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Life Lessons from a Cynical Pawnbroker

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Michael Smith. All photos by the author

There is a chess set made of whale teeth in Michael Smith's front window. It was carved by a farmer from Mount Barker, South Australia, he says. Behind the counter, he's got a bass guitar, but he says it's crap. Over the last few months he's gone through three limited edition Gibsons and a Les Paul 50 anniversary edition which he sold for $7,000 to a lawyer.

Smith and Sinclair is the oldest independent pawnshop in Perth, Australia, and Smith, 46, is quite possibly the world's most cynical pawnbroker. About 18 months ago, he officially took over from his father, who had also taken it over from his father. The fittings haven't changed since Smith's grandfather, a watchmaker, opened a store after WWII and the business has outlived three buildings since.

The shop is mostly a jeweler, but Smith says the pawnbroker sign out front is a glowing beacon to the city's "scumbags." On any given day, he wrestles with the best and worst Perth has to offer and it gives him a special kind of wisdom he's happy to share.

On Perth: "Great lifestyle. Mean city. Never used to be that way, but it probably is now. Just breathing in Perth will cost you a fortune."

On business: "I don't like avoidable hassles."

On hassles: "Stand firm. Tell them to get fucked, piss off, get out."

On people: "Everyone's someone else. Everyone's telling a story."

On wedding rings and divorce: "Gold is gold. Diamond is diamond. But the kids, they get all sold up in the romance."

On living: "There are a million different ways to live a life."

On school reunions: "Most people are happy living tiny lives."

Smith's father and uncle when they first introduced computers. It was so strange it made the paper.

In exchange for buying him a beer, he tells me how he got started in the family business when he got kicked out of school because he spent his time surfing instead of staring at books. When he failed his Year 11 exams, the principal chewed him out and told him not to come back. After that he went to work in his uncle's shop in Fremantle, back when it was still a "dirty, port harbor town" full of "wharfies and junkies and bogans." As he explains, "for a 16-year-old suburban boy, I was in good company."

That was 1985 and a golden age for the city's pawnbrokers. There were "60, 70 guys" between Fremantle and Perth looking to make a dollar buying low and selling high, he says. Among them were the two guys who started Cash Converters; Smith still remembers them "sniffing around." A little later, they opened several stores across the city and went global, making them the most internationally recognizable West Australian export next to Gina Rinehart.

Smith is full of war stories from his time behind the counter. His store has been robbed once, after hours. He's dragged passed-out junkies from his doorway and watched as people tried to lift his jewelry in front of him. Once a woman attempted a snatch-and-run on two rings Smith had been showing her. She was quick, but he was quicker. Before she could make it out of the store, he had hit the remote locks and watched, laughing, as she struggled with the door. "I wish I still had the CCTV footage," he says.

It happens about once a week, someone walks in with stolen jewelry and a story about how they inherited it from their aunt or uncle.

Then there's the regular check-ups by cops. "We had this one a few months back," he says. "A real attitude on him and he thought all pawnbrokers are scum. So I said to him call coppers are bent. He was stunned I put it back on him.

"Every now and then you need to tell people to fuck off."

And it happens about once a week, usually when someone walks in with stolen goods and a story about how they inherited it from their aunt or uncle. It might be a ring, a necklace, or a nice watch, but it doesn't matter, because the story always changes and Smith won't touch it. Regulations cover every aspect of the industry and Smith's family have been in business for over 60 years because they know exactly what a thing is worth. Someone else's watch is worthless.

Michael Smith. The doctor had cut away "a bit of something" from his ear earlier that day.

"They think they're actually telling you something new," he says. "But I've lived a life. I think the way these scumbags think. They think they're being original, but the 20-year-old dumb-shit junkies now are no different to those 30-years-ago."

People have all kinds of reasons to pawn their formerly treasured possessions. Smith told me about a once-wealthy socialite who needed a loan to fly business class to keep face with her friends and a mother who talked about her kids while she borrowed money to gamble with. Then there was the young guy in the flashy suit who had just developed a taste for the substances and was trying to pawn the family jewelry.

Then there are surprises, like Smith's richest customer, who wears clothes full of holes and smells like an alleyway, or the hopeless, 50-year-old, street-sleeping junkie who actually managed to turn his life around.

From his shop window, Smith looks out onto Perth's street and watches it walk right in through his front door. Sometimes its whales' teeth or ivory and sometimes it's trouble. Very rarely, it comes in wanting a little bit of wisdom, but when it does, that's something Michael Smith gives for free.

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Does Gentrification Really Make Neighborhoods Safer?

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An undercover police officer buying crack off a dealer, used here to illustrate "CRIME". Photo via Inside the Secret World of a British Undercover Drugs Cop

Gentrification has come to be known by a number of names. There are those who see it as tantamount to social cleansing, with the poor being shunted out of inner-city areas so the rich can move in. Then there are others, who think of this process as "regeneration," in which kindly local governments sort out a rundown area by demolishing all the old, actually affordable housing so developers can coax in more affluent people with the kind of "affordable" apartments that come with a Starbucks in the lobby.

Given the vast range of issues involved in gentrification, it's little wonder there are various perspectives at play—and there are undoubtedly good arguments on both sides of the debate. However, there are some pro-gentrification points I'm not sure I buy, one of which was brought up by Architects for Social Housing founder Geraldine Dening during a debate in Brixton, London, last week. She pointed out that the idea that sink estates foster crime and need to be demolished to make an area safer is one of the most common justifications of gentrification.

This idea—that family-bankrolled fashion students and artisanal coffee roasters moving to Brixton and Peckham somehow transformed them into crime-free paradises—doesn't quite add up to me; the rich and poor living cheek-by-jowl is surely a catalyst for crime, rather than a cure.

I was curious to see what the actual impact of gentrification is upon an area's crime rate, so I got in touch with a few academics and some criminals from three different inner-city areas that have been gentrified in recent years, because who better to approach to explain the true effects on crime than the perpetrators themselves?

Colin Blaney standing in front of Media City, Salford

The first person I spoke to was Colin Blaney, a former career criminal who lived in Central Salford, Manchester, while its upmarket Media City was in development. "Central Salford is on the brink of greatness," read a bold statement on the website of the company responsible for its construction redevelopment. According to Colin, this promised "greatness" has so far failed to materialize.

"I did a report on the Media City for People's Voice Media enjoyed targeting the media types. There was quite a lot of car crime and muggings, but the security have got it boxed off now. I wouldn't say the crime rate has improved, though. It went up for a while, then leveled off again."

To check if this tallied up with the latest research on the effects of gentrification, I got in touch with Professor David Kirk of Oxford University, who has studied the effects of neighborhood change on modern cities.

"One prominent theory of crime is social disorganization theory," he told me. "It emphasizes how instability and population turnover in neighborhoods leads to increases in crime. The idea is that, despite the attention we give to the role of police, one of the best ways to control crime in neighborhoods is through the informal actions of residents. Gentrifying neighborhoods where there is population turnover are characterized by a fragmentation of neighborhood social networks, so at least in the short term, there's instability, lower levels of informal social control and more crime."

This was in line with what Colin had said. But did it also hold true for drugs? Dealing is a crime I figured would probably decrease in gentrified spots because, statistically, people living in deprived areas are more likely to be frequent drug users. That's not to say well-off people don't take drugs—they definitely do; they're just less likely to be arrested for it than those in lower socio-economic groups—but according to studies they do so less often, and therefore won't be putting the call in nearly as much.

To find out, I went to see a guy called Joe who used to sell coke to some of my friends while they were living in the Hyde Park area of Leeds. Hyde Park has changed considerably over the past 20 years; in 1995 there were riots in the area, prompted—some suggested at the time—by police raiding the homes of local gangsters in search of drugs and weapons. Since then, it's become the most popular area of the city for student housing, with rising rents leading to complaints that people on low incomes are being squeezed out.

According to Joe, although the nature of drug dealing in Hyde Park changed when it started to become more upmarket, the overall level remained fairly similar. "You don't see as many junkies and scruffy bagheads here now, but there's more people after MDMA and ketamine, and sometimes GHB and weird shit I've never heard of," he told me. "You've got to be a bit more careful now, though, 'cause the police are more on it. It just means you change the way you work, though. It doesn't mean that anyone's packed their graft in or anything like that."

It seemed that what Joe was saying is that the influx of more affluent residents—and therefore more attention paid by police—had simply forced drug dealers in the area to become more covert, rather than stopping altogether. Again, this seems to tally with academic research on the topic: between 1999 and 2002, Professor Ric Curtis of the City University of New York studied the changing nature of drug dealing in Manhattan's Lower East Side. He found that dealing was moving indoors and drug peddlers were becoming less violent.

It was around that kind of time that the boutiques and bike shops started taking over the Lower East Side, so I got in touch with Professor Curtis to ask if he thought the changes he'd seen were down to gentrification.

"I think it's fair to say that we did see a shift towards indoor dealing in gentrifying neighborhoods—not in an absolute sense, but rather the poorer neighborhoods continued to feature other forms of dealing, while gentrifying neighborhoods didn't," he told me. In other words: dealers in places that were being gentrified had to make more of an effort to conceal their activities.

At this point, all evidence seemed to suggest that the "regeneration of an area" only changes it at a surface level; that the ways crimes are committed might morph slightly—and that criminals might be forced to work more under the radar of police and the community—but that just as much nefarious shit goes on. Still, I had one more criminal type to talk to before I came to any kind of solid conclusion.

The White Cube gallery in Bermondsey, for many a symbol of the gentrification of the area. Photo by Matt Brown via

A couple of years ago, one of the ways I made a living was by ghost-writing memoirs for former criminals. There was a relatively high demand for them until every crim and his nan started writing books, and the market became saturated. During that period I was approached by a guy from Bermondsey, South London—who I'll call "Derek"—who wanted me to help him put together an autobiography detailing his lengthy history of doing naughty stuff. Shortly after getting in contact, he changed his mind and decided that writing about his crimes would be too helpful to police. However, fortunately he was more up for chatting about crime in Bermondsey in general terms, and agreed to a talk on the condition that I didn't use his real name and didn't ask him anything too specific about his crimes.

Stepping out of Bermondsey subway station, I immediately spotted a guy in a Polo vest and a girl with a distinctly Godalming accent. Who knows—maybe they were Bermondsey born and bred. But they didn't immediately appear to have much in common with the locals I'd met the last time I was in the area, a little under ten years ago.

"You would have never seen those kinds of people on the manor back in the day," Derek told me. "It's funny, because most of the area's still a bit of a dive. There's two streets that I'd say have really been gentrified, and that's Bermondsey Street, where all the arty places are, and Maltby Street, which is a posh market street with lots of posh food. Bermondsey Street's had no effect on crime in the rest of Bermondsey; it's its own separate area, in a little bubble. Maltby Street seems to get a lot of foreigners there, which, to be honest, doesn't go down too well here. Every now and again one of them gets taxed. As a whole, I'd say there's still the same amount of crime, but it's definitely changed here. There's less violence, but probably more muggings 'cause no one had anything worth taking in the Bermondsey of old. There's still a lot of older faces doing what they do, though, and blaggers and villains. That's Bermondsey for you, and always will be."

Related: Watch 'Life as a Young, Indigenous, A-Class Offender in Australia'

So one of the criminals thought gentrification had no long-term effect on crime, and the other two thought that it changed the nature of the illegal acts that were being committed, but not the amount. So it would seem that this common assumption about gentrification—that demolishing estates and pumping money into an area solves all its problems—doesn't quite hold up.

"If we're worried about poorer areas, hotspots of criminal activity and other social problems, then the question we need to ask isn't, 'How do we have more gentrification?'" said urban studies and planning expert Rowland Atkinson. "The need is to see reductions in inequality, improvements in the fabric of our cities, investments in community, and greater opportunities channeled towards those most excluded and at risk of drifting into criminal careers."

A complex problem needs a complex solution, and demolishing estates and relocating families is not that. If councils and developers are to continue using the eradication of crime as justification for their actions, perhaps they should think about ways they can actually introduce positive change to an area, rather than flipping the land for the highest profit and washing their hands of the consequences.

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Meff, by John Doran: The First Step Toward Getting 'Fight Club Fit' Is Simple, but Incredibly Difficult

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The author doing a reading of his book, 'Jolly Lad.' Photo by Natasha Bright

My name is John Doran and I write about music. The young bucks who run VICE's UK website thought it would be amusing to employ a 44-year-old who wants to get "Fight Club fit" before his 45th birthday.

