We're living in divisive times, where we seem to clash daily on issues of race and gender and religion and anything else you could possibly think of. But of all the hot button issues out there, there may be nothing more contentious than Kanye West.

The musician and fashion designer is reviled by some as a pompous, arrogant, "jackass," to quote President Barack Obama. While others—Stans like myself—see the artist as their own personal spirit animal. And considering we've just been treated to a new chapter in the ongoing soap opera between West and Taylor Swift (#TaylorGate), it's likely that the debates over the merits and misdeeds of the Louis Vuitton Don will continue into perpetuity.

Since I've spent the last five days covering Cleveland's Republican National Convention, I decided to engage the delegates from all over the country in my favorite conversation topic and see if they needed Yeezus the way Kathy Lee needed Regis. Here are their thoughts.

Janet Fogarty, Massachusetts

VICE: What do you think of Yeezy?
Janet Fogarty: I like his music better than his politics.

What's your favorite Kanye West song?
I don't really have one. Actually, I can't think of one. So I guess I don't like his music that much either. I lied.

What don't you like about his politics?
Just that he's not very well-informed, but he speaks out and makes statements that I don't think he's really researched.

Are there any statements in particular that jump out?
I don't really listen or watch him too much unless he shows up on some show that I happen to be watching and makes some sort of crazy statement, like at an awards show or something.

What did you think after Hurricane Katrina when he said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people"?
I think that's just ignorant because George Bush definitely cares about black people. Everyone does. So that whole statement is not accurate.

If you could say something to Kanye West, as a representative of the Republican Party, what would it be?
Well, he said he was going to run for office one day. I'd say go for it and see where it goes.

Would you want him in your party?
Sure. We're the big-tent party. We welcome anyone. We don't exclude anyone, so we'd love to have him. Maybe he could perform at the next convention for us because we need some entertainment.

Richard and Leslie Kalama, Hawaii

Y'all know who Kanye is?
Richard Kalama: Yes, but I don't know his music very much. I know he doesn't like Taylor Swift very much. But hey, he's obviously talented. He's obviously got a big following. I'm a little past that age group, but I'd certainly go and listen to him at a concert. I'm sure live, he's very good. But I don't know much to say about him.
Leslie Kalama: I know he doesn't like Taylor Swift, but that is it. His audience is way younger than us.

Matthew Mcauliffe, Ohio

Got any thoughts on Kanye West?
Matthew Mcauliffe: I'm too old to know Kanye West. I'm more of a East Coast rap guy—that's a joke. But honest to God, I have no opinion on him. Everyone tells me he's talented, but I'm kind of like "whatever."

He said he wants to run for president in 2020. What do you think about the idea of a rap artist becoming a presidential nominee?
We have a guy who sold steaks and bad wine who is running for president right now.

He has made some political statements in the past.
Yeah, after Hurricane Katrina. I think that was a ridiculous, uninformed statement.

What's so ridiculous about it?
What fact did he have to back that up other than emotion? There was no fact. It was pure emotion.

Who do you like better, Kanye or Taylor Swift?
I don't even know who she is. I'm more of a Public Enemy guy. They're everything.

Your politics don't necessarily align with your music taste. How does that work?
I appreciate people who communicate with purpose rather than doing stuff just to hear themselves. Bands like U2 and Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine, they communicate with purpose. I appreciate that. I don't have to agree with it, but there's thought behind it.

Do you think Kanye communicates with purpose?
I don't know. I don't watch E! I would say in 2005, he communicated with emotion rather than purpose. But he's provocative, and he's doing exactly what he wants to do and gets a reaction out of people.

Jim Miller, Wisconsin

What do you think of Ye?
Jim Miller: I like Kanye. My favorite Kanye West song is "Gold Digger." It's on my playlist when I'm working out.

Todd Jennings, Florida

Do you have any thoughts on Kanye West?
Todd Jennings: I've only heard one song by Kanye West: "Jesus Walks." I'm a veteran and that song was on the Jarhead soundtrack. It's a great song. I appreciated his courage in coming out in a mainstream hip-hop song and singing about Jesus. It's great.

Pastor Shannon Wright, Maryland

So tell me, what do you think about Kanye West?

Donald Trump must still be butthurt after Ted Cruz declined to endorse him at the RNC this week, because the official GOP nominee decided to trot out his old conspiracy theory that Cruz's father was buds with Lee Harvey Oswald during a post-convention speech in Cleveland Friday morning, as Politico reports.

Trump told the crowd that he once met Cruz's father, Rafael, and that he was a "lovely guy." But the Donald finds it very odd Ted Cruz "never denied" the claim (originally posed by the tabloid National Enquirer) that his dad may have been tight with Oswald before the man assassinated John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Cruz may not have directly responded to Trump or the Enquirer back in spring, a move that the Donald somehow finds suspicious. Still, a spokesman did call the whole thing a "garbage story in a tabloid full of garbage" when it saw the light of day.

Trump, meanwhile, wants the gossip sheet—which nailed former Democratic politician John Edwards's sex scandal back in the 2008 campaign—to get its due.

" a magazine that, frankly, in many respects, should be very respected," he said Friday, referring to a publication that also once told us Cher had three months to live back in 2014.

Cher, if her Twitter activity is any indication, is not dead.

Read: Donald Trump's Coronation Was Long, Angry, and Strangely Coherent

Prime Minister Trudeau mingles with some youths. Photo via Facebook

Carve another notch in the prime minister's desk, folks: Justin Trudeau is really fucking us again. Can you beli—wait, sorry, wrong website.

This film has been edited from its original version due to privacy concerns surrounding one of its subjects.

This feature film follows the lives of people in Alberta, Canada, affected by the powerful opioid drug fentanyl. The underlying source of the fentanyl crisis in the country goes back to 2012, when the notorious prescription painkiller OxyContin was pulled from pharmacy shelves in lieu of a "safer" alternative called OxyNeo. In response to the change, counterfeit fentanyl disguised as fake OxyContin pills started popping up, proliferated, and ended up sparking a full-on crisis in the country—with Canada's west becoming a major epicentre.

In 2005, New York magazine dropped a bomb on the world of letters when it floated the since-confirmed idea that JT LeRoy—the literary prodigy known for harrowing tales of troubled youth—might actually be a woman named Laura Albert who previously worked as a phone sex operator.

Author: The JT LeRoy Story is the new film that reveals how Albert made waves for a decade before being unmasked. The story shows how Albert had no choice but to use an alternate identity if she was going to achieve self-actualization via literature.

Give the trailer a watch above.

Make sure to catch director Jeff Feurzeig's film, produced by VICE, in theaters this September.

The tale's as old as time: Republicans gather (whether at this week's Republican National Convention, CPAC, or otherwise), and gay men, as they do, proceed to look for sex. Bloggers post their ads for a quick laugh; rinse and repeat. (More intrepid mudslingers might mine a few anonymous male escorts for lurid stories.) It's an easy joke, one that's been made year in, year out since the dawn of cruising itself. By the language of the ads, which often mention terms like "discrete" or "married," it's safe to assume the politicos who post and respond are often closeted.

Being an out, gay Republican is crushing work. What's easier is to be a closeted, gay Republican—and you can count them among those who have worked the hardest to demonize LGBTQ Americans. From Roy Cohn to Larry Craig, it's long been gay politicians themselves who harbor some of the most vitriolic anti-gay beliefs.

A full year before Craig's infamous Minneapolis airport arrest, he was outed by activist and blogger Michael Rogers, who became notable throughout the aughts for outing politicians (from both the left and right) with anti-LGBTQ voting records through his website, BlogActive.com. His work is chronicled in the 2009 documentary Outrage, which examines the cultural, political, and psychological forces that drive gay politicians into the closet, and what compels them to remain closeted for political gain. Today, Rogers is decidedly out of the blogging game—he now runs the nonprofit Netroots Connect and owns the news website Raw Story.

If anyone understands what drives Republicans into the closet—and to post ads like "married guy seeks anothr married guy at the rnc"—it's Rogers.

VICE: Let's talk about cruising.
Michael Rogers: OK. I'm 53, I know a little bit about that.

What drives Republicans into the closet?
Some of it is the way they look at their identity. For example, I was raised Jewish. Am I a gay Jew, or am I a Jewish guy who's gay? We build our own identity based on who we are.

People who say "being gay isn't who I am, it's just who I sleep with" are in denial. Our sexuality is a key component of our humanity. They're willing to—whether for greed, to appease family, whatever—say "I'm OK being kicked to the curb by people who say they want to help me but really don't give a shit about me." Is it the "seeking a parent's love" thing? That's what made Reagan succeed; he was this grandfatherly type, and the nation was astray. Maybe these guys need direction.

