Photos by Chris Bethell

On Friday evening, hundreds of activists shut down the Eurostar terminal at London's St. Pancras station. Some of the city's radical protest groups including Sisters Uncut, London Latinxs, and Black Dissidentshad put the call out online about a day of civil disobedience in solidarity with migrants and refugees, holding back details until just before the demonstration to keep police and security off their tail.

At 5 PM, in a park off London's Euston Road, 200 or so people stood talking. Nobody wanted to tell me what they had in store.

Slowly, small groups headed out of the gardens, making their way toward the King's Cross St. Pancras station. Following the activists inside, some headed straight to the departure boards, while others made a beeline for the MAC Cosmetics shop. For 45 minutes, nothing happened. I grabbed a beer; some trains arrived. Then, at 6 PM sharp, it kicked off. A handful of activists had been lining up at the Eurostar ticket barriers with no intention of traveling. Instead, they had glued themselves to the machines.

The guards caught on pretty quickly, dragging some of those intending to stick themselves down out of the terminal before they could pop open the adhesive caps. But by this point it was too late, as over 300 protesters descended from all over the station, blockading the entrances and shutting the place down.

Chants of "Who shut shit down? We shut shit down," echoed through the station.

As banners were unfurled, the Eurostar staff scampered to regroup.

I asked a protester named Bill why he'd decided to spend his Friday night glued to a ticket machine. "People are drowning off the coast of Lesbos," he said. "People are stuck in Calais, dying trying to get over here. We have these fucking arbitrary borders based on who is born where that dictate our life chances. The point is to show that if people can't come here, then people can't go over there."

On the other side of the terminal, around 250 activists staged a die-in, a form of direct action that sees protesters playing dead on the floor, made famous by the #BlackLivesMatter movement in recent years. With stories in the news of migrants/refugees/human beings dying on their journeys to Europe every day, all those bodies splayed out on the ground had a striking effect.

Two women with a megaphone began reading out the demands of the protest, with the crowds repeating each of them line by line.

"We demand that the UK and the EU open their borders to all migrants and refugees. We demand that the UK stops funding the killing of migrants and refugees. We demand that Theresa May shut down all detention centers and end all deportations. Colonialism still, your racist borders kill."

By this point, the station was heaving. More protesters had appeared from nowhere, some having arrived late from work, while others just passing through the station decided to get involved.

Predictably, the police weren't all that happy that a throng of activists had managed to shut down a train station, and didn't hold back with their jostling. As scuffles broke out, hundreds of activists shouted: "This is what a border looks like."

The travelers, of which there were many, didn't really know what to do with themselves. Some of them were trying to get home to their loved ones across the channel, while others were off for a night out in Brussels. Some, I think, had just wanted to grab a sandwich from Benugo before taking the tube home, and instead found their path blocked by hundreds of shouting people.

Of course, it put the whole issue into perspective: these guys were blocked from the Northern Line by lefty activists with placards; the people the lefty activists were there to represent were blocked by armed forces, barbed wire, and deportations in their quest for a better life.

Watch on VICE News: 'Europe or Die,' a series documenting the efforts of those risking their lives to reach Europe, and the forces tasked to keep them out.

I got chatting to Isabel, who was trying to get home to Belgium. "I agree that there is a bad situationand people are angry; this is symbolic," she said. "As long as I get my train then I'm OK."

One French guy in a suit was less understanding, trying and failing to ram his way through the human barricades, before getting a bit mouthy and storming away.

As the pushing and shoving with cops continued, a handful of protesters glued their hands to a pillar while writhing around in fake blood on the floor.

"We are blocking the people coming in though the Eurostar to highlight how the government is protecting borders rather than people," a girl named Tatiana explained to me, as a police officer slipped up in the pool of liquid behind her. "The government here has made wars around the world, and have a responsibility to let people in. They have enough resources to protect everyone."

With the last Europe-bound train of the evening departed, the protesters made their way out the station, briefly blockading the main road as the police darted around behind them.

"I think actions like this will continue, because we're facing an urgent situation," a guy called Kwame told me. "We reject the border. But if it's there, the privileged and wealthy should feel it, too. Fortress Europe is a highly racialised project, which draws on longstanding ideas with a well-known history on this continent. It will continue to be resisted."

Follow Mike Segalov and Chris Bethell on Twitter.

More photos from the protest below:

Screencap via CNN

During last week's Democratic presidential debate, avowed pinko and every cool teen's favorite Larry David impersonator Bernie Sanders had some dire warnings about our online privacy.

"Virtually every telephone call in this country ends up in a file at the NSA. That is unacceptable to me," Sanders told debate moderator Anderson Cooper. "I think the government is involved in our emails, is involved in our websites."

Then he took it a step further. "But it's not just government surveillance," he said, as (I assume) a dark cloud made up of ones and zeroes gathered over his head slightly out of view of CNN's cameras. "Corporate America is doing it as well."

In an email to VICE this week, a Sanders campaign spokesperson expanded on the 2016 candidate's comments, saying, "In addition to government surveillance, the Senator is concerned about the lack of privacy consumers have, and how their information is often unwittingly collected, shared, and sold." The campaign also pointed to Sanders' vote against the controversial NSA reform bill earlier this year, and to an amendment the Senator attempted to attach to this year's National Defense Authorization Act. The amendment, which did not make it into the final version of the NDAA, would have created a two-year commission to investigate changes in data collection, and the possible impact on privacy rights and surveillance.

"I believe we need to take a look at how the public and private sectors are gathering data on the American people and how we are moving toward an Orwellian society in which your location and movements can be tracked at any time through your smartphones and computers," Sanders said in a June statement announcing his plans to introduce the amendment.

One of the big reasons we've encroached upon an "Orwellian society," as Sanders puts it, is because of data brokerscompanies that aggregate, package, and sell people's personal information to advertisers. If you've ever been fucking around online and encountered an ad you felt was almost scarily apt, you have data brokers to thanka 2014 report from the FTC showed that nearly everything Americans do online is collected by someone. That means that information we post in our social media profiles, our shopping histories both online and off, and information we provide to websites when we register for accounts is all fair game to data brokers, who'll either scrape your data with their own software or buy it from someone else who has it.

To some degree, companies have always collected information about their customers, but the amount of data that data brokers are now sitting on is unprecedented. When I spoke to Ron Moritz, the CEO of cybersecurity firm BioCatch recently, he estimated that they have "richer sets of information about people than the wildest dreams of the CIA and NSA."

As for the accuracy of Sanders's warning, "I think he gets the gist of it right," said Kelly Lum, an application security expert who has worked extensively in the public and private sectors. "The more entities that are collecting data on you, the higher the likelihood that one or more of them is going to screw up and have their information compromised, or sold off to someone who uses that data for malicious purposes."

Many businesses have found that information they gather from their customers can be sold off. Apps also frequently collect data, with consumers often waiving their rights to privacy by agreeing to long and confusing terms of use. Lum told me that even a company that runs what might be considered a "legitimate app" may be "collecting the data you send through it and selling it off to a broker." Additionally, she said, "information collected by the government, such as real estate sales and criminal records can make it into a data broker's collection."

A 60 Minutes segment on the subject of data brokers that aired last year reported that Acxiom, one of the world's largest data brokerage firms, owned an average of 1,500 pieces of information on 200 million Americans. That's a lot of information, and the more details a company has on you, the easier it is for those companies to make other assumptions about things like your age, your medical history, and even weird shit like whether or not you've got an STD or if you're likely to buy a Fleshlight. According to the 60 Minutes report, data brokers may have lists of people with addictions, STDs, and severe student loan debt.

Related: Watch the full HBO Special Report: Fixing the System

In September, the data broker Experian was hacked, exposing the identifying information of some 15 million people, most of whom had sought credit checks through the company as part of the process of getting T-Mobile cell service. Although the company claimed that the hack "did not impact Experian's consumer credit database," it nevertheless proved that data brokers are not infallible.

If the information data brokers have collected were to leak, experts say the consequences could be dire. "Imagine data in the wrong hands being used to out a person living in a conservative town as homosexual or transgender," said Lum, "or a person's daily routine being discovered by an abusive ex."

If Sanders is serious about stopping the spread of Big Data, though, he might want to start in his own backyard. A September audit of campaign websites conducted by the Online Trust Alliance, a consumer watchdog group, gave Sanders' 2016 site a failing grade.

Over the phone, OTA's Craig Spiezle explained that the audit rated 23 presidential campaign sites on a variety of criteria, including privacy protection, site security, the privacy policy listed on campaign websites, and authentication measures. "The total (your campaign) could get was a 100," he said. "The average was 57.7, the highest was 90, and the lowest was 37. The Sanders campaign was towards the very bottom of that scale."

Of the major candidates graded in the OTA audit, only Jeb Bush's campaign site was awarded a passing grade. OTA's report did not reveal the specific scores for each campaign site, and Spiezle declined place the candidates on a continuum, but he did tell me that Hillary Clinton's campaign site scored slightly higher than that of the Sanders campaign.

Though Sanders' site does provide an easy-to-understand privacy policy, it states that the campaign reserves the right to share visitors' personal information "with groups, causes, organizations, or candidates we believe to have similar views, goals, and principles." It also states that the site "communicate shared for marketing purposes." So far, though, there hasn't been much movement on that front.

A bill introduced last year by West Virginia Senator John D. Rockefeller would have required data brokers to provide consumers with access to whatever personal information they had collected, and allow them to opt out of being included on the firms' lists. Loftily titled the "Data Broker Accountability and Transparency Act," the bill died in committee. A similar bill was introduced earlier this year, but it too died before ever hitting the Senate floor.

Follow Drew on Twitter.

Dear VICE Readers,

It's come to my attention that nobody is completely certain where Japanese video game designer Hideo Kojima, known worldwide for the Metal Gear Solid series, Penguin Adventure, and taking photographs of his lunch, really is right now.

Konami, Kojima's employers for the past 29 years, have released a statement that the producer of Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner and Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django, games that to this day are enjoyed on a global scale, is "on vacation." Kojima's own Twitter appears to corroborate this claim, with a post of October 19 indicating that the director of Stock Trading Trainer: Kabutore, an all-time classic if we're being honest with ourselves for a goddamn second here, had a lovely time at the Mori Arts Center, Tokyo, taking in the Golden Pharohs and Pyramids exhibition. A great and educational day out for all the family, I'm sure you agree.

Konami's statement also says that Kojima remains an employee of their organization, which is reassuring after several months of rumors and reports along the lines of him leaving in the wake of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which has been out for ages now.

And yet, here's Simon Parkin writing for The New Yorker that, actually, wouldn't you know it, Kojima's final day at the office was October 9. He says that there was a leaving party, with drinks in plastic cups and people pretending that they'll keep in touch with him once he's cleared his desk and everything. Look, there's even Photographic Evidence of what appears to be this event as it happened, in the tweet embedded below. Use your eyes: that is Kojima, second from the left, politely, perhaps reluctantly, raising a drink. He may well have downed it seconds after this shot was taken and smashed the fuck out of the room before dropping his drawers and dumping on a framed picture of promo art for Lords of Shadow 2; or simply taken a sip, put it down on a desk and forgotten about it. We'll never know for sure, because Konami can't recall what this gathering was in aid of, at all.

