The pub in question. If any pub on earth has a more "a man was arrested here once for railing cocaine and very publicly having a wank about it" vibe, I would like to know about it. Photo via Robert Wade

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

A Blackburn man appeared in court today after "performing a sex act" (a big wank) in a pub garden after snorting five lines of cocainea sex act he managed to keep up for 40 minutes, a sort of endurance wank, a long-distance marathon of a wank, the kind of wank Paula Radcliffe gets up in the middle of and takes a shit during. A big wank, basically. Police arrested him on the scene and he has a history of criminal indecency, and today he pleaded guilty to outraging public decency.

What is public decency? This constant lie that we are all in some way decent. I feel at one time or another we have all felt like a 35-year-old man, wanking in the wind, five lines into a session in a Blackburn beer garden. At one time or another: Do we not all just want the sweet release of a self-inflicted orgasm? Do we not all want to really rail some gak? Do we not all occasionally need to let our minds breathe, in a place where so little happens there may as well be nothing, in a large Lancashire town that is so featureless it is like diving deep into one's own mind, mediocrity close to meditation?

The man's name is Michael Brian Scotthis name is Michael Scott, like in the US Office (why has nobody on Tumblr done an appropriate GIF set of this yet?)and Blackburn magistrates today heard how he's sort of done stuff like this before. "He was in the beer garden of Clitheroe Kate's on Mincing Lane and people were constantly walking past," the prosecution, Catherine Allan, said. Then from Richard Prew, his defense, possibly the greatest court quote of all time: "He has been working as a forklift truck driver for the last two years and lives with his partner who sits at the back of court. She finds his behavior difficult to explain." She finds his behavior. Difficult to explain.

I've been thinking about Blackburn beer garden gak wanker a lot, and I've come to the conclusion: He is a self-expressionist of the highest order, Britain's greatest living artist. Has Banksy done anything close to being as subversive as giving himself a coke-fueled handy in a pub garden in Blackburn? He has not. Does anything say "Britain" more than the image of a tired forklift truck operator, coked out of his mind, emotionlessly wanking under a Thwaites-branded bench umbrella? We should put that on tourist pamphlets instead of a picture of the Queen. We should have had that instead of the Olympic opening ceremony.

On VICE Sports: The Weird and Wonderful Origins of Scottish Football Club Names

Anyway, seeing as he's previously served 32 weeks in prison for indecency, there's a decent chance he'll go to prison again, all while his partner tries to explain to her family and friends where he's gone. "Uh," she's saying, at her niece's christening. "Where's Michael? Ah... bitbit of a weird one. He's in prison for a gak wank." Godspeed to you, Blackburn beer garden gak wanker. God speed to you.

Follow Joel Golby on Twitter.

Official photo via Kentucky State Legislature

An elected official in Kentucky has filed a lawsuit against local campaign finance authorities, arguing that ethic laws that prevent him from receiving gifts violate his constitutional rights. The effort is headed up by Republican State Senator John Schickel, along with two Libertarian candidates for office.

Christopher Wiest, the attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Lexington Herald-Leader that the rules that prevent candidates for office from receiving campaign donations of more than $1,000, and from receiving gifts from lobbyists are "ridiculous."

"If you're a legislator and a lobbyist is your next-door neighbor, and he invites you over to his place for a Christmas party, you can't accept, because it might be considered a form of entertainment or a thing of value," Weist said, explaining the rationale behind the suit.

In theory, Schickel could attempt to get Kentucky's State Legislature, of which he's a member, on board with changing these ethics rules. However, Wiest told the Herald-Leader that Schickel "thinks he could get a bill through the Senate, but if it can't get through the House, why spend time spinning his wheels on it?" Instead, he's hoping to hammer it out in the courts.

Similarly, Citizens United vs. FEC was a lawsuit that began in a Washington DC district court before it became the famous Supreme Court case that overturned federal laws limiting campaign spending by nonprofit groups on the basis that such spending is free speech, and thus, protected by the First Amendment.

According to Schickel's court filing, free speech is also the basis for this lawsuit. "Senator Schickel, a retired law enforcement officer, who has a long and distinguished history of protecting Kentuckians, seeks to continue fulfilling his oath of office, upholding and protecting the US Constitution, and vindicating the First Amendment rights of himself and millions of other Kentuckians," the filing reads.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Kids forced to work in mica mines in India. Screen grab via Made In a Free World

Slavery Footprint is a site that asks the simple question, "How many slaves work for you?" The answer feels like it should be zeroafter all, nobody reading this owns another human being (I hope). But because of the vast network of supply chains that make up our ever-increasing global marketplace, it turns out that it's a pretty hard question to answer.

As a thought exercise, let's consider the sparkly stuff, like the paint on your car. A common way to make something sparkle is to infuse it with mineral called mica, explains Justin Dillon of Made In a Free World, an organization dedicated to promoting transparent and humane supply chains. "Anywhere between 50 and 60 percent of the world's mica," Dillon tells me, "comes from a region in India where it's mined by kids using prehistoric tools going down into rathole mines. They come out with sparkles on their face."

Dillon's not bullshittinglast year, it was revealed that at least 12 multinational companies had been purchasing mica that had been mined by children. And it quickly came out that those kids weren't exactly working in those mines because they were looking for an alternative to a paper route. "It's painful to see. I look at sparkles very differently now," Dillon says.

Modern-day slavery, Dillon explains, is "extreme poverty with the bottom dropped out." It means being a person who is forced to work in terrible conditions who doesn't have the privilege of stopping. "Anywhere where you don't have the structure around you to protect you and hold you at a basic level of justice," Dillon says, "the conditions are there for you to fall into slavery." According to data from Made In a Free World, over 29 million people could be considered "slaves" under that definition.

Fortunately, there are steps people can take to fight this new version of slavery. Namely, they can help to change the attitudes that make people complicit about the use of forced labor in the supply chains of products they use. Made in a Free World aims to bring awareness to forced labor in supply chains, not just among consumers, but among large corporations who have the power to alter purchasing decisions on a large scale. If enough massive corporations start buying from suppliers who enforce fair labor practices, maybe people can feel a little less bad about buying stuff, armed with the knowledge that they're doing so responsibly.

VICE: Give me an overview of Made in a Free World's mission.
Justin Dillon: We're trying to use the power of free markets to free people. That's our cute phrase Strip clubs are not sustainable.

Follow Drew Millard on Twitter.

Empire is a lot of things. Melodramatic. Addictive. Moving.Stylish. Exceedingly well-viewed. But by no means is it subtle. For proof ofthis, look no further than the first scene of the first episode of the show'ssecond season, in which Cookie Lyon (Taraji P. Henson) is lowered onto aconcert stage in a cage while wearing a gorilla suit. She beats her chest,removing the gorilla mask to give a brief, impassioned speech to the crowd,protesting the mass incarceration of black men in America.

The concertmarketedas a "rally"is meant to benefit her husband, Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard),who's been imprisoned for the murder of a guy named Bunkie, who just so happensto be Cookie's cousin. Lucious is guilty as hell, and Cookie and the rest ofLucious's family know he did it and hate him for it: two of his sons, Andre andHakeem, are the ones who snitched on him as revenge for handing thecompany to his middle son, Jamal. But Empire, the family's record label, is largerthan whatever conflicts they might have. It's the biggest hip-hop companyaround, and if it continues to thrive, whatever heinous crimes the Lyons mighthave committed to perpetuate it will be worth it. More than anything, theconcert is an opportunity to impress a white, lesbian investor played byMarissa Tomei, who can potentially help Cookie, Hakeem, and Andre wrest controlof Empire from Lucious and Jamal once and for all.

These quick shifts in personal politics and public opinion are ones that inform Empire's dramatic style. Characters and themes swerve and transform abruptly, just like our news cycle.

Ifthis sounds a bit confusing, it's only because Empire's bombastic storyline is a reflection of our ownover-the-top society. When Jamal tells Cookie backstage that Bill Clinton is inthe crowd and she responds, "He better be if he wants his wife to win," it's a timelymoment that mirrors our social and political landscape, one in which Clintonactively (if clumsily) courts black voters by doing the "nae nae" on the The EllenDeGeneres Show, and Donald Trump insults a notable Latino journalist only to see his ratings go up.

Screengrab via Fox

Mattersof social justice, race, and discussions around gender have become tweetable.Bernie Sanders was interrupted by activists claiming to represent Black LivesMatter one day; within a week he rolled out an extensive racism and racial justice platform on his website. Texas teenager Ahmed Mohamed cameto school, excited to show his teachers a homemade clock, only to be labeled aterrorist. Within a day, the public had rallied behind him, and now he's being invited to visit MIT. Same with the internet's reaction to theMinnesota dentist who shot Zimbabwean national icon Cecil the Lion, and the white Indiana poet whoused a Chinese pen name to get a previously rejected poem published. Thesequick shifts in personal politics and public opinion are ones that inform Empire's dramatic style. Characters andthemes swerve and transform abruptly, just like our news cycle.

Empire's pacing is fast and frenetic. New characters and story arcs are packed in tightly,exploding in front of us, only to disappear an episode later. Last season,Cookie was involved in the murder of a rival drug dealer, but the event seemedto get lost in the din of the show, only to surge into relevance in season two.A friend of mine worried that the show might "burn out" of storylines beforeits third season. But I'm not sure the show is concerned with burnout, as itignites a storm of memes, hashtags, and tweets during and after each episode.One of last season's most notable moments was a scene in which Cookie smacked her ass,saying, "This is an ass," after being turneddown by Lucious at a dinner. That GIF went viral, racking up thousands ofretweets, Instagram shares, and Tumblr notes, and was shared and reposted bymen, women, mothers, teens, and grandmothers alike. Cookie became her ownconversation. My own mother even called me to talk about the ass-smacking.