Let's talk about the influence of religion on the party and these men who won't come out.
Right, it was the Catholics who pushed the hardest against gay people. Let's get this straight: A religion whose basic premise is that those in charge have to be straight men without any interest in fucking women. Can we understand how everything that emanates from that is preposterous?

What straight man would listen to anything about sexuality from straight men who have pledged not to have sex? And the other thing is these people can say or do whatever they want because they have that magic friend in the sky. These are people who, when husbands have beat the living shit out of them, say you have to go home and can't divorce them. What kind of person has that much self-hatred?

There's a moment in Outrage, where someone said that being closeted can actually help you as a politician, because so much of being a politician is being able to spin and pirouette on an issue. Why do you think gay men crave that power?
I don't know if it's any different in gay men than it is in men. Gay men are no more pigs than straights—the difference is they're just looking for other pigs.

Many are willing to let their thirst for power overtake their self-respect. This is how it starts: You're an intern, and you're asked to fetch lunch for a senator because the guy who does it is out. So you help. Then they need someone to ride with the senator to a meeting, and he was impressed by your get-go. Now you're hooked—you're a kid in a limo with a US senator, that feels cool. Then he needs a scheduler, he asks you, and it keeps going. Now you're in the Republican Party. It's about seeking more and more power in that context, in this world you've created for yourself. Whether you're Craig and you did it because you're from Boise, Idaho, or David Dreier—someone told me he wouldn't come out because he didn't want his mother to know he's gay. Grow the fuck up.

People learn power. Nobody's born with it. Even monarchs learn to wield power, or people revolt. I think outing is a revolt: You can't come out? That's your problem. Don't take it out on my community, and young people in my community.

Someone like is a diversity point now. I always say we can forgive people for what they've done if they'll say what they did. In Mehlman's case, he came out, said sorry, great. Raised money for charity, great. But I think the only other thing he should have to do is spend a day with the family of a gay kid who took his own life. Because his messaging killed that kid.

You've said that "outing is so last decade." What do you mean?
I think outing and citizen journalism have made it more acceptable now to report the truth. People tell me I should write a book about outing—nobody's going to buy that, who cares. But if I were to write a book, one chapter would be called, "The Pact of Protection: How Washington's Political and Media Elite Protect the People from the Truth." And it is one big scandal. I mean, this sex stuff has gone on forever—Lyndon Johnson found out he had staff who had gay affairs. Nixon knew there were gays on his staff. Today, if there were proof that an anti-gay politician were gay, people would see the hypocrisy and report on it, whereas they used to bury those stories and conspire to hide them, even, which is worse.

The other reason is it's no longer a wedge issue, frankly. Today, Republicans go after stuff like bathrooms, and they're losing. The bathroom issue is the one thing we've always been afraid of. And whether it's McCrory, these guys go after the bathroom issue, and they look like idiots. It might even cost McCrory an election—who would have thought that? If you'd told me ten years ago elections would be won and lost based on the bathroom issue and we would be winning them, I would have said you're nuts. In May 2006, 67 percent of Americans said they would never be able to accept marriage equality. 67 percent.

Follow Tyler Trykowski on Twitter.

Jean-Sebastien Evrard via Getty

The outdoor exercise yard of the Oregon State Penitentiary looks exactly like a movie set. The wide outdoor space is surrounded by 25-foot-high concrete walls and razor-wire fencing, but it's still one of the few spots in the penitentiary where you can feel the sun on your skin or get a good view of the sky. It's the platonic ideal of a prison yard.

I came here to run a 5k as part of OSP's annual racing series, which invites the public to race alongside incarcerated male convicts. The prison's running program was started in the 1970s with the support of the late Steven Prefontaine, an Olympic runner who was one of the state's most revered athletes at the time. Today, it's among the prison's most popular programs, and inmates interested in participating often wait years for spots to open up. In the past few years, it's attracted an increasing number of outside runners as well; since only 20 outsiders are allowed per race, those spots fill up quickly, too.

After a series of security checks that led us deeper into the prison, a guard took me and my fellow runners out onto the yard. An inmate with a camera mounted on a tripod beckoned me over for my official race portrait. "Do you want the guard tower in the background?" he asked, nodding up to a turret staffed with armed guards ready to shoot, as if I were visiting a tourist attraction instead of Oregon's only maximum-security penitentiary. Of course I wanted the tower behind me.

The next few minutes were a blur of exchanging brief pleasantries with inmates—one of whom introduced me to Felix, the resident blue heeler mutt who'd been brought in to chase geese off the yard and had since become the penitentiary's de facto therapy dog. An inmate handed out official racing bibs with the words "RUN FOR YOUR LIFE" emblazoned below our numbers. After crowding on the bleachers for a group photo, it was time to start the race: nine and a half laps around the yard for a 5k and double that for a 10k.

Photo courtesy of Margot Bigg

I started somewhere in the middle, not knowing how I—a casual runner on a good day—would fare against a group of men who trained regularly. Although I'd been instructed to wear modest clothing (I even wore shorts over my running leggings), the inmates had no such restrictions; plenty ran shirtless, tatted up with spider webs on their elbows and telltale teardrops next to their eyes. One had the words "Fuck the police" emblazoned across his chest. A few inmates resembled suburban grandpas, puffing along the track slowly and T-shirts glued to their backs with Rorschach-like sweat stains. I later learned that the geriatric prison population was among the fastest-growing segments of incarcerated adults, owing largely to minimum mandatory sentencing programs.

Round the track we went, circling past a seemingly neglected mini-golf course alongside a row of dilapidated pay phone booths. We continued past an outdoor fitness area full of old weight machines and out through a gate where inmate volunteers cheered us on, offering tiny Dixie cups full of Gatorade or water as we ran past. Old-school hip-hop and grunge tracks blared over the prison sound system, interrupted occasionally by commentary from a pair of inmates who'd taken on MC duties.

Some of the sportier inmates sped around the inside of the track, shouting out encouragements to me and their fellow running-club members as they passed. I'd run a handful of races in the past, but until this race, I'd never encountered such an encouraging, positive, and polite group of fellow runners. The fact that we were behind bars—that this was a distraction that offered these men some respite from the dire situation that is long-term incarceration—had temporarily escaped my mind.

The finish line was similarly jovial, as inmates, outsiders, and guards chatted casually over sports drinks and bananas. Some opened up about what life was like inside, while others made small talk about music and TV. I learned about their daily lives, in which they work for pennies at various prison enterprises ranging from a furniture shop to an inbound call center; most of the inmates I spoke to worked for an enormous laundry facility, which is the state's second-largest. I asked what they knew of the Internet; one guy told me he'd never used a computer, while another said he'd heard rumors that the prison was being considered for a pilot program that might allow them to stream shows from Netflix.

As we chatted, the inmates headed off to shower and get on with their lives in prison. It seemed very casual, and nobody's movement seemed strictly controlled. A guard led me and my fellow outsiders back through a series of gated chambers that eventually spat us back out into the outside world—back to a freedom that most of us are just one poor choice away from losing.

Follow Margot Bigg on Twitter.

BLMTO at Toronto's 2016 Pride parade. Photo by Mark Blinch/CP

If you've read anything on your phone recently, you know that Black Lives Matter has been in the spotlight as of late. In the past three years, BLM has come to be one of the loudest, most visible, and most unforgiving movements in North America. During last month's Pride Parade in Toronto, the local chapter of the group received considerable heat after staging a protest in the middle of the party—one of the biggest Pride parties in the world. While some in attendance were angry and/or confused, the Pride protest provided the flashpoint for many other discussions and opinions surrounding BLM in Toronto and across the country, particularly amid the ongoing tensions in the US.

Illustration by Joel Benjamin

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Prison seems to provide an almost infinite source of bizarre stories for the press. Throughout the last few months, we've had inmates reportedly fight each other half-naked armed with toilet brushes, attempt to blow their up rivals using liquid explosives, and squeeze naked through the food hatch on a cell door. Suffice to say, a lot of stuff goes on behind bars that you'd be unlikely to encounter in everyday life.

The notion of prison being like another world might be a cliché, but it stands to reason that the rules of mainstream society aren't likely to apply in a place reserved for people who are deemed to live with the general population. With this in mind, I got in touch with four former prison inmates to find out the most bizarre things they witnessed during their time inside. Here's what they had to say.

John Williams
67 years old
Served a number of sentences for armed robbery

I saw two incidents during my various prison sentences that have stuck in my mind as being quite bizarre. The first was when the prison guards in HMP Albany dug up the body of my dead pet budgie, thinking I'd buried contraband. People serving long sentences were allowed to have budgies, and I'd come to see mine as almost like my child. There was a little grassy area with a tree on it outside the wing, which I'd decided was a suitable spot for a burial. About 20 minutes later, I was looking out my cell window when I noticed a group of screws walking towards the grass.

