This week on the podcast, Reihan Salam sits down with Rebecca Richman Cohen, lecturer at Harvard Law School and an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker. Cohen's latest film, Code of the West, follows the political process of marijuana-policy reform in Montana, as well as the federal crackdown on medical-marijuana growers across the country.
Image by Courtney Nicholas
Spike Jonze’s Her is a story about the death of human love masked as a love story between a man, Theo (Joaquin Phoenix), and his sexy artificially intelligent operating system, Samantha (Scarlett Johansson’s voice). Theo works as a professional surrogate letter-writer, a profession that’s equal parts emotional detective, jaded but secretly hopeful voyeur, and empathetic poet. His specialty is the intimate love letter, so his letters give voice to the feelings for the couples that hire him. This service, one set in an unnamed metropolis in the near future (and was shot both in Los Angeles and Shanghai to give the grey and pastel Google-age sheen to the exteriors) provides a parallel for Theo’s eventual relationship with his OS, an ethereal and exponentially hyper-intelligent lover who says everything he wants to hear, just like Theo’s letters do for his clients. The central questions of the film are existential: What does it mean to be human? How do we define emotions? Can something digital, and programmed, have a personality? How valuable are our bodies in the dawning age of total digital immersion?
My former professor, N. Kathryn Hayles, author of How We Became Post-Human, during a class lecture about Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days, a book that poses questions in line with those presented in Her, defined the new situation as follows: Before the computer age, humans defined their existence apropos to animals, i.e., what differentiates us from the beasts who live outside and don’t cook their food? Our superior intelligence, our tools and our souls, of course.
In the age of digital technology, however, we now define our collective nature as humans apropos to the computer, or at the very least technology in general. And this existential metamorphosis is still ongoing. It will only continue when we accept and fully come to terms with the fact that our tools are smarter than us and will continue to exponentially increase in their self-taught intelligence until either world peace is achieved and they help keep it that way, or, far more likely, the world is swallowed up in a pervasive “gray goo” propagated by self-replicating nano-robots. If we haven’t already, this is when we will truly start to define what it is to be human across entirely different lines. We have already started to resort to analog and digital categories as evaluators of the human condition: memory, bandwidth, selfies, texting, emailing, online surfing, etc.
In Her, the relationship between Samantha and Theo begins in the midst of a period of intense loneliness and depression following the divorce from his now ex-wife, played by Rooney Mara (who, you could say, resembles Sophia Coppola). On the surface level, the plot of the film can be read as Spike’s take on his own divorce, with his and Theo’s pivot to art and technology a palliative for the pain, a recourse that in modern times is as common as substance abuse, spending extra time with friends, obsessing over work, and eating lots of ice cream were in the past.
When Theo first meets Samantha, it seems that the highly intelligent, autodidactic operating system can provide Theo with everything he needs to overcome his loneliness—except for a body to hold and have intercourse with. This provides an opening for a queer reading of the film, where their relationship becomes a new kind of interaction, one incapable of being defined by bodily insertion holes because Samantha doesn’t have any; the only thing that orients her gender is the sound of her voice (a notably husky one) and her name, which she chooses because she likes the sound of it (a very post-modern assumption of a title based on affect rather than any kind of religious, familial, or national ties). So, Samantha is, by definition, a very queer thing. She is pure digitally, ethereal, and potent at the same time. It’s to Scarlett Johansson’s credit that she gives us a fully rounded character without the audience seeing her once. There isn’t even a volleyball called Wilson to fixate our attention on and give human attributes to. As a result, most of the time that, in a lesser movie, would’ve been spent with the camera providing cross-coverage between the two characters is spent looking at Joaquin Phoenix’s face. But we still get a strong sense of Samantha—we feel Samantha, she is a character. It is a rare movie that, if you think about it too deeply before watching, will not only meet your expectations but shatter any doubt that it can be pulled off, because it most certainly is pulled off to a T.
This feeling of another person that the audience experiences but does not see is exactly the situation that Theo is faced with in the film: If Samantha’s disembodied voice elicits emotions in him, then why shouldn’t he rush headlong into a full-blown romantic relationship with her? In many ways she is the direct opposite as well as the corollary to the devastated and confused lovers of the murdered and otherwise expired lovers of Lester Ballard, the necrophiliac principle character in Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God: In Lester’s case, he gets the body of an other without the troubling consciousness and questions that go along with it (his imagination infuses the corpses with consciousness), while in Her, Theo gets the extremely intelligent and charming consciousness of another without the body. This is the crux of Her, and it reveals an at-first “perfect” relationship that quickly becomes both chilling in its implications of intimacy with a non-human form, while also serving as a locus to study in order to understand the essence of human intimacy. Just what are we interacting with when we bond with one another? What is essential? What turns us on? And if a computer can provide the same emotional connections as a human, or at least foster the same emotions as a human counterpart, then what keeps the computer from being human? The lack of a body? Not really, because we can easily extrapolate from Her the possibilities of computers with fully formed human bodies, just look at the Terminator films.
There is a moment in Her when Samantha and Theo go through the typical break-up scenario that’s prevalent in most romantic comedies, a scene that has destroyed many a real-life couple, when one lover reveals how many lovers he or she has had (or in this case, currently has). But this usually hackneyed archetype is given new vitality because it now involves a non-human—much like Brokeback Mountain achieved much of its acclaim by using a traditional tragic love story that was invigorated by swapping the traditional gender preferences of the players. In Her, this scene reveals that Theo has expected Samantha to follow the human mores of fidelity, while she has had many lovers because she can. She is capable of giving her equal attention to thousands at once, and can grow from and connect to each relationship (which is perhaps a more advanced form of the relationship turbulence caused by social networking), so wouldn’t it be unfair if she were forced to limit the breadth of her love to one, small-minded human? Then there’s the shot that shows a bunch of people walking while engaged with their smart phones (or whatever they will be termed in the future). This was a powerfully sad image, because it showed how unnecessary the human being may be very soon—they were the slower, less intelligent earthbound components in relationships with their grand digital mothers like Samantha, who can keep them all adequately occupied at once. That is until the humans realize that they are not the one.
One of the many elaborate flower arrangements in Vito Rizzuto's funeral cortege. Photos by Patrick Lejtenyi.
They don’t make mob bosses like Vito Rizzuto anymore. That’s what the experts say, anyway.
When Montreal mob boss Vito Rizzuto died last week at age 67 of lung cancer, it wasn’t just the passing of an old-school gangster; it was the end of an era. Vito was the kind of Mafioso that you only saw in the movies: a sober, cool-headed, respected, circumspect kind of criminal who is thought to have controlled much of the illegal narcotics trade in North America, benefitting from international connections and a legacy that built on the ground laid down by his father Nicolo. As the (sometimes) undisputed ruler of Montreal’s criminal class, Vito Rizzuto was as close Vito Corleone as we were going to get.
And now he’s gone, with a send-off befitting his stature as Canada’s best-known criminal. On a frigid Monday afternoon, limos with lavish floral arrangements pulled up outside the Madonna della Difesa church in the heart of Montreal’s Little Italy. A media horde was across the street, shivering as they positioned themselves for photos and asking curious passers-by what brought them out. “Curiosity,” most of them answered. And why not: Rizzuto, who’d just returned home after serving eight years behind US bars on a triple murder charge, died unexpectedly. Few people outside a select group of intimates and maybe cops knew he was sick. By all appearances, he was back as king of the underworld, leaving bodies in his wake as he re-established himself as boss. Rizzuto came home to a crime scene that was in an uproar. As he predicted upon his arrest, his incarceration led to a vicious spate of killings as factions within Canadian organized crime jockeyed for control.
