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The VICE Guide to Right Now: British Columbia to Grant Transgender Prisoners Option to Transfer from Male to Female Prison

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Bianca Bailey Sawyer. Photo via Facebook

Read: Justin Trudeau's First Test of Journalistic Freedoms: The RCMP vs. VICE

In a first of its kind, BC Corrections has granted a preoperative transgender inmate the right to transfer from a male to female prison, according to a report from the Georgia Straight.

Bianca Bailey Sawyer, a transgender woman who was serving time at the Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre, was transferred from the all-male facility to Alouette Correctional Center, a female prison, on September 30.

Currently restricted under the BC Ministry of Justice Adult Custody Policy, transgender inmates are technically not allowed to be transferred to opposite-gender facilities unless they have undergone a "surgical removal of sex organs."

Ontario made a change to the province's law earlier this year that relieved transgender inmates of a requirement to prove their gender via physical anatomy, instead allowing people to register by what gender they identify as.

As of today, there are no official statistics on how many transgender inmates there are in Canada.

Sawyer, who is currently in the pre-op stage of transitioning, said that she was extremely happy about the change in location, according to a letter sent to the Straight.

"For three days my face hurt from smiling," she said.

She also told Global News that the reason for wanting to switch prisons was due to the harassment she faced at the Kamloops facility, noting that she felt depressed and disconnected while at the all-male prison.

Since switching to the Alouette facility in Maple Ridge, BC, Sawyer said that things have improved drastically.

BC Minister of Justice Suzanne Anton told Global News that the approval of Sawyer's request to switch prisons is apparently part of an upcoming change to policy for transgender inmates that will be drafted soon.

"The details of the policy are still being worked out," Anton said. "It will be a very progressive policy. It will allow people to be placed according to their gender identity."

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.


The New Curriculum: Teaching College Students How to Spy

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Georgetown University made the Top Ten on our list of the most militarized schools in America. Photo via Flickr user oasoea

This story appears in the November Issue of VICE.

Why does US intelligence get it wrong so often? Why does every Islamic State, or Arab Spring, or move by Putin come as a surprise? Why do wedding parties and hospitals continue to be bombed?

The official answers have not changed since 9/11: "We couldn't know," or "Intelligence is an art and not a science," or "We're doing the best we can." Another commission finds another dot left unconnected. Intelligence failure splinters into a partisan political fracas.

And then what happens? We reorganize. Budgets grow. We collect even more data from cyber bulk or with drones and satellites that produce even higher-definition images. Not a lot goes into asking whether our strategy is correct, or whether "intelligence" is intelligent enough for the challenges of the real world. Now, for the first time, we have some insight into why that is.

VICE News has analyzed the educational backgrounds of more than 90,000 workers in the national security community and gathered some intelligence of its own:

  • Of the top 100 schools that educate this elite cadre tasked with protecting our nation, 20 are online diploma mills of dubious academic quality.
  • Not one of the top 100 nationally ranked American liberal arts colleges is present in the top 100 universities and colleges that analysts and officers attended to get their bachelor's degrees.
  • The institutions that educate most of America's spies and officers are Washington area appendages of the federal government or schools huddled near military and intelligence bases: Cochise College, Central Texas College, or the University of Central Florida.
  • The most common majors of the group are in the information sciences and systems management. History is nowhere to be seen on the list, international relations barely ranks, and foreign language expertise is embarrassingly absent. It seems the national security community couldn't care less about the outside world.

Four kinds of institutions dominate VICE News's ranking of the 100 most militarized schools in America: online schools; schools in Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia; research universities involved in contract work for national security clients; and schools that teach "homeland security" and "police intelligence," academic fields that didn't exist before 9/11 and now are offered by more than 250 institutions.

Read the full report now on VICE News.

Many of these universities have profited mightily as training establishments for counter-terrorism and domestic security professionals, bringing in more than $15 billion a year through national security contracts, grants, and tuition. The schools and their post-9/11 curricula don't broaden students' horizons—they serve federal government needs. Of course, not every federal worker needs to be a Middle East scholar, but the list shows how significantly the demands of cyber security and big-data analytics have changed the way people who enter the intelligence field are educated.

The image portrayed since 9/11 is that the intelligence community had an about-face, away from technical data collection and remote bombing to more human intelligence and a greater proficiency in regional and cultural understanding. The facts say otherwise. Not only did the intelligence world become more technical and clogged with data, but the role of the American university shifted from educator to service provider. Today our defenders are taught at training outposts that serve a greater master.

Click image to enlarge

William M. Arkin is co-author of the award-winning book Top Secret America. He has collected biographies of intelligence community workers and people who have held top secret clearances since 9/11. Alexa O'Brien is an investigative journalist and was shortlisted for the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in the UK.

How Police Unions Are Using Protests, Boycotts, and Shady Tactics to Fight Reform

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At 6 AM on May 8, 2014, a SWAT team in Halladnale Beach, Florida, snuck through the backyard of Howard Bowe, a 34-year-old landscaper who was suspected of selling small amounts of cocaine. The officers shot his dog, then busted through the back door, which led to the kitchen. Officer Michael McKenzie, who is white, came face to face with Bowe, who was black, unarmed, and in his underwear, and shot him several times with an automatic weapon. Bowe died in the hospital 11 days later, leaving behind four children.

This was the third shooting of an unarmed man in less than three years in Hallandale Beach, a veritable epidemic for a sleepy suburban town of fewer than 40,000. In January 2012, Officer Edward McGovern shot Gregory Ehlers, a 32-year-old white man who fled police after shoplifting an iPad from a Best Buy. (Last month, after a nearly four-year-long investigation, prosecutors took one day to present evidence to a grand jury. McGovern said he saw Ehlers reach toward an object—which turned out to be the iPad. The grand jury ruled the shooting to be justified.)

Then there's Eduardo Prieto, a 32-year-old who was shot in September 2012 after he was caught shoplifting at Walmart. Prieto gave back the merchandise and was detained by employees, but fled after brandishing a small pocketknife. According to a civil lawsuit filed by Prieto's family, a 9-1-1 dispatcher misinformed police that Prieto had a gun; when officers caught up to him, they shot him. His ex-wife is currently suing the police department and Walmart for wrongful death.

These controversial shootings led to a modest proposal from city leaders to put body cameras on its officers. The plan gained support after Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014, leading to national focus on police brutality and cries for more police accountability. To Hallandale Beach politicians, body cams seemed like a sensible way forward.

"With all the incidents going on around the country, I think we need ," Commissioner Bill Julian told the Sun Sentinel in April. "The nation wants the cameras. So bring it on."

Hallandale Beach Police Chief Dwayne Flournoy endorsed the plan, but his officers opposed it—so much so that they hired an outside consultant to conduct a survey of cops' opinions of body cams to let people know how they felt. Eighty-seven percent were worried that the cameras would lead to their bosses punishing them for minor infractions, while 44 percent said that they would be less willing to respond to calls if they were wearing cameras.

Despite this, Chief Flournoy wouldn't change his mind. And that's when things got ugly.

On VICE News: The Most Militarized Universities in America

In the past year, as Black Lives Matter (BLM) and other activist groups have drawn increasing attention to law enforcement misconduct, police officer unions around the country have garnered more and more headlines for supporting cops and opposing reforms. The unions naturally stick up for officers whose jobs are threatened thanks to their own errors, but they've also been known to oppose body cameras, and boycott businesses associated with anti-cop or pro-BLM sentiments. Unions have even called for a boycott on Quentin Tarantino movies after the filmmaker attended an anti-police brutality rally in Manhattan last month. The rhetoric used by these unions is heated and often over the top: Last year, after two NYPD cops were shot execution-style in Brooklyn, Pat Lynch, the head of New York's Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, said there was " blood on the hands" of Mayor Bill de Blasio's office because he didn't voice sufficient support for his police department.

It was in this climate that the Hallandale Beach police union went after the chief, dredging up the dirtiest allegations against Flournoy they could find and using them in a naked attempt at bullying. It offered a preview, perhaps, of what cop unions will be driven to do as body cams and other anti-brutality measures are proposed and adopted throughout the US.

In May, Tony Alfero, a police union attorney hired by HBPD officers, told local media that his clients believed their chief was unfit for duty because of several transgressions, the most serious of which went back to 2010. Flournoy, Alfero alleged, had been involved in two drunk driving incidents, including one in which he assaulted the cop who pulled him over. He had also allegedly gotten into a drunken brawl at a club, brought a gun to the airport, and even stalked his ex-girlfriend.

The allegations forced the city to spend taxpayer money on an investigation. If Flournoy hit a cop after getting pulled over for drunk driving, there was no record of it. But the airport mishap really had happened, as it turned out (Flournoy forgot he had a gun in his bag) and he did, indeed, stalk his girlfriend five years ago, joining her gym after they broke up and going to her child's school when she went to pick the kid up. The woman had to call the police on him to stop the harassment. No charges were filed, he was given a verbal warning from his superiors, and two years later, he was promoted to chief of police.

In the end, Flournoy didn't lose his job; body cameras are scheduled to arrive later this year and be assigned to fewer than a third of HBPD officers as a sort of pilot program. Neither Flournoy nor Alfero would comment for this story. Flournoy has a pending defamation lawsuit against Alfero.

Other incidents of police unions getting aggressive on public officials abound. In Costa Mesa, California, a police union didn't think three city councilman, including now-mayor Steve Mensinger, were doing enough for cops' retirement benefits. So the union hired two private investigators to keep an eye on them during a city-sponsored trip to Las Vegas.

"I'm sure they will be dealing with other 'developer' friends, maybe a Brown Act a doper and has moral issues," Mitch Johnson, the union's treasurer at the time, wrote in an email to one of the PIs, according to the LA Times. "I could totally see him sniffing coke a prostitute. Just a thought."

The hired dicks—former cops Christopher Lanzillo and Scott Impola—didn't catch Mensinger doing blow or paying for hookers, but they did allegedly illegally track him with a GPS device. And when Councilman Jim Righeimer, another city official the union didn't like, left a friend's bar one night in July, 2012, they called police to report a DUI. Unfortunately, the cop who pulled over Righeimer must not have been in on the plan because he quickly ascertained that the politico hadn't been drinking. And the incident led to the allegations that the Costa Mesa police union conspired to frame city officials.

The two PIs now each face multiple felony charges, including conspiracy to commit a crime of unlawful use of an electronic tracking device, false imprisonment by deceit, and conspiracy to commit a crime of falsely reporting crime.

Author Ron DeLord, a former police officer and union representative who, in 1992, led the boycott against Time Warner for releasing the Ice-T album including the track "Cop Killer," had no comment about the potentially illegal practices of some police unions to get their way, but did say that the influence of unions seems to be waning.

"Police unions had been getting what they wanted—good pay, benefits, policies they were in favor of—for a long time," DeLord, who lives in Texas, said. "Both parties wanted their endorsement, even if it went against their ideology because they didn't want to appear soft on crime. But what that means is changing."

DeLord cited both body cam legislation enacted around the country and a new Texas open-carry gun law as examples of political battles lost by police unions. If he's right and police union power is in decline, that could explain the clashes between unions and the public that have flared up in recent months.

One of these flare-ups happened a few miles west of Hallandale Beach in Pembroke Pines. It started in September, when Kenneth Davenport, a 19-year-old Arby's employee, was accused by Sergeant Jennifer Martin of denying her service. Martin claimed that when she tried to pay for her food, Davenport wouldn't run her credit card. Davenport's 21-year-old assistant manager, Angel Mirabel, then stepped in to process the payment and told Martin, "He doesn't want to serve you because you are a police officer."

After Martin filled out a report detailing the incident, it became a national news story. Davenport was lambasted on Facebook as a cop-hater, the Broward County Police Benevolent Association called for a national boycott of the restaurant chain, and the CEO of Arby's came down to Florida to personally apologize. But after Arby's conducted an investigation, they found Davenport wasn't to blame—he didn't process Martin's card because he was doing another task in the restaurant and asked Mirabal to help. And Mirabal's remark to the cop was apparently an awkward joke. He was fired, and Davenport was suspended but kept his job.

"African Americans fought against discrimination using boycotts. We're exercising out First Amendment right to do the same." –Jeff Merano

When asked if the Broward PBA maybe went a bit too far in going after Arby's and the two employees, Jeff Marano, president of the Broward Police Benevolent Association, was sarcastic: "So Arby's conducted their own internal investigation and what they came up with should be accepted, right? They investigated themselves and nobody should question them?"

He continued: "Look, police officers are being discriminated against around the country simply because of their job. African Americans fought against discrimination using boycotts. We're exercising out First Amendment right to do the same."

Drawing an analogy to the plight black Americans have faced in this country seems to be a talking point for many police union leaders.

In October, a cop went into a Providence, Rhode Island Dunkin' Donuts and ordered a cup of coffee. The cop, whose name was never released, was given back a cup with "#BlackLivesMatter" written on it. During the ensuing media hubbub, Fox News' Greta Sustern invited Lieutenant Roger Aspinall of the Providence Fraternal Order of Police on her show. During that interview, Aspinall said writing #BlackLivesMatter on a cop's coffee is akin to "an act of war."

Aspinall elaborated on those thoughts in a recent phone call.

"Our guys and gals are being attacked out there, put under a miscroscope. They're just trying to do their job and go home at the end of the day," he said. "But they're being treated like this and discriminated against simply because of the uniform they wear. If somebody doesn't get served because of their race, that's a big deal and it should be. We are getting discriminated against because of our uniform, but somehow that's OK."

When asked if some of the boycotts and protests are petty, Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, which has more than 300,000 members, also drew the racial discrimination analogy.

"It's like when civil rights leaders used their First Amendment rights to fight against discrimination," Pasco said.

Pasco went on to say that despite public and political opinion leaning towards lesser sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, he believes that the FOP, which doesn't support strong sentencing reform for drug offenses, will convince politicians to stick to their old voting habits.