In case you were wondering or simply too lazy to use urban dictionary, "meff" is Scouse/Woollyback slang for tramp (meff = meths = methylated spirits). It also means someone who looks odd; someone who doesn't fit in. As in, "Your Adidas Samba are boss la, look at that meff Doran, he can't even afford Dunlop Green Flash. Chin him and grab his wallet."

MEFF 4: WE HAVE DRUNK OUR SUMMERS AWAY

Boing! Boing! Boing! Boing! BOINGBOINGBOINGBOINGBOING!

"Daddy, why are you so boingy?"

Wait up... let's roll back 90 seconds.

My son roars into the room and launches himself through the air at me like a rocket-powered ninja in Minion socks.

"What's this?" KNOCK KNOCK

"It's my cranium... the top part of my skull."

"Cranium. Cranium. Cranium. What's this?" KERPOW

"Ouch. That's my jaw. Well, actually, strictly speaking it's my mandible because..."

"What's this?" BASH BASH

"Oooof. That's my sternum. It holds all of my ribs in place."

"Do your ribs protect your heart and your lungs?"

"Yes."

"And... WHAT'S THIS?!" Boing! Boing! Boing! Boing!

Maria is standing in the doorway laughing: "That is daddy's belly."

"BOINGBOINGBOINGBOING! Daddy, why are you so boingy?"

I try to muster up some manliness and say: "Well, son, the funny thing about daddy's belly is that it's a symbol for how much loves and respects the modern cultural landscape of the Netherlands."

A few days before this I am walking out of the "nothing to declare" exit from the security zone of Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam towards a high speed, double decker train bound for Utrecht. I walk past a massed choir of Miffy dolls standing behind the glass in a large shop dedicated solely to the cute little Dutch rabbit. There are two giant Miffys standing sentry either side of the door. From paws to ears they must be seven-foot-tall each.

I'm running late but I don't care. At Gatwick, takeoff was delayed when three stern-looking security guards came aboard and frog-marched a young man off the flight. This well-to-do bro had a box fresh red baseball cap with bib pointing backwards, massive wallet chain, an expensive tan, and one of those ear piercings that leaves a circular hole in your earlobe. His 12 or so mates, who had been whooping and braying at each other, immediately sank into sullen silence and everyone else on the plane was left to contemplate their aggressively dissonant miasma of expensive but violently clashing colognes. An agitated Dutch man leapt up and shouted: "Please take his suitcase as well!" One of the security guards came back onto the plane to collect his Samsonite metal hand luggage and I heard several people exhale audibly with relief. I sank back into my chair, feeling the throb of 180 creased foreheads pulsating with anxiety all around me and 180 pairs of lips silently mouthing the words: "Paris! Paris! Paris!" I reached for my strip of diazepam, took three out and popped them in my mouth; ah, you sweet little yellow tablets and the temporary but blissful holiday away from the idiocy of oneself that you afford.

I was fast asleep before the plane leveled out at altitude and the seatbelt light switched off with a ping.

And now I am flowing like an azure rivulet towards an azure sea. Seeking the path of least resistance all the way to my hotel room in Utrecht, flowing past a shop full of Miffys.

Utrecht may be the birthplace of the rabbit's creator Dick Bruna and home of the world's premier Miffy museum (aggravatingly closed for renovation this weekend), but I am here for different reasons. Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson of my favorite metal band SunnO))) have asked me to come and do a reading from my book Jolly Lad as part of their line up at the amazing Le Guess Who? festival. It's put me in the weird and humbling position of being on the same bill as the French prog rock titans Magma, the sui generis genius Annette Peacock, the amazing Circuit Des Yeux, and disturbing Odinic death metal band, Bolzer.

It is pretty much a decade since I first met O'Malley face to face in the foyer of a Holiday Inn on Camden Lock when I was interviewing him and Wata from Boris about the collaborative Altar LP. The intense American kicked my ass in the interview because I'd been drinking and hadn't really done much in the way of planning. Shamefully, it wasn't the last time I turned up drunk to conduct an interview (my sincerest apologies Gang of Four, my sincerest apologies White Denim). It was, however, the last time that I ever decided not to do any research and just "wing it" instead.

At the end of my allotted 45 minutes I asked the pair a nebulous question about doom metal existing in other, non-heavy metal forms. Wata answered that Dick Bruna was a doom cartoonist because he usually spent a full day drawing one single frame of the rabbit, spending hours deliberating over the exact shade of red to paint her dress.

The older you get, the more you realize that everything is connected but the less able you are to synthesize any advantage out of this realization.

My reading flows like a dream. It is somewhere in the region of my 60th show of 2015 and a great way to round off book activity for the year. I talk about alcoholism, hallucinating buses full of vampires, and watching the Red Arrows perform aerobatics when I was six years old, over some musique concrete that my pal Andy Votel has made for me. I'm supporting the hypnotically brilliant Marissa Nadler in a packed LE:EN venue on the edge of town. In an alternate—better—universe, Nic Pizzolatto went straight from True Detective season one to directing a film adaptation of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and used Nadler's music as the soundtrack, redolent as it is of grown-over ancient pathways, rusted boxcars on long since abandoned railway sidings, once futuristic looking water towers, and the American continent as haunted as it is vast.

It is a great evening but none of it is enough. There is a bottomless pit inside me that demands to be filled. Away from my family and heavy domestic work routine, old voices start making themselves heard once more.

After all the music has finished, I take to the streets and canal footpaths of Utrecht on my own and it takes me 20 minutes before I find what I'm looking for: a kebab shop with a poster that reads "KAPSALON" in the window.

The Dutch word kapsalon translates into English as hairdresser and is the name, for better or worse, of Rotterdam's only notable culinary innovation. It is either the absolute apex or the utter nadir of post-pub food, depending on several factors, which include self-respect and your desire to reach a ripe old age. According to the Dutch anthropologist Linda Roodenburg, one day in 2006 a hairdresser, born on the West African islands of Cape Verde but resident in the Netherlands, couldn't make up his mind what he wanted to order from his local kebab shop El Aviva, so simply asked for all of his favorite items from the menu to be combined into one berserk dish. Using a large aluminum tray, they piled in a thick bedrock of fries and then topped this with a healthy sedimentary layer of kebab meat, before adding generous amounts of thick, garlicky mayo and lashings of sambal (hot sauce). This was topped in turn by slabs of gouda, which were then melted under the grill, before a mixed salad was added on top of that.

Legend has it that the owner of El Aviva added "The Hairdresser" to the menu on the takeaway wall as a joke, but it quickly caught on, with customers realizing that they too could throw caution to the wind and have it all, just as that maverick hair stylist liked to. Other takeaways in Rotterdam realized that they were losing business by not selling the kapsalon, and before long it became the most popular fast food dish in the city. It spread like wildfire across the Netherlands and even out into the wider Benelux territories. (Could it catch on in the UK? I really think it could. It knocks Perfect Fried Chicken into a cocked hat and there are no ingredients—bar gouda—that any kebab shop doesn't already have. Like all the "best" ideas you can't quite believe that someone hadn't thought of it sooner. I mean, don't tell me you're not even slightly curious about the potential of a dish which is essentially a combination of a shish kebab, chilli sauce, salad, and cheesy fries.)

My kapsalon comes quickly but I count four other people asking for the same thing while I'm at the counter. There are several varieties now and I go for the chicken meat version—large, of course. The metal trough of superheated food madness is enough to stop my body and mind clamoring, and I can now contemplate going back to my hotel room at last. When I get into bed I very quickly slip into a food coma.

By the end of my stay in Utrecht I have eaten five kapsalons, each washed down with two cans of Coke. When I leave my hotel room for the train on the last day, I feel like Thom Yorke trapped in James Corden's body—my heavy heart is only matched by my fat fucking hands and big boingy bastard belly.

A few days after getting back home I have lunch in Hackney with my old pal Tony Sylvester, the singer from the Norwegian "deathpunk" band Turbonegro. I first met him 12 years ago when he was doing press for SunnO))). Subsequently, much drinking occurred, there was some enthusiastic shouting, and some furniture was upended. I haven't seen him for about a year—work keeps us both busy and he is getting ready for his wedding, which is in a few days time. Not only that, but his band is back with a new single, "Hot for Nietzsche."

He has come straight from some punishing-sounding exercise routine in the park, and within seconds of seeing him I realize that he has affected a big change in his physical appearance—and this, he informs me, has had incredible knock-on effects on his mental health as well.

I have an ulterior motive for wanting to see him. In short, I'm hoping that a pep talk will sort me out. My new plan to get "Fight Club fit" before my 45th birthday has been—at best—stumbling along in fits and starts. Sure enough the exercise is clearly doing something to me: my joints ache at night and I am aware of muscles I didn't even know I had. I can walk up the escalators on the underground without breaking into a sweat and I no longer get stabbing pains in my chest when I run for the bus. But still, any signs of actual physical change are hidden from view by an intransigent layer of subcutaneous fat that is as stubborn as fuck and shows no signs of going anywhere. But my pal is obviously transformed... it's incredible. With his bewilderingly massive array of tattoos and newly ripped and buff as fuck body, he looks like some dastardly and immaculately dressed Edwardian circus strong man with a glint in his eye and a terrible secret. And it is this kind of transformation that I'm desperate for.

The author and Sylvester. Photo by Michael Gray

He says that his role fronting Turbonegro was the catalyst for this change, but that it went further back, to five years ago and the realization that he wasn't happy and how this was causing him to behave very selfishly and self-destructively: "I was still managing to hold onto the things I had, like a job and relationship, but only just about... God knows how."

The relationship (with another friend of mine) fell apart, causing "everything else to unravel." He adds: "But then six weeks after that, out of the blue, I got the job in Turbonegro ..."

The gregarious and self-confessed show off suddenly had a "healthier" outlet for his personality other than just being the center of attention at whatever rock pub or punk venue or metal bar we happened to be in at the time. This drastic change allowed him to leave the job he'd been in—working with legendary but struggling punk/DIY label Southern and sister distro company SRD—and gave him the freedom to contemplate some real change.

"The last stage of this was getting in physical shape, and this manifested itself through me not being able to do my new job, which was fronting a band. Every band I'd been in before—hardcore bands like Fabric and Dukes Of Nothing—had been a case of pounding it out for 20 minutes via sheer adrenaline, but they didn't call for me to be fit. And also, when you're in bands like that who are underground or emerging, you always have a 'fuck you' attitude towards gigs. It's different when you join a band who have a following and are the main draw. It wasn't until joining Turbo that I really appreciated that the two most physical roles in music are being the drummer or being the singer. The others may have 'flourishes' of physicality, but they don't fundamentally rely on this force of power like the drummer and the singer do.

"So, not only was I having to coach my voice and take training in that area, but I had to train physically as well."

Tony (in the tie) pre-training. Photo by Steven Thomas

Tony post-training

It was through hitting the gym that Tony came to a realization: the Cartesian divide—once you're out of your twenties, at least—is just so much fucking bullshit. He says: "I hadn't realized how much your physical fitness is tied into your mental health. I hadn't done anything physical for 20 years... it was absurd.

"The worst thing was, I used to laugh at people who exercised."

I nod exaggeratedly in agreement.

"I used to think it was office work-y and bourgeois."

I nod emphatically again.

"I didn't want to play five-a-side! I wanted to go to the Cro-Bar and do some racket! That seemed like a much more eminently worthwhile way to spend a Wednesday night."

Brother, you're preaching to the choir.

He adds: "None of this is 'woe is me,' by the way... I'm not going to whine that 'being a singer is hard' because it's not, but I do think you have to put in the same amount of effort into doing the job as you'd put into being a sportsperson or athlete."

He adds: "I went from smoking full time to stopping. I was drinking a lot and eating a lot and I was 25 kilos heavier than I am now. I was pretty damn big... I was living the good life, you know. The first thing I had to tackle was my diet. You can't train your way to losing weight. So I did six weeks of dieting before starting properly."

He laughs: "I tried running while I was dieting. I got 50 fucking yards before..." mimes falling on the floor. "I was like, 'What the fuck is this?!'"

He continues: "So I realized that there were three things that I needed to do and I needed to do all of them and not cheat any of them. And they were: eat less, eat better, and exercise. It's so fucking simple. It's just that it doesn't feel simple. But if you do all three things it will work."