On October 9, Kojima posted no photographs of a leaving lunch, and come on now: everybody has a leaving lunch on their last day, where nearest and dearest and some guy from IT who you barely know but they seem OK I guess go out just before one and come crawling back to their computers after three, semi-comatose and glaring at the clock until it ticks around to shut down and bar time. That is the way of things. Now, I don't know for sure how Japan does last days, but you'd expect to see a sausage, at the very least.

Who can we trust? Perhaps Hideo never went to see the old Egyptian stuff. Perhaps he's in a cardboard box somewhere, right now, desperately trying to sneak past people who, if they spotted him, would be Very Upset Indeed. Alarmed, even. Maybe he's belatedly on his way to a lovely lunch? All I know is that I don't know.

So help us help Konami here, friends. If you've seen Hideo Kojima recently, please let us know. It's not like he's in trouble or anything. The world's moved on from the debacle that was Sons of Liberty. He can come back whenever he wants, no rush. It's almost definitely unlikely that he'll be made to work in the pachinko department, probably. It'd just be nice to know whether or not Konami can chuck out that African violet he's had on the edge of his station, sitting unloved and limp, for the last four months. It's making the office look untidy, what with all the other spotless, vacated desks around the place.

Thanks, and stay away from the balloons.

- Mike Diver, Gaming Editor

A piece by Paul "Boydy" Boyd

Being a tattoo artist anywhere is a tough job. Every day you permanently mark people's skin with deeply personal images and phrases. But in the city, you have the room to develop a reputation of your own. Clients come to you because they like your style, they get your aesthetic, and hopefully believe that you are the right person for this job.

Boydy at work

In small towns like Cobram on the Murray River in Australia, clients come to you because you're their only option. Paul "Boydy" Boyd is the owner and artist at Ink Me Tattoo, the only tattoo shop in the town of 6,000 people. Here there aren't a lot of options when you want to finally get that tribal armband, infinity symbol, child's name, or memoriam portrait. So Boydy has to be able to do everything.

Related: Tattoo Artists Tell Us About the Worst Tattoos Everyone Wants

Being the only tattoo place in town means you need to be versatile, flexible, good with people, and pragmatic. You're given a very strange but telling window into what your neighbors are thinking and feeling. It's one of the reasons he describes his two-seat set up, where he usually works on two or three clients a day, as looking more like a hairdresser than a city parlor. He spoke to VICE about how good manners and a willingness to tattoo a dick will help you go far with a small client pool.

Ink Me Tattoo is located in a small strip mall

VICE: Hey Boydy. So you're the only tattoo and piercing shop in town, do you feel like a landmark?
Paul "Boydy" Boyd: Yeah, everyone knows me even if I don't know them. I don't go out much, you get bothered. If I go to the pub people come up to me like, "I want to get this tattoo," and I'm like, "Yeah, alright, my shop's over there, come and see me Tuesday." I won't spend all night talking to drunks.

Do you have a typical type of client?
I get all sorts. I say 95 percent of my clients are normal and 5 percent are the sort of crazy where you wonder how they get through everyday life. The way I have the shop set up because a lot of normal people are afraid to go into tattoo shopsbeing a small town you want to get as many people as you can. A lot of clients coming in are surprised. They think it's going to be dark and dingy but it's like going to the hairdressers'.

Are certain types of tattoos more popular than others?
I do a lot of writing, especially with girls, they like writing. You have little fads, infinity symbols were crazy for a while. All the girls were getting those or feathers. They come in and they're like, "Have you done this before?"

In a small town do you need to be like, "Don't get that, Barry has that"?
For small tattoos I'm not fussed. If it's something a bit more extravagant I'm not going to do that on two people.

The town is onboard with the "put a bird on it" tattoo trend.

Most towns this size couldn't support a tattoo parlor, why do you think you've been able to make it work in Cobram?
When I first opened a lot of people said it wouldn't work; other tattooists had tried opening shops here. I think it's more about the way you treat people:It doesn't matter what business you go into, if someone treats you badly, you're not going to spend money. I'm just a normal bloke, I think a lot of tattooists have that arrogance which makes people uncomfortable. I've lived in Cobram for 30 years, I know a fair few peopleyou just have a yack.

Is there pressure to do work you don't like? What happens if someone brings in an idea that's garbage?
I'll politely tell them, "That won't work that way, we can do something along these lines." People bring in pictures they've drawn and think are awesome, I ask them to leave it with me to tidy up. Some are fine with that, others are like, "I want it just like that." Then you have to say, "Well I can't do it because it's shit and I can't put my name to it."

Boydy says in a small town, sometimes you have to do tattoos you don't like.

Isn't there a business elementwith such a small circle of clients you couldn't afford to refuse every design you didn't want to do?
I do tattoos all the time that I don't like much. If I was a renowned tattooist in a big-city shop and someone bought me a tribal I'd say, "Nah I don't do that shit." But in a country town you've got to be a jack of all trades, you can't afford to be picky, you've got to adapt.

Is there anything you won't do?
There're certain spotsyou have people come in that haven't got any tattoos and they want a tattoo on their head. If they come in with full sleeves and heaps of tattoos I'll do it, but if it's their first tattoo I won't. A girl came in and she was only 18 but she wanted me to tattoo her neck. I asked if she had a job and she said no, so I wouldn't do it. She goes, "You have to do it, I'm 18." Legally I can do it, but morally I can't.

If you're the only tattooist in town, how did you get into this?
I'm self-taught. Ten years ago a mate was always going on about tattooing. I was getting sick of it so I bought us tattoo kits to encourage him to do it. I started on myself and friends, and basically it went from there. I kept learning, practicing, going to conventions, and trying to watch really good tattooists. I'm a person who can pick up things by watching. If I see how something's done I can usually nut it out.

Are you ever tempted to go work in the city?
I grew up in Melbourne and moved to the country when I was 12. I love the countryeven if I was making big money I couldn't imagine going to work in the city.

What's the most insane piece of work that you've ever done?
Probably tattooing a dickI've done a couple. The first time I got asked to tattoo a dick it was on a regular. I'd done his head, his face, everywhere. He wanted me to tattoo his dick into an elephanthis shaft was the elephant trunk and then I shaved his pubes off and did the head.

For the first ten or 15 minutes I was just laughingthe funny thing was this dude has the biggest dick I've ever seen. I finished the trunk and said, "What sort of head do you want?" He said, "Whatever you want." So I did a cross-eyed elephant.

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Britain First marchers this weekend

I wasn't totally sure what to expect as I headed to my first-ever Britain First demonstration this past Saturday.

The far-right group, notorious for "invading" mosques and shouting at restaurateurs for serving halal chicken, called a protest this weekend against plans to build "the biggest mosque in Europe" in the Staffordshire town of Burton-on-Trent.

I wasn't sure why this would be a problemfreedom of religion is very much A Thing in the UKand given that Burton-on-Trent has a population of around 65,000, I had my doubts as to how true it was. After spending literally 30 seconds researching it on Google, my thoughts were confirmed: The plans were to build an extension on to an existing mosque, which would then accommodate a minimum of 1,500 people. South London's Morden mosque can hold 10,000, meaning the Burton one wouldn't even be the largest in the UK, let alone Europe.

Still, Paul GoldingBritain First's party leaderhad sent a video from Budapest to the organization's Facebook page to encourage people to actually show up. At almost one million Facebook fans, the Christian group's online presence is kind of astounding; chances are someone in your newsfeedmaybe that guy from school who had loads of pet lizards, or your shut-in auntwill regularly share their posts about "supporting our troops" or how we should all "treat extremists like pedophiles." Thing is, while these regularly receive thousands of Likes, it's rare that the turnout at their rallies surpasses more than a couple hundred.

"People just watching this video who aren't quite involved in Britain First yet need to get to Burton-on-Trent," said Golding from Hungary, where he'd been meeting with "fellow patriots."

"You might be saying, 'I'd like to come along, but I'm not too sure about safety.' Our protest marches are always safe," he continued, reassuringly. "There is no reason why people can't come along."

It was decided: I would go along and have a safe experience in Burton-on-Trent, finding out what Britain First are all about.

Arriving in Burton-on-Trent, the police presence was high. As various cordons formed along the road, 150 or so anti-fascist activists stood behind a barrier while the local community watched on.

I headed into a parking lot, where flags and banners were being handed out. Within moments, one of the uniformed Britain First security detail came over, grabbed my collar and told me to "fuck off right now unless to get hurt."

As I was in the process of fucking right off, a guy draped in a Union Jack got very much in my personal space and shouted: "I'm gonna smash your face in if you take another picture."

I decided at that point that I didn't want to join Britain First. Golding had promised I would be safe; his followers had immediately let him and the reputation of his far-right street team down.

Just outside the pen were a handful of "patriotic" blokes who'd decided to keep an eye on the counter-protesters before joining in with the mega-mosque march.

"Would you mind having a chat with me about why you're here today?" I asked one of them.

Turns out he didn't. Instead, he showed off his Nazi salute, which he'd clearly been working very hard on.

As Golding talked to arrivals about how "our grandfathers didn't die for this," gesturing over at a multicultural crowd of local residents, while his pals saluted Hitler, waved Israeli flags, and sang "God Save the Queen," I couldn't help but feel the event was already a little confused.

Saj Hussain (right)

Standing outside a parade of shops was Saj Hussain, a local landlord, chatting with a crowd of mates. "We live in harmony here; we've got Polish, Slovakians, Latvians, Indians, Romanians, and Bulgarians. We all live here," Hussain told me, as Britain First lined up to start their parade. "These guys, there's probably 100 of them. They're racist idiots."

Watching the crowds walk past was Josh and his mate, both locals. I wanted to know what they made of the whole thing, because if you took Golding's word, the non-Muslims of this town had become pariahs, force-fed halal curries as local vicars were burnt at the stake.

"If they want to build a mosque, then they're entitled to build a mosque. Only those pricks over there would do something like this," said Josh.

The Britain First members were vastly outnumbered by locals, who almost without exception stood outside their homes, shops, and workplaces to tell the demonstrators to fuck off.

"I don't want to see racist scum walk the streets," said Niamh, whoalong with her friend Jessicahad come to shout obscenities at the fascists. "I saw a photo on their Facebook page that said, 'By 2050, this country will be full of Muslims, is that what our grandparents died for?' Sorry, that's bullshitour grandparents fought fascism so we could live freely, not so fascists could walk these very streets."

Paul Golding

The parade passed through the town into a quiet, blocked off square opposite the local chippy. Up on stage, Paul Golding started talking, as crowds of locals stood behind heckling him.

"You'll have to get used to the fact that this is our country, a Christian country. If you don't like it, sod off back to Saudi Arabia," he shouted towards the "white, self-loathing traitors" and the "bunch of Muslims who worship a pedophile."

As he stepped down from the podium, I went to see if he'd be up for an interview. Unfortunately, my old mate the security man stopped me in my tracks, this time knocking my camera and pushing me backwards until some police stepped in to keep him off.

Jayda Fransen

Up next on the podium was Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of the party. However, I'd heard enough embarrassing, misguided rhetoric by this point (their brand of British pride made me feel very sad to be British), so instead decided to check out the subject of all the commotion: the mosque. A local Muslim kid named Calum showed me down; it looked nice and had a parking lot outside. Nobody I asked on the street was bothered by it. That was that, then.

As I headed back into the pen, arms were raised. I didn't dare ask what was going on, but there was something in the air that made me, a small Jewish man, feel quite uncomfortable. I couldn't help but feel that those gathered in front of me had just given up on trying to be the acceptable face of the far-right; I saw all the Nazi salutes, racism, and thuggery I assumed they'd be desperately trying to hide.