"A person who gets caught with a pound of cocaine, even if it's his first arrest, is not a nonviolent criminal," he said. "The drug business is inherently violent. Do you really think a person with that kind of amount didn't do anything to be able to get it?"

There are certainly individual cops in favor of reforms supported by BLM activists and others. When Denver's police union sued the city on Wednesday over its new body cam policy, the group made clear that they generally support body cams, they just object to their being implemented without sufficient input from officers. But more and more, the role of police unions is to push back against increased scrutiny—and as the Hallandale Beach union demonstrated, they won't hesitate to go after fellow cops who stand in their way.

Follow Ray Downs on Twitter.

We Asked Some Former Gang Members for the Truth About London's Gangs

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"London in Peril from Drug Gang Turf Wars" read a headline on Sky News a couple of weeks ago. Usually when an article title implies that a major city is facing imminent doom due to anything short of an earthquake or a substantiated terror attack, I file it away in a little box in my brain marked "fear-mongering bullshit" and read no further.

However, this time curiosity got the better of me and I clicked through. The content was nothing new—"crime is out of control," "you should live in constant fear of gangs," "do not, for any reason, leave your home," etc, etc—but what did catch my eye was an accompanying map that purported to show all of the gangs in East London. These gangs all had names like "Hindle House Thugs," "E3 Bloods," and "True Tredegar Thugs," along with their own color codes.

Given that a gang is just a group of people who commit crimes together, was this report trying to imply that the majority of criminal activity in London is carried out by American-style street gangs with hip-hop-inspired names and gang colors? It didn't seem particularly plausible to me—but then again, I'm no authority on London's gangs.

This map did the rounds in numerous different major newspapers and media outlets. Several papers published extended versions, claiming to show the territory of every gang in London. Googling the gangs, most appeared to be predominantly black or Asian, and made up of teenagers. Boroughs like Havering and Bexley with fewer minorities apparently have no gangs whatsoever, so presumably have no drug-related crime or robberies either, unless they're being carried out by either lone criminals or commuters.

It seemed to me the map represented the prejudices of the compiler, which only saw a group of criminals as a gang if they modeled themselves on black American street gangs. I decided to get in touch with former London gang members to get their opinions. Here's what they had to say.

Paul

VICE: What was your involvement in gangs?
Paul: I was in a gang who called ourselves the East London Gang. We carried knives and knuckle dusters, did street robberies, and nicked safes, and other things out the back of shops. By the time we reached 18, we'd become an organized unit and were earning up to a grand a day from credit card fraud. Between the age of 18 and 21 I became the leader, but then I tried heroin, and one year later I'd lost five stone , stopped brushing my teeth, and my gang wanted nothing to do with me. I've now been clean for nine years and give talks to kids about the dangers of drugs and knives.

According to the gang map, there are entire boroughs of London that don't have any gangs. How accurate is that?
It might be true when you go further afield into rural areas outside London, but within places like Central and East London, it's a load of rubbish. In Havering, which is the borough I'm from, there were gangs 20 years ago, and the gang situation in London is worse now than it was then.

Most of the gangs on the list seem to be predominantly black and Asian. Is that how things really are?
I work with lots of kids in gangs to try to stop them from taking drugs and carrying knives, and I'd say you get a range. There's black gangs, white gangs, gangs with both black and white boys, Asian gangs—and then you've got the Eastern European gangs.

Have most of the gangs you've come across got official names and gang colors?
I think most give themselves a tongue-in-cheek name, but that's not really important. All that counts to the gang is that if there's trouble, they'll all be there.

Do you think most gangs in London are made up of teenagers?
There's involvement from older adults in terms of getting rid of stolen goods, sorting out drugs, and providing financing.

In your opinion, do articles like the ones these maps appeared in show gangs in an accurate light?
I think they actually show the situation as being less bad than it is.

"Mr. E"

What was your involvement in gangs?
Mr. E: I was in a firm that did a lot of fraud, was involved with drugs, and sent ecstasy over to Italy in bulk. I associated with football gangs as well. Some of the lads I grafted with were Millwall, and some were West Ham.

Football gangs aren't mentioned at all on the gang map. Are they still prominent in the city today?
Of course, but you won't see a lot of the stuff they do on TV, because MPs don't want their boroughs to be shown in a bad light.

According to the gang map, there are entire boroughs that don't have any gangs. Would you say that's accurate?
No, you can find gangs in every area.

Most of the gangs on the map seem to be predominantly black and Asian. How does that square up with your experiences?
In terms of drugs, most of the crews in London that I've come into contact with have been Jamaicans, but there are lots of gangs of white lads doing credit card fraud and things like that, and lots in football firms.

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Have most of the gangs you've come across had official names and gang colors?
That's mainly the young lads, and they're messing it up for themselves because they're bringing their firms on top. We didn't have a crew name, because we tried to keep under the radar. It's mostly lads at the bottom of the ladder that are into having a gang name. The people at the top live off their own reputations, so they don't need a name for their crews.

Are most gangs in London really made up of teenagers?
Nah, you get a lot of younger lads, but a lot of older ones as well.

Do you think that media articles like the ones these maps appeared in show gangs in an accurate light?
When gangs are shown in the media, it's almost like a game. Kids look at things like that and it puts a seed in their head that grows and takes them down a bad path.

Justin

What was your involvement in gangs?
Justin: I created a graffiti gang called WZ, which stood for Warriorz. We started trouble with graffiti gangs and other street gangs, using fists, knives, whatever.

There aren't any graffiti gangs on the map. Are there still violent graffiti gangs operating in London?
Yeah, there's a gang called SFL, which stands for Scum for Life, who are a graffiti gang and general street gang.

According to the map, there are entire boroughs that don't have any gangs. How accurate is that?
I think there's probably at least one gang in every borough.

Most of the gangs on the map seem to be predominantly black and Asian. How does that square up with your experiences?
We were on the move around London a lot, and came across gangs that were black, Asian, white, whatever.

Do you think that media articles like the one these maps appeared in show gangs in an accurate light?
They're just another way to sell stories and breed fear.

Sam

What was your involvement in gangs?
Sam: My gang involvement included robbery, graffiti, fighting, drugs, and theft. I chose to get out because a revelation of the purpose of my life was made clear through many spiritual experiences.

According to the map, there are entire boroughs that don't have any gangs. Would you say that's accurate?
Every area in London probably has a gang. Whether they're recognized or not is the question. Many of the recognized gangs are those who are loud in their community, and who fight and commit crime both in secret and in public to be talked about the next day.

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Most of the gangs on the map seem to be predominantly black and Asian. Does that reflect the reality of the city's gangs?
Not entirely. There are many black and Asian gangs, and gangs with mixes of both, but there are also a lot of gangs with mostly white members. Many of London's white gangs seem to be football firms, which are rarely reported by the media, probably because many of the fights are away from the community. If it's not in the media, it doesn't mean it's not happening.

Do you think it's realistic that the majority of gang-related crime in London is carried out by gangs with official names and gang colors, like the ones on the map?
Yes. But saying that, there are many unreported crimes happening every day, and a lot of these crimes are not being committed by the teen gangs we see all over London. Many of these youths lack experience in stealth gang involvement, so they're known in the community and are the most likely to get caught for crimes. There are bigger and smarter gangs who wear the right things and say the right things, but are secretly involved in gang-related activities.

Do you think the media depicts gangs in an accurate light?
The media is partly to blame for putting across the idea that gangs only come in the form of blacks and Asians, which is not true. As mentioned already, just because we see it and hear about it, it doesn't mean it's the only thing happening in our city.

Can You Still Love Your Father If He Was a High-Ranking Nazi?

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Horst von Wächter (left) and Niklas Frank (right), staring at a mass grave in Zolkiew, Ukraine. Via What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy

Niklas Frank can only remember one instance of affection from his father, Hans Frank, when he was a small boy and his father dabbed a bit of shaving cream on his nose. The rest of his childhood memories are of the war, his parents' wrecked marriage, and his father's demanding career as Hitler's personal lawyer and governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland.

Horst von Wächter's father, Otto von Wächter, was also a high-ranking Nazi politician. He had been one of Hans Frank's deputies, governor of Krakow and then Galicia under Nazi rule. But when Horst remembers his childhood, he thinks of time spent in their Austrian lakehouse and a father who he admired. It's not that Horst is a Nazi sympathizer, or Holocaust denier—he just refuses to see his father as a man who had a hand in mass murder. To him, Otto von Wächter was a decent man. A "good Nazi."

Decades later, their stories converge in a new documentary,What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy. They're brought together by Philippe Sands, an international lawyer who met Horst and Niklas while researching a book on international criminal law, and who has his own Holocaust legacy: His grandfather, a Ukrainian Jew, was the only one of his 80-person family to survive. Together, the three of them travel through Europe to confront their pasts.

This month marks the 70-year anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials, which gave an impartial judgment of the Nazi's war crimes during World War II. Hans Frank was tried and executed during the tribunal; Otto von Wächter sought refuge in the Vatican, where he later died.

The film calls into question how we can impartially judge those who are close to us and how our memories and our view of justice can be clouded by the complications of flesh and blood. We spoke to the film's director David Evans about how the film came together, the unexpected emotions that arose from it, and the way two men are dealing with their fathers' horrible pasts.

Horst von Wächter, Philippe Sands, and Niklas Frank

VICE: You've mostly directed television dramas. Why make a film like this?
David Evans: The truth is, my path into this film was an entirely personal one. Philippe had a relationship with Niklas and Horst a long time before he ever mentioned them to me. When he did mention them to me, he was literally saying, "I really can't believe the stories these guys have to say about their parents." I think he told me the thing about Nik keeping the photograph of the hanged body of his father in his pocket. He just was so obsessed with Niklas, who he knew better than Horst at that time.

Essentially, he said, "I really think we should film these guys," basically meaning for posterity. Like, someone needs to have on record what these men say about their fathers. And they're not young men, so we should do it now. It could've easily been something we picked up and put down in conversation, but it didn't happen that way. When we started filming, about two years ago, it really was just me and two other guys in a van getting out by the side of the lake in Bavaria, and Nik, Horst, and Philippe getting out of a car on the other end, and we met in the middle and started filming. We had no idea what was going to happen.

It seems clear why Niklas would want to participate in the film—he's disavowed his Nazi heritage. But why Horst?
We knew that there was a difference between Niklas and Horst. We knew that Niklas really, to an enormous extreme, trashed his father's name, in public. In 1987, he published his book , Horst says something like, "I don't really care what you think. The reason I'm on this stage is I feel it's my duty as a son to defend my father's reputation." That's the beginning of seeing that he's incredibly flinty. We always imagined that the film we were making might have its climax at that point. We thought something would happen where Nik would shout at Horst, and Philippe would present him calmly with lots of documented evidence, and Horst would crumble and weep and say, "You're right. It's terrible. I feel so guilty." We were wrong. That's just not the way Horst's character works. He's not an apologist to the Nazis or a Holocaust denier, but he's still saying it was possible that there were good men who were senior Nazis.

Did you intend for it to play like a character study, rather than a film about history or even really about Nazis?
There was no point in trying to make this a film that was mostly about the Holocaust, because the films that have already been made have been so authoritative and there's nothing we could really do to add to them. It's perfectly legitimate to assume that nobody who's coming to this film is going to be ignorant of what the Holocaust is. So that was a big decision. Is it a character study? I'm not sure. What the film is for me is about the relationship between memory, justice, and love. The way that when you think about the people you love—or think you should love—suddenly you can't have the impartiality that advocates strive for in a courtroom. There you see Philippe, a highly professional international lawyer, incapable of maintaining his legalistic disinterest. He can't help but throw himself in there and care. As soon as you start to care, you can't really look to justice in quite the same way.

As well as being this rather agonizing journey of self-examination, it's also the story of a Jewish lawyer who's also trying to capture memories and find a meaningful relationship with a lost generation that he only had this one slender connection with via his grandfather, with whom he never discussed this. So for me, is it a character study? Yeah, but it feels like a character study like Hamlet is a character study. I hope the strength of the film is to make you think about the way one's own judgment is clouded, how easy it is to judge the wrongdoings of people the further the distance is from your own circumstances.

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Philippe's own family history also plays very heavily into the film in some parts.
Yes, it does. Whenever I watch screenings of the film, I'm still struck by what, in drama terms, we'd call the "blocking"—the way the men move around each other in a space. When they're at the gravesite, it really feels to me like Horst and Niklas are magnetized to Philippe in some way, as if this man can help them find some sort of way of dealing with a shadow that otherwise eludes them. That only works because Philippe is right in there with him. As soon as you have that dispassionate voice in the calm of the dubbing studio—rather than Philippe standing there, shouting at Horst because he won't listen to him when Philippe's presenting him with these damning documents—that's where the movie lies. It's a three-way relationship. Philippe shouldn't be out of the film, telling you what to think; there are only relative values here.

What do you want viewers to take away from this film?
There is no message. My own learning process about making the documentary was really realizing that watching a film, and engaging with a film fully, is about imagination. Empathy, putting yourself in the place of other people, and feeling scenarios that, god-willing, you'll never experience. I mean, how utterly terrible to have people like these as your parents. Here, you can go along a sympathetic path to try to work out why these guys are the way they are, and that's really what a film should be.

What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy will be released in select theaters November 6.

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

I Took the 'Country Life' Test to See if I Qualify as a 'Lady'

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Would I ever Botox? Am I secretly in love with Rupert Campbell-Black, whoever that is?

Why Scaring Kids Out of Committing Crimes Doesn't Work

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Illustration via Flickr user Roy Blumenthal

America's love affair with frightening kids into obeying the law took off in earnest in 1978, when Scared Straight!, a film that follows juvenile offenders as they get a harsh preview of prison life from inmates, received the Academy Award for best documentary. The movie inspired a wave of similarly themed youth-intervention programs across the country, and as various sequels and television spinoffs remained popular throughout the 80s and 90s, criminal justice analysts began studying whether these programs' results backed up the hype.

