BellBoi is a tiny cafe just off Brick Lane in Shoreditch, London—though to call it a cafe would perhaps be misleading. It does serve coffee, and there's the obligatory peg board with prices for cappuccinos, espressos, and flat whites marked out in white letters. But there's barely seating room for more than two people inside, and no toilets. There is, on the other hand, a large computer terminal that the barista uses to update calendars and spreadsheets, and a wall of luggage lockers at the far end of the shop floor.

BellBoi is the client-facing hub of a small Airbnb-letting empire in Shoreditch made up of more than 30 properties in the surrounding area, plus a few in New York. Guests arrive to pick up their keys and receive a laminated map directing them from the cafe to their accommodation—a model imported from the US, where sharing economy support services have already taken hold. It's a business founded entirely on professionalized use of the Airbnb platform, and like many similar operations in London, it's operating in the gray area between what's legal and what's actually enforced.

All of these rooms and apartments are listed by "Vincent & Alice," a prominent hosting couple I first discovered through the Inside Airbnb website, an online tool that aims to "add data to the debate" around Airbnb's effect on housing and communities across 31 cities worldwide.

Click to enlarge. Via Inside Airbnb

By scraping data from publicly available listings and plotting them on a map, it gives the kind of insight that Airbnb's own statistics lack—like the fact that, as of September 2015, there were 4,680 listings in the capital for entire homes or apartments, frequently booked and with high availability all year round. In other words, properties which are used virtually full-time to host Airbnb guests.

Ignoring questions around the morality of keeping these properties out of the long-term rental market during the sort of housing crisis that London is going through, the majority of these lets are also likely to be in contravention to local housing law. Section 44 of the Deregulation Act, an amendment to existing housing legislation introduced in February of last year, states that if a property is let out to short-stay guests for more than 90 days in a calendar year, the homeowner must receive planning permission from his or her local authority for a change of use to short-stay letting—something London authorities are reluctant to allow. (Camden council lists disturbance to neighbors, decreased sense of community, and reduction of the permanent housing stock as reasons for resisting all development of short-stay accommodation in the borough.)

In fact, up until the amendment in 2015, planning permission was technically required to undertake any short-term letting at all in London. When Conservative housing minister Brandon Lewis introduced the deregulation bill to Parliament, he outlined the need to remove "unnecessary red tape" in order to provide extra income to householders and boost the sharing economy in London.

But while the new bill specified a new (and relatively generous) quota for unregulated short-term letting, it also greatly complicated the work of the enforcement teams that were tasked with identifying illegal lets. Paul Simmons, a manager within the planning enforcement team at Westminster Council, who objected to the bill, explained:

"When this went through Parliament, Westminster lobbied very hard firstly for the laws not to change, but secondly for there to be some requirement for the flat owner to notify the council—maybe just through clicking a button on a website—to say that a person was staying, for how many nights, etc. But the government said no, that it was too bureaucratic, and so as a result it's very difficult for us to know without reasonable doubt when the limit has been reached."

He estimates that his team investigates between 2,000 to 3,000 cases each year—the same as before the change in legislation—except that the amount of work needed to successfully serve an enforcement notice has increased significantly. And it's the difficulty in enforcing the new laws that has opened the door for London's new breed of professional Airbnb landlords.

Click to enlarge. Via Airbnb

In a phone call, Vincent and Alice of BellBoi were somewhat evasive when I put it to them that their business was based on illegal use of rental housing. But both were adamant that a large percentage of Shoreditch is now Airbnb'd full-time, and that there were thousands of other landlords in London who were doing exactly the same thing. The first claim is hard to verify (although utterly believable for anyone who's been to Shoreditch recently), but the second is completely in keeping with the data.

Like Brandon Lewis MP, Airbnb promotes the idea that the typical host is just an individual renting a spare room now and again, but the data suggest this is only partly true. If, as InsideAirbnb's figures show, 10,000 of the Airbnb listings in London are from hosts with more than one property on the site, that's a huge number as a proportion of the 24,100 active hosts that Airbnb claims operate in the city.

Even Airbnb's own official statistics on London are revealing: The highlighted claim that 35 percent of hosts' income is at or below the median for the UK is slightly comical, since if the hosts represented a normal income distribution you'd expect 50 percent to be at or below the median. Put another way: Two-thirds of hosts make more than the UK median income, and not far off half of them make more than £43,000 a year—which would put them in the top 15 percent of earners in the UK.

Clearly, not only is there a lot of money to be made through Airbnb, but there are a lot of wealthy people listing properties on it. And things are being made easier than ever for these wealthy property owners thanks to a new type of startup with a uniquely tailored product: the Airbnb management service.

Click to enlarge. Via hostmaker.co

"Airbnb management"—a very 2016 industry—involves anything from providing a key exchange for guests, or employing cleaning staff to remake beds between stays, professionally photographing a property, meeting visitors with a welcome pack, operating an account in the host's name, and scheduling bookings to maximize occupancy. In fact, in exchange for a cut of the profit, a landlord can just hand over his or her keys, then sit back and collect a paycheck at the end of the month with no further interaction.

Posing as a homeowner with a flat to let, I called Hostmaker and Airsorted—two prominent companies operating in London—and asked about what returns they could offer me. Both boasted occupancy rates of 75 percent or above, with average stays of between three and five nights. That would work out at somewhere around 280 days per year—again, well in excess of the quota for short-term letting.

When I questioned the legality of the arrangement, representatives of both teams were well aware that there was a 90-day legal limit. Though they stopped short of advising me to break it, both were happy to admit that almost all of their customers chose to ignore it (with one reassuring me that the laws were "unenforceable"). Provided I was happy to aim for full occupancy, I was told that I could expect an income well above the market average for residential tenants, even in off-peak months for tourism.

These companies are not in themselves breaking the law, but they're potentially facilitating an activity that often does. And even if the legal framework were to change and become even more forgiving of short-term lets, we need to ask ourselves: As the capital struggles to provide enough housing, is this really the kind of "sharing economy" we thought would help?

Read on Motherboard: Kill Your Airbnb's Hidden WiFi Cameras with This Script

When researching this article, I reached out to Murray Cox, creator of the InsideAirbnb website, to ask what he thought were the key points to pursue.

"Superhosts are low hanging fruit in terms of discovering illegal use of housing," he told me by email, "but in aggregate, all of the hosts with a single investment property listed permanently on Airbnb can be just as disruptive, and are frequently under the radar of policy makers and enforcement."

Though they may be under the radar for outsiders, they're certainly not for Airbnb. With the enormous amount of data they collect, it would be simple for Airbnb to spot infractions of the 90-day law and restrict hosts' accounts. So I contacted the UK office to ask if it'd consider sharing this data with local councils, and whether the company thought short-term letting was driving up prices. A representative from the Public Affairs department sent this statement:

"Airbnb hosts are regular people who share their homes and use the money they earn by sharing space in his or her home for 50 nights a year. Airbnb helps grow and diversify tourism in London, helps countless Londoners stay in their homes and the city they love, and provides an economic boost to communities and local businesses across the capital."

The thing about economic boosts is that some always get more of the boost than others. For all the talk of its disruptive nature, Airbnb still looks a lot like capitalism 1.0: People with property, or those who have access to credit, find it easy to generate more and more of it; people with money to consume the product benefit from greater choice; and people with none of the above are squeezed out of the equation and collectively absorb the negative impact of higher rents and increasingly transient communities. Above it all stands Airbnb itself, a £17 billion giant of a company, taking a cut of every pound, euro, or yen spent through the site.

Newspapers still seem more interested in reporting the one-off, headline grabbing stories of sex, drugs, and wild parties in rented flats. But if there's an out-of-control gang using Airbnb to wreak havoc in local communities, it's not the teenagers. It's the landlords.

Thumbnail photo by Raysonho via

Follow Corin on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Stretching her endless limbs on a yacht, Taylor Swift noticed a paparazzo on a boat in the blue slipstream. Not wanting him to sell this private bikinied moment, she uploaded a selfie to Instagram, gazumping the pap out of his trade.

That is the feeble victory celebrities have managed to eek out in the war over their private lives. Having accepted that the world owns every inch of their bodies and each minuscule detail of their sex lives, the best they can now hope for is to leak the information themselves rather than let a long-lensed photographer do it.

