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Last week, I spoke to activist and libertarian talk show host Adam Kokesh. Less than 24 hours later he was taken into custody by federal agents.

Kokesh is a former Iraq War veteran. In 2007, he was issued a general discharge from the US Marine Corp after being photographed by the Washington Post while attending an Iraq Veterans Against the War protest in his uniform. The resulting incident made the papers and the national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars publicly backed Kokesh, then accused the Marine Corps of trying to silence and punish members of the military for exercising their constitutional rights. This would be the first in a series of controversies surrounding Adam and his politics.

Adam's latest agenda is probably his most controversial to date. A couple of weeks ago on his talk show Adam vs The Man, Kokesh announced his plans to celebrate Independence Day by marching into the nation's capital with 10,000 followers, all of whom would be armed with loaded firearms.

Adam and I talked on the phone for nearly a half hour about, among other things, his protest, privacy and security, and his Jeffersonian values. While his motivations aren't always clear, one thing was obvious: Adam Kokesh does not like the US Government. It's not that he hates the people running the government, but he believes government has invalidated itself by betraying the principles from which it was founded. At times Kokesh sounded downright anarchistic, but overall he was more empowered by the idea that government should belong to the governed.

The day after our conversation, Adam was arrested at "Smoke Down Prohibition," a public protest for the legalization of marijuana that takes place every month in Philadelphia. Basically, large groups of people gather in public and simultaneously spark up joints or smoke bowls of weed to protest the fact that it's illegal to do so. Also, they get high. It's not complicated. Before last Saturday, no arrests had ever been made at one of these events, despite the fact that police were always present and laws were broken every time.

There are several videos on YouTube that document the moments before and during Adam's arrest. In one of the clearest videos, Adam isn't sparking up. He continues talking into the microphone while everyone else is flicking their Bics. Within seconds, the police move in and Adam yells, “Lock arms, we’re going to make it difficult for the police here.” That didn't work out so well.

Moments later, Adam is being dragged away from the crowd by police. He doesn't appear to be committing any crime in the video. In fact, the only charges against him are for events that transpired after he was engaged by the officers: assault on a federal police officer, impeding the duties of a federal police officer, and resisting arrest. Almost immediately after being grabbed by the officers Adam's hands go up into the air, palms up, signaling that he has officially surrendered and isn't resisting arrest. No assault of any kind appears to take place.

According to Lucas Jewell, Adam's podcast manager, the arrest is in direct response to the upcoming Independence Day march, not the Smoke Down Prohibition demonstration. "They walked by a big black guy with dreads smoking a blunt and snatched Adam when he hadn't done anything illegal." The fact that Adam was originally taken to a local jail but then picked up by agents and transferred to a Federal detention facility has only fueled this theory. 

Kokesh went before a judge at 1:30 PM Monday and was reportedly silent the entire time. According to Jewell via the Adam Kokesh Facebook page, another hearing was scheduled for this Thursday. Jewell writes: "The reason for the detention hearing is because Adam will not speak on if he owns fire arms [sic] or his address."

It's unclear if Adam will be released in time to conduct his march on DC, if it will be canceled, or whether the arrest will inadvertently cause even more people to show up on July 4 with loaded weapons slung over their shoulders. If the arrest was indeed a preemptive strike by law enforcement attempting to stop the open carry march before it took place, the tactic of targeting Kokesh in public might very well backfire.

Here's part of my telephone interview with Adam Kokesh from Friday, May 17.

VICE: Hi Adam, thanks for talking with me. How many people have signed up to join your open carry march?
Adam:The total is over 4,000 now, so we're well on our way to meeting our goal of 10,000. There are a lot of people who have signed up by e-mail who said they're going to be organizing buses. So I think with all of the support we've gotten outside of Facebook we're close to 10,000 already.

Is your protest specifically just about the 2nd Amendment or is there a broader theme behind your armed march?
It's definitely broader than that. While the 2nd amendment is an important part of how we are able to keep government in check— at least the founders intended it that way—this is really more about fundamentally altering our relationship with government and making sure that the government fears the people and not the other way around.

You allude to a famous Jefferson quote often. He said, “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” What exactly does that mean to you?
The people have to live in such a state that their rights are privileges because they know the government can take them away at any time; I think that's the state of fear of government that a lot of people live in today. When that's the case it's because rights are threatened. When you fear someone else it's because they are a threat to you peacefully exercising your rights. Human beings are capable of ruling their own lives and shouldn't have other people exercising authority over them in any way. But, in a situation where the government truly exists at the pleasure of the people, then the government should constantly be in fear of the people and should acknowledge that at any time anybody in government can lose their job, or, as the founders said in reference to the declaration, the people have the right to alter or abolish said government.

How do you feel about these recent public comments by President Obama: "Unfortunately you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all of our problems... They'll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices."
Well, in a way, everything he said is perfectly true because the government is not a separate entity as a product of the will of the people. In the other sense, when he says that the people who say "tyranny is around the corner," it's true that they're lying. In any sense that you'd be able to define it, tyranny is already here. If the government is corrosive and only sustainable by assertively violating your rights, I would say that it already is. I think those saying tyranny is around the corner are really the one's that are saying there is some hope left in the political system or if you just do what we say, we're going to be able to fix this or if we just believe in the conservative hype we'll be able to vote our way to liberty.

In the sense that Obama meant it, of course it was absurd that he was saying "don't worry, everything is OK." It's an insult to the intelligence of his audience to suggest they don't know better.

Some people say the notion that the 2nd Amendment is in jeopardy is just a weapon of mass distraction; that gun control is just the next divisive topic to help Democrats and Republicans continue to appear different on the issues now that the polls have shifted on gay marriage. Do you agree with that?
I think most Republicans don't have any credibility when it comes to claiming that they're different from Democrats. The gun control debate is a little more significant than the gay marriage debate. I understand it could be a distraction from the real exploitation that the federal government represents but it's so much more fundamentally important because it deals with the nature of government as a violent monopoly. If you challenge that monopoly they don't like it. There's often a negative reaction and they arrest people illegally, as we've seen in Ohio, in Texas, and events all over the country where people are openly carrying legally and end up getting arrested, accosted, and sometimes assaulted by police officers. So, we're using the gun control to speak to something that goes a lot deeper.

Do you think gun control arguments politicize tragic events such as the Newtown shooting or are the debates necessary?
I think it's necessary to quell the knee-jerk reaction of those who would turn to government to attempt to solve problems, but that's why those conversations happen. Whenever there is a tragedy the government seeks to exploit it. You know, never let a good crisis go to waste. So, I think it's important that we fight back and resist that when there is such a tragedy and this is one way of doing it.

While we're on the topic of politics and guns, do you think the tens of millions of dollars spent by groups like the NRA place the value of the money above our influence as individual citizens on the political process?
I think, really, the problem of money's influence on politics isn't the money that is used to communicate ideas for whatever reason. The problem is that people are willing to vote without thinking. In a sense, voting is an act of aggression because you are saying that if I happen to have the majority when I cast this ballot, it's legitimate for the government to force my will on you; to name a leader for you that has certain policies that you may or may not agree with. To impose a tax on you or pass a law that is going to be forced on you. As long as people believe that somehow voting is appropriate as a way to organize society through force, then we're going to have a problem with influence from various places that are going to try to effect how people vote and who the guns of government are pointed at. I think that's a much deeper problem.

Is privacy the civil rights issue of our generation?
That's a good question. I think it's a very important issue as we see our lives fundamentally altered by technology. I think, in a way, technology provides great mechanisms of accountability. I'm not against surveillance, in a sense. I'm looking forward to having a camera mounted in my contact lens. It's really just a matter of who's controlling it, who is doing what with that data, and who is accessing it for what purposes. But I think privacy is going to become something that we're also empowered by technologically to create for ourselves if we need to. The problem is when you have this technology in the hands of government.

The information we're talking about when we talk about privacy... we're talking about the NSA recording every single digital phone call that takes place in the United States. Every single one. And we found that out unequivocally after the Boston bombing when it was revealed that the FBI was going to “find these conversations.” And you're like... there it is. The question is, who controls this information? Should it be a gang of violent thugs in our government? Absolutely not. But should we have that record? Should it exist? I think so.

It was recently revealed that the Justice Department obtained the telephone records of journalists working at the Associated Press. You're a member of the media, you have your own show. Do you feel this is an all-out assault on the 1st Amendment?
Do I think it's an assault against the 1st Amendment or is it just more intimidation? I don't know, because when I heard about that story and it was the Associated Press that was being targeted, I was definitely surprised. What happened to the AP is not unique to journalists, it's the entire American public. I think we all are threatened by this and we should be worried if it turns out that the government is targeting and influencing journalists—I think that the record is clear now that they have. Is it an assault on the 1st Amendment? The 1st Amendment is a bunch of words on paper. The assault is on individuals and their privacy. All of these transgressions just demonstrate how illegitimate this government is. If there is such a thing as legitimate government, this is not it.

Going back to your protest on July 4th, if the police chief does amass a police presence on the Arlington Memorial Bridge to prevent your demonstration from entering DC, how will you react?
If there is a line drawn then we will march up to that line and we will request permission to pass. If denied, then we'll take our grounds for a lawsuit with us and turn around peacefully.

Thanks for taking the time, Adam. 

@dellcam

For more about government:

How Are We Supposed to Know What the Government Does?

Why I'm Anti-Big Government, and Why Taxes Should Be Made Illigal

Helping the Malaysian Government Find Gays on Grindr

After decades of strife, the citizens of Pakistan can point to May 11, 2013, as the first civilian transfer of power through general elections following the successful completion of a term by a democratically elected government. Nawaz Sharif’s heavily criticized party, the Pakistan Muslim League, was victorious in what was a highly contentious election, even in the context of this volatile region. Sharif has already served as Prime Minister of Pakistan twice: from 1990 to 1993 and then from 1997 to 1999. At first glance, it would be easy to dismiss these results as a rubber stamp of the status quo, a bandage on a festering wound of political unrest. When you look closer at the socio-political situation here in Pakistan, however, it becomes clear that just being able to transition governmental authority without military involvement is a victory.

It's not as if everything went perfectly. Prior to the election, Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud wrote a letter that defiantly stated that the aim of their organization was to destroy the entire democratic system in Pakistan. Threats of violence against polling stations were common. Mismanagement of the process by the election commission led to interminable lines for those who exercised their franchise. Ballot rigging was witnessed at many voting sites. Incidents of women being barred from voting occurred in a smattering of cities. Yet despite all this, 47 percent of the population chose to ignore the danger and cast ballots, and violence was kept to a minimum in a nation where political unrest is all too familiar.

Photo via

Pakistan’s history of chaotic transitions is well documented. From 1999 to 2008, General Pervez Musharraf ruled the country through a harsh military dictatorship. His siege of Lal Masjid mosque in Islamabad in July 2007, an attempt to pacify the growing Islamic fundamentalist movement in Pakistan, and the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in December 2007 only increased pressure on the military regime and contributed to the fall of Musharraf’s government. 

Despite the progress made in this election cycle, Pakistan was not without its struggles, which isn't surprising for a nation weaned on war. At least 121 people were killed and more than 496 were injured in the month before elections. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), and Awami National Party (ANP) were all put on notice by Taliban forces prior to the start of voting for their left-leaning platforms. Their corner meetings were targeted, and their candidates killed in suicide attacks. Sadiq Zaman Khattak, a National Assembly candidate from ANP, was killed with his son outside a mosque on Friday and elections were postponed in that constituency. 

Photo via

After the results were announced, the various political entities immediately started assigning blame for any electoral inconsistencies. In one constituency, a protest was organized by the PPP against the MQM against threats from the latter's leader, Altaf Hussain. In Karachi's NA-250 constituency, Zahra Shahid Hussain, the Vice President of PTI’s Sindh Chapter, was killed late on Saturday in an attempted robbery. PTI chairman Imran Khan blamed MQM and Altaf Hussain for her murder because of threatening remarks made after the protest. On Sunday, PTI won the national assembly seat from NA-250 after a re-vote. It is not clear if the fighting lead to an increased mobilization of PTI supporters, but it is yet another example of political rivalry spiraling out of control in the country.

Hopefully all of this is just part of the country's transformation into a place where power is tranferred through nonviolent, democratic means. As tensions rise throughout the region, Pakistan can rise to the occasion and present a model for nearby countries. Egypt’s revolution remains fiercely tenuous, Syria descends further into chaos every day, and Afghanistan’s government barely controls its countryside. If elections can be held here, they can be held anywhere. 

For more coverage of Pakistan:

I Lost My Mind in Kashmir

The Taliban Just Tried to Assassinate Me

The Gun Markets of Pakistan

Those reports were later confirmed, but far-right Islamophobes the English Defence League didn't need confirmation, just speculation, to spur them into descending onto Woolwich in their frenzied, drunken hordes. What exactly they were hoping to achieve is unclear—the two alleged killers had already been shot by police and taken to hospital—but it seems they were there to exploit a soldier's death and make wild generalizations about British Muslims all being extremists who want to behead people in public.

The fascist mob gathered at a local pub, where they listened to some rambling hate rhetoric from their leader Tommy Robinson, before trying to march through the streets, being stopped by police, throwing bottles at the police, being kettled by the police, then sent home having accomplished absolutely nothing.

I was there to take photographs of 60 to a hundred angry, confused men. 

Find full coverage of yesterday's events in Woolwich here.

Yesterday afternoon in Woolwich, South London, two men ran over a soldier from the local army barracks, before getting out of their car and hacking at his body with machetes, while shouting "Allahu Akbar!" (God is great). Immediately after the attack, the two men—who were armed with a variety of weapons—spoke at length to bystanders and made political statements on camera, before police arrived on the scene and attempted to secure the area. After 20 minutes, the police's armed response team finally arrived, shooting them both. The soldier died at the scene and the two attackers—who expressed religious and political motives for the murder—are currently in hospital. The case is being treated by the police, the government, and the media as a terrorist attack.

The story emerged quickly yesterday through a mess of unconfirmed eyewitness reports and social media posts—most prominently through Twitter user @BOYADEE, who relayed events to the world in a flurry of 11 tweets starting at 3:09 PM and 3:33 PM [all sic/gic]:

"Ohhhhh myyyy God!!!! I just see a man with hishead chopped off right in front of my eyes!" he said. "The two black bredas run this white guy over over then hop out the car and start chopping mans head off with machete!!

"People were asking whyyy whyyy they were just saying we've had enough! They looked like they were on sutn! Then they start waving a recolver.

"The first guy goes for the female fed with the machete and she not even ramping she took man out like robocop never seen nutn like it. Then the next breda try buss off the rusty 45 and it just backfires and blows mans finger clean off... Feds didnt pet to just take him out!!

"These times i was just going to the shop for some fruit and veg and i see all that!"

The fact that the attack was carried out in broad daylight in front of horrified onlookers, and that the attackers seemed calm enough to speak at length to those onlookers about their motives, only served to reinforce the shock. The fact that the incident took place on the aptly named Artillery Place wasn’t enough to mask the sense of horror shared by everyone.

Talking to a filming bystander in a chillingly calm voice for somebody with blood quite literally on a machete in his hands, one of the attackers said: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologize that women had to witness this today, but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you."

In a separate piece of footage, the man added: "You think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start bussin' our guns? You think politicians are going to die? No, it's going to be the average guy, like you and your children.

"So get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so you can all live in peace."

Once we had finished staring at the initial reports on our laptops in disbelief, we headed down to Woolwich to gauge people’s reactions.

We arrived to a heavy police presence which seemed to be dwarfed by the media scrum. The ubiquitous police helicopter buzzed noisily overhead. Unsurprisingly, everyone we spoke to was surprised at what had happened.

Julia Wilders, a 51-year-old local, told us what she saw. “The blue car was crashed against the lamppost. My husband went: ‘Oh look, there’s two people trying to resuscitate someone.’ So we walked back to have a look. And then suddenly we saw a tall black guy come with a gun. So my husband went: ‘No, get back,’ and he phoned the police... The police turned up and he ran towards them with meat cleavers before they could even get out of the car, so they shot him. And the other one looked like he was going to lift the gun up so they shot him as well."

Israel Ali, 62, told us how cohesive the community usually is: “I’m a Muslim. It’s quite peaceful here. I’ve been here for 20 years. I’m really surprised,” he said. Is there usually any ill-feeling between the locals and the soldiers in the barracks? “It’s very friendly. When they come out in public they say ‘Hello’ and we say ‘Hello.'”

Eighty-three-year-old Maurice Edwards told us, “You don’t get trouble in Woolwich most of the time. I’ve been here 46 years and there has never been any trouble with the soldiers in the barracks. We happened to be in a cafe having a meal. We decided to have a sandwich and a cup of tea, which was just as well because I would have been caught in the bloody middle of it. I’m not that keen on guns, not when there’s bullets flying around!"

Richard, a young Muslim, who didn’t want to be photographed, was concerned at the reports that the murder was linked to terrorism: "I hope that what they are suggesting is not right. I’m a Muslim myself, and this is a big issue to our community. And if it turns out that it was a terrorist attack it will really affect the Muslims in this community. That’ll be a huge disappointment.” Was he afraid of the potential for anti-Muslim reprisals? “Yes. That’s what I’m really scared of.”

As the sun began to set, it seemed increasingly likely that Richard's fears would be realized. Reacting to the attack with their typical sense of balance and serenity, the EDL had tweeted: "CONFIRMED WE HAVE BEEN SUBJECT TO A TERROR ATTACK BY ISLAM, WE ARE CURRENTLY UNDER ATTACK." So it was only a matter of time until Britain's far-right Strongbow squadron turned up to do something about the situation. Despite the fact the killers were already lying in hospital with gunshot wounds, undoubtedly soon to be tried for one of the most widely witnessed and well-documented murders in British legal history.

We hung around the local train station, expecting them to arrive there in their furious, pissed-up hordes. But we didn't quite get the mass we were expecting—just a couple of slightly lost-looking fascists intent on defending the area from an imaginary Muslim militia.

Nothing much happened until we followed some police cars to a pub that had been chosen as the rally point for any EDL wanting to get in on the action. An English flag had been erected on a fence and a large group of shouty, pint-toting EDL were being held back by police in riot gear. More EDL started to emerge to yell abuse at the press and recycle their tired rally cries of, "Muzzie bombers off our streets!" "Shut down all the mosques!" and a bunch of other stuff that blindly tarred every single Muslim living in Britain as an abhorrent, extremist murderer.

By the time they'd all finished up their drinks and made their way outside, there were around 60 or 70 EDL standing outside the pub. There were minor scuffles as the police tried to stop them from advancing, before Tommy Robinson—EDL leader and recent perpetrator of identity fraud—stood up to deliver his speech.

The speech was much as you'd expect. Tommy, a man touting himself as a defender of the British people, exploiting the death of a British man to preach hate and intolerance against other British citizens. He kept repeating stuff like, "enough is enough" and "better late than never," but the speech fizzled out a little when he realized he'd exhausted his catchphrases, so encouraged everyone to march into the center of town (which was one street away).   

Someone presented a box of EDL-branded balaclavas, which prompted a wild rush of screaming and grabbing hands. Anyone who didn't manage to get hold of a balaclava looked a little dejected, covered their faces with their hands and followed the mob into the town center.

Everyone continued to shout anti-Islamic slurs and a few began chucking bottles at police—a move that was met with shouts of, "No bottles! Slow down! Let's properly fuck this place up!" By "this place," it's fair to assume they meant the nearby Islamic cultural center, but there's no confirmation of that as yet.

Once the police managed to get themselves in place, a group of EDL found themselves cornered, angering the rest of the mob, who began lobbing more bottles and random masonry towards the riot cops. A pack of them tried charging through to save their trapped comrades, but were quickly put down by a retaliatory police baton charge.

The whole EDL effort was even less organized than usual and really achieved nothing but another embarrassing set of headlines for Tommy and his boys. They'd effectively gone in to prove that there are still proper British patriots out there who will defend the country from mindless violence, before being mindlessly violent, throwing a tantrum, and being sent home to write badly-worded expressions of hate on their Facebook profiles. 

Today, two houses have been searched, one an address in Lincolnshire, the other in Greenwich. Both properties are believed to be the homes of the suspects and three women and a teenage boy were led away from the latter address by police. Following a COBRA meeting yesterday attended by David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and police and intelligence agencies, armed forces have been warned to be vigilant when off-base and to conceal their uniforms wherever possible.

"One of the best ways of defeating terrorism is to go about our normal lives," said Cameron in a speech given to media outside Downing Street this morning, "and that is what we should all do."

The soldier's family have asked for his identity to be withheld from the public for now, but reports indicate that he served one tour of Afghanistan. The attacker filmed speaking to the camera with the meat cleaver is thought to be a man of Nigerian descent named Michael Adebolajo, a convert to Islam in 2003 who had attended lectures by controversial Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary.

With reports of mosques being attacked and an EDL rally planned to take place in Newcastle on Saturday, the next few days will be a crucial measure of any anti-Islamic backlash. Hopefully the handful of assholes attempting to leech political traction from this horrific and isolated event will be met with public derision. After all, it's worth remembering that for all of our faults, most of us aren't murderous fanatics or bigoted idiots. We're just people who don't like it when other people get murdered with machetes in the street.

Images by Mirror Image Photos and Simon Childs. Find more photos of the EDL's battle with police here.

Follow Simon and VICE News on Twitter: @SimonChilds13 

More on English fascists:

The EDL Want "Paedo Muslims" off England's Streets  

The EDL Are Not Very Popular in East London 

A Far-Right Picnic in the Park  

Each year, more than 30 million people flow between the US and Mexico through the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the busiest land-border crossing in the world. Situated between San Diego and Tijuana, at one time the area around San Ysidro was a prime spot to cross illegally into the US. But in 1994, Operation Gatekeeper expanded the border wall and increased the number of checkpoints. With the more recent addition of unmanned drone patrols along the border, Tijuana has become one of the most fortified border points in the Americas. Border crossers have been forced to turn to alternative sites of crossing, such as the Sonoran Desert, where hundreds of people die each year.

About 40 percent of Mexican immigrants deported from the US are sent back through Tijuana. Many of the deported border crossers have established a makeshift shantytown inside a dry, concrete riverbed where the Tijuana River once flowed—called El Bordo.

In years past, local nonprofits and shelters offered humanitarian aid to immigrants attempting to cross into the US, but today they primarily care for the deportees who have been booted back to Mexico. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (better known as ICE) reported a record 409,849 immigrants deported from the States in 2012, and a recent report published by Social Scientists on Immigration Policy states that, based on the current rates of deportation, more than two million people will have been deported by the Obama administration by 2014, more than under any president in American history. 

El Bordo roughly translates as “the border” or, more grimly, “the ditch.” In the 1960s, the area around the Tijuana River was a frontier town where would-be immigrants would congregate to meet polleros (“human smugglers”), who would transport them into the US for a fee. 

Micaela Saucedo runs the Casa Refugio Elvira shelter, located a block away from the dry river, and has assisted border crossers and deportees for more than 30 years. “In the 60s, it was very easy to cross. In those years, it was a different world.” Micaela led me to a public square where several hundred homeless deportees were milling about, waiting for the free meal that local humanitarian organizations dish out every day. “The deportees stay here [in Tijuana] because they think crossing again will be easy,” Micaela said, “but they don’t realize that the border is now completely secured. It’s very hard to cross.” 

Later Micaela gave me a tour of El Bordo—an inhospitable concrete embankment filled with a sea of tents. The elegant Las Americas mall in San Diego is visible just over the border fence. 

“Gallo!” Micaela shouted. A man emerged from a hole, crowing like a rooster. Delfino Lopez, a.k.a. El Gallo, a man in his early 30s who wore a hat with a fighting cock embroidered on it, is one of the estimated 3,000 people who reside in El Bordo year-round. Like many of his fellow inhabitants, Gallo previously resided in the US. He crossed the border illegally in 2005 and worked in construction for six years, sending most of his money to his wife and kids in Puebla. 

Two years ago, Gallo’s landlord called ICE on him, and he was deported. He hasn’t seen his family since and told me he refuses to do so until he’s capable of providing for them. He tried to return to the US several times but was unsuccessful. He said the only way he knew how to make money was to return to el otro lado. “I don’t want to return as a defeated person,” he added. 

Gallo welcomed me inside his improvised dwelling—a five-by-ten-foot minibunker, called a ñongo, that he dug out some time ago. It’s one of 300 along the concrete riverbed, with the rest of the deportees living in tents or inside the sewers. I crawled through a hatch fashioned out of the casing of an old TV. He told me it was safe because the dirt walls had been reinforced with recycled materials like wood, plastic tarps, and sandbags, but I couldn’t imagine sleeping in what is essentially a hole in the ground. Or, more pessimistically, a ready-made grave. Nevertheless, Gallo said, if constructed properly there are benefits to living in a subterranean abode—“the roof doesn’t leak and people can walk on top of it without it collapsing.” Still, that doesn’t mean he’s completely protected.

“I’m afraid of the cops,” Gallo said. “They come, and they burn everything. They think we are all drug addicts and thieves.” 

“The first time they came in, they brought a bulldozer and destroyed houses here and then set them on fire,” Micaela added. “The second time, they got here and spread gasoline, not even checking if people were inside or not. Some people were burned. Then a third time the same thing happened.”

We walked the embankment’s perimeter, stopping at an overturned cooler. Micaela knocked, and moments later, Avimael “El Cocho” Martinez emerged from his hole, inviting us inside. His “Cochotunnel,” as he calls it, was much larger than Gallo’s and, he said, could accommodate as many as 16 guests. Cocho came to El Bordo two years ago after being deported, and like many of his neighbors, he still yearns for his former life in the States.  

“I was in the US for a long time,” Cocho said. “I wanted the American dream. My family is OK, but most of my belongings are still there. I left my family and my work. I used to own my own business, an auto-body shop.” His eyes welled up while reminiscing about his former home; the luxuries of having a TV, laundry room, kitchen, and guest room. “We used to eat like regular people. This place is awful. It’s really impossible to compare. There I had happiness, good memories. Here I have sadness. This is a place full of vices. I try to stay away from them.” 

Gallo and Cocho aren’t exceptions in El Bordo—many of the residents have worked in the US and even have children who are American citizens. Many were deported for infractions like drunk driving or domestic violence. 

According to Victor Clark Alfaro, director of the Binational Center for Human Rights in Tijuana, Mexicans deported from the US fall into three loose categories: those apprehended while trying to cross the border illegally; deportees who once lived in the US and had normal lives but were deported; and former inmates sent home from overcrowded US prisons.

All of this becomes even more troubling when you consider that Mexicans living illegally in the United States have become vital to the American economy, providing cheap labor for farms, factories, restaurants, and other industries. They are also essential to the Mexican economy. Remittances sent from the US represent Mexico’s second-largest revenue source after oil. 

A homeless man showers in El Bordo, the border wall separating the US and Mexico stands behind him.

“The Mexican state has a huge responsibility to provide immigrants with free food, shelter, give them IDs, and help them find work,” Victor said. “They should provide orientation about the services that the city offers. Last year, migrants sent $24 billion to Mexico, so it would only be fair, when those immigrants become deportees, that the state should give back.”

Finding work is nearly impossible for the majority of those living in El Bordo, so they come to rely on nonprofits and religious organizations for basic necessities. The most established of these organizations is the Padre Chava soup kitchen, located directly across the street from El Bordo. The kitchen serves breakfast to more than 1,000 people daily. 

Father Ernesto Hernández, the priest who oversees the soup kitchen, said that deportees can go from having respectable, comfortable lives in the States to being broke and homeless in as little as ten days. He explained that recent deportees usually spend their last few dollars on cheap hotels or shelters while trying to find work. Most are unsuccessful and wind up living on the streets where the police harass them until they end up in El Bordo. 

“A lot of the people that have been deported were in the US for a long time,” Father Ernesto said. “They have a family, wife and kids there. Once they are deported, they decide to stay here to feel a bit closer to their families [in the US].” 

Father Ernesto introduced us to Joaquin, a man in his late 30s. He said that he had lived in the US undocumented for 22 years before he was deported in 2012 for expired license-plate tags on his truck. His wife, eight brothers, parents, and four kids (two of whom are American citizens) remain in California, where Joaquin ran a welding business. Joaquin hopes that after filing his 2012 taxes in the US (made possible by “borrowing” a friend’s Social Security number) his refund will cover the $3,000 coyote fee to get him back to the US. 

Tijuana’s economy has changed drastically over the last decade. In the early 2000s, the main tourist thoroughfare, Revolución Avenue, was packed with underage gringos getting drunk and buying Viagra and Xanax over the counter at pharmacies. The debauchery came to an abrupt halt in 2006, when the Sinaloa cartel declared war on the Tijuana cartel and local police forces. In 2008 alone, there were at least 844 murders in the city. While the official death toll dwindled slightly over the next two years, the violence continued unabated. The killings have subsided in recent years, partially because of the increased presence of police and the Mexican army, and partially because the Sinaloa cartel has largely forced their enemies out of town. Restaurants are now reopening, the bar scene is booming, and the locals have reclaimed Revolución Avenue for themselves. Ruidoson, Tijuana’s brand of electronic music, is rising to prominence, and the local Baja Med cuisine is gaining international attention. Today, Tijuana is once again fun, vibrant, and for the most part, safe. 

To better understand the situation on the border, I arranged to ride along with Tijuana Police Subdirector Armando Rascón on a scheduled patrol of Zona Norte, sandwiched between the tourist center and El Bordo. Zona Norte is where most of the migrant shelters are located, along with many houses that serve as heroin-shooting dens and the red-light district, which is full of cheap hotels, brothels, and massive strip clubs.

“The problem at El Bordo is serious, and it’s growing,” Armando said. “The people that live there are not worried about eating. In the morning, they eat at the Padre Chava soup kitchen, then at 4 PM, a Christian group feeds them, and then Americans feed them again at night. These people are worried about getting money to buy their drugs because most of them are addicts. And that’s why they go snatch a purse, or steal whatever they can.” 

Armando continued, explaining the strategy of local law enforcement. “We go and destroy everything they build. But as soon as we destroy it, they build it back again. It’s like a game.” I asked him about Micaela’s allegations that the police sometimes torched the El Bordo encampments, and he assured us that his officers would never engage in such brutal tactics, claiming that the residents had started the fires accidentally while cooking food outside or burning tires. Most of the occupiers of El Bordo I spoke with, however, said that they are terrified of the police, and many told me that they have been abused and beaten up by officers, and some said they’ve had their homes bulldozed or burned down. 

As we continued along the canal, Armando pointed out the giant sewage tunnels and said that many deportees live inside of them in total darkness. “All we want is for these people to stay in El Bordo,” Armando said. “We don’t want them to rob our tourists. We have to take care of the people that cross the border legally into the US, and those that come back into Mexico… Our job is to provide security for all the citizens of Tijuana, protect the tourists and businesses in our city. And the way to show we are doing our work is with operatives and removing people from the streets.”

Cocho peers out from his “Cochotunnel.”

When I asked him about potential solutions to the growing migrant problem in El Bordo, he said, “We would have to start with the US sending the deportees by plane to the rest of the country, instead of sending everyone through here. In the downtown area, 86 percent of the crimes are related to the people that live in El Bordo… At the same time this is a problem that has to be solved from a social perspective, and not just by putting people in jail.”

The Mexican federal government has a program to help repatriated deportees, but it is not nearly enough. The program provides a free phone call, some food and medical attention, and a temporary ID (often not recognized by cops and potential employers), but beyond that, there’s nothing else given to help them get reestablished in Mexico.

It’s painfully apparent that many of the residents of El Bordo are addicted to hard drugs like heroin and meth, which only reinforces the local police’s perceptions of the embankment’s displaced residents. A dose of heroin can be bought for as little as $2, and most users I spoke with said they shot up at least three or four times per day. Many of these addicts support their addiction by collecting scrap metal, and the police said they resort to robbery and other criminal activity to fund their habits. 

Dr. Remedios Lozada, coordinator of the HIV and STD program at the Baja California health ministry, has organized a needle-exchange program in El Bordo with the goal of reducing the risk of HIV and hepatitis infection. “All of them are addicted to some substance,” she said of its residents. “Ninety percent of them do intravenous drugs like heroin. Those who don’t shoot up at least smoke meth.” Due to lack of funds, the program can only manage to conduct the exchanges every few weeks. 

I accompanied Dr. Remedios to one of the exchanges. She drove me to an encampment near the river surrounded by tall bushes. We parked the car, and I watched as approximately 30 men staggered up the concrete ramp and approached a table that volunteer organizers had set up to exchange needles. Each man was clutching an assortment of used needles, and some even had syringes wedged behind their ears. Moments after receiving their clean needles, each began cooking up heroin—or chiva (“goat”) as they call it—in plastic spoons. They then proceeded to shoot into their necks, legs, and between their fingers, right in front of the volunteer table. 

I approached a man after he finished injecting his dose. He told me he had been recently deported from a prison in the US. I asked him if he thought he was better off living in jail or El Bordo, and he replied that at least jail had provided him with basic sustenance and a roof over his head.  

Our next stop was a bridge where around 100 people—including a few women—had gathered below. The volunteers set up their table and doled out clean needles and condoms. Ten minutes later, a guy wearing brand-new shoes and a black hoodie appeared. Our driver discreetly told us that he was a wholesale heroin supplier, dropping off a fresh batch for the local dealer. We decided it was time to leave.  

Watch our new documentary about Mexican deportees living in El Bordo on VICE.com later this month.

Read more from our World Hates You Issue:

This Is What Winning Looks Like

A Long Way From Home

Getting Wet

 “At this moment in history, you've got to choose between being in favor of legalization, or being against 'the system.'”

Mason Tvert is leading a quick tour of what he irreverently describes as the Marijuana Manor—a genteel, three-story, historically-registered, 1880s-era brick and stained-glass building in downtown Denver that was recently converted into permanent office space for a consortium of do-gooders fighting to make legal cannabis work in America. The building houses four separate activist organizations, a trade association, and a law firm. Tvert is clad in a conservative suit jacket and tie worn above a pair of faded blue-jeans—an ensemble compiled in deference to a remote television appearance earlier in the day that shot him from the waist up. His clashing outfit offers an unintended statement on the split-personality of the pot world right now: Business in the front, party in the back.

Last November, Tvert certainly had plenty of reason to celebrate, after heading a historic campaign that saw voters in Colorado approve Amendment 64 by a wide margin, ushering in a new era of state-legal commercial cannabis cultivation and retail sales of up to an ounce for all adults 21 and over. A similar ballot initiative in Washington State also passed easily on the unforgettable night when pot outperformed the president, while making headlines around the world.

To date, lawmakers in both states continue to work out exactly how to implement the herb-friendly will of their citizenry, ever-mindful that a miraculous crop that can't kill you, won't hurt you, and just might heal you remains fully illegal under federal law, even if you've got terminal cancer and floor seats to see Phish. Despite the fact that smoking a joint remains a lot less dangerous than swilling booze. Not to mention that the same federales imposing cannabis prohibition ultimately answer to a guy best known in his youth for “roof hits,” “interceptions,” and sharing some righteous Maui Wowie with the Choom Gang.

Mason Tvert posing in front of a SAFER billboard. Photo courtesy of Mason Tvert.

Tvert has made such hypocrisy at the highest levels the centerpiece of his messaging ever since co-founding Safer Alternatives for Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER) in 2005. From erecting billboards declaring “Marijuana: No Hangovers. No Violence. No Carbs," to publicly calling brewpub pioneer turned Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper a “drug dealer,” SAFER never misses a chance to challenge cultural norms that have us blithely cheering on a Jack Daniels-sponsored NASCAR team, while kicking down the doors of otherwise law-abiding ganja smokers.

So, I wonder, now that the good guys finally won big, how long until the Denver Nuggets (pun abstained) start offering an officially-licensed glass bong alongside the collectible beer mugs and shot glasses they already sell to basketball fans of all ages?

Well, don't hold your breath, but with the smart money increasingly looking to marijuana as the nation's biggest new business boom since the internet, don't look away either.