He started training in May of 2013 when he was 128 kilos . He says he still hasn't learned to run and terms it "bullshit," but he became obsessed with lifting weights: "I am built for two things: taking punches and lifting weights." He started trying to get his dead weights really high, considering a day he could bench press 100k a success. But then he says he stopped caring about the high numbers: "The fact that I could do 40 or 50 bench presses at 70k started to mean more to me. It doesn't feel impressive in terms of figures but it's better in terms of stamina." He adds that he can single deadlift well over 300 lbs regularly.

He adds cryptically: "Henry Rollins said that, 'A weight is a weight is a weight.' That's the appeal of it. It doesn't change. If you come from a creative background—especially if it's a creative background that is punk rock-esque or outsider-ish—there's always a compromise on the way you perform and get tasks done. You can release a record, but you won't have enough money for promotion or you won't be able to get it done on time or you won't be able to find the money to record it exactly as you want it; so everything's about working with what you've got and doing the best job you can.

"You're probably the same, John. You probably don't have enough time to write something as well as you could. I bet you look at your stuff after the fact and go, 'I could have done that differently. I could have written it better.'"

Ouch. But he is 100 percent correct.

He continues: "So with creative things there's always the room for improvement, but the whole thing with training is it's completely finite. It's such a holiday from those regrets about not being able to do something better."

When I explain that I want to get fit enough that I can fight—and fight properly—he seems slightly nonplussed: "I'm very lucky. When I was young I spent a lot of my time 'round very violent people and in very physically violent scenes because of testosterone and things like that. But maybe because of my size and temperament I've always managed to tread lightly, relatively speaking. I got the shit beaten out of me by six guys when I was 15, but other than that I've been fairly lucky. I haven't started many fights. In fact, the last person I punched was . My problem with fighting is that it's not satisfactory. There's never a natural end to it, you can just keep on going and going. That thing you said to me about never kicking a man on the floor unless you mean to kill him? It's true, but when does a fight actually end naturally? You feel weird and impotent walking away from a fight at any stage after one has started. It's best just not to have a fight in the first place."

I mention that I took a serious leathering when I was 13 and wonder out loud if it was those couple of years that made the difference. I tell him that I don't mean I became an alcoholic with mental health issues solely because of it, but the damage done to me physically and mentally by that beating felt like a shadow falling across my childhood—hand on heart.

He replies: "I'm happy that my kicking wasn't so bad. There weren't any repercussions. I know from reading your book that you ended up with long term physical and psychological after effects. I didn't. A few chipped teeth was the worst that happened. What happened with me was more that it cemented this idea of me being at the edge of things... as much as a straight, middle class, able-bodied white guy can be, at least. Because it was a gang of townies who did it, it made me think, 'Oh right... I actually am different to them.' It polarized me from the mainstream and that hasn't been detrimental to me at all. I'm happy about it, in fact. And then, after that, the violence in the straight edge scene was always a bit more keystone cops-esque... a bit more Bash Street Kids."

While we're finishing up I ask him if it's possible to get into all this stuff—taking care of one's health, getting muscular, being aware of one's mental health, looking seriously at what it means to be a man—without ending up one of these men's rights whoppers; a rights for fathers idiot dressed as Batman, half way up the Houses of Parliament; or some bearded helmet in sandals in a drum circle weeping about his childhood and his relationship with his father.

He laughs: "Look, I'm not necessarily endorsing what Jack Donovan says in The Way of Men, but one thing that has stuck with me is this: 'There are plenty of books about being a man, but no books on how to be good at being a man.' And that means very old fashioned values of strength, courage, and honesty. Things that people don't really talk much about any more. A lot of it is about self-confidence. But I'm split between the idea of being a good man and being good at being a man."

I thank him and suggest that we meet in a year's time when I'm fully sorted out so he can talk me through buying a suit—Sylvester is London's best dressed man—and he brightens immediately: "Is that the next step? If so, that's great. The idea of getting fit so you can fight... I don't have any empathy for that. Getting in shape so you can have a suit fitted... I'm down with that."

And it has been exactly the pep talk I needed. I make a pact with myself on the walk home. I'm not actually sure why it can seem like an insurmountable task to deal with your diet. If, like me, you've (hopefully) broken the back of several drug habits, successfully (crosses fingers) stopped drinking, weaned yourself off anti-depressants and painkillers, it's hard to see why stopping eating junk food and drinking sugary pop should be such a massive deal. But it is—for me, at least—because it represents the last really obvious (and easy way) I have of manipulating my mood if I'm anxious, angry, or depressed. But it's time to throw the kapsalon into the dust bin and pour the Coke down the sink.

Stream or download Turbonegro's Hot for Nietzsche here.

John Doran's MENK column for VICE was reworked into the acclaimed memoir, Jolly Lad, which was published this year by Strange Attractor.

Previously—How to Get Properly Fit: A Realistic Guide for Lazy People

The 1998 World Cup, Fragile Memory, and the Death of My Mother

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My first actual memory is quite literally a pile of shit. If I remember correctly, it involves toddling contentedly around the grottyish suburban South London driveway outside my house, clasping a bone-dry cake of unconfirmed animal poo in my hands, until my mom runs over and slaps it out of my crusty little hands. The first recorded moments of an actual human consciousness, just a chubby handful of dusty shit and a half assed telling off flecked with exasperated laughter.

The only real competition to the driveway shit is a brief flash of smugly reclining in a buggy while mom pulls down the plastic cover as rain beats down from a dull grey sky. Quite nice, that one. Securely lodged in a cocoon of cheap plastic and vaguely conscious of the world in the way that only the dribbling young and dribbling old can ever pull off acceptably.

First memories, as a concept, have one gigantic shitty flaw: You can't choose them. You simply have to put up with what your prematurely decaying brain gives you and be happy that the slop in your skull can even give you that much after the interim years of teenage drinking, the Somme-Upon-Somerset music festivals, the brain/finance emaciating years of uni, and then the slowly unfurling yawn of the life of admin and terminal insecurity to come. Only an ungrateful shit could ask for any more. Only an ungrateful shit would ask to choose their first memory.

I am an ungrateful shit. It's not that either of those brief, hazy flashes are bad or even remotely traumatic. Just boring, bog-standard Kingsmill loaf memories of a suburban toddlerdom. The thing is, I've never shaken the feeling that they're fake. Not exactly big steaming lies: I mean, I'm pretty sure they actually happened—I was exactly the sort of child that would indiscriminately pick up turds—but fake in the way that they bear absolutely no relationship to the confused, primary-colored mess of childhood as a whole. It's mom's hair that gives them the unreal tinge: It's too long, too shiny, too L'Oreal-healthy by half. Memory is rubbish like that—it's so chronically unreliable that it takes the safest, most mundane of 5/10 happiness' and makes you second-, third-, and fourth-guess them into a thin grey paste. Urgh memory, memory is shit.

I have no idea when mom was diagnosed, but it must have been after the driveway and after the buggy in the rain. You look at photos from before I was born and her hair drapes down past her shoulders, thick and sun-lightened brown: an objectively cracking barnet by any measurement. In her twenties it was, my aunts tell me, "down past her arse," evidence of a wild Gypsy stage in her life that no one seems to know very much about. After the diagnosis and the first batch of chemo it did what hair generally tends to do under the circumstances, i.e promptly fucked off. After the chemo came the creative hats. Mom was good like that: Everything seemed a bit of an adventure, even cancer-enforced hair loss. I was gifted a matching one just for me, a screech loud multicolored tea cozy number straight out of Lewisham market to match her purple velvet bonnet. Hats are stitched into the memory: hats are to remember, especially luminous faux-Rasta bonnets. But after the hats came the tiredness, the deep perpetual weighed-down-by-20-shopping bags weariness of terminal illness.

That's the first time I started to sniff that whatever was eating mom was really bad. Children are typically selfish little sociopaths, and six-year-old me was no exception. I just couldn't understand why mom was too tired to watch my Action Man operatic masterpieces, or take me out to the park to sprint at the birds and pick up massive sticks. Most children's actions are very straightforward—an unbroken chain of, 'Look at me, I'm doing something, recognize it now,' and then looking at them and recognizing them—but once that chain sustains a fracture, then the kid starts to really notice something amiss. It didn't take many answers of "show me in 20 minutes, darling, Mummy's too tired" for that to get through.

She had this intuitive talent for seamlessly entering into the hyper-surrealism of children's self-directed games. If the defeated-looking cushion on the sofa was an enemy citadel to be stormed by a collection of battered plastic toys then it was, "OK, tell me the strategy." If my stuffed Gorilla was giving me shit, she'd give him an absolute lecture. She could suspend disbelief in these endeavors with the same intensity as a child scaring itself with PS1-era Resident Evil, so when she couldn't because of cancer, then what was I meant to do? All I could muster was to lash out with a "Mom, you're meant to be good at games!"

Soccer was the big exception. When it came to ADHD spurts of the imagination mom was the word, but soccer was a struggle even for her almost limitless imaginative generosity. It probably didn't help matters that I'd decided to support Chelsea on the back of one of those intense primary school best-friendships that are inexplicably forged on the cast iron basis of a mutual appreciation of the color blue. Chelsea isn't a club for soccer-apathetic moms, especially dying ones. Then, as now, Chelsea were almost universally disliked, although less for their oil baron-bought athletes (they didn't have them then, they had Ed de Goey. And I challenge any human alive to legitimately hate Gianfranco Zola) and instead for their, uh, 'robust' (i.e racist with a propensity to extreme violence) element to their support. Mom couldn't back it. Soccer just wasn't her bag. Everyone has their limits.


Photo via the author


The big exception to the exception was France '98. Fuck, France '98 was great. France '98 is a pretty decent first choice for the first memory of an ungrateful shit. World Cups are essentially just a cluster of freeze-frame memories, by turns euphoric, tragic, and hilarious. I was only two during USA 94, so Diana Ross's firework-igniting toe-punt and Baggio's tragic, Mars-bound penalty are just distant, YouTube-able history to me. The same goes for Euro 96, which ran parallel to an incredibly intense JCB and tractor obsession. But France '98 is a big fat blob of incomprehensible vividness. It was the tournament of Zidane bullet-headers, a kebabed-up Gazza roofing Glen Hoddle's office after being cut from the England squad and the mystery of Ronaldo's conspiracy spawning pre-final illness. It was the tournament that saw a pre-national treasure/Unicef saint David Beckham score a sublime group stage free-kick against Columbia before erupting into a national hate figure after brushing Diego Simone's calf with the outline of his pinky toe. The tournament in which a teenaged Michael Owen emerged in a blur of spindly limbs, charging at the dark heart of Argentina's defense with nothing but a Year 5 buzz-cut helmet for protection, before scoring that goal. David Batty was there, for fuck's sake: David Batty! Fuck, France '98 was great.

Mom thought so too. I like to imagine she enjoyed the immense, multi-colored absurdity of it all. The ridiculous mock solemnity of the national anthems, the invasive McDonalds ads, and close-up shots of weeping men a few pints in after dubiously disallowed goals. All that fun stuff. Sitting in the dark living room of our basement apartment, she found it all hilarious. After cranking up the contrast on the telly, we'd lie curled up on the sofa laughing through dishwater-dull 0-0 group stage games between exotic nations unknown to my six-year-old self. Afterwards I'd take the flyaway soccer ball out to the yard and smash endless last minute winners against the fence, glancing up every couple of minutes through the receding light to see her through the glass of the living room window, smile on her face, with one arm raised in a silent salute at the appropriate moments. She'd sit there patiently watching and smiling silent encouragement until darkness fell, and I'd come back in and explain in the whole rambling mythology of my tournament-winning exploits. What a little narcissist. I, I, I; me, me, me. But she'd listen: eyebrows arched tolerantly until I rambled myself to sleep.

I have no idea when the tournament ended and even less when it had begun. It's Google-able of course, but it doesn't really matter. I don't remember the final, or any of the big set piece knock-out stage matches apart from England-Argentina in the last 16. 'Real' soccer memories came later in 2002, when I sat with Gran and assorted family friends in the same basement apartment living room watching Becks roll in his big redemption penalty against the Argentinians, again. But I'll still remember those twice-weekly toddles to the newsagent for a stack of Panini stickers, always returning with three horrifying Craig Burleys.

I don't remember much at all about what happened after the end of France '98, but there are progressively fewer flashes of mom apart from dim, gut-sore visits to Guys Hospital. Things declined and her eyes got heavier, the smiles weaker, the arms thinner. There's the memory of all the adults looking different shades of grey, ashen with the inevitability. My childish life went on as life—childish or not—has the tendency to do. I still played soccer and used sticks as machine guns went for potato-smile teas. Games were still concocted and I'm sure I must have filled mom in at visiting time, but I don't remember: not really. Ugh, memory. Memory is shit.

