Takashi Murakami's art has always sat at the crossroads where Japanese tradition meets contemporary culture. Often working in sculpture and painting, he recently ventured into the world of cinema with his first feature film. Inspired by the devastating tsunami that hit Japan in 2011, Jellyfish Eyes mixes live-action with animation and is a monster movie set in a post-Fukushima world. It centers around a boy who moves to a new town where he discovers the kids there fight fantastical creatures.

To bring these creatures to life, Murakami used CGI, noting in our sit-down interview above how the technology has only recently become cheap and effective enough for widespread use. The latest green screen technology and industry software bring Murakami's visions of a giant bunny, a jellyfish boy, and other strange beings to the screen, in a coming-of-age movie that updates the Godzilla trope for 21st century nuclear fears. Watch our video for more from Murakami on his art, film, and Japanese culture at large.

Continue reading over at The Creators Project.

Hip-hop is having a renaissance right now in the city of New York, where it seems like every other day a new MC rises up out of the five boroughs with an even more unique style and approach to the music than what we thought was possible before. Motley crews like the A$AP Mob, the Beast Coast, and World's Fair have given us a reason to love rhymes again. We've written a lot about this stuff, but sometimes words don't do it justice. So, we've linked up with scene insider Verena Stefanie Grotto to document the new New York movement as it happens in real time, with intimate shots of rappers, scenesters, artists, and fashion fiends.

This week Verena caught up with rappers Erick Arc Elliot and Meechy Darko of the Flatbush Zombies, Kilo Kish, Lil Durk, Syd the Kid of the Internet and OFWGKTA, Frenchie of Brick Squad Monopoly, Problem, Iamsu!, Hefna Gwap, and designer Black Scale Mega and photographer Ricky Powell,

These pictures were taken at the Bible Study in Manhattan, the monthly NOISEY Rap Party at Santos Party House, Frenchie's Long Overdue mixtape release party, and other spots around NYC.

Photographer Verena Stefanie was born and bred in Bassano del Grappa, Italy. The small town is not known for hip-hop, but they do make a very tasty grape-based pomace brandy there called grappa. Stefanie left Bassano del Grappa at the age of 17 to go and live the wild skateboarding life in Barcelona, Spain, where she worked as the Fashion Coordinator for VICE Spain. Tired of guiding photographers to catch the best shots, she eventually grabbed the camera herself and is now devoted to documenting artists, rappers, style-heads, and more. She recently directed a renowned documentary about the Grime scene in UK and has had photo features in GQ, Cosmopolitan, VICE, and many more. 

Check out her website and follow her on twitter and instagram

@VerenaStefanie 

Previously - Bodega Bamz, Black Dave, Chase N. Cashe, OG Ron C, Stalley, Remy Banks, and Mayhem Lauren

The boardwalk outside Silverball Museum.

Pinball is pretty much all I care about. I make art and I write and I have friends and blah blah blah, but it's all just a means to get quarters and play pinball. 

The best place to play pinball on the East Coast is the Silverball Museum in Asbury, New Jersey. The entrance fees vary, but for $20 you can stay all day and play every machine they have, all of which are free once you’re inside. The photos sprinkled throughout this blog post are pictures of some of my favorite games at the museum.

Pinball is a beautiful game that was originally like pachinko, in that it was used for gambling as well as recreational purposes. Much like today, pinball players of yore would pull back a spring-loaded plunger and shoot a metal ball through a playfield covered in pins and hope that the ball hit some targets. Eventually someone made a machine with six flippers, adding a stronger element of skill to the game. Not long after that, someone else decided to keep the flippers but simplify the operation by controlling all of them with just two buttons, and that's how modern pinball was born. 

Pinball machines are sort of like video arcade games but much more unique. The production run of an average machine usually ranges between 500 and 10,000. They also contain miles and miles of wire, which is neither here nor there, but pretty neat nonetheless. They are hand-constructed and almost all of them are collectors’ items. 

There's also something about pinball that's a lot like boning. The game is physical—you shove and push the machine in an attempt to control the ball. There's a move called the bang-back where you hit the machine with your hip to keep the ball from draining, and another where you kick the leg of the thing just like it likes it. Your crotch is also level with the machine, if you're an adult of average height.

Anyway, the Silverball contains about 200 machines, many of which are very rare. The museum is right on the boardwalk, so when Hurricane Sandy hit it was thoroughly fucked up.

After searching for news of how the Silverball had faired I found this image. It's not as upsetting as the news about people who lost their lives or homes, but it bummed me out nonetheless. Luckily, somehow they managed to get the museum repaired and open again within a couple months.

I interviewed the owner, Rob Ilvento, about the museum and here that is.

VICE: Do you remember the first pinball machine you played?
Rob: My father bought one called Dixieland when I was nine years old and I’ve loved them ever since.

When did you become fixated with pinball?
At around the time I got my first 20 I thought it would be great to archive that part of Americana history. It’s taken years, but now the collection includes over 600 machines.

Did you consider any other names for the museum before settling on Silverball?
Silverball was the only name I considered. It just had a good ring to it.

What is it about pinball that makes it so great? Do you think the value of the machines lies more in their playability, or their beauty as objects? 
It’s man against machine. It requires hand-eye coordination, as well as different rules for each unit. I think the beauty lies in that, as well as how they tell the American story in an interactive piece of art.

I know this is a little Sophie’s Choice-y, but if you had to pick one favorite machine, which would it be?
The electro-mechanical Evel Knievel game. I played it a lot growing up. It’s got a great American theme.

Which machine was the hardest to find or are you still looking for one that you can’t find?
The hardest to find is a wood rail Mermaid. I am still looking for a great one. 

Thanks, Rob! 

@NicholasGazin

More on games:

How Awful Are the Free Porn Games on the Internet 

North Korea's First Racing Video Game is Terrible

'Watergate: The Video Game' Exists and It's Awesome

Yesterday one of my favorite people in the world died, but it’s okay because he was ninety and he didn’t get shot in the face like everybody thought he would. I’m talking about—you guessed it—DOCTOORRR HENRY MORGENTALLEERRR, everybody’s favorite abortionist.

Dr. Morgentaler survived numerous terrorist attacks between 1980-2000, after years of struggling to keep his medical license while catering to the popular abortion-demand. Perhaps one of the more intense attempts to end his life, was that of Augusto Dantas, who literally tried to slice him in half with garden sheers at the opening of his Toronto clinic in 1983.

But way back in 1967, Dr. Morgentaler had been working as a general practitioner, and around that time there was a lot of political discussion about the legalization of contraceptives. Can you imagine? Wanting to fuck all the time but always having to pull out and probably accidentally getting semen into the wrong place at the wrong time? You’d be fucked. You’d have no money because of the seven children you’d be forced to take care of.  Another pregnancy would sound like a death sentence.

At that point Morgentaler would have been dealing with a lot of families who were super bummed out. Picture the moms saying: “Please, please, don’t let me pregnant again.” He’s like, “Oh fuck, someone’s gotta do something about this or I’m gonna lose it.”

So Dr. Morgentaler goes to the House of Commons and he’s like, “Listen, I’ve got an idea.” It was 1969 and he had just proposed the legalization of abortion. That’s it. He merely suggested it as an idea and then all of a sudden, a fucking avalanche of women comes hurling in, they’re all begging him to exterminate the fertilized reproductive cells growing inside of their bodies.