On Creators' Project: Everything We Know About the Art in 'Empire'

Cookie,and the show's writers, also don't care much about respectability politics,especially when related to black characters. Cookie's assistant mistakenlycalls Ferguson "Peterson" when talking to Don Lemon, while Jamal is annoyedby a flamboyant, gay singer who shows up to his office and performs on hisdesk. In true Empire style, theexistence of stereotype is acknowledged, but also complicated. In one scene,Cookie argues loudly over the phone in a cab; when the dark-skinned Indiandriver shakes his head in disapproval, she asks, "What are you shaking your head for? You're black, too!" It's a sobering piece of dialogue that allowsCookie a level of depth and agency to thwart the labels placed on her, and onthe show.

On VICE: Watch the Real 'Wolf of Wall Street':

Attimes, though, I wonder if the show is inviting humor that it is unaware of, atthe cost of the larger issues it attempts to address. Chris Rock as FrankGathers, a high-profile drug dealer whom Lucious reunites with in jail, seemslike an off-brand casting choice aimed more for name recognition. In anotherepisode, a corrupt prison guard played by Ludacris puts Lucious in solitaryconfinement, warning him that he could kill him in jail and no one would everknow what happened. Whether intentional or not, there was an eerie connectionmade to Sandra Bland, but the fact that it was Ludacris and Terrence Howardfacing off through a small slat in the cell makes the moment feel unearned inlight of the real-life tragedy the scene echoes.

Andso, we come back to the "Free Lucious" rally against mass incarceration, acomplicated moment in a show whose bread-and-butter is doing too much. Cookiepasses up talking to Don Lemon, who is seen as fake, to chat with Al Sharpton,who is seen as authentic. Jamal, Swizz Beatz, and another rapper perform a songabout freedom, while the crowd holds up signs with Lucious's face plastered onit. It's a clever cooptation of the current moment, one that may feel more"real" than the barrage of presidential hopefuls slinging insults andhalf-hearted truths and a county clerk hailed as a hero for blocking gay couples from being married, while a black teen is tackled by a police officer for jaywalking. We may, in fact, be living in whatfeels like a show, something stranger than reality. Empire is just a heightened version of that.

Follow Nijla on Twitter.

Empireairs on Wednesdays at 9 PM on Fox.

Inmates attending a yoga class at Heidering prison, on the outskirts of Berlin. Photos by Julian Rder

Published in partnership with the Marshall Project

This article appears in VICE magazine's upcoming Prison Issue, which will go online Monday, October 5

Last year, Gregg Marcantel, the secretary of New Mexico's Corrections Department, voluntarily placed himself in solitary confinement for 48 hours. He was one of a rare few who could choose to do such a thing, and it was a very Gregg thing to dodramatic, physically demanding, good for a story. Since taking the job a few years before, Marcantel had worked to reduce the number of prisoners held in their cells for 23 hours a day, and he wanted to better understand what these prisoners actually experienced. He told a reporter, "There are just things sometimes that you gotta feel, you gotta taste, and you gotta hear, and you gotta smell."

The video footage of his two days in a 12-by-7-foot cell has an eerie intimacy. Wearing standard-issue yellow scrubs and a bright orange beanie, Marcantel, a former cop who resembles a bodybuilder, looms around the cell. He listens to the shouting and clanging outside his door, writes in a notebook, and picks at some rubbery breakfast meat. His face alternates between boredom and curiosity. He reads Night, the Holocaust memoir by Elie Wiesel, and a business book called Boundaries for Leaders.

The stunt was not Marcantel's only effort to address solitary confinement, though it was the most public. Working with the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit organization based in New York, his staff was implementing a program called Restoration to Population, which would allow inmates affiliated with prison gangs to renounce their membership and earn their way out of solitary confinement through good behavior. Another program would allow inmates who had been held in solitary for their own protectioninformants and the young and weakto live together in regular housing. The number of New Mexico state prisoners in solitary dropped from 10.1 percent in late 2013 to 6.9 percent in June 2015.

This was a modest victory, and not a politically risky one: Curbing solitary is less likely to anger the public than, say, spending money to help inmates obtain college degrees. Marcantel was still criticized by progressives for opposing a statewide ban on solitary for those with mental illness. But in the glowing press coverageABC News called him the "ultimate undercover boss"Marcantel positioned himself as open-minded to reform while conservative enough to avoid being seen as soft on criminals.

Marcantel had a clever way of selling his plan to reduce solitary confinement: Instead of focusing on human rights, he talked about public safety. He told the Albuquerque Journal that when solitary is overused, "all you're doing now is creating a socially isolated human being that's going to go back to your neighborhood" and commit more crimes (one study found such prisoners are twice as likely to reoffend). "We've got to do everything we can to send people back better from prison than when they came."

The broader implication of Marcantel's pointthat prisons should take rehabilitation seriously in order to alleviate crime and protect the publichas become a primary talking point within our current moment of criminal justice reform, a moment in which journalists, politicians, and policy experts are trumpeting an unprecedented level of cooperation between the political left and right. In February 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for American Progress, FreedomWorks, and Koch Industries announced they would collaborate to back the Coalition for Public Safety and lobby to reduce mandatory-minimum sentences, support alternatives to incarceration, and reduce the overall prison population.

The push for reform has many supporters, including fiscal conservatives who think incarcerating the nonviolent is a waste of money, Evangelicals who believe that overlong sentences rob people of a chance at redemption, libertarians who see a bloated criminal justice system as an example of government overreach, and progressives who talk about crime as the product of racial injustice and the decimation of welfare programs for the poor and the mentally ill. With such varied ideological backgrounds, finding a common language can be difficult, so the terminology tends toward the appealingly vague"smart on crime," "best practices," "evidence-based policies"though the goals generally circle around reducing the prison population and helping people who come out of prison to avoid returning.

One place that has managed to keep both incarceration and crime rates low is Western Europe. In 2013, the Vera Institute took a group of corrections officials to tour prisons in the Netherlands and Germany. They found that throughout the continent, sentences are significantly shorter than in the US, and the entire focus is on rehabilitating prisoners so they can return to society. Wardens are often professional psychologists and emphasize therapy over security. There are fewer than 100 prisoners for every 100,000 Germans, and more than 600 prisoners for every 100,000 Americans. Few Germans spend more than 15 years in prison.

While Germany's low crime rates cannot be directly credited to the country's therapy-driven prisons, researchers at Vera believed that learning about how these prisons work might help Americans improve their own. In other words, Germany might offer new ways of addressing the problems Marcantel had highlighted with his trip to solitary confinement a year before: How might treating prisoners differently ensure they would not commit crimes after getting out?

As Vera began planning a tour of German prisons, scheduled for June 2015, they invited Marcantel and other criminal justice leaders who had showed an interest in reform. Nicholas Turner, the institute's president, envisioned the weeklong excursion might function as a "summer camp," in which unlikely bonds would be formed to pave the way for political collaboration back in the US.

Accepting the invitation, Marcantel admitted he did not have a "real good sense of Germany." But he had traveled to Europe before and been struck by "how much more they know about America than I know about them." He chided his fellow Americans for their insularity. "Why do I need to know about you?" he said with a chuckle. "Everything spins around America!"

Members of the International Sentencing and Corrections Exchange gather outside Heidering, including Gregg Marcantel (center), secretary of New Mexico's Corrections Department.

On a Sunday morning this past June, the two dozen members of the International Sentencing and Corrections Exchange were drowsy from an overnight flight to Berlin. Along with Marcantel, Vera had invited the heads of the prison systems in Connecticut, Tennessee, and Washington, as well as two district attorneys, a former prisoner, an historian, a law professor, several policy analysts, and influential activists from the left and right.

Marcantel was animated during the introductions, which were held in a private room at a downtown restaurant, full of dark wood and brass lamps. Everyone listed the universities or agencies or think tanks or foundations they were representing. The academics used words like "carceral." Craig DeRoche, of the Evangelical organization Justice Fellowship, talked about where people's "hearts are." Marcantel was the first to crack a joke, opening coyly with, "Hi, my name is Gregg, and I'm an alcoholic."

Jeremy Travis, the president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, explained how the German approach to incarceration may differ radically from the American approach today, but this had not always been the case. In the 1960s, incarceration rates in Europe and the US were broadly comparable, but then ours began to climb. From the 1970s through the 1990s, while Germany, Sweden, France, England, and their peers never saw their incarceration rates change by more than 50 percent in either direction, the US rate rose by roughly 300 percent.

For more stories on incarceration, watch our documentary 'Young Reoffenders':

"We're here because we've chosen to be here," Travis said. Congressional decisionschief among them the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, often just called the "crime bill"encouraged states to pass their own laws to increase the number of people locked up: three-strikes laws, mandatory minimums, harsher drug laws, longer sentences, lower ages for criminal responsibility, more restrictions on parole. Crime had been on the rise, and after Michael Dukakis went down in flames following a 1988 ad about Willie Horton, which blamed a rape and murder on the candidate's liberal policies, Democrats were just as eager as Republicans to promote harsh sentencing laws. In those days, Travis was running the National Institute of Justice, a federal think tank, under President Clinton's appointment. "We funded all of you guys," he said, looking around the room at Americans from a dozen different states, "to go change your laws to keep people in prison longer."

Marcantel listened intently, hunched over in his chair and stroking his beard. His role in this story was more practical than political. After an early stint welding in the oil fields of his native Louisiana and a few years in the Marines, he spent most of his career as a police officer, chasing murderers and drug dealers around New Mexico. He used the imagined horrors of prison as leverage while he encouraged them to rat one another out. He still talks of these days with a boisterous nostalgiahe once chased a drug lord into Alabamabut admits he seldom thought about where these criminals ended up after he caught them. Like most people, he imagined such places as a distant hell.