You kid yourself you've got a choice over what you remember, because it's comforting to think that when it comes to the crunch of recalling that you won't forget the really big, significant moments. The truth is you might, or you might not. I remember when the end came better than I remember France '98: the inevitable thud of impact from a bullet fired a mile away. And the first thing I did with the news was pick up a Snickers and the flyaway soccer ball, march into the yard, and punt it against the fence, again and again and again.

Memory deserves at a bit of fidelity, though it doesn't really matter if you treat it nicely or not: one day it's going to go. You can delude yourself and wish it different but memory is an obdurate prick when it suits itself to be. You can't predict what it's going to shed or what's going to stick. Occasionally though, just occasionally, there are bits that make you scrunch your brain that bit harder. There are bits that don't wilt and don't dilute with time because—fuck you brain—you force it otherwise.

Looking back on the summer of France '98, the overriding emotion is guilt—standing large as a wardrobe at the forefront of all those happy, laughter filled evenings in front of instantly forgotten matches and never-completed sticker albums. They are all about me, really. The happiness is about mom's recognition of my whims, my passionate noisy enjoyment. It was all just an elaborate continuation of all the elaborate games. Just brilliant, unreal, hyper-vivid fun. For her, those evenings must have brought unimaginable pain. The bald realization of time running out, life running down, and your body gradually giving in to the death sentence in your breasts. Staring while your only child waves demented arms at the TV and acts out every action of a game you've never been fussed about, watching him mope when you're too tired to join in. Sitting—even though you're desperate for bed—by the window as the light dies around you, watching him punt the ball about the yard, and grinning up for your approval, and your approval alone.

It must have been hard to grin back, or maybe it wasn't. Maybe I really was that cute and delightful. But I just can't imagine what that would feel like, to smile back every single time. I can't imagine the pain she had to bear to watch me try to dribble past an invisible Colin Hendry. And I can't imagine how it is to feel your body failing as the vivid screams and colors of Coupe du Monde pass by, and you wonder how more times you'll watch the light fade through the window. Ah, memory is shit. But at least I can remember that. At least I can remember France '98.

Follow Francisco on Twitter.

Follow Marta on Twitter.

VICE Vs Video Games: ‘Just Cause 3’ Has Amazing Explosions but Not Much Else

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I'm tweeting while I'm playing. We all do it. A friend replies: "I saw this game plastered on the side of a bus, and thought it must be a spoof action film." Part of me wishes it was a dumb movie and nothing more. That way I could see all that Just Cause 3 has to offer inside two hours. But this is another massive open-world adventure, a substantial time-sink, a virtual playground of possibilities. Two hours into it, and your completion percentage is going to be around the 5 percent mark.

What you'll have seen in those first two hours, and how you take to it, will determine your enjoyment for everything that follows, as you've essentially been through most of what this game has to offer. (Hell, you saw a lot of this in 2010's Just Cause 2.) You are Rico Rodriguez, adrenaline junkie and freedom fighter and "dictator removal specialist," who returns to his fictional Mediterranean homeland of Medici to rid the islands of a merciless general called Sebastiano Di Ravello. On reaching Medici airspace, Rico takes to the wings of his plane, rocket launcher primed, and sets about destroying the SAM batteries firing on his position. He inevitably falls, but stylishly parachutes straight into a ground-level gunfight. This is where we meet his mate, Mario, who promptly punches Rico in the dick, because that's what male friends do. Obviously.

Seconds later, Rico's on the roof of a jeep, machine gun in his hands, fending off occupying forces swarming around him. Next, he's in a tank, wasting everyone with the brutal effectiveness of pouring boiling water on an ant nest. Immediately after that, a brief helicopter ride and further bursts of extreme violence paint a blood-splashed path to catching up with a scientist ally, who has some new gear for you—a wing suit and an improved grappling hook device. Used in tandem, and with the parachute, these gadgets effectively allow Rico to "fly." The grappler is also great for tethering explosive barrels to armored enemy vehicles, zipping one into the other, and watching the sparks fly, hopefully setting off even bigger bangs in a chain reaction. New toys tested, it's time to free a local town from the general's forces, and the game "proper" begins.

Sounds exciting, doesn't it? And before you play it, Just Cause 3 promises to be a special sandbox of mayhem, Rico able to destroy entire military bases single-handedly, to heroically chase all oppressors from his homeland, or simply murder them, whatever's easiest. But even in its opening moments, problems with this game emerge and leave a troublesome impression.

Road vehicle handling tends to go one of two ways: wholly unresponsive to the extent where it's quicker to crawl, or so wildly sensitive that you're quickly lurching from one direction to another like a drunk on the dodgems. Generally, the controls are questionable, with sections requiring perfect accuracy usually only beaten after a handful of attempts. The gunplay, for all the furious noise and vibrant color, feels weightless. Rico is a complete personality vacuum, funny when swearing at missiles while riding them, but otherwise nothing more than an instrument for the player's own destructive desires. And the story is dead on arrival—between them, the nine writers listed in the game's opening credits have failed to deliver a compelling central plot. Something something a special mineral something stop the bad man doing bad things something restore this person to power something something ooh did you see that go up, though?

Because the explosions in this game are glorious—and it's not just when things are being wrecked that makers Avalanche Studios' art department really impresses. The many islands of Medici add up to a game world that's significantly larger than most, with the map here extending to 390 square miles. I recommend taking time out from bringing about the downfall of Di Ravello, getting in a helicopter (or, if you've gotta go fast, a rebel jet), and having a look around. Fly to the game's tallest peak—there's an achievement for that, naturally—and feel awestruck by the landscape that spills out before you. This isn't the deepest game of its ilk that you'll ever play, but it has to be one of the widest, and the towns and cities, some rural and others modernized, are evocative of places I've been to around the Mediterranean. The game's sense of place is excellently realized.

For every hour I've played Just Cause 3, I've experienced five or ten minutes of immense, electric, eyes-widening pleasure. I've smiled hard, like I've not at a game since those Assassin's Creed glitches. I've laughed unashamedly at the absurdity of what I was seeing. I wanted more, more, and yet while searching for another rush—the near-complete destruction of an enemy complex by crashing a jet into it; tethering a soldier to a gas canister, shooting a single bullet into the casing and watching the pair soar skywards; perfecting my wing suit travel across several kilometers at a time; greedily drinking in the game's most stunning vistas—I was left disappointed.

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Related: Watch VICE's new film, 'The Real "X-Files"?'

On Xbox One the frame rate slowdown at times is, while not game breaking, incredibly distracting. I'm not usually one to complain about such technicalities, but this game's chugging becomes a serious impediment during busy battles. I've experienced a couple of complete freezes, the screen locking and the only solution being to reset my console. Liberating civilian settlements in order to progress with story missions can become a chore—the requirements vary from location to location, but it's always a case of ticking boxes on a checklist and causing as much carnage as possible until the rebels gain the upper hand. And this represents an uncomfortable conflict at the centre of the entire experience.

Rico is supposedly here to free his people, but the no-questions-asked killing of thousands of Di Ravello's troops feels like a terrific disconnect between the basic game(play) and the bigger (narrative) picture. Surely some of these people, most of them, are native to this country? Chances are that a lot of them are working for Di Ravello through fear of what might happen to them if they don't—we're shown early on that the price of failure amongst his employees is usually death. If Rico really cared for Medici, the game's body count wouldn't be half as high.

That said, if you're playing just for the story, you're playing it wrong—and while I loathe aspects of it, I keep coming back to Just Cause 3. I'll play for an hour or two, shout some obscenities at the screen and turn it off, only to switch back on a short time later. Those five minutes of the most remarkable thrills, the stunts, and the flames and the flying bodies, I know how to find them—but it's keeping hold of them that's the problem, as the game works hard to make a bombastic delight into a directionless mess. There are a lot of modifications to make to vehicles, new weapons to unlock as you play (delivered in gift-wrapped rebel drops), and a ton of mini-game-style challenges to keep track of—longest time with your wing suit open; highest point reached while climbing with a parachute; basic land, air, and sea races; most consecutive headshots, and so forth. But at no point do all of these separate systems really come together to comprise a rewarding gameplay loop. If this were a two-hour action flick, it'd have a couple of mind-blowing scenes amid a cacophony of tired set pieces and plenty of scenery chewing.

Still, I turn on once more, to chase my fix. I come up short, and I tweet again.

Just Cause 3 is out now on Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One (version tested).

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.

An Expert Explains How Social Media Can Lead to the 'Self-Radicalization' of Terrorists

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Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook entering the United States as an engaged couple in 2014. Photo via ABC News

On Friday, it was revealed that Tashfeen Malik, the 29-year-old suspect at the center of last week's massacre in San Bernardino, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State on Facebook just before the mass shooting that killed 14 and injured 21. The FBI promptly indicated it would be probing the attack as an act of terrorism, and agents are culling data from electronic devices obtained during a search of the home Malik shared with her husband and fellow alleged shooter, Syed Farook.

It's still unclear whether Malik and Farook were directed by the sprawling terrorist organization, or else "self-radicalized," which might be even more terrifying. The Islamic State seemed to embrace the duo as "supporters" or "soldiers" over the weekend, but teasing out just how closely affiliated the couple were with the group is tricky. What we do know is that social media is an effective recruitment tool for the Islamic State, both in the United States and abroad. It's also how much of the news of tragedies—be they terrorist attacks in a Paris club, or a mass shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood—first make their way to the public sphere, amplifying our horror, sadness, and differences of opinion in real time.

Michael A. Stefanone is an associate professor at the University at Buffalo's department of communication, and his background is in the social psychology of technology use and strategic behavior. In the past, his work has been funded by the Air Force and Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). He's uniquely qualified to speak to the vital role social media has come to play in these events—before, during, and after the fact. We asked him about the psychology at work when someone is "self-radicalized," if government can—as Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton suggested over the weekend—work with social media to help tamp down terrorism, and the new role women might begin playing in attacks traditionally carried out by men.

VICE: Could you tell me a bit about how people are radicalized through social media?
Michael A. Stefanone: The ultimate utility of social media is to connect like-minded individuals. We see this everywhere, and this shouldn't be surprising, because connecting with similar others has always been a human motivation. Today, however, technology enables us to connect globally. Now that we can connect globally, there is also greater opportunity to connect with others who are increasingly extreme in their attitudes and beliefs.

The Internet, and specifically social media, makes it so easy to connect with people that share similar ideologies. ISIS has a unique recruitment style; that is, very personal attention over a very long period of time. In many instances, when people are persuaded or pushed into action, it is the result of a long, effortful recruitment process. I think that is very unique when it comes to online recruitment. ISIS stands out in that regard.

Watch our documentary on the Islamic State:

Social media seems to be playing a growing role in terrorist attacks and mass shootings. How does it amplify alienation from society and make these tragedies more likely?
When one communicates online, and he or she is not present with the people they are communicating with, that polarization and shift in attitudes is even more amplified. That is when that self-radicalization really happens and can happen at a quicker speed. Let's say you are unhappy about a car you purchased and you find a Facebook group of people upset about the same car. This in-group identification comes into play and the psychology behind it ramps up your hatred and the strength of your hatred amplifies.

It is no different than what happens when people are physically in groups together—people do crazy things in groups. But over the internet you are anonymous and can find people with extreme attitudes and connect with them and then your attitudes can polarize quickly and amplify much faster. Your attitude becomes much stronger much faster online.

Social media enables loose, decentralized networks of people to come together, where no one person is in charge and there is no formal structure. That is just like the nature of these terrorist groups today. It allows like-minded individuals to communicate at absolutely no cost. Fifteen years ago I would have had to fly to Saudi Arabia. Social media creates access and allows you to broadcast these messages to people who maybe cannot afford to travel overseas. It gives access to this information, so more people can get this access.

"When individuals communicate online, and especially when they are anonymous, their communicative behavior can become more aggressive, and the attitudes they express can be more extreme."

What kinds of people are most vulnerable to being radicalized by extremist groups via social media?
If an extreme group such as ISIS is trying to persuade people to do something that very few people would do, it is about probability. Suddenly, social media increases the pool greatly. Social media and technology makes it easier to not only create, but broadcast, these persuasive messages. The people creating these messages and recruiting have a global audience at zero cost. Anybody with a phone or computer can access these messages. It doesn't matter what I am interested in, I can find information on it and still maintain a benign online presence and real life presence.

