Staff Writer

Refugee camp in Calais. Photo by Jake Lewis.

Romania

Upon arriving in Romania, refugees are given 20 a dayisn't supposed last more than a month; but in reality, the verification time for refugees' applications is so long that it can take more than one year. In early 2015, according to the latest report on international security in Italy, 47 percent of asylum applications have been rejected. When the application is rejected, refugees have to be either repatriated or simply expelled from the country. But as the Italian government lacks the resources to do so, migrants quite often find themselves in an uncertain state of illegality.

As if the bureaucratic problems weren't enough, extreme right parties have attacked (sometimes physically) reception centers on various occasions, and politicians such as Matteo Salvinisecretary of Lega Nord, the third political party according to recent opinion pollsrepeatedly tell people that those arriving in Italy are "fake refugees," and that we need to think "to Italian people first."

Luckily, though, civil society seems to function far better than government policies, and you can find activists and groups helping refugees throughout the country. Leonardo Bianchi, News Editor

Watch our documentary, 'Migrants Stranded on Kos':

GREECE

Greece is basically the front gate to Europe right nowwith the vast majority of refugees arriving to one of its many small islands, having crossed the Mediterranean in a dinghy.

The Greek government and local authorities have not yet managed to find a permanent solution for refugees accommodation, medical care, food supply, or transportation to mainland Greece. The system of identification has improved, but the entire process remains time consuming. Refugees are expected to pay for another boat to go to Athens. More often than not, a trafficker will approach you and take you out of the country, in order to continue your journey.

Thankfully, there are a lot of volunteer initiatives to provide a helping hand.

That said, the country has a ton of racists and fascists, like the the members of Golden Dawn, a neo-Nazi party that is currently being prosecuted as a criminal organization yet still managed to become the third-strongest force in Parliamentpredominantly receiving votes from racists who live in the islands or other parts of the country that you now pass through. Unfortunately, as the weather gets cold and the rains start, conditions for refugees will only get worse, especially if they are attempting to cross the Evros area, close to the border, where there is also a fence.

Melpomeni Maragkidou, News Editor

GERMANY

Should you end up in Germany as a refugee, you might be welcomed by a crowd of chanting volunteers handing you bottles of water and free chocolate bars. On the other hand you should be aware that despite all the hospitality and willingness to help, Germans are still obsessed with paperwork, so you will have to wait for months for your asylum request to be processed. You should also know that most refugees centers are overcrowded and sanitary standards are very low. Some people even have to sleep on the street as the authorities are no longer able to cope with the amount of new arrivals. On top of this you might be confronted by racism or xenophobic hooligans looking for trouble. So beware of bald headed Nazis waving the German flag and the so-called "worried citizens" protesting against the "islamization of Germany" and setting fire to planned refugee homes. That said, it's also quite reassuring to see virtually every German celebrity being really outspoken about the need to help refugees and a large part of the public working activelyon social media and in real lifeto put these assholes into their place.

Sophie-Charlotte Claassen, Staff Writer

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a bit further down the road than Germany for most refugees, but the Germans and the Dutch share a talent for organizing things swiftly and efficientlyincluding care for refugees. While a lot of the shelters are overcrowded and understaffed, in recent weeks countless private initiatives have popped up, like people collecting clothing and food or launching an Airbnb-style site that connects refugees with people wanting to take them in. When Red Cross called for volunteers, 10,000 people registered in 24 hours. But at the same time, there have been small-scale protests against planned refugee shelters in countless communities. So it seems that a lot of people are willing to help, as long as the shelter isn't anywhere near their backyard.

This schism is evident in the parliament too: Alexander Pechtold, leader of the progressive liberal center party D66 complimented municipalities in the Netherlands for putting up hundreds of refugees in places like events centers and abandoned holiday parks. Most MPs stood up to applaud him, but right-wing Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders later took to the stage to call the parliament "fake," claiming that its politicians don't represent the "millions" of Dutch people who want nothing to do with refugees. Pechtold then called Wilders "undemocratic," while a Labour Party member tweeted that Wilders was basically a fascist leader, and it all got very awkward and unpleasant there, for a bit.

