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The Bangladeshis Who Make Your Clothes Have Been Given a Pay Raise

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A garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh

As discouraging as it is, no number of documentaries or worthy articles is suddenly going to make everyone in the world care about the people making our underwear for $1.50 a day. A large part of that is probably because it's hard to comprehend how shocking the working conditions in Bangladesh's clothing factories are until you visit them for yourself—until you meet the workers being slapped around by their bosses and the kids being hidden on the factory roof every time Western buyers come to town.

In response to those working conditions and wages, which are among the lowest in the world, some workers have been striking for weeks, their frustration often turning to violence as they clash with police. And those violent protests have won them what looks like a victory: the Bangladesh government announced over the weekend that the minimum wage for garment workers is going to be increased by 77 percent, to $67 a month.

I flew out to Bangladesh a couple of weeks before the pay raise was announced to meet some garment workers. Upon arrival, a contact took me to a poor factory neighborhood—a slum, comprised as it was of a few beaten up huts—on the outskirts of Dhaka. There, he introduced me to Bilkiss, a sweet, pretty 18-year-old who had worked at the same garment factory for five years. She is one of an estimated 4 million in Bangladesh who make our clothes.

Bilkiss

She had just finished a long day's shift and looked exhausted, moving and talking slowly. "Today, I was slapped and grabbed by the throat for making a tiny mistake," she said. "Sometimes we are slapped because of other people’s mistakes. And they insult us. They call us whores."

For her troubles, Bilkiss is currently paid about $1.60 per day. That wage doesn’t cover the rent of her small room, which she shares with her two sisters and one brother. "We don’t have the courage to complain," she explained. "We tolerate it. We think it’s our natural destiny."

Late one evening, I filmed a factory close to where I'd met Bilkiss. As soon as I pulled out my camera, I was mobbed by an inquisitive crowd of people who clogged the road and blocked traffic until the factory owner came out and told me to film on the other side of the street. I asked him who his factory made clothes for and he reeled off a who's who of the British and American high street. Then I asked him whether his workers were happy. He chortled, his big belly bouncing. "Yes, of course they are," he said, proudly. "We pay them very well."

Lovle

Back in the slum, I told another young girl named Lovle what the factory owner had said. "If the owners do well, they open another factory and then another, so they are happy and they think the workers are happy, too," she replied. "When the owners ask us if we are happy, we must say 'yes' because we have no alternative."

Bilkiss agreed: "Happy?" she asked. "That’s their statement; it’s not ours."

The buyers from Western companies who come to view the factories and barter on deals are often unaware of the extent of the mistreatment. "When foreign buyers come, the bosses instruct people to clean the floors and work properly," Lovle explained. "The whole environment changes just for the buyers."

Lovle, who has been working in the factories for ten years, continued: "Sometimes our salaries aren't paid on time. We're told, if the buyers ask us, we must say that they are." Speaking about underage workers, she said, "When foreign buyers come, the teenage boys or girls working in the factory are hidden in the toilets or on the roof so the buyers don’t see them. Or, if there are too many children, the owners will tell the kids not to come to work today."

There are between 30 and 40 children working in Lovle's factory, and child labor is common in Bangladesh. It's a depressing side effect of the extremely low wages, but families must make money to survive, and the children mostly have their parents' blessing.

Workers leaving a factory in Dhaka

But among all this misery are small signs that the situation for Bangladesh's factory workers might be getting better. In some, mainly the larger of the 4,500 garment factories, conditions have been improving. With the help of local NGOs and the international media, workers have been speaking out and factory owners are beginning to be held accountable for their offenses.

The owners of the Rana Plaza factory—which collapsed earlier this year, crushing over 1,130 workers to death—are on trial. And at the end of last month, Bangladesh police announced that the owner and 14 employees of the Tazreen factory were going to be charged with "death due to negligence." Mind you, that was a year after a fire in the factory killed more than 110 workers, and a year for Tazreen owner Delwar Hossain to walk around as a free man.

And then there's that pay raise, the 77 percent increase to the minimum wage for garment workers in Bangladesh. Which, on the face of it, sounds like a very positive development. However, campaigners fear that this change in law won't be adopted by factory owners, and some wonder whether anything will change at all.

In Dhaka, Bilkiss told me how she doesn't think she's ever been paid properly for all the overtime she works, which suggests factory bosses aren't too likely to start abiding by any new wage laws. "I suspect that my bosses keep some of the money for themselves," she said. But unfortunately, like many others in her position, she doesn’t have the courage to ask.

In response to the strikes and wage hikes, over 100 factories have reportedly closed down. The government and factory owners have used this news to launch a claim that a rise in wages will put everyone out of work. Western companies, they say, will go to other countries in search of cheap labor. And for a nation that depends on making clothes for 80 percent of its export earnings, it's a business they can’t afford to lose.

Bando

Living next door to Bilkiss and Lovle is a cleaner at one of the factories, a lady named Bando. She doesn’t know how old she is exactly, but guesses about 65. She looked tired and I didn’t want to bother her with questions, but she was keen to invite us in. She was sick, she told me. Her back and shoulders ached.

"I have been working all week with this pain," she said, "but today it was too much, so I took the day off." The pain was visible on her face and she clearly shouldn't have been working, but she had to go back the next day or risk losing her job.

As deeply distressing as all of this is, the sad truth is that if we were all to boycott companies that source their clothes from Bangladesh, young girls like Bilkiss and Lovle would most likely lose their jobs and not have any income at all. 

As Bando told me before I left: "It's not much, but what else can I do?"


Le Havre Is a Paradise

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The town of Le Havre is the least beloved of all French seaside towns. Or at least it sometimes seems like it's held in such disregard by its residents, of which I – admittedly – am one. We're probably no different from people anywhere else on Earth, as we let ourselves believe that nothing interesting ever happens in the place in which we live, but in reality, during night-time, the pubs and the whores are brought to life. The noise echoes through the streets and Le Havre becomes sexy.