We do know that when individuals communicate online, and especially when they are anonymous, their communicative behavior can become more aggressive, and the attitudes they express can be more extreme. This is readily apparent in reader comments to online news articles. It is well known that online conversations like these tend not to be civil.

In part, this is because when we communicate online, and don't have to think about the immediate consequences of our conversations (like we do when we communicate face to face), it's easier to communicate more aggressively or take "riskier" positions on issues. When everyone in the conversation behaves this way, the result is polarization. Again, this is easily observable online and via social media. I see it in the comments in response to politically-motivated Facebook posts on my feed all the time.

The internet and social media cut the costs of finding and communicating with others. Social media also significantly increases the audience size for messages created by extremist groups (or, anyone else for that matter). So the likelihood that those messages will resonate with someone in that audience also increases. I'm not sure how effective social media is as a recruitment tool, but it certainly gets a lot of press coverage as an effective tool because the stories are often so sensational. The actual recruitment process is more likely a function of direct, personal communication over time.

The latest narrative around Friday's San Bernardino shooting is that Malik may have been the mastermind. Do you have any insight into how women get drawn into radical Islam?
Women typically don't have many of the freedoms afforded to men in their society, which is typically male-dominated. I think there is something to be said for the fact that their society is oppressive toward women and women haven't been asked to be a part of many things before. That jumps out to me. Someone that hasn't had a voice, hasn't been able to drive, has had to cover up, that may make them more susceptible when someone finally gives them attention and is trying to recruit them. ISIS is an opportunity for people who typically haven't had a voice—it makes them more susceptible.

Hilary Clinton is now urging social media companies to work more closely with government to share info to shut down terrorist groups. What would something like that look like, and is it even possible?
That is a classic government response, but frankly the government is poorly equipped to handle things that change quickly, and technology changes quickly. This is a human problem, not a technology problem. As the government tries to restrict venues that are being used today, new ways of doing this will pop up tomorrow. It is an endless cycle.

If there are hubs like Facebook and other media sites that become restricted or inefficient as recruitment tools, they will find something new. And the truth is, they are already using dark web and tools 99 percent of Americans don't even know about, so people aren't just posting to Facebook. This is all politically-motivated rhetoric. When governments get involved in technology, it doesn't traditionally go very well. Just look at the rollout of healthcare, which was a great idea, but governments move slowly and aren't equipped to do things like that.

Follow Brian McManus on Twitter.

Finally, the Federal Government Is Investigating the Notoriously Brutal Chicago Police Department

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Photo via Flickr user Mobilus In Mobili

Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Monday announced that the Department of Justice will conduct a civil rights investigation of Chicago police after nearly two weeks of turmoil over dash-cam videos depicting the shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald at the hands of a local cop.

Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke has been charged with first-degree murder for McDonald's killing after he shot the teenager 16 times on October 20, 2014. Now CPD will be the subject of an extensive probe to determine if it unfairly targets communities of color and violates the Constitution and federal law, the latest American police department to see federal scrutiny after a year defined by police killings and the Black Lives Matter movement.

In Chicago's case, the investigation has been an awfully long time coming—with questionable practices going back decades in a city that remains extremely racially divided.

"What we are looking at is whether, as a systemic matter, the (Chicago) police department engages in policing practices that violate the constitution," Lynch told reporters Monday.

We know from past DOJ investigations in cities like Cleveland, Albuquerque, and Los Angeles a bit about what how this will play out. The feds are going to be looking for evidence that minorities are unfairly targeted by Chicago cops; that such targeting is a "pattern of practice," as the official term goes. They will also be looking into Chicago cops' use of force policy to determine what, if anything, needs to change.

In some ways, it's stunning that it took the graphic video of McDonald's death to invite federal attention to one of America's more notorious policing forces. Earlier this year, the Chicago City Council agreed to pay $5 million to the victims of Jon Burge, a former CPD commander who allegedly oversaw a torture program to elicit confessions and gather other information from suspects in the 1970s and 1980s, mostly young black men.

Not until a reporter uncovered Burge's actions in an obscure court case did the commander face even of a whiff of accountability. He was never charged in relation to the torture allegations, but Burge did get sentenced to four and a half years in prison for obstruction of justice and perjury. Most estimates suggest the city has doled out around $100 million in settlements related to Burge's practices.

More recently, an active CPD commander was accused of putting a gun in a suspected drug dealer's mouth. That allegation is now being handled in court, and the commander, Glenn Evans, has been taken off the streets. Just last week, the city agreed to pay a freelance photographer $100,000 for taking a beating at the hands of Evans during the 2012 NATO protests.

Then came the McDonald video. Mayor Rahm Emanuel for months had said its release would screw up the federal and local investigations into the teen's brutal killing, not to mention the investigation still being conducted by Chicago's Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA). But a judge disagreed and forced the city to release the footage, which it did two weeks ago.

It was as bad as everyone thought it might be.

Emanuel quickly forced the resignation of Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, the first sacrificial lamb in this sordid saga. And on Sunday night, IPRA chief administrator and former big shot in the Chicago office of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Scott Ando, also resigned.

If you don't think Emanuel played a heavy-handed role in Ando's decision, you don't know Chicago.

Last week, prior to Ando's "decision," Emanuel announced the creation of a police accountability task force. The mayor tapped Lori Lightfoot to head the group. Lightfoot is the former chief administrator of the now-defunct Office of Professional Standards (OPS).

And here's where history begins to repeat itself: OPS, a division of the Chicago Police Department, was disbanded in 2007 "in response to concerns about how allegations of police misconduct were being investigated," according to IPRA's website.

OPS was replaced by IPRA, which has found just one of 258 non-fatal and 116 fatal police shootings to not have been justified, according to WBEZ-Chicago. Then, last week, Emanuel created a new task force that will ostensibly look into how the city handles investigations of police shootings and claims of misconduct. To bring the OPS/IPRA debacle full circle, Emanuel chose Lightfoot, the former head of OPS, to head the new body.

He might instead have picked Lorenzo Davis, a former CPD commander with 23 years at the department who's now a whistleblower against IPRA after being fired by the agency for refusing to reverse his findings that three police shootings were unjustified.

"I say that it's all a deceptive practice," Davis told me last week following the announcement of the new local task force. He was in a jovial mood, after years of work thinking that perhaps things are beginning to change in Chicago. He is hopeful that the police accountability he's been advocating for may soon actually take place.

Of course, that remains to be seen, and even now that there's federal attention squarely on the city, it will take time for any changes to be enacted.

"After every officer-involved shooting in Chicago, IPRA will investigate. But it's dropped down a black hole and you don't know anything about it, and maybe it's two or three years later that IPRA releases its findings quietly on its website with no names of the victims, no names of the police," Davis said. "It's a big game."

The heads currently rolling in Chicago are directly related to the DOJ announcement and the release of the McDonald death video. But McDonald was just one of 19 men killed by the Chicago Police Department in 2014. So far this year there have been seven, according to media reports.

Over the past year and a half I've investigated all of those 19 deaths in an attempt to determine whether or not they were justified—and many of them apparently were. Others, however, are harder to make sense of. Regardless, the team of DOJ investigators tasked with digging into the practices of the Chicago Police Department may find things related to the 19 arrest-related deaths from 2014 that I, and many others, have not.

With the increased scrutiny of the department, and the thousands of questions inundating Chicago police coming from local and national media outlets, an active-duty police sergeant who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the heat surrounding his employers just hopes the good cops are separated from bad.

"Please do your best to take it easy on us. (Politicians) have careers to protect; bad cops exist," he wrote in an email. "There are 12,000 of us though. I've spent my professional life trying to serve, and serve better. If it makes you feel any better about us cops, I'm wholly ignored by my agency."

Follow Justin Glawe on Twitter.

Athenians Rioted on the Anniversary of the Police Killing of a 15-Year-Old

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This article was originally published on VICE Greece.

Thirteen people, including six minors, were arrested on Sunday evening in Athens after extensive and violent clashes between demonstrators and the police on the seventh anniversary of the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos.

Back in 2008, 15-year-old Grigoropoulos was killed by a police officer named Epaminondas Korkoneas in the neighborhood of Exarcheia. The murder sparked a series of protests and riots, largely led by students around Grigoropoulos's age.

On VICE News: The Canadian Air Force Is Looking to Buy Weaponized Drones

Since December 2008, annual demonstrations have been organized by many different leftist groups, students, and particularly anarchists, to commemorate the teen's killing and protest police violence. The protests often culminate in clashes between demonstrators and police.

This year, a crowd of mostly students and leftists groups started gathering at the center of Athens (Propylea) at 12 PM. The police were fully prepared for unrest—the number of officers in the city streets exceeded 5,000, while two central metro stations remained closed for security reasons. Around 3 PM, people started marching. It was mostly peaceful, though a few rocks were thrown at a police cordon guarding the National Library.

By around 6 PM, the Propylea was filled with members of anarchist and anti-authoritarian groups who gathered for their own march. The demonstrators' faces were now covered with gas masks and an uneasy silence hung in the air.

As soon as the march hit the intersection of Panepistimiou and Voukourestiou Streets, petrol bombs were launched by the demonstrators toward the riot police, who answered with teargas and flashbangs.

By the time the heavy chemical smoke cleared, the demonstrators had regrouped and continued on their way until they were forced to draw a halt at the intersection of Panepistimiou and Benaki Streets due to a roadblock. It was at that point that it became evident the police had cut off all escape routes, effectively surrounding the main body of the demonstrations. Tension begun building up again and further clashes took place until the police moved further into the area of Exarcheia, where fighting continued into the early hours of the morning.

Meanwhile, a little further away from Exarcheia, in the area surrounding Omonia square, two dozen police on motorcycles surrounded a group of ten people who were mostly photographers and journalists. They were asked for identification and those that could not provide the necessary documents were arrested and led to police headquarters.

At the end of the day, flowers and notes covered the monument that's been erected in Grigoropoulos's memory at the spot he was shot.

Further marches in his memory were held in most cities around Greece on Sunday, with only small-scale clashes reported.


The VICE Guide to Right Now: A 73-Year-Old Man Got Caught Snorting Coke During a Traffic Stop

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Thumbnail image via Flickr user Valerie Everett

Read: We Asked Some Young People if They'd Stop Doing Coke After Watching This Anti-Drug PSA

Last week, Seattle police pulled over a car driving at night without headlights on. When Officer Nic Abts-Olsen approached the vehicle, found a 73-year-old man at the wheel and, after running his name and finding no outstanding warrants, was going to turn the guy loose with a warning.

But when Abts-Olsen walked back up to the car's window, he caught the guy snorting from a glass vial of white powder.

"Are you kidding?" the incredulous cop asked the senior citizen, according to the SPD blotter. Startled, the 73-year-old spilled the blow all over himself.

The driver tried to claim that the powder was "vitamins," but the keen-eyed Seattle officer saw right through that clever ruse. The 73-year-old later admitted to it being cocaine.

The guy is now being held at Seattle's Kings County Jail for possession of narcotics, a local NBC affiliate reports. In the meantime, the SPD produced the amusing PSA-style clip above. Happy holidays, everyone!

Seizure of BC Man’s Rescued Reptiles Highlights Strange Year in Lizard News

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Some of the Reptile Guy's rescued animals. Photo via Facebook/The Reptile Guy Rescue and Education Center

A BC man whose family of reptiles were seized from him last week says the raid, conducted by the province's SPCA, is "harassment" and that he never treated the animals with cruelty.

Mike Hopcroft, also known as the founder of Reptile Guy Rescue and Education Center in Mission, BC, had 14 reptiles, 46 rats, and six dead animals taken from him by the BC SPCA on Dec. 2, according to CBC News.

"They've always had this thing out for reptiles," he told CBC News. "I love reptiles and I've always loved reptiles."

Housing over 300 reptiles, the rescue centre that Hopcroft runs reportedly serves the purpose of rehabilitating animals that have been discarded or mistreated, as well as being an attraction for birthday parties and school presentations.

He told CBC News the real problem is not him having hundreds of reptiles in his care, but the people who keep taking shitty care of them in the first place—mainly pet stores that keep breeding reptiles they can't take care of.

Hopcroft added that the SPCA's criticism that the cages he keeps his reptiles in are too small is hypocritical when compared to what dogs and cats are kept in at pet stores. He does note, however, that at one point or another, he tried to breed and sell reptiles, but says this was back when he was "young and stupid".

It's been a rough year for reptile owners. In August, a Toronto man handed over to authorities a massive illegal reptile collection of around 150 full-grown alligators, crocodiles, and caimans he'd been amassing in his home for a decade. Realizing that keeping all those creatures was an unmanageable prospect (duh), he finally called an animal sanctuary for help.