He stepped up to help all of these women and, to me, that’s fucking nuts. Would you ever have the balls to walk out in front of a bunch of crazy religious extremists, like a giant fleshy target, just to help somebody else? He’s a fucking hero. He pioneered legal abortion in Canada, why isn’t everyone celebrating right now? We all love the idea of being able to structure our lives around a series of personal goals—isn’t that what we’ve been taught since we could learn how to talk? “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “What do you want?” Make a choice. It’s all up to you.

This guy was actually the fucking coolest, most badass, hawtest, sexiest man on the planet. Do you know why? Because he risked his life for pussy. He fucking loved pussy soooo much, and because of that he’s a hero to me, and to anyone else who loves abortion as much as I do. Regardless of how you feel about abortion, you have to admire the fact that he was objectively badass. He also survived Auschwitz. This has always made me wonder if his determination for euthanizing pre-developed babies was imbued with the fact that he directly witnessed how shitty human beings can actually be. Splendid!

Today, in honor of Henry Morgentaler’s amazing life, we should all be reminded that while some resource sucking, verminous wastes of human flesh waste their 90s complaining and making things worse, Henry Morgentaler made things a whole lot better. Or at least, made it so that tons of unwanted babies were not born. And for that, we’re very grateful.

RIP HENRY

WE <3 YOU

Follow Kara on Twitter: @karacrabb

Previously:

The RCMP Thought Rita MacNeil Was a Communist

Stompin' Tom Connors Was Punk as Fuck

El Salvador’s Supreme Court decided late last night not to allow a 22-year-old woman known as “Beatriz” to have an abortion, even though she is at risk of serious injury as a result of the pregnancy—and despite the fact that the fetus has an almost zero chance of survival because of its own health issues.

All abortion is illegal in El Salvador, but Beatriz’s supporters hoped the Supreme Court would make an exception in this case. After deliberating for 15 days, the Salvadoran Supreme Court revealed the fate of Beatriz, the nom de guerre of the five-months-pregnant 22-year-old woman who had legally appealing for a potentially life-saving “therapeutic abortion.” That’s not to say she’ll die when she gives birth in four months—though it’s a possibility, considering she suffers from lupus, an illness which has given her kidney disease as one of its many side effects, not to mention her fetus is anencephalic, which means that parts of its brain or skull are missing, and it will thus live anywhere from only minutes to mere weeks.

Also hanging in the balance these past two weeks was the question: In this staunchly Catholic country—which has declared all abortion illegal since 1998, even in cases of rape, incest, or maternal mortality—would this young woman win the right to choose for or against an abortion in the name of her own health and safety?

Protestors in San Salvador, El Salvador.

Does El Salvador seem to care about this question? Not really. Not even the current left-leaning president, Mauricio Funes, will offer comment. We tend to believe the US’s zealous abortion lobby is (ahem) out for blood, but they’ve got nothing on the calcified  moralism of El Salvador. In fact, hardly a single conservative pundit in the US has vocally supported the restrictions of the Salvadoran government. But why not?

I reached out to Adam Cassandra, the spokesperson for Human Life International, a strong Catholic pro-life organization in Virginia, with a highly influential affiliate organization, Sí a la Vida ("Yes to Life"), based in El Salvador. He believes that the liberal international media has put such an alarmist spin on the whole Beatriz controversy, that no one, not even a shamelessly pro-life politician, will come out in support of the Salvadoran policies. “In the case of Beatriz... the media ran with a narrative that this young woman is being denied a ‘life-saving abortion’ because of the government’s strong legal protection of unborn life. This narrative persists even after a group of medical experts submitted a report to the Supreme Court that her life is not in any danger from the pregnancy, and that an abortion would not help her chances of survival.”

It’s true that a team of Salvadoran doctors have said in court that Beatriz likely will not die from carrying this pregnancy to term—it’s also a common fact that women with lupus experience far fewer risks in pregnancy than they have historically. This is based on an assumption, however, that those lupus-suffering women have access to non-Third World medical attention, which might include the option to abort should the pregnancy threaten to kill her. In the case of Beatriz, there are also a retinue of doctors from the Salvadoran National Maternity Hospital who are aware of her previous pregnancy complications—preeclampsia, or high blood pressure, also caused by lupus—who have strongly recommended abortion as the most advisable option for her health. The simple fact remains, there would be no Supreme Court case if every medical professional believed she was free and clear.

In El Salvador, over 40 percent of women have their first child before age 20. Since the penal-code measure to ban all abortion procedures was established in 1998, there have been 628 women imprisoned for this offense. The average sentence for a self-induced abortion is two to eight years. Some women have been condemned to sentences as long as 30 years, when the charge becomes “aggravated homicide.” One woman, quite famously, was exonerated after serving eight years, when it was later discovered that she did, in fact, deliver a full-term stillborn infant, and not attempt to terminate it. Another, a mother of two, also sentenced to 30 years, died in prison after only serving a year, because she did not receive adequate treatment for her lymphoma while incarcerated. According to certain human rights groups, around 60 pregnant of Salvadoran women perished throughout 2012 due to health risks that likely could have been avoided through therapeutic abortions. While it’s impossible to accurately tally such a highly illegal activity, in 1998, the first year of the then-new penal code’s enforcement, more than 7,400 women were admitted to Salvadoran hospitals for abortion-related complications. El Salvador has one of the highest maternal-mortality rates in Latin America.

But God bless America, anyway. Because no one, really, besides Human Life International, seems so keen to jump in and support this stricture of the Salvadoran constitution. As Cassandra admits, “Many leading advocates and political figures in the pro-life movement in America are themselves uncomfortable when it comes to defending the pro-life position in the ‘hard cases’ of rape, incest, and life of the mother in the United States, so they are not likely to give these types of international stories much attention.” Even in Texas, where standard abortion procedure now involves a description of the physical attributes of your fetus and a mandatory audience of its heartbeat, providers are not required to do so if you are receiving a late-term abortion for a nonviable baby. Even the most hard-line antiabortion states seem to understand there is some expectation of decency owed to a suffering mother. Oh, but they will make her wait 24 hours. Even if she’s dying. But at least they will eventually help her—for now.

Nobody wants Beatriz to die. And no one, not even in the bleeding-heart-liberal public, should believe that, since the Supreme Court has now denied her an abortion, that it is automatically a death sentence. If all goes well, in four months she'll likely give birth to a very ill child with a life expectancy of about a month. In this specific case, the hysteria shouldn’t be surrounding a conservative government trying to murder a woman, because that's not the biggest issue here. Rather, the concern should be that a conservative government has the power to think it over.

Over the last few years, it's become increasingly clear that we didn't appreciate UK garage to the extent that we should have. You can't help but think that most of the DJs, producers, filmmakers and fashion designers referencing Todd Edwards and Ben Sherman in their work today actually grew up listening to Coal Chamber and wearing Criminal Damage trousers. 

One man who was definitely there, however, is photographer Ewen Spencer. Ewen's done a lot of things over the years, from working with the White Stripes and documenting the halcyon days of grime (if there was ever such a thing) in his book Open Mic, to taking the liner photos for Original Pirate Material. His latest project concerns the increasingly lauded but still somewhat undocumented world of UKG and comes in the form of a new book, Brandy & Coke.

The photos are fantastic, perfectly capturing the atmosphere of those early garage nights all my friends' older brothers claim to have been at. The newspaper-print trousers and YSL button-downs are all there in the forefront, being splashed by open bottles of champagne and any one of the classy drinks. After a good few hours of longingly staring at the photos, wishing I was one of the satin-suited people in them, I decided to catch up with Ewen to talk garage, grime, garms and whether or not ex-Newcastle striker Andy Cole really was one of the "original 50 garage ravers".

You can find some of these images and some words from Ewen in the latest issue of VICE Magazine.

