Quantcast
Channel: VICE CA
Viewing all 38002 articles
Browse latest View live

How My Tweets Led to Notorious Sex Offender Owen Labrie Going to Jail

0
0

Owen Labrie, the 20-year-old former prefect at St. Paul's prep school in New Hampshire who was convicted last summer of sexually assaulting a freshman when he was a senior, is now in jail. On Friday, he walked into a New Hampshire courthouse a free man and left in handcuffs, his bail having been revoked for curfew violations.

Unless Labrie's appeal is successful, he'll serve a year's time—or eight months with good behavior. And he's already poised to be listed in the sex offender registry for at least 15 years thanks to his felony conviction for using a computer to talk to the freshman, who was the younger sister of a woman he previously dated.

I covered that first trial for VICE, but this second time I myself was wrapped up in the case: According to prosecutors, the probe revealing those curfew violations was sparked by my own encounter with Labrie during an afternoon commute last month.

On February 29, at about 1:15 PM, I was traveling from Cambridge to Boston, where I ran into Labrie on the Red Line. To my surprise, after I introduced myself and told him I covered his trial for VICE, he moved over so I could sit down and proceeded to answer my questions. When I got off the train, I tweeted about the chance meeting, and then reflected on it, offering a few of my own opinions about the trial and its aftermath in a follow-up story that was published on VICE.

At the time, there was nothing about our conversation that made me think Labrie was violating his curfew, which required he remain at his mother's house in Vermont between 5 PM and 8 AM each day. (Indeed, prosecutors say he made it back in time after our chat, though he had left his house too early that morning.) But my tweets—specifically the ones in which I described Labrie saying he regularly traveled to Cambridge via bus from Dartmouth, New Hampshire, to visit a girlfriend—apparently caught the eye of Detective Julie Curtin of the Concord, New Hampshire, police.

Her subsequent interviews with Dartmouth bus drivers and a ticket saleswoman, as well as surveillance video, revealed that Labrie was regularly violating his curfew. Two weeks later, Prosecutor Catherine Ruffle filed a motion to revoke Labrie's bail, and requested an expedited hearing.

Suddenly I found myself thrust into the story in a way I'd never experienced as a professional journalist. My commute to work had become national news. I was on the Today Show and Nancy Grace and got written about in the New York Times.

Needless to say, my Twitter mentions were a mess.

To be clear, my interview with Labrie was no journalistic feat. I did not have to "work" a source, scour databases, or obtain any documents. I just happened to run into a famous convicted sex criminal on a busy train line—one that, by his own account, he rode regularly. I'm not sure I can even take credit for the fact that Labrie opened up to me: According to prosecutors, he was just as chatty with a woman who sold him a bus ticket.

But for better or for worse, I was now a part of this story that had fascinated me—and much of America—amid an intense national conversation about sexual assault.

I wrote after our train ride that Labrie's rejection of generous plea deals in the face of massive evidence that he had penetrated the 15-year-old girl (he denied they ever actually had sex) was arrogant. I also found Labrie taking the stand and, by the jury and judge's account, lying over and over again, to be eerie, even by the standards of criminal trials. This latest revelation—that, post-conviction, Labrie was regularly breaking the conditions of his bail—serves only to add an additional layer to the young man's already substantial hubris.

At the bail hearing Friday, Labrie's attorney Jaye Rancourt admitted he was breaking curfew but claimed the trips were to obtain legal counsel and to make in-person visits to supplement his online education. Though Labrie did tell me he was being privately mentored, Rancourt claimed the story he told me and the woman who sold him the bus ticket—that he was going to Cambridge to visit his girlfriend—was a lie.

In fact, he was protecting his academic endeavors, she explained to the judge. And the reason she did not ask to extend his curfew for these visits was, she said—gesturing behind her to the room packed with reporters—out of fear for the media attention the trips might garner. If his traveling pattern was publicized, Rancourt told the judge, there was a possibility that someone might try to harm her client.

The lawyer also released a statement in a court filing asserting that my conversation with Labrie was "off the record" and that I had "accosted" him, when the reality is that I introduced myself as a reporter, he greeted me warmly, and at no time did we discuss going off the record.

In the end, Judge Larry Smukler decided that it didn't matter why Labrie was breaking curfew—just that he did. Citing Labrie's "credibility" issues throughout the trial, he concluded that Labrie brought his fate upon himself. "You made the decision," Smukler told him.

In some ways, the St. Paul's rape trial has taken on the feel of a Greek drama. Labrie, the son of a schoolteacher and a landscaper, was the brilliant young student accepted into an elite circle of world leaders in training. These students are taught that they are the exception, that the rules need not always apply, and when the hand of accountability does comes down, to "deny till you die," as a saying among Labrie's peers went.

Without the wealth enjoyed by many of his classmates, Labrie apparently clung to alternative measures of social standing in a place where success is measured on one hand by self-sacrifice, and on the other by how many underclass girls you can bang. Bonus points for sisters. Ultimately, that was his undoing.

Follow Susan Zalkind on Twitter.


Musical Urban Legends: 'The Alterna-Monkees,' Today's Comic by Peter Bagge

0
0

Musical Urban Legends is a series of comics based on music world whispers and hearsay. The scenes depicted are not matters of historical fact. Check out Peter Bagge's website, Twitter, and buy his books from Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly.

Canadian Drug Dealers Explain What Students Buy During Exam Season

0
0


Vyvanse is one of the many drugs dealers in Canada are hit up for during exams. All photos via the author

No matter what kind of student you are, exams are a trash fire on your calendar. If you're one of the poor souls in a program like engineering or mathematics, you're probably going to be under a hell of a lot of stress when you're in school (albeit you're going to get paid a lot when you're done!). However, if you are in the social sciences or arts, you're probably a giant procrastinator and complain unnecessarily about your program, and will probably get a B- no matter how little you study (but you'll be paid virtually nothing for your work when you graduate).

Despite this shared sense of hatred/annoyance for tests that employers will never care about, we all handle our finals differently. For example, some students like to focus and knock their grades out of the park. It's the kind of mentality that takes either a special kind of student with impeccable work ethic, or somebody who caves and picks up a handful of Vyvanse every spring. On the other hand, some don't give a shit about wasting their tuition money and just want to have a good time after exams are done.

To get an idea of how Canadian students are surviving the study season, we reached out to drug dealers around the country about what kind of dope their pedalling to today's disenfranchised youth.

Jones, 25, Toronto
Most Sought Product: Vyvanse/Concerta

VICE: How long have you been dealing to students?
Jones: About four years. I started in my last year at university—my dealer needed some help moving his product, so I kind of stepped up after being a customer for so long. After I graduated, I just decided to do it independently as some side income. But, if I'm honest, it's pretty my main income now. take themselves too seriously. It's all about rager parties and what's happening at night, what you're going to do when it's over. Anybody who's taking their school for real is not going to get distracted very easily out here.

Do students ever tell you why they buy drugs?
I've had some open up to me. Students are always going to be my main customer base, because it's mainly a thing about managing priorities and drugs help with that. If you can get some more sleep and do a little dope. Why not? If you can blow a semester's worth of stress off by banging out a few lines, why fucking not?

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to the 2016 Election: Could an Independent Conservative Candidate Really Compete in the 2016 Election?

0
0

Composite of photos via Flickr and Wikimedia commons user Gage Skidmore

By most standards, the 2016 campaign has been bananas. A self-professed socialist has given the supposedly "inevitable" Democratic frontrunner a run for her money, while the billionaire TV personality who has become the other party's frontrunner is so completely loathed by something called the "Republican Establishment" that he now has his fellow Republicans actively looking for ways to sabotage him.

Some intra-party hostility is normal during primary season, but what's going on in the GOP has gotten legitimately apocalyptic, with prominent conservatives publicly denouncing Donald Trump, 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney delivering an 18-minute speech castigating the mogul, and a bunch of Republican "operatives" holding a closed-door meeting in DC, where the idea of mounting a third party challenge to Trump was openly discussed.

That would be a desperate move, and it's almost impossible to imagine a Republican-in-everything-but-name beating both the GOP and Democrats in November. But there have been some half-cooked theories about a third-party spoiler winding up in the Oval Office via some of the more obscure machinations mandated by the 12th Amendment. To wit, if no one gets 270 electoral votes, that means the Electoral College is deadlocked, and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives would pick the president, with each state's delegation counting for one vote each.

For that scenario to come to pass, the hypothetical Trump-slayer would have to win a substantial number of states, and the last third-party politician to do so was George Wallace in 1968. (Richard Nixon won, with no 12th Amendment trickery required.) 2016 has been a strange year, but is there a conceivable universe where a third-party candidate really puts a dent in the electorate, or even wins? We asked Geoffrey Skelley, a political analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, to game out the possibilities with us. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Check out VICE News's report on the abortion issue in the 2016 election:

VICE: Is there really going to be a competitive third party candidate in 2016?
Geoffrey Skelley: I'd say there's at least some chance of that. The obvious problem for he would be helping challenge the Republican Party in some way. But that individual would have very little chance of winning, and you would also have to know that, by doing this, you are basically guaranteeing that Hillary Clinton will be president.

Is that because a conservative third party candidate might split the Republican vote and hand all the swing states to the Democrats, like some people think happened when Ross Perot ran in 1992?
There's a debate about who would've won head to head—and actually Clinton might have won against George H.W. Bush. But there's no question that there were probably a couple of states that Clinton won that he might not have won in a head-to-head matchup.

But Trump is really nothing like George H. W. Bush in 1992. Is there an example that's more like what we're seeing now?
Really, the best example of this has to be the 1912 election. Teddy Roosevelt decides that he wants to challenge Taft for the Republican nomination because he was displeased with how Taft—who was essentially his successor—had handled the presidency. Well, Taft goes on to beat him at the convention for the nomination. Roosevelt walks out with a lot of supporters and runs as the Bull Moose Progressive Party candidate, and actually ends up finishing second in the electoral college. But Wilson won forty-two percent of the vote and four hundred thirty-five electoral votes.

The 1912 electoral map. Via Wikimedia Commons

If no one wins two hundred seventy Electoral College votes, a vote in the House of Representatives picks the president. What would happen if there were a conservative third party candidate?
If you had a Mitt Romney running, maybe he —or someone who has that kind of clout. Romney would probably be the best example of somebody who might be able to get enough support from members of the House who are Republicans.

Is it safe to say a situation like this definitely favors conservatives, even if a Democrat wins the popular vote?
Well, here's another thing to keep in mind: You have a situation where you have a state like, Arizona—that's probably the best example—where you have four Democrats and five Republicans . Ostensibly, you would expect the Republicans to end up getting the vote, and that Arizona would back whoever the Republican is. But what if you had three Republicans supporting Trump, two supporting Romney, but then four supporting Clinton for the Democrats. Does Arizona go to the Democrats? Did Clinton get one vote out of that?

Sounds chaotic.
This were debating internally—could Bloomberg even win a precinct in the entire country? Probably not! Every state is going to have a solid base of Democrats and Republicans who are not going to vote for an independent candidate. They are going to stick with their party, and that makes it really hard to get to a plurality. I know Gallup talks about how we have a record number of independents, but that's largely hogwash because if you push those "independents," it turns out that most of them vote one way or the other every time.

So on the whole, what happens if there's a conservative third-party candidate in the race?
It's really hard for a Republican to win.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Is in Palliative Care

0
0

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is in palliative care, local media outlets have confirmed.

Amidst rumours that Ford, 46, who has cancer, was dead, Ford's office and family released statements Thursday indicating he was hospitalized at Toronto's Mount Sinai.

On Monday, the Toronto Star confirmed Ford is currently in palliative care.

"I have been at the hospital for the last five days and nights by his side," Ford's brother and failed mayoral candidate, Doug Ford, told the Star.

Ford's chief of staff reportedly said he was in palliative care but not end-of-life care.

Ford was initially diagnosed with pleomorphic liposarcoma, a rare type of cancer that grows in soft connective tissues, in September 2014, forcing him to drop out of the Toronto mayoral race. He is currently a councillor for Ward 2, Etobicoke.

He underwent surgery last May, but in the fall he revealed doctors had found tumours on his bladder.

The former mayor's time in power was marred by controversy, most notably when he admitted to having smoked crack cocaine likely while in a "drunken stupor."

UPDATE: Ford's office put out a statement that provides further details on his treatment.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Meet the Immigrants Passionate About the 2016 Election, Even Though They Can't Vote

0
0

Ellie Perez (immediately left of the Hillary sign) crossed the border illegally when she was a child, and is now a prominent voice in Hillary Clinton's campaign. Photo courtesy of Ellie Perez.

The focus of 2016 presidential election shifts to Arizona this week, home to one of the most antagonistic immigration debates in the country. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have comfortable leads in the state entering their respective primary contests on Tuesday, while Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz hope for upset victories. John Kasich will be lingering around, too.

Since immigration plays such a huge role in the border state—remember, this is the home of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his Tent City—we decided to speak with immigrants about who they support in the Republican and Democrat primaries. Most of the interviewees aren't American citizens, and can't vote in the election, but many of them see themselves as full participants in the American political machine, whether in volunteering for campaigns or influencing their peers who can vote. Here, they explain who they're supporting and how much immigration policy plays into their view of American politics. These interviews have been edited for clarity, length, and grammar.

The "Anchor Baby" Who Supports Donald Trump

Photo courtesy of Danda Anthis

Danda Anthis grew up on the Mexican side of the border in Caborca, Sonora. The city is located about four hours away from Tucson, Arizona, where she lives now with her husband and two children. Anthis, a 41-year-old technical assistant at a mining company, is a US citizen only on a technicality—her mother crossed the border for medical treatment while she was carrying her and eventually gave birth in Arizona. She spent her childhood in Caborca and Mexico City before moving to Arizona at age 20.Anthis recognizes the irony in being a Republican and an "anchor baby," but she thinks Donald Trump's policies—including his view on immigration—have merit.

VICE: Given your background, why do you support Donald Trump?
Danda Anthis: At first he was loud and noisy, but I have read his biography, I have done some research and I can tell you this man is actually pretty great. He doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke. It seems like, based on what he has done with his businesses, he's very smart. And that's what we need. Political correctness is obviously not taking us anywhere at this point.

I think for the last seven or eight years, things are just going downhill. It is very sad. A lot of people don't see it. I see it, I do grocery shopping. I see that I spend more money on groceries than what I bring home. It's crazy, it's really crazy. I'm counting one penny, I'm counting the other penny. I cover one hole and I open the other one. It's just bad.

Watch: America's Election 2016: Immigrant Iowa

As someone who grew up in Mexico, do Trump's immigration views bother you? How about the wall?
Seriously, what's wrong with the wall? We all have fences around our houses, we all lock our doors. One of my aunts who lives in Mexico City, she's like, "Oh, but it's a wall, it's going to divide us." And then I remember being little and being told, "Fuck the gringo." And I'm thinking, when have we been close to them? And now you're talking about being united to the US when we have never been. I was never taught that the gringo was my friend, it was the other way around. The gringo was going to screw me, so fuck the gringo. It's so hypocritical. It's crazy, it annoys me so much, you have no idea.

You brought your brother from Mexico to the US, but he was eventually deported. What happened?
I have a brother who needed my help, and with my money, I actually helped him out to cross the border. He didn't have papers, but I felt that was my responsibility, to help him out and bring him here. And that's what I did. Anyway, with that in mind, he came in with his visa, but obviously his visa expired and we were planning to get him legal . Unfortunately, that didn't work out and he got in trouble, and he was actually deported.

I had to help him because he's my brother, but at the same time, I feel that I have principles. If I go back to Mexico right now myself, I have to ask for permission to go into the country. So it's not like here, where everything is kind of forgiven and forgotten. At least that's the way I see it right now.

Are you out campaigning?
If they need me in any shape, way, or form. I will definitely help out. I work for a mining consulting company and they make fun of me because I get very passionate.

