Photo: Jonathan Starke

This post originally appeared on VICE UK

There are more vegans now than ever before. That's not a statement based off scare stories by the Big Meat lobby, or the literally millions of #vegan photos on Instagram, or the fact you definitely see more vegans publicly proselytizing than you did even five years ago; it's fact. In May of this year, The Vegan Society commissioned research that found there are over half a million vegans in Great Britain, three-and-a-half times as many as estimated in 2006.

And with so many people living the vegan lifestyle, there have—of course—been ramifications when it comes to the way they date. The term "vegansexualism" first emerged in 2007, when a study in New Zealand found that the majority of vegans interviewed would prefer to date or have sex with other vegans. Some claimed to have little or no problem being intimate with non-vegans, but those who did saw their veganism as such a strong part of their identity that they needed to be with like-minded partners to make the relationship work.

Almost ten years after the study was conducted, and with this recent proliferation of vegans in the UK, I wanted to find out if and how vegansexualism had progressed.

First off I spoke to Kirilee, a vegan of eight years. "I wasn't always a vegan, and everyone is on their own journey," she said. "However, I wouldn't continue to be involved with someone who isn't open to the idea of becoming vegan and doesn't show compassion towards animals. You usually know pretty early on."

She then summed up the problem she faces when describing why this is an issue for her: "It's simpler to say that, typically, an environmentalist wouldn't be involved with a coal miner. A lot more people seem to understand that concept, but when it comes down to 'diet' and animals, things start to be a bit confusing."

" made things like going out to dinner a little bit tougher, especially when their family was also involved—it often meant compromising what I wanted to eat and settling for a salad," said Ben, who was vegan for several years, when I asked him how his diet affected his relationships. "I also wasn't overly keen on kissing after meaty meals."

So far, so understandable. And as yet, the views of the people I'd spoken to were much the same as those interviewed in the original New Zealand study.

The research—conducted by Dr. Annie Potts, Co-Director of the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies at the University of Canterbury—surveyed 157 vegans, 120 of whom were female. Sixty-three percent stated that, like Kirilee, they had (or would want) a partner who was also concerned for animals in the way they were.

The opinions of the people interviewed varied, but were mostly pretty straightforward. A 21-year-old vegan woman, for example, said: "My beliefs about animals have affected my relationship with my partner greatly. I have seriously considered leaving my fiancée to work with animals—he does not share my views—and we are still struggling." Whereas a man commented: "I could be in a relationship with any non-vegan. My belief is it is best to lead by example rather than preaching my personal views."

However, some were a little more militant. One 41-year-old woman likened non-vegan bodies to a cemetery for their previous meals: "I would not want to be intimate with someone whose body is literally made up from the bodies of others who have died for their sustenance," she said. "Non-vegetarian bodies smell different to me—they are, after all, literally sustained through carcasses, the murdered flesh of others. Even though I might find someone really attractive, I wouldn't want to get close to them in a physical sense if their body was derived from meat. For me, this constitutes my very personal form of ethical sexuality."

A study in the Czech Republic assessed the effect of red meat consumption on body odor attractiveness. The conclusion? Those on a non-meat diet were "judged as significantly more attractive, more pleasant and less intense." So there you have it—in the same way a devout non-smoker might liken kissing a smoker to "making out with an ashtray," perhaps those dedicated to their dietary beliefs are just more sensitive to bodily odors than others.

But does that have to get in the way, when—for instance—two people see eye to eye on everything but meat? I asked Kirilee what advice she would have for a new couple, when one person is a vegan and the other isn't. "Grow?" she laughed. "If you walk into a party and start throwing glass, no one is going to stay to dance. Be open with one another—you have shared different experiences in life that have brought you to the place you are now in your life."

Some vegan demonstrators, who aren't necessarily "vegansexual," but definitely were vegan when this photo was taken. Photo: Takver, via

This year, SpeedDater.co.uk launched Veggie/Vegan Speed Dating, so there's obviously enough demand out there for vegans and veggies looking for like-minded partners. In fact, a SpeedDater survey found that 56 percent of vegetarians and vegans "said they would be put off dating a meat eater"—a similar percentage to the New Zealand study.

The Vegan Society also holds a regular event called The London Vegan Meetup—a free social group for vegans and the vegan-curious. I spoke to Robb Masters, who took over management of the event in 2011, when the group had 750 members. Now, it's at almost 6,000.

"We know that some members have met their partners at London Vegan Meetup," he said. "We've even held a few singles events, and know of at least four marriages that have resulted from people meeting at our events. But we're very keen to emphasize that it isn't a dating group: we don't want people to come to our events in order to hit on each other. So, last December, we launched the London Vegan Singles group on Facebook. That now has over 500 members, with occasional 'single mingles,' and we've had a few success stories there too."

So it appears that while the number of vegans might have grown, there hasn't exactly been a huge surge of "vegansexuals." And perhaps that's unsurprising: after all, just because you don't want to eat meat, doesn't mean you have shut out anyone who does.

Peter Voelker has spent the last two years photographing protests. He's been at the center of social justice demos in New York; traveled the entire route of the Keystone XL oil pipeline; and seen the extraordinary force of the Black Lives Matter movement. "I feel the need to focus my energy toward social justice issues in a time where social change is being heavily impacted by the divisive political climate," he says.

"I see my work as part of an imperative fight for change—I go to protests out of professional and personal motivation. I want to promote awareness and spur discussion. I also believe that to be an ally, you have to insert yourself and offer what you can to the cause."

A selection of Peter's images have made it into his new book System Change Not Climate Change, and will be on display in London this week, from October 13-16 at Doomed Gallery.

Trump at Sunday night's debate. (Saul Loeb/Pool via AP)

On Friday afternoon, as everyone was anticipating Sunday's presidential debate, the Washington Post dropped a video that changed the entire tenor of the weekend and the entire campaign: a never-aired bit of footage in which Donald Trump detailed his efforts to "move on" a married woman and bragged that he was so famous he could kiss women on the mouth and "grab them by the pussy."

So naturally, moderator Anderson Cooper's first question directed at Trump wasn't even a question but an accusation. In what started one of—if not the—ugliest exchanges in the 2016 election cycle, the CNN anchor said, "You called what you said locker room banter — kissing women without consent, grabbing their genitals. That is sexual assault. You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?"

"No, I didn't say that at all," Trump replied. "I don't think you understood what was said. This was locker room talk. I'm not proud of it. I apologize to my family. I apologize to the American people. Certainly I'm not proud of it. But this is locker room talk."

He went on, pivoting immediately to his core message that the world is a terrifying place, so what was a bit of bragging about pussy-grabbing among friends? "You know, when we have a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads," he said. "Where you have wars and horrible, horrible sights all over, where you have so many bad things happening, this is like medieval times. We haven't seen anything like this, the carnage all over the world."

The argument, as pointed out by CNN commentator Van Jones just after the debate, was basically, Yeah, well at least I'm not as bad as ISIS. He also took a page from his running mate Mike Pence's playbook with the "I didn't say that at all" line—it's hard to argue against a flat denial, after all.

The debate moved on to other topics, including Syria and Russia and what each candidate admired about the other, but the tape was the kernel of the night's most important exchange. "Grab them by the pussy," grotesquely, could become the 2016 version of Mitt Romney's infamous comments in 2012 dismissing the "47 percent" of people who don't pay federal income taxes—an off-the-cuff remark from a Republican candidate that symbolizes neatly everything that many voters distrust about them. And Trump didn't likely do enough to convince everyone to move past that.

Trump's claim that "nobody has more respect for women than I do" was ridiculous on its face given his long history of making nasty comments about women. Female voters could very well decide this election, and in Hillary Clinton's most effective moment of the night, she used the Trump recording discussion as a springboard into a summation of Trump's overall toxicity:

"We have seen him insult women. We've seen him rate women. On their appearance. Ranking them from one to ten. We've seen him embarrass women on TV and on Twitter. We saw him after the first debate spend nearly a week denigrating a former Miss Universe in the harshest, most personal terms, so, yes, this is who Donald Trump is. But it's not only women, and it's not only this video that raises questions about his fitness to be our president. Because he has also targeted immigrants, African Americans, Latinos, people with disabilities, Muslims, and others, so, this is who Donald Trump is, and the question for us, the question our country must answer is that this is not who we are."

This was clearly the focus of her debate prep, but Trump had a counter ready, one that dredged up every nasty report about the Clintons that has circulated on conservative media:

"If you look at Bill Clinton, far worse—mine are words, and his was action. His was what he's done to women. There's never been anybody in the history politics in this nation that's been so abusive to women. So you can say any way you want to say it, but Bill Clinton was abusive to women.

"Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously. Four of them here tonight. One of the women, who is a wonderful woman, at 12 years old, was raped at 12. Her client she represented got him off, and she's seen laughing on two separate occasions, laughing at the girl who was raped. Kathy Shelton, that young woman is here with us tonight."