As the Britain First gang were escorted back to their gravel parking lot, the local teenagers were able to sneak past the police, most of whom were unfamiliar with the town's layout, having been drafted in from all over the Midlands and beyond.

These guys wanted to keep on shouting at the fascists, but the police were having none of it. Things got pretty tense, as one local teenager was grabbed after a little fracas with one of the cops. It escalated quickly, as five officers jumped on him, using cables to restrain him, before cuffing him and sitting on his back. These teens didn't like fascists, and they didn't like the police much either.

As police lines pushed these young people backwards, it was apparent that the counter protest wasn't being led by the usual anti-fascist types, but young people, of all races and religions, who didn't want their town's name tarnished by a group of strangers' prejudices.

From my day spent among them, it became very clear that Britain First's attempt to build support in towns like Burton-on-Trent isn't taking off. Their Facebook posts might get some attention, but this was arguably their loudest call-out of the year, and the turnout was just as meagre as all their previous rallies. Rather than stirring up local tensions, the community came out together and told Britain First to fuck off back to where they came from.

Follow Mike on Twitter.

Photos by Steve Prue

Stoya is an adult performer,writer, and master of avoiding pants. Her writing has been published by the Guardian, the New York Times, and theNew Inquiry. She maintains a blog at GraphicDescriptions.comand recommends you refrain from Googling her at work. The below article appears in the new book Coming Out Like a Porn Star and was excerpted with permission. For more information and to order the book, visit comingoutlikeapornstar.com.

Murphy'sLaw of Inappropriate Behavior states that if you make a habit of taking yourclothes off in public, eventually everyone in your family (including members sodistant they share less DNA with you than a chimpanzee does with a cuttlefish)will somehow stumble upon documentation of what you're up to.

Mygrandmother is a very smart woman, and I'd been dodging the question of what Idid for a living for at least three professionally naked years. I really hadbeen meaning to tell her about my job before she found out from the televisionor a newspaper, but I thought I'd do it when I was ready. "Ready" consistentlybeing defined as any time except for right now.

So Iwas completely unprepared when she called and said, "Your mother says thatyou're sort of like a model. I don't know what that means because if you were amodel she would just say you're a model, and you're a bit short for thatanyway. No offense, dear. What do you do with your days?"

Iwished I'd discussed this inevitability with my mom or had some legitimatereason to get off the phone. My usually dodgy cell service was clear as a bell.I worried: What if I failed at easing her into the whole idea of my career inpornography and she had a heart attack, leaving me accidentally guilty ofgrand-matricide? What if she decided to just cut me out of her life? More pressinghowwas I supposed to explain what a modern pornographic actress was to a woman whodoesn't know how to work a cell phone and still had typesetting tools layingaround from her days in advertising?

"Well,um, do you remember Bettie Page and pinup? What I do is kind of like pinup butmore explicit. Like, with no clothes on."

"Oh! Soyou're a noooooooodie girl!"

EitherI was hallucinating or that statement had been delivered in a positive tone.

"Yes,ma'am. But, uh, pop culture is a bit more edgy now than things were in the'50s, so I have actual sex with people and it goes on video or DVD."

"In themooooving pic-tures! Do you enjoy it?"

"I havefun. It's always interesting. I only do things that I want to do, with peoplethat I want to do them with. It's good."

"Wellthen, that's all very nice and I'm glad to hear you're doing something youlike."

Sincethe conversation was going so well, I figured we might as well get everythingover with at once.

"There'ssomething else I should probably tell you while we're on this subject."

"Ohhh?"

Inaddition to being smart, my grandmother is an incredibly expressive woman. Youknow that Mehrabian's rule thing about how communication is 93 percentnonverbal? In my grandma's case, 99 percent of communication is pure vocalinflection. There's something in the way she draws out the vowels. They becomea whole adventure.

This particular"ohhh" had started out some distance into curiosity land, passed over thegosh-what-else-could-top-the-last-thing mountains, and settled on thepatiently-waiting-to-hear-more plains.

"I'musing your name as my stage name. Well, I'm using the Americanized diminutive.The point is, I'm using part of your name as my stage name."

"Vera?That's not very sexy."

"No,ma'am. I mean, I think Vera could actually be quite marketable with the currentneoburlesque scene, but I'm using Stoya."

"Oh?Oh."

Thefirst oh was surprised, and the second oh sounded less than enthused. In myhead, I stared into the largest imaginable pit of uh-oh. I wondered if shecould hear my heart pounding over the phone. My left hand frantically picked atthe stitches on the hem of my shirt. I became concerned that I might be the oneto have the heart attack, and I wasn't going to die without one last cigarette.I lit up, inhaled and exhaled, inhaled and exhaled again. Finally, I couldn'ttake the extended silence any longer.

"Gramma?"

"I wasjust thinking. I hope none of the men at the nursing home get us confused andtry to put my feet behind my head. I don't bend that way anymore."

Apparently,since the death of her last husband, she'd acquired three boyfriends. Becauseit takes that many of them to keep up with her. My stressful and dramatic coming-out-to-Grandmamoment turned into a farce because although the promiscuity gene may haveskipped a generation, it most definitely runs in my family.

For more Stoya visit her blog, her sexy porno site TRENCHCOATx, and follow her on Twitter.

Image by Jamee Baiser. Click here to order 'Coming Out Like a Porn Star'

Over the past two days, a clip from BBC's Sunday Morning Live has been making the rounds on YouTube. In the video,Jagmeet Singh, representing the charity Basics of Sikhi, interruptshost Sian Williams to announce that Sikhs are being killed in India. Williams warns him that if he doesn't quiet down he'll be escorted out of the studio; the program cuts to a pre-recorded clip, and when the camera returns to the studio, Singh is no longer there.

What he was referring to were the deaths of two Sikh youths last week in Faridkot, Punjab, during clashes with police. A peaceful demonstration was held by Sikhs calling for the arrest of those responsible for tearing up pages from the Sikh holy scripture, Guru Granth Sahib, and police allegedly responded by using water cannons and tear gas to clear the crowds, before firing live rounds at the protesters.

Singh, along with many other Sikhs who voiced their opinions on Twitter, believes there's a willful lack of reporting on the subject. The BBC in particular has been strongly criticized both on social mediawith some alleging the Indian government is bribing the BBC to keep the story out of the pressand via a petition on Change.org.

A BBC spokesperson I contacted responded to accusations that they'd failed to cover the issue. "The BBC is covering this story online and on radio and it has been discussed on the BBC Asian Network," he said. "The BBC operates independently and impartially and makes its own editorial judgements." In response to the suggestion that the BBC had been bribed, the spokesperson said: "Clearly, that's a ludicrous suggestion."

The BBC press office then provided these links to coverage: two stories from October 15, and one from October 17, which mentions the deaths.

All of those links are in Hindi, but Singh himself has now been interviewed by the BBC Asian Network, and the BBC has since provided coverage in English. However, when I looked into it over the weekend, the most comprehensive coverage I could find was in the Indian Express, which reported that Bittu Singh and Krishan Singh were killed on Wednesday, October 14 as they staged a peaceful protest in response to the discovery of pages ripped from the Sikh holy scriptures, which were reportedly stolen in June.

To get a better handle on the situation, I called Jagmeet Singh up for a chat. The below text has been edited for clarity and length.

Jagmeet on 'Sunday Morning Live'

VICE: When you raised the issue that Sikhs were being killed and the media weren't covering it, were you hoping it would lead to a discussion on the show?
Jagmeet Singh: I'll tell you what I was truly hopingI was hoping the killings would stop. In the Sikh nation, our hearts are heavy, everybody feels the painthere was a massive social media outcry. Our guru had put me in a position where I could say something, and I thought: "Shame on me if I don't."

Were you concerned that you would be criticized for it?
I thought I'd be condemned and I did it anyway. I thought I would be ostracized by the whole world, because, as Sikhs, we don't like negative publicitywe don't want to disrespect ourselves or anybody else. But my guru made that come out of me.

Did you plan to draw attention to Sikhs being killed or was it spur of the moment?
I knew I would talk about it. I was invited on the show to talk about interfaith marriages in the Sikh community, because I married a Spanish woman who converted from Catholicism. I thought the interfaith marriage debate was a puff piece. I was already frustrated that the media in general were giving so much credence to an issue that affects less than 50 people a year. I thought, These people are so worried about their wedding day, but people are dying.

When you announced that Sikhs were being killed, the presenter, Sian Williams, said you'd had your time and you'd be taken out unless you were quiet.
I felt that she was being highly unprofessional. A lot of times, commentators and the host play devil's advocate to get the debate moving, and they always come back to give you your say. She was quite happy to shut me down and shut me up.

I thought, If I don't speak up now then I need a slap from every Sikh mother whose child has been killed, every Sikh brother, father, every loved one. And the thing is, Sikhs care about atrocities going on all over the worldwe should protest against anybody that is against humanity. It's not only about Sikhs' plights; it's about everyone's plights.

When I spoke out about the killing of Sikhs, Sian had the power to say: "You've told us Sikhs are being killedwhat do you mean? Let's take five minutes to explain it to the world." And that would have been a real debate. That would have been eye-opening to everybody.

READ ON VICE News: Sikh Man Is Brutally Beaten After Being Called 'Bin Laden' and 'Terrorist'

After you announced that Sikhs were being killed, viewers were shown a pre-recorded clip. When the camera came back to the studio, you weren't there. What happened in that time?
I got up and I apologized to everybody. I said, "I'm very sorry for how I said it, for stopping the show. I said this is not about me or you, it's about people dying and no one's reporting it. You guys are paid by the British public via their licensesyou have a duty of care to report in a fair and balanced way." And you know what? They didn't have anything to say; the producers kind of nodded their heads.

The BBC has received criticism for not covering this issue, from you, on Twitter and via an online petition. But there are other news outlets that haven't reported on this and the BCC has actually given it coverage. Why is the BBC being so heavily criticized?
Some Sikhs feel the BBC makes Sikhs look bad. They have people masquerading as Sikhs that make Sikhs look like clowns.

So the issue is that you feel Sikhs on the BBC aren't representative of the real Sikh community?
I wholeheartedly feeland I've been watching the BBC for yearsthey show a very narrow representation of what a Sikh is and what Sikhs are. Even when the BBC reported figures for the 1984 massacre, they downplayed the figure drastically. They have an agenda to suppress the Sikh voice. It's been said that the message I got across yesterday is more than the Sikh nation has been able to do for the last 30 years because no one will report on it. And it took one fool like myself to say something when God had me there, with his blessing.

Do you feel that the lack of media coverage overall is deliberate?
We have the Sikh Press Association, which has been set up to communicate with the British media. We actively provide press releases and quality images. In this day and age, journalists that investigate are gems. The rest are not journalists; they're churnaliststhey churn out whatever they're told to say. Even when we do all the legwork and give them the story, they still don't report it. They're cold heartedthey don't care. The lack of coverage is deliberate and calculated. They must be made accountable for what they're doing.

Thanks, Jagmeet.