The latest celebrity to beat the press to an exposition is George Shelley, a pipsqueak pop star referred to by British television and radio presenter Nick Grimshaw as "Harry Styles's little sister." Shelley is a singer in X Factor's Union J, a boyband assembled of angelic voices and perfectly plucked eyebrows. He released a YouTube video to explain that he's loved women and he's loved men.

Very clearly, Shelley says it's not something he feels he can label, that labels themselves are old-fashioned, but he's had girlfriends and boyfriends. But lo the online headlines: 'WATCH: George Shelley comes out in emotional YouTube Video,' 'George Shelley reveals he is bisexual,' 'George Shelley makes emotional revelation about his sexuality.'

The pieces themselves are at least well-meaning. These days it seems there's a tabloid obligation to present a positive narrative around people "coming out." So, for example, British television personality Vicky Pattinson's supportive tweets are screen-grabbed and pasted into stories alongside collated fan celebrations and aggregated hashtags. George is "brave" for announcing he has fallen in love with people, not genitals.

But it wasn't always this way. A 1990 front page of the Sun read "£1M SOCCER STAR: 'I AM Gay'" with the tagline: "Justin Fashanu confesses." Famously, he never played professional football again. In 1999, Irish pop singer Stephen Gately gave a hasty coming out interview to the same paper after hearing that a supposed friend was about to sell the story on him. He later suffered from depression and when he died of pulmonary edema, Mail columnist Jan Moir put it down to his "dangerous lifestyle."

And even though it seems as though things might have changed in the past few years—Olympic diver-turned-vlogger Tom Daley came out in 2013, and Sam Smith came out in a chat with Ellen DeGeneres in 2015—it seems as though, for the tabloids, all that has changed is a move from front-page outrage to back-slapping positivity online while poking-fun in the celeb pages.

Dan Wotton, the very same journalist who yesterday tweeted "It's so sad that boyband members still feel the need to hide their sexuality. It's 2016 people!" commits to an ongoing franchise in the Sun called "The Bi Bus." With his head photoshopped into the driver's seat, this "proud gay man" drives a bus-load of queer celebrities' cut-out heads. The underlying assumption being that being bisexual or queer is a temporary jolly instead of an innate feeling or an approach to love not predicated on the presence of a certain set of genitals.

The Sun's bi bus by the 'Sun.'

Some poor picture editor has surely been tasked with slicing around an image of George's tousled hair so as to neatly superimpose him alongside Bi Bus regulars Miley Cyrus, Tom Hardy, Megan Fox, and Harry Styles. More's the pity for George, who came out specifically to halt the "online speculation." But the way a personal announcement can be immaturely co-opted by tabloid writers as a "ha ha" moment is why queerness is stigmatized in the first place and why so few celebrities feel they can come out.

The oddest bedfellows to emerge from any public coming out are the two factions of the "why do we even care?" school of thought. On one side, there are socially-righteous youths who don't think sexuality needs to be solemnly declared like a cancer diagnosis. On the other, we have older harumphy sorts who would rather all this wasn't in their face all the time.

The former group are idealists, but it's unrealistic to expect no one to discuss their sexuality at a time when one in six LGBT people are victims of hate crimes, and 40 percent of young LGBT people have considered suicide. Queers need positive support wherever they can get it. Indeed, the more intolerant the latter group, the more important it is for LGBT people to come out, to make queerness acknowledged as a normal and everyday occurrence. But as long as editors of national papers react like jilted lovers, butthurt they didn't get the exclusive nosey on someone's private life first, we're going to get more vlogs like George's, whether the subject wants in or not.

Jaimeo Brown Transcendence's Work Songs is one of the most exciting, experimental, and important albums set to drop this year. The project is centered on the samples of songs laborers have sung through the ages as they toiled away with their work. Producer and drummer Jaimeo Brown teamed up with Grammy Award-winning guitarist and composer Chris Sholar and a host of other musicians to usher these historic tunes into the new millennium. What makes Transcendence's music so literally transcendent is how it builds new sonic textures on top of these historic audio samples, effectively linking our present with our past. When the two things come together, the audio collages arrive at a sound that's incredibly forward-thinking and fresh.

One of the standout tracks from Work Songs is "For Mama Lucy," which features a sample of the voice of Leroy Grant, a man who was incarcerated in Mississippi's Parchman Farm prison in the 50s. We hear Grant sing in a throaty croon about being distraught over a ill loved one. But what's cool is that the backing music behind his voice takes us on a journey that begins with a distorted blues rock sound that recalls the vibe of Electric Mud, and then evolves drastically, culminating with some blissed-out free jazz that sounds as chaotic and propulsive as modern life feels.

VICE is proud to exclusively premiere the music video for "For Mama Lucy," which you can watch below. The video follows the song's lead, visually bridging that gap between our past and our future through sampling. But in the video's case, it's the sampling of historical images spliced with the trappings of modern-day life. We see plantations and slain Civil Rights leaders in black and white as well as LCD monitors and current technology in vibrant color. Watch the video below and then keep scrolling down to read a short email interview I had with Jaimeo, who breaks down his vision for "For Mama Lucy" and the whole Work Songs project in general.

VICE: How did you develop the concept for this video?
Jaimeo Brown: The concept of the video is woven from the fabric of the larger Transcendence story. Transcendence seeks to transcend the barriers of history, art, and technology. We wanted everything, visually and sonically, to line up with this message so that "For Mama Lucy" would be accentuated emotionally. It was very much a collaborative effort amongst the creative team that has been involved—Steph Thom and Freda Knowles from saltjam., Haley Brawner from my record label, and the talented filmmaker Brad Wong, who did an amazing job finding the raw footage and assembling it to create a coherent, powerful piece.

The music video is a collage of images spanning a wide swath of American history. But it seems to begin and end with images of what looks like the Oak Alley plantation—there are also references to the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and World War II. How did you select the images for this film, what do they say to you, and how do they reinforce the overall concept of the song and the album?
The images that were chosen reflect the historical nature of Transcendence. In order to transcend the darker realities of our history, we have to face them. Transcendence finds its roots in the African-American experience, but demonstrates the common denominators that are found in every culture. The album illuminates music that has been tied to great struggle, perseverance, ingenuity, and courage. From Mississippi to Yamagata, Japan, work songs have been a way that humans have been able to transcend the overwhelming hardships of life.

As the video progresses, it turns from black and white into vibrant color. What is the significance of this shift?
The color also speaks to the future, as the black-and-white images refer to our history. The goal was to connect the two. It's always important to me that hope is the preeminent message of Transcendence, and I believe the color helps bring that out and conveys our optimism.

At certain points, we see not only the collaged images, but also the mediums through which they are disseminated—like televisions, iPads, and computer screens... What's important about not only the message, but the medium in which we get content?
Technology has produced a virtual reality in our culture. The idea of transcending technology focuses on making the best use of this medium. The Gees Bend quilters taught me that necessity and creativity are the parents of invention. If we have the right intentions, technology can be used in incredible ways to transcend.

What can we expect to see from the other music videos coming from this project?
I'm really hyped about the next video. It will feature some incredible work by the prodigious animator and filmmaker Fons Schiedon and dancer DC Focus. The visual elements of Transcendence are as important as the music itself, and we're really excited about creating stunning videos that encourage others to transcend!

Pre-order Work Songs on iTunes and go see Transcendence live at the Brooklyn Bowl on February 21.

Follow Wilbert on Twitter.

As much as I love short films, I never thought I'd be 100 articles deep in writing about them. There are great films out there, for sure. But for every mind-blowing one, there are hundreds of inane, heavy-handed, stupid ones. It's an uphill battle to bring you top-notch content every week, but I've tried to remain vigilant in my quest for goodness and I'm proud to say that this 100th one is a doozy. Plus, icing on the cake, it's the filmmaker's first film, which was animated as part of her thesis for MOME (Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest), which went on to win over 45 awards internationally and was shortlisted for the 87th Academy Awards. I'm proud to present animator Réka Bucsi's acclaimed absurdist short film, "Symphony No. 42," which begins like many landmark things—with a bang.

From the opening scene of "Symphony No. 42," where a fox draws a moving, mystical image before pulling out a gun and shooting itself, you know this short will take you places. The film is a compendium of vignettes that blend nature and pop culture with a surrealist, deadpan sensibility. Whether Busci is poking fun of famous artists like Damien Hirst, who's found painting his dumb dots on his iconic shark, or juxtaposing helpless elephants against brain-dead humans, her absurdist situations illuminate something about our condition. However, in each situation, next to the dry, dark humor is a futility or sadness that is never quite addressed. What does it all mean? Who knows? In the end, her whimsical creatures, affectless humans, and moments of surreal irrationality offer no answers, but they do swirl together into, well, pretty much everything.