The Undocumented Bernie Sanders Supporter

Photo by Steve Pavey, courtesy of Erika Andiola

Erika Andiola came to Arizona when she was 11 years old, as her mother fled an abusive relationship in the Mexican state of Durango. They crossed the border without authorization and began living as undocumented immigrants in Mesa, Arizona. In the last decade, the 28-year-old Andiola has been a passionate fighter for immigrant rights. She was a key player among the activists who pressed Obama to grant deportation relief to young undocumented immigrants, which he did in 2012 with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. She's currently the national press secretary for Latino outreach on Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.

VICE: You're not a citizen, so you can't vote—but you're very involved in the Sanders campaign. How did you get interested in working on that?
Erika Andiola:I think it was my understanding of the political system. When we started pushing for the different changes that we wanted in immigration, in the beginning we were very naive. We were following everything that the DC organizations and establishment were telling us to do. They would just grab us, like, "Here, tell your story. Push for immigration reform, push for comprehensive immigration reform." And we were there, being used by many of these people. Little by little, we started realizing that there wasn't really a good strategy, there wasn't really a way to pass immigration reform. It was more for the Democratic establishment to continue to use us.

The first time I heard Bernie Sanders, I was drawn to the way that he was talking about the change in the political system that we needed, going against the establishment politics that we have been playing for many years. I decided to contact them and I said, "I want to help. I want to help to do whatever I can to get that message out there, that we're tired of it." That we need to fix the system first, in order for us to fix the problems that we have in this country.

Photo courtesy of Erika Andiola

Are your family members supporting any of the presidential candidates?
My siblings and my mom, they can't vote. But my aunt and two of my uncles can vote and I've convinced them—they're going to vote for Bernie. And my mom actually is right now here in the office making phone calls. She's been phone banking for a couple of days now for Bernie. My entire family is very supportive.

My younger, 20-year-old brother is the one that got me into Bernie. I saw him watching YouTube videos of Bernie Sanders, as if it was a reality show or something. It was kind of cool to see him so involved, just being involved in civics. I started wondering, Who is this guy and why is my brother so passionate about him? I always tell him, it was really him who got me a lot more into Bernie. He's a DACA recipient.

The Dreamer Campaigning for Hillary Clinton

Photo courtesy of Ellie Perez

Ellie Perez has only known one home—Phoenix, Arizona. Although she was born in Mexico, her mother brought her and her sisters across the border when Ellie was just four years old. When she reached high school, she realized she didn't have a Social Security number, a discovery that eventually led to the revelation that she was living in the US without legal status. Perez, now 25, is enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows her to work on the staff of Kate Gallego, the vice mayor of the City of Phoenix.

VICE: You realized you were undocumented in high school. What did that mean for your life after graduation?
Ellie Perez: I graduated high school in 2009. Sometimes it still makes me pretty bummed out because on graduation night, I had worked so hard for four years to graduate, but then I knew that was it. And then the next day I had to go work with my mom as a house cleaner. I couldn't afford college because Arizona had passed a law where if you were undocumented, you had to pay three times what a resident was paying, even if you lived here your whole life.

In 2012, when President Obama gave deferred action, I remember that day. I had my cell phone and I got a CNN update. I was about to turn 22 and I still shared a room with my little sister. I remember jumping from my bed to her bed, yelling, "We can go to school!" That's all I cared about.

Why did you decide to back Hillary Clinton?
I actually was a Hillary person in 2008. I had been infatuated by the idea of Hillary Clinton because to me she seemed like a great woman who opened up all of these doors for other women and was truly fighting for equality. I was really sad when she lost the primary.

This year, with the primary, I don't think there was really a second where I doubted who I was going to support. I just think that all of her years of experience, that to me is huge. All of the coalitions that she can build and pull together are important to me. I think I know enough about where we are politically to understand that where Congress is right now, we're not going to do anything by ourselves. The Democratic Party is not going to pull it off by ourselves, unless we gain the majority back. But if we don't, we're going to have to work with the other side, we're going to have to find common ground.

Do you see Clinton being able to pass an immigration reform bill?
I really think it is possible, but I think it will take a lot of work. And it will definitely be something that you pass and you work on. You pass and you fix as the glitches come through. I definitely think that it can happen, but that it won't be perfect. And it's scary to say that, because I think it almost sounds like a defeatist attitude, but I feel it's a realistic attitude.

The International Student Who Supported Jeb Bush

Photo courtesy of Shay Khatiri

Shay Khatiri yearned to study political science, but realized that would never be possible in his native Iran, where he says the subject tends to be limited to how Islam defines politics. Instead, he enrolled in Arizona State University, where the 26-year-old is working on a bachelor's degree in political science and economics. He's active in US politics and was a strong supporter of Jeb Bush before his campaign fizzled out. Now, he's hoping for a contested convention.

VICE: What attracted you to Jeb Bush as a political figure?
Shay Khatiri: I'm into international relations and foreign policy. As a foreign policy person, I saw a lot of parallels between my view of the world and Governor Bush's view of the world, how he saw that active American leadership at the global stage was necessary. I am planning on staying in the United States after I graduate, so the domestic issues of this campaign matter to me as much as any other American. But as a foreigner, at least for now, anything that happens in the United States, whether regarding foreign policy or economy, matters to the rest of the world. You could see that the market crash of 2007 and '08 changed the economy of the world and we had a global recession and a global financial crisis.

Why did you choose to leave Iran and come the United States?
Honestly, life in Iran is very frustrating. I was raised by parents who have very Western views on life, very liberal views on life. My father was educated in Germany. And to be raised with that mentality—that Western, liberal mentality—and have to live in a conservative society, that was very difficult. I was desperate to leave Iran. My parents are still there.

I wanted to come to the US because I always saw the United States as a land of opportunity and as a nation of immigrants, which actually valued and appreciated immigration. That's also one of the important reasons that I supported Governor Bush. His policy about immigration reform, about legal immigration really resonated with me—that we need to liberalize immigration more and to admit more immigrants, and to get rid of chain migration.

Photo courtesy of Shay Khatiri

Are you willing to support any other candidates now that Bush is out?
Right now, I'm waiting for the GOP convention. I'm really hoping it's a contested convention, so a candidate who is not right now in the race would emerge as the nominee. Somebody like Mitt Romney, hopefully. Or maybe Governor Bush himself. You never know.

The Immigrant Adoptee Volunteering for Cruz

Photo courtesy of Jonathan Madrigal

Jonathan Madrigal, 31, was adopted from Costa Rica by parents who live in Traverse City, Michigan. Now, he studies political science at Arizona State University. He's on a student visa, but hopes he'll find a more permanent way to stay in the US after graduation. Jonathan was a Marco Rubio supporter, but now that he's dropped out of the race, he's shifting his support to Ted Cruz.

VICE: You were supporting Marco Rubio until he dropped out of the race. How did you feel about his views on immigration?
Jonathan Madrigal: One of things that I like about Rubio is that he knew the problem. The only way you can become legal in the United States is if you have family here, if you have a company that comes and hires you, or if you marry someone. He understood those things.

But there's got to be another way. All these international students that are coming in here. How can we use those international students? I put over $100,000 into school. When I say "me," it's me and my parents, over $100,000. So we grow the economy, we help out. So it's kind of a shame that there's not a program that could be used for people like us.

He was very clear in understanding the problem. Maybe he didn't have the greatest solutions or even a solution itself, but he really understood the issue and the problem. Cruz doesn't really have that. That's one of the things that is really kind of bothering me. It's preventing me to really get fully in his camp.

Did you always consider yourself a conservative?
No, actually. Latin America is very anti-Republican, so I grew up as anti-Republican. I knew that was the evil word. I had no idea about politics, but I knew that I didn't like Bush. But later on you kind of educate yourself a little more and you grow up and you understand a little more. I was just 17 years old, so I had no idea.

One of the things that got me really mad was when I started looking into both parties. And I hated how Democrats used the Latino vote, how they used the black vote. They really used it for their own advantage. They use it, but they don't so anything to help us out. They keep us in the bottom, so they can use it next season.

So you decided you liked the Republican Party better, on the whole?
I felt like the Republican Party would make you into an entrepreneur. "These are the tools you get. I'm not going to give you the fish, I'm going to teach you how to fish." I kind of like that attitude, maybe because I'm coming from a socialist country. I don't want the free stuff. Teach me how I can become a millionaire, how can I become this, how can I become that. Don't tell me that I'm a minority that's always going to stay in the bottom.

If Trump or Cruz gets the nomination, will you support them?
Trump is making it really hard for me to even think about it. But I think I can definitely do it for Cruz. Otherwise, I'll stay quiet, like, "Oh, I'm not supporting anyone." I'll be volunteering for Cruz. And my mom might help me, too. So she's going to go and volunteer for Cruz, even though, again, that is not her first choice. Rubio is her first choice, too.

Follow Ted Hesson on Twitter.

How the Legal System in New Orleans Is Screwing the Poor

0
0

Derwyn Bunton sits in a New Orleans courtroom, scrolling through his cell phone and waiting for the judge to call his name. The lawyer is here on behalf of a client facing a second-degree murder charge, and he's been posted up for about two hours as Judge Robin D. Pittman deals with cases ranging from a young woman charged with conspiracy to distribute heroin to an 18-year-old trying to strike a plea deal and avoid being placed on the sex offender registry. Every defendant in the courtroom is African American, and almost all of them have requested that counsel be provided—a right guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

If the chief public defender in Orleans Parish is frustrated, he doesn't look it. As the head of the deeply underfunded and imperiled Orleans Public Defenders (OPD), he should be anywhere but here, handling a case with a charge so serious it demands an attorney who might give it their full attention. But Bunton has no choice.

After all, if he were to drop the case, the lawyer says he could end up in jail himself.

"I've been ordered to take five cases by the judges so far," Bunton tells me on the steps of the Orleans Parish Criminal Court.

Derwyn Bunton, chief public defender in New Orleans. All photos by Edmund Fountain

In January, after years of budget reductions from the state and mounting caseloads, Orleans Public Defenders announced they would no longer take cases involving serious felonies—or alleged crimes where defendants face decades behind bars. The people working at the only public defense office in New Orleans just didn't have the resources to mount an adequate defense anymore. In the weeks since, when an indigent client charged with a serious crime has come their way, the attorneys have refused to take it on, cognizant that the alternative—accepting the case and not giving it their all—could deprive that client of justice.

You might think public defenders going rogue would force local and state officials to figure out how to repair Louisiana's criminal justice system, which is among America's most troubled. (As the New York Times reports, over eight in ten alleged criminals are represented by public defenders in the state.) But that didn't happen. There's been no action on the legislative level since January, while local judges have begun ordering the distressed public defense office—as well as some private lawyers—to take on cases anyway, under threat of contempt of court.

The result is a nightmare.

"Being threatened with jail time for being ethical is disheartening," Bunton says in his office across the street from the courthouse. "In a deeper sense, they're answering the question whether poor people deserve equal justice. To them, the answer is no, they don't."

As of Thursday, OPD had refused to take on 55 cases so far this year—almost all of them serious felonies that don't carry a life sentence (like armed robbery and manslaughter).

"By being overburdened, the little things that could make huge differences in a person's life gets missed, because you simply don't have time," explains Barksdale Hortenstine, Jr., a staff attorney who's been with OPD since 2007. "You can't convince the district attorney to charge a person fairly. That pre-indictment moment can do everything for your case."

And somehow, it's about to get worse.

Orleans Public Defenders Staff Attorney Barksdale Hortenstine, Jr. in his office

While OPD—and the entire New Orleans criminal justice system, for that matter—gets the majority of its funding from fees imposed on citizens, like traffic* tickets and fines, it also leans on support from the state government. But fees have been falling precipitously for several years now, and the state is facing a massive budget crisis after a bevy of tax cuts instituted by former Governor Bobby Jindal. The current doomsday budget under consideration by lawmakers would further cut public defense funds statewide by 63 percent; even a compromise bill could seriously decrease funding for defenders.

"There was never anything left to cut in the first place," Hortenstine says, his office crammed by mounds of case files he inherited from departed attorneys. "We need severe increases in funding to undo the damage that's already been done. People have sat in jail while they've lost their houses, their jobs, and become more likely to re-offend because of it. The idea of having less is just purposely or inadvertently causing a constitutional crisis."

Just a few days after they began refusing cases, OPD and the Louisiana Public Defender Board were sued by the American Civil Liberties Union. Alleging a violation of indigent defendants' Sixth Amendment rights, the ACLU placed the blame for the failures of the public defense system on Louisiana's reliance on a "user-funded" funding model. Across the country, similar lawsuits launched by the ACLU have forced states and localities to adequately fund indigent defense, and therefore fulfill their constitutional obligations.

When I visit on Thursday morning, almost every courtroom inside the imposing Orleans Parish Criminal Court is packed with people awaiting their fate under these obscenely tilted scales of justice. At first appearances, where defendants arrested in the past 24 hours have their initial interaction with the justice system, Judge Harry Cantrell oversees twelve cases, and most of the charges are for drug crimes, like ecstasy distribution and marijuana possession. Every defendant is given a sizable bond, in excess of $2500—an amount that people who cannot afford an attorney of their own will almost certainly be unable to pay.

Of the twelve, the lone white defendant is the only one to have secured a private attorney. The rest are relying on demoralized, physically drained public defenders to save their lives.

When a pair of teenagers arrested for alleged carjacking and armed robbery stand up to face the judge and have their bond set, OPD attorney Mariah Holder informs the judge that their office is refusing to take the case. The judge waves her off.

"This is just their first appearance, we'll figure out the other matter later," Cantrell tells the court. Holder is unsure whether they'll actually be forced to take on the case, but for two people facing the possibility of a life spent mostly in prison, this was a less than encouraging interaction.

Orleans Public Defenders Staff Attorney Lauren Anderson

Down the hall, staff attorney Lauren Anderson is waiting on testimony from two arresting police officers, but they never show. This isn't unusual for Anderson, who spends much of her day either at court or tracking down clients in jail—a task that's become increasingly difficult over the past few months. Beginning last year, many inmates awaiting trial in New Orleans have been transferred far across the state as the city cuts staffing at local jails

"I don't think the lawsuit is a bad thing for this office," she tells me. "This isn't a cut and dry budget problem. This isn't just politician's fighting about money. These are people's constitutional rights. This is basic Founding Fathers issues here, and people want to treat it like it's equal to the funding decisions about LSU football."

Friday marked the 53rd anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court decision that the right to an attorney requires states to provide lawyers for the poor. But the situation in Louisiana could not be more desperate. The Orleans Public Defenders are now waiting on a judgment of their own: whether 42 lawyers working 21,000 cases can truly be considered justice.

For the mostly poor people of color at the mercy of the New Orleans criminal justice system, that verdict will mean everything.

Follow Max Rivlin-Nadler on Twitter.

*Correction 3/22: An earlier version of this article said the New Orleans legal system collects revenue from parking tickets rather than traffic tickets.

I Was Part of the Media Circus Surrounding Spain's Deadly Bus Accident

0
0


Image vía RTVE

This article originally appeared on VICE Spain

On Sunday morning, I got a call from a long phone number I didn't recognize:

"Alba, can you go to Tarragona to cover the bus accident?"

It was the editor of a local TV news show, asking me to cover the story of one of the deadliest road accidents to take place in Spain in recent years. Two hours later, I was at kilometer 333 of the AP-7 highway surrounded by dozens of other reporters, who looked like they'd just received the exact same wake-up call as me.

On Sunday morning, a bus carrying Erasmus students from Valencia to Barcelona crashed near the town of Amposta, 95 miles south of Barcelona. The accident took place less than about 150 miles away from my place, so I remember trying to remind myself that no matter how rushed I was, it was important to avoid speeding while driving to the site. I also remember listening to the radio and writing down every detail I thought would be essential to properly cover the story—I still remember the words "14 deaths" on my palm .