To my horror, they then started digging, obviously thinking that I had hidden contraband. They must have seen me burying something and got the wrong end of the stick. It was very surreal. They eventually uncovered the budgie, and had a good laugh about it. I didn't see the funny side, though. I'd actually developed a closer relationship with that bird than I had with most people up until that point, which is probably one of the reasons I ended up in prison in the first place.

The second incident involved a prisoner getting caught wearing the prison governor's wife's underwear. He was strip searched, and revealed to be wearing a pair of Anne Summers-style knickers. The screws searched his cell, and found four other similar pairs. They wanted to know what was going on, and fired off questions at him: "What's going on here?", "Is there a black market in knickers?", "Where did you get them?" He refused to answer, so he was hauled in front of the governor for having unauthorised items in his cell.

I later heard that the governor had read out the charges, and then asked him if he had anything else to say. "Yes," said the undie thief. "I'm very sorry sir, but they're your wife's knickers." He had been allowed outside the prison to paint the governor's house, as he was a trusted inmate, and had snuck inside and stolen the underwear.

Justin Rollins
32 years old
Served sentences for street robbery

The strangest incident I saw inside happened at HMP Highdown in Surrey. I was on the healthcare unit at the time, after cutting my arms with a razor so that I would get transferred there. It was safer and quieter than the young offenders section of the prison, which I had previously been in.

Highdown mainly held category A and B adult prisoners, but also housed some youngsters, of which I was one. Everyone else in the healthcare unit but me was an adult, and a lot of the residents had serious mental health issues. One day, I witnessed a guy being dragged out of his cell by guards in white anti-contamination suits. He was taken past my cell, and placed in a special cell designed to reduce the possibility of self-harm.

It wasn't unusual for prisoners to be removed by the men in white suits; it usually happened when someone had covered themselves in shit, which happened on a regular basis. This time, the reason was something far weirder though; a pillowcase full of severed pigeon heads had been discovered in the inmate's cell. He had been using bread to lure them to his window, and then ripping their heads off and collecting them.

We never saw the pigeon killer again after that. I assume he was either shipped out to another prison or fast-tracked to a mental health facility. The other inmates found the incident funny. At the end of the day, you've got to find humour in dark situations in jail. The staff were more hardened than the cons. They'd seen all types of things in there, and took it in their stride. Saying that, one of them did vomit up her breakfast upon the pigeon discovery, for which I don't blame her.

Ceri "Cesto" Stokes
33 years old
Served numerous sentences for violent offences

The most bizarre thing I saw whilst locked up was a guy taking a screw hostage with a fake bomb made out of a flask and some wires from a radio. He was Irish, and was playing on the national stereotype. In reality, he had no idea how to make bombs. The hostage was a female screw called Emma, who was a pain in the arse. The whole wing had been complaining about her, and the Irish kid had obviously decided to take action. He'd blocked her in the office, and was threatening to blow her up. She was pissing herself, which we all thought was funny, because she had been making our lives a misery.

It became obvious that the screws had lost control of the wing, and the inmates were soon rioting. The guards managed to lock us outside in the exercise yard, where we were kept until midnight. The prisoners on the wings surrounding the yard threw their mattresses out of their windows, and we set fire to them and had a bonfire. The riot made the Welsh news.

The Irish kid got an extra four years added to his sentence for hostage-taking. The prison governor eventually assured everyone who had been kept on the yard that we wouldn't get any additional charges if we all agreed to go back to our cells. Although he kept his word, some of us got shipped out to other jails shortly afterwards. It was a strange and funny incident that sums up how mad prison can be at times.

Stephen Jackley
30 years old
Served a 12-year sentence for armed robbery

One of the oddest things I saw behind bars was the guards in HMP Parkhurst cancelling the prisoners' time on the yard because there was a cloud in the sky above it. I guess according to the prison authorities' logic, rain means wet ground, which constitutes a breach of health and safety. A cloud suggested that rain could have been on its way, and they wanted to be proactive and deal with the threat before it arrived. Considering the nature of prison, I wouldn't have thought a cloud featured at the top of the list of things that could have potentially caused us harm.

John, Justin, Cesto, and Stephen now say they are reformed characters. Justin has a book out about his criminal days, Stephen runs his own publishing company, John keeps a blog about all things crime- and prison-related, and Cesto now raps.

@Nickchesterv / @JoelBenjaminDraws

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(Photo by ZUMA Press)

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany

A gunman killed nine people at the Olympia shopping mall in Munich, Germany on Friday evening, before he was found dead with a single gunshot wound to the head. Five of the nine victims have been described as "youths" in media reports and, according to Munich police, 27 people were injured—10 of them severely. Among these was a 13-year-old boy. Peter Beck, Munich police spokesman, told the Associated Press that the attack left 16 people in need of treatment in hospital.

The alleged shooter was an 18-year-old German-Iranian male born in Munich, according to the police. At a press conference held late on Friday night, police chief Hubertus Andrä said investigations so far indicate the shooter killed himself after being shot and wounded by plainclothes officers.

Hours later, at a midday press conference on Saturday, the police said that the shooter—initially identified only as David S—had researched mass killings and didn't appear to have any political motivations behind his attack. The teen shooter was armed with a 9mm Glock pistol, according to police, and 300 bullets. "The events of last night make us speechless," Andrä said at the conference, "and our thoughts go out in particular to the victims."

According to the German newspaper Bild, police raided the Munich apartment the shooter allegedly shared with his parents in the early hours. Police at Saturday's followup press conference confirmed that nothing in the shooter's room had been found to connect him to Islamic State. A search of the shooter's room had turned up a copy of Peter Langman's book Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, translated into German, said police. Prosecutors also said the alleged perpetrator had been receiving psychiatric treatment, though this could not be confirmed with certainty yet.

The gunman had delivered newspapers in his neighbourhood, according to those based in the area who spoke to the press after the attack. "I saw him every once in a while pass by, he was a very shy guy and tall, about 6ft 2in. He wasn't very sporty, rather a little chubby," 47-year-old Stephan Baumanns told the Guardian. Baumanns owns the bakery and coffee shop below the flat where the gunman and his family lived, in a neighbourhood known as Maxvorstadt. "He seemed like a lazy guy. He had a job distributing a free newspaper, Münchener Wochenblatt, but I often saw him rather than deliver them, throw them all away into the garbage bin."

A neighbour speaking to a local broadcaster reportedly described the gunman as "very, very nice. I really can't say anything bad about him."

On Saturday afternoon, interior minister Thomas de Maizière confirmed the existence of a Facebook account that promised cheap food at the McDonald's where shots were fired. A police investigator earlier in the day had said that the gunman appeared to have hacked that account—believed to belong to a girl—to lure people to the McDonald's before shooting them.

"I'll give you something if you want, but not too expensive," read the post, according to the Guardian.

Shots were reported fired from about 5.50 PM CEST on Friday, at the McDonald's restaurant and in the mall, in Munich's northern Moosach neighbourhood. The police responded quickly, cordoning off a large area around the mall. Police on Friday had warned of three possible suspects, but this information turned out to be false.

Check out Line Hoj Hostrup's Tumblr.

Photo via Pixabay

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany

First there's the breaking news report. I'm still totally calm at this point. Shots fired at Olympia mall in Munich. 'Oh,' I think and send the info to one of my WhatsApp groups. In case someone missed it. What's Twitter saying? Shots at the OEZ mall; I already know that. And apparently taxi drivers are supposed to avoid Stachus, a large central square. Wait a minute—why there? That's miles away from the mall.

I write: "Shooter apparently still on the loose. Officials say avoid Stachus. What the fuck?" My friend Mari replies: "I heard there was something at Odeonsplatz too." "Subways shut down," writes Andrea. Twitter says: shots fired at Tollwood festival.

By now I'm getting reports on three different channels: WhatsApp, Telegram and Facebook. I'm in five Telegram groups and four WhatsApp groups; five of these nine groups are discussing the news.

Then suddenly, a message says: "He's here. Help. Omg." It's from my friend Max, in my largest WhatsApp group; 35 people read him. Panicked message upon message within seconds. Max? MAX?? Silence. Then a voice message. We hear wheezing. Max says, "We're at Rewe . On Tal. He's in here." Tal is a shopping street in Munich's city centre. Max is sobbing rather than talking. His voice somersaults as he keeps repeating, "Oh my god." End of voice message.

That's the moment when I start to panic.

