Photo via Canadian Press.

Linda Redgrave, the first witness who testified against Jian Ghomeshi at his February sexual assault trial, has revealed her identity as part of an effort to help victims of violence navigate the legal system.

In an interview with the Toronto Star, Redgrave said she was enraged by Justice William Horkins ruling—not so much the not guilty verdict (the former CBC host was acquitted of all charges), but the "condescending" tone of the judgment itself.

Horkins, who delivered the verdict March 24, said the complainants' reliability and credibility were severely damaged under cross-examination.

Redgrave testified in court that she met Ghomeshi at a CBC Christmas party she was catering in December 2002, and proceeded to go on three dates with him. On the first occasion, she said he pulled her hair back "really hard" while they were kissing in his car and on another, at his home, she said he grabbed her hair, brought her to her knees and punched her in the head.

Redgrave denied having any contact with Ghomeshi after alleged incident in his house, but Ghomeshi's lawyer Marie Henein revealed that she had sent Ghomeshi an email with a photo of herself in a bikini attached to it about a year later. Horkins characterized the behaviour as odd.

"It reveals conduct completely inconsistent with her assertion that the mere thought of Ghomeshi traumatized her," he said, noting he didn't believe her explanation that she sent the photo to bait Ghomeshi into giving her an explanation as to why he had treated her that way.

Redgrave told the Star she screamed in a witness room following the verdict.

"He indirectly called us liars, like 'You naughty girls, what were you thinking? Go back to your rooms. You wasted our time...' How dare he be so condescending? He could have come to the 'not guilty' in a much more respectful way to women. He's not just talking to us, he's talking to all survivors of sexual abuse."

She also pointed out that her so-called "odd" behaviour was similar to that of the other two witnesses in the case.

"We didn't behave maybe as a man would have, who doesn't have a clue about these issues."

Redgrave said she struggled with the court process and originally thought the Crown would act as counsel for her. She also said she didn't realize that statements made in the media and gave to the police would be scrutinized so heavily in court. The experience prompted her to launch www.comingforward.ca, a resource for victims of sexual assault who want to report the crimes against them. She also decided to waive the publication ban protecting her identity. (She was identified as L.R. throughout the trial.)

"I want other women to do this. I want them to identify with me and know I'm just a normal woman. I'm doing this so other women will be armed doing this."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Adrian Chmielarz (center) alongside The Astronauts co-founders, Andrzej Pozanski (left) and Michal Kosieradzki (right). Photo via theastronauts.com

Polish designer Adrian Chmielarz is a man who has split gamer opinion right down the middle. On one hand, his playable output is widely revered. As a founder of the People Can Fly studio in Warsaw, he worked on one of the most underrated murder-kicking simulators of the previous console generation, Bulletstorm (as well as Gears of War: Judgment and the Painkiller series); and at The Astronauts, where he presently works, he designed the astonishingly atmospheric narrative game The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, a winner in the category of Game Innovation at the 2015 British Academy Game Awards.

But then there's the other side to his public-facing persona. He's gone to war against Anita Sarkeesian's Feminist Frequency blog for its claims that The Witcher 3 was racist and sexist, and taken shots at Polygon for what he sees as the site's failure to actually love the medium it's covering. He grew up in a communist dictatorship, and is currently addicted to Destiny.

And he's also, in my opinion, one of the best video game critics around. By dint of being a games-maker, rather than a paid-up journalist, he's able to be completely honest with what he sees, rather than sometimes sugarcoating the message so as not to piss off publishers. He also has no qualms about flirting with controversy. My guess is he does it deliberately, but I think that's healthy. If you'll allow me to pull yet more milk from the leathery teats of modern cliché, Chmielarz might not be the critic we want right now, but he's definitely the kind we need.

When he writes, he does so in one of two general directions: there are his pieces on the socio-political talking points surrounding contemporary gaming culture, and then more straight-forward design essays. But it's the latter that can cut closer to the bone of the video games industry. "I guess it's surprising to some, but it's the game design that's often about the provocation," he tells me, "and it's the socio-politics that's about the facts."

Of course, it's the pieces on politics, such as his Feminist Frequency article, that provoke more "napalm." But why is that, exactly? "The reason is simple," Chmielarz explains. "I believe that humans are inherently, irreparably biased creatures who remain biased even when they are aware of their own bias. Myself included, of course."

We all have our biases, of course. Personally, I like his piece about Polygon, linked above, in which he criticizes author Phil Owens's issue with The Last of Us requiring four scissor blades to make one single shiv. (That, and with the fact that the piece is written by Owens and can be seen to advertise a book by Owens, titled WTF Is Wrong with Video Games.) Owens calls the crafting in The Last of Us a "bit of blatant absurdity," which is like an underhand, soft serve to Chmielarz, who subsequently applies Owens's wonky logic to other mediums: "...and don't get me started on the books. Why are most of them artificially divided into sections (so-called 'chapters')? Why are they presented in a code we need to decipher... so-called punctuation?"

Whether you agree with his politics or with his shooting of fish in a barrel, to me this is the kind of critical voice and bullshit filter, that every industry needs. Nobody is actually ringing the death-bell for video games writing, nor will they anytime soon (sorry, YouTubers), but it shouldn't have a free pass either. I'm certain that there is more great games writing out there than ever before; it just gets lost in the flood of pieces that exist primarily to represent #content. "There's barely any actual journalism," is Chmielarz's opinion. "It's mostly PR replays, clickbait and wrapping Reddit posts in a nicely colored ribbon."

Related: Watch our documentary about the secretive world of Indigo Children

"A big problem for me is the fact that most gaming websites don't really have any personalization," he continues. In this modern world of synaptic overload from the always-on news cycle, and the algorithmic time-traps of social media and Netflix, the need to offer something that really connects with readers somehow is crucial. "You go to a site and most of it is something you have zero interest in, like 'Halo 5 adds Harry Potter Quidditch Mode.' I am sure there are people out there who were shaken to the core by the news, so the existence of it is not an issue. The fact that I wasted a few brain cycles and seconds reading a headline that does nothing for me is an issue. Not that I know how to solve it."

Naturally, massive video games will always have interested and engaged players, eagerly consuming all updates, however trivial. But it's also easy to see things from Chmielarz's perspective—click your way to a traditional, specialist video games site, and its news feed will usually be stuffed with, basically, Stuff That Doesn't Matter. At least not to anyone outside of the game in question's audience. We are assaulted by the cynical monetization and infantilizing mechanics of mainstream games on a daily basis. And while the video game industry might be more transparent than ever, it doesn't always stop to fact-check.