I got there, and it was obvious that the authorities were doing their best to manage the catastrophe. A group of 50 therapists specialized in accidents had been set up at a hotel nearby, so the unharmed passengers would get the support they needed. All journalists had gathered just off the site of the accident—on a roadside that would become the makeshift TV set for a human tragedy.

I tried to imagine what happened to the 13 girls who lost their lives in that bus lying a few feet ahead of me. I found it hard to understand how the driver was so lucky—or so unlucky—to survive. Apparently, he swerved to the left after driving momentarily on the solid line and ended up invading the oncoming lane and crossing the central stripe, which is lined with plants and trees—as if that stripe was the most appropriate place to rest.

Politicians, university personalities, and experts in disaster management paraded the scene of the accident throughout the day.

I saw TV hosts fixing their makeup while memorizing frivolous text in front of the Dantesque scene of the accident. Anyone of us could have been victims—you, me, a sister, a cousin—yet the reporters maintained a calm demeanor and eyeliner perfectly applied. As I waited for instructions, I stared at the onlookers hanging around the scene as if the only thing missing was a box of popcorn. A couple even left their seven-year-old daughter locked in the car, so they could take a closer look the moment the firefighters pulled the seats out of the vehicle to retrieve the bodies.

I heard through the radio that the authorities were going to give a press conference at the nearby hotel. The Head of the Regional Police Department, Joan Jané, began to assess the tragedy. We were informed that more than ten hospitals from the area were engaged in assisting all injured and that hotels from Barcelona and Valencia also participated by providing rooms.

To me, the most shocking moment was when they announced that two out of the 13 dead bodies could not be identified. It turned out that the girls had changed buses in the last minute; they had just made friends with some of the original passengers and had decided to join them on the journey. How a swift decision can end your brief life in three seconds.

Everything about the day had been perfectly orchestrated—almost as if it had been previously rehearsed. Politicians, university personalities, and experts in disaster management paraded the scene of the accident throughout the day, providing very little information that was of actual use. When one reporter found out that the first hearse had arrived, we all flocked to the morgue. Nobody saw any of the survivors, but I can imagine what would have happened if we had: All the reporters would have jumped on them like hungry beasts, trying to get the best story, and, if possible, some tears.

Seventeen forensic experts were working to identify the bodies, which made me think I should carry my ID on me at all times. It's probably best to spare your family the suffering of having to identify your body in case of an accident. The victims' relatives had been asked to bring along DNA samples or anything else they could find—things like rubber bands, descriptions of tattoos, or recent photos of the deceased girls.

This morning, I found out the nationalities of the victims. That kind of detail isn't really important but people like to know: Seven of the women were Italian, two were German, one was Romanian, one was French, one was Uzbek, and the last one was Austrian. Some of the families have already arrived in Spain. I can picture the victims' parents calling on Saturday night, asking their daughters to let them know when they'd reached their destination. But that obviously never happened.


The Challenges of Running a Queer Homeless Shelter in Jamaica

0
0


Illustrations by George Heaven

Homelessness is a massive problem in Jamaica. As of 2015, the unemployment rate in the country was 13.2 percent among adults, and a staggering 38 percent among youth. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in January this year the Jamaica Observer revealed a 26 percent rise in homelessness over the past three years. The problem is particularly prevalent amongst the country's LGBTQ community, who comprise at least 40% of the overall homeless youth population.

Jamaica is not known for its progressive views on queer issues. In 2006, Time magazine asked if the island was "the most homophobic place on earth." In 2014, a Human Rights Watch report found that over half of respondents in Jamaica had experienced violence on the basis of their identified gender or sexuality. Reports of corrective rape and the mob murder of gender queer youth Dwayne Jones have also made the headlines in recent years. Across the 1990s, dancehall fast became one of Jamaica's biggest exports, but it has been well documented how many of the scene's biggest stars performed lyrics that openly incited homophobia. While in the 1970s and 1980s the gay rights movement operated much more freely (the country even had known gay clubs and visible LGBTQ space), today activists conduct clandestine operations and hold discreet gatherings as mounting homophobic sentiments pervade public discourse.

Back in 2014, VICE News covered a group of queer homeless youth in Kingston, colloquially referred to as the "Gully Queens." This was part of an outpouring of international concern over the country's queer homelessness problem. Despite widespread media attention in the wake of VICE News's report, the very same group of homeless youth are still on the streets, and the hoped-for improvements have not yet materialized.

Part of the reason LGBTQ communities are so neglected in Jamaica might be due to the fact that almost 70 percent of the country identifies as Christian. Amongst many of them, it is believed that acceptance of LGBTQ persons is akin to turning one's back on God.

On the other side of the fence, seeking help from within the LGBTQ community is complex. As part of the investigation for the new episode of the VICELAND series GAYCATION, which focuses on the current state of LGBTQ life in Jamaica, Yvonne McCalla-Sobers, a leading Jamaican human rights activist and co-founder of LGBTQ-friendly shelter Dwayne's House, tries to explain the mentality: "LGBT persons who are able to have well-paying jobs, drive high-end vehicles, live in gated communities, will have few issues of homophobia and they want to keep it that way so that they don't have to pay much attention to our youth here," she said. " class prejudice mixed with why are you doing this to draw attention to us? To make us look bad? "

This is not necessarily to say that there is a lack of sympathy for the homeless youth across the board amongst the middle-class members of the LGBTQ community. Rather, as J-Flag, Jamaica's leading LGBTQ rights organization stated in their 2013 Annual Report : "the diversity of Jamaica's LGBT community has been masked by the advocacy and media narratives that have focused on victimhood, crime and violence, sex and HIV." Therefore, when choosing issues to campaign for year on year, the middle-class members of the LGBTQ rights movement may be wary that consistently prioritizing the cause of the homeless youth will present the rights movement as a single-issue platform.

According to Dane Lewis, director of J-Flag, one of the greatest barriers to providing shelter for the LGBTQ homeless youth is a lack of funding. NGOs seeking to alleviate the burdens of the queer homeless youth were, and still are, locked in ongoing negotiations with both the government and international agencies for financial support that would help them address the issue on the ground. They find themselves consistently overstretched and unable to provide anything more than stop-gap support.

"The reality is such a project requires a significant investment to run a program that has been envisioned and designed by the various stakeholders invested in the response to homelessness." Lewis said. "Despite submitting proposals to major development agencies, the response has not been favorable."

McCalla-Sobers and Lewis have been spearheading efforts to set up The Larry Chang Centre, an LGBT youth homeless shelter named after the pioneering founder of J-Flag. Though they are hopeful that this year they will receive the last leg of funding needed to make the shelter a reality, the country's pervasive homophobia will likely make finding staff willing to work for an LGBTQ organization, as well as keeping the premises safe, significant challenges.

Until that happens, there are other groups in the country stepping up to help. The National Anti-Discrimination Alliance (NADA) is a Jamaican organization "committed to protecting the rights and freedoms of all people regardless of social or cultural biases." They have provided LGBTQ-friendly safe houses and private shelters for the homeless since 2014. NADA is a small-scale operation, relying largely on the kindness of volunteers willing to open their homes for those in need. When that's not an option, the group will pool their resources and rent a residential property which can be run as a safe house. The shelters can only take on a few guests at a time and operate on a word of mouth basis, but nonetheless NADA represents a small but significant victory in the struggle to provide shelter to displaced members of Jamaica's LGBTQ community.

Andrew Higgins, founder of NADA, believes that they have so far been able to avoid becoming a target of anti-LGBTQ groups by operating as a "non-discriminatory" organization rather than a "pro-LGBTQ" organization.

The fact still stands, though, that NADA's shelters are primarily aimed at people who are newly homeless, rather than those who have been living without shelter for several years. With a high occurrence of HIV and other medical problems within the long-term LGBTQ homeless community, as well as a high rate of unemployment and training, any shelter will have to provide more than just a roof in order to see the long-term homeless youth rejoin broader society. Therefore, for shelters like NADA's with limited funding, the best strategy is to focus energies on those who have just become homeless in the hope that they can prevent them from becoming homeless in the long-term.

For McCalla-Sobers, it is the fate of the youth population who have been homeless for some years now that she is trying to address once and for all.

"They've been traumatized. Re-traumatized. And traumatized ten times on top of that. People often speak about their behavior, and I'm not sure how I would act in their place." McCalla-Sobers says. "They have made it clear to me in the past; what they really want to do is leave this country."

As it becomes clear that even when provided with shelter many among the LGBTQ homeless youth have been displaced for so long that they believe it is impossible to ever feel at home again in their own country, the need to address their circumstances is more crucial than ever.

Follow Roxy on Twitter.

Learn more about the lives of queer Jamaicans on the latest episode of GAYCATION on VICELAND. Find out how to watch by clicking here.

The VICE Reader: 'Shockie' by Karan Mahajan

0
0

Karan Mahajan's ambitious second novel The Association of Small Bombs, out tomorrow, has been getting rave reviews all over the place. The New York Times called it "smart, devastating, unpredictable," and the Wall Street Journal deemed it "brilliant, troubling." (VICE describes it as "darkly incisive.") In this excerpt from the book, a young bomb maker named Shockie receives the order to carry out a bombing in New Delhi. And so begins his journey from a shabby, unadorned flat in Nepal, where he's been living in exile, to the crowded Indian marketplace where his bloody mission will be completed.

Photo by Molly Winters. Courtesy of Penguin Random House

Shockie

Soon after Shaukat "Shockie" Guru received the order to carry out the blast, he went to his alley and washed his face under the open tap outside the building. Then he entered his room and sat on the bed, brooding. The room was small, foggy with dust, ripe with the smell of chemical reagents (there had been construction recently in the alley), poorly painted. The sole decoration was a poster of a slick-bellied Urmila Matondkar from Rangeela. Two charpais lay separated by a moat of terrazzo. The mattress under him was thin. He felt the coir through the clotted cotton.

After a while, he went back into the alley, where afternoon was announcing itself in the form of clothes hung out to dry between buildings and the particular yawning honking that comes from cars when the sun is high overhead, dwarfing human activity, and he went to the public call office and called home. It was his ritual to call home before setting out on a mission. His mother thought he was a student in Kathmandu—at least she made him believe she thought that—and he wanted to give her an opportunity to save him. She is the only one who has the right to decide whether I live or die, he often thought when he smelled milk boiling in the shops—yes, that was the smell he associated with his mother and with Kathmandu. It gave Kathmandu a sweet, plasticky flavor. Of all natural substances, milk has the most artificial smell.

Shockie was the leading bomb maker of the Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Force, which operated out of exile in Nepal. An avuncular-looking man of 26, he had catlike green eyes, wet lips, and curly hair already balding on the vast egg of his head. His arms were fat rods under his kurta. In the past four years, he had killed dozens of Indians in revenge for the military oppression in Kashmir, expanding the JKIF's "theater of violence," as the newspapers called it.

Now he pushed the receiver close to his ear in the PCO booth. Deep in a crater of silence on the other side of the Himalayas, the phone rang. The phone was a drill seeking out life. "You're sick," he imagined saying to his mother. "Should I come?"

His mother had been a presswali her entire life, and she had developed a tumor in her stomach after years of exposure to the hot coals in the heavy, radiant, red-jawed iron, an iron that was shaped like a medieval torture device, something you might want to trap a head in. No one had been able to cure her. And yet she always refused his offer. This time, the phone wasn't even picked up (it wasn't her phone—it belonged to Shockie's cousin, Javed, who lived a few minutes from his mother in Anantnag, in Kashmir). Sweat distorted the air before Shockie's eyes in the suffocating cabin of the PCO, with its thrum of phone voices. Back in his room, he asked his friend and roommate, Malik, "Should I not go?"

Malik—a slow, deliberate, hassled man at the best of times, the sort who seems to be exhaling deeply against the troubles of the world—said, "You're making excuses." He was sitting curled up on his charpai.

"I fear that she's back to work again. My brother is ruthless and callous. He never did anything growing up, and he's used to being taken care of, and she likes taking care of people." He spat. "Do you think this is a wise mission?"

"Not wiser or unwiser than anything else."

"This is the first time Javed hasn't picked up," Shockie said, unzipping his fake Adidas cricket kit bag.

Every respectable revolutionary needs a few changes of clothes, and Shockie, on his knees in his shabby room, folded two shirts and a pair of black pants into the kit bag.

A journey to Delhi to plant a bomb did not require much, at least in the way of equipment. Most of the stuff you needed you bought there. That way no one could trace you to your source. You destroy a city with the material it conveniently provides. But every respectable revolutionary needs a few changes of clothes, and Shockie, on his knees in his shabby room, folded two shirts and a pair of black pants into the kit bag. On the journey, he knew, he would have to dress in pajamas and a kurta—brown rags. He was supposed to be a farmer attending an agro-conference near Azamgarh, in Uttar Pradesh.

These agro-conferences were among the most fascinating things about India. They happened several times a year, in far-flung parts of the country. Tinkerers and crackpots showed up, hawking inventions to solve irrigation problems and plowing "inefficiencies." A good number claimed to have invented perpetual motion machines (Shockie remembered a machine shaped like a calf with a swinging leg). The farmers, dismissed by urban Indians as bumpkins, roamed in gangs, examining the machines, discussing the finer points with the inventors. They were the audience for these raucous fairs held under tents in eroded Indian fields. The farmers were uniformly suspicious. They were taken in by nothing. Shockie—who had attended a fair to buy pipes for a large new bomb the group was building, as well as to purchase gunny sacks of ammonium nitrate and other fertilizer—was impressed. When he heard another one was happening in UP, he decided to disguise himself as a farmer in tribute. After stuffing a few old farmers' newspapers in his kit bag, Shockie patted his hair into place, as if it needed to be coaxed into traveling with him.

The next day, with Meraj, another agent, he left by bus for the Indo-Nepal border at Sunauli.

Meraj and he were both in tattered kurtas. The bus, rattling over bad roads, usually took eight hours to Sunauli. Today it took almost ten. The landscape, a wild scrawl of reddish terraces and gushing private rivers, came right up to the bus, nearly shattering it. The dug-up road heralded the air with red dust. Plants with plastic bags over their heads crossed their leaves in surrender. A baby in the back screamed the entire way. Shockie and Meraj shifted on their shared seat, trying to apply enough pressure to keep Nepalis from sitting next to them.

When Meraj, an absent-looking fellow with a disarmingly stupid face you could consider capable of nothing dangerous, picked dandruff off his hair and sniffed his fingers, Shockie said, "Don't do that."

"OK," he said, smiling nervously. But he had obviously not understood Shockie's command and soon smelled his fingers again.

"That," Shockie said.

"We're farmers. We told you," Shockie said quietly. "But you're of the terrorist religion, no?" the policeman said. "I've lived among you bastards, and you're all Pakistanis."

At the border in Sunauli, a town reveling in its own filth, the policeman in the Indian immigration hut gazed at them for far too long. Shockie and Meraj remained impassive, but when they were halfway out, the policeman suddenly shouted after them. "You're meat eaters?"

"We're farmers," Shockie said quietly. "We told you."

"But you're of the terrorist religion, no?" the policeman said. A dandy, his mustache was trimmed to the same depth as his eyebrows. "I've lived among you bastards, and you're all Pakistanis. Now go."

Shockie and Meraj walked quickly to the Indian side, disappearing into a crowd of truck drivers. When they came across a small dhaba selling sandwiches wrapped in plastic, with a grassy patch in the back, they collapsed on the ground, breathing heavily. Meraj counted out money for ketchup sandwiches, but kept fumbling the notes.

Suddenly, Shockie burst out, "How much did they give you?"


"Two thousand," Meraj said.


"Two thousand." Shockie shook his head. "You think it's enough?"

Meraj kept smiling—but it was a vacant, expectant smile. "It's not bad."

"Nonsense," Shockie said. "Do you know how much Abdul makes at the shop alone?" Abdul was the leader of the group, a 30-year-old who ran a carpet shop and also taught in the local school.