The fighting hit him close to home. In November 2009, his son Nick Jr. was gunned down on a street in Montreal’s Notre-Dame-de-Grace district. In May 2010 his brother-in-law Paolo Renda disappeared. That December, his father was killed by a sniper’s bullet fired through his kitchen window. Both murdered Rizzutos had their funeral services at Madonna della Difesa. At least some of those responsible paid for their ambition with their lives, with at least nine murders following Rizzuto’s return.
So after having worked so hard (and killed so many) to get back where he felt he belonged, Rizzuto’s victory lap was suddenly cut short. Few people if any know for sure what comes next. Some experts are predicting more blood, especially if Rizzuto left a successor. Author Antonio Nicaso, who will be publishing a book on the crime family next year, says Rizzuto’s primary goal after his release was vengeance, and that if the mobster left someone to carry on his work, we can expect more bodies—and more headlines. Avoiding that, says Nicaso, is the key to rebuilding the family’s fortunes and influence. Both have been badly damaged by the revelations coming out of the Charbonneau Commission into links between the mob and the province’s construction industry.
Another ballerific botanical tribute.
If, on the other hand, a sort of council of elders takes over, Nicaso thinks the Mafia will be able to dust itself off and get back to worming its way into all facets of Quebec society. “The future of the Mafia cannot rely on violence,” he says. “It is built on a network of relationships. Without relationships, the Mafia is just another criminal organization, and that’s not what the Mafia is about. It will always choose power over money. If it just goes for money, it’s no different from the street gangs.”
Retired SQ (Sûreté Du Quebec, Quebec's provinicial police force) investigator Francois Doré says the next weeks and months will show what’s in store for the mob. But the vacuum left by the man he and others call the real Last Don will be tough to avoid.
“He had a lot of respect all over Canada. He was the one who was able to act between motorcycle gangs and street gangs,” he says. Rizzuto was also instrumental in ending the bloody biker war of the mid-1990s between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine by brokering a criminal consortium that was unique at the time. “He was very powerful.”
Nicaso, for one, thinks there might be a secret sigh of relief blowing through the criminal milieu now that Rizzuto is dead. “Revenge was a personal issue for him,” he says. Without him, the Mafia can rebuild its connections; it can focus on business, not blood. “You can’t kill people and add more violence and at the same time rebuild connections with politicians, with businessmen, with bankers,” he adds. “If you are constantly on the front page, constantly on the police radar, constantly under media scrutiny, you will lose those relationships.” Nevertheless, Nicaso considers Rizzuto as a man ahead of his time. “He was able to internationalize the Montreal Mafia,” he says. “Before, it was a branch of the Bonnano family, an appendix of New York. He knew everything and everyone and built a strong network of relationships. That helped him reconsolidate his grip on the Montreal underworld in less than a year.”
Above, fresh wasabi plant, leaves and all.
Welcome back to our column, Dealers Choice, where food expert Ian Purkayastha clues us in on what top chefs across America are serving on freshly ironed white linen tablecloths at upscale restaurants. Food dealer to over 300 restaurants nationwide, including a clientele of chefs like Sean Brock and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Ian’s smooth talking sales pitch and top shelf product list has everybody hooked on the goods he’s slinging.
Above, a wasabi rhizome up close and personal.
Useless, or Useful Information
Traditionally, wasabia japonica takes 18 to 24 months to grow before it develops into a fully mature rhizome ready for culinary usage. In North America, the modernized farms that grow these green plants use a mixture of hydroponic growing conditions and high-pressured water jet streams to grow rhizomes at a rapid pace between 12 and 15 months.
Image via
Days ago, Khaled al-Haddad became the latest Al-Azhar University student to die during clashes with police. Students say he died from a police bullet. At least another eight students have been killed there since July.
However in November, in the days leading up to Mohamed Reda’s death at Cairo University, at least three other young students died in strikingly similar circumstances. A 20-year-old and another Cairo University student, Mahmoud Abdel Hakeem, were both killed with cartouche (or birdshot) in Tahrir Square on November 19, the Mohamed Mahmoud anniversary. Abdel Ghany Mahmoud was shot dead with cartouche at Al-Azhar University the next day. A week later, Mohamed Reda was dead.
Some of these students were Muslim Brotherhood supporters, others not. But in each case the authorities have denied any involvement in the killings. After Egypt’s bloodiest summer, the trail of bodies are reinforcing one of the mainstays of the Mubarak era: unexplained deaths, authorities denials.
“The police have been manipulating the evidence since before the revolution,” second-year engineer Mahmoud Khairy said. Authorities claim students are being killed by pro-Brotherhood shooters within student protests.
“If students did have guns on campus,” another Cairo University student told me, “don’t you think they’d fire them at the police, not at other students?”
Dr. Hazem Hossam is a forensic pathologist at Cairo’s Zeinhom morgue and wrote Mohamed Reda’s final autopsy report. He told me Mohamed was killed by four-millimeter cartouche pellets—the same ones found in the bodies of some of the wounded and martyrs of Mohamed Mahmoud Street, the site of the revolution’s most infamous police violence, in November 2011. “We definitely saw the same kind of cartouche in Mohamed Mahmoud,” Dr. Hossam said.
The senior forensics physician at Zeinhom, Dr. Hisham Abdel Hamid Farag, originally told OnTV on December 3 that the rounds that killed Mohamed were the same as those used at Mohamed Mahmoud—four and 8.5-mil cartouche—but suggested a nameless “third party” was responsible. When I met him in his office, the doctor flat-out denied the presence of four-millimeter rounds at Mohamed Mahmoud, contradicting what he originally said on TV.
Either way, another detail directly challenges official claims that the police do not possess the cartouche rounds that killed Mohamed Reda: according to morgue officials, they do and have used them before.
Lawyer Mohsen Bahnasy was part of a fact-finding committee that investigated the Mohamed Mahmoud clashes. “The committee found the interior ministry definitely had cartouche…whether or not the police had four-millimeter caliber or not, that wasn’t for us to decide.” The committee sent its final report to then-president, now-inmate Mohamed Morsi in January last year, but Bahnasy claimed that Morsi did not open a technical committee (which could have determined ammunition used) to push the findings further.
“Until now, we don’t know what kind of caliber the interior ministry uses,” Bahnasy said. “So the only thing we have to go on is the words of the ministry itself and they are one of the suspects.”
The interior ministry leaves few clues about its armory. The most recent official inventory is a 2007 administrative decree, which states that the dakhleya have “large” and “small” cartouche rounds, human rights campaigners say. No further details are supplied and ministry officials would not comment on the details of this investigation.
“Caliber four-millimeter is being locally manufactured in Egypt and [the ministry] can produce [it],” Bahnasy continued. “If people can get four-millimeter off the black market, so can the interior ministry.” It works both ways. With the right gun license, you could walk into one of Cairo’s handful of gun shops and pick up birdshot pellets.