The trend of reptile enthusiasts getting the book thrown at them doesn't end there either: in September, a Windsor man was caught trying to smuggle 51 turtles into the US via a unique transportation method—by stuffing them in his pants. He pleaded guilty to charges of smuggling and failing to present an animal for inspection earlier this month.

Not all news is light-hearted, however, as there is also the notorious case of Campbellton, NB man whose python escaped its enclosure and killed two children in 2013. The children, who were brothers, died when the python fell through the ceiling above where they were sleeping and asphyxiated the boys. Recently, Jean-Claude Savoie, who owned both the pet store and the apartment where the boys died, was ordered to stand trial in January of next year. He is charged with criminal negligence causing death.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

There’s a Food Security Crisis in Canada and It’s Worse Than You Think

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Photo via Flickr user vancouver foodbank

In late November, Food Banks Canada released its 2015 HungerCount report, the annual study that calls itself a "comprehensive report on hunger." This year's report, which looks at usage statistics at more than 4,000 food banks across the country, showed an increase from 2014, with more than 800,000 people using food banks per month, and an estimated 1.7 million individuals expected to use the service over the year.

HungerCount is probably the most widely disseminated, frequently cited data produced in Canada in regards to the issue of hunger and food security in the country. Its numbers are high, and they should be jarring.

But those numbers are misleading. It's more likely that the number of Canadians living in food insecure situations—meaning they sit somewhere on the spectrum from concerned about being able to afford good food or completely unable to do so—is four to five times higher than the number of Canadians who use food banks per month, or around 4 million people. And that margin of discrepancy, between how many people in Canada are actually food insecure (more than 10 percent) and how many people use food banks, is the difference between a problem and a crisis. Since more people aware of the numbers on food bank usage than the stats concerning food insecurity in general, it's a crisis that's being ignored.

"When you look at these reports, what they give you the impression of is that they're stats on the problem. They're not," Valerie Tarasuk, a researcher based out of the University of Toronto, told VICE.

"It's service utilization. If we were trying to look at the health of Canadians, would we look at the number of ambulances that drive by?" The issue, in other words, is right in the name: Food Banks Canada isn't actually counting the number of Canadians who are going hungry.

Tarasuk works with an organization called PROOF, which has since 2011 issued an annual Report on Household Food Insecurity in Canada, with funding from the Canadian Institute of Health Research. The reports use data from the Statistics Canada Canadian Community Health Survey to chart food insecurity across the country, but their final tally includes households that report marginal food insecurity (those who worry about affording food, where Statistics Canada only includes those reporting those experiencing moderate or severe insecurity (which are defined as a compromise in the quality of food purchased or inability to purchase food, respectively). In addition, PROOF's researchers count children under the age of 12, where Statistics Canada does not. The result is a table of statistics that varies drastically from the numbers being put forward by Stats Can or, indeed, HungerCount. In 2011, for instance, PROOF reported 3.9 million Canadians living in food insecure situations, including 1.1 million children. Statistics Canada only reported 1.1 million Canadians total (including a devastating 36.7 percent of households in Nunavut) while HungerCount reported food bank usage of more than 850,000 Canadians per month.

Beans: a staple of any low-income household. Photo via Flickr user allispossible.org.uk

But for all the effort PROOF puts into its reports, it seems no one is seeing them: "I actually have a full time job that isn't about promoting that number," Tarasuk said, "but nobody has a full time job whose job is promoting that number."

In fairness to Food Banks Canada, its aim with HungerCount is to identify poverty reduction strategies and policy interventions to reduce food insecurity—which is also Tarasuk's goal with PROOF. Regardless, there a lack of concrete data on the issue: In the United States, food insecurity is monitored and reported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but in Canada, the Household Food Security Survey Module on Statistics Canada's annual Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) is less than comprehensive. Our numbers simply don't exist.

According to Dr. Evan Fraser, the Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security, the dearth of information pertaining to food insecurity in Canada isn't specific to the issue. "Canada, relative to the US, does not have the investment in publicly available data," he told VICE. "So what you're observing here is something you'd find in all sorts of different areas. The USDA does a magnificent job; you get way more information."

Fraser, a University of Guelph professor and the author of the 2010 book Empires of Food, does cite HungerCount as a decent reflection of the rise of food insecurity in Canada, but also points to a 2012 report issued by Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations' special rapporteur to food. In that report, De Schutter also bemoaned Canada's lack of data collection on the issue of food insecurity, writing that "Canada would benefit from a national right to food strategy.... First, in order to effectively combat hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, it is necessary to have a comprehensive understanding of who is hungry, food insecure and malnourished. The Special Rapporteur is concerned that changes in the current budget will make the collection and analysis of data more complicated, particularly by changes to data collection through the elimination of the requirement for individuals to complete the long-form census."

Indeed, in 2013, British Columbia, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Yukon chose not to include the measurement of food insecurity for their populations in that year's Canadian Community Health Survey. However, the newly elected federal Liberal government has promised to reinstate the long-form census by 2016, which Fraser said is helpful. He explained that the new government is a positive outcome, too, in terms of the potential for policy interventions aimed at reducing hunger making it through the House of Commons. But on that front, he said that focusing strictly on interventions pertaining to income and housing would only be focusing on part of the problem.

Photo via Flickr user Jitze Couperus

"One of the root causes of food insecurity in Canada is that there are some people in Canada who are unable to afford a healthy diet," he said. "Within that, there's the cost of the healthy diet, and there's the inequity. In both regards we need policy interventions."

Fraser points to the fact that Canada only grows 11 percent of its supply of fruits and vegetables, while the rest is imported, meaning the costs of the fruits and vegetables we buy at home is dictated by foreign currencies (and, given the weak Canadian dollar, that means they're simply too high). Canada's food manufacturing industry has lost 24,000 jobs since 2008. Add to that the lack of a guaranteed livable income, the skyrocketing price of housing in many urban areas, and the increased cost of transit and transportation and it's no longer any surprise that 61 percent of households that qualify as food insecure are waged or salaried—not your stereotypical food bank demographic, but rather, working Canadians.

Additionally, those living in moderately food insecure situations in Ontario had medical costs that were 95 percent higher than those in food-secure households (compared to 32 percent higher in marginally food insecure households and 75 percent higher in severely food insecure households), according to a study published by Tarasuk in the August Canadian Medical Association Journal. Two months earlier, she also published a study that suggested that food insecurity is a greater indicator of poor nutrition in Canadians than it is in our neighbours to the south.

"If you're one of the have-nots," Fraser said, "everything else has risen in price to the point that food is squeezed to the margin." And now, given the aforementioned, being a have-not doesn't necessarily mean living below the poverty line.

So when we talk about food insecurity, we aren't just talking about hunger: we're talking about agriculture, economics, poverty, and costs to our healthcare system. But that's if we're talking about it at all. All signs, both Tarasuk and Fraser agree, point to Canada's national food insecurity as an underreported, nuanced crisis reaching its tipping point. Tarasuk, who has been monitoring food insecurity in Canada for 30 years, said the issue has "never been worse."

Fraser is more hopeful. He admits frustration at Canada's lack of a national food policy but, using climate change as an analogy, suggests that we are capable of shifting gears on widely misunderstood issues in a relatively short time. "Most of us, most of the time are aware of climate change. We're making progress on that file, which I would say 20 years ago was unexamined," he said.

"Now, I would say our food system is one of the great unexamined aspects of modern society. Developing the ways and means to equitably and sustainably feed the world's population is—along with climate change and the rise of religious fanaticism—my guess is that these are the great issues the 21st century will be remembered for."

Follow Rebecca Tucker on Twitter.

Justin Trudeau’s Throne Speech Makes No Mention of Reforming Unsafe Sex Work Laws

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks in regards to his party's throne speech, in the House of Commons in Ottawa, on Monday, Dec. 7, 2015. Photo courtesy The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld

Despite a lot of talk about honouring Indigenous peoples and creating policies to combat sexual assault, not a word was said about sex work laws in the Liberals' throne speech Friday.

Both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould have said the laws need to be revisited, but so far, it seems no actual steps in that direction have been taken.

For background: The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, which was once known as Bill C-36, came into effect last year under the Harper government. While the sale of sexual services is still technically legal under these laws, it is illegal to buy them, advertise for them, or sell them in areas that might reasonably be near someone under the age of 18, or "near" a school. In effect, there are plenty of ways one can get arrested while selling services under these laws.

Sex workers, academics, and politicians have decried the laws as unsafe, relegating sex workers to the dingy corners of society where they cannot conduct business in an open way. This makes workers more vulnerable to violence.

Many sex workers call for decriminalization as a safer model. That way, they can choose to work together or independently, advertise as they see fit, and have the most control over the services they sell—and to whom.

Sex worker advocacy groups have been making these points clear for years, prior to the Terri-Jean Bedford case making its way to court. Yet while the government claims in the speech from the throne that it will launch an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, provide "greater support for survivors of domestic and sexual assault," and make life easier for immigrants in Canada, it makes no reference to addressing laws that demonstrably harm all of these groups.

VICE Canada Reports: The New Era of Canadian Sex Work

Make no mistake: it's great to see that an inquiry into well over 1,000 missing and murdered Indigenous women is finally going to happen. It's great to hear the government say that it might finally start to honour Indigenous peoples. But while no one expected to hear the state of sex work discussed at length, referencing the dangerous nature of the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act would have been a good way to specifically address issues facing women, Indigenous women, and immigrants, rather than making vague promises.

Naomi Sayers is a law student and activist for sex workers' rights. She is also an Indigenous woman with sex work experience. In an open letter to Wilson-Raybould, she asks the minister to listen to sex workers, and to be open to discussing their realities and concerns. She urges her to consider decriminalization, and explains the dangers of the laws as they stand:

"On the East Coast, one police chief admitted to pushing clients of the most marginalized women, Indigenous women who work on the streets, off the main streets as 'helping' them. Further, the Calgary police admits to seeing less street-based sex workers following their initiatives to target clients. However, seeing less street-based sex workers on the street does not mean that these sex workers are more safe. These two policing initiatives show the harms with targeting clients: it means pushing sex workers off the streets and into the dark corners and allies, into the potential sites of increased violence."

I got in touch with Sayers for a follow-up interview Monday.

"The only positive thing I've seen come out of the throne speech is the mention of launching an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women," she told me via email. "While the government is right to include and focus on the families of these women, I have fear that the realities of Indigenous sex workers, who continue to live in fear and who continue to experience violence as a result of criminalization of their lives in multiple ways, including the criminalization of sex work, will not be addressed."

"While they can remember and honour the missing and murdered," she says, "we must not forget the living."

Wilson-Raybould told Maclean's in November that the laws are something that the government "will be looking at" and that she looks "forward to having more discussions and advising our next steps." She added that the safety of the workers is "fundamentally important."

I reached out to the department of justice for an interview with Wilson-Raybould, but after telling the department that my enquiry was about whether the laws would be repealed, I received no further response from the ministry's media relations department.

Follow Sarah Ratchford on Twitter.

Habits: Clementine Is a Scrooge in This Week's 'Habits' Comic

Will Britain See More Extreme Weather Incidents Like Storm Desmond?

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A screengrab of BBC footage showing the scale of the floods in Cumbria

Up to 60,000 homes without power, 40 schools closed, two people dead: this is just a glimpse of what Storm Desmond has left in its wake after a weekend of record rainfall and extreme winds battered the north east of England, as well as parts of Northern Ireland, north Wales, and southern Scotland.

In Lancaster, the army has been deployed to help with the ongoing rescue operation, and David Cameron has called a COBRA meeting as almost 50 flood warnings remain in place across the region.

While this weekend's weather was extreme in the utmost—Cumbria, the county worst hit, saw more than a month's rainfall in one night—it is by no means an anomaly. As the UK gets used to seeing more and more devastating natural incidents, VICE spoke to Natalie Hall, an environmental expert and advisor to the government, to try and get a better picture of what this means for the future.

VICE: Hi Natalie. Firstly, are you at all surprised that this is happening?
In one word, no. It's one of those things that specialists in flooding and climate change have been warning people about for at least 15 years if not more. But it's just now that we're starting to notice it happening a lot more often, and so the media is taking more of an interest and therefore people that aren't normally affected by it are taking more of an interest, too.