"Fifty thousand," Shockie said.

"Where, yaar?"

"I've seen it with my own eyes. And that's on top of the dana we're getting from Karachi." Dana was counterfeit money. The Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Force prided itself on being composed entirely of native Indian Kashmiris, but received funding from NGOs run by the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency.

"But why share it with us?" Shockie said. "We're little people. We're only making chocolate."

"Making chocolate," the code for bomb-making. "You know how in restaurants they have a mundu who helps the cook? That's the amount of respect we get. We're servants." He snapped a Kit Kat they'd bought from the dhaba. "Listen to how it snaps. What a delicate sound. It sounds like money. They probably spent more for this one chocolate, in setting up the factory, than they give us for one chocolate." He put a piece in his mouth.

Meraj watched.


Shockie said, "These small chocolates will achieve nothing."

Meraj shook his head absently.

"You're listening?" Shockie said. "Fuck it. It's useless talking to you."

This was not the best attitude to have, since they were soon on a five-hour bus to Gorakhpur, in India. A diesel-perfumed monster, its seats appeared ready to come loose from their moorings on the metal floor. Shockie looked out angrily at the landscape as Meraj drenched his shoulder with drool. How had this arid, dusty, ruthless part of the world become his life? Fighting for Kashmiri independence, he hadn't seen Kashmir in two years; he was an exile, and in those two years, he feared (with the unreasonable worry of all exiles) that Kashmir would have changed. What if it had become like this after all the warfare? What if the green had been exhausted and the placid mirror of Dal Lake had been smashed, revealing layers of dead bodies and desert that lay on the lake bed?

When he'd been growing up in the late 80s and early 90s, he was convinced that the bottom of the lake was choked with bodies, that each taut stem of lotus or water hyacinth tugged at the neck of a drowned person like a noose. Sometimes his friends and he boarded a shikara and went trawling, running their hands through the water, jumping back if they touched something, or if they saw a small drop of red floating by.

When Shockie looked out of the window again, it was evening. It occurred to him through his sleep that maybe even Uttar Pradesh had once been as pretty as Kashmir—only to be despoiled by wars and invasions.

Gorakhpur is one of the armpits of the universe. The best thing that can be said about it is that it is better than Azamgarh, which, along with Moradabad, competes in an imaginary inverse beauty pageant for the title of the world's ugliest town.

Shockie and Meraj disembarked and checked in at their usual hotel—a half-finished concrete building that had once been a godown and was crowned with rooms in a gallery on the first floor and now called Das Palace. (Though they called it Udaas Palace—Sad Palace.)

The room was even more awful than the ones they were assigned in Kathmandu. Mosquitoes swarmed through the gaps in the doorframe—the door did not fit properly. Meraj, alert after his nap on the bus, smeared his body with Odomos. "There's Japanese encephalitis here," he said, offering the tube to Shockie and savoring the name of the disease: He had once been a compounder.

Shockie accepted moodily. Alexander the Great had died from a mosquito bite, from malaria, he knew.

In the morning, when they had drunk tea served by the hunchback, the only apparent employee of the hotel, they went to visit the Jain.

The Jain sat on a cushion in an impeccable house, impeccable only on the inside, of course: Outside was a heap of roiling, shifting garbage, a heap that seemed a living thing with rats burrowing through it—swimming, really, floating in an unreal paradise of gnawables with pigs pushing aside layers of plastic and rotten trembling fruit with their snouts.

But the Jain's house, built like a Gujarati kothi, was oblivious to all this. The Jain was a boulder of a man with smooth coal-colored skin and a bald head offset by two equal tufts of hair. His nose was a beautiful chorus of tiny pores. He had large dark hands, whitish on the inside. He sat on his knees on a cushion in a white kurta, the rock of his paunch balanced before him.

"I had orchiopexy, you see—you know what that is?" he started. "When one of your testes doesn't descend." He must have been 29, 30. No one in this world was very old. "For years, I had lots of pain, and though I was strong, I couldn't run without losing my breath and getting a sharp pain in my torso. I used to always wonder why." The servant set down three earthen cups of tea; the Jain accepted his cup daintily in his large hands. "Now that I've had surgery I have all this energy. I can run five kilometers without stopping."

Where does the poor fellow run in this dump? Shockie wondered. But ideas of health, Western ideas, were spreading everywhere. Shockie himself was obsessed with exercise, with hanging from a rod in his doorway.

"Anyway," the Jain said, putting his large hands on his thighs, thighs the size of cricket bats, "I overdid it, so I have been advised to rest. Hence this cushion under me."

A fan turned overhead, raising a delicious current from the layers of sleeping air. It was dark in the drawing room, a welcome respite from the May heat of Gorakhpur.

The servant brought a VIP suitcase with a numbered lock, and the Jain twisted it open on his lap. "Count it," he said.

Meraj and Shockie each took a bundle in their hands and petaled the notes. Shockie was sleepy and slightly delirious; the room had a fan but not much air, and the smell of fresh money made him high. He kept losing count only to realize he'd been thinking of nothing, or rather, thinking of himself thinking.

When they had finally accounted for all the money, they dumped it into their kit bag and went off.

"You see what I was saying?" Shockie said, as they waited on the railway platform for the train to Delhi. "What we get is just a tip."

The money was not for them. It was to be dropped off with an agent in Delhi, part of a hawala money-laundering operation that sustained the group.

"But this is also for chocolate," Meraj said, speaking with the dazed clarity that comes to people in extreme heat.

"Just like that, it's for chocolate? If they have so many funds, why do you think they still bother to send us on such a long journey? Use your brain for once, Meru."

The train from Gorakhpur to Delhi could take anywhere from 15 to 30 hours, depending on the mood of the driver, the state of the tracks, accidents, and random occurrences. Meraj and Shockie settled into a third-class non-A/C sleeper compartment. Shockie was in a tired, despairing mood. He always got this way before action. It was like an advance mourning for his life. The vibrating bunks, stacked three to a wall; the mournful synthetic covers of the bunks, torn in places and looking smashed, with the webbed look of smashed things; the racing wheels underneath, like ladders of vertebrae being whipped; the sense of abject stinking wetness surrounding a train's journey through the universe—all these things filled Shockie with futility. The bogey was a jail cell ferrying him to a destiny he did not desire, his jaw on edge like the stiff end of his mother's iron.

Bougainvillea bloomed insanely here and there in the landscape.

Meraj kept waking up and falling asleep on the bunk across (they both had top bunks), and Shockie considered him with pity, surprise, even tenderness: People were closest to animals when they were sleeping and fighting for wakefulness. Or dying and fighting for life. What is Meraj dreaming about? he wondered. Probably the same thing as me—his own death—only through the obfuscating membrane of sleep. Meraj had been pulled out of a chemist's and beaten and tortured by the Jammu and Kashmir police a few years before.

At desolate stations in the depths of the subcontinent, Shockie got out and smoked, observing the blight of mildew on the walls, kicking away the twisted, disabled beggars who crowded around his feet cawing about their Hindu gods.

At the Old Delhi Railway Station, 20 hours after they had set out from Gorakhpur, an agent met them. The agent was a tall, hippy, pimply, nervous fellow in tight black new jeans. Shockie disliked him immediately. He had the slick, proprietary attitude that small men from big cities sometimes bring toward big men from small cities. He lorded everything over them. He didn't help them with their cricket kit bags. He asked them if they had ever been to Delhi before.

"Yes, hero," Shockie said, setting his emotional lips in a smirk.

"Let's go in different directions and meet at the car. It's parked behind," the agent, whose name was Taukir, said.

"Why do you want to do that?" Shockie said.

"You never know about the police these days."


"No," Shockie said. "What's safer is that we go together." 


The key to not being caught, Shockie knew, was to behave confidently.

They walked through the annihilating crowds to the car. From the high steel roofs of the station, birds raced down, avoiding a jungle gym of rafters and rods. People pressed and pushed as the trains hurtled through their routes of shit and piss, plastic and rubber burning weirdly in the background, spicing the air. The station was so bloated with people that the loss of a few would hardly be tragic or even important.

When a Sikh auntie leading a coolie into a maroon train jostled Shockie, Shockie shouted, "Hey!"

"Move!" the woman shrieked at him.


"You move, you witch."


And with that, she was gone, swallowed up by the dark maw of the train.

Invigorated, he lit a cigarette, broadening his shoulders as he brought the light to the Gold Flake hanging from his lips. He had always enjoyed the rudeness of Delhi.

A few minutes later, in Taukir's Maruti 800, Shockie gripped the plastic handrest above the window and looked out. Delhi—baked in exquisite concrete shapes—rose, cracked, spread out. It made no sense—the endlessness, the expanse. In Kashmir, no matter how confusing a town was, you could always shrink it down to size by looking at it from a hill. Delhi—flat, burning, mixed-up, smashed together from pieces of tin and tarpaulin, spreading on the arid plains of the north—offered no respite from itself. Delhi never ended. The houses along the road were like that too: jammed together, the balconies cramped with cycles, boxes, brooms, pots, clotheslines, buckets, the city minutely recreating itself down to the smallest cell. From one balcony, a boy with a runny nose waved to another. A woman with big haunches sat astride a stool next to a parked scooter; she was peeling onions into a steel plate and laughing. Before municipal walls painted with pictures of weapon-toting gods—meant to keep men from urinating—men urinated. Delhi. Fuck. I love it too.

Taukir lived with two spinsterish sisters and a mother whose eyes were dreamy with cataracts. The ladies served a hot lunch of watery daal and tinda and ghia, but Shockie was so excited he could barely eat. "No, no, bas," he said, whenever the younger of the sisters, not unattractive, gave him a phulka. The man and his house seemed very modern, with many cheap clocks adorning the walls; you had a sense that whatever money the family had earned had been spent on clothes.

"When can we go to buy the materials for the chocolate?" Shockie asked Taukir.

Shockie wasn't sure how much the sisters knew; he felt proud and confident nevertheless, puffed up like the phulka he set about tearing on his steel plate.

Taukir provided several ideas for where they could go.


"Chawri Bazaar is better than all those," Shockie said. 


After wiping his mouth with a towel, he signaled to Meraj, and they went out to buy materials. 


A car bomb is made by putting together a 9V battery, an LPG cylinder, a clock, a transformer, a mining detonator, and four meters of wire—red and yellow, to distinguish circuits. The cylinder is then put in the dicky, while the wiring and the timer are packed in the bonnet.

When bomb makers met one another, they inevitably looked at one another's hands.

The clock was easy to buy—they got it from a shop in Chandni Chowk, the Red Fort a merciless mirage in the distance. The 9V battery they acquired from an electrician's shop in Jangpura, where an old Punjabi man sat among sooty tables taking paternal pride in every piece of equipment. Shockie understood the fellow. He himself took a certain sensual, even feminine, pleasure in shopping for materials for a bomb; he might have been a man out to buy wedding fixtures for his beloved sister. But he had to keep his instinct for haggling and jolliness to a minimum. You had to make as little an impression as possible, and it was crucial to get material of the highest possible quality for the lowest possible price. You did not want your bomb to go phut when the day came—something that happened all the time, even to the best bomb makers. It had certainly happened to Shockie. One of his bombs had fizzled and let out a small burp of fire. This was in a market in Jaipur. He ran away before being caught, but two of his fingers were burned and had to be chopped off at the ends. He lost some feeling in his hand too, but it was for the best. It marked him as serious. When bomb makers met one another, they inevitably looked at one another's hands.

Taukir came along with them on these excursions, looking alternately keen-eyed and lanky and then despondent and distracted, one arm looped behind his back and clutching the other hand in that lackadaisical, half-stand-at-ease, half-chastised posture that is the hallmark of bored people at rest.

They shopped in a conspicuous group of three because the Indian police often prosecuted terrorists on circumstantial evidence, trying to damn them with statements like, "Why was he shopping alone with a shawl pulled over his face?" Thus, the revolutionaries reasoned, if you had three people carrying out a task meant for one, you defeated the police's logic with your illogic.

After two days of shopping in different parts of Delhi and arranging the materials on the floor of a room in Taukir's house—a room that obviously belonged to the sisters and mother, who had been sent away to the village the day after Shockie and Meraj arrived—Shockie said, "Now, let's see the car. It's still parked outside?"

Taukir let out a noncommittal sound.

"You've parked it somewhere else?" Shockie repeated, getting up from his chair and smoothing his curly hair, an unnatural motion for a man who liked the puffs and curls of his plumage.

"Ji, sir, that's my car," Taukir said, finding his voice.


"And where's the car for us?" Shockie said.


"Well, we have to steal it."


"I see," Shockie said. "Let me go steal it now."


Before Taukir could react, Shockie was up and heading outside the house. He came across Taukir's 800, the one in which they'd been driven from the station. Like every other vehicle in Delhi, it was a dented and dirt-spattered specimen, ruined as an old tooth.

As if conducting an examination, Shockie put his fist through the front window. The window came away, the crystalline fracture smeared with blood from his hairy arm.

"No!" Taukir screamed, coming outside. "What are you doing, sir?"

But Shockie said nothing, simply walking away, drops of blood falling on the earth.

The May heat was horrifying, violating the privacy of all things while also forcing you into yourself. Shockie closed his eyes against the ferocious prehistoric explosions of the sun. As he looked for a PCO from which to call headquarters and abort the mission—he had tied up his minor wound with a hankie—he cursed under his breath. They fucking want freedom, but this fucking cheapness will never go away .

When Shockie had headed out for the mission from Kathmandu, he had been reassured that he would not need to steal a car—he had fumbled this crime before, and besides, he disliked all aspects of the job that made him feel like a common criminal.

Packets of gutka dangled in front of a shop like strings on a bride's veil. Within the shop, the shopkeeper fished out items from the shelves with a pole. Shockie was about to ask the man if he knew where he could find a PCO when his eyes fell on another Maruti 800, parked on the side of the road—an ugly little blue thing with maroon fittings, tinted windows, and colorful plastic floral designs taped to the top of the windscreen.

The street was dense with scooters and bicyclists.

In a matter of seconds, Shockie bounded up to the car, hugged himself against the onslaught of vehicles and people, and then, in a swift motion that would have shocked anyone watching this avuncular fair fellow from a distance, put his hands on the petrol cap, stuck a blade under the metal, heaved with all his might, and ripped it off.

Every muscle in his left hand—his stronger hand, after that debacle in Jaipur—was afire. Carrying the petrol cap in his hand, making heavy strides in the traffic, he walked to Taukir's house.

Back at the house, Meraj and Taukir were playing cards on a sofa in sulky silence, light filtering dustily through the old Punjabi-style grilles of the house. The sofa had been put together by joining two metal trunks and covering it with a dhurrie.

"While you were sitting, I've done the job," Shockie said, coming in. He handed them the petrol cap.

"Was the car close by?" Meraj asked, turning it over.
 Taukir looked away.


"Give me some water, and go get a key made," Shockie instructed them.

While Taukir and Meraj had the key made at a shop (this was a flaw in the 800's design; the key used to open the petrol cap could also be used to start the car), Shockie feasted at a local dhaba and admired the women at the tables with their gluttonous husbands.

He wanted to ram his penis into their wives. He imagined pinning the dhaba owner's wife on a table and ripping off her kurta. Soon after, he went up to her and asked for another paratha. "Just one?" she said. She wore a nose ring and was obviously recently married.

"Yes, madam," he said, with the exceeding politeness of a man who has just imagined raping you.

Meraj and Taukir returned with a new key. 
But in the morning, when the three men walked down the alleys to the spot where Shockie had found the blue Maruti, it was gone. "Bhainchod," Shockie said. "I thought it belonged to that shopkeeper. It must be in the lane behind this one."

But after looking for a few hours, searching the neighborhood in an auto, they had still found nothing.
 So now, their mental scores settled, they did what they would have normally done—went to Nizamuddin, a rich neighborhood; found a shabby car orphaned outside a fancy house; stole the petrol cap; had the key made (at a different shop), and returned the next day and drove it away.