The Shelton case is much more complicated than Trump makes it out to be—Clinton did represent a rapist as a defense attorney, and he did earn a plea bargain because a crime lab mishandled evidence, though Clinton never laughed at the victim—but Trump's game plan was clearly to turn the debate into a vicious orgy of nasty accusations, however inaccurate. He was playing to his base and trying to draw attention away from himself with stunts and bluster. The real estate mogul preluded the debate with a press conference that included Shelton and several women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct. He then sat them in the front row of the audience, just within earshot of Bill and Chelsea, and mentioned Paula Jones, one of the women, when he tried to retake the high ground:

"So don't tell me about words. I am absolutely—I apologize for those words. But it is things that people say. But what President Clinton did, he was impeached, he lost his license to practice law. He had to pay an $850,000 fine to one of the women. Paula Jones, who's also here tonight.

"And I will tell you that when Hillary brings up a point like that and she talks about words that I said 11 years ago, I think it's disgraceful, and I think she should be ashamed of herself, if you want to know the truth."

Essentially, Trump tried to minimize the flames of his own dumpster fire by pointing to someone else's blaze. He repeatedly apologized, and said it was just words, but instead of showing humility, he went on offense. This is who Trump is, and it's what we'll get from him for the rest of the campaign. Republicans had warned Trump not to bring up Bill Clinton's scandals, with some calling it a "distraction," but with so many in the party walking away from Trump after the video leak, maybe the candidate figured, why not? Or maybe it's simpler: He just thinks Bill Clinton's misdeeds are worse than his and hates not getting the last word.

The difficulty Trump faces is that even if his diehard fans love this stuff, he needs to persuade undecided voters too, and they may be scared off by all of his nastiness. And oh yeah: There are reportedly more tapes of Trump with a hot mic, including one that supposedly has Trump saying the N-word.

There's a very good chance that, by the third and final presidential debate next week, there will probably be another cache of unearthed statements that he'll have to deflect questions about. What these new controversies will be and how they'll play is anyone's guess. But what the first 20 minutes of the second debate provided us with was a blueprint of how Trump will handle these sorts of things. Election day can't come fast enough.

(Debate transcript via the New York Times.)

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

This post originally appeared on VICE Australia.

It's Mental Health Week across Australia. Each state starts and ends the special week at different times, but today—Monday—there's a lot of overlap. So I want to explain why this week should feel like an important call to arms, and tell you what it's like to live with a common—and little understood—mental illness: borderline personality disorder, or BPD.

Between 1 and 2 percent of Australians suffer from BPD. Women are up to three times more likely to have it than men. It is often connected to (or misdiagnosed as) another mental illnesses, which means it can get lost in other, bigger discussions. It can blend in with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder. It might be genetic, or it may result from trauma. It might also be both, or neither.

It is hard to offer a simple medical definition of BPD, but I've heard it brilliantly summed up as "chronic irrationality." Think severe mood swings, impulsivity, instability, and a whole lot of explosive anger.

BPD feels like floating above a dinner party, above the chitchat and laughter, looking down at the smiling people who understand one another, and thinking: Why not me?

It sends you into spirals of self-doubt and hatred. It makes you feel like a tangled slinky, forever bumping inelegantly down a flight of stairs. You know something within you is twisted, and even once you're told what, you're left wondering why.

There's always this stifling sense of isolation. I say "sense" because I can be surrounded by the most supportive friends and still think they're out to get me, or mocking me behind my back. The tragedy of BPD is that it runs on such solipsism that it inverts me as a person. I become toxically narcissistic—self-hating to the point where I irrationally project my emotional insecurities onto those around me.

It almost goes without saying that it's hard to maintain relationships. The combination of feeling absolutely nothing while flinching at everything doesn't make for a whole lot of fun. BPD makes me lash out, allowing some of the cruelest things to tumble from my mouth. And believe me, there are only so many times loved ones will forgive a lack of control.

People often discuss BPD by describing an "emptiness." For me, it's more an oscillation between the impossibly empty and the impossibly full. I keep seeing my neighbor's pool in winter, just an empty bowl of dusty blue tiles. Imagine standing in the middle of that, when suddenly the pool fills up. In an instant, you're drowning. People describe BPD like that: a flip. A big switch going off in an invisible instant.

I think it's this erratic oscillation that makes BPD so hard to communicate—particularly to those who are close. Because on the surface it looks like I'm just being an ornery prick. Like all mental illness, it's best treated with patience and empathy. And unfortunately, like depression or hypomania, it places the onus on people who are not necessarily in a position to help or understand, no matter how much they may care for you. In a relationship, BPD can leave both parties feeling isolated.

It brings out my mean streak something shocking. I've always had a devilish way with words, particularly nasty ones, and BPD is like a Terminator vision that highlights the chinks in everyone's armor. Unlike my mania, which tends to make me charismatic and eloquent, a BPD "turn" or "moment" sees me turn sour and crude.

I remember once wagging a butter knife at my friend's mom and her baby-boomer friends at their dinner table after they were bemoaning the Gillard government. I accused them of "dry butt fucking my generation into oblivion." They stared at me in open-mouthed shock, so I added that that they should "go huff asbestos in a ditch." It's not the kind of thing a level-headed person whips out at a 6 PM dinner with freshly introduced adults.

Of course, the outburst didn't give me any sense of relief. It turned into a looping internal monologue of personal recrimination and self-hatred. Every decision is retroactively punished.

It's a mirage illness. You feel like someone without fingerprints. You have no identity. You move between things constantly, people and passions. Onlookers can be tricked into seeing you as boldly transformative. In reality, you are someone without a sense of self. Sometimes I feel like a snake shedding infinite skin.

BPD isn't talked about, but it needs to be. The stigma around BPD is pernicious. People accusing sufferers of using it as a crutch or an excuse for erratic behavior are only pushing us deeper into the pit of isolation that worsens the symptoms and the pain. Conversation can dispel a lot of the hurt, and while we have Mental Health Week, we may as well take the opportunity to air it out and punch it in the sunlight.

Luckily, BPD is treatable with consistent therapy, self-awareness, and support. It doesn't have to be a lifelong chum like depression or anxiety. The ghost can definitely be outed. But like all mental illness, to do that requires some love, from friends, strangers, and yourself.

The shit thing about BPD is that it makes love hard to come by.

Follow Patrick Marlborough on Twitter.

Tomorrow, those who tune in to Logo to catch their marathon of the eighth season of 'RuPaul's Drag Race' will be greeted by this far less fabulous version. Still via Logo

Get the VICE App on iOS and Android

Tune in to Logo's RuPaul's Drag Race season eight marathon tomorrow, and you won't see any of RuPaul's stunning outfits, hear queen Robbie Turner talk of growing up gay in a tiny rural town, or gaze into judge Carson Kressley's soulful eyes.

Just in time for Coming Out Day, Logo is temporarily censoring all queer people and dialogue from the show. It's "a show of solidarity with LGBT people living in countries where such images are blocked entirely and where coming out is not safe or legal," the network said in a statement. The goal: "providing a glimpse at what life could be like in countries where LGBT people can't turn on the television, open the newspaper, or go to social media to see positive and relatable images."

The censorship makes for an arresting visual, reminiscent of duct-taped NOH8 mouths or ACT UP's long history of staging die-ins (a protest tactic where activists lay dead in a public space).

But drag queens have always been on the cutting edge of activism, from the Compton's Cafeteria riots and the long history of protest-fueled clashes between drag queens and police to Pantigate, in which the Irish drag queen Panti Bliss sparked a national conversation in 2014 over homophobia in her home country's media. And though LGBTQ activists may have more of a platform than ever in the United States, their people remain oppressed around the world.

Depending on how you define your terms, there are around thirteen countries where "homosexual acts" are associated with the death penalty. Additionally, Iraq has no laws against homosexuality, but militias are known to execute suspected gays. In 74 countries, LGBTQ relationships are outlawed—not including Russia, where same-sex couples are barred from adopting children and public displays of homosexuality are prohibited.

Even in the United States, research by GLAAD, an LGBTQ media watchdog group, shows that LGBTQ media visibility is lacking. Only 4% of regular characters on primetime broadcast programming are gay, lesbian, or bisexual. There are no trans characters on broadcast, and only three recurring trans characters on cable.

That visibility matters because depictions of queer people are often cited as a means to move public opinion. "I think Will & Grace did more to educate the American public more than almost anything anybody has done so far," said Vice President Joe Biden in 2012.

Around the world, visibility has started to slowly improve. Chilean reality show Happy Together recently featured same-sex couple Julio and Juan Pablo, and LGBTQ media portrayals are improving in China, for example.