I reached out to director Réka Bucsi to see if she could help shed some light on her ideas and her future films. Check it out below.

VICE: Why "Symphony No. 42"? What was wrong with the ones before it?
Réka Bucsi: Forty-two is a magical number that looks good, is a suspiciously central number in the world of science, and still I think means nothing at all. I like to just take things as they are, and not symbolize them, but it's really not easy to do that with movies. Also, I'm sure Mozart had some great symphonies before his 42nd one, but this has nothing to do with the man.

Then have you always been a fan of symphonies? What is it about the classical form that gets you going?
I like classical music—it makes me feel smarter than I actually am. I have huge respect for some composers, and listening to their music is a great inspiration. I also think classical music can build a really great contrast with some of my work. It helps me balance between dramatic and sarcastic.

What came first, your character design or the visual gags associated with them? I especially love the reoccurring gag of the elephant painting for help.
"Symphony No. 42" wasn't meant to be a gag film. But I was really glad when the audience reacted with laughter, as this showed me that I could hit that spot in other people that I thought as a "laugh-cry" moment in the film. The characters came simultaneously with the situations I put them in. It was never first a character and than a story. The situation brought the character along, and the character defined what it could do best. I think that poor elephant doesn't deserve laughter, but I'm really glad you enjoyed watching him suffer!

Well, your short is still absurd, in the best way. I don't think there's any getting around that. But having traveled around the world with it now, what has been the most absurd response to "Symphony No. 42"?
There was a guy once, who asked me in a letter if I am part of some kind of secret society, because of the sign that the fox draws in the very beginning of the film. He was quite suspicious and sent me some screenshots of other films that have the sign as well and asked me what is going on in the film industry, and to reveal the truth. It was really hard to resist not sending him a well-built-up conspiracy theory that would scare him to death.

Even though you're a relatively new animator, both this and your newest short "Love" seem to tell their stories through vignettes. Is that style of storytelling more exciting to you than something more linear?
Actually, "Love" is very different from "Symphony No. 42." The trailer may make you feel it's a similar structure, but it's a way more concrete story. I wouldn't call the situations vignettes anymore, but I wouldn't call it classical storytelling either. I'm just excited about the short form of film. I think it is a perfect platform for experimenting with storytelling, composing pictures and sound. It's only recently that I started to feel a growing interest in feature length, and how I could maybe include the things I like in the short format.

What are you working on now?
I just finished my new film "Love," which is a 14-minute-long, French-Hungarian co-production. That film took a lot of time to finance and make, but will be shown in competition at the Berlin Film Festival for the first time . I recently worked with some great people on a short promotional film for a city in Denmark, but mainly I try to just draw without deadlines for a bit now, and see what happens. In the near future, I would like to do something based on music. I will be part of an artist-in-residence program in Vienna in May, where I want to start developing a new short little something.

Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as a film curator. He's the senior curator for Vimeo's On Demand platform. He has also programmed at Tribeca Film Festival, Rooftop Films, and the Hamptons International Film Festival.

For information on Réka Busci, visit her website.

A little cow. Photo via Flickr user Suzette

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

I think, deep down, we all know the meat industry isn't that great. Whether you've watched Cowspiracy, read those George Monbiot-type articles about how meat production is catastrophically bad for the environment, or just listened to someone at a party go on about how Food, Inc. was, like, so dark it almost made him or her give up eating burgers, you're likely aware of the ramifications of industrial animal farming.

So it's no wonder that around 20 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK now follow a vegetarian or vegan diet, and around 12 percent of all adults in the UK are vegetarian. The amount of red meat being eaten in Britain has declined almost year-by-year since 1950, and this trend looks set to continue.

Which makes you wonder: What would actually happen if the whole of Britain just stopped eating meat? Would farmers all lose their jobs? Would we be healthier and happier? Would the streets look like something out of a Mike Leigh film, grayscale, with loads of people sitting around starved of protein, their hair falling out, their translucent skin bruising at the lightest touch?

To find out, I spoke to experts in food policy, environmental science, and meat-related health.

All photos below from the Anchor village cows advert, 2011

IMPACT ON THE ECONOMY AND FARMING
Timothy Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University London

VICE: Would it be possible to maintain a farming industry without animals here in Britain?
Timothy Lang: Well, that's a big debate going on in my world: Can we imagine British farming without animals? Or can we imagine carrying on doing what we're doing and making it even more brutal? Animals, cows, and sheep are major sources of greenhouse gasses, and we're using a lot of "hidden" land for them. The Amazonian rainforest is being chopped down for the purpose of growing soya, which is then fed to the animals in Europe which you eat. We're growing a huge amount of cereals here in Britain and across Europe, which are then fed to animals. Animals used to be part of a fertility cycle, a rotation in farming, but have become an end in themselves. We've made animals not just competitors to us in terms of land use, but also major users of land, resources, and indeed food. We have to dramatically reduce animal use in Britain.

What would actually happen to our farming landscape if meat was taken out of the equation?
Well, for a start, we would dramatically increase our horticulture. The good things for your diet and mine are actually plants. Fruits, vegetables, cereals—staple foods. And there has been a catastrophic drop in the production of these things in Britain. If we stopped eating meat we would have to resuscitate and reinvest and re-skill ourselves in horticulture. And we have to do that anyway, certainly with climate change. When I was a farmer in the uplands on the Pennines, 50 years or so ago, even then, we experimented with growing crops in parts where people would say, "Oh, that's sheep country." You could grow swedes, turnips, brassicas, and potatoes very easily and very well, and historically they did.

We would have to re-skill a lot. It would mean the transformation of British agriculture. The politicians are frightened, but they have to address this issue. Climate change is going to make them do it. The food system is being forced to change by climate, by water stress, by population changes, by geopolitics. We've got a food system based on a population being well fed by very, very intense agricultural methods. We now know that has to change.

How long would it take for farmers to re-learn and shift their methods?
That can't be done tomorrow. It's taken 50 to 70 years to get into the mess we're now in. We have to make a very dramatic change in approach very quickly. We should have a 30-year plan. The Labour government started a 20-year plan and then the coalition abolished it and nothing happened. They went back to a Thatcherite notion that markets will resolve themselves. The current government is working on a 25-year food strategy, but it's all about supporting industry and industry taking a lead. Industry cannot resolve this. It's going to have to be consumer culture changes. I'm a critic of the thinking that's going on at the moment in government. As a public, we're going to have to take the movement toward discussion.

IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT
Nick Hewitt, Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry, Department of Environmental Science, Lancaster University

VICE: What would happen to the environment if we all stopped eating meat?
Nick Hewitt: Eating meat makes a large contribution to the greenhouse gasses that people in the UK produce. If everyone stopped eating it, the food-related greenhouse gas emissions would reduce by about 35 percent. It's one very effective way to make a big dent in emissions.

Why?
It's particularly cattle—beef is by far the worst. Cows chew grass and digest it in conditions in the stomach with no oxygen, and that releases methane. That's the principle reason. Also, the way the grassland is fertilized causes greenhouse gas emissions. Transporting the food around does contribute, but it's relatively small, unless you use air freight. Lorries aren't too bad. The biggest lifestyle choice you could make to reduce greenhouse gasses is to stop eating meat. It's hard to think of another single lifestyle change we could make that would have the same effect.

So using the same farmland for plants would be the quickest way to reduce emissions?
Yeah. You'd still have to be careful with your fertilization, but using land for meat is the least efficient way of producing protein. It's just an inefficient way of producing food. By growing plants on the land and eating those, it's much more efficient, so we would be greatly reducing those greenhouse gas emissions.

Would it make more of a difference if everyone was vegan?
Yeah, it would make more of a difference, because obviously if you're vegetarian but eat cheese that's related to the dairy industry and cows. If you eliminate cheese and meat, you'd reduce emissions even further.

Hypothetically, then, meat-free Britain is a lot cleaner.
Our government has put targets on the national greenhouse gas emissions and said that, by 2050, UK emissions have to be reduced by 80 percent of what they were in 2010. It's very hard to see how we'd ever meet that target without reducing emissions from every sector—transport, heating, fuel, food. Food currently makes up about 20 percent of total emissions. If the government wants to reduce by that overall figure, we have to reduce emissions from food.