"Facts don't mean a lot when you already have a strong view of belief," says Chmielarz. A case in point is the reactions to E3 2015's assortment of female leads, when several commentators in the games press declared it the most diverse showing in years. Go deeper and a slightly different story unfolds, Chmielarz argues, with research on his side, that there were just as many female leads on show a year earlier. But the problem with 'facts' is that, "on the contrary, they can ignite a very strong reaction that's supposed to kill the dissonance those facts created." So, pinch of salt at the ready.

A trailer for the award-winning 'The Vanishing of Ethan Carter,' the first game from The Astronauts

And stopping to question what can be seen as bias-confirming narratives often gets Chmielarz in trouble, especially in this world of Reddit/Twitter-endorsed pitchforkings. "You don't need that extra press, and thus I think the only people talking are people who don't have it in them not to. People who cannot shut up, even if shutting up is the most logical thing to do. Like, you know, Harlan Ellison." Ellison wrote: "You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant." That's something we could all do well to remember.

Yet not all who disagree are trolls, and Chmielarz's writing has a knack of rubbing his fellow professionals the wrong way too, such as Tadhg Kelly, TechCrunch columnist and industry writer. Bear in mind that if someone of either Chmielarz's or Kelly's cachet wrote a public rebuttal of one of my articles, my career would probably wrap up quicker than a Zen Bound pro sparked on Adderall.

Provocation aside, Chmielarz really is a gifted analyst of video game tropes, mechanics, and design, and that much is clear regardless of whether or not you agree with his findings. Take this in-depth explanation of what Her Story reveals about the broader state of game design. He will often come to a big game months after release, when the hype has cooled and the next 30 "must-haves" are released into the wild. This runs contrapuntal to the FOMO-fueled success of quasi-sociable Skinner boxes like The Division, when everyone clamors to chip in their two or more hot cents while the commission bucks and hits are freely flowing. "Do you know how many games were not bought because Counter-Strike, League of Legends, or Destiny players neither needed them nor had the time for them?" Chmielarz asks. "Or how many will not be bought because The Division players are neither going to need them nor will have the time for them?"

Maybe this is something a new game by his studio, The Astronauts, could fix? "I'd always take a great atmosphere with a weak story over a great story told in a world that is unable to put me in a certain mood," he says. "So now that we got Ethan out of our systems, we have this hunger for a highly atmospheric, mechanics-focused game. I think we found a sweet core idea, and now it's the question of execution." And as for more writing, his last Medium post coming in October 2015, Chmielarz says: "I also like headshotting aliens, robots, and demons in Destiny, so that's in the way." You cannot argue with that.

Will questioning our own biases and dissecting cynical design improve the games we play? Or are we all just gnashing teeth while the majority mash buttons? One thing is for damn sure: the video game industry is a more interesting place with Chmielarz around.

Follow Danny on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Abulic Monkey

Last month, four prisoners with drug addictions filed a lawsuit against the government of British Columbia. They argued that the correctional system was withholding treatment from them and their fellow prisoners—violating their constitutional rights.

But now, all four have started receiving methadone or suboxone, and the government has changed its policy. Declaring victory, they have dropped their case.

The prisoners' lawyer, Adrienne Smith, told VICE "our clients are relieved that they are getting treatment. This policy change is timely given this week's announcement of a public health emergency in BC because they don't know if I will be released. Then I go to pretrial, and I have to wait a day or two to see a doctor."

According to Rose the matter is closed: "BC Corrections is pleased this matter is settled between all parties; however, we cannot discuss the process leading to the settlement or the terms of it."

Smith said the four prisoners hope that their victory will be extended to anyone needing treatment in BC facilities.

"It's nice to win sometimes," Smith said.

Follow Garth Mullins on Twitter.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Read: A Muslim Kid Got Arrested Because His Teacher Thought His Homemade Clock Was a Bomb

There are plenty of reasonable reasons for flight attendants to kick people off of planes, like drunken outbursts or doing yoga in the aisles, but speaking in Arabic isn't one of them.

On April 6, UC Berkeley senior Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, an Iraqi refugee, was booted off his Southwest Airlines flight to Oakland after a passenger thought she heard him use a "threatening phrase," the New York Times reports.

The passenger reported Makhzoomi to Southwest after overhearing him make a phone call to his uncle before takeoff. Makhzoomi had just seen UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon speak and was stoked to tell his uncle about asking the speaker a question and the chicken dinner that was served. The 26-year-old was quickly apprehended by a Southwest employee after using the common Arabic phrase Inshallah, meaning "god willing," to end the call with his uncle.

The employee escorted Makhzoomi off the plane, bringing him back into LAX to be searched and questioned by the FBI. There, the agents learned that the kid's family had been living the US for six years, and that his father was a diplomat who had been jailed in Abu Ghraib and later killed by Saddam Hussein's regime.

After the FBI determined Makhzoomi wasn't a threat, he was able to get his ticket refunded and book another flight on Delta. He finally landed in Oakland eight hours later than planned.

"We regret any less than positive experience a customer has onboard our aircraft," Southwest said in a statement about the incident. "Southwest neither condones nor tolerates discrimination of any kind."

"My family and I have been through a lot and this is just another one of the experiences I have had," Makhzoomi told the Times. "Human dignity is the most valuable thing in the world, not money. If they apologized, maybe it would teach them to treat people equally."

Dalhousie University. Photo via Flickr.

The Halifax chapter of Anonymous allegedly downed multiple Dalhousie University and fraternity websites over a lack of action on addressing an alleged sexual assault at a frat house.

The hacktivist group told VICE Monday that their distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks caused the Dalhousie website to drop offline last week, along with additional attacks on the websites of the university's student paper and the Phi Kappa Pi fraternity. Screenshots obtained by VICE back these claims.

"We're doing this because justice needs to be served, period," a spokesperson for the Halifax chapter of Anonymous told VICE.

"We had a Jane Doe that used to be in school, that's not in school anymore. That used to be a productive member of society, that has now turned to substance abuse. Her life is ruined while this known rapist walks the streets."

The group's attacks are in response to an allegation of sexual assault that happened in November last year at a nearby off-campus fraternity. Over the weekend, Anonymous published a video that named the alleged rapist and members of his family, reiterating a similar message from a video last year. They also published a video that included a statement from the unnamed victim's mother, who thanked Anonymous for taking action.