In an alley near Taukir's house, they removed the license plates from the stolen car, packed wires in the bonnet, and put the LPG cylinder in the back. Like a person sprinkling petals on a bed, Shockie grimly filled the dicky with nails and ball bearings and scrap. He rued the lack of ammonium nitrate—it would have been good to visit the agro fair and buy a sack. Fertilizer was more explosive than natural gas.

This part of the operation was the most dangerous—scarier than running amok in Delhi with the police possibly at your back. Bomb makers, like most people, are undone not by others but by themselves. Shockie knew countless stories of bomb makers who had lost eyes, limbs, hands, dicks to premature explosions; knew operatives who'd succeeded in blackening and burning their faces so that the skin peeled off for months and ran down their backs in rivulets, and they looked like hideous ghouls, unable to do the anonymous work of revolution without exciting the pitying, curious stares of onlookers—the same looks you hoped to elicit for the craters you left behind.

If anyone asked them, they were to say they had come to buy clothes and gifts for their sister's wedding.

Even the greats were not immune to this curse of bomb makers, Shockie knew. Take Ramzi Yousef. He flew to New York in 1993 without a visa, snuck into the country after being let go from an immigration prison in Queens (it was overcrowded), and then, after setting off practice fertilizer bombs in the New Jersey countryside, hired a man at a local mosque to drive a rented van packed with explosives into the basement of the World Trade Center.

The night the bomb went off, buckling but not capsizing the first tower, injuring thousands but killing only three, Yousef flew first class on Pakistan International Airlines over the plumes of his explosion. All good. But then he got to Pakistan and tried to assassinate Benazir Bhutto and ended up in the hospital with burns (the pipe bomb he'd been preparing exploded in his face as he tried to clean the lead azide in the pipe). The police suspected him, and he had to run away. A year or two later, he found himself in Manila. His plan was now to assassinate the pope, who was visiting, and Bill Clinton, who was coming to one-up the pope. His comrades and he had robes and crosses with which to Christianize themselves. On a plane from Manila to Tokyo, testing out a new device, he attached a tiny explosive fashioned from a Casio Databank watch under his seat. When he got off at Seoul's airport, the stopover, a Japanese businessman took his place. In midair, en route from Seoul to Tokyo, the seat exploded, painting the inner ribs of the aircraft with the guts of the businessman. The plane, weaving wildly through the air like a gutless firework rocket, did not crash.

So now, back in his Manila flat, Yousef—invincible, a genius of terror, perhaps the greatest terrorist who ever lived—cooked a virulent soup of chemicals on the stove. Or no. He was cooking to get rid of the evidence. But as the chemicals vanished, huge clouds of smoke appeared, and his comrades and he fled the apartment in fright, leaving behind chemistry books, canisters of fertilizer, passports, wires, Rough Rider condoms.

Yousef escaped to Pakistan but was arrested later in a hotel in Islamabad as he puffed his hair with gel and stuck explosives up the ass of a doll.

A genius of terror. Shockie's heart pounded. He wanted to be like Yousef, the Kashmiri Yousef, but even Yousef, who had shocked America— who had almost toppled a building that seemed to snick heaven like a finger, who had tried to blow up jetliners over the Pacific and kill the pope—even Yousef was fallible.

Shockie prayed as he attached the wires in the corroded belly of the car. Like so many rich people's cars, it was poorly maintained.

He blew the dust from the machinery with his mouth and inhaled the rich petroleum blackness. He made the other two men stand with him as he risked his face.

The bomb did not explode during assembly. But afterward he was tired; he had a headache and his arms hurt—more so than when he had violently tugged the scab of the petrol cap from the rump of the Maruti—and he stayed up all night on the bed of the spinsters, his head throbbing and the city mocking him with its million nocturnal honks, wondering: What will it be for? Am I ruining it by not sleeping? Will my nerves be too shot to pull off the blast?

They drove the car to the market the next evening. They were all bathed, and they had all gone to the mosque and prayed—even Shockie, who found prayer distasteful and feminine. They were in good clothes and disguised with thick spectacles and false mustaches (Meraj wore dark glasses, for contrast). If anyone asked them, they were to say they had come to buy clothes and gifts for their sister's wedding. They'd even brought pictures of a woman in a fake marriage album (not one of Taukir's sisters but a random pinup girl ripped from the walls of a seedy photography studio) to show how they were trying to buy wedding bangles that matched her dupatta.

Shockie, in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, had masturbated to this woman, completing the fantasy that had begun with the dhaba owner's bride.

The market was packed—just as he had hoped. It was a Sunday. Driving carefully through the obstacle course of pedestrians and cyclists and thelas, they entered the central square of Lajpat Nagar Market—if you could call it a square. Encroachment had softened the sides and the corners of the market; there were buildings and shacks on all sides, and a park in the middle with a rusted fence and rubbish collecting on the brown mound where grass had once grown. Shockie was pleased with this choice of venue. He'd visited Lajpat Nagar on his previous trip to Delhi and had decided, with his friend Malik, that it would make an excellent target.

They parked the car in front of Shingar Dupatte, a women's clothing shop.

Afire with nervous tics, they came out of the car. Shockie smoothed his hair, Meraj put on his dark glasses, and Taukir dusted off his tight black jeans.

Quite suddenly, a man appeared before them. "You can't park here," he said.


"Sir?" said Shockie.


"My son has to park his car here." The man was the owner of Shingar Dupatte—a short bald fellow with a mustache and a granitic head that appeared to hold every shade of brown.

"And who's your son—the king of Delhi?" Taukir asked.


"Come on, it's OK," Shockie said. 


At first he was appalled that Taukir would risk searing himself into the man's memory with an argument, but later he was grateful: Taukir had behaved as any rude Delhiite would, and besides, they were disguised.

Now, getting back into the car and reversing it, Shockie said, "Next time be quiet." This was already the worst mission he'd ever been on, he decided; his mind swarmed with images of the police, of torture, of life coming to a sudden end in Delhi. The only way out was to park close enough to Shingar Dupatte so that the nosy, rude proprietor—and his son—were killed. "You guys get out now, and I'll park. That guy is going to come after us again and ask us to move."

They did as he instructed, and Shockie maneuvered the car in front of a framing shop.

Within the shop, he caught sight of oil paintings of mountains—things yellowy and oozy with paint; a golden Ganesh; a Christ on a cross; a Rajasthani village woman. It was like a flashback a man might have as he dies, all the odd significant objects swirling into view over the heads of humming, commercially active humans.

He parked, jumped out, and walked away. He pressed a small jerry-rigged antenna in his hand and activated the timer, set to go off in five minutes. The proprietor of the framing shop looked at him, but Shockie smiled and waved back—as if he were a regular customer—and the man, seated fatly behind a counter, one of those counters that have a money drawer, looked confused and then smiled and waved back.

Shockie walked away from the central square. "Don't look; keep moving," he told the other men as he came across them in an alley. After a while they made it to the main road.

But the market—the market was noisy in its normal way. There was no disruption, no blast, nothing. "Shit," Shockie said. "But let's wait."

They threaded their way through the dark alleys, sweating, bad-breathed, anxious, melting in the heat. "It must be the cylinder," Shockie said finally, realizing the bomb had not gone off. "Let me go back and get it," he said. "Something must have gone wrong." He was ashamed. The eyes of his comrades were on him. Failure was failure—explanations solved nothing. His bravado had been for naught.

"We'll come," Meraj said.

"You should have helped when it was needed," Shockie said. "Now what's the point?"

"What if it goes off when you get in?" asked Taukir.


"Then do me a favor and say I martyred myself purposely."

The car was still there when he went back. For effect, he entered the framing shop. "How are you?" he said, bringing together his palms for the proprietor.

"Good, good. Business is fine—what else can one want?"

The proprietor was fair and doggish, with worry lines contorting his forehead. He had a serious look on his face, as if being surrounded by so many frames had made him conscious of being framed himself, of being watched.

Shockie went back to the car. As he turned the ignition, there were tears in his eyes. Instinctively preparing himself, he put a palm over his dick.

So this was how it would end. Pulling the gears, he backed out of the spot.

"I know what went wrong," Shockie said, when they were back in Taukir's house.

"What?" said Taukir, now feeling much closer to Shockie.

Shockie pointed to the yellow wires that he'd clipped from the contraption in the bonnet, picking them up in a loop the way one may pick up a punished animal by the ears. They had frayed in the heat.

"Let's just go tomorrow and try again," Meraj said irritably. He just wished the mission to be over.

"We can't," Taukir said. "The market is closed on Mondays. But Tuesday is a big day because it's the day after it's closed."

"We better send a message back to base," Meraj said sleepily. "The election is in four days." The bomb in Delhi was meant to be a signal to the central government about the elections they were organizing in Kashmir.

"Tell them that it was a wiring problem," Shockie replied. "They'll understand."

But Shockie was chastened. They were all chastened and disappointed with one another. Like men who have failed together, they wanted nothing more than to never see one another again.

On Tuesday, Shockie went alone to the market. But there was no pleasure in it. It was all anticlimax. And he could see the faces of the framing shop owner and the owner of Shingar Dupatte, how they would react when the bomb went off; and he felt sad, the way one always did when one knew the victims even a little.

Excerpted from THE ASSOCIATION OF SMALL BOMBS by Karan Mahajan (Viking, March 2016).

Venezuela Is Running Low on Condoms, Birth Control, and Shampoo

0
0

All photos by @Venusina_

This article originally appeared on VICE Mexico

"I don't enjoy sex as much as I used to, now that I can't come inside my girlfriend. It's too much pressure. It really changed my sex life," says Francisco Araujo, a 24-year-old Venezuelan civil engineer. "Late last year, I had to ask a family member in Miami to send me condoms. They have completely disappeared from the shops here."

Venezuela is one of the unsafest countries in the world, with one of the weakest economies. Thanks to a potent mix of hyperinflation, intense price and currency controls, disappointing oil revenue, and years of terrible governmental decision making, we're also blessed with the fact that very normal goods are extremely scarce here. You'll have to wait in line for hours or days to get your hands on them—and that's only when they sporadically come in. This obviously has a lot of implications on life in Venezuela—one of them being that some Venezuelans, given the scarcity of contraceptives, are wary to have sex.

"I have used Grindr a lot, since it's the fastest way to find a sexual partner. But I haven't as much over the last couple of years, since there's an enormous lack of condoms. I saved all the condoms I had and only use them if I really can't help myself," says 28-year-old Alejandro Bohorquez. "I'll try to suppress my urges or I don't penetrate. I'm afraid of getting an STI, so I honestly prefer abstinence, just to be safe."

in February 2016, the organization StopVIH received reports of pressing contraceptive shortages in Venezuelan states like Amazonas, Anzoategui, Aragua, Bolivar, Carabobo, Lara, Miranda, Monagas, Nueva Esparta, Sucre, Tachira, and Greater Caracas. That means that almost half of the population in Venezuela has difficulties in getting condoms, which in turn undermines prevention measures taken against HIV and other STIs, carried out by NGO's in the country. To make matters worse, Venezuela already has the third highest number of AIDS infections per resident in South America, and an extremely high teen pregnancy rate.

Several Instagram accounts offering contraceptives

But if you're really desperate for a condom or a pill and you can afford some crazy prices, you can usually find one. In Venezuela, we have two prices for everything—tires, milk, toothpaste, toilet paper, contraceptive pills, DirecTV, and plane tickets—due to the supply never being enough for the demand. There is the official price and the black market price. For example, if you can find a bottle of shampoo in the shop, and you're willing and able to wait in line for hours for it, the official price will be around 80 Venezuelan Bolívar, which amounts to about $12.50. On the black market, you'll always find something, but it'll be around 2000 Bolívar . If you have a dealer's phone number, that helps. A dealer can help you find almost anything, basically. If you don't have that, you'll find black market options on Facebook, Instagram, and sites like MercadoLibre—some accounts even provide 24 hour assistance, like a delivery service.

Below, I've specified some of the difficulties you can have trying to find the products you need as a Venezuelan with active genitalia.

CONDOMS

After a day of scouring 12 pharmacies to find condoms, I couldn't find any. The three above, I bummed off a few friends who had some condoms saved—they're the closest thing to protection I could find and afford in Venezuela. The condoms were 500 Bolívar a piece—about $79—and on the black market, you'd pay ten times more.

Our government has always feared the evil consumerist empire that is the United States of America, so it's great news that the contraceptive that is the easiest to get your hands on in Venezuela (although that's a relative term here) is called SEX USA. I would advise you not to get your nose too close to these things, because they smell horribly. I truly admire the boldness of the people I know who have tasted them—just opening the package makes me nauseous.

The condom on the right is called "Momentos," which means "Moments" and would be a better choice for your money than the condom on the left. I don't know about you, but if I pay that much for a single condom, I don't want a 1990s Shakira on the packaging staring at me, silently judging me, ruining my mood.

CHAVISTA CONDOM

The Chavista is also a condom, but it comes with its own special story. It was produced by the Chinese government to give to the people of Venezuela, as a solution to the shortage of imported condoms. The Venezuelan and the Chinese government have many trading deals together (China is Venezuela's second biggest trading partner), but this is, to my knowledge, the only kind of contraceptive the Chinese designed especially for us. The package reads "Bolivarian Government of Venezuela" and specifies that you can only "use it once," which is a helpful instruction on a condom package.

Again, I wasn't able to find any of these in the drugstore—the one in the picture, I borrowed from a friend.

THE PILL

Contraceptive pills are extremely sought after in Venezuela, but you won't find them in any pharmacy. The only way to get your hands on them is through a dealer. That's exactly as shady as it sounds, except that the product you call your dealer for is legal.

According to Daniela Parra, a 29-year-old Venezuelan pharmacist, "the scarcity of medicines in the country is up by 70 percent and it is the same for the pill. Women come to us offering ridiculous amounts of money or begging us to sell them pills, but unfortunately, we have nothing. I often tell people to try the black market, where products are sometimes even safer, but prices are ten to 12 times what you would've paid for it in the pharmacies. I also recommend that they keep an eye on the expiration dates of each product, too."

"If I can't get the pill in a pharmacy I'll wait for my contact at MercadoLibre to resupply, and I buy them with him," said 24-year-old María Betsabé. "It's not ideal but it's my only option, and paying ten times the normal price is better than not having them at all."

PADS

Menstrual pads aren't contraceptives, I'm aware of that, but they are one of the most sought after products by Venezuelan women, and they're only available on the black market—as are tampons. Due to their scarcity, the government had the bright idea of hosting workshops to teach women how to make their own pads, with fabric. That's right, instead of improving import conditions of basic goods so more pads can come into the country, the government would rather have Venezuelan women making there own pads, while watching a soap opera.

"Every Tuesday I have to queue up in order to buy regulated products that I can buy with my ID number. I would rather wait in line for six hours than pay what the black market charges," says Gladys Parra, a 56-year-old housewife. "That would save a lot of time, but unfortunately, everything in this country is so expensive, and I'd rather save as much as I can."

Follow Diego on Twitter.

A Brief Analysis of the NSFW Nudes of Big Celebrities Holding Big Fish

0
0

Hey long story short there's this campaign called 'FishLove' where celebrities – normally quite luvvy ones, quite actor-actor ones, the ones most likely to sincerely call you "darling", I mean England's Rose Kerry Katona is not going to be doing this any time soon – celebrities pose nude with under-appreciated fish to try and convince people to stop eating over-fished stuff like cod and instead eat a snapper or a lobster or whatever. I don't really know, either. I don't really know why someone dry-humping a smooth hound shark is meant to make you want to eat it. I don't know. If we all stopped eating cod, maybe this would end.