Ross Murray, Director of News and Faith Initiatives at GLAAD, is particularly intrigued by an Indonesian web series called CONQ, as well as the possible cautionary tale that it provides. "It's about two gay best friends and their lives," he said. "It started getting attention, and started getting threats. wound up pulling it."

In other words, visibility can be a double-edged sword. "The overall trajectory for a lot of LGBTIQ people is positive, but we're also seeing an acute backlash around the world," Jessica Stern, executive director of OutRight Action International, a human rights organization, told the LA Times this June. "The backlash is akin to what happens to many communities and movements when they stand up and advocate for their rights."

"There is also a strong presence of gay characters as comic relief based strongly on stereotyping, and often with racist undertones," said Thomás Levy of gay characters in Brazilian programming. "We're also going through a 'politically incorrect' humor phase, which is just... not good."

As such, there's an overseas market for US shows with authentic LGBTQ representations.

"Empire is very popular in Africa," GLAAD's Ross Murray said. "Modern Family is very popular in South America," thanks in part to the casting of Sofia Vergara. "When people can see a character that they can identify and recognize, that makes the US show more popular. If you're in a culture that has really negative stereotypes—and the US has been that country—you have preconceived notions of what LGBT people are like. And then if you can get a good nuanced depiction or storyline or emotional way of getting caught up with them as a person, it starts to challenge those notions."

By way of example, one Reddit user wrote of Drag Race last year, "I am from Morocco, and me and my friends watch on internet every ep + Untucked. RPDR is the best TV show ever. Simply the best. I hope one day homosexuality would not be a crime and gay bars become less of a secret."

"At its core, it is the story of the tenacity of the human spirit," said RuPaul of his show in an ABC interview. The show's appeal certainly reaches beyond national borders: "We get to see these kids who have been pushed aside by society, who've made a way for themselves to be seen and to be great. And watching them thrive throughout these challenges is captivating, especially knowing their stories. And I know their stories because it's my story. It really is the story of really everyone who thinks outside the box."

Follow Matt Baume on Twitter.

John Hyrum Koyle. Photo courtesy of Delynn "Doc" Hansen

In the heart of rural Utah, there's a small group watching the 2016 election not just as a contest for the leadership of the free world, but also as a very real harbinger of the end of days.

These people are believers in a turn-of-the-century prophet named John Hyrum Koyle. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Koyle amassed thousands of followers based on his dreams that predicted the end of the world. One in particular, Koyle's "Republican elephant" dream, predicted an elephant, embodying the Republican party, stumble to its knees during an election, and never rise again. A century later, there are still those who believe in Koyle's dreams—which they see as collective symbols of the end of the world—and have speculated Donald Trump's candidacy is a fulfillment of the elephant dream.

In other words, they see Trump as a symbol of the apocalypse.

America's history has long been rich on seers, revelators, and con artists, all claiming to have a gift for seeing what's around the bend. But Koyle wasn't just a seer. The fact that he still has believers in Utah in 2016 is due in part to the preservation of a mine, carved into the hillsides outside of Salem, Utah, an hour south of Salt Lake City.

In 1894, as the legend goes, Koyle was visited in a dream by an angel, who led him from his modest farmhouse into the mountains, safely passing through dirt and rock like it was fog. Inside the mountain, the angel revealed to Koyle not only veins of gold, but nine vaulted rooms filled with treasures of the Nephites, an extinct tribe of people from the Book of Mormon. The angel told Koyle to build a mine, and during humanity's 11th hour, the riches would be used to build a kingdom that would survive the Armageddon.

It's said that, back then, people listened to Koyle because his prophecies were mostly accurate: His first dream led him to find a missing cow, in a nearby pasture; later, he was said to have predicted the 1929 stock market crash and the start of World War I. So when he told others about the mine, they signed on.

John Hyrum Koyle. Photo courtesy of Delynn "Doc" Hansen

In 1909, the mine was incorporated. Roughly 114,000 shares of stock were sold for $1.50 a piece, with the understanding that once they hit the motherlode, the shares would skyrocket in value. In the mine's heyday, shareholders and their families amounted to between 20,000 and 30,000 Utahns that supported Koyle's visions of the mine, according to the accounts of Norman Pierce, himself a Koyle acolyte and author of The Dream Mine Story.

Today, the mine's tunnels, including a main shaft over 3,000 feet long, remain on the hillside—yet the mine itself still isn't operational. The Relief Mine Company has, however, made sure to complete $100 worth of labor on the mine every year to keep the claims as per Utah state law. The claims have thus been active and registered with the state for over a century, all the while producing no jackpots or dividends for shareholders. The mine only pays its meager bills from revenue from a gravel pit on site and the sale of fruit from an orchard on the property.

Stock still gets passed down through the generations, sometimes as an oddity, like when my father—who avoided any and all churches quite religiously—passed stock on to me. Others have received stock and bought new shares in full anticipation of the Armageddon.

The Republican elephant prophecy isn't the only sign that the end is near. Koyle's followers also point to the 2008 recession and the subsequent bailouts. At the time, believers compared the events to Koyle's dream that, before the end, the government would prop up the nation's economy as if it were on "stilts." But with the Republican Party seemingly splitting at the seams—even George W. Bush wondered recently if he would be the last Republican president—followers see this election cycle as another sign that they need to prepare for the end.

Take Reg McDaniel, who's been active with the mine for several years and has bought numerous shares. McDaniel is pretty sure the end is coming, and he's preparing for it. In 2014, he even approached the mine's current board of directors offering to donate rebar and construction materials to help get the mine in working order. His offer was politely rebuffed; he told me the current board, who are Mormons, made it clear that they wouldn't do so without explicit guidance from one of the Three Nephites, the guardian-angel like figures from Mormon scriptures.

McDaniel, however, isn't taking his chances. He told me Trump's role in this election is a clear manifestation of Koyle's prophesy. He and others, he says, have already stocked a compound with food, ammunition, and rations to survive in underground shelters.

The Relief Mine. Photo courtesy of Delynn "Doc" Hansen

Delynn "Doc" Hansen, another believer, quit his chiropractic business several years ago to help found the American Relief Mint in Santaquin, Utah. While the mint pays its bills by churning out products like commemorative silver Buffalo nickel coins, it's real mission is to be ready to start minting coins from ore of the mine.

Hansen told me Koyle believers are warning of other perils he envisioned—like one prediction that, overnight, people would wake up, and there would be no heat, electricity, or gas. Hansen, like McDaniel and others, is preparing for the fallout.

Other stockholders have been heeding the warning signs for a while. William Anderson, a stockholder and ardent believer in Koyle, already got his shelter and most of his supplies ready and in place several years ago. (He's still gathering the last few items on his list, like the radiation detector he recently picked up in the mail.) While Anderson sees Trump as a fulfillment of Koyle's elephant dream, he also told me that he and others have had dreams predicting that something would happen in 2016. A man in Nevada, for example, claimed that God told him that Trump was the Lord's servant.

" to pull us out of this mess or plunge us further in? Personally, I'm pretty pessimistic."

Like other believers in Koyle's mine, Anderson is prepped and ready, and with preparation comes peace of mind when contemplating the apocalypse.

"You know with nuclear war, if you live in the right place, it's not that big of a deal, and would actually come as a relief," Anderson says, since he believes targets would likely be cities like Washington, DC. "The places they're gonna hit, they can have 'em."

Follow Eric Peterson on Twitter.

Photo by Flickr user Gage Skidmore

While the second presidential debate of 2016 raged on Sunday night, the good folks at Merriam-Webster were busy keeping track of the most searched terms on their website from viewers. For a brief spell, two of those words were "demagogic" and "demagogue," suggesting people didn't really understand it when Hillary Clinton was going on about the "demagogic rhetoric" that's been at the heart of this horrific election. (Other most searched words included "bigly" and "lepo." As in "a lepo," as in Gary Johnson isn't alone in his ignorance over the crisis in Syria.) Her opponent Donald Trump, of course, is a textbook demagogue, a political leader who (to quote Merriam-Webster) "tries to get support by making false claims and promises and using arguments based on emotion rather than reason." He's far from the first.

Credit: Gerald Herbert/AP

The spin room is a uniquely American creation, a sort of hell-corridor where, after a big political debate, the supporters of one candidate claim their guy won, loudly, to anyone who will listen. The "spinners" have strict talking points and refuse to acknowledge successes of the other side. Nothing is learned. Nothing is honest. Even the name, "the spin room", acknowledges that it's an echo chamber of bullshit.

In recent presidential elections there have been scores of political advisors and friendly politicians, who will, no matter what happened in the debate, come out to blindly bat for their candidate. But after Donald Trump's recent scandals, his bench has been severely depleted. Only three people currently holding elected office came out to support him after the second presidential debate: Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Representative Jason Smith of Missouri and a British politician called Nigel Farage, who can, for now at least, still call himself a member of the European Parliament.