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Jeff Goldblum looking a bit worse for wear as the Brundlefly in 'The Fly'

I love practical effects in films. By this I mean I love makeup, special effects, puppetry, animatronics, and prosthetics. This isn't because I'm a retro-loving luddite who wants to return to the past and have all computers destroyed. It's because practical effects have pushed to the absolute limits the power of the human imagination and what we can achieve with our bare hands. In this modern era where the vast majority of special effectsincluding desert scenes, medieval castles, and battling armiesare brought to life using CGI technology and most actors show their terror or awe in front of green screens, it's easy to forget there was a time when special effects were done by hand, not computer.

In the 1980s, special effects artists became stars in their own rights as their incredible skills and talents gained recognition and plaudits as they turned previously recognizable faces into unrecognizable monsters. Jon Moore, a special effects and makeup artist who has worked on Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, Prometheus, and Doctor Who, tells me that this groundbreaking period was a major influence on his career.

"In the 70s and 80s practical effects really found their feet and the pioneers gained recognition," he says. "Things were being created that hadn't been seen before and it opened up a whole new world of entertainment that had previously been reserved for art or imagination."

Who can forget Rick Baker's jaw-dropping transformation of David Kessler from man to werewolf in American Werewolf in London (1981), or Chris Walas turning Jeff Goldblum into the sickeningly oozing Brundlefly in The Fly (1986)? How about Bob Keen's retina-searing creations, The Cenobites: the sadistic leather-clad guardians of hell led by Pinhead in Clive Barker's Hellraiser (1987)?

Modern CGI techniques supposedly make things look more realistic, but it is the monsters and cityscapes created by practical effects that linger longer in the memory of audiences.

"I think the issues surrounding CGI go deeper than merely filling in as a representation for the real thing," says artist Aramis Gutierrez, who runs the hugely popular ANTI_CGI, an Instagram account bursting at the seams with staggering imagery, much of it the exploding heads and tearing tendons of 70s and 80s horror. "When you can render just about anything you want, it eliminates the 'box' of pragmatism and the means you were facing prior to digital technology," Gutierrez tells me. "It took a tremendous amount of creativity and care to come up with solutions that were plausible and also meant that FX shots were shorter and left more to the viewer's imagination."

Related: Watch VICE Talks Film with directors of Austrian horror film 'Goodnight Mommy'

It is the imagination that is key to practical effects. Audiences want 'real,' but in an emotional sense. Real isn't necessarily how realistic something looks, it's the extent to which we can identify with a character's emotions based on their response to who, or what, they share the frame with. As Kirsty in Hellraiser is chased down a dank subterranean corridor by the Engineera snarling, slime-dripping monstera technician pushing the creature along on wheels is clearly visible in the background but Kirsty's terror is believable.

"Practical effects seem to carry more weight in more than one sense," says Jon Moore. "They react with their surroundings naturally, regardless of how 'clunky' they can appear." Moore feels that despite looking impressive, CGI's lack of physicality means the technique still does not sit comfortably in the filmed world: "It's not quite there yet. That to me is what takes away the realism, even if it looks amazingly realistic."

A really not very nice image from 'Hellraiser'

CGI does have its place and when used sparingly it can be memorable. Think of T-Rex chasing jeeps full of screaming visitors in Jurassic Park (1991) or the T-1000 emerging from the floor of the mental hospital to stab his bladed hand into the forehead of the security guard in Terminator 2 (1991). However, the ease and availability of CGI technology means artists and directors now use it so often that mystery and terror of the unknown in films, whether in the form of a monster or a spaceship, evaporates.

"CGI certainly has a dulling effect," says Gutierrez. "Always providing long exposing shots of an enigma demystifies it. It kills its power."

The power of imagination is vital in allowing audiences to suspend their disbelief and go along for the ride. By never seeing the witch in The Blair Witch Project (1999) and watching the cast gradually go insane with fear and panic, we begin to imagine how she might look, picturing our worst unfathomable terrors. When a CGI monster or a city in the sky is constantly shown to us we begin to shrug our shoulders and take things for granted. How powerful and exciting can CGI Alien fighting CGI Predator for most of a film actually be? It's an overload and it becomes dull.

In the first Alien (1979), the creature is barely visible in the dripping shadows of the Nostromo, waiting to kill the ship's crew one by one. We see the creature but only for seconds at a time, so our anticipation and fear builds to a crescendo. When the alien finally appears with full clarity in an air vent and devours Captain Dallas, the popcorn goes flying.

A literally stomach-churning scene from 'Videodrome'

Keeping practical effect use to a minimum is not the only reason certain scenes and images are memorable and terrifying. There is something inexplicable and surreal about the raw clunkiness of puppetry and stop-motion animation, particularly in scenes of horror. Nightmares stay with us because they twist normality and allow the bizarre and freakish to somehow exist alongside us. Would robot ED-209 and his boardroom machine gun massacre in the original Robocop (1987) be nearly as unnerving were it not for the jerky movements of his stop-motion animation? Would the VHS slot/vagina merged into James Wood's stomach in Videodrome (1983) have the same impact in polished CGI? How powerful and simply disgusting would the flying flesh and blood of countless lawn-mowered zombies in Braindead (1992), or the flying head-drilling spheres of Phantasm (1979), be were they created using computer imagery?

Too often now filmmakers do our thinking for us, showing us everything rather than allowing us to use the most powerful toolour imagination. While it has become something of a cinematic cliche, it remains true that what you don't see is more powerful than what you do. The practical effects employed by filmmakers in the 70s and 80s helped tell stories but, crucially, were not the story themselves. CGI is brilliant and versatile, but filmmakers should remember that less is often more: Polished and slick is not necessarily better than rough and raw.

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Photo via Flickr user ntm-a_cstc-a

One of the most disturbing takeaways from the federal investigation into the policing practices of Ferguson, Missouri, earlier this year was that cops and judges were preying on the black population and fining them for minor infractions as a way to raise revenue for the cash-strapped municipal government. Many of the victims of this policing practice were too poor to pay the fines and would get caught in a vicious cycleunpaid tickets would lead to further penalties, which they had no hope of paying.

Mistreatment of the poor by the criminal justice system isn't limited to Ferguson, obviously. In recent months there have been reports of people in Texas being illegally jailed for being unable to pay fines, of a Washington county running "a modern-day debtors' prison," and of for-profit probation companies making it harder for offenders to get rid of their debts to the government.

Though criminal justice reform is a hot topic at the moment, there remain plenty of abuses perpetrated by the system against the poor. And the New York Times may have found the most baroque form of punishment yet: One Alabama judge has essentially been compelling indigent offenders to give blood or else go behind bars:

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen," began Judge Wiggins, a circuit judge here in rural Alabama since 1999. "For your consideration, there's a blood drive outside," he continued, according to a recording of the hearing. "If you don't have any money, go out there and give blood and bring in a receipt indicating you gave blood."

For those who had no money or did not want to give blood, the judge concluded: "The sheriff has enough handcuffs."

As you might expect, civil liberties advocates and criminal justice experts are outraged at the idea that poor people who do not want to spend the night in jail are being forced to give blood.

"This takes it to a new level," says Jeffrey Fagan, an expert on policing and criminal justice at Columbia Law School. "You used to talk about blood money, that's what comes to mind. Soaking the poor for money is one thing, soaking the poor for blood is quite another. It's insane."

The morality of bloodletting as a punishment in modern-day America may seem pretty clear-cut, but legally it's a complicated issue. The government does have the power to do things to your bodywe still have the death penalty, after all, even if many people (and a healthy chunk of the Supreme Court) think it represents cruel and unusual punishment. And if killing murderers and rapists is A-OK according to the law, why can't the government take some of your blood if you're illegally parked?

"If the judge just ordered you to give blood for a traffic violation, you could make a cruel and unusual punishment argument of some kind," Noah Feldman, a legal historian at Harvard Law School, tells VICE. "And there is some constitutional value of bodily integrity. something civic-minded," Feldman says. "That's the charitable interpretation of what he was doing." (It's worth pointing out that the Times wasn't able to actually find anyone who got $100 credit off their fine as promised by Judge Wiggins, though no one was booked into jail that day.)

On the other hand, the practice of accepting blood as a form of payment seems downright horrific, not to mention something of a slippery slope for an ostensibly modern criminal justice system. If a pint of blood is worth $100, could donating a kidney get you off the hook for a more serious crime?

"There are circumstances where the law can take over your body, but there has to a very strong government reason for it, and that doesn't seem to be the case here," Feldman says.

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Read: This Guy Spent Two Years Writing One Article About How the Star Wars Prequels Didn't Suck

Tickets for The Force Awakens went on sale yesterday, and roughly a third of the world's population collectively dropped what they were doing and flooded theater sites to get a ticket. To get fans of the most famous sci-fi action franchise in history even more pumped up, Disney premiered the longest (and probably final) The Force Awakens trailer during halftime of Monday's NFL game.

The trailer is low on plot but high on everything elseTIE fighters, X-wings, stormtroopers, BB-8 the spherical drone, Han Solo (Han Solo!), Chewie, and a lot of laser fire. Everyone on the internet is extremely excited about this, though everyone on the internet would be excited if the trailer was just two minutes of those big lizard things walking around Tatooine's desert landscape.

There's no sign of Luke, though, unless you count that shrouded, metal-handed guy stroking R2-D2. Since he's also not on the official movie poster then that extremely in-depth plot synopsis a fan pieced together may be onto something. We'll have to wait until December to know for sure (or later, if you haven't bought your tickets already).

Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits theaters stateside on December 18, but you probably know that already.

Photo by Elose Bollack

It's a strange fear for a government that's surrounded itself with concrete walls, missile batteries, and armored steel, but the Israeli state seems to have a pathological phobia of flying stones.

Palestinians facing armed soldiers in full combat armor often have no other weapons than the rocks under their feet; in much of the occupied territories, stone-throwing is considered a form of all but nonviolent protest. (In the history of the occupation, 14 Israelis have been killed by stone-throwers. For comparison, roughly twice that many Americans are killed each year by skateboarding injuries.)

This threat is so great that a new law passed by the Israeli Knesset in July has introduced mandatory four-year prison sentences for stone-throwers, with some liable to imprisonment of up to 20 years. Palestinians are forbidden from bringing any object into aerial motion; in the occupied territories, the law of gravity is enforced by the police.

But if stone-throwing is such a dangerous activity, why are Israeli soldiers doing it themselves? In dramatic video footage that emerged online last week, Israeli soldiers disguised in T-shirts and keffiyehs were seen throwing rocks as part of a group of young Palestinians, apparently inciting a confrontation, before suddenly pulling out pistols and firing on the crowd. The video also shows one of the undercover soldiers firing his gun directly into a protester's leg as he attempts to squirm away from the punches and kicks of a group of furious Israelis.

The Israeli government insists that it wants peace more than anything, and that it's trying to defuse tensionsbut sending agent provocateurs to carry out an impromptu kneecapping is a pretty weird way of going about it. It doesn't look like Israel trying to avoid an intifada; it looks like a deliberate attempt to spark one.

Israelis disguised as Palestinians attacking Palestinians

During the First Intifada, what had been a generally peaceful Palestinian uprising in the face of military repression only began to employ violent tactics in 1990, when an Israeli group placed a cornerstone for a rebuilt Jewish temple by the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

The Second Intifada, brutal from its beginning, was sparked in 2000, when then-Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon made a provocative visit to Temple Mount flanked by hundreds of cops in riot gear. It'd be a gross oversimplification to reduce these struggles entirely to disagreements over architecture (many Palestinians would probably be more forgiving of unscheduled political walking tours around the Old City if they had national self-determination and full political rights), but if Israel was serious about peace then a fairly important first step would be to abstain from fucking around with the Temple Mount.

