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How Paris Is Recovering from the 'Charlie Hebdo' Attacks

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It is incredibly difficult to reconcile the sheer barbarity of this week's images of massacre with the placid reality of the setting in which they unfolded. The neighborhood where the infamous Charlie Hebdo attack took place, in the 11th Arrondissement, is just a short stroll north from the gorgeous Place des Vosges, the oldest planned square in Paris and the template for the kind of open residential spaces that came to typify urban landscapes around Europe as they transitioned out of the Middle Ages.

Paris, even at its grittiest, is nothing like New York, where the possibility of real violence is never totally unexpected—and where, because of that latent menace, an overly intrusive police presence has come to feel like just one more part of the city's configuration. Here, it's possible to go days at a stretch without so much as laying eyes on a cop, and without ever having to glance over your shoulder or pause to consider your bodily safety. Those are two of the reasons I don't miss Brooklyn.

In the absence of the kind of "broken windows" logic and spectacular military-grade weaponry that characterizes US law enforcement even in small towns, the Parisian police hardly come across as omnipotent (the officer who was executed in the street at the scene of the shooting approached the gunmen on a bicycle). Nor, for that matter, does the badge inspire in the public the kind of unthinking reverence Americans are supposed to have for their boys in blue. Here, you will see dismay over officers killed on duty but you won't see the deification-in-retrospect of fallen police, such as has just occurred in New York. The French, for better or worse, simply lack that kind of piety.

In general, perfunctory displays of obeisance to authority or hierarchy in any form struggle to take root here. Ride the Metro and you will see every type of Parisian down to pregnant ladies brazenly hopping the turnstiles, daring the lackadaisical station attendants to so much as look at them askance. Waiters routinely talk down to diners and taxi drivers thumb their noses at fares. Paris is the only global capital I know of where you will get eviscerated asking for a shoeshine. Which is to say, to an outsider it can feel like everyone here is out to deliberately offend everyone else.

Pharmacies, which sit on practically ever block, display large images of nude bodies in their windows (mothers and children included); prostitutes, johns, and pimps mingle with schoolchildren, families, and tourists on the sidewalks. Tokens of religious symbolism—namely, headscarves—are controversially forbidden in public schools. Quite literally, and not accidentally, nothing is sacred. What the French call laicité—secularism—is exponentially more integral to the national psychology than the comparatively flaccid American concept of the separation of church and state.

To an outsider it can feel like everyone here is out to deliberately offend everyone else.

And that is one huge part of the reason the slaughter of ten cartoonists at a well-known but not especially earth-shattering satirical paper cut this city and country to the core, prompting some 35,000 people to gather in the Place de la République in response: This was an assault on an entire way of life.

Wednesday night, as friends Instagrammed the crowds at République and Facebook filled with declarations of "Je Suis Charlie," the television stations looped footage of heavily armed and somehow American-looking police squads descending in teams on public housing units in Croix Rouge, a suburb of the nearby city of Reims, where several unspecified arrests were made. Reports were that the local youth jeered them.

By Friday morning, a manhunt had turned into a hostage situation, with the two brothers suspected of the killings, Said and Chérif Kouachi, holed up in an industrial complex, surrounded by police helicopters and armored cars, the nation's law enforcement hardware suddenly on display—and then, predictably, the brothers were dead.

Importantly, though this is being framed by many right-wingers as a battle between Islam and the West, the Kouachis were born here and were every bit as French as those kids in the housing projects who taunted the cops. Among the thinking people I've spoken to, there is widespread recognition that France does a miserable job of integrating even its native-born Arab, African, and Muslim populations—a long-known fact that has everybody freshly nervous in the wake of the attack.

The Kouachis were born here and were every bit as French as those kids in the housing projects who taunted the cops.

In so many ways, it is seems oddly congruent that yesterday also marked the highly anticipated publication of the country's most famous and important living writer Michel Houellebecq's sixth novel, Soumission (submission)—a dystopian narrative set in the near future in which Islam has literally conquered France.

Houellebecq (who has stopped promoting his novel in the wake of the attack, and is under police protection), has homed in on an unflattering but nonetheless authentically felt aspect of a culture that increasingly views itself (and intelligent people can disagree on the extent to which this view is sensible) as existentially plagued by a growing internal threat. That is why one thing everyone—white or brown, liberal or conservative—concedes is that Marine Le Pen, the darling of the xenophobic far right, is the only true beneficiary of this horrific loss of life. Her suddenly credible party, the National Front, is all but assured of building on its recent eyebrow-raising gains.

And so what is to be done? Liberté, égalité, and fraternité are famously the words of the land. But less frequently quoted is the subsequent modification that appended the conditional ou la mort (or death) to that expression. At the vigils for the victims of the attack, Parisians rallied for liberté, and most voices at least pay lip service to egalité. But we are all but certain not to have seen the last of the death part of the equation if somehow more of these alienated young men aren't made to feel some kind of fraternité.

Thomas Chatterton Williams is a writer living in Paris. Follow him on Twitter.


American Conservatives Are Using the Paris Terror Attacks to Call for More War on Terror

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Even as the terrorism drama continues to unfold in Paris, many right-wingers are treating the events of the past few days as confirmation that their warnings about radical Islam were right all along. While Europe deals with its own racial tensions and immigration issues, America's conservatives have seized on the attacks as an opportunity to reassert their hawkish national security policies and double down on the anti-terror strategies neocons have been pushing since 9/11.

Just days into the new legislative session, Republicans in Congress used the year's first terror crisis to pillory Obama's foreign policy, indicating they would try to force his hand on national security issues. "We must use this horrific attack as an opportunity to reevaluate our own national security posture," South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, a leading neocon, said in a lengthy statement on the attacks. "I fear our intelligence capabilities, those designed to prevent such an attack from taking place on our shores, are quickly eroding,"

Suggesting that Obama doesn't understand the "gravity" of the terrorist threat, Senator John McCain, the new chair of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, said Thursday that the attacks would serve as impetus to reexamine issues like defense spending and the US strategy against the Islamic State.

"As long as ISIS succeeds, that will breed this kind of terrorist who goes to Syria, Iraq and fight, return to the country from which they came from—not only radicalized, but well trained," McCain told reporters. "And that is the reason why the administration is failing in not devoting the sufficient effort to destroy ISIS which is what the President's stated goal is... when in fact there is no strategy to do so."

For neocons, the attacks also offered an opening to defend controversy anti-terror intelligence programs and push back against bipartisan efforts to increase oversight of the country's spy agencies. In remarks to the National Journal Wednesday, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said that the Paris attack proves why Congress shouldn't get in the way of the NSA's mass surveillance programs. "To me, Congress having oversight certainly is important," he said, "but what is more important relative to these types of events is ensuring we don't overly hamstring the NSA's ability to collect this kind of information in advance and keep these kinds of activities from occurring,"

New York Republican Congressman Peter King went a step farther, arguing that the Paris attack proves the NYPD was justified in spying on Muslims. "We have to put the New York Times aside, and we have to put the Associated Press aside and all the bleeding-heart politically correct people who say we can't be emphasizing one community over the other," King said in a talk radio interview Wednesday. "The fact is [the threat] coming from the Muslim community and it shows that the NYPD and [former police commissioner] Ray Kelly were right for so many years when they were really saturating areas where they thought the threat was coming from."

The response is perhaps unsurprising, given the rapid neoconservative resurgence within the Republican Party. The GOP made huge gains in 2014 in part by capitalizing on voter anxiety about global security threats. This week's attacks play right into that message, confirming conservative fears that the US is losing to The Terrorists. And while President Obama has sought to characterize the US fight against terrorism as a tactical campaign against a weak and distant threat, the assault on French cartoonists gives Republicans an opening to once again cast the war on terror as an imminent, existential, and even religious, battle for American freedoms.