Just days ago, a study was published saying that 73 percent of Germans are afraid of terrorism. That's 21 percent up from last year—and perhaps a few percent less than now. According to the study, terrorism was Germans' greatest fear even prior to the events in Munich, coming in ahead of other fears such as "severe illness" or "wars with German participation."

Terrorism has been happening in people's minds for years now. The scene has been set by thousands of media reports, and right-wing agitation, and debates about right-wing agitation. The image of the crazed Islamist firing into a crowd at random has seared itself into our minds. On the 24th of June, the German government passed a new anti-terror law. Anonymous prepaid SIM cards are prohibited, the German security agency BfV can acquire data more easily, the use of covert operations is subject to fewer restrictions. On the 20th of July, a new Russian anti-terror law came into force and France extended its state of emergency for another six months. Do these measures prevent attacks? It hardly matters. You can't really argue with fear. I wonder if terrorism has now come to Munich as well.

Public transportation has shut down. The police advise people to avoid public places. Articles detailing what is and isn't known dominate German online media. What we know: absolutely nothing. But on Twitter, people do seem to know things: Apparently Islam itself did it, and most likely the perpetrator only just fled from Syria. What exactly did he do? Where are shots being fired? Who cares. The phone network is at breaking point. I'm notified of missed call after missed call, coming in with massive delay.

Articles detailing what is and isn't known dominate German online media. What we know: absolutely nothing

"Go home," I message all my friends. I've advocated against fear of terrorism for months now, cited statistics about the likelihood of being hit by falling branches versus facing the gun of a terrorist. But ever since I heard the voice message, I'm scared. What if my friends are among the victims? Terror is right here with us now, I feel it. People in the street outside my door are all staring at their phones. The Olympia mall is half an hour from here, and so is Stachus, but via Twitter and WhatsApp I'm basically around the corner. It feels like it, anyway.

Later that evening most of the photos and videos will be revealed as fakes. Just like most of the alleged crime scenes. The information on social media hasn't informed us at all—it has simply filled us with panic.

In the pedestrian shopping street between Marienplatz and Stachus squares, all the shops are closed and full of people. Right outside are cops with assault rifles. It's 9:30 PM. Still no all-clear from the police. "Nobody dares to go outside," says a toy store employee. "And where would they even go? There's no transport." Closing time was an hour ago, but now he's handing out free drinks to the people who've sought refuge with him. "I saw the fear in their faces; it was just like in a movie," he says. He sounds tired, the words coming out slowly. Do I want to come in? No? "Okay, but then you should stick close to walls, to monitor your surroundings. And don't move in groups", he says. "I got that advice from the police."

The police can't really tell us much more than that. At Marienplatz, an officer guards a big police cordon, barring the way to Stachus. I ask him why. "Well, isn't Stachus closed?" he asks back. "No," I say, "that's where I just came from." "Oh," says the cop. But he keeps on guarding, now with doubt in his eyes.

Later that evening most of the photos and videos will be revealed as fakes. The information on social media hasn't informed us at all – it has simply filled us with panic

I get a phone call from Max, who has found out that the Stachus attacker wasn't at the supermarket with him. That he didn't, in fact, exist. "We'd just been told on Twitter that shots had been fired at Stachus," he says. "I'm at the checkout five minutes from there when someone storms in yelling, 'He's coming!'"

So Max drops everything and runs, along with all the other customers. Shelves topple, people shove, kids scream. He hides in the cold storage room, squeezing inside the cabinet under a sink with a friend. Just across from them, a man is calling his mother to say farewell. Everyone's sure: we're about to die. Between frozen ribs and pork chops.

A photo Max took at the supermarket: "Everyone's sure: we're about to die."

Max sends the voice message to the WhatsApp group. Outside some guy is yelling something in Arabic. Max is an anti-fascist and considers himself to be unprejudiced. He says, "I was sure that had to be the shooter." He pauses for a second. "That's just unbelievable," he then adds. "I'm against prejudice like that, and I still had those thoughts. We all thought it. Because 9/11 had such an impact on all of us. I'm no exception."

"I've read so much about it since 9/11. These images were everywhere, and suddenly it seemed to be happening," he says. "It's crazy how the human mind works."

The attacker at the Olympia mall was an 18-year-old lone shooter, the police tell us at the press conference at 2AM on Saturday. The other attackers apparently never existed. "To us they were very real," says Max. 2,300 police officers were deployed. Countless emergency calls and reports of shootings in other places reached the police on Friday night. None of them held water. Mass panic didn't just occur at the supermarket, but dozens of other places such as the central train station, Stachus and the famous beer hall Hofbräuhaus.

Were the events in Munich terrorism? It hardly matters. In the minds of Munich's inhabitants, it was. And you can't really argue with fear.

What we are left with is grief for the dead. A special meeting of the security council. Perhaps a new anti-terror law, sooner or later. The machine of fear and hate rumbles on, across social media, in the newspapers, on the talk shows. Last night I felt how deeply we are part of it. That's what I'm left with.

As a child in London, Yassin Yassin would probably never have expected to end up on the front lines of a conflict in Iraq. Besides needing to leave the ravages of Saddam Hussein's regime to join family in the UK, his life had been normal enough. Now aged 24, he's back in London from a trip to Iraq where he'd photographed the armed groups fighting on behalf of the government – they prefer not to be called militia, Yassin says – as they worked to keep ISIS from advancing on their base. The project was part of Yassin's effort to understand what had become of the country he'd left behind, and the citizens who'd armed themselves against ISIS in a bid to keep from losing all control.

Spending time with three groups – Kataib Jund Al Imam, Tayyar Al Risali and Forket al imam Ali – he picked up a sense of not only the quietly persistent dangers of life at battle but the almost surprisingly camaraderie those conditions created. "At first I was scared as I've never been exposed to any real danger but as time went on and seeing how relaxed these soldiers were, I eased up a little," he says. But after having a building calmly pointed out to him in the near distance that was being struck by ISIS, he realised the experience was indeed that of a war zone. Here he shares some of his photos and memories of his five weeks in Iraq earlier this year.

VICE: How did you manage to get such close access to the militia?
Yassin Yassin: I flew out of the UK and literally just started going into the offices of these militias, asking if I could document what they were doing. It was hard, obviously. A lot of people didn't trust me, in a nice way – they thought, 'You could be a spy.' But one of my family members knew a TV reporter who knew people who knew people, and got my foot in the door.

What was a typical day like at the base?
A typical day is hard to describe, because each was so different. I was there just before the liberation of Fallujah – it had fallen in January 2014, before Mosel followed on the 10th of June and Tikrit then fell to Isis on the 13th of June. While I was there, Hashd Al Shaabi were in defensive mode, and I was out on the front lines with them as they aimed to keep the enemy out.

How did that work? What did you observe, or what did they let you see?
Each militia is split into two: the soldiers and the media team, who took me up to their base at Camp Speicher in Tikrit. I met a bomb diffusing engineer working with this group – he refused to be photographed, for security reasons – who told me that he used to work as a translator for the US Army, during the Iraq war.

Much later, I also met another soldier at a different location who didn't know the bomb engineer, but had fought for the Mahdi army during the 2003 war. He'd been affiliated with a group who gave Americans a hard time, who killed a lot of soldiers and kidnapped Iraqi translators – though he didn't take part in that. I thought it was interesting that these guys with totally different views had joined together to fight one common enemy. All the people in Hashd Al Shaabi have one thing in common: the goal of destroying ISIS. They were all positive, treated me with respect.

Whose stories stuck with you?
There was a guy called Malik (above) who I met at Camp Speicher. He's a jihadi fighter in his mid-twenties, from south Iraq, and had been in the movement for a year by the time I photographed him. He told me about a pact he'd made with his four older brothers: if he was to fall and lose his life, his next brother would replace him, and so on until they were all gone. He had the qualities of a friend – he was a nice guy, he was warm, we kept in touch after we parted ways. But at the same time, I saw a different side to him. I'd forget that he was a serious killing machine until he showed me the photos and videos of his time in battle.

Given your background, how did you make sense of what you saw?
As a Brit-Iraqi, it's really just sad to see what's happened. When you go out there, and see the conditions people live in – with the corruption, dirty streets, poor services – you feel powerless. But this project taught me one thing: Iraqis are currently going through a lot but are incredibly strong and passionate people who can still smile and laugh through it. Each day in Baghdad feels like Russian roulette. If you're literally, if you're at the wrong place at the wrong time, you're gone. But that doesn't stop people. They can't stay at home and do nothing they have to live their lives.