Farage has become are an unlikely hero among Trump supporters, who see the Brexit vote as a kind of foretelling of a Trump victory. The similarities would be striking: an outsider nationalist politician wins a vote against the predictions of polls and advice of experts. It makes sense why Trump supporters would latch on to Farage. What's less immediately clear is why Farage wants anything to do with them.

Trump's approval in the UK is particularly low: around 85 percent of Brits have no confidence in him. Even among UKIP supporters, only 30 percent say they have at least some confidence in Trump. Trump also struggles for support among right-wing politicians. A straw poll taken by the BBC at the Tory party conference found that, with the exception of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Jim Davidson, most party members were enthused about supporting Hillary Clinton. Boris Johnson has made a series of disparaging remarks about Trump. Even UKIP leadership candidates like Lisa Duffy and Diane James have sought to distance themselves from Trump, or at the very least refused any kind of endorsement.

Yet despite this negative British response to Trump, on Sunday, Farage bent over backwards to support his campaign. Before the debate, when asked by Sky News whether he could defend Trump's boasting about sexual assault, he said: "The alpha male says and does boastful things." He said he suspects "those comments inflame and upset the media perhaps more than they will Trump voters".

After the debate he was in the spin room, brazenly supporting Trump, likening him to "a silverback gorilla", telling reporters he was "prowling the set and he is that big alpha male – that's what he is, that's what he is".

Then on Monday, on BBC 5 Live, Nigel Farage once again made light of Trump's remarks about women, saying they were "the sort of thing that some men do" and that it was "all well and good for the media to moralise" but "a lot of people do talk like that" and say "all sorts of boastful things to each other".

What does Farage have to gain from backing the Donald? Well, one theory is that Trump's campaign have wooed Farage – a seasoned debater, who was thought to have performed well in both the EU referendum debates and the general election – to help with debate prep. Farage has had plenty of experience responding to situations where either he or UKIP members have been caught on tape saying something unpalatable, so could help Trump in similar predicaments. Farage has denied he was specifically hired to coach Trump but a number of media reports have said otherwise.

Spending time in the US, defending Trump, also allows Farage to distance himself from the mess in his own party. Farage is currently interim UKIP leader, his previous replacement lasting just 18 days before she chose to resign. A new leadership campaign has yet to begin, but a violent punch-up between UKIP members in the European parliament left one UKIP MEP, Steven Woolfe, in hospital. As party leader, Farage is best placed to try and bring some discipline and order to his party, but he clearly has little desire for that, likely realising that there is now very little to be gained from involving himself in UKIP, a party which seems increasingly likely to implode following the referendum result. His only real comment on the debacle is to compare it to something "from the third world". A move to America takes him out the fray without him looking like a deserter.

But there is a broader ideological impetus to his move into US politics. Farage, a man who wants to ban HIV positive people from coming to Britain, who said it was fine to call a Chinese person "a chinky", who said parts of Britain were live "a foreign land", who said women are paid less because they "are worth less to their employers", has found a political arena where he is not just tolerated but adored.

Like Trump, Farage paints himself as an "anti-establishment" candidate while being about as an establishment as it is possible to be. Like Trump, he recognises that blue-collar workers who felt let down by the system are easy to rile up with strong anti-immigration rhetoric, particularly if you smush in a sense of being anti-banks and anti-politics as well.

Buoyed by the Brexit vote, Farage has sensed that his isolationist project could have an even bigger impact in the US. If he were to help Trump to a victory, he would have shifted the ideological direction of the West in less than 12 months. Even if Trump loses badly, Farage will have secured his position in a new global movement focused that celebrates isolationism and decries political correctness and multiculturalism.

As Farage himself said in a column in Monday's Telegraph, "I believe we are witnessing a popular uprising against failed politics on a global scale. People want to vote for candidates with personality, faults and all. It is the same in the UK, America and much of the rest of Europe. The little people have had enough. They want change."

What he's really interested in, as he says, is the "little people", by which he, of course, means "white people"

For his whole career, Farage has said he only cares about Britain and what's best for British interests, but as he pivots to the global stage, it's clear that this was only a means to an end. What he's really interested in, as he says, is the "little people", by which he, of course, means "white people". British, American, European - he supports all these "little people" knowing full well that fears about foreign investment and immigration are rarely shared by minority voters. Farage is drawing up the dots, creating a new kind of isolationism in which whites in Western, majority-white countries protect themselves from immigration and foreign powers, with him as a kind of global talisman for the little people.

And already it's working. On Monday, David Duke, the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, posted an image of Farage, saying "If (((they))) pull off this #RiggedElection, if #Clintons win, White men must stand up. It will be time for patriots to do their jobs! #MAGA"

Today, Farage is just an eccentric Englander in a spin room, pretending Trump won a debate. But having quietly extricated himself from the petty politics of his soon-to-be-former party, Farage has, in the last 48 hours, put himself in the middle of a global movement of Western white voters against the rest of the world.

@samwolfson

More on VICE:

It's the Beginning of the End For Ukip

How the Conservative Party Is Sucking Up to Bigots and Stoking Racism

I Tried to Find the Lesser Evil at Ukip's London Hustings

This article originally appeared on VICE Serbia

For Serbian parents with kids over the age of seven – like me – it would have been impossible not to have heard of BalkanTube Fest months in advance. Because at this convention on the 1st and 2nd of October in Belgrade, Serbian kids could finally meet their vlogging idols and scream their precious little heads off while doing so.

When, on our way to the convention, I tried to explain to my son that I would just drop him and his sister off because the focus of the convention didn't interest me enough to stay the whole day, he gave me a look of utter incomprehension. He could not understand why I don't share his passion for YouTube stars like Marija Zezelj, Mudja or Stuber – yes, I know their names. You try having kids in Serbia, raising them for a couple of years and then judge me. But he didn't need to understand – they would have a great day without me.

Sunday was the most important day of the festival, when the most popular and influential YouTubers from Serbia and the rest of the Balkans stopped by. That meant hordes of screaming children clutching their phones, in hot pursuit of a selfie with a YouTube star. I brought my kids to the entrance, set them free in the convention centre of their wildest dreams and left for a couple of hours. But there were many parents who couldn't leave their children there and were forced to spend a day pushing through this very 2016 hellscape.

These parents were the real stars of this convention.

More on VICE:

The Video Series That's Updating Sex Ed for the YouTube Generation

EDM YouTube Comments Might Restore Your Faith in Humanity

Meet YouTube's 79-Year-Old Grandma Gamer

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

Hillary Clinton at a campaign event in Michigan following last Sunday's second presidential debate. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

US News

Clinton Takes Double-Digit Lead in New National Poll
A new NBC / WSJ poll, the first of the major national surveys since the release of Trump's 2005 "grab them by the pussy" tape, shows Hillary Clinton enjoying an 11 point lead. In a four-way ballot, Clinton leads Donald Trump 46 percent to 35 percent, and in a two-way ballot, the Democratic nominee leads 52 percent to 38 percent. A congressional poll shows the Democrats leading Republicans 49 percent to 42 percent.—NBC News

'Snowden' Actress Arrested at Dakota Access Protest
Actress Shailene Woodley, star of the Divergent series and Snowden, has been arrested protesting the Dakota Access pipeline that will cross Native American land. Livestreaming her arrest, Woodley said she had been singled out "because I'm well-known." Police say she was one of 27 people arrested for criminal trespass and engaging in a riot.—The Washington Post

Wells Fargo Employee Warned Boss About Fake Accounts in 2006
A Wells Fargo bank manager tried to warn the head of the company's regional banking unit of an improperly created account back in January 2006, five years earlier than the bank has said its board learned of abuses at its branches. As many as 2 million improperly created accounts have been discovered in recent months.—VICE News

Judge Extends Voter Registration in Florida
A judge in Florida has extended the voter registration deadline by an additional day because of Hurricane Matthew's impact, allowing people to register through Wednesday. Governor Rick Scott had initially refused to extend the deadline, but US district judge Mark Walker decided it was "wholly irrational" not to extend the deadline.—Tampa Bay Times

International News

Samsung to Permanently Stop Production of Galaxy Note 7
Samsung has announced that it will cease production of the Galaxy Note 7, as reports of the phone catching fire and exploding have continued. It's a massive blow to the South Korean firm, as the premium device was the company's boldest attempt to compete with Apple in the smartphone market.—The New York Times

Colombia to Start Peace Talks with ELN Rebels
The Colombian government has announced it will start formal peace talks with the country's second-biggest rebel group, the National Liberation Army, on October 27. Although the nation recently rejected a peace deal with the FARC rebel group by referendum, President Juan Manuel Santos, recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, said, "Peace won't slip through our fingers."—Reuters