"It's not an attack on our homeland, but it's definitely an attack on our way of life," Graham said Wednesday. "There's a perfect storm brewing to have this country hit again."

Calling the fight against Islamic extremism a "religious war," Graham added: "Our way of life doesn't fit into their scheme of how the world should be. If you stopped talking about radical Islam, if you never did a cartoon again, that's not enough. What people need to get is they can't be accommodated. They can't be negotiated with. They have to be eventually destroyed."

The party's 2016 presidential hopefuls have echoed this message. "Despite the President's assertion that the war on terror was over and that al-Qaeda was on the road to defeat, this is not accurate," Florida Senator Marco Rubio said, standing alongside McCain at Thursday's press conference. "The bottom line is that the war on terror continues, and for those who believe that somehow that war is over, I think if they have any doubts yet, yesterday should have dispelled them."

Texas Republican Ted Cruz weighed in on Facebook, calling the Paris massacre "an attack on us all."

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who recently left his job at Fox News to explore a possible White House bid, was more forceful, calling the attack a "wakeup call that Western Civilization continues to face a threat to our very existence from radical Islam-inspired extremists."

"We all must stand firm against violent, totalitarian ideologies which seek to destroy our freedom," he said in a statement to the Hill. "Americans and Europeans must start by correctly identifying the problem, not simply wishing it away or trying to appease radicals. While apologists for radical Islam have often confused the issue with claims of 'Islamophobia,' it's well past time for those who truly value liberty and freedom to call their bluff."

Similarly, Rick Santorum, who is also openly considering another presidential run, said that the attack should serve as "a reminder to the West of the continuing threat to our way of life."

Even Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian-leaning Republican who has frequently butted heads with his party's neocons, has seized the opportunity to ramp up the rhetoric. "I haven't seen any Christians or Jews dragging people of the Islamic faith through the streets, but I am seeing the opposite. I'm seeing Christians beheaded. I'm seeing people who say anything about Islam being shot," he said in a radio interview with Sean Hannity Thursday. "And so, yeah, should the rules always protect everyone's rights? Yeah. But I'm not too worried right now that we've infringed on their rights. I'm worried that Christians and Jews are being killed around the world."

Paul stopped short of calling for any changes in US national security strategy, instead suggesting that "maybe every Muslim immigrant that wishes to come to France shouldn't have an open door."

As of Friday morning, Hillary Clinton had not commented publicly on the attacks. More moderate Republican presidential contenders, including Jeb Bush and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, have also opted to stay out of the fray, at least for now.

Follow Grace on Twitter.

I'm Short, Not Stupid Presents: 'Skin'

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What do you do when you fall for a pretty girl? Pretty much anything. Maybe you stalk her a bit, scope out her interests, find out her likes and dislikes. Bat a couple eyelashes and invite her to throw rocks against a wall. Skin, by Jordana Spiro, captures that struggle, but as an almost voyeuristic portrait of a boy and girl, Spiro transcends a simple young coming of age-of-love story and highlights our innate struggle to understand one another. If that sounds super corny, it's not meant to be. In fact, the film is quite unsettling.

The boy, a young taxidermist, longs to connect with his fantasy girl but instead stays distanced from her. Shy, reserved, and hopelessly unaware, he stays silent and observes. As the object of his eye though, he learns of the love she has for her dying dog and in an attempt to swoon her he makes a concerted effort to come out of his shell.

Unlike films that hold your hand, Skin manages a real sense of honesty through reliance on everyday moments—gestures, quirks, words (though very few). It isn't until halfway through the film that the boy, who appears in every scene, speaks. Spiro directs the two first-time child actors to beautifully understated performances, where despite their different backgrounds, their characters connect on a purely visceral level. As Spiro depicts the world around them, or rather the family around them, she illustrates how children's will can be forced into our rigid existence, one ruled by class, tradition, ego, and more.

Maybe this is a side effect of a hardening heart, but the earnestness of these children is what makes the film. It's heartbreaking to imagine all of the times we could've done something good or worthwhile if only we weren't so easily pressured by outside forces. The film is called Skin and it depicts just that, skin being just a mask we wear to protect and hide our true and desired identities. Beautiful and haunting, relatable and moving, Jordana Spiro is a talent to watch, so watch Skin for the next 12 minutes.

Jordana Spiro is relatively new to directing by way of acting ( The Good Wife, Trespass). She has directed three short films, Skin being her most recent. The short premiered at Sundance Film Festival and went on to play at SXSW, AFI, Palm Springs, and more. In 2014, Sundance tapped her for their Screenwriter's Lab as she hashes out her debut feature script entitled Night Comes On.

Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as a film curator. He's the Senior Curator for Vimeo's On Demand platform. He has also programmed at Tribeca Film Festival, Rooftop Films, and the Hamptons International Film Festival.

The Idea of Reinstating the Death Penalty in Europe Is Utterly Moronic

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Marine Le Pen, leader of the French right-wing party Front National. Image via Wikimedia Commons

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Like any major attack, the horror inflicted on Charlie Hebdo this week has stirred up a whirlwind of debate about how Western liberal society should respond to these kinds of events. A big chunk of that argument is based around the idea that we should be more Western and less liberal, with some prominent figures calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty in Europe.

There were the inevitable hard-right attacks on multiculturalism. Channel 4 News attempted to add a bit of "edge" to their coverage by bringing on Nigel Farage, who is about as edgy as a cue ball. It's hard to get inside the mind of the TV news producer who thought Farage was a good person to talk to in the wake of a massive European tragedy, but on he went and blathered away about immigrants.

Then, people started begging the government to invade their privacy. The Sun, whose sister paper was shut down for spying on people's private communications, mocked "liberals" who "still fret over the perceived assault on civil liberties of spooks analyzing emails." Meanwhile, the Telegraph's Dan Hodges tied a white flag to his spine and waved it over his head in surrender: "If one way of stopping obscenities like today is providing the security services a bit more access to our emails, we must give it to them. If it means internet providers handing over their records, the records must be handed over."

As fun as it would be to see Theresa May's reaction to my porn collection, I'm pretty sure terrorists can find alternatives to Facebook and Gmail.

Marine Le Pen's reaction matters more than most, though. The increasingly popular leader of France's far-right Front National has promised a national referendum on the death penalty if she's elected president in 2017, and she's quoted in Newsweek saying it "should exist in our legal arsenal." She'd probably never get it through—protection from the death penalty is in the French constitution now and would violate god knows how many treaties—but, like the attack itself, it won't hurt her election chances.

I—like most—have strong views on the death penalty. Partly, it's because a country singer with the same name as me wrote a really creepy song about being fried in an electric chair that makes Johnny Cash's "Hurt" sound like "Mr. Blue Skies"—"Suddenly, I'm paralyzed / This must be the end / My body jerks and trembles / And they turn it on again." Mostly, though, it's because nothing about the death penalty has ever made any kind of sense.

What happens if someone is wrongly convicted? Going to prison for a murder when you're innocent is terrible, but at some point there's a chance you might be able to get out and live the rest of your life. You can't live the rest of your life if you've been executed.

As Ian Hislop pointed out a while ago, false convictions aren't exactly rare, and "we would have killed those people." Research published last year estimated that around 4.1 percent of inmates on death row in the US should have been exonerated. That doesn't sound a lot, but, as Scientific American pointed out, over the years it adds up to 340 people.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/_DrsVhzbLzU' width='640' height='360']

What, exactly, are executions supposed to achieve?

You can't execute a suicide bomber. Death isn't a big problem for the kind of fanatics willing to die for a cause. Even if you just look at ordinary crime, there's no real reason to think that execution would deter people. As Amnesty put it, "The threat of execution at some future date is unlikely to enter the minds of those acting under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, those who are in the grip of fear or rage, those who are panicking while committing another crime (such as a robbery), or those who suffer from mental illness or mental retardation and do not fully understand the gravity of their crime." They note that murder rates are considerably higher in those American states that still have the death penalty.

