'HBO Original: Indonesia's Palm Bomb'

In anticipation of the upcoming fourth season of our HBO show, which will premiere February 5 at 11 PM, we are releasing all of season three for free online along with updates to the stories. Today's installment follows up on a segment titled "Indonesia's Palm Bomb," which investigated the damage being done to that country's rainforests by the palm oil industry.

Palm oil is everywhere. The cheap substitute for trans fats can be found in products ranging from soap to processed foods, butter to lipstick to detergent. It's primarily produced on plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, and that's the problem—for years, the palm oil industry has been destroying the rainforests in the region, sometimes breaking Indonesian laws in the process and committing acts of violence against the indigenous people who live in these places.

In the above episode of VICE, correspondent Ben Anderson traveled to the Indonesian island of Sumatra to see these effects firsthand—the rampant deforestation, the tensions between the palm oil companies and the natives fighting back against them, and the endangered species being put at risk as a result of human greed.

To see if any progress had been made in Indonesia, we got in touch with Rhett Butler, the founder and editor-in-chief of Mongabay, an environmental news and activism website.

VICE: There's been increased media coverage of the palm oil issue in recent years. Do you think that the public has become more aware that palm oil is causing these problems as a result?
Rhett Butler:We just wrapped up an analysis of eight years of media coverage of palm oil and indeed found a sharp increase in coverage globally.

Traditionally palm oil coverage has been a niche domain of business and finance publications, but that has dramatically changed as the impact of palm oil expansion has increased and larger areas of rainforests and peatlands have been destroyed. Interest from the broader public was catalyzed by environmental campaigns that focused on charismatic animals that were losing their homes to oil palm plantations: most notably orangutans in Sumatra and Borneo. It's rare to see a mainstream news article about palm oil environmental issues that doesn't mention orangutans. But the issue really exploded in Asia with Indonesia's haze crisis, which was largely driven by fires set to clear land for plantations.

Has anything changed in Indonesia since the HBO episode airs? Have there been efforts to curb the corruption and illegal deforestation?
Since VICE did its filming, there have been some significant changes in the Indonesian palm oil sector.

First, the price of palm oil has collapsed like most other commodities. While the price collapse hasn't been fully felt yet in the sector, it will almost certainly reduce investment in new plantations, especially in marginal areas, at least in the short-term. That macroeconomic development, coupled with increasing public outrage over environmental problems caused by the sector, has pushed several prominent palm oil growers and processors to adopt "zero deforestation" policies that bar palm oil sourced at the expense of forests and peatlands. The policies include safeguards for workers and require companies to seek permission from local communities prior to establishing new plantations. Some policies are stronger than others, but the fact they are being adopted is encouraging to environmental groups that have been working on the issue for a long time.

Second, elements in the Indonesian government have launched a massive push to establish a price floor for palm oil through proposed subsidies in the form of a biofuel mandate. Indonesia and Malaysia have former a cartel to develop schemes that could raise prices, perhaps overlooking the broader market trends and the fact that a lot of countries are now planting oil palm. Also within Indonesia, there is growing political pressure on companies that have made zero deforestation commitments to jettison those for much weaker standards. The argument is very familiar: environmental standards make it harder for domestic producers—especially small farmers—to compete.

A third major development was the haze crisis, which was so bad that it pushed Indonesia to finally implement some of the reforms needed to address the underlying causes of peatlands and forest destruction. Notably, President Jokowi announced a ban on planting in areas burned during the recent blazes, which is incredible given that many of the fires were set to clear land for oil palm plantations. Jokowi has mandated that these 2 million hectares be restored to natural ecosystems and appointed a capable head of the agency to carry out the commitment.

And finally there are some signs that the government may be getting serious about enforcing environmental laws. For example, Indonesia's Supreme Court just upheld a decision to fine a company $26 million for illegally destroying a peatland in the Leuser Ecosystem. And dozens of companies are being punished or investigated for their role in setting fires that sparked last year's haze.

In the documentary we see some locals who seem prepared to literally go to war with the companies taking part in this deforestation. Are tensions still high there?
There is still considerable conflict in the sector. Indonesia's Agrarian Reform Consortium just released a report finding 35 cases of companies committing violence against communities and more than 250 instances of agrarian conflicts. These numbers are across all sectors, but disputes over palm oil are certainly common. One high profile case is Maura Tae from East Kalimantan in Indonesian Borneo. The community fighting against palm oil was recognized for its struggle with a UN prize.

Is there such a thing as sustainable or forest-friendly palm oil? If I'm a consumer and I want to make choices that don't support a rainforest-destroying industry, what should I do?
Some people would argue that there's no such thing as sustainable plantation agriculture. Putting that aside, there are definitely ways of producing palm oil that are less damaging, and several companies are generally moving in that direction through zero deforestation commitments, which include important environmental safeguards on top of standards developed by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). First consumers should check to see whether they products they buy are produced by a company that has made a zero deforestation commitment. If the company has, let it know that you approve. If not, then ask the company what it is doing to address deforestation risk in its palm oil supply chain. Companies aren't likely do to anything unless their customers let them know the issue is important.

What is the mood of activists who have been trying to call attention to this issue and fight deforestation? Are they hopeful of reaching a critical mass soon where everyone from celebrities to the US government is denouncing palm oil plantations?
Generally I think activists have been surprised by how fast companies have taken up zero deforestation commitments. This was all a pipe dream five years ago, but now most companies that trade or consume palm oil internationally have some sort of forest policy in place. However it is still a big step to go from words to action, so environmental groups are now focusing on the more challenging issue of implementation. But, encouragingly, companies seem receptive to dialog on how to move toward greener supply chains.

That said, there is still plenty of deforestation happening for palm oil production. And it's spreading. For example, companies are clearing massive areas of primary forests in the Peruvian Amazon for new plantations. Community members who have tried to stand up to these plantations have been threatened with death. And investors are eyeing forests in New Guinea, equatorial Africa, and other parts of Latin America for plantations. The palm oil business isn't going to be controlled by Indonesia and Malaysia forever.

Storm Frank battered Western Europe over the Christmas period. Across Ireland and the UK, towns were evacuated, rivers broke their banks, and the media was full of stories of people's homes being washed out. In Ireland, where we tend to get a little hysterical about the weather, the public went into a blind panic when national weather forecaster Evelyn Cusack predicted that Storm Frank would have a "sting in the tail." A second storm—a close cousin of Frank's—was set to make land the following day, bringing more water, more wind, and more chaos.

There were long lines at the supermarkets, canoes made ready in front gardens, and DVDs rented by the shelf-load.

I contacted some big wave surfers I found on Instagram and asked if they were still going out in the storm.

"Hell yeah," they said.

"Can I come out with you?" I asked.

"Can you surf?"

"A bit," I replied.

"OK, come party with us first and then we'll get you a wave," they said.

The west coast of Ireland is one of the world's premier big wave locations. It's not unheard of for a wave to be 40 or 50-feet tall in these parts. It's also not unheard of for people to surf waves that big.

Instead of waves breaking onto beaches they come crashing down on giant cliff faces that are so steep the boys have had to install safety kits in the crevices in case surfers get stranded. Contained in those kits are a first aid bag, food, a phone, and whisky.

It's also freezing, so those who do surf here have a slight touch of madness about them. You have to wear a suit all year round and a hood and boots for three quarters of that. Surfers, exhausted, arms like planks, will hang on in the water an extra 20 minutes, half an hour, in the hope that the rain will stop for just long enough that they can get changed in the parking lot without getting their dry clothes wet.

Ollie O Flaherty and Pete Conroy are a toe-in team. Between them they've had their backs broken, hips cracked, and knees popped in weather that you wouldn't put a duck out in. Pete is getting married in a couple of months and is stocking up on drink for the wedding, so it's decided that the party will be at his house.

Clem McInerney is a videographer. He picks me up. His car is ankle deep in sand and broken leashes. Clem is back in the water a week after tearing the ligaments around his shoulder.

How big was the wave that did that?

"It wasn't a wave," he says, "it was the wind."

The party is a lot of fun. About 25 guys and four girls show up. In spite of the blow-dried hair and the little black dresses, which in this weather must be harder to get into than a wetsuit, the girls won't be enough to distract the boys from wrestling, fighting with samurai swords, and talking about surfing. The west coast of Ireland is a lonely place for a girl, lonelier still when all the boys are married to the sea.

"Is it ever too big that you don't go out?" I ask the boys.

Silence.

They come across like Jackass at Sea, but the boys who surf the big shit can take care of themselves. Pete's a part-time fireman, and it's hard to believe when he's got someone topless in a chokehold (that also, impressively, includes a wedgie), but he goes around the big wave spots handing out free life jackets to newcomers. In a way it's the opposite of the localism notorious in the surfing world. That might be because the sport is so young in Ireland, or because the area around here is so dangerous.

Ireland has the heaviest surfing in the world, says Ollie; you surf Pipeline in Hawaii and you ride back into a beach, but you surf Aileen's off the west coast of Ireland and you're charging at a 750-foot cliff, which isn't quite as forgiving as a nice stretch of sand. Fionan Cronin—who's also at the party and is running around with his shirt off, swinging a broken samurai sword—got caught between the rocks and the waves and slammed five times before the jet-ski got to him.

Everyone sleeps over. Somehow 20 guys and those few girls find corners to crash in, curled up beside each other, the dog or bottles of Buckfast—a mixture of wine, caffeine, and sugar that is commonly popular in places with high winds and persistent rain.

In the morning it's pissing down. It has been since I arrived. The boys keep going around saying how mild it is, which is crazy talk for anyone who doesn't live here. Choosing to live in Ireland, especially the west of the country, is a choice between being "cold" and "not so cold" for the rest of your days.

We get into our wetsuits in a mucky field full of cows. Everyone makes little squeals as the damp suits touch their skin. Then we climb down a cliff face that erodes beneath our feet. We then have to scramble across huge shelves of rock before we can get into the water. Ollie's already been in the water since dawn. He's the only one of us who doesn't stink of booze.

We start paddling out. I can taste Buckfast in my mouth.

The first set starts rolling in and I realize that I'm already caught inside and the lip is going to hit me. I try to dive but the water's too heavy, or I'm just too weak, and I get absolutely battered. Not once but twice. There's a lull and I paddle like fuck. I can't judge wave heights but it feels as big as a house. Clem will tell me later that it's only two foot. That's a west coast thing; you go up to someone after they've just rode a monster and say, "That was a nice knee-high wave you caught."

I stay out and try to catch some bits and pieces, but it's too big and I'm shitting myself—and you don't do that in a borrowed wetsuit—so after another couple of wipe outs I ride the white wash back into the big rock slabs, scramble to the land, spit a blob of puke out of my mouth, and make my way back up the cliff to the muddy field and the parking lot.