VICE: Hi Ewen. So, when did you first hear the term "garage" used in relation to dance music?
Ewen Spencer: In the early 90s, but that would have been American garage, like house music. New York vocal house music would have been called "garage". I first heard it on the soul scene, probably. At that time, it was crossing over and me and my pals were going to soul dos, avoiding the atrocious rave scene. House music was infiltrating the soul scene and, at that time, garage was basically soulful house.

There's this debate about who the true parents of UK garage are – what's your opinion on that?
Yeah, I think it’s a worthwhile debate. It came from America, it didn’t come from rave culture – rave culture was British. It came from Detroit, America, which is when we started to hear house music in the club – in Newcastle, for instance. We liked all of that stuff, but it was placed side by side with soul music – Soul II Soul, modern soul, SOS Band, all that shit. So I guess rave became overground and house music changed and became something else. And then I'd say speed garage came out of New Jersey and was popularised over here. 

What other kind of nights were there in London around the time speed garage was coming through?
My experience was being in a little club in Hoxton Square, east London, which was a jungle club. I wasn’t a fan of that – it was really fucking tedious to hear that kind of music all night. The style was awful; it was really dull.

How did early speed garage nights differ from the rest of the capital's nightlife at the time?
It was really fucking exciting. There were couples and lots of blokes dancing together dressed immaculately – suited often – in very colourful garments. This was the post-rave period, so everyone looked a bit lousy, really. All of a sudden, you went there and people looked really dapper, really smart. It was ostentatious, because they were drinking champagne, but it was also exciting because you realised that something was changing and it was completely different to everything else on offer. It felt underground, it felt different – it was exciting going in there.

Was it a strictly grown and peaceful kind of affair? Or was there a rough side to the nights?
It wasn’t really rough. I never felt threatened. It felt joyous and quite celebratory, in the same way as the soul scene did. It felt like you went there for fun. There was a lot of posing and a slightly moody attitude from some people, but people were just posing around.

Your book’s called Brandy & Coke. Was that the tipple of choice at garage nights? Or are you implying something a bit more than that?
Yeah, it's simply based on what everyone was drinking: brandy and coke. That was the drink. There are ladies drinking champagne in some of the pictures, but the drink that most fellas would be drinking was brandy and coke.

It's not a drink you see much any more.
You don’t, do you? It gets you plastered, doesn’t it?

It does. Were drugs big on the garage scene?
It was just smoking weed, which would have been a Caribbean influence – a West Indian influence, possibly. It’s just British, isn’t it? It’s just London.

So it was a move away from the pills of the rave scene?
Yeah, there was none of that. Those massive, bullshit, ostentatious super-clubs packed with thousands of people doing bad Es and shuffling around with really bad coke were never really my thing.   

How big a part did style play in the UKG scene?
Massive. That was one of the most integral parts of it, really. People were dressing differently. People were developing that style, which was a slimmer silhouette than the way other people were dressing at the time.

The rest of Britain were dressing like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach at that point.
Exactly. It was stuff like Addict and all those awful labels. It became slimmer, and I remember thinking that it reminded me of the mod scene I'd been a part of when I was younger – the guys dancing together en masse in their slim, smart looks. There were a lot of kids in London on scooters around that time, too. It had a really nice British feel to it and people made a massive effort to dress up to go out, which I think had been missing until then.

A lot of the fashion was based around designer labels, which seemed at odds with the rave and Brit-pop scenes that preceded it. Would you say it was a scene synonymous with a kind of luxury?
Not so much. It was just that classic British stuff – against the odds, a subculture, mainly working class lads dressing up to go out for the weekend. It’s escapism, isn’t it? I don’t think there was any luxury. It got a bit like that later on, but the scene was done for by then, really.

What was the definitive garage look for a guy and a girl?
The girls would wear amazing dresses. They’d wear simple make-up and their hair, nails and heels would be immaculate. They had to dance well to look good, too. With the geezers, obviously there were different stages, but it wasn't sporty when I was taking photos, it would be the sportswear fusion lines, like chinos, Guess Jeans, that kind of thing. And you might have seen some Paul Smith in there because he was using a lot of bold graphics at that time. I remember he had shirts with huge apples on.

I'm fascinated by all those Chinese print shirts with dragons all over them. Although perhaps that was a bit later when Pied Piper et al came along.
Yeah, that was a bit later on when it became a bit more street. 

A lot of guys were wearing Kickers or Bass loafers, right?
I still wear them. I call them Glaswegian loafers.

And those silky black trousers?
Yeah, those mixed material trousers. You saw a lot of them. You couldn't get into a garage club wearing jeans back then, even a nice pair.

And Ben Sherman?
Yeah, Ben Sherman if you were a bit tough. But a lot of the boys would be wearing those bright, satiny shirts with bold prints on them. You’d see a lot of guys wearing suits, but the jackets would be quite long. I remember that being popular. Then you’d just get geezers with a Moschino print shirt on, shades and a pair of strides. Gucci loafers were massive, too.

When did you first begin to realise that garage was going overground, as it were?
When pirate radio started bringing all the kids from the suburbs and provinces in. You noticed a big change in Ayia Napa – British kids getting rowdy and young kids going to the clubs. You could go down Old Kent Road and see young kids at raves, but you wouldn't really see them at the clubs, so they'd go on holiday, go clubbing and bring it back, so it spread and got really popular. Then you’d get half a dozen Craig Davids and Ministry of Sound released a rewind album. I mean, that’s the fucking nail in the coffin of any scene, isn’t it?

They released a deep house compilation the other day.
How many more deep house compilations do we need?

Exactly. So grime became the dominant scene in urban London music some time around 2004 and it was a much angrier, rawer sound. What do you think the reasons are for that?
The people who were making that music were a bit more sussed and they’d learned from garage and So Solid – they wanted the success and the spoils that come with it. But grime was about being a bit more existential, wasn’t it? It was about the street, wasn’t it? It was about what they were saying. You’ve got to remember, when grime was first coming about in 2004, So Solid Crew were playing huge gigs around the country. Kids were getting shot inside and outside the venues, dying. It’s pretty fucking real, isn’t it? Three of So Solid were charged with murder.

You don’t get shootings at clubs any more, but it was a big thing back then.
Security became ridiculous; it became as much of a feature as the music. It ramped it up a bit, didn’t it? You’d see people scattering everywhere with a knife. 

Do you remember any incidents like that?
Yeah. I'd moved on from the garage scene by that point, so it was on the grime scene. There would be, like, a kind of music forum day at the Royal Festival Hall and it would all be grime-y kids, and you'd just see people scattering. But grime had a competitiveness that garage didn't; it was about the street, it was about their own experiences, it was about who could MC and produce the best. It didn't get all dancey until much later.

Do you think kids were always angry – even in the garage scene – with their situation?
I don’t think everyone was generally angry. I think garage was a bit more about having a good time and grime was a bit of anger, probably. There was a little bit more punk in that world. Garage was a bit more accessible. It was always going to be more accessible because it was about looking good and dancing.

Yeah. There seem to be a lot of future garage producers at the moment who are missing the fact that garage is supposed to be sexy music. What do you think about that? 
With future garage, or any sort of revival, it's not that the sexiness has been taken out of it, it's that it's been edited. The ambiguity was the sexy thing – not knowing where the scene was going to go. It's replaying a bit now. But there's nothing wrong with that because the music’s great, that scene’s healthy and I like future garage. I didn’t like grime much – it wasn’t for me. I couldn't be a complete fucking tourist – a 30-odd-year-old bloke pretending to be into grime. I liked the energy and attitude, though.