Pakistani Journalist Banned from Leaving Country
A top Pakistani journalist says he has been banned from leaving the country, after he reported a dispute between military and government officials. Cyril Almeida said on Twitter his name was now on an "exit control list." Almeida recently reported the government warned military chiefs to act against homegrown militancy in Pakistan.—The Guardian

Zika Virus Will Spread in Asia, Says World Health Organization
Zika infections are "highly likely" to continue spreading throughout the Asian continent, the World Health Organization has warned. The mosquito-borne virus has been detected in 19 countries in the Asia Pacific region. Hundreds of cases have been reported in Singapore, and two cases of Zika-linked microcephaly have been confirmed in Thailand.—BBC News

Everything Else

Drake Sets AWA Record with 13 Nominations
With 13 nominations at Billboard's annual American Music Awards, Drake has toppled Michael Jackson's 32-year standing record of 11 nominations for the 1984 classic Thriller. The rapper is up for Artist of the Year, Favorite Male Artist, and Favorite Album for his LP Views.—Billboard

German Artist 'Kidnaps' Rosa Parks Home
Berlin-based artist Ryan Mendoza has dismantled the façade of civil rights activist Rosa Parks's former home, set to be demolished, and shipped it to Germany. Mendoza said he "kidnapped" it in order that "America recognize what it has lost."—The Guardian

Kesha and Dr. Luke Battle Over Medical Records
Kesha has asked a judge to slap a protective order on her medical files, according to court papers. She wants to stop Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald from leaking private information during their sexual assault legal battle.—Rolling Stone

Musicians Take a Stand Against Trump
Music stars are joining forces for 30 Days, 30 Songs: an effort to help keep Donald Trump from becoming president. Artists listed include R.E.M., Aimee Mann, Thao Nguyen, and more, with a new political track dropping every day.—Noisey

FBI Hacked Computers in Australia in Child Porn Sting
Motherboard has learned that the FBI hacked computers in Australia in early 2015 as part of a global crackdown on child pornography. The case, codenamed Operation Pacifier, was an investigation into one of the largest ever dark websites and may have leaned on an illegal warrant.—Motherboard

Doomsday Preppers See Trump as an Apocalyptic Sign
A group of Doomsday fanatics in Utah believe John Hyrum Koyle—a turn-of-the-century prophet who dreamed that the Republican Party would die and then the world would end—predicted the rise of Donald Trump in 2016.—VICE

Dean Strang (left) and Jerry Buting (Screen shot via)

Police cover-ups, wrongful convictions, coercion, a dodgy prosecutor and two defence lawyers the likes of which haven't been seen since To Kill a Mockingbird. Making a Murderer – the 10-hour Netflix series following the trial of Steven Avery over the murder of Teresa Halbach – had it all, but it was Avery's lawyers, Jerry Buting and Dean Strang, who became the real stars of the show.

Now the pair have embarked on an international tour to continue thrashing out the rights and wrongs of the criminal justice system. I caught up with them ahead of their London appearance to chat justice and newfound fame.

VICE: Hi both. Why are you going on tour?
Jerry Buting: Making a Murderer raises a lot of serious questions about justice, fairness and process, and we thought it was worth discussing in depth. But a lot of the media interviews at the time were very short and didn't really go beyond the show. We thought it'd be nice to do a forum where people could get together and ask us questions, and that grew into a talk in Milwaukee, then other cities contacted us and then people from all over Europe were calling us to get us to come over and do the same thing.

There are clearly differences between the criminal justice system in the US and elsewhere. Does that get in the way of the conversation, or is it about showing how the issues are the same everywhere?
Dean Strang: Yeah, that's exactly the point. Some of the things are specific to America in the details, but the phenomenon of tunnel vision on the part of police officers or core systems of defence counsel, false confessions – these things are universal. The similarities really are much greater than the dissimilarities.

Admitting mistakes would be an act of both honesty and humility that would enhance the public impression of courts, not diminish it.

Brendan Dassey has had his conviction overturned – how much of that do you think was helped by the show?
JB: There's no real way to know. It was a decision made by a federal judge and they try to rule on the law and not on public opinion. But it is sort of sad that it takes a couple of filmmakers to shine a light on what goes on in some courthouses that people otherwise wouldn't know or care about.

Have you been shocked at the popularity of the series and how it has thrust both of you into the spotlight?
DS: Shock only slightly overstates it; greatly surprised would not overstate it. It's hard to know what great shows are going to catch the public attention, and I think both Jerry and I were surprised at how interest spread as quickly and pervasively as it did – especially interest in what lawyers might have to say.

There was a long gap between filming and the documentary being aired. Was it strange for you to relive it after all these years?
JB: It was, although I did see it right before it came out and we both went and spoke to Steven. It was hard to relive those moments, particularly the verdict. Seeing the tears welling up in Steven's eyes – that was very difficult. Not that we'd completely put it aside or forgotten, but after all these years, to watch it again was difficult.

Steven Avery. Photo Morry Gash AP/PA

Your determination to find the truth in an honest way made you the heroes of the show. What made you want to be lawyers in the first place?
JB: You know, I've always wanted to champion the underdog. When I first started my legal career, I wanted to be a public defender, knowing that those were the people who were least able to stand up for themselves against the government. They don't always have the resources or education or ability to express themselves. I always felt it was my calling, my vocation.

Often, lawyers are painted as evil caricatures in more of the Ken Kratz model. Do you think you've changed that?
JB: I grew up when the criminal defence attorney was an honourable position and career. But in more recent years, it's been portrayed by Hollywood and on television in a negative and cynical way, with dishonest, sleazy lawyers trying to get away with something. I really didn't expect that a consequence of this show would be that people would be inspired to look into this as a career choice. I've had so many people contact me, and that's really very gratifying.
DS: There are literally tens of thousands of criminal defence lawyers and other lawyers in this country alone who do, every day, the types of things you saw us doing. I don't think either one of us is exceptional, let alone unique, in what we're doing.

What needs to be done to restore public faith in the system?
DS: There has to be more honesty about the frequency with which unreliable outcomes occur in our courts. I think a system that pretends to near perfect accuracy and reliability is not one that will win the public trust – there's DNA exonerations piled up now by the hundreds. I think the public is especially distrustful of assertions by courts and lawyers that everything's fine and there's nothing to see here. I really do think that admitting mistakes would be an act of both honesty and humility that would enhance the public impression of courts, not diminish it.

Dean Strang and Jerry Buting bring a Conversation on Justice to London's Palladium on the 23rd of October. For more UK dates, see here

More from VICE:

Corruption, Abuse and Manslaughter: The Inexcusable Failings of Britain's Worst Police Force

Why Police Interrogations Lead to So Many False Confessions

My Life as a Murderous Teen Goth on True Crime TV

Photo by Zak Krevitt

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

Comedian Jon Glaser loves gear. He loves it so much that this fall, he's launching a new comedy series on truTV—called, appropriately enough, Jon Glaser Loves Gear—that documents his obsession. When we heard, we asked him to review four new pieces of music gear. Here's what he had to say.

House of Martley Chant Sport Portable Speaker

I'll call this portable speaker "A Tale of Two Cities": It wasn't the best of sound, it wasn't the worst of sound. I wasn't sent any instructions, but I figured out how to use it, and it seemed fairly straightforward for a grandpa like myself. I like the size. It has easy-to-use controls, nicely displayed on the top of the speaker. I don't mind the all black, although it's not the most eye-pleasing design, and the raised logo on the speaker was a little garish. I like that it comes with a cute lil' carabiner. Fun! You can hang it on your backpack and play the sound of a cowbell to let bears know you're coming while you're backpacking in Alaska. Too bad dude from Grizzly Man didn't have one of these. Looking it up online, it's a decent price for what you're getting, although one of the features listed says "double pairing with two units for true stereo sound." Huh? As in, "This speaker isn't that good, but if you buy another one, then you'll have the sound you want!"??? It also listed "built-in microphone... for use as a speakerphone," "up to 8 hours of wireless play," and "rechargeable lithium-ion battery," all of which sound good. All in all, it's a fine speaker, perfect for occasions such as sitting at the dining table and listening to music to write a review while arguing with your son about eating another slice of pizza for lunch while he watches college football. That's fine—just don't complain that you're hungry later when you didn't have a good lunch (he did).