Instead, in recent months rumors have abound that the Israeli government has plans to relax longstanding rules about the number of Jews allowed to visit the holy mountainmany of whom do so as a display of Jewish sovereignty over an undivided Jerusalemin a bid to strengthen Jewish rights in the complex. Israel has repeatedly denied such claims, but the result has been a disastrous upsurge in random, undirected, and deadly violence from both communities.

There have been stabbings and shootings and pogromsincluding one grimly ironic instance in which one Jewish Israeli knifed another because he thought he looked a bit too Arabic. Violent clashes between both sides continued this weekend when four Palestinians were shot dead after authorities said they tried to attack Israelis in separate attacks across the region.

Watch on Noisey: Hip-Hop in the Holy Land

But if elements in the Israeli state are seeking to deliberately inflame tensions, it's not immediately clear whyafter all, don't Israelis have as much to lose from a possible Third Intifada as Palestinians?

It might be possible to find some kind of answer in the escalation that preceded the last war in Gaza, just over a year ago. In June of 2014, three teenage Israeli settlers were kidnapped in the West Bank; one of them managed to call the emergency services, but the tape was allegedly placed under a judicial gag order and the Israeli media purportedly forbidden from reporting sounds of automatic gunfire at the end of the recording, which may have indicated that the boys had been murdered.

If the reports are true, the Israeli public could have been encouraged to believe that the teens were being held hostage somewhere in the West Bank, and the military carried out a vast and intrusive search operation in which hundreds were arrested, including dozens from the Hamas leadership, and five Palestinians were killed, on this basis.

On VICE News: In PhotosRiding Along with Medics on the Frontline of Clashes in the West Bank

If the rescue operation was a calculated attempt to provoke Hamas into violence, it worked: Ten weeks later, 2,000 Gazans were dead in the rubble that had been their city. The political context is important hereimmediately before the kidnappings, Hamas and its rival Fatah movement had formed a Palestinian unity government, one that would have involved Hamas officially recognizing the State of Israel.

Everything the Israelis claimed to want was happening: They finally had a negotiating partner that could represent the entire Palestinian people and that was willing to recognize Israel's legitimacy as a precondition for talks. Suddenly, a negotiated end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was almost in reach, one that might have ended in the formation of a fully independent Palestinian state. Instead, there was a war and the unity government fell apart.

For Israel, these brutal outbreaks of violence aren't a disruption of the ordinary status quo, they're a way of preserving it. Something similar is happening nowthe Palestinian flag has been raised at the United Nations, and Palestine has formally joined the International Criminal Court. Netanyahu is faced with the prospect of a peace process that might actually go somewhere, instead of stalling for time while the concrete cools in new West Bank settlements. And in the weird and chasmic world of Israeli politics, that might mean it's time for another war.

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What a great bunch. Photos by Jake Kivanc

Easily the worst/longest election season Canada has seen in my lifetimewith its lowlights being the extreme bigotry produced by the niqab debate and a crack-smoking ex-mayor's endorsement of a man who allegedly hates drugsthe 42nd Canadian federal election is mercifully over.

But before we pretend this didn't happen, there are a few things left to say.

Read more: The Definitive Explanation for Why You Voted in Justin Trudeau

One of the main attractions during VICE's Election Circus that aired last night was the Wall of Shame, which featured the pictures of various candidates from the three main political parties who had done or said some kind of stupid and/or offensive shit during the election. As the night went on, our team added Xs or checkmarks to the winners and losers on the list. Here are the results:

WINNERS (Dammit)

Although he retained control of his Calgary riding and is technically a winner, soon-to-be-no-longer-prime-minister Stephen Harper got straight-up murked by Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. After immolating our environmental policy and drumming up a racist conversation about Muslim women can wear when taking their citizenship oath, it's only fitting that the (now resigning) Conservative leader got his just desserts.

Another Conservative on the list (all the winners were), Marilyn Gladu also held onto her Sarnia-Lambton seat after defeating her NDP competitor Jason McMichael and Liberal candidate Dave McPhail. Known for her vibrant social media feed that features comments about how Muslims "want to kill everyone," Gladu will surely continue her party's stream of racism well into the future.

Conservative Larry Miller, also known as the dude who told Muslim women to "go the hell back where they came from" and compared their appearance to bowling balls, once again won his Owen Sound riding, which he has maintained control of since 2004.

Watch more: Daily VICE, October 20 - Liberal Majority, Doug Ford, Drunk Tank

Diane Watts also makes the list for (you guessed it) making offensive comments about Muslims. (It's a trend.) Some of Watts' fliers this election included fear-mongering quotes about ISIS such as "You Will Not Feel Safe in Your Bedroom" and "We Will Fight Jihadi Terrorists at Home and Abroad" (sounds like a sweet hardcore band name), making the suggestion that the Islamic State is encroaching into the private lives of Canadians almost as much as our own government already does. Anyways, she won back her South Surrey riding Monday night. Hopefully she can govern OK with ISIS lurking behind her curtains.

Champion of anti-sex ed fanatics everywhere, Tory MP Cheryl Gallant won back her seat in her Pembroke riding last night, which makes us ask the question: "What the fuck, Pembroke? I mean, we're talking about the person who said that Ontario's new sex education curriculum would aide child molesters in assaulting more children, a comment based off an ignorant reference to a former Kathleen Wynne staffer who was charged with possession of child pornography. Seriously, this one is just a disaster.

Finally, lesser evil Maxime Bernierwhose real crime was getting a ridiculously catchy and highly annoying election tune stuck in our headsand future Tory overlord Jason Kenneywho is just a bad guyboth got reelected last night and you will likely hear from them again. Sorry.

LOSERS

Homophobia has been a political stumbling block for a long time, so it's no surprise two candidates this election fell victim to its repercussions. First was the NDP's Harbaljit Singh Kahlon, whose half-apology for his comments on people not being born homosexual in 2005 was not enough to save him this race. More recently, a Conservative-turned-Independent named Jagdish Grewal was ousted from the Tories after a column he wrote in the Punjabi Post earlier this year called "Is it wrong for a homosexual to become a normal person?" resurfaced on the internet, thus prompting a flurry of outrage. Grewal lost his Mississauga riding by a landslide to Liberal candidate Navdeep Bains, and we got to put a big fat X over his face.

NDP Perth-Wellington candidate Ethan Rabidoux lost his chance at another four years of office last night and will probably go to work on his next novel, which is not a good outcome considering he wrote a book featuring highly-graphic descriptions of teenage rape. Similarly, another loser, who, if you can believe it, both sent out a bunch of misogynistic tweets a few years ago AND is named Chris Brown, crashed and burned in his Peace River riding last night when he lost to Conservative candidate Arnold Viersen.

Three candidates who made stupid and/or heinous references to Nazi Germany, Peter Njenga, Alex Johnstone, and Gordon Giesbrecht, also lost their respective races yesterday. Njegna, a Liberal candidate who compared himself to Hitler (seriously), and Johnstone, an NDP candidate who didn't know what Auschwitz was, lost to devastatingly-low support. Giesbrecht, on the other hand, set himself up for a big L after trying to draw similarities between abortion and the Holocaust.

In a more humorous turn of events, grown man and parliamentary secretary of crybabies Paul Calandra lost his seat last night, too, which means we won't hear him deflect serious questions anymore with a proclamation about how much he loves Israel. Also former Toronto police chief Julian Fantino lost in a turn events that probably doesn't have anything to do with him allegedly assaulting somebody (with ketchup).

To close off the night, two more Conservatives got the boot from office last night. Chris Alexander, who totally fucked up at managing the now-out-of-control Syrian refugee crisis, and William Moughrabi, who made a Facebook post that ranked women based on how "hot" or "crazy" they were, both got completely trampled by their Liberal opponents.

Can't wait to do this again in four years.*

* This is a lie.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

All photos by Michelle Goskopf

For six years, the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic has descended upon the Palisades like a bro descends upon the lawn of his frat house after drinking three or four bottles of Veuve Clicquot champagne. Veuve Clicquot itself calls the event "an exciting afternoon of polo viewing and picnicking" meant to be enjoyed "while enjoying a flute of champagne." (Or 20.)

After attending the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic, our photographer Michelle Groskopf would describe it by saying that it felt like the end of days.

Over the phone, she told us about her experiences at the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic:

"It was one of those events that was equal parts horrible and amazing. It felt like a scene from another, more bloated and debaucherous era. People were wandering around dressed in the Veuve colors spending thousands of dollars on champagne. They were selling Veuve Clicquot blankets, umbrellas, glasses, everything. It was just one giant, product placement-y spectacle.

I got the feeling that the polo match was background for the party. Mostly it was an opportunity for people to congregate, schmooze, get wasted, hook up, and cut deals (which is the business equivalent of a hookup). The crowd had on a lot of bling for how young they were. There was a lot of seersucker, a lot of sweaters over shoulders. I think that they treated the event with a tongue-in-cheek attitude, almost like it was dress-up, but also not. They were so entrenched in the wealth and privilege on display that they felt comfortable enough to mock it a bit, like they were honoring their ancestors while also making fun of them.

If I had to compare it to one historical event, I would say it was the court of Louis XIV, crossed with a house party from a John Hughes movie. There was this sense of entitlement leaking out of every pore therethese were the children of the people who run the world, and they were wasted. I can't imagine the cleanup, it was probably like working for a disaster relief agency."

See more of Michelle's work on her website as well as her Instagram.

Photo via Flickr user Marc Nozell

Read: Did Big Pharma Dickhead Martin Shkreli Offer to Pay His Ex-Girlfriend $10,000 to Go Down on Her?

Poor, poor, pitiful Martin Shkreli. The Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO who made headlines last month for hiking up the price of HIV medication 5,000 percent has since become one of the most despised men on the internet. (Donald Trump called him "a zero" and said he "looks like a spoiled brat.") This week Shkreli tried to donate $2,700 to Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign only to have his donation refused; he followed that up by declaring on Twitter he punched a wall so hard in rage that he broke his wrist, only to have people accuse him of lying about the injury.

Now it appears that Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton wants to get in on the anti-Shkreli dogpile. On Monday, Clinton wrote letters to the FDA and the FTC calling on them to launch an investigation into the "egregious actions of Turing," Reutersreports.

Clinton called on the agencies to "study and make recommendations on whether and how our laws might be amended to address " and figure out a way to import cheaper generic drugs into the US.

Clinton previously spoke out against Turing, saying that no one should "have to choose between buying the medicine they need and paying their rent."

Turing didn't respond to Reuters's requests for comment.

Check out more from Julian Glander at his Twitter, Instagram, and blog.

Chinese Prime Minister Xi Jinping, who visits the UK this week. Photo: Global Panorama via Flickr

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

What's the point of Britain? Ashort century ago, this country produced a significant portion of the world'stin trays, steamships, literary fiction, and dead bodies. Now, we produceSherlock. What's a country meant to do after a five-century-long killing spree,when it's no longer the biggest, baddest, craziest power out there? Easy. Now,we seek out the world's biggest tyrant and deftly deploy the monarchyourhistorical embodiment of trumped-up refinementto foot-kiss around them.

Thisis Britain's role in the 21st century: the global henchman, the Waylon Smithersof international relations.