In 2002, criminal justice and education expert Dr. Anthony Petrosino and a team of researchers conducted a comprehensive analysis of the various "scared straight" studies out there, and found that not only do these appeals fail to deter kids from breaking the law, they sometimes make young people more likely to commit crimes. While the Department of Justice no longer funds these types of programs, many localities and families around the nation continue to spend their own money terrifying young people about crime in spite of the evidence that it may cause more harm than it prevents. A scared-straight-based TV show even went on the air in 2011 amid petitions and criticism.

I spoke with Dr. Petrosino to get his take on why scared straight programs refuse to die.

VICE: What first made you skeptical about scared straight's efficacy?
Dr. Anthony Petrosino: I was skeptical because a professor of mine at Rutgers studied the original scared straight program at the Rahway State Prison in New Jersey, and he found not only that the program didn't have any positive impact, but kids who went through scared straight did a lot worse that the kids who got nothing. I had that in mind when I realized that we'd never seen a rigorous review of all the studies done on scared straight. So we synthesized Rickenhauer's experiment, along with eight others, to look across all of them and see if there was any pattern. The pattern was pretty consistent: On average, scared straight had a harmful effect on kids versus kids who didn't get it. In the studies with crime data, the kids who went through scared straight were much more likely to be arrested or brought to juvenile court than kids in the control group.

Why do you think scared straight continues to be practiced despite your research and other studies?
There's a lot of interest in a low-cost panacea. Jurisdictions that want aren't getting federal money for it, but it's so cheap to implement that doing it on their own dime isn't discouraging them at all. It also has a "common sense" appeal: A lot of people believe that if you get tougher with kids in particular, but also with adults, that you're going to deter them. The evidence for that is not all that strong, but it fits with these common-sense notions. In some jurisdictions, community support can be strong due to particular examples, like one kid being turned around. There'll be people such as parents, ministers, concerned siblings who call me and say, "Hey I brought a kid to scared straight and they turned around." That's great! There are kids who'll be helped by any intervention. You could cherry-pick any kid who did well in DARE or in boot camps. The question for policymakers is, does the program help more kids than it hurts?

At the government level, you have to look at the broader range of the population. We can't identify who would be successful in scared straight; we can't say, "Only these eight kids fit the profile of those who would be successful." There's no way to do that. It has to be a program that on aggregate has positive effects or at least isn't doing any harm. even if it's harmless, there's a cost in that there's opportunity lost—something better could be taking its place. In this case, it seems we're spending bad money after bad; we're using an intervention that's harmful, in hopes of reducing crime, but we're actually inspiring more crime.

Since many people seem to hold up these anecdotal examples as proof of Scared Straight's success, do you think there's a tendency to blame juveniles who reoffend after Scared Straight for their own behavior, rather than looking at harmful impacts of the program itself?
I could see it, in the same sense that we often times blame the victim. Right now we have a big problem with homicide in inner cities. Many people in the public associate young men who live in inner cities with risky behaviors, and racial and ethnic bias have a lot do with that. Many more young people have died in the inner city this year than at Newtown or school shootings, but the energy around solving it is much, much less; I think because of who those kids are, kids of color, and some feeling of their own culpability in it. I don't know if that translates to scared straight, but it wouldn't surprise me if some people held those views.

It reminds me of DARE—it's a great idea, bring cops into the classroom to teach a curriculum on drug abuse, and lo and behold, kids will stop using or experimenting. Studies have shown that it's hasn't had much of an impact on drug use, but despite the evidence, a lot of jurisdictions have kept DARE. In the same way I think scared straight may satisfy a feeling of, "We're doing something," rather than nothing, and it doesn't cost the jurisdiction a ton of money, and we're giving inmates a chance to redeem themselves, which is always a nice story.

Do you think the popularity of the television program reinforces this idea that SS works?
Without a doubt. The show reaches a ton more people than any journal article or report that I've done. In fact, after that show came out in 2011 there was a lot more interest in the program and a revival of this strategy.

What other forms of intervention have you found are more successful than SS?
The justice system has a lot of discretion about whether to divert or process low-level offenders. For juveniles who've done something like vandalism or burglary, maybe it's not serious enough to warrant juvenile court or facility. What we've found in our review, and what's been held up by other studies, is that diversion with services, including counseling, education, and employment, seems to be very effective. That's one strategy. Another is cognitive behavioral therapy, which attempts to restructure an offender's thinking about the distortions they hold which support their offending behavior, and has shown very positive effects.

Can you explain the psychological mechanics behind Scared Straight and why they don't work as advertised?
One theory out there is peer contagion theory: kids who are more inclined to be law abiding will be influenced in these groups by more deviant peers. Scared straight is a group intervention; kids don't go in by themselves. That's one possibility that's raised when interventions like this backfire. Other people think as kids go through scared straight, particularly the harsher forms of it where inmates are yelling at them, they don't really perceive it as a threatening outcome that's likely to happen to them. The kids themselves think they're not going to be caught, so they see people behind bars as being losers, and they may even be further emboldened or inspired to do something . But there's been no firm tests with data that shows why this sort of is wrong.

One study found that juvenile offenders have post-traumatic stress disorder at a rate comparable to Iraq War veterans. Might that explain why scared straight doesn't work, because it attempts to treat trauma with more potential trauma?
For whatever reason, and I don't know what the mechanism is, when we try to get harsher, it seems to backfire. We did a systematic review in 2010, looking at studies in which kids were either diverted from the [juvenile justice] system or officially processed through . It's uncanny that in those 27 to 29 experiments, kids who were diverted out of the system did much better if they got services versus going through the formal juvenile court process. The kids who got nothing, diverted to go home to their parents with no treatment, even did slightly better than those who went through the formal juvenile court! That's amazing, because then it's a helluva lot cheaper to just send the kid home rather than process them. That's a cost savings for juvenile justice authorities; to be able to divert more kids out instead of putting through them a formal process.

Even on the adult side, people studied the length of prison terms and found a negative impact: the people getting the longer sentences, all things being equal, are doing worse when they get out than people who get lesser sentences. There's kind of a pattern of results which I think for the most part people are feeling now; even Democrats and Republicans are coalescing around this idea that we're punishing too many people, especially nonviolent people, too harshly. The Democrats are saying it's unfair, and the Republicans are saying it's too costly. They're adult and juvenile justice reform for the first time that I can remember in my lifetime.

Follow Bill Kilby on Twitter.

All the Very British Things That Should Have Actually Been Included in the New UK Passport Design

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Man, passports are badass. Tiny little books that allow you to fly. Little passbooks into the sky and into the future. Fancy exploring another entire country? Another continent? Show a man in a hat your passport, get your bags searched, three to four sterilized fingers inside your butt, and boom: you're ready to fly. Passports: good things, imo. Good and excellent things.

Passports are changing, though, and everybody's all pissed off. Why? Basically, every five years the passport design changes, in part to keep things extremely fresh and in part to confuse forgers, and this week the new design was announced. Supposedly it's a celebration of British arts and culture, but what that means is "another goddamn picture of Shakespeare, fucking again" and only two women—Ada Lovelace and Elisabeth Scott—featured. There's the Angel of the North and the London Eye. A red telephone box. According to our passport, Britain is just a tote bag with the same three London landmarks printed on it, stamping on William Shakespeare's head, forever. Sad, old, dull images of Britain.

"What," you're asking me, "what, Joel, is more British than a red telephone box, then? Those things nobody uses for anything other than pissing in any more? Or calling up sex workers to anonymously arrange emotionless and ultimately unfulfilling intercourse? What's more British than that, then, smart-ass?"

Reader: I'm glad you asked. Plenty of things. So many things. All of these things:

A BRITISH BULLDOG DISRUPTING A JUMPERS-FOR-GOALPOSTS FOOTBALL GAME

Illustrations by Daniel Huddlestone

The most British thing is—ultimately—the concept of failure, and more specifically football failure: Our enduring sporting image is less Bobby Moore lifting the World Cup and more Gazza in tears; less Geoff Hurst spanking a fourth in off the goalpost and more Wayne Rooney stomping Ricardo Carvalho on the bollocks. But a triumphant image from the glittering world of higher level sports is too sanitary—too anodyne—for a passport cover book. What we need is the traditional British image of a dog invading a kickabout.

For what is Britain without a boy going home early because he skidded on a dog turd and got shit all up his kecks? Think about it: every ten seconds, somewhere in the UK, a boy is skidding on a dog turd and getting shit all up his kecks. And that's what football really is in this country: a slippery, mud-driven surface; a slightly flat ball that someone keeps kicking up a few times and going "this ball's flat as fuck"; jumpers for goalposts and the fattest lad begrudgingly being in goal; and, as sure as the sun follows the moon, so someone's dog will sprint onto the pitch, shit and take the football away. And then a boy will fall in that turd and have to go home early.

A SAD ENGLISH DAD FAILING TO LIGHT A BARBECUE

Listen, I know Shakespeare has a very iconic face-and-ruff combination, but I would argue that a dad trying and failing to light a barbecue—he's topless, the dad, beneath his "KISS THE COOK" apron, and he hasn't shaved his shoulders for a while—lighting six matches before giving up and dumping a load of lighter fluid on it, getting at the fucker with a lighter: that's the Britain I know, not some PUA-looking ruff-haver who writes poems as well as plays. A wasp bumbles into shot. Panic knifes through the air.

This, if anything, is what drives us out of the country and abroad: the frenzied, claws-in-the-flesh-of-it clinging to the vague gasps of the British summertime, the futility, the pathetic smell of desperation wafting over the meat and tainting the assembled mayonnaises. One failed barbecue can be enough to make you leave the country entirely and panic book an all-expenses to Spain. One failed barbecue is enough to make you feel patriotic.

A DRUNK GIRL CRYING IN AN IMMACULATE AND AWARD-WINNING WETHERSPOONS TOILET

What's more British than a drunk girl crying in an immaculate and award-winning Wetherspoons toilet? Wrong: nothing is. Is the Queen more British than a girl with clotted mascara screaming "CHRIS IS A BASTARD" while a woman in a polo shirt picks up soiled and discarded tissue paper? She is not. Is a tray of tea and scones more British than a girl trying to fish a glowstick out of a toilet bowl and accidentally dropping her iPhone in while she leans over to retrieve it? It is not. Is Helen Mirren shaking hands with a bulldog more British than a girl who pulled her Spanx over her head to piss and now needs three people to help her down and back into them while vomiting into her own hands?

No, no, no. A drunk girl crying in an immaculate and award-winning Wetherspoons toilet is the image we should project to the world, because it is truth. It is Britain.

A TEENAGER BLOWING HIS FINGERS OFF WITH A FIRECRACKER

Teens are the bleeding edge of all the culture that inevitably filters to the top—these teens, with their swegways and their Snapchat and their twerking, these teens, saying "on fleek," and getting low-level STDs—but it doesn't stop them being as dumb as a post sometimes, which is why every secondary school in Britain has, at all times, a Year 10 who blew his fingers off with a firecracker. Every single one, every single school. There is no school in the country that doesn't have one kid who just has this one long, burnt finger that looks a bit like a claw, wheeled out for assemblies around October time to warn kids not to hold firecrackers. Look me in the eye and tell me that's not more passport-appropriate than a portrait of the artist John Constable. You can't.

SOMEONE WHO IS VISIBLY DRUNK PUNCHING THEIR FIST ON A TABLE AND DEMANDING SHOTS

Honestly, they should just replace the national anthem with the sound of some dude called Terry pounding the bar and saying "shots." Imagine that at the Olympics. Queen standing solemnly to attention. Single tear rolls out of gold medal-winning Mo Farah's eye. An orchestra tunes up. And then: thump, and the crowd inhales, and goes: "Shots."

A BAG WITH A TURD IN IT FLOATING IN THE SEA

A turd in a blue bag bobbing helplessly in the frigid sea off the coast of Cleethorpes is why we have passports, why we have planes, why we have airports and why we earn money to buy holidays with: it is everything we are trying to escape, writ large across the very tiny book we are using to escape with.

Who in Britain hasn't seen a turd in a bag bobbing helplessly in the sea before and thought: I wonder if that turd is human, or dog. It is what we are. It is hardwired into our bones the same way fry-ups and liking quizzes is. It was probably, almost definitely, human.

A BULLIED ten-YEAR-OLD SOBBING ALONE AT HIS DOCTOR WHO-THEMED BIRTHDAY PARTY

People really like Doctor Who in this country, and I don't pretend to understand why—it's a man who fights monsters with a magic screwdriver, right? He goes across the galaxy telling an undulating series of sidekicks to "believe in yourself"? What's good about that?—but we've got to mark it in the passport somehow or all the nerds who like it will stage an extremely breathing difficulty-heavy sit-in at VICE HQ.

I honestly don't want to have to break a picket of dudes in suits-and-Converse and girls with Adventure Time wrist tattoos just to get to my desk and write the living fuck out of some content for eight hours before going home.

PETER ANDRE

Peter Andre, despite his status as a human Australian, is the most British celebrity there is. Name another country on Earth where Peter Andre would be considered a famous man. Name another country on Earth where Peter Andre—who last released a song you can hum 19 years ago, and has basically spent his career, as best I can tell, "existing while having a tan" ever since—would be on TV as much as he is in Britain. You can't. There isn't one. There is no country on Earth that would embrace Andre. Peter Andre is Britain.

This is because Peter Andre is beloved by mums (everyone's mum wants to fuck Peter Andre) (your mum wants to fuck Peter Andre) (Like: really get on him) and he loves his family and is very vocal about loving his family, and a lot of Britain loves their family, because that's all the hope they've got. And so you can suddenly visualize all these swathes of Britain that are extremely pro-Andre: extremely horny mums, the kind of dads who only tell their son they love them in the final gasping seconds before they die, cabbies.