“[Cartouche] pellets are available widely,” Karim Ennarah, human rights researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, agreed. He has documented cases of police brutality since the 2011 revolution and knows the supply network, which includes a police production facility in Alexandria, international imports and a healthy black market. Does that mean anyone could have shot Mohamed Reda?
“In some cases with demonstrations, you can tell there was an exchange of fire from both sides. This was not one of those cases,” Ennarah said, discussing Reda’s death. “There is no documented evidence of weapons being fired from the university campus [on November 28]. I don’t even know how students are meant to have got a weapon on campus.”
No journalists or human rights groups have found eyewitnesses who support the Ministry’s story of what happened that day. Evidence which authorities claim defends their case—including a mirror shattered by four-millimeter cartouche to the rear of the engineering campus courtyard—hasn’t been released. But bullet-holes in lampposts facing out of the university, where the police were positioned on November 28, suggest fire came from outside. Is this definitively police ammo? “It’s impossible to make a determination that this wasn’t the police, but I think that initial statement [blaming students] has very little credibility.”
Dr. Hossam agreed – you can’t rule out the possibility that Mohamed was killed by students using what is sometimes police-issue cartouche.
“Shotguns are present everywhere,” he admits, “but these types of [four-mil] shots are only present in cases when the police have been involved. We seldom see these shots in criminal cases, and we see nearly two cases every day.”
After Mohamed Mahmoud too, the interior ministry made a “third party allegation” that anonymous shooters—not the police—killed protesters. “There was no evidence of civilian-on-civilian clashes,” Bahnasy claimed. “All clashes were police versus civilians.” Therefore, he said, it would be reasonable to assume that the ammunition that killed the Mohamed Mahmoud martyrs is police-issue after all.
I asked Dr. Hisham this as he sat behind his desk buried under a mountain of papers. Who killed protesters in November 2011 if it wasn’t the police? It may have been “foreign intelligence services” with “vested interests in maintaining instability in Egypt,” he replied, apparently straight-faced. What about the death at Cairo University? “It is highly unlikely that the police killed Mohamed Reda,” he concluded. The doctor also warned me about listening to “Muslim Brotherhood doctors” who would lie about the evidence.
The claim that a “third party” killed Mohamed Reda would be more credible if he was the only student killed recently. Scores have died since July. In Tahrir Square on this year’s Mohamed Mahmoud anniversary, one 20-year-old and another Cairo University student, Mahmoud Abdel Hakeem (or “Moody” to his friends), died from cartouche wounds. Both died after being hit by four and 8.5-mil cartouche, according to a well-informed forensic source who asked to remain anonymous, exactly the same types of ammunition which killed Mohamed Reda and the Mohamed Mahmoud martyrs. Both were shot near police lines on the edge of the square, but authorities claim they have confessions which get the police safely off the hook.
During riots with police at Al-Azhar University in late November, Abdel Ghany Mahmoud was shot with cartouche. Afterwards, a health ministry spokesman told Daily News Egypt’s Rana M. Taha, “police forces do not use birdshot weapons” despite almost three years’ worth of evidence to the contrary. Forensics say he died from one-millimeter birdshot rounds, the only “official police ammunition” according to Dr. Hisham: “This is the ammunition which killed the students in Al-Azhar.” So again the authorities lied.
Youssef Salaeen is a spokesman for Students Against the Coup, a campus-based youth group which has driven protests leading to weekly clashes with police. “The police have been using a lot of cartouche,” he said.
“Cartouche doesn’t kill if it’s [fired] from far away… [but] Abdel Ghany was shot at close-range in his chest” while recovering from tear gas in a university mosque. “That killed him.”
Young Egyptians searching for justice are facing intimidation and scare tactics by the authorities.
Since November, Cairo University students—and Mohamed’s family—have vocally attacked the police for his death. Second-year engineer Ahmed Hammad went to prosecutors with Mohamed’s mom and cousin to file a claim against the interior ministry. The claim openly blamed interior minister Mohamed Ibrahim for the shooting, carried out “with the hands and knowledge of police forces” there that day. Mohamed’s mother claimed there was “indisputable evidence” that police “fired cartouche/bullets at students without any right to do so.”
“At the prosecutor’s office they welcomed us, they’re giving the case a lot of attention,” Ahmed said. “When we filed the case, the prosecutor general [Hisham Barakat] himself welcomed Reda’s mother and took her into his office.” This was special treatment.
Since then students have complained of threats and intimidation from prosecutors, while Ahmed said others were interviewed “very aggressively”—some for five, even six hours. “My friend went, they asked him how far from Reda he was [at the time of the shooting] and he said he didn’t know. The prosecutor yelled at him: ‘You’re an architecture student, of course you should know!’” Prosecutors allegedly made “implicit threats” to press charges for protesting illegally or carrying weapons the day Mohamed died. It is possible the confessions, which authorities say implicate students in the killings, are being engineered this way? One Cairo University student told me an eyewitness was intimidated into saying students had guns the day Reda died, but it wasn’t possible to verify this claim.
“This is Egypt, this is how it works,” Ahmed said. “If you went to the Interior Ministry itself and filed a complaint, they’d welcome you but then direct [the case] the way the state wanted.”
So I went to the prosecutors. After walking through the vast entrance hall painted black on either side with the uniforms of sleeping police conscripts, I was sitting in the office of the prosecution’s media coordinator. Could we ask some questions about the progress of the case? “According to Egyptian criminal law, investigations are secret,” he replied. “The information we have released so far is sufficient.” Then he smiled and started asking the questions: Where are you from? Who are you working for? Can I see your IDs? Where do you live? He was trying to intimidate us.
For better or worse, Mohamed Reda’s case is now firmly in the hands of the state. It is near impossible to absolutely prove who killed Mohamed Reda, Mahmoud Abdel Hakeem, and Abdel Ghany Mahmoud—or any of the other students shot since November. If we question how the Interior Ministry and prosecution officials handle the suspicious deaths of young protesters, it could help challenge the military crackdown now permeating Egypt.
Additional reporting by Abdalla Kamal
An injured man is carried from the scene of the clashes in Cambodia this morning (photo by Thomas Cristofoletti / Ruom)
Four people were killed and 21 more injured in Cambodia this morning, when police opened fire with AK-47s into a group of protesters. The deaths come after months of tension and escalating violence between the authorities and garment workers, who are demanding higher wages.
Things came to a head on Thursday evening, when a police battalion in Phnom Penh were beaten back from an apartment block that had been seized by protesters during a day of demonstrations. By this morning, the military cops were engaged in a standoff on Veng Sreng Boulevard—one of the main roads out of the Cambodian capital—and the makeup of their opponents was a curious one. The factory workers, 90 percent of whom are women, had at some point been replaced by groups of metal pole- and machete-wielding young men, gathered together behind rows of Molotov cocktails.
At some point, the military police chose to respond to a barrage of rocks, bricks, and flaming bottles with gunfire. A nearby clinic that had refused to help the injured was ransacked. One of the injured was a pregnant woman who had been trying to escape the chaos.
Protesters block the road in November
The tragic scenes come after several months of strikes by workers at the SL Factory, which supplies Western chains with clothes. The SL workers' own strike ended on December 22, just in time for them to join a nationwide strike on Christmas Day. The deaths this morning weren't the first. A protest in November saw an innocent bystander—a food vendor named Eng Sokhom—killed by a stray police bullet to the chest, with an additional nine wounded and 37 arrested. The crackdown actually started last August, when 19 union members were fired and SL Factory shareholder, Meas Sotha, brought his private guards into the factory for "security."