THE SILICON VALLEY OF CANNABIS

“The Silicon Valley of cannabis is already happening,” Troy Dayton, co-founder of the Arcview Group, assures me as his angel investor network prepares to gather venture capitalists and pot entrepreneurs together in Seattle for the second time in three months. Attendees from both camps pay Arcview a sizable fee to participate.

“I always thought I'd have to choose between making a lot of money and changing the world,” Dayton, a long-time fundraiser for non-profit drug law reform organizations, muses on his new role as a pot impresario, before offering up the mind-bending hypothesis that free-market capitalism just might be the best thing to happen to cannabis sativa since the advent of sinsemilla.

Troy Dayton addressing Arcview investors meeting. Photo by Kim Sidwell.

“The hippies keep being right. They were right about personal computing, alternative energy, organic foods, and yoga—four of the biggest business success stories of the past few decades. And they're right again about cannabis. All of this bubbles up from the counterculture, until finally the mainstream takes notice. Do things get diluted along the way? I mean, now you've got McYoga and Fortune 500 companies that aren't doing everything the way the original organic food movement wanted, and renewable energy owned by oil companies, but the overall impact is hugely positive.”

Especially when you consider that we never arrested 800,000 Americans a year for practicing kundalini. Or let Mexican drug cartels and violent street gangs control the trade in organic arugula.

“It's so much better to have large investors and corporations involved in this industry,” Dayton concludes, “because when you have big business behind something that creates jobs and tax dollars, it becomes completely untenable to keep putting people in prison for it.”

His partner in Arcview, Steve DeAngelo, agrees, but with a dollop of trepidation. As head of Harborside Health Center in Oakland, California, the nation's largest and perhaps best-run medical cannabis dispensary, DeAngelo sees a bright green future for both the plant and the industry, even as he battles the federal government in and out of court to keep his own doors open. After spending nearly 40 years fighting to legalize it, the star of Discovery Channel's Weed Wars still speaks warmly of his distant past as a professional underground marijuana retailer, while making it clear he'd much prefer to see cannabis culture transform corporate culture than the reverse.

“There are millions of people around the world who are either incarcerated or have  seriously suffered because of their involvement with this plant,” DeAngelo explains. “Until we address their incredible persecution, I think that anyone who's only in this for the money is in the wrong industry. Honestly, if your main motivation is making the largest profit possible, in the shortest amount of time, you'd be much better off working on Wall Street.”

For the time being, Arcview remains focused on what they term ancillary and secondary players, meaning operations not directly involved in cultivation, distribution, or sales. Dayton describes the ideal investment opportunity as a company seeking between 200,000 and a million dollars to bring a new idea to market, or better yet expand a cannabusiness that already has some traction.

After forming in 2010, when it looked like the Obama administration would take a states-rights, hands-off approach to medical marijuana, Arcview itself almost went under following a marked shift in federal enforcement that saw armed government agents raiding state-compliant growers and dispensaries in Oregon, Michigan, Montana, Washington, Nevada, and California, including several considered models of the industry. Naturally, once the perceived risks of the pot biz eclipsed any potential reward, the investor class quickly evaporated, but they've now returned in droves after Colorado and Washington made history and the President of the United States revealed himself as (knock on wood) too afraid of America's ascendant marijuana majority to stand in the way.

“We’ve got bigger fish to fry,” Obama told Barbara Walters more than a month after the election, rejecting the idea of federal agents going after individual pot smokers in legalization states, while failing to directly address the larger issue of state-licensed cultivation and sales. Since then, Attorney General Eric Holder has repeatedly promised a more comprehensive federal response to the new laws, but so far the Justice Department has said little and done nothing.

Meanwhile, at the foresighted end of the political spectrum, Mike McGinn, Seattle's progressive mayor, actually helped lead the charge for legalization in Washington, getting out in front of an issue both major political parties have refused to embrace, despite a Pew poll showing support from 52 percent of Americans (with 85 percent approving legal medical use in a recent Fox News poll). McGinn, who met with members of Arcview and their allies in the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA) during the groups' recent visit to the Emerald City, says welcoming the pot lobby to town didn't take any convincing.

“It's a legal industry,” he explains over the phone from his office in City Hall, “and I thought it would be interesting to share what I know.”

The mayor's focus remains squarely on the public safety benefits of legalization, rather than in promoting economic development. Still, one attendee described him as “gung-ho” when it came to bringing marijuana jobs, tax dollars, investment, and innovation to Seattle. And McGinn did share with me an idea of how he'd like to see things move forward.

“In Seattle, we love local and we love quality. That's what we look for in our coffee, beer, and spirits. So we want to create a type of regulatory framework that rewards small, local businesses and allows them to engage effectively, because that's what will reflect this city's values over the long run.”

McGinn worries that as the implementation process moves away from reformers and into the hands of state legislators, many of whom remain opposed to this bold, though long-overdue experiment, we may end up with a set of rules that's too restrictive. “Our biggest challenge is ending up with a system that displaces the black market completely,” he concludes, before returning to overseeing the governance of the nation's 23rd largest city.

FREE MARKET MARIJUANA

Tripp Keber at Dixie Elixir headquarters. Photo by Kim Sidwell.

Back in Denver, Tripp Keber, managing director of Dixie Elixirs & Edibles, also wants to displace the black market and he's not afraid to put marijuana where your mouth is to do it. A member of both Arcview and the NCIA, Keber invited me to his company's headquarters to witness firsthand the world's premiere intersection of cannabis and commerce.

At the entrance to Dixie's 27,000-square-foot production facility, a sign warns all who approach that the premises are under 24-hour video surveillance. Inside, a team of more than 40 full-time employees that includes PhD food scientists, biochemists, mechanical engineers, clinical herbalists, trained culinary chefs, and true pot experts work to produce a dozen distinct lines of what the state terms marijuana-infused products (MIPs)—everything from THC-infused beverages and treats to topical applications, tinctures, and botanicals.

Each product undergoes multiple third-party lab tests for potency before reaching consumers: first when raw plant material enters the facility, then after it's rendered into a concentrated liquid, and finally at the beginning, middle, and end of each production run. All packaging meets FDA-standards, should the Food and Drug Administration ever decide to actually oversee an industry that sells food infused with a drug, including nutritional facts, an ingredient statement, a mechanical reporting of active cannabinoids in milligrams, and all necessary regulatory language.

Things have come a long way from Dixie's founding just three years ago. Now at the helm of one of the industry's flagship enterprises, Keber describes starting up with just one “pot soda” produced in a 450-square foot “drug house” on the sketchy outskirts of town.

“We never really worried about the police,” he tells me, “only our neighbors—on both sides.”

The Washington, DC native, who earned his fortune creating and selling companies focused on technology and telephony, moved to Colorado in 2002, while still in his 30s, to retire, or at least refocus. As an incorrigible entrepreneur, it didn’t take long before he started a real estate development company, just as what's come to be known as the “green rush” swept through the state. A time when hordes of newly-formed medical marijuana businesses bought up commercial spaces with a fervor not seen since the original gold rushers first made Denver a boomtown in the late 1850s.

By 2009, Keber, who describes himself as comfortable with fairly high-risk ventures, decided to “dabble” directly in the green rush by lending money to cultivators. The risks quickly got a bit higher than he'd initially anticipated.

“A lot of times I was the only guy not wearing a handgun when we were meeting at grow facilities,” he says, reminiscing fondly on the Wild West days from the safety and comfort of his corner office. “There were a lot of 'smash and grabs' taking place back then, so cultivators on a large scale were nervous. I didn't take offense to it, but I think a lot of people thought I might be some sort of undercover narcotics agent.”

What proved far more intimidating than sitting down with glocked-up ganja growers was calling Dad and revealing the precise nature of his new venture shortly before an appearance on CNBC's Squawk Box—a financial news show his old man never misses. Fortunately, Keber has found everyone in his personal life supportive, though he's not without detractors within the industry.

“I don't have a strong relationship with the plant. I certainly have medicated in the past, but it's just not something that I traditionally do,” he says, almost apologetically. While nobody thinks he's a narc anymore, to some he remains a convenient symbol of a Wall Street-style hostile take-over in the making. “It doesn't help that articles have painted me out to be Gordon Gecko.”

Most notably, a Newsweek cover story called “The New Pot Barons,” by Tony Dokoupil quoted Keber as saying: “I make companies to sell companies. Make me an offer, and I’ll ride off into the sunlight with saddlebags of gold.” A sentiment fairly far removed from the old Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers maxim that “dope will get you through a time of no money better than money will get you through a time of no dope.”

And yet, for all that, Keber expresses genuine pride and joy in what he's built, including—if not especially—the “incredible amount of intellectual horsepower” Dixie has assembled. His convictions are also clear when he touts the 10,000-plus jobs the medical marijuana industry has created in Colorado, while generating over $10 million in licensing fees and taxes each year, a number expected to skyrocket once full legalization takes hold.

Still, it's nice to think about those saddlebags.

“Should somebody like Big Tobacco knock on our door and say they're ready to enter into discussions, it would be foolish to not give that serious consideration,” he says, after affirming that everything in life has a price, and a multinational conglomerate like Philip Morris would likely have no trouble matching the number in his head. “The reality is that Dixie represents probably a rounding error, when you look at the market cap of those companies.”

He's already had discussions at “high levels” with various interested parties he declined to name, but says that ongoing federal prohibition makes such a buy-out at least temporarily untenable. In the meantime, a funny thing happened on the way to Wall Street. Tripp Keber realized that marijuana may be a widget, but it's one that really helps people.

“On any given day, we probably receive phone calls from half a dozen parents with a child dealing with cancer and their oncologist has proscribed Oxycontin in some form or fashion, which they know is incredibly dangerous and potentially damaging. They say, 'Will you please send us some of your medicated fruit lozenges?' You would have to be inhuman not to be affected by that, but the reality is, unless they're a red card holder in the state of Colorado, we can't provide medicine to them.”

THE CHEESECAKE LADY

The Cheesecake Lady preparing product. Photo courtesy of Jessica LeRoux

Jessica LeRoux, owner of Twirling Hippy Confections, also in Denver, never let something as trivial as the law get in the way of helping those in desperate need of cannabis healing—at least not until the authorities gave her a license and let her operate openly. Now known far and wide as the Cheesecake Lady, LeRoux began baking THC-infused treats when her own mother was admitted as a hospice patient in Illinois in the early 90s. And though the illicit medicine helped tremendously, she says her father not only never forgave her, he pestered relatives for her phone number and address to turn her in to the FBI.

After relocating to Colorado, LeRoux connected with local pot activists and began supplying free “magic” cheesecakes to terminally-ill patients throughout the state. When that proved life-affirming, but cost-prohibitive, she decided to ramp up production, hoping to sell enough of the overrun in concert parking lots to cover expenses and fund her higher calling. Before long, former Grateful Dead keyboardist Vince Welnick, who suffered from emphysema but loved cannabis, became a dedicated fan of her smokeless sweets. The endorsement whisked the parking lot mainstay backstage, where her cheesecakes became an overnight sensation.

And so, LeRoux found herself as both a retailer of recreational cannabis and a compassionate provider of medical marijuana years before Colorado legalized either activity. All the while, her dream never wavered.

“Going above ground has always been my goal. From the beginning, I gave my business a name and a logo hoping those things would stay with me when I went legal. I saved money in a shoebox the entire time I was on tour. I never spent any on myself. I saved all of it to go into this.”

In 2009, Twirling Hippy became one of Colorado's first locally licensed MIPs, operating out of a commercial kitchen in tiny Idaho Springs. After opening with just four clients, the business grew to serve more than 60 retail outlets in an era of rapid expansion for the industry. Then came House Bill 1284. LeRoux sighs so deeply when I mention it that I can hear her dream deflate.

She describes making a delivery to one of her clients' medical marijuana centers shortly before the bill was first proposed, and finding the owner engaged in backroom discussions with a state senator. They were going over likely new regulations, including “vertical integration” of marijuana growing, which requires retailers to produce at least 70 percent of their own product. LeRoux says that when she raised her hand to ask a question, she was escorted from the room.

“They didn't want to have an open-minded, free-hearted hippie in there with them while they planned how to push all the baby birds out of the nest.”

When it passed, 1284  charged Colorado's Department of Revenue with overseeing the nation's  most tightly regulated medical marijuana industry, including creating a special Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division to serve as the pot cops.

While proponents within both the industry and the wider activism community pushed for 1284 and its much vaunted “seed-to-sales” tracking requirements as a necessary defensive action, designed to avoid a looming total ban at the state level, while keeping federal enforcement out of Colorado, LeRoux saw the well-capitalized among the cannabusinesses conspiring with amenable lawmakers to create an expensive set of burdensome regulations designed to crush the little guy in favor of consolidation.

“What we need are more small mom and pop owner-operators, who are at their dispensaries, in person, really putting their energy into the space—instead, all of these people with no love of cannabis, once they invested in huge warehouse spaces and realized they didn't know how to grow, the only thing they could do to protect their investment was to push the small timer out of the market. They needed vertical integration to protect themselves from those more talented than themselves.”

While the bill's intentions remain up for debate, 1284 shook the marketplace. Tripp Keber at Dixie estimates that from a high of more than 300 MIPs, the industry now supports approximately 20 distinct manufactures making “edibles,” even as the overall market share for infused products has grown from 8 percent to 25 percent or more. Of course, he's got a free-market solution for those feeling the squeeze.

“Small businesses will always come up with new and innovative product lines. The reality is that I watch those companies very closely. We're acquiring a company every six to eight weeks.”

But despite suffering through disappointments  disillusionment, and narrowly-avoided financial disaster, at least one still-twirling hippy says she ain't selling. Instead she'll stay and fight for a cause that only later became her career, even if it means working 80-hour weeks, canceling her cable, and eating far more rice than she'd prefer, all while attending every government meeting on marijuana, medical, or otherwise. She's also tried rallying together with the more idealistic among her colleagues, but they're all down to stems and seeds and political influence don't come cheap. Particularly when you sell all-natural, locally-produced, eco-packaged cheesecakes—with vegan and gluten-free options—that just happen to contain a Schedule I narcotic.

“We're going to have a hell of hard time holding on to what we fought for unless we start fighting together, but if you don't have the money to hire an executive director for your lobbying group, you just can't accomplish as much. I will say this for Mike Elliot. He's a douchebag, but he gets shit done for his members, because that's all he has to do.”

THE POT LOBBYIST

Mike Elliot is Executive Director of the Medical Marijuana Industry Group (MMIG), a trade association founded in 2010 “to help protect and promote the Colorado medical marijuana regulatory framework, serve as a responsible resource for policy makers, and protect the rights of medical marijuana patients.” They were integral in drafting House Bill 1284, the “seed to sales” law that made the nice hippy lady sigh.

To reach MMIG's headquarters on the 16^th floor of a non-nondescript office building less than three blocks from the state capitol, I brave a raging late-Spring snowstorm. A sign directly outside my destination reads: Corporate Advocates. Inside, there’s a historical map of Denver dated 1908 and an empty candy dish.  Followed by the most neutral conference room imaginable.

“Most trade associations advocate for less regulation at all times, and I could see our group being in that position. We’re it not for the fact that this is a federally illegal substance,” Mike Elliot responds, when I pose a few pointed questions about MMIG's role in passing 1284. “We've known that by creating this tight, comprehensive framework, it would be burdensome. It's locked a lot of people out because of the financial obligations, and I can see why they would be frustrated with that. Our primary concern, however, has been creating a program that withstands federal scrutiny. And that has meant having a tough, restrictive program.”

He sees his mission as building bridges between the cannabis industry and the powers-that-be.

“A lot of people, for as long as the Drug War has been going on, they've been anti-government. And for good reason. But MMIG is not anti-government, because now, at least at the state level, we don't need to be. We can be partners.”

Elliott makes his best case for 1284 when comparing subsequent federal enforcement efforts in Colorado to those in California, where there's still no statewide regulation of medical marijuana. While California has endured a coordinated crackdown on commercial growers and dispensaries, with armed raids and cash grabs galore, the worst that's happened in Colorado was when a few dozen cannabusinesses received a rather polite letter from the US Justice Department instructing them to either close up shop within 45 days or move to a new location at least a 1,000 feet away from a school .

Which sure sounds like progress when you consider the case of Denver's own Samuel Caldwell, the first person ever arrested under federal law after the Marihuana Tax Act passed in 1937. The FBI and local police set him up on the very day the new law was enacted, in fact, busting him for selling two-joints in the lobby of the Mile High City's seedy Lexington Hotel. Caldwell would serve every day of his four-year sentence in Leavenworth Prison, and die less than a year after his release.

GROWTH INDUSTRY

Inside Medicine Man's on-site cannabis cultivation facility. Photo courtesy Andy Williams.

Had poor Mr. Caldwell only lived long enough to see the Medicine Man medical marijuana center on Denver's east side, a single 20,000 square-foot facility housing a small but extremely busy retail operation and a state-of-the-art cultivation set-up efficient enough to stock the shelves entirely in-house. Something about the place just feels right the moment I walk inside. I've visited many such establishments, in several different states, and you can always tell two things quickly: “Does somebody here care deeply about cannabis?” And “Does somebody here know how to run a business?”

It's all too rare to get both right.

Even the straight-laced MBA's I've talked to seem to understand this dynamic. Brendan Kennedy, for instance, started Privateer Holdings to focus on investment opportunities in the emerging legal marijuana business only after graduating Yale Business School, forming and selling a software company and enjoying a lucrative stint evaluating investment opportunities on behalf of venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. He also holds an engineering degree and has finished six Ironman Triathlons. So hardly a light-weight, and yet he's the first to admit that no amount of spreadsheets and analytical evaluations could ever have adequately prepared him to enter a surging business sector that remains an ongoing criminal enterprise in most of the country.

“Cannabis is a more complicated industry than anything I've ever looked at by orders of magnitude,” he informs me with apparent wonder. “I've never worked this hard in my life, and I've never had this much fun.”

To get themselves up to speed, he and a partner began their new venture with a magical mystery tour, or what Kennedy calls “old-fashioned, boots on the ground research,” meeting with growers, lawyers, activists, dispensary owners, and other thought-leaders of the trade, to pick their brains while looking for “smart, nice people” to work with down the road.

They found most companies to be immature and unsophisticated, all of them competing under the looming threat of federal law in a fragmented market with no real standards, poor marketing, and terrible branding. “There were no institutional players. No Wall Street, no banks, no private equity, no venture capital. And yet annual revenues were still $18 to $40 billion, with rapid growth.”

Privateer has already raised more than $5 million in capital, though that may prove the easy part. The real trick will be spending it wisely. So far they've made only one acquisition, a Yelp-like application called Leafly that allows users to rate marijuana businesses, comment on their favorite pot strains, browse dispensary menus, and interact socially.

They're currently seeking additional brands with a mainstream aesthetic that can become trusted advisors for consumers. The kind of companies that will help ensure Washington and Colorado's experiment with legal pot proves successful. In fact, Kennedy says his investors are as motived to end the “ridiculous” War on Weed as they are to make a profit, and he for one sees no potential conflict in Privateer pursuing a financial return and a social return simultaneously.

Meanwhile, after gazing longingly at Medicine Man’s display glass of buds, I head into a private office in the back to meet the odd-couple Williams brothers, who co-own  the entire operation. As you might have guessed from the set up, one is a former military man who spent years as a project portfolio manager with a Boeing-owned aviation management firm and doesn't smoke pot; the other's been dreaming of legal marijuana his entire adult life, and recently spent 4/20 at the High Times Cannabis Cup—dressed from head to toe as Willie Wonka.

“You don't say 'dude' to Andy,” the grower, Pete, tells me by way of explaining his brother. “Well, now you can, but in the beginning you didn't say 'dude.'”

When Medicine Man first opened, in addition to feeling like a fish-out-of-water (or rather one swimming in bong water), Andy also had recurring nightmares about the police raiding his house and taking his kids. Staying in “painful adherence” to state law therefore became an obsession. He also kept his day job the first two years, which meant spending mornings, nights, and weekends in a “constant scramble to adhere to whatever new rules were coming out.” He estimates their facility cost around $1.5 million to complete, with up to 10 percent of those expenses directly related to 1284 compliance, including complex video surveillance, carbon-filtered ventilation, and state-mandated computer systems and security measures.

The brothers originally started up with $125,000 in seed money, and thought it would be more than enough. Half a million bucks later, they finally turned a profit. Andy says they've been well in the black ever since, “but if we hadn't been able to get that extra funding, we'd have been out of business. And so many people didn't have that ability.”

Even now, because they deal in a federally illegal drug, Medicine Man can't get a bank loan. Many cannabusinesses struggle to even acquire or maintain a bank account, so much so that the ones who do have one will never tell you where.

“Anybody else with our financials would have no problem raising capital for expansion,” Andy laments. In two months, Medicine Man will take over a 20,000 square-foot facility adjacent to the one they already own, and another $1.2 million would allow them to build it out all at once, perhaps even in time to open a new recreational marijuana operation on the day such sales become legal. Instead they'll have to save the money up over time, while pursuing other opportunities.

“We're building a franchisable brand,” Pete says, taking the idea of expansion to its logical conclusion. “People think it takes a lone mystical grower, some guru, but it doesn't. It takes a standard operating procedure.”

When they broach the subject of a corporate buyout, I ask what would happen if a new management team took over, charged with maximizing profits at all costs. Andy frowns. It's clearly something he's thought about enough to know he doesn't want to think about it.

First, he says, you'd have to automate watering and trimming, slashing labor costs. Medicine Man's growers water each plant by hand to assure that they're all spot checked for any potential pests, diseases or growth problems before they can spread or get worse. It's hard to imagine some outside consultant/efficiency-expert seeing the value in that. Nor would any competent corporate personnel manager continue to employ the eight experienced, full-time bud manicurists who make up to $15 an hour transforming a perpetual harvest of raw stalks into shelf-ready miniature bonsai trees. Certainly not when a machine can do the job nearly half as well at a miniscule fraction of the cost.

Next, why not cut salaries and bonuses across the board? And is it really cost effective to produce organically grown medicine? The endless possibilities are a serious bummer.

HIGHER IDEALS

Kris Krane in an SSDP shirt holding his baby in an SSDP onesie. His shirt says "Dare to Resist the War on Drugs" and hers says "Babies for Sensible Drug Policy." Photo by Jenny Janichek.

I first met Kris Krane about 10 years ago, when he worked at the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), the nation's oldest and largest marijuana law reform organization. Later, as Executive Director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, he helped inspire countless young people to begin fighting back against a War on Drugs that targets them so disproportionately, while transforming the organization into one of the fastest-growing nationwide student groups in the country. And now he's Managing Partner at 4Front Advisors, an Arizona-based consulting firm backed by billionaire University of Phoenix founder and drug-law reform funder John Sperling that's focused on helping prospective dispensary operators nationwide open in full compliance with state and local law, while serving as a positive model for the industry.

Kris tells me he misses activism in many ways, but sees what he's doing now as an effective extension of those efforts. Both by providing a skeptical public with working examples of responsible marijuana distribution, and by helping create a new class of drug war reformers—those with a vested interest in victory.

“Every day,” he says, “we're taking people who never would have been advocates for this cause, and getting them engaged, out of necessity, because of their bottom line.”

In the next room, he's got a one-year-old daughter. My old friend and I share a dream that she will grow up in a world entirely without a drug war. Where addicts aren't brutalized. Families aren't torn apart. And the violent cartels die off like the bootleggers before them.

No more Samuel Caldwells, even if it takes corporate pot to get there.

“Capitalism is definitely going to change cannabis, because it's been completely in the shadows and totally unregulated,” Kris agrees, after I describe the story I've been working on. “At the same time, while I'm not idealistic enough to believe that legal cannabis will change the way that capitalism works and people behave, I do hope that within the cannabis industry, the way that things are rolling out will provide us with a buffer period to get it right. Obviously, if cannabis were made completely legal at the federal level and in every state all at once, the big alcohol and tobacco companies would swoop in and dominate the market by resorting to the same tactics they use in their core businesses, but that's not what's happening. Instead we're seeing cannabis legalized state-by-state, while remaining federally illegal, which keeps those kinds of players largely on the sidelines.”

So call it a grey market. Or better yet call it a chance to nurture a new American industry from the green shoots up. One that breaks the Wall Street greed mold by embracing the higher ideals so many of us associate with getting high. Like cooperation, compassion, creativity, empathy, innovation, inclusion, tolerance and a feeling of interconnectedness that transcends the bottom line.

If that happens, from the masters of high finance to the twirling hippies, we can all have our THC-infused cheesecake and eat it too. 

To read more of David's work, visit: davidbienenstock.com

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Last summer, I filed a story about a 12-year-old girl from London who'd failed to return home one Friday afternoon. People of all ages go missing in London all the time, so, although obviously sad, it was nothing that remarkable. Not yet. In the days that followed, the story of Tia Sharp's disappearance became the country's most reported-upon news story. And last week, Stuart Hazell, Tia's step-grandfather, was sentenced to a minimum of 38 years in prison for her murder.

Hazell shocked the packed courtroom on Monday when he changed his plea to guilty mid-trial. He refused to explain how or why he'd killed the girl and, in doing so, denied Tia's grieving family the chance to ever know what really happened in that house in Croydon's The Lindens estate. What we do know is that by the time Hazell had fabricated the story of Tia's disappearance, he had already killed her and hidden her body in the loft of the house he shared with her grandmother, Christine Bicknell.

New Addington, where Hazell and his partner lived, was described in the media as a "benighted ghetto" in the worst part of Croydon, full of undesirable people. I guess it's easier to rationalize the murder of a child if it's us and them. "Them" being a uniform mass of miscreants who apparently spend their days breeding attack dogs and killing children.

However, the people of New Addington proved the media wrong the weekend that Tia disappeared, volunteering their time and banding together to search for the missing girl. Unfortunately, neither the search party nor CCTV turned up any sightings of Tia, even though her face was everywhere. Missing posters were plastered over lampposts and littered public transportation, and pictures were stuck to the bus stop closest to Tia's house, where girls Tia's age held a vigil for her safe return.

Stuart Hazell next to a missing poster for Tia Sharp.

Despite the fact that the Olympics had just kicked off and should have been dominating the news, the story of Tia's disappearance didn't go away. The UK press cohort moved into The Lindens and kept a round-the-clock watch on the house. Huge "outside broadcast" vans blocked the road, cameras were basically cemented to the pavement, and neighbors, who had initially been eager to offer their opinions to any reporter who would listen, began to tire of the intrusion.  

I camped out in New Addington for a few days during the height of the search. I met the tabloid crime hacks and googled their Leveson evidence to pass the time. It was hard not to draw parallels between what we were doing and the phone hacking case that sparked the inquiry. We weren't hacking phones, but it certainly felt like we were hacking into and capitalizing on a family's grief.

Ultimately, though, it was this goldfish bowl that became Hazell's undoing. Four searches of the property failed to uncover anything. But with his every move scrutinized by the press, Hazell was unable to move Tia's body from his loft undetected, and eventually the summer heat reached the dead girl's body. On the fifth search, when the police finally found Tia's decomposing body, she had to be identified by her dental records. The police chief involved has since removed himself from search duties, and you can understand why.

The botched search effort meant that Tia's family had to agonize through a full week of Hazell's charade. They made TV pleas for her return and waged a battle against the rumors and speculation about their involvement in Tia's disappearance on social media.

Six days after Tia was reported missing, Hazell gave a news interview. Wearing a T-shirt bearing Tia's face, he stared into the camera and protested his innocence, spoke of his love for Tia, and begged for her to return. The following day, after the body was found, a manhunt was launched for Hazell, who had left a note for his partner and fled. He was found, drunk, a few hours later, and kept lying, claiming that Tia's death was an accident; she had fallen down the stairs and he'd hidden her body in a panic.

I was sickened when Tia’s body was found in the loft, just feet from where we’d watched police hold press conferences in the family's front garden. Of course, considering the thought of it being there the whole time had made me feel horrible, I could only begin to imagine how god-awful the feeling would be for her family who'd actually been living in the house the entire time. For days afterward, Hazell's face appeared whenever I closed my eyes.

During the search, the news of Hazell's previous convictions, drug offenses, and possession of a machete, had become public knowledge. So too had the news that he'd previously dated Tia's mother before moving on to her grandmother. An unspeakable question was raised. In court, that question was answered when it was revealed that Hazell had kept flash drives containing images of Tia sleeping and rubbing cream into her legs, as well as searching the internet for pictures of young girls. An image was shown to the court of a naked young girl posed in a sexual position, which was believed to be Tia after she had died.

In his closing address, Hazell's lawyer said that the change of plea was possibly the only brave decision Hazell had ever made, claiming he had done so because Tia's family had already "suffered enough." The obvious issue with that is that it was Hazell who was responsible both for the initial suffering and prolonging the suffering, rendering his belated "compassion" utterly defunct.  

In case you're still finding it hard to grasp the level of insincerity and apathy Hazell operates under, the letter he wrote to his father shortly after his arrest should clear it up. In it, he asked for forgiveness, before complaining that he had "no fags" and expressing his remorse for the crime by drawing a picture of a sad face.

On the day of the sentencing, I stood outside the public gallery waiting for Tia's father, who had previously called for Hazell to be hanged for the killing, and the rest of the family to arrive. I readied my camera to get a photo of them entering the court, but when they arrived, dressed in black and visibly upset, it became clear how manipulated and scrutinized the family had been from the moment that Tia had gone missing. I couldn't bring myself to take the photo and put my camera away.

Judge Justice Nichol called the aggravating circumstances in this case "notable and serious" before sentencing Hazell to his lengthy minimum term. As he was removed from the court to begin his sentence, the press pack crowded around each of the court's exits trying to get one last shot of the family.

I’m motivated to not just bear witness to events and report on them, but to tell stories that matter somehow. Standing outside the court, I couldn’t see what there was to learn from Tia’s death and Hazell’s sentencing, apart from the fact that throwing every beam of media attention on a devastated, grieving family isn't something any decent human being should do. Airing every detail of the case in the public forum does little but expose Tia's family to speculation, criticism, and extra pressure in a time when they could have really done without it. And, after all that, we're not really any wiser for knowing that a young girl is dead and a man did something depraved. 

The only people whose lives could benefit from the knowledge are Tia’s family, but the sentencing doesn't change much for them. It only allows them to start to unravel the work of fiction spun by the girl's murderer since last August. Tia's mother, Natalie Sharp, said: “I can't say what will happen after the trial. It's my last hurdle. I haven't allowed myself to grieve yet. I need to finish this first. When the trial is done, everything is over for everyone else, but it won't be for us.”

Follow Emma on Twitter: @ejbeals

More on the life of being a reporter:

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If you like Army Wives, Preachers’ Daughters, Dance Moms, or any other TV show attempting to create a taxonomy of women based on the professions of their husbands, fathers, and children, then you may well have caught an episode of Teen Trouble. It’s a reality TV show on the Lifetime network where a guy named Josh Shipp sends “at-risk teens” to "alternative rehab centers," where they’re forced to endure emotional and physical abuse before being allowed to rejoin society.  

Shipp is your classic Jerry Springer brand of therapist—no real qualifications, a huge ego, and a penchant for money and entertaining TV over science and genuine psychology. “I’m a teen behavior specialist,” he says in the intro. “My approach is gritty, gutsy, and in your face.”

But the show is a lot grittier than you might expect from that typical teleprompter spiel. The unregulated "troubled teen" industry is able to persist despite numerous allegations of physical and sexual abuse, torture, and death at various institutions, and Shipp is exploiting that same system for monetary gain. Even when they aren’t abusive and/or deadly, the pseudoscientific practices used at “tough love boarding schools” have often proven to be ineffective and can lead to PTSD, anxiety, depression, and drug addiction. Maia Szalavitz, author of Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids, told me about some of the horror stories her own research uncovered.

“The classic list is food deprivation, sleep deprivation, public humiliation, beatings, and denial of access to the bathroom to the point where you wet or soil yourself. But I’m also constantly hearing stories of people being forced to re-enact various traumas, like being raped,” she told me.

A child at Family First Growth Camp in California is made to carry a truck tyre and screamed at until he is broken down.

Szalavitz continued, "At Mount Bachelor Academy, an investigation found bed sheets that had been used during re-enactments, and one of them had, ‘I am the yes girl, spray your cum on my tits,’ written on it. Let’s be real, this is not therapy.”

The methods used at these facilities are arguably traceable to an anti-drug cult in the 60s called the Church of Synanon. Their method was to abduct addicts and then “rehabilitate” them through beatings and humiliation. “I found that virtually all of the programs that exist today using the harshest tactics were either founded by former Synanon members or sent people to Synanon to learn the treatment,” Szalavitz told me.

Former patients have been airing their stories on Reddit and other websites, so I contacted a few of them to find out more. It soon became clear that today’s residential teen treatment centers still have all the trappings of a cult.

One night, Nick Quinn was roused from sleep at his home and taken to Aspen Education’s Outback program in Utah (the same program Josh Shipp sent Jacob to in episode two of Teen Trouble) because his parents caught him smoking weed.

“At 4:30 AM, I was woken up by two strangers holding handcuffs. They took my wallet and phone and told me that if I didn’t want to go easily they would make it hard for me. I thought I was being kidnapped. Next thing I know, I’m in a big white truck on my way to the airport,” he told me.

Once he arrived, Nick was given new clothes and survival gear, tied up and shipped into the wilderness, where he would remain for eight weeks. His boots were taken away at night to prevent him from escaping on the freezing cold ground. All of which seems a little aggressive for smoking a bit of weed.

Nick Quinn while he was at Swift River Academy.

After his ordeal, Nick was sent to another Aspen institute—the Swift River Academy in Massachusetts—where he was kept for seven months. “I was lucky my parents pulled me out. You could just tell they wanted the kids to be there as long as possible. They were milking it. My parents spent around $150,000.”

At Swift River, Nick endured the same kind of “therapy” I’d heard about from every other young victim, and which numerous academics had told me can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). According to Szalavitz, the goal is to break the child down psychologically and brainwash them: “The reasons these tactics sound similar to enhanced interrogation techniques, AKA torture, is because they're the ways you can break people and leave minimal marks.”

Now, years later, Nick has developed an anxiety disorder, experiences recurring nightmares from his time in “therapy” and still smokes weed. Understandably, his parents regret sending him there as it seems to have caused more damage than it prevented—something that appears to be a recurring theme with victims of troubled teen camps.

"Pretty much all the kids who I’m in touch with [from the camps] have dropped out of school," Nick told me. "Most get re-addicted to drugs. When you get out, you have all this freedom and you don’t know what to do with it. You lose control, you know?”

Aria Leonard, who was sent to the Monarch School in Montana seven years ago, had similar experiences. Aria told me her mother sent her there because she “disliked the friends she was making because they were ‘different’—black, gay, etc.” After a pricey $2,000 visit to an “educational consultant,” Aria was diagnosed as depressed, as a drug addict, and told by her parents she’d be going to “boarding school.”

Aria first realized it was no ordinary boarding school when her belongings were taken and she was strip-searched on entry.

Aria Leonard while she was at the Monarch School.

“Right after that I was taken directly to a group session. People were talking about drugs, sex, and alcohol, then everyone started screaming and crying. I was really confused and started to wonder if there had been some sort of mistake. I was then asked what drugs I'd done to be put there, and—despite my insistence that I'd never done drugs, was a virgin, and wasn’t violent—they didn't believe me.”

Aria was forced to undertake pointless physical labor, like cutting down huge trees and dragging them along the ground for half an hour, as well as being told to sit opposite a wall at night and continuously write stuff like, "I am a slut" and "I'm not good enough."

Like most victims of the troubled teen industry, Aria was forced to divulge “disclosures”—a form of ludicrously invasive confessional. “You had to write about everything bad you'd ever done, with an emphasis on ‘sexual disclosures.’ I had very little experience in sexual anything, but they wouldn’t believe me, so in the end I just made it up,” she said.