You didn’t go home and chill out to some Jammer before bed?
He was fucking great, Jammo. He was great to work with. But the future garage thing – it’s probably less sexy because there’s an element of nostalgia, and that’s not very sexy.

Finally, I once heard a brilliant but totally unsubstantiated rumour that Andy Cole was one of the original 50 garage ravers.
I think he was playing up front for Newcastle, so I don’t know how he could have been one of the original ravers at that time. 

Well, that's that cleared up. What are you up to next?
We’re publishing the book, which is brand new. I think it’s worthy of a film. I think, now that it's been revived, it shows it's significant enough. And even without the revival, it's significant to look back and see how it's informed popular culture and subcultures since. For example, I don’t think there would have been any grime without garage – it wouldn’t have happened.

Thanks, Ewen.

Follow Clive on Twitter: @thugclive

More stuff about dance music:

Rave and Hardcore YouTube Comments Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity

Thatcher's War on Acid House

Electric Independence: A Decade of VICE in the Rave

I Used My Stockmarket Millions to Throw Raves and Sell Drugs

While in Kenya, through a contact at a local radio station, a friend and I were able to access an illegal abortion clinic run by a Catholic doctor. We had hiked for more than an hour across Nairobi’s hot and dusty Kibera slums to reach the clinic, and found ourselves sitting awkwardly while we waited for our friend Jobe to make the necessary arrangements.

The pharmacy was no bigger than my bedroom. At the back of the tiny room a wooden door blended into the wall. Above it hung one of the portraits of the Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki, which are ubiquitous in businesses across Kenya.

Peter, a doctor from Kisii, had opened the clinic several years earlier. Working in the slums can be tough, and occasionally dangerous. During the violence in Kenya after the 2007 presidential election, which killed 1,000 people and forced a quarter of a million to flee their homes, he patched up fighters in return for protection. In spite of the risks, however, the large population and lack of competing medical facilities in the slums meant he could run a lucrative business, generating more income than some of the doctors at the major hospitals.

Through the wooden door we found a treatment room where Peter carries out minor surgeries. Inside we found little more than a couple of chairs, a wooden desk, and a blue plastic bed with grimy yellow stuffing poking out through several large tears. Abortions were being performed here four or five times a month, either chemically, using Misoprostol, or through manual vacuum aspiration.

Abortion remains illegal in Kenya, and women can’t discuss it or ask about it openly. “People are ashamed to talk about abortion,” Peter told us. “They know it’s going on, but they fear talking about it and they are ashamed.” Instead, a careful and secretive negotiation takes place: “First they come in for the pregnancy test and then maybe the test is positive. Then the lady tells you, ‘I’m unmarried,’ ‘I’m divorced,’ maybe ‘I’m supposed to go for a job somewhere,’ and then ‘I don’t want this pregnancy.’”

If the woman is married, then the husband must be consulted, even in the direst emergencies. “I won’t perform the abortion until the husband comes, and then we agree.” It turns out there’s a very practical reason for this rule. “If you do it without consulting the husband, you will get violence in this place. They will attack you. The husband will get a mob of his guys and they attack you, so I don’t do it.”

The amount charged varies between 3,000 and 5,000 Kenyan shillings (about $35–$60). Cash must be paid upfront, and if the woman doesn’t have it, she is turned away. The price is kept deliberately high to discourage younger women and avoid abortions Peter considers to be unnecessary. “Whoever comes should be adult and responsible.” Most of his patients are unmarried and over the age of 22, many of them unable to afford to raise a child. Sexual violence against woman—and girls—is widespread in the slums.

Peter performs abortions up to around 16 weeks. The woman comes in, is given the treatment, rests for ten minutes, and leaves, returning a few days later for a follow-up appointment. Although none of his patients have died, the procedure isn’t without risks—hemorrhaging is the most serious complication. If things go drastically wrong the patient finds herself put into a taxi bound for the nearest hospital, knowing she may face arrest when she arrives.

These risks are far more acceptable than the alternative. Denied legal access to abortion, families sometimes terminate pregnancies at home instead. The methods used are barbaric: “They take a drug overdose with quinine, and they can prick the cervix using maybe a sharp object,” says Peter. Often these result in incomplete abortions or serious internal injury and the victims are carried bleeding to the clinic.

Like most of his peers, Peter believes abortion should be legal: “Many women are dying from abortions being done in the villages. In Lindi you cannot wait a month without hearing that some woman is dying due to an abortion that was done by a quack somewhere. You can get two cases in a month.” As is the case in many places across the world, making abortions illegal in Kenya hasn’t stopped them from happening, it's just made them far more deadly.

Getting the necessary gear is fairly easy for a doctor. Misoprostol is regulated, but because it’s also used to treat stomach ulcers it can be stocked without too many questions. The MVA kit for vacuum aspiration can be obtained discreetly from some NGOs, and in Peter’s case is stored in a secret location near the clinic. Police visits in the slums are very rare, but if they were to search the premises they would find no evidence of any wrongdoing.

Since abortion is illegal, doctors aren’t taught how to do it. Instead, the profession relies on word of mouth to keep their skills alive. We also saw evidence of assistance from various Western NGOs. Peter told us they were aware of his activities, and had provided training and advice to him and other doctors.

While we were talking, I noticed a Bible in his desk drawer: “I’m religious. I’m a Catholic.” It turned out Peter was a family man, with a wife and three children. His wife ran the clinic with him, working as a pharmacist. A devout Catholic herself, she took a dim view of his extracurricular activities: “She’s against it, she’s so much against.”

His wife had encouraged him to renew his faith, but returning to the Church led to a crisis of conscience over his work as an abortionist: “For the last three years I’ve not been attending church. Now I’ve attended recently and I believe I am on the wrong side.” Motivated by his new faith, he told us he wanted to quit the black market. “I’m trying to do it the last time this month. It’s sinful. Life starts at conception. But if you reach a place where you understand it’s a sin, I think God can forgive.”

But what about the women who will die without his help? Peter faced a horrible dilemma. “What I am going to ask [his priest] is: 'What if I am a medical person, what do I do?' Because you get somebody, maybe her mama was doing an abortion in the house, then maybe she has been brought to me with an incomplete abortion, what way do I proceed? Do I proceed and help the mother not to die? Or do I leave these people because I am a Christian? What do I do? The villagers, the people know there’s a doctor here who can help us. Then they bring that lady to me. If he says that you leave these people to die, the village will be against me.”

Peter can’t win. Continuing would make him a criminal and a sinner, while stopping may condemn women to death. For many that’s the stark reality of abortion in the real world, away from abstract debates in blogs and newspapers, churches and parliaments. Conservatives have a fantasy that abortion can be stopped through legislation or social pressure. In reality, abortion happens, and it will continue to happen: the only choice we have to make is how many women we want to die in the process, and whether doctors like Peter should be criminalized for trying to save them.

Follow Martin on Twitter: @mjrobbins

Also:

Talking About My Abortion

Totally Abortion!

Abortion a Go-Go

Yesterday, three members of the feminist activist group Femen staged a topless protest outside the Ministry of Justice in Tunis, Tunisia. They had gathered there to draw international attention to the fact that one of their sister activists, the Tunisian Amina Tyler, could face up to two years in prison for allegedly spraypainting the name of the group on the side of a mosque.

The Femen protesters—two of whom were French, the other German—stood, bare-chested, chanting the slogans "Free Amina!" and "Women's spring is coming!" for a couple of minutes before hauling themselves up onto the gates of the ministry. A few dozen offended onlookers, many of whom were lawyers who worked inside the ministry, tried to cover them up with items of clothing throughout the protest. Their banners, which read "Free Amina," were torn from their grasp well before the police turned up and dragged them away into the building amid lots of panicked shouting and angry gesticulation.