"Anonymous, you have tirelessly helped my family and I seek justice for my daughter. You have stood strong by us. We are forever grateful ... You have stood by us, more than anyone could. You have checked on us, when you didn't have to. You gave us hope, when we had none," the video reads.

Brian Ledbetter, director of communications at the university, told VICE that the attacks had little impact and that, contrary to the claims of Anonymous, the official Dalhousie websites were not affected.

Ledbetter also deflected claims that the university should be held responsible for the actions of the fraternity and characterized the attacks as unfair.

"What I can say to the allegations that were referenced , the attacks might intensify. If the police continue to let rapists walk free when they could proceed with charges...That's all I'll say."

Follow Jake Kivanç on Twitter.

The triumphant Real Dream Team, winners of Heroes of the Dorm. Photo via heroesofthedorm.com

April 10, 2016. In a small conference room quartered off from the bright purple lights of Seattle's KeyArena, the five members of Arizona State's Real Dream Team prepare for war. Austin "Shot" Lansert, Parpham "Pham" Emami, Michael Udall, Stefan "akaface" Anderson, and Isaiah "Snickers" Rubin are students, but tonight they'll be the faces of eSports for an unprepared world.

Heroes of the Dorm is—well, was, for 2016—without a doubt, the most public demonstration of eSports in the history of the industry. It's a collegiate, bracketed tournament for amateur Heroes of the Storm players, with the final four broadcasted live on ESPN. In a few short days these boys will sweep the finals, and be biting into custom gold medals for a national audience. But right now, you can feel the nerves. Competitive gaming has long lived on Twitch and YouTube, far from the eyes of any doubting, judging Colin Cowherd types, but the landscape is changing quickly. The winners of Dorm get the remainder of their college tuition paid off by HotS makers Blizzard, but will also be left with a lot of lingering ambiguity about the future.

"It's super time-consuming, and right now there's not a lot of money to make in the Heroes of the Storm scene," says Pham, perhaps the most talkative player on ASU's team. "It's a really hardcore dream. I'm gonna ride this until it hopefully picks up."

Pham is staring down the question of either focusing all of his energy on his burgeoning HotS career or resigning to more traditional employment. This is a very 21st century predicament. Being profoundly talented at a certain video game was cute, but never a marketable skill. At best you might earn a spot on Starcade. But in 2016, "eSports" might be the most popular term in boardroom meetings across the world. League of Legends is scoring huge sponsorship deals, player contracts are reportedly reaching seven figures, and a game like HotS—which has only been officially out for a year—is available on the same channels your parents watch. We're in a rare moment where a passion for gaming can be an entrepreneurial endeavor. It's not an easy path, but it's there.

"For me it's the current goal," says Michael Udall, one of ASU's centerpieces and the only player who operates without a gamertag. "I don't necessarily want to do it my whole life, but eSports is what I'm really passionate about right now. I was very athletic growing up, I did a lot of football and basketball, and my freshman year at Heroes of the Dorm last year I found myself on a massive ESPN stage playing video games. It catapulted my professional career."

There are a select handful of men and women who get to call themselves full-time professional gamers. And like anything competitive, eSports requires some transcendent talent, and a lot of dedication. But unlike football, or basketball, the average age of players burning out tends to be very young. It's hard to find someone on a high-level LoL, DOTA, or HotS team above the age of 24. That's partly because of the emotional and physical demands, but there's also a real lack of infrastructure in the eSports industry.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's film on the world of competitive gaming, 'eSports'

The pro scene in HotS is incredibly nascent. Sure, Blizzard is putting on massive competitions like Dorm, and handing out ridiculous $500,000 prize pools at their seasonal championships, but that's it. If you win big, you earn a life-changing amount of money. If not? You're scraping for peanuts. There's no room for a workmanlike career in pro gaming right now, and that inevitably leaves a lot of people out in the cold.

"The burnout age is more to do with stress and lack of job security and not knowing what your plans are," says Pham. "It's also still unstable, where some people think it's cool and some people want to call you a nerd."

Almost all of the players on ASU have some sort of professional ambition in gaming. Maybe not long-term, but they're certainly dedicated until they can't do it anymore. Heroes of the Dorm is an ephemeral competition. It's an advertisement for HotS and the raw concept of eSports, a transparent attempt by ESPN to dig into a esoteric industry. Sure, these boys will keep playing and keep competing. They might go pro, and might even prove amongst the few who make enough money to truly do this full-time. But there's also the very realistic chance that this moment, the winning of Dorm, might be the peak of their careers. And they're trying to act accordingly, at least before their triumph.

A screenshot from 'Heroes of the Storm'

"I grew up with a big family, and the guys my age all played games together," says Udall. "We all watched Artosis and Tasteless, and they all wanted to play games professionally, so they're kind of living vicariously through me. They might be more hyped than I am. I'm hyped, but stressed. But for them they get to see me on stage and on stream. It's been an awesome experience."

I often think about the commercial timing of professional gamers. There are transcendent Quake and Duke Nukem players who never ran into any significant financial rewards for their efforts, simply because they were peaking at a time where the scene wasn't as comprehensive or well-funded. But even as the eSports business grows, you can't help but wonder what the fate of these young men from ASU might be now, compared to had they been born maybe five or ten years later. Perhaps they've blossomed a little too soon, before HotS develops a robust pro scene, before video games on TV is a usual sight on a Sunday night, and they'll ultimately be left out in the cold.

The situation reminds me of John Havlicek or Oscar Robertson, or any great basketball player who worked tape-delayed games and microscopic paychecks before the NBA turned into the juggernaut it is today. These kids are holding onto a crazy, quite possibly unsustainable dream as hard as they possibly can. It's unfair, but it's out of their control. So they smile wide, and only think about the future when they have to.

"I love LAN events, I adore LAN events, they're so much fun, and I don't know how many more I'll get to go to," says Shot, towards the end of our conversation. "You never know, a million things could happen. eSports is a huge experience. If I don't do it now I might never get the chance, so I'm going to cherish every second of it."

Follow Luke on Twitter.

Read: Looking Back at 'BattleBots,' the Best Robot-Combat Show Ever Made

Northern China turned into an IRL BattleBots competition last Saturday, when a couple of construction workers were caught on camera after jumping in their bulldozers and turning their job site into a crash derby.

The Guardian reports that the bulldozers were from two competing construction companies bidding for business in a Chinese construction market that has seen incredibly hard times lately—growth in that sector is down nearly two thirds from its peak a decade ago.