I sit in the car with the heater on full blast, watching other guys getting changed into damp clothes, using wet towels and car doors to protect them from the gale.

In winter, Clem says, there's a drop of about 80 percent in the number of surfers because of the cold, but that's also when the waves are firing hardest. There are many consistent inconsistencies in the life of the year-round Irish surfer. The North Shore of Hawaii it most certainly is not—cow shit, frost bite, the danger of death-by-cliff-face—so thank god for at least giving them waves.

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Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

It's not a perfect measure, but you can generally assume that when half a million British people agree on something, that something is stupid, selfish, priggish, and wrong. Case in point: the petition to ban Donald Trump from entering the UK, signed by 575,000 people and debated in Parliament on Monday.

The debate was a great exercise in British self-delusion, running for three hours, as one politician after another put on their most serious statesman face, burping up heroic soundbites on fighting racism or free expression in the hope of being turned into a viral gif. Parliamentary politics at its finest, or in other words, as a mildewing private school debate club: there was no vote, and the debate had no consequences; the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have already indicated that they will not be blocking Trump from entering the country—supposedly because of our commitment to free speech; more likely because we can't be sure that a bored and blood-crazed American public won't hand the man 7,000 nuclear weapons. We can debate the issue all we like; the next time Donald Trump comes to Britain, he's more likely to be stuffed into a gilded carriage with the Queen than to be turned away at the border.

And this, despite appearances, could be a good thing. Not because of any of the usual guff about how open debate is the best way to solve differences or how we can only change people's minds by talking to them, but because of the sheer hypocrisy of the petition. Trump has said and done any number of monstrous things over the course of his 69-year slither to the top, but what really caught the world's attention was his proposal for a temporary moratorium on the movement of all Muslims—including US citizens—into the United States. His politics are border politics: a big beautiful wall to seal off the boundary with Mexico, a big beautiful database of every Muslim in America, a big beautiful box to hide your head in.

Like all fascisms, it's about determining what is inside and what is out, stamping down on any exceptions that blur the divide, and turning the world into a cartoon with extremely heavy linework. And the reaction of the British public, when faced with proposals to introduce harsh and arbitrary border controls and keep the dangerous foreigners away? Introduce harsh and arbitrary border controls. Keep the dangerous foreigner away. What does it say about a country when its reaction to any outside evil is to go glassy and rigid, to jump inside of its shell?

Related: Watch 'The Wolf of the West End'

Whatever their other differences, just about every response to the Trump situation is based on the idea that Britain is a good and open and harmonious place, something you can easily disprove by going outside on a rainy Tuesday. Theresa May insists that "coming to the UK is a privilege and not a right." Jeremy Corbyn proposes to invite Trump to his local mosque in Islington, so he can see how nicely everyone is getting along. Paul Flynn MP suggests taking him to Brixton, which Trump had identified as a Muslim-controlled "no-go" area.

Meanwhile Britain bombs foreign countries and refuses to take its share of refugees; it lets children die on train tracks or crammed into the backs of lorries. A new Home Office policy, taking effect in April this year, will order the deportation of any non-EU national in Britain who makes less than £35,000 a year. (If the rules were enforced universally, well over half the country would have to leave. Donald Trump, though, would be safe.) New changes to the spousal settlement visa would separate British-born children from parents who fail to pass a mandatory English language test and are unceremoniously exiled from the country.

The discourse on migration in Britain is brutal and insane, and the laws are enforced by dawn raids and racist vans, an exclusionism on the point of fascism. We don't just talk about purifying ourselves of foreign contaminants, we do it every day. In a situation like this, the function of that petition is to make us feel better about ourselves. We take the evil that surrounds us and project it onto the sweaty folds of Donald Trump's body. We're not racist, we're not fascist—it's the orange man, he's to blame. And to prove how different we are, we'll close our borders to him. The petitioners are speaking his language. Britain and Donald Trump deserve each other.

I'm not saying that Donald Trump should be allowed into the UK; ideally, he'd be barred from every country on Earth, left to live out the rest of his days in an underwater prison. But if we're serious about keeping fascism out of this country, we should do it consistently. The Home Office can block or remove anyone from the country if it feels that their presence is "non-conducive to the public good." Let's start taking this seriously.

First, we boot out all the foreign landlords, all the attendees at our glitzy arms fairs, all the visiting generals. It'd be hard to claim that any of these people are anything other than non-conducive to the public good. Then we can get to work on our domestic problems. Ticket inspectors, for instance, those low-level enforcers of our own grotty 21st-century fascism. Border guards (of course), lobbyists, cops, Vine stars, aristocrats, Sunday Times columnists, and so on. As we work further and further to dig out the evil from our national psyche, the landscape itself will start to change. The old forests, beaten back for 3,000 years, will once again swamp the countryside, their deep dells seething with wolves. Climbing plants will slowly grapple skyscrapers to the ground. Seals will swim up the Thames. Something like life will return to the rainy fascism island. All this is in our power. And until it's done, we have no right to refuse entry to anyone.

Follow Sam Kriss on Twitter.

Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán is escorted by army soldiers to a waiting helicopter, at a federal hangar in Mexico City, Friday, January 8. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

The recapture of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo, in Mexico earlier this month has given the world's most infamous drug lord a healthy dose of attention. Shortly after news broke of Guzmán's capture at the hands of an elite squad of Mexican marines in his home state of Sinaloa, Sean Penn came under heavy criticism for his secret rendezvous with the fugitive criminal, and for the Rolling Stone article in which the actor self-indulgently detailed a bizarre October tete-a-tete in the Mexican jungle. On Sunday night, the man who famously portrayed Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High tried to explain himself on 60 Minutes, insisting that the Mexican government placed a target on his back when they blamed El Chapo's capture at least partly on the meeting he had with Penn.

Regardless of what you think about Penn as a practitioner of journalism, this whole affair has clarified that El Chapo—like generations of drug lords, gangsters, and banditos before him—is determined to court public admiration. From Al Capone to Bonnie and Clyde, right up to modern day outlaws like Pablo Escobar, John Gotti, and Demetrius "Big Meech" Flenory from the Black Mafia Family (BMF), major criminals often covet the spotlight.

"Most of the public is enamored with celebrities." says Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist at the University of Baltimore. "Individuals like El Chapo may believe that they have similar qualities to famous people, and that there is minimal difference between being famous and infamous."

Lest we forget, criminal indictments against Guzmán in various US states accuse the man of being involved in a rash of murders and kidnappings, in addition to running the largest narcotics operation in the western hemisphere. But that didn't stop him from seeking validation in the form of a biopic on the big screen.

"What really amazed me was that he was interested in doing a movie," says Freeway Rick Ross, the legendary former crack kingpin from Los Angeles. "He could have financed the movie himself with the type of money he has. He was already one of the most famous people in the world. I don't know why he would have wanted to be any more famous than he already was. His goal should have been to stay free, because your freedom is a powerful thing to lose."

Yet seemingly due in no small part to his movie ambitions—if also a possible wish to court the actress Kate del Castillo, who acted as a go-between for Penn and Guzmán—El Chapo has forfeited his freedom yet again.

"I think he was very foolish to want to make a movie when in fact he was already a movie without making one," says Donald "Sly" Green, the former head of a large scale drug organization out of Buffalo who's currently serving a life sentence in federal prison. "Like Gotti, he wanted to be more famous than he already was. It was an unrealistic move that now puts him away for his entire life with extreme high security. He'll regret that."

Indeed, the latest indications suggest that while Guzmán is back in the very same prison from which he escaped in July, authorities are moving him to different cells constantly to prevent the tunnel maven's cronies from coming to fetch him. Motion sensors and new cameras are helping keep tabs on him. And whereas the Mexican government had previously refused to consider extraditing Guzmán to face charges in the United States, that seems increasingly likely this time—even if it takes years.

Check out our documentary about how Pablo Escobar's legacy of violence drives today's cartel wars.

Shawn Rech, the co-director of the true-crime documentary A Murder in the Park, argues the high-profile gangsters of our era are prone to selling themselves out for short-term gratification.

"If you look back at gangsters in America, only the guys with fancy suits, jewelry and luxury cars went to prison," Rech says. "The low-key guys stayed free and amassed fortunes. Add to that the element of wanting to be a folk hero—a twisted, modern day Robin Hood, and you've got the pathology of an El Chapo. Guys like him and Pablo Escobar actually believed they were good guys."

But in Mexico's drug underworld, there's a certain method to El Chapo's madness.

"In the narco culture of Sinaloa, there's been a long tradition of drug traffickers promoting themselves in song and film," explains Ioan Grillo, a journalist covering the drug war who wrote Gangster Warlords and El Narco . "They actually pay drug balladeers to pen verses about them, painting them as heroes who have the balls to stand up to the DEA and Mexican army. El Chapo was just taking it up a notch by making links with Hollywood."

El Chapo may be a modern drug lord, but the saga of his capture speaks to age-old proclivities on the part of career criminals determined to carve out a legacy.

Kevin Chiles, a notorious Harlem drug lord who documents the stories of legendary gangsters in Don Diva, a magazine he founded in prison, said, "We've been doing stories for 17 years now, since the inception of Don Diva, and that's one thing they all have in common. It doesn't seem to matter what nationality you are or how rich you are—notoriety and infamy always gets the best of them."

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In anticipation of the upcoming fourth season of our HBO show which will premiere this February, we are releasing all of season three for free online. Watch all the episodes here, and don't miss the premiere of season four on Friday, February 5, at 11PM on HBO.

Last spring, for the third season of VICE on HBO, VICE correspondent Thomas Morton explored the very real possibility of a world without antibiotics, looking at the sometimes-perilous search for as-yet-unknown plants that might contain the keys to a new breed of bacteria-fighting drugs. Without new therapies, people are already starting to die from antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" like the dreaded MRSA infection, a deadly version of staph.

But microbiologist Michael Schmidt of the Medical University of South Carolina, thinks there may be a way to avoid this post-antibiotic crisis. According to Schmidt, conventional thinking about antibiotics has helped bring humans to this crisis point. It was inevitable that bacteria would adapt to dodge the effects of even the best antibiotics, since those antibiotics were essentially just chemicals produced by co-evolving organisms, or synthesized to mimic what those co-evolving organisms would produce.

"This arms race has been going on since the beginning of time," Schmidt said in an interview last week. "We've got about 30 more years of antibiotics left, the microbes outsmart us. Unless we become clever."

According to Schmidt, this cleverness could involve plotting a new way to kill deadly bacteria. Specifically, Schmidt's research has focused on usingBacteriophages (or phages as they're informally known,) a category of naturally-occurring bacteria fighters that use a different strategy than typical antibiotics in the fight against bacteria.