The research that exists doesn't support it, either. It's true that you can find papers that claim to show a deterrent effect—one infamous paper from the 1970s claimed that each execution in the US prevents eight homicides. Trouble is, the results don't survive even the slightest bit of scrutiny. Several studies misuse basic statistics, take weird approaches (one obsesses about the size of the Republican vote), or fail to deal with the fact that both executions and homicides fall in the period they cover.

The only real reason to execute people is retaliation—an eye for an eye. What you make of that really comes down to your own set of morals, but I thought we'd moved past biblical retribution. France hasn't beheaded anyone since Hamida Djandoubi in 1977; Britain and other European countries for a lot longer. We leave that kind of savagery to the likes of Islamic State. It's hard to imagine why, having seen where their idea of morality leads, we'd want to imitate it.

Follow Martin on Twitter.

PC Music Is Post-Internet Art

Cry-Baby of the Week: A Politician Threatened to Sue a Newspaper for Printing His Name

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It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Kirby Delauter

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The incident: A newspaper mentioned a city council member in an article.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: He threatened to sue the paper if they used his name again without permission.

Kirby Delauter is a council member for Frederick County, Maryland. Last week, he was mentioned exactly one time in an article about parking restrictions written by tae Frederick News Post reporter named Bethany Rodgers.

This didn't sit all that well with Delauter, who wrote a Facebook post expressing his annoyance at being mentioned by the paper. "Shame on Bethany Rodgers for the unauthorized use of my name and my reference in her article today," he wrote. "Let me be clear.................... do not contact me and do not use my name or reference me in an unauthorized form in the future."

As Rodgers had been tagged in the post, she responded in a comment, explaining to Delauter that, as a journalist, she doesn't need to get his permission to use his name in an article. "It's not just our right but our responsibility to report on people like you, who occupy positions of trust in our government and I make no apologies for doing that," she explained.

Delauter, who possesses frighteningly little understanding of his legal rights for a man in his position, wrote a follow-up comment threatening Rodgers with legal action if she uses his name again: "Use my name unauthorized again and you'll be paying for an Attorney [ sic]. Your rights stop where mine start."

The Frederick News Post responded to this, hilariously, by posting an article with the Malkovichesque headline "Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter." The article featured his name 30 times.

After Delauter's outburst received national attention, he posted an apology to Facebook, admitting that what he had done was dumb.

Cry-Baby #2: Ronald Corwin

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Photo via Flickr user Mike Licht

The incident: A man fell off a Citi Bike.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: He is suing the city of New York for not forcing him to wear a helmet.

Back in 2013, a 74-year-old Connecticut man named Ronald Corwin was riding a Citi Bike (New York's system of rentable bikes) in Manhattan.

Corwin says that while riding the bike, he hit a concrete barrier and fell off, landing on his head. He filed a lawsuit against the city at the end of last month, asking for $60 million. According to Ronald, he lost his sense of taste and smell as a result of his accident, and feels that New York and Citi Bike are at fault for not offering helmets when you rent one of the bikes.

A story in the New York Daily News reports that Ronald also feels that the concrete barrier that he rode into should have been painted to make it more visible.

Which of these guys is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll here:

Previously: Cry-Baby of the Year 2014

Winner: The woman who tried to get someone raped because she outbid her on a house!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

Pennsylvania Cops Are Looking for the Owner of a Mysterious Embalmed Head

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Sketch by Michelle Vitali courtesy of Economy Police Department

Nearly a month after its discovery, authorities are still baffled by an embalmed human head found in a field in Economy, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. It was first stumbled upon by a middle school student on December 12.

"The young fellow had gone to school in a remote area of the county," says Beaver County District Attorney Anthony J. Berosh. "He thought it was deer guts. It turned out to be the head of some woman."

The road on which the head was found is "located in a wooded, residential area and is not a heavily traveled road," according to a police press release. As you would expect, the discovery was followed by a multi-agency search of the area. The operation included cadaver-sniffing dogs and an aerial survey by the Pennsylvania State Police Aviation Unit.

No other remains were found, however.

The head, which looks to have belonged to a woman in her 50s, had been embalmed and its gray hair had been styled, leading police to suspect this isn't a case of murder but theft from a graveyard, funeral home, or medical school.

"Not many murderers would know how to embalm," Berosh tells me. He adds that the head was apparently severed in a clean way that shows some expertise. The head was in good condition, with the skin mostly free of tears and all the teeth intact, so authorities do not think it spent much time out in the elements.

The head currently sits in the Beaver County Coroner's Office; all the leads have dried up. Investigators have reviewed missing person reports from 14 states. They've also surveyed medical schools, funeral homes, and organ donation agencies—"anyone who has access to bodies," according to Berosh. So far, nothing.

An unattached head like that is unusual, but hardly unique. As of 2007, about 40,000 sets of unidentified human remains sat in coroners' offices across the United States, according to a Department of Justice study released that year. Many of them were from decades-old cold cases.

In the event of a mysterious corpse or piece of a corpse, one tool for law enforcement officers is the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NaMUS), a database of unidentified remains and missing people maintained by the Department of Justice.

Todd Matthews, director of communications and case management for NaMUS, says he is not aware of another case of an embalmed body part found in the database. He tells me the fact that the Economy head probably belonged to a person known to be dead and put to rest puts police on the case at a disadvantage. Often, cases of human remains are solved by matching the DNA in the body part with DNA submitted to a database of missing persons.

"There's one case of a missing person and one case of unidentified remains," he says of a typical situation. "There are two ends trying to meet."

Unless someone has noticed a disturbed grave or security breach at a medical school, it's possible no one but the cops is looking for this head.

"It's a very strange case," Matthews says. "Could it have been some kind of joke?"

Another unidentified head was discovered in Pennsylvania back in 1904. This one was handled very differently. The head was found by the side of a road in Shamokin, in the center of the state; the man it belonged to had probably been "the victim of a highwayman," according to a 1977 Associated Press story. The local Farrow Funeral Home embalmed the head and placed it in a shop window in the hopes that someone would identify the man. After a few months, the home gave up, placed the head in a cardboard box, and shelved it for 70 years.

In 1976, the Anthracite Heritage Center, "a museum of coal mining things, asked if it could borrow the head," according to the AP. The museum "put it on display, mounting it on a pedestal beneath a black cloth. Visitors were told what was beneath the cloth, then asked if they would like to look. Most did."

After a few months, a county judge ended the show, "saying to place human remains on display bucked Judeo-Christian philosophy." He ordered it buried. The head then went missing "and most townspeople were convinced museum officials were hiding it for fear the county coroner would carry out the judge's order." But it soon turned up at the district attorney's office and the coroner managed its burial in an undisclosed location. That head's final resting place, like its origin, is still a mystery.

Berosh promises that, even if never identified, this new head found in Economy will see a more dignified fate. But because of lack of precedent, he's not sure when.

"If it's not identified, it will be buried in a nondenominational cemetery," Berosh tells me.

He's just not sure what the headstone should say.

Nick Keppler is a Pennsylvania-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Village Voice, Nerve.com, and Pittsburgh City Paper.

'Prosperity Porn' Gives Britain's Super Wealthy Too Much of a Free Pass

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A screen shot from Rich, Russian, and Living in London

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Chances are you're reading this at work. Perhaps you're sitting in your own private office with a sweeping view of the city, stretching back in your Eames, reaching for the 30-year-old Laphroaig and cackling over the 10k you've made since lunchtime.

If, on the other hand, your job is a bit shit—or if you don't have one at all—you should know that the reason for this lies squarely on your piss-lazy shoulders; you're just not trying hard enough.

Or so our Conservative overlords would have us believe. Most recently, Tory councilor Mark Winn enlightened us with his view that food banks are only used by "those with drug, alcohol, and mental health problems."