Since 2011, when he was appointed New Mexico's corrections secretary, he has come to know that hell intimately. Prison rapes, a common threat among cops toward recalcitrant suspects, "ain't funny anymore." (In 2012, 14 percent of the women in one New Mexico facility reported they had been recently sexually assaulted.) Marcantel sees how the environment of most American prisons, with few educational programs, fails to keep the men and women they release from returning. In 2012, his department found that in New Mexico, "over half of inmates released from prison will be back within five years."

Every state has its own subplot in the recent American story of growing prison populations, its own sensational crimes, political dynamics, and policy justifications. In New Mexico, a riot in 1980 at the main state penitentiary, near Santa Fe, led to the deaths of 33 prisoners. It was the most violent takeover of a prison since the one at Attica Correctional Facility, in upstate New York, nine years earlier. Marcantel told others on the trip that this riot fueled a popular belief in his state that rehabilitation was a farce because prisoners were always ready to attack.

He had come on the trip in part because he disagreed. He knew that prisons could help transform criminals, and that he could, by running effective prisons, "take a bigger bite of crime than I ever did chasing and what he could do," Muhammad said.

"Where we're at in America is that we fancy the notion of rehabilitation. But what touches our feelings and our approach to managing the criminal justice system is really punishment."

In late July 2015, about a week after President Obama commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders, Marcantel announced that his department would hire a 40-year-old man named David Van Horn as a supervisor in the staff kitchen at one of the prisons. Van Horn had been released in May after serving 20 years for murder. It was Marcantel's first step in the development of a new transition program for former prisoners, and he said he hoped it would inspire businesses to take more risks in hiring such men and women.

A five-minute segment about the program on KRQE, a local news station, cut back and forth between Van Horn talking about how much he had changed and Marcantel saying, "He's coming back to the community, whether anybody likes it or not, and we're trying to work a better public safety policy."

The corrections union angrily noted that Van Horn would make $17 an hour, more than some prison guards. The son of the victimsan elderly married couple whom Van Horn had robbed in 1995 before setting their house on fire, killing the wife, and shooting two deputies as he escapedtold a reporter that he wished Van Horn would stay in prison forever.

It was a flicker of the political dynamic that still haunts reform efforts in the US. But for now, Marcantel's tasks were smaller: defending this hire of an ex-prisoner, finding a way to keep dropping the number of prisoners in solitary confinement, reviewing a program that allows some men to work outside the prison walls after one ran away from a job and set off a manhunt.

But having seen a radically different vision of how a country could manage those who had transgressed its laws, Marcantel now wanted his own country to think about what it was doing and why. He had seen that, historically and comparatively, it was not Germany but the US that was the anomaly. "Where we're at in America," he said, "if we're gonna be brutally honest, is that we fancy the notion of rehabilitation. But what touches our feelings and our approach to managing the criminal justice system is really punishment. We feel that. We know that."

For Marcantel, current reform efforts can only go so far without a deep rethinking of what prisons are for: "We've got to sit down as a country and say, 'What are the goals?' We've got to start from an authentic point."

Follow Maurice on Twitter.

Officials in the United States government have dusted off that old partisan debate about abortion and put it back in the spotlight. With yet another budget standoff looming, the government might shut down on October 1, and it all might come down to a difference of opinion about whether a cluster of cells has rights. And according to an article in June's Scientific American, we're only just beginning to learn exactly what a fetus can feel and when.

But you know what definitely can feel? Plants, at least according to biologist Daniel Chamovitz, dean of Life Sciences at Tel Aviv University in Israel, and author of the book What a Plant Knows.

We reached out to Chamovitz to find out if one of those things plants can feel is pain, because we figured if they could, that would really shake up the whole abortion debate, not to mention add a new dimension to veganism.

VICE: I'm looking at a video of a plant called mimosa pudica that can obviously feel. Someone touches it, and the leaves close up...
Daniel Chamovitz: I'm actually touching a mimosa as we talk.

It feels that, right?
It's feeling it. I would even use the word "aware," but it doesn't care. A leaf knows when it's been cut, and it will respond, but it's not getting a complex, like 'oh my god. What happens to me if this happens again?'

Is a mimosa different from other plants?
Mimosa, and also the venus flytrap have a specific organ for movement called a pulvinus. Other plants don't have that. But the way that a pulvinis reacts to touch is the same way that a branch reacts to touch at the molecular level.

Would it frustrate the plant if you kept it from moving?
What you can do is, there are certain drugshuman drugsthat you can put on a mimosa mountain it's going to be short with few branches, few leaves, and a thick trunk. If it stayed at the same height with the same number of branches, it would be blown over. So we know that plants actively respond to the wind by inhibiting vertical growth, and by increasing their girth. It's an active response. It's not like it's responding to damage. It's changing its own response in order to survive.

Can a plant learn?
Plants have memories. They store and recall information, but they won't go talk to their psychiatrist about it. The clearest example would be a venus flytrap. The way a venus flytrap closes is that it has these huge hairsfilamentsalong its big open lobe. It looks like two leaves, but it's one leaf. And when a bug comes along and catches two of those hairs, it'll close. If it only touches one, it won't. It touches one, keeps crawling, touches the second. If it touches it within 20 seconds, it'll close. If it's within 20 seconds, it's a big bug, and it's worth the energy to close. If it's a longer time, maybe it's two little things, and it's not worth the energy to close. It only wants to eat something that's big.

That's not really much of a memory, is it?
Short-term memory! Within several seconds, it's gone. That's what happens here. The first hair gets touched. It'll remember for 20 seconds; after that it forgets that it's been touched.

So, if I follow you, plants really do feel, not metaphorically, but really. They just can't feel pain. Right?
Plants don't have pain receptors. Plants have pressure receptors that allow them to know when they're being touched or movedmechanoreceptors. It's a specific nerve cell.

And to be clear, am I right that a plant knows it's being damaged?
You can definitely kill a plant, but it doesn't care.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Screenshot via Katie's blog post

Read: We Asked an Expert How the Price of a Pill Could Go from $13.50 to $750 Overnight

Martin Shkreli became this week's most hated man on theinternet after his pharmaceutical company raised the price of Daraprimalife-saving drug that's been on the market since the early 1950sfrom $13.50 to$750 a pill overnight.

Since then, everyone from medical experts to presidential candidates have called him out,prompting Shkreli to backdown and promise to lower the price of Daraprim.

Now that Shkreli has thrust himself into the nationalspotlight, all sorts of nastydetails about his past are cropping upmost recently, that he allegedlyoffered to pay an ex-girlfriend $10,000 in exchange for her letting him eat her out.

"Freshman year of college I dated Martin Shkreli: unrepentant capitalist, quoter of Eminem lyrics, embodiment of douchebaggery," the girl wrote Tuesday on her blog, In Defense Of Getting Off, where she's been writing about sex since 2008.

In a post titled "10k," Katiewho's elected not to reveal her last nameexplains how Shkreli hit her up for sex more than five years after they'd broken up.

To prove Shkreli's messages are the real deal, Katie also posteda screenshotof an email (see above) he sent from his work account at Elea Capital Management, a hedgefund Shkreli ran in the mid 2000s.

Still from 'Camp Gyno,' the viral commercial about young girls using tampons

Jemma-Louise Roberts died after using a tampon. The 13-year-old girl, whose family was later told had toxic shock syndrome, reportedly visited a doctor for vomiting and diarrhea when she fell ill in Marchbut her symptoms were dismissed as a simple stomach bug. A week later, she was dead.

Now, in honor of Sepsis Awareness Month, her mother Diane Roberts is speaking to the media with a message: toxic shock syndrome, or TSS, is not just a thing of the past.

In the early 1980s, fears about TSS were rampant. In 1980, 813 cases of TSS in menstruating women were reported to the Centers for Disease Control38 of which were fatal. Tampon manufacturers faced lawsuits, and the popular super-absorbent Rely tampons were soon pulled off the market. By 1982, tampon manufacturers were required by law to include a warning on their products: "Attention," the label read. "Tampons are associated with Toxic Shock Syndrome... a rare but serious disease that may cause death."

On Motherboard: Why Are Tampons Still a Thing?

But TSS hasn't gone away. Earlier this year, Los Angeles model Lauren Wasser announced her lawsuit against Kotex after she had her right leg amputated from complications of TSS.

Though more than 30 years have passed since those initial scares, Philip Tierno, a professor of microbiology and pathology at the New York University School of Medicine, says that TSS should worry tampon users. The disease is rare, he adds, but tampon companies could still push for even greater safety with their products.

"Toxic shock syndrome is a disease of the youth." Dr. Philip Tierno

In the 1980s, Tierno was at the forefront of linking TSS with the synthetic materials used in tamponsprompted after his wife showed him an article in Cosmopolitan about women getting rashes, vomiting, and having fevers after wearing tampons." seemed to have a few things in common," Tierno told me. "They used tampons, they were menstruating, and they had staph."

He said his wife turned to him and asked, "Aren't you an expert in staph? Isn't there something you can figure out?'

So Tierno looked at samples of the then-popular Rely tampons, which were made of synthetic materials that turned into a "jellied mass" when liquid hit it, creating a "petri dish" of sorts for Staphylococcus aureus, or staph bacteria. Tierno had a breakthrough: This was what was causing the problem.

Read: A Guide to Periods for Men

In the late 1980s, Tierno and his colleague, Bruce Hanna, published a study that showed a link between TSS and several of the synthetic materials used to make tampons. Those materialsmany of which have since been bannedhelped create an ideal environment for staph toxins to multiply and potentially spread into the bloodstream.

For the 33 percent of people that carry staph, TSS can quickly become a problem.