That's what happens when people let boredom overwhelm them – their despair allows them to shine. Le Havre makes do with what it has. It has pussycats with dyed fur, bruises with no stories to tell and truth-coloured eyes. And when I stop to reconsider things, I think that might just be enough for a clapped out French seaside town to be getting on with.

See more of Elodie's work here.

Does your town or city qualify for paradise status? Feel free to send your pitches to ukphotoblog@vice.com. Don't be shy.

Previous Paradises:

Detroit / Lahti / Budapest / Leeds / Dublin / Birmingham / Miami / Phoenix / Tbilisi / Los Angeles / Berlin / Rotterdam / Bristol

Epicly Later'd - Season 1: Geoff Rowley - Bonus

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As a bonus to the more historical episodes we usually do, pro skater Geoff Rowley took us on a tour of his biking/camping journey across America. In this episode, he discusses his philosophies on nature and how to balance his psycho skate regimen with finding his chill zone.

The Real Rick Ross Stands Up

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The Real Rick Ross Stands Up

Trans Model Carmen Carrera Is Transforming Fashion

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Everyone loves a good Instagram collage of a beautiful trans model, right? All pictures via Carmen's Instagram.

Like most women, Carmen Carrera finds it a little rude when strangers ask questions about her genitals. But Carrera, a reality TV star, model, and, potentially, one of next year’s Victoria’s Secret’s “angels,” is trans, which means people ask her about them, anyway.  

I got the chance to talk gender—and fashion—with Carrera a few days ago during a Skype date. The call connected and I asked her to go on video. “I look like shit,” she whined, and then went on. Needless to say, she does not look like shit. She’s already got the mermaid-like Victoria’s Secret waves going on, and she has on minimal makeup, with the exception of black eyeliner and mascara. It’s a Saturday evening, and she wears a bare-bones, grey spaghetti strap top—the uniform of an off-duty Cindy Crawford in the ‘90s. Carrera seems to be getting more famous by the week, given some of the amazing work she's done lately. Plus, her fans made a petition calling for her to become the first trans Victoria’s Secret model.

Although she’s obviously been quite successful at this point in her career, Carrera still struggles with intense insecurity issues, and she’s constantly fighting the labels people try to stick to her. I ask her if there’s one thing she can’t stand being asked in the flurry of media attention.

“Yeah, when they ask me if I got the sex change surgery. It’s kind of weird. At the beginning of my transition when people would ask me, I would answer. But now, it’s kind of getting to the point where I don’t think that that’s relevant. Like, I wouldn’t sit here and ask you about your genitals.”

“It’s indecent! Don’t be concerned about if I’ve had the snip or not, because it’s between me and my intimate partner.” Carrera’s a Jersey girl, and clearly, she’s not scared to tell it people to fuck off when need be.

Carrera has been outwardly presenting as a woman since last year, when she finished as a contestant on a RuPaul’s Drag Race which is basically a contest to determine who is the best drag queen. Now, Carrera’s interested in what, for her, is an authentic gender performance both in her personal life, and her professional one. But she says in order for that to happen, trans people and trans allies need to push for the fashion industry to be more inclusive when it comes to gender lines, and accept all forms of beauty within its folds. About 42,000 people have signed the petition for Victoria’s Secret to include Carrera.

“Trans people are beautiful. It’s a different kind of beauty, and it should be recognized and respected. I want to express that, and I want to show people that, hey, this is trans beauty. This is beauty, period. It just so happens that I’m trans.”

“It shouldn’t have to be like ‘Oh, that’s the trans model selling the trans clothes.’”

She says she’ll audition to walk for the iconic lingerie conglomerate, but the prevailing state of mind in the industry won’t shift from that step alone. There’s still an excessive level of stereotyping in fashion, despite the attention models like Andrej Pejic and Ines Rau have brought to the scene.

Carrera’s trans pride is fully intact, but she says it can be tiring always being cast as the trans cast member or model—she just wants to be a woman in the entertainment industry, play a woman in the entertainment industry, and not be typecast as a trans character. She wants people to define her by her work, not her gender identification. By writing about her daily life and posting photos on her various social media accounts, and by playing roles of biological women, Carrera hopes to shift the viewpoints of label-happy people, and inspire them to just enjoy the beauty in front of them regardless of its particular form.

“My life isn’t really that different from a biological female. The only thing that’s different is what’s in between my legs.” Carrera lives a normal female existence, going to the gym, picking up her stepdaughter from school, going to parent teacher meetings. She says it gets irritating when people focus only on the transition a person goes through, looking at nothing beyond the before and after photos. She’s just wants people to know she’s just a girl.

Carrera is polite, but her bright tone slips for a minute here. It’s clear she’s tired of explaining her basic existence to journalists. But she puts a funny spin on it despite her weariness with the subject of herself:

“I’m just a female who was born with a penis. That’s all. It’s like a surprise. You know, it’s like there’s white meat, and there’s dark meat. There’s women that have vaginas, and there’s women who don’t. It’s really that simple, but a lot of people can’t understand that.”

Someone should book this woman in elementary school gymnasiums across the globe until everyone just gets it. But, until that kind of awareness sets in, Carrera is working on herself. In order to better reflect her identity as a female, Carrera did undergo some surgery. She’s on a hormone regimen, and had a nose job.

“I fixed up a couple things. I got a breast augmentation because, you know, I wanted to be a bad bitch.” Carrera says she hasn’t had any procedures just to boost her career, and the ones she has had make her feel more like herself.

“Now I get to be charismatic, I get to be the person that I want to be. I get to crack little jokes and I get to be cheesy, it’s okay. Because it’s feminine, and it’s fine.”

Though fashion thrives on judgment and makes most of its money by capitalizing on the inadequacies of ordinary mortals, it’s showing signs of trying to learn. The thick gendered lines drawn around what is and is not considered beautiful are morphing and bending.