Aria was also put through the same emotional breaking-down sessions inflicted on Nick. During procedures known as “insights,” teens were denied bathroom access, food, and sleep for three to five days. They would also be made to perform role-playing exercises that ended in them acting out their own death—exercises Shia likened to the kind of “therapy” seen in this bizarre video.

Aria remained in the center for 18 months. Like Nick, she has since been diagnosed with anxiety and depression and continues to have nightmares about her experience.

Liz went to 39 residential treatment centres and describes being abused and raped multiple times. Rape claims are common in the industry, but – as the children are completely under staff's control for years – lawsuits rarely surface.

“The excessive use of punishment and humiliating procedures isn't only unhelpful, but also traumatizing for young people," said Professor Robert Friedman, a child psychologist. "As is the practice of having strangers wake them in the middle of the night and transport them far away without any preparation.”

And it’s not just the trauma-inducing methodology that makes the industry questionable. It’s also the diagnosis. "What is a 'troubled teen'?" Szalavitz wonders. “The idea that we put kids with Asperger’s, heroin addictions, depression, and extreme anxiety disorders in one program with a rigid, regimented schedule and expect it to help all of those kids—how could that be?

“Americans have this idea that addiction and drug use is about complete hedonistic abandon, seeking extra pleasure and defying your parents. They missed the fact that the people who really tend to have problems with drugs are people in pain seeking relief. Their idea is that these people don’t have enough pain, so we need to give them more pain to fix them,” she said.

No matter the intention, these forms of therapy aren't only pointless and outdated, but cruel and damaging. Any emotional trauma that teenagers suffer at Aspen Education’s institutes must only be matched by the neglect they feel at being abandoned by their parents for an important part of their formative years.

While these practices might seem abhorrent, the troubled teen industry is huge, powerful, and experienced in deflecting allegations. In 2002, Forbes magazine’s Erika Brown estimated its worth at $2 billion, and since then it's only been on the rise. The industry has managed to stick around in some incarnation since the 60s due to its powerful Republican and Christian roots. Many programs can be traced back to Straight, Incorporated, Nancy Reagan and George Bush Sr.'s favorite anti-drug program that was closed due to abuse lawsuits in the early 90s.

George Bush Sr voices his support for Straight, Incorporated.

Today, funding from Mitt Romney’s private equity firm Bain Capital (of which he has resigned as CEO, but continues to profit from) has allowed the industry to thrive. The biggest name in the business, Aspen Education, is owned by CRC Health Group, which was bought by Bain Capital in 2006 and is responsible for many of the institutes used on Shipp’s show. Since the takeover, Aspen has seen six deaths occur in its facilities, mainly due to neglect. Worryingly, the US Department of State advertises Aspen programs for teens on their website.

I confronted Shipp about the issue, but he brushed it aside as an unfortunate change of staffing in a few of the programs, rather than a powerful nationwide industry that’s rotten to the core. “Treatment facilities can change ownership, management, and staffing quite regularly," Shipp told me. "Parents need to proceed with caution with any program at all and be armed with the right questions to ask.”

Shipp also assured me that, “A family therapist chose the aftercare for each kid based on the situation they were going through.” But if there’s one reason that the industry has managed to survive other than money, it’s that there’s almost no supervision for psychological treatments in the USA, which is kind of at odds with Shipp's claims. As Szalavitz told me, “If I wanted to start a addiction rehab center tomorrow where treatment just involves standing on your head for extended periods of time, then I could do just that.”

Mitt Romney. (Image via)

It’s not difficult for the industry to legitimize itself. Professor Friedman told me that “groups like Aspen are now trying to build an empirical case for their programs by hiring evaluators to conduct supposedly independent studies that validate the effectiveness of the programs. These studies aren't independent and are more of a marketing effort than a genuine evaluation.”

This kind of “therapy” comes from an older America: one which believes that society is subject to moral decay and that the solution is to force outliers to conform to Republican and Christian ideals of abstinence and hard work. It’s American to puts faith in the ecstatic emotional climaxes of TV evangelism and “tough love” over the tried scientific methods of modern psychology.  

Where we see experimentation and the pushing of boundaries, it sees sin and societal corruption that must be violently scared out of people. Normal teenagers are being told that they are wrong and worthless, then broken and abused with the goal of making them “born again” as upstanding adults. And all the while, their parents’ bank accounts are being emptied straight into the coffers of America’s richest men. (The recession has dampened the industry’s growth, but CRC Health lists the net revenue per child in outdoor programs as $438.96 per day, and in residential programs as $257.87 per day.)

And yet, while minor investigations have forced individual rehab centers to change staff, the industry continues to thrive. That's because these institutions use the same methods, have the same roots, and are funded by the same people. Which begs the question: Why has there been no attempt at state regulation of treatment centers? Until there is, American kids are destined to continue suffering in these abusive institutions.

Follow Matt on Twitter: @Matt_A_Shea

More times adults have been horrible to children:

Evil People Are Exploiting Cambodia's Orphans

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Hungary has one of the most highly organized far-right movements in Europe. The Jobbik party—admired by those fed up with government corruption, derided by opponents as anti-Gypsy, anti-Semite, neo-Nazi homophobes—look set to become the second biggest presence in Hungarian parliament when the elections take place in 2014. I spent a week with them trying to find out what motivates their hate.

There’s something stirring in Europe. In Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, France, Spain, and the Ukraine, support for nationalism is growing and the parties that represent nationalist interests are making tangible strides. Jobbik preaches an ideology of restoring Hungary to its former glory, which—although vague and the exact intention I'd imagine most political parties are going for—obviously becomes more attractive and believable when there are Gypsies to scapegoat. That ideology has led to their enjoying huge success at the ballots, with their uniformed nationalist militias often marching through the streets unopposed.

Last November, I watched in horror as 10,000 far-right nationalists swarmed through Warsaw. I was making a film about the rise of the far right in Poland and saw fascists in balaclavas attacking press photographers and fighting pitched battles with police. I thought these would be the worst scenes of fascism I would ever witness in Europe, but it's clear that Hungary has bigger problems on the horizon.

On May Day in Budapest, I found myself standing in the middle of an 8,000-strong crowd of Jobbik supporters, watching nationalist rockers Karpathia play awful patriotic rock songs. The crowd was a bizarre mix of saluting neo-Nazi skinheads, elderly nationalists, and ordinary young Hungarians. I was there with Channel 4 News, and while the crew was busy shooting footage of the stalls selling whips and axes and the bouncy castles and petting zoos run by skinheads, I managed to find myself alone in the crowd as the national anthem started up.

I've never heard the Hungarian national anthem before, but the entire crowd was on their feet, standing to attention, staring reverently into the distance. And so was I—standing in their midst, mumbling words to myself and hoping I wouldn’t stand out. In a crowd like this, it's clear that things could go sour pretty quickly if they realized I was part of the “liberal media.” Yes, I had my all-access Jobbik pass, but I couldn't see that helping to ward off a pack of furious fascists particularly well. Or at all.

After dark, the respectable mask slipped. While a Jobbik official watched, I was slapped in the head by a reveller annoyed that “Jews” were at his festival. He then poured a beer over my head. Although irritating and sticky, it could have been worse —I was in a forest at night surrounded by thousands of nationalists and stalls selling whips and axes. That said, it was also weirdly comforting: they gave up the pretence of decency and turned into the far right I'm accustomed to—drunk, sloppy, and taking a swing at anyone who doesn't look like them.   

I had spent that morning watching a Magyar Nemzeti Garda (a nationalist militia linked to Jobbik) training session. The group's leader explained their political motivations: “There are two major problems. The problem within the country is the gypsy crime, and the external threat is the Jewish territorial expansion." Gypsies and Jews—rhetoric recycled from the start of the 20th century that seems to be making a big comeback in Hungary.

But even with their recycled fascist ideology, marching around in military uniforms and saluting the flag like TA recruits in their first orientation session, the Garda seemed pretty harmless. The group explained how they give blood, help homeless people, and carry out other useful patriotic activities—all of which seemed to be at odds with their military structure, uniforms, and the stories I'd heard about them. 

However, in villages like Gyongyospata—or any other area with a large Gypsy population—the real role of the militias becomes much more apparent. In 2011, tensions between Jobbik and the local Roma gypsy population came to a head and hundreds of uniformed nationalists descended on the village to act as vigilantes and patrol the dilapidated ghetto the gypsies call home.

Jobbik held torch-lit rallies outside the gypsy homes and there were violent clashes between gypsies and a neo-Nazi group. Since the fighting, the town has become a Jobbik stronghold. The night before I arrived, locals had fallen out with the gypsies again—the Jobbik mayor claiming that they had refused to keep quiet during the national anthem at a town festival, causing him to call off the entire event.

A Roma girl in Gyongyospata.

The Roma have no kind words for the mayor, which isn't much of a surprise. Despite the tidy paved roads on the mayor's side, the village apparently has no money to pave the roads in most gypsy areas. They have, however, managed to find the cash to install CCTV cameras outside a number of gypsy homes. One family who invited us in for coffee told us that they'd lived in the village for 600 years, but—along with many others—are now fleeing to Canada in fear of further nationalist attacks.

Estimates suggest that there are as many as one million Roma people living in Hungary, but unemployment within the community stands at 60 percent—six times the national average and a convenient figure for nationalists to lash out at. Jobbik says they will put the unemployed Romani to work, but aren’t clear as to how exactly they're planning on creating meaningful employment for them.

Marginalised and poverty-stricken, the gypsy community has become an easy scapegoat for the right. One Jobbik activist told me that, “60 percent of Roma are criminals; if you think I’m racist come and live next to them.” Weirdly, though, everyone I spoke to knows of someone who's been a victim of Roma crime, but has never been a victim themselves.

Members of Magyar Nemzeti Garda.

Back in Budapest at a Jobbik rally against the World Jewish Congress, militias lined up in military formation. The Jewish Congress has moved here from Jerusalem to highlight the rise of anti-Semitism in Hungary and let Jobbik know that they won’t stand idly by as their religion is used as a get-out clause for a nation's problems. Fascists don't like Jews standing up for themselves, so Jobbik sent in the seemingly friendly Garda group we'd filmed earlier that week, as well as a group dressed in black wearing helmets and gas masks. 

Jobbik wants the secret service to investigate any Hungarians with dual Israeli citizenship, as they believe there's a Jewish conspiracy to try to buy Hungary—a laughable case of paranoia all based on a throwaway remark made by Israeli President Shimon Peres a few years ago.

A lone, elderly protester takes a stand against the Jewish Congress's arrival, holding aloft a picture of a swastika. He is quietly removed from the front of the stage and Jobbik security takes him over to police, who then take down his details. Across the street, men in paramilitary outfits carry out drills with impunity.

Later, I join a cruise on the Danube for the assembled Jewish delegates from across the world and ask them why they've come here. “Because we won’t let this happen again,” is the universal answer. Police line the banks of the river, terrified that there will be some kind of incident.

Shoes on the Danube monument.

We float past the shoes on the Danube monument, where the fascist Hungarian Arrow Guard shot Jews and let their bodies fall into the river, making them remove their shoes first. The monument has resonance with everyone on the boat; many of their families fled Europe in the 40s to escape the anti-Semitism that was plaguing the country. Seventy years later, after decades of trying to move on from the persecution Hungarian Jews suffered, some Hungarians are again perfectly happy to march around the city proudly displaying the Arrow Guard insignia. 

If you're in the UK, watch Channel 4 News tomorrow at 7 PM for Brian's special report on the far-right in Hungary.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @brianwhelanhack

More from Hungary:

Hungary Is Destroying Itself from the Inside

Far-Right Terror in Hungary

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NEWS

The Wizard of the Saddle Rides Again

Is a Park in Memphis, Tennessee, the Epitome of Racism in Modern America? The KKK Say It’s Just History, Many Others Disagree  

By Rocco Castoro

A cross-lighting ceremony that took place near Tupelo, Mississippi, in late March following a Ku Klux Klan rally in Memphis, Tennessee, that was organized to protest the renaming of three parks in the city built in honor of the Confederacy. It is a “cross lighting,” not “cross burning,” because these Klansmen “do not burn, but light the cross to signify that Christ is the light of the world.” Photo by Robert King.

I

n the middle of an unkempt park in Memphis, Tennessee, stands an oversize bronze statue of a Confederate lieutenant general astride his mount. Its subject, Nathan Bedford Forrest, is considered by some to be one of the most infamous and powerful racists in American history. The first official leader of the Ku Klux Klan, some historians allege that Lieutenant General Forrest’s most heinous act was ordering his troops to slaughter hundreds of surrendered soldiers at 1864’s Battle of Fort Pillow, more than half of whom were African American. Others celebrate him as the physical manifestation of the South’s ethos during the Civil War and beyond: a rebel hero who relentlessly campaigned for his cause until it became untenable; he never gave up, even after his death.

Unveiled in 1905, the Memphis News-Scimitar reported that the masterfully sculpted monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest (or NBF) would “stand for ages as the emblem of a standard of virtue.” And today it seems the newspaper’s prophecy was correct, except for perhaps the “virtue” part. As of 2013, “that devil Forrest,” as he was infamously nicknamed by Union General William T. Sherman, is still sprinting across a Tennessee ridge on his stallion, kicking up dust in a city with historically tense racial relations. 

Pink granite tiles and modest bronze headstones that look like plaques skirt the sculpture. General Forrest and his wife, Mary Ann Montgomery, are buried underneath. NBF’s more celebrated moniker, at least in some circles, is the “Wizard of the Saddle,” a nickname he earned for his wondrous equestrian talents in battle, and one that calls to mind the highest modern-day rank of the KKK—the Imperial Wizard. 

The latest controversy surrounding the park and statue came to a head in early February, when the Memphis City Council unanimously voted to change the name of Forrest Park to Health Sciences Park (at least temporarily; a special commission is still in the process of deciding its final name as of press time), in line with the downtown medical-student facilities of the University of Tennessee that surround it. Two other Memphis parks—Confederate Park and Jefferson Davis Park, named after the president of the Confederacy—were also renamed by the City Council, with the reasoning that they were publicly funded reminders of an era that could be considered offensive and unwelcoming to the majority of the city’s residents, 63 percent of whom are African American according to the 2010 census. 

Shortly after the City Council’s decision, a man identifying himself as Exalted Cyclops Edward announced that his chapter of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was planning a massive rally to protest the renaming of the three parks. “It’s not going to be 20 or 30,” he told local NBC affiliate WMC-TV. “It’s going to be thousands of Klansmen from the whole United States coming to Memphis, Tennessee.” Later  in the month the city granted the Loyal White Knights a permit for a public rally to be held March 30 on the steps of the county courthouse in downtown Memphis, one day before Easter and five days before the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination at the Lorraine Motel.  

It was an eerily familiar scenario for Memphians. On January 17, 1998, around 50 members of the KKK held a rally at the very same courthouse in what they claimed was an attempt to protect their “heritage” in the lead-up to MLK Day and that year’s 30th anniversary of his assassination. Outnumbered by counterprotesters, the Klan’s vitriolic screeds incited a small riot that resulted in looting and the ill-prepared police force teargassing the entire crowd. 

One Memphian and self-proclaimed member of the Grape Street Crips seemed to take the Klan’s threats to return to his city very seriously. Following the announcement of the planned rally, 20-year-old DaJuan Horton posted a video on YouTube in which he states that he’s organizing a consortium of local gangs—some rivals—to unify and show their discontent on the day of the rally. Local and national media suddenly became very interested in the impending event, whipping a diverse cross-section of the city into a frenzy.

“They gonna come to Memphis, Tennessee… where Martin Luther King got gunned down,” DaJuan says in the video. “You’re going to come here and rally deep—really, really deep, in my language, just to talk? No, it’s not gonna happen like that. When you come to Memphis, Tennessee, we’re gonna rally right across from you, and it’s gonna be Young Mob, Crips, Bloods, GDs, Vice Lords, Goon Squad… I’m getting on the phone with them daily. I’m talking to the big guys, the big kahunas. I’m talking to the Bill Gates of the gang wars. You come to Memphis, we’re going to be waiting on you. It’s versatile down here. We got every gang you can think of; we’ve got the fucking Mob down here. Bring your ass on.” 

Had the City Council’s decision to rename the park sparked a potential showdown with what many law enforcement agencies consider America’s oldest terrorist organization and a mega-alliance of the country’s most violent gangs? Or was the Klan struggling to retain relevancy in an era when race relations have progressed so much that the US has elected a black president twice over? I traveled to Memphis about a week before the rally to meet everyone involved and find out. 

Continue reading on page two.

Matthew Heimbach insists he’s not a racist. This comes as a surprise to his fellow students at Towson University, in the suburbs of Baltimore, where Matthew has formed a group called the White Student Union that advocates for “persons of European heritage”—what most of us call “white people.” It also comes as a surprise to the African American students who feel targeted by the night patrols the senior history major began conducting in March. The patrols target supposed “black predators,” Matthew wrote on the WSU’s website, citing (among others) a case in which an African American man pulled out a knife and his penis, and wagged both at a co-ed couple who were copulating in a parking garage. “White Southern men,” he wrote, “have long been called to defend their communities when law enforcement and the State seem unwilling to protect our people.”

Also surprised by Matthew’s claim that he’s not a racist is Duane Davis. “You are a fat, racist little bitch,” the scrappy, dreadlocked man told Matthew one sunny Tuesday this April. There was a rally going on, organized by the Student Government Association and the Black Student Union. In a field behind Duane and Matthew, about 100 students protested the White Student Union by reading unity-themed slam poetry from a microphone. When Matthew showed up on the edge of the crowd, a dozen protesters had come to confront him. Down the façade of a parking garage, a banner unfurled reading, WSU GTFO (translation: White Student Union Get the Fuck Out).

“There’s no need to insult me,” Matthew told Duane, who looked one wrong reply away from punching the 21-year-old.

“I’ve killed people,” Duane said. “In self-defense... But I’ve killed people.”

Matthew has the look of someone who’s been bullied his whole life: he puffs out his chest to hide an abundant belly, wears unfashionable drugstore spectacles, and on this day sported what vaguely resembled a Morrissey T-shirt.

“Who is that on your shirt?” Duane said, jabbing Matthew in the chest. The onlookers leaned in to hear the answer.

“Ian Smith,” Matthew said, before rattling off the biography of the former prime minister of Rhodesia, a white supremacist who resisted efforts to end white rule there in the 60s. “He’s one of my heroes.”

A svelte woman in a dashiki interrupted. “If you were dying and needed a heart transplant,” she asked, “would you accept one from a black person?”

Matthew was silent. He cracked an awkward smile. From the microphone, the lyrics to John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” were heard.

“He doesn’t need a black heart,” Duane said. “He’s already got one!”

Protesters at a “unity rally” on the Towson campus send a message to Matthew and company: “White Student Union Get The Fuck Out.” Photo by Iram Nayati.

Since launching the night patrols, Matthew has become the pasty public face of campus hate. He knows how to court the media, and the segments about him that have aired on CNN, CBS, the Thom Hartmann Program, and pretty much every news blog, all prove it. As such, going to Maryland and hanging out with him and his shadowy “comrades,” as we did recently, risks giving him the thing he wants even more than his own Rhodesia: attention. Yet accounts so far have treated the student as a vile curiosity rather than what he really is—the possible future of organized racism in America—and so we figured, what the hell, let’s go interview him. 

“I hate Hitler,” Matthew told me at his apartment, in an African American neighborhood in Baltimore about 15 miles from Towson’s campus. He resents being classified as a “racist” or “white supremacist,” he said, and despises the KKK and neo-Nazi organizations. “They’re just low-rent thugs trying to make themselves feel better. Frankly, they’re an embarrassment.”

Sipping coffee from a mug emblazoned with the Confederate flag, Matthew told me about the “race realist” movement of which he's a part—a group of activists and academics who some believe have traded burning crosses for PhDs and tweed jackets. They float a variety of ideologies, but the most popular are identitarianism (a term mostly used in Europe) and racial realism, interchangeable names for people who believe that whiteness is worth celebrating as much as blackness or any other identity. “We stand for positive love of our people,” Matthew told me, “but also respect for everyone else… That’s the key difference [between them and groups like the Klan]. Love will get us a lot further than yelling racial epithets into a bullhorn.” According to Matthew, identitarianism and racial realism reject white power but embrace white pride on the basis that if pride is a good thing for one group, it’s good for any group. “You’re never going to get anywhere in America by waving a swastika banner,” he said.

Matthew formed his first White Student Union when he was still in high school, in the rural town of Poolesville, Maryland, after the school tried to integrate. “There were, like, three black kids before that,” he said. But the group didn’t become a reality until years later when in August 2012, Matthew organized sympathizers at Towson (initially under the name of "Youth for Western Civilization") and enlisted a conservative professor to serve as its advisor. They went mostly unnoticed until one of their members, Scott Terry (who isn’t a Towson student), was spotted on national TV at the Conservative Political Action Conference this March. Scott told K. Carl Smith, the black founder of the Frederick Douglass Republicans, that Frederick Douglass should’ve thanked his master for “feeding and housing him.” Jon Stewart played the clip on The Daily Show and lambasted Scott. Their advisor dropped his support, and the group was denied official recognition by the university, but the group grew as a result: according to Matthew, it now allegedly has 57 members. He’s also helped form similar groups on other campuses, most recently at Indiana University, in Bloomington. (Though antiracist activists have since shut down that chapter.)

When I asked Matthew how he felt about Obama’s presidency, he said, “I’m not a fan, but not because he’s African American.” He explained how, for him, Obama’s two presidential victories underscored the waning power of white male voters in America. Pointing to US Census Bureau predictions that by 2040 whites will no longer be a majority (though they’ll still be the largest ethnic category), he said that, because of changing demographics across the country, Mitt Romney’s defeat in the 2012 presidential election showed that “we’ve already lost the ability to elect a president. Mitt Romney got 60 percent of the white vote. Ten years ago, if you got 60 percent of the white vote, you would win the presidency. Now it’s not enough. So the change in demographics spells to us the fact that we’ve lost the ability on a national level to even advocate for ourselves.” It was clear that his usage of “we” and “our” did not include non-Caucasian Americans.

According to Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, this same sentiment has fueled a recent spike in white-supremacist activity: since 2008, there’s been an 800 percent increase in what he calls “patriot groups,” many of whom have armed themselves against the government, and a twofold increase in hate groups. He cites Obama’s presidency and the economic recession as motivating factors. “It’s about capitalizing on discontent,” Mark told me recently. “Heimbach couches his politics in vague, Christian-sounding language that’s designed to make the racist message palatable to young, disenfranchised, ignorant whites on college campuses or elsewhere.” The Southern Poverty Law Center recently listed Matthew on its annual Hatewatch list.

The weekend after my first visit to Towson, at a conference held by the American Renaissance outside Nashville, Tennessee, the theme of white victimization was on full display, as were the movement’s increasingly young followers. American Renaissance was founded in 1990 by Jared Taylor, a Yale-educated academic who has taught Japanese at Harvard and also runs a white-separatist organization called New Century Foundation. Jared has provided much of the intellectual heft for the identitarianism and racial-realism movement by publishing books brimming with dubious statistics, which argue that blacks are less intelligent than whites and more prone to commit crimes, yet he has barred neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers from joining his group. He is pro-Israel and celebrates Japan (where he was born) as a successful example of a homogenous ethnic state because he believes the Japanese are more “advanced”—genetically and socially—than whites. But at the conference, Jared, who looks a bit like Ted Danson and is a fan of foppish sport coats and collared shirts, dropped his polished tone for a more incendiary message. When he asked the 150 or so people there how many were first-time attendees, more than half raised their hands. From a stage, he explained the ultimate goal of his efforts. “We want a homeland where we are a majority,” he said. “We have a government of traitors... White people who express a desire for a homeland are labeled as haters.” He ended his speech to applause: “Think of secession…Think of hometowns. We have to build them ourselves… Survival is the first law. We have no choice but to keep fighting.”

Matthew had flown down from Baltimore to attend. He stood up and asked a question. “The federal government will continue its genocide of our people,” he said. “Where should we go? What’s the best way to create a homeland?”

“It will work itself out organically in ways we can’t predict,” Jared responded. “White anger may erupt in places we haven’t heard of.”

Matthew Heimbach and Duane Davis argue during the unity rally. Photo by Iram Nayati.

A week later, I tagged along with the White Student Union on a night patrol. “It’s the anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination,” Matthew said cheerily to the five WSU members who showed up. Until then, no reporters had met the other members of the group, and after repeated cancellations to go on patrol, I’d started to wonder if they really existed. But here they were. “Let’s do a little golf clap for Lincoln’s assassination,” Matthew said, kicking off the vigilante effort before the crew wended its way through the brick and ivy campus.

The cavalcade included a young skinhead-looking guy named Paddy and his fiancée, Addie, who said she was happy to lend a “female face to the movement.” There was a 40-something-year-old named Ken, who had driven all the way from Delaware to poke around Towson looking for unruly “black criminals.” The patrol was rounded out by Sean, who barely said a word to me the entire night, and Shayne, who described himself as a “cowboy.” (Oddly, when I later checked their enrollment statuses with a university official, she claimed none, except Matthew, were actually students at Towson, though this couldn’t be confirmed and it’s possible the university was simply trying to distance itself from the group.) The female patroller was armed with pepper spray, the men with flashlights. 

I asked the obvious: What kinds of crimes had they prevented on previous patrols?

“The worst we’ve encountered so far,” Matthew said, “were some sorority girls passed out from drinking too much. We put them in taxis and escorted them to their dorm rooms.”

It was 9 PM on a Monday and there were scores of kids out, playing softball or headed to the cafeteria. The campus was well lit. We walked around, but witnessing a crime in progress seemed unlikely, so after about an hour, Matthew had an idea. Let’s go "visit our brothers in the Black Student Union,” he said.

In a large brick building at the center of campus, we found four African American students typing on their laptops in the BSU office. They frowned when Matthew entered. “I’m Matt Heimbach from the White Student Union,” he said, flashing a politician’s smile, “and we just wanted to come by to invite you to patrol campus with us.”

“No, thanks,” they said, demurring. “We’ve got homework.”

A few days earlier, I had interviewed the former vice president of the Black Student Union, a senior from Baltimore named Ignacio Evans. “Sitting in a classroom with Matt is like putting Hitler in a class with Jews,” Ignacio told me, explaining how he had a modern Japanese-history course last semester with Matthew. “That’s how it feels to be stifled in a classroom with a person that you know hates your existence.” When I asked him about the night patrols, he said, “White supremacists don’t have to be loud. You show up with a hooded robe, I’m scared. My problem is that the White Student Union echoes that… it’s unsettling to be a hypermasculine black male and to feel scared on campus when you see these guys.”

When Matthew first announced the patrols on the WSU web page in February, he justified them as a response to a “black crime wave.” But local crime statistics cast doubt on this claim. With just six crimes committed per 1,000 students, Towson’s campus crime rate is the lowest it’s been in 17 years. In seven of the past ten years, Towson was ranked as the safest public campus in the entire state of Maryland. Of course, such statistics might be beside the point: it's hard to tell if the patrols are an earnest safety measure or simply a publicity stunt—an attempt to give a nice, community-service face to prejudice.

That, after all, is the strategy of identitarianism and racial realism—trying, with spiffed-up eugenics and slippery rhetoric, to reinvent racism for the 21st century, to present it with a smiley face. Even if it’s unlikely to convince the majority of students or teachers (or journalists), that’s not the point. The movement is geared toward whites who might feel threatened by or antagonistic toward minorities, but who don’t necessarily think of themselves as bona fide racists. “The only difference between Matt and the KKK,” Ignacio had told me, “is that Matt is PC, and he truly believes whites are victimized. Other than that, they’re exactly the same.”

Kicking off the night patrol with a Bible reading and speech. “United we’ll be able to wake to a new dawn of justice and righteousness.”

Outside the office of the Black Student Union, a dozen or so white frat boys had appeared. If Matthew and crew were disappointed that the black students hadn’t wanted a conflict, some of these guys looked like they did. “Matthew tries to pretend he’s not a racist,” a red-faced, doughy guy in a black blazer hissed, “but this is not the way to go about it. You’re spreading a message of hate, and I’m pissed about it.”

“Is it because you hate white people?” Matthew said.

“It’s ’cause you’re racist!” the frat guy shouted.

A dozen more Alpha Epsilon Pi brothers poured down the hall. The night patrol looked nervous. But then, instead of pummeling Matthew and his crew, the frat guys pulled their member, the red-faced one, into a classroom and slammed the door.

“It’s funny,” Matthew said as we left, obviously relieved. “Frat guys are usually the first ones behind closed doors to crack a black joke.”

But the real climax of the evening happened a half hour later, when we followed a mazy outdoor path called the International Walkway. Along it fly flags from every country Towson students hail from; as we passed the People’s Republic of China ensign billowing in the wind, Paddy, taking a leadership cue from Matthew, stopped the patrol. He wanted to give a speech. The Black Student Union, the frat boys, the commie flag… it had apparently riled him up.

“We’re heading toward a dissolution of the United States,” Paddy told his fellow patrollers. “But in a sense, that could be for the better because it may lead to a white ethno-state. That’s ultimately what we want. We want an ethno-state for our people, a strong nation-state that’s well-defended but at peace with the world.”

“What would the criteria of citizenship be for this ethno-state?” I asked.

“I’m just going to come out and say it,” Paddy said. “The criteria of citizenship would be based on race. It would be based on [being] white. Absolutely. One hundred percent.”

I turned to Matthew. In the spiritedness of the moment, the group seemed to be dropping its restrained tone. And Matthew was worked up, too. “If there are white people... who want to remain in this multicultural cesspool,” he said, “let them. We don’t want them. Let us mind our own business. Let us stand up for our own people, and create our own nation and new homeland for Europeans around the entire globe. So give us a homeland, and if you want to sell yourself and your children down the river of multiculturalism, you can do so.”

After that, on the way back to the parking garage to get our cars and call it a night, we finally witnessed a crime. We came upon three white students on a dark path, obviously engaged in a drug deal.

“Look at that,” Paddy said as we watched the transaction.

“And everyone tries to say there’s no crime at Towson,” Matthew said, shaking his head. “This is not a safe campus.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

No one intervened. 

Watch our documentary about the White Student Union this Thursday on VICE.com. Here's the trailer.

Read more on racists:

Who Feels Bad for the KKK?

Britian's Nazi Punk Scene Is Alive and Limping

The Leader of the Real KKK DM'd Me on Twitter

Image via Yelp

On May 3rd, a 36-year-old Iraq war veteran and college student named Maribel Ramos (pictured above right) was reported missing by her family, after failing to turn up to several events in Santa Ana, California. 

A couple of days later, a friend of Maribel's named Emily C started a Yelp thread called "My friend Maribel Ramos is missing!!" in an effort to track her down. 

Somebody posted asking if Maribel's roommate had been questioned by police yet. 

This is where the roommate, KC Joy (who is pictured at the very top of this post with Maribel), joined the conversation. Posting that Maribel was his BFF, and giving details of the police's search of the apartment they shared. 

Then a user called Grant K joined the thread, pointing out that it was suuuuuuuuuper suspicious that KC was referring to Maribel in the past tense. 

Some other users weren't too happy with what Grant was implying, and told him off.

And KC returned to explain that he wasn't intentionally referring to Maribel in the past tense, but was actually having trouble with his English, as he is originally from China. 

The next day, KC returned to the thread, and said some weird, kinda suspicious stuff.

Like, really, really weird and really, really kinda suspicious stuff.

Then a user named Daniel J came along and offered KC the (very solid) advice of shutting up.

KC thanked him. This was KC's final post in the thread. 

On May 17th, exactly 2 weeks after Maribel went missing, Emily C returned to break the news that a body had been found.

The body was found in a canyon after people living nearby reported a foul smell in the area.

Later that day, another user confirmed that the body had been positively identified as Maribel. Her missing persons case was reclassified as a homicide. 

After voluntarily accompanying police officers to the Orange Police Department, KC was arrested and charged with Maribel's murder. 

Which meant Grant K was (allegedly) right all along. KC could have accidentally let slip that he knew more than he was letting on. 

Kinda like when Reddit tried to track down the Boston bombers, except he was actually right with his accusations, and didn't ruin any people's lives. 

Unwilling to enjoy this victory in silence, Grant returned to the thread to remind everyone of his prediction and gloat. Douchebag. 

@JLCT

You should probably be afraid, at least a little, of the federal government. The reason for this doesn’t have anything to do with conspiracy theories about fluoridation or the Obama administration hoarding ammo to keep it out of the hands of True Patriots. It’s simpler than that: you should be worried about the US government because it is huge and well funded and powerful and, most importantly, you don’t know what it’s doing.

The civics-class version of government—that there are three branches, each with its own checks and balances and blah blah blah—is hopelessly outdated. For one thing, the legislative branch is paralyzed by partisanship and a set of rules that make it impossible for it to do anything but stop laws from getting enacted. For another, as documented by the Washington Post in 2010, the governmental agencies that are in charge of “national security” have grown like not-all-that-benign tumors, consuming billions of tax dollars, constructing massive top-secret facilities, and employing hundreds of thousands of people whose job descriptions you don’t have the security clearance to know. The national security state is vast and unknowable, practically its own branch of government at this point, with its own secret history. Millions upon millions of documents are classified, many unnecessarily. By some counts, there are more pages of classified documents in the US than there are unclassified—and the government spends $12 billion a year keeping all that information under wraps.  

Against this, what are ordinary people supposed to do? We could tune all of this out and only notice the massive but mysterious network of intelligence gathering and decision making when it butts into our everyday lives—like when the TSA searches your bag without your consent as you travel across the country, or when a manhunt in Boston reveals how much cops resemble soldiers now—or we could dig through documents and poke and prod the unelected officials who know what’s going on and hope they let a nugget of information drop. Except you probably don’t have the time to investigate the government, and that’s what journalists are for.

The most important reason that the media exists—maybe the only good reason—is to tell the public what’s happening and what the people in power are doing about it. That’s increasingly difficult when the decisions that matter are shrouded in multiple levels of secrecy, and officials who reveal that information are prosecuted for crimes. The First Amendment's protection that lets journalists write whatever they want isn’t enough—they need to be able to be free to gather information that gives them the ability to write something that’s not just a reworked government press release. 

That’s the context in which people have been getting upset about the Department of Justice subpoenaing the Associated Press’s phone records while investigating a leak, and it’s why it should be even more outrageous that the DOJ called Fox News’s James Rosen “an aider and abettor” in a crime for getting a source to reveal classified information to him. 

In the first case, the DOJ looked at phone records as part of an investigation not into the AP itself, but into which official gave a reporter information about counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Even though the AP delayed reporting what it had at the government’s request, it’s possible that the story made it more difficult for the US to catch the bad guys, and some people have argued that the DOJ was investigating a serious breach of federal law and acting legally and in the government’s best interest.

The investigation of Rosen is even more worrying if you think that the press should be in the business of reporting on the government. Rosen wrote a story in 2009 that revealed the CIA thought North Korea would perform more nuclear tests based on information the agency had gotten from inside North Korea. For this, the DOJ aggressively pursued Rosen and Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government employee who leaked the information to him, even going through the reporter's personal emails. Rosen wasn’t charged with a crime, but unlike the AP investigation, the FBI accused him of engaging in criminal activity in an official document—for trying to find out what the government was doing and thinking, which is his job.

When most of the US’s overseas operations are deliberately hidden from public view, leaks and the reporters who are smart and connected and lucky enough to cajole them out of sources are the only way we have of knowing what the hell is going on. Just to give an example of how this works: McClatchy got its hands on some classified intelligence reports on drone attacks recently, analyzed them, and published the results, and now we know, definitively, that the campaign of drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan is way less accurate than Obama administration's officials claim. That’s how journalism works. That’s the only way information emerges into the light of day.

The government wants to stop this process because if people know about its decisions, presumably they can second-guess or criticize those decisions. The Obama administration likely figures it has nothing to gain from transparency and has ditched the idea of accountability to the public entirely. How else to explain the administration’s quote about letting the press be “unfettered in its pursuit of investigative journalism” at the same time it's prosecuting any government employee who says anything at all to a reporter? If the administration was serious about letting the press do its job, why is it supporting a “media shield” law that wouldn’t protect reporters who are reporting on matters of national security?