Most antibiotic drugs work by finding various cell vulnerabilities in bacteria that do not exist in human cells. In contrast, a bacteriophage—basically a "bacteria eater"—is a virus that infects a bacterium. Like all viruses, bacteriophages are not lifeforms per se, just little packets of matter that attach to cells, and trick them into making more packets of matter, and on and on, ad nauseam. And they are astonishingly common—perhaps the single most common organic "entities" in the entire biosphere. They're everywhere: In the air, the ocean, the North Pole and even our bodies.

"They're out there, just floating as these inert objects, waiting to bump into a microbe," Schmidt told me. Any given bacterium likely has a whole army of phage that can target it. "The phage is the key, and it will find the lock," he explained.

That gives phages an edge in the fight against bacteria. Over the billions of years bacteria and phage have fought each other, bacteria have evolved to fend off one phage or another, but they haven't become phage-proof. What's more, bacteriophages absolutely can be used to kill infections—in fact, the first use of phage therapy to cure infections actually predates penicillin. Phages have just rarely been practical or reliable in medicine.

Schmidt tried to fix that problem a little over a decade ago. "We did research on taking advantage of the molecular syringe aspect of phage, and what we had them do is inject instructions for the microbe itself to kill itself," he told me. It worked extremely well. "Every mouse that got the phage was cured, and every mouse that didn't get the phage unfortunately succumbed to the infection," Schmidt said.

Unfortunately, he added, there are hurdles that still prevent phage therapy from being a silver bullet, even in a lab. First of all, not all phages can compete with the human immune system, which is always on the prowl for intruders. Bacteria can also bring a version of a phage with them when they infect a host, making the host "lysogenic"—in a sense, immune to the phage. "If you happen to be lysogenic to phage that you're using to treat that infection, the drug won't work," Schmidt said.

In 2003, Schmidt and his team developed a workaround for these problems, programming phages to carry a lethal set of instructions for bacteria. "We didn't actually make any phage. We just programmed to die," he said. "We called it a lethal-agent delivery system."

According to Scmidt, lethal agents can even target MRSA, the scariest antibiotic-resistant superbug. The trouble isn't making these lethal agents—which Schmidt calls "magic bullets"—but getting them approved in pharmaceutical treatments. "With every bullet you create, it creates an FDA regulatory pathway" Schmidt said. "Quite frankly, that is the biggest hurdle to ethical phage therapy."

Some scientists are dismissive of Schmidt's approach to phage therapy, arguing that engineering phages is a waste of time and money, given that so many bacteriophages already exist in nature. But Schmidt thinks his lethally-armed phages could be ripe for a resurgence, thanks to improvements in the technology needed for large-scale manufacture.

"When we were starting this 15 years ago, it was a very different cost structure, but now in 2016, it's less expensive," he said. "It could become a viable option."

But Schmidt acknowledges that there are other ways to cure superbugs with phage therapy. In fact, to my astonishment, he told me that if I had, say, a child infected with MRSA, and I took it upon myself to find the cure, I could potentially find phages out in nature, and use them to "create a cocktail that would take out the MRSA."

The first step in this highly scientific process would be to fetch a bucket of sewage. "You'd isolate the MRSA from your child's wound, plate it on a petri plate, and then you would literally take drops of sewage, filter them out, and figure out which drop of sewage would wipe out the MRSA on the petri plate," Schmidt explained. "Then you could clean that up some more through dilution and purification, and make your own drug fairly quickly."

What he's describing, he said, is not unlike a technique for fighting local bacteria with local phages. The local phage method that has worked in trials in the former Soviet Union, where experimentation with phage therapy is still very active.

One way or another, if the antibiotic apocalypse comes, and we're all dying of seemingly incurable infections, phages could well come to our rescue. "It's not a question of knowing how to do it; it's a question of doing it," Schmidt said.

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A lab in China where synthetic drugs are manufactured. Photo courtesy VICE on HBO

In anticipation of the upcoming fourth season of our HBO show, which will premiere February 5 at 11 PM, we are releasing all of season three for free online along with updates to the stories. Today's installment follows up on a dispatch called Synthetic Drug Revolution, which explored how foreign manufacturers create recreational products that often slip through the cracks of US drug law. Watch the episode below:

Synthetic marijuana made for a major American public health scare in 2015. The term, which refers to any chemical that affects the same brain receptors as weed's active ingredient of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), was all over the headlines for its abuse by homeless people who can obtain it for as little as a dollar, and teenagers who conflate apparent legality with safety. Emergency room visits spiked around the country, with patients exhibiting symptoms ranging from catatonia to something resembling excited delirium.

Although things have cooled off a bit since last summer, synthetic marijuana, often known as "K2" or "Spice," was back in the news last week when New England Patriots player Chandler Jones allegedly smoked some, only to reportedly show up at a Massachusetts police station shirtless before getting hospitalized.

Despite the efforts of regulators, synthetic weed has often been found in corner stores and bodegas around America. But where it originates is a bit murkier. In the VICE on HBO episode Synthetic Drug Revolution, correspondent Hamilton Morris traveled to New Zealand and China to get a first-hand look at the people and facilities behind this new frontier of dangerous, quasi-legal highs.

VICE: I'm really curious as to how synthetic cannabinoids are produced. I've done a lot of reporting on the public health effects but I have no understanding of how they're actually made. Can you walk me through that?
Hamilton Morris: I mean, there's so many different cannabinoids and there's so many different circumstances under which they're produced. In an academic lab, they're produced on a small scale pretty routinely, and that's where most of these synthetic cannabinoids that are used in "spice"-type blends originated—in academic and pharmaceutical research.

With a couple exceptions, the first synthetic cannabinoids to enter widespread use were called naphthoylindoles, and they are synthesized in a two step reaction where 1-napthoyl chloride, or a substituted derivative, acylates an indole and then the indole nitrogen is deprotonated with a strong base like sodium hydride and alkylated with an alkyl halide like bromopentane. A lot of fuss is made about the fact these drugs are produced in Chinese labs, but the issue is not that they come from China—virtually everything is manufactured in China. The issue is that they are sold in blends where users can't predict the strength of what they are ingesting because the law necessitates deceptive labeling.

One of the labs that we visited in China was producing enormous quantities of an intermediate for an experimental antiandrogen designed by the pharmaceutical company Roussel Uclaf. Presumably, it would have no psychoactive effect and was being sold on the grey market to treat androgenic alopecia . So they're making drugs for baldness, acne, synthetic cannabinoids, antibiotics, ketamine derivatives—all in the same labs. The people that are producing them are not particularly concerned with the end product or who's using it. They're chemists, not moralists.

Right. So when you spoke to those people, were they suspicious of your motives for going there?
I wanted to be honest and say, 'I'm a journalist, but I've also worked in a lab and understand what you do and I'm not here to vilify your work but rather to understand how and why these substances are being manufactured.' But being honest didn't really work and we had an enormous amount of difficulty gaining access.

I'd been to China once before to shoot in cannabinoid labs with VICE in 2012. That time, we posed as buyers from a European legal high reseller and we did get some interesting access, but it wasn't quite enough. When I went back for VICE on HBO, I thought the best way to gain access would be to travel with Matt Bowden. He was already the subject of the piece and he'd poured millions of dollars into the cannabinoid industry in China so I assumed the manufacturers would feel indebted to him. His money had literally built factories in Shanghai.

But even with Matt Bowden and all his clout, the manufacturers still didn't feel comfortable allowing us to film in their labs as journalists. So we reoriented our stated goal slightly—we told the manufacturers that we were using their labs as a location to shoot a steampunk rock opera, and they were totally OK with that. The cannabinoid chemists really loved Matt Bowden's music; they would stop synthesizing cannabinoids to film us on their phones. So we made the HBO piece, but we also shot a great music video for Matt Bowden that I hope will be released soon as well.

Crazy. But did the people there know that they were making chemicals that are designed for abuse overseas? Or did they not even realize it?
I think the actual chemists doing the benchwork in many instances did not know. The synthetic cannabinoids aren't being sold or used domestically in China and the chemists certainly weren't using the drugs themselves, so if they did know, it was in some very abstract capacity. The people that owned the labs who were overseeing the business end had a better idea, but even they may not fully understand beyond the market demand.

There was one lab we visited that was doing contract work for Pfizer, and I asked them if they could offer a chemical called MDMB-FUBINACA that had been implicated in a lot of deaths in Russia, and the chemist that was working there scolded me for even asking about it because she was following the news and was aware that it had been implicated in these fatal poisonings. So that was a definite exception—she knew how the compounds were being used and had concerns about their toxicity.

Did you get a sense of how many people were working in the facilities you visited or how much output they were responsible for?
We went to about a half-dozen labs. There were different scales, different degrees of technological sophistication. I imagine there are over a thousand labs producing these substances in China now. It's almost entirely cannabinoid oriented, maybe in the future that will change. All the labs could produce kilogram quantities of cannabinoids active at doses below one milligram; some of them could have produced hundreds of kilograms.

Do you have any sense of how these substances get from these facilities in China to the corner store in Brooklyn? What happens between those two steps?
The pure chemicals are purchased in bulk, then they're dissolved in a solvent like acetone, the acetone-cannabinoid solution is poured over an inert plant carrier, generally damiana, and the acetone is evaporated, leaving a cannabinoid-impregnated leaf that's stuffed into foil envelopes and sold. The profit margin is enormous. Often the amount of chemical in one of these packets that sells for $15 would be a small fraction of a dollar, if not a fraction of a cent.

Oh wow, okay. I know these drugs have been around for a long time, but it was really only last year when we started hearing about a huge spike in emergency room visits. Is there a second generation of chemicals that's more dangerous than the ones that were first banned by the feds, or is there another explanation as to why we're seeing this all over the news?
There are so many social factors that go into a drug's toxicity—the direct biological effect is only part of the equation. With synthetic cannabinoids, I think the primary issue is not necessarily the drugs themselves but the fact that they are sold as mixtures with unknown potency and deceptive labeling, which is necessitated by prohibition. It's not something the manufacturers do out of malicious intent.

Of course, it's not ideal to introduce a drug that has never been used outside an in-vitro binding assay into a population of thousands of humans, but this is an industry created by prohibition, and many users choose synthetic cannabinoids because they are being drug tested or because they can't afford Cannabis. As soon as one synthetic cannabinoid becomes familiar, it's prohibited and a new one is introduced to take its place and this constant influx of new drugs dramatically increases the chance of people encountering one that really does have unacceptable toxicity.

Also, despite the endless scare stories in the media, I think many people are still skeptical that synthetic cannabinoids really do get you as high or much higher than Cannabis. They might buy a packet at a bodega and think that there's no way that this stuff—this potpourri—could be as strong as weed, when in fact it could be a hundred times stronger.