What is Britain to them? Britain to them is Peter Andre cheerily walking down an aisle in Iceland, picking up a frozen pizza and saying, "Cor, that's only a pound!" Britain to them in Peter Andre picking up a 16-pack of Cornettos and going, "These will be nice treats to have in the freezer, for my kids, who I love." Britain to them is Peter Andre ripping his shirt off and saying, "Wallaby." This is it. This is the new passport design. Peter Andre 4 Prez. Peter Andre 4 King. Peter Andre 4 Passport.

Follow Joel Golby on Twitter.



VICE Vs Video Games: ‘Halo 5: Guardians’ Is an Amazing-Looking Game, but It's Not Flawless

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The digital version of Halo 5: Guardians took absolutely ages to install on my Xbox One.

While I was waiting, pacing, smoking, watching each agonizing percentage jump, I was reminded of that tingle in the balls and skin-prickling sense of excitement and anticipation that only Halo can bring. I remembered lining up drunk in the misty Ashford air for the midnight launch of Halo: Reach. Waiting up all night for GAME Aberystwyth to start selling copies of Halo 3 to grungers at the ungodly hour of 7 AM. Tearing off the cellophane and plunging red-eyed, straight into the heroic campaign after months of rumors, previews, screenshots, secrets, and lies. Hunting the truth, loving bees.

And here we are again. The big one. The system-selling space opera, 60-frames-per-second show stealer, shattering showdown between Spartans and difficult middle child in 343 Industries' triple-A trilogy returns. The most anticipated video game on Xbox One since the system launched, and now the biggest launch title in the franchise's history, has hit the shelves. You can trade money for it and hold it in your trembling, clammy hands at long, long last.

'Halo 5: Guardians,' launch trailer

But despite the skin-prickles, the hyperbole, the eights, the nines, and the overwhelming fanfare created by this latest entry in gaming's own Star Wars saga, I'm disappointed to report that Halo 5: Guardians is in fact a bit of a mixed bag.

Let's start with the good stuff.

THE VISUALS ARE SIMPLY INSANE

Halo 5 pisses its multiple frames of visual excellence into your face every single second. It really does. Prepare a nice little spot on the floor for your jaw to rest on, because from the minute the opening cutscene finishes, to the second you're pressing Y to skip the closing credits, Guardians is a dizzying sight to behold. Feel the cool millions blowing out of the screen and across your gormless face. Mumble your woahs. Rack your brains for the last time you saw anything like this before. Halo is back.

Throughout the seven-hour campaign, the success of the visuals derives from the game's giddying sense of scale, and the set pieces here have it in spades. Slide down the spine of one of the game's colossal Guardians and bring down the gargantuan Kraken with a squad of Banshees. Traverse the towering verticality of Sanghelios, and watch the Promethean weaponry come to life in your hands like never before.

Bungie: take note.

THE SOUND DESIGN IS ELECTRIFYING

Grab your best set of headphones, advise your Bake Off-loving flatmates / nagging mum / long-suffering girlfriend / insufferable toddlers that you'll be incommunicado for the next few hours, and get your ears around some of the most otherworldly and brilliantly executed sound design since Vanquish. It sounds so alive, and so alien. Battle weaponry thuds. Grenades tinkle. Grunts giggle. Lightrifles pew. It's a universe of electrifying sounds, and each and every effect is delivered with a clarity and creativity that's impossible to ignore.

Not to mention a pulsing score that's not afraid to wrench guts, race pulses, and break hearts.

THE NEW MOVESET IS AN IMPORTANT, SATISFYING ADDITION TO THE FRANCHISE

I have discovered that there are few things in life more satisfying than shoulder-barging a fleeing Grunt from behind. Or ground-pounding one so hard his teeth go straight through his little Grunt ass.

You can aim down the sights now too, as well as boost dodge, hover in the air, and clamber up onto ledges. Each of these additions feels crucial, and brings Halo more in line with modern, pacier shooters like Titanfall and the Call of Duty series. Whether or not that's a good or bad thing is largely up to you, but I approve.

THE COMBAT IS MEATIER THAN EVER

I don't sit up all night long twitching feverishly on Halo eve for the story. I come for the cunning enemies, epic set pieces and inimitable combat. Why? When it comes to the bread and butter of battle, Halo is unsurpassable. It's the cat's warm spot in front of the fireplace, the first cigarette after a couple of pints. It's like coming home.

Halo 5's combat is a veritable ballet, with each arena offering mind boggling verticality, hidden passageways, turrets, frantic scrambles for abandoned weapons, dozens of flanking options, numerous ways to surprise and gain advantage over the enemy, and a handful of truly outstanding vehicle sections. In this regard, it really does shit on Destiny, in every possible way.

Which is quite funny, when you come to think about it.

MULTIPLAYER IS TENSE, CRISP, AND INVOLVING

Guardians features a multiplayer package that ticks all the right boxes. Open up your Requisition packs and dive straight into Warzone, an expansive Battlefield-style game of conquest, with souped-up AI enemies and a can't-wait-to-tell-someone-about-that moment around every corner. Spawn a Ghost and hurtle into the enemy base, glide around picking off balcony snipers in a Wraith, or try your luck on foot. Whatever your play style, Warzone is tremendous fun.

Got your sea legs after years of being spoiled by Destiny and CoD? Halo 5's Arena is calling, and you'd better be on point, because it's hard as nails. Breakout's the standout new mode here—either capture the flag or wipe out the enemy team to score a point, one life a piece. Had a great moment when I was the lone red against two blues, managed to melee both of them as they hurtled into a corner, resulting in roars of approval from my teammates.

Seems people are pretty pissed off about the Requisition microtransactions, and while they could be seen as a sinister sign of things to come in future Halo releases, they pose little intrusion to all but the most hardened of completionists.

And now, the stuff that doesn't work quite so well.

The Warden just won't bugger off

THE WARDEN IS A CLOWNSHOE

In Halo 5, there's a boss character called the Warden. He has a big sword and a glowing weak point on his back. You fight him once, and it's pretty cool. On Heroic difficulty, he smacks you about a bit, but you eventually prevail.

Then later, you fight him again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

When he finally naffs off for good towards the end of the campaign, you'll wonder how on earth 343 got away with it.

Metal Gear Solid V and Bloodborne were released earlier this year, and featured some of the most nail-biting and innovative boss battles ever conceived. There's no excuse for this howling, tumbleweed-addled void of imagination. It's spam, and nobody should be defending it.

THE STORY IS A RAGING LOAD OF OLD BOBBINS

As I mentioned before, I don't buy Halo for the story. There's a chance you don't either. But just in case you were wondering whether Guardians would be the Halo game to renew your interest in the expansive and detailed lore, 343 have made absolutely no effort to get you up to speed.

Why's that woman's arm missing? I thought Locke and Chief were going to have a massive ruck? That's the ending? Really?

On the plus side, despite the self-serious gobbledygook coming out of the characters' mouths, the cut scenes probably set new standards for quality in video games. They're truly a sight to behold.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE in conversation with Halo franchise development director Frank O'Connor

THE AI TEAMS ARE AS USEFUL AS CHOCOLATE FIREGUARDS

Whether you're saddled with Blue Team or Osiris, one thing's clear: the AI is abundantly useless.

They're at least competent for a portion of the game, reviving where necessary, and can be roughly directed using the limited D-pad commands, but later solo battles against groups of Promethean Knights and the idiot Warden pose massive problems on higher difficulties. They're so inept you'll feel your piss simmering in your bladder.

Watch! In awe as your revive timer depletes, sending you back to the checkpoint despite Buck standing right next to you.

Marvel! As Tanaka, meaning well, runs straight towards you for a revive, and straight into the welcoming arms of a pissed-off Knight.

Fume! As you end up repeating the same sequences over and over again.

Navigate! Straight to your friends list and pull in some competent human players, pronto.

Read on Motherboard: In Russia, Halo Is Free

THERE'S WORK TO DO BEFORE 'HALO 6'

All in all, this is not a perfect package. The story's a mess, Forge is still missing, there's some insanely cheap boss fights going on in there, and unless you've got some willing mates, the solo campaign is hampered by poor AI.

But when Guardians gets it right, it gets it so right. Warzone alone will last a generation, and is an environment where some of the most epic multiplayer battles in the series' history will be waged.

The campaign has some truly spectacular moments and images that'll stay with you forever—the titular Guardians looming like ominous colossi in the pink skies, the writhing Kraken tracking you across perilous rock faces, and the sheer joy of seeing Halo in 60FPS for the first time proper.

You'll be blown away by the sheer thrill of the game's combat, the new freedom offered by the updated move set, and of course, the familiar joy of colliding with Elites is absolutely impeccable.

So. Do all of these things make Halo 5 worth waiting up for, worth braving darkened midnight high streets for? Of course they do. I'll be outside GAME Camden for Halo 6, providing it's still in business, and so will you. 343 just have to iron out the evident problems with Guardians to create the truly outstanding next-generation Halo experience we all crave and deserve.

Halo 5: Guardians is out now, currently exclusive to Xbox One

Follow Jonathan on Twitter.

Michael: Michael Fights the World's Archenemy in This Week's Comic from Stephen Maurice Graham

Everyone's a Star at StreamCon, the Convention for YouTube Sensations

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All photos by Joel Sheakoski

It's surprisingly hard to get face time with Connor Franta. His publicist seemed keen, but when it got down to scheduling an interview, she started playing hardball.

"If we can guarantee a standalone piece on just Connor, I can lock this in," she said.

Franta has over 5 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, and the videos he films from his home in Los Angeles have gotten more than 270 million views. The videos detail his life and relationships, as Franta directly addresses the camera and uses lots of stylistic jump cuts. I hadn't heard of Franta until I registered to attend StreamCon, a conference in New York City dedicated to YouTube stars and all things streaming, and received a press release from the vlogger's publicist. It was my way into the world of viral video stars: a kid who's extremely popular online, though I had absolutely no idea why.

Getting close to a YouTube star, though, is harder than connecting with a world dignitary. Franta's publicist wouldn't commit to a meeting, and she seemed to speak exclusively in buzzwords. "He's trying to put out there that he's a curator and social tastemaker," she said. "Connor wants to promote all the things he's working on because he so much more than YouTube at this point."

"Uh-huh," I said. I'd only learned who he was ten minutes before.

We live in a world where anyone can have a shot at fame. Take Jiff, an adorable Pomeranian with an Instagram following of 1.9 million. (As Jiff and his owner paraded through StreamCon, crowds mobbed; "I just want to squish it," said one enamored fan.) Bethany Mota started uploading outfit ideas and hair tutorials to YouTube in 2009, and now makes $40K a month on her videos, in addition to designing her own fashion line for Aéropostale. Hannah Hart got famous filming herself cooking while drunk; it led to a cookbook and a YouTube show with celebrity guests.Michelle Phan's videos helped launch her cosmetic empire. In almost every industry—comedy, cooking, makeup application—there's an unknown who became a breakout star. And it's all thanks to YouTube.

The game changing moment was in 2006, when Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. Google's search algorithm increased video traffic and brought a better monetization model to the video-sharing platform. By 2014, 300 hours of videos were being uploaded to YouTube every minute, with a total of 4 billion views a day. Factor into that people now having easy access to cameras on their phones and suddenly everyone has become "a creator."

Everyone can be a YouTube star—even Gandhi.

With this influx of viewership and activity, advertisers are willing to pay popular YouTube stars to endorse and feature their products in their videos. Forbes now puts out an annual list of the Top Earning YouTube Stars, most of whom earn money not only from advertising, but also from book deals, preview launches, and product lines—all stemming from their online video popularity. At the top of the list is PewDiePie, a 26-year-old Swedish comedian-slash-video game reviewer with a whopping 40 million subscribers who pulled in $12 million last year.

Viewers are the new studio bosses, and Google analytics dictate stardom. Justin Bieber, for better or worse, was discovered via his YouTube videos. So was comedian Bo Burnham, who went from making YouTube videos in his room to doing international tours and starring in his own Comedy Central special. And with the sudden fame and money comes managers, agents, and overprotective publicists, who try to mold YouTubers—many of whom are young, inexperienced, and unprepared—into something beyond the video-sharing site that made them famous.

Watch: YouTube sensation Shoenice22 Will Eat Anything for Fame

StreamCon is where some of the top YouTube stars converge and meet their fans. It's modeled similarly to VidCon, an Anaheim-based convention for YouTube celebrities, which almost 20,000 people attended this year. At StreamCon, which launched this year (attendance numbers have not been released), tween girls shriek when they spot a girl who films cupcake videos in her basement; when another viral star walks by, they collectively screech and quickly pull out their cameras in unison.

"I'm at StreamCon and I just met iJustine," said a girl on the convention floor. She had her arm outstretched and was holding her phone, selfie-style, so she could speak directly into the camera. It wasn't clear who she was talking to.

A long line careened down a corridor where fans stood waiting to meet some of their favorite stars. The top male YouTubers looked like they'd all been snatched out of a boy band. They were, for the most part, very tiny—which doesn't shock fans, who are used to watching them on iPhones, not the big screen.

With few exceptions, everyone spoke in abstract terms. Vine star Thomas Sanders, whose YouTube compilation video has gotten 15 million views, went on stage to talk about ad blockers, all the random places he gets recognized, and what's next for him. "I'm working on a lot of auditions," he said vaguely. "I really can't talk a lot about it."

Then I met Joey Graceffa. A vlogger with a massive following, Graceffa had just finished a Q&A panel where fans asked him about his life and his YouTube channel. I had managed to secure an interview with him, so after the panel, we took the VIP route to the service elevator to avoid being mobbed by the crowd.