Why isn't the government telling us that via campaigns or something?
What the government is trying to do at the moment is reduce food waste. So, obviously, the more food wasted—and there is a hell of a lot of food wasted—the more unnecessary emissions there are. So if you cut waste, you'll cut emissions. That's the government's focus right now. If the government is serious about this it would try to introduce interventions to get people to eat less meat or go vegetarian. The numbers show that. So, hypothetically, if we were all vegetarian in this country, we'd change things drastically. Sadly, in some very large countries, meat is seen as a status symbol and its consumption is increasing drastically. Anything we can do to help that is a help.

IMPACT ON THE HEALTH OF THE POPULATION
Ian Givens, Professor of Food Chain Nutrition at University of Reading's School of Agriculture

VICE: What would happen to the health of British people if we all gave up meat?
Ian Givens: There isn't any real association between white meat and cancer or cardiovascular problems. It tends to be relatively neutral.

Red meat, though, is a different story. There is an issue in Britain of malnutrition of young females. There is good evidence from several surveys that women, especially between the ages of 11 and 18, have a suboptimal level of a number of key nutrients, and one is iron. In fact, half the population is below the lowest level of iron intake. If you look back over the last ten years or more, there's been a consistent decrease in iron intake, and that—without too much of a doubt—is down to the reduction of red meat intake, because it's the best form of iron. The question is: Does that matter? Probably not in the short term, but one wonders what happens in the long term.

So we'd have to make sure we were supplementing young women, especially with more nutrients?
That's what the evidence suggests. There are other issues about zinc and vitamin B12, which would have to be supplemented. But then you have to balance that with the fact that red meat increases the risk of getting colon cancer. Most evidence now says that processed meat has a high increase of relative risk for colon cancer, higher than red meat. If you look at the increase of cancer per amount of red meat per day, it's still quite striking.

Overall, then, do you think this new Britain would be healthier?
There would be some health benefits. Colon cancer has the highest prevalence of any cancer that's available to both men and women. The evidence suggests that the risks of colon cancer associated with processed meat especially would be reduced. Processed meat is bacon, sausages, salami, deli meat, hotdogs, luncheon meat, and so on. I'm less sure about red and white meats. The BMIs of vegetarians and vegans are also significantly lower, and they have lower risks associated with obesity.

Follow Hannah Ewens on Twitter.

Check out Jim's blog, Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook.

Bernie Sanders in Iowa in January. Photo via Flickr user Alex Hanson

Earlier this week, Hillary Clinton edged out an extremely narrow win over Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Iowa caucuses, a result that nevertheless made it clear that Sanders, an irascible self-described democratic socialist, is a serious contender for president. But the contest was so close that it's not even clear Clinton won, said Iowa's leading newspaper, which wrote in a Wednesday editorial that "what happened Monday night at the Democratic caucuses was a debacle, period."

"Two-tenths of 1 percent separated Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. A caucus should not be confused with an election, but it's worth noting that much larger margins trigger automatic recounts in other states," the Des Moines Register editorial board continued. The editorial went on to describe conditions on the ground in the overcrowded and contentious caucus night:

"Too many questions have been raised. Too many accounts have arisen of inconsistent counts, untrained and overwhelmed volunteers, confused voters, cramped precinct locations, a lack of voter registration forms and other problems. Too many of us, including members of the Register editorial board who were observing caucuses, saw opportunities for error amid Monday night's chaos."

Adding to the confusion is the system used by the Iowa Democratic Party to pick a winner in these caucuses, which is based on "state delegate equivalents" instead of actual votes. Sanders has called for the raw vote totals to be released, presumably on the assumption that even though Clinton won the delegate count, he may have captured more hearts and minds than the former first lady. The Register editorial board echoed the demand that Democrats reveal how many people voted for each candidate, and also wanted an audit of the results and a commission to study how to improve the caucus process.

Clinton has been the frontrunner for as long as anyone's been thinking about the 2016 race, and there's been a lot of talk about how the Democratic Party has favored her over the insurgent Sanders. But a Sanders spokeswoman told the Register that even though the campaign had found some errors while doing its own review of the results, "It's not that we think anybody did anything intentionally."

Though the Register editorial board and others may have their doubts about what happened during the caucuses, the Sanders camp didn't challenge the Iowa results, which the candidate has called a "virtual tie." With the media largely declaring that Clinton's surprisingly close call was a victory for Sanders anyway, and his strong lead in the New Hampshire polls, the Vermont senator may be more interested in focusing on what lies ahead.

Photo via Flickr user redjar

A new study from the University of California San Diego found that voter ID laws directly discourage minority voters, effectively tipping the scales toward Republicans and the white people who support them, the Washington Post reports.

These laws are generally passed by Republicans who claim they want to stop what they say is a scourge of voter fraud cases by forcing people to show a photo ID before they cast a ballot. But there have been barely any documented cases of voter fraud, leading critics to accuse right wingers of attempting to make it difficult for minorities—who tend to be poorer than whites and therefore less likely to have documentation like driver's licenses—to vote for Democrats.

There have been studies of voter ID laws and voter turnout before, some of which failed to find a correlation, but this UCSD paper argues that those studies didn't find a connection because they were done before the strictest ID laws went into effect. The authors are pretty confident: "The analysis shows that strict photo identification laws have a differentially negative impact on the turnout of Hispanics, Blacks, and mixed-race Americans in primaries and general elections," they write. "Voter ID laws skew democracy in favor of whites and those on the political right."

The study comes as a federal judge in Winston-Salem is deliberating over whether or not to uphold a 2013 North Carolina voter ID law following a suit from the NAACP over the law's alleged discriminatory effects.

Photo via Bonnie Rotton's Instagram

Bonnie Rotten was watching football in her living room one Sunday when a comment popped up on one of her Instagram photos:

"So is she gonna stop porn or be one of those disgusting, horrible mothers?"

The comment was in response to a photo Rotten posted of herself with her two-week old daughter. She didn't reply—Rotten says that she tries not to feed the trolls—but comments like this have become routine since the 22-year-old former porn actress announced that she was pregnant last May.

"Every single day, I get the most ridiculous comments," she told me. "'What kind of mother are you?' 'How do you think your daughter is going to feel when her friends bring up to her that her mom was getting railed by a bunch of dudes?' Or, 'How do you think you're gonna raise a child when all you do is suck dick for a living?' Just stupid shit, all day long, from all angles."

Rotten stopped performing in February of 2015, in anticipation of her pregnancy. She was at the height of her career; in 2014, she was the second-youngest woman ever to win Performer of the Year at the AVN Awards. But her pregnancy, she says, has changed her life and her career.

According to Mark Spiegler—one of the top porn agents in Los Angeles, who's represented the likes of Rotten, Sasha Grey, and Asa Akira—it's "pretty rare" for one of his clients to get pregnant. When they do, though, most drop out of the game.

"I don't really have too much to say about this," Spiegler told me, "because when girls get pregnant, they usually quit porn."

When porn actress Dana Vespoli was 33 (married to fellow porn actor Manuel Ferrara), she decided she wanted to have a baby. But when she and Ferrara started trying to conceive, it affected the way she approached work: She had to take fewer risks with her body.

For one thing, she started only doing girl-on-girl scenes and working with fewer people, since "you're more prone to infection when there's that much exposure to different people, different flora."

Vespoli, who has been in the adult industry for 11 years, stopped performing for the majority of her pregnancy. After giving birth, she realized getting back to work would be a challenge for her postpartum body. Porn actresses use their bodies as instruments for their work; new moms use their bodies as instruments to nourish or nurture their children. Vespoli found the divide too taxing.

"I breastfed all my children," said Vespoli, who is now a mother of three, "and my body didn't really feel like it was entirely mine during that time. I felt like it belonged to my children. I didn't want anything else touching my breasts, or to catch an STD and have to go on antibiotics. It's really hard on the infant."

Rotten echoed the sentiment: "I'm a very all-in person," she said. "I'm either going to be all-in as a performer, or all-in as a mother. I can't do both."

While that may be the standard trajectory, there are also ways to capitalize on pregnancy within the porn industry. Sierra Simmons was a freshman at Florida State College at Jacksonville when she and her boyfriend found out they were expecting a child. Simmons had been toying with the idea of working in the adult industry to put herself through college, and when her pregnancy test came back positive, her decision was made.