Synthetic weed can make people freak out, but it also can make people become comatose. So is there an explanation as to why the reaction varies so wildly? Is it based on which cannabinoid happens to be used?
Some synthetic cannabinoids have been known to cause seizures or a sort of excited delirium in certain users, and some have been known to decrease blood pressure to the point that users lose consciousness and asphyxiate on their own vomit. Virtually all of these cannabinoids bind to the CB1 receptor in the brain, but beyond that there are enormous variations in potency, functional activity, off-target binding, and an enormously diverse population of users taking different doses often in combination with other drugs. In Japan, there was a trend for some time of selling synthetic cannabinoids with NMDA antagonists like diphenidine or methoxphenidine; then you're dealing with interactions between drugs that are already unknown in isolation. It all paints a very complex toxicological picture.

How many varieties of synthetic cannabinoids could exist? Is the DEA's method of banning several at a time practical or not given that there are millions of permutations?
Not only is it completely impractical, it's extremely unsafe. Prohibition has been terrible at achieving its goal of preventing people from using psychoactive drugs, and it's maximizing the harm for users. Every time a drug comes out that people enjoy, the first response is to make it illegal, to take it off the market so that it has to be replaced with something that is relatively unknown and could be much more toxic. If Cannabis were federally legal, people wouldn't be using synthetic cannabinoids. Even within the realm of synthetic cannabinoids, the first generation synthetic cannabinoids that came out around 2009 like cannabicyclohexanol and JWH-073 were relatively benign and well tolerated, but they were prohibited and it eventually lead to compounds like MDMB-FUBINACA that have a very narrow safety margin.

The number of possible cannabinoids is near infinite. From the beginning, I knew there would be hundreds possible, and years later I'm still surprised every month when I see the array of new structures appearing on the market.

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In 1933, a young Hans J. Massaquoi stood in a schoolyard in Hamburg, wearing a swastika patch on his sweater, surrounded by the load of fair-haired, blue-eyed kids, that you see in the photo above.

Young Hans, the son of a German nurse and a Liberian diplomat, managed to survive under Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime. "I survived because of a loophole in racial laws. We weren't such a significant number so as to be noticed by the Nazis," wrote Massaquoi in his autobiography Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany.

Germany's black population during the Nazi period was minimal—maybe a few thousand at most, among the 65 million people living in Germany at the time. Massaquoi was the grandson of the Liberian Consul in Germany, so his family was granted immunity and he was able to live among the Aryan population while anyone else considered by the Nazis to belong to an "inferior race" began to suffer the effects of Hitler's repressive, xenophobic policies.

However, Massaquoi's life began to change in the summer of 1934. "When I came to school one beautiful summer morning in 1934, our third grade teacher informed the class that the principal had given instructions for all the students and teachers to gather at the schoolyard," he wrote. "Right there, dressed in the brown Nazi uniform I used to wear for special occasions, the principal announced that 'the most splendorous moment of our young lives' was about to come, that destiny had chosen us to be among the fortunate ones who would contemplate 'our beloved Führer' with their own eyes. That was a privilege, he assured us, that our yet to be born children, and our children's children, would envy in times to come. I was eight by then, and I didn't notice that, from the almost 600 kids gathered in that schoolyard, I was the only one Herr Wriede was not talking to."

Massaquoi's schoolmates were seemingly so taken in by the Nazi leader's charisma that, after his visit, they all signed up to the Hitler Youth. Massaquoi didn't want to be left out, so he also applied to become a member. He was not accepted.

A couple of years later, the xenophobic trend in German society became even more apparent. After African-American athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, Hitler and the rest of the National Socialist fanatics ramped up their rejection of black people. Soon after this, Massaquoi's paternal family had to flee the country, while he remained in Germany with his mother.

Hans as a child (left) and an adult (right). Photo via

But the nightmare had only just started. First, a notice placed on the swings of a park said "non-Aryan" kids were not allowed to play there. After that, teachers at school who were of Jewish origin began to disappear. But it wasn't until young Massaquoi visited the Hamburg Zoo that the emotional connection he had felt towards Nazism was finally severed. Inside the zoo, in a cage placed outdoors among the animals, he discovered an African family being laughed at and teased by the crowd. Massaquoi had been just another kid fearfully approaching the cage, until somebody stood out from the crowd, pointed at him and yelled cruelly: "They've had a child." That was the first time he had been the subject of public scorn.

In order to survive the country's increasingly racist dogma, Massaquoi had to endure many insults to his person. Another peculiar episode in his life took place immediately after the beginning of the second world war. Massaquoi, who had been rejected by the Hitler Youth for being "unworthy to wear the German uniform," was on the brink of being recruited by the German Army, an irony not lost on him. However, he was spared because he was underweight.

The end of the second world war led to another U-turn in Massaquoi's life. During the post-war period, he initially made a living working as a jazz saxophonist, and then emigrated to the United States with a brief stopover at Liberia—his father's homeland, where he was recruited by Uncle Sam to fight in the Korean War.

After his time as a paratrooper in the American army, he attended the University of Illinois, where he graduated with a degree in journalism. He worked as a journalist for more than four decades and served as a managing editor of Ebony magazine, the legendary African-American publication. "All's well that ends well," Massaquoi writes. "I'm quite satisfied with the way my life has turned out to be. I survived to tell the piece of history I was a witness of. At the same time, I wish everyone could have a happy childhood within a fair society. And that was definitely not my case."

Massaquoi passed away on January 13, 2013, in New Orleans.

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Even food trucks can turn into potential displays of white privilege, apparently. Photo via Facebook

When Bobbi jo Rice opened her food truck in 2012, she settled on the name "Com Bun Yeu," Vietnamese for "rice noodle love," to reflect her passion for that country's cuisine.

But Rice, 34, a white woman from Brooklyn, soon found her branding was misleading customers.

"The food was far from authentic and my business was not meeting people's expectations for traditional Vietnamese fare," she told VICE.

At the end of 2014, she started fresh with a new truck and a name that left no room for confusion: White Girl Asian Food. The Austin, Texas-based business serves up "Chinese/Vietnamese inspired" banh mi sandwiches, "Korean bbq-inspired" bulgogi rice boxes, "Thai-inspired" noodles and the like.

Rice's cooking has earned three stars on Yelp with extreme reviews on both ends of the spectrum e.g. " I'd rather burn my tongue than eat at this place" versus "Wow, just wow, what a sandwich!" But some are claiming the name itself is a blatant display of cultural appropriation by "privileged white whores," as one post put it.

"The oblivious tone-deaf white privilege here is astounding," said a post on the blog Angry Asian Man that was widely shared over the weekend.

VICE reached out to Rice to ask just WTF she was thinking with this concept:

VICE: Why Asian food?
Bobbi jo Rice: Growing up in Brooklyn, New York with a mother who was an adventurous eater gave me the opportunity to be exposed to a cultural melting pot of foods. However, I found myself drawn to a particular restaurant, which became like a second home to me, named Joy Kitchen. When I finally had the opportunity to open a food truck in 2012, I was madly in love with the combination of fresh, rich, deep flavors and textures I found in Vietnamese cuisine.

Why did you choose to market it as White Girl Asian Food? Explain the 'white girl' part of the concept.
The original name, Com Bun Yeu, implies traditional Vietnamese fare. When rebranding, I wanted to get the point across that our goal was not to make traditional Asian food. I am a white girl cooking my rendition of Asian cuisine. Couldn't think of a name that was more honest and straight to the point.

Asia is pretty big, which cuisines from Asia are represented in your food?
Asia is an incredibly diverse place and we could never hope to represent all of Asia (or even most of a single country). We do, however, have loves from almost every different cuisine in Asia, and some of those loves make it into the food we cook every day. We borrow a little bit from everywhere, and while we cook far from traditional dishes, we rely heavily on the umami of Vietnamese, Thai, and Korean food, but we reserve the right to visit, borrow from, and celebrate other food cultures as well!!

Is the menu more tailored to a suit a white person's palette?
Our hope is to reach everyone who loves great food. Our customer base is diverse as is our personal backgrounds. We wouldn't have it any other way! We hope our love of food shines through, and in our opinion, that is perfect for any palette.

Did you ever worry that this might be considered offensive, in terms of the fact that you're taking cuisine from a different culture or cultures and labelling it as 'white'? Take for example this comment: 'How many Asian people have had to be told their food was weird only to see white people turn around and charge ridiculous prices for it. My culture should not be a gimmick for making white people rich.' How do you respond to that?Unfortunately, I cannot report that opening White Girl Asian Food has made me rich :). I'm also not entirely sure I can solve that problem. The reason I say that is a lack of cultural acceptance of other people's food culture is a problem that only exploration of other food cultures can help resolve. Throughout my voyage as a chef, a minority small business owner (did you know only 26 percent of food establishments are owned by women? Booo!!!!), and as someone who is passionate about other food cultures than my own, a greater understanding of "weird" or different than my own has been not only largely enriching, but truly life changing.

But did you think the name White Girls Asian Food would offend people?
I didn't really ever think of that. I am a white girl making Asian food. If anyone was offended by my choice of name, I apologize. This was never my intention. If anything, my hope is to celebrate those cultures through food.

I noticed you were wearing an Action Bronson t-shirt on Facebook, are you a big fan of his?
Of course!! I'm originally from Brooklyn! We have Action Bronson Day every month at White Girl Asian Food.

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John Nuttall and Amanda Korody, pictured above, were arrested for plotting to blow up the BC legislature in 2013. Photo via RCMP

The leader of an RCMP task force on potential terror threats testified to the BC Supreme Court yesterday that he had concerns that the police force may have employed entrapment techniques near the beginning of their sting on a pair of terror suspects in 2013.

John Nuttall and Amanda Korody—who were arrested for plotting to blow up the BC legislature in 2013—claimed entrapment as a defence back in June last year after they were found guilty of terrorism. Now, emails revealed during the Supreme Court's review of the case show that the lead Mountie on their investigation, Sgt. Bill Kalkat, had expressed concern about the techniques employed by the national police force.

According the Canadian Press, Kalkat had asked undercover officers via email how they were going to avoid legal issues and was concerned about their lack of familiarity with dealing with Islamic extremists. He also noted that the team lacked a thorough plan on actually apprehending the suspects and that they seemed to have been going from "scenario to scenario" with little forethought.

"There has to be some sort of game plan. And I wasn't seeing that with the undercover unit," Kalkat said.

When asked by the Crown lawyer when Kalkat began having thoughts about whether the unit was employing entrapment techniques, Kalkat said that it was around February 2013—five months prior to the couple's arrest on Canada Day that year.

Kalkat said that the case was put on hold at one point because of differences in opinion about how the investigation was to be handled, and that the undercover team he was overseeing was proceeding with techniques that might have worked on homicide or drug stings—not terrorism cases.

"That's one of the difficulties you experienced with the undercover shop, that they were bringing pages out of the wrong playbook?" Crown lawyer Peter Eccles asked.