Though the 19 workers were later reinstated, that didn't do much in terms of quelling the rage felt by SL's employees.
The SL garment factory
The anger isn't confined to the SL Factory. The Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia (GMAC) estimates that over a quarter of working days in the last two years have been lost due to strikes. I lost a working day last May when I found my road home blocked by three enormous concrete pipes that had been dragged into place by cheering, pyjama-wearing factory workers (pyjamas are acceptable daywear in Cambodia).
While men on scooters tried to circumnavigate the blockade by slipping and sliding through a drainage ditch, I stopped and talked with those involved. I found a story that would repeat itself at the gates of factories throughout Cambodia—the workers said they needed higher wages but the bosses said they could not afford to pay them. Both agreed that the onus was on Western chains to pay more for the garments they were buying.
Inside the SL garment factory
Cambodia’s clothing industry makes up 80 percent of the country's exports and employs 400,000 people, with an estimated 300,000 more working in supporting roles. Almost all are young, female, and poor. As a result, rural Cambodian villages are devoid of graduates as they get absorbed into the industry. It's a punitive cycle. I lived in a Cambodian village and noticed the older girls from my English class kept disappearing. “Where’s Srey Neung?” I would ask, to give an example. “She’s gone to work in a factory," would come the typical reply.
Srey Neung, like many her age, now works 60 hours per week in order to send the equivalent of $30 home to her family. She’s relatively lucky to be starting work in 2013. Ten years ago, the situation for workers was atrocious. Rina Roat started her working life in the factories back in 2003. She told me that her basic salary was $44 per month. She had to work up to 20 hours a day including overtime to support herself. She suffered from depression and exhaustion but was too afraid to complain in case she lost her job. She's now an entrepreneur but her hands remain thick with scar tissue from years spent tending to the machines.
Since Rina’s day, there have been small improvements. The minimum wage per month was increased in February from $61 to $73, plus an extra $5 as a "health benefit." But is this enough to cover the cost of living? Joseph Lee, Director of SL Factory, told me that the minimum one of his workers needed to survive is $58 per month—that’s if they shared a tiny room with four others, ate only super-cheap Ramen noodles, and commuted in overstuffed cattle trucks.
That’s nowhere near enough, said Ath Thorn, the president of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union (CCAWDU). He pointed out that Cambodia’s Ministry of Labour found that garment workers needed at least $156 per month to cover the cost of living. This kind of bickering between factories and unions is typical and often results in protests and violence.
Joseph Lee, Director of SL Factory
Joseph Lee says this year has been the worst he can remember. He told me that his driver was left half blind after a clash between strikers and security staff at the factory on November 1. The driver was trying to escape the ruckus when a ball bearing was fired from a slingshot. It exploded his eyeball on impact. Lee also alleges that a worker who didn’t want to join the protest was hit by a brick on his way to work. “He used to be the most handsome man in the factory but not any more,” Lee explained. “I want to increase wages but how can I when the buyers keep pushing me to reduce my price?”
One buyer has taken some responsibility. H&M has chosen two factories in Bangladesh and one in Cambodia to pilot a scheme where they interview the management and staff to discover what is a living wage and supply the extra funds from their own profits. They have pledged to pay a living wage, but not until 2018. Koh Chong Ho, the general manager of SL Factory, told me that if the buyers increased their price he'd be able to pay his workers more and that this would go a long way to creating peace and stability in the industry.
Clearly Western brands need to take more responsibility, but that won’t solve the problem completely; not while corruption remains widespread. Cambodia is ranked as the 17 most corrupt country in the world by Transparency International. Kol Preap, executive director of Transparency International Cambodia told me that while there are no exact figures, he knows that garment factories pay massive bribes to officials. Koh declined to comment on this.
Opposition party the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) claims to have been cheated out of winning last summer’s elections and have seen their ranks swell with garment factory workers after promising them their desired wage increase to $263 per month. The pressure on Prime Minister Hun Sen is mounting. Everyone's waiting to see what will happen on Sunday, when the CNRP has called for another demonstration.
Follow Nathan on Twitter @NathanWrites and check out his website.
There is an enthusiasm for the counterculture in Orlando, with a strong punk scene and DIY community. You can end up in a mosh pit at a warehouse with no air conditioning, a local art show at a converted apartment located above a pizza shop, a dive bar feeling like you are back at a friend's basement back in high school, or riding bikes to a sweaty house party full of flying beer cans and leather jackets. These photos capture the faces in the crowds, the rowdy party-going youth of Orlando.
"Are you going to win?" the journalist asked the rebel.
"We don't deserve to lose," the rebel answered.
That was the first exchange journalist Gaspar Morquecho recalls having with the revolutionary Subcomandante Marcos on January 1, 1994, in the central plaza of San Cristobal del las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. Morquecho, feeling a mixture of "drunk and hungover" from the New Year celebrations the night before, interviewed the Zapatista leader minutes after he and his comrades had stormed and taken over the municipal hall of San Cristobal.
Twenty years after the Zapatista uprising, VICE traveled to Chiapas to meet Morquecho, the first local journalist to speak with the Zapatista Army face-to-face, so he could recall the events of that fateful day—it was the first indigenous armed uprising in Latin America in the internet age.
In 1993, Mexico's then-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the presidents of the United States and Canada. NAFTA was meant to establish a globalized tri-national economic front, and it went into effect January 1, 1994.
That same morning, as a direct response to the neoliberal policies that were gradually taking hold in Mexico, thousands of indigenous fighters emerged from the rain forests of the Altos region of Chiapas, in southern Mexico, with the intention to take seven municipalities, including San Cristobal. The group called itself as Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).
That January 1, without warning, the EZLN released the Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle, in which the armed group declared war on the Mexican government, and demanded “jobs, land, housing, food, health, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice, and peace.”
From that moment on, and during 12 days that followed, the war between the EZLN and the Mexican Army gripped several towns and villages in Chiapas, resulting in more than 100 casualities and a large and still-disputed number of disappeared people. What also remains in dispute is the legacy, the impact, and the strength of the EZLN in Mexico today.
Text by Luis Chaparro. Follow Luis on Twitter @luiskuryaki
Before digital cameras and the anti-red-eye effect made all our pictures look good, we were subject to possibility of evil eyes and glares ruining our moments of happiness, but now no more—every image can be tweaked into perfection. Though maybe the red eye effect was sometimes an added bonus. In my family we always took two photos: one real and one scary. You could never tell who would be infected or which image would be more affected.
Director Jonathan Caouette took the red-eye effect to a new level in his 2010 short film All Flowers in Time, which was just released online for the first time. The film relies heavily on dream logic, a la David Lynch—its "plot" concerns a young American family watching a French cowboy host a surreal Dutch TV show that broadcasts sinister waves that deeply affect viewers, giving them red glowing eyes and making them believe they can transform into monsters. This visually and sonically arresting film gets under your skin quickly, pushing the boundaries of the short horror film to the limit.
The characters who inhabit the TV are disconnected and even disembodied as they rattle eccentric sayings from their mouths. The uneasiness is lapped up by the viewers, played by Chloë Sevigny and Chandler Frantz. The climax, which features a murderous, screaming vagina horse-face is the perfect climax to a horror film and a great end to the holidays.