"I always sort of make the analogy of the D-day invasion on Omaha Beach," said John Townes, medical director of Infection Prevention and Control at Oregon Health Sciences University."You had to get a certain amount of troops landing on the beach to establish a beachhead, and once they had amassed enough people they could move in and start throwing bombs and grenades at the enemy."

Most people have small numbers of staph bacteria on their skin and it's no problem, Townes explained. "But when you get a large number of them reproducing all at once," he added, "those bacteria can start producing toxins that make you sick."

"People think, 'That's gone. It's a thing of the 80s.' It's not. To this day, I testify in death cases." Tierno

Townes was clear: Tampons, themselves, don't cause TSS, and good hygiene reduces a lot of the risk. But for young girls like Roberts, TSSand specifically TSST-1, the toxin produced by staphcan pose more of a threat.

As a person gets older, the body usually produces a protective antibody that keeps them from being as susceptible. But "if that person is infected with a strain that produces TSST-1 and they don't have an antibody, they can get a full blown syndrome," Townes said.

Because of that, Tierno said,doctors should know to ask further questions of an adolescent girl with flu-like symptoms. He said Roberts should have been asked questions like: "Are you menstruating? And if you are, are you using tampons? And if so: stop."

"TSS is a disease of the youth," Tierno added.

In his book, The Secret Life of Germs, Tierno writes that only half of teenage girls under age 16 have the appropriate antibodies to fight off TSST-1. And if they wear a tampon for too longmaybe nine, ten hours as they sleep in on a Saturday morningthe risk of TSS increases.

"Most people, when they put a tampon in, don't leave it in for a long period of time," Townes said. "The idea is that the staph that are collecting the vaginal area do not have time to multiply."

Though the likelihood of having that protective antibody increases with age, the threat doesn't completely disappear. Women in their 40s have died from TSS. This April, US Representative Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York, introduced a bill called the Robin Danielson Feminine Hygiene Product Safety Act, named for a woman who died at age 44 after using conventional tampons.

On Motherboard: Tampons Could Be Toxic, But Congress Doesn't Care

So if people know that tampons made with synthetic materials create a haven for staph toxins, then why not make them from all cotton? Tierno said that's a question he's been asking for decadesespecially because, he added, there has never been a TSS case from all-cotton tampons.

"Many people think that with the current tampons there is no problem," he said. "They think, 'That's gone. It's a thing of the 80s.' It's not. To this day, I testify in death cases."

Diane Roberts has the same message. "My husband had never heard of TSS," she told the Manchester Evening News this week. "If one dad reads this and his daughter falls ill, it could save her life."

Knowing that a woman will use as many as 16,800 tampons in her lifetime, Tierno said he continues to put pressure on tampon manufacturers to convert to an all-cotton product. He said he's even asked companies to add a skull and crossbones to their labels.

He points to Maloney, who has been pushing for increased tampon safety regulations since 1997.

"She reintroduces it again and again and again," Tierno said. "If men had vaginas this bill would have been passed the first time. That's the truth."

Follow Leah Sottile on Twitter.

Last Friday, the second annual Island Rumble took place on the Toronto Island. Located behind Artscape Gibraltar point in a makeshift wrestling ring surrounded by screaming fans, match after match of vulgar, choreographed madness took place. It was put on by the League of Lady Wrestlers, an art collective who (obviously) love wrestling. It's kind of like the WWF's Prime Time Wrestling but in a back yard, with slightly more glitter and references to yeast infectionsone of the finishing moves actually involved one wrestler smothering another one's face in her yeast-infected crotch. Another move involved bottling a "Misogynist Heckler" and there was even a match that made its way from Artscape onto the beach, where the host of the event announced her retirement and fought one last match in the water. With wrestling names like "The Stinker," "Helga Hysteria," and "Doughnut Messaround," they took their turns battling it out for what looked like ten trophies duct-taped together with a plastic baby doll on top. Never the less, it made for a glorious display of celebration and hilarity.

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

Cry-Baby #1: An unnamed Mercedes driver in England

The incident: Two cars attempted to enter a single-lane tunnel in opposing directions at the same time.

The appropriate response: Reversing to allow the other person to pass.

The actual response: One driver was apparently unable to reverse out of the tunnel, while the other refused to, causing a traffic jam that lasted 40 minutes.

Earlier this month, an unnamed elderly man failed to give way to an unnamed woman as they both attempted to drive their cars through a single lane tunnel in Maidenhead, England. The female driver, who had right of way, refused to back her car out of the tunnel, choosing instead to sit still and insist that the other driver move and let her through. This prevented other cars from passing, causing a large line of traffic to build up behind her.

It's not totally clear why the male driver didn't reverse out of the tunnel. From the video, it seems that he might not actually possess the necessary driving skills to pull off such a maneuver. At one point, he seems to attempt to back up, but sends the car diagonally toward the wall of the tunnel.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Brad Haverly, who shot the above video of the incident said, "I think the swearing and shouting contributed to the fact that the man was unable to reverse out of the tunnel and also an inability to drive."

In the video, bystanders can be seen pleading with the woman, several of whom say they are attempting to pick up their kids from school.

The standoff ended when a bystander helped the man back out of the tunnel by controlling his steering wheel through the window, allowing the woman to carry on her journey.

Cry-Baby #2: Jason Tackett

Screencap via Google Maps

The incident: A woman looked at the obituary of her former boyfriend who, obviously, is dead.

The appropriate response: Offering her sympathy.

The actual response: Her current boyfriend attacked her in a jealous rage.

According to a police report obtained by the Smoking Gun, an unnamed 43-year-old woman was hanging out last Thursday with her 38-year-old boyfriend, Jason Tackett (pictured above) at the home they share in Bradenton, Florida.

As they sat on the couch, Jason allegedly took the woman's phone to see what she was looking at and saw that it was the obituary of an ex-boyfriend.

"The defendant became upset that she was looking him up (even though he is deceased)," the police report states.

The unnamed woman later told police that this sent Jason into a rage. He allegedly yelled at her, trashed their house, and threw her to the floor before placing his hands over her mouth and nose.

The victim was able to escape to a neighbor's house where she called 911. Jason was reportedly arrested and charged with domestic battery by strangulation.

This is the second appearance for Bradenton, Florida in this column this month. Two weeks ago, I featured a woman in the same town who called the police because somebody called her a name.

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

Previously: A guy who got mad because a library has books written by a child molester vs. a school who suspended a student for wearing a shirt with the word "lesbian" on it.

Winner: The school!!!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

Photo by Mattha Busby

Depending on you disposition, club drugsecstasy, speed, cocaine, MDMA, mephedronecan either be great night-extenders or tragic night-obliterators. Usually, it's as black and white as thatyou do some, you dance around a bit, you go to bed, you wake up feeling like shit. Sometimes, though, the drugs become a problem; you start to rely on them for a good time, and then you start to rely on them to get you through the day.

A couple of years ago we spoke to Dr. Owen Bowden-Jones, founder of London's Club Drug Clinica center dedicated to helping people with their club drug problemsabout what he was up against. Back then, the main drugs the clinic was dealing with were GBL, crystal meth, ketamine, and mephedrone, with a number of users injecting those last two. I caught up with Bowden-Jones recently to see what's changed since then.

VICE: Hi, Owen. How has club drug culture changed since you spoke to us in 2013?
Dr. Owen Bowden-Jones: Well, I can only speak for people I've seen at the clinic, but we're seeing a much more diverse group of people, including clubbers, students, psychonauts, men who have sex with men, people who've been in prison or in custody, and vulnerable groups, such as homeless populations. It seems that more diverse groups are trying these drugs and experiencing problems.

Why do you think that is?
I think it will be a range of factors. The drugs themselves remain easily available, cheap, potent, and, for a number of the non-psychoactive drugs, legal, and so they appeal to a variety of different groups for different reasons. Some users say they like the drugs because they don't show up on urine drug screening. If you are being regularly drug tested, that can be a real attraction. Some of our psychonauts say they enjoy trying lots of different chemicals to experience new effects, and some of our clubbers say they're just interested in trying the latest thing.

MDMA and ecstasy usage has gone up, as has the purity of those drugs in the UK. Do you think it's a positive thing that people are experimenting with more pure drugs?
It's difficult to say because, as with any commercial market, people want value for money, so they want to get the effect they're seeking for the best price possible, for the least harm. Some of the newer drugs may cause greater harm than MDMA, but it's complicated because plenty of MDMA is cut with other drugs. If you don't really know what you're taking, it's hard to know the risks. Without meaning to sound patronizing, taking any psychoactive drug involves some risk.

READ ON THUMP: We Spoke to an Academic Who's Spent 25 Years Researching Drugs in Clubs

There was a problem a couple of years ago with dealers selling PMA as MDMA, which caused a number of deaths. Is that still an issue?
Yeah, there were a few cases of users who thought they were taking MDMA, didn't really feel any effects after about half an hour and, being experienced MDMA users, said, "Well, it's obviously not very good quality, so let's take some more." What they didn't realize was they'd actually been taking PMA, which takes a lot longer to worktypically around an hour. So they essentially double-dosed themselves with PMA. Some users died because of the toxic effects of PMA in the amount they took. This is a pattern we often see at the clinic, with people taking a drug, expecting a particular effect, and then being surprised when they get something they didn't bargain for.

Have any drugs become particularly popular in the last year?
From about 2008, the big new drug was mephedrone, and that very rapidly gained a new market share. It probably made big inroads into the drug market because the quality of other drugs wasn't so good. At the time it was relatively pure and relatively cheap. What we haven't seen is a sort of son of mephedrone; there isn't another drug that's come along in the same way and taken a big slice of the market. That may happen, but it hasn't happened yet.