"I was in school and trying to pay for all of that," says the now 20-year-old biology major. "I needed to have the funds to do everything, and I was so concerned with not trying to stress myself out with working from nine to five."

Her boyfriend, agreeing that they needed the money, gave her the green light. "I was like, 'OK, alrighty,'" she said. "I went ahead and committed."

An NYC subway car free of the alleged scourge of knife attacks. Photo via Flickr user James Loesch

Unless you've been living under a rock or in a K2-induced state of catatonia, you've probably heard something about the spate of knife attacks across New York City in recent days. Tuesday saw a trio of disturbing episodes in the streets of Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan, and there were ten stabbing and slashing incidents reported on the city subway system as of Monday, according to the New York Daily News. Naturally, the local tabloids—and seemingly everyone you talk to—is terrified of being assaulted by a blade-bearing lunatic. Even Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, who called the sudden uptick in knifings an "aberration," seemed to give credence to the idea that the subway system was dangerous at a Wednesday press conference.

But let's calm down for a second: No matter what nervous chatter you hear from your friends or what headlines you read on the front page of the New York Post, everything is fine, and the city's knife crime is nothing to worry about.

As the New York Times reported in late December, NYC is as safe these days as it's ever been in the modern era. Shootings were down in 2015, and even if murders rose very slightly, total crime numbers were down too. Subway assaults are up from this time last year, true (there were 37 such attacks in January 2016, compared to 12 a year ago), but you have to be careful when throwing out contextless crime statistics like that.

"Massive Uptick in NYC Shootings," screamed a Post headline last May, just one of many tabloid missives decrying a return to the bad old days of graffiti, grifters, gun violence, and muggings. Of course, by the end of December, the year-on-year shooting numbers had leveled out and finished lower than in 2014. And if you really want to look at month-on-month stats, you can't ignore the fact that when it comes to murders, January was the safest in decades, with killings down 45 percent, according to the NYPD.

"The January homicide numbers are astonishing, and once again demonstrate the dubious claims of 'a science of policing' or that the city would unravel if the cops are not doing full-throttle enforcement," Eugene O'Donnell, a former Brooklyn cop and prosecutor, wrote me in an email.

O'Donnell is talking about the fact that, since peaking at over 685,000 in 2011, street stops by NYPD officers have dropped massively amid legal challenges and public outrage at stop-and-frisk tactics. But when you freak out about statistical blips in violent crime, all sorts of buffoons tend to come out of the woodwork.

"People were appealing to us. They were calling us, reaching out to us. When we were on the trains, people would converse with us and say, 'We need you back,'" Curtis Sliwa, the putative head of the Guardian Angels, a publicity-hungry vigilante group that made a big show of patrolling city streets and subways in the 1980s, told TIME on Wednesday. The Angels are reportedly on the job again, though relying on them for anything at all is probably a bad idea. (In the 90s, Sliwa admitted that the group had faked a bunch of "crimes" so it could foil them.)

But Sliwa is not alone in thinking extraordinary measures may be necessary here. NYPD officials were reportedly considering banning so-called "career criminals" from the subway system as of last week—though that sort of blanket action likely wouldn't be legal. And while the massive decline of stop-and-frisk since 2011 is rightly celebrated, it's at least theoretically possible for some kinds of crime to increase as a result.

"The truth is that if the cops are having fewer enforcement interfaces—arrests for fare evasion, summonses for violations such as smoking or urinating in the subway, fewer ejections (a power transit cops have)—this will probably result in less pre-emption of violent acts and also may embolden people who are prone to acting out," O'Donnell explains. "The subway, especially in winter, has a lot of mentally ill riders (some of whom are violent), and it is not a stretch to think that this tiny cohort of violent people—off their meds—might not be intercepted before they commit heinous crimes."

That said, it's too early to form any kind of conclusion: 2016 will be a long year, and we won't know for a while whether knife attacks in New York have risen, fallen, or stayed the same. Too bad. "Statistically insignificant uptick in crime hits NYC subways" doesn't make a very good headline.

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Kakei.R

Assholes are everywhere, just ask Kanye.

For Dr. Jonathan Allan, anuses are a gateway into understanding culture, language, social anxieties, humour, politics, and possibly the meaning of life. Given that butts are gender neutral and represent a host of positive and negative connotations, they make for a fascinating topic of study. Dr. Allan spent two and a half years researching and philosophizing about the anus, and he eventually wrote Reading from Behind: A Cultural Analysis of the Anus. Set for release in early March this year, the book inspects the ass in literary theory and cultural criticism.

Starting with Sigmund Freud's 1908 work "Character and Anal Eroticism," Dr. Allan shows how describing someone as having an "anal personality" may signal our need to take the anus, with all "its pleasures and its discomforts," and "repress" it. From there, the author surveys everything from films like Brokeback Mountain, the virginity complex, anal pleasure and violence, and even how butts relate to colonialism in Canada.

We reached the professor and Canada research chair in queer theory at Brandon University by phone for an interview. We probed him about butt stuff like twerking and how the anus relates to socio-economic disparity and gender.

Dr. Jonathan Allan says Kent Monkman's "Cree Master 1" painting flips the traditional colonial narrative. Photo courtesy of the University of Regina Press

VICE: What do you mean by the 'democratization of the anus'?
Dr. Jonathan Allan: One of the things that most interests me is how we define gender based on difference. And of course, gender is this weird thing that gets conflated with sex all the time. When you fill out a government form it asks for your gender—male or female. Well, male or female is about your biological sex, not your gender, which is how you live your day-to-day life. Everything is about difference. The one thing that unites us is the butt. We all have one, have access to it, and we sit on it for most of the day. That's what's so interesting to me.

You also relate the anus to what you call 'the frontier myth and colonialism.'
When I started presenting this work at conferences, someone asked me about colonialism. They referred me to Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge. That scene is quite graphic. There is a certain violence and a lot of power at play. I think that power is always transferable and always in flux. The anus is always there. We've all experienced pain in our asses. We've all experienced anal pleasure. We've all had particular bowel movements that were pleasurable. When we frame it in those terms, it becomes something different. I don't think we'll ever get rid of the shame of assholes, but we're clearly interested in them.

Is there something to be said about social class and the butt?
The butt is the proletariat of the body. If it is about wealth, the Kardashians seem to be doing fine. There are class arguments to be made around it though. I quote the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, who says, "The day shit is worth money, poor people will be born without an asshole."

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Follow Devin Pacholik on Twitter.

Roosh V. Screenshot via YouTube

With his desire for free publicity satiated, "pickup artist" Daryush "Roosh V" Valizadeh has cancelled his International Meetup Day for his "neomasculine" horde of followers.

We can't say we didn't see this coming.

"I can no longer guarantee the safety or privacy of the men who want to attend on February 6, especially since most of the meetups can not be made private in time," Valizadeh wrote on his Return of Kings website last night.

It's so obvious that it doesn't need saying, but for anyone who's late to this story, this explanation is coming from the guy who published a passcode for a "secret meeting" on a public website. That's advertising, not Op-Sec.

The International Return of Kings meetup day was scheduled for this Saturday in 43 different countries, including 10 Canadian cities, inspiring planned protests and online petitions pretty much everywhere.

Several Canadian politicians had already spoken out against Valizadeh's events, including Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, and Twitter mayor Norm Kelly.

"Your pro-rape, misogynistic, homophobic garbage is not welcome in Ottawa," Watson said on Twitter.

Valizadeh is best known for arguing that rape should be legal "if done on private property."

Valizadeh's recent experience in Canada hasn't gone over that well. Last August's so-called "Battle of Montreal" ended with him being doused with beer.

"You piece of shit, how dare you fucking come to Canada?" yells a women in a confrontation caught on video. "This is fucking Roosh V! This is the guy who says that rape should be legal!"

Valizadeh has self-published 15 "books" on picking up women (Sample title: Bang Iceland: How to Sleep with Icelandic Women in Iceland.) He likely sold a few more this week than last.

Follow Josh Visser on Twitter.

Just your average BC vending machines. All photos by the author

A high school student walking to and from Stratford Hall, a private school on Vancouver's Commercial Drive, walks past two pot dispensaries in the three blocks between the transit station and school. They could mistake one of the dispensaries, the BC Compassion Club Society (BCCCS), for a hippie health-food store. The other, the BC Pain Society, is pretty hard to miss though, thanks to the sandwich board out front: "Got Pot? Our Vending Machine Does!"