The problem won’t be solved by voting Obama out of office. For years, the national security state has grown like some kind of ugly animal in a terrarium, fed by executive orders and ever-expanding budgets, and when it’s threatened by reporters like Rosen, it defends itself. It’s no longer concerned with defeating the version of al Qaeda responsible for 9/11, since that war is largely won. It just keeps growing and growing and creating new reasons for itself to exist, along the way treating the media like unfriendly viruses trying to infect it. Change the names of the people in charge, and the self-perpetuating security state will still be in place, churning out reams of documents no regular taxpayer is allowed to see.

The spy agencies, by the way, cost those taxpayers $75 billion a year. It’s not clear what they buy with that money, because any further information about that budget is classified, since it’s a matter of national security. Presumably, to try to find out more would be a crime.

@HCheadle

More on the policies of the Obama administration:

Big Money's Obama

Obama Governs Like Bush on Reproductive Rights

Obama Wants to Kill the Penny and so Should You

The VICE Podcast Show is a weekly unedited discussion in which we go inside the minds of some of the most interesting, creative, and bizarre people we come across. This week, host Reihan Salam talks to adult performer and VICE columnist Stoya about gender roles, homeschooling, safe sex, and the future of monogamy.

Here is just the audio from this week's discussion:

Previously on the podcast, we spoke with Ben Anderson about his thrilling new documentary, This Is What Winning Looks Like.

You can read all of Stoya's VICE articles here.

On February 7, 2013, there was a dispute inside Guantanamo Bay over prison guards searching Qur'ans. For the following two days, inmates ate the remainder of the food they had—including stuff that was reportedly two years past date—and, once finished with all of their decomposing rations, embarked on a hunger strike. Yesterday was the 100th day of the inmates' protest against their treatment and, out of the 166 still being held at Guantanmo, 102 are on hunger strike, with 30 being force-fed.  

Authorities at the prison camp have revised their guidelines to allow them to shackle hunger-strikers to a chair, before fitting them with masks and inserting tubes through their noses and into their stomachs to force-feed them for up to two hours at a time. Despite these efforts, some prisoners claim to weigh as little as 85 lbs.

Several attempts have been made to punish or dissuade inmates from their starvation efforts. According to Shaker Aamer (the last British resident being held in Guantanamo), prison wardens have begun inflicting sleep deprivation on inmates, as well as adopting a new practice where, instead of shackling their hands and legs and pushing them along from behind, they're now clipping cloth dog leashes to inmates' waists and dragging them around like animals.      

Aamer is one of 86 inmates who have been cleared for release but are still being held inside the facility—something that, according to Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer representing inmates at the prison, is completely irrational. “Any prison, even in the most despotic dictatorship, should not have 86 of 166 [52 percent] prisoners cleared for release,” he told me, before adding, “Obama hasn't shown the political will to do the right thing.”

Stafford Smith provided me with testimonies from three Guantanamo hunger-strikers in order to gain a little more insight into the Cuban detention camp that President Obama promised to close within a year back in 2009.

SHAKER AAMER

Shaker Aamer is a legal permanent resident of the UK. Aamer was volunteering with an Islamic charity in Kabul in 2001 when he was wrongly arrested, tortured, and eventually deported to Guantanamo Bay. He was cleared five years ago, but remains imprisoned today. At the time of speaking to Aamer, he had lost 32 lbs.

Aamer speaks about “forcible cell extractions (FCEs)," a euphemism for sending in the Emergency Reaction Force to extract prisoners from their cells. These "procedures" are apparently almost always carried out during prayer time, which seems a little insensitive. Then again, this is Guantanamo, where guards seem to stem more from the school of brutality than sensitivity. In one instance, the force exerted on one of Aamer’s fellow inmates was enough to leave him hospitalized, unconscious for four days.

Despite full knowledge that the prisoners are starving themselves, officers carry out FCEs in order to deliver food. “They FCE’d me at 2 PM to bring lunch,” Aamer explains. “They wouldn't take the lunch away. They left it until dinner.” He has also been FCE’d for water. “For three days now, if I say I want more water, they FCE me just to give me water.” Aamer has also been denied various items that were ordered for medical reasons and went ten days without being allowed a toothbrush. Which seems kind of a pointless thing thing to deny someone who's not eating any food.

Describing his experience of force-feeding, Aamer continually refers to "the Board"—something Stafford Smith describes as “a kind of hard stretcher that officers use to transfer prisoners involuntarily from their cells to the force-feeding, or other things.” He goes on to add, “It's better to use the board than what they're doing now, which is to grab inmates by the arms and legs and to drag them.”

Aamer goes some way to explaining the psychological toll he suffers while starving himself and remaining in prison for a crime he's been cleared of: “I try to go to sleep early in the night. Then I feel as if I've just died.”

NABIL HADJARAB

Nabil Nadjarab is Algerian but spent most of his pre-Guantanamo life in France. He moved to London briefly, but found the cost of living hard and quickly moved to Afghanistan, where he had heard it would be possible to live "without papers." Following 9/11, he—like Aamer—believed that, as a foreign Arab living in the country, he would be rounded up and killed by the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban military front.

Nadjarab escaped to the mountains, but was eventually discovered and captured. In 2007, six years later (SIX years later), the Administrative Review Board found that Nabil was not an "enemy combatant," and US interrogators have apparently even told him that his was a case of mistaken identity.

By the end of March, Nadjarab had lost 44 lbs after being on hunger strike for ten weeks. He explains, “On March the 22nd, I was force-fed for the first time. Since then, I've been force-fed two times a day, every day. To be force-fed is unnatural, and it feels like my body is not real. They put you on a chair—it reminds me of an execution chair. Your legs, arms and shoulders are tied with belts. If you refuse to let them put the tube in, they force your head back… [it is very risky] because if the tube goes in the wrong way, the liquid might get into your lungs. I know some who have developed infections in the nose. They now have to keep tubes in their noses permanently.”

“The real issue here,” Stafford Smith explains, “is that the US is force-feeding people in a gratuitously painful way to try to force them off their peaceful protest. So the US intentionally changed various procedures to make it less 'convenient' to be on strike. One change was to use only larger tubes. The second was to put the tubes in and take them back out after each feeding, rather than leaving the tubes in place. This adds immensely to the pain. Then they use the force-feeding restraint chair and leave the prisoners in there for hours at a time. All of this takes a medical procedure that is, according to the World Medical Association, already unethical, and transforms it into something that is just torture.”

For Nadjarab, hunger-striking is not just an act of protest, but the only solution to an insufferable situation. “I cannot stand being in here any further,” he says. “I am done. So I am sacrificing myself.”

YOUNUS CHEKKOURI

According to reports, Moroccan national Younus Chekkouri is one of the most compliant prisoners being held at Guantanamo. After leaving his home country for Pakistan in the 90s, he moved several times due to financial reasons and eventually settled in Kabul to begin working for a Moroccan charity. After 9/11, Chekkouri fled via Jalalabad and was met at the Pakistan border by officers rounding up people of Arabic descent en masse. After being apprehended, he was sent to a Pakistani prison, then on to Guantanamo.

Over the past decade, Chekkouri has been issued only one disciplinary. He began his hunger strike after officials raided his room, stripping him of "comfort items" that had previously been cleared by authorities. He reports that a close friend of his dropped to 120 lb, his face turning from red to blue, before he almost died.

Chekkouri is currently being fed Metamucil, a bulk-producing fiber supplement. “When I eat it,” he says, “it feels like the best food in the entire world. I am addicted to the small pieces of Metamucil.” But Chekkouri's forced diet concerns health experts, who believe the high-fiber supplement can prevent the body from absorbing key minerals. Chekkouri says that he wakes up from dreams in which he imagines “he is faced with large piles of food”.

Last month he wrote a sign on the window of his block: “Dial 911—I’m starving.” And another that simply read, “SOS.”

That so many people are starving inside the facility seems to still have no impact on the political decisions surrounding its closure. “The hunger strike has already got Obama's attention,” Stafford Smith explains. “It is our job to make sure the world doesn't forget these men, who are simply making a claim for basic human rights. It is notable, and hypocritical, that the US has often praised people in Iran or Burma for going on hunger strike to courageously demand their rights.

“The world is forgetting 800 or a thousand years of experience. This is all down to the politics of fear and vilification that the US has currently turned on Muslims, and is sadly something that is being emulated around the world. I just hope that we can all work to ensure that it is a brief passing phase on the march towards human rights, rather than something permanent.” 

Follow Nathalie on Twitter: @NROlah

More from Guantanamo Bay:

Yemen Want Their Guantanamo Detainees Back

Strange Things Are Happening at Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Trial

Meet the New President, Same as the Old President  

I'm not sure if this story about Barack Obama is actually racist or just really disturbing, but we're going to run it through the This Week in Racism "Racism-o-Meter" anyway, and see what comes out. With the assistance of my friends at the @YesYoureRacist Twitter account, I’ll be ranking this and other news stories on a scale of 1 to RACIST, with “1” being the least racist and “racist” being the most racist.

According to testimony given during the prostitution trial of his three former aides, Italy's former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was alleged to have dressed women up like Barack Obama and then had them perform stripteases. Now, I am not here to debate the erotic merits of President Obama, nor am I here to question the sexual preferences of Silvio Berlusconi. I am here to wonder if these women wore blackface. Also, what about those giant fucking ears he has? Fake mole? I think this is one of those "teachable moments" I've heard so much about lately. I'm giving this a 2, because I'm genuinely still totally fucking confused.

- Police in Agoura Hills, California, are looking for someone who spray-painted racist graffiti on the walls of the local high school. The message included the phrase “Ni**ers will die,” which school officials erased without telling students or parents. Two days later, students showed up to school to find a “hit list” of African American students painted on the bathroom wall. They're right though. Ni**ers will die. Unfortunately, so will everyone else one day. RACIST

- This is the logo for a food truck in Los Angeles. I don't know why this is in here other than it made me laugh. Also, I've often fantasized about slapping my own mother.

- In Great Britain, a newly elected councillor representing the UK Independence Party—which goes out of the way to say it’s “not racist”—found himself in hot water after sharing on Facebook a cartoon depicting Muslims being burned at the stake using copies of the Quran. "I don’t have a racist bone in my body,” said Eric Kitson of Stourport-on-Severn. “It's just a bit of bloody stupidity." Kitson added that he has “several Muslim friends,” which of course automatically disqualifies someone from being Islamophobic, as everyone knows. Also, I don't think bones can be racist. What would a "racist bone" even look like? A bunch of swastikas on a femur? 8

- Last week we told you about Jason Richwine, the Heritage Foundation analyst who once wrote that Hispanics are genetically predisposed to have lower IQs than “native white Americans.” Ignoring the fact that there’s no such thing as a “native white American,” Richwine’s assertion that Hispanics are genetically inferior is pretty much a textbook example of racism. Even the Heritage Foundation agreed, firing Richwine soon after the writing was made public. But Richwine still doesn’t see how his assertion could be racist, telling the Washington Examiner’s Byron York, "The idea that I am some sort of foaming-at-the-mouth extremist never even crossed my mind." Probably not, but then again, I've heard Chris Brown thought he was just "explaining things" to Rihanna's face. Richwine added, "The accusation of racism is one of the worst things that anyone can call you in public life." I can think of a few things that are worse, such as being told your entire race is inferior... but what would Richwine know about that? RACIST

Jason Richwine's best friend, Ann Coulter, receives this week’s Ann Coulter Award for Excellence in Racism for this:

We've already established that Jason Richwine is a huge racist prick who has no sense of shame. The fact that Ann Coulter feels the intense need to paint a total asshole as a victim is one of those twisted pieces of logic that makes me want to curl up into a ball and die.

@YesYoureRacist’s 10 Most Racist Retweets of the Week [all grammar sic'd]:

10. @Jay_Flo6: “I'm not racist, but I couldn't date a white girl if she has messed with a black guy. #NoRacismIntended”

9. @Cal_E_Boi: “I'm not racist but as soon as I see a black man under the age of 25 driving a BMW I immediately shout drug dealer”

8. @RodeoPrincesss: “Im not racist but black people and white people just dont make cute couples.”

7. @bmill98: “Im not racist...but jews make themselves pretty easy to hate”

6. @2_jayyyz: “I'm no racist but I hate, hate, HATE, wet backs”

5. @SashaDaniels: “I'm not racist but im actually terrified of Jews”

4. @toriiiiz: “I'm not a racist but I f*cking hate middle eastern guys.”

3. @Mattt_Lee: “I'm not racist but that group of chinks can f*ck off. Twats.”

2. @graceegregory: “I'm not racist, but I understand where Hitler was coming from.”

1. @AlifNorazmii: “I'm not racist but ni**er really stink!!!”

Last Week in Racism:

Happy Confederate Memorial Day!

@dave_schilling

There came a point on Thursday afternoon—after learning that Toronto mayor Rob Ford had taken some time off from an important city-council meeting to wander around a parking lot sticking "Rob Ford" magnets to cars—that I figured it would be time to update you about the ongoing saga that is Robbie’s intoxicated reign over the Kingdom of Toronto. Way back when, before the already infamous crack-cocaine scandal of May 2013, the magnet controversy of 24 hours earlier didn’t seem so important. That is, of course, until Gawker broke the story that some guy, somewhere, has a video of King Robbie smoking crack from a glass pipe. And the footage is for sale. Until someone buys it, you can always watch the Taiwanese CGI reenactment.

Gawker—who have decided that this is not an “alleged” or “supposed” crack-smoking incident, given that they’ve got a graphic that reads “Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Smokes Crack” on their homepage—have caused a major firestorm for King Robbie the First in the City of Toronto. The Toronto Star, an ungrateful and petulant organization that is hell-bent on taking down the mayor, has viewed the tape “three times” but was clearly too cheap to buy it and stream it for the royal subjects of the Rob Ford empire. Plus, according to them, they saw this video on May 3. Why keep all this crack-smoking mayhem a secret? And what kind of incompetent blackmail-video salesman is behind this controversy? How can you mess up on monetizing such a golden piece of footage? One must assume they’re ready to let it go at fire-sale prices right now.

But, regardless, the Star claims they were shown the video—that allegedly shows Rob Ford raising a “lighter and [moving] it in a circle motion beneath the pipe”—by a “group of Somali men” who are “involved in the drug trade.” Apparently these upstanding gentlemen showed the Star their all-of-a-sudden infamous footage, wherein Rob Ford allegedly calls Justin Trudeau a “fag,” audibly says, regarding the cell phone that was recording him, “that better not be on,” and allegedly refers to the players on his beloved high school football team (in a mumbly tone) as “just fucking minorities.” Since all this has broken, Rob Ford has denied it, but is probably angry at his buddy Don Cherry for foreshadowing this whole situation when he told a council meeting in 2010 to “put that in your pipe, you left-wing kooks.” We know now that Don Cherry was probably referring to street drugs.

So this is all quite sad and lame, huh? What’s worse is that these drug-dealing blackmailers—who have captivated the attention of the media very quickly—also have a photo of Rob Ford chilling with (who many believe to be) a Toronto drug dealer who died during a gang-related shooting outside of a Toronto club. Now, I don’t really know what your background is, reader, but I do not encounter many crack dealing gangsters in my day-to-day life; because I generally avoid smoking crack. The fact that our King was hanging around crack dealers is a bit fucked up and suspicious—and that’s the beauty of it all.

If you could actually use your brain and flex your critical-thinking muscles for a minute, you’d realize that Rob Ford is currently at the center of the world’s most elaborate antidrug campaign. Think about it, sheeple. What does a man with royal blood have to gain from such a bland position as mayor of Toronto? A man with the intellectual pedigree of Rob Ford and the body of Chris Farley does not require the miserable salary and excruciating hours (which he does not keep, but, whatever) of a mayoral position to maintain his profile or accumulate wealth. This crack-smokin’ hullabaloo is simply an example of performance art, in which we are all part of the audience.

Toronto evidently has a cocaine problem that Rob Ford is trying to expose. By planting himself in a room full of crack-loving drug dealers while some random dude films him on a cell phone and gets Robbie to say crazy, racist shit, Rob Ford has presented the planet with a POV look at what it’s really like to ho your life out for a glass dick. We should be thankful that we all have such an excellent role model like Robbie to show us what pathways to never, ever go down. Because that’s what a mayor is for! If anything, this is just an elaborate callback to the great comedian Marion Barry whom Rob Ford is known to idolize.*

So don’t buy into the tabloid narrative that somehow it’s a bad thing to have a crack-smoking mayor who appears to be totally chill about being filmed while his lips are wrapped around the smoky nozzle of a crack pipe. Those people over at Gawker who are trying to make this into such a big deal don’t know what they’re talking about. Because they’re American. Canadians have much different standards for education, humor, and acceptable crack use in the political arena.

Or maybe King Robbie isn’t so infallible after all. It was all fun and games when he managed to get fired and come back from the dead, or when he was posing for crappy photos inside of sports cars he doesn't own, but now the guy is being secretly filmed doing hard drugs in a sketchy apartment. Perhaps it’s not a joke after all. Maybe King Robbie needs help.*

*Safe assumption.

Follow Patrick on Twitter: @patrickmcguire

Previously:

Rob Ford Has a Terrible Photographer

Rob Ford, the World's Greatest Mayor, Has Conquered His Adversaries

I arrived in Jerusalem on Nakba Day expecting shit to get wild. But the speed with which the demonstration went from zero to fucked shocked even me, a relative veteran of the West Bank protest scene. 

Nakba Day is the bleak mirror image of Israeli Independence Day. Where Israelis celebrate the founding of their state on Independence Day, Nakba (a word that translates as "catastrophe") Day commemorates the 750,000 Palestinians who were forced from their homes when Israel became a state in 1948. Roughly one-third of the refugees and their children (now numbering around 5 million) continue to live in refugee camps 65 years later.

The Israeli government, of course, is not all that happy about large groups of people banding together to shout about the creation of their state being a catastrophe, and Nakba Day demonstrations are often marked by violence. The largest Nakba Day gathering this year was in Jerusalem, although clashes also broke out in Hebron, Bethlehem, and several other points around the West Bank. Luckily, they weren't even comparable to scenes in 2011, when Israeli police shot dead 13 pro-Palestine demonstrators, but that's not to say there wasn't still a disturbing amount of violence.

This year kicked off quietly enough at the Damascus Gate, the main entrance to the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's old city. About 100 Palestinians were gathered, waving flags and chanting. I sat there for about an hour and was just getting bored enough to wander off in search of a falafel when everyone jumped up and started running out to the street. 

A much larger Nakba Day march was headed toward the Damascus Gate and the Palestinian demonstrators were rushing to meet it. The police had been watching calmly until that point, but as soon as the two groups met it was like some high-pitched police whistle had been blown that awoke them from their ennui and immediately made them really angry and unnecessarily violent. 

Cops on horseback, a favorite in Jerusalem, came out of nowhere and began trying to run down everyone in sight—Palestinian, Israeli, international, demonstrator, journalist, passer-by—literally anyone with feet. The fact that the groups had converged right in front of a police station didn't help the situation much, and riot cops were soon swarming the scene like heavily armed fire ants keen to bash up some Palestinian skulls. And that's exactly what they did: beat up and arrest a bunch of Palestinians at random. 

Busloads of Palestinians came in from all over Israel and I chatted to a guy from Nazareth for a while. He told me that his bus had arrived early in the morning so people could pray at al-Aqsa mosque, but that they'd been turned away by Israeli police. "I had a Palestinian flag. They called me a terrorist," he said.

I hung around for a while taking pictures and trying to avoid being run down by the giant, demonic warhorses with weird ankle fringes, until I noticed people shouting at something down the street.

Industrious photographer that I am, I ran as fast as I could to see what was happening, dodging the other rubberneckers to get a better look. I ran out into the middle of the street and came face-to-face with a skunk truck. If you're not aware of what a "skunk truck" is, it's basically a truck that drives around at protests spraying something that smells worse than liquid shit at protesters. Imagine if you left a potato to rot for a year, mashed up that toxic musk with the contents of a curry-festival porta-potty and used the liquid to marinate a charred, decaying horse. You're now maybe halfway to understanding how bad this stuff reeks. 

Watching the spray shoot out of the truck, I tried to skid to a stop. But since the ground was already wet with the muck, I skidded right onto my ass instead. Horrified, it took me a moment to realize that they had switched the skunk out of the skunk truck and replaced it with normal water. Apparently it's fine to spray it all over Palestine, but they can't foul up the beautiful streets of Jerusalem since the smell hangs around for weeks and is impossible to clean. 

The water cannon was directing all its energy at a single middle-aged woman waving a Palestinian flag. I watched it spray her head-on at least ten times while she held her ground and continued waving the flag, apparently completely unfazed. 

A few at a time, the demonstrators managed to make their way around the cops and headed back to Damascus Gate, where the violence intensified even more. People gathered in groups, waving flags and chanting until dozens of police stormed the square, beating and/or arresting everyone they could catch. The demonstrators would run away, forcing the cops to chase them, and then circle back for another round of chanting until the police came back and the cycle started all over again.

At one point, I saw a guy hit a cop with a flag—the flag itself, not the stick it was hanging from, meaning he basically brushed the cop with a cloth. Because of that reprehensible offense, the entire police force went completely ape-shit. Around a dozen cops with machine guns chased the guy down, cornered him, threw him to the ground, and dragged him off screaming.

At one point, a female Palestinian journalist in a hijab was taking pictures of a cop when, without any kind of warning, he grabbed her and hurled her roughly to the ground, looking incredibly proud of himself as he did it. The woman was less than five feet tall and couldn't have weighed a third of what the cop did.

Protesters started to throw stones and glass bottles at the police. The "Palestinian stone-thrower" is often trotted out in pro-Israel media as a terrorist archetype, used to justify all sorts of brutality against demonstrations in the West Bank. But the police were beating people up for at least an hour before I saw the first stone fly, making it appear less an act of terrorism and more an act of improvised (and let's face it, ineffectual) self-defense.

After a couple hours of beatings, arrests, sound bombs, and water cannons, it seemed like things had started to calm down a little. Back at the Damascus Gate, I ran into a friend of mine—a community organizer from Palestinian East Jerusalem.

"What do you think?" I asked her. 

"I'm happy," she said. 

"Even with all the violence?"

"I'm happy because of the violence. This never happens in Jerusalem."

I could see her point. The fact that the police resorted to such extreme measures meant that the demonstration had made an impact. If there hadn't been such a large turnout, there wouldn't have been clashes. The police could have tossed a sound bomb or two and called it a day. But the massive number of demonstrators provoked a heavy-handed police response, which can definitely be seen as a victory from a non-violent-resistance point of view. 

I went off looking for some food when everybody went crazy again. The cops began firing a massive amount of sound bombs, injuring at least one person that I saw. They brought in a second water truck, and with a couple of colleagues, I ended up crouched behind a fruit stand while the truck blasted water at us, three foreign photographers clearly doing nothing dangerous. I got soaked but managed to keep my camera dry, which I'm calling a victory. 

As we finally piled into the car and made our way home, I thought about the Jerusalem Day celebration that I'd covered the week before. For Jerusalem Day, the cops shut down the entire Muslim section of the old city, confining people to their homes to accommodate thousands of flag-waving Israelis marching to the Wailing Wall. But switch out the Israeli flags for Palestinian ones and the response is noticeably different.

Just normal life in Jerusalem. Sixty-five years on and every Palestinian demonstration is still a catastrophe. 

Follow Andy on Twitter: @HanDetenido

More from Israel and Palestine:

Dancing Idiots, Rubber Bullets and Candy Floss at this Year's Passover in Hebron

Israel's Radical Left

One Young Druze Vs. the Entire Israeli Army

You likely already know how overcrowded and abusive the US prison system is, and you probably are also aware that the US has more people in prison than even China or Russia. In this age of privatization, of course, it’s also not surprising that many of the detention centers are not actually operated by the government, but by for-profit companies. So clearly, some people are making lots and lots of money off the booming business of keeping human beings in cages.   

But who are these people?

Using NASDAQ data, I looked through the long list of investors in Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group, the two biggest corporations that operate detention centers in the US, to find out who was cashing in the most on prisons. When we say “prison-industrial complex,” this is who we’re talking about.

Henri Wedell
The individual who’s invested the most in private prisons is Henri Wedell, who started serving on CCA’s board of directors in 2000, when the company was struggling with scandals related to prisoner abuse and mismanagement. He now owns more than 650,000 shares in the company, which is far more successful these days. Those shares are worth more than $25 million.

I called Wedell to ask him what it was like to make a fortune from the incarceration of others, and whether it bothered him to profit off a system that puts more people in prison than any other country in the world.

“America is the freest country in the world,” he told me. “America allows more freedom than any other country in the world, much more than Russia and a whole lot more than Scandinavia, where they really aren’t free. So offering all this freedom to society, there’ll be a certain number of people, more in this country than elsewhere, who take advantage of that freedom, abuse it, and end up in prison. That happens because we are so free in this country.”

Presumably, when he’s referring to all the freedom Americans have, he’s not including the 80,000 inmates in 60 prisons operated by CCA.

George Zoley
Another prison profiteer who presumably has no moral qualms about the business is George Zoley, the CEO of GEO Group and the second-biggest investor in the incarceration industry. In fact, he’s so proud of his business, which has committed a laundry list of human rights abuses, he tried to get a college football stadium named after it.

Zoley made nearly $6 million last year through salary and bonuses alone, but the real money is in stocks—he owns more than 500,000 shares in GEO, and he has made $23 million in stock trades during one 18-month period. But you can’t accuse him of not earning his pay, exactly. GEO saw a 56 percent spike in profits in the first quarter of 2013, and the company’s executives reassured investors that the incarceration rate wouldn’t be dropping any time soon when announcing its earnings. Zoley will be mega rich for years to come.

Jeremy Mindich and Matt Sirovich
Both Wedell and Zoley are big donors to the Republican party, but that doesn’t mean those from the left side of the aisle can’t play their game. Matt Sirovich and Jeremy Mindich both donate to Democratic politicians and are involved with progressive-leaning organizations like Root Capital, a nonprofit lending company that offers loans to farmers in developing countries to alleviate poverty.

Their day job, however, is running Scopia Capital, a hedge fund that is the one of the largest shareholders of GEO Group. The fund owns about $300 million in shares in that company, which represents 12 percent of its entire portfolio. Like Zoley, they are good at what they do—their fund outperformed the market by 20 percentage points, and the State of New Jersey hired Scopia to manage $150 million worth of pensions.

I called them up to ask their thoughts about being politically liberal but heavily invested in private prisons, but Mindich refused to answer any questions and Sirovich was unavailable.

It should be pointed out that while being far to the left politically might seem incompatible with investing in prisons (or managing a hedge fund in the first place), the Democratic party is totally fine with the incarceration rate. Although Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan are largely responsible for the drug-war policies that caused the prison population to skyrocket, Bill Clinton was a “tough on crime” president who continued their ideas. And Vice President Joe Biden was a principal player in the Clinton era’s crime policies—he wrote the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which, among other things, called for $9.7 billion in increased funding for prisons and stiffer penalties for drug offenders.

Though the US prison population is shrinking slightly, the number of inmates in federal lockup is increasing, and while Obama keeps saying he’s ending the war on drugs, he’s also proposed budgets that call for increasing the amount of money spent on the Bureau of Prisons. So it’s not such a stretch that a Democratic donor would also be in the men-in-cages industry.

Retired People and Probably You
The Vanguard Group and Fidelity Investments are America’s top two 401(k) providers. They are also two of the private prison industry’s biggest investors.

Together, they own about 20 percent of both CCA and GEO. That means if you have a 401(k) plan, there’s a good chance you benefit financially from private prisons. And even if you don’t, there are many more mutual funds, brokerage firms, and banks that invest in private prisons—it being a growth industry and all—so if you have money somewhere other than your wallet or your mattress, it’s a good bet you’re involved in some way with companies that are locking up and probably abusing inmates.

This is especially true for government employees like public school teachers because their retirement funds are some of the biggest investors in private prisons. According to NASDAQ data, the retirement funds for public employees and teachers in New York and California together have about $60 million ($30 million each) invested in CCA and GEO. Teacher retirement funds in Texas and Kentucky have $8.3 million and $4 million invested in prisons respectively, and public employees in Florida ($10.3 million), Ohio ($8.6 million), Texas ($5.6 million), Arizona ($5.3 million), and Colorado ($2.25 million) are also connected to the industry. Except for New York, which has only one privately run detention facility, each of these states has several prisons run by CCA and GEO Group facilities. And it’s not just Americans who have ties to prisons. Foreign investors have money in them as well, including the pension fund for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which recently sold off its $5.1 million worth of GEO Group stock.

Most of these employees are probably unaware that their pensions are tied to prisons—and it’s hard to say that these are “bad” investments from a purely capitalistic perspective, since these prisons are making money hand over fist. The private prison industry is entrenched in our society. And the only way to make sure that we’re not individually and collectively profiting off of it is to close these things.  

Follow Ray on Twitter: @RayDowns

More on prisons:

Prisons I’ve Known and Yelped

Don’t Get Caught

Why Can’t We Cane Criminals?

Staggering around the Victorian suburb of Coburg one night, I noticed a gigantic house with impractical high ceilings, a gated entrance and the tail end of a Beemer visible through the links of a fence. The roof sloped both ways and the house vibrated importance into the neighbourhood. None of the other houses had been built too close to it and it looked like it owned that corner of the street – like it might have been a place of gathering once. It was a dark and I was a bit drunk. That’s a weird house, I said to my girlfriend. Yeah, she replied, it used to be a church. This astounded me. I never even really considered that this could be possible, that the Church would sell their churches and that people would move into them – these things are institutions and have all sorts of weird vibes; people aren’t meant to live in them. I’d never seen a church-house in Canada. It’s not a particularly religious country compared to, you know, Pakistan, but still – you didn’t live in a church. 

Follow Adnan on Twitter: @whotookadnan

For more gay marriage:

The Red Marriage Equality Sign on your Facebook Profile is Completely Useless

After Gay Marriage, Why Not Polygamy?

Fact: Gay Marriage Kills Babies

I’m sure by now you’ve seen that video that Los Angeles-based writer Greg Karber made where he hands out a buch of Abercrombie gear to homeless people. It’s embedded above if you haven't.

Karber made the video in response to that stuff that Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries said about their “no women’s clothing above a size 10” policy. Essentially, Jefferies only wants “thin and beautiful people” shopping at his stores, because he doesn’t want the “cool kids” to have to endure the horror of seeing a fat person wearing the same outfit as them. I think we can all agree that the most shocking part of Mike’s statements is that they reveal there’s a person out there who thinks that the cool kids are wearing Abercrombie.

Photo via

Karber handed out A&F clothing to, as far as I can tell from the video, a fairly bewildered homeless population on Los Angeles’s Skid Row. His goal was to “rebrand” Abercrombie & Fitch by putting their clothing not on the cool kids that Mike Jeffries so loves, but on the homeless, who, I guess, are the opposite of cool.

Now, if you only think about it for a few seconds, it would appear that this is a great campaign. Karber wanted to make a point about Abercrombie & Fitch and to “clothe the homeless,” in his words, while doing it. Unfortunately, “Fitch the Homeless,” as Karber dubbed his campaign, is fucking stupid. For one thing, Karber doesn't appear to ask these people if they want Abercrombie & Fitch clothing, or if he did ask them, he cut those parts from the video for some reason. He just sort of dumps polo shirts and A&F brand tees onto the residents of Skid Row, as if they were pack mules and he were a sherpa venturing into the mountains to deliver striped rugby shirts to a monastery.

Perhaps Karber realized that homeless people make great props for your viral video. You can dress them up any way you want, bribe them with free stuff, and the worst that can happen is maybe they bite you, but they don’t brush their teeth, so it’s doubtful they’d break skin. It’s just too damn easy to use a homeless person to elicit sympathy from gullible viewers, so why not? We have no idea if these individuals are even in need of clothing, or if the clothes given to them would fit, and yet that is hardly the reason this video exists. It’s a   prank that uses the most abundant scenery in Los Angeles, which is dirty people. Also, Karber himself says several times that Abercrombie & Fitch clothing looks “douchey,” which it does. By his own logic, why would the homeless want it?

The “Fitch the Homeless” campaign centers on the idea that homeless people are dirty or gross: the anticool kids. Karber’s thesis seems to be “Mike Jeffries would be so mad if homeless people wore Abercrombie & Fitch, because the homeless are lowly and disgusting. This’ll show that crusty old CEO!”

Photo via

Karber’s video has gone viral, receiving over 2 million views in just two days. He’s already appeared on several talk shows. On Twitter, the hashtag #FitchTheHomeless is thriving. That’s because at the end of Karber’s video, he called for others to raid their closets and give all their Abercrombie & Fitch clothes to the homeless, as he had done. Many people have tweeted about what a good idea this is, how this really sticks it to Abercrombie & Fitch and helps the homeless in the process, so it may be too late to say this, but please don’t “Fitch the Homeless.” This is all just some cheeseball stunt perpetrated by a guy who really wants attention and saw an opportunity to get it. Yes, it seems clever, but making fart noises with your armpits in seventh grade seemed clever, too.

@AllegraRingo

More on people without homes:

How to Best Handle Being a Homeless Person  

Going Underground with the Homeless of Ulan Bator 

You Do Have To Live Like A Refugee  

Once upon a time, long before Angelina Jolie got a mastectomy, she adopted a Cambodian child. As a result, privileged Westerners of all nationalities flocked to the country's orphanages in the hope of simultaneously nurturing a child and their own sense of self-worth.

In 2012 alone, Cambodia was visited by 3.5 million tourists, so I guess someone was eventually bound to put two and two together and realize that the hundreds of orphanages throughout the country could be exploited into becoming a tourist attraction for the growing number of foreign visitors.

The country's orphanage boom began in the early 70s, when Pol Pot marauded around the country, intentionally splitting up villages, slaughtering families, and imprisoning the educated populace in an attempt to win the civil war. The tactic worked for Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime, but left thousands of children displaced, so NGOs came flooding in to salvage the situation by building orphanages all over the country.

Thirty years later, Cambodia now boasts more than 500 orphanages—a figure that has doubled in the last decade, presumably because the large donations they receive are a much easier way to make money than actually working. Sadly, that nifty little ruse seems to have become public knowledge, and the exploitation of Cambodia's orphans has turned into a booming, multimillion dollar industry.

Dr. Setan Lee, a Cambodian who lived through the Khmer Rouge era, has watched the spread of corruption through his country's orphanages. There are Westerners who come to Cambodia under the pretence of helping orphans, Lee told me, but "literally all they're doing is fulfilling their own lusty lifestyles" by siphoning off the donations intended for the children into their own pockets.

Image via

Foster schemes and effective family planning are arguably much better alternatives to orphanages, but unfortunately neither of them exist to a sufficient extent in Cambodia, largely due to the country's poor economy. According to Tara Winkler, founder of Cambodia’s Children’s Trust (CCT), it's that same economy and "lack of alternative support" that's making parents "feel forced to send their children away" to orphanages.

Tara continued, saying that there's a common perception among Cambodian parents that, if they send their children to orphanages, they will be provided "an education, access to medical care, and better nutrition.” That perception now means that orphanages are no longer comprised of just orphans, but also children from poor families.

In fact, according to a 2011 UNICEF study, an estimated three out four children in Cambodia's orphanages still have one living parent. That clearly seems to be dodging the definition of "orphan" a little, but those in charge couldn't care less about stuff like definitions or, say, morality, because the more children in their care, the more donations they receive to pillage for their own ends. A well-intended scheme that has now become a loophole for the corrupt, with some orphanages even offering small sums of money to parents in exchange for their children.