Of all the various club drugs, how badly does mephedrone rate in terms of how many issues people have when they come in?
Thinking about drug harm is complicated, because you need to think about the drug itself, then you need to think about the way the drug was taken, and then you need to think about the individual characteristics of the person using the drug. Mephedrone is a synthetic stimulant drug that can cause psychosis, severe agitation, and dependence.

Now, it's much more likely to do that if you take it by injection rather than taking it as powder. Some people are more susceptible to psychosis than others, and it's the same with addiction; some people are predisposed. What people want to think about is what their own individual risk might be. Do they have a family history of psychotic illness? Do they have a history of addiction? Have they gotten addicted to other drugs in the past?

The last time we spoke to you there was a lot of emphasis on ketamine, but since then there's been a bit of a K drought. How has that affected your day-to-day?
Two years ago we were seeing huge numbers of ketamine users, often experiencing very significant "ketamine bladder," some of them experiencing dependence. As ketamine has apparently disappeared off the streets, we have seen a big reduction in people coming to the clinic with ketamine problems. For the moment, it seems to have almost disappeared as a problem drug for us.

Related: 'The Hard Lives of Britain's Synthetic Marijuana Addicts,' our documentary about people addicted to synthetic cannabis.

Have synthetic cannabinoids been a big problem for you?
We do see quite a number of people who are trying some synthetic cannabis productsthings like Spiceand some of the problems have been surprisingly severe. We've seen people with psychosis and very disturbing paranoia. We've seen people get very agitated and being very impulsive and sometimes injuring themselves after smoking synthetic cannabinoids. One of the messages that seems to be emerging is that the synthetic cannabinoids appear to be much stronger and more harmful than regular cannabis.

Has anyone expressed why they decide to go for the synthetic cannabis over regular cannabis?
Again, it's about bang for your buck, because some of the synthetic cannabinoids are very strong and still relatively cheap, and so I think some people just think they're getting a lot of drugs for their money. The problem is, they're also getting a lot of harm for their moneywe're seeing increasing numbers of people coming to the clinic with problems around synthetic cannabinoids.

How has work changed for you personally since we last spoke?
What we've had to do over the last couple of years is learn a lot more about the different groups who are using these drugs, because it seems that more and more different groups are trying out club drugs to see what they're like, and we're seeing more people with harms. We're also seeing more people injecting their club drugs and we're seeing greater harms, so the sort of harms we now see related to club drugs are similar to the ones that we see in our traditional drug clinics.

Dependence, withdrawal, psychosis, depression, and anxiety are the problems we regularly see. The other thing we've done is we've got a group of experts together, including people who use these drugs, to help us write a set of clinical guidance, which is called Project Neptune. Many doctors and nurses still have very little idea about these drugs and the problems they cause. We're trying to make sure that health professionals in settings like A&E know enough about these drugs to be able to help.

It sounds like club drugs have gone from a bit of a flight of fancy to being more akin to things like heroin or crack cocaine.
Heroin and crack cocaine remain the most harmful drugs you can use, but these other drugs used to be called recreational drugs. What's clear is that some people are experiencing harms that are a long way from recreational. They're experiencing the sort of harms we'd expect to see with more traditional drugs.

Thanks, Owen.

Follow Joe Bish on Twitter.

With federal elections right around the corner, the Bloc Qubcois is making a last push to get young Francophones back in their court. Despite Duceppe's return as leader this year, the party only has two seats in Parliament and the separatist party continues to fall behind in the polls.

This week, Simon Coutu sat down with Bloc Qubcois leader Gilles Duceppe to discuss why it's in Quebec's best interest to separate, the risks of assimilation and the survival of his party.

You may have read Lincoln Michel's writing on this site before, but those engaging and incisive essays are just the tip of the literary iceberg for this guy, who is the online editor at Electric Literature and whose outstanding debut collection Upright Beasts comes out October 9 from Coffee House Books. Lincoln's writing is consistently hilarious, dark, sad, and absurd, with unexpected bursts of poignancy. I like how Lincoln's work seems to draw from a great and rich traditionincluding Donald Barthelme, Franz Kafka, Flannery O'Connor, Diane Williams, and Kobo Abewhile also carrying on the anarchic spirit of things like Mr. Show, golden-era SNL, and the shaggy-dog joke. I've had the pleasure of knowing Lincoln since 2006, when we were both students at the Columbia MFA Program, jostling for workshops with coveted professors and incurring massive amounts of student debt. Along with two of our classmates, Ann DeWitt and Rozalia Jovanovic, Lincoln and I started the literary and arts magazine Gigantic, which just released its first-ever book Gigantic Worlds, an anthology of science flash fiction that you should purchase here, because it's a beautiful thing you will want to hold and show off to people. VICE is proud to present Lincoln's story "My Life in the Belly of Beasts" below.

James Yeh

My Life in the Belly of Beasts

I was born prematurely and, as such, was a very small child. Sosmall, in fact, that shortly after emerging into the world, I wasgobbled up by a clever fox that terrorized my parents' farm. It had sneaked in the back door while everyone was distracted.My mother's tears of joy turned acid, and my father cursed thelazy farmhand he'd tasked with mending the fence. These werethe first and last words I ever heard my parents utter.

It was cozy and warm inside the fox's belly. I barely noticedwhat had happened. To me, it seemed I had merely gone fromone womb to another. When I was hungry, I ate the scraps ofraw meat that fell around me. When I was sad and wailed, thefox howled lullabies to guide me back to sleep. All in all, myearly days were bearable.

In time, I began to grow skittish. I was no longer a baby,and I needed to stretch my limbs. One day, as if to answer myprayers, the fox was cornered by a local hunter and his giantmastiffs. The fox tried to run away, but I had grown so large thatI weighed her down, and she was torn apart by the hounds. I feltthe cool air and saw the harsh sunlight for the first time beforebeing swallowed by the largest dog.

I can't deny I felt a great sadness as I settled among the bitsof organ and clumps of fox fur. Yes, the fox had kidnapped me,but she had also been my home, and that is never an easy thingto lose.

Still, the mastiff was roomier and more appropriate fora growing boy. I could feel my muscles developing as I didpush-ups on the soft stomach floor and pull-ups on the outlineof the mastiff's large spine. When the dog bounded throughthe grassy fields, I would crawl up his throat and rest my chinon the back of his massive tongue, gazing out at the dry, openworld.

I even fell in love this way, believe it or not. There was akind girl who lived next to the hunter's house who would feedthe mastiff I lived in tasty leftovers through the gaps in thefence. She wore pastel sundresses and had dandelions in herhair. I couldn't believe how light and beautiful she looked inthe sun.

"What are you doing in there?" the girl said when she sawme peeking from the back of the mouth.

"I live down here," I said, ashamed.

"Well, come on out!" She laughed, but I was afraid and slid back down into the guts. I didn't think a boy who had lived his life in the bellies ofbeasts was worthy of her.

I howled with self-pity, and the girl rubbed the mastiff'sbelly, saying, "There, there."

Eventually my constant loneliness made me resolve to leavethe dog's belly. And I did. Using all my strength, I pulled myway out of the mastiff's maw. It was dark outside the dog. Mylimbs ached, and I decided to rest. As I sat on squishy ground,I realized I was merely in another belly. The dog had beengobbled up by a grizzly bear when I hadn't been paying attention. I couldn't believe my bad luck!

When I tried to escape the bear, she grew angry and climbedup a tall tree. I was almost a teenager now, and life felt like arotten trap. Everything that seemed sweet contained hidden thorns. If I had fresh honey in my grasp, it was followed by thepainful sting of swallowed bees.

'I live down here,' I said, ashamed.

But life moves on, and one grows accustomed to anything.Years passed. The grizzly was drugged and placed on a boat thatset off for a foreign zoo. The boat was caught in a terrible storm,and the bear and I were tossed overboard, only to be consumedby a shark that was later swallowed, accidentally, by a giantsperm whale.

I was now in the largest belly I had ever been in. Therewas nothing to restrain me anymore. I was a man, and I hadto make a life for myself. I set to work, building a shelter outof driftwood scraps and skewering fish from the stomach'spond for food. Sometimes I thought about the little girl inthe sundress and felt a sadness in my stomach. I lived in thewhale for a long time. My skin grew spots, and my hair fellsoftly to the ground. My years were swallowed one by oneby the beast of time.

Then one day, I noticed the whale was no longer moving.I hadn't felt stillness in many years. I was afraid and sat waistdeep in the cold saltwater. I pressed my ear to the whale's ribcage and heard shouts and noises beyond the barrier of flesh.Then metal claws tore the walls of my world open, and I tumbledonto a wooden deck.

It took my eyes quite some time to adjust to the light. Myold skin was covered in flecks of blood and slick blubber.

Between the unshaven sailors, I saw a woman looking at meand smiling. Her skin was crumpled with age, and her hair waslong and white. She was wearing a green sundress and holdingout her hand.

"How did you find me?" I managed to say.

"I've been searching for you all my life," she said. She bentdown to kiss me softly on the brow.

She helped me off the ship's floor and gave me a bowl ofhot soup. The sailors waved goodbye to us at the next port.We married and bought a little apartment in the city, far awayfrom the woods and wild beasts. Inside, we enveloped eachother in our arms and whispered the words we'd saved up overall that time. There weren't many years left for us, so we weredetermined to live them happily. We drank dark wine and filledour bellies with rich meals of liver and ripe fruit.

Time passed, and my days were calm.

Yet despite all my happiness, life was uneasy for me on theoutside. Often at night I would wake up in a sweat, my bodyencased in the tight sheets of our little bed in a cold apartmentin a city surrounded by the warm sea. I felt small and alone inthat dark room. I could feel the breath of my wife on my neck,but it felt like the breath of some unstoppable and infinitelylarge beast, the one waiting for the day that it would swallowme inside the blackness of its belly forever.