For a long time, the object of ourministrations was the United States, but now there's a new bully on the block. Thisweek sees the first Chinese state visit to the UK since 2005, with President XiJinping set to wander idly around the country like a wealthy gangster at a cardealership while the British ruling class springs into action to genuflectbefore him.

It's bound to be a great tripfor all involved. As Chinese ambassador Liu Xiaoming said at the weekend, "TheBritish people are very gentlemen, very smart. They know how to behave onoccasions like this."

Britain has now decided to be China's bestfriend in the West, an alignment that a tickled-pink Xi has praised as a "visionaryand strategic choice," and like all good friendships it's based on the exchangeof vast sums of money. This follows a five-day visit to Beijing from George Osborne,Cameron's very own personal butler, in which he won the Chinese state media's "Good Boy Award" for not making a big fuss over human rights.

Of course, rightswon't be entirely off the table this time: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been granted abrief interview with Xi, in which he can hector the Chinese leader over thestatus of dissidents in the country before shuffling back into opposition.

But maybe it's best to put thehuman rights issue aside. According to Amnesty International, Britain is "tradingaway" its reputation as a champion of human freedom in its dealings with Chinabut what reputation is that, exactly? Britain sends teenagers to prison forcrass tweets and burning paper poppies, we deport asylum seekers to countrieswhere they'll be killed for their sexuality or their political beliefs, we havemore security cameras per person than any other nationand while China'sforeign policy is based on a principle of non-interference in the domesticaffairs of other states, in Britain's pervious role as America's sidekick wewere only too happy to pour molten destruction on any Middle Eastern nation tostep out of line. Corbyn might be well within his rights to take issue withXi's record on civil liberties if he's speaking in a purely personal capacity,but as the leader of a Labour Party that played its part in the above abuses,he doesn't really have a leg to stand on.

Photo by Will Coutts

You can imagine Xi being shown around the British Museum: "I think we have some of your old stuff here, fancy itback? We've also got some Elgin Marbles knocking around, just gathering dust, really, in case you fancy building a new Acropolis? Come up to Manchester, buya football team, buy the whole city, we're not doing much with it. Please, loveus. Be our friend. Europe hates us, America scorns us, Africa keeps going onabout all the things we did to them ages ago; we're so alone. Why not takeWales as a going-home present?"

You can imagine the future: Chinawill have its century in the sun, and Britain will be there to attend to itsevery whim. Then it'll be India or Brazil or Nigeria, and the British willsidle into service accordingly. Great powers will rise and fade away, butBritain will survive.

Follow Sam Kriss on Twitter.

Sad Webb. Photo via Flickr user Cliff

Read: The Bizarre Mystery of Jim Webb's Presidential Campaign

Jim Webb, the former Virginia senator who looks a vaguely like one of the Small Soldiers toys in human form, announced on Tuesday that he plans to back out of the Democratic presidential race, endingat least for nowone of the stranger campaigns of the 2016 election cycle.

At a press conference, Webb cited the extreme polarity of both parties as a reason for pulling out, saying that his more moderate views don't align well with today's Democratic Party. The veteran's stance on the environment and gun control skewed more conservative than his fellow candidates during the Democratic debate, though maybe he just didn't get enough time to get his point across.

"I fully accept that my views on many issues are not compatible with the power structure and base of the Democratic Party," Webb said Tuesday. "For this reason I am withdrawing from any consideration of being the Democratic Party's nominee for the presidency."

Webb is still considering a bid for the White House as an independent, so America still has a shot at finally electing a president who writes dirty, not-so-sexy books. If he does run, he'll have Donald Trump's support, for whatever that is worth.

Follow VICE Politics on Twitter.

Image courtesy of FlightRadar24

One warm night in August, Salomon Kabongo-Koopr is standing on his Crown Heights rooftop, laptop held tenderly up towards the sky. There is the occasional slam of a car door or bounce of a basketball, the yip of a dog, the roar of a car driving past blasting music. Every few minutes, though, a plane descending toward one of the airports will pass low enough to let out a dispatch from above; a low-slung humming sound.

"This is a good night," the 6'6" former college athlete says. At any given moment, there are thousands of commercial aircraft flying above the United States. In the area above this particular roof, tonight, there are fewer. "One... two... 20, OK, so there's 31 planes in the sky. But I'm probably missing some."

Not tonight, but in a few weeks, the news will be flooded once again with theories about a plane that actually is missing. Reports will surface, in mid-October, that wreckage allegedly found on Sugbai Island in the Philippines belongs to MH370 (that report will quickly be discounted); followed by a theory about how exploding batteries downed the flight.

From our lawn chairs (successfully commandeered from a neighbor two rooftops down), the cityscape is choppywe can see as far as the lonely peak of 1 WTC in one direction and as far as a Chinese take-out by Eastern Parkway in the otherbut Salomon outlines the airport panorama beyond: La Guardia, JFK, EWR. A thin, peach-colored panel of storm light is the only disruption in the sky itself. He points to the left.

"That airplane over there is taking off from JFK, see how it's going to loop around? I bet we can see it right now." He points his screen, as if it were a remote, in the direction of JFK. "Yeah. So that's Aer Lingus, that's going to Dublin."

To determine this stuff, he's using FlightRadar24, a real-time flight tracking app. According to its About page, the app's information is amassed through a data-gathering service called automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (known, much more succinctly, as ADS-B) which roughly 60 percent of commercial aircrafts are equipped with. It only takes a second or two for FlightRadar24 to identify a plane. This is less time than it takes an app like Shazam to identify, say, "Party in the USA".

"My roommates think I'm crazy," Salomon says. "They think it's just a way to pick up girls."

It's not. Tracking flights is a lonely endeavor that caters to obsessives, rewarding those patient enough to sit for hours on a roof, or behind a computer, watching the slow crawl of a flight line in the hopes that some sort of subtle disruption of flight patterns might present itself, and that that disruption means anything at all.

What's the point of knowing that information? Salomon shrugs. "In America, we want to know everything. Even what the Kardashians are doing."

Fair enough.

Image via Wiki Commons

People who like planes tend to really like planes, and they have no problem coming up with crazy theories surrounding them. Consider what happened after the world lost track of Amelia Earhart's plane while she was flying over the Pacific Ocean in a 1937 attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Some of the more eye-popping theories espoused after Earhart's disappearance include that: she was secretly an American spy who got captured by the Japanese and executed, that she assumed another identity and lived out her days as a banker named Irene, and that she had turned around mid-flight and fallen into the ocean.

The tendency to toss theories around when there's a mishap with a plane hasn't changed muchCNN anchor Don Lemon suggested MH370 had been sucked up by a black hole, after allbut what has progressed is the technology available to the layman spectator. In 1937, the casual plane enthusiast would have spotted planes with binoculars and perhaps a copy of the short-lived magazine The Aeroplane Spotter, which offered tips for identifying the makes and model of a plane. Now, there are sophisticated services such as FlightRadar24 and the slightly more intricate and community-based FlightAware, which also plays host to a fairly active message board. Posts range from the benign ("7 Stats About Air Traffic in the US") to the hyper-specific ("John Kerry's Plane to Somalia 5/5/15").

Reading through the site's boards from around the time that MH370 disappeared is haunting and oddly intimatea user posted a FlightAware screenshot of the plane's flight line, in which that green line is suspended in the middle of the ocean. In that same thread, a user observed, "Definitively this was not a situation of a sudden plane malfunction, the pilot or one of the crew members would have sent radio message or distress signal," speculating that "this plane was voluntary shutdown by Malaysian Air Force to prevent an imminent terrorist attack," or that "the plane has exploded in high cruising altitude." Other users dismissed his theories as nonsense, while a savvy poster pointed out that the specific plane had previously been involved in an accident.

To look at a screen full of planes and understand that those planes are full of individual people can foster a sense of stewardship. One particularly active user, who asked to remain anonymous, said that his only goal in using flight apps was to ensure the safety of the aircraft. His worst fear, he claimed, was that the information would fall into the wrong hands.

Perhaps it is that same sense of protective paranoia that drove Jeff Wise, an established science writer, to become the de facto face of MH370 conspiracy theoristsdedicating over a year, a 95-page Kindle ebook, and a New York Magazine piece towards developing and disseminating the theory that Vladmir Putin had masterminded the disappearance of MH370. Crazy as it might sound, in Wise's hands, the hypothesis comes across as eloquent and rational.

Recommended: Solar Planes

Indeed, sometimes a combination of diligence, pessimism, and a surveillance app can pay off. It sure helped Pete Cimbolic, a policy analyst in Baltimore. Like Salomon, he'd wanted to be a pilot, but had ended up at a desk. Though he made pains to assure me when we spoke on the phone that he only uses the app occasionally and doesn't haunt flight message boards Pete does know a lot about planes. He told me he's attuned to the subtle sonic differences between aircraft and tends to pull out his phone whenever an unfamiliar sound passes overhead, hoping to catch a plane with his phone and identify it.

A lot of planes fly in the Baltimore areaevery day, 734 flights pass through its airport, according to a recent press releasewhich can make it hard to separate an irregular flight pattern from the densely packed skies. But during the Freddie Gray riots, a sense of unease spread across the city. This was when a Washington Post story reported that Ben Shaynewho runs scanbaltimore.com, a website that monitors police activitynoticed two planes making tight, unusual loops over the epicenter of unrest.

"Anyone know who has been flying the light plane in circles above the city for the last few nights?" he tweeted. Within minutes, Pete Cimbolic replied with a FlightRadar24 screenshot of the two planes flight paths, and where they were registered: NG Research, a shell firm based in Bristow, VA. The exchange went viral, and the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Justice requesting more information.

An extensive Associated Press report followed, revealing that the two planes that Pete Cimbolic had identified, along with two other small planes, were contracted by the FBI to monitor the riot areas, and the people in thema disturbing and almost certainly direct violation of the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of association. The AP report traced more than 50 planes, fronted by fictitious companies, to the FBI.

Cimbolic told me he feels that Apps like FlightRadar24 are a "powerful tool to access publicly available info" so that citizens might "spot patterns of abuse." He adds that he had kept an eye on air traffic above areas of political unrest, following Baltimore, but hadn't noticed unusual avian activity. The FBI, he said, seemed to have wised up.

Related: The Science of Stowing Away on an Airplane

When I asked David Fankhauser, a former pilot, if he thought it was possible that a casual hobbyist could, equipped with flight apps, truly identify (and perhaps solve) a problem for a live aircraft, he said no, probably not. "There are something like three to 5,000 commercial flights per day in the United States, so the needle in the haystack thing aside, I'm not sure the casual hobbyist possesses that type of expertise. Most aviation accidents or problems occur in a very short period of time."

So while it's doubtful that someone could help a plane in real time, it doesn't keep theorists from looking. Some follow the private jets of celebrities for fun (Donald Trump, not shockingly, blocked his aircraft from being tracked), others think they've stumbled upon irregularities that turn out to be, well, just regularities. But every so often, something truly unusual will show itself. Good thing someone is watching.

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Bonanno crime family leader Vincent Asaro is escorted by FBI agents from their Manhattan offices in New York on January 23, 2014. Photo by REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

In a Brooklyn federal courtroom on Tuesday, Gaspare Valenti did the one thing mobsters like him aren't supposed to do: talk.