It is thought to be the first topless feminist protest to ever take place in the Arab world, and is certainly the first carried out by Femen.

"An inquiry has been opened and they will be placed under arrest and brought to trial," justice ministry spokesman Adel Riahi told AFP. He didn't specify what the Femen activists might be charged with, but six journalists who were present at the protest, including reporters from Reuters and Canal+ television, were also arrested.

I've hung out with Femen quite a lot recently, so I got in touch with founding member Inna Shevchenko to get her take on yesterday's events.

VICE: Hey, Inna. So what's the latest on the aftermath of the protest in Tunis today?
Inna Shevchenko, Femen founding member: We know that she is with journalists who were arrested at the same time; journalists from Reuters. They are arrested, but we don’t know which police station they are in exactly. There is now a new calling for them to spend six years in jail for protesting topless in the street. They could also be deported.

Six years, you said?
Six months.

Oh, good.
But they can also be deported as foreigners. We don’t know for now. We have no new information apart from that they are arrested. We have had no contact with them. For now, nothing.

You expected this, right?
Yeah, definitely, of course.

What do you think will happen now?
We understand that they can and will be deported. It’s not a decision based on law, but more of a political one, so we don’t know what will happen. I don’t know, but I would say that our official position at the moment is that we are not going to leave Tunisia and we are going to have to be deported.

Amina's trial is tomorrow. Do you have any news on that?
For now, no news. But we know she’s in jail, waiting for tomorrow. But no, nothing.

Do you feel that the action today was successful? Did it go how you hoped?
Yeah. This is something that we planned and it was quite hard because during the last few days we got strange messages, strange calls and strange commands from different people. People who call and try to find out if Femen really was coming to Tunisia. They were giving signs that they were from secret terrorism departments. It was quite difficult to prepare the action and to not get deported beforehand. Tunisia was the first country to start the Arab spring, and now it is the first country for our topless protests. This action is the beginning of a big campaign of the liberation of women.

Do you think you’re being monitored by surveillance groups?
We know that they've broken into our Facebook accounts and website a few times. We understand that they are trying to stop us and that is something like spitting in their face, this action today. We showed them we can do things, so we can show who is more powerful.

So your website is down right now, correct?
Yes, our website is down right now. We don’t know where the attacks have come from.

Thank you so much.

Follow Milene on Twitter: @Milenelarsson

More on Femen:

Femen Are Being Attacked by Nazis and Sent to Prison

I Spent the Weekend Watching Topless Feminists Piss Off Neo-Nazis 

Happy International Topless Jihad Day!

The Egyptian Feminist Who Was Kidnapped for Posing Nude

Cindy Blackstock. via.

Anyone concerned with internet privacy has probably heard about the efforts in the United States to install realtime internet monitoring that would essentially allow the FBI to wiretap our internet. Then there’s the unsettling news that broke earlier this month, which revealed that the Department of Justice was spying on the Associated Press. But what about Canada? This week, it was revealed that the Canadian government went “too far” in spying on a First Nations activist who was crusading for the rights of children.

It appears that the government was compiling a very detailed dossier on the activist, Cindy Blackstock, who was allegedly being monitored through her social media profiles and at her speaking engagements. Cindy figured all of this out after requesting any and all information the government was keeping on her. We spoke to Cindy about what it’s like to be the target of government surveillance in Canada, and you can learn all about her cause—the First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada—at their website. Basically, they believe that the funding for child welfare on Native reserves is sorely lacking.

VICE: What initially made you think the government was watching you?
Cindy: I was attending a meeting with the chiefs of Ontario in 2009 in December. The government officials at the meeting said that they wouldn't meet if I was in the room. They said, because I had concerns about their child welfare funding, they were not going to meet with anyone if I was there. So I just excused myself because as much as I thought that was crazy, I also thought it was more important the meeting went ahead for kids. I sat outside and the government actually had a security guard there guarding me.

So that raises the question: what is it about me? I am not a violent person, I don't make threats, I don't raise my voice, I try to conduct myself in the most professional manner, I don't have a criminal record or anything. Why did that happen? Why did they A) refuse the meeting to go ahead if I was in the room and B) call security to guard me? So that's when I filed the privacy request. I wanted to see what this was all about. It took me a year and a half to get the documents. I got the first batch of documents and in there were hundreds of pages. They were systematically following me to all my public events and recording notes about my various presentations and sending them around through the government. Sometimes in very unflattering ways. As far away as Australia for example.

In the desert in Australia I was doing a talk and they have notes in their records. On top of that I saw references to my Facebook page from these government employees and there was also loose references that it was to do with the child welfare complaint. So I got on CBC’s The Current November 17th 2011 to talk about these documents. Then about a month later I filed another access to information request and I got another series of documents, and in those documents it clearly says that the Department of Justice and Aboriginal Affairs were monitoring my Facebook page for some number of months.

So you would not have even known you were being spied on unless you looked into it.
That's exactly right, had I not gotten those documents I would have never known and it may well be continuing up until today. In fact, I haven't gotten any reassurance from the government that they've stopped. I just heard the public statements that they said they were going to stop. I actually sent a letter off to both the Ministers of Justice and Aboriginal Affairs this morning asking that they apologize and [change their policies so that] other Canadians are protected.

They are probably looking a bit closer now that this has gone public.
One would hope so. You really hope that they would realize that they've been caught out breaking the law. It's a violation of the privacy act.

What exactly was illegal about it?
The government can only collect information about you for a proper process. For example, when you go and apply for a passport, they can only use that information for the purposes of reviewing whether you are eligible for a passport and maintaining that passport. They can't use it for other purposes. The other thing, is they cannot go and proactively collect private information about you that's not related to a public program so when they started collecting things like my [personal Facebook posts], there is no government program that that stuff relates to. It's against the law for the government to actually do that unless they have some kind of warrant. You need to keep in mind that these are not trained people. These bureaucrats are government officials from Aboriginal Affairs and Justice. A lot of citizens have said to me, “Well you must be happy that it wasn’t CSIS” and I said, “Well honestly I think I’d rather have CSIS doing it because at least those people have training and accountability.”

Did you ever find out who exactly these people were?
I know some of them. I haven't released their names publicly because I know what it's like to have my privacy violated and quite frankly there is so many of them that it shows that it’s really high up in the system.

Where does the Aboriginal issue come in that they would show so much interest in you being so vocal?
I think for a couple reasons. One is that what they are doing is wrong to these kids and quite frankly they don't want anybody to find out. So when the evidence is so strong that they are providing unequal opportunities for First Nations kids to grow up with their families, we have the auditor’s general reports, their own documents, they don't have a leg to stand on. So my own view is that they then decided to discredit me. Discredit the report by discrediting me. That's why they decided to go onto my Facebook page hoping to find that I posted something that would throw my case into disrepute. I live a pretty boring life and unfortunately for them they didn't find anything. It's ridiculous that this actually happened. Some folks said, “Well Facebook is a public forum.” Yes it is, if your privacy settings are not set at maximum, which I always try to make sure mine, are. Sometimes Facebook readjusts their settings and information goes public. I always acknowledge that. Do we really, as people, want the government of Canada, without our knowledge, on our personal Facebook pages collecting information about our friends, our family and ourselves?