Lincoln Michel's debut collection, Upright Beasts, will be published on October 9 by Coffee House Press. Follow him on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

Read: Does America Really Have a Problem with Ghost Voters?

John Boehner, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, announced during a Friday meeting with other Republicans that he would be resigning from Congress at the end of October. His departure comes during the middle of a heated battle over an attempt by conservatives to defund Planned Parenthood that threatens to shut down the federal government.

On VICE News: Pope Politely Sticks It to Congress in Historic Speech

Some more right-wing members of the GOP caucus have long had problems with Boehner, who they see as too willing to placate the Democrats. The Ohio-born politician came to power during the rise of the Tea Party in 2010, but his inability to get along with the angrier, anti-compromise elements in the GOP is emblematic of a larger rift within the party. In the past weeks, some Republicans have threatened to unseat him as Speaker, leading some observers to speculate that he could have asked the Democrats to help him retain power if his own party attempted to replace him.

But instead, a day after the Pope addressed Congressan event which the New York Times called "the fulfillment of a 20-year dream for Mr. Boehner"the Speaker announced he would simply be quitting.

Now that he doesn't have to worry about internal Republican politics, Boehner will most likely get together the votes needed to avoid a government shutdown while funding Planned Parenthood. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy will probably replace him.

On Thursday evening, Boehner told reporters from POLITCO and the Washington Post that there was nothing left for him to accomplish after the Pontiff's visit.

Follow Allie Conti 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.

Planning ahead made all the difference while I served my 25-year prison sentence, and especially when I was released. I earned university degrees and published books while inside, and earned an income, which meant I returned to society with enough money in the bankto launch a career. Within three weeks, I was an adjunctprofessor at San Francisco State University.

But most people who go through lengthy stays in the American prison system don't have the same fulfilling experience. Often, not long after they get out, people get dragged back in.

As a consequence of my outreach since rejoining society, formerlyincarcerated people frequently reach out to me seeking guidance. One of them was Larry, a 58-year old black man who had a more typical experience returning to the public after a lengthy prison stay.

Larry grew up in St. Louis's infamous housing projects,where crime was rampant. Lee Rainwater, a well-known sociologist, once deemed one of them, Pruitt-Igoe, "a human disaster area." Larry told me that crime in theprojects was simply a part of life for the thousands of black people who livedthere. That environment influenced his adolescence and early adult years.

He dropped out of school in the 11th grade andstarted getting into trouble. When Larry was in his mid 20s, a judgesentenced him to serve a ten-year prison term for selling marijuana.

While inside, Larry earned his GED and worked in the kitchen bakery.

"I wouldn't say that I learned nothin' about bakin' when Iwas in prison 'cause there wasn't nothin' to learn," Larry tells VICE. "All you did was pour a bigbag into a big pot. Then you'd add water and wait. That's how you cook inprison. Don't need to be no expert or have any kind a trainin."

Larry didn't seem to think his work in state prison wouldn't translateinto any type of employment opportunities upon release. But as he approached the end of his term, hequalified for work release. The concept of work release is available in somecriminal justice systems, such as Missouri's, but not in others. (Many people don't realize it, butour nation has 53 different criminal justice systemseach of the50 states has its own criminal code and justice system, the District ofColumbia maintains its own criminal justice system, the military has a criminaljustice system, and the federal government has a criminal justice system.)

Larry told me that when qualified inmates approached thefinal 18 months of their prison terms, they could qualify to have jobs outside the prison. Hewelcomed the opportunity because it would allow him to develop real-world workexperience while simultaneously allowing him to save resources he could use totransition into the regular world. During this period, Larry would line upalongside others on work release to leave the prison to board a bus, which delivered him and others to a turkey processing plant where they labored for eight hours each day. While on the job, Larry earned eight dollarsan hour.

"The money I earned during my final year in prison made ahuge difference," Larry told me over the phone. "When I got locked up, Ididn't have no money. When my time came to walk out, I had $8,000 in the bank.Besides that, I had a job."

Larry concluded his obligation to the Missouri prison systemin 1992 and continued working at the turkey plant for the next seven years.But steady employment ended for him in 1999, when federal authorities came knocking. After ajury convicted Larry for charges related to selling crack cocaine, a judgesentenced him to 30 years in prison.

I was confused. If he walked out of prison with$8,000 and a job, how did Larry get caught up in another crime?

"I just wasn't able to get out of poverty," he told me."When I was in prison, on work release, the money I was earning all went into asavings account. But as soon as I got out, I needed to use the money to startmy life. Needed to rent an apartment, buy clothesjust livin', man. Grown mancan't pay no bills on the kind of money I was earnin' from work."

Larry is free again, and hopes to stay that way.

At first, Larry advanced his career at the turkey plant. Bytransferring to different departments, he was able to move into a supervisoryrole, earning $13 per hour. He worked long shifts, starting at 5 AM and working until two each afternoon. Then he invested $1,500 of his savings into renting a storefront with his fiance, where they sold hats and casual clothing. But meager earnings alwayskept him living from one paycheck to the next, always too close to poverty.

"I used to go see a partner of mine, just hung out with him.He was making a little money selling drugs. I could see what he was doing. Iasked him about it. He told me what was goin' down and I just thought about it.Thought I had a plan. I knew people in St. Louis who would sell me cocaine at abetter price. One day, after bein' out of prison for 'bout three years, I hadenough of not havin' enough. I drove over to St. Louis and bought some cocainefrom someone I knew. I brought it back to Springfield and that was it. Mypartner sold it and gave me the profit. Real quick, I got addicted to the moneyand kept on doin' it."

Larry told me that he collected about $5,000 a month sellingdrugs on the side.

"I thought I had a plan, thinkin' that if I bought the drugsand gave them to a partner to sell, no one would ever catch me. But I didn'tplan on people tellin' on me. That was one thin' I didn't plan on." He laughed."Turns out my plan wasn't so good."

"When you reverted to selling drugs," I asked Larry, "didn'tyou have anxieties or fears about going back to prison?" Many former inmates whocontacted me told me that since they couldn't make ends meet in society, thethought of returning to prison didn't deter them.

"Like I said, I thought I had a plan and I thought I couldavoid bein' caught or sent back to prison," he replied. "But I was wrong. Jus' didn't thinkit through too good."

After serving 13 years, Larry benefited from a change insentencing laws, when President Barack Obama signed legislation that reduced sentences forpeople who had been convicted of selling crack. Previously, those who wereconvicted of selling crack cocaine were sentenced 100 times more severely thanpeople who were convicted of selling powder cocaine. The new law resulted inLarry's release in 2013.

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

I asked Larry about how his adjustment has gone since beingreleased from prison the second time.

"I'd say it was harder," he answered. "The feds don't offer no work-releaseprogram. I went to the halfway house. My brother hooked me up with a job at thesalvage yard makin' $8.50 per hour. Wasn't much, but least it was a job.Trouble was that rules required me to give 25 percent of my gross wages to thehalfway house. On a 40-hour week, I'd earn 'bout $340 before taxes. Right thenI'd have to give 25 percent, or $85 to the halfway house. I'd also have to paytaxes, pay the bus, and pay for livin'. Can't get no traction on that."

Larry has been free from prison for nearly three years now,but he still struggles. He's grateful to have a job cleaning exhaust systems,working all the hours that are available to him. He needs to work hard, hesays, because the job only pays $12 per hour.

"All I do is work now. Don't take no time off, sure 'nuff don't want be 'round no drug dealers. Just trying to get ahead and stay out oftrouble."

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

Issue 2 of 'Optic Nerve.' All images courtesy of Adrian Tomine

In 1991, a teenage Adrian Tomine began self-publishing Optic Nerve, a semi-autobiographical comic series starring an affable cast of oddballs and misfits. The stories were short, steeped in realism, and drawn with elegance and subtletythe beginnings of what would become Tomine's trademark style.

The series soon gained a cult following, as readers responded to Tomine's channelling his own detachment and lack of social interaction into his work. By the fifth issue, he received a handwritten letter from Chris Oliveros, the then publisher of Canadian Independent comics powerhouse Drawn & Quarterly and, with Chris's help, Tomine's stories eventually reached a worldwide audience.

Like finding a box of old school memories or discovering a battered Nokia 3310 filled with forgotten text messages, Tomine's stories have an ability to transport you back to the social awkwardness, unrequited love, and emotional growing pains of your own adolescence.

His first collection, Sleepwalk, is charged with lonely, haunting short stories taken from Tomine's early Optic Nerve series. The most memorable charts the small acts of rebellion that are easy to indulge in during a banal summer job, as well as the sometimes depressing reality of people who are trapped in roles most people use merely as temporary employment.

The cover of 'Summer Blonde.'

Developing a harmless crush on an attractive person whom you regularly encounter is something most people are guilty of (girl from the caf with the stripy T-shirtwhere are you now?). In Tomine's second collection, Summer Blonde, the principal story explores how an unhealthy infatuation with a local shop assistant and neighbor's girlfriend snowballs as the desperation and neurosis of the central character takes hold. With grander themes and more refined, minimal artwork, this collection exploring the pain and loneliness of the modern urban existence was the moment Tomine's graphic novels truly hit the mainstream, earning widespread plaudits from the notoriously elitist book industry.

Tomine's third and most substantial release, Shortcomings, charts the tumultuous relationship of an Asian-American protagonist as he lusts after a bevy of seemingly unattainable white blondesmuch to the chagrin of his long-suffering girlfriend. The relationship unravels as his cynicism and wandering eye drives her to move to New York to find a new partner.

Tomine's latest release, Killing and Dying, is a collection of full-color tales of physical and emotional upheaval, creative ambition, and navigating the often-difficult realities of family life. I caught up with the cartoonist to talk about his newest release, his creative process, reaching middle age, and the fear of failure.