Anyway the... the photos are quite something:


(All photos via Fishlove/J. Edelstein)

Emma Thompson and her husband Greg Wise, 56, are being profiled by Evening Standard magazine about a new yoga retreat that they've pioneered that allows you not just to swim with dolphins, but fuck them, too. "Dolphins are gentle, intelligent lovers," Thompson says, running her finger along the entire length of an eel. "I've come to a crisis more times with my cetacean lover, Nar'u, then I ever have with my husband Greg." Wise has been locked in a downward-facing dog for 55 minutes, but finds time in his breathing routine to concur. "It's true," he shouts, puce and panicked. "I can't hit the crevices Nar'u can, not even half of the time." Wise's own aquamarine lover, Lenara, a five-year-old bottlenose, has been at sea for 18 months. "She decided she needed some time apart," he says, sadly. "I track her movements as well as her fertility cycle with this iPad app." A recent fishing expedition suggested Lenara was seen in swimming in a pod with several viable bulls. "It's been tough," Wise whispers. "It's been tough."

Miriam Margolyes is the all girls' school headmistress you always thought was a bit eccentric but who properly went off the deep end when they found that boy's skeleton down by the pond.

Mark Rylance was voted 'Oxford's Favourite Street Performer' six years in a row and landed a modest book deal with Hodder after a video of his unusual technique – posing nude while wearing a swordfish on his shoulder and singing a sort of folk mash-up of the Black Eyed Peas' 'My Humps' – went slightly viral. "I'm just an ordinary man," he told the Oxford Mail. "An ordinary man whose only friend is a dead swordfish."

Ballet dancer Gary Avis has just moved in with your mum and has an extremely lax attitude towards round-the-house nudity for someone who refuses to be referred to as your stepdad. "Oh, don't mind me girls," Gary Avis says. "I'm just making your mother some dinner for when she gets in from her djembe class. Salsa verde and a big fuck off Mahi Mahi. Anyone want som—? oh, you've all eaten. Well if you could clear the front room in a bit, then, yeah? I've got to do my stretches before the Archers."

Dougray Scott wants to know what the bare minimum you'll take for this smack is, becau— oh, you don't... no, it's fine. No I wasn't going to offer you the fish! Fuck off then!

Miriam Margolyes is ruddy-boned church hall improv drama teacher you always thought was a bit eccentric but who properly went off the deep end when she got electrocuted after putting a spade through a catering marquee power supply and got set on fire in front of that wedding.

Ade Edmundson doesn't care what these so-called medical professionals or his so-called family say: he's going to shun modern medicine ("Poison.") and treat his own late-onset adenoid disorder with nothing more than a lobster-heavy diet.

Alex Jennings' one-man show, 'I Can't Believe She Left Me!', accrued Edinburgh Festival's lowest ever aggregated review score, with critics citing the 20-minute monologue where Jennings plays the role of his own prostate as being "baffling" and "uncomfortable to the point of being hate speech".

Jodhi May has absolutely fucking ruined this dinner party, like she always fucking does, I know she's your sister but I'm going to stop inviting her.

Miriam Margolyes is the kindly Oxfam volunteer you always thought was a bit eccentric but who properly went off the deep end when she went to a How to Look Good Naked roadshow and Gok Wan hauled her on stage to shout directly into the cleft of her bangers.

Miriam Margolyes is the cat-loving dinnerlady you always thought was a bit eccentric but who really went off the deep end when Idris Elba took out a restraining order out on her.

Miriam Margolyes is the vegan café-owning great auntie who you always thought was a bit eccentric but who really went off the deep end after she came back from that charity skydive everyone saw on the news.

Miriam Margolyes was a fine local mayor until she accidentally saw video footage of all those horses being shot.

Miriam Margolyes used to come to your primary school and give little lectures about Jesus but stopped after she got hit by lightning and had to go on those pills.

Miriam Margolyes is the first ever female cricket umpire you always thought was a bit eccentric but who really went off the deep end when that suspension bridge she declared herself legally married to was destroyed by the council.

Miriam Margolyes truly, truly, has her fingers too deep in that fish for this to be in any way alright.

@joelgolby

More stuff from VICE:

A Deep Dive into the New England Football Team Official Euro 2016 Suit Photos

We Must Abolish Capitalism to Save the Animals

Shark Diving Teaches People Sharks Are Just Big, Beautiful Fish

We Asked Female Tennis Players if They Think Men Have 'Carried the Sport'

0
0

A competitor in a female tennis tournament in Windsor. Photo: Windsor Tennis Club via

Earlier today, Raymond Moore—the CEO of Indian Wells, the biggest tennis tournament in the world besides the Grand Slams—resigned with immediate effect. The announcement followed a press conference held ahead of the Indian Wells women's final, in which he remarked: "If I was a lady player, I'd go down every night on my knees and thank God that Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal were born, because they have carried this sport. They really have."

Moore went on to describe Eugenie Bouchard and Garbiñe Muguruza as "attractive prospects" in the world of tennis. When asked to clarify what he meant, he said they were both physically attractive and competitively attractive.

Women's tennis is the only widely-televised ball sport in which men and women both earn the same prize money and matches are given similar prominence. Equality within the sport has been hard fought for, so for one of its leading figures to use sexually aggressive language about the sport's biggest stars being on their knees, and then commenting on their physical appearance, was more than just sexist; it allowed others to reopen disputes that had long since been put to bed.

World number one, Novak Djokovic, chimed into the debate shortly after Moore made his comments, claiming that prize money should be "fairly distributed" based on "who attracts more attention, spectators, and who sells more tickets," seemingly implying that women should be penalized financially because, in some competitions, less people show up to their matches.

Serena Williams was just one of many female tennis players to hit back at the remarks, telling reporters, "We as women have come a long way. And we shouldn't have to drop to our knees at any point."

Moore and Djokovic's comments may have shaken the professional tennis world, but will they have any effect on grassroots level tennis? We spoke to some female tennis club members and staff to see whether they'll be assuming the position for Federer any time soon.

"Society has made us feel this way."

I am shocked that, in this day and age, we're still speaking about whether a woman has the right to be paid the same amount as a man. Both men and women put in the same amount of hours, effort, and pretty much their lives into tennis, so for one to be paid more because he gets more viewers on TV is ridiculous.

When I was younger I was an avid tennis player. As I grew older, the number of girls playing dropped, and soon the only players at the same level as me were boys, resulting in me being the only girl in my tennis team for a while. As new coaches came in, they would automatically assume I wasn't as fit or as good as the boys and put me in a less experienced team or make me "join the girls," regardless of their ability or age. Looking back, it is incredibly unfair and a huge assumption to make, but I do feel that society has made us feel this way, and it wasn't a reflection of my club in particular.

Victoria Sampson, college student and tennis player at Regents Park Tennis Club

Related: Watch 'Tennis at San Quentin Prison'

"Comments like this don't really help."

I think these comments will make female club members angry, more than anything. I don't think the CEO really appreciated the level of athleticism that female tennis players need to have to make it into the professional ranks. It's a bit insulting to women to suggest that they are just there to make up the numbers and don't have a contribution to make. We run a small tournament in Bolton and we offer equal prize money for the men's and women's singles—there are just as many people who watch them both.


Comments such as these don't help all the clubs who are fighting an uphill battle to retain female members; most clubs have more male members than women. There is always more pressure for women not to play sports, and comments like this don't really help. So I hope, for everyone's sake, Ray Moore is a dying breed of CEO.

Diane Hardman, tennis player and ex-chair of Bolton Tennis Federation

"He's wrong on so many levels."

Ray Moore is obviously more interested in money than the spirit of the game. He's wrong on so many levels, particularly that women's matches do not attract as much attention as the men's. It is only the top eight men who attract the bigger crowds, and these tend to be quarters, semi-finals and finals. Personally, I think the hype and advertising play a big part. The girls need to start featuring more on TV advertising and getting more promotional work.

Moore's comments won't have much of an effect on the overall game in the country, but they are certainly not helpful. His comments could indeed damage the aspirations of young female tennis players who are grinding away to make it.

Sue Lawson, Tennis Player and Youth Coach at Holcombe Brook Tennis Club, Greater Manchester.

"I don't think this is honestly that much of a big deal."

This is a very tricky topic. The way Moore put his point across was terrible, and obviously women have fought long and hard for equal prize money, but the only thing I will say is that the market forces for tickets tend to mean that the men's events are indeed more popular, so Djokovic does have a point.

But, funnily enough, the Indian Wells women's final was much better than the men's, in terms of excitement and the amount of people watching. Serena was beaten, which was a bigger story.

I don't think this is honestly that much of a big deal; it's not going to put the girls I coach off playing tennis. Role models such as Serena Williams and other female tennis players have a significantly bigger sway in determining a young girl's opinion—a great deal more than the views of an aging CEO of Indian Wells.

Alison Hannah, Head Coach at Westside Lawn Tennis Club, Wimbledon

Follow Amelia on Twitter.

Uncovering the Secret Locations Where the US Government Illegally Interrogates Its Captives

0
0

The swimming pool in the Hotel Gran Meli, Victoria, Palma de Mallorca. The rendition team and flight crew from N313P relaxed here in January of 2004 after the transfers of Binyam Mohamed from Morocco to Afghanistan and of Khaled el-Masri from Macedonia to Afghanistan. All photos © Edmund Clark, courtesy of Flowers Gallery London and New York.

Negative Publicity, a new book by investigator and journalist Crofton Black, and photographer Edmund Clark, offers a fascinating insight into the process of unearthing and documenting the extrajudicial arrests and interrogations that made up the covert "extraordinary rendition" system operated by the United States in the years after the September 11th attacks.

As explained in the quote from the Gibson, P. et al., Report of the Detainee Inquiry, UK Government, December 2013, at the book's opening, Extraordinary Rendition is a term "most commonly used to cover the extra-judicial transfer of an individual from one jurisdiction or state to another (as opposed to legally authorized methods of transfer such as extradition, deportation, or removal; processes which are subject to some judicial process or right of appeal). Over the last ten years, the term 'extraordinary rendition' has been used to cover rendition where there is a real risk of torture or improper treatment."

Using one US-operated interrogation site in Lithuania as a case study that reappears in documents including flight plans, emails, and legal proceedings, alongside Clark's discomfortingly sedate photos, Negative Publicity lays bare the "matrix of mundanity" that surrounded one of the most controversial processes to be born out of the "war on terror."

The forest surrounding Antaviliai, 12 miles north of Vilnius, Lithuania. In 2004, a few months before the Supreme Court ruled in Rasul vs Bush that prisoners at Guantanamo could challenge their detention through the US court system, the CIA began work on a new prison facility. It was in Antaviliai, a quiet hamlet surrounded by lakes and woods just outside the Lithuanian capital.

VICE: First off, how did you two come to work on this book together?
Edmund Clark: In 2011, while I was working on a body of work on Guantanamo Bay, I was in contact with Clive Stafford Smith at Reprieve and found out that they were doing work on extraordinary rendition. I met Crofton and discovered that was what he was also researching. I became interested in doing something on extraordinary rendition as a progression of my work on Guantanamo Bay.
Crofton Black: When he first came to me I'd been out in Lithuania, looking at this weird site—a warehouse that had been built in the woods in the middle of nowhere, on the site of a former riding school. I was building a court case around it, so when got in touch I said, 'Oh, you should go to Lithuania and take some photos of this strange, peculiar place.' Which he did. After that we started formulating a more complex and ambitious scheme of trying to document the black-site network through documents, images, and prose. We spent a long time working out how to fit it all together.
Clark: At first I was thinking of only focusing on this little hamlet in Lithuania, and the idea that this site of extraordinary geopolitical importance was in a former riding school in a forest. The idea developed and grew from that. I was talking to Crofton about what sorts of documents he had, which were really important, and he sent me loads of stuff to look at. Of course, I was looking at things in terms of what was visually impactful—how these documents transcend being bits of paper with information on them and become visual objects that told a story in themselves.

Offices of Sportsflight, Long Island, New York. Sportsflight was one of three brokers who assisted the CIA in procuring planes for prisoner transport.

How did you decide to work your photos into that body of visual evidence?
There was a point at which I was thinking about not even using photographs. I was planning on visualizing it all through documents, satellite imagery, found imagery... because what's the point in doing this worldwide photographic project about something where there's nothing to see? But then I think the photographs developed from the straightforward need to have imagery, which offered a counterpoint to what is some very dense documentation in the book. The act of taking the photos eventually became almost the point for me—even if all I could do was take a photo of a façade, I went there. That became a sort of act of testimony, and an act of reconstructing part of this network, of visualizing it.

Was it odd for you, Crofton, to have to think of your work in this visual, artistic way?
Black: I wanted to make the book in order to be able to do just that. I was aware that I had all this material, that there were remarkable stories and images and documents that were bizarre, and spoke beyond what was immediately visible in them. I knew I wanted to do something with it that was less dry than legal cases, which are quite dull. There was an opportunity to do something that spoke to a different, and bigger, audience.

A room formerly used for interrogations in the Libyan intelligence service facility at Tajoura, Tripoli

You mentioned the Lithuanian site. It's the key location in the book, and chapter-to-chapter it pops up again and again. Why did you select that site to serve as a sort of narrative thread for the book?
It's the site that has the most personal resonance for me. It's the one that I've worked the most on and one I developed from the ground up, more or less. Lots of other cases I picked up halfway through then ran with. But when I started on the Lithuania case there was almost nothing, aside from an ABC News piece that claimed there was a rendition site in Lithuania. There was no evidence, no documents, no planes. Historically, plane tracking has been the way people investigated rendition. It was the way to tie people to certain countries. But when you got to Lithuania, there were no planes. None of the data that had been compiled by anyone had any planes going through Lithuania—it was a black hole. I set out to fill that hole. Of course, it's also such an odd story...

Yes—the idea of this pristine, modern, windowless building popping up almost overnight, behind awnings, next to this tiny, rural hamlet.
Imagine how weird it would be if you grew up in that village! Of all the strange events that this aspect of the war on terror has created, this one—for me—was one of the strangest.
Clark: I found it compelling. Crofton is right—it was, in a way, the center of this whole situation—a nondescript hamlet, 45 minutes from Vilnius. One thing we tried to do with this book was to show that this process wasn't something exotic handled by the government or the CIA; it was outsourced to small companies, taking place in these unremarkable places. Places which are incredibly ordinary. The extension of that is that our airports were used, our airspace—we are all implicated, all complicit in this, because it was happening in our world.

Office of Legal Counsel, Memorandum for John Rizzo: Interrogation of an al-Qaeda Operative, August 1, 2002. At the end of March 2002, the Palestinian known as Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan. American agents transported him to Thailand where, in a secret location, they tried various means of eliciting information from him. By the end of July, the CIA felt it necessary to obtain in writing legal advice from the Department of Justice relating to the techniques that they were using on him.

That ties into something else I really got from the book. From the photos of the pools in hotels where pilots stayed, down to the documents and invoices—they offer hints about the very normal people involved. I think when people think of "extraordinary rendition" they think of that sort of Zero Dark Thirty black-ops world. But this book lays bare the tawdriness of reality. Was demystifying the process a key aim?
Black: Obviously, post-Hannah Arendt, "the banality of evil" has become a standardized phrase. For me, one of the places you see it most strongly is in bureaucracy: in these documents, in the way they are written, the way certain forms of interrogation are described, or flight routes are detailed. I wanted to make that point. None of these things would be possible without a complex bureaucratic system enabling them. In theory, the idea of a bureaucracy is that everything has its place and gets done by the right person. But in practice it often means that no one is responsible for anything. And that's what we found in Eastern Europe—no one was responsible. There's no one in Poland or Lithuania who is responsible for any of this stuff!
Clark: That's something we wanted to bring out: the ordinariness, the banality of it all. When she spoke of the banality of evil, Hannah Arendt was talking about the bureaucracy of National Socialism. Here, we are talking about a mosaic of small companies—small to medium enterprises—earning a buck.