@tnm___ / @yassino_yassino

I love jotting down nonsensical snippets of conversation I overhear at music festivals, parties, and other drug-friendly gatherings. I've catalogued trustafarian musings like "At our core, we're interstellar beings," "Dog feet are a good idea," and most spectacularly, "I feel like a deer that for some reason has the ability to travel in and out of heaven."

Imagine for a second that these quotes came from respected members of Victorian society—powdered wigs and all—and you've got the focus of Oh Excellent Air Bag: Under the Influence of Nitrous Oxide 1799-1920. This anthology of original accounts from the earliest days of laughing gas (out now via The Public Domain Review) features poets, scientists, and philosophers offering such musings as "I felt like the sound of a harp," "He seemed... to be bathed all over with a bucket full of good humour," and "It would require a pen, made of a quill, plucked from an angel's wing, to describe half the pleasures arising from this source."

This manner of speech was wholly new in the early 19th century, well before our culture's current surplus of armchair philosophers and aspiring gonzo journalists. Even Thomas Beddoes, who owned the first lab in which nitrous oxide was synthesized, prefaced his own sensory descriptions with the following parenthetical: "Why should one fear to use ludicrous terms when they are expressive?"

Indeed, Oh Excellent Air Bag's curators believe that their findings comprise some of the earliest-known psychedelic literature. Author Mike Jay, who previously explored nitrous oxide's beginnings in his book The Atmosphere of Heaven, penned an introduction to this chronological collection of essays, scientific observations, and poetry, as well as assisted with its curation. VICE spoke with him about the drug's remarkable history.

Colored etching by Robert Seymour, 1829

How prevalent was the use of other recreational drugs during this time period?
Mike Jay: Opium was used very widely, and it was a medication that most people were familiar with—but it wasn't thought of as a mind-altering drug until Thomas De Quincy's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. People didn't use opium for philosophical investigations, though. There's also a bit of writing about hashish—particularly in the French tradition—which was becoming known in the West by 1850. Baudelaire and the French decadent poets were taking it, and some scientists experimented with it too. Ether was also very popular.

There wasn't really a category of illegal drugs like we have now. These were all seen as medicines with interesting and odd effects. We still have things like that— Parkinson's disease medicines give people bizarre hallucinations, but we don't think of them as mind-altering drugs.

What differed in the way nitrous oxide entered the fold?
In the 19th century, nitrous oxide was the go-to drug for what we might now call psychedelic science. There was no LSD or other psychedelics. It all started when Humphrey Davy synthesized nitrous oxide in a laboratory in 1799. He inhaled it and had this really bizarre, extraordinary experience of consciousness alteration. The chemical reaction by which he did it was simple, so anybody who was set up with a laboratory could have a go at it.

raised all of these extraordinary questions, like: How could a gas isolated in a laboratory have this effect on the human mind? How could it make you suddenly feel happy and euphoric for no reason? Why did it make you laugh? Why did it give you this feeling of cosmic revelation? What's the connection between mind and body? Where do ideas and feelings come from? The 19th century was the great century for discovering the mind, so for anybody who was interested in these ideas during this time, nitrous oxide was the go-to drug to investigate further.

Illustration by Thomas Rowlandson

What differentiates these writings on nitrous oxide from Paris' mid-19th century "drug literature" scene?
They follow different cultural threads. Nitrous oxide got involved with anesthesia halfway through the century. But because of the drug's many dimensions, early on Davy and Beddoes brought on was members of other disciplines—poets, artists, literary figures—to get the nitrous experience. intense, and it's obvious while you're having it, but it's really hard to describe. Davy figured all that out and said, "We need a new language of feeling to describe our state of consciousness when we take this gas."

At the time, Davy was very friendly with early Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, who were trying to find ways to talk about states of mind and emotions that nobody had ever talked about before. So Davy got everybody involved in the experiments to write about their experiences. Those have never been reproduced before, so it's great to see them—it's kind of the beginning of psychedelic literature. When the hashish experiments in Paris started in the mid-19th century, the doctor who convened them looked back and read all of Davy's work, said "This is what I'm trying to do," and convened a similar group of scientists, artists, and poets.

It's interesting that all of these inter-disciplinary minds converged on the scene immediately. How did that happen?
Beddoes was a guru figure to Coleridge and Southey, and he also brought Davy in as his lab assistant, so they all met during the course of the project. Beddoes is a real interesting figure—a political revolutionary, very much on the radical edge of British culture, he brought a lot of interesting people together. They had great medical ambitions for nitrous oxide, but it was hard to interest the medical profession because nobody had any idea of how this stuff might work, or what the therapeutic applications might be. Also, they were a marginal, radical group of people who you didn't want to associate with.

Oddly enough, the writings became popular, and people got the idea that it was this extraordinary gas that had strange effects. You'd have nitrous oxide demonstrations as an evening's entertainment, or scientific lectures, or variety shows with magic and hypnotism. That's when it got the name "laughing gas." It was discovered by dentists when they watched people taking it in public and not feel any pain until the gas wore off—a big problem with dentists' business model at the time was that nobody wanted the pain of dental procedures and tooth extractions. So nitrous oxide went from philosophical experiments, to the seamy world of carnivals and fairgrounds, and then it was accepted as a great medical breakthrough.

Illustration by James Gilray

Had nitrous oxide been discovered and tested more recently, do you think it would have still been explored for medical use?
Pretty much everything we think of now as an illicit drug once had medical or therapeutic applications in a clinical setting before becoming part of a public scene. If something gets known as a street drug nowadays, it becomes much harder for it to become accepted in medicine—we're seeing that with everything from psilocybin to ketamine. It's always an uphill battle to get approval.

The first mention of psilocybin mushrooms in European medical writing also occurred in England in 1799. Was there something about the state of British science, medicine, or culture at the time that led people to be more curious about mind-altering substances?
The end of the 18th century was the great age of classification, when everybody started trying to nail down all kinds of things that, in the past, had been labeled as folklore, mythology, or weird superstition. In the 1760s, famed taxonomist Carl Linnaeus wrote a book called Inebriantia, which was the first catalog of intoxicants. He rounded up everything from all over the world— coca leaf and tobacco from the Americas, betel nut and opium and hashish and different types of alcohol—which nobody had listed at that point. Linnaeus looked around the world and said, "Every culture has their own favorite intoxicants," which was an idea that I don't think anybody would've had before that time.

The identification of psilocybin mushrooms was interesting. It was random that there happened to be a doctor around to write and publish a report when people started acting strangely. People always believed there were poisonous mushrooms—ones that had strange effects or made you delirious—but no one nailed down which exact species. At the same time, the discovery of nitrous oxide was part of Beddoes' program of isolating and testing different gases. They're both part of the same process of classification.

Oh Excellent Air Bag: Under the Influence of Nitrous Oxide 1799-1920 is out now on The Public Domain Review.

Follow Patrick Lyons on Twitter.

Photo by Wong Maye-E via AP Images

In the column "How Scared Should I Be?" VICE staff writer and generalized anxiety disorder sufferer Mike Pearl seeks to quantify the scariness of everything under the sun. We hope it'll help you to more wisely allocate that most precious of natural resources: your fear.

On July 19, North Korea went and did a naughty thing: It fired three ballistic missiles, which traveled across its landmass, and dropped into the Sea of Japan. As is often the case, North Korea's abrupt display of force appears to have been an expression of disapproval at new military measures being put in place by the US and South Korea—in this case, it was the US's implementation of the THAAD missile defense system in Seongju, South Korea.

North Korea can't physically harm me by blowing up Seongju, at least not anymore. (As it happens, I used to live about 95 miles from Seongju in the neighboring city of Gwangju.) But as callous as this may sound, the fate of Seongju isn't what worries me. What worries me is when North Korea claims, like it did earlier this year, that it can reduce its enemies, including the US to "flames and ashes." That was just one of North Korea's many colorful ways of expressing its long held, and well known, desire to wipe out the US, South Korea, and Japan.

But do I really have any reason to fear the Hermit Kingdom?

"If the regime feels directly threatened, it could lash out, inviting a counterattack that would destroy the country, but causing a lot of damage along the way." —Charles K. Armstrong

What worries most analysts is that North Korea's nuclear option is pretty much its only option if it gets into a major fight. "The escalation ladder is only artillery, and then nuclear weapons," Victor Cha, North Korea analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies told my colleague Keegan Hamilton back in March. That conversation (which you can watch below) took place shortly after a cascade of events in which North Korea successfully tested its fourth nuke in January, and then launched a satellite into orbit in February.

The UN then cut off a huge amount of aid, and—in a commonplace strategy for dealing with North Korea—exporters agreed to embargo resources, and braced for something crazy to happen, because embargoes and sanctions tend to piss off Dear Leader Kim Jong-un.