He echoes Baroness Anne Jenkin, who reckons poor people just don't know how to cook. Bo-Jo would presumably agree, having claimed that the state should favor the 2 percent of the population with an IQ over 130, comparing those with a low IQ to the manky powdery stuff at the bottom of a cornflakes packet.

The financial elite, and those whose policies allow them to keep burning banknotes, continue to thrive. Worse, their existence seems to be accepted as an ineradicable fact of British life.

This tired "the rich will be rich" mentality has been bolstered by the recent spate of prosperity porn about the super wealthy. Within the last few weeks, the BBC has broadcast Posh People: Inside Tatler; Rich, Russian and Living in London; and Billionaire's Paradise: Inside Necker Island—all shows that gave those at the top of Boris's financial cornflake packet a remarkably easy ride.

Last night, the first part of Jacques Peretti's documentary, The Super-Rich and Us, was a welcome change from the sycophantism. Focusing on the fact that Britain is the world's most sought-after tax haven, Peretti—along with several prominent economists—neatly skewered the Thatcherite idea that wealth "trickles-down."

In fact, wealth appears to be trickling up: Britain now has more billionaires per capita than any other country in the world, and we're the only leading economy in which inequality has increased in the last century. The question, then, "Are the super-rich good for Britain?" was answered with a resounding no.

So why, when we focus on the super-rich as individuals, do we give them so much leeway? That recent prosperity porn fiesta seemed like one long PR exercise in pushing the belief that people who own ten cars should be admired, purely for the fact they have a bigger garage than you.

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A screen shot from Billionaire's Paradise: Inside Necker Island

Necker Island was aired on BBC2 this Tuesday and offered a lurid glimpse into the lives of those who pay £37,000 [$56,000] a night to frolic in the turquoise waters of Richard Branson's private Caribbean island.

Presented in the style of a Virgin holiday promotion, the program didn't stop to question the fact that, on Necker Island, it's as though colonialism never faltered. Visiting guests—the New York property developer, the actresses, the princess—were Western and white, none doubting their entitlement to this slice of paradise. Even staff seemed to be "ranked" according to race: Branson's personal assistants (blonde, female, pretty), chefs, water-sports instructors, and managers were white European; the cleaners and gardeners black Caribbean.

Branson came across as affable and charming, and of course he didn't create the global system that Necker Island so perfectly mirrors, though he certainly benefits from it. Britain's colonial history in the Caribbean is as shameful as it comes; a nation's wealth built on the back of the slave trade and sugar plantations. Today, cash has mostly replaced the guns, but on Necker Island, feudalism lives on. Perhaps Branson's cleaner will find a way to buy an island off the British coast and employ locals to make her beds, but it seems unlikely.

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A screen shot from Posh People: Inside Tatler

This old money—which was, in all probability, created back in the days of the Empire—still festers on in Britain. We got the chance to gawp at the grizzled lords and ladies who own it via BBC2's Inside Tatler, which follows the staff of the country's most cloyingly Conservative publication as they "not only observe the upper classes but help preserve the rules they live by."

The Tatler team treat aristos with benign amusement and the show invites us to do the same. When a Scottish lord remembers how his ancestor threw an "annoying" waiter through a plate glass window, brushing off complaints by saying, "Put him on my bill," it's just a funny anecdote. Imagine if White Dee had joked about her granny getting away with glassing someone in the local.

New money was presented on a gold platter in Rich, Russian and Living in London. The show rounded up a selection of likeable multimillionaires—not an oligarch among them—and, as much as is possible in 60 minutes, tried to challenge stereotypes and look at the historical context which led to Russians driving (literally) diamond-encrusted cars through Knightsbridge.

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The format is very different when it comes to depicting the poor; the problems with poverty porn such as Benefits Street and Skint have already been well documented. Feeding straight into assumptions about the work-shy, irresponsible poor, the surge of hatred on Twitter during the first few episodes of Benefits Street was in no way matched following anything shown in the rich-people circuses of Necker Island or Inside Tatler.

Residents of James Turner St received death threats after appearing on Benefits Street. Calling for the same treatment for the Bullingdon crew who polo-played their way though Inside Tatler is clearly just as much of a step too far, but surely the super-rich should be held just a bit more accountable?

Bank bonuses are still slapped on the table. Sanctions continue to be placed on the benefits of those who need them most. Last year, MPs claimed more on expenses than at the height of the 2009 expenses scandal. Income inequality in the UK is more pronounced than at any previous time in the last 30 years.

The super-rich need you to believe that their presence isn't fucking you up. But it is. If trickle-down economics worked, we'd all be getting richer.

We've had poverty porn. Prosperity porn just isn't matching up. Let's have some shows that problematize wealth in the same way as poverty. More stereotypes. Let's seek out cocaine-guzzling bankers, single mum-hating property developers and ruthless foreign investors.

Rich people aren't all like that? To hell with it—think of the ratings.

Follow Frankie on Twitter.


Talking to Lane Milburn About His New Weekly VICE Comic Strip

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Images courtesy of Lane Milburn

This week marks the official start of Lane Milburn doing a weekly comic for VICE, so I thought I'd interview Lane to introduce him to all of you nice readers out there. Lane was in a collective called Closed Caption Comics and he's done a book called 12 Gems for Fantagraphics. We had a nice chat about things we like.

VICE: My memory was destroyed by smart phones. Were you or are you still a member of Closed Caption Comics?
Lane Milburn: Yes, I was in the group and had work in all of the anthologies. We don't do the anthology or really collaborate anymore but we remain very close friends.

How long have you been making comics for?
I drew them as a kid like most, though I didn't really grow up as a comics fan aside from an intense Spawn phase. I drew lots of comics based on movies like Jurassic Park and Star Wars, and video games like Mortal Kombat, Boogerman, and Vectorman.

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Lane Milburn.

I had a Spawn phase. How far did yours go?
Probably just the first 30 issues. I was ten. I remember not liking Greg Capullo's art. I had some of the action figures.

What was the process of learning to draw like for you?
I drew from my imagination incessantly as a young kid. In high school, I began drawing and painting portraits of friends. I went into art school (Maryland Institute College of Art) with the ambition to be a traditional figurative painter, so I think a lot of my figuration is informed by life drawing. It wasn't until college that I switched gears and became a cartoonist and comics fan, and since then I've tried to learn more by studying the greats: Moebius, Kirby, Ditko, Los Bros, Otomo, Druillet, Manara, etc.

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Are you into Wally Wood at all? He did a lot of spacey stuff.
Yes he does. One of the true gods of ink on paper. I took the design for Jo Sparta's outfit from one of his illustrations for some pulp paperback. I have some EC reprints that I look at often.

Can you tell me about your relationship with science fiction? I assume that this comic is coming from a place of familiarity. Do you have favorite authors, films, and comics that you responded to?
I grew up with what I imagine is a pretty typical pop culture diet for people my age. As I mentioned, I didn't read too many comics or anything else until college, where I became a rabid reader of everything. I played lots of video games growing up. Some favorites over the years were Super Metroid, Perfect Dark, Metal Gear Solid, and the Final Fantasy series. In high school I watched Ghost in the Shell and Tetsuo the Iron Man. In college I read the Dune series, Ender's Game, some Heinlein stuff.

Discovering Moebius's Airtight Garage in college was an absolute revelation for me. I could sense its influence on my childhood favorites like Star Wars, yet I also responded to the incredible drawings as a fine artist interested in the figure. Since then I've just tried to absorb as much as I can on all fronts. As far as sci-fi goes, I recently finished watching Battlestar Galactica and have been reading Russell Hoban, Ursula K. LeGuin, Philip K. Dick, the Strugatsky Brothers, and Dan Simmons's Hyperion. In my "to read" stack I have Stanislaw Lem and Octavia Butler.