After the competing drivers allegedly got in a heated argument, they jumped in their machines to duke it out in a heated battle, while cars fled the scene in what can only be assumed is absolute terror. Eventually, one dozer topples the other, and the losing driver pulls himself unharmed from the wreckage and runs for safety.

According to the Guardian, real estate construction represents close to a fourth of China's economy, and its dramatic slowdown has impacted many Chinese—not least of all its bulldozer operators. These bulldozers, in effect, were two starving lions fighting for the last bits of an already picked-clean zebra carcass. Except endlessly more badass than that.

Check out Jeff's Flickr.

Letizia Battaglia. All photos courtesy of Letizia Battaglia and DRAGO Publishing

Since 1971, Letizia Battaglia has documented the rich, dangerous, and sun-bathed lives of the people of Sicily's capital Palermo. For years she worked as a photojournalist for the now-defunct newspaper L'Ora, but packed it in when the paper closed.

At 81 years old, Battaglia is ready to share her stunning archive of photos in her new book Anthology. The collection—made up over 300 pages of photographs of her home city—goes on sale May 5. Ahead of its release, I spoke to Letizia about her life and the emotional toll of seeing the Mafia inflict violence on her hometown. She also shared some exclusive photos from the book with us.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

VICE: How do you feel your work has changed over time?
Letizia Battaglia: I dealt with crime in Palermo for 19 years, so my style came out of that alone. I photographed with passion. I wanted to document everything I felt acted as testimony against the Mafia. Then I stopped shooting crime when the heroic newspaper L'Ora closed, and also because I'd lost the physical alertness required to report.

Palermo is a beautiful place with a rich history—do you think that's in peril?
I believe that, today, there is an increasingly dangerous obsession with consumerism—the past seems more like an obstacle to modernity and wealth. And so there is no money to protect our Arab-Norman and Baroque heritage; there is no money to fix the amazing historic center of Palermo; there is no money to preserve and protect the landscape, our sea.

What differences strike you the most about the Sicily of the 1970s and the Sicily of today?
In the 70s there was a furious Mafia war against civil society, with so many murder victims, so much pain and so much poverty. Today, the Mafia is more subtle, less furious; it doesn't kill judges, politicians, or police men any more. What interests the Mafia now, as always, is the power. And now that they have achieved that, they no longer need shoot people. It's enough for them to elect political representatives who look after their economic interests.

Is this book your final work? A kind of love letter to the place that has provided the most inspiration to you?
I put together pictures of my life, of my people. I searched in my negatives for things that I'd forgotten I'd photographed. I tried to tell the story of my love for this land, which cannot get away from the tyrants who oppress her. I searched for beauty within the ugliness. I spent hours with Paolo Falcone, the curator of Anthology, searching for a poetic thread between the various negatives. Sometimes I even cried.

To what extent does the Mafia exist outside of southern Italy?
The Mafia was certainly born in Sicily, but now has interests everywhere. Through drug trafficking, the Mafia has investments in northern Italy, as well as in Europe. It's more dangerous than before because it has inserted itself into the worlds of finance and politics, but operates using the same barbaric techniques as those who peddle drugs.

Do you think the Mafia control comes from Sicilians being one of the most ruled-over places in history? A sense of people being happier oppressed than free?
Yes, I think we are a people who could not choose our own freedom for ourselves.

When you drive down the stretch of road where Giovanni Falcone, the famously anti-Mafia judge, was assassinated in 1992, how does that make you feel?
I loved him a lot. We were grateful for what he was doing; his fight against Cosa Nostra was powerful, and at last we could hope for change. But we weren't able to protect him, and neither was the Italian state. But how do I feel? I feel humiliated, angry, and determined not to give up. And these feelings have nothing to do with fear.

You've dedicated such a large portion of your life to this very dark topic—how has that affected you?
I've suffered a lot—so much so that I've had to run away from Palermo several times. But I've always returned. I've done everything I can to preserve my sanity: I've planted trees, I've surrounded myself with young people, I've got involved in politics with a brave and extraordinary mayor called Leoluca Orlando ; I've loved and been loved. I've reminded everyone that there's still something good and beautiful under this sky, as, above all, I'm always looking for beauty and trying to photograph it.

Follow Joe Bish on Twitter.

A man at the press preview for 'Hey! Ho! Let's Go: Ramones and the Birth of Punk!' at the Queens Museum on April 5, 2016. Photo by Timothy A. CLARYAFP/Getty Images

To go to a museum exhibit about the Ramones is to wrestle with questions that have nipped at humanity since Socrates, knowing he was born to lose, drank the hemlock: Namely, what is punk? Should punk be in museums? What would Johnny Ramone do, physically, to Malcolm McLaren's idiot son if he were alive to see Joe Corré's aristocratic, morally vacant, twerp notion of burning $7 million worth of punk paraphernalia as protest against Punk London, the Queen, and apparently his own failure of imagination? All big questions that nagged at me as I bopped from one encased magazine clipping to the next.

What is the true nature of punk? Oh, boy. Fuck if I know. The first punk-sounding band was probably Peru's 1964 band Los Saicos. Was punk an existential "yes" or "no"? Was punk a costume parade for fickle Brits? A boys' adventure story in the Beirut Not Beirut of 70s/80s NYC as told by whatever Patti Smith/Vinnie Stigma amalgamation one prefers to listen to? All that, for sure, and I don't want to fight. I'm not sure I care what punk was about—I don't know what enchiladas are about, but I know they're delicious. I used to keep it simple with a pragmatic "punk was about not sounding like Pink Floyd," but on the train to Hey! Oh! Let's Go: The Ramones and the Birth of Punk! at the Queens Museum, there was a teenage girl with back patches of both Floyd and the Ramones. So what can I say?

The question of whether punk belongs in museums is rendered moot as, well, there it is. And it could be argued that the Ramones were more appealingly counter-revolutionary than revolutionary as what they are credited with is bringing back what their partisans liked about rock and pop: simplicity and a lack of pretense. They loved the Beatles but, you know, mainly their old stuff. So, in that way, the Ramones were already willing and able museum pieces. You can kill your idols all you like, but, living in the world as it is, one that grooves hard to hagiography, I'd argue for a tearing down of all statues of useless Kennedys to be replaced by gargantuan Little Richard in bronze looking down on us all like a hip-shaking titan. I could care less for any shock of the new, so the Ramones behind a rope or in a car-tape deck is all the same to me.