Sennheiser Momentum Wireless Headphone

If I were a wasted frat guy d-bag who was reviewing these, I'd punch a hole in the wall of my dorm room and break these amazing headphones when I passed out and smashed my head against my bed. These are extremely pricey, but I would say absolutely worth the money if you either got the fundz or got a mommy or daddy who can get them for you. Personally, I always lean toward spending the money on quality, and these are high quality. First and foremost, they sound amazing. Rich, crisp sound and, most important for me, warm, deep bass. They feel like they are made very well. They're very comfortable. It's a simple, elegant design that I wouldn't be embarrassed wearing on the subway for my commute. They fold easily with a soft, satisfying click, adjust to your head cleanly, and come with a nice case. The pair I was sent to review are brown leather with white (ivory) ear cups, which wouldn't be my first choice of color. But they don't look bad, and going online, I see they also come in all black, which looks pretty sweet. I personally don't mind a cable (which they come with), so maybe I wouldn't spend the money for Bluetooth headphones. And the Bluetooth also freaks me out since they're on my head. I also couldn't figure out how to connect these to my computer. I only used them with my iPhone. But I'm guessing that's just me being a grandpa who can't figure out something simple. Bottom line, these things rule and are too cool for fool school.

Roland JU-O6 Sound Module and K-25M Keyboard Unit

I don't play piano or keyboards and have no idea how these things work. The sound module looks cool as hell and must be fun as hell to play with. And one of the editors at the show I'm making right now is a member of Bear in Heaven and creamed his jeans when he saw these. He also showed me how the two pieces click together, which was really cool. That's all I have to say about this one.

Roland VT-3 Voice Transformer

Hopefully I am right when I assume that this beauty was sent to me to review because I can use it to make the scrambled voice from Delocated, in which I play someone in the witness protection program who's always wearing a ski mask and talking in a scrambled voice. Unfortunately, my mini amp is in storage (I know, lame), and I wasn't able to try it out and go on the balcony of my building and scream out to the neighborhood as "Jon." I would have loved to have put on my ski mask and shouted "WELCOME TO THE BONE ZONE" over and over and over again until the cops were called. Based on the brand and the design, I'm going to guess this thing is great. I love the shape, size, weight, and design of the unit itself. The kelly-green trim on the black looks great. I love the click at the halfway point of all the levers, as well as the soft click of the main-control button. There's a button that says "ROBOT," which can only mean good times. Obviously, there should be a button on all vocal transformers that simply say "JON FROM DELOCATED." I looked it up online and thoroughly enjoyed a German guy's video about it. At least I think he's German. Oh, it also came in a pretty cool-looking box. If I were the wasted frat guy d-bag reviewing this, I'd say, "Nice package," followed by "That's what she said," followed by projectile vomiting all over the unit, followed by passing out and breaking my dick because I was also jacking off to hockey-fight videos online while I was reviewing it.

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

Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

On Monday, VICE News Tonight aired an interview with conservative radio personality and Trump basher Glenn Beck, in which he said voting for Hillary Clinton had "crossed his mind." Now, the right-wing host has taken to his Facebook page to officially urge his followers not to vote for Donald Trump.

"It is not acceptable to ask a moral, dignified man to cast his vote to help elect an immoral man who is absent decency or dignity," Beck wrote Tuesday. "If the consequence of standing against Trump and for principles is indeed the election of Hillary Clinton, so be it. At least it is a moral, ethical choice."

Beck went on to suggest the ways in which the democratic process could be used to fight Hillary while in office, but pointed out that a Donald Trump presidency would only validate the candidate's "immorality, lewdness, and depravity."

Beck—who left the Republican party in 2015—has been anti-Trump from the get-go. He's compared him to Hitler and claimed he's an "unstable" choice who is a departure from conservative ideals. Despite saying Clinton would be a moral and ethical choice, Beck told VICE News he'd be supporting Darrell Castle, the Constitution Party candidate, come November.

Read: Donald Trump and What Men Say When They Think Women Won't Hear

Still courtesy Moto Films

The first scene in Newtown is a joyous school parade through small-town America. The band plays, the cheerleaders smile, and the homecoming queen waves at the camera. It's shot in slow motion, as if to preserve that idyllic, precious moment in time, before the screen fades to black.

That's when we hear the first of many 911 calls made from Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012.

The next hour and 40 minutes of the film, which is out now in select theaters, is a harrowing encapsulation of how that morning changed the Connecticut neighborhood—and, really, all of us—forever. It is a deeply moving case study of how a community has tried to recover from unimaginable trauma: the senseless murder of 20 kids between the ages of six and seven, as well as six school staff members. It is a stark look at the before and after, with the film's tagline not unreasonably asking, "What remains after all is lost?"

Symbolically setting shooter Adam Lanza aside, the film's director, Kim A. Snyder, follows the lives of those affected by his rampage: the pastor, the janitor, the doctor, the neighbor, the parents, the schoolteacher, and, most important, three of the families who lost their children that day—the Wheelers, the Hockleys, and the Bardens. We watch their home videos, see their tears, and seethe with their anger, as Congress failed to respond with gun control legislation.

The point of Newtown is a simple one baked into all of cinema: to make us feel. "It's not about politics. It's about people," New York governor Andrew Cuomo said at the film's premiere last week in Manhattan. "And it's about saving lives, and saving the lives of innocent people." After the massacre, Cuomo was heralded for signing the SAFE Act, one of the more significant pieces of state and local gun control passed in recent years. (His sister, Maria Cuomo Cole, is the film's producer.)

We spoke with Snyder the day after the premiere about her documentary and what it might take to break our national numbness when it comes to gun violence.

VICE: How did you first decide to make this film, and what was that earliest stage like, approaching such an unreal tragedy?
Kim A. Snyder: I ended up in Newtown about four to five weeks after the tragedy. Honestly, by happenstance, in a sense—I didn't wake up and say, "Gee, I'm gonna make a film about gun violence, and I'm going to go up to Newtown, where 10,000 or however many news cameras are." A not-for-profit I had done some work with in the past called and said they were looking to develop some short-form material in the midst of that. They had some contacts, and asked if I would consider going up and looking into it, and possibly looking into something that would be longer form. So I went up very tentatively and reluctantly. But I had a contact in the interfaith community, and I met with Father Bob, the priest who had buried eight of those 20 children. And I was so struck by the amount of trauma he was shouldering that I really started to think about all of the ripple effects on these towns, and all of the different communities that this must be affecting, outside of just the parents—who, of course, the entire world was crying for.

For me, it very quickly became, Well, I hadn't seen gun violence taken on from the perspective of the entire community, through different lenses. And I hadn't seen it as a longer form trajectory of aftermath. What really happens to the social fabric of a town in the wake of this? That was very interesting to me, and the psychology of it, and the interconnected fate. I just sort of, on a wing and a prayer, started to shoot more and more, together with a cameraman, Derek Wiesehahn, who I worked with before. We just started building trust, and being introduced to others in the community. So it wasn't until nine months later that I met the first of the families. And that was very organic—someone had introduced me, and they thought they might be interested in talking.

At first, I have to think there was a barrier of trust you had to overcome with these families.

Original images via Flickr user Oregon State University and Wikicommons

The US government has hatched a plan to blast some people over to Mars in the next few decades, President Obama announced Tuesday.

"We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America's story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time," Obama wrote in an essay published by CNN.

The government will be partnering with private companies to accomplish the long haul to the red planet. The first step will come with private firms sending individuals to the International Space Station—a task that Obama says will happen within the next two years.

"I'm excited to announce that we are working with our commercial partners to build new habitats that can sustain and transport astronauts on long-duration missions in deep space," Obama continued. "These missions will teach us how humans can live far from Earth—something we'll need for the long journey to Mars."

While it does seem pretty cool to think that humans could be hoofing around on Mars by the time Ivanka Trump is probably running for president, Obama didn't mention the fact that cosmic rays from deep space might send Mars explorers into a crippling space insanity. Hopefully Leo DiCaprio will be alright.

Read: How Will Humanity Need to Change if We Want to Live on Other Planets?

Stars like Nadiya Hussain and Mo Farah are considered "good immigrants." But what about everyone else? Source: BBC

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

My dad was a taxi driver in the 80s. A fat man named Clarky owned the cab company that employed him. Clarky only seemed to hire black- or brown-skinned drivers, presumably because they were the only ones willing to work for the awful wages he was offering. So, in the extremely white town of Gateshead, northeast England, the place was widely known as "Clarky's Darikes."

He left Iran at the age of 21, determined to find a decent education amid a dearth of university spots in his home country. He ended up in Gateshead because it was cheap. He was alone, with no English, studying English and math, and renting a small room from an elderly deaf couple for about $15 per week.

I remember the racism he experienced over the years: people shouting at us in the street, and the time some kids tossed lit fireworks through the letterbox of our shop and it felt like we'd been bombed. He told me stories about men in pubs trying to punch him for daring to date an English girl (my mom). I remember how 9/11 happened—and Iran went from being just somewhere in the Middle East to being "an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world"—and everything got ten times worse.

"Clarky's Darkies" became a joke in our house; it's a good way to disarm and cope with stuff like that. But it's always remained etched into my brain. The thought of him, every Friday and Saturday night, driving folk from their house to the pub and home again, patiently nodding into the rearview mirror as his passengers drunkenly ranted about how, "You know what, mate—you seem alright, but the problem with pakis is..."