CIA Inspector General, Special Review: Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001–October 2003), dated May 7, 2004. Declassified in redacted form in August 2009

I remember one email with an emoticon in it. In the context of interrogation—and, by extension, torture—it was extremely strange to see.
Yes, there was another email when someone talked about changing the flight itinerary to make sure it passed the "giggle-test." People knew what they were doing. Or did they...? Did they know what they were carrying? Who it was? The court case in the book is not a case about anything more than a payment dispute. A squabble over how much was paid for a certain amount of hours a plane was in the air. It's nothing to do with the person who was the cargo, they were subject to extrajudicial detention and transportation to be interrogated. That just doesn't come up. So yes—it's banal. The pictures are, at times, banal. Some of the sites were banal to document. And the paper trail of bureaucracy is also, at times, banal. But it does raise ethical questions that are quite profound.


Cross-examination of Mahlon Richards. Richmor Aviation, Inc. vs Sportsflight Air, Inc., 2 July 2009. The case of Richmor vs Sportsflight centered on Richmor's argument that after the termination of an initial six-month contract for flight services in 2002, they continued for another three years to have a legitimate expectation of a minimum of 50 flying hours per month.

The reproduction of the paper trails you followed, and the notes accompanying them, form a large part of the book. One thing I almost found reassuring was that this paper trail did exist. Even the US government has to file all these invoices.
Black: Most of the paperwork in the book is from other entities or other countries. If they wanted to have an entirely secret prison system, they shouldn't have invented one that involved flying prisoners all over the world. You simply can't fly a plane from A to B without leaving a gigantic paper trail. You just can't, otherwise planes would be bumping into each other. They could have just held their 119 prisoners in Afghanistan and we would probably have found it an awful lot more difficult to find out about it. But the peculiarities of how they wanted—or, at times, were forced to—use different locations... that made it detectable.

There's a part in the book where you, Edmund, talk about the difficulty of deciding whether or not to publish a photo you took of the private home of someone involved in this process. What are your gut feelings about where the buck stops in this insane, Kafkaesque bureaucracy?
It's something we have thought about a lot. We took the decision in producing this book that we weren't going to publish any names that had not already been published elsewhere. We could easily have included more. In that respect, of course, we have redacted our own work.
Clark: Where does the buck stop? I think with our governments, with those individuals involved in the process who possibly knew what they were doing. And, in some way, the buck stops with all of us, because it's being done in our names, and probably on the basis of it being the least of all possible evils. And that's not a justification. I would parallel it with control orders in the UK, where it's now possible for the government to detain people without any due legal process. That's overturned 800 years of habeas corpus. You can now hold people without legal process based on secret evidence; is that actually for the greater good? To that extent, we all deal with that buck.

Negative Publicity is out now, published by Aperture.

A selection of works from Negative Publicity: Artefacts of Extraordinary Rendition will go on display for the first time in the UK at a forthcoming free exhibition at IWM London, running from the July 28, 2016 to August 28, 2017. The show will bring together several series of Edmund Clark's recent work, including Control Order House and Section 4 Part 20: One Day on a Saturday, to explore hidden experiences of state control, touching on issues of security, legality, and ethics during the "Global War on Terror."

Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Has Died

0
0


Previous Toronto Mayor Rob Ford leaving a press conference prior to a meeting at Ottawa City Hall in February 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has died.

Ford, 46, who had a rare form of cancer, spent the last few days in palliative care at Toronto's Mount Sinai hospital as his condition worsened.

In a statement released Tuesday morning, his family said he had died.

"With heavy hearts and profound sadness, the Ford family announces the passing of their beloved son, brother, husband, and father, Rob Ford," the statement says.

"A dedicated man of the people, Councillor Ford spent his life serving the citizens of Toronto."

Ford had two small children, Stephanie and Douglas, with his wife Renata. He is also survived by his mother Diane, brothers Doug and Randy, and his sister Kathy.

After being diagnosed with pleomorphic liposarcoma, a cancer that grows in soft connective tissues, in September 2014, Ford, who was incumbent mayor seeking re-election at the time, dropped out of the race. His older brother Doug Ford replaced him as the candidate but was defeated by John Tory.

At the time of his death, Ford was serving as a councillor for Ward 2, Etobicoke North.

Ford underwent surgery for his cancer last May but doctors later discovered additional tumours on his bladder. On Thursday, he was admitted to Mount Sinai.

Ford was mayor of Toronto from 2010-2014, during which time he drummed up much controversy, primarily due to his substance abuse issues.

In May 2013, journalists at both Gawker and the Toronto Star revealed they had witnessed a cellphone video in which Ford appeared to be smoking from a crack pipe. The same footage reportedly showed Ford calling Justin Trudeau a "fag." Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair later told the public he had seen a video that corroborated the media reports.

After months of being hounded by the media, and a mass exodus amongst his staffers, Ford admitted to having smoked crack cocaine.

"Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine," he said at a scrum at City Hall. "Have I tried it? Probably in one of my drunken stupors."

But he claimed he wasn't an addict.

The story that made international headlines and landed Ford mentions and appearances on late-night American talk shows.

Ford entered rehab in spring 2014, which he described as "amazing" in an interview with the Toronto Sun.

Over the years, Ford had also been accused of public intoxication, drinking and driving, and associating with criminals, including Alexander "Sandro" Lisi, Ford's sometimes driver who was accused of extortion for trying to obtain the Ford crack video.

Prior to becoming mayor, Ford was a Toronto city councillor, first elected to office in 2000. He primarily campaigned to stop the "gravy train" at City Hall and to respect taxpayers. He was known for returning his constituents phone calls.

Ford's father, Doug Ford Sr. was an Ontario Conservative and businessman who founded Deco Labels & Tags Limited; the company made the family multimillionaires.

Despite being a highly controversial figure, tributes were pouring in for Ford Tuesday, and flags on official city poles in Toronto were flying at half mast.

"He rehabilitated himself only to face this. It just doesn't feel fair," said Toronto Councillor Norm Kelly, while Mayor John Tory described Ford as, "above all else, a profoundly human guy whose presence in our city will be missed."

Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose, in a statement released this morning said Ford was a "tireless fighter for the taxpayer and a true advocate for the people he represented."

In an op-ed published in Maclean's, Ford's former chief of staff Mark Towhey described Ford as "the best of mayors and the worst of mayors."

He said hundreds of thousands of people loved the mayor, a "larger than life" figure, and at least as many hated him.

"Those of us who worked closely with him will always wonder 'What could have been, if only?' We'll never know. Like it or not, ready or not, we've got to let you go, Buddy."

The Ford family said it will not be taking questions from the media at this time, but details on a memorial service will follow.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.


The VICE Guide to the 2016 Election: Whatever Happened to Arizona's Minutemen?

0
0

Jim Gilchrist truly believes he's an American hero. Gilchrist—a co-founder of the Minutemen Project, a now-defunct civilian border militia—insists it was his group's actions that led to the conservative fervor over cracking down on illegal immigration. He traces the current Republican discourse on the issue—Donald Trump's infamous Wall, the renewed interest in revoking birthright citizenship, the calls for mass deportations back to his movement, which mobilized hundreds of armed vigilantes to fend off migrants at the US-Mexico border back in the spring of 2005.

"We had 1,200 people show up that April, manning 36 makeshift outposts on 23 miles of the border in Arizona. They set up tents, homemade lean-tos, sleeping bags, and RV's. Half of them were armed, with pistols and revolvers and some rifles," Gilchrist said, reminiscing on his group's 30-day border campaign that drew national media coverage. "It attracted many more people than I thought—it grew legs of its own."

Gilchrist, who is now 67, drove between the outposts in his green army vest, blue jeans, and hiking boots, carrying PowerBars, water, and his Colt 45 handgun.

Between 2004 and 2009, Gilchrist's Minutemen were a powerful force in the anti-immigration movement, drawing in thousands of members who believed the government was doing too little to stop border crossings, and subsequently felt they should take enforcement into their own hands. The anti-establishment coalition—composed largely of veterans and retirees—tried to cover the border with "outposts," sometimes as barebones as lawn chairs, to block immigrants from coming into the US from Mexico. The movement fell apart after a few prominent members were arrested on murder and sex abuse charges, but their mark on conservative ideology had already been made, resulting in the passage of stringent anti-immigration legislation in several states.

Now, years after the movement's disintegration, the Minutemen are making headlines again—this time, in the 2016 presidential race. During a primary debate in Miami this month, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton accused her opponent, Bernie Sanders, of supporting the group by voting for a 2006 amendment that prevented the US Department of Homeland Security from "providing a foreign government with information relating to the activities of an organized volunteer civilian action group," including the Minutemen.

According to Clinton, the vote amounted to tacit support for the vigilantes, who at the time were circulating a conspiracy theory that American border officials were tipping off the Mexican government to their "patrols." Unsurprisingly, Sanders has vehemently insisted that he "does not support vigilantes." But the attack has nonetheless become a central part of the Clinton campaign's argument against Sanders' immigration record, and has been repeated often by the frontrunner's surrogates in the lead up to Arizona's presidential nominating contest Tuesday.

While Democrats have used the Minutemen as a symbol for anti-immigration extremism, the Republican presidential candidates seem to have embraced the movement's message, if not the vigilantes themselves. In fact, Gilchrist thinks the his group deserves credit for informing the GOP field's positions on the topic of immigration.

"My mission has been accomplished, and that was to force national awareness of the immigration issue," Gilchrist told me. "Now every political candidate has a platform on immigration. The Minutemen even inspired the Tea Party."

On Vice on HBO: Meet the Domestic Right-Wing Vigilantes 'Defending' America's Borders

But while the legacy of the Minutemen may be imprinted on the Republican Party platform, the group itself has largely disappeared. Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said this dissipation was largely because the movement's message was co-opted by the conservative establishment, which began pushing increasingly extreme immigration measures towards the end of the last decade.

"We saw even more radical legislation coming out of Alabama and Arizona than what was proposed by the Minutemen," Potok said. "When more extreme legislatures around the country began to take up this cause, there was not really a purpose for the Minutemen."

The grassroots movement also splintered into rival factions, according to Harel Shapira, who embedded with the border vigilantes for years while writing his book Waiting for San Jose: The Minutemen's Pursuit of America. At its peak, Shapira said, the Minutemen Project had 12,000 official members. But when Gilchrist and his fellow co-founder Chris Simcox ran for political office, many of those members felt alienated from the movement. (Gilchrist ran for a congressional seat in Orange County, California, in 2005, winning 25 percent of the vote, and Simcox ran for US Senate in Arizona in 2010. Neither bid was successful.)

"Even though they didn't win, politicians started referencing members in speeches, so the Minutemen entered the public discourse and started getting much more money," Shapira said. "But for rank-and-file members, this was precisely what they didn't want. Part of the appeal was that it as anti-government."

The group was further splintered when two prominent members, including Simcox, were charged with horrific crimes: In 2009, Minutemen member Shawna Forde was charged with killing a girl and her father in an Arizona home invasion; Simcox was arrested in 2013 for sexually abusing three young girls, including his daughter (his trial starts next month).

But while the Minutemen Project may have fallen apart, many of its former members have found other vigilante pursuits, founding new civilian militias. Some, like Arizona Border Recon, continue to focus on patrolling the border for illegal crossings. Founded in 2011, Arizona Border Recon is mostly made up of veterans and ex-law enforcement, and has the stated mission of protecting America's "back door." Others groups operate like bounty hunters, traveling around Arizona to serve people with arrest warrants, or in an attempt to protect the border from terrorist threats.

"People who were original members of the Minutemen in Arizona are still down on the border patrolling," Shapira said. "The discourse is the same in that they're defending America from invasion, but now the focus is ISIS."

Former Minuteman member Pete Lanteri, who became well-known for organizing the Long Island, New York, chapter of the group, now runs his own "school," a sort of training course in vigilante justice that prepares civilians for combat and other emergencies. Lanteri told me his group has "firearms, medical, and communications training, in cases of active shooters."

Most recently, Lanteri ran the conspiracy-infused civilian operation known as Counter Jade Helm, which surveyed the US military exercise Jade Helm in the Southern US last year. These days, he makes trips to patrol the border as often as he can. "A lot of us are still doing border operations, just under other groups," he told me.

Despite this continued enthusiasm for monitoring the border, Gilchrist has struggled to organize further actions. He told me he was forced to cancelhis latest planned mission, something he called "Operation Normandy," after failing to rally sufficient troops.

"People didn't want to show up to fight when there was so much infighting about who is better to conduct this kind of operation," Gilchrist said of his fragmented movement. "We had about 2,200 responses, but realistically, only 10 percent of responders show up to fight—so around 200, which would be just a drop in the bucket."

Though many former members have long since turned on one another, Howie Morgan, a former Minuteman who ran Gilchrist's congressional campaign, maintains that the group has already done fulfilled its original mission, forcing American politicians to steer more resources into beefing up law enforcement and security at the southern border.

"We wanted them to hire more patrols, to build a bigger wall and let's face it—immigration has been the number one, two, or three issue in Republican politics in the last decade," Morgan said. "Why is that so? Because Jim started this and said, 'We're not taking this anymore.'"

"What is the thing that took Donald Trump to the front of the race?" Morgan demanded. "He said we still haven't fixed the border. To say we're not relevant is ridiculous."

Follow Meredith Hoffman on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Here's What US Politicians Are Saying About the Terror Attacks in Brussels

0
0

Donald Trump on the stump. Photo via Flickr user Michael Vadon

On Tuesday, three bombings in Brussels—two at Zaventem airport's departure area and a third on a subway train at Maelbeek metro station—left at least 30 people dead and over 200 more injured. The attacks followed the arrest on Friday of Belgian-born Salah Abdeslam, believed to be one of ten people directly involved in the November attacks that killed 130 in Paris. The Islamic State was quick to claim responsibility for the attacks in Belgium in a posting by an affiliated news agency called Amaq.

In the United States, President Obama and the bevy of candidates running to succeed him roundly denounced the tragedy early Tuesday, offering condolences as well as more pointed vows and potential policy responses. As you might expect, Donald Trump had the most colorful—and lengthy—take.

Here's a round-up of what the people who run—or want to run—America are saying.

President Obama

"The thoughts and the prayers of the American people are with the people of Belgium. We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people," the President said at a televised press conference in Cuba. "We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible. And this is yet another reminder that the world must unite. We must be together regardless of nationality, race, or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism. We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world."

Donald Trump

"Brussels was a beautiful city, a beautiful place with zero crime. And now it's a disaster city. It's a total disaster and we have to be very careful in the United States," the Republican frontrunner told Fox and Friends Tuesday.

"We have no idea what's happening. Our government has absolutely no idea what's happening, but they're coming into our country," he continued. "They're coming in by the thousands and just watch what happens. I'm a pretty good prognosticator...just watch what happens over the years. It won't be pretty."

In another interview with Today, Trump once again said he wants to tighten the border and use harsh, extra-legal tactics on terrorist suspects like Abdeslam. "I would be very, very tough on the borders , and I would be not allowing certain people to come into this country without absolute perfect documentation," he said, also promising, "Waterboarding would be fine. If they could expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding. You have to get the information from these people."

The candidate also told CBS, "They have areas in Brussels where the police can't even go. The police are afraid to go there. The police don't even go there. It's a mess. And if you look at Paris, believe me it's the same thing. It's pretty close. It'll be the same thing. It might be worse, if you want to know the truth. So you know, all of these cities that we think so much of, they're from different planets right now, all because you allowed people into the cities that shouldn't be in there, frankly."

HILLARY CLINTON

"Terrorists have once again struck at the heart of Europe, but their campaign of hate and fear will not succeed. The people of Brussels, of Europe, and of the world will not be intimidated by these vicious killers," the 2016 presidential candidate said in a statement making the rounds on Twitter Tuesday. "Today Americans stand in solidarity with our European allies. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those killed and wounded, and all the people of Belgium. These terrorists seek to undermine the democratic values that are the foundation of our alliance and our way of life, but they will never succeed. Today's attacks will only strengthen our resolve to stand together as allies and defeat terrorism and radical jihadism around the world."