A number of unlicensed orphanages are now popping up around Cambodia and starting to reel the kids in. They are all, Tara told me, “operating without official registration and without essential documentation, like child protection policies.” So we can only guess what goes on behind closed doors, but Tara is certain that whatever it is, it's deeply corrupt in some shape or form. Dr. Lee goes one step further, claiming that the children in these unlicensed orphanages are being "forced to do labor in jobs that they don't want to do.” It's Oliver Twist, only with exploitative, morally corrupt caretakers who ruin lives, rather than charismatic weirdos who teach you how to pickpocket.

Children in these orphanages are rarely given an education, instead being put to work until the tourists come to visit, when they're wheeled out as bait for donations. Unsurprisingly, little of those donations end up being spent on their care. And it's not only the physical toll on these children that's worrisome, but the damaging emotional effects that come with your parents handing you over to a workhouse where you're forced to live in worse conditions than you were at home.  



Image via

Tara works with many children and families in Battambang, a region in northwest Cambodia, and her observations of the children’s feelings sum up the issue pretty concisely: “Imagine being one in 100," she says. "Imagine not really understanding why you’ve been taken away from your family, and imagine how it would feel to miss your family and siblings, knowing they’re only a few minutes down the road.”



Tara went on to warn that children being turned into “moneymaking tourist attractions” isn't even the most serious issue currently plaguing Cambodia's orphanages. Sexual abuse is rife, and according to Dr. Lee, Western child abusers travel to Cambodia to work in its orphanages just so they can gain easy, unsupervised access to the children in care.

In 2007, Tara’s organization, CCT, rescued 14 children from an orphanage named Sprouting Knowledge Orphans, where the director had been sexually and physically abusing the children in his care. The children, Tara told me, were “provided with so little food that they were forced to catch mice and rats to survive.” Working in the country for the last six years, Tara assures me that cases like that are endemic in Cambodia's orphanages.

Earlier this year, an Australian-run orphanage was closed down amid accusations of child abuse and child trafficking. The orphanage in question—the ominously named Love in Action—had "rescued" 21 children from the streets of Phnom Penh and, like many others, was unregistered. A week later, a director of another institution in the city of Siem Reap was arrested for sexually abusing two girls, one 11 years old, the other 12. His orphanage remains open, but is expected to be shut down.

Although the likely closing of the orphanage seems like a good thing, when orphanages are shut down—or when children escape or grow too old to stay—they're forced out onto the streets with no family or support. They're vulnerable and susceptible to becoming tied up in work that's nowhere near suitable for children.

Young girls often end up offering themselves to geriatric sex tourists in small, dirty bars, and others—according to Dr. Lee—flock to factories to get work because they don't have the education required to apply for any other jobs. And while it may beat sex work, life as a factory worker in Cambodia still isn't that desirable—you're basically guaranteed malnourishment, exceptionally low wages, and only about four days off a month.

It took the Cambodian government 20 years to establish a tribunal system to punish the Khmer Rouge members guilty of genocide in the late 70s, so it's unlikely that they're going to step in and put a stop to the orphanage exploitation any time soon. Accentuating that problem, Dr. Lee tells me that a quick "$750 or $1,500 will keep [the authorities'] mouths shut, so even though these people should be sent to prison, it's very hard to do anything because the government is so corrupt."    



That said, the government has promised an investigation and, if necessary, raids into the offending orphanages. However, there's no real sign of that being carried out any time soon. The most realistic aim, according to both Tara and Dr. Lee, is trying to keep children with their parents, but that's far easier said than done in a culture where those parents genuinely believe that orphanages will provide their kids better prospects than they can offer themselves.

Of course, the legitimate, licensed orphanages still doing things the right way may well be able to offer these kids the futures they deserve. So perhaps it's time to start paying a little more attention to where exactly the donations are going.

Follow Sascha on Twitter: @SaschaKouvelis

More from Cambodia:

The Walkabout Is Cambodia's Sleaziest Bar

A Holiday Ends in Cambodia

Cambodia Fashion Week

Standing in the Athens police headquarters, interviewing the director of the drug unit, I realized I had a bag of chemically enhanced crystal meth in my pocket. I’d bought it the night before from a Greek homeless man and had forgotten to throw it away. After the interview, I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette, which is when some officers noticed the film crew I had brought along, who were recording from a distance. 

Minutes later the cops dragged us into a holding room, the little packet of drugs still stuffed in my pants. They made some calls, glared at us, and eventually, reluctantly, released us—without ever searching me, thankfully. On my way out, I threw the baggie into the first garbage can I passed.

Several Greek police stations have been firebombed in recent months, so the cops have reason to be nervous, especially when they notice that they are being filmed. On our first evening in Athens, a different group of officers approached us and, after spotting our film crew down the street, demanded to see our papers. They deleted our footage and detained us for a couple of hours, until we’d managed to get our passports delivered to the station. Greece is a paranoid place at the moment. The police, fascists, anarchists, dealers, and drug users are all fighting for local supremacy and no one trusts anyone else. 

The night before our close call at the Athens police headquarters, I was approached by a group of homeless people, one of whom was smoking some horrible-smelling stuff through what appeared to be a meth bowl made from an old lightbulb. Although I don’t speak Greek, I managed to let him know that I wanted to buy some of the drug, colloquially known as sisa. The homeless guy wandered off with my five-euro note, and afterward an old man grabbed my arm and shouted, “No, no take! Very bad.” I wasn’t going to smoke it, but I was very curious about Greece’s infamous new drug. 

In 2012, Charalampos Poulopoulos, director of KETHEA, a government-funded antidrug, rehabilitation organization, authored a research paper titled “Economic Crisis in Greece: Risks and Challenges for Drug Policy and Strategy” for the journal Drugs and Alcohol Today. In it, he detailed the ways the Greek economic disaster has exacerbated drug use in the country, claiming that “rates of drug and alcohol consumption... as well as the associated mental-health problems are set to rise the longer the recession continues.” At its essence, the report provides data for the obvious: the instability that results from widespread and increasing nationwide poverty leads to hopelessness, health problems, and self-medication by way of street drugs. 

“In the last two years drug users have become more self-destructive,” Charalampos wrote. “Especially in the region of Athens where the effects of economic crisis are more obvious.” According to him, it was around this time that sisa emerged on the market.

The basic ingredient of sisa is methamphetamine. Addicts have reported that it can also contain filler ingredients like battery acid, engine oil, shampoo, and cooking salt. “There is no official data on that,” Charalampos told me. “The General Chemical State Laboratory of Greece hasn’t gotten enough samples to reach any conclusions yet.” 

Whatever’s in it, in many ways sisa is the epitome of an austerity drug. The majority of its users are poor, often homeless, city dwellers reeling from the psychological and physical impacts of a country in the grip of total economic collapse. In a country so broke that upper-middle-class families reportedly ate their Christmas dinners in unheated homes so they could afford a turkey, many users’ habits have become unsustainable. Addicts who’ve been priced out of using smack, crack, and meth have turned to sisa, which costs as little as two euros a hit.

As with most cheap highs, sisa comes with some nasty side effects, including “insomnia, delusions, heart attacks, and aggressiveness,” according to Charalampos. “It’s often compared with cocaine,” he said, though it acts faster, and the effects last longer than coke. “It’s the drug of the streets, produced in home-based laboratories.” 

Sisa is the latest grim example in a global trend toward mass-produced synthetic drugs, from the skin-eating opiate cocktail krokodil in Siberia to South Africa’s new fascination with getting high from souped-up anti-AIDS meds to the bath-salts craze in America and the UK. These are cheap, DIY highs, so it’s no wonder that in poverty-stricken Greece, sisa has found a natural home. 

Kapodistriou Street, a long road in the center of Athens, where sisa users congregate.

The day we arrived in Athens, we approached a man as we walked through Exarcheia, a district that’s traditionally been home to anarchists and is now known for its high concentration of addicts. The man was glaring at the sky, shouting. I thought he was screaming at God, but it turned out he was just yelling about a broken traffic light. Cars swept past, their drivers giving him no opportunity to beg at their windows. He was inconsolable, flitting between rage and tears, but after I bought him an orange juice, he chilled out, said his name was Konstantinos, and told me all about sisa. 

“The cocaine of the poor! It’s the cocaine of the poor!” he shouted. He said that people he knew who smoked too much were losing limbs. “If you smoke it for six months, you’ll be dead,” he said. He claimed that he wasn’t a user, but the next day I bumped into him again, and he beckoned for me to follow, squatted behind a car, and smoked a pipe full of sisa. It was the middle of the afternoon.

 Sisa has become something of an urban legend in Athens; everyone knows it exists, but no one knows exactly what it is. The only people with any real understanding of it are its users, the police who bust them, and the dealers who fuel the epidemic. The rest of the country is too busy trying to ignore the country’s 58 percent youth-unemployment rate, the rise of the far right and the extreme left, an increasingly ineffective legal system, a political class reduced to selling the nation’s islands, and the European Union’s demands for austerity measures that may or may not be working. As such, reports about sisa in the Greek media have been rare.

“We found out about sisa from a paper by the European Center of Disease Prevention in November,” said Dani Vergou, the health editor of the newspaper Efsyn. Sisa was a mystery to her. She’d heard rumors, but “there’s not much research from the Greek authorities or the Ministry of Health. It just sounds dangerous.” 

In the streets, though, people know all about it. On Kapodistriou Street, one of the most popular junkie hangouts in Athens, I met Kostas, Stathis, and Panagiotis—chronically homeless addicts who have been trying to kick sisa, without much success. 

“There’s three ways you can take sisa,” said Stathis, who’s in his 40s. “With a pipe, with a syringe, or with a piece of aluminum, and I’ve seen people snorting it as well. But let me say that if you shoot it, you don’t have long to live. It destroys all vital organs from the inside.” I asked him if he knew of anyone who had died from taking it.

“Many,” Stathis said. “I know too many. For some, their innards rotted… It might give you other sorts of sicknesses, it might hit your liver, your heart, kidneys... anywhere.” 

A bag of sisa we bought for $6.50. We suspect we were ripped off.  

The three of them spoke darkly about sisa. “When I had it for the first time, it freaked me out,” Panagiotis said. “I didn’t like it. It tensed me up, I didn’t feel good at all.”

“It melts you,” Kostos said. “It hits others in their nervous system. It creates wounds on the body that don’t heal, they never close. It starts like a pimple and instead of healing, it grows. Even the user’s face is full of holes.” 

“You see 50- to 60-year-old guys addicted to sisa. Men, women, wherever you look, sisa,” Panagiotis bleakly added. “Everywhere in Athens: alleys, squares, smoking all day long and looking for more sisa. You don’t hear about heroin anymore, or weed or pills. This is because sisa is a cheap drug… For me sisa is the drug that will destroy Greece.”

Later the trio took us to the Off Club, a day center for sisa addicts, where the attendants handed us zine-like comic books about the dangers of the drug. The club is located just off Exarcheia Square, which is cluttered with coffee shops, bars, gangs, teens, immigrants, and others on society’s margins. Near the square is the enormous building that houses Athens Polytechnic, one of Greece’s most prestigious universities, and where, in 1973, the military sent tanks to break up an antigovernment protest, resulting in 24 deaths. The police don’t patrol around here much; instead they stay in their riot vans on the square’s outskirts, smoking cigarettes, submachine guns hanging from their shoulders. A few anarchists I met harbor a conspiracy theory that the police themselves are behind the influx of sisa into the neighborhood.

In a nearby bar, we met a notorious young anarchist who we’ll call Alcander. In 2008, during the anarchist riots, he allegedly manufactured gasoline bombs and handed them out en masse. Two years ago, Alcander noticed that homeless drug addicts were acting differently; then he had the shit kicked out of him by a group of people he claimed were users. He said that he directly blames sisa for their wanton aggression, and the way he spoke about the drug made it sound demonic. “How can I tell if someone’s a sisa user? It’s easy—they’re unbalanced, unstable, like a psychopath. They have crazy eyes, are talking to themselves, and they are very aggressive. I think sisa is the worst drug in the world.”

I asked him why he thought local police officers were behind the distribution of the potentially fatal narcotic. “Some of [the users] came to us and said that the police told them to go to Exarcheia. They said, ‘We cannot do it anywhere else, they send us away from all the other territories, all the other squares. They said go to Exarcheia.’” 

“So you believe it’s political?” I asked. 

“Yeah, this whole social movement is starting to rise up, and they want to have an excuse to come in as a savior for the residents... They’ve done it before, like two decades ago with heroin.”

Greek anarchists have already begun fighting back against the sisa epidemic by coordinating attacks on dealers and users in an attempt to clean up their neighborhoods. “We want the children to play in Exarcheia Square and not have to worry about drug dealing,” Alcander said. Their goal doesn’t seem like it will be met any time soon, however. Users are scattered throughout the city and, presumably, other parts of the country. And over the course of our visit, sisa dealers appeared out of nowhere to sell their wares before charging off just as abruptly. 

According to Alcander, some women in the area have been raped by sisa addicts. However, this could be a rumor inspired by the idea that sisa fuels sexual appetites—a description that some addicts agree with. Konstantinos said that after he smokes sisa, he usually ends up having wild, violent sex. And he wasn’t bragging; he looked upset about it.

A sisa user smoking his pipe on Kapodistriou Street.

As recently as 2009, it was a rarity to see homeless people in Athens. But since then, homelessness in Greece has gone up 25 percent, according to Greek activists, and today, a drive through the city feels like touring a never-ending Skid Row. The police have even started throwing the homeless in the back of vans and driving them out of Athens to Amigdaleza, an immigrant detention center, in an effort they’ve dubbed Operation Thetis, after Achilles’s mother. The word thetiko, taken from her name, means “positive,” but in the minds of the homeless people it targets and those who work with them, it’s nothing short of fascistic. 

“This is crazy policing,” said Charalambos. “It pushes people with the problems to the margins, and toward criminal behavior.” While we were in Greece, the homeless people we spoke to claimed that at least twice a day, the police were conducting sweeps through the center of Athens to round up the homeless and drug addicts.

“We don’t know where they’re taking them or what they’re doing it for,” said one social worker, as I accompanied her on her nightly tours of addict hot spots. “It’s a mystery.” She was being coy; it was obvious what she thought the police were doing: cleansing the streets of undesirables. 

A couple days later, we visited Kannigos Square, where prostitutes, addicts, and drug dealers (who, we’d been warned, were often armed) congregated. The atmosphere was tense: earlier that day, about 20 uniformed policemen had rounded up the homeless situated throughout the square and loaded them into three large buses. When we arrived, plainclothes cops were still milling around a crowd of tweaked-out sisa and heroin users. 

The sergeant who had detained us and deleted our footage when we arrived in Athens was also there, so we hid our cameras and approached his colleagues. They told to us inquire at the local headquarters, which is how I ended up accidentally bringing sisa into a Greek police station, where I met George Kastanis, the director of the Athens narcotics division. He said that he thinks sisa originated in Africa and Asia, and although he told me he was increasingly worried about its popularity, he didn’t believe the drug was turning users into violent maniacs and rapists, which matched up with my own impressions—very few of the addicts I met had showed any signs of aggression. When I asked George about Operation Thetis, he told me that it had been enacted only once. 

“But I saw something this morning that looked a lot like a sweep of the streets. Was that Thetis?” I asked. 

“No. It’s something completely different,” George answered, adding that these detainees are taken to police stations where the cops check for outstanding warrants against them, and that most of the time, they’re set free after an hour and a half. When I asked him whether he believed schemes like Operation Thetis were useful, he looked as though the question made him uncomfortable and said, “I’m a policeman—I follow orders.”

The follwing day, before returning home, we bumped into Konstantinos again and took him to a bakery to get him some lunch. We stood in the sun, eating small, honey-covered balls of dough, while Konstantinos tried to explain something in broken English. He kept running his finger across his neck to clarify his point, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. He was a nice guy, the son of a prostitute who said he’d always been surrounded by drugs, whose quality of life had become immeasurably worse since Greece’s financial collapse. We gave him prints of some photos he’d asked for earlier, and he left smiling, saying he loved us. 

“You know what he was trying to tell you before?” my translator asked me later. “That he loved you, but if you’d approached him in English that day underneath the traffic light, he would have got his sisa dealers to kill you for your cameras.” 

Watch our new documentary, Sisa: Cocaine of the Poor, now on VICE.com

Read more about drugs:

Internet Psychonauts Try All the Drugs You Don't Want To

New Frontiers of Sobriety

We Can't Get High Like We Used To

NEWS

AUSTERITY'S DRUG OF CHOICE

Sisa Is Destroying the Lives of Athens’s Homeless People

By Alex Miller

A meeting with an anarchist in Exarcheia, a district of Athens. Photos by Henry Langston.

Standing in the Athens police headquarters, interviewing the director of the drug unit, I realised I had a bag of chemically enhanced crystal meth in my pocket. I’d bought it the night before from a Greek homeless man and had forgotten to throw it away. After the interview, I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette, which is when some officers noticed the film crew I had brought along, who were recording from a distance. 

Minutes later the cops dragged us into a holding room, the little packet of drugs still stuffed in my pants. They made some calls, glared at us and eventually, reluctantly, released us – without ever searching me, thankfully. On my way out, I threw the baggie into the first garbage can I passed.

Several Greek police stations have been firebombed in recent months, so the cops have reason to be nervous, especially when they notice that they are being filmed. On our first evening in Athens, a different group of officers approached us and, after spotting our film crew down the street, demanded to see our papers. They deleted our footage and detained us for a couple of hours, until we’d managed to get our passports delivered to the station. Greece is a paranoid place at the moment. The police, fascists, anarchists, dealers and drug users are all fighting for local supremacy and no one trusts anyone else. 

The night before our close call at the Athens police headquarters, I was approached by a group of homeless people, one of whom was smoking some horrible-smelling stuff through what appeared to be a meth bowl made from an old lightbulb. Although I don’t speak Greek, I managed to let him know that I wanted to buy some of the drug, colloquially known as sisa. The homeless guy wandered off with my five-euro note, and afterward an old man grabbed my arm and shouted, “No, no take! Very bad.” I wasn’t going to smoke it, but I was very curious about Greece’s infamous new drug. 

In 2012, Charalampos Poulopoulos, director of KETHEA, a government-funded antidrug, rehabilitation organisation, authored a research paper titled “Economic Crisis in Greece: Risks and Challenges for Drug Policy and Strategy” for the journal Drugs and Alcohol Today. In it, he detailed the ways the Greek economic disaster has exacerbated drug use in the country, claiming that “rates of drug and alcohol consumption... as well as the associated mental-health problems are set to rise the longer the recession continues.” At its essence, the report provides data for the obvious: the instability that results from widespread and increasing nationwide poverty leads to hopelessness, health problems, and self-medication by way of street drugs. 

“In the last two years drug users have become more self-destructive,” Charalampos wrote. “Especially in the region of Athens where the effects of economic crisis are more obvious.” According to him, it was around this time that sisa emerged on the market.

The basic ingredient of sisa is methamphetamine. Addicts have reported that it can also contain filler ingredients like battery acid, engine oil, shampoo and cooking salt. “There is no official data on that,” Charalampos told me. “The General Chemical State Laboratory of Greece hasn’t gotten enough samples to reach any conclusions yet.” 

Whatever’s in it, in many ways sisa is the epitome of an austerity drug. The majority of its users are poor, often homeless, city dwellers reeling from the psychological and physical impacts of a country in the grip of total economic collapse. In a country so broke that upper-middle-class families reportedly ate their Christmas dinners in unheated homes so they could afford a turkey, many users’ habits have become unsustainable. Addicts who’ve been priced out of using smack, crack, and meth have turned to sisa, which costs as little as two euros a hit.

As with most cheap highs, sisa comes with some nasty side effects, including “insomnia, delusions, heart attacks and aggressiveness,” according to Charalampos. “It’s often compared with cocaine,” he said, though it acts faster, and the effects last longer than coke. “It’s the drug of the streets, produced in home-based laboratories.” 

Sisa is the latest grim example in a global trend toward mass-produced synthetic drugs, from the skin-eating opiate cocktail krokodil in Siberia to South Africa’s new fascination with getting high from souped-up anti-AIDS meds to the bath-salts craze in America and the UK. These are cheap, DIY highs, so it’s no wonder that in poverty-stricken Greece, sisa has found a natural home. 

Kapodistriou Street, a long road in the center of Athens, where sisa users congregate.

The day we arrived in Athens, we approached a man as we walked through Exarcheia, a district that’s traditionally been home to anarchists and is now known for its high concentration of addicts. The man was glaring at the sky, shouting. I thought he was screaming at God, but it turned out he was just yelling about a broken traffic light. Cars swept past, their drivers giving him no opportunity to beg at their windows. He was inconsolable, flitting between rage and tears, but after I bought him an orange juice, he chilled out, said his name was Konstantinos and told me all about sisa. 

“The cocaine of the poor! It’s the cocaine of the poor!” he shouted. He said that people he knew who smoked too much were losing limbs. “If you smoke it for six months, you’ll be dead,” he said. He claimed that he wasn’t a user, but the next day I bumped into him again and he beckoned for me to follow, squatted behind a car and smoked a pipe full of sisa. It was the middle of the afternoon.

Sisa has become something of an urban legend in Athens; everyone knows it exists, but no one knows exactly what it is. The only people with any real understanding of it are its users, the police who bust them and the dealers who fuel the epidemic. The rest of the country is too busy trying to ignore the country’s 58 percent youth-unemployment rate, the rise of the far right and the extreme left, an increasingly ineffective legal system, a political class reduced to selling the nation’s islands and the European Union’s demands for austerity measures that may or may not be working. As such, reports about sisa in the Greek media have been rare.

“We found out about sisa from a paper by the European Center of Disease Prevention in November,” said Dani Vergou, the health editor of the newspaper Efsyn. Sisa was a mystery to her. She’d heard rumours, but “there’s not much research from the Greek authorities or the Ministry of Health. It just sounds dangerous.” 

In the streets, though, people know all about it. On Kapodistriou Street, one of the most popular junkie hangouts in Athens, I met Kostas, Stathis and Panagiotis – chronically homeless addicts who have been trying to kick sisa, without much success. 

“There’s three ways you can take sisa,” said Stathis, who’s in his 40s. “With a pipe, with a syringe or with a piece of aluminum, and I’ve seen people snorting it as well. But let me say that if you shoot it, you don’t have long to live. It destroys all vital organs from the inside.” I asked him if he knew of anyone who had died from taking it.

“Many,” Stathis said. “I know too many. For some, their innards rotted… It might give you other sorts of sicknesses, it might hit your liver, your heart, kidneys... anywhere.” 

A bag of sisa we bought for $6.50. We suspect we were ripped off.  

The three of them spoke darkly about sisa. “When I had it for the first time, it freaked me out,” Panagiotis said. “I didn’t like it. It tensed me up, I didn’t feel good at all.”

“It melts you,” Kostas said. “It hits others in their nervous system. It creates wounds on the body that don’t heal, they never close. It starts like a pimple and instead of healing, it grows. Even the user’s face is full of holes.” 

“You see 50- to 60-year-old guys addicted to sisa. Men, women, wherever you look, sisa,” Panagiotis bleakly added. “Everywhere in Athens: alleys, squares, smoking all day long and looking for more sisa. You don’t hear about heroin anymore, or weed or pills. This is because sisa is a cheap drug… For me sisa is the drug that will destroy Greece.”

Later the trio took us to the Off Club, a day center for sisa addicts, where the attendants handed us zine-like comic books about the dangers of the drug. The club is located just off Exarcheia Square, which is cluttered with coffee shops, bars, gangs, teens, immigrants and others on society’s margins. Near the square is the enormous building that houses Athens Polytechnic, one of Greece’s most prestigious universities, and where, in 1973, the military sent tanks to break up an antigovernment protest, resulting in 24 deaths. The police don’t patrol around here much; instead they stay in their riot vans on the square’s outskirts, smoking cigarettes, submachine guns hanging from their shoulders. A few anarchists I met harbour a conspiracy theory that the police themselves are behind the influx of sisa into the neighbourhood.

In a nearby bar, we met a notorious young anarchist who we’ll call Alcander. In 2008, during the anarchist riots, he allegedly manufactured gasoline bombs and handed them out en masse. Two years ago, Alcander noticed that homeless drug addicts were acting differently; then he had the shit kicked out of him by a group of people he claimed were users. He said that he directly blames sisa for their wanton aggression, and the way he spoke about the drug made it sound demonic. “How can I tell if someone’s a sisa user? It’s easy – they’re unbalanced, unstable, like a psychopath. They have crazy eyes, are talking to themselves and they are very aggressive. I think sisa is the worst drug in the world.”

I asked him why he thought local police officers were behind the distribution of the potentially fatal narcotic. “Some of [the users] came to us and said that the police told them to go to Exarcheia. They said, ‘We cannot do it anywhere else, they send us away from all the other territories, all the other squares. They said go to Exarcheia.’” 

“So you believe it’s political?” I asked. 

“Yeah, this whole social movement is starting to rise up, and they want to have an excuse to come in as a savior for the residents... They’ve done it before, like two decades ago with heroin.”

Greek anarchists have already begun fighting back against the sisa epidemic by coordinating attacks on dealers and users in an attempt to clean up their neighbourhoods. “We want the children to play in Exarcheia Square and not have to worry about drug dealing,” Alcander said. Their goal doesn’t seem like it will be met any time soon, however. Users are scattered throughout the city and, presumably, other parts of the country. And over the course of our visit, sisa dealers appeared out of nowhere to sell their wares before charging off just as abruptly. 

According to Alcander, some women in the area have been raped by sisa addicts. However, this could be a rumour inspired by the idea that sisa fuels sexual appetites – a description that some addicts agree with. Konstantinos said that after he smokes sisa, he usually ends up having wild, violent sex. And he wasn’t bragging; he looked upset about it.

A sisa user smoking his pipe on Kapodistriou Street.

As recently as 2009, it was a rarity to see homeless people in Athens. But since then, homelessness in Greece has gone up 25 percent, according to Greek activists, and today, a drive through the city feels like touring a never-ending Skid Row. The police have even started throwing the homeless in the back of vans and driving them out of Athens to Amigdaleza, an immigrant detention center, in an effort they’ve dubbed Operation Thetis, after Achilles’s mother. The word thetiko, taken from her name, means “positive”, but in the minds of the homeless people it targets and those who work with them, it’s nothing short of fascistic. 

“This is crazy policing,” said Charalambos. “It pushes people with the problems to the margins, and toward criminal behaviour.” While we were in Greece, the homeless people we spoke to claimed that at least twice a day, the police were conducting sweeps through the center of Athens to round up the homeless and drug addicts.

“We don’t know where they’re taking them or what they’re doing it for,” said one social worker, as I accompanied her on her nightly tours of addict hot spots. “It’s a mystery.” She was being coy; it was obvious what she thought the police were doing: cleansing the streets of undesirables. 

A couple days later, we visited Kannigos Square, where prostitutes, addicts and drug dealers (who, we’d been warned, were often armed) congregated. The atmosphere was tense: earlier that day, about 20 uniformed policemen had rounded up the homeless situated throughout the square and loaded them into three large buses. When we arrived, plainclothes cops were still milling around a crowd of tweaked-out sisa and heroin users. 

The sergeant who had detained us and deleted our footage when we arrived in Athens was also there, so we hid our cameras and approached his colleagues. They told to us inquire at the local headquarters, which is how I ended up accidentally bringing sisa into a Greek police station, where I met George Kastanis, the director of the Athens narcotics division. He said that he thinks sisa originated in Africa and Asia, and although he told me he was increasingly worried about its popularity, he didn’t believe the drug was turning users into violent maniacs and rapists, which matched up with my own impressions – very few of the addicts I met had showed any signs of aggression. When I asked George about Operation Thetis, he told me that it had been enacted only once. 

“But I saw something this morning that looked a lot like a sweep of the streets. Was that Thetis?” I asked. 

“No. It’s something completely different,” George answered, adding that these detainees are taken to police stations where the cops check for outstanding warrants against them, and that most of the time, they’re set free after an hour and a half. When I asked him whether he believed schemes like Operation Thetis were useful, he looked as though the question made him uncomfortable and said, “I’m a policeman – I follow orders.”

The follwing day, before returning home, we bumped into Konstantinos again and took him to a bakery to get him some lunch. We stood in the sun, eating small, honey-covered balls of dough, while Konstantinos tried to explain something in broken English. He kept running his finger across his neck to clarify his point, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. He was a nice guy, the son of a prostitute who said he’d always been surrounded by drugs, whose quality of life had become immeasurably worse since Greece’s financial collapse. We gave him prints of some photos he’d asked for earlier, and he left smiling, saying he loved us. 

“You know what he was trying to tell you before?” my translator asked me later. “That he loved you, but if you’d approached him in English that day underneath the traffic light, he would have got his sisa dealers to kill you for your cameras.” 

Watch our new documentary, Sisa: Cocaine of the Poor, now on VICE.com

Read more about drugs on VICE:

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Back in 1990, Robert Kosilek (pictured above) killed his wife, Cheryl. He strangled her to death after she poured boiling tea on him. The details are pretty gruesome; Kosilek used a wire. He nearly decapitated her. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Kosilek is currently incarcerated in a Massachusetts prison, where he became she; Kosilek is now living as a woman “to the extent possible.” According to her lawyer, Frances Cohen, who I spoke to at some length last week, the "extent possible" translates to Kosilek growing her hair long and legally changing her name to Michelle.

Michelle is currently embroiled in a legal battle, which—after dragging on for years—has now reached the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit—the judiciary tier right below the US Supreme Court. It's an interesting case and, because of its subject matter, has become national news. The two sides of the coin are equally compelling: On one side, you have the human rights of a prisoner. On the other, you have an individual who has severely violated that same code of morality.

Kosilek has sued the Massachusetts Department of Correction (DOC), saying that the agency must pay for sexual-reasignment surgery—the removal of the penis and the construction of female genitals—because she suffers from gender identity disorder. Denying medical treatment, Cohen tells me, violates the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution, which bars cruel and unusual punishment.

“It’s not as if she’s being afforded something that's a luxury or elective or cosmetic,” she says. “It’s the prison doctors who have recommended this treatment.”

Unsurprisingly, the case has become a source of great controversy. The friends and family of Cheryl, Kosilek’s former wife and murder victim, have campaigned against the state paying for the surgery. Last autumn, then US Senator Scott Brown called a judge’s decision to go ahead with the surgery “an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars.”

Cohen, however, downplays the cost, saying medical services already paid for by the DOC would cover the surgery. A handful of surgeries, she says, “wouldn’t move the needle all that much.” She continued, saying that the only precedent the case would set would be “the DOC following the instruction of its own doctors.”

The ripple effect of the case is hard to gauge. In reference to Kosilek successfully suing for hormone treatment in 2002, Boston radio station WBUR reported that, “The case reverberated across the country. Inmates from Massachusetts to California started requesting hormone therapy, and a lot of them got it. In 2005, the Wisconsin state legislature passed a bill prohibiting that state’s corrections department from providing any treatment of the sort, and the law was swiftly challenged in court.”

Exact numbers are hard to come by. Cohen doesn't know how many inmates in the US suffer from gender identity disorder, and she's unsure if there is an international example of a state paying for a convicted murderer’s sex-change operation.

Then there’s the issue of where to house Kosilek should she become, anatomically speaking, a woman. Asked if Kosilek would be moved to a female prison if she had the surgery, Cohen says, “It’s too early to say.” The prison system’s lawyers have argued that the surgery could put Kosilek at increased risk of sexual assault. The department has also argued that the previous treatment, which included hormone pills and psychotherapy, should suffice.

Cohen disagrees. Gender identity disorder has lead Kosilek, who is now 64 years old, to attempt suicide, according to her lawyer. Kosilek has also attempted self-castration and self-mutilation in the past, says Cohen.

Last autumn, US District Court Chief Judge Mark Wolf declared that the state should pay for the surgery. Wolf, according to the Boston Globe, noted that a course of action "had been prescribed by Department of Correction doctors, and that the only justifications for denying the treatment were based on public opinion."

The department, which declined to comment when I got in touch, appealed the decision and a three-judge First Circuit panel heard arguments earlier this month. The panel is currently reviewing the matter and is expected to announce their decision before the end of summer, so place bets and hang on to the edge of your seat—or do whatever you normally do when you're awaiting interesting news—until then.

Follow Danny on Twitter: @DMacCash

More stuff about prison and transgender people:

The New York Penal System Threw Our Friend Kira to the Wolves

Life Inside the Sex Prison

The Swedish Goverment has Stopped Tranquilizing Transgender People

Read the full story in "The Wizard of the Saddle Rides Again" from the May issue of VICE.

Nicholas Heyward is a haunted man. He is one of many New Yorkers who have lost loved ones to the police. Nineteen years ago, Heyward's son was playing with a toy gun in the stairwell of a Boerum Hill housing project in Brooklyn, New York, when he was fatally shot by an NYPD officer. Nicholas Jr. was 13 years old when he was killed.

"I heard Nick say, 'We're playing,' and then I heard a boom," Katrell Fowler, a friend of Nick Jr.'s told the New York Times shortly after the incident. Yet blame was placed on the boy's toy rifle, instead of officer Brian George, who fired his very real revolver into the child's abdomen.

The tragedy Heyward suffered has turned him into an activist. These days he spends much of his time calling for the Justice Department to review cases of alleged abuse committed by the NYPD, including that of his son's. Heyward claims he had a deposition taken by his attorney in which officer George contradicts reasons cited by Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes—currently up for reelection and the subject of a new reality show on CBS—for closing the case.

“Hynes said the stairwell was dimly lit, it was not. Hynes said George was responding to a 911 call, he was not.” Heyward has written several letters to Hynes over the years, he said, without receiving a response. In 2001, he was granted a meeting with the Brooklyn DA, after confronting him at a press conference. Heyward pleaded his case in Hynes's office but nothing came of it. The DA's office declined to comment on Heyward's allegations when I called them yesterday, saying that since the case is more than ten years old, the office did not have the case's file on hand. But for Heyward, the the pain of the slaying of his 13-year-old boy are still very fresh.

I

n the middle of an unkempt park in Memphis, Tennessee, stands an oversize bronze statue of a Confederate lieutenant general astride his mount. Its subject, Nathan Bedford Forrest, is considered by some to be one of the most infamous and powerful racists in American history. The first official leader of the Ku Klux Klan, some historians allege that Lieutenant General Forrest’s most heinous act was ordering his troops to slaughter hundreds of surrendered soldiers at 1864’s Battle of Fort Pillow, more than half of whom were African American. Others celebrate him as the physical manifestation of the South’s ethos during the Civil War and beyond: a rebel hero who relentlessly campaigned for his cause until it became untenable; he never gave up, even after his death.

Unveiled in 1905, the Memphis News-Scimitar reported that the masterfully sculpted monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest (or NBF) would “stand for ages as the emblem of a standard of virtue.” And today it seems the newspaper’s prophecy was correct, except for perhaps the “virtue” part. As of 2013, “that devil Forrest,” as he was infamously nicknamed by Union General William T. Sherman, is still sprinting across a Tennessee ridge on his stallion, kicking up dust in a city with historically tense racial relations. 

Pink granite tiles and modest bronze headstones that look like plaques skirt the sculpture. General Forrest and his wife, Mary Ann Montgomery, are buried underneath. NBF’s more celebrated moniker, at least in some circles, is the “Wizard of the Saddle,” a nickname he earned for his wondrous equestrian talents in battle, and one that calls to mind the highest modern-day rank of the KKK—the Imperial Wizard. 

The latest controversy surrounding the park and statue came to a head in early February, when the Memphis City Council unanimously voted to change the name of Forrest Park to Health Sciences Park (at least temporarily; a special commission is still in the process of deciding its final name as of press time), in line with the downtown medical-student facilities of the University of Tennessee that surround it. Two other Memphis parks—Confederate Park and Jefferson Davis Park, named after the president of the Confederacy—were also renamed by the City Council, with the reasoning that they were publicly funded reminders of an era that could be considered offensive and unwelcoming to the majority of the city’s residents, 63 percent of whom are African American according to the 2010 census. 