All Flowers in Time has screened at dozens of international film festivals including Cannes and the New York Film Festival. It was produced by the amazing short film funders over at PHI Films. I've posted about a couple of their films before, including Danse Macabre. Jonathan Caouette is most recognized for his feature debut, Tarnation, which premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and went on to play Cannes Director’s Fortnight, TIFF, NYFF, and more. It was the talk of 2004 and won him a lot of recognition for blending documentary, narrative, and experimental elements, and both Gus Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell came on as producers. In 2009 he directed a documentary about the music festival All Tomorrows Parties and did another film in 2011 about his mentally ill mother called Walk Away Renee. He’s got some other stuff planned, but none of it’s launching anytime soon.
Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as an art and film curator. He is a programmer at the Hamptons International Film Festival and screens for the Tribeca Film Festival. He also self-publishes a super fancy mixed-media art serial called PRISM index.
The author in search of a place to legally smoke his legal weed.
On Wednesday, I bought some legal weed at Colorado's newly opened recreational pot stores. What an incredible feeling of freedom and liberation! Finally, after nearly a century of oppression and millions of arrests, the War on Marijuana is over—at least in the Rocky Mountain State, where I'm now safe from harm for choosing buds over booze.
Except that certain restrictions still apply when it comes to enjoying this newly legal herb. For instance, any of the following could quickly earn me a citation, an arrest, or even a felony charge.
- Possessing more than an ounce of cannabis
- Displaying or smoking cannabis in public view (except on a front porch)
- Selling cannabis without a license
- Sharing cannabis with someone under 21
- Transporting cannabis across state lines
- Driving while impaired by cannabis
- Bringing cannabis to Denver International Airport
Colorado residents can also get fired for legally smoking reefer on their time off. Or potentially lose custody of their children, even for responsible marijuana use. The authorities have even been trying to put the kibosh on pot clubs that don't sell herb, but do allow on-site consumption.
Which brings up the question of where, exactly, I can roll up and smoke all of the lovely, lovely ganja I purchased on the first day of legal sales. Well, for starters, it's cool to blaze up in any private residence. Also, a few hotels offer 420-friendly smoking rooms.
And that's about it.
Tea Pad Revival
Back in the 1930s and 40s, the hepcats and Vipers who served as marijuana's early adopters gathered at places called “tea pads” to partake of their shared sacrament. Typically informal after-hours affairs, these floating pot parties cropped up in private apartments after the jazz clubs closed. And man-oh-man, those tea pads must have been swinging, what with the whole place baked as cakes, including the musicians, who could freely indulge in their wildest, most experimental improvisations among such highly open-minded fellow aficionados.
Tea pads also served as a neutral space where men and women, black and white, young and old, of all economic means and political persuasions could meet, unwind, intermingle, get high and exchange ideas away from polite society’s disapproving eyes.
In 1938, the New Yorker's Meyer Berger dedicated weeks of leg-work to garnering a coveted invitation to one of these underground cannabis clubs. In “Tea for a Viper,” he finally gained entrée to Chappy's, a dark, austere spot in Harlem with jazz music, muggles, and dancing till dawn. After getting to know the regulars, Berger became convinced that the reefer madness tales of the day didn't hold up to close observation.
Federal agents told me that vipers are always dangerous; that an overdose of marijuana generates savage and sadistic traits likely to reach a climax in axe and icepick murders… Medical experts seem to agree that marijuana, while no more habit-forming than ordinary cigarette smoking, offers a shorter cut to complete madness than any other drug. They say it causes deterioration of the brain. Chappy’s customers scoffed at this idea. They said reefers only made them happy. They didn’t know a single viper who was vicious or mad….
In 1944, a blue-ribbon report on marijuana commissioned by New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia further described the phenomenon.
A "tea-pad" is a room or an apartment in which people gather to smoke marihuana... Usually, each "tea-pad" has comfortable furniture, a radio, Victrola, or, as in most instances, a rented nickelodeon. The lighting is more or less uniformly dim, with blue predominating. An incense is considered part of the furnishings....
The marihuana smoker derives greater satisfaction if he is smoking in the presence of others. His attitude in the "tea-pad" is that of a relaxed individual, free from the anxieties and cares of the realities of life. The "tea-pad" takes on the atmosphere of a very congenial social club. The smoker readily engages in conversation with strangers, discussing freely his pleasant reactions to the drug and philosophizing on subjects pertaining to life in a manner which, at times, appears to be out of keeping with his intellectual level. A constant observation was the extreme willingness to share and puff on each other's cigarettes.
With that spirit in mind, I contacted a friend in Denver and asked permission to use her downtown apartment as a sort of makeshift tea pad for the evening. After assembling an esteemed panel, we put on jazz records, twisted up some reefers, and set about the serious business of assessing all the weed I'd managed to score. Due to the long lines at every open store in the state, I only ended up visiting two locations. And given my limited budget (read bud-get) and the high prices around town, we only had a few strains from each shop to sample. But I didn't hear any complaints.
After assessing the taste, smell, and affect of each variety, we narrowed our choices down to two overall favorites, rolled those up again, and started taking notes. The rest, as they say, was history.
"Golden Goat" from Medicine Man
$61.30 per 1/8 ounce (including tax)
A sativa-dominant hybrid with an Island Sweet Skunk x (Hawaiian x Romulan) lineage, this particular sample of Golden Goat greeted the nose with a pungent blast of citrus. Lime green with copious red hairs, the small, dense buds ground up perfectly due to a thorough cure. Once lit, the joint tasted great from start to finish, with a smooth, even burn. And the buzz felt giddy and cerebral, befitting the strain's sativa heavy genetics.
"Sour Diesel" from 3D Cannabis Center
$17.50 per gram (including tax)
A long-flowering sativa-dominant strain that originated on the East Coast, this Sour Diesel sample produced an almost astringent aroma, with a hint of the grapefruit sourness noted in the name. Although a little dry, the joint burned smooth enough to produce a pleasant taste, and produced a clear, nearly soaring high when inhaled in high doses.
This cloudy purple grave is a lot more fun than your shitty tombstone. All photos via Funeral Concept.
Maybe it’s because we just said goodbye to another year, or because I spent the past two weeks gazing into the creases of my grandmother’s face as she tried to remember my name, but I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. Not in the half-assed New Year’s resolution way, where I’ll con myself into thinking I’m going to live life to the fullest, while simultaneously reaching for a bag of Cheetos and watching porn. I’m thinking more about the practical side--burial arrangements.
Let’s face it: graveyards are a bummer. I’m not just talking about all the dead mommies, daddies, and babies that are lying underground rotting; I’m speaking from a purely aesthetic standpoint. Most cemeteries are just a sea of boring grey, crumbly stone with a bit of marble thrown in here and there. At best there might be a statue of an angel crying or a cool spikey cross to mix it up, but unless these sort of drab surroundings give you some sort of cemetery boner then they’re really not an exciting visual experience.
But why shouldn’t it be? When I die, I want my final resting place to be a monument to my own inflated sense of self-worth. And while some people have the fun coffin thing on lock, I think it’s time we paid more attention to what’s going on above ground. Thankfully there’s Funeral Concept.