As his son glared at him from the gallery and his cousin sat enraged at the defendant's table, Valenti recounted how the first time he went on a score, he showed up in a seersucker suit, not quite understanding that "come dressed" meant come with a gun. He even told the court how he "got rid" of a body by pouring lime over it. "I was told it helps it decompose faster," the 68-year-old said, nonchalantly.

But when asked what his biggest crime was, Valenti replied with one word: "Lufthansa."

Read our previous coverage of this trial.

That answer marked the first time a gangster has admitted in court to helping carry out what was once the largest cash theft in American history: the 1978 Lufthansa heist at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport. The robbery was a key plot point in Martin Scorsese's 1990 gangster classic Goodfellas, and the way Valenti described it, you could see why it showed up in a movie.

"I was separating gold chains and watches and the diamonds and emeralds and rubies," the criminal told the court of the spoils.

Valenti is the key witness in the trial of Vincent Asaro, his 80-year-old cousin, who is charged with taking a cut from the $6 million heist, as well as murdering Paul Katzwho was believed to be a snitchwith a dog chain a decade earlier. That's the man Valenti graphically described burying, exhuming, and then "getting rid of" a second time, years later.

Valenti was arrested in 2013 for racketeering conspiracy, pleaded guilty, then agreed to wear a wire to help the Feds catch his cousin mouthing off about the heist. A year later, Asaro was arrested. When asked by a federal prosecutor on Tuesday what the penalty is for talking to law enforcementone of the biggest no-no's in Mafia politicsValenti responded quickly: "Death."

Throughout Valenti's testimony in the courtroom on Tuesday, Asaro stared at him, his hands clasped below his chin. At one point, when Valenti described a robbery where he dressed up like a woman to avoid detection, Asaro broke character, laughing to himself, perhaps at the memory of a mafioso in drag getting cat-called on the streets of Queens. It was clear that at one point, the cousins were friends.

In many ways, Asaro and Valenti's relationship closely resembled the one famously shared by the two other major players in the heist: Jimmy Burke and Henry Hill, the Lucchese family associates respectively played by Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. According to Valenti, Asaro and his father, who were both part of the Bonanno crime family, brought him into organized crime. Asaro apparently taught him how to rob, signed off on all of his scores, and, in one situation, instructed Valenti to brutally beat a bartender "who showed him disrespect" after a Fourth of July party.

But most importantly, Asaro always wanted to make sure he was making money, Valenti said, which is why he was invited to get in on the multi-family Lufthansa heist led by Burke. Fortunately for prosecutors, Valenti was able to offer a play-by-play of the caper.

If true, Valenti's account of the Lufthansa heist represents pure gangster gold.

He reeled off a list of alleged participantssomething that the feds were never able to fully compileand discussed the meetings held beforehand at Burke's club in Queens to plan just exactly how they'd rob the airport hanger. (Blueprints were apparently provided by Henry Hill's friend, Marty Krugmanthe guy in Goodfellas who keeps pleading to Liotta for the heist money. He was later allegedly murdered in cold blood.)

On the night of the heist, Burke and Asaro waited a mile away in a "crash car," according to Valenti, and before arriving at the scene, Tommy DeSimoneJoe Pesci's characterbragged about using his silencer. Valenti then recounted how he and Burke's son, Frank, held up two terminal workers at gunpoint, hiding them in a van while the two mobsters cleaned the place out.

What happened afterward, though, is where the key details lie. "A robbery that big and nothing discussed of where anyone would go afterward," Valenti recalled thinking to himself.

Apparently, the group hadn't chosen a place to store the money, so at the last minute, according to Valenti, his own house in Brooklyn was chosen to stash the burlap sacks filled with the stolen $6 million. It was initially divided up around Christmastime to the families involved who were guaranteed a cut. Valenti asserted that he and Asaro were promised $750,000 at the onset. "Jimmy and Vinnie said, 'Don't spend anything,'" Valenti said. "'Don't catch any heat.'"

But the final amounts weren't fully doled out, he said. Some participants were apparently killed for disobeying Burke's orders (you might remember this scene from the movie, set to "Layla"), and others went missing. So the rest of the cash and diamonds allegedly remained in Burke's possession, especially when Burke later came under fire for unrelated crimessomething that apparently particularly pissed off Asaro, as he and Burke were partners for some time.

Years later, Asaro's frustration was caught on Valenti's wire. "We never got our right money, what we were supposed to get... Jimmy kept everything," Asaro is reportedly heard saying. Prosecutors claim that whatever cut Asaro did end up with, he blew it all on gambling. (That vice ran in the family: Valenti testified that he, too, went straight to the racetracks and social clubs with his end of the heist.)

Check out our documentary about the connection between organized crime and right-wing politics in Japan.

After an explosive first-day primer of Mafia life, the key witness's testimony made up the entire second day of Asaro's trial, and could provide the feds with their best chance at booking Asaro for the age-old crimes with a life sentence. However, just as Valenti's memory serves the prosecution nicely, it also lays the groundwork for the defense to argue that his knack for details is suspiciousor too good to be true.

Regardless of Asaro's fate, Brooklyn federal court saw history on Tuesday: an admission from someone who was apparently involved in a legendary crime nearly four decades ago. In the process, old grudgesthese rivalries and relationships that once dominated the New York City crime underworldwere given a dramatic public airing.

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

Say hello to your new prime minister. Photo via Facebook/Justin Trudeau

Smoke 'em if you got 'em, b'ys, because Justin Trudeau is our new prime minister. Soon you'll be able to pick up a pack of joints on your way down to the local brothel/assisted suicide emporium.

God knows we're going to need it.

Mostly, though, thank the risen Christ it's finally over. It's over, it's over, it's over. After 11 weeks of wading through madness, bullshit, outright lies, and at least one surreptitiously captured video of a man pissing into a coffee mug, the 42nd general Canadian election can finally be put to rest.

A week is a long time in politics, and they're even longer in an election campaign. Multiply that by a social media-powered newscycle and an electorate with the attention span of a goldfish, and you can appreciate why July 2015 feels like it belongs to another lifetime. The next campaign should come with a warning: contact a doctor if your election lasts longer than six weeks.

Pat yourself on the back for surviving 80 days of partisan bloodletting. Meanwhile, if you need me, I'm going to be hurling my smartphone off the High Level Bridge.

I'm still trying to process it. No one would have called a Liberal victorylet alone a majority even a month ago, but here we are. The day after what would have been his father's 96th birthday, Justin Trudeau is moving back into his childhood home. The NDP are humbled and Tom Mulcair is probably curled up in a ball somewhere listening to Morrissey. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have been beaten back to their Western and suburban strongholds and Stephen Harper is living out his worst-case scenario.

I'm not sure if it's safe to say our long national nightmare is finally over, or if it's only just getting warmed up. But either way, I think I know how we got here.

A NEW HOPE

A long time ago (I'm sorry, but did you see the new Star Wars trailer?), in a country far, far away, it was early August. Stephen Harper had just called a monster of an election campaign against Thomas Mulcair and the NDP. Between kneecapping themselves among progressive voters by supporting Harper's Bill C-51 surveillance legislation and taking a beating from the "just not ready" ads playing every ten minutes on Canadian television, the Liberals were lurching toward another shitty finish as the third party in the House of Commons.

The New Democrats were still high from their shocking springtime provincial victory in Alberta, and the Canadian public was finally ready to imagine having an NDP prime minister. Mulcair was in striking distance of 24 Sussex, and there was no shortage of Conservative scandals to give the NDP machine grist for its mill. History was beckoning. Thomas Mulcair was going to lead finish Jack Layton's drive and finally bring the party of Tommy Douglas to power in Ottawa, ushering in a new golden age of subsidized daycare and a modest raise for federal employees making the minimum wage.

But Stephen Harper isn't an idiot. The Tories were fully aware they'd have to jump a few self-erected hurdles on the road ahead, but it was nothing the war machine couldn't handle. The long campaign was itself supposed to be the first and deadliest line of attack: bleed their opponents dry so that they'd hobble across the finish line in October, unable and unwilling to play the game of brinkmanship that comes along with a(n expected) hung parliament.

Outwit, outlast, outplay. An election campaign is basically Survivor.

Plus, they needed to start strong in order to head off coverage of the Mike Duffy trial. Remember Ol' Duff? His trial kicked back into high gear for a week in August and we discovered that Harper was apparently sitting in his office repeatedly screaming "I CAN'T HEAR YOU" while literally everyone else in the PMO was trying to work out how to sweep Duffy's expenses under the rug. (The PMO's lawyer at the time of the scandal, Benjamin Perrin, would later claim the Tories had "lost the moral authority to govern.")

Reminding Canadians of Harper's many personal connections to the unholy trinity of Senate corruptionMike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, and Patrick Brazeauonly played into Mulcair's hands. No one has any idea how they'd actually do it (they can't), but the NDP have long campaigned on abolishing the awful piece of shit we call the Senate. And it's hard to resist that sentiment when you're watching PMO staffers parade through a courthouse on charges of conspiracy.

And then, after a slow few weeks of warming up on the hustings, all hell broke loose. Every newspaper in the country ran a photo of a dead toddler washed up on a Turkish beach and suddenly everyone in Canada gave a shit about the Syrian refugee crisis. Except, apparently, Stephen Harper.

The Tories had started opening spaces for more than 11,000 Syrian refugees back in 2013, but only 2,500 had actually arrived by early September (2015). Trudeau and the Liberals immediately vowed to take in 25,000 refugees by January 1, although no one has any idea how they would pull this off. The NDP pledged to bring in 46,000 refugees over four years if elected to office, althoughin what would become a running theme throughout his campaignMulcair came under pressure activists within his party to go a lot further.

But the Conservatives weren't going to budge. Amid some totally sane concerns that refugees were coming over to the Canadian heartlands as ISIS sleeper agents and/or planning to live like kings by abusing our welfare system, Harper was adamant that he would not throw open the floodgates to the teeming unwashed masses, despite our continued commitment to bombing the bejeesus out of the region in our neverending War on Terror.

Then it came out that the PMO was tampering directly in the refugee claims process, auditing applications and fast-tracking Christians ahead of Sunni and Shia Muslims. Eventually, the wave of public outrage pushed the Tories to promise a further 10,000 refugees over four years if re-elected.

But the damage was donefor the first time in a long time, the Tories were knocked off their game. Stephen Harper had long built his public profile around an image of cool, measured rationality in the face of his "hysterical" opposition. But in the aftershock of young Alan Kurdi's graphic public death, the shrewd accountant-in-chief now looked like an unfeeling monster.

No one on the Conservative campaign was seriously worried, though, initially. It was still early days, and there was plenty of time to turn the ship around.

They planned to do this by doubling down on the xenophobia.

Turns out you can pet all the babies you want and still not get elected. Sad. Photo via Facebook/Stephen Harper

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

As far as the NDP was concerned, everything was coming up Milhouse. Between a still-floundering Liberal party and a Conservative government struggling to tread water, it was time to make their long game pay off.

Even before Jack Layton's untimely death after the 2011 Orange Wave swept the NDP into official opposition, the party had long been engaged in a clandestine civil war over whether to shed its socialist skin in a bid for "electability" or try to hold its place as the lodestar for progressives in Parliament. Layton's greatest virtue is that he could do the former while appearing to do the latter. And after he died with the keys to the kingdom within reach, the party establishment decided to bet the house on Blairism.