If you’ve ever been sucked into the guilty pleasure that is America’s Next Top Model, you’ll have witnessed an example of this already—when you had your heartstrings yanked and mangled by Isis King. King was the human elastic/transgender model with the killer poses who competed in both cycles 11 and 17, and was unceremoniously ejected. The elimination, to say the least, seemed incongruous in relation to her skill as a model. But regardless of the fact that she didn’t win, her participation in the show provided a significant level of exposure of the masses to trans beauty. Carrera’s success is another sign of that fledgling change. There was no way for fans to know if King didn’t take home the next top model title because she was trans, but we all wondered if prejudice was the cause. Carrera says this uncertainty holds true industry-wide.

“For any model in this industry, you never know if you’re going to get work. You never know if people are going to relate to you, and embrace you. And then being trans is kind of like—I hate to say it—but it’s kind of like a setback.

“If you go on a go-see, and they decide not to use you, you don’t know if it’s because you’re trans or not. But that thought is still in your mind.”

Despite her rapid success in a cutthroat field—within only a year of presenting outwardly as a woman, she’s been signed with Elite, and she walked for Marco Marco—she says she still lives with insecurity. Growing up was hard because she spent all of her energy working to present as a man, even though she didn’t feel it.

“Honestly, I never really looked at myself as anyone that was attractive. You know, I’m so used to being insecure that I even catch myself nowadays being afraid, and it’s just something that’s probably always going to be with me.

“I tried my hardest not to be myself, so now that I am myself, I’m a little afraid. I was so caught up in what people would say, and what people would think, and how they would perceive me, and how they would receive me. There were times that I caught myself not wanting to walk into a room because I was afraid of the people. You start to fear society; you start to drive yourself nuts.”

The fashion industry is far from embracing gender diversity, but there have been major strides recently. There’s the aforementioned Pejic, whose beauty, like Carrera’s, transcends all gender lines. But while the two have different looks, they’re both made of what’s considered beautiful in fashion: high, angular cheek bones, giant eyeballs, somewhat pale skin. Though their gender bending makes them different from other prominent models, there’s much about each of them that sticks with the prescribed standard of western beauty.

Evidently, the standards of beauty in the fashion industry need to change, and Carrera is fighting that fight, despite the distaste she has at being typecast, and despite the harsh judgment she faces at times. She says she’s going to talk to Victoria’s Secret and see what they say. Sports Illustrated is a dream of hers, too.

“For trans people in the industry, it’s hard to dream, or just be taken seriously, even. Not a lot of trans people have been able to break through, but, you know, that time is now.”

Documents Shed New Light on the FBI's 18-Year-Old Drone Ambitions

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Documents Shed New Light on the FBI's 18-Year-Old Drone Ambitions

VICE Premiere: 'Long Live the Pimp' Remixtape by Cy Fyre

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Six years ago on December 4, 2007, one half of the of the legendary rap group UGK, Chad "Pimp C" Butler, died of codeine overdose. Pimp C is one of the greatest MCs to ever touch a microphone. His work, alongside Bun B, brought greater attention to the Southern-rap scene, by making music that was filled with deep, poetic lyrics and soulful beats. His distinctive style left its mark on rappers of every stripe—from Outkast to Jay Z, and A$AP Rocky to Big Krit. To honor him, we are proud to exclusively premiere Cy Fyre's Long Live the Pimp remixtape, which features classic Pimp C verses over new beats. Enjoy!

A School in Ontario Staged a Fake Massacre for a Police Training Exercise

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All photos by Jon D. Clarke, Graeme Frisque, Greg Longley, Mazine Lowe, Robert Moodie and Taylor Shappert.

Journalism students at Sheridan College, near Toronto, were ordered to take down video and photos (which you can see in the gallery above) of a mock school shooting that have ruffled some feathers with the school's faculty and administration.

On November 25, the college hosted a training exercise for the Halton Regional Police Department. Students from the school’s musical theatre program acted as if they had been shot dead, complete with fake wounds and blood.

The scenario took place with two shooters played by plainclothes cops. About 100 students and staff participated in the event, with 15 playing dead and a further 10 playing wounded. 

“To my knowledge this is the first time we’ve done something like this in a public venue. We run lockdown drills through the high schools, but never actually involving the students, they are always in lockdown mode. This is the first time it’s been interactive with people with makeup and everything,” said Sgt. Barry Hughes to the Sheridan Sun, the school's newspaper.

The school's in-house video production company filmed the entire exercise, while journalism students took photos, which were posted to the site of the Sheridan Sun.

However, the day after the exercise took place, Sandy McKean, associate dean of Film, Television and Journalism at Sheridan ordered that the photos and video be taken down on the basis of them being "too graphic."

Speaking to the Sheridan Sun earlier, Sandy said he asked the content be taken down "based on professional practice in journalism because there was an excessive use of violent images." A statement the school's faculty disagreed with, saying that it was "censorship."

Some have suggested that maybe the images were ordered down because having grinning, blood-covered students posing for pictures in the school hallways might be a bit of a "public relations blunder." That seems a bit more likely than whatever Sandy McKean was rambling about.

Anyway, you can see the images in the gallery above and see video of the performance here. Enjoy!

@StrangeCitizen


A Guy Accidentally Paid $700 for a Photo of an Xbox on eBay

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Screencap via

Peter Clatworthy, a 19 year-old in Nottingham, UK, thought he had bought an XBox One on eBay for £450 (about $700), plus £8 shipping and handling on November 28, but all that came in the mail was a shitty photo of the console. It's a scam almost as old as eBay itself, and it looks like it'll never go away.

Clatworthy had saved up to buy the brand new, eighth generation console for his 4-year-old son McKenzie. As an avid eBay user, he says he had examined the listing before bidding, and noticed an odd wording about the item being a photo, but since it was listed in the section for video games and consoles, he figured it couldn't just be a photo. He told Nottingham Post, "I looked at the seller's feedback and there was nothing negative. I bought it there and then because I thought it was a good deal."

Indeed, the old "it's just a photo," trick is from the original, dusty book of eBay scams. There's a record of it developing back in 2001,  when someone sold an empty Playstation 2 box. Then in 2004, someone sold a photo of a plasma TV. Next, it jumped to the seventh generation of consoles, with the XBox 360. It also made a cameo on Judge Judy.