This young French company specializes in what they call custom “iron graves” (they’re actually made out of steel). What makes Funeral Concept’s products so special isn’t just their durability, but that you can have any image custom printed, painted and permanently emblazoned on your or your loved one’s grave for all eternity (or at least for the duration of their 30-year no-rust warranty). From pictures of your dad riding a motorcycle bursting through a wall of flames or you lying naked in bed with light beams shooting out of your boob, the only limit is your imagination (and their graphic designers’ Photoshop skills).
I recently got in touch with founder Freddy Pineau to talk about the idea behind Funeral Concept and to test the limits of how far one can actually customize their grave.
VICE: How did you come up with the idea for iron graves?
Freddy: It was a combination between the death of a loved one, being forced to pick a funerary monument from a gloomy selection, and the acquisition of a laser cutter at the metallurgy company I worked for that really pushed me to create my own painted steel models, which I then showed to professionals. The enthusiastic response to my models confirmed that there was a real void to be filled.
How’s business been so far?
We only started commercializing our products in September 2012. We’ve produced about 100 monuments during the first year and they’ve all been put up in graveyards. We don’t wholesale our products to showrooms. We only create unique pieces custom-made for our clients.
What kind of reaction have you gotten from graveyard managers?
I’d say they’re quite surprised at first and then happy that we bring a bit of joy to a place that is dire need of it.
Is there a project in particular that you are the most proud of?
The grave we made for Serge Danot, creator of Pollux and the Magic Roundabout. It really helped the company take off, as pictures of it circulated very rapidly across France.
Who’s in charge of creating your designs?
Our own designers, according to the preference of the family of the deceased.
Is there a classic model that is more popular than others?
All the models on our site are unique. We have a catalogue of mostly industrially produced monuments. The “décalés” section is pretty funny too.
Yes, I particularly like the “thanks for not peeing on my grave” one. This makes me wonder, are there any restrictions? Let’s say a client wants a picture of themselves naked and spread eagle on their iron grave, would you do it?
We try not to refuse any special request, legally only city officials can judge whether the artwork is offensive, even if it’s on a gravestone.
What if somebody wants to put up a picture of their hero, but their hero happens to be Hitler or Pol Pot, would you do it?
When it comes to heroes, it’s very tricky because we need to obtain copyrights. For example, we created this Little Prince monument and fortunately, the Saint Exupéry family was extremely understanding towards the family of the deceased. Now when it comes to heroes such as the ones you mentioned, well, they’re only considered heroes by the deceased and we would obviously refuse this kind of work.
What would you say to people who think your creations are tacky and in poor taste?
You have the right not to like our products, but not to criticize them. Having a personalized iron grave that reflects the life of a loved one is first and foremost the decision of the families. So, as a matter of respect for the families, I’d tell those people who are clearly lacking in personality to think before they speak.
Well said.
Jimmy Kimmel, host of Jimmy Kimmel Live!—a not-live, pre-recorded TV show—and his Jackhole Productions staff recently horked up an in-show ad for Tostitos dubbed “The Worst Contest Ever.” In-show ads are of course now de rigueur, thanks to DVRs, but this one is especially fucking degrading. The stale, fake audience question motif is bad enough, but the exchanges here between the plants and Kimmel are asinine. If I had submitted this script to my former creative director, he would have wiped his ass with it and thrown it back in my face.
Here’s Frito-Lay’s press release about the ad:
“Watched by more than 13 million viewers last year, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl is one of the most anticipated match-ups in the Bowl Championship Series. Tostitos has been the title sponsor of the Fiesta Bowl for the past 19 years– the longest running sponsor of a BCS game. This year, the Tostitos brand is reinventing the college bowl game viewing experience and taking it to the next level through its partnership with Kimmel. As a brand that is known for making life a party, Tostitos is leveraging one of the biggest properties in college sports to bring the ultimate party experience to viewers at home and at the game.”
That is some buzzwordy gobbledygook right there.
The disclaimer at the end of the video reads:
“The Worst Contest Ever” Void where exhibited. Not valid in your state of residence. No reason to enter… nothing to win.”
But, some people—Hundreds? Thousands?—will still mail a Tostito (or a reasonable chip facsimile or maybe a piece of cat shit) to that address, wasting stamps and paper and precious moments of their lives. Kimmel should be required by law to stuff every one of those dirty, smashed chips into his man maw, not in the comfort of his own home, but on “live” TV. Every single fucking one of them. He can then do an in-show Imodium ad.
Lottery advertising is hard to do well, so I was a bit hesitant to include this latest spot for the New York Lottery. But this concept is so bad, and the copy line is so bad, and the actor looks like such a nimrod in his midlife crisis Jaguar-like convertible, that I had to post it.
First off, the only times anybody stops thinking about money are during death (maybe) or an apocalypse. Secondly, I want to see a couple of F-15s blow this lottery winner into Florida’s Moser Channel like that great scene from True Lies.
Ad agency: DDB New York.
McDonald’s just put up this billboard in Stockholm, Sweden. It makes fun of the olds and the slow deterioration of their wrinkly bodies pretty cruelly, doesn’t it? Well, according to the ad’s art director: no, no it doesn't.
Said DDB Stockholm’s Gustav Holm: "In Sweden even older people have a sense [of] humor," and that writing out what you're supposed to hear—or not hear—makes it even more harmless.”
Huh. I guess then that Holm or maybe a junior AD is currently stationed next to the billboard 24/7 to explain it to Sweden’s nonplussed near-deaf retirees.
(NOTE: it reads “menu” instead of “meal” probably because this is a badly translated version of the billboard, used for publicity purposes.)
Finally, this week’s Social Media Dipshit is hp, who, for a recent “Throwback Thursday” not only threw up a goddamn beautiful Facebook photo of a 1994 LaserJet printer, but also invited you to post and “share” a photo of your hot-ass paper belcher. That’s engagement, baby. Via Condescending Corporate Brand Page.
Above photo by Mike Baird. All other photos by Ben Hattem.
“I plant three times and they tear it up,” says Jamal. “After that, I can’t do anything. I just sit and wait...”
“And pray,” Rashid adds.
“Yes, pray to God to get rid of these pigs. But that’s not a practical thing to do. The only practical thing I can do is shoot them”—he mimes a pistol with his thumb and forefinger—“and that’s not allowed by the Israelis or the Palestinian Authority. No one is doing anything.”
I came to Salfit, a large agricultural village south of Nablus in the West Bank, to speak with Saleh Afaneh, head of the Engineering Department here, about sewage being dumped into the town from the Israeli settlement, called Ariel, sprawling across the nearby hills. Saleh is a squat, bald fellow with rectangular glasses who smokes Gauloises like a French chimney. At one point while talking with him, I scribble “benevolent bureaucrat” in my notebook.
Saleh tells me that Ariel has one small sewage treatment plant, which was built to handle the 7,000 people who lived in the settlement twenty years ago. After Ariel expanded to almost 20,000 people, the plant got overwhelmed—it started breaking down constantly and provided insufficient treatment levels even when it was running. In 2008, it cut out altogether; since then, raw wastewater from Ariel has flowed freely into Salfit. Here, the shit quite literally rolls downhill.