Graceffa started his YouTube channel in 2007, back when he was in high school. At the time he never thought of YouTube as a career track; he just wanted people to enjoy the videos that he made. Then, things suddenly clicked, and three years ago, Joey's followers went from 200,000 to 2 million in a course of a year. Now, he has an entourage, including two full-time publicists.

"It put a lot of stress on me that I now had this larger audience and I felt an obligation to keep posting to the standard of the previous videos I was doing," he told me.

By "larger audience," he means his 5,304,200 YouTube subscribers, and the 627,617,254 views on all his combined videos. Besides the videos, the 24-year old has also published a memoir, In Real Life, about his journey to YouTube stardom.

We stopped with his posse for a quick on-camera interview with People. The correspondent asked about his hair, which had recently been dyed silvery lavender. (The YouTube video of him dying it has over 1 million views.)

"This is a new look for you," said the People correspondent.

"I wanted to try a new style."

Just then, the guy in charge of the People shoot stormed toward me. He had seen me scribbling notes in my notebook and was clearly upset. "There can be no reporting on this for five days!" he snarled at me. "This is for People. This is an exclusive!"

Earlier in the day, Graceffa had done a fan event with two other YouTwo stars: iJustine, who describes herself as a "lifecaster," and GloZell, a web comedienne who interviewed President Obama earlier this year. I didn't really know much about them, other than they're extremely popular in these circles. The large crowd was made up mostly of ecstatic girls, roughly ages ten to 15 years old, all of whom were armed with cell phones.

"Is anyone dressed up like their favorite YouTube star?" the moderator asked as the panel started. Numerous hands shot up.

Graceffa walked onstage to offer advice on how to be a star. "If you want to be a creator—just start," he said. Fans pulled out phones and filmed, creating content out of this talk about creating content.

"If you build it, they will come," GloZell added.

Meet WendyVainity, the Animated Queen of Weird YouTube

The YouTube stardom approach is kind like throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Who the fuck knows what makes a video suddenly go viral and hit 2 million views? Neither Graceffa, nor anyone else I spoke to at StreamCon, had a clear answer about how or why they became famous. And yet, everyone in the audience was there to learn how they could do it too.

"How many of you guys want to be creators or already are?" the moderator asked. All of the hands went up.


By the time I sat down with Graceffa for our one-on-one interview, his publicists had already given me the rundown on what I was allowed to ask him. They hovered closely while we spoke—and sure, I get that celebrities are closely reigned in by their publicists, but this was like having parents along on a first date. To scoop People, I asked Graceffa about his hair. Then I asked him about his fans.

"I call my fans psychopaths. Mainly because some of them actually are," he said with a nervous laugh. "I just had some crazy stories of some hiring private detectives, finding out where I live, and delivering me letters."

"Does that freak you out?" I asked.

"It does, yes. I don't like that."

And then, for just a second, perhaps his publicists momentarily looked away, I got a glimpse of the slightly overwhelmed kid behind the YouTube sensation.

Follow Harmon Leon on Twitter.

I Spent a Month Dating Sugar Mamas and I Wouldn’t Do It Again

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Photo via Flickr user Phil Galdys

I was lying in bed this past summer when I had the sudden urge to try something new. After reinstalling Tinder on my phone—which I removed after ruining most of my matches by spamming them with Drake lyrics—and setting up my profile, I was prompted with a choice: what was the age range of women I was interested in?

With a nonchalant slide to the right, I set the end zone at 50 and began swiping away. Eventually, I got bored, my thumb got tired, and I drifted off to sleep. The next morning, I woke up to a rumble, and another rumble, and another rumble. After opening the app, I realized that I had racked up dozens upon dozens of matches—many of whom were "mature" women—and it gave me an idea: I was going to try and get wined and dined by older women without leaving a date too early or dashing after I had my share of food/booze.

The prospect of dating a hot, mom-type figure is the fantasy of most straight guys growing up, but getting sugar momma'd is something a little different. Giving up the reigns and showing some vulnerability as a man filled with machismo is a step beyond just beating off to a video under the MILF category on Pornhub. This was full-on commitment to a different lifestyle and way of being treated. It's an experiment I needed to try to know if the real thing lived up to the hype.

The next night I set up a Craigslist posting seeking older women along with an account on a cougar dating site.

"19-year-old male going to university and working in media. I'm a pretty open book and I'm down for just about anything," I wrote in my bio, following up with some details about my appearance (not hideous) and my financial status (terrible). "I'm looking for something casual because I want to learn. Don't expect anything long-term, but don't expect a quick hit-and-run."

With a partially-blacked out shot of my face for a profile picture, I opened my account and left it open to the public. For the following month, I would go on multiple dates with women from the ages of 35-48 in Toronto. All of the women I went on dates with were pleasant but firm—some more so the latter. Here are the highlights.*

*All names have been changed.

That is some high-class eatin'. Photo via Flickr user w00kie

Tessa, age 39

Tessa was the first person to message me when I put my profile up, noting that she liked the forwardness I displayed in my bio and she admired how I was hard-working at such a young age. Like the reason anybody signs up for dating site, however, our digital conversation quickly turned to more shallow characteristics, such as how she thought my jawline was sexy and how I thought her athletic build was hot.

Since this was my first foray into the realm of dating women only slightly younger than my mom, I didn't really know what to expect and came prepared to leave if shit got weird or uncomfortable (which I was expecting might be the case). Based on the "horror" stories I had heard from friends who had gone on dates with people much older than them, occasionally matches go awry when they find out the person is super desperate to have some kind of kinky sex or treats the younger person like a fresh crop to be harvested. I didn't want to be corn.

When I arrived at the place—an Italian restaurant in a trendy part of town—10 minutes early, I was surprised to find Tessa already seated at the table with a napkin on her lap and purse neatly tucked beside. She looked stunning, too. In a way, she reminded me a lot of Gillian Anderson back in the X-Files days, who I had a giant crush on as a kid. That alone really motivated me to make this work.

When she saw me striding over, she didn't stand up. Instead, she made unbreakable eye contact with me like she wanted to know my soul. Since I am a tough staring contest opponent, I kept my gaze locked as I extended my hand and made the introductions.

"How are you?" I asked, to which she replied. "Great, great. Sit down." I followed her instructions without question and did.

One of the terms they use in the cougar community for younger guys going after older women is "cub," and although Tessa never used it in real life, she did use it frequently in our digital communications. Of course, cub is essentially just a nice way of saying that a matriarch owns you, which I knew going in. I actually looked forward to the prospect of being taken care of by an older, more successful woman. It was a flip on the typical stereotypes of male-female interaction, and I like free food, so why the hell not?

After a few minutes of small talk, the ice broke quite easily. We ending up having a long dinner ($100), a bottle of wine ($40), and spent the rest of the evening walking around the city slightly-intoxicated. Throughout the entire night, my expenses were covered. Tessa was an accountant and she made it clear that she wanted me to pay for absolutely nothing. I eventually made the argument that I had enough trouble letting her pay for the entirety of dinner, so she conceded and let me buy us coffee (approximately $4) when we stopped by a downtime diner.

When it came time for us to part, she became very forward with me. She came onto me very quickly, which I gave into without protest (obviously). For the first time in a long time, I actually had to do virtually nothing on my end of the equation. We kissed for a bit on a park bench and parted ways. Before I left, I told her that I'd be down to do it again, but later felt weird about it after I saw pictures of her kids—the father whom she separated from shortly after their birth—when she added me on Facebook. We never went out again, despite her sending me two messages asking to grab Baskin Robbins. As much as I love ice cream, awkward makeout sessions with someone old enough to be my parent was just a little too much at that point.

Photo via Flickr user Nicolas Alejandro

Angela, age 42

Shortly before I went on a date with Tessa, Angela reached out to my Craigslist ad with an email saying, "I'll buy you dinner but are you dtf? Not interested otherwise." I didn't know how to respond exactly. There was no photo of her, I didn't know who she was, and the only detail she gave was her age. I mean, I usually am DTF, but I was somewhat worried about whether I was being catfished or led on by some kind of sex-thirsty predator. In the end, I sat on it for a few weeks before coming back to it while cleaning my email. After reading it over again after my date with Tessa, I figured: fuck it, why not? With a few strokes of the keyboard, I said, "Sure. Call me." My phone rang almost immediately.

We spoke for about ten minutes before deciding to set something up. She said we should go to a coffee shop in the east end, head to a bar later, and see where the night takes us. Once again, like the last date with Tessa, Angela would pay. During the whole process of setting up the date, I made absolutely no decisions, nor did she let me. While we were on the phone, one of things she told me was that she did not ever, under any circumstance, want me to call her a cougar. If I was to refer to her by something other than "babe," it was to be "tigress" and I was to listen to her at all times.This kind of threw me off. I was used to being on the same level in my relationships, so it was pretty fucking weird being told that I had to submit to somebody else. For a slight moment, I kind of felt what almost every woman has felt for, like, thousands of years.

When we met up, Angela's outfit screamed boss: she was dressed in a black leather jacket and blue jeans with tall black boots and a low-cut white shirt. She was definitely a hot mom-type figure—kinda like a biker mom without the meth—and she was also very in control. She was so insistent on making all the decisions that, at one point in the early part of our date, she snatched my hand into a tight grip and led us to our first destination. This was an experiment and I was getting free lattes and booze, so I had little to complain about.

The entire night was mostly a blur of bar hopping, but what I do remember from it is that Angela was a very interesting woman: she told me that she got divorced from her husband—who happened to be ten years older than her—a while back, which came out of a desire to date younger men. When I asked her how many men she had gone out with before me, she said couldn't remember but that she'd been doing it pretty regularly for the past year. She also insisted we go back to her place, to which I obliged.

When we arrived at her house—a loft near the coffee shop she originally brought us to—the whole place was set up like some kind of red-light district sex den that was built solely for the purpose of seducing me. The room flowed with creamy colours, from the grey, leather couch with red, velvet pillows, to the white beads that hung in front of a door to the hallway. The room smelled great, too, like lavender and chocolate had a delicious baby. Neon sign fixtures with the words "Love" and other phrases that belong on Tumblr, which provided most of the light in her dark living room, were moody and dimly lit. A few candles sat burning on the kitchen table and an iPod was docked while playing some kind of atmospheric house music. It was basically like being in one of The Weeknd's music videos, minus the drugs and mushroom-cloud hair, and I actually kind of dug it.

As soon as I unlaced my boots and stood up, Angela pointed to me to the swagged out couch in the middle of room. Almost immediately after my ass touched the sofa, she reached for my pants and started to rub my crotch, no kissing or small talk. I was kinda weirded out—she sort of reminded me of a friend's aunt I used to know who drank a lot of V8 and was super-tanned. But I had also taken two Ativan earlier so my brain didn't really give a chemical fuck about anything at this point. In a few seconds, she scooped my pants off my legs, tore my boxers off, and began to give me head immediately. I have to note, too, that this was good head. Like, the best blowjob I've got since I woke up fucking a mattress because of getting a dream-level blowjob. Angela knew her game and she played it well.

Suddenly, she stopped and stood up. For a moment, I almost thought I did something wrong. Had I not fought back enough? I didn't understand. After a pause, she pulled her pants off, and then she tried to mount me.

This is where things broke bad. When I told her I needed to grab a condom, she tried to prevent me from reaching for it. I told her I wasn't interested in having sex without one, and she told me to stop whining. Instantly, I was no longer into it at all. Somewhat angry that I was being told by somebody what I could and couldn't do with my own body, I dropped the submissive act and gently pushed her off. We both sort of sat on the couch for a minute while I slowly put my pants back on and explained that this had gotten too weird for me. I told her she was a very nice woman and that I was super grateful for the drinks, but that this is where it ended for me and our night of escapades.

I ended up leaving $30 on the table despite her protests not to, partly because I felt bad (even though I shouldn't have, considering I have the right to decline sex), and partly because some deep-rooted sense of masculinity said I should have split the tab on the booze. On the stairs down from her place, I deleted our texts and her number. We never talked again. Some regrets!

Photo via Wikipedia

Marilyn, age 40

I met Marilyn the same day she sent a message to my profile. As a real estate agent who both lived and worked in an upscale neighbourhood, she had the bling to show for it. She picked me up outside of a north-end subway station around noon in a brand new Audi that smelled like fresh leather and expensive things. When I got in the car, she gave me a hug and greeted me with a big smile. She had a great laugh and was incredibly well-spoken. I was so comfortable, in fact, unlike my previous dates, it didn't feel like I had to ease into the situation or fake small talk. She was quite fun to be around. She even liked Drake.

Marilyn was clearly into fashion. I'm talking layering and colour coordination that even the most pretentious fashionistas would lose their shit over. It made me feel kind of underdressed, especially because I was in my regular greaser getup. Either way, Marilyn didn't seem to care as much as I did. She asked where I bought the leather jacket from, to which I replied, "Some guy in the Grand Bazaar." It was the truth and I felt no need to lie around her.

When messaging each other beforehand, we had planned to grab lunch and scope things out, to see if it was a good fit to go on further dates. I was pretty happy with that idea, especially considering she probably had as much reservations about dating a strange young man as I did dating a random older woman. We ended up choosing a cheap Thai restaurant downtown that's popular with students in the area—somewhere I thought was busy enough that we wouldn't be stared at.

Marilyn and I shot the shit for almost two hours over a few plates of spicy stir fry and crunchy egg rolls. Marilyn was a vegetarian, while I'm more of a only-eat-flesh type of person, and we ended up getting into a bit of debate about the ethics of meat-eating. We both agreed that animal slaughter is kind of fucked up, and she accepted my answer that I bear full responsibility for the poultry I consume on a daily basis. She ended the conversation by making a quip that she "eats meat...sometimes." On that note, I ordered the bill. We split it without argument. It actually felt quite normal.