"That was one of the challenges I faced," Kalkat said.

In the past, entrapment has been a hot button issue in Canada. One of the more popular forms of the the technique is known as the "Mr. Big" sting. Developed by the RCMP in the 1990s, Mr. Big stings essentially involve authorities either posing as or creating a fake illegal entity in order to nudge criminals into working with them.

In Mr. Big operations, the police's goal is to make the criminals trust the undercover cops enough that they feel comfortable meeting the kingpin of the operation—hence the name "Mr. Big"—where they will then try to extract a confession to a previous crime. While the BC terror case is not a classic Mr. Big sting, the challenges to it are similar to those levied against Mr. Big cases of the past.

In 2014, the police were able to trick an Alberta man into confessing to the murder of his roommate. Despite a Supreme Court challenge that the Mr. Big technique had been used to elicit a false confession from the man, the court upheld the ruling.

Most instances of challenging the practice have been shot down—with a notable attempt by the Toronto 18 terror group's defence, who argued that RCMP had entrapped the collective by providing them with the necessary materials and motivation to carry out the planned attacks on government buildings and assassination of the Prime Minister. Ultimately, the judge on the case ruled that their claims were moot.

In august 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Big stings do have the potential to foster unreliable confessions. The ruling opened the door for those with past convictions (who haven't used up all their appeals) to appeal their case to the court. According 2008 statistics from the RCMP, around 95 percent of all Mr. Big cases brought to trial end in a conviction.

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Thumbnail via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

In a strange, but not particularly surprising, case of politician-turned-reality star endorsing reality star-turned-politician, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has officially come out in support of Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

Palin is the highest profile Republican to endorse Trump. According to the New York Times, which first reported the news Tuesday, the pair plans to make an appearance together this afternoon in Iowa, where Trump is virtually tied with Texas Senator Cruz at the top of the Republican field. With only a few weeks to go before the state's first-in-the-nation caucus, an endorsement from Palin, the GOP's 2008 vice presidential nominee, could help solidify Trump's lead.

"Palin's brand among evangelicals is as gold as the faucets in Trump tower," Ralph Reed, of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, told the Times. "Endorsements alone don't guarantee victory, but Palin's embrace of Trump may turn the fight over the evangelical vote into a war for the soul of the party."

"I am greatly honored to receive Sarah's endorsement," Trump said in a statement. "She is a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for. I am proud to have her support."

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Defendants Michael McCarthy and Rachelle Bond. Photos courtesy Suffolk District Attorney's Office

Deer Island, a barren strip of land in Boston Harbor, is so named for the animals that once swam there to escape wolves. Human inhabitants have been chased to its shores too, though few would call it refuge. It's where some of the first Massachusetts colonists sent Native Americans to freeze and starve, where sick Irish immigrants were quarantined, and the site of a prison where doctors once conducted medical experiments on inmates.

The most recent chapter of the island's heartbreaking history began last June, when a dead toddler washed up on the beach. The big-eyed, brown-haired girl was found in a plastic garbage bag, wearing only her leggings. For three months, the mystery of the dead child haunted police. Despite a widespread media campaign, no one seemed to know who she was, so they called her "Baby Doe."

Now we know the child was Bella Bond, two and a half years old at the time of her death. Her mother's boyfriend, Michael McCarthy, is being charged with her murder, pleading not guilty to the first-degree charge last week at Suffolk Superior Court in Boston. The case makes for a glimpse into a dark world of addiction, madness, demonology, and neglect.

Unfortunately, the case largely rests on the word of Bella's allegedly drug-addled mother, Rachelle Bond. Given the information we have to work with, it's hard to say if we'll ever know for certain why the child wound up dead on Deer Island.

The story Bond initially told police was that McCarthy was supposed to put the child to bed, but instead she found him standing over and hitting the toddler in the abdomen. Bella apparently stopped breathing, her head gray and swollen. When he noticed the child was dead, McCarthy allegedly announced she was "possessed by demons" and "it was her time to die."

McCarthy then stored the child in a refrigerator, according to Bond.

Bond, meanwhile, is charged with collecting public assistance money after Bella's death and being an accessory to murder after the fact. She told police officers she went with McCarthy to South Boston to help dump the child in the sea, but only because he threatened to kill her if she went to the cops, according to court documents. She also claims McCarthy shot heroin in her neck to keep her sedated. This is not the first time Bond has been in trouble with the law—she has a lengthy police record dating back to the late 90s that includes drug charges and alleged prostitution.

According to her biological father, Joseph Amoroso, Bella was conceived in a tent at Occupy Boston. Upon learning about Bond's history as a prostitute, Amoroso reportedly left her and moved to Florida, never meeting the child in person.
But Amoroso was with Bond at the time of her arrest, according to court documents. He'd returned to Boston and in recent weeks had been asking to see the child. At first, after the body was identified, Amoroso seemed to be an advocate for the mother of his child, blaming McCarthy squarely for the incident. But as reports surfaced of the abuse Bella allegedly endured when she was alive, his sentiment appears to have changed, with Amoroso recently calling them both "monsters." Then, last month, the case took a bizarre turn when Amoroso was arrested for allegedly shoplifting at Home Depot while carrying hypodermic needles.

Before Bella was identified, computer-generated images of "Baby Doe" hung over highways, fliers, newspapers in the Boston area, and went viral online. Police officers taped her image to their dashboards, and law enforcement searched all over the country for clues, not knowing if the killers might have traveled to dispose of her body. When people asked about Bella, according to court documents, Bond replied that she had been seized by the state Department of Children and Families (DCF). It made sense—she'd had two children taken by DCF before, and in fact concern for Bella's well-being had been brought to the DCF's attention twice before her death. The social worker assigned to her case, it turned out, cut and pasted information on Bond from 2006 into a September 2013 report, failing to call attention to factors that may have impacted Bella's safety. As a result, the case didn't receive the attention it deserved.

It wasn't until a friend named Michael Sprinsky began to inquire about Bella's whereabouts that Bond broke down, according to court documents. "He killed my daughter," she apparently told Sprinsky. Sprinsky had seen both Bond and McCarthy abuse the child before, and told police they called her a "demon," frequently locking her in the closet. McCarthy's interest in demonology was covered extensively in a profile by the Boston Globe. "He never shut up about demons," said his old roommate Robert McMahon.

When McCarthy showed up in court shortly after his arrest last September, it seemed as if he barely knew where he was. But it appears he's cleaned up behind bars, where he's also receiving treatment for drug addiction. In court last week, his long, greasy blond hair was cut short and his expression less vacant than in the past. His lawyer, Jonathan Shapiro, maintains his client is innocent, and that he believed his girlfriend's story that Bella had been taken by the Department of Children and Families.

The case against McCarthy is "extraordinarily weak," Shapiro told the court. The state's case, he argued, is "based entirely upon Ms. Bond's self-serving statement that she clearly concocted to escape her own guilt in the matter. She lied about it for months to everybody that she talked to and when she finally realized that she could no longer lie about it she came up with a story that pointed the finger at Mr. McCarthy. He believed that she was in DCF custody, period."

The state, represented by Assistant District Attorney David Deakin, introduced a text McCarthy apparently sent when Bond was facing eviction. "Whatever you do, don't tell them you have a daughter ... We don't want DSS getting involved," he wrote, referring to the Department of Social Services, another name for the Department of Children and Families. But Shapiro said the text does not indicate guilt or knowledge of Bella's death. McCarthy was only afraid of losing housing—he wasn't trying to cover up a murder, the lawyer argued, because he thought Bella was still alive. That McCarthy appeared to be afraid of DCF interfering with Bond's housing rather than the police coming to arrest him for murder might ultimately work in his favor.

Aside from Bond's word, there does not seem to be other evidence linking him to Bella's death. Autopsy reports have not indicated a cause of death, according to Shapiro. And veteran Boston defense attorney Martin Weinberg says without any evidence other than Bond, the state may have a tough time securing a guilty verdict.

"Any time a case is based on the uncorroborated allegations with a person with a substantial motive to shift blame and accuse another is a case that's fraught with peril," he told VICE.

The problem for the defense, according to Weinberg, is that the jurors—and certainly the public—may hate McCarthy anyway. "It's the ultimate challenge for the defense lawyer to take a case on with this kind of toxic atmosphere," he added.

With a weak case against McCarthy, and no one else facing murder charges, there's a real worry Bella won't ever get the justice she deserves.

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Photo via Flickr user Ted Eytan

Alberta, a province that remains the heartland of Canadian conservatism, did a good thing last week when it released a set of recommendations to help all of its schools accommodate transgender students.

The Ministry of Education document, called the "Guideline for Best Practices: Creating Learning Environments that Respect Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities and Gender Expressions," lays out practical ways to make trans and gender-diverse students more comfortable.

Some of its suggestions include allowing students to self-identify with a particular gender or sexual orientation and to choose their own name/pronoun; modernizing school uniforms to allow for gender neutral options; steering away from "girls versus boys" set-ups for activities; allowing students to participate in sports that reflect their gender identity; creating gender neutral spaces in bathrooms and change rooms as well as letting students use the bathroom/change room in line with their gender identity. School boards now have the task of drafting policies that reflect these values by the end of March.

Naturally, this has created an absolute shitstorm.

While the idea behind this guideline is clearly to create a more inclusive school system, that's not necessarily what you'll gather reading some of the inflammatory reactions currently being espoused in the media. Instead, you could be fooled into thinking the new policies will allow "peeping toms" to enter girls' bathrooms and change rooms and potentially assault them. Or that parental rights are under attack. Or that the NDP government is trying to inflict a "totalitarian" regime over schools.

These views range from misguided to outright transphobic.

Fred Henry, a Calgary-based Catholic bishop, penned a borderline hysterical open letter to his "brothers and sisters in Christ" in which he asserted that "totalitarianism" was alive and well in Alberta.

The NDP directive amounts to a "forceful imposition of a particular narrow-minded anti-Catholic ideology," he said. He took issue with Gay Straight Alliances because they condone an anti-Catholic view of sexuality and said the church teaches women and men to accept their sexual identities.

Meanwhile, a post on The Rebel by rhetoric flame-thrower and unofficial Alberta opposition leader Ezra Levant, claims the new rules are "dangerous" and will be abused by "peeping Toms."

"Based on other jurisdictions' experience: this will result in sexual assaults. It may even result in rapes, as it has in Ontario," he said, a statement that doesn't require any fact checking given its excessive bullshit smell.

Others, including Donna Trimble, executive director of Parents for Choice in Education, said keeping a child's sexual orientation or gender identity from parents is a misstep.

"The vast majority of parents prove to be loving towards their children, regardless of sexual orientation. In the rare cases where children are not given adequate care from parents, support can and is provided by outside resources on an individual basis," she wrote in a Calgary Herald op-ed.