Shortly after the City Council’s decision, a man identifying himself as Exalted Cyclops Edward announced that his chapter of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was planning a massive rally to protest the renaming of the three parks. “It’s not going to be 20 or 30,” he told local NBC affiliate WMC-TV. “It’s going to be thousands of Klansmen from the whole United States coming to Memphis, Tennessee.” Later  in the month the city granted the Loyal White Knights a permit for a public rally to be held March 30 on the steps of the county courthouse in downtown Memphis, one day before Easter and five days before the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination at the Lorraine Motel.  

It was an eerily familiar scenario for Memphians. On January 17, 1998, around 50 members of the KKK held a rally at the very same courthouse in what they claimed was an attempt to protect their “heritage” in the lead-up to MLK Day and that year’s 30th anniversary of his assassination. Outnumbered by counterprotesters, the Klan’s vitriolic screeds incited a small riot that resulted in looting and the ill-prepared police force teargassing the entire crowd. 

One Memphian and self-proclaimed member of the Grape Street Crips seemed to take the Klan’s threats to return to his city very seriously. Following the announcement of the planned rally, 20-year-old DaJuan Horton posted a video on YouTube in which he states that he’s organizing a consortium of local gangs—some rivals—to unify and show their discontent on the day of the rally. Local and national media suddenly became very interested in the impending event, whipping a diverse cross-section of the city into a frenzy.

“They gonna come to Memphis, Tennessee… where Martin Luther King got gunned down,” DaJuan says in the video. “You’re going to come here and rally deep—really, really deep, in my language, just to talk? No, it’s not gonna happen like that. When you come to Memphis, Tennessee, we’re gonna rally right across from you, and it’s gonna be Young Mob, Crips, Bloods, GDs, Vice Lords, Goon Squad… I’m getting on the phone with them daily. I’m talking to the big guys, the big kahunas. I’m talking to the Bill Gates of the gang wars. You come to Memphis, we’re going to be waiting on you. It’s versatile down here. We got every gang you can think of; we’ve got the fucking Mob down here. Bring your ass on.” 

Had the City Council’s decision to rename the park sparked a potential showdown with what many law enforcement agencies consider America’s oldest terrorist organization and a mega-alliance of the country’s most violent gangs? Or was the Klan struggling to retain relevancy in an era when race relations have progressed so much that the US has elected a black president twice over? I traveled to Memphis about a week before the rally to meet everyone involved and find out. 

This bronze statue of Confederate Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest has stood for more than 100 years in a Memphis park that, until February 2013, was named after him. Photo by Robert King.

M y first order of business in Memphis, a wonderfully diverse and eclectic city that has been hit hard by economic woes in recent years, was to interview the protagonists of the situation at hand. Long-serving council members Myron Lowery and Janis Fullilove spearheaded—or were at least the most outspoken about—the decision to change the names of the parks. 

“Change produces controversy, and that’s what we have in this case,” Myron, a middle-aged black man who has the bluntly authoritative look and demeanor unique to experienced local politicians, told me. “Many people don’t want to change, they want to live in the past with the memories that they had. And whenever there comes along an idea to offer to compromise, they object to it because they say, ‘This is history, and you can’t change history.’”

What, I wondered, were Myron’s thoughts on NBF, a man who has been dead for over 130 years but still haunts Tennessee’s largest city from beyond the grave?

“Nathan Bedford Forrest was a racist,” he said. “He was head of the Klan—‘Oh, no, it isn’t the same Klan today as it was yesterday’—it was still the Klan… I’ve referred to the Klan as a terrorist organization. In fact, I call them the ‘American Taliban’ because of who they are and what they do.” 

No stranger to controversy, Myron’s counterpart Janis has been arrested on alcohol-related charges four times in the past five years (all the while serving on the council), and told me she was once shot at by a police officer while marching with MLK (the bullet left a hole through her wig). On the day we met she wore a fiery red suit and short, bleached blond hair. Forrest Park in particular, she said, had been a source of contention since 1904, when the remains of NBF and his wife were reinterred at the base of the statue after they were exhumed from nearby Elmhurst Cemetery. She was present at the rally in 1998, where she was “trampled and teargassed,” and told me that this time around she had received multiple death threats from anonymous parties who disapprove of the council’s decision to rename the parks. I asked her if she was prepared to accept responsibility for any resulting fallout. 

“I do, yeah, I take the blame,” Janis said, “even though I’ve got death threats—they gonna hang me, ‘Nigga, we gonna get you.’ Fine. I don’t know if it was the Klan, [but it was] somebody… OK, so what. Hang me.” 

My next question addressed accusations from the Klan and other Confederate-history enthusiasts: Was the Memphis City Council—made up of six whites and seven blacks—trying to erase the city’s controversial past? 

“The bottom line, at the end of the day, the names of those parks are not going back to what they once were. It’s going to change… So if Nathan Bedford Forrest is their hero, fine. Take his statue, put it in your backyard, your front yard, put it wherever you want to put it.” 

Earlier in the day I had met with Lee Millar, spokesperson for the Memphis chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans  (SCV) who wears a gray beard that wouldn’t be out of place in the late 19th century. Last year, Lee and his fellow SCV members raised the funds to install a massive stone engraved with the words forrest park at its perimeter, facing the street. He showed me a few emails from the parks department that seemed to approve its placement. But a few weeks back, a city maintenance crew had removed the stone in the middle of the night and relocated it to a municipal storage garage close to the city zoo. This happened without warning, Lee said, and virtually in tandem with the announcement that the parks’ names would be changed. Lee also said he considered the entire ordeal to be underhanded and detrimental to Memphis’s history. 

DaJuan Horton (center, in the black tank top), a member of the local Grape Street Crips, recruits friends in east Memphis to participate in a counterprotest of a planned KKK rally on Easter weekend. Photo by Robert King.

“It’s just idiotic,” he said. “Look at the Jews over in Germany, they keep parts of the prisons there as a reminder. This is all history for Memphis and America, and history should not be erased. You should add to it and enhance it, but don’t get rid of it, because you always want to know about your past so you can go forward in your future.” 

Lee added that he was also frustrated that the KKK had seemingly co-opted the entire ordeal for its own means. “I think the Ku Klux Klan capitalized on the controversy to stage a rally in Memphis, to gather attention for themselves, to bring awareness more to the Klan [than NBF].” 

About an hour later, Lee and I visited what, less than a month ago, had been known as Forrest Park. NBF’s statue watched over its domain, glaring down at us as if he were about to lead his garrison into battle. The artist who created the statue, Charles Henry Niehaus, was at the height of his craft. An American sculptor who throughout his career stayed true to the neoclassical training he received in Germany, Charles is best known for his 19th-century depictions of US President James A. Garfield, Moses, Louis IX, and other meticulously rendered statues of historical figures scattered throughout the States. His depiction of NBF is perhaps his most controversial work, but judged against the rest of his oeuvre, Charles was just doing his job: NBF looks merciless and singularly determined. 

Lee introduced me to a man standing in front of the NBF statue with a cigar in his mouth. Wearing a wide-brimmed hat, one of his white-gloved hands was stuffed in his pocket, pushing aside a jacket that halfway covered what appeared to be an authentic, standard-issue Union general’s uniform. He introduced himself as General Ulysses S. Grant; the resemblance was striking. I didn’t hesitate to ask the good general’s opinion of NBF, perhaps one of his greatest rivals. “I have a very healthy respect for Nathan Bedford Forrest,” he said with the cadence of a proper Southern gentleman. 

Later, when I asked him about the city’s decision to change the name of the park—which, of course, he disagreed with—he broke character and introduced himself again, this time as E. C. Fields Jr. A local high school principal, reserve police officer, SCV member, and historical reenactor, E. C. appeared to be a prime example of a highly educated and well-spoken man who apparently had no agenda regarding the naming of the park other than his love for history. 

Feeling like reality was slipping from my grip, I got right to the point and asked E. C. if he thought NBF was racist.

“No,” he replied with a drawl. “He had the culture of the country at the time. He had no personal vendetta against any group of people; he was fighting for what he believed in.” 

What, exactly, did NBF believe in? I wondered but thought it would be futile to ask a man so enamored with the history—or perhaps a certain type of history—of the Civil War. But it seemed to be the crux of the matter, the murky but bold ethos of a man who’s proved nothing but divisive in the annals of history. 

Later, while perusing the few books written about NBF, I may have discovered the answer. In the foreword of the 1989 edition of John Allan Wyeth’s preeminent NBF biography, That Devil Forrest, Western Michigan University history professor emeritus Albert Castel writes: “Despite all the rhetoric from the South’s politicians and editors about ‘States Rights’ and ‘Southern Nationalism,’ [NBF] had no illusions about [the Civil War’s] true purpose: ‘If we ain’t fightin’ to keep slavery, then what the hell are we fightin’ for?’”

After his death from diabetes-related issues in October of 1877, NBF was buried in Elmhurst Cemetery in accordance with his will. His body’s disinterment and its transfer to Forrest Park by Confederate sympathizers over 25 years later could cause one to wonder what their true motives were. While it would be very difficult to remove the statue regardless (Councilwoman Fullilove told me it would require a court order), throwing NBF’s corpse into the mix adds a macabre element to any such attempts politicans have avoided until now.   

NBF’s grave isn’t much different than the man himself: stubborn and resolute. Born dirt poor on July 13, 1821, in what is now known as Chapel Hill, Tennessee, NBF was the most unlikely of heroes. The oldest of seven brothers and three sisters, he became the head of his household when he was around 16, following the death of his blacksmith father. Almost completely illiterate throughout his life, NBF had still managed to amass a sizable fortune as a speculator, plantation owner, and slave trader. After the so-called War Between the States broke out, he enlisted in the Confederate Army even though he lacked formal military training of any kind. He was, however, a natural tactician and courageous woodsman, and quickly shot up through its ranks. By the time he was named lieutenant general, NBF had recruited a large and intensely loyal force culled from the South. 

Perhaps the most feared and dangerous soldier in the Confederacy, NBF’s greatest contributions to humanity were his innovative battle techniques, some of which served as the basis for US military tactics well into the 20th century. Tennessee-born poet and novelist Andrew Lytle once described NBF as a “spiritual comforter,” due to the mythical status he attained during the Reconstruction era. This may be why NBF was appointed the first head of the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1800s. 

Historical reenactors E. C. Fields Jr. and his spouse portray Union General Ulysses S. Grant and his wife. They believe the city’s decision to change the name of the parks was wrong. Photo by Robert King.

M y initial contact with Edward, the mysterious, hulking Exalted Cyclops (the title bestowed on Klavern, or local chapter, leaders) who had called the rally and appeared on local Memphis newscasts wearing a ski mask, happened a couple weeks before my arrival in Memphis. I had called the number of a Tennessee “Klan hotline” listed on the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan’s website. I left a voicemail, requesting an interview, and a few days later I answered a blocked call. It was Edward. He invited me to meet up for an interview with him and his associates before the rally in Memphis, as well as a cross-lighting ceremony a couple hours’ drive away in Mississippi that would follow. We had arranged to conduct the interview at my hotel shortly after I arrived. “Don’t be freaked out when you see a 300-pound guy with a hood on standing outside your room,” he said. I told him I would try my best. 

The hotel meeting never happened, and after a series of intermittently returned calls and emails, Edward finally told me to meet one of his underlings outside a local restaurant. He instructed me to keep an eye out for a purple car that was “loud as hell.” 

Arriving at the restaurant at the specified time, I spotted a purple compact sedan. Its driver, who was wearing a camouflage wraparound mask and hood like those used for bird hunting, pointed down the road and peeled off. We followed him for a few miles, ending up at the mouth of a dirt road that led to a field of trash and discarded tires that looked like the perfect location to film a murder scene. The driver emerged, still wearing his mask and revealing a pear-shaped frame swathed in black military-style fatigues to which various patches featuring Klan-related imagery had been sewn. He was talking on the phone, I assumed to Edward, and motioned to keep my distance. Then he hung up and said, “OK, we’re good now.” 

Seconds later a beat-up truck rolled up and parked next to us. Three young men—in their late teens or early 20s—exited. One of them was black. Great, I thought, they are going to think we set them up. 

The anonymous Klansman looked nervous. He waved to stay back and put the phone up to his ear. “We gotta change locations,” he said after hanging up, and instructed us to follow. We drove around for another few minutes, tailing the purple car once again, when Edward called me: “It’s all good, come back. My security guy just got spooked by those kids. They’re just metal scrappers.” 

On our return to the disused dirt pit, we were ushered toward the back of the lot by our masked chaperone. Along the way we passed a 20-something man in a black hoodie holding a German shepherd on a leash at bay as it bared its teeth and barked viciously. The entire scene was so absurd that there wasn’t room to be scared.

A large black truck parked across the field came into view. Two men were inside, one of them wearing a ski mask. It was Edward. He exited and approached while his driver peered at us through his sunglasses. I introduced myself and asked how much time we had for the interview. “Until it gets hot, I guess,” Edward said and explained that earlier in the day he had received information that African American ex-military sharpshooters who were now gang members had traveled from Detroit to stalk him and his fellow Klansmen before the rally. It sounded ludicrous, but then again I was standing in the middle of a garbage dump talking to a member of the Ku Klux Klan in 2013.

Our interview in the field wasn’t particularly informative and mostly consisted of the same rhetoric that can be found on most Klan websites, coupled with regurgitations of what Edward had already said to the media: the Klan was based on Christian principles, they were defending the white race’s “loss of rights,” and their criticisms about President Obama. (“Well, yeah, I’m very happy with him. [laughs] I have got to say he’s made the Klan a lot stronger.”) He also told me that he was introduced to the KKK at the age of three.

It had been mentioned in the local press that while the Klan had been granted a permit to protest in Memphis, they were forbidden from covering their faces during the rally. I found this ironic, considering both of the Klansmen I was speaking to wore masks. Were they worried about retaliation? 

“Yep, absolutely, because they don’t understand us,” Edward said. “They think we’re just a straight hate group and want to kill people, and we’re not that way. I’m just concerned about them knowing who I am. I have grandkids, I have kids, and I don’t want, you know—my house has been shot up twice already since this has aired on the TV.” 

There was a rumbling in the distance, and seemingly out of nowhere a middle-aged man appeared on a four-wheeler with a younger black woman seated behind him. After they passed, I asked Edward what he thought about “race mixing,” as the Klan commonly refers to interracial relationships. “That’s disgusting,” he said. “Stick with your own race. That’s a horrible thing.”

Minutes after the four-wheeler had driven off, Edward said he had just gotten word that the cops were on their way. He added that he’d spotted a police radio on the ATV that just passed us, and he’d see me at the rally on Saturday. None of it made much sense, and I wondered if the whole thing was a setup, but it didn’t matter either way. They were already in the truck, on their way to wherever it was Klansmen hang out. The hefty masked man who had taken us to the lot waddled his way back to the purple car, and I followed to mine. It was time to go back to the hotel. 

A KKK member who would only identify himself as Exalted Cyclops Edward (right) and his associate agreed to be interviewed in a junkyard a few days before the rally in Memphis. Photo by Robert King.

T he following afternoon I arrived at DaJuan Horton’s apartment to speak with him and fellow members of the Grape Street Crips about how their plans were coming together for the counterprotest. DaJuan clarified his statements from the YouTube video that had brought me here, saying he had been organizing other local gangs under the banner of an alliance he had named Divine United International—DUI. He explained that they weren’t looking for trouble or violence, they just wanted to show the Klan how to hold a rally in Memphis. Smoking blunt after blunt, it wasn’t far-fetched to believe that DaJuan and his buds could pull off a low-key and ultimately peaceful event. But, understandably, I was a little dubious.

The Crips’ volition and mission seemed to waver in the smoky haze, with DaJuan saying things like, “The KKK can’t wear their masks at the protest, but that doesn’t me we can’t wear ours.” He also had his friend, whom he referred to as “Shooter,” show off his handgun. Shooter said DaJuan wasn’t allowed one because he was “too trigger happy.” 

I asked DaJuan his opinion on NBF, and what he thought about the renaming of the eponymous park. “I researched and learned who he was,” he said, “and he really did some stuff for them, but I don’t really care for it. They can name the park what they want to name the park. I don’t care what they do with his body, I don’t think it’s important or nothing like that. I don’t mean to sound mean, but that’s just how I feel about it. I can see it from their angle, that he really means something to them, but that’s their stuff.” 

We made plans to meet again in two days, a Thursday, so that I could tag along with DaJuan and his crew while they drove through neighborhoods on the east side of Memphis in an effort to enlist more people to join them to oppose Saturday’s Klan rally. I followed him as planned, to a street on the east side of town that quickly filled with kids who seemed enthusiastic for the cause. There was a lot of “Fuck the KKK!” and ruminations on why the Klan was granted a permit in the first place, but no one seemed to have a clear vision, except to express their outrage in some sort of fashion on Saturday. 

After the impromptu meeting in the street with his friends, DaJuan took me to Robinhood Park—a Section 8 housing complex that, he told me, was strictly Bloods territory. About 150 of Robinhood’s residents watched as we rolled in, many of them dressed in red, and children rapidly fired cap guns at us. We loitered around for about 15 minutes as DaJuan tried to explain the mission of DUI and why he wanted as many gang members as possible to attend the rally. A few listened, but most were hesitant to talk. Eventually a white woman appeared who looked to be in her early 60s and asked us to leave before we caused any problems. DaJuan agreed, and we parted ways. I wasn’t convinced that he would be able to pull off his plan to align the local gangs against the Klan, but given all the strange occurrences of the past few days, I didn’t think it was entirely out of the question. 

A week before the Klan rally in Memphis, a Mississippi chapter of the KKK who were planning on attending the event held a “practice rally” outside the Tishomingo County Courthouse. Photo by Robert King.

O n Saturday morning, the day of the rally, the forecast was rain. I was supposed to accompany DaJuan and his comrades to the county courthouse, but he said they weren’t quite ready yet and told me to come by his apartment in one hour. When I arrived he wasn’t there but drove up about 20 minutes later. By this time, the gray sky had opened up into a drizzle. 

DaJuan told me he wouldn’t be going to the rally, nor were any of his recruits, because the Klan wasn’t worth being cold and wet all day. “White people don’t mind the rain,” he said. “I just don’t have a good feeling about it.” He said that he might reconsider if it stopped raining, and that he planned to carry on DUI’s mission, but it was apparent that there was not going to be a standoff of Clockwork Orange proportions between the Klan and local gangbangers. It was a relief on some level, and judging from reports in the local news, it would be nearly impossible for the Crips or anyone else to get remotely close to the Klan. About ten square blocks had been cordoned off by the Memphis Police Department and an assortment of other regional law enforcement, who would reportedly be out in forces that numbered around 700. The Klansmen would be isolated, shuttled in on city buses and confined to a fenced-in area on the courthouse steps. Spectators and counterprotesters would be funneled in to a separate pen and required to pass through metal detectors and undergo random searches. Downtown Memphis was on lockdown, and many neighborhood businesses had closed for the day. Reports estimated that the rally cost the city $175,000.

The massive police presence, which included multiple SWAT units, hundreds of vehicles, mobile surveillance-camera towers, and cops in full riot gear, ensured that the rally was kept under control. As about 50 Klansmen filed in from the buses and through the courthouse, they amassed on the steps, waving KKK flags alongside what appeared to be a dozen or so skinheads and members of other white-supremacy groups. It was far from the thousands Edward had promised. 

Klansmen took turns shouting into a megaphone, but it was hard to see or hear anything from the media tent that had been purposely situated behind a SWAT truck and other vehicles. They occasionally chanted “White power!” in unison. The rain continued to pick up, and the small group of antifascist counterprotesters who had gathered a few blocks away from the rally had been dispersed or cordoned off in the civilian area. DaJuan and his crew were nowhere to be found. As the local reporters bemoaned having to stand out in the cold and rain on a Saturday, I began to think the modern-day Klan had turned it into what was basically a historical-reenactment society who yearned for the “good ol’ days,” whatever that means. I left the rally early and went back to my hotel to dry out before the cross-lighting ceremony in Mississippi that had been planned for later that evening. 

Shortly before dusk I arrived in a small country town outside of Tupelo, Mississippi, about a two-hour drive away from Memphis. I was warmly greeted by Nicole, wife of North Mississippi White Knights of the KKK Imperial Wizard Steven Howard, outside their home where the cross lighting was to be held. She told me Steven was still on his way back from the rally in Memphis, and that she’d been unable to attend because she had young children to look after. Steven, who is known for his shimmery, red Klan robe, was one of the main speakers at the rally, although I had no idea what he or any of his fellow Klansmen had said because of the way the cops had them positioned—they were effectively yelling into a brick wall. 

The rally in Memphis was largely a nonevent, with a massive police presence that completely separated the Klan from the counterprotesters and all but blocked the media from even getting a clear shot. 

From the looks of the handful of people gathered on Steven’s property—which appeared to consist of a single-wide trailer amid a couple acres of wooded land—there wasn’t much doing. Then, all of a sudden, a cavalcade of vehicles drove up and, one by one, parked in Steven’s front yard. By my count, there were approximately 100 Klansmen and women in attendance. 

After dinner a half-dozen men got to work constructing the cross for the impending lighting ceremony, wrapping pieces of wood in burlap and pouring diesel fuel over their handiwork. Soon enough, it was time to “robe up.”

I took the opportunity to talk with Steven—who is 31 and speaks with the enthusiastic charisma of a natural-born leader—for a few minutes as he donned his cherished red robe. He told me that he had served as a marine in the Iraq War, and that some of his fellow Klansmen had also been in the military. “When they strung him up on the bridge and shit, his body burning and shit, that’s when I was over there,” he said in reference to the four Blackwater Security contractors who were killed, burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah that spans the Euphrates River. 

As he finished buttoning his robe, I asked him about his thoughts on the afternoon’s rally. “I think they had too much police protection,” he said. “I think that’s ridiculous. I know a lot of people said they didn’t even hear us; a lot of people said they couldn’t even see us.” 

Steven went on to tell me that the reason the cross lighting was happening so late was because the convoy of Klansmen who had trailed him from Memphis was alarmed by a strange vehicle they thought was following them. They pulled off to the side of the road, forcing their pursuer to do the same. It turned out that the vehicle in question contained a local television news crew. “They got out and they were two white guys, but their film crew—their camera crew—was Indians… not Indians, but they was chinks and gooks and niggers, and I was like, ‘Naw, you can’t come to my house, man.’” Then he thanked me for coming out, saying that I was welcome anytime. 

 As Steven’s fellow Klansmen made their final preparations for the cross lighting, I spoke with a 26-year-old from Baltimore who said he had recently started a local Klan chapter following his wife’s firing from a local Walmart for, what he believes, were racists reasons. He told me that he had helped develop an online application and screening process, as well as a chat room, for the North Mississippi White Knights, and that his local Klan—which at the time consisted of him, his mother, and a friend—did a lot of good for his community. When I asked for specifics, he told me that they sometimes organize trash pickups in nearby parks. Another 26-year-old I spoke with, a Grand Dragon from Virginia, showed off his vintage green robe. 

I also met two members of the Supreme White Alliance, a white-supremacist skinhead group. They said they had driven through the night from Cincinnati, Ohio, to attend the rally and were planning to do the same later that evening to get back in time for their day jobs.  

As I was speaking with the two men, someone called out with instructions to pick up makeshift torches that had been dipped in a barrel of diesel, ignite it, and proceed to the hollow behind Steven’s house that seemed custom-made for lighting crosses on fire. I watched as, one by one, a hooded figure asked each attendee, “Klansman, do you accept the light?” They did.

Taking a look around the circle that had formed around the cross, I was surprised to see so many young faces among the grizzled Klansmen. Some of the freshly initiated looked like teenagers. The ceremony that followed included a dedication to Nathan Bedford Forrest, but first Steven performed his ritual duties as an Imperial Wizard. A red KKK banner, as well as a black Nazi SS flag, flapped ominously in the background. 

“Klansmen, for God!” he shouted, his declaration echoed back by his guests. “Klansmen, for Mississippi! Klansmen, for the Loyal White Knights!” Steven then instructed his audience to march clockwise before continuing what might as well have been an incantation. “Klansmen, for the National Socialist Movement! Klansmen, for the white race! Klansmen, approach the cross!”

“Don’t turn your back on a fiery cross,” someone shouted to the crowd as it was set ablaze. 

Considering that just a few hours earlier, I’d felt certain that the Ku Klux Klan was in the throes of death and a united America was finally prevailing, the Klansman’s warning was the soundest advice I’d heard all week. Bigotry in America, it seemed, wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

More racists on VICE:

What Is the Most Racist Country in Europe?

Who Feels Bad for the KKK?

The Iron Pipe of Swedish Neo-Fascism

This style of protest was also hugely successful—that is, until a series of arrests in 2005 against radical environmentalists who were labeled “terrorists.” It scared the shit out of the environmental-activist community, and folks started drifting away.

Now, there's a vibrant national protest movement reviving those "direct action" tactics of civil disobedience again, and adding a new political savvy to the mix. They, too, have been incredibly effective. In Oregon, in the summer of 2011, one blockade took 50 cops, a backhoe, and a 125-foot-crane to remove treesitters. A few days later, activists locked themselves together in an Oregon Department of Forestry office. The group responsible, the Cascadia Forest Defenders, say they won't stop until the Elliott State Forest is protected from clearcutting.

As a result—surprise, surprise—politicians are trying to create new laws that make tree-sits and other direct-action techniques illegal. The bills even single out the Elliott State Forest campaign by name and allow corporations to sue protesters for costing them money.

On April 29, two bills passed the Oregon House that would hit tree sitters and non-violent protesters with felonies and mandatory minimum sentences.

"There's been a 30-year reign of terror by these people having no respect for the rights of others," says Rep. Wayne Krieger, a Republican. Krieger says "environmental terrorists" have been "chaining themselves to trees, locking themselves to equipment, and laying down in the road."

Krieger, a tree farmer and former member of the Oregon Board of Forestry, has introduced HB 2595. It would create a new crime of "interference with state forestland management." The first offense, a felony, carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 13 months; another offense kicks that up to a $25,000 fine and five years in prison. That's five years for non-violent civil disobedience.

A companion bill, HB 2596, allows loggers to sue protesters for up to $10,000 in lost income up to six years after a protest ended.

Who are the environmentalists responsible for this terror?

"I coach kindergarten soccer," says Jason Gonzales of Cascadia Forest Defenders. He testified against the bill and questioned lawmakers' priorities. "We have students, we are professionals, we meet with governors, we present at panels.  And when it’s the last resort we put our bodies on the line."

Supporters of the bills say they are needed to combat protests against increased logging on federal lands, specifically the tree-sits in the Elliott State Forest. In the absence of real protective measures from the Obama administration or state lawmakers, protests have been escalating. Obama signed off on logging in the Alaskan rainforest (a move later blocked by a federal district court), and activists say his new national forest proposal lacks any real teeth.

"It clearly is targeting speech," says Becky Strauss, who is legislative director of the ACLU of Oregon. The bills place a heightened penalty on protest because of what is being protested. "It leaves it open to a police officer’s unbridled discretion as to when and how to enforce this bill, and we expect this to be enforced disproportionately based on the content of their speech."

Sound unconstitutional? The courts thought so, too. Oregon once had a nearly identical law that criminalized "interference with agricultural operations." It was struck down in 2009 as unconstitutional because it outlawed environmental protest but made an exception for labor protest.

Lauren Regan, an attorney with the Civil Liberties Defense Center, led the fight against that bill. She says these new bills are zombified versions of the dead laws, and if they pass they'll be challenged in court. Again.

But dead legislation isn't the only thing being resurrected. The direct action wing of the environmental movement has been increasing in intensity in the last few years. In protests against the Keystone XL pipeline, activists in Texas have been locking themselves to bulldozers and climbing onto tripods. In Oklahoma, two people were just arrested for chaining themselves to heavy equipment.

If these effective tactics continue, activists fear the Pacific Northwest won't be the only states considering new laws against protesters. In many ways, these bills against environmentalists are similar to "ag-gag" laws against animal rights activists that are being considered around the country; just as the ag industry is trying to create a crime of "animal agriculture interference," the forest industry is trying to create a crime of "interference with forestland management."

Corporations should be worked about much more than "interference," Jason Gonzales says. "Creating a mandatory minimum prison sentence won’t stop us from fighting these projects but it will change the way we have to fight them," he says. "My very genuine concern is that it will force large sections of our movement to take their actions further underground.  Indeed, instead of stopping us, it may encourage us to accomplish more when risking so much."

Will Potter is the author of Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege.

Follow Will on Twitter: @will_potter

A screencap from Canipre's website

As you may already know, Voltage Pictures, the company responsible for the movie The Hurt Locker, (as well as a million movies you've never heard of) is currently in court, attempting to get an Ontario-based internet service provider to release the names associated with over 1000 IP addresses that they claim belong to people who illegally downloaded their copyrighted material. 

These IP addresses were gathered by an extraordinarily douchey company called Canipre, the only antipiracy enforcement firm currently offering services in Canada. 

Canipre, as a company, offers to track down people who are illegally downloading copyrighted material from record companies and film studios. According to their website, they have issued more than 3,500,000 takedown notices, and their work has led to multimillion dollar damages awards, injunctions, seizure of assets, and even incarceration.

But it's not like Canipre is doing this just to get rich. In a recent interview, Canipre's managing director Barry Logan explained that it's about much more than just money—he's hoping to teach the Canadian public a moral lesson:

 "[We want to] change social attitudes toward downloading. Many people know it is illegal but they continue to do it... Our collective goal is not to sue everybody… but to change the sense of entitlement that people have, regarding Internet-based theft of property.”

Here is a screenshot of the front page of the Canipre website as it appeared when I visited it this morning. 

The image you see in the background is this self portrait, by Steve Houk.

I contacted Steve and asked if they had sought permission to use the picture. Steve said, "No. In no way have I authorized or licensed this image to anyone in any way."

Oh, dear. 

So, just to be clear: Canipre has written "they all know it's wrong and they're still doing it." Referring to copyright theft. On top of an image that they are using without the permission of the copyright holder. On their official website.

Holy.

Shit.

Here is another screencap of their site. The image you see in the background this time is this image by Sascha Pohflepp.

I contacted Sascha and asked if Canipre had permission to use this image. Once again, they did not. 

What's even more remarkable with their use of this image is that the photo is available under the Creative Commons license. Meaning that, if Canipre did want to use the image for free, all they would have to do is attribute the photographer. Which they did not do. 

In closing, here is another quote from Barry Logan, that Canipre executive we heard from earlier, "[Canadians have] a pervasive sense of entitlement... [Illegally] downloading content should also be socially unacceptable.”

We have reached out to the photographers who took the other images used on the Canipre website, and will update this post as they respond.

UPDATE I: Steve Houk's image seems to have been removed from the Canipre website.

UPDATE II: Steve Houk wrote us a few minutes ago to say:

Hi Jamie;

I sent them an e-mail via their website. I identified the image, told them that it is my creative property under copyright and requested that they either remove the image from their site or compensate me for its use.

I also told them that it was disheartening to see a company the champions intellectual property rights to pirate someone else's creative work.

I ended up getting a flurry of phone calls and e-mails from a guy named Barry Logan.

Logan claimed that the company used a 3rd party vendor to develop their website and that the vendor had purchased the image from an image bank.

I pointed out to Logan that if that was true, he had basically paid his vendor to rip off other people's creative work. Logan told me that he would contact his web provider and have the image removed. He also told me that he would provide me with the name of the website developer and the name of the image bank where they obtained my photo.

I did notice that they took down my photo, but I have not heard back from Logan regarding the name of the developer and where they sourced my image. I plan to contact Logan later today if he doesn't get back to me. [sic]

Steve

We'll update again when/if Steve hears back from Mr. Logan.

UPDATE III: Brian Moore, the guy who took this photo, which also appeared on Canipre's website (screenshot below) writes:

Jamie,

That's amazing. No, I did not give them permission as far as I know.

Go get 'em. Let me know if you need anything (quotes, content, etc.) from me.

Brian's photo, like Sascha's, was available under the Creative Commons liscense, meaning Canipre could have legally used this photo had they provided proper attribution.

Update IV: Canipre appears to have removed all of the images mentioned above from their website. The only photo that currently remains is of what looks like a darkened theater.

More stuff about copyright theft:

Are Canadians About to be Prosecuted for File Sharing?

The Author of SOPA is a Copyright Violator

Universal Music Group Stole Our Music

@JLCT

In December 2012, and again in February of this year, a couple of highly coordinated cyberattacks targeted two Middle Eastern banks—Oman’s Bank of Muscat and the United Arab Emirates’ Bank of Ras Al Khaimah—in a $45-million heist that evidently surprised the shit out of authorities and "impressed" cybercrime experts worldwide. It was only announced late last week that the heist occurred, and it’s believed that operations in 27 countries led to the grand total of $45 million stolen. That said, arrests have only been made in the United States (one of the suspects was caught with an iPhone full of cash-filled selfies) and Germany—which is extra crazy because the authorities believe the ringleaders were working outside of the United States. So, where are the rest of these digital bank robbers and their ringleaders?

To make matters even more intense, news broke on Saturday morning that the man believed to be leading the American wing of this global-bank-robbing scheme was executed in the Dominican Republic in late April. It doesn’t take a massive stretch of the imagination to conclude that someone is trying to prevent the information that was swirling around in that man’s head—i.e., how these cyberbank robbers were able to steal so much money from the banking system, without causing any alarms that would freeze the tampered accounts they were using—from being spilled out into the hands of the authorities. When his body was found, there was $100,000 of cash in his residence, along with an assault rifle, telescopic sight, and three pistols. According to Reuters, the American operation alone, allegedly led by this dead man, netted $2.4 million in stolen cash, taken from over 3,000 ATMs, within ten hours. This part of the story alone can now be referred to simply as the second-largest bank robbery in New York’s history.

From all the reports that are out now, it appears that these bank thieves hacked into two different credit card processing companies: one in India, which has admitted to a system breach, and one in the United States. Once they got in there, they accessed the companies’ prepaid credit card databases, took a bunch of the account numbers, increased their credit limits, erased their withdrawal limits, and passed that information out to people known as “cashers” who were able to create cards that would be able to access these newly tampered accounts. Between the heists in December and February, it’s alleged that over 40,000 withdrawals were processed.

This technique is known as “unlimited operations”—which refers to the breaches in credit card limits and the demolition of typical withdrawal minimums. This, of course, allows cybercriminals to take out a ton of money in a short time. CRN picked up some New York court documents pertaining to this case that stated: “Successful unlimited operations are rare events requiring a high degree of technical proficiency, coordination and patience on the part of the criminal actors.” So clearly, the world is dealing with some incredibly advanced, internet-based bank robbers who are hungry for stolen cash.

So far a total of nine people (plus the one dead suspect in the Dominican Republic) have been arrested in connection with the heists, but authorities claim that hundreds of people, worldwide, are involved. Apparently, the organizers use “money mules” to head out into the world with compromised bank cards and physically withdraw cash—these mules, in the past, have actually been tricked into thinking they are doing legitimate work for an ostensibly bullshit business.

Loretta Lynch, a US Attorney in New York, said at a press conference that American authorities had worked with law enforcement agencies in “Japan, Canada, Germany, Romania, the United Arab Emirates, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Belgium, France, United Kingdom, Latvia, Estonia, Thailand, and Malaysia” in an attempt to put all of the pieces of this cybercrime ring together.

It will be very interesting to see whether or not further arrests pop up in these allegedly affected countries—and if the supreme leaders of this criminal operation are ever revealed and captured. Lynch also said that the men involved in the New York operation were sending 20 percent of their proceeds back to organizers. So it would follow that the authorities have some idea of who the organizers are. There have been reports of email exchanges that describe wire transfers linking back to Russia. Plus, stolen funds have also, apparently, been linked back to a Russian money-laundering ring.

The number of thieves who have so far escaped prosecution in connection to this global bank heist is a stupefying accomplishment. While the German suspects, who are now in custody, were caught withdrawing 170,000 euros, and the American team was responsible for $2.4 million in cash, that still leaves over $43 million unaccounted for. The banks are left with an “uncertain path” on how to get all their cash back since it doesn’t seem like the authorities have too great of an idea on how these hundreds of people stole millions of dollars from the banks in a very short time.