One business has been accused of bringing in a growing number of people who are wafting pot smoke across the playground of a preschool three doors down, while the other has given presentations on the pharmacological properties of medical cannabis to Grade 12 biology classes.

Samantha Gayfer, the community development manager at Stratford Hall, says the two dispensaries couldn't be more different in their presence in the community. Yet according to a new city zoning bylaw amendment, both will be shut down for being too close to schools unless they can convince an appeals board to let them stay.

"The BCCCS have been respectful neighbours," she says. "We don't find that their branding and marketing in the community is nearly as blatant as the BC Pain Society down the street."

Vancouver City Council brought in the new zoning restrictions last June to address the explosion of dispensaries without shutting them all down, and the new rules come into effect this month. There are now nearly 100 dispensaries open in the city, and it's not unusual to find multiple pot shops on a single block. In the near future, however, most of them will have to close. The new bylaw requires that dispensaries be at least 300 metres from schools, community centres, neighbourhood houses and one another.

There were no exceptions made for compassion clubs—which offer other services like nutritional counseling and subsidized bud—but the cost of a compassion club license is only $1,000 versus the $30,000 that for-profit shops will have to pay.

Just 14 of the 176 applications met the criteria in the new bylaw and can move along in the approval process. The dispensary with the sandwich board, the BC Pain Society, was not one of them, nor was the BC Compassion Club Society across the street. Both are appealing to the city's Board of Variance.

Chuck Varabioff is the owner of the BC Pain Society's two locations (one, on Broadway, did meet the criteria and is now going through the approval process). He says finding another location is not an option.

"I have a better chance of winning the Powerball in the States than finding a new location that fits the city's requirements," he says, and he's not far off. A look at a map of the city's schools and community centres shows that many prime areas are out of the question, and that's not even considering things like whether there is space to rent, or whether a property owner will rent to a dispensary. But his lottery metaphor fits in another sense, too: the owners of the dispensaries that are allowed to remain open will find themselves with an influx of new customers as the vast majority of their competitors are shut down.

If Varabioff is unsuccessful in keeping the location open, the 14,000 members he says use the dispensary would have to go elsewhere—like the compassion club across the street.

The BC Compassion Club Society dispensary is the oldest of its kind in Canada, and it smells like your weird aunt's house. It predates the private school whose presence would now shut it down.

"We don't think there's any case to make us move," says Jamie Shaw, who has been working at the compassion club for four years.

If the dispensaries win their appeals, they will start the next stage in the permit process, which means submitting more information and inviting comment from the public. But once that process is finished, they will exist legally as businesses in Vancouver (even if what the businesses do is still technically illegal under Canadian law).

"The upshot of all the bylaws is we created a regulatory structure where we said you can exist, and as long as you follow these rules nobody will touch you," says city councillor Kerry Jang. That's a valuable status for a business that has so far only existed in a legal gray area.

Dispensaries have been raided, shut down, and fined in the past in Vancouver, and all across Canada they exist in a state of uncertainty. Last month Good Weeds Lounge in Toronto was raided days after a VICE interview in which the owner, now arrested on trafficking charges, insisted that he had "complete confidence" in what he was doing.

Other Vancouver city councillors, however, criticize the one-size-fits all approach that city council took with the new zoning restrictions. In a statement released Friday, Councillor Melissa De Genova said things should stay the way they are while the federal government figures out what marijuana legalization will look like.

"I find it inconsistent and kind of hypocritical that Council has said no to ride-sharing services such as Uber, claiming that the Provincial government doesn't have any regulations in place yet, but Council is willing to say yes to marijuana businesses even though the federal government doesn't have new regulations in place yet," De Genova said.

There haven't been many hints as to what the new federal rules will be, or when legalization will take effect nationally. Pot has been de facto legal in Vancouver for years since the police said they would not devote resources to simple possession charges or shutting down dispensaries. The new federal laws, however, could mean an overhaul in how pot can be supplied or sold, which has longtime marijuana activist and compassion club owner Dana Larsen worried.

"We don't want to see a crackdown on small scale businesses or home growing," he says.

Follow Jimmy Thomson on Twitter.

All screenshots courtesy Taylor Cooper

It's no secret that not everyone who you talk to on the internet is who they say they are. A growing number of men in Canada are falling victim to a scam in which catfish accounts on Facebook are adding them, direct messaging back and forth with them, and convincing them to get on Skype to perform sexual acts. Taylor Cooper, a 26-year-old pipeline worker from British Columbia who asked VICE to use his real name in case other victims want to reach out to him, became one victim of this widespread scam in August.

Cooper says an "average-looking... bookworm-y type girl" using the name Kelsey Smith who appeared to be in her early 20s and had no mutual friends with him added him on Facebook, began a private messenger string with him, then convinced him to get on Skype with her. After he got naked on webcam with her, the person he was talking to tried to extort him for over a grand by posting a recording of their Skype session on YouTube and threatening to leak it to his family.

VICE: What led up to you Skyping with this person?
Taylor Cooper: Literally she added me, and then a week later she messaged me and it was just all in one go. In the chat on Skype. Then she kept saying, "Show me your cock, and I'll take my shirt off." So of course, I went with it. She said, "Show me your ass" too, which I thought was kind of weird. I just went along with it, and she took her shirt off. Then all of the sudden, the video just went black. Then she sent me the link: it was a YouTube link of the video of me. Then she told me to listen to what she had to say very carefully, then gave me a whole list of my family members with their full names.

What family members did she list off?
I think maybe she could see my whole friend list on Facebook, and since my last name is Cooper, it was all my Coopers that I had as Facebook friends. So like cousins, aunts, uncles, some family members who I hadn't seen in years and just have them on Facebook. I assumed that she only looked at my last name, but I have a stepmom and stepdad too—they have different last names.

What did you do then? Did you consider paying this person off?
No, there was no way I was going to pay. They wanted at first $1,500 Canadian. So I kept on playing the whole I'm broke, I'm poor thing in the conversation. I just kept saying I had no money, trying to stall her. While I was trying to stall her, she posted the video of me on my timeline, and she said, "Taylor Cooper is a pedophile." So I'm freaking out because she said she was 20, right? But obviously it probably wasn't even a girl. Luckily for me, it was about 4:30 or 5 in the morning when she did that, but I immediately deleted it off my timeline. Then I wanted to stay on Facebook, so I just started deleting every single friend I had on there. I was freaking out. I was living with my buddy, and he woke up and didn't really know what to say about the whole thing because it's pretty hard to believe. So I kept telling her I had no money, and then the price kept on going up and down. She asked for $1,500 at first, then she changed it to $500. I kept on saying I was broke, and she was like, "OK, send $90 right now." It was just back and forth of me begging her not to do it.

How did it all end then?
I told her my pay day was a couple days from now and that I would send her the money on Friday. She gave me a Western Union address to send to her, and it was Ivory Coast, Africa. I phoned my best friend, and he was like, "Just talk to your family and tell them not to open up any videos that are sent. Nothing came of it; they didn't send it to anyone. But I phoned my dad and was telling him and my uncle not to open anything. Thinking about it now, maybe I shouldn't have done that, but I was just kind of freaking out. My uncle, my dad, and my stepmom knew about it. They kind of understand. I've seen my uncle since then and the whole family, and they haven't said anything about it. I think they know I was kind of embarrassed.

I think eventually the scammer got scared. They ended up deleting all the messages, and nothing ended up happening. I don't know if I just got lucky, or maybe they felt bad for me because I was playing that pouty story.

Did you ever report it to the police?
No, because I just knew that if they're out of the country, there's nothing they can do about it. When I read your previous article about it, I thought it was good that other people were reporting it. I was glad when I found out I wasn't the only person it happened to because it felt pretty silly. I couldn't imagine if it happened to guys who were married or had kids—that's when they probably pay.

Do you know anyone else who this happened to?
I actually did. A friend of a friend of mine in BC had the same exact thing happen to him. He just deleted his Facebook, and it kind of went away.

How do you feel about it now that a bit of time has passed and you have heard about it happening to other people?
It was really crazy. It scared the shit out of me when it first happened. I think it's just people in foreign countries just sitting on computers all day adding people, it's just like fishing—you get a bite once in a while. It's crazy how advanced this has gotten. Even when I saw the girl on webcam taking her shirt off, it must have been a prerecorded video.