Saleh introduces me to Rashid, who has been tasked with taking me down to see the wastewater flow. “Hopefully you will be able to see it,” Saleh says. “Sometimes they store the sewage during the day at the treatment plant so that no one can take pictures, and then at night they let it out.”
Rashid and I climb into his white SUV and head down to the wastewater stream just outside of town. It runs like a small creek along the side of the road. I snap pictures of each reservoir we pass, Bedouin-looking tents on the hills, cows standing by the water. Stopping briefly to view a site where the town is trying to build a new reservoir, we run into Jamal Al-Hamad, an old friend of Rashid who farms the land around this area.
Jamal is eloquent and funny with bad teeth and excellent English. He worked for several years with an American company in California that cleaned up landmines in Kuwait after the first Gulf War. He reminisces about the parties he used to go to in Tel Aviv, and he claims that at one point he spoke English with an American accent. He calls the stretch of land between Salfit and the settlements the DMZ, like North Korea’s Demilitarized Zone.
Rashid explains that I’m a journalist doing a story on the sewage. Jamal smiles warmly and says, “We have two problems here. The first is the sewage, which causes diseases and smells and things. The second is the pigs.”
Back at the office, Saleh had mentioned almost offhand that some farmers in the area were having issues with pigs, so I say, “yeah, I’ve heard that’s been a problem here.”
Jamal grins again and motions for me to follow him.
At the farm, I kneel down between the bushes to touch the trampled and upended earth and the small, immature onions lying on top of the dirt. Every field we see is like this, torn apart.
“They show up at night,” Jamal says. The pigs jump over the small chain-link fence that he erected in the vain hope of keeping them away from his crops, and then they tear everything up, hunting for small insects and other creatures living in the soil. By the time he arrives in the morning, entire plots of land are destroyed.
The pig population in Salfit has ballooned recently. Jamal claims that the number of pigs invading his farm has increased twentyfold in the last two years.
“We used to find two or three pigs getting in, but now when you follow their tracks you find fifty or sixty,” he says. “I’ve never seen destruction like this.”
Of course, calling these creatures “pigs” may make them sound too cute; these things are three feet tall and weigh 200 pounds, according to officials here—more Great Dane than Dachshund.
They’ve made some farmers in Salfit give up on cultivating their lands, relying solely on olive production for their yearly income. “Every year forty farmers become thirty, people are stopping farming, trying to find another way to get their income. Every year, the number of people that stop farming increases,” he says.
He tells me he doesn’t know where the pigs came from, although Saleh believes that the pigs were released by Israeli settlers to drive the Palestinians away from their farms. Officials from other towns in the area have made similar claims. In an interview with CNN in 2012, Mayor Nazmi Salman of Deir Istiya, a small town in the central Salfit governorate, said that Israeli settlers had released 300 pigs into the area’s farmland to destroy crops.
In August 2012, PA President Mahmoud Abbas said the same thing during a speech in Ramallah, claiming that “settlers [are]... training dogs to attack us and sending wild boars to spread corruption on the face of the earth.”
However, information to corroborate those claims remains anecdotal. “We have no evidence [of settler involvement],” says Reut Mor, a spokeswoman for Yesh Din, an Israeli organization which documents settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.
“We have heard rumors, but nothing more concrete,” Mor says. A 2009 report from the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem disputes the settler theory and attributes the spread of the pigs to the extinction of other wildlife in the area because of the sewage pollution from Ariel.
No matter how the pigs arrived, getting rid of them is Jamal’s bigger concern. “Since two months ago,” Jamal says, “we are planting and they are destroying. Planting and destroying. No one helps—the Palestinian Authority, the Agricultural Ministry. What can I do?”
Jamal says that both the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Civil Administration, which jointly oversee the Salfit municipality, forbid farmers in the area from killing the pigs. “We cannot kill them, we cannot poison them—it’s not allowed,” Jamal tells me.
When I speak later with Abdullah Lahlouh, Deputy Minister of Agriculture for the Palestinian Authority, he disputes the claim that the PA restricts killing the boars, placing blame for the policies squarely on the Israeli government. Lahlouh says that officials of the Agricultural Ministry had used strychnine to poison the pigs, but now “Israel doesn’t allow that material to be used in Palestine.”
Lahlouh says that the Civil Administration also stopped attempts by Palestinians to use tranquilizers or hunting to circumvent the restrictions on strychnine. He tells me that Israel banned the import of the tranquilizers along with strychnine and introduced regulations to make hunting boars illegal, citing a threat to biodiversity and the possibility that other animals in the area would be harmed.
“We told them that Palestinian humans are more important,” says Lahlouh.
Given the injunction against killing the pigs, the only option left to farmers in Salfit is to erect fences guarding their lands. Jamal has tried to use chain-link fences and piles of tires to protect his crops, but the pigs jump over or trample them. When I arrive, his fence is crushed and the tires on top of the pile have been knocked around.
Jamal says he would need a larger steel fence to keep the pigs away, but building an adequate fence would cost more than he can afford. Ashref Zohod, head of the Environmental Department of Salfit municipality, says in an email that no one could pay the “exorbitant” price of constructing a fence around the farmland in Salfit. “We do not have the power to pay those kinds of costs,” he says. “Not us, nor the [Palestinian Authority] government, nor the farms.”
While aid flounders, the farmers of Salfit continue to lose their crops and livelihoods to the pigs. “It’s a very big loss,” Jamal tells me, “compared to our income.”
"We've lost everything," he says.
In October 2013, VICE News was invited to visit the infamous tech mogul and creator of Megaupload, Kim Dotcom, at his palatial property in New Zealand. Even though Kim is under house arrest—since he's at the centre of history's largest copyright case—he's still able to visit a recording studio in Auckland. So check out this brand new documentary we made at Kim's mega-mansion and in the studio where our host, Tim Pool, got to lay down some backup vocals for Kim's upcoming EDM album while talking about online surveillance, file-sharing, and Kim's controversial case.
Special thanks to Donovan Leitch.
Portrait by David Titlow
Official UK government documents have just been released regarding one of the best things ever done by the only real punk band ever, Crass.
Basically, in 1982, when the rest of punk had started playing sax, Crass made this piece of subversive décollage, splicing together recordings of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to create a fake phone call between the conservative übermenschen.
Here's Crass founder Penny Rimbaud explaining the whole story to VICE back in 2004:
–
"We wanted to come up with something which might get rid of Thatcher. It was just after the Falklands charade, when she was about to get re-elected. We were told something we knew could seriously dent the Thatcher Empire. Allegedly, the Navy had allowed HMS Sheffield to be blown out of the water by not informing them that an incoming Exocet missile had been picked up on the radar. The other three boats in the grouping were informed and took defensive action. Why? Because one of the ships was the Invincible and on board was Prince Andrew. Given that the information was classified, we decided the only way to make it public was to fake a telephone conversation between Thatcher and Reagan.
"We edited bits and pieces from speeches made by the two of them, creating a conversation which included all the details of the Sheffield. We then sent out tapes to all the major European newspapers, but nothing happened. Thatcher was re-elected, but then, six months down the line, the US State Department announced that they were in possession of KGB tapes 'produced to destroy democracy as we know it.'