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Did you ever get into old Heavy Metal magazines or Epic Illustrated?
Yeah, I mentioned Moebius and Druillet, whose work I mainly got into through the collections printed by Epic and Dragon's Dream. I only own a couple issues of Heavy Metal. I have almost all of the old Moebius collections from Epic. I'm also crazy about Kaluta and Enki Bilal. Wasn't Starstruck part of the Epic line? I recently found a copy of that Star Raiders book illustrated by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, one of my all-time favorite comics illustrators.

Did you see Interstellar? What did you think of it?
I didn't see it. My friends hated it. I watched the trailer and the premise seemed too ridiculous, even by my standards. My favorite recent or recent-ish sci-fi films are District 9, Splice, Antiviral, Under the Skin, The Host, Monsters, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Coherence.

I'm a huge fan of Cronenberg, who for me embodies a lot of the essence of science fiction, which is concepts and thought experiments: a zoomed-out view of human issues. Science fiction in comics often focuses on the visuals. I love the visuals too, and certainly had that in mind working on Twelve Gems, which I actually view as a fantasy comedy. Of course there are lots of comics with great sci-fi concepts too... Akira, Moebius's Gardens of Aedena. Sci-fi or die.

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Do you have a favorite Cronenberg movie? I also agree that he is the greatest. I don't notice a lot of similarity in the work you've done for VICE so far. Do you do much horror work?
In the fall of 2009 I won a Xeric grant for my horror graphic novella Death Trap. It's sort of a teens-in-peril, Texas Chainsaw Massacre action story. My favorite Cronenberg movies are The Fly, eXistenZ, Shivers, and The Brood.

Have you worked in color much before when making comic stories?
Not much, but it's quickly become my preferred mode. I use a lightbox and do the colors on a second sheet with acrylic inks. My Death Trap book has a short intro story done in watercolors.

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Your main character feels like a less reluctant version of Ripley from the Alien movies in a lot of ways. Was that a conscious decision?
No actually, but I appreciate the comparison. It's been ages since I've seen those movies but they certainly made a huge impression on me. I actually do want Jo Sparta to show a bit of reluctance and mixed emotions, but hopefully that'll come through as Envoy unfurls.

I mean that Ripley doesn't usually decide to go on the adventures she has in the movies.
Right. Great character, great performances. The original Alien is my favorite movie in the series.

Does Envoy take place in the same universe as your book, Twelve Gems?
No, I don't think so. But I sometimes can't resist the urge for stupid cameos, so I guess we'll see.

Read Envoy on VICE every Thursday.

Meet the Nieratkos: Catching Up with the Actress Formerly Known as Belladonna

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Michelle Sinclair, a.k.a. Belladonna, with Chris Neiratko. Photos courtesy of the author

In 2012 I was working on an installment of my short-lived VICE documentary series Skinema, featuring Michelle Sinclair. Today Sinclair is one of the actresses in Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice, but back then she was known as Belladonna. At the time she was at something of a crossroads in her life. As Belladonna, she was arguably one of the most successful and sexual beings to ever do it on camera, but at the time we were filming she was in the last days of her XXX career, as well as the twilight of her marriage to longtime collaborator and father to her child, Aiden Riley. We talked extensively on and off camera about which direction her life would take at a time when the world seemed spread out in front of her.

Over the past year and a half we have stayed in touch and exchanged parenting tips and baby stories. During that time she mentioned a few possible new career paths: aerial silks performer, Cirque du Soleil acrobat, sexual instructor, and the list goes on. Then one day out of the blue she texted me: "I have amazing news. You're not going to believe it."

She went on to tell me that she had landed a meaty role in PTA's stoner gumshoe flick Inherent Vice, which I like to describe as a reimagining of a Big Lewbowski prequel starring Joaquin Phoenix.

Her legions of adoring fans have no doubt been wondering what she's been doing since leaving the biz, and I'm sure they were shocked to see her pop up, fully clothed, in the trailer for Inherent Vice, so I decided to call up the star of Dick Sauce and My Ass Is Haunted to discuss how this new chapter in her life is going.

VICE: At the end of the final pat of your Skinema episode you walked off into the sunset, unsure what was next. Two years later, how are you? And how the hell did you end up in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie?
Michelle Sinclair: Well, I'm healthy, my daughter is well, and I have an amazing, incredible partner. You and I talked about me wanting romance when we did our last interview, and I never thought it would be like this. I definitely feel like I've found a life partner.

As for Inherent Vice, I'm friends with Joaquin Phoenix and randomly got a text from him saying: "I'm working on this project. Is it OK if I give the casting director your information? Because they're interested in casting you for a part in this movie." I was like, "Sure. Great." When they called I found out it was a Paul Thomas Anderson movie and I started freaking out. Then I asked what kind of scene it was, and of course it was a sex scene. At that point I was just not interested in being naked on camera or doing the things that I am known for, so I told her I wasn't interested in that part, but maybe they could find something different. She relayed the message, and Paul was like, "What are you talking about? This is a major motion picture. Are you crazy?" He couldn't understand how I could say no. I wanted to be a part of the film—it's Paul Thomas Anderson and he's an amazing filmmaker! So I thought about it, and figured if it wasn't a porn scene and instead maybe a softcore, tasteful-looking thing, then maybe I could do it. So I said yes.

How similar was the real Hollywood casting couch to the one used in the porn world?
Ha! Well, that depends on the porn company, I think. But no, it was very professional. I went in and met with a woman named Cassandra, and she videotaped me reading the part for Clancy Sherlock.

Naked?
No! You would say that! It was just a dialogue part, and there was a ton of dialogue, actually. Then there's a bit where Joaquin walks in the door and sees me and Tariq fucking in his office. It was a very quick kind of thing. There wasn't meant to be a lot of focus on us having sex, which was another reason why I thought I could do it. I ended up reading and Paul loved it, so he had me do a reading with Joaquin.

I originally filmed a great scene with Joaquin and another guy, Mars Crain. They were really happy because I was super prepared and nailed it, but they ended up recasting the guy, Mars Crain, so we had to reshoot. The second time around there wasn't as much dialogue, and in the end the sex scene didn't even make the cut...which I'm very happy about. And listen, I get it. There's a lot of me having sex out there. You can't take away everything I've done, but it made me feel like people who are watching this and don't know Belladonna will just see some woman. They don't know who I am, and that gives me a chance to be someone different. It gives me a chance to be Michelle Sinclair.

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Is mainstream acting your new calling?
I would love that, but I don't think it would be the only thing I'd want to do. I would love to be able to do other things. I've always thrived on variety. I'm thankful for people who give me opportunities to do something completely different. I don't want to be typecast and I don't want to be naked, which is what most people would want to cast me for.

I could see why you'd want to shy away from that, but maybe six months ago you were thinking about becoming a sex-positive speaker/instructor.
Since I retired three years ago it's been a trip. I don't know if it's like this for any other girl who leaves the adult industry, but for me, I'm trying to find myself. I'm trying to find out where my place is in this world and it's confusing and it's changing all the time. So no, I've thought about the sex-positive speaker route but I've also thought about a lot of things. I'm trying not to put so much pressure on myself to figure out what the answer is. I feel like I'm at the place where most people are when they're just out of college, or getting ready to go to college, and figuring out what it is they really want to do with their lives. I guess I'm doing it backward.

So instead of the stripper putting herself through college you're a former porn star trying to put herself through life.
Yeah, and trying to navigate that has been very, very hard. I dropped out of high school, I didn't go to college... porn was my life, my career, everything. And I was so blessed to be so successful in that world, because I went from having barely anything to being super financially successful. Walking away from that was very hard but it was what I really wanted. I wish I could say that I had it all figured out but I don't. I can tell you I'm a very involved, committed, amazing mother and that is my number one priority. That's my job right now.

Are you ever tempted to go back to porn?
No. Not at all. You know what I think about? What I was thriving on when I was in porn? The variety. The traveling. The performing. I loved performing. That I miss, being in front of an audience dancing or performing aerial acrobatics. I loved that. I loved meeting and connecting with people. I miss that and think that's what appeals to me so much about acting—you can have variety.