Given the recent assassination of the alleged American kingpin, it would appear that there is a lot on the line—for those powerful enough to coordinate a multimillion-dollar cyberheist and have people killed at will to presumably protect their secrets—so it’s anyone’s guess as to whether more information will trickle out into the public.

One thing can be said right now: recent advancements in cybercrime are astoundingly complex and reaching epic scales. Couple that with the fact that this heist didn’t actually target any civilian accounts—this money was purely stolen from the banks—and most comment sections covering this story will tell you that public sympathy for the banks is pretty fucking low. It's a perfect storm, in that this case is clearly hard to prosecute and inoffensive to the public at large. Regardless, what we have here is a cybercrime story of 007 proportions that will require a lot of investigative power to ensure the authorities understand this crime as quickly as possible, and prevent it from happening again, on an even wider scale.

Follow Patrick on Twitter: @patrickmcguire

Read more about cybercrime:

Speaking with the SEA about Hacking the Onion's Twitter Account

Man, Republicans sure are the worst, right? Here's a good “for instance”:

Back in 2011, the FDA recommended that the government allow women of all ages to have access to Plan B, the so-called morning-after pill. What would be the point in caring about a woman's age when she needs emergency contraception? was the FDA's thought. If an 18-year-old needs it, or a 14-year-old, or a 13-year-old, what's the difference? In fact, if a younger girl needs it, it's probably more important. But, instead, the Republicans got together and decided to overturn the recommendation, restricting the availability of Plan B only to women at least 15 years old—and with a photo ID to prove it. While the official excuse by the Republicans for introducing this arbitrary age limit was that there were “concerns about the drug's impact on young girls,” everyone knew it was simply a way to appease their religious-minded, socially conservative voting base, an attempt to show that they're actually trying to keep the country from becoming one big cesspool of sex-craved kids fucking on piles of dead fetuses. And, hey, if a few young girls have to pay for their slutty ways by being forced to carry their mistake-babies to term, well, that's the way He would have wanted it anyway. 

Now go back into the previous paragraph and replace any references to “Republicans” with “the Obama administration,” because that's what really happened. 

Last week, District Judge Edward Korman went on quite a tirade against the Obama administration for pulling this age-limit-restriction bullshit in regards to Plan B. “You’re disadvantaging young people, African Americans, the poor. That’s the policy of the Obama administration?” he asked. “It turns out that the same policies that President Bush followed were followed by President Obama. You're basically lying,” he scolded. And rightfully so. This is the kind of move we've come to expect from the red-staters, the Bible-thumpers, the Bush-Cheneys, the gun-toters, and the tobacco-chewers. But not from our progressive president.

Which is to say, Republicans are bad. But when it comes to reproductive rights, Democrats don't have their shit together either.

Oh, and happy Mother's Day.

Onto the roundup!

- An Afghanistan-born prisoner in Guantanamo Bay gave the LA Times an account of the conditions in the prison that led to the widespread hunger strike.

- A gay couple has been arrested in Zambia after relatives of the men tipped off police about their relationship. Zambia, you see, is one of those ass-backward countries like Uganda in regards to gay rights, where “sodomy” and “having sex against the order of nature” is against the law.

- A pastor in Texas got himself busted for trying to use his priest-ey leverage to get underage girls to take off their clothes.

- Stephen Hawking, one of the smartest men in the world, has decided to withdraw from an academic conference in Israel because he's supporting an “academic boycott of the country” due to their continuing morally-iffy treatment of Palestine. Noam Chomsky, evidently, was behind the group that caused this to happen.

- Tim Lambesis, the lead singer of the Christian heavy metal band As I Lay Dying, went to go hire a hitman to kill his estranged wife and ended up hiring an undercover police officer instead. Oops.

- Michelle Bachmann, an actual United States Representative who has been elected by actual people in the real state of Minnesota, told a prayer group of conservatives that 9/11, the seige of the US embassy in Benghazi, and what's going in Libya are judgements from God. Her answer to stopping these attacks, it should be noted, is “humbling ourselves before an almighty God.” This is a person who a large amount of people thought could actually become the next President, it should also be noted.

- Islamist sect Boko Harem was behind a prison raid if the Nigerian city of Bama, freeing at least 105 prisoners while killing at least 55.

- The Catholic League has taken a stance on David Bowie's new music video for his song “The Next Day,” and has determined that “it is a mess.” Speaking of the Catholics, a group of gay and allied Catholics tried to get into St. Patrick's Cathedral in NYC with dirty hands—in response to Cardinal Dolan's mention that gay Catholics have 'em—but were refused entry by police.

- In Pakistan, a suicide car bombing attack left one policeman and two civilians dead. Later in the week, gunman abducted the son of former Pakistani Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani during an election rally. During the election, in fact, the Taliban attacked polling stations and killed at least 24, but millions of people still voted undeterred.

- In Mogadishu, a series of attacks by al-Qaeda linked militants, including a bombing outside of a courthouse followed by a raid of gunmen, left at least 19 dead.

- Commenting on the Boston Marathon bombings, King of Bahrain Hamid Bin Eisa Al Khalifa said that “terrorism has no religion.” Which is certainly true. It has them all.

- Rainn Wilson, that guy from The Office, is going to spend his post-TV years preaching about his Baha'i faith. So, get ready to stop following his Twitter account.

And Our Person of the Week: Martha Mullen, who is a Christian woman, coordinated the burial for Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev after a whole bunch of other funeral homes and graveyards refused to accept his body. “It portrayed America at its worst,” she said about the refusals and protests, “Jesus says, love our enemies.” She's right, you know. Everyone who has this bullshit “my religion is better than your religion” attitude should take some cues from her.

Previously - "Coexist" Bumper Stickers Are Actually Intolerant

NEWS

This Is What Winning Looks Like 

My Afghanistan War Diary 

By Ben Anderson

US Specialist Christopher Saenz looks out over the landscape during a patrol outside the village of Musa Qala, Helmand province. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

I didn’t plan on spending six years covering the war in Afghanistan. I went there in 2007 to make a film about the vicious fighting between undermanned, underequipped British forces and the Taliban in Helmand, Afghanistan’s most violent province. But I became obsessed with what I witnessed there—how different it was from the conflict’s portrayal in the media and in official government statements. 

All I had to do was trek out to one of the many tiny, isolated patrol bases that dot the barren, sunbaked landscape and hang out with British infantry troops to see the chaotic reality of the war firsthand: firefights that lasted entire days, suicide bombers who leaped onto unarmored jeeps from behind market stalls, IEDs buried everywhere, and bombs dropped onto Afghans’ homes, sometimes with whole families of innocent civilians inside. 

In 2006, when troops were sent into Helmand, British command didn’t think there’d be much fighting at all. The mission was simple: “Facilitate reconstruction and development.” The UK Defense Secretary John Reid even said he hoped the army could complete their mission “without a single shot being fired.”

But with each year that followed, casualties and deaths rose as steadily as the local opium crop. Thousands more British troops were deployed, then tens of thousands of US troops, at the request of General Stanley McChrystal, following a six-month review of the war after President Obama took office. Still, the carnage and confusion continued unabated. Suicide bombings increased sevenfold. Every step you took might reveal yet another IED.

In February 2013, on his last day at the helm of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John R. Allen described what he thought the war’s legacy will be: ‘‘Afghan forces defending Afghan people and enabling the government of this country to serve its citizens. This is victory, this is what winning looks like, and we should not shrink from using these words.’’ 

The US and British forces are preparing to leave Afghanistan for good (officially, by the end of 2014), and my time in the country over the last six years has convinced me that our legacy will be the exact opposite of what Allen posits—not a stable Afghanistan, but one at war with itself yet again. Here are a few encapsulated snapshots of what I’ve seen and what we’re leaving behind. 

November 2012 – “Chai Boys”

Lieutenant Will Felder, left, after speaking with a villager in the Baghran Valley in Helmand province. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

For the vast majority of troops in Sangin, a city of 14,000 and a hub of opium production in the south of the country, the war was already over by late 2012. The US Marines had abandoned the patrol bases they’d established at great cost over the last six years and pulled back to the safety of their headquarters, just north of the city center, which they rarely left. Sangin was firmly in the hands of the Afghan government. Two teams of 18 marine “advisors” occasionally visited the patrol bases, which had been repurposed by the Afghan police and army, but in no way could this be construed as a sign of success. 

Transition is the fourth and final stage of NATO’s counterinsurgency policy, but it isn’t supposed to happen until the Taliban have been cleared out, infrastructure has been built up, and the Afghan security forces have been trained and recruited to the point where they are ready to take over without outside support. 

After spending five weeks in Sangin, it was obvious to me that Afghan security was nowhere near ready. I’d seen policemen so high on heroin they couldn’t stand up straight or tie sandbags, and soldiers firing hundreds of rockets, bullets, and grenades at the smallest of suspicious movements in the desert—“Fuck them, they are all Taliban here,” one blurted out when he was told to stop shooting at a father and son—and on at least six different occasions, the use of child soldiers.

The Afghan Police  was still active, too, kidnapping civilians for ransom or as bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges. Weapons, fuel, and equipment NATO had supplied to the Afghan National Army were being sold at the local bazaar, and “ghosts”—officers who technically didn’t exist—filled police payroll sheets. “Have you ever seen The Sopranos?” said Major Bill Steuber, the marine in charge of the police-advisory team, describing the corruption. “It’s vast.” 

Worst of all, police commanders were routinely abducting young men and using them as “chai boys,” house servants who were also kept as sex slaves. In separate incidents, three of those boys had been shot dead while trying to escape. One was shot in the face and one was shot at police headquarters. When a fourth boy was shot, Steuber marched into the police chief’s office and demanded action.

The police chief first said that the boys had chosen to live on the patrol bases: “They like being there and giving their asses at night.” He also claimed that the practice of soldiers sexually abusing them was necessary. “If my commanders don’t fuck these boys, who will they fuck? Their own grandmothers?” 

January 2011 – “The Taliban Will Be Here Half an Hour After You Leave.”

An Afghan National Army soldier prepares for an operation in Taliban-held territory.

The man who came out of the mosque told the marines standing in the street that his daughter had been shot in the shoulder by a stray bullet the day before. The family had taken her to a hospital themselves, with no help from either the marines or the Afghan National Army.

One of the marines blamed the shooting on the Taliban, saying that they use civilians for cover. He added that in the present scope of things, this was a good sign because it meant they were losing control and becoming more desperate. 

The mullah who accompanied the man from inside the mosque smiled as if his suspicions had been confirmed, then spoke directly to an Afghan National Army sergeant nearby. “There is no security beyond the road,” he said. “They are just saying this to make themselves happy. The Russians did the same. God willing, they will suffer the same fate as the Russians.

“Yes, the Taliban are here, but who are the Taliban? They are Afghans,” he continued, waving his hand at the marines. “Who are they? We two have to come together! Because my orphans will be left to you, yours to me. They,” he waved at the marines again, “will be leaving. God will cause them such problems that they will forget about here.” Instead of imparting the mullah’s words to the soldiers, the translator balked, saying instead, “We used to live in the Green Zone but it was dangerous, so now we live here and it’s very good. The children can play.” 

“That’s good,” said one marine, unaware of how badly he was being misled. “We are trying to increase security, and I’m happy that you feel safer.” 

The interpreter spoke directly to the mullah. “I told him you said it was very secure here. I didn’t tell him what you said. I told him the security was good here.”

The mullah argued that the three of them—the ANA sergeant, the translator, and himself—should unite against the foreigners. “Yesterday they killed six people in a house,” he said. “Only two babies were spared. Is that the meaning of democracy? We don’t want this democracy. We don’t want this law of the infidel. We want the rule of Islam.”

The mullah’s claim that six people had been killed in their home was eventually translated for the marine. “Well, we do drop a lot of bombs,” he said, “but when we do, we are very careful where we drop those bombs, and who we are dropping them on.”

“If you don’t get upset, I will tell you something,” said the mullah. “Whatever you have brought into Afghanistan, your people are here for killing. Your tanks are here for killing. Your cannons are here for killing. Your planes are here for killing. You haven’t brought anything that we like. All you have brought are the things for death.” 

“I understand that you don’t like us here because we attract bullets and we make a lot of noise and sometimes people get hurt because of us,” said the marine. “But these things are going to have to happen before your country can become peaceful, and if you help us and help the ANA and we win, we’re not going to have to be here in your lives.”

“The Taliban will be here half an hour after you leave,” said the mullah, smiling. “They don’t kill us. With them, we don’t worry about going outside. They don’t touch us. We don’t touch them.” 

It was difficult to tell if the mullah was on the verge of laughter or rage. “Thousands of people have died in this area. As you can see, it’s empty. All you have done is build one and a half kilometers of road in the bazaar, but against that, more than 5,000 people have lost their lives. Men, women, and children. Now you can compare these two things against each other, which one of these do you say is better?”

When the conversation ended, the mullah softened slightly. He said there was a small guesthouse inside the mosque and invited everyone in for a cup of tea. The marine looked at his watch and replied, “I would love to drink tea with you today, but unfortunately I’m all out of time, and I need to continue my patrol. But the next time we come down here, I would be more than happy to sit down with you and drink tea and discuss things.”

The mullah’s smile turned back to a snarl. He gave up on whatever he thought talking could have achieved. 

January 2010 – “Jesus Fucking Christ. It Was Right There.”

The Afghan police HQ is full of jeeps that have been destroyed by IEDs or shot up. US and British soldiers drive around in million-dollar bombproof trucks, but Afghan soldiers are given unarmored pickup trucks.

Outside a house in Sangin, several large rocks were suspiciously strewn along a path. Lance Corporal Jeff Payne was on his knees, scraping at the ground with his knife, feeling for metal. Lance Corporal Blake Hancock slowly followed, stretching each leg straight out and pressing lightly on the ground with his toes before each step, looking like someone trying to avoid puddles in his best pair of shoes. Hancock thought the rocks were a guide for someone at the other end of a command wire. “They see someone walk by it, they know that’s when to pull the trigger... Boom!” He fanned his hands out to demonstrate the explosion.

“See that hole filled with rock?” said Hancock. “I’m not going there. That’s like the one that hit McGuinness,” a fellow soldier who was the victim of an IED. 

We approached an S-shaped bend in the path, a junction of four alleys.
“There have to be IEDs on this fucking corner,” Hancock said. 

No one knew it at the time, but Hancock was absolutely right. Buried underneath our feet was a seven-IED-long daisy chain, designed to kill or maim an entire platoon. Two command wires led down a pair of alleys; at the end of one, someone watched, waiting to detonate the bombs. That person held the power source, probably a battery, in one hand and the command wire in the other. As soon as he connected the two, the daisy chain would go off. This method left no metal in the ground for the soldiers to detect. 

I held my breath until I got past the corner. Four marines appeared behind me, looking down each alley through the sights of their rifles. Payne propped a ladder against a wall, trying to find a route off the path—the “fucking path,” as everyone now called it. As he reached the top of the ladder, a huge explosion roared behind us. I turned to see two plumes of brown dust rising in the air. Stones and rocks rained down on us.

“IS ANYBODY HIT? IS ANYBODY HIT?” screamed the marines. I couldn’t see around the corner but could hear a few awful groans.

I walked back to see what had happened. Everyone had frozen where they stood. The groans became horrendous. As the dust cleared, I saw a crater with the fragments of a yellow plastic jug in it. The jug was big enough to have held about 40 pounds of explosives, enough to blow several people to pieces.

“Jesus fucking Christ. It was right there,” said a marine. He pointed at the crater, about eight feet away.

Another marine was on his knees, his right hand reaching for something to grab hold of. But his palm couldn’t find the ground. In the distance a medic was screaming: Could he hear? Could he see? Could he crawl away from the corner? At least three IEDs had gone off together, but everyone was certain there were more around them.

Payne appeared next to me. He surveyed the corner for a second, then quietly walked forward. He stepped over the first crater and bent down to assess the casualty. It was Corporal Christian Thomas, known as Big T. The other marines used to playfully mock him because he flinched at any explosion, even small, controlled ones.

“Can you stand up, can you see?” asked Payne.

“He’s blind! Big T’s a priority!” someone screamed into a radio. Less than three feet away from Big T’s head was another crater, full of a fizzing dark powder that sounded like a fistful of matches being scratched alight at once. 

Payne tried to get Big T onto his feet, but he just patted the ground around him and groaned. “Can you see? Can you stand up?”

“Huh?”

“Can you see?”

“Huh?”

“He can’t hear you, man,” the medic shouted. Big T was blind and deaf. Payne helped him to his feet, but he collapsed, groaning. “Arrrggggh, fuck.”

“Follow me, grab my shoulder,” said Payne. Putting Big T’s arm around his neck, he staggered back down the path.

I was suddenly alone, standing between two smoking craters. “Stay where you’re at, don’t move,” yelled a marine in front of me.

Big T was lowered to the ground. He groaned some more as his arms hung lifelessly from his body, like a stuffed dummy’s. The black powder in the crater was now on fire, crackling ominously.

Big T put his hands to his ears. His mouth was wide open, and his glasses were covered in thick dust, hiding his eyes. 

I shouted to the nearest marine that the powder was still burning. “Could it explode?”

“I don’t know, I’m not going over there,” he said.

Miraculously, none of the marines had been directly on top of the IEDs when they exploded. No one other than Big T had been seriously injured. The people at the front of the patrol—Payne, Hancock, four other marines, and me—had been standing on top of a bunch of the IEDs for about ten minutes before we had walked around the corner. Payne returned to continue sweeping the path until we could get up to a roof. 

A marine pointed down one of the alleys. He said he was sure that was where the triggerman was hiding. “It’s all right,” he said. “He’ll be dead soon.”

August 2009 – “This Is Some Vietnam Shit.”

An Afghan police officer so high on heroin that he can barely stand or tie sandbags.

The marines slept on the concrete floor of a long, thin building that was once a school. I was told to sleep with the medics, who had one room to treat casualties, one room for the doctor, and a mud courtyard that I shared with about 15 others. My bed was a stretcher, when the medics weren’t using it.

“Have you seen what’s next door?” said a marine. “A gynecologist’s bench with a dustbin at the end. How apt for this country.”

There was one casualty at the medical center. He was a local boy, a paraplegic who, despite being “somewhere between 16 and 30,” couldn’t have weighed more than 85 pounds. He’d been discovered in a nearby house that was ablaze after being hit by a Hellfire missile. His family had fled, along with everyone else, when the marines first landed. Unable to move and barely able to talk, the boy had almost starved to death. He told the interpreter that he’d been injured in a farming accident, which none of the marines believed. They assumed anyone who had been injured in the area was either involved in combat or making IEDs.

The marines patrolled the surrounding area daily, but the Taliban were all but invisible. “This is some Vietnam shit,” said one. “Most of the time it’s like we’re getting shot at by bushes.”

One soldier was miserable because his first phone call home had not gone well. During the pep talk before the operation, Echo Company had been told that “the world is watching,” but his friends back home told him that most Americans didn’t know there had been any fighting. He was just 21, had completed a tour of Iraq, and spent some time in prison for assault. 

“Our families know what’s going on,” he growled. “People in the military know, but the general population doesn’t. America’s not at war. America’s at the mall,” he growled. “No one fucking cares. It’s, ‘What’s up with Paris Hilton now? Britney Spears fucking this...’ The average American doesn’t fucking know when people die over here.”

Another marine agreed. “Every day, we get shot at. I finally got to make a phone call today, expecting it to be like, ‘Oh, I miss you so much.’ No. It’s ‘Everything’s fine. I’m partying, having a good life down here.’ Doesn’t even ask me how I’m doing. That’s when I realized that people don’t give a shit. No one even really mentions 9/11 anymore. To me, that’s the whole reason I’m over here. That’s why I went to Iraq, why I joined the Marine Corps. Now we’re here, and I really don’t know why.”

Some of the marines were just 11 or 12 years old when 9/11 happened. And the younger they were, it seemed, the less convinced they were that they were fighting the war on terror. One private, who had signed up exactly one year before, five days after his eighteenth birthday, said, “I don’t know. Where I was, the economy wasn’t good, you couldn’t get a job, my stepdad was suffering, had a hard time finding a job. I knew this was a good organization, regular paycheck, they take care of you. Sitting here now, I’m helping my parents out a lot.” His pay was just over $20,000 a year.

A fellow marine stroked a small bush with his gloved hand. “Look at this fucking thing, it’s nothing but thorns. It’s just angry. It literally has no function except to cause pain. Everything in this country is just so fucking angry.”

June 2007 – “They Are Our Kings.”

The finger of the Gereshk district police chief trembled as he raised it in emphasis. He was a small man with a neatly cropped, graying beard. “The ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] operations are not useful,” he said. “They leave, and the Taliban come back. They are indiscriminate. They see no difference between women and children and the Taliban.” 

I thought he was going over the top, trying to let everyone know that he empathized with them. But then I realized that he too had lost several family members to an air strike, which surprised no one but me. “They have hit me so hard that I am stunned. What can I do? I have lost four of my brothers. How can I look after their families now?”

When he had finished, the elders raged about the bombings, saying that the Taliban were often far away by the time the bombs were dropped, that security was getting worse, and that more civilians would soon start joining the Taliban if things didn’t change. “Life has no meaning for me anymore,” said one man. “I have lost 27 members of my family. My house has been destroyed. Everything I’ve built for 70 years is gone.”

Metal containers were brought in, placed on tables in front of the group, and opened. The elders were given bricks of 500-afghani notes, signing for them by dipping their right thumbs in ink and making prints. They received roughly $2,000 for each family member killed. 

“I lost 20 people, and I was given 2 million afghanis [about $36,000],” said one man. “It was before 12:30 at night, when your forces came to our area. They were involved in a fight, but the Taliban retreated. Later, a jet came and dropped bombs on our house. Two rooms were destroyed. In one of the rooms, my two nephews and my son were there. My son survived. I rescued him from the debris. Six of my uncle’s family were in the other room. All became martyrs. They were buried under the soil. I moved the children away and came back to rescue those under the debris. While we were trying to do that, the children were so frightened they started running away. The plane shot them one by one.

“All we want is security, whether you bring it or the Taliban. We are not supporting war. We support peace and security. If you bring peace and security, you are my king. If they bring security, they are our kings.” 

Go buy Ben's book, No Worse Enemy, now out in paperback, and send him tweets at @BenJohnAnderson.

More stuff from Afghanistan: 

Inside Afghanistan

Life in Afghanistan

The Black Tar Tits of Afghanistan

Last Friday, I took the Eurostar from London to Paris to meet the topless feminist protest group Femen. Originally based in the Ukraine, the organization has since spread across the world. The idea was to film the buildup to Femen's next protest, but I didn't find out quite what I was getting myself into until I arrived at their headquarters—a lofty space above a theater in Goutte D'or—that afternoon.

The area has a large Muslim population and is dotted with Islamic cultural centrers, so it seems quite a ballsy (or boobsy? Is that a thing?) move to base themselves there considering a large part of their shtick is protesting against conservative Islam. Their last protest action, for example, was Topless Jihad Day—a day where Femen members got their boobs out in various European cities to show solidarity with Amina Tyler. Amina, is a 19-year-old Femen member from Tunisia who was drugged and given a "virginity test" after posting topless protest pictures of herself on Facebook.

When I arrived, the Paris HQ was plastered with banners from previous demos—one that read "Sextremism" in bright red paint covered an entire wall. A few members were trying to decide on the best slogan for the massive new banner, which a girl called Oksana was already decorating with paintings of topless Femen activists. The reason for the extended deliberation was because of a heated discussion over whether "Nazi factions" should be spelled with or without an s at the end. No one's going to pay you much attention in the protest world if you mess up your spelling.  

Femen members working on their protest banner.

Prolonging the whole thing even further, Inna Shevchenko—one of the original Ukrainian Femen members—then argued that the slogan ”Femen Action Against Nazi Factions” wasn’t strong enough. Inna started up the French branch of Femen in September 2012 after fleeing Ukraine because, in solidarity with Pussy Riot, she'd chainsawed through an eight-meter-tall crucifix in Kiev's main square. Which is something the Russian government presumably wouldn't be too happy about, when you consider that Pussy Riot were jailed for simply performing a "punk prayer" in a cathedral—a far cry from intentionally destroying a public piece of religious iconography with a massive serrated saw.

Inna was clearly the leader, but the cry of "Let's make a democratic decision!" was frequently blurted out as the group tried to conclude whatever particular thing it was they were trying to conclude. After various suggestions had been tossed around and subsequently shut down—if not by Inna, then by the other girls—we were left standing in an awkward, angry, silent void. The vibe was tense.   

The group didn't want to disclose what exactly it was they were planning in case authorities caught wind of it, giving them ample time to round the Femen members up before they could even unfurl their banners. But I'd guessed by this point (not exactly difficult, what with the all the arguing about the spelling on their banners) that the action was to be against far-right groups who were planning to congregate in Paris on May 12. 

Femen member Margueritte working on their banner.

Inna explained that the last time they confronted neo-Nazi thugs they were badly beaten, and she lost a tooth. So this time round they were planning a different, slightly more detached approach: waving their banners at the fascists from a distance. The plan was for Inna and Sarah, another core member of French Femen, to check into a luxury hotel by the Joan of Arc statue on Place des Pyramides, which is where the far-right groups were going to gather. Once the square was full of neo-Nazis and press, they'd roll down their massive banner and shout their slogans, wearing nothing but flower crowns from the hip up.

The following day, I was invited to one of Femen's weekly sextremist training sessions. As I walked in, the 11 gathered girls—most of them wearing jean shorts and Femen tank-tops—were standing in a circle and furiously screaming their mottos: "Go rape yourself!" and "Nudity is freedom!" and "Fuck your church!" and "Fuck your morals!" and "Not a sex toy!" and "In gay we trust!" and "Homohobes dégage! [Homophobes get out of the way]" and "Where is Amina? Free Amina!" in support of their Tunisian sister.

Femen members practising their protest techniques.

Marianne, another Tunisian Femen activist living in Paris, explained how Amina inspired their Topless Jihad Day. When I asked her about the Muslim Women against Femen Facebook page that was triggered by their actions, she assured me that Femen aren’t against women wearing burqas; they’re against women having to wear burkas. Accentuating the widespread female oppression in Tunisia, Marianne added that her Muslim family don't know she's a Femen member and claimed they'd disown her if they ever found out.  

A new recruit to the group was then asked to demonstrate what she had learned during her inaugural training session at the headquarters the previous week. In front of everyone present, she got into position and started screaming the slogans at the top of her lungs. Inna told her she'd done well, but that her arms went a little slack as she was screaming, before going over the technical aspects of the Femen pose: legs in a wide stance and holding the sign high, arms straight and held a little behind the ears. “We’re not promoting yogurt or beer; we’re reclaiming our bodies. This is aggressive nudity—we’re ready to attack!” Inna told her.

Action training at the Femen headquarters.

Being able to quickly get your top off before getting into position is also an essential skill for any Femen member. Some girls flashed their tits so quickly I barely even registered the fact they were undressing. After the exercise in aggressively disrobing, the members went on to their action training and everything got pretty full on. Half the girls took the role of Femen activists, the other half acted as police and security, dragging their topless cohorts across the room as they screamed slogans and practiced making their actions as visible and audible as possible for the cameras. Inna firmly pointed out that everything they do at protests is for the cameras: "The action will go on until the last camera has left," she told the group.    

The first practice attempt didn't go so well. "All I can hear is noise—you’re not coordinated. We want people to know exactly why we are here,” she said.

The second attempt was more successful, but it took me a while to discern what the girls were actually shouting through their thick accents (I eventually figured out it was "Pope no more" after listening to them for a good five minutes). 

Femen members about to be walked on.

Adrenaline was high and the girls were out of breath. Then they did sit-ups, lift-ups, and planks, all in the style of a military boot camp. After a while, some of the girls started exclaiming, “Oh putain!” ["for fuck’s sake"] at Inna’s orders, to which she replied, “15 push ups!” The girls even practiced being walked on, as is often the outcome at their protests. Pauline, a full-time French Femen activist, told me that women’s bodies are a lot more resistant to pain than you'd think. “We’re taught early on that we are frail, but we’re not! We’re probably more pain resistant than men. I’ve been beaten up during my six months as a Femen, and I’m amazed at how much violence I can be exposed to and still be able to get back up and continue the action."

I caught myself thinking out loud that they all had pretty great tits. Inna assured me there was no casting process, then blushed, admitting that she didn’t particularly like her own boobs.

When the newer activists left, Inna, Pauline, Sarah, Oksana, and another core member, Margueritte, put the finishing touches on their banner, which now bore the slogan: "SEXTERMINATION FOR NAZISM.” Once dried, they folded it into a suitcase. Inna and Sarah, who had got all dolled-up for the swanky hotel check-in, took the suitcase and hopped in a cab to kick off the action.

French fascists gathering at Place de la Madeleine.
 
The next day, I headed down to where the ultra nationalists were gathering at Place de la Madeleine. The army of flag-waving, banner-thrusting thugs in black bomber jackets—who were soundtracked by a truck blasting out dramatic classical music, kind of like the Helicopter Attack in Apocalypse Now, just a bit more fascist—were pretty intimidating. As soon as we got our cameras out, the PR guy from France's infamous Troisième Voie neo-Nazi group walked up and informed us of what we could and could not film.  

We were then introduced to the group's leader, Serge Ayoub, a buff, middle-aged man in a suit jacket with a shaved head and a crooked nose. Serge explained that they had gathered for their annual celebration of Joan of Arc, who kicked the Brits out of France, but also to protest against globalization, “which is destroying our national economy and identity.” After about an hour, the nationalist groups started marching toward the statue of Joan of Arc, where Inna, Sarah, and the other Femen were waiting with their banner.

The Femen annoy loads of fascists with their banner.

Femen had managed to get a room on the third floor of the Hotel Regina, strategically located right behind the nationalists’ sacred Joan of Arc statue. At around noon, when the most violent faction of the ultra-nationalists had arrived at the statue, Inna, Sarah, Pauline, and Oksana emerged on the balcony, bare-breasted in their flower crowns, and swiftly rolled down their banner in front of the hostile neo-Nazis. Unsurprisingly, the fascists tried to storm the hotel, but were quickly pushed back by riot police.

As they couldn’t get their fists on the girls, the nationalists reverted to Nazi salutes and angry displays of their middle fingers while yelling, “Salopes!” ["Bitches!"], “Suicide-toi!” ["Commit suicide!"] and all sorts of other unfriendly things. The girls answered by blowing kisses toward the furious fascists, all while holding position: chins up and straight arms holding smoke flares. A group of nationalist girls gathered beneath Femen’s balcony, shouting, “We’re waiting for you!”

After a little more back and forth between the two groups, a fire truck pulled up and evacuated the Femen activists down a long ladder. The girls descended, occasionally stopping to proudly salute the booing crowd, who were just about being held back from attacking the truck by an armed police brigade. Femen were then safely escorted away by the police before Serge Ayoub held a speech accusing them of being paid by the government and alleging that the tit-flashing was all a conspiracy to disturb nationalist protests. In the eyes of the Femen members, the action was a success.
 
Before meeting Femen, I was in two minds about their tactics. On the one hand, they’ve found a genius way of getting noticed. But are people too distracted by their nipples for their messages to gain any traction? Either way, they have successfully managed to get feminism back on the front pages, which has to count for something. Femen’s nonviolent, topless-protest tactics have even earned them the title of "The new face of feminism," which hasn't gone down too well with feminists who consider flashing your tits to protest prostitution and male oppression as a bit of an oxymoron.  

Angry fascist girls shouting at the Femen protesters.

Admittedly, that whole dilemma is a bit of a mind fuck, but Inna assures it's done on purpose: a wolf in sheep’s clothing type of move, just like how you probably clicked on this article because you read the word “topless” in the title. Maybe Inna is right, and the stigma surrounding female nudity and sexuality has been holding women back by objectifying them or spreading a fear of being objectified. Regardless, it's kind of amazing how much of a fuss people make over some tits being flashed. You would think that it would be thoroughly played out by now, that the tit stigma would be long gone.

Femen aren't hurting anyone and have found a form of nonviolent protest that people actually notice, so why shouldn't they be allowed to walk around topless with flowers in their hair?
 
Don’t miss the VICE documentary on Femen, coming soon on VICE.com.

Read more about Femen:

The Egyptian Feminist Who Was Kidnapped for Posing Nude

Watch more at the VICE show page and check out VICE on HBO every Friday at 11 PM.

Happy Confederate Memorial Day to you and yours! Yes, this is a real holiday in several southern states and the above gentleman is South Carolina Lieutenant Governor Glenn McConnell, a dedicated Civil War reenactor and total douchebag. If you’ve ever pined for the good ol’ days of manners, gentlemanly behavior, long sips of lemonade on the porch during a hot day, and ungodly human bondage, then this is the holiday for you. Giving gifts is encouraged. Your slave will most appreciate a day outside the "hot box."

As always, with the assistance of my friends at the @YesYoureRacist Twitter account, I’ll be ranking news stories on a scale of 1 to RACIST, with “1” being the least racist and “racist” being the most racist.

- The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank dedicated to developing all the world’s dumbest ideas, released a study that claimed that immigration reform will cost the United States at least $6.3 trillion. That may or may not be true. I ain’t no mathematician. What I do know is true is that it recently came out that a co-author of the study, Jason Richwine, wrote his doctoral thesis at Harvard about the relative intelligences of the races. “The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations,” Richwine claimed in his thesis, which was written in 2009, not 1959. Richwine argued that immigration should be selective based on IQ because “no one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.” If we’re going to keep dumb Mexican people out of our country, then can we also deport all the dumb white people? Can we give Rush Limbaugh his own island?

- A poster in France calling for demonstrations against gay rights stirred up plenty of controversy this week for portraying Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira, who is black, as a raging giant gorilla with cornrows and glowing eyes. The Taubira-gorilla is depicted as being swarmed by a crowd of homophobic protesters, who just so happen to be entirely white. The designer of the image deleted the post and apologized for the racist imagery, but only after it went viral. Funny how racism and homophobia tend to go hand in hand... 8

- The state of Michigan recently passed Public Act 436, which gives borderline dictatorial authority to an emergency manager to “supersede local ordinances, sell city assets, and break union contracts” in areas of the state that are economically impoverished, according to the Atlantic. These emergency managers currently function in six cities in Michigan, including Detroit. Around half of the black people in Michigan live in these six cities, which means that they all basically live without basic democratic rights. RACIST

- Last weekend, a group of mostly black University of Southern California students held a party to celebrate their upcoming graduation. The party was registered with USC campus police, and student IDs were checked at the door. Across the street, a group of mostly white students held a similar party. But when Los Angeles police received a noise complaint from party-pooping neighbors, they apparently felt so “threatened” that they called in more than 80 officers in riot gear and a helicopter to bust one of the parties. Want to guess which party they busted? If you guessed the mostly black party, you might be a little cynical, but you’re also correct. "My house was treated with respect, and the only difference between the two parties was that racial component. And if you're going to deny that, then I'm sorry, I'm just not going to stand for it,” said the white student who lives across the street. 9

Photo via

- Noted fashionista Ann Coulter receives this week’s Ann Coulter Award for Excellence in Racism for claiming in a column that evangelical Christians who have had a change of heart on immigration reform are “incapable of abstract thinking” and “they demand that we transform our country into a bankrupt hellhole so that they can feel good about themselves.” Responding to an evangelical interviewed by the New York Times who said that Jesus would not care if someone was legal or illegal, Coulter states:

Would Jesus care if they were gay? Would he care if they’d had abortions? Because if that’s the test for public policy, it’s abortion on demand and gay marriage all around!

Moreover, it’s not clear that Jesus wouldn’t care how people came to this country. Did they come here in disobedience of the laws of God and of man? Was their first act on American soil to defy the law of the nation?