After food, we parted ways and made vague plans to meet up again. It wouldn't be until the end of the summer that we did actually meet up for coffee. When I ran into her this time, things were quite different. She seemed to be a little less on edge but a little more drained. Her energy was lower, she wasn't smiling as much, and she seemed to be there out of a show of courtesy rather than to actually have fun. When I asked her how things were, she told me that her mother passed away recently and things have been rough.

We spent the rest of the evening talking and walking around the city. It was a bit of a gloomy day, both because of the rainy weather and our conversation, and we ended up at a church. It was heavy. Marilyn told me that she needed some time to herself, so I gave her a hug and we parted ways. While we never ended up meeting again, I texted her to check up on her and she said she's doing much better. She also told me that she wants to meet up soon to grab more Thai food. I told her I was totally down, even if that was a bit of a lie in order to stop her from feeling any worse than she already was from her mom dying.

Vanessa, age 48

The final woman, Vanessa, contacted me through my Craigslist ad before I pulled it down—which I did after realizing that school was coming up and I shouldn't keep going on dates with women twice my age when I would be surrounded by thousands of university girls in just a few weeks.

Vanessa messaged me with a very-detailed and highly-specific profile of herself. Aside from her height, weight, and hair colour, she also emphasized that she was of Chinese descent. When I emailed her back saying that I was interested, I also asked her why she specified her race. She told me that some men had told her to essentially fuck off once they met in person when they realized she was Asian.

As a guy who grew up around bro culture, this was depressing but unsurprising to me. Men, especially white dudes, can be absurdly offensive with their "fetishes" and choices in women. Regardless, I assured her that I legitimately did not care and that anyone who did that to her was a raging asshole. We set up a date for the day after at a Korean BBQ restaurant with plans to go and do a photoshoot by the waterfront later. (I happen to do photography and it happens to be a very useful icebreaker on dates, OK,? Please don't judge.)

When we got to the BBQ and ordered our food, I had a hard time communicating with her and it was kind of pissing me off. She spent a lot of time on her phone (it's not just a millennial thing!) and kept giving me very vague responses to my questions. Thankfully, since a Korean BBQ requires actual, y'know, real-life engagement to cook your own food and eventually eat it, she did put down her phone occasionally to throw some beef on the grill and talk to me for a minute. Strangely, every time we talked, her eyes would dart around the room, never staying locked with mine for too long (not like Tessa!), and she seemed genuinely nervous. I tried to appear as relaxed as possible to make her feel more comfortable, even depressing my posture and making my voice sound soft and angelic like a social worker does, although it was to no avail. She was not easing up.

After we left the restaurant and started walking toward the waterfront as planned, she kept checking her phone, even more frequently than before. About halfway there, I stopped and asked her if she felt OK, at which point she broke me the news: her husband (whom I didn't know existed) was asking her where she was and had suspected she was cheating on him.

Taken aback, I asked her why she didn't tell me in the first place, and she said it was because she was afraid I might not go on the date with her. Of course, she was right—I definitely wouldn't have gone on a date with somebody who was not only cheating on their husband but also putting me in potential danger of being at the other end of her partner's wrath—but I was having trouble actually giving her the whole truth considering how anxiety-ridden she already was and how she might've ended up crying in the middle of the busy street we were now about to argue in.

Instead, I told her that I found it a little bit weird and that we should pack up the date so she can go see her husband. As I learned, that was the wrong fucking choice. Vanessa blew up on me, accusing me of being shortsighted and inconsiderate of her situation. Her voice began to grow from "I can't believe you just said that" to "People are going to start staring at us with great concern really soon."

After going off for about half-a-minute, she stopped and told me that she would put her phone away from the rest of the date if I would put the whole thing behind me. At this point, I was totally uninterested and ready to decline her offer, so I just kind of stared, shook my head and sighed. I told her that I'd be glad to walk her back to her car, but that I really saw no point in continuing this anymore. She told me that she would be fine and called an Uber. Seeing this as my chance to eject the fuck out, I nodded, said goodbye and popped in my headphones for a long and relieving walk home to some Phil Collins. You can judge me for that.

What I Learned

If there's anything I pulled out of the entirety of this experience, it's that dating people way older than you is a delicate balance between challengingly exciting and really fucking uncomfortable. While it's hella awesome to have expensive dinners paid for you, someone to lead you around, and to have sex thrown at your dick, I still couldn't fully stomach the concept that the women who were providing me with all these luxuries were looking at me as freshly-legal ass.

Frankly, in terms of the actual dates themselves, I'm still undecided on whether I'm just an immature piece of shit or that some of the more cringe-worthy moments were genuinely not my fault. For example, while I found Angela's insistence on dominating me completely off-putting, you could also make the argument that I just wasn't being open-minded enough, especially considering I was supposed to be assuming the role of a sugar mama's cub. With that said, I have a hard enough time watching porn where dudes yell obscenities at the women they're fucking, and the one time an ex asked me to choke her during sex, I actually went half-limp. I guess I'm just a softie.

But would I recommend getting sugar momma'd to other dude my age? Yes. Yes, I would. Not because I can guarantee they'll be happy with the outcome—they might leave as weirded out as I was, especially after I realized how unlike porn it actually was—but I am a firm believer in learning things the hard way. In fact, I think the only thing to truly know if something's right for you is to try it, fuck it up, and then audibly make small whimpers when you relive the terrible moments of your experience over, and over, and over again (this may or not be something I actually do). Also, you'll get to kick it for a bit and get drunk for free instead of splitting the tab like most culturally-appropriate people do nowadays. How can you pass that up?

The Last Gun Store in San Francisco Just Closed

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All photos by the author

It should come as no surprise that San Francisco is pretty hostile toward guns. The city has some of the toughest gun control laws in America: Friscans are prohibited from carrying a concealed weapon; they're required to install trigger locks, or keep their gun in a safe. Even the types of bullets you can use are restricted.

In 2005, voters went so far as to approve an outright ban on handguns, which was later struck down for violating the basic relationship between local government and state law. This summer, Supervisor Mark Farrell has introduced new measures to monitor and restrict gun sales in the city. And now, the last gun store in San Francisco, High Bridge Arms, has finally closed its doors for good.

As Farrell sees it, "easy access to guns and ammunition continue to contribute to senseless violent crime here in San Francisco and across the country. Even though San Francisco has some of the toughest gun control laws on the books in the country, there is more we can do to protect the public." The new regulations, which haven't been voted on yet, would require all in-store transactions to be recorded and then turned over to the SFPD.

On its face, it sounds like a reasonable idea. The police should have access to gun sales records—and in fact, they mostly already do. If High Bridge Arms could survive the proposed 2005 handgun ban, why couldn't it deal with some redundant legislation that hadn't even been implemented yet?

To learn more, I visited the shop just before it closed. It was tucked away just off Mission Street and Caesar Chavez Blvd, in an abandoned corner of the painfully residential Bernal Heights neighborhood. The store itself was nearly barren, though there were a few straggling customers trying to get their fix before the shop closed. One guy brought his two toddlers, who were sitting on the floor, playing with a flak jacket.

Despite some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, crime in San Francisco is not only excessively high, but it's been rising. Spillover from California's murder capital, Oakland, coupled with drug addiction and mental illness fueled violence cannot be solved by a redundant ordinance. To try and understand why San Francisco can't seem to figure out it's own gun problem, I sat down with the former general manager of High Bridge arms, Steve Alcairo, just days after they closed.

VICE: How long have you been with the store?
Steve Alcairo: Let's see...I had been there since '05.

That was around when Prop H, the handgun ban, popped up, right?
Yeah, it was.

What was that like?
You know, it was kind of strange because typically the topic of politics or what have you is something we just kind of keep out of the shop. Before High Bridge, I was at Jackson Arms, and I learned that it was probably a good idea to kind of have bar-type rules, where you really didn't talk about politics and religion and things like that. But When the Prop H came out, though, I did speak to a lot of our clients and a lot of them admitted to me that they didn't even vote on it.

Watch: It's legal for a hobbyist to make a gun in the comfort of their own home, without going through a background check or registering it. VICE investigates this world of DIY guns.

Are San Francisco gun owners kind of lazy about supporting gun rights?
Yes. Absolutely. Because what you find is that most San Franciscans that actually do own them, have the attitude of live and let live. Although they disagree with any kind of ordinance or anything they try to pass on the city level, a lot of them just figure that there are enough gun out there, so it won't pass.

And then none of them vote.
Right. That was the bulk answer I got. They're just like, "You know what? I generally don't vote. I don't like the government. I don't like them sticking their hands ." But to me, I mean, that's kind of contradicting themselves because if they didn't like that, they should be keeping tabs on what the elected officials are doing at the municipal level—because if you're not paying attention, they'll pass all these bills all day long and you wouldn't know it. And you may not agree with it but it'll be too late for you to do anything about it.

On Motherboard: A History of Guns on Instagram

But in this case, the new regulations proposed by Farrell haven't gone into effect. So why close down prematurely? Were you already struggling financially?
You know, we were doing OK. We weren't really seeing that much money coming in, and historically, the summer is pretty slow, but the announcement of that idea came out and we started getting calls. Even today we know if we were submitting their information to the police department willingly like that, they would just simply shop somewhere else. A bulk of our clients have two things widely in common: They want to buy a firearm, and they're very private individuals. Some of our clients are authors, and athletes. One gave me a call and said that he wishes us well, but that he wouldn't want to be filmed in store, it would be bad for PR.

But you were already filming all the transactions anyway, right?
Well, we have a long list of use conditions in our permit to operate in the city. Part of those conditions are that if a uniformed officer, in this working capacity, ever enters the building, we are to surrender a customer's information, firearm information, what they bought, and any video surveillance. Our surveillance has a minimum of a month to have to be stored, be available to officers or inspectors of the San Francisco police department or agents thereof. So that was all there.

I see. So then why close the store?
The constant phone calls. The worst part was that one out of every five should be the one explaining. And then two, business. I wouldn't say it took a nosedive, but it made a significant impact on our cash flow, which we rely on. Because, you know, the margin of the industry, it's pretty bad.

How many guns would you sell in a month?
In a month? It would vary anywhere from 20 to 40 a month. But that's not including someone who comes in with a private transaction. So let's say you and I had met on some sort of firearm forum and you agreed to meet me at that shop to look at it, closely examine it, and if you decide you want to purchase it, we would facilitate that transaction.

How many of those would there be a month?
Almost an equal amount, 20 to 50.

Click, Print, Gun: The Inside Story of the 3D-Printed Gun Movement

So you're selling less than 100 guns a month. That doesn't sound great.
Well, there's also this state law that says you can only buy one handgun a month. Here's the funny part: If you came over to my house for a barbecue and I had like, let's say, five Colts with sequential serial numbers, you'd be like, "Wow! That's awesome! I want to buy all five of those." I can meet you at a licensed dealer and we can do a private transaction for an unlimited number of guns, and you could even go from person to person. So these ordinances are really going to kind of slow down a license holder trying to do the right thing.

That's a silly loophole. What do most San Franciscans buy? Handguns?
Yeah, totally. And I would say that easily 30 percent are women, and they all tell me the same thing: "It wasn't originally a hobby that I wanted to pick up but I feel like it's an equalizer. My neighbor got his house broken into while he was home, he's a burly man and I'm a 110-pound woman in Mission, so police response times vary." I hear stories like that. "I filed a police report against this man last month. He followed me; he assaulted me and I pepper sprayed him. Then I saw him again a block away from where I get off the bus. Just standing there. I don't know if it was a coincidence but he seemed like he was waiting, so it freaked me out. I thought I should probably get some protection. He could have followed me right to my apartment building and I wouldn't have known." We get that a lot. I got tons of stories like that from people.

Do you get hate from anti-gun activists?
You know Code Pink? with a sign saying something like, "ARMS ARE FOR HUGGING; NOT FOR KILLING!" Honestly I don't have a problem with that; they were not disrupting business coming in or out. They were being loud but not to the point where they were being disrespectful to us in any way. Now it did distract some of my staff, but I reminded everybody that they're out there exercising their right to free speech. If you go out there and tell them to move it along or do it somewhere else, we wouldn't be any better than someone telling us that they don't want our business here. I would go to war to protect the right to do what they're doing—quite literally.

So then they started tapping at the windows, hard, and waving their signs at the windows. And there was a journalist there—I don't remember who he was, I want to say he was from Mission Local or something—and when they did that, he immediately looked at us for a reaction. So I told my staff, "Do me a favor. Everybody take your guns off and go out there and give them a hug." And they did. We all did. After we gave them hugs, they stayed out for another ten or 20 minutes, and they left. I think they actually liked what we did—some of them did, but a majority of them didn't.

Read: I Went to a Smart Gun Symposium and There Were No Guns Allowed

Do you think San Franciscans in general are apathetic to gun rights or anti-gun?
You know, I would tend to think that if you want to embrace San Francisco, if you're a native or if you just moved here, I would say to embrace the idea of live and let live. If you're not imposing on me, then I don't really have a problem with it. I may not agree with it, I may not like it, but I'm not going to step on your toes or discourage you from doing what you feel is right for you. I mean, just in this last week, people were coming to the door, telling us they wished us well, that they live in the immediate area and that while they don't have an interest in firearms, they do support those who want to buy them legally.

It sounds like the anti-gun regulations primarily hurt legitimate firearm dealers.
Yeah, for people out there in the street, I mean, you know, what's changed for them? If I go to a dark corner of San Francisco where I meet a guy with all "the goods", and I've got the money, it's just a simple exchange, hoping no one gets killed in the process. The only change is that High Bridge is gone now.

So where do San Franciscans go to buy guns now?
I tell people to go to Jackson Arms in South San Francisco, which is technically San Mateo County.