Has this had a negative affect on your professional career or personal life at home?
It was stressful to find out that they were doing this. I'm not a paranoid person by nature but I think any reasonable person coming across all of these documents knowing that the government is on your Facebook page and is following you to events and all the rest of it. They were even taking notes of events I wasn't at. They would say X, Y, or Z event is occurring and she's not there. You know that would really shake your sense of safety. Not only for myself but also for my family. I wonder what else are they up to?

Previously:

The Wildly Depressing History of Canadian Residential Schools

Ibragim Todashev.

On May 22^nd, Ibragim Todashev died inside of his Orlando apartment after an FBI agent shot him six times. That agent, along with “other investigators,” was there to ask Ibragim about the unsolved, triple murder of three Massachusetts men in a “well-kept rental home.”  The killings occurred on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. All three men had their throats slashed, and their bodies were covered in weed. I’m not sure what the significance of the weed is, but that’s what happened.

The FBI suspected Ibragim, along with Tamerlan Tsarnev, the dead man accused of planning the Boston bombings, of being the murderers they were looking for. Tamerlan’s “former roommate” (or “best friend” depending on what you read) was one of the victims killed in the Massachusetts triple-murder. It is not clear if Tamerlan was questioned in connection to these murders when they occurred in 2011, but clearly he was not a credible person of interest at the time. 

Last week, when the news first broke that Ibragim was killed by an FBI agent, the reasoning (according to a “law enforcement official” who spoke to the New York Times) was that he had pulled a “knife or a pipe or something” on the investigators who were in his home. Because he had aggressively pulled out a weapon that looked sort of like a blade and sort of like a pipe, the killing was in self-defense. According to that same law enforcement official, Ibragim turned violent immediately after he “admitted his role in the killings” in a way that also “implicated” Tamerlan Tsarnev. At that point, the official claims, Ibragim “went off the deep end.” To confuse things further, another agent was quoted as saying Ibragim reached for an investigator’s gun and that’s why he was shot, but did not mention anything about a pipe or a knife.

That was the sketchy story, built on conflicting information, up until Wednesday. A full week after Ibragim was killed the Washington Post broke the news that, according to “law enforcement officials,” Ibragim was unarmed at the time of his death. No knife, no pipe. One of the Post’s sources also allege that the other investigators left the room before the FBI agent murdered Ibragim, which would mean there weren’t actually any witnesses besides the shooter. And yet, the newest explanation of Ibragim’s (in the words of the FBI) “violent confrontation” with authorities is that he knocked over a table and lunged at the agent. That’s, according to the most recent explanation, when the gun went off and why the agent fired it. A new report from CNN published on Thursday cites a representative from the Council on American-Islamic Relations who is insiting that the only weapon-like object in Ibragim's home at the time was a dull, decorative sword with a broken handle.

So is this most recent anonymous, law enforcement source correct in saying Ibragim was not a lethal threat to the investigator at the time he was killed? If so, why was this man murdered for simply knocking over his own furniture in his own home and then jumping at a cop? Surely these law enforcement professionals can handle a situation like that without fatal gunfire. Ibragim’s supposed actions read like the behavior of a terrified and angry individual, which is understandable given the context of his meeting that day.

To make matters more perplexing, the FBI says Ibragim was “not suspected of involvement” in connection to the Boston Bombings, which makes the reasoning behind is killing more unclear. But even if he were implicated, the man would still have deserved some kind of fair trial.

If the story is now how it appears to be, and the FBI murdered Ibragim before he could properly go through the justice system for the triple-murder he allegedly committed with Tamerlan Tsarnev, this is not only an example of the police using excessive force to silence a suspect.  This is an example of how chunks of bad information—let’s call them lies—can be pushed into the public through dishonest and anonymous law enforcement sources, in order to obscure the story and silence the truth. By ostensibly inventing a narrative in which Ibragim threatened an FBI officer with his life, the FBI created a palatable motive for Ibragaim’s suddenly violent death. Now that the truth may finally be out, the bubble of media attention is smaller (it was tiny to begin with) for this incident than it was a week ago, and most people won’t be listening closely enough to criticize this apparent cover-up.

This is not even the only death connected to the police’s intense reaction to the Boston Marathon Bombings that appears to be highly questionable. Tamerlan Tsarnev reportedly died after his younger brother ran him over while fleeing from a gunfight with the cops. Worth noting, however, is that there is an eyewitness who claims she saw a “police SUV” run Tamerlan over before cops “shot him multiple times.” Her account of things was recorded on an unknown radio show and popularized in this YouTube video, which is really only gaining traction on conspiracy theory blogs. In light of Ibragim’s story, it seems credible that the cops would be more likely to kill Tamerlan than Tamerlan’s own brother, but again there is really no way to know for sure.

Clearly though, there was something about how Ibragim died that was worth lying about, which makes me wonder what it was he knew or said that led to his death in the first place. It is one of those situations where—as a result of the FBI’s lies and the general lack of available information—one tends to come up with conspiratorial explanations while trying to reach a conclusion.

For example, perhaps the FBI killed Ibragim in order to cover up information about the Tsarnevs they didn’t want out there. Or maybe the FBI agent’s gun went off by accident and they didn’t want anyone to find out. Who knows? At this point, anything is possible, because all that’s known is that Ibragim got angry at the feds, and then he got shot. Most sources seem to at least agree that he confessed to the triple-murder, but there was no signed, written confession, nor will he ever have the chance to plead guilty in court. On top of that, the FBI says it will take months to finish investigating this incident and Ibragim’s father has publicly stated his belief that the “FBI made up their accusations” because his son “worked helping disabled people in America and did sports.”

Unfortunately, given that Ibragim’s story stopped dead in his apartment on May 22^nd, all that anyone can do is hypothesize, if one even feels like thinking about this incident in the first place, as the aftermath of the Boston bombing continues to unravel in bizarre ways.

Follow Patrick on Twitter: @patrickmcguire

More on the Boston Bombings:

A Long Way From Home

Surveying the Chaos at the Boston Marathon Bombings

The Boston Bomber Is Not Eric Twardzik

Despite being safe in the Bahamas, Arthur Porter thought he’d be safe to go on vacation in Panama. via

Quebec's anti-corruption squad hit another jackpot on Monday, announcing the arrest of the long sought-after Dr. Arthur Porter and his wife, Pamela, by the authorities in Panama. Canadian authorities first issued a warrant for Porter’s arrest in February of this year for several fraud charges relating to shady international business ventures and some of his many positions in the Canadian health care and political scene. Of course it comes as no surprise to Quebecers that it all comes down to the now infamous Montreal corruption scandal.

Porter first entered the Canadian scene when he was hired to head up the construction a multibillion-dollar health centre at McGill University (MUHC), in Montreal. In 2008, Stephen Harper appointed him to a watchdog committee of Canada’s spy agency, meaning he Porter had access to the country’s most secret of secrets. Perhaps his appointment had to do with yearly donations Porter had been making to the Tories since 2004.

Porter’s fall from Grace, which we’ve already told you about, began in November 2011 when it was revealed that Porter was involved in a dubious secret contract with a former Israeli spy. Porter and his wife soon picked up their belongings and escaped to the Bahamas after resigning from his federal post and quitting his role with the MUHC several months before his contract ended.

It was revealed Thursday that, while living in the Bahamas, Porter’s criminal activities continued through 2012. New criminal charges cover a later period, extending to the end of 2012; it’s an extension on the earlier February charges. These new charges allege that Porter’s criminal involvement with the MUHC contract extended past his resignation. As the Montreal Gazette reports, Porter is one of seven (so far) people who have been tied to an attempt to embezzle millions from the MUHC project.