Most likely this scam persists without really evolving because it's about as sophisticated as tricking someone into sitting on a whoopie cushion. If the scammers went so far as to mail a presentable photograph, printed on glossy paper and framed, maybe they could make a case for themselves after getting caught. But Kelly from the "Judge Judy" clip sent those tiny little thumbnail jpegs, and Clatworthy's scammer didn't even make sure his printer had ink when he printed out that Xbox One. It looks horrible. 

They also dickishly scribbled "Thank you for your purchase" on the back of the printout, and, although the CSI team probably won't be called in to check my rampant speculation, they probably wiped a booger on it too, before sneaking past their mom, and sticking it in the mailbox.

Clatworthy contested his purchase, on the basis of the listing being misleading, and so far eBay seems to agree. They informed him on Wednesday that since he paid with PayPal, he could expect a full refund, and that they will contact the scammer, in order to pry the money away from them.

Online shopping had to fight a tough battle for acceptance, so eBay has always had to work hard to safeguard users from scams, and balance their limited capacity for actual policing with stern caveat emptors to cover their asses. However, eBay has to devote its energy to policing for today's more sophisticated fraudulent payment requests, phishing, account hijacking and a whole world of arcane bidding trickery. This photo trick, meanwhile, is hidden in plain sight.

Sure, internet people are shitting on this guy, but he's already looking on the bright side. He told Nottingham Post, "At least we've now got something to laugh about in the years to come," probably because he knows he played the media game right. The worst thing he could have done was stay quiet about it. Now at least he's going to end up with an actual Xbox One and an apology for his trouble. 

@MikeLeePearl

I Went to a Fast Food Protest

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Photos by Maggie West

Hot on the heels of the consumer bukkake party known as Black Friday, fast food workers got out their markers and poster board and rustled themselves up a protest. It was reported earlier this week that around 100 separate events were to take place today in cities around the country.

The largest of these protests occurred in New York and Chicago, under the auspices of the Fightfor15 movement, which also organized similar events in August of this year. I assumed that there was also some correlation between the timing of this event and the phasing out of the Dollar Menu, which kept me and plenty of other broke people from starving to death. If I can't get a double cheeseburger for a dollar, then the system is clearly out of whack.

Two rallies were staged in Los Angeles. The protest I attended was at the Silver Lake location on Sunset and Vermont. Despite being it one of the hipper parts of town, there was nothing alternative about this joint, but as you can see in the above photo, I came with my fly down. That's my way of "sticking it to the man."

McDonald’s employees were not wearing nametags when I arrived at the restaurant. When I tried to talk to them, they let me know that they were told not to speak to journalists. It seemed like this location had brought in their best looking, most personable employees for this inauspicious occasion.

After I bought a reasonably priced soda and milled about for awhile, the employees perked up when a gentleman who referred to himself as Luke ordered some fries in between hostilities directed at the amassed protesters. He claimed that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) had hired the people that were picketing, which prompted the folks behind the register to tell me that they were certain that no one engaged in the protest worked at their McDonald’s location.

Many of the protestors seemed too young to be fast food workers, while others appeared to be sympathetic liberal activists. In particular, I noticed a heavy-set, bearded gentleman (who may or may not have been Clerks director Kevin Smith) who looked as though he recently dropped out of Sarah Lawrence to follow his passion for fingerpainting or something. He led the standard protest chants from behind a megaphone, barking instructions and dancing around as if Jack Black had stopped making people laugh and started making people think.

I approached a van full of kids who definitely weren't fast food workers. I figured the "15" on their shirt was their age, rather than how much they wanted to earn at their jobs. I approached their handler/driver, who quickly blew me off when I requested to speak to someone. I asked point blank if anyone in the van was a fast food worker, and she told me she didn't want to talk to me, and that she was just a friend of the passengers. Naturally, I wondered who paid for the van rental, which would be a bit pricey for someone making minimum wage.

I checked back with my friend/Ron Paul fanatic, Luke, who revealed that he also works for minimum wage, slinging beverages at a coffee shop in the neighborhood. His friends in similar situations, “spend their money on weed and 40s,” but he said that "being poor makes me dream." I wondered what that dream was. I’m guessing his dream has something to do with “scraping together enough spare change for his next meal” or something close to that.

It seemed a bit fallacious to assume that people fighting to earn a living wage and spend their free time organizing rallies don’t dream, or that there’s virtue in being broke in America. Unfortunately for those who preach personal austerity and lionize the working class guy who eats shit from his employers with a smile on his face, the American economy doesn’t function particularly well unless people spend lots of money. If that weren't the case, then I wouldn't have seen 50 articles about how slow Black Friday sales are "calamitous" for the nation.

In order to better understand the situation, I spoke to Alberto Castro, a worker at the Burger King on Century Boulevard and Broadway in LA. Alberto, unlike Luke, was willing to pose for a photo. He's been working at Burger King for 10 months, but he says he has colleagues who have been "working 10, 20 years, and still making $8 an hour. They are still at the same level as I am."

I asked why there wasn't more room for advancement at his Burger King, and he claimed the system is set up to discourage wage increases. “There is no possible way where my manager would give us a raise," he said, "because the managers themselves make a dollar, dollar-fifty more than us regular workers. We get a raise, they have to get a raise. I know these corporations don’t want that.”

Earlier, Luke had trotted out the old rhetorical bomb about how lucky people are to have jobs at all, and that there are new immigrants that would kill for a low-paying gig cleaning hot grease out of a deep fryer. I passed that on to Alberto, who quickly responded, "Many of these immigrants are accustomed to their own rules, and don’t have much knowledge of their rights in the United States. What these corporations put into these people is fear. Fear of losing their jobs.”

Alberto, like many other activists, doesn't have a firm grasp on what the result of their direct action will be. When I queried him about whether or not he thought fast food executives should take pay cuts to compensate for the increase in unskilled wages, he shrugged, blinked for awhile, and finally sputtered out, “Well, I’m not quite sure how to answer that, but right now, our goal is to send out a message to hope our demands are met.” When I asked him if he even had an idea what the consequences of his demands being met would be, he blinked a few more times, like he was trying to send a message in morse code. "We're not at that stage yet."