Follow Jules Suzdaltsev on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: New York Is Investigating Exxon Mobil for Allegedly Lying About Climate Change

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Photo of the Exxon Valdez via NOAA on Flickr

Read: The Exxon Valdez Spill Is Still Making Fish Suffer 26 Years Later

On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office subpoenaed oil giant Exxon Mobil for allegedly lying to the public and shareholders about the dangers of climate change, as the New York Times reports.

The LA Times and Inside Climate News reported this fall that scientists at the seventh-largest publicly-traded company in the world were aware of fossil fuels' impact on global warming as early as the late 70s, and did what they could to account for it in their business practices. The New York probe will also reportedly touch on whether the company cooked climate research.

Wednesday's subpoena comes after federal investigations into the company were backed by Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Malley, along with a bunch of environmentalists who wrote an open letter to the Justice Department last week.

For his part, Kenneth P. Cohen, VP for Public Affairs at Exxon Mobil, told the Times, "We unequivocally reject the allegations that Exxon Mobil has suppressed climate-change research." A spokesperson also said that the accusations "are inaccurate distortions of ExxonMobil's nearly 40-year history of climate research that was conducted publicly in conjunction with the Department of Energy, academics and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

We Got a First Look at Anonymous' List of Alleged KKK Members

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Photo via Flickr user Vincent Diamante

Late last month, members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous announced that they would release a list of the real identities of a thousand Ku Klux Klan members on November 5. This week those members shared that list with me, and after analyzing the data and consulting with more than a dozen Klansman about its veracity, it appears that much of the list is accurate, though there are still errors, including names of people who are not affiliated with any Klan group.

The Anonymous members, who did not wish to share their real names, compiled their list after months of work infiltrating Klan social media sites posing as white nationalist sympathizers. They then spent several days culling and updating the list to eliminate as many inaccuracies as possible. Anonymous responded to requests because of my previous investigative reporting on the Klan.

Related: How a Disgraced KKK Leader Became a Key FBI Operative in a Bizarre Radioactive Ray Gun Case

Most of the more than 500 names released on Thursday afternoon are online aliases rather than real identities, and there are no phone numbers, addresses, or other personal information, according to the Anonymous members who compiled the information.

No prominent names, such as those of elected officials, are included in the list. An unrelated and discredited list falsely outed several politicians earlier this week, but though that data dump was credited to Anonymous, the group behind the list released today insists they had nothing to do with it, and that they have been guarding their information closely.

"Five people, including you and me, have seen our list. I am the only one in physical possession of this list besides you. Those working with me do not have a copy themselves," a person who asked to be identified as "West" said Wednesday.

West said that the list was compiled through "different methodologies for data collection, espionage, I guess you could call it. We did pose as racist assholes and tried to infiltrate social media accounts of KKK members and other white supremacist extremists."

Ku Klux Klan members contacted this week confirmed many names as accurate, but say that most are aliases and contend the release will not harm their organizations.

"It is definitely not going to cause people to have a mass exodus," said Frank Ancona, the Imperial Wizard—or national leader—of the Traditionalist Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who is named in the Anonymous leak, as are a number of his Klan faction's members. "I have not had one single member contact me concerned about it. It will bring some positive publicity in terms of membership."

Ancona said he has had thousands of new Twitter followers in recent days. He also said that there have been two concerted hacking attacks on his group's website in the last 24 hours.

"The KKK is part of an important cultural landscape and history in the United States," the members of Anonymous said in a statement accompanying the list. "The reality is that racism usually does NOT wear a hood but it does permeate our culture on every level. Part of the reason we have taken the hoods off of these individuals is not because of their identities, but because of what their hoods symbolize to us in our broader society."

The list is being released today to coincide with Guy Fawkes Day, which has in recent years been adopted by Anonymous as a day of anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian protests, including the "Million Mask March" in London and elsewhere.


VICE Vs Video Games: An Ode to the Dark Souls Bonfire

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The cavernous hall that stretches before you is magnificent.

A towering knight emerges from the gallery. It raises its lance one-handed above its head. An electrical charge surges from its end to its tip.

Momentarily, you allow yourself to be taken in by its beauty: its vacuous ceiling, its immotile stone pillars, its imposing shadows cutting ominous contours across its sweeping floor.

A huge, lumbering, hammer-wielding henchman lowers himself to one knee, before shifting his weight forward as he sets off in your direction. His body hunched, his head facing downward, he leads with his shoulder.

Sunlight pours in from the vast windows that asymmetrically punctuate the perimeter, lending the room a glowing orange hue, illuminating dust particles that swirl, and coil, and dance abstract shapes around the exquisite stone masonry above.

A typically orchestral boss battle theme begins to play in the background. Two health bars appear at the foot of the screen. "Dragon Slayer Ornstein" reads one. "Executioner Smough" reads the other.

Moments of reflection are few and far between in FromSoftware's Dark Souls games.

As Ornstein flops to his knees you let out an immense sigh of relief. After an hour, five attempts, five consumed humanities, a cup of coffee, a cup a tea, a piss, two cigarettes, and five incarnations of poor AI companion Knight Solaire, arguably the hardest Dark Souls boss has been defeated. "VICTORY ACHIEVED" heralds a genuine achievement; "+50,000" looks positively glorious as it sits aloft your previously meager souls count of 1,661.

And then, panic. With your shield steadfastly raised, defending your face, your body, your life, your sanity, you head for the exit. You pause at the archway of the door. You look back. You step forward. The elevator descends; you shuffle in anticipation. You spin the camera 360 degrees, checking that there are no unwelcome surprises behind you. You glance again at your souls, make sure they're still there. Yup, 51,661. That's a lot of souls. You emerge from the lift into another hallway. You look right. It's too dark—there could be monsters that way. Can't be too safe. A long corridor sprawls out to the left—you can just about see a glowing white collectable at the opposite end. There must be a bonfire down that way. You go. There isn't a bonfire down that way.

Where is the next bonfire?

You head back, retrace your steps. Shield still raised. Aha! Is that... is that it, in the corner... it is. Yes. You break into a sprint. And then this:

Phew. "Rest at bonfire" isn't even a question. Praise the sun.

Whereas 2009's Demon's Souls, the first of FromSoftware's Souls games, is the most challenging of the series so far, it doesn't have bonfires. Upon death, instead of restarting from interval checkpoints, players are forced back to the start of entire sections—whether bested by nominal foes or by end-of-zone boss battles. If this seems cruel, that's because it is.

In an otherwise fantastic game, this quite remarkable design choice willfully imposes a degree of unforgiving, unrelenting difficulty on players that's completely unnecessary, especially given how hard the rest of the game is. As a result, I've never finished Demon's Souls. Every time I've been rightly defeated by a boss that capitalized on my mistakes and poor decision making, I've fallen out with the fact that I'm constantly being punished for what I perceive as the game's shortcomings, and not my own.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's film on the mystical universe of 'Magic: The Gathering'

Introducing the bonfire in 2011's Dark Souls, then, was a mark of genius (one they've kept for the game's two sequels). Now, after I'd made an ass of dodging Quelaag's vomits of lava, or failed to out roll Moonlight Butterfly's piercing lightning beams, or completely bailed on any kind of strategy against the aforementioned formidable tag team of Ornstein and Smough, I respawned at a bonfire. So too did the enemies I'd previously put to the sword, yet these bite-sized runs of beast-slaying action, shuttling from fiery salvation to my souls-spilling bloodstain, made repeating my previously unsuccessful ventures rewarding, not frustrating.

The majority of video games nowadays incorporate auto-save systems, whereby failure is almost redundant. If you die, you're inconvenienced by a loading screen before being offered another shot: full health, full ammo. In Dark Souls, souls are farmed from fallen enemies and act as the currency that facilitates progression. Leveling up, as it were, can only be done at a bonfire. Upon being killed, you lose whatever souls you were carrying prior to death, which can only be redeemed in the immediate next life, and none beyond it. This means trekking from the last bonfire you rested at to wherever you were struck down, marked by a pool of your previous body's blood. If you die again before recovering the souls of the previous turn, however, they're gone for good.

So imagine the burden of hauling around over 50,000 souls after triumphing in the boss battle of your life. Imagine the panic. Imagine the dread. Your mind races ahead at the thought of dying before reaching the next bonfire. And then dying again before redeeming your beautiful souls. You've unwittingly moved from the couch, to the chair nearest the computer, to the corner of the coffee table. Now you're standing up in front of the telly, hopping from one foot to the next as if dying for the toilet. Perhaps you are, but that's obviously going to wait until you find this fire.

By giving us the bonfire, Dark Souls reinvented the save point. The purple crystals of Tomb Raider, the typewriters of Resident Evil, the animated question marks of Final Fantasy VII, the inns of every other 1990s JRPG: They all marked a challenge. In these games, respite was a privilege, not a right. Reflecting on your progress during these brief recesses is part of what makes that challenge worth it. Dark Souls is a game about death, one that teaches you by killing you. It shows you the ropes by handing you one. For every second of success, there's hours of failure. For every moment of joy, there's another ten of despair.

New, on Motherboard: Watch This 11-Minute 'Metroid' Fan Movie

These moments, hunched over a bonfire, are as valuable as leveling up, equipping stronger weapons, or attuning your spells. These moments make the pain and strife and struggle worthwhile. Getting to the next bonfire is like receiving a badge of honor—the reason you're able to rest here is testament to what you've previously overcome. The Dark Souls bonfire is as much a central character of any Souls game as the quirky NPCs, demonic monsters, and opulent lore.

Don't praise the sun, then, but praise the bonfire. Enjoy those rare moments of reflection. You've earned them.

Follow Joe on Twitter.

Mountain Black: Photos from the Former Yugoslavia

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These photos appear in the November Issue of VICE Magazine.

I'm in a rental car, pulling up to the border between Bosnia and Montenegro. The uniformed man in the booth squints down at me through the sweaty smoke of a cigarette that's dangling from his lower lip. My American passport turns his face sour with distaste but he stumbles on the first page and does a double take between my photo and me. "Russkaya?" he whispers with incredulity and then he's laughing like thunder. "Irina! You're one of us! Darko, come quick, a Russian." From somewhere, Darko appears, also in uniform, also with a cigarette.

They're wide-eyed and grinning like schoolboys, and saying something like, "Hey, meet our buddy, he's single." They slide open the window to reveal a third guy in uniform. "Like him?" This one seems like he had just got through an evening of getting punched in the face and drinking. "He was in a fight last night, but he's a nice guy. And he's looking for a girlfriend."

"Can I slika?" I reach for my camera. "Yes, sure, sure, slika." They sling their arms around each other, look proud, I take a photo and drive forward. A fourth, final patrol guard steps suddenly in front of the car with a wide stance and a massive gun slung across his body. He's clearly the boss. "Did you just take their photo? No photos at the border!"

"But I asked them if I could slika and they said yes."

"Of course they said yes. They are like dogs. What happens when you show a dog the meat?" I am not sure. "He will say yes," he says, steps aside and motions me onwards.

The world's biggest Balkan music festival erupts every summer in a tiny mountainous village in Serbia. I have always felt charmed and hypnotized by the absurd madness of these sounds and this August set out to put them in pictures. Approaching the village the first evening, I heard trumpets from far away, rising to the heights of joy and falling to the depths of pain. The music echoed loud among the dark mountains that have witnessed bloodshed and now seemed to sing about it.

The photographs in this portfolio were made during an ensuing road trip through the former Yugoslavia—a group of neighboring countries bound together by culture but fragmented by history and war. Perhaps, what I heard in the music, I began to see through my camera.

Ben Carson's Rap Radio Ad Is an Embarrassment for Everyone

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Ben Carson inadvertently throws up "The Roc" during the third Republican debate. Screencap via CNBC

Earlier today, Ben Carson released a radio ad for his campaign that features rapping. Over a beat that sounds like a g-funk GarageBand preset, a rapper named Aspiring Mogul dropped lyrics that only a true Republican could construe as rapping:

"Vote! / Inspire! / Vote! / Revive! / Ben Carson 2016 / Vote and support Ben Carrrrrrson / to be our next president it'll be awwwwwesome! / If you wanna get America back on track / We gotta vote Carson, matter of fact!"

The ad, which will appear on the radio in cities with large black populations such as Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, and Memphis, quickly drew criticism, both for the quality of rapping (low), as well as the balls-out cynicism—or cluelessness—it must have taken for the Carson campaign to refer to black people as "a non-traditional voting market for Republicans" who "we feel pretty strongly is ready and prepared to start working for Ben Carson" and is best reached through hip-hop, "a level they appreciate and follow."

In so many words, Carson's campaign manager Doug Watts is saying, "We want black people, who we know to enjoy rap music, to vote for Ben Carson, so if we make a campaign ad that's a rap song, black people will realize they should vote for Ben Carson."

But while Carson's white campaign manager seems perfectly happy to court the black vote through the medium of hip-hop, it doesn't seem the candidate actually respects it all that much. In an April interview with a New York R&B radio station, Carson defined hip-hop as "the aspect of modern society that pretty much dismisses anything that has to do with Jesus Christ" and claimed it was destroying the black community's faith and family values.

Aspiring Mogul—the rapper whom the Carson campaign has saddled with their hopes and fears and dreams—is an openly Republican youth minister and "race relations expert" from Savannah, Georgia. The only other song of his I could find, "The Black Republican," is also about how much Aspiring Mogul likes Ben Carson. I'm embedding it below, but only so you can look at its amazing artwork.

Between unintentionally hilarious lines like "The devil tryna kill me / But I'm pro-life, don't believe in abortion," Aspiring Mogul does manage to hit upon an essential fact about hip-hop, and that's that hip-hop as a genre is fundamentally opposed to the Republican Party.