There is still a Belladonna imprint from Evil Angel with your ex-husband, Aiden Riley, at the helm. Do you have any involvement with that?
No, but he's still producing a movie every month like he was before, and I think financially he's doing fine. But I think it's not as exciting for him because he doesn't have that muse, or me as the creative director. I'd come up with all the ideas and he'd make them happen. Or we'd co-collaborate. It's nice to have that person to bounce off of.

Does he ever bring you garbage bags full of letters from fans wanting you back? Do people even write letters anymore? Or is it just comments on Twitter and Instagram?
Ha. No. I don't know if Aiden gets emails like that. Even if he did I don't know if he'd give them to me. He knows that I really want to be disconnected from it. I recently got back on Instagram when Inherent Vice came out to connect with people, but for a long time I didn't have Twitter or Instragram, or even internet for that matter. I even went without a cell phone for three months and it was beautiful. I really enjoyed that.

There was a little tip of the hat to your former self in Inherent Vice, where your character prefers two guys at the same time. What was your reaction when you read that?
I didn't have a reaction. I just thought, Well, that makes sense if you know who Belladonna is. That's perfect. I just kind of giggled when I saw it in the script.

Follow Michelle on Instagram.

More stupid can be found at Chrisnieratko.com or on Twitter.

How-To: Make Sai Krok Isan with Kim Wejendorp

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How-To: Make Sai Krok Isan with Kim Wejendorp

A Close Look at the French Far Right

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Far-right protesters on a "Day of Rage" demonstration last year

Since the shooting of 12 journalists at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday morning, a predictable series of attacks on Muslims have unfolded with a grim inevitability.

In Le Mans, a city just West of Paris, three blank grenades were tossed into the courtyard of a local mosque on the evening of the shooting. In the South, near Narbonne, shots were fired at a group just finishing their evening prayers. On Thursday morning, in the town of Villefranche-sur-Saône, a kebab shop next door to a mosque was firebombed. And yesterday afternoon a Muslim woman who was four months pregnant,lost her child after being attacked on the streets of Paris.

Like many countries in Europe, France appears to be on the edge; under the strain of an extended economic crisis, tensions over immigration have meant big gains for far-right parties. When I visited the former communist-voting rust belts of France last year to explore the impact of this on local populations, it was de-industrialization, unemployment, and disillusionment with more moderate politics that stuck me as the main sources of the problem.

But who are the groups we should be worried about? Who makes up the French far right in 2015? From old school neo-Nazi skinheads to Jewish defense groups, from ex-communists to extreme-right groups that claim to reject nationalism, it's an odd, sometimes paradoxical, always horrifying mix.

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Marine Le Pen. Photo via Flickr user Blandine Le Cain

At its heart is the National Front (FN), the dominant far-right party founded in the 1970s by Nazi collaborators, Vichy obsessives, and anti-republicans. They aren't the only political party stigmatizing the Muslim population—it was Sarkozy's center-right UMP that introduced the ban on headscarves and—but they remain easily the most Islamophobic party in France.

In March last year they took control of a number of towns in the local elections, and immediately set about making life as miserable as possible for the Muslim and immigrant populations. Much like another far-right French organization—Riposte Laïque (Secular Response), who organized a small rally in central Paris on Thursday—the FN's stance on immigration today is cloaked in the language of secularism and republican universalism; fascism dressed up as anti-fascism. Some of their members—like the Major of Hayange, Fabien Engelmann, and many of their supporters—are even ex-communists.

For the FN, the Charlie Hebdo massacre presents yet another opportunity to grow its base, to make Islamophobia more mainstream and "legitimate" than it already is. Their leader, Marine Le Pen, daughter of the far more openly fascist holocaust revisionist Jean-Marie Le Pen, has already called for a "republican" march this Saturday. The shooting also means an opportunity to push forward other ideas from the radical right. On Thursday morning, speaking to France 2, Le Pen said she would call for a referendum on reinstating the death penalty if her 2017 presidential campaign proves successful.

Also worrying is the growth of an extra-parliamentary street protest movement called the Bloc Identitaire, set up in 2003 by Fabrice Robert, a former member of the far-right Unite Radical. Since their inception they've been engaging in all kinds of weird, provocative, racist street stunts designed to prevent the "Islamization of Europe" and "anti-white racism." They've held pork and wine parties in Muslim neighborhoods and have distributed so-called "identity soup"—pork soup—to homeless people across the country. After the killings they published a statement on their website saying "nobody will be able to claim that they are struggling again Jihadism without questioning massive immigration and the Islamization of our country."

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Their theoretical ideas—which they refuse to call nationalism—are rooted in Identitarianism, an ideology cooked up by the philosopher and so called "father of the new radical right" Alain de Benoist. He heads up a think tank called GRECE—the Research and Study Group for European Civilization. A critic of neoliberalism and multiculturalism, Benoist claims that the separation of different races and culture is the key to spiritual rebirth. It's a theory he calls ethnopluralism. Others call it racism.

Bloc Identitaire have an extremely active presence on the internet. Benoist is particularly keen on aspects of the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, whose theory of cultural hegemony emphasizes the need to influence culture and public opinion in order to achieve political change. The group even has its own pan-European press agency called Novopress that it uses to publicize its far-right ideology.

In 2009 the Bloc Identitaire became a formal political party and in 2012 they set up the Generation Identitaire—a sort of fascist Boy Scouts—who also work to protect the "freedom" and "cultural heritage" of "native" French citizens. They have a truly bloodcurdling, but decently produced, shot video on YouTube where they describe themselves as "the generation of ethnic fracture, total failure of coexistence, and forced mixing of the races."

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Members of Génération Identitaire conduct a "scum patrol." Photo courtesy of Génération Identitaire

One of Génération Identitaire's first actions was held in 2012 when 100 activists stormed the Great Mosque of Poitiers, in a small city in west-central France, occupying the roof and unfurling a banner with the group's name. Last year they organized what they called "patrouilles antiracailles," anti-scum patrols in the subway of Lille designed to intimidate anyone they consider not French.

Both groups maintain close links to the FN and aim to influence it. Philip Vardon, the head of Nissa Rebela, a local division of the Bloc, joined Marine Le Pen's coalition of far-right parties in 2013. And various leaders of the group's youth wing were involved in local FN campaign teams during last year's election. Some, like Damie Rieu, have even secured permanent positions, in his case managing communications for Julian Sanchez, the FN mayor of Beaucaire.

Another group with supposed links to the National Front, and perhaps one of the stranger presences on the far right are the Ligue De Defense Juif (LDJ), the French division of the Jewish Defence League (JDL)—a virulently anti-Arab militant group whose stated mission is defending Jews against anti-Semitism, or, as it usually turns out, any criticism of Israel.

The JDL were founded in the US back in 1968 by Rabbi Meir Kahane, who also set up Kach, the now banned religious nationalist Israeli political party. The group is outlawed in many countries around the world—including the US, who classify the JDL as a terrorist organization—but operates freely in France, where it claims to be gaining membership.

The French wing of the JDL is composed almost entirely of young men and is mainly active in Paris and Lyon. Since 2001 they've been charged with over a hundred accounts of physical aggression and assault including an attack on high school students, vandalizing a pro-Palestine Parisian bookstore, and strapping an explosive device to the car of Jonathan Moadab, a Jewish journalist and an open critic of the Israeli state.

Their relationship with other far-right parties is bizarre, at least for a so-called Jewish group. One of their founders, Jean-Claude Nataf, is known to have links to both the National Front and the Bloc Identitaire. Like in the UK—where the JDL has a Jewish division in the English Defence League—the basic principle seems to be that the enemy of your enemy is your friend. It is said to be a source of baffled horror and amusement amongst French anti-fascists that a Jewish group is hanging out with people who advocate Hitler-esque politics because they both hate Arabs so much.