The Environmental Agency has said this was an "unprecedented event," and that this amount of rainfall was not predicted. Can that be right? Is this a freak occurrence?
It definitely was a bit of a freak occurrence. How it works with flooding in general is that the government will give people a risk level of how likely certain events are to happen. For example, a certain area might have a one in 200 chance of being flooded, or it might have a much higher risk where floods happen a lot more. And I don't think this scenario was predicted to happen this year.

Do you think storms and flooding like this are the norm now, and something we should expect to happen?
Yes, definitely. Obviously, it is happening a lot more frequently now and people are starting to be aware that it's happening a lot more frequently. Really, we know enough about it—the government knows enough about it—to put things in place in case this does happen. If we don't put things in place, people die, the economy's damaged, and biodiversity's damaged. Now is the time to invest so things aren't so severe when it does happen.

Is this a direct consequence of climate change?
Yes. For me, it is as simple as that. But obviously, it's never one thing that causes something like this. I would say development is a big contributing factor. By that I mean major road schemes and big housing developments—water can no longer soak into the soil in the same way and that is one thing that increases flood risk.

What is being done and what should be done? Are there enough preventative measures to help combat the effects of storms such as these?
If you look at the bigger picture—at climate change as a whole—I would say that not enough is being done at the top level. But in relation to flood risk itself, and I'm not a flood risk specialist, the Water Framework Directive (WFD) has become more at the forefront of people's minds. When people get planning permission now, they have to take flood risk seriously. You can't get away with building houses on flood planes any more like we did ten, 15 years ago. There have to be things in place to make sure the landscape you're left with afterwards is the same level of risk as it was before. You can't make it worse now. So there are some things in place, but it's not enough.

What do you think the impact might be on communities in places like Cumbria in the future?
Tourism is a major, major money-making, job-making industry up there and I think a lot of people will be scared to visit in the winter. People can't get insurance, they can't sell their houses, transports affected—they will end up moving out. And this isn't a one-off. It has a really big knock-on effect. The whole local economy will be affected and the local community too, because people will move away if they can. And if the population shrinks, the area will receive less money from the government for protection against natural events, because there will be fewer people living there.

How about biodiversity—how will that be affected?
The timing of seasonal events, the way habitats can be used—these are just a couple of ways climate change will affect biodiversity. Big floods have big consequences: If there are fish spawning in a river, they will probably not survive. There might be water voles living in the river banks. If they're broken, they can no longer live there. It reduces the amount of habitat that is available. It will change all the water regimes, the rate of decomposition—things like the amount of carbon that is stored.

And why is it happening in that particular part of the country?
It's all to do with difference from sea level, the local topography, and the river system. If you're in a flood plane, chances are when there's heavy rain and the rivers can't handle it, you'll get flooded. There are so many rivers in that area, so they all converge together and flooding's more likely to happen. If London didn't have the Thames barrier, we'd probably have been flooded a lot by now—but because London's London, there are good flood defenses. The bigger the population and the more money, the better the defenses against flooding.

Thanks Natalie.

​How a Paraplegic Syrian Man Became an Emergency Lifeline for Thousands of Refugees

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"Hello, Abu Amar?" crackles a voice through a smartphone speaker. It belongs to a man about 1,800 miles away from where we are, on a beach near Izmir, Turkey. He wants to know the best time to attempt a crossing to the Greek island of Lesbos. He says his group consists of 39 people, including women and children—their rubber dinghy is ready to go. He sends their coordinates via WhatsApp. Lesbos is only a few miles off the Turkish coast but the Mediterranean is dominated by autumn storms this time of year. Within seconds, Abu Amar checks the wind and wave forecast on another app. "Looks good for tonight. Get going once it's dark and send me your new coordinates," he says. There's silence on the other end for a moment and then the caller says, "Stay with us, Abu Amar, please stay with us."

Mohammed Abu Amar, 31, was born and raised in Damascus. He's married, has two small children, and is a plasterer by trade. Recently, he's also become a sort of emergency call center for Syrian refugees trying to get to Northern Europe by means of the West Balkan route. He's the first person they contact when in need of instructions. One of his two smartphones rings nearly every second and on the other end, people who have been on the road for weeks sometimes, ask him for help.

As he directs refugees through the West Balkans on a daily basis, Abu Amar lies in a hospital bed in Elmshorn—a little city north of Hamburg. The Syrian civil war reached the capital Damascus in early December, 2012. Abu Amar was on his way to work when a tank shell hit an apartment building next to him. The Syrian army had started shelling his neighborhood, which was a rebel stronghold. A piece of shrapnel hit Abu Amar's spine, injuring his spinal cord. He's been unable to move his legs ever since. That was almost three years ago. A doctor in Damascus removed the piece of shrapnel back then and recommended that Abu Amar go to Europe—nobody could help him any further in Syria.

His own escape from Syria first got him and his family to Egypt, from where his wife, his mother, both of his young children, and himself—sitting in a wheelchair—tried to get to Italy by boat. However they were stopped by the Egyptian police while still on the beach and his whole family was thrown in jail for two weeks. After they got out, the Egyptian authorities gave them an ultimatum: They could either return to Syria or they would be taken to a refugee camp in Turkey. They decided on the camp in Turkey.

By June 2013, he and his family had arrived in Turkey. "At the camp, I heard stories about refugees who had been robbed in the Balkans," Abu Amar recalls. He heard about women being raped by traffickers or being held captive by them and forced into prostitution. The traffickers were also demanding thousands of euros in order to move refugees. So he started studying maps, tracing the smugglers' movements. He started reading about earlier refugee routes used by Afghanis and Iraqis and discovered faster and safer paths. Then he opened his first Facebook group, where he would post maps with favorable migrant routes.

There's another call: a man just crossed the border between Greece and Macedonia overnight with his group and wants to know which way they should go next. Abu Amar looks up the next city with a bus connection. "In Gevgelija there are busses to Skopje. From there you can continue to Serbia." He posts the co-ordinates of the unguarded patch of border in his Facebook groups for subsequent refugees.

Abu Amar's refugee help network functions virally. He reaches about 35,000 people with his private Facebook groups, 'Fleeing and Migration Without Smugglers' and 'The Marine Organisation for Saving and Helping.' His personal page has over 7,000 likes. His telephone numbers are spread among Syrian refugees in refugee camps in Lebanon and Turkey by word of mouth. And since hardly anybody migrates alone, each of his callers also comes with a group of people, which increases the number of people he reaches exponentially. He has several WhatsApp groups with hundreds of people in them. They're sorted according to the various stations on the migration route. His WhatsApp has 2,074 unread messages. But even though many Syrians know who he is, he was totally unknown in the West until his name came up in a refugee's story printed in The New Yorker.


The idea behind his operation is to give refugees on the West Balkan route a platform for self-organization, as a means of reducing their reliance on human traffickers. His platforms share information concerning European asylum politics, unguarded border stretches, coast guard patrols, hostels that take in refugees, smugglers, bus routes, prices for crossings, and weather. No matter whether you are on a Greek island in the Aegean, in the forests of Macedonia, a Serbian country road, or a city in Hungary, Abu Amar will always have advice for you.

"Two days ago I got a call in the middle of the night from a boat that had lost its course on the way to Greece and was slowly filling with water," recalls Abu Amar while playing a recording of the desperate woman on his phone. He had her send him their coordinates and then sent a text he translated on Google Translate to the Greek coast guard via WhatsApp. At three in the morning he received a message in his hospital bed in Elmshorn: Everyone had been saved.

Migration might be an ancient phenomenon, but social media has fundamentally revolutionized modern refugee and migrant movement. The beginning of the Arab Spring in Tunisia in 2011 was of course largely set in motion through Facebook, Twitter, and other similar platforms. Rianne Dekker and Godfried Engbersen, sociologists at Rotterdam University, wrote in 2012 that social media would "actively change migration networks and, in doing so, lower the inhibition level of potential migrants." Thanks to the internet, people in war-torn areas would be more prone to the long, dangerous journey because they could remain in contact with loved ones at home and organize into large virtual groups.

Abu Amar's community grew so quickly that it became a threat to established smugglers. Traffickers in Turkey asked around for his address and sent him death threats. Naked pictures were posted on his Facebook pages countless times in an attempt to get Facebook to freeze them.

He doesn't know how many people he's helped on their journey north over the past two and a half years. He reckons he communicates with one or two groups per day, each made up of 20 to 30 people. On top of that are the people who spontaneously pull information from his pages. There must be tens, if not hundreds, of thousands.

His phone rings again. "We're in Belgrade at the bus stop. Which bus should we take?" a voice on the other end asks. Abu Amar doesn't need to look it up; he's memorized most of the bus connections. He recommends they take a bus to Zagreb and from there further on to Austria. The way through Hungary has become a dead end for Syrian refugees since the local right-wing populist government begun to seal off their country with border fences. "Germany and Sweden are the most desirable destinations, everyone wants to get there," the migrant helper explains.

He never traversed the West Balkan route himself. After two years in the Turkish refugee camp, this summer he and his family decided to attempt another crossing by boat. They managed to reach Greece and from there they flew to Germany with counterfeit passports they bought from a Greek trafficker for 13,000 euros . He says he got the passports for cheaper than usual because the trafficker had sympathy for the young father in a wheelchair. He never wanted to leave Syria as the majority of his family is still there but he hopes that in Germany he'll be able to get the treatment he needs to be able to walk again.

Related: Watch VICE News' report, 'My Escape from Syria'

Even though he's been there for almost four weeks now, his hospital room is spartanly decorated. A copy of the Koran, a prayer rug and shrink-wrapped dates make up his personal belongings. He can't eat the hospital food, he says, but his wife brings him homemade food daily. She and their six- and seven-year-old children were given a small apartment in Elmshorn and visit him every day.

Abu Amar says he hasn't slept through a night for a long time. His phones ring off the hook and he is responsible for so many lives. "When someone calls you and says they're about to drown, you can't just hang up." There are deaths every month. Once, he got a message from a boat in the Aegean but couldn't reach the caller back—he doesn't know what happened to the people on it to this day. However, he doesn't have time to reflect on such tragedies, as new enquiries keep coming in.

He would really like to be concentrating on his recovery and he might be able to do so soon, as more helps comes in from international aid organisations and projects like the Watch The Med alarm phone, that supports refugees on boats across the entire Mediterranean. Yet, none of them are comparable to Abu Amar's widely ramified network.

The autumn wind was blowing yellow leaves by the hospital window at nightfall as we bid farewell to Abu Amar. Thirty-nine people were getting into a rubber dinghy on a beach near Izmir in Turkey. The winds were favourable to make the crossing. Abu Amar is with them. He will notify the Greek coast guard soon. But not too soon—otherwise there's the chance they will be sent back to Turkey.


We Talked to One of the World Trade Center Bombers About ISIS and Mass Shootings

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Eyad Ismoil at his arraignment in 1995. AP Photo/Ruth Pollack

Eyad Ismoil is one of the half-dozen men convicted for carrying out the World Trade Center bombings in 1993. Born in Kuwait to a Palestinian father and Jordanian mother, he was sentenced to 240 years in prison for driving a rental van packed with a bomb into a garage, killing six and injuring about 1000 more. (During his trial, he maintained that he was innocent and did not know what was inside the truck.) But 20 years after his arrest and burial deep inside the dungeons of the ADX Super Max facility in Colorado, Ismoil was moved to the general population here in West Virginia at USP Hazelton, the high-security federal prison where I reside.

Ismoil is my coworker in one of the resource centers on the compound that gives inmates an opportunity to break free from the gambling, drugs, and violence that makes up a monotonous prison life. I find him to be an extremely intelligent and humble man; for someone who's supposed to "hate the infidels," he shows no signs of loathing towards the many prisoners and staff who openly despise him.

Still, Ismoil's ethnicity and the nature of his crime make him a target. Every horrific event that pops up on the news increases the disdain for him even more, but after talking with the guy, I found myself less than shocked at the eruption of radical Islamic terrorism over the past two decades. Indeed, when I first asked Ismoil about ISIS after the Paris attacks, he asked me one question back: "Why do you think they did it?"

I responded with the only thing I knew: "They hate us."

He smiled and rolled his eyes, as if to say I knew nothing. So it was that an unlikely acquaintanceship between a hippie bank robber from Pittsburgh and a convicted terrorist from the Middle East was born.

Recently I sat down at a table with the thin, bearded 44-year-old Muslim, to get his views on the Islamic State, the mass shooting in San Bernardino, and other tragedies like the Planned Parenthood attack in Colorado. He said that to resolve the conflicts between extremists in the Middle East and the West, it was important to talk "human to human," but he also made it clear that he empathizes at least somewhat with the Islamic State. Unsurprisingly, many of his views would be considered appalling to the vast majority of Americans, but our conversation gave me a window into the worldview of people who think the US is to blame for terrorism.