"It soon became obvious that it was our tape they were talking about. It was frightening. A bunch of anarchist jokers sparking off a world war? Anyway, the same KGB story eventually broke in the British press and it wasn't long before the Observer got in touch with us, asking whether we knew anything about the tapes. It was unbelievable. The whole operation had been carried out in absolute secrecy, but somehow or other they'd managed to pin it onto us. After a gruelling day of negotiations, we agreed to admit responsibility if they would print the Sheffield details in their article, which, true to their word, they did.
"We did our best to expose the story but even now it's an issue which has never really been given full and proper investigation."
–
The official documents that were released aren't not wildly revelatory, but they do prove that Margaret Thatcher spent at least a small part of 1983 reading about Crass—something she has in common with most of the 45-year-old punks you see throwing their cider cans at Pret a Manger in Kentish Town. [American editor's note to other Americans: We don't know what this means either but we're assured it makes sense. Just go with it.]
You can read the rest of the papers here.
Anyway, as funny as it is to nearly start WWIII, it's arguably not the finest Situationist dump Crass have ever taken on society. That would have to be the time they gave away a version of a song from their album Penis Envy with a teen girl magazine called Loving. Here's Penny Rimbaud explaining that story:
"We were recording an album called Penis Envy, the last track of which was 'Lipstick On Your Penis' based on the old standard 'Lipstick On Your Collar.' Penis Envy was fronted by the women of the band, it was a very feminist album and 'Lipstick' was about the institution of marriage being little more than prostitution. Having recorded that track, we realized it would almost certainly lead to a copyright prosecution, so we decided to completely rewrite the lyrics. What we ended up with was so convincingly schmaltzy that we had the idea of trying to sell it to a teenage romance magazine called Loving. It was one of those magazines which feeds lies to young girls, sets them up with ludicrously impossible fantasies which they can't follow, won't follow, and don't follow. Magazines like that just create heartache, they remove young people from themselves, set them up to be knocked down.
"Anyway, we called in at Loving's IPC offices as Creative Recordings and Sound Services (CRASS) and said, 'We've just made this recording and think it would be suitable for your publication.' They jumped at it, saying, 'It's great, fantastic. We're about to do a special brides [bribes] issue. How about us doing it as a free flexi?' Which is precisely what it became. They advertised it as 'Our Wedding'—an 'absolute must for your wedding day.'
"They'd bought it hook, line, and stinker, but the lyrics were frightful, banal shit about the social fantasy of marriage, you know, things like never looking at other girls or guys once you've fallen for it. It was total rubbish, but they happily gave it away with their magazine. Now, what kind of loving is that? Shortly afterwards a friend in Fleet Street exposed the scam and the Star printed the glorious headline 'Band of Hate's Loving Message.' I think there were a few sackings at Loving magazine."
David Brooks, presumably talking about how great he is. Photo via Flickr user Miller Center
David Brooks is a deeply strange man with strange opinions who makes a living writing op-ed columns in the New York Times that make everyone feel uncomfortable and angry because they adopt a tone of smooth white-guy Reasonableness while advocating ideas that are completely insane.
So today, while most of the towns where media folks live were covered in snow, Brooks’s target audience—bloggers who want to write mean shit about him and his fucked-up columns—huddled under the covers with a mug of warm cocoa and had a field day ripping apart his latest opus, which is called “Weed: Been There. Done That.” (Edgy title, bro.)
The column starts out with an admission:
“For a little while in my teenage years, my friends and I smoked marijuana. It was fun. I have some fond memories of us all being silly together.”
Trying to imagine what the heck this guy would look like when he’s “silly”? Please stop. In any case, that first bit is just a lead-up to Brooks’s explanation of why his group of (presumably white, upper-middle class) friends stopped smoking pot. For one thing, they got bored of it—it was “fun, for a bit, but it was kind of repetitive,” he writes. For another, one of his buddies “became a full-on stoner,” which as Brooks describes it is a fate too awful to contemplate—“something sad happened to him as he sunk deeper into pothead life.” (I’m imagining a dude who bought a bong, a bunch of shitty Bob Marley posters, and today leads a perfectly pleasant life raising alpacas and playing in a folk-punk band. Today he occasionally talks about his old high-school friend Dave, who “would usually pay for the weed, but was kind of a dick.”)
Finally, Brooks gets to the reason he’s writing this column:
“I don’t have any problem with somebody who gets high from time to time, but I guess, on the whole, I think being stoned is not a particularly uplifting form of pleasure and should be discouraged more than encouraged. We now have a couple states—Colorado and Washington—that have gone into the business of effectively encouraging drug use.
[…]
Laws profoundly mold culture, so what sort of community do we want our laws to nurture? What sort of individuals and behaviors do our governments want to encourage? I’d say that in healthy societies government wants to subtly tip the scale to favor temperate, prudent, self-governing citizenship. In those societies, government subtly encourages the highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts or being in nature, and discourages lesser pleasures, like being stoned.”
One way to look at this column is that it’s a very highfalutin way of Brooks saying that he wishes now he’d been arrested when he was a teenager. It’s pretty clear he disapproves of states legalizing marijuana—legalization “encourages” drugs, drugs are bad, mmmkay?—and when you say something should be illegal, don’t you mean that everyone who breaks that law should be put in jail, or fined, or forced to go to rehab, or (in lil’ Brooks’s case) put in front of a juvenile judge?
Obviously, Brooks isn’t saying that, since his narrative of teen drug use sounds totally harmless. He toked up, he decided it wasn’t for him, and went on to such great heights of success that he’s now routinely mocked and derided by writers from across the political spectrum—all without the government interfering with him. What Brooks is really saying is that he does not give a shit about what laws actually do.
People like Brooks—by which I mean “centrists” who have massive platforms to express their milquetoast views and get treated as serious people despite everything, so basically, I just mean Brooks and like three or four other white dudes his age—are very good at spinning pseudo-philosophical narratives about what is good for society and how government can encourage morality and the conflict of freedom and responsibility and high-minded shit like that. They are not very good at talking about the real-world consequences of laws. That’s how you get stuff like Brooks’s fellow NYT columnist Ross Douthat writing about how gay marriage weakens traditional marriage-related values while tiptoeing around the fact that denying gay people the legal benefits of wedlock makes them second-class citizens. It’s also how you get Brooks writing about how governments need to encourage behaviors through laws today, but complaining about how “balky” and inefficient a tool government is just last month. Guys like Brooks are so accustomed to no one paying attention to what they’re saying that they’ve stopped paying attention themselves.
In practice, it doesn't matter much to teens in Brooks’s demographic whether weed is legal or not. They’ll smoke, they’ll like it or they won’t, they’ll write much later about how it was a youthful indiscretion. (Barack Obama did pretty much the same thing, and he apparently isn’t in favor of legal weed either.) But if you’re a poor black kid, you’re much more likely to get arrested for weed, and in that case you won’t be looking back and musing about how governments need to discourage marijuana use—you’ll understand, as Brooks apparently doesn’t, that that kind of discouragement inevitably involves putting people in cages.
I actually agree with Brooks on one thing, which is that being a stoner isn’t particularly awesome, and society (not necessarily the government) probably should try to avoid everyone being high all the time. That doesn’t take laws, though—the use of both alcohol and tobacco has been on a long-term decline for years now, but not because the government stepped in and made those substances illegal. It turns out that if you educate people about the risks of doing drugs, a lot of them will decide not to fuck themselves up too badly on them. We don’t need David Brooks or the government to help us decide whether pot is good or bad.