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A protester does a "quenelle" gesture on a far-right demonstration last year

One noted anti-semite that the LDJ do seem to dislike is Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, the onetime anti-racist activist who has made YouTube videos about the "Jewish lobby" and invented the "quenelle" gesture—the inverted sieg heil that got soccer player Nicolas Anelka in trouble.

M'bala's mixture of conspiracy theories, anti-Western rhetoric and virulent anti-Semitism appeals to numerous people from the extreme right to the disconnected urban youth. His popularity with the latter group is particularly strange given his close ties with Jean Marine Le Pen, who is the godfather of his third child, and Alain Soral, the far-right activist and founder of Equality and Recognition.

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Mourners in France pay their dues to murdered activist Clement Meric in June 2013. Photo by Maxime Lelong

Sadly, M'bala and Soral don't complete the picture. There are Catholic fundamentalists who are active, there's a viciously homophobic movement called Manif Pour Tous that organized demonstrations last year against the gay marriage bill, and of course, there are skinhead groups, who despite having no overarching organization haven't gone away. Last year a group of swastika-wearing neo-Nazi hangers-on were responsible for the tragic death of Clément Méric, an 18-year-old anti-fascist activist.

All in all, it's a confusing picture. Not all of these groups will be hoping to benefit from the shooting, not all of them are straightforwardly Islamophobic, but many are. And, as usual, it will be ordinary people who suffer from their actions: immigrants, Muslim citizens, and refugees who have fled exactly the same people that carried out Wednesday's massacre. For the far right in France, this could be a defining moment.

Follow Philip Kleinfeld on Twitter.

Comics: Roy in Hollywood - Roy's Golden Adventures Under the Earth

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Buy Gilbert Hernandez's books from Fantagraphics and Drawn and Quarterly.

​Trans People Can’t Drive in Russia Anymore

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On Monday, the Russian government announced that trans people, among others, would no longer be allowed to drive. The law, which is titled "On Road Safety," was signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on December 29 and is ostensibly about " reducing deaths from road accidents."

In reality, it's yet another draconian restriction placed on LGBT individuals in a country that has all but criminalized being gay.

The decree covers stuff that would obviously create peril on the road, such as blindness. But other, less obviously harmful conditions were banned as well. Listed right alongside those who have compulsive tendencies toward gambling and stealing are people who "desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex" and people who wear "clothes of the opposite sex in order to experience temporary membership of the opposite sex."

The Russians are using the International Statistical Classification of Diseases, or ICD-10—a widely accepted compendium of mental health disorders put out by the World Health Organization—as justification for shoehorning anti-gay legislation into a piece of legislation that's supposed to reduce driving fatalities.

There are two reference books in psychology that professionals use to diagnose people. One is called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, which considered homosexuality a disorder until 1973. The ICD is the other go-to manual, and didn't change that until 1990. Presumably, if either tome still considered homosexuality a mental disorder, gays would no longer be allowed to drive in Russia, either—and it's not impossible that this law will be interpreted to that effect anyway.

So the Russians are using the current dearth of research on trans people as a weapon, a tactic will put pressure on the medical community to destigmatize being trans—and fast.

Still, it's unclear how Russia plans to enforce this new rule among people who already drive. What is virtually certain is that it will keep even more folks in the closet there because they'll be afraid to lose their mobility, which in turn would compromise their livelihoods.

"Banning people from driving based on their gender identity or expression is ridiculous and just another example of the Russian regime's methodical rollback of basic human rights for its citizens," Human Rights First's Shawn Gaylord said in a statement. "Beyond the denial of basic freedoms, this provision may deter transgender people from seeking mental health services for fear of receiving a diagnosis that would strip them of their right to drive, and leaves the door open for increased harassment, persecution, and discrimination of transgender people by Russian authorities."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Can Putting Your Personal Genome on the Internet Lead to Lasting Friendships?

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Last week at a dinner party, I met Melbourne residents Masha Lewis and Miranda Weiss. Complete strangers five months ago, the pair are now firm friends. This in itself is not unusual; what makes their story interesting is that what brought them together was a genetic similarity found in their saliva.

Masha and Miranda used 23andme, an at times controversial web-based service that analyzes the DNA of its thousands of users. The process is straightforward: You order a kit online and it arrives by mail to your house; then you register online, spit in a test tube, and send it back in the prepaid packaging for analysis. That's when things get interesting.

The site claims that once their DNA is in the system users will discover things about their distant ancestors, close family members, and, most of all, themselves. For example, Masha found that according to her genetic sequencing she is 99.5 percent European, with 70.4 percent of that being Ashkenazi Jew and 2.7 percent Neanderthal (the European average).

For Miranda, who is of mixed race, determining her genetic makeup was a big reason to sign up. Miranda's mother's ancestry is nearly 100 percent Ashkenazi Jewish, and she is able to name her relatives back several generations. Her father's side of the tree is more complicated—she knew there was African American in there, and possibly Native American, Irish, and even the Igbo tribe of Nigerian Jews. "I've never known exactly what races I had in me," she said. "Now I am finally able to know who I am."

[body_image width='640' height='640' path='images/content-images/2015/01/08/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/08/' filename='would-you-put-your-genes-on-the-internet-body-image-1420679035.jpg' id='16319']

Miranda (middle) with her mother and daughter

23andMe also claims that predispositions to health conditions can be found through its DNA analysis, although this has been disputed. Masha was able to find out she had potentially elevated risks for psoriasis, breast cancer, and arthritis—and decreased risks for Alzheimer's, glaucoma, and multiple sclerosis. Miranda, who has a history of breast cancer in her family, confirmed her suspicions of having a higher than average risk to develop the condition.

But it's the potential for finding unknown relatives that is perhaps most exciting for potential users. Through its growing database, 23andme can match individuals sharing common genetic ancestry, as it did for our two dinner party guests.

Miranda first messaged Masha through 23andme in December 2013 requesting to share ancestry information after 23andme indicated that they were third or fourth cousins. (You can only see other people's detailed information if they've opted to share that with you.) Masha noticed on Miranda's profile that she lived in Melbourne and asked her where specifically and what her story was.

Fast-forward to August 2014, when Masha had been in Melbourne for about a month and decided to messaged Miranda letting her know she was around. That resulted on an invite to personally meet one another. "I guess in the back of my mind I was thinking I hope this girl's not a weirdo, but since I had just moved to a new country I was eager to make new friends", said Masha.

"Miranda seemed like a great person, and I wanted to be her friend immediately after meeting her," she continued. "We talked about where we've lived, how we met our husbands, mutual friends, and our dislike of Nicolas Cage. Everyone I've told about this experience has nothing but positive things to say. I think we may have even convinced a few other people to get their DNA tested."

Nowadays Masha and Miranda consider one another their closest friends in Melbourne and (physically) hang out at least once every week.

Considering the current ubiquity of social media platforms, genetics-based networks could become the next chapter of the digital revolution. Twitter, Instagram, and Vine allow us to share things with the internet at large; Facebook lets us "friend" people we barely know—but what if there were a social network that could discover strangers who were also family members? Would that give us the sense of making realer, more empathetic connections?

According to psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, "Our capacity to live in community is affirmed by our capacity to feel empathy, to think and feel as if we were in someone else's mind." In the past, churches, universities, artistic collectives, unions, and sports clubs—all endeavors where face-to-face exchanges are required—constituted the basis of social trust. Without them, people become alienated and lack the trust to relate to one another. In the internet age it's easier than ever to form weak bonds with people through IMs and social media, but it's hard for those bonds to turn into real friendship.

What allowed Masha's and Miranda's first encounter to evolve into an actual relationship was real-time physical proximity, of course, which was more good luck than a conscious plan. But perhaps there's something about that genetic connection—the old-fashioned tie of blood—that made their friendship deepen and emerge from cyberspace to become something real. If so, it's possible that 23andme can do some real good in the world.