One of these seven people was once one of the top dogs at SNC-Lavalin, the engineering firm constructing the Montreal hospital. The engineering firm has been at the centre of the Quebec’s corruption and more recently, the company has faced several challenges with the World Bank and the Canadian International Development Agency banning the company from bidding on projects. Want more?

In May, An affidavit from the police from their search of the firm’s Montreal headquarters showed incomplete immigration papers for Al-Saadi Gadhafi (Muammar Gadhafi’s son) with a VP offer at the company. Meanwhile, the CBC reported that the firm was using a code system in their accounting meant to hide bribes made in Africa and parts of Asia. More recently, SNC-Lavalin announced it will be offering amnesty to whistleblowers in the company, but the reports can only be made between June 3rd and Aug. 1st.

Somehow, it seems a little sketchy. Amnesty, really? Saying they’re offering amnesty seems more like a ploy to get the firm back in people’s good books more than anything. While many, or most, of the employees working for this massive company probably know nothing about all of its inner workings, it’s difficult to imagine that a whistleblower’s position would not be endangered in some way. This is a company rife with corruption and under the table deals. They’ve got some serious trust issues, no?

Meanwhile, Dr. Porter’s actions have been highly suspicious. He has avoided Interpol for several months saying he could respond to summons from the Quebec anti-corruption agency due to his cancer treatments in the Bahamas—he says he’s struggling from an aggressive stage four lung cancer, a result of a personal examination of X-rays. Why then, did he think he was safe to leave the country? Did he not realize that Interpol had been waiting to arrest him? Although, to be fair, it’s unsure why the international authorities could not arrest him from his home in the Bahamas.

Even before all these accusations and warrants began, did the people who put him in these positions of power, including Stephen Harper, not realize the trail of mystery and doubt Porter left behind him? Were these people not aware of Porter’s past work in Detroit where he sunk a hospital in millions of dollars in debt? It seems that Porter’s long time donations to the Tories had been giving him a leg up in the political rounds long ago. It scares me to think what else he could have been doing, or who he could have been possibly bribing all this time.

Reports say the doctor was able to avoid arrest by traveling with his Sierra Leon ambassador card. Now he and the Misses are sitting in a Panama City jail, while the extradition process gets underway. Porter announced this week that he does not plan on fighting the extradition. He has 15 days to decide as of the day of his arrest. Given his reputation, his money, and his international connections, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if Arthur Porter managed to pull a fast one and maneuver his way out of this.

But let’s not get our hopes up.

Follow Ken on Twitter: @kjrwall

For more on Canadian corruption:

Dr. Arthur T. Porter IV Got Very, Very Rich From Ripping Off Canadians

Quebec's Mafia Corruption Is All Out in the Open

The photos in this article have been shared with us by The Exposure Project.

A group of sex workers in Toronto have decided to come together and take part in The Exposure Project, a photo exhibit designed to show people exactly what their lives look like, from the first-person perspective of the sex workers themselves. There are eleven artists total, and it’s an all-woman, trans-inclusive group.

Many of the women got involved with the project because they were sick of the myths and shit-talk surrounding their work—myths circulated by people who have no experience in the world they criticize regardless of their ignorance.

Janet is one of the artists whose work will be shown at the exhibit on May 31. She explained to me, over email, why she wanted to give people an inside look at her life by learning how to take a good photograph.

“What’s portrayed in movies is not the reality for most sex workers. Not everyone is down and out. Look at all the college students that work online—it’s sex work whether it’s on the street corner or in a dorm room. Not everyone is a drug addict.”

When most people picture sex workers, they picture those who operate on the streets, under cover of night, usually using drugs and in seedy areas. In reality, only about 20 per cent of sex work in Canada takes place on the street. It should be obvious that many others also live under that umbrella, including women who work in massage parlours, strip clubs, and via escort services, among other forms of sex work. Further, studies suggest most sex workers in North America are not illicit drug users. People get involved in the trade for their own reasons.

“[I want] people to see the community in a different way,” Janet says, “so they will be open minded and less judgmental of it.”

The Exposure Project was dreamed into existence by Carly Kalish, the clinical and program manager at All Saints Church-Community Centre. Kalish has worked with sex workers in West Africa and New York, and she’s worked with survivors of human trafficking as well. She designed the Exposure Project as a silent auction. The 33 photos will be auctioned off the night of the show, with all proceeds going back into funding creative initiatives for women at All Saints.

Each woman was given a digital camera with which to document her life. Some of the artists were clients of All Saints, and others heard about the project from those women and asked to be involved. There was no specific direction given to shape their work; Kalish wanted them all to feel free to explore whatever inspired them.

“Themes we talked about were things like ‘home.’ Some are quite literal shots of street-involved life, and others are abstract impressions of what they were feeling about something.”

“Instead of guiding them, we were open. I just said, “What do you want to teach people and educate them about? This whole project was born out of the women’s creativity.”

The event will be “like a party,” she says, with a full spread of hors d’oeuvres and drinks served all night. All of the women will be present, explaining their work and watching visitors take it in.

“The goal of the project is to create an outlet for women who have experienced sex work, formerly or currently, to share their stories,” she says. “But also to educate the greater community about life on the streets for women. And that includes trans women.”

The project operates not only as an opportunity for people to learn about life as a sex worker—it’s also a chance for the women to learn about themselves.

“It was a chance to do something I’ve never done,” Janet told me. “I knew nothing about photography and I was bored of sitting around at drop-ins. This was a chance to do something new and learn about photography.”

“I feel good about it, and I hope I have contributed to the group. I’m not used to working with a bunch of women. It’s a learning experience for me there.”

She says she plans to keep exploring life through photography after the project is done. She’s excited to take photos of her relatives when she visits them, and she’s going to show her photos to her family “to help them understand where I come from.”

Obtaining a better understanding of where she, and others in her industry, are coming from is clearly needed in this country. The eyes of the justice system are slowly being opened to the issues facing the sex work community. Sex workers themselves have already made huge strides in this area. Amy Lebovich, Terri-Jean Bedford, and Valerie Scott won their case in the Ontario Superior Court. The 2010 Himel decision struck down Canadian prostitution laws as unconstitutional because they actively prevented the women involved in sex work from protecting themselves. (Laws in question were in regards to living on the avails of prostitution, communicating in public for the purposes of prostitution, and keeping a brothel).

The decision was appealed, and the Ontario Court of Appeal then reinstated the communications law. What followed was a sexy tennis match of sorts, with the feds appealing to the Supreme Court of Canada to restore the other two laws. Bedford et al. then made the move to cross-appeal.

On June 13, the Supreme Court will hear the arguments in Attorney General of Canada v. Bedford, and the criminality of these activities will hopefully be abolished once and for all. Painstakingly slow progress is being made, but it’s progress nonetheless.

But that still hasn’t stopped much of the judgment amongst the wider populace. We still live in a world of slut-shaming, where women in sex work are at least partially blamed for any harm that befalls them, and the system still doesn’t do nearly enough to help. (Statistics Canada found that between 1991 and 2004, 171 female sex workers were murdered in this country. A whopping 45 per cent of those cases went unsolved. What if they had been lawyers instead of sex workers?) Tearing down that judgment factor is a major goal for Janet, and one of the primary reasons she decided to take part in The Exposure Project.

“It could be anybody. Don’t judge anybody. It could be your sister, mother, girlfriend, son. Some people choose to be in the industry. Some do it because of financial circumstances or sometimes by coercion.”

“I hope my photographs achieved the goal to educate the public on what’s going on in this community—visible and invisible.” The question of visibility came up with Kalish, as well. She told me it’s one of her goals to help educate people “about people who are deemed invisible in our city.”