I don't mind you using my name because if someone's in that situation, they read this, and they want to talk to someone about it, I will gladly try to help them. I don't get embarrassed too easily.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Follow Allison Elkin on Twitter.

Jian Ghomeshi walks in front of protesters as he arrives at a Toronto courthouse with his lawyer Marie Henein (left) for the third day of his trial. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

A year after allegedly choking Lucy DeCoutere and slapping her in the face, Jian Ghomeshi stole her mic during a karaoke performance to sing Britney Spears' "Hit Me Baby One More Time," the court heard Thursday, in testimony that painted the former CBC host as a petulant narcissist.

DeCoutere, the Trailer Park Boys actress and the only complainant in Ghomeshi's sex assault trial without a publication ban on her identity, told Ontario Judge William Horkins of a relationship that started out "playful" before quickly taking a dark turn.

She testified that she met Ghomeshi at the Banff World Television Festival, an industry networking event, in June 2003. They chatted for a bit, and he asked if DeCoutere was American because "I didn't know a lot about the work that he had done."

At the end of the event, DeCoutere, who lived in Halifax at the time, said Ghomeshi handed her his business card, which she assumed was in a "romantic" context because there was no potential for doing business together.

"I came away thinking Mr. Ghomeshi was a playful, fun person," she said, and she told the court the two began emailing flirtatious exchanges daily. DeCoutere admitted she has a dirty sense of humour, which was reflected in her emails with Ghomeshi. At one point they discussed slang for sexual acts, including the term "rusty trombone," which she told the court means " there's anal play with tongue and you give somebody a hand job."

(Ghomeshi's mom and sister were present in court at the time.)

She said the former Q host tried to engage her in unironic sex talk, which she "shut down." In July, she visited Toronto, in part to spend time with him and see if there was a romantic connection. At a dinner on the Danforth, DeCoutere said Ghomeshi spent a considerable amount of time talking about his success.

He then told her he wanted to "go back to his house, listen to music and hold me." DeCoutere told the court it was "cheesy" and she felt uncomfortable, but agreed to go back to his Riverdale home. On the way, she said he made a few attempts to kiss her but it felt forced.

Lucy DeCoutere, pictured above, is an actress best known for her role in 'Trailer Park Boys.' Screenshot via YouTube

Once inside, Ghomeshi gave her a tour of his home. When they got to his closet, she noticed his shirts were arranged specifically by colour. That's when she said Ghomeshi assaulted her.

"We were outside of his closet he started kissing me and he took me by the throat and pushed me against the wall, cutting off my breath," DeCoutere told the court. She said he slapped her three times.

"I was slapped twice and then again... The way I remember it there was a pause."

The encounter was silent, she said, though she recalls her face being frozen and "serious."

When asked by the Crown if she consented to the alleged assault, DeCoutere said, "It's impossible to consent to something you're not asked, so no I didn't consent to it."

Afterward, she said they sat on Ghomeshi's couch and he played guitar; they kissed goodnight.

DeCoutere said she was "bewildered" by the encounter but didn't want to leave so as not to anger Ghomeshi or seem rude.

She said the attack was not sexual in nature.

"Somebody puts their hand on your throat and cuts off your airway, that's not sexual. That's 'I could kill you.'"

DeCoutere said the pair had plans to hang out the rest of the weekend, and she obliged them, thinking maybe the incident was a "one-off." She testified she didn't bring up the choking.

"I felt like I put myself in this place so I have to get over it," she said.

In her testimony, DeCoutere painted the picture of a weekend full of socially awkward encounters with Ghomeshi and hints towards his jealous behavior. After introducing her to his friends, one of whom was black, the other Asian, she said Ghomeshi later accused her of being "racist," suggesting she wasn't embracing Toronto's multiculturalism.

She also testified the former radio host was "on the verge of tears a few times" including when she stepped on his glasses. At an industry party, he found her chatting with a group of men and asked if there was a time he could leave her alone and "not come back to find you with a semi-circle of men."

By the end of the trip, DeCoutere said she was certain she had no romantic future with Ghomeshi. She sent him thank you flowers for hosting her once she was back home. Later in the year, she bumped into him at the Gemini Awards in October of that year and he "put his hand on my throat to remind me he had choked me."

She said she next saw Ghomeshi at the Banff TV festival in 2004. She hung out with him and he complained that she hadn't bought him a birthday present. Then, at the same karaoke event they'd met a year prior, she got onstage to perform.

"Jian actually came up onstage and took my mic and turned it into a duet," she said. The song? Britney Spears' "Hit Me Baby One More Time."

Later, he allegedly told her, "I ruined my career by singing with you."

But that wouldn't happen for another decade, after the Toronto Star printed allegations about Ghomeshi's abusive behaviour toward women. DeCoutere, who seemed calm and relaxed during her testimony, said she initially had no intention of going to the police.

She did media interviews, thinking "Oh my god, I'm not the only person that he did this too?"

At least eight women have spoken to the media, accusing Ghomeshi of similar abuses. Three of them are testifying at this trial. The fourth woman will have her allegations heard in a separate trial later this year.

Ghomeshi's lawyer Marie Henein will begin cross-examination of DeCoutere this afternoon.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter for live updates from the trial.

An assailant flees the scene of the murder of Alfredo Patriarca on January 20, 2016. Screenshot via YouTube

Last week, Rocco Zito—a long-retired Toronto crime boss—was found shot to death in his home, allegedly slain by his son-in-law. Zito died at 87, a long time for anyone, but a longer time still for a former mob boss believed to have been involved in up to six murders. Even more surprising was that he wasn't the only old-school mobster recently killed in Toronto.

Just a week prior, Alfredo Patriarca—an alleged member of the Patriarca crime family—was assassinated in the garage of a house he rented. The police released a video Wednesday that shows an assailant donning a white parka and black jeans fleeing the scene, and questions have been raised whether it has something to do with a previous attempt on his life.

While gang disputes in Toronto have floated in and out of the public consciousness during the last decade, the classic image of European mafias that once dominated pop culture have largely faded into obscurity. Consequently, these new murders have stuck out.

James Dubro has an encyclopedic knowledge of Canadian crime. From the biggest biker gangs to the Triads to various mafias to rag-tag teams of criminals, Dubro has documented the most bloody and brutal parts of Canadian criminal history for the last 42 years. If he had a resume, his skills would include having hitmen as friends and access to a rolodex of mob bosses you only see in films like The Godfather.

Starting as a documentary journalist in 1974, Dubro covered a swath of Canadian gang activity from the 1970s to the 90s. Some of the highlights included the ups and downs of Ontario's Calabrian mafia, and the various warring factions of Asian gangs on the west coast. He's covered biker gangs like the Hells Angels and Rock Machine, as well as the Montreal-based Rizzuto crime family.

In Canada, it's hard to find anyone better qualified to speak about organized crime, so I called him up to get a clearer idea of what's happening to the criminal world.

VICE: If you're willing to spill some of your secrets—how did you begin to gain access to sources within organized crime?
James Dubro: It was very different in the 70s, we were lucky to have the CBC behind us with money. We actually spent three years researching one documentary and they had resources that they gave us. I cultivated organized crime sources, which includes everything from mistresses, to ex-members of biker gangs, mafias, and various organized crime groups, Asian crime groups.

In those days, there was no internet. I started by spending a few months at the library. I know that sounds ridiculous now, but there was no Google. There was nothing. I had to use cards on which I wrote everything. I had a file card system. Basically, I spent a lot of time, a lot of money. I had to wine and dine sources—we actually had a budget for that. A Mountie will talk a lot better after he's had a few glasses of booze. In the early 70s, the cops were very suspicious of reporters, but they weren't suspicious anymore after a few drinks.

What was the climate of organized crime like in Canada in the 70s, 80s?
In the 70s it was very different. Vancouver has always been very interesting and the war in Ontario, I think whatever war there was in Quebec recently is now sorted out and, presumably, under the new leaders of the Rizzuto family, there will be less bloodshed. British Columbia, there's always battles because no one's supreme. There's always killings and there's always vengeance and there's always drug turf wars because there's so much money to be made.