Fortunately, the NDP had a guy who was up to the job. A veteran cabinet minister of Quebec's National Assembly (and the federalist trenches of the 1995 referendum), Thomas Mulcair was tailor-made for the gig. He gave the NDP the cool, pragmatic, emphatically "non-ideological" image they felt would sell them to the "mainstream" Canadian electorate. He would be the man to bring them "out of the 1950s"part of his leadership pitch in 2012 was to get Canada's social democrats away from talking about the working class.

So when the campaign conversation finally turned to the economy (and whether Canada was in a recession, technical or otherwise), the NDP figured they had their chance to show how Serious and Pragmatic and Adult they were by joining the Conservatives in promising a balanced budget (and small business tax cuts) come hell, high water, or all the funding they'd promised for a laundry list of social programs. Meanwhile, the Liberals said they'd be OK with running a deficit for a few years in order to fund new infrastructure and grow the economy "from the heart out."

Suddenly, we were in a bizarre situation in which the Liberals could (credibly, in the eyes of the electorate) accuse the NDP of being selloutsthe cardinal sin of any self-respecting lefty.

The Liberals were making the NDP's identity crisis a campaign issue. They dug up old videos of Liberal Tom Mulcair praising the sublime beauty of Margaret Thatcher and enthusing about the bulk export of Quebec's fresh water. Somehow, the Liberals started to look more progressive than the liberalized NDP.

All of this culminated in the middle of September when a cadre of left-wing artists, activists, and assorted intelligentsia issued the LEAP Manifesto, whichdespite being reported in the National Post as the spiritual successor to Lenin's State & Revolutionwas a rather bloodless plea to shift the Canadian economy from fossil fuels, raise taxes on the rich, and seriously reconsider the political veneration of "free trade." The aim was to build a powerful grassroots network that would force politicians seeking office to confront LEAP and its demands, but all it's really accomplished so far was pushing Mulcair further into the partisan crossfire.

Despite the NDP establishment's official distance from it, the LEAP Manifesto cut two ways. Because it was supported by a number of prominent Dippers, Harper used it as proof that the NDP campaign was unspeakably radical and that Mulcair was a secret communist. Meanwhile, for basically the same reasons, Trudeau's team flipped the script and claimed it was proof that Mulcair and his entourage were secret Thatcherites bent on destroying social democracy.

Whatever he may or may not be behind closed doors, Mulcair was not-so-secretly fucked.

In the middle of all this of all this, the biggest subplot of #elxn42 was that, thanks to old social media posts, we discovered a fair chunk of the candidates seeking office wererefreshingly!fucking lunatics. I know every election since 2007 has been billed as "the social media election" but this actually was the social media election: the election in which all of the bullshit posts we've made on the internet since we were part of a House, M.D. fan community on Livejournal finally started coming back to haunt us.

God, there were so many scandals. There was the Liberal who tweeted (as a teenager) that some guy should blow his brains out during a disagreement on the internet. There was the NDP candidate who defended the really weird dick joke she made on a photo of Auschwitz by claiming that she didn't know what Auschwitz was. There was the other Liberal candidate who got drunk in 2009 and tweeted about how women were bitches and whores. There was a Conservative who had a YouTube channel filled with videos of him crank calling and/or sexually harassing people. There was another Liberal (from BC, natch) who was a cancer truther and claimed marijuana could cure domestic violence. And, of course, there was the Conservative candidate who was busted by CBC's Marketplace in 2012 for pissing into a coffee mug at a customer's kitcheneasily the crown jewel of the federal election.

It was a hell of a ride. And bittersweet, too. This is probably the last campaign in which we'll see such a rich tapestry of flawed, human weirdos on our ballots. Between the PR-ification of everything and Parliament's self-selection of poli sci/business nerds, it's likely that in the future only the blandest, beige-est knobs ever assembled will bother standing for election.

There's a small chance that as younger people age and more of the electorate has grown up online, we'll collectively get cooler with people posting dumb shit on the internet when they were legally children. God knows that if Twitter existed when I was 15 I would be writing this from an undisclosed bunker out on the Uruguayan pampas. But then again, this is Canada, and we invented boredom, so don't hold your breath.

Anyway.

Photo via Flickr user David Dennis

While Canada's left-ish parties tore themselves to pieces, the Tories were working on a new strategy. At the Globe & Mail leaders' debate on the economy in mid-September, when pressed about his handling of refugee claimants in Canada, Stephen Harper asserted that everything his government did was in the best interest of "new and existing and old-stock Canadians." For the first few days afterwards, there was still some debate about whether this was an unfortunate Freudian slip or a deliberate dogwhistle aimed at galvanizing (white) Canadians against the conniving (brown) Others.

A week later at the French-language debate, it became obvious that it had been the latter. Harper pulled out a proposed ban on the niqab at citizenship ceremonies in order to bludgeon the NDP to death in Quebec. Nevermind that less than a handful of women have ever worn a niqab at a citizenship ceremony or that these women identified themselves to officials beforehand or that this was totally irrelevant to any real issue of substance that around which a federal election should revolve.

No. The Conservative campaign decided that this election was going to be a referendum on Muslim women. And, God help us, for a good while it seemed like it was going to work.

RETURN OF THE JEDI

As the election neared the home stretch, the Tories traded their Islamophobic dogwhistle for a giant vuvuzela strapped to a megaphone that also shot bees at people. They announced the creation of a "Barbaric Cultural Practices" tipline to encourage you to snitch on your neighbours if you suspect they are praying at weird hours or eating too much shawarma (literally impossible). The prime minister even mused about bringing in a blanket ban on niqabs in the public service, even though this situation had arisen literally zero times in the the last 148 years.

Basically, Harper went all-in on a strong plurality of Canadians being overwhelmingly, irrationally distrustful of Muslims. The election had suddenly gone from paying lip service to real issuesthe economy, healthcare, education, the environmentto one totally oriented around a question of values and image. The Conservatives were forcing voters to ask: what kind of country do you want Canada to be? And what kind of people do you want Canadians to look like?

Ironically for the Tories, turning the election into a contest over values played right into Justin Trudeau's hands.

There are a lot of things to say about Trudeau the Younger and the party he leads. Not all of them are goodespecially on the substantive policy front. But one thing you can't deny is that the guy talks a damn good game about values and ideas. Whatever else he may or may not have inherited from his father, he certainly got his gift for Grand Vision. (It also didn't hurt that the bar had been set so low by the Conservative attack machine that he couldn't help but come off as a bit of a colossus just for, as PMO communications director Kory Teneycke put it, "showing up with his pants on.")

But charisma and low expectations alone don't explain why, in the dying days of the campaign, change-minded voters started flocking to Trudeauespecially since, despite their "Real Change" slogan, there isn't a lot about the Liberals that speaks to change of any depth. They're one of the longest-governing parties in the history of liberal democracy, headed by the son of one of its longest-serving leaders, stacked to the brim with technocrats and wannabe corporate cronies like Dan Gagnier.

Part of it was definitely some strange feeling of nostalgia for the first round of Trudeaumania, sure. And part of it was a creeping sense that, with the NDP floundering in Quebec, it was better to back the (perceived) country-wide winner. But a big part was the question of values, and on this point Justin Trudeau is the most earnest of the bunch.

Time was, a contest over Canadian valuesat a historical moment when the progressive cause is on the upswing in the English-speaking worldwould have been the NDP's strong suit. Time was, no one could match the NDP's ability to give a rich rhetorical expression to the full depth and promise of the Canadian dream. But this time, the party establishment opted to forego its idealism and try to beat Stephen Harper at his own game.

It turns out that this was a mistake on the level of a Greek tragedy. In a contest over what it means to be Canadian, neither Tom Mulcair nor Stephen Harper could hold a candle to the crown prince of Canada's philosopher kings.

As the NDP continued tanking and the "change" vote coalesced around a single alternative, Stephen Harper was suddenly faced with his worst nightmare: losing to a resurgent Liberal party, led by a Trudeau family scion.

By all accounts, this made the Tories lose their shit.

Suddenly Harper was turning up at campaign rallies with a box of props that looked like they'd been poached from the set of The Price Is Right to underscore that no, really, Justin Trudeau is going to break into your house and steal your money and/or children. Then he showed up in a television commercial, awkwardly leaning against a desk and frantically assuring us that this election is not a popularity contest but please guys just vote for me. Then Toronto's Ford brothers started coming around and everything degenerated to the level of self-parody.

The Conservative campaign started coming apart at the seams. Even though almost every national newspaper in the country endorsed the Conservatives (the Toronto Star endorsed Trudeau), it sparked a media mutiny. The Globe and Mail endorsed the Conservatives but called on Stephen Harper to resign. Lord Felon Conrad Black appeared in the National Post to beat the fuck out of the prime minister and endorse the Trudeau Liberals. Laurentian WASP icon Andrew Coyne quit his editorial job at the Post in protest of its endorsement and voted NDP. Even card-carrying Tories were jumping ship, and the prime minister was finally left alone.

Well, not quite alone. On the second-last day of the campaign, Harpertough-on-crime, hard-nosed, "pot is infinitely worse than tobacco" Harperwas photographed in an awkward hug with Robert fucking Ford and family in what might be the darkest photo of the entire campaign.

Being alone might have been better.

Waving goodbye to his dreams. Photo via Facebook/Tom Mulcair

THE DUST SETTLES

And now, suddenly, we're faced with a Liberal majority government. I'm not sure anyone would have predicted this a few days ago, except the most delirious partisans.

It's hard to say at the outset what the fallout will be. The complete collapse of the New Democratic vote is nothing short of a shocker. The general consensus was that they'd come in third, but even the stingiest estimates put them above 60 seats in the House of Commons.

What shall it profit a man, if he should gain the whole world, but lose his soul? I'm not sure, but lord knows the cost is heavier still if he should end up losing both. I expect Thomas Mulcair is taking a long, scathing look in the mirror right now. It's hard to feel sympathy for the party establishment after such a disappointing campaign, but my heart goes out to all the party activists who have to spend the next four years picking up the pieces of Jack Layton's broken dream.

I won't pretend I'm sorry to see the piece of shit go, but all things considered, Stephen Harper had a pretty good run. He played the parliamentary game better than most and will leave a lasting mark on every fabric of the Canadian tapestry, for good and for ill. I have no idea how long beyond his tenure the CPC's marriage of Reformers and Progressive Conservatives will last, but if it does survive, the union is a testament to the man's many gifts. He's leaving some big shoes to fill and after a decade under his iron fist, the talent pool is shallow.

So now we're stuck with the Liberals for the next four years. They've made a lot of promises over the course of this campaign and it's not clear how many they'll actually be able to keepI'm not getting my hopes up that a prime minister who just won a surprise majority is going to be in any rush to overhaul the electoral system. We're getting a human face slapped on Bill C-51, the shadowy Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, and yet another government eager to sidestep the bitumen-belching elephant in the room in the interests of strip-mining the oil patch. Just how many of us have buyer's remorse after enthusiastically voting Liberal as our "anyone but Harper" option will come out in the wash, but there's nothing we can do about it now.

Prime Minister Trudeau II spent a lot of time campaigning on cleaning up the government and reforming the way Parliament works after a decade of being brutalized by Harper. It's easy to talk a big game from the comfort of the Commons' back corner, but it's another to actually hold the reins of power. Justin Trudeau will need an inner strength to throw all the bullish trappings of the modern PMO back into the fires where his father forged them almost 50 years ago. Time will tell if he's the man for the job.

Ready or not, here he comes.

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