A bit later, his studies paid off, and he became a math teacher. And then something weird happened. It was like the volume on his otherness had been abruptly turned down and something else had been turned up. Abusive comments became less frequent. Hassle evaporated. He became respected, almost revered. He always swears that even the bricks and mortar of our little semi-detached house seemed to take on new meaning. "Some foreigners live there" became "a teacher lives there." Neighbors who usually struggled to give us the time of day started turning up at the door step with a bottle of whatever was on sale, asking if he could tutor their kids on their homework. In the eyes of our immediate community, he had gone from being a threatening other—the sort of "bad immigrant" who invades in hordes, steals jobs, sponges off the NHS, gobbles benefits, takes a dump on the economy, and is personally responsible for all that is wrong with life in Britain—to being someone worth their time, a "good immigrant."

Nikesh Shukla, curator of 'The Good Immigrant'

That's the good immigrant/bad immigrant binary: that all immigrants are automatically deemed bad people until they somehow earn their right to be treated as humans and to sit at the table. It's one of many triggers that inspired the author Nikesh Shukla to put together a new book: an anthology of essays from 21 different BAME writers, titled The Good Immigrant, exploring what it means to be black, Asian, or minority ethnic in Britain in 2016.

"Mo Farah is a good immigrant because he's won Olympic Gold, and Nadiya Hussain is a good immigrant because she won the Great British Bake Off," Shukla explains to me, as we both drink a beer over Skype one Friday evening. "And we're all bad immigrants until we prove ourselves otherwise."

Obviously, the problem with the good immigrant/bad immigrant theory—I say theory, it's more of a misconception pandemic—is that it's fueled by the toxic rhetoric that has always plagued mainstream British media and politics around immigration. It's the same misconception that has resulted in the majority of people believing that immigration not only needs to be reduced but is bad for the economy, when studies actually show the complete opposite.

"When my brain started ticking about creating this book, and what it would look like, I started imagining all the reasons why a publisher would reject it," explains Shukla. "One of the things you always hear as a person of color in publishing is, 'Oh, there isn't really a market for that.' You slowly start to realize that being Asian is a marketing trend and not a very lucrative one." He smiles. "That's a pretty shitty double whammy to be hit with."

To say the publication of The Good Immigrant has come at a good time would be an understatement. As I write this, the news is gushing with hostility toward anything and anyone resembling otherness; from post-Tory conference notions that companies should be shamed for employing foreign workers (now hastily abandoned), to suggestions that non-British doctors won't be welcome after 2025, to the revelation that the British Home Office has repeatedly ignored 400 unaccompanied child refugees who are legally eligible to come to the UK. Though this book was conceived and written before Britain Brexit-ed itself ass over elbow toward a grim future of prejudice, "celebratory racism" and hate crime surges, it very much exists within this conversation. The writers of these 21 essays are citizens of a multi-cultural United Kingdom pondering—often with great humor—why it is they often feel unwelcome, unequal, or unrepresented in a country they (and in some cases their parents, and their parents' parents) call home. This tone struck a chord with the prospective readers that crowdfunded the book's creation before a single word had been written. It reached its target within three days, boosted by a $6,000 or so donation from J.K. Rowling.

But while the good immigrant/bad immigrant binary might be the catalyst that provoked Shukla's book into life, it is by no means its sole focus. In fact, once you get your teeth into these essays, the pages explode into a kaleidoscope of perspectives on race, identity, and apathy within modern Britain—administering a much-needed injection of nuance into the heart of a national debate that has turned black over the last few months.

Each essay deals with a different aspect of life: What's it like to be strip-searched every time you go to the airport because of the color of your skin, to feel like your cultural history is being forcefully erased, to be told you're loitering just for being "dark skinned in broad daylight," to feel like you're constantly switching between different versions of yourself to appease your environment, to have your career path negatively dictated by your ethnicity, to be chatted up or objectified just so someone can tick off some "Asian girl" fuck quota.

This isn't the book on race, as Shukla often makes sure to state. It doesn't try to define "the black experience" or claim to know how every Chinese person in Britain feels right now. It treats race and identity not as segmented discussions of skin color or origin, but as a vast and nuanced spectrum of individual stories, spanning gender, age, ethnicity, upbringing, and environment—all underlined by a sense of hope and optimism. Some stories will make you feel uncomfortable, some will shine an awkward light on the shadowy corners where we all still harbor some form of subconscious ignorance. But mostly it seems astounding that these experiences, everyday otherness felt by the writers, are stories rarely heard.

Despite being a collection of personal essays, the book lends itself well to a being read through rather than dipped into. There are subtle threads dotted throughout, like the way it begins with an arrival (of a baby), ends with a departure (a writer who has chosen to leave Britain), and, almost slap bang in the middle, has Riz Ahmed's weaving essay about his experiences in both arrivals and departures (at the airport). But one of the most prominent themes throughout is the powerful imagery of mirrors that each writer summons, both directly and indirectly.

It takes ideas that are often discussed in the abstract, like diversity in film and television, and demonstrates their importance in everyday life. For instance, numerous essays touch on the role of programs like The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and The Cosby Show played in writer's lives, how important the first Indian family in EastEnders was, how annoying it is that there has never been a Chinese family, and how damaging it is to see your ethnicity finally represented, but only to be used tokenistically, or even for ridicule.

"There is a brilliant quote from White Teeth by Zadie Smith," explains Shukla, "that goes, 'There was England, a gigantic mirror, and there was Irie, without reflection.' I think that really sums up the representation thing. If television is a gigantic mirror, it's not reflecting all of us. There are people with no reflection at all. We need to see ourselves on TV, in books, in films, in the charts, because that's where our aspirations are built. We need to see role models, people in spaces we want to occupy." He pauses. "I often wonder if the Asian stereotype of being a doctor or a lawyer came from our parents looking at medicine and law and seeing us represented, then looking at the arts and thinking: 'Well, it's all white folk, I don't see you progressing there.'"

The essay titled "Kendo Nagasaki and Me" by Daniel York Loh perhaps captures this best. It tells the story of the writer as a young half-Chinese boy—living in the southwest of England in the 70s, surrounded exclusively by white people—becoming fascinated with a masked British wrestling villain he would watch on the telly called Kendo Nagasaki. Growing up surrounded by racial jibes at school and humiliating Chinese characters on TV, he sought solace in the bullish fighter, who, with a Japanese name, at least came from the same area of the world as him. Growing up in a world where he only felt put down, seeing Kendo Nagasaki body slamming English brutes every weekend was a joyous experience. But when he dramatically sees his hero eventually unmasked in an unexpected defeat, he's crushed to discover it was just a blond-haired white man in a costume. There are many parallels in this story to 2016, in Hollywood's relentless whitewashing, as the anticipated remake of Japanese classic Ghost in the Shell approaches with Scarlett Johannson, not a Japanese actor, cast as the lead role of Major Motoko Kusanagi.

Later on in The Good Immigrant, in Darren Chetty's essay, "You Can't Say That! Stories Have to be About White People," you see the societal consequences of this problem. Chetty reflects on two decades spent teaching English in primary schools, finding that when young children of color were encouraged to write a story, their characters would almost always be white characters with English names, instead of characters from backgrounds the same or similar to their own.

"We learn so many things from reading stories," writes Chetty, "including the conventions of stories such as good versus evil, confronting our fears and that danger often lurks in the woods. The problem is that, when one of these conventions is that children in stories are white, English, and middle class, then you may come to learn that your own life does not qualify as subject material."

Anyone with commissioning power or decision-making power needs to resign on Monday morning

Shukla has his own ideas about how we rectify this broad problem. "Here's a revolutionary thing: In order for us to have proper reflective and inclusive diversity in the arts, it wouldn't be quotas and statistic and guidelines, it would be that anyone with commissioning power or decision-making power needs to resign on Monday morning. All of those people need to resign, and everyone else needs to apply for them in some sort of color blind, gender blind way. It's the gatekeepers that are the problem."

Five years ago, my dad retired as a teacher in the UK and moved back to Iran. But in that time, he's discovered that maybe, after spending 40 years of his life in Britain, he actually feels more at home in Newcastle than he does in the Mazandaran Province. He's a Geordie; he doesn't mind bitter winds and quite likes fish and chips at Whitley Bay. He's coming back to Britain next summer. It's odd that he feels more ominous about moving over now than he did in 1974.

It feels like we are always progressing as a society, but the last few years have shown that maybe we aren't. Attitudes toward racism and immigration are approaching boiling point, and we desperately need voices of hope and progression to be heard. You don't need to be an immigrant, or have immigrant parents, to get something from The Good Immigrant—in fact, it's better if you aren't. This book is a mirror for those who rarely see their experiences voiced so candidly on the printed page, but it is also a valuable window for anyone who wants to better understand a situation radically different from their own. If 2016 has left you feeling helpless, desperately wondering what you can do to repair the damage of anti-immigration rhetoric, then reading it would be a good place to start: It leaves you feeling armed with empathy. As Chetty puts it in his essay, "Windows offer us a chance to look closely at a view of the world we may not have previously seen."