Maybe Masha explains the benefits of genetic networking and the forging of new relationships best. Grinning, she told me "a fat inheritance from some distant uncle would have been nice, but I'll settle for Miranda."

Follow Sergio on Twitter.


Watch the Trailer for Season 3 of 'VICE' on HBO

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[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/lPS5uDmbzNM' width='640' height='480']

Today HBO announced that our Emmy Award-winning show, VICE, will be premiering its third season on March 6 at 11 PM EST. The first trailer for the new season is above. As you might have expected, this time around the show will feature on-the-ground reporting from the most interesting corners of the globe, as well as a slew of new hosts. The stories in this season will take us from Tennessee to Antarctica and beyond.

We know that the days leading up to March 6 will be long, so earlier this week, in the interest of whetting your appetites for the new season, we published the first episode from Season 2 online. Over the coming weeks we'll be streaming the rest of the episodes as well, with a new one appearing every Monday.

See you next month.

Season 3 of VICE premieres on HBO on March 6 at 11 PM.


Plastic People Remembered by the People Who Shaped It

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Plastic People Remembered by the People Who Shaped It

VICE News: VICE News Capsule

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The VICE News Capsule is a news roundup that looks beyond the headlines. Today: Mass graves are found in Mexico's Guerrero State, Venezuela's economic woes continue, a study finds fracking caused Ohio's earthquakes, and a new antibiotic offers hope in the global war on superbugs.

The Baha Men Will Outlive Us All

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Photo courtesy of the Baha Men

In the year 2000, a group of men from the Bahamas asked a loud and repetitive question in an incredibly catchy way. "Who Let the Dogs Out" led the Baha Men to world tours, deals with Disney and Nickelodeon, and even to be the walk-up song for pro baseball player Alex Rodriguez.

Though their inquiry into why the canines weren't indoors made the band international stars, their success didn't come out of nowhere. The group was formed in the late 70s and repeatedly changed its name and sound—they were originally called High Voltage—along the way to starring in a 90s family movie, boosting Japanese tourism rates in the Bahamas, and juggling literal lines of women all wanting to "talk."

Fifteen years after their wave crested, the band is back in the Bahama Islands, where they practice daily in anticipation for the release of Ride with Me, their 12th album. Though as entrenched as ever in what they call "Island Life," the Baha Men are grown up, and many of the members have children.

While most of the world has written off the band as one-hit wonders, the Grammy Award–winning group continues to churn out albums and tour today. They're always sure to play "Who Let the Dogs Out" on stage, although the group has to fake their way through the song's rap section because no one remembers the words.

In a fit of nostalgia after rediscovering a Now! That's What I Call Music CD in my parents' garage, I decided to track the Baha Men down and talk to them about their new album. It didn't take long before I was talking to founder Isaiah Taylor and fellow Baha Man Dyson Knight.

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VICE: I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that you guys weren't always the Baha Men. Can you go into how and when you guys formed?
Isaiah Taylor: The first name of our band was High Voltage, and we were formed officially in 1977, right on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas. Our sound has changed tremendously since those days. We ended up changing our name though because of other bands from the United States and Canada.

For some reason when I researched you guys I saw sources claiming that the band was formed in England.
There was a band in England that tried to steal—or at least spin-off—the fame the band had, particularly around the time of "Who Let the Dogs Out." We're not affiliated with them in any way.

Got it. So you guys become the Baha Men and start getting some fame in the early 90s, and then you made your first official big screen debut in 1994 in a Katherine Heigl movie.
That's right, man! In My Father the Hero. The experience filming that movie was so much fun. I had never worked hours quite like it before though—we would go from six in the morning until six at night.

So I have to ask, how was "Who Let the Dogs Out" created?
Dyson Knight: It was originally sung by a Trinidadian artist whose name is Anslem Douglas. The manager of the Baha Men at that time heard a version of the song in Europe. He called Isaiah and told him it was an absolute must that Baha Men record that song, because they had the vibe to make it a huge hit. Isaiah heard the song and said there was "no way in hell we're recording that song."

So the biggest dance song of the early 2000s almost didn't happen?
Right. Management had the vision, and the Baha Men were reluctant, but the group went in and recorded it anyway. The rest is history.

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And then you guys become huge international stars. Do you have any crazy tour stories from that time?
I wonder if I can tell you any of the tour stories without selling out members of the group. When the band was really, really hot and traveling from city to city, there would be a line outside one of the member's hotel rooms. He would always have a line of women waiting to speak with him.

Speak with him? That's all they wanted to do?
Just speak with him, or have a conversation. He would have one woman in his hotel room talking to him, and then two or three outside of his room just waiting to talk.

He must be a great conversationalist. I know you joined the band after Grammy night, but do you mind retelling a story from the Grammys?
Apparently the band was talking to either Jennifer Lopez or Jennifer Lopez's manager, and when the nominations were announced, Jennifer Lopez or her manager said, "The Baha Men have that in the bag." Isaiah felt so strong about winning the award that he bet all the members of the band that they were going to win. When they won the Grammy, the keyboard player actually paid him on stage. He said it was the best bet he ever lost.

A lot of members have left the band over the years. What's it like to have so many members?
Yeah, we've had a lot of people come and go. One time, when the group was heading to London or some place, [former member] Omerit Hield looked at his ticket and became hysterical. They asked him what was wrong, and he said, "This isn't a first-class ticket." He went to management and made a huge thing about it and said, "If I can't fly first class, then I'm not going." He didn't go, and that was the last time he was part of the band.

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You guys have stayed busy since "Who Let the Dogs Out." In 2010, you covered a George Harrison song for MySpace. Are the Beatles big influences on you? They also had a lot of animal-related songs—"Rocky Raccoon," "Octopus's Garden," "Blackbird." I'm sure there are more.
The Baha Men have recorded a lot of songs that would fit the Beatles' sound and caliber of recording. We had a few songs that were huge in Japan, like "Beach Baby." This was even before "Who Let the Dogs Out." In fact, the songs were so large in Japan that some of the hotels in the Bahamas had to hire Japanese translators for all the guests coming to see us.

Are you sick and tired of playing "Who Let the Dogs Out?"
I'm very tired of playing that song in rehearsal. I mean, we've been playing it for almost as long as I've been alive. But on stage, it's different. The fans really give life to that song.

When you watch the crowd sing along to the song, can you see them get confused when you reach the rap section?
Leroy Butler sings the rap part in the song now, and no matter how much I hear him sing that part, I can't sing it. Marvin, the ex-member with blond hair, originally wrote the rap, so he's the only one who knows what the words are. Leroy sings what he thinks it is, but I know that what he's singing doesn't make sense.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/mXlzHjubkXg?rel=0' width='640' height='360']

How does your new album sound different from your old albums?
It's a lot more grown up and a lot less gimmicky. I think the vibe people get are still party vibes, especially from a song called "Carry On." It has crazy vibes, just like "Who Let the Dogs Out." It's a different song and has a different feel, but the same energy. I think it will take off and be huge. The title of the new album is Ride with Me.

Alright, it's haunted me for 14 years. Who exactly let the dogs out?
I'm not allowed to say. The feds are after us, we have to keep it quiet. It goes deep—top-secret information. If you have any clues, and you feel like you're on a lead, don't be like Dan Brown and write books about the Illuminati or anything like that.

OK, deal. So who let the dogs out?
Hey, the dogs are out. We men, who love God's greatest creation, the women, can't be blamed for coming out of the house and coming into the dog house. Be a dog. Bark!

The Baha Men's new album, Ride with Me, will be released February 9 via Sony Music.

Follow Brandt Hamilton on Twitter.

This Handy Calorie-Counting App Barrages You With Insults

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This Handy Calorie-Counting App Barrages You With Insults
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