North Korea seems to view itself (somewhat reasonably) as under constant external threat. Each time North Korea's defense system achieves something, like its first successful nuclear detonation in 2006, it's told by the US, the UN, or even its closest ally, China, to absolutely not take another step. Then it inevitably takes another step, and another, and another.

"Pyongyang has reaped tens of billions in concessions, including cash, food, energy, fertilizer, while advancing its nuclear and missile capabilities, all in return for repeatedly lying about denuclearization," Lee Sung-Yoon, research associate at Harvard's Korea Institute, told VICE in an email.

Earlier this year, Kim claimed he'd finally gotten his hands on a nuclear warhead small enough to be mounted on a rocket. Then in April of this year, when North Korea claimed that it has the ICBM technology necessary to attack well inside the US mainland, North Korea's claim that it could turn American cities to ash finally developed some real validity.

But North Korea's history is fully of empty threats. "North Korea itself is not going to attack anyone—least of all the US—without provocation. Their number one priority is survival," Charles K. Armstrong, professor of Korean studies at Columbia University, told VICE. According to the CIA's World Factbook, North Korea is mostly a struggling, agrarian backwater that just happens to have a bellicose cult leader running it from its biggest city.

The World Factbook claims that in order to have some semblance of an economy, North Korea futzes with its currency supply in order to stave off hyperinflation. What little industry North Korea has, according to the CIA, struggles with broken-down machinery, and has no access to spare parts. There's not enough usable farmland, and even if there were, there's not enough fertilizer, tractors, and fuel to generate food. North Koreans, The World Factbook says, pretty much rely on food aid to live.

In March, when Kim told his people they were in for a historic famine, he blamed the new UN sanctions, rather than a total agricultural breakdown at last year's harvest, leading to "lean times" that are most likely peaking right now as silos sit empty in anticipation of a fresh harvest in the coming fall.

"Its very own survival depends on overturning one day the gloomy reality of perpetual inferiority against that other Korean state." —Lee Sung-Yoon

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA agent told the Japan Times in 2013, "It is virtually impossible to run a human spy in the North and penetrate the Korean state." Riedel said most foreign intelligence about North Korea comes from satellite photography.

In other words, fallow fields are visible to satellite cameras, so the CIA can say with certainty that North Korean farmers are struggling. But tucked away inside of buildings (and in tunnels) North Korea could—and probably does—have capabilities we don't know about, according to commentator and former congressional advisor on North Korea, Joshua Stanton. " in South Korean courts, and found responsible in US federal courts," Stanton told me.

For instance, in May, North Korean agents in China killed a pastor who had been helping North Korean defectors escape to the South. "They have a history of bombings and other terrorist attacks, and also control North Korea's hackers," Stanton said, adding, "I'm not aware of any attempts on anyone in the US, except for cyberattacks."

North Korean hackers mean business. The 2014 Sony hack was attributed to North Koreans who were supposedly retaliating against the creation and release of an objectively bad movie called The Interview. That hack was sophisticated, intentional, and enormously damaging, causing $35 million in digital damage, smearing showbiz muckety mucks, and briefly holding a movie release hostage and leading to a lingering debate that threatens to soften Hollywood's ability to satirize—a tangible blow to free speech.

"The bottom line is that the North Koreans are capable of anything." —Joshua Stanton

Even if the odds of my own injury or death at the hands of North Korea may be infinitesimal, as are those of my South Korean and Japanese friends, there are other things to fear. North Korea wants to, and thinks it has to, hurt the US and South Korea somehow. "Its very own survival depends on overturning one day the gloomy reality of perpetual inferiority against that other Korean state, the one that is far more prosperous and pleasant," Lee told me.

Or as Stanton put it: "The bottom line is that the North Koreans are capable of anything."

Final Verdict: How Scared Should I Be of North Korea?

3/5: SWEATING IT.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

The following is an excerpt from Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud. The new book by Elizabeth Greenwood examines what it's like to fake your own death, the cottage industry that's sprung up around making someone disappear, and the paper trails individuals construct in order to be "reborn". In the passage below, the author explores how and why people fake their own demise and the differing ways that they go about it. Playing Dead is out August 9 from Simon and Schuster.

Todd put me on Bluetooth when he called from the road on a Friday afternoon. He was on his way to a campground in Northern California. He had left work early to beat traffic and get a few hours to himself before his wife and his two daughters, ages ten and eight, arrived. A forty-nine-year-old software manager from Lafayette, California, an affluent suburb in the East Bay, Todd's soft, nasally voice skewed more surfer bro. He called me from the car with the windows rolled down because he couldn't talk to me at home or at the office. He couldn't talk in front of anyone else because we were talking about how he thinks of faking his own death.

"The only way to do it is at sea or to get blown up," he told me. "You do it on a boat and find someone to witness it. First, I'd take out an insurance policy so I'd be gone but would know my kids could get a college education. I would arrange a sailing trip somewhere in Southeast Asia and make it seem like there had been a drowning. I'd head to Thailand because you can live in Thailand for nothing. I've traveled there, and I know how easy it would be. You don't need anything, not even papers. I wouldn't want to take any money with me, but I'd have some on the side, a few thousand. Now I'd have to make money, and I would do it online. I know I could make enough money to support myself under the radar—untraceable internet ad sales or something. It'd only make about ten thousand dollars, but I could live off that, just me, in Thailand, easy."

Todd described himself as "a cog in the wheel." On the periphery of Silicon Valley, where billionaires are made overnight, Todd is uncomfortably in the middle. "The area isn't great for my career, and technical jobs are hard to get," he said plaintively. Depending on how hellacious the traffic, he spends fifteen to twenty hours a week commuting from the eucalyptus-lined suburb to his office in Marin County. As he sees it, "I will never be able to retire. Every penny goes into mortgage, family, bills. We will never be as comfortable as my wife wants." Todd would be happy to spend his golden years living on a houseboat, but it's not an option. "I mentioned that once to my wife, and she went ballistic," he said. Todd has the life he thought he wanted: two healthy children, a wife, a house in the suburbs, and a good job. But he feels trapped. The idea of faking his own death provides fodder for his imagination during his commute and in front of his computer as he fantasizes about lazing on a Thai island, away from his responsibilities. Once, he Googled "faking your death" and was directed to the site wikiHow, on which someone had posted crude steps a person might take. Step one of the article instructs: "Decide whether you really want to do this."

The thing that surprised me most about Todd was not that he wanted to fake his own death. I'd done the same Google search.

* * * * * * *

Faking your death—both as a concept and as an act people attempt with surprising frequency—first occurred to me several years earlier, when I was having dinner with my friend Matt. We had met teaching public school in the Bronx. That evening, as we sat in a cheap Vietnamese restaurant, I was feeling sorry for myself. I'd recently abandoned teaching to go back to school full-time, which meant foolishly taking out several dozen thousand dollars in student loans to heap upon the $60,000 debt from my undergraduate education, bringing the sum total to a bloated figure in the six digits. At the beginning of the semester, I felt alive and nourished and like I was on vacation after a career of corralling second graders. Then, a few weeks in, I realized what I had done. I'd screwed myself financially, big time (for the second time!), and had nobody to blame but the creep in the mirror.

In the dim crepuscular light of early winter, I was bemoaning my self-imposed financial plight to Matt, who was exhausted and smelled slightly like the syrup from the school cafeteria. He looked less than amused.

I revealed my latest vision of the future over greasy spring rolls:

"So the plan is to become, like, a towering luminary and highly sought-after public intellectual, and, I mean, my TED Talk alone will obviously pay back my private loans, but in the very off chance that the film offers don't come knocking straightaway, I've come up with plan B: Belize."

"What does that even mean?" Matt asked, his eyelids sagging after a day of coaxing eight-year-olds into mastering fractions.

"You know, just slip through the cracks. Find a sun- bleached country with a rickety government and no extradition policy and kick back on the beach, avoiding the feds for the rest of my life."

Lil Wayne once said, "You can make a million rapping about some pussy." He's right—but it wasn't always that way. Freedom of expression in hip-hop was once hotly contested; in 1990, Miami hip-hop group 2 Live Crew were literally put on trial for their sexually charged 1989 album As Nasty As They Wanna Be.

The average hip-hop fan is probably familiar with 2 Live Crew's frontman, Luther "Uncle Luke" Campbell—but the group's co-founder, as well as the only person to appear on every 2 Live Crew album, is an equally important figure. He's "The Chinaman," better known as Fresh Kid Ice, the first-ever notable rapper of Asian descent. It's impossible not to note the irony of an Asian man—one of the most desexualized demographics in American culture—co-founding one the most sexually explicit hip-hop groups in history.