Follow Joe Zadeh on Twitter.

Your personal data is valuable to corporations, governments, and criminals. In part two of User Profiled, VICE investigates a social experiment designed to find out how easily people will give up their personal, private information online. We meet with an online investigator to look at the tools and techniques used to track down people's information online. We interview a high-profile hacktivist to learn about how he's fighting back against increasing surveillance online. And we meet a cybersecurity professional who outlines the steps you can take to keep your messages private and your personal data secure.

This video has been made possible by Ubisoft and 'Watch Dogs 2.'

This January 28, 2016, file photo shows a solitary confinement cell at New York City's Rikers Island jail. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday announced that the city has put an end to punitive segregation—a.k.a. solitary confinement—for inmates 21 and under in local jails, including the notorious Rikers Island complex.

"Today's announcement shows that New York City is leading the nation down a new path toward rehabilitation and safety," de Blasio said in a statement. "New Yorkers can be proud that their correctional facilities are pioneering these smarter, more humane approaches."

At the tail end of 2014, amid scathing criticism from journalists and the feds alike over systematic violence (especially with respect to the mentally ill and adolescents), the New York Department of Corrections (DOC) stopped using punitive segregation for 16- and 17-year-olds. The rule was extended to include 18-year-olds this past June, but the DOC had stalled on expanding the plan for inmates between the ages of 19 and 21—despite city officials voting to do so—until now.

The new regime officially began on Tuesday after it was teased earlier this week.

"During the last two years, the Department created and tested a number of models for safely managing our youngest inmates," Correction commissioner Joseph Ponte said in the release. "Our ending of punitive segregation today is founded upon thoughtful evaluation, flexibility, and adjustments with the needs and safety concerns of staff and young adults front and center."

Read: The 14-Year-Old Who Grew Up in Prison

Photo via Flickr user Michael Vadon

Donald Trump, a man whose burnt-umber skin belongs on a painting of the American Southwest, shit-talked a female contestant's skin during a shoot for The Apprentice, according to show transcripts released Monday by the Huffington Post.

Although the hunt for behind-the-scenes footage and deleted scenes from Trump's reality show have turned up empty so far, HuffPost was able to get its hands on some typed transcripts from the show's ninth season, during an episode where contestants had to spruce up a musician's career. One of those musicians was country singer Emily West, and Trump takes issue with her skin.

"Don't put this shit on the show," he says according to the typed transcript. "But her skin, her skin sucks, OK? I mean her skin, she needs some serious fucking dermatology."

Trump is also captured telling country music star Trace Adkins, "You're obviously not a skin man." The Donald later reiterated the point, pounding the table and saying, "which is okay... I wish I wasn't."

Singer Cyndi Lauper, who helped manage West on the episode, confirmed the transcript was legit. "That's just the way he is," she told HuffPost. "It is just very disappointing."

"Of all people to talk about people's skin," Lauper added. "What the hell is going on with his?"

Read: Donald Trump and What Men Say When They Think Women Won't Hear

When the documentary Fire at Sea won the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin Film Festival back in February, jury president Meryl Streep called the documentary, "urgent, imaginative, and necessary filmmaking."

Director Gianfranco Rosi tells a personal story of the migrant crisis engulfing Italy as north Africans and others flee wars and strife by jumping en masse onto small rubber boats with the hopes of reaching the mainland to improve their lives. By choosing images that evoke the joy of life rather than the hardships, Rosi packs an unexpected emotional punch.

The 50-something Eritrean native's primary focus is Samuele, a 13-year-old local boy with a lazy eye as he goes about life on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa. We see him play fantasy war games, and we learn of his dreams to grow up and become a fisherman just like his Sicilian uncle. He also visits a doctor for treatment on his lazy eye. This doctor is one of the few locals on the island who has any interaction with the huge number of migrants passing through after risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean. The lazy eye becomes a metaphor for Europe's treatment of these homeless migrants as Rosi lyrically places scenes of the islanders' placid everyday lives against the momentous struggle of the migrants crossing the sea.

With this film, and his 2013 Golden Lion win at the Venice Film Festival for Sacra GRA, Rosi has established himself as one of the world's great observational documentarians. We caught up with the gregarious, sociable director to chat migrants, bodily metaphors, and the duty to film and share with the world.

VICE: How did you get the islanders to trust you to tell their story?
Gianfranco Rosi: For me, it's important to be in a place without a camera first. I was on the island for three months before I took the camera out.

There is a colonial link between Italy and Africa—Italy colonized Ethiopia when it was called Abyssinia. When and why did this link between Italy and Africa disappear?
there was very little trade or exchange. But there were many people from Ethiopia and Eritrea who came to Italy to live there. What makes me—I cannot say upset—but surprised is that Italy is not a place that can create integration. We now have the third or fourth generation of these immigrants from Eritrea living in Italy and they did not become part of the social and economic fabric of the country as happened in France and Britain.

Why do you think that is?
When you live in New York, you don't have to integrate. There is a transcultural aspect, which is universal. But somehow in Italy it is a very conservative place where it's somehow very difficult to climb the social ladder and it is a very nepotistic society. It's not a meritocratic system. If your father is a doctor, you have to be a doctor, and if your father is a banker, you have to be a banker, and if your father is a filmmaker, you have to be a filmmaker. So, it's a very structured society, with a very stagnant system that doesn't allow shifting.

What is unique about your film is that in the moments that we see a little boy, we forget about the African migrants. Somehow that feels more true to the experience of life in the West.
Yes, absolutely. Lampedusa—this little island—is a metaphor of Europe. It's very important to understand that three years ago, Mare Nostrum was created. Mare Nostrum saw the moving of the border from Lampedusa into the middle of the sea. Before, people would arrive in Lampedusa straight from Libya or Tunisia, so there was an interaction between the migrants and the islanders. The migrants were there for a few days and then they leave. Since Mare Nostrum, boats have been intercepting the migrants in the middle of the sea.

It has created a hypothetical border, is moving, more and more, towards Libya. Before Mare Nostrum, there were more interactions between the islander and the migrants, because the migrants would land directly on the island and there would be an interaction. Now it is all organized and institutionalized. The migrants are taken on boats, they come into the port and then they are taken to the center, they stay two or three days there, get identified, and then they leave for the mainland.

But Mare Nostrum and Frontex, which superseded it, have been reported as saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Isn't that a good thing?
Since Mare Nostrum and especially now with Frontex, there are many more people leaving, but they are leaving in much worse conditions. Now they are being put into rubber boats, or these boats are completely packed full of people, like the boat you see in the movie, with three times the number of people that the boat was designed to hold aboard. Also the level of criminality is much higher. The business became much harsher. Before, the people used to buy their own boats and leave. Now it's only in the hands of the criminals, of the human traffickers, like the situation in Turkey. So yes, there are more people saved, but also more people dying, because they leave in worse conditions now.

So you're saying that the policy means that human traffickers have more power and the journey of the migrants has become much more precarious?
The traffickers say to the migrants, "Go into these boats and you'll be saved." Some are beaten up and put onto the boat. Like in my film, the man with blood-red eyes, the people were forced to go down into the hull of the boat, where it's packed with 300 people and they all suffocate. There is no air down there, it's hot, and there is engine fuel. So they die, like they are in a gas chamber.

Because Samuele is a young Sicilian with a lazy eye, his ailment and his behavior seem to become a metaphor for how Europe treat migrants. Was this your intention?
eyes become this inflammatory metaphor. I don't know why, but it does somehow show the state of the emotional reaction towards migrants, something that goes beyond Lampedusa. The first three months I only shot with him and I never shot with the refugees because in that period the refugee center was burned. This allowed me to go deeper with the islanders.

Did you ever struggle to hold the camera to the refugees? Did you feel like you were ever exploiting them for your art?
I spent 40 days filming people arriving and then death came to me. When I was filming, I was completely in that moment and I then see a body and I don't know what to do. I'm agonizing. If you see that moment in the film, the camera goes high and then low, as I'm not sure whether to film. It was the captain of the boat who asked me to film that and I said, "I cannot do that," and he said, "You have to do that because the world has to know this."

Did you ever feel while making a film that you should have put the camera down and help?
Of course. But help? No, because that would be stupid. There are people there who know how to do that job and I would probably fall into the water and I don't think that is helping. The only way for me to help in that situation, and it was very hard, was to film because the camera has such a power in front of such weakness, where the people cannot even say, "Don't film me." So it was my duty to film.

Follow Kaleem Aftab on Twitter.

Find screenings of Fire at Sea.