“We really want to open up people’s eyes to the realities of this community, and what the streets of Toronto are really like.”

The results of the Exposure Project will be exhibited on Friday, May 31 at 7 p.m. at St. James Cathedral.



Previously by Sarah Ratchford:

Why Doesn't the Justice System Take Rape Cases Seriously?

Photos by Janicza Bravo

This song is from Rat Tail’s one and only album, The Motorola Pimp. His whereabouts are unknown. We do know that he seemed to be on the rise when his album was first released; however, shortly after getting in an altercation with rapper Ice T, Rat Tail vanished. Ice T denies any knowledge of or involvement in his disappearance. Thankfully, Rat Tail's music lives on. Stream the rapper's debut track below and absorb all of its peculiar gravitas and poetical power. 

The following is an excerpt from the liner notes of  The Motorola Pimp:

1. INTRODUCING RAT TAIL: 
(A. Goldstein, D. Goldenberg, L. Nachman) Produced by Janet for Cyrk Records. Recorded at Cyrk Studios in Hollywood by Doo Doo Dune Dune. Mixed by Conch Shell at Cyrk Studios in Hollywood.

Introducing Rat Tail / Rat Tail got a fat tail
Eight ball in the thermos of my Muppet Movie lunch pail
Want dick? Got it / Want nuts? Got those
I like to hang with strippers ’cause they take off their clothes
New Air Jordans, so you know that I’m rockin’
Rolex on my wrist tick tockin’ like my dick
Diamonds in my ears / Rhinestones on my shirts
Make them teen panties wet, give ’em ring-around-the-skirt

And you know I am a flirt, biggest flirt on earth
I drink champagne that’s yellow like Bert 
And Ernie’s rubber ducky, girlies whisper “sucky fucky”
Got ’em feeling real lucky ’cause they got the chance to fuck me
I’m soooo handsome / My looks will pay ya daughter’s ransom
No fear of the five-0, I run up on ’em and pants ’em!
Breath stank like milk / Hands smooth like silk
Sending ’nuff love to my man Harvey Milk
Introducing Rat Tail!
THAT’S ME!
Introducing Rat Tail!
THAT’S ME!
Introducing Rat Tail!
THAT’S ME!
We want to fuck you Rat Tail!
THAT’S FREE!

I like my butts round plus hanging to the ground
I like my tits round and my eyes doo-doo brown
I like it like this and like it like that
I like to chill in Hollywood ’cause that’s where I live at
One compound / Five mansions / One fence
I speak a little broken, but that don’t mean that I’m dense
Talking on my cell phone, that’s when I speak my mind
I’m always on that hustle and forever on that grind
Speaking of that grind, I love to grind behind
I get behind that behind, and I grind that behind

Blast this song in my boom box / Then after I rewind 
Then after I rewind I get behind behind and grind 
My shotgun spray and my 45—BLAM!
I’m fly, dope, fresh, def with a splash of glam
My real name’s Aaron, and my middle name’s Sam
Rat Tail is the man / And you know that’s who I am
Rat Tail is the man / And you know that’s who I am
My name’s Rat Tail / That’s the name of the man
You know who I am / Rat Tail is the man 
Introducing Rat Tail!
THAT’S ME!
Introducing Rat Tail!
THAT’S ME!
Introducing Rat Tail!
THAT’S ME!
We wanna fuck you Rat Tail!
THAT’S FREE!

Read all 13 installments of Combover, Brett Gelman’s novel about Hollywood, baldness, and the beauty of the Jewish tradition here.

Cry-Baby #1: Latasha Renee Love

(via)

The incident: A kid ate some Pop Tarts that he wasn't supposed to eat. 

The appropriate response: Yelling at him. 

The actual response: His mother called the police and had him arrested. 

A 37-year-old North Carolina woman named Latasha Renee Love called the police earlier this week to report that a box of Pop Tarts belonging to her had been stolen. 

When police arrived, she told them that they had been taken by her son. 

The son was placed under juvenile arrest for misdemeanor larceny. The police report doesn't specify how old the son is, but as he was placed under juvenile arrest, he must be under the age of 18. 

He will be tried before a juvenile court at a later date. 

Also, I have been laughing for like, a solid 10 minutes at the part in the news report embedded above where the news reader guy says "she fingered her own son."

Cry-Baby #2: Leonard Burdek

(via)

The incident: A man noticed a spelling mistake on a sign. 

The appropriate response: Instagraming/tweeting it. 

The actual response: He allegedly tried to blow it up.  

According to police, 50-year-old Leonard Burdek walked into the offices of the Teachers Standards and Practices Commission in Salem, Oregon on Wednesday afternoon carrying a pressure cooker with wires sticking out of it.

He dumped it on the front desk and told the people working there that he'd just unsuccessfully tried to blow up their sign, as there was a spelling mistake on it. 

The sign in question was meant to say "Teacher Standards and Practices Commission," but a "d" was missing from the "and," making it read "Teacher Standards an Practices Commission."

Office staff said "d" may have been scraped off or had worn off over time.

Leonard fled when the workers called the police. Apparently, before leaving, he complained that the instructions he'd used to make the bomb contained spelling mistakes. 

Police arrested Leonard after spotting him nearby, and he was charged with disorderly conduct. 

Which of these guys is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in the poll below. But like, only if you really want to:

Previously: The cops who arrested some kids for a water balloon fight vs. The guy suing Taco Bell for stealing his ideas.

Winner: The cops!

@JLCT

Artur Conka is one of the few Roma who has documented his community from behind the lens. Originally from Lunik IX, one of the largest and poorest Roma communities in Slovakia, his family traveled across Europe before finally settling in Britain when Artur was eight. Years later, equipped with a degree in photography, Artur revisited his old home to see how life had changed for those who stayed behind.

Turned out a lot had changed. Instead of the joyous place that was the backdrop of his childhood years, Artur found a racially segregated community of 10,000 people that suffers from 99 percent unemployment, widespread disease, and pervasive drug abuse. While there, he filmed a short documentary about daily life in Lunik IX, which you should watch.

I called him up for a chat.

VICE: Hi, Artur. Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Artur Conka: I was born in Lunik IX in Slovakia, but my family left when I was about two or three years old. We traveled across Europe for a while and finally got to England when I was eight. Even though I was really young, I remember a lot about the place where I was born. I think that allowed me to clearly see the ways in which it had changed when I went back for the first time in 2009.

And what's changed?
A lot. I can remember there being a lot of racial tension, but at the time we left—which was in the early 90s—there was still some sort of integration between the Roma and the Slovaks in Lunik IX. Slovakians have now moved out of Lunik IX and the situation between the Roma community and other minorities has slowly deteriorated. This is because of the economic crisis, the fall of Communism, and the Velvet Revolution that took place after the split of Czechoslovakia.

The segregation seems to have driven Roma to a situation where they can’t afford food, housing, and other basic needs. That's what happens when you stigmatize people, when you cut them off from society. Without proper education and other necessities, people don’t develop the skills they need to survive in today's world, which only fuels the prejudice and racial hatred among Slovakians. Going back was definitely a shock.

Your case is unique, because you're one of the few Roma photographers who engages with your communities in your work. Did this project change your perspective of the Roma in any way?
Yes, definitely. When you’re brought up within a certain educational system, working in another country—no matter if it's the one you come from—will inadvertedly change your viewpoint. Everything changes once you look behind the lens. Some people will look at my work and say that it’s very biased, propagandist, or too sympathetic toward the Roma community. But that is reality to me—you can’t hide it or push it under the carpet.