I can understand why parents would want to know if their child is gay or trans but it's also tough to argue that gaining a student's "explicit permission" before disclosing that information is a bad idea. If kids are choosing to tell someone at school about these issues, it's because they feel comfortable doing so and likely aren't ready to tell their parents—possibly because they fear negative repercussions. Revealing that information to a homophobic/transphobic parent could result in the student feeling more isolated or even being removed from a school that supports them. Isn't it better for them to have at least some adult guidance rather than none at all?

Levant has started a petition against the guidelines while Henry and Trimble are also calling for their outright rejection, extreme stances that make little sense.

First off, the guideline is just that—a guideline, not an iron-clad manifesto. At present time, there's no word as to what consequences, if any, school boards will face if they fail to meet the requirements, but we can assume that boards with questions won't be forced to "dissolve" as Levant has dramatically inferred.

As for the policies being, "anti-Catholic," well, we know that there are gay and trans kids who grow up Christian. They deserve the same protections as everyone else, protections that Catholic school boards haven't yet done a great job of providing.

Part of the huffing and puffing is no doubt due to the fact that some of these adults are uncomfortable with the idea of a more gender neutral community. But that's exactly why the guideline needs to be so specific—the alternative makes it too easy to brush these issues under the rug by having schools simply claim "we respect everyone," as they have done in the past. Studies show that more than one-third of trans youth in Canada have attempted suicide. There may still be some specifics to work through but the reality is this new guideline couldn't come sooner for many Albertan kids.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Not everyone would agree. Photo via Flickr user Jaysin Trevino

Scott plans on being the CEO of his own media enterprise by the time he is 37.

Today he's 29. He's unemployed and he's out of school due to outstanding debt. But unlike other 20-somethings with big dreams and discouraging finances, Scott isn't the least bit worried. That's because his sugar daddies are pretty damn generous.
Over the last four years, this former University of Toronto student has dated sugar daddies around Toronto who have provided him with over $10,000 in cash and gifts, plus professional guidance, which he says is helping him towards his entrepreneurial goals.

Not exactly the defining image you'd expect from Martin Luther King Day celebrations. Screenshot via YouTube.

According to the travel industry and junk science, the third Monday of every January is the most depressing day of the year. Sit at a desk in any office in the Western world, and no less than three co-workers will remind you about Blue Monday before the first smoke break. The third Monday of January also happens to be Martin Luther King Day, which your Canadian co-workers will only know about if they happen to be black, or if they catch you scrolling through TheRoot.com homepage. It may be a complete coincidence that these two events happen to fall on the same day, but for black folk, it can often seem like white people have formed a secret pact to make the day as difficult, depressing, and uncomfortable as possible.

Take, for example, Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau's impromptu musical number during a tribute to MLK at Ottawa City Hall. Some in the Canadian news media fawned over Grégoire-Trudeau's "singing chops," (including another of Power & Politics' infamous all-white panels), and no one thought to ask whether a rich white lady singing a song written for her daughter was appropriate for remembrance of a black civil rights leader. A black civil rights leader who was surveilled by a white government, accosted by white mobs, imprisoned by white police officers, and murdered in anger by a white assassin. But as it turns out, Grégoire-Trudeau's off-the-cuff warbling turned out to be the least problematic aspect of that day's events.

For twelve years, an Ottawa organization called the DreamKEEPERS has held the Martin Luther King Day celebration at Ottawa City Hall. Marketing for this year's event consisted of a digital poster shopped around Facebook and Twitter, prominently announcing the presentation of this year's lifetime achievement award to former prime minister and Progressive Conservative Party leader, Joe Clark. It also prominently announced an appearance by special guest speaker Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau, spouse to the current Canadian prime minister. The poster did not prominently announce the presence of any black civil rights advocates. As you can see below, pictures of Clark and Grégoire-Trudeau adorned the poster. Not a single black face adorned the poster. Not even that of Martin Luther King himself.

Perplexed, I contacted Daniel Stringer, one of the DreamKEEPERS co-founders and nomination committee co-chair. Stringer, a former aide to Ontario Liberal MPP Richard Patten, and short-lived Ottawa City Council candidate, was less than happy to hear from me. I asked about the optics of advertising the event with solely the faces of Joe Clark and Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau, and handing the award to a man whose myth-inflated work on Brian Mulroney's apartheid file is over two decades old. His answer was that the DreamKEEPERS committee made the best possible choice of candidate, and while I, being a Torontonian and living in the "Centre of the Universe" may not agree with the poster, no one in Ottawa's black community voiced any concerns. I also asked whether the DreamKEEPERS shortlisted young, black civil rights activists who have forcefully raised awareness of systemic racism in Canada, and if so, how many. Stringer repeated his answer: The DreamKEEPERS committee made the best possible choice of candidate.

I then asked Stringer about Grégoire-Trudeau's song. Stringer answered that other guests also performed songs, and that Grégoire-Trudeau received a standing ovation for her performance. I asked him what relevance the lyrics "When you smile, when you smile, when you smile, I love you my child," have to black struggle and liberation. Stringer answered my question with a few questions of his own: Why hadn't I made the trip to the DreamKEEPERS event to see it for myself? Why was this event of such sudden importance, yet no one paid this much attention when awards were handed to Pinball Clemons and Michaëlle Jean in previous years. And why, above all, was I so offended?

He did have me there. I was indeed offended. I was also perplexed and disappointed, but yes, it does offend me that the wife of our prime minister kept her vocals under wraps for last year's Remembrance Day ceremonies, yet believed Martin Luther King Day was the right time and place to drop her a capella mixtape. It does offend me that organizations like DreamKEEPERS would much rather hand out awards to the rich, the respectable, and the politically connected than black activists who march in the streets and sue for our humanity. And yes, it does offend me that when I spoke with three advocates from Ottawa's black community, none were invited to this event, much less honoured. One of them, Erica Ifill, marveled at the lost opportunity to facilitate a conversation between front-line activists, black Canadians in business and political circles, and Ottawa politicians. "In this country, whenever they talk about race, it's somebody else's problem," she told me. "It's this low-expectations bigotry that I can't understand. It's the way this country works."

But it was the third Monday of January, and as I think on Martin Luther King Jr's prescient warning about white moderates, I remember that it's supposed to be depressing.

Follow Andray Domise on Twitter.

From 2012 to 2015, I went to a lot of clubs. These dark rooms came to define my existence; they became my office, my living room, the theaters in which the dramas of my early 20s played out.

In the course of those three years I was stabbed with an epi-pen, dumped while dancing in a cage at a fetish club, and punched in the head by a trainee marine. I played in a ball pond with a goth, did a shot with Arg from The Only Way Is Essex, was shut down by Sophie Ellis Bextor, trod in emo vomit, drank a dirty pint with a university rugby team, and had T-shirts made about me by a UK hip-hop crew from Bristol, emblazoned with the slogan "Fuck Clive."

I saw things that nobody would ever see, had it not been their job to stay sober enough to see them. I saw a man masturbate into his own flip-flops, I saw The Pigeon Detectives play live, I saw the Bantersaurus Rex himself having a disco nap in a McDonald's in Cambridge. I breathed the foul air of a turbo-folk tent three days into a summer festival. I saw all of party life, and that was just the shit I was getting paid for.

VICE's Big Night Out series—in both its written and video form—was the reason for all this. I'd been charged with documenting the nightlife that revolves around Britain's many subcultural groups, and so spent roughly a weekend a month doing so. It was, and remains, a ridiculous way to have made a living—one that battered my liver and wallet, and left me with a weird Peter Pan complex as I headed towards my late 20s. Ever wonder why DJs and bouncers are all so weird and aggy? It's because they spend too much time in clubs. They aren't good for you in large doses.

The author and Arg from 'The Only Way Is Essex'. Photo from A Big Night Out at... The Worst Club Night Ever?

I fell into doing the series by accident. It already existed before I started working on it, having previously been more about cities and situations—like Romford or Bradford or the West End—rather than the subcultures and extreme branches of the mainstream that later became its focus.

Within a few excursions I realized that what I really wanted to get at was a kind of Kinsey survey of the British nightlife experience in the early part of the 21st century. To try to understand the differences, the appeals, the niches, and the inherent similarities between these seemingly distant worlds. I wanted to touch on just about every facet of going out in the UK, from fashion parties to reality TV star personal appearances; Cambridge student piss-ups to basement metal nights; fetish clubs to central London indie discos. I wanted to drink through the spectrum of it all, hoping to come to some conclusions at the end of it.

Three years later and I'm still convinced that you can learn much more about society from the way it parties than just about any other method, including the way it votes. There's a simple honesty to people when they're out and having fun. They aren't partying because they feel they should be, or because they're buying into something they're being sold or scared into. They're getting off their faces and wearing these clothes because they have to. They wouldn't feel right if they didn't. Partying is a form of expression that comes from a much more primitive, visceral place than appearing on the Question Time panel, or writing an op-ed. It comes from somewhere they can't quite explain.

Clubbing is tribal, it's sexual, it's political—it's the human species in fight or fuck mode, and is thus a very effective way of distilling what we're really about. It's humanity in the wild. It's probably why Freud did so much blow.

Despite these lofty ideas, the real fun of it all lies in the niches. I always considered Big Night Out as a fashion feature first and foremost, a warped street style column where everybody is getting it slightly wrong but telling us so much more about our relationship with style than a slight Japanese man in a chunky knit scarf ever could. Something akin to a wreckhead's version of The Sartorialist, or a Jägerbomb Tommy Ton.

Photo from A Big Night Out at... Britain's Biggest Emo Club!

It was edifying and sometimes inspiring, seeing how stuff like Hood By Air, or My Chemical Romance, or Hedi Slimane, or fetish culture trickles down to the high street and is recreated by people in their own way. It was weird seeing creatine made tangible in the swollen triceps of the university lads, illuminating to see that the Alain Mikli shutter shades designed for Kanye's "Stronger" video took six years to make it to freshmen parties at The University of the West Country. As somebody who's always been obsessed with dressing and the way people do it, watching these ideas manifest themselves on this massive, very real scale told me more about how culture influences its wider environment than a thousand fashion weeks ever could.

The series was essentially a testament to superficiality, snapping people while they were peacocking and posturing and preening. It coincided with a time in which people were becoming increasingly more obsessed with their own image, with the rise of Instagram, male gym bunny culture, the duck-face, the E-cig pout, and the concept of a "club photographer," which was beginning to become commonplace across the country. We wanted to take the style of these typically banal images and use them to tell a story of sorts, instead of just whacking them up on the club's official Facebook page. In fact, the rise of the "official club photographer" (usually a guy with a DSLR on a drink token and $60 a night) also allowed us to get away with taking the pictures in the first place. We were essentially hiding in plain sight and using the punters' obsession with portraying themselves as fun-loving party people to say something about nightlife as a whole.