This lack of an endgame vision is what scares people like Luke when they hear about fast food workers uniting. They want Alberto and his ilk to work harder and be more ambitious rather than just ask for more money, but the opportunities to gain those skills are drying up. Going to college has become an expensive proposition, and government grants and loans are drying up.

If we should try to help the working poor is not a question. How we help them is, and until the two sides of this divide figure out how to raise people's earning potential, America will have a hard time getting itself out of the recession. In the meantime, I'm going to focus on something I can solve, which is buying the URL, www.bringbackthedollarmenu.com.

@dave_schilling

 

Munchies: Jackson Boxer - Brunswick House

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Jackson Boxer runs Brunswick House in Vauxhall – a grand Georgian townhouse that was previously home to squat raves and rubble, before he transformed it into one of South London's destination restaurants.

We ate calf's brains, partridge and Stilton tarte tatin and then Jackson and his brother Frank took us to Silk Road, a fiery local Xinjiang restaurant in Camberwell. We then drank "extra terrestrial" burgundy at Sager and Wilde and cocktails at The Clove Club, East London's new gastronomical staples.

Back at Brunswick for our late-night cook up, we ate pig's trotter buns and had some killer grappa nightcaps.

Cry-Baby of the Week

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

Cry-Baby #1: Chamblee Police Department


Channel 11 News via Reddit.

The incident: A man charged his electric car on an outlet outside a school, allegedly using less than a nickle's worth of electricity.

The appropriate response: Nothing. Asking him not to do it if it's a big deal. 

The actual response: He was arrested and charged with theft. 

Last week, Kaveh Kamooneh parked his electric car outside Chamblee Middle School in Chamblee, Georgia, where his son was playing tennis. 

Before walking up to the tennis courts to watch his son, Kaveh plugged an extension cable from his Nissan Leaf into an electrical outlet outside the school.

After being plugged in for a little under 20 minutes, he noticed a man inside his car. He went over to investigate and found a police officer. Apparently, someone had called 911 to report Kaveh's car.

"He informed me he was about to arrest me, or at least charge me, for electrical theft," Kaveh told Channel 11 News.

Kaveh was allowed to leave, but ten days later, he was arrested at his home.

Channel 11 News contacted the power company that serves the area, and they estimated the cost of electricity used by Kaveh to be 4 cents. 

Sgt. Ernesto Ford of the Chamblee Police Department apparently does not regret the arrest, telling Channel 11 News that "a theft is a theft," and that he would "do it again."

Kaveh believes he was the victim of selective prosecution, "There's no record of anyone being arrested for drinking water out of a tap. People charge laptops or cell phones at public outlets all the time, and no one's ever been arrested for that." he told Channel 11 News. He plans to fight his charge. 

Cry-Baby #2: Joseph M. Maloney 


Chicago Tribune via Reddit. Image via Cook County Sheriff Dept.

The incident: A drunk driver got yelled at because he was driving badly. 

The appropriate response: Pulling over and taking a nap or something.

The actual response: He tried to kill the guy who yelled at him, as well as his mother. 

Last week, a drunken Joseph M Maloney, 52, was driving in Streamwood, Illinois. 

As often happens when people are driving while drunk, Joseph was driving pretty terribly. At one point, he jumped the curb and had to swerve back into his lane. This caused a motorist behind him to pull up to him at a stop sign and yell that he should "learn how to drive".

Possibly feeling that this was unfair as he probably does know how to drive, he was just drunk, Joseph pulled in front of the other driver. Who, managing to avoid a collision, drove home. 

Joseph followed the motorist to his home, where his mother was outside doing yard work. 

When the unnamed motorist exited his car, Joseph drove at him and tried to run him over "three or four" times. He also tried to run over the man's mother, driving through multiple yards and driveways as he attempted to do so. 

Joseph then circled the block, came back, and tried to run them over again. He then fled the scene.

Police caught up with Joseph and he was given a sobriety test, which he failed. According the police report, his eyes were glassy and his breath smelled like alcohol. He was charged with driving under the influence, aggravated assault, and reckless driving. 

His bail has been set at $75,000.

Which of these fine folks is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll right here, if that's OK with you:

 

Previously: A guy who smeared his shit on his neighbors' doors over a parking dispute Vs. A woman who thinks her relative shouldn't have been shot just because he was robbing someone at gunpoint

Winner: The poop smearer!!!

@JLCT

Child-Stealing Demons Terrorized the Alps Again This Year

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The darkest, coldest, scariest day of the year in the Alps region is December 6. That's when Saint Nikolaus (Santa, for you guys) visits us, bringing with him nuts, oranges, apples, sweets, and an army of terrifying, child-stealing demons called the Krampus. The Krampus break into people's homes to wreak havoc or run around the streets swinging their cow tails and rods. The locals are all pretty scared of them.

We've long been conditioned to jump at the sound of their bells ringing around some dark corner. Of course we know it's just plain old humans under the masks, but most of them are drunk and as children we were told stories about the barbwire and sharp razor blades hanging from their tails.

Last year, I followed a group of really nice Krampus guys around, which helped me to get over my fear. But the bruises from their rods still hurt.

Check out more of Anna's work here.

Hot Links: Tourist Traps

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Image via.

Welcome to our brand new food column, Hot Links, where VICE employee, Dan Meyer, explores the neglected culinary stars of Youtube. Each week, Dan will present a selection of videos highlighting specific food themes, from amateur cooking, to local restaurant commercials, elderly drinking buddies, kitchen disasters, to the infinite supply of odd YouTube wonders in the food category. We encourage you to fall into this culinary video k-hole, and include your own comments and contributions below. 

Here are my top seven selections for local restaurant advertisements. Watching these clips should mentally transport you to a run-down motel room in somewhere, USA, where the TV’s blaring with low-budget tourist trap commercials on a loop. Get familiar with the theme, crack a cold one, and watch these hot links.