VICE: As an Islamic terrorist from an earlier generation, what's your sense of who the Islamic State's members are and where they came from?
Eyad Ismoil:
ISIS is not jihadists recruited from all over to fight. They are the Sunni Muslims that have lived through 25 years of wars, torture, and rapes. They are the Iraqi and Syrian people that have suffered from unjust wars started by the US government. And when the US government Iraq in 2010, the Shia and Maliki government started killing the Sunni day and night under the watch of the Americans.

The US response was, "This is an internal problem. We don't want to interfere with their business." The show Rise of ISIS showed this, even though they tried to spin it like ISIS are aliens from another planet trying to take advantage of the massacres that the Shia—the government of Iraq—is doing to the Sunni and to get people to pledge.

But the fact that every Arab and Muslim knows is ISIS is the native people of Iraq and Syria. That's why the head of ISIS is Abu Bakr Baghdadi. He was a prisoner in an American prison in Iraq during the occupation for about four years and is known to be a scholar from the prophet's family. They are a very big family in Iraq. That's why of the Sunni pledge to him.

You don't have to recruit people for ISIS. They're Muslims from all over the world that have seen an injustice after 25 years and want to help their brothers. What you have to understand is the Iraqi people are the most stubborn of the Muslim world. They won't accept occupation or humiliation.

Day after day, all these things add up 'til the volcano erupts, and that is what's happening in Iraq and Syria under the name ISIS.

Were you surprised by the Islamic State attack in Paris?
People over in America ask why ISIS did this. people in the Middle East ask, "Why is the US doing this to us?" Put yourself in their shoes—France is dropping bombs for a year in Iraq and Syria, destroying everything, women, children, buildings... A bomb doesn't discriminate between ISIS or women and children—it just destroys.

In USA Today, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said, "We're in the business of killing terrorists, and business is good." This is a business to them. But it's human life. Human life has the right to exist the way they want.

Imagine the Iraq and Syrian people. After a year of bombing, you see your people killed, land destroyed, children scared to do anything more than hide in the corners all day. All this coming from bombs in the sky and you can't stop it. What would you do?

But even if you think the French air campaign is wrong, how does that justify terrorism?
This reminds me of a story. There was a lion, a tiger, and a zebra. The lion is complaining that something went wrong in the jungle: There is no rain. So he wants to see what went wrong so they can bring back the rain. The three of them get together and the lion goes first. "What I did was I saw an antelope and I killed it and ate it." OK, OK—they all agree that's alright. The tiger goes second. He says, "I saw a rabbit, I chased it down, killed it and ate it." OK, OK—they all agree that's okay. The zebra goes last. "What I did, I saw this patch of grass and I ate a little bit to kill my hunger.." "Get him!" the lion and tiger say in outrage.

So, the question should be who is the first to be blamed? Tell both sides of the story.

What did you think of the San Bernardino attack?
The first thing that came to my mind when I saw the attack in California was I hope they're not Muslim. I thought this for several reasons. First, the victims are civilians—they have nothing to do with it. My religion prohibits attacks on civilians. Unfortunately, many Muslims don't know much about Islam.

Second, every time you enter a country with a visa, the visa you receive is a contract. To break a contract is prohibited by Islam. You have to respect the law of the land that you live in. Third, in all my years of watching the news, all the media seems controlled. They know how to use an incident to put more wood on the fire and not give the incident justice. When it's Muslims committing these acts of violence, it's 24-hour coverage. But when it's not Muslim, it goes away quickly.

What about the Planned Parenthood attack?
What this man did is worse then what the doctors do. If this is what he's angry at, taking life, he did worse. Islam doesn't believe in abortion—all life is precious.... what he did was kill adult people who are grown. How is he trying to solve the issue?

If the government says it's alright, then you lost and have to accept it. That's part of life. They should try to solve the problem with the government, not the doctors performing what the government says is legal. You see there are symptoms to problems you can cure, which is a temporary cure. Or you can cure the root of the problem, which is permanent.

For every action, there's a reaction. If you throw a ball against a wall, it's going to come back at you. If you throw a ball hard, it's going to come back at you hard. This is the problem with all sides in these wars. We hit you, you hit back. We hit you hard, you hit back harder. Back and forth, back and forth. Nobody wins. Both sides end up with death and destruction.

But aren't Arabs forming these terrorist cells to attack Westerners?
The Arabs are not radicalizing themselves. Your government action is radicalizing the Arabs. The Muslim people of France and Europe see the pictures, days and nights of bombs. The refugees, the millions running away from war. It's horrible pictures. Do you think they should say, "Vive la France!"?

See, the Arabs want to live the way they want to live. Every century we've suffered under dictators and tyrants backed by the West. We want to live a decent life, that's all. They want us to live under man's law. We, the Arabs, we can't live like the West. We're different from them. The only thing that keeps us just is Islam. Because in Islam, the peace, the justice, comes from the sky. The one who created earth and man, he knows best.

If we have an Arab leader without Islam, he turns into a dictator. ISIS declares an Islamic State because after a century of living under dictators, the US left and put in a new one. This was their cure for the symptom. A temporary cure. Then ISIS came and the problem is even worse.

How can we solve the problem?
To solve the problem from the root, everyone has to become human. They need to talk, human to human. Let the people decide what they want. Leave them alone. Everyone can come together and say enough is enough. How long are we going to keep this action up? For the rest of our lives?

It's the law of the jungle that we're living in right now. We were given more sense than this. We walk on two legs, with our heads high. But right now, we are walking with our heads down. We need to lift our heads up, and use the brains God created for us.

Alberta’s Suicide Rates Are Up 30 Percent Amid Oil Patch Crisis

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Fort McMurray. Photo via Flickr user sbamueller

Albertans are killing themselves at an alarming rate.

There were 327 suicides in the province from January to June of this year, up from 252 in the same time period in 2014—a 30 percent increase, according to data from the Chief Medical Examiner.

"This is awful. It is alarming," Mara Grunau, executive director of the Calgary-based Centre for Suicide Prevention told VICE.

"More Albertans die by suicide every year than they do in fatal car collisions."

While Grunau was hesitant to point to one cause, she believes the suicides may be linked to the massive downturn in Alberta's energy sector as well as the catastrophic floods in 2013.

"When you have one big awful thing, a rise in unemployment, economic breakdown natural disaster, we will see a rise in the suicide rate but there's usually a delay," she said. "It hasn't been great here for a while."

According to the province, 18,006 workers were laid off in 2015, 78 percent of whom worked in the oil and gas industry. In comparison, the total job losses for 2013 and 2014 combined was 11,694. More cuts are expected in 2016. As a result, there's been a huge surge in the number of people on employment insurance, up 99 percent (28,830 recipients) year-over-year from September. In that month alone, Alberta saw a 9.1 percent jump in EI benefits.

David Kirby, a councillor with the Calgary Distress Centre, told the CBC demand for counselling is up by 80 percent and that coexisting conditions such as substance abuse playing a role in the crisis. Three out of four people who commit suicide are men.

"For me it says something really about the horrible human impact of what's happening in the economy with the recession and the real felt effect, the real suffering and the real struggle that people are experiencing," he said.

According to the Centre for Suicide Prevention, there's an average of 500 suicides per year in Alberta. If the trend continues, that number could reach 650 by the end of the year.

Grunau said she's hopeful the province's mental health review, to be tabled January, will address the issue.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

A Pig Head Was Left in a Mosque's Toilet at an Australian University

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Image via Facebook

Early yesterday afternoon, University of Western Australia PhD candidate Majdi Fal entered the bathroom of the university's student mosque to prepare for his regular afternoon prayers. Opening the door, Fal discovered a bloody pig's head lying in the basin of the traditional Turkish toilet he had intended to use. He called security, took photographs, and posted image of the scene on his Facebook page.

Detailing the grim find he noted, "I was getting ready to do my regular prayers at UWA Mosque. As soon as I opened the toilet's door, I found a dead pig's head inside. The toilet is a traditional Turkish toilet used mostly by Muslims for their ablution before performing their prayers. Needless to say, if this happened at a university, then THINGS ARE ESCALATING."

He later told the university's student magazine Pelican that, for a fleeting moment "I thought it could have been a human head."

In an official statement, the University of Western Australia described the incidence as "a deplorable act," and expressed concern over the UWA Muslim prayer room being targeted. The statement went on: "We would like to reinforce that UWA strives to support a culturally inclusive and tolerant campus community and the University will offer help and support to our Muslim students at this time."

The university's student union has also been quick to condemn the incident via their official Facebook page. "Acts like this are designed only to incite religious and racial hatred," said the student union, which also pledged to investigate, offered support services to students, and encouraged anyone with information to get in touch.

Nazim Khan, an academic and Executive Officer of the UWA Muslim Students Association, told VICE that yesterday's incident as totally surprising. "We never expected something like this would happen, and nothing so serious has happened before." But while he adds that incidences of harassment on campus had been few and far between, they're not unheard of. Earlier in the year, an unknown person attempted to gain access to the key-code protected prayer room.

Majdi also referenced the previous incident in his Pelican interview, calling it "minor" and commenting that "this is the first time something major has happened at UWA." He also stressed that despite the aggressive act, it didn't change his feelings about the wider university. "I'm sure the people who did this think for themselves and only represent themselves."

Muslim students are prominent on the UWA campus. The student mosque is situated next to a pedestrian thoroughfare, and is one of the first landmarks that students pass on their way to class from the main campus bus stop. The UWA Muslim Students Association Facebook page has over 1,000 likes, and the group recently won a campus award for hosting "the most inclusive student event" of 2015.

The Muslim Students Association is now cooperating with UWA's administration, student union, and the police to investigate the incident and protect the university's Muslim students. Khan notes that security surrounding the mosque will have to be immediately upgraded. "We had been discussing this in general, but after this incident the process will have to be fast-tracked. We will necessarily have to be more aware and vigilant."

Majdi Fal hadn't responded to VICE's request for comment at the time of writing.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Sorry Everybody, Jar Jar Binks Definitely Won't Be in 'The Force Awakens'

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Jar Jar Binks dies in a fan recut. Thumbnail image via Flickr user istolethetv

Read: The Actor Who Played Jar Jar Binks Is Not Sorry

Jar Jar Binks is one of the most beloved characters in all of cinema. Not only does he provide welcome comic relief throughout the otherwise incredibly grim and gritty Phantom Menace, he's the spiritual heart of the entire Star Wars franchise, a secret Sith Lord who is behind the evil conspiracy running the galaxy. His journey from hero to villain and back again to hero is the lynchpin that makes the first six episodes of Star Wars more than just six children's movies. He's also the character with the most popular, most elegant merchandise.

So fans of the series (a.k.a. "Warries") were crushed, naturally, when Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy confirmed that their favorite Gungan will not be making an appearance in the new film, the Guardian reports.

"Jar Jar is definitely not in the movie," Kennedy announced at a news conference as the audience cheered, no doubt sarcastically.

There won't be any Ewoks, either, because "Harrison insisted on it." That's sure to dash the hopes of many of the more serious Warries, who love cosplaying as the cute-but-deadly aliens and have long demanding several movies focused on them.

At this point, it's unlikely that anyone is looking forward to Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: This Guy Is Getting Fined for Having a Zombie Nativity Scene in His Front Yard

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Jasen Dixon's zombie nativity scene via the display's Facebook page

Read: Inside the Satanic Temple's Secret Baphomet Monument Unveiling

For the second year in a row, Ohio resident Jason Dixon has unveiled his zombie nativity scene on his front lawn just in time for the holidays. And for the second year in a row, his community members and even the local authorities are trying to get him to take it down.

Raw Story reports that Dixon's display—which houses undead wise men, a ghoulish Mary and Joseph, and a radioactive-blue, spike-toothed baby Jesus—is the target of Christians protestors, who leave him flyers that say things like "God frowns upon this manger scene."

He's getting fined by the city, ostensibly because he didn't get the proper permits for his 65-square-foot nativity scene, but he told a local CBS affiliate that he's being singled out because of his display's "theme." Dixon had received one $500 fine as of Friday, and expects to continue to be fined every day the little zombie Jesus continues to rest his undead head in the scene's manger.

To help offset the cost of the fines, Dixon has launched an Indigogo campaign to ask for donations to fight the town's fines and keep zombie Jesus on his lawn for as long as he can. He's received $407 as of Monday afternoon.

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