The author in a cage at a fetish party. Photo from A Big Night Out in... a Fetish Club Dance Cage!

That said, shooting it wasn't always easy. Jake Lewis, the photographer for the written excursions, found himself on the receiving end of a fair bit of agro, but luckily he's very tall and charming and looks like a young Dave Grohl. Arg's manager, for instance, accused us of trying to blind him with a flash, and I was told never to go back to Milton Keynes again. We weren't exactly Marie Colvin and Tim Hetherington, but there were a few hairy moments here and there. Luckily, there was never any serious retribution—although I still watch my back every time I cross the border into Milton Keynes—because any violence happened in the moment. Only one installment never made it out: a shuffler-heavy deep house night we filmed in Vauxhall that was held back because the club owners couldn't see the funny side.

Looking back, a lot of the stuff that was said about the people in the pictures was probably unwarranted, probably played into quite a few stereotypes and was probably—largely—a bit mean. But "taking the piss," as we call it, is a grand tradition in this country, and part of the series' concept was about playing on our collective understanding of these different subcultures and scenes. Luckily, most people are pretty good at seeing the funny side of the worlds they inhabit (the UK hip-hop fans we met in Bristol being a notable exception), and if anyone came out of it looking like a prick, it was probably me.

Related: Watch 'The People Vs. Big Night Out', in which Clive responds to criticism and comments from YouTube viewers

Bringing the series into the video format presented a new set of problems. We got probably even more grief, walking through clubs with massive top-lights, getting in everyone's faces, treading on their Huaraches, trying to get the right shots in the middle of a melee. People might mistake you for a club photographer if you're just doing stills, but everyone knows what a film crew is.

I'm sure a few people got wound up in the moment, and I probably just barely avoided a few bottles being smashed over my head, but I'd like to think we've left the world with something at least. That maybe we captured something that might not have been otherwise. Because when you look through YouTube, or any online collation of images from clubs of old, you'll notice how often people bemoan just how little footage or photos there are from some of our most important nightlife events. Some of the world's most famous club nights were barely recorded at all, and while I think a lot of that stuff is probably better left to the imagination, I'm also quite proud of having documented British club life as it was in a certain time and place. We will at least be able to remember that strange era of bodycon dresses and scoop tees, beer funnels, Flyknits, lad tats, mephedrone, and casual cross-dressing.

Every club or festival or party had its own merits. The goth night was probably the most fun, the gabber night probably the most intense, the student night probably the most debauched and the Milton Keynes shopping center/club The Only Way Is Essex extravaganza probably the most depressing. The Fashion Week party one probably came closest to my extra-curricular social life, and thus remains a personal favorite because I got the chance to take the piss out of myself and my horrifically shallow friends a bit.

Photo from A Big Night Out at... a Fashion Week Party!

On a personal level, it gave me something to really sink my teeth into, even if it probably damaged a few of aspects of my day-to-day life. It was like being in a weird, protracted version of Almost Famous, where everyone's singing "Au Seve" by Julio Bashmore rather than "Tiny Dancer," and nobody really wants you to be there. I doubt I'll have many more projects in my working life that'll have the same kind of intensity or longevity, and it'll probably always be a major part of what I've done with my life.

What the whole experience offered was a massive reaffirmation—a heartening, human reminder of how much going out means to people. Of course, all of this was happening in the midst of Britain's clubs closing down at an unprecedented rate, their role in society being evermore overlooked by the in-bed-by-11 nu-capitalists.

More than anything, though, it was beautiful being consistently surrounded by people having some of the best nights of their lives, confirming all my beliefs about how integral parties are to our collective modern experience.

Follow Clive Martin on Twitter.

Even if we don't win, we'll always have this memory. Still via Canadian Cannabis

We're pretty pumped to announce that VICE Canada Reports, a series of documentaries exploring controversial topics across this country, has been nominated for a Canadian Screen Award in the Best Original Program or Series Produced for Digital Media—Non Fiction category. (It's as prestigious a category as it is lengthy.)

The awards, hosted by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, honour "productions and talent who excel in front of the camera and behind-the-scenes in Canadian film, television and digital media."The awards will be announced on March 8.

We asked VICE Canada Head of Content, Patrick McGuire, what he thinks about the nomination and he is, understandably, stoked.

"In 2014 and 2015, we worked really hard to produce and publish documentaries on the alleged radicalization of ISIS militants in Calgary, the abortion access dilemma in the maritimes, alcohol prohibition in Nunavut, and the future of weed in Canada," he said.

"It feels amazing to be recognized, our production team is the best there is, and we're happy to be nominated at the very least."

The following titles are up for the award:

"Homegrown Radicals." VICE founder Suroosh Alvi went to Calgary—declared a hotbed of terrorism by the media—to investigate the radicalization of Muslim youths there.

Kamila Stanley is one of those precocious, self-taught, up-and-coming photographs whose improvisation and effortless captured moments get me excited. Stanley finds beautiful scenes in the everyday, and uses travel as a way to further explore her perspective in photo. She recently sent me a collection of images made in Turkey this past fall and offered a statement on her editing process after the fact. Below is a selection from the work and some words from the artist.

–Elizabeth Renstrom, VICE Photo Editor

I traveled to Turkey in the autumn of 2015. In the same year, Turkey made international headlines for imprisoned journalists, bloody terror attacks, a shadowy general election, the downing of the Russian fighter jet—and an unprecedented refugee crisis. As I write this, a suicide bomber with apparent links to ISIS shook the country again.

In contrast, I wanted to shoot an intimate series about everyday life in Turkey—distanced from the darkness of its politics and the mainstream media image. I chose to focus on the country's dramatic landscapes, the bustle of its everyday scenes, and its youth. There is a relationship between the solitude of the winding hills and the nostalgia rooted deep in the Turkish character.

I traveled with my brother from Istanbul to the mountains of Cappadocia via empty side roads, eerie gas stations and dusty suburbs. We passed through villages and cities—Antalya, Selçuk, Izmir. It was a series of student flats, motels, citrus trees; selfe-sticks, pole-dance shoes, and again and again religion—Turkish youth blend holy festivals and Islamic traditions with Western clothes and American pop music.

It's certainly a difficult time to be young in the Middle East. Although Turkey's borders separate it from Syria and Iran, it has become deeply entangled in the regional conflict. An identity crisis is rumbling in Turkey's guts, yet its new generation ofers a promise of what a peaceful outcome could look like in the Muslim world.

Contemporary representations of Turkey are often grim and politically charged, or superficial and angled towards a tourist audience. I shot this series on a small 35mm film camera, as I sought to preserve the grit and candor of the many encounters we had. Due to the heat and to the cheap film, the developed pictures came in washed-out, pastel hues. I decided not to alter this as it tints the series with a youthful haze—and carries some of the warmth of Turkey's mellow soul.

All photographs by Kamila Stanley

Kratom in powder form. Photo courtesy Susan Ash

It sounds like the perfect drug. At low doses, it's stimulating, like a strong cup of coffee; at higher doses, it's sedating and kills pain. And it's a legal, natural plant that has been used in Asian medicine for centuries. Indeed, a growing number of Americans are finding it to be a useful alternative to heroin and prescription pain relievers.

But of course, there's a catch. Like the opioid drugs it is used to replace, this stuff can be addictive, and it can also cause serious nausea. Unlike other opioids, however, it seems to have an extremely low overdose risk, which has caught the eye of people working to fight the record high level of overdose deaths.

It's called kratom. And while some harm reductionists and thousands of pain patients see it as a possible path to relief and recovery, recent media attention in the New York Times and elsewhere has focused on it primarily as a drug of abuse. As a result, kratom may soon be prohibited, rather than properly studied. The data so far, however, suggests that banning it might do more harm than good— and that new more flexible ways of regulating drugs may be needed in order to truly protect the public.

Kratom is an unusual substance, with a storied history of use in Thailand and Malaysia, typically to fortify workers, treat diarrhea, and reduce pain. As far back as the 1940s, it was known to relieve symptoms of opium withdrawal; in fact, it was actually banned by the Thai government in 1943 precisely because its use as a substitute led to decreased revenues from opium taxes.

But because kratom use in the US was historically rare, and because herbal medicines and supplements are lightly regulated, the plant is currently legal in all but four American states. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), however, has placed it on its list of " drugs of concern," which is often a precursor to a ban. Meanwhile, New York and Florida lawmakers are both currently considering bans of their own.

Check out our documentary about medical marijuana use by sick children.

Usually consumed as a tea made from the leaves of the Mitragyna speciosa plant, the main active ingredients of kratom have been identified as mitragynine and a related substance, 7-hydroxymitragynine. These chemicals activate opioid receptors, just like heroin and Oxycontin can. However, both the high that results and the tolerance and withdrawal that can occur after long-term use pale in comparison to those from heroin and painkillers, according to users.

"It's not as sweet, but it is relaxing, calming," one user, a former heroin addict, told me, comparing the two drugs. Also, while opioids tend to be sedating, kratom initially has a stimulating effect— users compare it to a serious caffeine buzz, and indeed, the plant is a member of the same species as coffee. With higher doses, the energizing effect is followed by a more relaxing, mellow feeling.

Probably the most important difference between kratom and other opioids, however, is the risk of overdose. While a record-high 28,647 Americans died of opioid-involved (typically multi-drug) overdose in 2014, according to the CDC, even on their own, opioids can kill. In contrast, the few reported kratom-linked deaths have all involved multiple drugs.

Moreover, even the kratom mixture deaths don't kill via cessation of breathing, which is a hallmark of opioid overdose. "Direct kratom overdoses from the life-threatening respiratory depression that usually occurs with opioid overdoses have not been reported," says Oliver Grundmann, clinical associate professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Florida, who recently reviewed the research on kratom for the International Journal of Legal Medicine.

That's probably because kratom tea and powders are both bulky and frequently nausea-inducing, particularly in high doses—so it would be physically difficult for most people to actually keep enough down to be dangerous. And given its lengthy history of medicinal use in Asian countries, if there was a significant risk from acute overdose, it should have been reported by now.

Susan Ash, a chronic pain patient and the founder of the American Kratom Association, started taking kratom when she was trying to end her dependence on opioid pain medication. Suffering from the lingering effects of Lyme disease, she had severe joint pain, but realized that she was starting to misuse her prescription pills and decided to stop.

As she did so, someone in an online support group suggested that she try kratom, both to relieve pain and ease withdrawal. "I thought she was crazy," Ash recalls. But she eventually decided to try it, and when she got the dose right, found that it allowed her to stop the other opioids and function better than she had before. "It literally changed my life," she says.