The exhibit apparently almost didn't happen, according to curator, Marc H. Miller, as the Ramones' management wanted more illustrious surroundings than the Queens Museum. It was only a partnership with the Grammy Museum that apparently convinced them, which is frankly too depressing a notion to ponder for too long. Regardless, the exhibit, in its limited ambitions, is enjoyable. Even if it's got a certain air of "punk roommate with bottomless eBay funds," so what: It's cool shit, and Ramones songs are playing in the background.

The Ramones really understood what is important in this world of tears and murder: awesome T-shirts. There's a whole wall of them, and everything that isn't already a shirt could be turned into one with minimal effort. The mix of the late Arturo Vega's design work and the assorted cartoons, each one seeming to elongate Joey further until he began to resemble Mr. Fantastic in shades, makes for the sort of aesthetic that defies mockery. Young people can be cruel about a man of a certain age in a CBGBs shirt, but the Ramones, by encompassing the last 60 years of pop art (with even comparisons drawing back as far as Futurism not seeming completely insane), largely get a pass. Ramones shirts, like Discharge shirts, look good on everyone. One of the early Sire Records promotional shirts had "Ramones" in quotation marks, which is honestly endlessly funny to me, and I now despise every band that doesn't have their name in quotation marks on their shirts. Who the fuck are you to be so smug as to think your stupid band name is like a commandment from God that we should all just recognize?

Other logos sighted on museum-goers, besides multiple Ramones/Discharge shirts/patches, included Crossed Out and Rudimentary Peni. Also, there was a large man with "Gas Rag" and "Negative Approach" stenciled onto the back of his leather jacket, gently bopping his head to "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement," and it was honestly one of the sweetest things I've seen. Also, said punks in patches went under the rope to get in rather than walk the 15 feet around, which seemed to sum up a lot of what's good and bad about punk in 2016 and ever.

The Ramones in an alley behind CBGB in 1977. Photo by Danny Fields/courtesy of the Queens Museum

The rest of the exhibit was cool enough, if looking at things is your bag. There were back issues of the magazine Rock Scene, which appeared to be a celebration of male sunglass use (and Patti Smith, of course), and the fact that all the Ramones videos were shown on individual TVs was an especially nice touch.

But what was really interesting to me was what was going on in the main museum lobby. There, the Queens Teen organization, the museum youth group, had booked young punk/indie bands to perform as an inspired commentary on the exhibit for Queens' prodigal eternal teens. Badmouth, a youthful, wry, and noisy in all the right ways indie group, covered much of the same thematic ground as the Ramones—young love, the subway—to a crowd of punks in leather, little boys in baseball caps and women in hijabs/chadors. They were followed by Dark Thoughts, a self-described "Ramones band" from Philly whose Ramones worship was loud as hell and bracing and far, far better than any band, no matter how canonical, behind glass. Kids held their ears and laughed and self-consciously tried to get their friends to dance before collapsing into giggles, and it was wonderful and all I really want from rock 'n' roll, at least during daylight hours.

All in all the Ramones, in the context of the Queens Museum, work. And more than it would in any other context. Especially the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an endlessly unfunny joke only recently and briefly made interesting by the feuding between Steve Miller and those perpetual strivers and lesser Stripes, the Black Keys. And more than the Guggenheim or MOMA, where it's impossible to imagine the same level of diversity in attendees and, instead of bands like Badmouth or Dark Thoughts, the tribute music would probably been, if there was music at all, been some Dirty Projectors side-project atrocity or similar viola-ridden bullshit.

As I left, one of the Dark Thoughts guys, as I was buying their record, remarked, "Cool Supertouch shirt," and I beamed from my toes to my thinning hair because, at the end of the day, when it all comes down, isn't that what punk is really about? The feeling you get when a young punk tells you he likes your shirt.

Follow Zachary on Twitter.

Hey! Oh! Let's Go! Ramones and the Birth of Punk is on exhibit at the Queens Museum through July 31, 2016.

"We're not a melting pot, we're a cultural mosaic!" is one of the most common things any kid growing up in Canada will have pounded into their brain from a young age. We are a diverse country, we're told. We are accepting of all cultures, religions, and political ideologies (*cough*). Truly, you can go to most major cities in Canada and find a significant portion of the population wasn't born in this country.

It's easy to get lost in how diverse we say we are. Outside of Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, there's still a lot of whiteness (and trees and rocks and ice) that makes up everything stretching from George Street to the Pacific Ocean. As Canadians, many of us look at through that homogenized, beer-loving, hockey bro lens, but not everyone's experience is the same.

To find out what Canada looks like both from the outside in, and the inside out, we asked some folks who immigrated here about the most shocking things they experienced after moving to the Great White North.

Goodbye weed vending machine? Photo by Aurora Tejeida

As the April 29 deadline draws nearer for more than 100 unlicensed pot shops to close in Vancouver, at least one dispensary operator has made it clear he's not going down without a fight.

Phil Boudreault has won a lot of fights. Photo via YouTube.

A former Olympic boxer and current high-ranking member of the Hells Angels was the target of a drive-by shooting in Quebec this weekend.

Follow Jake Kivanç on Twitter.

NASA illustration via Wikimedia Commons

When Tim, the nine-year-old kid in Jurassic Park, listed a bunch of ways the dinosaurs might have died, a meteor was the most appealing —it's quick, and clean, and doesn't involve the coolest animals that ever lived suffering slowly from a horrible plague or something. And while we're now more-or-less positive a meteor collided with Earth near the Yucatan Peninsula and created the Chicxulub Crater, in turn triggering a mass die-off of many of Earth's species, it turns out, their deaths weren't exactly swift.

According to a New Study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the dinosaurs had been in an an evolutionary tailspin for millions of years by the time of that mass extinction. Species had been dying off, and new species weren't showing up to replace them. Less dinosaur biodiversity would have made dinosaurs on the whole more susceptible to a disaster like, say, a giant meteor.

It's not entirely a new idea. A study in 2012 found that changes in "morphological disparity"—the amount of physical difference between dinosaurs—may have indicated a pre-meteor decline. However, the authors of this study, based at the University of Reading in England say they took a "statistical approach," looking at a family-tree like diagram of dinosaur species over time, and creating a mathematical model for species changes, resulting in greater certainty that dinosaurs were dying en masse before that meteor came.

"There is no doubt that the Chicxulub impact was the final nail in the dinosaurs' coffin—with the exception of birds," one of the authors, Manabu Sakamoto, told The Los Angeles Times. However, Sakamoto explained, even if the Earth had whiffed past that meteor like a drunk batter missing a curveball, the dinosaurs may well have gone extinct on their own.