So if you're coming to the Netherlands as a refugee, you'll be in good hands for a while. If you decide to stay, however, that's a different story: There have been huge cuts in funding for integration processes for migrants and asylum seekers, and getting an actual residence permit can take years. But for now, the Dutch generally think you're very welcome, as long as you're not staying anywhere too close to their home. Lisette Van Eijk, Content Manager

A glacier in Eyjafjallajkull, Iceland. Photo by Andreas Tille via Wikimedia

Last week, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott got the boot. His ousting reminded me of all the bullshit the Australian government has pulled with him in power, and how, on balance, they've got their just desserts, both in terms of Abbott's fate and Australia's image abroad. It seems most people in the Northern Hemisphere are fairly aware of the Australian government's prejudices towards Aborigines and asylum seekers alike; some have even heard of Abbott's dismissal of climate change.

All this made me wonder why the Icelandic government hasn't suffered the same fate, because they've been getting away with some pretty rancid stuff.

Since reelection in the spring of 2013, the ruling conservative coalition has allowed Iceland's already-beleaguered healthcare system to crumble into dust, and is now preparing to privatize our healthcaresomething that's always worked really well for other countries. They've also overseen a spectacularly clumsy attempt by Icelandic police to procure and import Norwegian submachine gunsto a country with practically zero gun crimeciting, of course, "national security" as just cause.

They have actively sought to industrialize Iceland's highlands, selling or overseeing the sale of huge tracts of land to foreign entities, which plan to build power plants and silica refineries. This is consistent with the Icelandic right's view that our economy should be buoyed by industry, an especially infuriating stance in light of the fact that heavy industry constitutes maybe 5 percent of our GDP in a bad year, while tourismthe overwhelming majority of which is nature tourismrakes in millions and millions of dollars every year. Yet, tourism is dismissed as an irrelevant fad to them, resulting in the deterioration of national landmarks, a massive rent spike in Reykjavik due to the unregulated establishment of hotels and Airbnbs, and general overcrowding of the capital, to the point where tourists have been forced to pitch tents and literally take shits on public and private property.

But their dislike of tourism hasn't stopped the Finance Minister's father from monopolizing transport between Reykjavik and Iceland's only international airport. Chances are that if you've been here, you've helped line their coffers, as no public transportation of any kind connects the airport to Reykjavik.

And then there's the racism. Last year, a Nigerian asylum seeker was deported and separated from his family after an assistant of the then-interior minister leaked a memo containing false and misleading information about the man to the media, while a woman running for city council won racist votes by promising to halt the construction of Reykjavik's only mosque.

TRENDING ON BROADLY: Mother Teresa Was Kind of a Heartless Bitch

I understand that all this seems provincialeven cutecompared to the Australian government's offenses, but I'm mystified by how oblivious the world seems to our government's crimes in light of the amount of hype Iceland's been getting, especially for our supposedly "ultra-liberal" politics, which in reality have been limited to ideological gestures by the occasional powerless but outspoken pundit or politician.

Reykjavik's former mayor wore drag once and everyone assumed everything was just fine and dandy up here in Iceland, like we're some kind of liberal paradise. Or there was the time five corrupt bankers were jailed after being caught doing what our whole financial sector was doing before our economy collapsed, and a load of clickbait sites published articles about how we "let the banks fail" (this never happened) and "jailed all our bankers."

The truth is that the banks are soaring, having made massive profits since the collapse, while the rest of Iceland is still stumbling out of it. All the mistakes that led to our meltdown seven years ago are being repeated by the same political parties who presided over it, whom, bizarrely, the Icelandic electorate chose to reelect; meanwhile, the average Icelander sinks deeper into debt as the cost of living rises with inflation while salaries stay the same.

Related: 'Nest of Giants,' our film about Iceland's strongmen.

But no one really cares. It seems people here want to believe the "liberal paradise" myth so badly that there isn't any interest in learning the truth. The average Icelandophile visiting here has been so thoroughly inundated by quirky music videos and cute news stories about how everyone here "believes in elves" (another total fabrication) or how we shun religion and "believe only in ourselves" (our constitution actually guarantees special rights to the Church) that it's very difficult for him or her to see that this is actually a real place with real problems.

I'm not saying you can't visit here and enjoy iton the contrary; perhaps the only way to truly enjoy life here is to come as a tourist, a non-participant in our farcically corrupt society. So by all means, come and inject your delicious foreign money into our economy and help prove our government wrong about tourism. Come see the nature before it's destroyed. Come have a drink while you still can before our state-owned liquor store workers go on strike. Come see a show before all the musicians move abroad, like I'm doing. So come, but come quick, before the people running this country choke it to death.

Follow Sindri Eldon on Twitter.