 

Creeds Seafood & Steaks—King Of Prussia, Pennsylvania 

Restaurant owner, Jim Creed, loves wine, and is proud to be the boss at the longest independently owned fine dining restaurant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania—since 1982. Every time I am in the suburbs of Philly driving around the parking lots of a shopping mall, I find myself wondering, "where could I possibly find a nice steak, in a lively setting, prepared by a real chef?" Luckily, Creeds is the answer.

3 Sisters Cafe—Indianapolis, Indiana

After a few quick camera shots of pre-packaged tea and granola, Moira and her husband, Alex, explain that not everyone "gets" their style of food—a cuisine focused on “whole foods,”—which is how, "God intended you to eat.” Alex puts it best in his own words, “some people don’t get it, and then they don’t eat here again.” 

Nunzios Pizza—Cleveland, Ohio

A dead ringer for Uncle Fester, Nunzio cooks "old world" style pizza in a brand new convection oven. 

Larry's on the Lake—Camdenton, Missouri

I’m not sure what it means, but at Larry’s on the Lake, “everyone’s a Larry.” This is the spot where “a boatload of people do great things.” You can pull in on your boat, make your own Bloody Mary at the make-your-own Bloody Mary bar, and hit the dance floor with a hula-hoop. Party animal Larry describes the wonders of his establishment shortly before launching into promoting nearby Ozark spots Paradise, Captain Ron's Bulldogs, Bare Bottoms, and the Halfway Inn. Sounds like a great area.  

Schooner's Coastal Kitchen—Monterey, California

Allow restaurant manager Brandon to explain the dining concept. Executive chef, James Waller, believes that “there’s not a lot of adultering of the food.” I’m curious about what’s really going on behind the drink bar, and would love to hear a food review from the two female dining companions who seem to be enjoying their silent meal. 

O'Kelly's Restaurant—Fargo, North Dakota

Mike “Clevy,” shows you around his restaurant in Fargo, North Dakota, where the staff is “crazy.” I love the slideshow effect, and I hope that the next time you find yourself in Fargo, the "crazy" staff will help you enjoy sushi time and “care-okie.”  

Mignon's Steak’s & Seafood—Biloxi, Mississippi

After a long night of gambling and heavy drinking in Biloxi, Mississippi, Mignon’s is the hot spot if you’re in the mood to order a big bottle of wine and a grilled steak that one customer claims, “is the best steak I’ve ever put in my mouth.” Mignon’s Steak’s & Seafood patrons, Anna and Sue, steal the show with their brief dining review, "I love steak," "and I love lobster." If you decide to visit, I hope that you order the eggplant Napolean and love it as much as the customer in the tropical blouse.

Welcome Freshman

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Obesity & Speed shirt, vintage bra, American Apparel skirt, Converse sneakers, Carhartt beanie, SUMMER BUMMER by Alexandra Cassaniti sunglasses, L. Jardim bodychain

PHOTOS BY ANNETTE LAMOTHE-RAMOS
STYLIST: MIYAKO BELLIZZI


UNIF jacket, American Apparel shorts, HUF socks, T.U.K. shoes, vintage jewelry and sunglasses


adidas Originals x Jeremy Scott jacket, American Apparel shirt and leggings, Danner boots, Ray-Ban sunglasses, vintage hat, H&M jewelry, A-1 Store x XLARGE basketball


American Apparel long sleeve shirt, vintage halter top, Levi's jeans, UNIF boots and sunglasses, Dolce & Gabbana headscarf, vintage jewelry


HUF sweatshirt, Topshop skirt, Hue tights, Uniqlo socks, vintage earrings; Jansport backpack 


If R. Kelly Makes Us Uncomfortable, Why Do We Keep Listening?

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If R. Kelly Makes Us Uncomfortable, Why Do We Keep Listening?

How To Raise Fucking Twins: The Hilarious World of Infertility Treatment

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Editor's note: VICE has been around for almost 20 years now, and a few of us are getting a little long in the tooth, you know? Some people around the office are starting to shift their attention from open vodka bars to turding out little annoying kids, and we're a little nervous, to be honest. Amit Wehle’s years of infertility treatments and recent lease of a 2013 Honda Pilot LX make him an early childhood development and parenting expert, so we asked him to document his experience to find out what having these weird little things is like. Welcome to our new parenting column, "How To Raise Fucking Twins."

 

Last fall I found myself butt-naked and spread-eagled on a tissue-lined recliner in a fertility clinic, pounding off to Asian Honeycums Vol. 2 with a lubricated test tube lodged firmly in my ass. The test tube wasn’t just a lucky rabbit’s foot; I truly believed that anally stimulating my prostate would procure the freshest and most fertile sperm I could spurt out. Pie in the ass thinking? Maybe… I just wanted to have a baby.

Ask your average third-grader or 34-year-old man where babies come from and you’re likely to get the same response: Daddy sticks his boner into Mommy’s fun hole and nine months later she dooks out a child, followed by afterbirth and insufferable Facebook posts. That is the case most of the time, and (until three years ago) something I wouldn’t have questioned. After all, making babies is the most fundamental of things—the miraculous simplicity of nature repeating itself over and over and over again.

My wife and I, being mammals, shared this to drive to procreate. Even though we had lives before wanting children, we were happily married, and we had an impressive Time Warner cable package, we always felt something was... missing. We wanted the next step, to evolve, to celebrate life. In short: to raise little people.

But several months into the process we realized we couldn’t just have one. Unlike paying taxes or being invited to a game of Farmville, giving forth life is not a birthright. So despite us owning a penis and vagina, and despite us living in Brooklyn’s fertile crescent (the insufferable stretch of land made up of Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, and Park Slope, where every halfwit beardo and his NPR-mainlining boo stroll about pushing their newborns) we found ourselves in the land of the infertile. A barren shit hole. Isolated and angry.