The paper speculates about the possible culprits causing long-term dino-decline. The Cretaceous Period was a generally shitty time to be a dinosaur: Continental drift was separating the continents, and other massive geological changes were contributing to a rise in volcanic eruptions. Plus, Earth was cooling off.

But Sakamoto would hate for you to get the wrong idea about the hazards of a cooling Earth as opposed to a warmer one. "We are putting a lot of pressure on modern species, and extinctions are happening at an unprecedented rate," he told Ed Yong at The Atlantic. "If some kind of catastrophe occurs, it might be even more damaging than what we're observing right now."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

This story was co-published with the Marshall Project.

For the past year, the district attorney's office in Orange County, California, has been battling the fallout from revelations of a decades-old scheme of planting secret informants near defendants' jail cells.

Under this practice, prosecutors gathered information from informers in the county jail—information they were obligated to reveal to the defense but didn't—and then lied about it in court. Once these unethical and unconstitutional practices became known, the DA's office was forced to dismiss or reduce charges or re-try cases for more than a dozen people accused of murder and other serious crimes. In the process, the DA's office and the county judiciary have ended up in a protracted legal sparring match.

Now two longtime prosecutors from that same office—Michael Murray and Larry Yellin—are running for Superior Court judgeships, aiming to take the bench alongside judges who have called them out for misconduct. Neither prosecutor has been formally sanctioned in the scandal. But both are supervisory-level district attorneys in an office that a judge recently ruled "habitually ignored the law over an extended period of time." Both, by their own admission, have withheld evidence. And both are considered shoo-ins by the local press. (Two other prosecutors are running for judgeships, but they have not been implicated in the scandal.)

If elected, Murray and Yellin won't be the first prosecutors to join the bench after withholding evidence or being accused of misconduct. Legal scholars and critics have long noted how rarely prosecutors are publicly accountable for misbehavior. A recent investigation by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, for example, identified 120 Massachusetts criminal convictions that were reversed in the last 30 years because of prosecutorial misconduct; at least seven of these prosecutors went on to higher posts, including judgeships, the reporters found.

"The idea that an individual responsible for such serious misconduct could effectively stroll into the office of judge is deeply disturbing," says Laura Fernandez, a Yale research scholar who studies prosecutorial misconduct. No one has yet faced charges related to the scandal, but one deputy district attorney resigned and four sheriff's deputies refused to testify in a related hearing, citing their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. "More troubling still, this appears to be the tip of the iceberg," John Van de Kamp, a former state attorney general, and Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California-Irvine, wrote last year in a letter to the Justice Department, requesting a federal inquiry*. "Compelling evidence of pervasive police and prosecutorial misconduct in Orange County...has caused us grave concern."

The judicial election is June 7.

At the heart of the scandal is a database the Orange County Sheriff's office uses to track the placement of informers in the jail. Use of jailhouse informers is constitutional, as long as the informer happens to hear the defendant talk, unprompted. But the Supreme Court said informers can't elicit information from someone who already has a lawyer—that would too closely resemble an interrogation. What's more, any deals brokered with informants, and any information that might undermine the informants' credibility—say, that they were informants in other cases, or that they have lied on the stand in the past—must be turned over to the defense.

The database first came to light when Orange County Public defender Scott Sanders combed through thousands of pages of records and pieced it together. Sanders was representing confessed mass murderer Scott Dekraai, whom DAs targeted with the scheme. Documents and subsequent hearings revealed that it wasn't just Dekraai—the DA's office had been violating these constitutional prohibitions for years. In a searing ruling issued last March, Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals removed the entire county DA's office—all 250 attorneys—from Dekraai's case, the highest-profile murder case the county has ever seen, ruling that the DA had proved himself incapable of achieving "compliance with his constitutional...obligations in this case."

The DA's office then retaliated by seeking to have Goethals removed from almost every murder case it tried in the months that followed. In that instance, one of Goethals's colleagues, Superior Court Judge Richard King, ruled that the DA's actions "have substantially disrupted the orderly administration of criminal justice in Orange County, the sixth largest county in the nation." This legal battle is ongoing, as the DA's office fights to maintain its ability to disqualify Goethals from cases at will.

Now, armed with new revelations from the database and its fallout, defense lawyers have begun to unravel other cases in which jailhouse informers may have been used illegally against their clients. A handful of these cases raise questions about Murray and Yellin.

In one case, Murray didn't turn over a jailhouse recording of an informer named Oscar Moriel, who had served as a snitch in several other cases. The recording could have helped the defense team of Alberto Martinez, accused of a gang-related killing. In the tape, Martinez's co-defendant Armando Macias downplays Martinez's role in the gang, undermining the prosecution's theory at trial that Martinez was a high-ranking member of the gang. In a hearing related to the snitch scandal, Murray admitted on the stand that he violated the law by not turning over these recordings to Martinez's or Macias's legal teams. Both men were later sentenced to death.

In another, continuing case, the defense has argued that Murray conspired with the California Highway Patrol to hide evidence of doctored police reports.

And in 2007, in a case unrelated to the scandal over informers, Murray was cited for misconduct by a California appeals court, which identified multiple instances when Murray misstated the law and used improper tactics at the murder trial of Thai Ba Tran. The court upheld Tran's conviction for two 1996 murders, but wrote, "Our conclusion Tran was not prejudiced by Michael Murray's numerous acts of misconduct does not mean we approve of or condone his tactics and behavior. The district attorney should take little solace in the fact we have affirmed Tran's convictions...We are troubled by the frequency in which we see prosecutorial misconduct."

Murray did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but on his campaign website, he says "I have a reputation as a determined, knowledgeable and ethical prosecutor."

Murray's colleague Larry Yellin, running for a separate seat on the same court, admitted in 2014 that he did not turn over key information from an informer in a murder case against Nuzzio Begaren. In that case, a jailhouse snitch named Raymond Cuevas not only elicited information from Begaren's accomplice, Rudy Duran, but Cuevas also threatened that the Mexican Mafia would go after Duran if he didn't inform against Begaren. Yellin admitted he never turned over these recordings to Begaren's lawyers, but he was unrepentant, telling a reporter it was "redundant" to other evidence. "It would have given nowhere to go," he said. In the same article, Yellin's own boss conceded, "it should have been turned over."

"You're talking about a situation where the jailhouse informant threatened physical violence, even death, to elicit statements, conduct that is flatly unconstitutional," says Fernandez, the Yale research scholar.

Yellin also did not respond to emails and Facebook messages requesting comment. On his campaign website he describes himself as "a tough but fair prosecutor."