"This is a time for us to reaffirm our solidarity with our European friends and allies, individually and through NATO," sheaddedin an interview of her own onToday.

Ted Cruz

"Radical Islam is at war with us. For over seven years we have had a president who refuses to acknowledge this reality. And the truth is, we can never hope to defeat this evil so long as we refuse to even name it," the Republican Senator from Texas posted on his Facebook page. "That ends on January 20, 2017, when I am sworn in as president. We will name our enemy—radical Islamic terrorism. And we will defeat it."

In a news conference on Capitol Hill Tuesday, Cruz added, "President Obama should be back in America keeping this country safe. Or President Obama should be planning to travel to Brussels."

Bernie Sanders

"We offer our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones in this barbaric attack and to the people of Brussels who were the target of another cowardly attempt to terrorize innocent civilians," the Democratic Senator from Vermont competing with Clinton for their party's 2016 presidential nomination said in a statement. "We stand with our European allies to offer any necessary assistance in these difficult times.

"Today's attack is a brutal reminder that the international community must come together to destroy ISIS," Sanders added. "This type of barbarism cannot be allowed to continue."

John Kasich

"We and our allies must rededicate ourselves to these values of freedom and human rights. We must utterly reject the use of deadly acts of terror," the Republican candidate and Ohio governor said in a statement on Twitter.

"We must also redouble our efforts with our allies to identify, root out and destroy the perpetrators of such acts of evil," he added. "We must strengthen our alliances as our way of life and the international system that has been built on our common values since the end of the Second World War comes under challenge from these and other actors of evil."

After Two Years in Solitary, This Mother’s Healing Has Just Begun

0
0

In this July 23, 2015 file photo, Candie Hailey, center, speaks during a monthly rally calling for the end of solitary confinement in New York.(AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)

Last May, a jury in the Bronx found Candie Hailey not guilty of attempted murder, freeing her from a long and brutal stretch of pretrial confinement on New York's notoriously violent Rikers Island jail complex. But for Hailey, welcome as it was, the verdict didn't come soon enough: Over the course of more than three years on the island, she spent the majority of her time in the severe isolation of a six-by-ten-foot solitary confinement cell, awaiting her day in court. While she endured bewildering delays in the Bronx's famously sclerotic criminal justice system, Hailey attempted suicide multiple times.

One attempt saw the 32-year-old swallow a hair removal product.

As arduous as her time on Rikers was, Hailey's acquittal did not mark the end of her battle with New York City. Even after the jury cleared her on the initial charges that got her arrested, the Bronx district attorney's office pursued her with felony criminal mischief and other charges, some related to an incident in which she allegedly broke a jailhouse chair.

Finally, on Monday afternoon, Hailey's odyssey with the local criminal justice system came to an end when a Bronx judge asked prosecutors to drop all remaining criminal charges. In return, Hailey agreed to plead guilty to several non-criminal disorderly conduct infractions punishable by a fine, ending the latest disturbing saga set in a jail under national scrutiny and facing calls from local and state officials to close shop entirely.

By 4 PM, the mother of two had left the court for what she hopes is the last time.

"She leaves today with a completely clean record," Hailey's lawyer, Patrick Higgins, told me shortly after the bench trial was over. "Now she can get on with her life."

For Hailey, the outcome was a bittersweet one: She's finally free of prosecution, but says the years in solitary confinement have made her a profoundly different person. "I'm talking to you and I'm alive," she told me over the phone late Monday, "but physically, spiritually, mentally—I died."

After years in an isolation cell, Hailey says she struggles to carry on conversations with people, as she often loses her train of thought mid-sentence or suddenly fears that her words are not making sense. She now wears glasses because, she claims, lacking access to books in solitary confinement, she was left to reread a tiny-print pocket bible until her vision permanently blurred. Hailey adds that she finds it difficult to sleep at night because the walls in her the bedroom she shares with three other women are blue—like her old cell. And she now prefers to sleep with the lights on, as in her isolation cell, where she believed illumination helped keep rodents and bugs off of her sleeping body.

When she does manage to sleep now, Hailey says she sometimes wakes up after dreaming about Rikers.

"I have nightmares that I'm still in solitary, and when I wake up and look around and say, 'Okay, I'm not in solitary,' it's hard to go back to sleep," she said.

Last month, the Associated Press's Jake Pearson profiled Hailey's time on Rikers and subsequent struggle to regain her footing in society after more than two years in isolation. It seemed to epitomize the urgent problems facing the Rikers Island jail complex, which inmates, experts, and advocates often describe as a civil rights catastrophe.

Hailey's case touches some of the most pressing problems at the jail.

Having reportedly been diagnosed with borderline character disorder while in Rikers, the jail's harsh conditions weighed severely on Hailey's emotional state. But the facility provided little in the way of meaningful mental health services: By the AP's account, in response to Hailey's suicide attempts, the jail's administration often simply sent her to solitary confinement, which made things worse. She fought with other inmates and even smeared her body with feces at one point, and yet the jail's psychologists apparently dismissed her as strategically deploying misbehavior to seek more favorable conditions.

"Punitive segregation should be used sparsely and with careful consideration—which is why we've reduced the number of people in punitive segregation by about 75 percent," a New York City Department of Correction (DOC) spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday. "Everyone in our custody deserves to be treated safely and humanely, and we've added numerous alternative housing options to provide rehabilitative discipline. From new mental health training to expanded education for inmates, we're taking aggressive steps to keep our inmates safe and provide them with tools to build productive lives once they leave."

A 2014 New Yorker profile of a former Rikers inmate named Kalief Browder, who also spent some two years in solitary confinement, catapulted the excesses of pretrial incarceration into the national discourse. Browder, whose charges were also ultimately dismissed after he went three years without trial, struggled to rebuild his life and, in June of last year, committed suicide.

The terrors of isolation can cause inmates who might not otherwise break rules to accumulate new criminal charges while incarcerated, experts and advocates say.

"Inmates can become more difficult to deal with as they suffer the effects of isolation and they try to figure out some way to maintain their mental heath," said Taylor Pendergrass, a senior staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union. He argues that, because of its severe consequences, solitary confinement must be avoided categorically. The problem, of course, is that on Rikers, isolation has been used as a go-to tool of enforcing basic discipline. "Like a lot of other places, Rikers has been practicing that form of just routine and punishing isolation for a very long time," the advocate added.

In recent years, thanks in part to a scathing 2014 investigation by the Justice Department, reformers have won a slate of changes at the jail complex. They include a halt to the use of solitary confinement for 16- and 17-year-olds—with plans to expand that up to age 21 this year—and the creation of new programs like CAPS (Clinical Alternative to Punitive Segregation) for mentally ill inmates who clash with guards. "I think the changes that are under way there are all heading in the right direction," Pendergrass told me, "but I don't think anyone is under the illusion that it's going to be an easy or quick process."

A growing chorus of activists and politicians—including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo—have voiced support for the idea that problems at Rikers are too deep for mere reform, and that the island jail must be closed altogether. A recently-formed commission on Rikers called for by City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito could recommend shutting it down.

Higgins, the attorney, noted that the jailhouse charges against Hailey were initiated before the state lost its initial case, but said he's never seen prosecutors pursue felony charges against a Rikers inmate for criminal mischief. "I think it was a situation where Candie was in there an awfully long time and the correction officers took an considerable dislike to her," Higgins told me. "I think there was some retaliation in some of the charges she faced. You don't often see criminal mischief charges like this."

Hailey said that, to celebrate the win in court, she had wanted to go get seafood, but couldn't afford it. In fact, she said couldn't even afford the bus ride back to her temporary room in Harlem. "I asked some bus drivers," she told me. "The first two said, 'No,' but the last one was hesitant, but he said 'Okay, I'll let you on.'" A mother of two, Hailey says she occasionally braids hair for money, and eventually wants to return to school to pursue either a degree in adult education or law.

She adds that there's one thing she knows with certainty: She will continue to pursue activist work to oppose solitary confinement in jails.

"It's torture," Hailey told me. "There's no other way to describe it but torture."

Follow Spencer Woodman on Twitter.

This Book About Skinheads Might Capture How You Feel About Oshawa

0
0


All photos by Colin Medley

There's a certain strain of teen folklore that could maybe be a sombre cautionary tale, but is more often delivered like a grandstanding party trick. That death-by-rope-swing accident. Your buddy's improvised dentistry. How so-and-so's left fingers were never seen again.

Growing up in the south end of Oshawa, a gloomy quasi-industrial Ontario city 60 kilometres outside of Toronto, author Andrew F. Sullivan has heard plenty of morbid rumours like these.

"They built my elementary school right beside a train track," he recalled—apparently an endless source of stories about frisbee throwers' amputated legs.


"There'd be ones about cops showing up to a bush party, and someone throwing a can of aerosol paint into the fire," he told VICE, "it went horribly wrong, and a kid actually got impaled with a chunk of aerosol spray can... stuff like that was passed around my schools."

Often tinged with sex or violence, it's the kind of chatter that's especially familiar if your hometown happens to be wedged between farmland and one of Canada's more respectable cities. (At the very least, it's something I relate to, being from London, Ontario).

In his debut novel Waste, Sullivan takes that rumour-milled lens and points it right back at the town of his childhood, known to many simply as the 'Shwa. The result is both nostalgic and timely—a sideways look at a city's underbelly animated by skinheads, head trauma, ZZ Top beards and exotic pet owning drug dealers.


Oshawa denizens have already praised the book for its attention to setting and aesthetic. In the Walrus last week, Jay Hosking recounts the landmarks that featured prominently in his own experience growing up: "The sad strip-club hotel along the baseline, the Dynasty, which everyone called 'Da Nasty'? That was really there," he wrote. "The abandoned psychiatric facility, the Iron Maiden blaring from basement apartments, and the rundown housing on Olive Avenue? These were givens if you were born and raised in Oshawa before 1990."

It's not just recognizable buildings that make the book seem necessary—it also reminds how full of darkness and desperation youth can be. Sullivan draws on experience working at liquor warehouses and butcher counters, referencing his own life as if it were trivia. It's a bizarro documentation not often seen in Canada's literary scene, but its core commentary resonates much further down the 401.

The story follows Jamie and Moses, two guys working a meat counter in the fictional town Larkhill. "I did pick a different name because it's also parts of London, Peterborough, Hamilton, Windsor," Sullivan said. "These are our blue collar former industry towns that are now a bit crippled."

The book is set in 1989, a year that real-life Oshawa's car manufacturing industry took a big hit. "The book actually takes place when there was sort of a downturn in manufacturing, but I feel that's being mirrored again," Sullivan said.

(Perhaps not coincidentally, the Shwa's reputation for weird criminal leanings seems to have grown in the meantime.)

Jamie and Moses manage to crash into a stray lion on their drive home one night, which sets the city's criminal element after them. What happens to them and others in the book is truly disturbing—suffocated in plastic, beaned with a bowling ball—but wouldn't seem out of place told around a bush party fire.

For Sullivan, trauma doesn't necessarily have to be separated out from slapstick payoff. Ideally he prefers them to coexist in a sort of Lynchian disharmony. "I think it can still serve both purposes—it can be a bit funny but there's a real tragedy in the background."

To write the book, Sullivan camped out in the Shwa's downtown public library. "In the acknowledgements I say thanks for keeping the water running and bathrooms pretty clean," he said.

His research included poring over community newspaper clips from the '80s, where he found one- and two-inch crime briefs that begged to be retold: "You read a man was thrown out of a four storey window, but luckily landed on an RV and survived," he said. "For me it gives raw material to work with, but then part of you knows it is true, like an anonymous truth."

There are no good characters in this book, but they are complicated. And in quiet moments, say when bodies aren't being stuffed in dumpsters, there's a disorienting familiarity: the Hasty Mart, the pawn shop across the street, the abandoned hotel pool with a dead crow in it.

As Canada faces down the worst oil price plunge in a generation, Waste might be an opportunity to get reacquainted with the predatory temp agencies, abandoned factories, and slowly climbing teen pregnancy rates that came with previous economic downturns. It's a close look at some rough edges that Sullivan tells me aren't often featured in Canadian literature.

"You hear about the prairie farmer, the professor in the city, the bad thing that happened in another country but now I'm here—you don't get a lot of confrontations of the kind of poverty that's not in Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal," Sullivan said. "That place between the field and the warehouse is sort of undocumented."

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

Coral Bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef Sure Looks a Lot Like Climate Change

0
0

Here are two things that are not a coincidence: February was the hottest month in global history. And on March 21 Australian environment minister Greg Hunt announced the threat of coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park would be increased to the highest level—"severe."

Why is this no coincidence? Well, over the past two weeks maximum temperatures were driven two degrees higher across almost all of tropical Australia. In Northern Queensland, clear skies and calm conditions meant coral cooked in clear, still waters, killing off large patches of reef around Lizard Island.

Bleaching of the reef around Lizard Island. All photos by XL Catlin Seaview Survey

Coral bleaching happens when coral—stressed by excess heat, light, or pollution—expels all of the beneficial algae living inside it, turning reefs sickly pale. Bleaching can kill coral, damaging these delicately balanced ecosystems to the point they can't be repaired, and it also makes for a pretty depressing snorkeling experience.

In response to the coral bleaching crisis, the government has announced a new survey of 40 sites in the 1,400 mile-long reef's far northern section to take place this September. The new data will be compared with that collected in 2012 and 2014.

Dr. Tyrone Ridgway is the manager of the Healthy Oceans Program at the University of Queensland. He has worked with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and been involved in the project management of the Climate Change Action Plan, as well as overseeing the Reef Health Impact Survey and BleachWatch programs. Speaking to VICE, he emphasizes that its current situation is far from unique. In fact, it's symptomatic of a worldwide problem.

"Things are not going great," he said. "There's been bleaching in Hawaii this year, Caledonia, and now in Australia."

Coral bleaching in Queensland's north is the worst it has been in fifteen years. Ridgway says that sea temperatures in the far northern section of the Great Barrier Reef have been steadily climbing in the past four to six weeks, with the water averaging one to two degrees warmer than usual.

As it stands, scientists are unsure if the worst is over. "According to our predictions, sea temperatures will be quite a lot warmer than they should be in the weeks ahead. If weather conditions remain calm, that will exacerbate the problem. But if there's storm activity, that will help the temperatures drop off slightly," he says.

The prognosis does seem fairly bleak. "But it's definitely not too late to do something, or for governments to take action rather than just talk about taking action."

Greg Hunt's proposed surveys, he says, are useful to an extent. They'll help us compare old and new data, but they won't bring the coral back. "What we're seeing is an increase in sea temperatures due to climate change, and all over the world more of these extreme weather events are happening. They'll keep on happening."

"What we're really talking about here is needing carbon reduction and climate change initiatives. If the temperature goes back to normal there's a good chance the coral will recover. But we need to reduce carbon emissions. Frankly, if the coral is going to have any chance, temperatures have to be kept between 1.5 and 2 degrees celsius . Ideally 1.5 degrees."

Of course, coral bleaching isn't the only issue facing by the Great Barrier Reef. Our relationship with one of the country's most well known tourist spots is abusive at best. But while dredging the hell out of it isn't exactly an ideal way to treat a pristine natural marine park, Ridgway reckons we shouldn't become too distracted by what are ultimately small scale problems. "To be honest, the reef is massive and dredging is actually only an isolated thing that will happen in a small location over a short period of time."

Actually, there are lots of small things we're doing to damage the Great Barrier Reef. Coating it in toxic sunscreen, for example. But as far as the long term future of all that coral is concerned, as a marine scientist Ridgway attests that we've definitely got bigger fish to fry.

"We should really be worried about is these mass temperature rises over vast spatial scales," he reiterated. "That's the focus."

Follow Kat on Twitter.

Viewing all 38002 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images