Fresh Kid Ice recently released his autobiography, My Rise 2 Fame. The book is equal parts memoir and industry advice, and it wastes no time getting to 2 Live Crew's essence: in the first few pages, he writes about how "girls got fucked, and sucked, and covered in nut as the 2 Live shows got raunchier and raunchier." He describes the number of women he's slept with thusly: "Less than Wilt Chamberlain, but more than you and all your friends combined." The book's back half details the dark side of fame, too—from financial mismanagement to the abuse and objectification of women.

Fresh Kid Ice was born in 1964 as Christopher Wong Won in Port of Spain, Trinidad. "I'm Afrochinese, both of my grandmothers were black," he says during a phone conversation. "But my grandfather was Cantonese." During his childhood, Fresh Kid Ice soaked in the rhythm and sensuality of the Caribbean music around him: "It was girls coming out and dancing at festivals and booty shaking—that type of stuff."

In 1977, Fresh Kid Ice's family moved to Brooklyn, just in time for him to witness the birth of hip-hop. In both Trinidad and the US, he was teased because of his Asian heritage. "They'd make fun of your last name and call you 'Wonton,'" is how he describes the abuse from his peers. His upbringing paralleled that of many Asians: "Chris had really strict parents, so he wasn't a wild child," a former classmate guest-wrote in My Rise 2 Fame. A former girlfriend is quoted as saying, "Chris was so shy and sweet—a perfect gentleman— seeing him as Fresh Kid Ice was literally a shock."

In 1985, Fresh Kid Ice co-founded the 2 Live Crew in California with DJ Mr. Mixx and Amazing Vee. The next year—following the release of their single "Throw The D"—the group was discovered by Campbell, who signed them to his label, brought them to Miami, and joined as their frontman. I ask Fresh Kid Ice if being Asian changed the group's trajectory. "When we first started, a lot of people didn't know I was Asian," he explains. "But when the videos came out, it basically crossed the group over. Other people could be like, 'Damn, that could be me. I didn't know an Asian dude was rapping like that!'"

Photos courtesy of Jake Katel

As Nasty As They Wanna Be went double-platinum, aided in part by the 1990 ruling by Florida District Judge Jose Gonzalez that declared it the first legally obscene album in history following a campaign against the group that included the sheriff of Broward County, then-Governor Bob Martinez, and Vice President Dan Quayle. Two years later, the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta overturned the ruling, setting a precedent with implications that hip-hop could now be as nasty as it wanted to be—and 2 Live Crew could be as nasty on record as they were in their personal lives.

"I got a lot of stories," Fresh Kid Ice says with a laugh. "When we'd hit the , 'Okay you chill here, we'll take your sister up or whatever.' Later that night, somebody would be knocking at the door being like 'Where she at!'"

"It caused some drama," Fresh Kid Ice continued. "We was on tour with Jazzy Jeff and had to jump out the window to get out of there!"

America has a dearth of Asian sex symbols and Asian rappers, but when I ask Fresh Kid Ice if he was treated differently for being an Asian man, he seems confused by the question: "Girls always took a particular liking to me because I was different. I looked different—and instead of complaining, I used that to my advantage."

His words extend to his advice for Asians in the music industry. "We can't have excuses anymore," Fresh Kid Ice states. "Hip-hop is a genre for everybody—music is international—so your bloodline shouldn't make a difference. Look at PSY: he's South Korean and he had one of the hugest records ever."

"The Asians were there in the beginning of hip-hop—but as DJs," he continued. "We've been in the background and stayed behind the scenes, but we learn from our mistakes. A lot of people see us as being passive, but sometimes being passive means that you're learning. Right now, I see us right there with everyone else. has to just come along and do it big."

As Asian rap is more widely recognized—a documentary on the subject, Bad Rap, recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, Fresh Kid Ice will invariably be looked upon as a trailblazer who helped clear the way for free expression in hip-hop. He also showed the world how appealing an Asian emcee could be.

Follow Zachary on Twitter.

Frank Bourassa drinks Goldschlager because he doesn't like the taste of alcohol.

Aversion aside, the shimmery, gold-flecked liqueur seems like an obvious choice for a man whose quest for riches drove him to print $250 million in fake US currency. For Bourassa, the shooter's saccharine taste is made even sweeter by the fact that despite his extraordinary caper, he is a free man.

We meet up with the self-proclaimed world's best counterfeiter in his hometown of Trois-Rivières, QC, at a bar that seems named after him. But the staff at "Les Contrebandiers" (French for "The Smugglers") don't recognize the man they're serving.

Bourassa attributes this to the fact that the (rather prominent) coverage of his exploits was mostly published in the US, in English. "Strangely, in my town, it's not really known because life here is all in French, and English doesn't really infiltrate the kind of insular world we have in Quebec."

This is Bourassa's life now, a quiet, modest existence in a small city that stretches along the Saint Lawrence river.

But a few years ago, the former career criminal hatched a plan that would forever alter his life. "I was just stopped at a red light," he recalls, "and I thought to myself, we get up in the morning to sell a product, provide a service, but the goal is always to make money."

"I thought well, why not cut all the steps and make the money directly, it's going to solve the problem. All the irritations, the complications and issues we have in life, at work, I won't have those anymore."

Frank Bourassa: 'I don't do much in moderation.'

For years, Bourassa researched his plan, fastidiously studying the US bill's security features and contacting hundreds of paper suppliers to find the perfect canvas for his crime.

"I'm really something when it comes to research," he brags. "The samba? Not so much, but research? It took me thousands of hours," he says. "I had to find a recipe, ingredients, components, and a place to do it. I had to source a supplier that would produce my recipe without it seeming like this was a recipe for money paper."

After months of emails, Bourassa finally found a European shop willing to print his order, though he maintains they had no clue as to his final intentions. He describes the moment this shipment arrived to its final destination as "the happiest day of his life, by far."

It was also the most stressful. "Up to there, I hadn't spoken out loud to anyone, because a voice recording is strong evidence against you in court," Bourassa says. "Everything was done by email, and from the moment they took the paper and sent it, I had no clue whether or not they'd called the FBI."

Picking up the paper shipment at the Port of Montreal was an ordeal that required three days of surveillance, numerous accomplices, and a change of vehicles to further cover their tracks.

Sitting in a shadowy booth away from the rest of the bar's patrons, Bourassa—who refers to regular, non-criminal people as "legal folks"—runs through the myriad precautions he says most wouldn't think of taking.

"You have to transfer are some of the best people on the planet, but they get beat down by their government, they have it tough," he says, citing the lack of access to free healthcare as an example of this hardship. "So I didn't want to find a network of clients who'd spend this in the U.S. because the way fake money works is that anyone who gets caught with it loses it."

"I may have a lot of faults but I'm not willing to beat people down, to steal and cause someone harm. But doing something against the government, that's not something I have that much of an issue with."

There's hardly any way to track the money he sold, so Bourassa can't say whether it was used for other crimes, though "I doubt it ended up in church."

Tasting freedom—in Canada, at least.

The world's best counterfeiter now runs his own enterprise, offering consulting services to help businesses thwart counterfeiters.

His freedom isn't total: Bourassa's only protected from extradition if he stays in Canada, and he still can't say whether he's still being watched (Secret Service representatives told VICE they couldn't comment on the case because their investigation is still open).

Bourassa says further surveillance would be a waste of time. "I wouldn't touch another fake $20 with a 100 foot pole," he says. "Never in my life."

If he could go back, would he do it all over again? "Yeah, I'm happy, I did a good job."

Follow Brigitte on Twitter.

Image via Google Street View

While over 700 Hells Angels are meeting up in Ottawa this weekend, one of their clubhouses in British Columbia has apparently become the site of an escalating Pokémon Go battle.

The gang's clubhouse in Coquitlam is a designated Pokémon gym, which I guess makes it like a flame to the millions of nostalgia-addicted moths who can't stop playing the Nintendo game on their phones. Longtime West Coast gang reporter Kim Bolan was tipped off about the gym on Friday, and players have since started fighting over the spot.

If smack talk on Reddit can be considered any indication, the competition is heating up. "I beat this gym with a Hypno named MattDamon," one commenter bragged. "What a low level Pokemon. I'm going there right now to reclaim the gym for team blue," replied another. "You don't want to start a turf war with us."

Read More: Hells Angels, Boozy Old Men, and Thongs: Everything I Saw at Canada's Biggest Biker Rally

While it might not necessarily be a bad thing to have extra eyeballs on a gang hangout, police definitely aren't happy about it.