If Murray and Yellin are elected, they will be in a position to rule on cases related to withheld database evidence.

*District Attorney Tony Rackauckas has agreed to the probe; Justice Department spokeswoman Dena Iverson told the Marshall Project the Department is reviewing the letter and declined to comment further.

This article was originally published by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow the Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

"Hellooo, New York!" Sean Hannity yelled into a microphone. "Thank you very much for being here!" The audience erupted in cheers. "And thank you very much, Governor Cuomo!" The crowd responded in kind.

It was Friday afternoon, at the Forum Theatre for the Performing Arts in Binghamton, New York, and Hannity was standing in front of a large "TRUSTED" banner. In a few minutes, Texas Senator Ted Cruz would be joining him on stage, for a live broadcast interview with the Fox News showman. But before that, the coiffed conservative talking a head—a Long Island native with an estimated networth of $30 million—wanted to let the crowd know he was just like them: Angry.

"If we were doing what Pennsylvania was doing," he asked the crowd, referring to oil and gas exploration, "you know how many jobs would be here, in upstate?"

The crowd applauded approvingly. Pennsylvania, a more regulatorily-relaxed state just a few miles away, is natural competition here. Unencumbered by the "liberal Democratic policies" of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and the downstate progressives he represents, Pennsylvanians are free to frack—a process Cuomo has banned statewide—and therefore free to grow and prosper. And Binghamton, the capital of the New York region known as the Southern Tier, is at the center of that divide.

Fox News anchor Sean Hannity moderates a discussion with US Senator Ted Cruz in Binghamton, New York on April 15, 2016. Photo by Jason Bergman

"Unfortunately, New York Democratic politicians have prohibited developing the resources CEO and tell him to bring their jobs back. That's what we need."

"This city in the 80s was amazing," Thornton reminisced. "We had young people working here, not Manhattan, and spinoffs from the defense industry, and manufacturing." Today, Thornton said, the city relies on the local university for economic growth, but most students leave once their studies are over. As Thornton and I talked, we were interrupted twice: First, by a man who complained he couldn't find a job with his degree in social work degree; then later by a man who asked if I would consider relocating my company to Binghamton.

"Lower overhead costs!" he said, grinning. "But seriously," he added, before walking away. "There's nothing going on here. It's dead."

Follow John Surico on Twitter. Photographer Jason Bergman is on Instagram.

Bernie Sanders (Photo by Gage Skidmore via)

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

US News

• Sanders Accuses Clinton of Breaking Finance Rules
  Bernie Sanders has accused rival Hillary Clinton of violating campaign finance rules. Sanders questioned whether Clinton "improperly subsidized" her campaign by paying staffers with funds raised from joint fundraising by Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. Clinton's campaign manager called the claim "irresponsible."—ABC News
• Rainbow Nooses Found at Tennessee University
  Austin Peay State University is investigating six rainbow-colored nooses found hanging from a tree on campus. The Tennessee university removed the nooses over concerns of "hate symbolism," and President Alisa White called the display "deeply disturbing." —USA Today
• Five Dead in Houston Floods
  At least five people were killed and hundreds were evacuated from their homes as torrential rain and flooding hit Houston, Texas. Governor Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster in nine counties, mass transit shut down, and schools were closed after an "unprecedented" amount of rain fell in just a matter of hours Monday. —NBC News
• Obama's Immigration Plan Divides Supreme Court
  Supreme Court judges appear evenly split on the question of whether a president can protect migrants from deportation without congressional authority. justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer voiced favorable opinions, while Justice Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts have signaled their skepticism. —The New York Times

International News

• Car Bomb Attack Kills 22 in Kabul
  A suicide car bomber has blown himself up near the defence ministry in the Afghan capital of Kabul. At least 22 people have been killed and 200 others wounded. It comes days after the Taliban announced that it would launch a "spring offensive" of attacks. —Al Jazeera
• Death Toll Rises in Ecuador
  At least 413 people are confirmed dead and more than 2,500 injured after Saturday's magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Ecuador. As rescue efforts moved into a third day, President Rafael Correa said the rebuilding process could cost billions. —AP
• Ethiopia Wants to Rescue Kidnapped Children
  Ethiopia's army will attempt to rescue 108 women and children abducted in a cross-border raid. The government blames Friday's raid, in which 208 people died, on the Murle community in South Sudan. Ethiopia's Prime Minister is seeking permission to cross the border for a joint military operation with South Sudan. —BBC News
• Australian PM Calls Early Election
  Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull intends to call an early general election for July 2, after parliament voted down a key labor reform bill. Turnbull used a rare constitutional mechanism to dissolve both houses of parliament and put them to a so-called "double-dissolution" election. —Reuters

Screengrab via

Everything Else

• Snyder Promises to Drink Flint Water
  Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has promised to drink Flint tap water for the next 30 days to prove that it's safe. Asked if his wife would also be drinking the water, Snyder said: "Sue is on board with this." —Detroit Free Press
• Arabic-Speaking College Student Removed from Flight
  UC Berkeley Student Khairuldeen Makhzoomi was booted off his Southwest Airlines flight for talking enthusiastically about chicken in Arabic. A passenger reported him for "threatening comments" shortly before takeoff. —VICE
• Scientists Can Identity Our Brainprints
  Binghamton University researchers have matched subjects to their identifying brain waves, or "brainprints," with 100 percent accuracy. Each person's brain waves are unique enough to identify them, like fingerprints or DNA. —Motherboard
• Kanye and Jay-Z Sued Over Album Claim
  Jay-Z's company and Kanye West face a class action lawsuit from fans who claim they were duped into signing up to Tidal. The suit claims users were told it was the only way to access The Life of Pablo, but Kanye's latest album began streaming elsewhere. —Rolling Stone

Done with reading for today? That's OK—instead, watch filmmaker Jeremy Saulnier talk punks, neo-Nazis and his thriller Green Room.

The build-up to this year's Tribeca Film Festival was dominated by controversy over the inclusion—then unceremonious yanking—of ultra-dubious anti-vaccination doc Vaxxed from its slate, to co-founder Robert De Niro's apparent chagrin.

However, a semblance of smoothness was returned to the annual New York shindig in the shape of its first Directors Series event: a pleasant Friday evening chat during which superstar producer-director J. J. Abrams was shepherded through a tour of his prolific career by comedian Chris Rock, an accomplished filmmaker in his own right.