Our drive and determination led us to various cutting-edge fertility clinics, where we mercilessly toiled for three-and-a-half years. Infertility drove us to terrible depths; to puncture, prick, and pull at our body parts in ways we never could imagine. Over the years it led my wife to endure round after round of medications and invasive procedures.

Let me explain something: In the land of infertility and IVFs and IUIs (intrauterine insemination), the essential rules of reproduction still apply—the marriage of sperm and egg. It’s just the process of getting it done is less, shall we say, "Wham-bam," spontaneous or natural. It is, in contrast, the epitome of intentional, micro-managed and manipulated at every turn. Just one round of IVF (let alone eight) takes several weeks of brutal monitoring, constant tweaking, and re-calibrating by a sizable team of doctors and embryologists whom you find yourself praying to like the 86 Mets up against insurmountable odds. They are ultimately your friends, but friends you never wished you needed. And, incidentally, friends who charge upwards of $22,000 a pop to work their laboratory magic, magic that might ultimately fail.

On the other hand, those in the same boat as you—the other couples you see in these clinics going through the assembly line—are not really your friends at all. They are competition. Not outright competition, but physical reminders of actual statistics. Not everyone here will get pregnant, that’s a fact. So my wife and I spent much of our time in the DMV-like waiting area handicapping our opponent’s chances versus our own. It is survival of the fittest within a population that is already assuredly not fit, and it makes you do things like pray the couple across from you has irreversible fibroid damage or a laughable sperm count. With any luck, both. You see, infertility is, by its nature, a couple’s sport, and while there’s usually someone at fault when a couple can’t conceive. In my case, it was my wife—I swear I’m not here to single her out, even though it was her fault. We learned early on that the sooner we tag-teamed the issue and approached it as a group project, the better off we’d be. "Babe, I love you. I couldn’t do this with out you," my wife would repeat like a mantra to me over these years. I would stop her, touch her head with love, and simply say, "I know. I love you. And I wouldn’t have to do this without you."

Like every person hoping against hope for something out of their reach, you start looking for signs, divine messages where nonesuch exist. If she wears my dead grandmother’s ring in the embryo-transfer room, it will work this time! If the doctor calls us on an even-numbered hour he has good news! If I rub this African fertility goddesses' belly 34 times before we take a pregnancy test, throw just the right amount of rocks into the ocean on New Year’s Day, or give one of those kids on the subway some money for their “sports team,” the universe will reward me.

My wife and I were at the end of our rope. We were physically, financially, and spiritually tapped out. If this failed, we had several options. We could continue our dealings with a fast-talking Upper West Side Yemenite who specializes in providing eggs from attractive, Army-aged Israeli chicks and sells them to the infertile. This seemed like a terrible option, because the child wouldn’t have my wife’s DNA and I wouldn’t get to bone the Israeli army chick from Portnoy’s Complaint. The second option was adoption, and while that’s probably the best thing you can do for the planet, I just couldn’t wrap my head around circumcising a 15-month-old Korean boy. The only other option was to convince ourselves we were dog lovers and let my glorious bloodline die with me. With any luck we’d be sending pictures of us with half-smiles from the Tivoli Gardens in no time.

But, this wasn’t in the cards for us... The test tube in my ass worked. (I know, I know, I should be an embryologist). Our pre-implantation genetic diagnosis-tested, double-A grade, frozen blastocysts were transferred into my wife on January 28, 2013. And just like that we were pregnant people. Pardoned. Expectants. Free to join the land of the living. Free to walk the streets of our yuppie neighborhood, the way God intended. One hand on my wife’s belly, the other directing traffic. "Watch the fuck where you're going, asshole! Can’t you see my wife’s pregnant!?"

You can follow Amit on Twitter (@AMITWEHLE), or find him on Friendster.com

The FDA Doesn't Want to Hide Your DNA

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With regard to 23andMe, Silicon Valley's favorite genetic testing startup, the agency is doing exactly what government regulation is designed to do: Protect consumers from unsafe or misleading medical products in cases where the company has little financial incentive to do so itself.

Kids Telling Dirty Jokes: Carla

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Kids Telling Dirty Jokes is our new series that features tiny comedians we found on Craigslist. This episode stars Carla, who's kinda like a young Paula Poundstone, minus all those child abuse and drunk driving charges.

Previously - Gigi

An Interview with One of Greenpeace's Freed Arctic 30

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Frank Hewetson (photo courtesy of Kirill Andreev / Greenpeace)

In some ways, it's surprising that Vladimir Putin isn't more revered by conservative Western bigots. On the September 19, while taking a break from effectively making homophobia obligatory by law, his administration launched the largest governmental attack on Greenpeace since the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior ship by the French Intelligence Service in 1985.

A group of heavily armed antiterrorist agents from the FSB (the spiritual successor to the KGB) forcibly boarded Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise boat after activists tried to climb the controversial Prirazlomnaya oil rig in the Arctic Sea. They were there to protest deep-sea drilling in the area, which they say is damaging the fragile Arctic ecosystem, but 28 of them—as well as two freelance journalists—were put under armed guard and towed the five-day journey back to Russia, where they spent two months in Murmansk prison.

The activists were initially charged with piracy, but the charge was later dropped to "hooliganism," which still carries a ludicrous seven-year sentence. The last of the Arctic 30 were released on bail in St. Petersburg on November 28 after spending 71 days in jail. But with a trial still pending and efforts by the British Government seemingly falling on deaf ears—presumably because Putin regards the UK as "a small island nobody cares about"—the protesters are unable to leave Russia and still face prosecution.

I called up British activist Frank Hewetson to talk about the protest, his time in Murmansk, and what the future holds for him and the rest of the Arctic 30.

Frank while incarcerated in Murmansk, Russia (photo courtesy of Dimitri Sharomov / Greenpeace)

VICE: Hi, Frank. Can you talk me through the events of your capture?
Frank Hewetson: We arrived at Prirazlomnaya on the 18 and attempted to get people onto it to hang a banner as a peaceful protest. The coastguard vessel tried to stop us and the situation rapidly became quite non-peaceful. A lot of damage was done to our boat, firearms were discharged and we decided that our safety had been pushed too far, so we retreated. Then there was a standoff for a good 24 hours. The coastguard wanted to board our vessel and discuss the events of the day with us, which we realized would probably result in our arrests. On the 19, they flew a helicopter out of Moscow and loads of heavily armed agents from the antiterrorist wing of the FSB descended on our boat and took control.