Do you think most people don't understand how organized crime really works?
I think most people have a very simplified view of organized crime. People often ask me who the boss of Toronto is, as if it's that simple. It isn't, it's extremely complex, and when you're talking about British Columbia crime, there has never been one person in charge. This is also very fluid and changing. It only really takes a gun and a couple of people to shoot the boss—if there is a boss—and it's happened. It's happened in Atlantic City, in New York City, it's happened in Toronto. No matter how respected or feared you are, it only takes one bullet to end your reign.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

For the past few months, all of us at VICE have been working hard to put the finishing touches on VICELAND, our new TV channel. The time has almost come to share it with you all. VICELAND will go live on February 29, and you'll be able to soak up all the new and classic shows through your television (and other ways too), 24 hours a day. We're all pretty excitedSome old favourites from VICE.com like BALLS DEEP and WEEDIQUETTE will be premiering new seasons on VICELAND. We'll also be dropping new shows, like GAYCATION with Ellen Page and Ian Daniel.Spike Jonze, one of our oldest and dearest VICE friends, has been masterminding VICELAND from the beginning. We asked him what he is most excited about when it comes to the channel as a whole:"It feels like most channels are just a collection of shows. We wanted VICELAND to be different, to feel like everything on there has a reason to exist and a strong point of view. Our mission with the channel is not that different from what our mission is as a company: It's us trying to understand the world we live in by producing pieces about things we're curious about, or confused about, or that we think are funny."Are you as pumped as we are yet? For those of you wondering how to tune into VICELAND once it launches, we put together a helpful little guide.

VICELAND.com

iOS and Android

Follow VICELAND on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Bernie Sanders. Photo via Flickr user Michael Vadon

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

US News

Clinton and Sanders Turn Angry
In the fiercest Democratic debate yet, Bernie Sanders accused Hillary Clinton of being part of a Wall Street-funded "establishment" controlling the political process. Hillary accused her democratic rival of an "artful smear" and his campaign of "innuendo." — The Washington Post

Shkreli Calls Congress 'Imbeciles'
Pharma bro Martin Shkreli refused to answer questions from House Committee lawmakers in a hearing on Thursday, then took to Twitter afterwards to call them all "imbeciles." His attorney described Shkreli as a "genius" and said "you cannot troll the greatest troll who ever lived." — Bloomberg

Two New York City Officers Shot
Two New York City police officers have been shot while patrolling a public housing complex in the Bronx. The suspected gunman then allegedly shot and killed himself inside his apartment. Both officers are now in stable condition. — The New York Times

BMX Legend Dave Mirra Found Dead
Professional BMX biker Dave Mirra was found dead in an apparent suicide, at the age of 41. Police officers in North Carolina found the X Games athlete in a parked truck with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. — CBS News

International News

UN: Assange Should Be Freed
A UN legal panel has ruled in favor of Julian Assange, saying the UK and Sweden should end the Wikileaks founder's "deprivation of liberty." Prosecutors in Sweden say they still seek extradition, and UK police say he still faces arrest if he leaves the Ecuadorian embassy. — AP

Up to 70,000 Syrians Flee for Turkey
Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees are heading for Turkey to flee heavy fighting near the city of Aleppo. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said up to 70,000 may be heading to the border, while a monitoring group put the number at 40,000. — BBC News

Terrorism Blacklist Revealed
A confidential database has secretly given major charities, activists, and religious institutions a "terrorism" designation, VICE News revealed. Council on American-Islamic Relations Executive Director Nihad Awad, featured on the blacklist, called it "inaccurate, bigoted garbage." — VICE News

China Tells North Korea to Cool It
China has told North Korea it does not want to anything to happen that could raise "further tensions" in the region, said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. North Korea is believed to be making preparations for a test launch of a long-range rocket. — Reuters

James Franco. Photo via Wikimedia.

Everything Else

Spider Named After Johnny Cash
A new species of black tarantula that lives near Folsom Prison has been named after Johnny Cash. Aphonopelma johnnycashi is among 14 new tarantula species discovered in the US. —National Geographic

James Franco to Direct Movie Based on 'Zola's Story'
Franco will direct and produce a movie based on a series of tweets by stripper Aziah "Zola" Wells' about her road trip across Florida. Zola's trip, according to her, involved a sex trafficking scheme and the arrest of a Nigerian pimp called Z; it went viral last year when she tweeted her long account of it. — Rolling Stone

Michael Moore Hospitalized with Pneumonia
Filmmaker Michael Moore is in an intensive care unit suffering from pneumonia. In a tweet, Moore explained that preparing his latest movie and all the campaigning in Flint over the water scandal had left him ill. — Detroit Free Press

Florida to Rule on Dead People's Facebook
Florida has joined a growing list of states considering bills to determine who manages the Facebook accounts of the deceased. The Florida bill would require an agreement in someone's will to allow another person to take over after death. — Motherboard

Done with reading today? Watch our video 'Martin Shkreli on Drug Price Hikes and Playing the World's Villain'

The crossed the bridge to Maine to get a waterfront view of the Portsmouth New Hampshire skyline.

This November, photographer Pete Voelker took a tour of the early primary states that play an outsized role in deciding who the next US president will be. He attended candidate rallies, went to debate parties and luncheons, and sometimes just walked up and down the streets to find people to talk to. He was curious to see not which candidates they supported, but what their key issues were. The result is not a formal poll, but an anecdotal examination of what matters to Americans, and a preview of what's going to get debated in the months leading up to Election Day.

Today's photo essay is from New Hampshire, whose citizens will be casting primary votes February 9.

All photographs by Pete Voelker.

For weeks now, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been quietly ripping into each other. Mostly, though, the jabs haven't been direct: whispers from aides, indirect attack ads, and polite suggestions in cable news interviews, in contrast to, say, Donald Trump calling Jeb Bush "dumb as a rock." But over the last few days, that subtle tone has taken a turn—not to Republican levels, perhaps, but still more forceful than we've seen in the Democratic race thus far.

So it was almost inevitable that Thursday night's Democratic debate—the first face-to-face encounter between the two remaining candidates—would get ugly. For two hours straight, it was just Clinton and Sanders on stage in New Hampshire, and almost immediately MSNBC moderators Rachel Maddow and Chuck Todd started asking different variations of the question that Democratic voters have been fighting over for months: What does it mean to be a true progressive?

Yet what began as an argument over progressivism—more so as a title than an ideological distinction—turned into one of the more serious internal discussions that the Democratic Party has had in recent memory. It was also, arguably, the most revealing dialogue we've seen in the 2016 campaign so far.

As expected, Sanders contrasted his grassroots political campaign with Clinton's Establishment-backed juggernaut, implying his rival's wealthy backers are harbingers of an administration that would just be crony politics as usual.

"She has the entire Establishment—or almost the entire Establishment—behind her. That's fact. I don't deny it," Sanders told the moderators, responding to a question about Clinton's endorsements from prominent Democrats in his home state. "What being part of the Establishment is," he added later, "is in the last quarter, having a super PAC that raised $15 million from Wall Street, that throughout one's life raised a whole lot of money from the drug companies and other special interests."

"People support me because they know me, they know my life's work, they have worked with me, and many have also worked with Senator Sanders," Clinton replied, a little heatedly. "And, at the end of the day, they endorse me because they know I can get things done."

She went on to lambast what she described as the Sanders campaign's "innuendos" and "insinuation" that her political career has been bought and sold by special interests. "If you've got something to say, say it directly," Clinton demanded, her carefully-measured front now totally gone. "You will not find that I have ever changed a view or a vote because of any donation I have received. I have stood up and I have represented my constituents to the best of my abilities, and I'm very proud of that."

The exchange was representative of the broader conflict going on between the moderate and progressive factions of the political left in the US—a divide that, whether or not the Democrats win in November, will likely determine the future of the party for years to come.

The rest of the debate generally rehashed the usual campaign talking points for both sides, albeit with slightly more fiery tenor than in past match-ups. But the candidates never quite returned to that initial level of personal attack, instead diving deep into a hodgepodge of liberal issues, including guns, veterans' healthcare, the death penalty, and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Toward the end of the debate, the moderators touched on foreign policy, but even then, the drama was limited to Sanders's continued attacks on Clinton's vote for the Iraq War, and his otherwise rambling responses on how he would handle international affairs as president.

The issue of Clinton's emails also resurfaced, with Clinton quickly attempting to squash any skepticism that she might not make it out of the 2016 election cycle without being indicted. She also struggled to respond to questions about whether she would release the transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, virtually guaranteeing that the Sanders campaign will continue to use the issue against her going into the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.

Follow John Surico on Twitter.