Tomine's latest release, 'Killing and Dying.'

"I didn't set out to make the book with any specific themes in mind, so I'm probably not the best person to answer this question," Tomine explains after I ask him to describe the concept behind his latest work. "To be honest, the whole writing process is kind of mysterious to me, and a lot of the best material is more surprising than strategic.

"But looking at the book now, it seems like there's a lot of stuff about parents and children, and I think there's some recurring anxiety about trying to be creative in some way, and maybe something about the positives and negatives of putting yourself out there into the public.

"But on a broader level, I think this book is the result of moving away from California after 30 years, and trying to capture certain moods and emotions that I associate with the places I used to live."

Indeed, much of Tomine's early works is concerned with the upheaval and fear of change. In Shortcomings, the emotional gulf between the two principal characters is reflected in a physical distance that ultimately destroys the relationship. Tomine's work often deals with the angst and uncertainty of growing up and finding a place in the world, as well as the fragility and complexity of relationships in your twenties.

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I wondered about how having a family of his own affected the stories he chooses to write: "When I found out my wife was pregnant, I made a conscious choice to work on short storiesrather than a graphic novelbecause I sensed that my working life was about to get very unpredictable," he replies.

"Having kids also forced me to become a lot more focused and disciplined in my work habits, basically 'clocking in' the minute they were out of the house rather than waiting for inspiration to strike."

With each new release, Tomine seems to push himself in terms of the scale and intent of his stories, weaving longer narratives with greater complexity and emotional depth. I wondered if he considered Killing and Dying to be his most ambitious work to date. "Sometimes just answering email or getting the laundry done feels very ambitious when I'm home with both my daughters," he says. "So while I hope I never actually utter the phrase, 'This is my most ambitious work to date,' I will say that I'm kind of amazed that I ever finished this book at all."

Reminiscent of a sprawling, open-ended Linklater film, I've always thought Tomine's collections feel a lot like a series of snapshots of a certain period in a character's life, typically without a conventional resolution. Tomine disagreed with my interpretation: "If anything, I honestly try to tell stories as clearly as possible. Look at the end of Hortisculpture. When I finished that story, I was like, 'Now no one can say that I intentionally avoid resolution,' but what do I know?"

From 'Killing and Dying'

"I feel like all my characters are just weird stand-ins for myself," Tomine explained as we discussed a mutual admiration for the honesty of autobiographical comics from artists like Dan Clowes and Joe Matt. I wondered how many of his contemporary characters were still based predominantly on himself: "To varying degrees, all of my stories are somehow autobiographical. But not having to explain which parts are made up and which parts are taken directly from my life frees me up quite a bit. But I'm totally with you... autobiographical comics are great, and I wish there were more. Where are you, Joe Matt?"

With so much of his life, personal failings and experiences laid bare within his work, I asked Tomine if he still feels nervous at the release of a new collection, despite his accomplished career: "Of course. I feel like I'm constantly on the verge of just calling it quits and getting a respectable job because I'm too weak to handle criticism or failure.

"But that's been going on for 20 years now, so maybe that's like my security blanket. It's actually very comforting to know that there's a lot of other things I could do with my life that would probably be more anonymous and also more lucrative."

Throughout Tomine's work, his stories explore many pertinent issues, particularly those surrounding mental health and his own experiences of racism as an Asian American. Some of the narratives inKilling and Dying confront serious issues around family and mortality, yet Tomine argues that too much emphasis is put on the importance of focussing on serious issues: "At this point, I think there's a sense that the best 'graphic storytelling' always tackles big, important issues, and I don't think that's necessarily the case."

Indeed, the simplicity, subtlety, and purity of Tomine's writing are part of the reason for its success. It's easy to identify with any number of his characters as they struggle to connect and build healthy social relationships in an increasingly disconnected world. After reading Killing and Dying, it seems that even as we age, it never gets any easier.

Killing and Dying will be released on October 6 in North America and the UK by Drawn & Quarterly and Faber & Faber respectively.

Follow Joseph Marczynski on Twitter.

Photo via Kingston Police

READ: The UK's Stupidest Weed Smuggler Just Got Sentenced to Nearly Four Years in Jail

Kingston upon Thames police officers discovered a vast cannabis "forest" in the southwest London borough, where approximately 150 marijuana plants were found growing among indigenous flora.

Officers posted images of the shocking discovery on Twitter after an anonymous tip on Thursday informed the force of "a few cannabis plants." The plantation was found on disused private land on leafy Kingston's Lower Marsh Lane, situated near a college, university halls, fitness center, and Berrylands train station. Upon arrival, officers were greeted by scores of plants of extraordinary heights, with some standing at around five feet.

Kingston borough PC Sarah Henderson said: "The area these plants were growing on was the size of a football pitch . It looked like a small forest of Christmas trees and was complete with a gazebo. Whoever set this up used a really remote spot. The only way to get there was a 20-minute walk through wasteland. But all their time, trouble and gardening skills will go unrewarded, as the whole lot will now be destroyed by police."

Officers have secured the wasteland and are in the process of arranging for the plants to be removed and destroyed. No arrests have been made as yet, and inquiries into the discovery continue as police search for those involved in cultivating the plants.

Rice paddies outside of Nong Ben village in Sakon Nakhon province. Photos by the author

One woman in Nong Ben village was plagued by headaches, stomach pain, and dizziness. Another began babbling to herself incoherently. A third started laughing and crying at the same time. As the number of mysteriously ill women in this northeastern Thai village rose last October, so did suspicions about the source. Someone, it was said, must be using black magic to infect the community with a phi poba Thai-style ghost that possesses its victims and eats them from the inside out.

While many Thais have only encountered the bloodthirsty phi pob in low-budget horror flicks and soap operas, dramas revolving around the ghost are still playing out off screen in places like Nong Ben. That's where 46-year-old Lek, whose name has been changed for this article, has spent the past year fighting accusations that she used witchcraft to dispatch the ghoulish spirit on her neighbors.

At first there were only whispers here and theregossipy but harmless. The real trouble started after Lek was accused of witchcraft in a Facebook post that garnered more than three million views. Once the narrative was scrawled across the web, it was difficult to erase, and quickly became a catchall for the community's health problems.

"Every time a woman would die people would say it was the phi pob," said Supot Sonsomnuek, a Thai reporter who lives in the province. "The whole village was looking at this woman."

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CAUGHT ON CAMERA

Lek had recently married into the community, where most people farm rubber and rice, and she had always been considered "strange," locals told VICE. After the witchcraft accusation went viral, villagers stopped speaking to her altogether, and their children refused to sit or play with her kids at school.

Northeastern Thailand, where Nong Ben is located, is still the poorest and least developed part of the country, but it's no longer the disconnected backwoods it once was. Today the roads are paved, homes are increasingly built with bricks, and cell phones are ubiquitous. In just ten years, the percentage of Thailand's rural population living below the poverty line has halved.

But this sweep of economic development and globalization has largely altered, not displaced, traditional practices and beliefs like that of the phi pob, an animist spirit that predates the spread of Buddhism across Thailand.

Ken Mooltripakdee sits in front of a religious shrine in his home in Ban Fang

Even exorcists like Ken Mooltripakdee, 66, who claims to have killed more than 1,000 phi pobs in his lifetime, cites the proliferation of cell phones as one change that has made his job easier.

"In the past, it was all kind of mysterious, and I had nothing to prove that the phi pob existed," he said. "But now, villagers can record the ceremonies and share the videos on social media."

"It helps provide evidence," Ken explained, pointing to CDs of his exorcism footage.

When Ken started his practice 40 years ago, ghost doctors were often a patient's first and only stop. Now, his serviceswhich involve magical chants, sprinkles of holy water, and some light prodding with a special plant to oust the spiritare sought in tandem with those provided by doctors at hospitals.

Some spiritual practitioners even incorporate the language of modern medicine into their ceremonies, said Visisya Pinthongvijayakul, a Thai anthropologist who teaches at Chandrakasem Rajabhat University. Local spirit mediums in the northeast, for instance, will offer to use their spiritual stock to "help lead pills, or medicine, into the right channel," he said.

"They have a really vivid explanation for how medicine works," said Visisya. "They see a map of the body, and that the medicine isn't working because it's blocked somewhere. But if someone comes to them to pray and ask for help, then the gods will open the channel."

COVETING THY NEIGHBOR

According to travelogues written by foreigners in the late 19th century, Thai villages used to expel hundreds of accused witches annually. Today, that number is down to one or two per year. But the underlying motivations driving these accusations appear to have hardly changed.

Cows graze on the side of the road in Nong Ben village

For Thip Yingnok, 43, there's no question that her father's enviable herd of buffalo played a role in his expulsion from their village several decades ago.

"At first people said the phi pob was in my father's buffalo, so he had to sell them," recounted Thip. "Then the villagers said the phi pob had moved into his hut."

Eventually, he was forced to leave everything behind and move to the "phi pob village," a community that was founded by families from across the region who were similarly exiled on account of witchcraft accusations.

"People wanted his land and property, so that's why they accused him," said Thip, who still lives in the community.

Similarly, while some villagers in Nong Ben appeared convinced that Lek was a sorceress, others spoke of a separate dispute that had nothing to do with ghosts or black magic.

One man said he heard Lek was involved in a land conflict with a local official, whose wife was one of the first villagers to claim she was infected by the phi pob. Another village rumor alleged that the same official was involved in the drug trade and feared that Lek, who was friends with local soldiers, was serving as a military spy.

Several officials confirmed that a personal conflict lay behind Nong Ben's phi pob scare, but none were willing to provide the particulars.