That must have been pretty terrifying?
Well, we'd had the coastguard vessel with us for the previous five days, so it wasn’t that scary, really—it was kind of expected. And I have to say, they were relatively professional. One of them even helped me carry a tray with tea and cakes from one level to the other, all while he was wearing a balaclava and had an AK-47, a knife and a handgun strapped to him. Then they basically imprisoned us in a reduced area of the ship, under armed guard—the captain was completely separated from us—and started our five-day tow back to Russia.

It sounds like something from Hornblower, but, you know, with AKs and helicopters.
Actually, a few of us started reading those kinds of books when we got to jail. We weren't expecting the piracy charge, we weren't expecting two months incarceration in a pretty grim prison, and we weren't expecting to be held in Russia. We’re still not free now. We still can’t leave Russia, and we still have a trial date that has to happen before February 24. So at this present moment I’m sitting in a very nice restaurant in St. Petersburg, but we could go back to court and we could face a jail sentence.

Russian security services after abseiling from a helicopter onto the deck of the Arctic Sunrise and seizing the ship (photo courtesy of Greenpeace)

Are you still facing the piracy charge?
I believe they have technically removed the piracy charge, which carries a minimum of 15 years imprisonment. Being charged with that really took the wind out of our sails. In Britain, if the police charge you with something, it means they’re serious—they’ve got a case against you and they will proceed with it. Fortunately, they’ve dropped that charge and now it’s hooliganism with a weapon, which is also a ridiculous charge.

What was the weapon?
I think they’re referring to a line-launching catapult, but I can’t be totally sure. That’s not a weapon. I don’t know where the weapon was. Well, I do: they had it and they fired it.

You’re still facing some pretty serious jail time, though. Seven years, right?
We are, yeah. We’re hoping they reduce it. Well, we’re hoping they realize there is no case and we get sent home. There are varying degrees of hooliganism—one is just a fine, and if anything it should be that. But it shouldn’t even be that, really. We’ve committed no crime. Don’t forget this man-made island is outside the 12-nautical-mile zone, therefore it’s in international waters. We were seized illegally and all of our equipment has been taken illegally.

Can you talk about your time in jail?
Yes, it was pretty grim. I think the jail in Murmansk was previously a mental hospital. The whole of the first floor was full of prisoners with tuberculosis. I was on the third floor. It was extremely run-down. The food was truly grim. We were locked up in a cell for 23 hours a day. The cell was, I think, 7 by 18 feet, or something like that. They have this motto there: "Don’t hope, don’t fear, and don’t beg." It really rang true.

A Russian coast guard officer pointing a gun at a Greenpeace International activist as five activists attempt to climb the Prirazlomnaya oil rig (photo courtesy of Greenpeace)

What was the toughest part?
We had an hour of recreation per day. As you entered the prison you were taken through a pretty dilapidated basketball court, which is where I was expecting to be taken for recreation. So I was totally crushed when I was taken to this concrete pen with a sheet steel cover over the roof. There was no sunlight; you couldn’t see the sky at all. I’ve seen better pigpens. You were on your own unless one of your Russian cellmates wanted to join you, and that was it. That was your hour of exercise.

How did you get along with your cellmates?
Turning up there with your roll mat and your pillow, blanket and sheets, you shook hands with your cellmates and you lay down and didn’t really know how long you were going be in there for. Obviously there was a massive language barrier, but we got along with them as best we could. Unfortunately for me, mine were both chain smokers. I don’t smoke, and the only way to get the smoke out is to open the window. And, of course, at night it’s well below zero.

Sounds tough.
It was. You have to take it a day at a time and take it slow, which is sometimes difficult when presented with a piracy charge and 15 years in prison. I made quite a few court appearances and I’d be squeezed into a tiny prison van for transportation. Sometimes the van would break down and they would have to get out and push it with me inside. It was actually kind of hilarious. It did oscillate a lot between being the worst thing ever and utter hilarity. I remember going into the yard and slipping on ice and going flat on my back. It was awful, but I just found it really funny, looking down on myself and thinking how pathetic I must look.

The Greenpeace ship, Arctic Sunrise (photo courtesy of Greenpeace)

Gallows humor?
Yeah, that helped a lot. There were six Britons on the vessel and a couple of us used to whistle "The Great Escape," which was so wonderful to hear. That building, that whole environment—the razor wire, the dogs, the megaphones, the watchtowers, the dilapidated buildings—it just made you feel like you were in one of those old war movies. But you weren’t, you were banged up and looking at years inside. So it was very surreal to hear "The Great Escape," because you really did want to escape.

Even though the protest hasn't exactly turned out how you wanted, do you think it’s been successful at drawing attention to the issue?
Yes, I definitely feel it has, and I want the Arctic campaign to continue. It’s an iconic campaign and I think the public really takes it seriously. They understand the fragility of the Arctic and they fully understand what we’re campaigning about. We spent two months in prison; it was a huge news story, and I think it has highlighted how seriously we take the issue. I really hope the support continues.

What is it exactly that you hope to come out of all this?
If there were some kind of moratorium on drilling in the Arctic, we would take that as a huge victory. Don’t forget we actually achieved that in Antarctica—we got a 50-year moratorium on any mineral and oil extraction in the Antarctic. That was driven by Greenpeace, so we can save the Arctic, but we just don’t have much time in which to do it.

Thanks, Frank.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @matthewfrancey

More stories about people saving the world:

Why Are the Russians Taking Greenpeace's 'Pirates' So Seriously?

Anti-Fracking Protesters are Still Having a Pretty Torid Time in Balcombe

New US Laws Would Make Environmetal Protest 'Terrorism'

The Police are Helping Power Barons Sue Protesters

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