"We think it's highly inappropriate that this game would include a location that attracts all ages—including children—to the location of a gang," BC anti-gang police force spokesperson Sgt. Lindsey Houghton told the Province.

But considering one kid in Vancouver jumped onto Skytrain tracks while playing Pokémon Go earlier this week, it's tough to say whether the game or the gang poses more of a threat.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

Photo by Lubunya via

This article originally appeared on VICE Alps

On Thursday of last week, I flew from my home in Zürich to my family in Izmir. I would stay for three weeks and the plan was to go on some day trips, take my nieces and nephews swimming and just relax and spend some time together. That all changed when the first push notifications about the attempted coup reached us.

Military interventions into politics are a Turkish tradition. Since the Republic was founded in 1923, there have been four coups where the military succeeded in taking power from democratically elected governments. Particularly the coup in 1980 left deep scars in Turkish society, because of General Kenan Evren's brutal crackdown on dissidents.

The military sees itself as a protector of the secular Turkish republic and traditionally follows Kemalism – the ideals of modern Turkey's founder Atatürk. In earlier coups, parts of the military believed that those in power were violating the key values of Kemalism, and felt called to protect the republic.

Since last Friday, a lot has been said and written about the coup – how it came to this and what effect the failed coup will have beyond the hundreds dead, thousands injured and the countless arrests and impeachments. My family and I, Alevi Kurds originally from southeast Anatolia, thankfully aren't among those numbers, but we did experience the attempt like many others in Turkey did. This is how I, a Swiss citizen with a Kurdish background, experienced the day of the attempted coup and its aftermath in Turkey.

Friday July 15th at around 10:30PM (MEST): The military closes the bridges over the Bosporus in Istanbul

My brother and I are sitting in a restaurant in an Izmir suburb and have just ordered a bottle of raki to toast the start of our holiday. Within a few minutes the other guests at the restaurant get restless and exchange wild rumours – they've heard Erdogan has been shot. My brother and I start getting very uncomfortable – one second we're sitting together laughing and the next we're not sure about anything anymore.

The people at the table next to ours whisper about an attack, an assassination and protests. My brother and I try to calm each other down, tell each other that we don't know anything yet. We call our parents and my sister-in-law who are with us in Turkey, to be sure that they're safe. They haven't heard anything about what we tell them.

I catch myself wondering whether I can fly to Istanbul next weekend for a friend's wedding.

While still discussing the rumours with the other patrons, we start getting the first push notifications from Turkish media mentioning closed bridges and blocked streets in Istanbul. The restaurant owner turns on the TV, where we see the occupied bridges. I have so many questions: What's going on? What does this mean for my family and me? But it's not just the big questions that hit me: I catch myself wondering whether I can fly to Istanbul next weekend for a friend's wedding.

After we leave the restaurant we first hear it's an attempted coup on the car radio. I immediately think of my father – the memory of the bloody military coup of 1980 is never far away for my family. It was the start of a time of repression, violence and the persecution of people who opposed it. Will it come to that again? Who could be behind the coup? If they take over, would we soon want Erdogan and the AKP back? How will the AKP and Erdogan respond? And: how will the masses respond? I'm afraid and feel powerless.

Screenshot from YouTube

Friday July 15th at 11PM – the military announces it has toppled the government

We're sitting at home and watch the message from coup leaders on the state channel TRT. They've hijacked the broadcast to announce they've toppled the government and are now in power. They say they took over to fight the AKP's rampant corruption and its general incapacity to rule. Marshall law has been imposed, as well as a strict curfew. They announce a new constitution which they say will recognise the country's ethnic and religious minorities.

As Alevi Kurds we're a double minority, so we should be delighted with that last promise. But it feels absurd to hear such an announcement from a brand new military regime. Could a military coup be a positive impulse for Turkish democracy? Should I be happy about a coup? Could I ever be?

My father has terrible memories of the coup of 1980 and doesn't think much of military involvement in politics. "The military gets involved to promote democracy and protect the country from a totalitarian system?" he asks with his typical slightly detached scepticism. "Just goes to show how broken this country is. We should be pleased to see a coup? That's never a good thing. No matter who's pulling the strings." I tend to agree with him – my father has had a lot of experience with these kinds of matters and his analysis of political events is usually spot on. State media report the AKP is still in power.

Friday July 15th at 11:30PM – Erdogan mobilises his supporters via FaceTime

Screenshot of tweet by Deniz Yücel

By now, users with Turkish IP addresses can't access YouTube, Twitter and Facebook and most TV stations have stopped broadcasting. The first image to appear on TV is a FaceTime video of an interview with Erdogan. He speaks of a devious conspiracy by a clique within the army, and he encourages people to take to the streets, take over key places and airports in the country and stop the military.

It's absurd to hear a man who struck down protests and grossly reduced the right to assemble and demonstrate. But we can see on TV that many Turks are heeding his call. It's understandable that these people refuse to accept a military coup, but we do wonder who they are and what they want, exactly. They chant nationalist slogans ("Martyrs don't die, the homeland cannot be divided") and an Islamist slogan chanted at conservative religious marches. Those chants are accompanied by Mehter marches – traditional military music dating back to Ottoman times.

A friend who is in the city centre of Izmir tells me that there are violent clashes between people on the coup's side and civilians. Thousands of AKP-supporters are protesting in the streets – it looks like the Turkish football team has just won the Euros.

The nationalist Islamist slogans make my family very unconfortable. We all agree that a coup is deeply undemocratic and won't move Turkey forward. But it's also scary to think it could just play straight into the hands of the regime. An attempted coup could legitimise an even more authoritarian rule in Turkey.

Saturday July 16th at 3AM – the coup apparently failed

Every media outlet is now reporting that the coup has failed, and the government claims that everything will soon go back to normal. We're all deeply confused – without realising it, we apparently all had some very small hope that a regime change could possibly lead to more democracy and that hope is now gone. I'm a bit embarrassed about having allowed myself to feel that way. My family have been gathered around the television set for hours, trying to get information about what's going on. We're all deeply confused and it's impossible to sleep. The government threatens revenge and retribution, which is as expected as it is worrying. Our biggest fear is that after this unreal situation, the country will move further and further away from actual democracy.

Saturday July 16th at 1PM – Erdogan sends a text message to Turkey

Everyone in Turkey receives this text message from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Everyone.

Screenshot by the author

"Dear children of the Turkish nation. This action is a coup against the nation, commandeering armoured vehicles and weapons in Ankara and Istanbul, behaving as if it were the 1970s. Honourable Turkish nation, claim democracy and peace: I am calling you to the streets against this action of a narrow cadre that has fallen against the Turkish nation. Claim the state, claim the nation."

The text message is a personal call to continue supporting the current AKP government on the streets. I find it totalitarian and frightening, but my family in Turkey is used to these kinds of messages. The text has a visible effect: on Saturday night, the streets and squares are full of people celebrating the failure of the coup. But there seem to be coup leaders who haven't been found and arrested yet. The text is probably intended to make sure the people will defend the regime against a potential second attempt.

Sunday July 17TH – Turkey has changed

According to the state news agency Anadolu, more than 200 people were killed during or after the attempted coup, 2000 were injured and 7500 were arrested. My family's fears seem justified: according to media reports, Erdoğan has removed almost 3000 judges and banned 21,000 private school teachers from teaching. Almost 1600 university deans have been dismissed and the education ministry fired 15,000 employees.

Videos of soldiers being humiliated, beaten and almost lynched are circulating on social media. A coup is undemocratic and I couldn't support it under any circumstances, but the images of the riled masses are no less terrifying. These people say they're flooding the streets to defend democracy, but I wonder where they were exactly two months ago, when left-wing HDP MPs were stripped of their immunity. Why didn't they protest the unspeakably undemocratic Turkish electoral system, which excludes all parties that have less than 10% of the votes? Where are they when it comes to minority rights, why don't they stand up against the systematic exclusion of the opposition, the oppression of critical media, the persecution of journalists?

Screenshot of tweet by Deniz Yücel

Wednesday July 20th at 10PM – Erdoğan declares a state of emergency

After an hour-long meeting of the national security council President Erdoğan announces that he is declaring a state of emergency across the country. He says it's to protect the people – the freedom of assembly and movement remain intact, as do the freedom of speech and the free press, he claims. But that's not the political reality: we hear and read that people are arrested based on their social media posts. At least Erdoğan is honest about that when announces further arrests. My father's icy commentary is quick to follow: "This country has been in a state of emergency for years. Phases of stability are the exception. We'll see what this means for the country. I have a bad feeling about it."

More on VICE:

How Facetime Saved Erdogan from Turkey's Failed Coup

Hazy, Dreamlike Photos from a Trip Across Turkey

Istanbul Rising