Her organization now has 250 dues-paying members and over 2,400 regular participants in a closed Facebook page discussion group for people who take it, Ash says. While the group doesn't take donations directly from kratom manufacturers or suppliers, she says it may receive some money from people employed in the business. "We don't endorse any companies," she says.

Ash, who has a master's in forestry science but has been on disability due to her pain, has taken kratom daily for around a year and a half. "I really don't experience much aside from pain relief and a little jump in energy, which is important because I still deal with chronic fatigue," she says.

But because there is little history of kratom use in the US, there is also not much research on its effects—negative or positive. Mark Swogger, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and his colleagues analyzed 161 "experience reports" posted by kratom users on the drug information site Erowid.org for a recent study in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs . When asked what is known about negative outcomes, Swogger says, "I think it's pretty safe to say that kratom has at least some addiction potential. The data is fairly strong on that and our study also found that people are reporting addiction."

However, he adds, "Overall, we found that it's really mild compared to opioid addiction and it didn't seem to last as long." The most commonly reported negative experience was nausea or stomach pain, which 16 percent of the users experienced. And almost 6 percent actually vomited. "I know people personally who have taken small doses and had miserable experiences," he says, mentioning "days" of throwing up.

Two of the study participants reported severe side effects such as jaundice and hepatitis, which required medical attention. Both recovered fully, but one reported liver enzymes that were still elevated six weeks later. There have also been a few case reports of liver problems and seizures. Moreover, the long-term effects of taking the stuff are simply unknown: As pharmaceutical manufacturers have found, sometimes rare but damaging side effects only emerge after millions of people have taken a drug for years. "We don't know that much about kratom," says Grundmann. "We have to evaluate the adverse effects and do clinical studies."

All of this makes for a vexing regulatory challenge. If kratom were a newly developed synthetic addiction medication, no one would dream of allowing it on the market without clinical testing. But because it's a supplement with a long history of use in herbal medicine, the rules are different.

Since 1994, even herbs that contain clearly pharmacologically active substances are allowed to be sold over the counter without testing if they have previously been used medically—unless they are proven to be harmful and as long as they aren't claimed to cure or treat medical disorders. That's the exact opposite of the way the FDA regulates medicines, which must be determined to be safe and effective through a process of clinical testing before they can be sold.

Usually, the FDA testing process works reasonably well to balance public safety and the need for medical progress. But the regulation of supplements has far more loopholes, and there is no path at all for regulating recreational drugs—the only action ever taken tends to be absolute prohibition. To get a medical drug approved requires millions of dollars worth of investment, takes years, and needs to provide viable intellectual property rights to the pharmaceutical industry in order to get them to take the risk. That's a heavy lift for plant-based substances that can't be patented in and of themselves.

This is a problem. In the case of kratom, during an epidemic of opioid misuse which is absolutely known to be rapidly killing people, it seems odd to call for a ban of a substance that, whatever its long term risks are, is clearly safer in the short term. And yet that is what recent media coverage seems to suggest should happen—the New York Times piece, for example, was headlined, "Kratom, an Addict's Alternative, Is Found to Be Addictive Itself," and it highlighted the drug primarily as a path to relapse for people seeking to be abstinent.

Given all of the other opioids typically involved in relapse—including the life-saving maintenance medications methadone and buprenorphine—can themselves be deadly, this seems short-sighted. Yes, there clearly are unknown risks for people who take this drug as an alternative to opioids, and it certainly shouldn't be sold to children.

But perhaps, as the federal government is now doing with the legal weed states, it might be wise just to let those who use and distribute it alone for now—and in the meanwhile, fund research on what could be the safest form of opioid painkiller and maintenance drug on the planet.

To deal with recovering people who fear the temptation to take it, sellers in the Netherlands—far ahead of America as usual—have developed a solution that could easily be adopted here. Kratom is legal there, but the "smart shops" that sell it recognize that some people do become problem users. To help them, some stores allow customers to voluntarily place themselves on a "blacklist," for a certain period of time, during which they will not be permitted to buy, even if they ask for a change of status.

Such measures could be used in the United States, too—but only if we begin to think more flexibly about harm reduction and risk, rather than continually adding new prohibitions without considering whether, in context, the lesser of the evils may save lives.

Follow Maia Szalavitz on Twitter.

Look at Stephen Maurice Graham's website, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram.

Ex-CIA contractors Kris "Tanto" Paronto, Mark "Oz" Geist, and John "Tig" Tiegen are currently on a nationwide publicity tour promoting 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, Michael Bay's new combat porno based on their accounts of the 2012 attacks on the US diplomatic compound in Libya. The function of this press tour, it seems, is to convince journalists like me that the movie (adapted from a book the trio co-authored) isn't "political" or partisan—just a concise reenactment of the attacks as they saw them.

"There was no politics when we were out fighting that night," Geist told me in an interview. Paronto, the most outspoken of the three, chimed in: "Discussing politics dishonors the truth that occurred that night—it dishonors the courageous acts," he declared. "We're trying to honor everyone that was involved, including those that died."

This has been Paramount's company line on 13 Hours. "It feels like it was hard for people to buy a ticket if they were more liberal leaning," Rob Moore, the studio's vice chairman, told Variety, explaining the film's lackluster performance at the box office. "It's sad that this gets turned into a political debate as opposed to a conversation about who did the right thing and who was heroic."

But this argument is more than a bit disingenuous. If the studio didn't want 13 Hours to seem like a partisan effort, they probably shouldn't have dispatched their secret soldiers to do interviews with almost every primetime anchor at Fox News—an outlet that has arguably done more than any other to turn #Benghazi into a partisan issue. Further, they probably shouldn't have screened the film for select conservative journalists long before showing it to anyone in the mainstream press.

But this has been the studio's two-pronged strategy to promote Bay's new film: lather up Benghazi-obsessed conservatives through the appropriate media channels, then reassure liberal audiences that the film is just a classic tale of American heroism, one that has nothing to do with politics.

Tig, Tanto, and Oz have been at the forefront of this effort. One night, they're on Fox News' The Kelly File, discussing the alleged stand-down order they claim prevented the rescue of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens; the next day, it's Good Morning America, where they insist that only the militants who launched the attack are responsible for the deaths of Stevens and three other Americans.

Certainly, the three men stand to benefit from a public rehashing of the Benghazi controversy—particularly Paronto, the natural showman of the bunch. When he's not promoting 13 Hours, or running a side business as an insurance adjuster, the loquacious former Army Ranger is trying himself out as a motivational speaker. He says he wants a reality show and, considering his manic energy, he could very well get one. Punditry can sustain careers like these, and it may well have to—all five of the surviving members of the annex security team in Benghazi had to cut ties with the CIA in order to go public with their story.

"We'd all love pretty much to return to the battlefield," Tiegen told me, a bit solemnly. "We did it for ten years, help keep the terrorists over there. But, doing the book, getting the truth out, we're not allowed to work for them no more."

The CIA evidently isn't thrilled with the contractors' account of what happened in Benghazi, particularly their widely-publicized claim that the agency's base chief in Benghazi, a man known only as "Bob," ordered the security team to "stand down" during the initial attack. The team claims that this order tragically stalled rescue efforts at the nearby diplomatic compound, resulting in the deaths of Stevens and a member of his staff. The CIA denies that there was ever a stand-down order; a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into Benghazi seems to back up this conclusion.

In the nether regions of the Tea Party imagination, that "stand-down" emanated straight from Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, or both. 13 Hours keeps the fever dream alive, depicting the security team waiting impatiently outside the annex after the stand-down order, as "Bob" blabbers on the phone to undisclosed persons. (The real "Bob" disputes this account, but admitted to the Washington Post that the deployment to the consulate was delayed as he tried to enlist support from local militias.)

More brazenly, 13 Hours also sustains the now firmly debunked theory that American forces could have sent air support to help end the attack, but that the military chose not to deploy planes that could have reached Benghazi. "The defense assets were moving," Paronto told me, in keeping with the narrative of the film. "The question is why they stopped." It's fairly clear that this just didn't happen. A report by the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee found that the military didn't have any combat-ready aircraft available close enough to Benghazi to do anything about the attack.

Pablo Schreiber as Kris 'Tanto' Paronto, John Krasinski as security contractor Jack Silva, and David Denman as Dave 'Boon' Benton. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

The film breathes new life into the already widespread conspiracy theories that have fueled the right's Benghazi obsession and turned everyone else off the subject entirely. On the left, the increasingly confused Fox News narrative about the attacks has produced an almost aggressive disinterest in the topic. Many otherwise highly informed people have elected to learn nothing about the subject. The din of partisan bickering about stand-downs and CIA talking points has drowned out murkier questions about what the US was actually doing in Benghazi.

A Michael Bay flick should not be expected to contribute much toward answering these questions. The best one can hope to get out of 13 Hours is a survey of contemporary Orientalist tropes. "It's hot as balls here and you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys," one hero says to another, early in the film, deadpan. Outwardly, at least, Bay avoids the roiling political controversy connected to the events in his film. But in ignoring the deeper issues surrounding Benghazi, 13 Hours pushes a distinctly partisan narrative about the attacks.

For evidence of this, we don't have to look much further than Donald Trump, who invited Iowa supporters to a free screening of the film last week. Beyond giving Republican audiences an opening to attack Clinton, 13 Hours seems to call for Trump's brand of hypermasculine, gut-centric, nativist leadership—someone who would have bombed the hell out of the entire nation of Libya just to get our boys out in time, and then taken some oil just to prove the point.

Krasinski and TV personality Kevin Frazier attend the Dallas premiere of "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi" at the AT&T Dallas Cowboys Stadium last week. Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures

Trump will likely have been satisfied with the film's depictions of Muslims. Apart from the obvious shots of men praying next to their AK-47s, most of the locals depicted in 13 Hours are either creeping sharia zombies, scowling bystanders, or unreliable opportunists. Apparently realizing that this called for a "good local," the screenwriters contrived one: Amal is a Libyan translator working at the annex (Iranian-American actor Peyman Moaadi brings a Persian accent to the role), who anxiously follows our boys into combat, developing a very subservient friendship with them in the process, only to be seen off at the end with this sage advice: "Your country gotta figure this shit out, Amal."

The character was added during the conversion from book to film: In the original text, the helpful translator is called Henry, and described as a 60-something American citizen of Middle Eastern heritage. In other words, an Arab-American hero was converted into a trusty, but childish, local servant.

While the contractors I spoke to maintained that none of this amounts to a political message, they happily agreed that the overarching message of the film is unusually patriotic.

"It is a very patriotic movie. I think we've lost a little bit of that in America, which leads to a loss of civil service. In that way, I think 13 Hours is very important for our society and pop culture. There's an underlying Christian theme, as well!"

Leon Dische Becker is a writer, editor, and translator currently living in Los Angeles. You should consider following him on Twitter and maybe even Instagram.

The film 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is now playing nationwide.