"When someone has more power, they can get people to agree with them," is all that Paiboon Nakthippiman, the new district officer in town, would say of Lek's witchcraft accusation. He described trying to challenge that power as similar to "using only one hand to block the sun."

Lek's effort to combat ostracization in her village lasted for the better part of a year. With scant assistance from local leaders, she was forced to marshal help from government officials outside the village, and she eventually threatened to sue those who published the accusatory post on Facebook.

The conflict was finally settled last month after Paiboon brokered a compromise: Lek agreed to drop the lawsuit if the villagers promised to put the witchcraft accusation behind them as well. In order to placate those who remained wary, Paiboon hired a group of monks to bless the village and Lek's home.

"A special thing happened on that day," said Paiboon. "There was very hard rain, a sign that the village was cleaning itself."

Whether everyone else is as convinced remains to be seen. A woman serving up papaya salad in the village told VICE she thought the phi pob was probably gone. But she said she's still watering a special plant said to ward off the spirit, just in case.

Follow Sally on Twitter.

"Taking of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, 15th July 1099," (oil on canvas), Emile Signol, (1804-92). This happened a month after the Crusaders took the city of Ma'arrat al-Numan and ate some of its inhabitants.

If you want to see exactly how Britain has turned itself from an unremarkably grotty island in a grey and chilly sea into a kind of brutally ironic Hell, consider visiting the Saltley Academy in Birmingham. This school is funded by the Department for Education, but is effectively run as an independent company. It has a mostly Muslim student body and was caught up in 2014's "Operation Trojan Horse" faux conspiracy. It also prominently features a large red cross patte on a white shield one of its walls, with the slogan "I'm St. George. I'm here to defend: Tolerance, The Rule of Law, Freedom of Expression, Community, Equality, on behalf of everyone."

Whatever his actual historical background, St. George is a figure closely associated in the national psyche with the Crusades, a relation that the red cross on a white shield does little to dispel. When the invading Crusaders took the city of Ma'arrat al-Numan in what is now Syria, they indiscriminately slaughtered 20,000 inhabitants, and ate them. A 12th century chronicler neatly summed up the attitudes of the time when he wrote that "the Christians did not shrink from eating not only killed Turks or Saracens, but even dogs." In terms of good sense and cultural sensitivity, Saltley Academy's mural is a little like putting up a big poster of Idi Amin in the cafeteria, the tyrant in full British ceremonial uniform, stuffing a forkful of human flesh into his puffy cheeks, with the slogan "A Varied Diet is Good for You!" Or painting some jaunty Khmer Rouge slogans on the walls of an optician's.

In a way, that mural does reveal some of the truth of the situation: All our high-minded rhetoric about tolerance and freedom of expression is often just old-fashioned medieval racism given an unconvincing makeover. The mural was put up in tandem with the government's Prevent strategy, which aims to deter young people from being seduced by extremist Islam and to encourage them to embrace British values, apparently by smearing some of the worst of this country's history in their faces; letting them know British values include the idea that, at a pinch, Muslims make a decent substitute for roast beef.

Not that this was the intention, but the vague drooping nonsense about Community and Equality and Other Poorly-Defined Concepts That Require Capitalization to Avoid Collapsing Under the Weight of Their Own Abstraction does carry a set of ugly, racialized concepts. It's taken as read that Britain really is free and tolerant and inclusive; when young Muslim students are singled out as needing to be taught this particular message, the implication is that they, in particular, are intolerant, and therefore not tolerated; noninclusive, and therefore not to be included.

It shouldn't need to be said that Britain isn't free, or tolerant, or inclusive; it's a damp and wretched clod chiefly defined by mass idiocy, antique ethnic squabbling, and shiny new buildings that conceal century-long decay. This was nicely demonstrated recently by another example of the Prevent strategy in action, when it came to light that a 14-year old schoolboy in north London had been taken out of a lesson to be interviewed by officials over whether he was "affiliated with ISIS."

Under the Prevent strategy, teachers are supposed to watch out for any inappropriate religiosity on the part of their students; basically, they're being drafted as a part-time Stasi. In this case, the school was alarmed whenduring a French lesson in which students had been discussing the environmenthe had talked about environmental activists, and mentioned that some people refer to it as l'ecoterrorisme. He hadn't expressed any support for terrorism, eco or otherwise; he just said the word. The school reacted as if it were some magical incantation that turns ordinary kids into black-robed beheaders; as good Preventers, they had to notify the government. And the room in which this child was isolated and interrogated wasof coursecalled an "inclusion center."

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These pleasingly waffly buzzwords, like "tolerance," or "inclusion," tend to have a sinister double aspect: They seem like the flaccid self-definition of a country still not used to thinking outside the terms of the empire it no longer has, while actually being a kind of weaponized irony. In practice, like with the "inclusion center," their meaning is always the opposite of what it appears to be. Take "Free Speech"in the aftermath of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, thousands marched through the streets of Paris in defense of the freedom to say whatever you want, no matter how many people it might upset. The dominant slogan was "Je suis Charlie": it wasn't enough to be horrified by the murder of 11 people, you had to identify yourself with a stupid and offensive magazine.

Not long afterwards, an eight-year-old Muslim child was taken from school by police for saying he "felt he was on the side of the terrorists" because he was against caricatures of the Prophet when teachers repeatedly singled him out to ask if he, too, was Charlie. It was a simple and callous reminder: free speech is importantbut ours, not yours. Our free speech is the freedom to say whatever we want, and your free speech is the freedom to agree with useven if you're far too young to really understand the situation. Our tolerance is seething fear mongering that only just stops short of actually calling for you to be killed and eaten, and your tolerance is putting up with it. Our inclusion is a cold and intimidating cell, where we demand that children tell us which salafist gang half a world away ordered them to say the T-word in a classroom, and your inclusion is helping us put them there.

The Prevent strategy, as it stands, is colossally idiotic. It's hard to think of anything that would more efficiently drive an angsty and solitudinous teenager to Islamic fundamentalism. But what about all the other threats to our national welfare?

It's fair to guess that all the relentless bullshit about British Values is not a major feature of the school experience at (say) Eton, the spawning-grounds of our slimy ruling classes. (At my own school, which has also produced its fair share of high-powered tosspots, it was notably absent.) The news that this country is founded on principles of equality and inclusion might be a strange one for kids with eight middle names and titles dating back half a millennium, but surely it's something they need to be taught.

Public schools don't have police officers on standby to swoop in whenever students express the kind of radicalized class snobbery that might lead them to, one day, do things like systematically cut benefits provision. Posh white kids aren't taught that the long British tradition of decency and tolerance forbids one from hacking into the phones of dead children, or setting up a government strategy that sees millions of British schoolchildren as terrorists-in-waiting. If we're really serious about ensuring that people grow up learning good democratic values, that might be a good place to start.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron. Photo via Flickr user Steve Bowbrick

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

It's the last day of the Daily Mail's serialization of what they're calling the "political book of the decade," Call Me Dave. After a week's worth of stories for the country's biggest newspaperand with no end in sight to the David-Cameron-fucking-a-dead-pig jokesI think it's remarkable that people are still buying it. Dark political secrets are supposedly being revealed about our overlords, without asking who the true overlord is herenamely the billionaire behind the book, Lord Ashcroft.

Lord Ashcroft's career says a lot more about the relationship between money, the Conservative Party, and how we are governed than any story about a penis and a pig's head. Even Ashcroft's co-author says that with the pig fucking story they were "merely reporting" what they were told by "a respected Tory MP who is a contemporary of David Cameron's at Oxford" without any judgement as to whether it is actually true.

Lord Ashcroft. Photo via Policy Exchange

I can "merely report" that at Conservative Headquarters, Ashcroft's nickname was Blofeld (from 1998-2001 he was party Treasurer and from 2005-2010 he was party Chairman). They thought of him as like a James Bond villain. He has a headquarters in a tropical paradiseBelize, a tax havenwhere he keeps two massive yachts and a private jet. He doesn't actually live in a fake volcano run by men in orange boiler suits on golf carts, but he does use his powersa.k.a. a very large bag of moneyto try and bend the world to his will.

Even at the surface of the current scandal it is openly said that Ashcroft has written a hatchet-job biography of Cameron because he is angry he couldn't buy a position as a minister. It's not a great context for a supposedly explosive political scandal.

That's before you ask how Ashcroft became a billionaire. Much of the press seems to be too trivial to mention that, but Ashcroft has threatened some of the journalists that are more serious about reporting with libel, and he's got the cash and lawyers to back it up.

Who really did something really outrageous in the back in 1980s? Dave with a pig? My vote goes for Lord Ashcroft. Back then his main business, Hawley Group, was heavily into contract cleaning. Behind the scenes, Ashcroft funded a political lobby to privatize the cleaning of schools and NHS hospitalsuntil that point were run by the public sector. The lobby group he funded, called PULSE (the "Public and Local Service Efficiency" Campaign) was set up in 1985 to persuade the public sector to contract out services like cleaning and catering. Ashcroft gave PULSE around 500,000 of donations to the Tories could give him a shortcut so that he could avoid the normal route to becoming a Minister, which usually involved arduous tasks such as actually getting elected. Cameron actually did offer him a job as a "Junior Whip" in the Foreign Office, but Ashcroft rejected it because he thought he'd bought a bigger job. Ashcroft says that he "regarded this as a declinable offer. It would have been better had Cameron offered me nothing at all." Ashcroft often argues that Cameron is not "modern" enough, but has an 18th century attitude towards buying a place in the government.

Cameron has been getting a press shellacking because of Ashcroft's book, but the real story is about how he didn't let Ashcroft buy a place in government. Whatever the reasons for that, he did the right thing for once. A book published by an angry multi-millionaire full of barely political smears tells us something about our political world, but not much about David Cameron.

I approached Lord Ashcroft for comment but did not get a response.

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