After being cheered onstage by an expectant crowd inside the cavernous, lecture hall-like surroundings of the BMCC's John Zuccotti Theater, this dapper pair of highly trained media professionals swiftly settled into a groove. Rock peppered his questions with some trademark motormouth ribbing—he chided Abrams for stripping a black man, Good Times' Jimmie "J. J." Walker, of the title of "the world's most famous J. J."

Neither of these vastly successful men could resist the opportunity to repeatedly self-deprecate in the face of each other's talents. "What job did you get that you didn't deserve?" asked Rock. "Star Wars" sighed Abrams. Occasionally, Abrams's self-deprecation was genuinely amusing, such as when he addressed, in length and detail, his much-discussed fetish for lens flares.

In one of the evening's few revelations, Rock revealed that Abrams had directed the skits at the Academy Awards that addressed the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. The subject of industry racism was left mostly untouched during the interview, although an Egyptian-American woman in the audience did praise Rock for using his clout to address diversity in his role as host at the ceremony.

Rock and Abrams discussed the possibility of pairing again on a potential single-camera, half-hour show with Rock as the star. Abrams appeared keen when Rock said, "If I were to do a show... I'm running out of money, I need to cash out this credibility... if I nail it, will you do it with me?" Both men also noted whom they'd most like to direct in future projects: for Abrams, Meryl Streep; for Rock, Denzel Washington, but in a comedy ("He can do everything. You could be in it too. I'd better be in it. Kevin Hart ain't in it though!" he said, playing up his ongoing rivalry with the younger comic, who was recently mistaken for Rock).

There were a few surprises for Star Wars fans, most notably Abrams's revealing that Mark Hamill was unsure about taking on such a minor role in The Force Awakens—he thought it might be "silly." He also confirmed, in a sly response to an optimistic audience member's question, that the mysterious parents of Rey (Daisy Ridley) will not feature in the forthcoming Episode VIII , and that "it's something that Rey thinks about, too."

Speaking of Star Wars fans, one audience member—a spindly, middle-aged man wrapped in a black cape—rose from his seat to announce that The Force Awakens had inspired him to jettison his Wall Street career to blog full-time about Star Wars films, and jolted him out of his atheism. He then asked Abrams whether he believed in God. Abrams took the temperature of the room before launching into an answer as frictionless and broadly humanist as the majority of his filmic output: " Star Wars is a film about spiritual connection... There is something that connects us, there has to be."

Rock, however, took the opportunity to call back to an earlier joke he'd cracked about who was scarier or more sycophantic: Trekkies or Star Wars fans? The man's question, he said, answered his own. One felt a little sorry for the chap who'd poured his heart out to a hero, but it was a relief, on such a relentlessly agreeable evening, when Rock extended his comedy claws.

Follow Ashley on Twitter.

Three men on a farm in the Democratic Republic of Congo prepare weed for sale.

This article appeared in the April issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

From April 19 to 21, the United Nations General Assembly will convene a special session to discuss international drug control priorities and policies. So, on 4/20, while stoners across the globe light up and dream of legal weed, the suited emissaries of the world's governments will hold their own kind of chief sesh, inside the wood-paneled chamber of the UN's Manhattan headquarters. Their expected agenda could be the beginning of the end for de facto pot prohibition around the world, and it could bring a subsequent reorganization of the macroeconomics of marijuana—a welcome change that would have wide-reaching effects.

While some states in the US and countries such as Uruguay have legalized and regulated marijuana, they do so in violation of three governing international agreements about drug control. The first, the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, was signed in 1961, and today, its signees total 185 member nations. The treaty requires each country's laws to sanction "the production, manufacture, export, import, distribution of, trade in, use, and possession" of cannabis, poppy, and coca plant "exclusively to medical and scientific purposes." Marijuana has been used traditionally in cultures around the world, but this dictum has led to many countries outlawing it.

It's unlikely that the outcome of the special session will be worldwide marijuana legalization. But according to William R. Brownfield, the assistant secretary of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs for the United States, and the top State Department official guiding US policy in the lead up to the 4/20 meeting, the new thinking in international drug policy is "harm reduction," not "eradication." As he said at a press conference on March 8, "At the end of the day, the issue is not precisely whether a government has chosen to decriminalize or not to decriminalize; it is whether the government is still working cooperatively to reduce the harm caused by the product." At the international level, that subtle distinction radically reframes drug policy, and it might give governments cover to reconsider their policies.

It's probably premature to imagine a legitimate, worldwide supply chain of weed, given that this UN meeting is really just a baby step in that direction, but what would a world with legal weed look like?

Pretty bad for pot farmers, it turns out. Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert at New York University, told me as much one afternoon last June.

"Think about a joint. It's a little bit of dried plant material in a little bit of a wrapping. That sounds a lot like a tea bag. What does a tea bag cost in a supermarket? Two cents? That's the production cost of a joint, not four dollars, which is roughly the cannabis content of a contemporary joint. So we could be looking at a two-order magnitude change in the price of weed."

While criminal organizations profit the most off of that artificially pumped-up cost, for farmers from California's Emerald Triangle to peasant growers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the price change will drastically alter their ways of life. Any worldwide normalization of weed commodity prices could, potentially, have a very negative impact on growers.

The FDLR care little about the weed trade happening under their noses—gold and rare earth minerals are their pay dirt. But to the farmers I met there, pot is a cash crop.

In California, where medical marijuana use is legal and it's widely expected that voters will sanction recreational use this fall, I met farmers trying to distinguish their goods as connoisseur grade to justify higher prices. But in the DRC, a country that's been ravaged by civil wars and natural disasters, the options are far fewer, and weed's criminality actually helps poverty-stricken Congolese make a modest living.

When I visited last July, I tracked Congo's weed supply chain to a tiny village in the Masisi territory in the eastern part of the country. The village, Kivuye, was under control of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a notorious rebel group started by the Hutu militants who carried out the genocide in neighboring Rwanda. The FDLR care little about the weed trade happening under their noses—gold and rare earth minerals are their pay dirt. But to the farmers I met there, pot is a cash crop.

I asked Mwembo, a farmer, why he and others in Kivuye grow the stuff. "Because it enables us to buy essential commodities like salt or soap," he told me. "As you can see, I was able to wash this jacket I am wearing because they bought my weed. When my child needs clothes, I can raise money to buy them. That's why we do this."

While many think of legal weed as an unmitigated good, and while it has improved economies in several situations, legalization and regulation could present hardship for some. I hope that farmers like Mwembo will still be able to provide for their families if the UN moves toward international decriminalization of weed and the bottom falls out of the illicit market.

This article appeared in the April issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.