By now, the causes of this relationship are myriad, but it largely begins with Ronald Reagan, who's popularly credited with facilitating the introduction of crack-cocaine to the hood. Think Kanye West's couplet, "How do we stop the Black Panthers? Ronald Reagan cooked up an answer," from the 2005 track "Crack Music." Or when Chuck D of Public Enemy told CNN, "Since Reagan and Bush, there's been nothing but drugs and guns in the black community."

As the years have passed and Republicans have increasingly become the de facto party of rich, old white dudes, hip-hop has reacted accordingly and started mocking the shit out of them. Consider Mac Dre's 2004 album Ronald Dregan: Dreganomics, whose cover found the late hyphy pioneer wearing comically mismatched plaid and standing in front of an American flag and a pastoral home. The title track's chorus features Dre rapping in an intentionally refined cadence, "It's only civilized for us to live our lives / Royal, spoiled, the American way! Dreganomics!"

Even more referenced than Reagan is Donald Trump, whose name in hip-hop has served as shorthand as the logical conclusion of capitalism as we know it. Raekwon referred to himself as "The black Trump" on "Incarcerated Scarfaces" from his 1995 album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx..., which found the Wu-Tang MC reimagining himself as a cocaine kingpin. In 1998, Bay Area hero E-40 put it more bluntly in "Trump Change," in which he rapped about having "Trump change, not chump change."

More recently, Mac Miller's 2011 single "Donald Trump" got over a hundred million hits on YouTube and promised to, "Take over the world when I'm on my Donald Trump shit." In 2013, Trump called Miller an "ungrateful dog" on Twitter and threatened, "I'm now going to teach you a big boy lesson about lawsuits and finance." (The pair have since made up.)

Then there's Rae Sremmurd's jubilant "Up Like Trump," whose video features a dude doing trap arms while wearing a Trump mask and which includes the lyric "FORBESLISTFORBESLISTFORBESLIST!" And the Young Thug track "Donald Trump," whose hook finds Thugger rapping, "Donald Trump, I made Forbes list this month." I could keep talking about how much rappers like talking about Donald Trump, but if I did I would never finish writing this article.

Related: The Noisey Editorial Board Is Proud to Endorse Donald Trump for Prez

In the rare instances that hip-hop has intentionally aligned itself with the Republican Party, it's always felt like a bit of an elaborate irony play. Eazy E of N.W.A. once attended a White House luncheon during the first George Bush administration, but according to the group's then-manager Jerry Heller, Eazy only went because it seemed like the most outrageous thing he could have done that day (and even if Eazy had been a card-carrying Republican, he still showed up to the luncheon stoned, according to Heller). In 2005, 50 Cent reportedly said, "I wanna meet George (W.) Bush, just shake his hand and tell him how much of me I see in him." But given that mid-2000s Fiddy relished his status as rap's arch supervillain (not to mention his 2012 endorsement of Barack Obama), he might have meant the remark as an insult.

Then there's Jay Z and Nas's "Black Republican," in which the onetime New York rivals quashed their beef over a beat that sampled "Marcia Religiosa," which was composed by Francis Ford Coppola's father Carmine Coppola and originally appeared on the soundtrack to The Godfather Part III. Even before the two rappers spit a single bar, the implication is clear: In hip-hop, being a Republican is the same thing as being an actual gangster who kills people.

One of the few times a rapper seems to have wholeheartedly supported a Republican is in Baltimore rapper King Los's 2010 track "Next Black President," in which the erstwhile Bad Boy affiliate rapped, "Verbally I'm Ben Carson / Y'all duplicate the wheel, I reinvent awesome." Given its title (and the presence of the same "Carson/awesome" rhyme formulation employed by Aspiring Mogul), it's kind of shocking to realize the song came out in 2010.

The GOP, meanwhile, seems to view hip-hop as a curio, a talking point to hit when trying to establish some much-needed credibility with "non-traditional Republican voters." In 2013, Stan Veuger, a blogger for the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, wrote an article trying to reframe gangster rap tropes as extensions of conservative ideals. Needless to say, Veuger's goober-y claims—like saying Em and Dre's "Guilty Conscience" was a "morality play"—didn't go over well among humans with brains and ears.

Meanwhile, whenever Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubiowants to adjust the settings on his human suit to "young and hip," he tends to invoke hip-hop. When a GQ interviewer asked the Florida Senator to name his favorite Afrika Bambaataa track, he froze. Rather than name, say, "Planet Rock" or "Renegades of Funk," Rubio answered, "All the normal ones." He also offered such cutting commentary on hip-hop culture as, "You know, many people say Nicki Minaj is a rapper, but she's also a singer," and "There's no message for , compared to like an Eminem." This summer on Fox News, Rubio declared his allegiance to the Wu-Tang Clan, only to be unable to name a single member (I don't think Raekwon would mind, really, as we've already established he's on Team Trump).

It's a testament to the total cluelessness of the GOP that its politicians have misinterpreted hip-hop's simultaneous distrust and ironic appropriation of their party as nuggets of support, and somehow decided that they can cultivate that support simply by establishing that they are aware that hip-hop is a thing that people seem to like.

Even still, maybe Carson's strategy will work. Kanye West has gone on record as saying, "As soon as I heard Carson speak, I tried for three weeks to get on the phone with him. I was like, 'This is the most brilliant guy.'"

Then again, Yeezy might just be doing research for his own campaign.

Follow Drew on Twitter.


We Asked a Former Baggage Handler If an Airline Employee Could Sneak a Bomb on a Plane

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Photo via Flickr user Christopher Sessums

On Saturday, Metrojet Flight 9268 exploded in the sky over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. Shortly after, ISIS, who has a presence in the area, began taking credit for the Russian flight's demise and the 224 lives lost as a result. Though no official cause for the crash has been released, both US and UK officials believe the explosion may have come from a bomb placed on the plane before takeoff. As reported earlier today, all flights between the UK and Sharm El-Sheikh, the airport from which the flight took off, have been canceled until British investigators evaluate security measures there.

Metrojet is an extremely tiny airline, with only six planes in their whole fleet. And according to flightradar24.com, a flight tracking service available to the public, the recent flight history of 9268 shows it sat at Sharm el-Sheikh for several hours before being reloaded and sent back out—arriving at the airport on the afternoon of October 30 and heading out the next day. Special attention is being paid to airport and airline employees who may have had access to the plane before takeoff, but how likely is it that someone from the runway staff or plane crew could successfully plant a bomb on a plane?

We reached out to a former ramp agent, Kevin Brosky, who worked at Philadelphia International Airport for two different airlines between 2011 and 2015. While there his tasks included dealing with bags, freight, and marshalling planes in and out of the gates. We asked him how much of this speculation is rooted in reality.

VICE: How thorough was security protocol when you worked at Philadelphia International?
Kevin Brosky: Well, I can't speak for security screenings in other countries for ramp personnel, but I can tell you about PHL, which is probably very similar to most other US airports. Firstly to become a ramp agent, you need to pass a background check in order to be approved for an airport badge (which allows you to swipe in and out of secure areas, such as the ramp/tarmac, baggage areas, etc.). You need that badge on you at all times, visibly displayed, and the airport is pretty stringent about policing this.

However, ramp personnel do not go through TSA screening to come into work. Upstairs terminal workers do, but their badges don't grant access to the same areas. Ramp workers are already cleared to be in the secured areas of the airport, so the badge is all they need. I do remember random screenings by TSA, checking all ramp employees' bags, coming through the doors onto the ramp, on certain days, but these were rather few and far between. So most days, in essence, ramp personnel could actually bring whatever they wanted with them to work.

For someone who worked in your position at an airport, how possible would it be for them to do harm to a flight?
Most flights worked throughout the day are "turn flights," meaning the plane comes in from one destination to the gate, those passengers and bags come off, and it's quickly turned for another outbound flight, usually within an hour's time. If the inbound flight was behind schedule, the turnaround times can be much shorter. So it's a very time-sensitive operation.

Another point is that ramp employees work together on a crew of people to handle each flight. These range from about three to seven people, on average. These teams work very closely together to handle the loads going on the flight, and there are multiple sets of eyes on every item going on and off the plane. Every piece of baggage and freight needs a bar code tag, which is scanned. There is a lead agent to make sure every single piece is accounted for, as weight and balance is very important on every flight.

Beyond that, there is always someone on the crew doing a final walk-around, inspecting all accessible areas of the plane. So, would it be possible for a ramp agent to plant something malicious on a flight? Definitely. Is it a realistic scenario? Probably not, in my experience. That person would have to be extremely sneaky about it and get past a bunch of people's eyes.

Anything you saw while working at the airport that was particularly distressing? Like, that made you think, Bad people could do bad things because of...
Delta, for example, no longer hires part-time employees and rarely promotes existing employees to full-time. Instead, they've created a new class of employee, which they call Ready Reserve. They say it allows for flexible scheduling, with access to flight benefits and is a "win-win" for everybody. Well, at Philadelphia International, hours were not at all "flexible," and in fact, with this somehow-legal program, the company caps the number of hours an employee can work for the year in order to avoid paying any real benefits. In other words, unless you're just looking for a very supplemental job and the flight benefits, it's a scam. Airlines do not want career people anymore.

That's no good.
Another thing they've started doing is just simply outsourcing smaller stations and contracting the work out to other companies, who pay basically minimum wage. Philly International is always in danger of this for these two airlines. The last one I worked for has laid off so many employees at smaller stations over the past few years. These new employees are paid terribly, with no benefits, and really have no loyalty to the parent company, quite frankly. They just don't do as thorough a job, and why should they?

When I started working at the airport in 2011, I was routinely working on crews of six or so people to handle flights, which was great. Over my last few years there, and after transferring airlines, I saw that number get down to about three people, which is basically the bare minimum. The natural result of having less people working a flight is that the safety of employees suffers, and also, there are less eyes on the operation, which is key in preventing incidents. It's a distressing trend and is maybe another variable to consider.

Flight tracking info for this particular flight shows it spent the night at Sharm, so it doesn't fit the "turn flight" scenario you described earlier. Could that play into this at all?
Ramp crews, at least in the U.S., are supposed to do a security sweep of a plane that's been sitting there for longer than a certain amount of time, and on any overnighting flight, before loading. But I'm not sure what the procedures for this would be over there. In any case, yes, it's possible something could have been placed on this plane by someone who had access to the secured area of the airport, and it's also possible the ramp crew for the outbound flight wouldn't have noticed it.

Metrojet flight 9268 was a charter flight. What's the significance of that, if any?
For our purposes, the airlines I worked for, it was basically like a separately ordered flight, outside of our regular flight schedule. Like we would sometimes work charter flights for sports teams traveling in and out of Philly. And these would be handled in a remote ramp location (airports have these areas for non-commercial flights), rather than at the passenger gates. So in that case, the TSA screening process was also done remotely, though I don't have much insight into how that went. I think the bigger point is that the previous flight was a RON (remain overnight) flight, so that means the plane was most definitely sitting somewhere, unattended, for a decent amount of time.

Follow Brian on Twitter.

The VICE Morning Bulletin

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A demonstrator in London in an Anonymous mask (Photo by Chris Bethell)

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

  • Revealed: America's Most Militarized Universities
    VICE News has analyzed and ranked the 100 most militarized universities in the country. These schools produce the most students employed by the Intelligence Community, have the closest military ties, and profit the most from American wars overseas. —VICE News
  • Exxon Mobil Investigated Over Climate Change
    The state of New York is investigating whether Exxon Mobil lied to the public about the risk of climate change. The investigation will focus on whether the energy giant deliberately clouded the science and hid known risks from investors. —The Washington Post
  • Anonymous Share KKK List
    The coalition of hackers shared details of around 1,000 alleged Ku Klux Klan members and sympathizers online. A list of alleged high-profile KKK members published earlier in the week looks to have been fake. —BBC News
  • Goodfellas Heist Case Nears End
    A New York City jury is set to hear closing arguments today at the trial of a gangster accused of planning a $6 million heist retold in the movie Goodfellas. Vincent Asaro has pleaded not guilty to the robbery at Kennedy Airport. —ABC News

International News

  • London and Moscow at Odds
    British Prime Minister David Cameron said it was "more likely than not" that a bomb brought down the Russian jetliner. But Vladimir Putin told Cameron the cause of the crash should be determined only by the official Russian and Egyptian investigation. —Reuters
  • Israeli Comms Boss Overshares on Facebook
    Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu will review the appointment of a new communications chief because of his old Facebook comments accusing President Obama of anti-Semitism. Ran Baratz also described John Kerry as having a "mental age" of 12. —The New York Times
  • Dam Bursts in Brazil
    A dam burst at an iron ore mine in southeastern Brazil, flooding a small town nearby. At least one person has been killed and an unknown number are missing, with rescue teams searching for bodies. —Bloomberg
  • Romania's Outgoing PM in Court
    Romania's former prime minister, who resigned Wednesday, is appearing at the country's high court today. Victor Ponta is on trial for tax evasion, money-laundering, conflict of interest, and making false statements. —AP

(Screen shot via "Hotline Bling" music video)

Everything Else

  • NASA Explains How Mars Turned Dry
    Mars was once a warm, wet planet. New findings from NASA's MAVEN spacecraft show how solar winds stripped ions from the Martian atmosphere and left it bare. —CNN
  • BlackBerry Reboots
    Can Android revive the fallen smartphone king? The new BlackBerry Priv smartphone goes on sale today and will use a Google operating system. —The Verge
  • Drake Loves Strippers, Strippers Love Drake
    Broadly spoke to strippers about the mutual adoration they enjoy with the "Hotline Bling" rapper. "If Drake didn't have strippers, what would he have?" asks Dae from Atlanta. —Broadly
  • Cleveland's Recovery
    The lessons the city has learned about rape prevention and victim engagement since the murders of the Cleveland Strangler. —VICE

Done with reading for this morning? That's fine—watch the final part in our series on the Cleveland Strangler, 'The Cleveland Strangler Is on Death Row, but His Victims' Families Still Suffer'.

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