Let’s take a moment to ignore the obvious bigotry and stupidity of her worldview and appreciate that conservative spinster Ann Coulter just admitted that the Bible is not a document we should be using to govern our nation. For that inadvertent admission, Ann only gets a 10

@YesYoureRacist’s 10 Most Racist Retweets of the Week [all grammar sic’d]:

10. @loganbrowning93: "I'm not racist. But what the hell is up with all these white girls being with all of these black guys"

9. @sickdos: "I'm not racist...but Jews make themselves pretty easy to hate."

8. @loganpletcher10: “Statistically 7/10 times you see a black child on a bike it's not there's.#notracist.#LetsBeSerious”

7. @die_sophyy: “Trying to have a peaceful night and some damn negros come to the dock with bebe guns really#kkk#notracist”

6. @GreysonMedley5: “I'm not racist but i would prefer a white only water fountain”

5. @vdross95: “Asians scare me, no racist but really.. something about their face that keeps me on edge”

4. @mangano1974: "Ban black people from buying guns? Not racist but that's where  most of gun crimes come from."

3. @Talksick412: “im not racist...but im not a fan of a lot of black ppl because most of them think they're entitled to everything.”

2. @Baberam303: “I'm not racist but man do I hate Mexicans"

1. @CJJofNYC: “I'm not racist BUT I sometimes wish movie theaters were still segregated.”

@dave_schilling

Last Week in Racism: Clarence Thomas Thinks Barack Obama Was "Approved by the Elites"

Watch more at the VICE show page and check out VICE on HBO every Friday at 11 PM.

Every day, Manixia Thor and her team of 20 women wake up knowing the jobs they have to go to could get them blown to smithereens. Unexploded American cluster bombs could detonate at any moment as they excavate dangerous areas of Laos with their metal detectors. Since the Laotian secret war ended some 40 years ago, millions of these unexploded bombs have remained buried across the country, regularly maiming children and ruining or ending the lives of the thousands who accidentally set them off.

Due to Western involvement in foreign coup d’états, alleged third-party funding of rebel uprisings, and diplomatic meetings behind closed doors, history has seen many wars fought in a way that could be considered secret. Few secret wars, however, continue to lay siege to a native population like the secret war has in Laos—an undeclared state of conflict so brutal that it gave Laos the official title of being history's most bombed country.

For nine years, from 1964 to 1973, the US government dropped more than 2 million tons of cluster bombs and other heavy artillery on Laos. They did all this to help the Royal Lao Government (RLG) combat the far-left communist rebel group Pathet Lao, whose members were trying to, and eventually succeeded, overthrow them and taking control of the country.

Some of the unexploded bombs in Laos.

Back then, there was nothing America despised more than communists—especially rebellious communists—and they were already pretty tight with the Royal Lao Government. Conveniently for the US, the Viet Cong were known to use the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos, so the American government were also aiming to disrupt their movements by dropping bombs, as well as the main event of showering death on a bunch of uppity commies.

Although the secret war was happening at the same time as the Vietnam War—where America was, of course, very much officially taking part—Laos remained neutral throughout the conflict in their neighboring country. However, sitting on the fence didn’t help them much, as they still suffered the equivalent of a planeload of bombs being dropped on their heads every eight minutes for nine years straight. With thousands of people displaced, countless villages left burning, and pretty much every death being a civilian's (over 98 percent), the secret war ended totally in vain. The Pathet Lao went on to successfully overthrow the Royal Lao Government in 1975, just two years after America stopped bombing Laos.

Four decades on, the people of Laos are still dealing with the consequences of the 80 million bombs (out of the 270 million that were dropped) that didn't detonate. To put that in context, there’s an average of two casualties every single week because of live bombs left over from the Secret War. Forty percent of these casualties are children. To combat this, Manixia—a Laos native—and her all-female de-mining team have taken matters into their own hands.

Manixia with her son.

“We can find anywhere from zero bombs a day to 60 bombs a day,” Manixia tells me over the phone. “I understand that my work is very dangerous, but it’s work on behalf of the community and that’s why it’s so worthwhile.”

In the 16 years since the US started trying to rectify their mistakes in Laos, they have sent more than $59 million (£38 million) to help clean up the unexploded bombs. A decent gesture, but compared to the conservative estimate of $500 billion (£322 billion) that the US spent dropping the bombs, is it enough? Hillary Clinton thinks not. While visiting Laos last year, she said that, “We [America] have to do more.”

However, Manixia isn't bitter: “It does no good to point fingers of blame. I’m concerned about the solutions. History can never take out these bombs, we have to focus on how we can help out by removing these bombs.”

Manixia’s team formed six years ago with the help of the Mines Advisory Group (MAG). They recognized a progressive change in the roles of men and women in Laos and thought an all female de-mining team would be symbolic for equal rights in the country.

Manixia’s reasons for leading the team stem partly from an accident her uncle had 15 years ago, when he narrowly survived a blast from a “bombie”—bombie being the local name for the unexploded, fist-sized cluster bombs that litter Laos.

Thoummy Silamphan.

Growing up in Laos, Manixia tells me she was always conscious of the bombs and was told by her parents to “never touch.” She grew up unscathed, but her friend Thoummy Silamphan was less fortunate. Thoummy’s left hand was blown off by a detonating cluster bomb when he was just eight years old. He tells me about his role helping other survivors in the local area.

“After the accidents happen, we give them different care depending on their injuries,” he says. “Some of them have lost legs, lost hands, are blind in the eyes. It’s very difficult for the poor families. We try to help them by taking them to hospital and follow up with patients when they need prosthetics. We can explain to them [what has happened] and help with the badly injured.”

The accidents Manixia Thor has witnessed, the well-being of her young son as he grows older and the will to stop others being maimed or killed by these bombs are a major influence on her work. “I’m possibly saving somebody else from a terrible accident or death,” she says. “That’s always in the back of my mind in terms of my own personal safety, but every bomb destroyed is a chance for somebody not to come across one.”

As well as directly saving lives, Manixia's de-mining efforts will also hopefully bring more attention to the legacies of the secret war and the resilience of Laos—a nation still indirectly under attack from Western artillery.

Follow Jake on Twitter: @OiJake

More from Laos:

How a Remote Laotian Village Became Asia's Cancun

Eat Shit

The Golden Triangle's Relapse

Ben also wrote an article for the May issue of VICE about what he witnessed in Afghanistan, and earlier this week he spoke with VICE creative director Eddy Moretti about how no one there is winning at anything.

Go buy Ben's book, No Worse Enemy, now out in paperback, and send him tweets at @BenJohnAnderson.

The VICE Podcast is a weekly unedited discussion that delves inside the minds of some of the most interesting, creative, and bizarre people in the VICE universe. This week we spoke with author and filmmaker Ben Anderson, who has just returned from Helmand, the most violent province in Afghanistan. With US forces withdrawing, most of the country is now controlled by the Afghan government and its security forces. This, it was officially claimed, is victory. Ben's disturbing new documentary, This Is What Winning Looks Like (premiering Monday on VICE.com), would suggest otherwise.

If you're more of a listener who doesn't like watching things, well, you're in luck:

Read Ben's piece from the May issue of VICE, "This Is What Winning Looks Like."

Previously on the podcast - Eddie Huang

The occupation is the latest battle in a war to keep Cooper Union free. Cooper Union is one of the only colleges in America that doesn't charge tuition. But on April 23, Chairman of the Board Mark Epstein announced that, starting in 2014, the college would cost students $20,000 a year. That’s a 2 zillion percent increase. It was, according to protesters and students, a betrayal of the principles on which Cooper Union was built.

"Education should be as free as air or water," the school's founder, industrialist Peter Cooper, once procliamed. Cooper was the most progressive of the robber barons, a simple-living abolitionist Unitarian who invented Jell-O. He founded his university to provide an education to cash-strapped geniuses of both sexes. He positioned it where Bowery meets Broadway, as a geographic nod to class transcendence—where the upper and lower classes collide.

Since 1859, Cooper Union has been free. Cooper's original endowment is supplemented by donors, alumni, and, most crucially, rent from the land under the Chrysler Building, located 39 blocks away.

Growing up in New York, I viewed Cooper Union through the filter of legend. Because it was free, it took only the best.

My friend Zak Smith, a Cooper art graduate who went on to exhibit in the Whitney Biennial, told me via text: "The great schools in the US are all too often just places that make rich families richer. Cooper Union was the exception.” Smith comes from a working-class family, but thanks to a free education at Cooper, he landed a Yale scholarship for his master's degree and later became a world-renowned contemporary painter. “Not anymore. If it wasn't for Cooper, people like me wouldn't get to be artists."

Cooper Union has been running at a deficit since 1982. Rent from the land under the Chrysler Building was only covering two-thirds of their expenses, so they started selling off property. Starting with Green Camp in New Jersey, they sold off a plot of land here, an unused gas station there. By 2012, Cooper Union had few assets left to sell.

To save money, the university decided to consolidate to two buildings instead of three. Logically, they might have renovated the neoclassical Cooper Hewitt building. Instead, they tore it down. In its place, they built what looks like a gray Rubik's Cube upon which a toddler has sat. It cost $111.6 million and was completed in 2009.

All sketches of protesters by Molly Crabapple, done during the occupation.

In 2006, Cooper Union President George Campbell took out a $175-million loan from MetLife. In what a source close to the Cooper administration, speaking on the condition of anonymity, described as a "huge conflict of interest," Campbell gave control of some of the assets to a member to the board to invest in the market. The investments, along with the rest of the economy, crashed in 2008.  

"The loan from MetLife with a huge prepayment charge erased any savings the building might have provided," said my source.

While current President Jamshed Bharucha has held his position since 2011 and isn't responsible for the university's debt, he's a proponent of expensive tuition. As a result, he's less than beloved. The feeling seems mutual. My source told me that, after an art student banged on the windows of his cab, Bharucha had all early-admissions applicants to the art school deferred. He changed the school's security contract to provide himself with bodyguards and harangued the students for their "politics of destruction." My source says "his behavior toward the students has been nothing short of despicable.”

Bharucha probably wasn’t too happy when, yesterday morning, the 50 students took over his office. He had left the building minutes before. Since the occupation started, 200 students, as well as the entire tenured faculty of the art department, have signed a vote of no confidence in Bharucha. The occupation has since grown to 60 students, all camped out in the president’s office. They've pledged to stay until Bharucha steps down as president. They've hung black banners from the facade and painted on the windows "Keep It Free."

Because they’re current, not incoming, students, none of the people occupying that office will have to pay tuition. They don't care. Saar Shemesh, an art student, said, "We've been granted this amazing education for free. Future students don't have a voice yet. If we don't fight for them, no one will."

The students organize themselves nonhierarchically. It's a few weeks from finals, so they study in between planning meetings.

Angus, a second-year art student, told me that the administration had tried to lock them in. They refused.

Outside, perhaps 50 protesters hold a solidarity rally. Occupiers bang pans next to veterans of the CUNY student protests, all while being filmed by the inevitable live-streamer. Many wear the red square of Quebec's student strikes—the carre rouge that has become an international symbol of debt. Bored cops wait, their waists loaded with zipcuffs. An old man plays the sax.  

The crowd chanted "No debt! No fees! Cooper Union will be free!"

"This is a much bigger fight than against our administration," Angus said. "In America, the rich can get an education. The poor have to take out loans, and are burdened by debt from the day they graduate."

There's an American tendency to accuse those who want social services of entitlement. Who are you, the thinking goes, to demand college? To demand food? To think that you should work fewer than 12 hours a day, or not die of untreated illness, or have a dignified old age? The Cooper Union students are getting their share of that. But they make a particularly poor target. They are largely bright working class kids who passed brutal admissions to attend a school whose reason for existing is to educate them for free.

Cooper Union students are the paragons of that most sacred American myth: meritocracy.

The students' official statement decries tuition as "desecrating a 154-year-old tradition of meritocracy and free education."

But can a free Cooper Union be saved? Saar Shemesh said, "I think instead of thinking about tuition as a solution to fix this deficit problem, we should focus on fundraising and getting more support from alumni and outside donors.”

"Bloomberg could cement his legacy by writing one check to keep Cooper free. Buy one less pony, guy." Zak Smith said. 

In the long run, the debt-freighted American education system itself is probably more unsustainable than a free Cooper Union.

"This isn't just about Cooper Union," said Saar Shemash. "The problem of tuition hikes is something that afflicts every university. We're not isolated. Our occupation is not something that should go on for a few days for people to eventually forget about. It is something that should happen on campuses around the country, around the world."

The windows of Cooper Union's historic Foundation Building in Manhattan's East Village are awash with calls to “keep it free” in large lettering, espousing the virtues of gratis learning. Inside, about 50 students and university faculty are occupying the office of the school's president. They've been at it since yesterday morning, when a scrum of teachers and students dissatisfied with a decision by the school's Board of Trustees to begin charging tuition, marched into President Jamshed Bharucha's office and placed a letter on his desk that demanded his resignation and signed by more than half the student body.

“We no longer recognize your presidency at Cooper as legitimate,” it read, “and in so doing we commit to reclaim this office in the interim until a suitable administrative alternative is secured.”

Security personnel later arrived removing files, but not occupiers, who have pledged to nonviolently resist attempts of eviction. They've declared Bharucha's office “a tuition-free zone,” instigating a standoff between themselves and the academic institution seeking a new economic model.

“The administration wants us to leave,” said Pablo Chea a sophomore engineering student taking part in the occupation, “but they don't want to involve the cops. They don't want any bad press.”

Cooper Union is a private liberal arts school founded by an endowment from Peter Cooper in 1859. Cooper, a wealthy industrialist and an inventor, believed “education should be free as air and water,” regardless of a person's race, ethnicity, gender, or economic background.

Gail Buckland, who has taught photography at the school since the 70s and took part in the occupation of the president's office Wednesday, said the lack of tuition at Cooper Union has created a unique learning environment. “Everyone in my classroom has a sense of equality,” she said. “Nobody has prolonged adolescence because their parents are supporting them. They're responsible to themselves, not to banks, not to their parents.”

In a country where the cost of higher education at both private and public institutions has risen year after year—driving America's student debt over the trillion-dollar threshold—Cooper Union has never asked for a buck from its students.

“Everybody has a debt to somebody,” said Buckland, “But I'd rather my students have a debt to society than to bankers.”

Cooper Union's meritocracy has stood for 154 years but that's starting to change. Last year, Bharucha and the Board of Trustees voted to begin charging the small percentage of graduate students attending the school and on April 23 elected to do the same to undergraduates beginning in 2014.

The administration declined to comment for this story and, as of the time this article was posted, had not released a statement on the flock of students who spent the night curled up in the office of the school's president beside empty boxes of pizza. In the past, however, Bharucha and other school officials have defended the decision to charge for enrollment, arguing their hands have been forced by the dire economic straits the university finds itself in. “There will be some tough decisions,” Bharucha told the New York Times in February. “There have to be. Because the model that has been in place cannot be sustained.”

At the time, Bharucha said no decision had been made, but a statement proclaiming that the “college admits undergraduates solely on merit and awards full scholarships to all enrolled students” had already been removed from the school's website.

Pointing to the new monochrome structure adjacent to the Foundation Building that serves as home to Cooper Union's School for the Advancement of Science and Art—Victoria Sobel said she isn't buying Bharucha's story. Sobel, an art major who graduates this year, is a member of Cooper Union $O$, which planned and orchestrated the occupation. The window propaganda decorating the Foundation Building was her senior project, although the administration made her take down slogans mentioning Bharucha specifically by name. She accuses the president of continuing a trend established by his predecessors, that of “selling Cooper Union down the river.”

In February, Bharucha told the Times that the school is loosing about $12 million per year. The institution owns the Chrysler Building and other pieces of high-value New York real estate, but the cost of upkeep isn't keeping up with revenue. Yet, Cooper Union is currently spending $10.3 million a year paying back a $177 million loan it took out to invest in the stock market shortly before the economy tanked in 2008. And it spent an additional $173 million erecting the Science and Art building, enlisting the talents of famed architect Thom Mayne. Completed in 2009, the building's sleek, modernist design stands in stark contrast to the red brick structure, first erected when Peter Cooper established the school shortly before the Civil War.

“They're trying to make the school more hip looking,” said Sobel, “and a lot of that has to do with profitability. Not charging tuition just isn't profitable.” She's confident Cooper Union can remain free and accuses the school of exaggerating the cost it incurs per student, a figure it puts at $38,550. She also said its administrative costs are too high, including the reported half a million plus housing that Bharucha receives a year. Most of all she wants the Cooper Union community to have more of a role in how budgetary decisions are made. “From public forums to private meetings, there have been so many interventions from student, faculty, and alumni, and we've been met with complete resistance."

On Wednesday evening students from across the city, including some from the public City College of New York, where incremental tuition hikes are being implemented, gathered in front of the Foundation Building to support those hunkered down seven stories above. Chants of “Education is a right! Fight, fight, fight” filled Cooper Union Square. School security stood by the building's entrance making sure no one without proper ID stepped inside. In the park nearby, holding a staff and perched on a thrown, sat a bronze statue of Peter Cooper. Cooper faced southward, his back to the scene, as if someone had wheeled him around so he couldn't see the profiteering happening at the school he built to be as free as "air and water." 

More on Cooper Union: 

The Fight to Save America's Best Free College

Last week, VICE interviewed Th3 Pr0, an alleged member of the hacker group Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) who claims to be the head of their Special Operations division. The SEA are staunch supporters of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad. They claim that the rebel forces attempting to overthrow the Syrian government are financed and controlled by Western-backed terrorist factions, including groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra who have been designated a “terrorist organization” by the Obama administration and are in open alliance with al Qaeda. This week, four UN peacekeepers were abducted by al Qaeda-linked Syrian rebels, the Martyrs of Yarmouk, in the Israeli-occupied Syrian territory known as the Golan Heights. The knowledge of these nefarious associations, however, has not delayed the United States from aiding the Syrian rebels. US aid in the form of medical supplies and ready-to-eat meals was delivered to the Free Syrian Army in the Aleppo district late last week.

By most estimates the civil war in Syria has already claimed the lives of over 70,000 people, and even with external forces beginning to intervene, there is no end in sight. The fighting won't be confined to physical locations, however, and as with many other conflicts worldwide, cyberspace has become a secondary theater of war. The SEA has been waging war against Western media networks, whom they accuse of distorting facts and facilitating the approval of Western intervention against the Assad regime. To date, they have infiltrated dozens of social-media accounts belonging to numerous news networks, including affiliated accounts of CBS, the Guardian, and the Associated Press, to name a few. As was recently reported, the @AP hack caused a dramatic $136 billion drop in the DOW Jones, after the official Twitter account of the Associated Press tweeted about two explosions at the White House while under SEA control.



This week, the SEA successfully hacked the Twitter account of America's Finest News Source, the Onion, and tweeted numerous messages condemning the UN, the governments of Qatar and Israel, and the CEO of the Onion for "taking zionist money to defame Syria." While the Onion may seem much less relevant than an account like the Associated Press's, in terms of reach, the attack may have been tactical: @TheOnion's following exceeds that of @AP by 2.9 million users, although it wasn't clear if this factored into the SEA's decision to target the Onion. Since the SEA is likely casting a broad net with the use of phishing emails, as opposed to hacking Twitter's servers to gain access, the actions of the Onion's own employees are likely to blame for the security failure. It's also possible the Onion may have made themselves a target last week when they copied and retweeted the hoax @AP message as a kind of “too soon” joke.
 

BREAKING: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama Is Injured

— The Onion (@TheOnion) April 23, 2013

Twitter quickly restored @TheOnion, and their writers immediately went to work on the SEA. An article was published as if written by the SEA that claimed the group intended to hack the Onion website as well, but were turned off by how obsolete the coding was: "We want users to immediately see our message that Zionist-controlled interests are distorting the facts that come out of Syria... And when we looked at the layout of the Onion’s homepage, we immediately realized the huge mistake we’d made."

We decided to touch base with an alleged member of the Syrian Electronic Army once again to learn more about their intentions behind Monday's attack on the Onion. This time we spoke to a person known as the Shadow, who claims to be a hacker, as well as a member of the "Special Operations Division" of the SEA.

VICE: What made you decide to hack the Onion this week after spending so much time targeting serious news organizations?
The Shadow: We are well aware of the satirical nature of the Onion, but this does not detract from the fact that the basis of their "humor" was rooted in the narrative promoted by most major corporate media. What convinced us to make our move was an article titled "The Onion Website Joins the U.S. Anti-Syria Club" by Shamus Cooke that details how the Onion can be a more effective wartime propaganda tool than even "serious" and seemingly credible media. The irresponsible promotion of chemical weapons claims and attribution of all the mayhem in Syria on the one side attempting to keep order is very much an assumption of their focus on Syria. This is why the majority of informed people do not find such articles funny.

Why did you accuse the Onion of taking “Zionist money” in exchange for defaming Syria?
We have various tactics when we penetrate a media outlet. For the Onion, we decided to loosely follow their style. We do not seriously suggest any kind of money transfer from unnamed “Zionist” sources, we realize it is more likely that the Onion follows the corporate line as a matter of ideology. During the Second World War, both the Germans and the Americans used satire to attack one another. The Onion serves the same sort of wartime role that the Disney anti-German short films did back then.

What do you think about the Onion's response?
Many readers found it in poor taste. One Twitter user responded with a simple "yikes." This reaction was exactly what we were hoping for, as the writer placed all their anger in it, dropping the mask of the real situation in Syria. The rebels were depicted in the exact same manner as reality, so it cannot really be classified as satire except with one difference—the Syrian army will win and we don't have a "base" that can be attacked.

We have reports that the internet and phone lines were in a complete shutdown last night in Syria. Is that true?
Unfortunately, it is true, though mobile phones worked intermittently due to a large number of Syrians using them as an alternate form of communication. These kinds of cuts do not affect the terrorists operating in Syria as they have their own US-supplied communication equipment. The blackout effectively shut down our operations, but we are glad to be back.

Can you tell us more about the Israeli air strike in Damascus?
I was asleep during the bombings. I heard some explosions later, although I never saw them. These acts of terror only motivate us to work harder to defend our country on the internet from these terrorists and their masters.

Have the recent attacks by Israel changed the course of the Syrian cyberwar in any specific way?
I cannot comment about this at the current time as not to give any hints to the enemy.

What is the official SEA response to the Israeli strikes?
Again, I cannot comment about this in any specific detail, but they will not be spared from our efforts, just like all sides conspiring against Syria.

Do you feel the situation is getting easier or harder for the Syrian government?
We aren't military or political experts, but the situation does seem to be improving for the government, especially from the general opinions of friends, family, and online contacts. The public awareness of the conspiracy targeting the nation has made the war exponentially easier for the government.

If Israel and the United States become fully involved in the conflict and send troops/fighter jets to attack regime targets, do you still feel confident of winning the war?
If Israel and the United States were fully involved, we would be even more confident in victory, even though it will come at a great cost to the entire planet. At least then the world will share the pain we suffered alone.

In warfare, ideally, both sides would agree that certain actions are illegal. Are there any boundaries in cyberwarfare you feel should be respected? Is there anything you won't hack as a matter of principle?
For sure. The moment when human life is at risk or damage to infrastructure is possible, computer hacking transitions from hacktivism to cyberwarfare or cyberterrorism. Recently, an unknown group pretending to be the SEA hacked into a fictional "Israel Critical Infrastructure" SCADA system. This was attributed to the Syrian Electronic Army, but we never announced it on any of our official mediums. We do not approve of this. If anything, it does not contribute to our cause of showing people the truth. Quite the contrary.

Are there any actions taken by Syrian Arab Army or Shabiha forces that the SEA disapprove of?
First off, we don't recognize the existence of the so-called Shabiha that were popularized by the Al-Jazeera propaganda channel. There is no perfect army in the world, and we cannot claim that every soldier in the Syrian Arab Army adheres to the rules of combat. But overall, we can say with confidence that this is a heroic army who risk their lives for the safety and dignity of our people. We are in no position to criticize specific actions by the army from the safety of our homes. If we may, we would also like to add that many massacres that have been pinned on the Syrian army were in fact committed by the terrorists. Real journalists on the ground like Alex Thomson of Channel 4 have investigated several of these massacres and the locals verified that it was not the army who attacked them.

Many people are suggesting changing the way Twitter works so that there is a two-step verification process to make life harder for the SEA. Would that make life harder for you guys?
It will definitely make it harder on Twitter, but this was never our primary attack vector. Nevertheless, there are still some security holes in Twitter's model that we hope to exploit in the future so no one should get too comfortable; we are not going to give up.

How do you feel about the SEA's work over the last year or so?
Given the fact that we are a voluntary group, that most of us have studies or work to tend to and that many of us live in a warzone, we believe we have done the best that we could. We don't want to disappoint the Syrian people by being too satisfied with what has been achieved so far. We know for sure that we can go even further.

Max Fisher, while writing for the Washington Post blog, said that you guys aren't very funny. Do you have a response for him?
Max Fischer most likely based his "they're juvenile" comment solely on the E! News hacks where it was announced that Justin Bieber was gay. This was the first time the SEA hacked an entertainment outlet. We did in fact do the hack "for the lulz," especially since so many fans demanded it inside and outside Syria. The sharp eye would have picked up a story behind one of the tweets: the Angelina Jolie tweet. She has visited in December 2012 a Syrian refugees camp in Jordan and was video taped teary eyed, voicing her sympathies to the refugees. We know the likes of Jolie, who under the "humanitarian" cover only serve American imperialism. Furthermore, the timing of the hack with the visit by Bieber to a Gulf state conspiring against our nation shouldn't be ignored.

As for us being "unfunny," one only has to observe the replies and the reactions to the hacked tweets to see that the majority of the "Twittersphere" that has interacted with or encountered the SEA find us witty and informative. We can't please everybody and Fischer's comment is just another opinion. What can we say? Haters gonna hate.

Why have you been willing to talk to us at VICE? Are we not just as likely targets for a hack too?
We generally target the most malicious media, especially those who refuse to cover both sides of the war. We won't say we approve of anyone's coverage, but the fact that you're willing to hear a second point of view means that VICE won't be on our radars. There are many media sites we could have easily targeted, but didn't out of at least gratitude for a slim amount of journalistic integrity. On the other hand, outright lying media such as the Guardian is going to be a target for the rest of the war. They even managed to claim we are paid for our hacks (to delegitimize our cause), imagined an SEA base in Dubai connecting them via Syria (an entire base, I kid you not!) while at the same time claiming that they interviewed a "defector" who classified our sectarian affiliation. Needless to say, this was the Guardian's knee-jerk response to our infiltration of their media. Our response to Luke Harding and others is, U MAD BRO?

Follow Dell on Twitter: @DellCam

Follow Oz on Twitter: @OzKaterji

Previously:

The Syrian Electronic Army Talks About Hacking the Guardian and Their Obama Bomb Hoax

Watch more at the VICE show page and check out VICE on HBO every Friday at 11 PM.

Have you ever simultaneously regretted that the poor had been pushed out of a neighborhood, but wished you could have gotten in when rents were still cheap? Have you ever admired the pluck and ingenuity of the first few nonpoor bastards to move into a poor area? I have.

The Los Angeles City Council just unanimously voted to tear down Jordan Downs, nearly the oldest housing project in America and probably the title holder for ugliest. Jordan Downs is comprised of 103 spookily identical buildings in the low-income, violence-ridden neighborhood of Watts. While notorious for its gangs, its racially tinged police brutality, and its intractable poverty, Watts is also noteworthy for its cultural vibrancy and the palpable neighborhood pride of its residents. I wrote that last sentence by the way, not the Watts Chamber of Commerce, but they can have it for free.

"URBAN VILLAGE"

They’re not just tearing down Jordan Downs, they’re turning this Orwellian nightmare-scape into an “urban village,” including four story townhomes, condos, retail restaurants, and a farmer’s market. Residents have been hearing about this pie-in-the-sky renovation for years, or even decades, but about ten months ago, a developer was chosen, and the City Council’s decision on Wednesday, April 17 marked a big step forward. But optimism on the part of lifelong residents might not be the most practical emotion.

(“Like” the Facebook page now. It’ll look good later when you apply to live there.)

COLD WATER BATH OF FACTS AND FIGURES

A group called The Michaels Organization is one of the principal entities taking the helm on this project, according to the LA Times. They’re responsible for the reimagining of the Robert Taylor Homes project in Chicago’s Bronzeville. As you might, expect, rents in the area have since gone up, quite a bit. The adjacent South Loop neighborhood now includes the third fastest gentrifying neighborhood in America, and from the 2000s to the teens, the percentage of whites in the 60604 area code went from 37.7 to 75.4.

The problem for developers trying to gentrify Watts is going to be the promise the city has made to maintain a “1:1 ratio,” with regard to subsidized rent. Currently all 700 units are being rented out at housing-project prices, and when construction is completed, 700 of the 1,100 new units are ostensibly still going to be subsidized. The fuzzy part in the middle raises three major questions: What will those subsidized rents be? Who will be paying them? Will these subsidized tenants be the same lifelong tenants currently living in Jordan Downs?

CITY-SPONSORED GENTRIFICATION

As a city in 2013, you have to partner with a private sector that hasn’t heard words like “our first priority is to protect families from homelessness” since the Carter administration.

Still, NPR’s piece on this redevelopment makes it clear that at least on paper, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) wants this to go differently than Chicago, where in some areas, like Cabrini Green, 80 percent of the low-income population got nudged out in favor of those willing to pay a premium for the proximity to downtown and nearby rapid transit stops. Unfortunately Watts is a similar situation in too many respects. In fact, LA Housing Authority Chief Executive Douglas Guthrie worked on the Cabrini Green redevelopment. It’s hard to see this going too differently.

In other words, history teaches us that when your dilapidated housing project gets revitalized, you do not get to stay unless you stop being very poor.

SEPARATING THE POOR FROM THE VERY POOR

The new residents paying market rates for rent will only have to live side by side with the more savory, less scary, poor. The language the city is using is that all residents “in good standing,” will be allowed to stay, but it sounds as though residents in bad standing are only recently hearing about it.

What members of community outreach group SHIELDS For Families who were on site at Jordan Downs when I visited explained is that a “new enforcement of old rules,” seems to be getting people evicted now. After a lifetime of bad housekeeping, residents are newly subject to inspections for cleanliness, and then evicted if a certain standard isn’t maintained. The longstanding ban on pets, which in the past was (anecdotally) an unenforced guideline, is now also grounds for eviction after a warning. SHIELDS For Families is on the ground trying to help residents not get evicted as all this unfolds.

SHIELDS For Families Outreach Workers

Surprise evictions also come from the zero-tolerance rule for harboring fugitives. In a neighborhood with a drug problem, this means that in the likely event that someone staying in your house is involved in the drug trade in some way, or just using heavily enough to leave paraphernalia around, heavier enforcement could mean you’re out on your ass if they get caught. One strike. The end.

WHY SOME POOR AND NOT OTHERS?

John King, Policy and Planning Director for Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles explained to me:

“HACLA has a Flat Rent policy, which sets rents at a level below market rate but higher than the average rent which is about $300. This allows families who have relatively higher incomes to stay in public housing should they so choose. Therefore we currently have someone paying $100 per month for a 3 bedroom living next to someone paying $948 per month for a 3 bedroom.”

Mr. King also wanted to emphasize that the new “market rate” units are going to be “market rate for Watts.” Naturally, he points out, “it won’t be the market rate for Santa Monica.”

SPEAKING AS A GENTRIFIER...

Mr. King may not realize it, but I, for one, would rather live in Watts than Santa Monica. I’m like the guy in the Onion’s fake op-ed from 2006 with the headline “Sometimes I Feel Like I'm the Only One Trying to Gentrify this Neighborhood.” I’m a white guy who only likes small, nervous dogs, and despises yuppies. 

Of course, Metro ads for Watts focus entirely on the Watts Towers, Simon Rodia’s deranged wonderland, a spot often visited and photographed with Holgas and parent-purchased DSLRs. What PR operation could ever include the hideous blight of Jordan Downs?

But as an alternative to homelessness, I could see myself falling in love with this place.

@MikeLeePearl

More stuff from LA:

LA Pizza That Doesn't Suck?

Reasons Why Los Angeles Is the Worst Place Ever 

Why Gentrification Is Only Bad if You're Poor 

VICE Australia is turning ten this month, which means we've spent a decade bringing you a steady stream of the weirdest, most thought-provoking news and culture that's ever been filmed, photographed, or written about. And when looked at in combination with the fact we just ticked over 2 million subscribers to our YouTube channel (which Shane Smith nakedly attests to here), it feels like we have cause for celebration. So, in what's possibly the least suprising news ever, we're marking the occasion by throwing huge parties at Sydney's Goodgod Danceteria and Higher Ground in Melbourne.

If you'd like to see NY drug-hop outfit Flatbush Zombies alongside VICE favourites Roland Tings, Straight Arrows, Mining Boom, Raw Prawn,  Home Travel, Housewives, and Dodecahedron, as well as DJ sets from Midnight Juggernauts, Halfway Crooks, Roman Wafers and more, enter here to win tickets.

Special thanks go to Wrangler, in addition to Cerveza Aguila, providers of the beer many of you will be drinking.

Want a sample of what you'll be hearing on the night?

Kids are dumb. We know this both from research that shows teenagers’ brains are suggestion-prone and vulnerable and from just watching how they act every day. “I’m going to eat a bunch of cinnamon because YouTube told me to, oh no, now I require medical attention because I’m an idiot!” is something teens say all the time. Do you remember what you did when you were a teen? The embarrassingly earnest manifestos you wrote on the bus? The furtive masturbations? The unchecked emotional swings? That night you were too high to drive home and called your mom and then forgot your overelaborate excuse so you just went, “Uhhhhhhmmmmmmmmm”?

Most ex-teens look back on that phase happy to have avoided receiving emotional or physical scars—or dealing with those scars however they can: through therapy, letting time and distance do their work, or wearing long-sleeved shirts pretty much all the time. But we should also be glad that we never got ground down by the gears of the legal system—the cops can be one of the most destructive forces in the lives of young people, coming down on mostly innocent kids just because they made a mistake, or sometimes for no reason at all.

A couple of high-profile examples from the last two weeks show just how brutal law enforcement can be when it comes into contact with teenagers. On Thursday, Cameron D’Ambrosio, an 18-year-old from Methuen, Massachusetts, was arrested for making felony bomb threats thanks to a lame video he posted to Facebook of himself rapping about having a bunch of money and killing people. “Cammy Dee” could get up to 20 years for his shitty, shitty rapping and posturing, and his bail has been set at $1 million. The absurdity of this is obvious from the details contained in this local news story:

[Cameron] had disturbing photos and posts on his Facebook page including “Fuck politics, Fuck Obama and Fuck the government!!”

He also had a “disturbing satanic photo posted as well as a photo of himself on a “Wanted Poster” that reads “Wanted Dead or Alive.” A quick perusal of his Facebook page shows D’Ambrosio’s unusual interest in gangs, violence and a criminal lifestyle. 

In other words, he had the same mundane, straight-out-of-pop-culture fantasies that 80 percent of kids have. Yet in the context of law enforcement, these become “threats” and Cameron becomes a suspect.

Then there’s the case of Kiera Wilmot, a 16-year-old from Florida who was amusing herself before school on April 22 in the manner of nerdy kids everywhere, by fooling around with science. She mixed toilet-bowl cleaner and aluminum foil in a water bottle, which resulted in a chemical reaction that produced “a firecracker-like ‘pop’ and some smoke,” according to USA Today. Since she did this on school grounds, she had to get disciplined, even though, as her principal said, she was a “good kid” and didn’t mean anyone any harm. But rather than receiving a slap on the wrist, Kiera is, absurdly, getting charged with “possession and discharge of a weapon on school ground and with discharging a destructive device” and being tried as an adult. Already, scientists and others have voiced their support for Kiera and over 180,000 people have signed a petition on her behalf addressed to Florida State Attorney Jerry Hill. Hopefully, so much publicity will persuade the people in power to realize what a horrific mistake the police and prosecutors made, and Kiera will be back in school, where she should have been all along.

But there are plenty of less famous instances of children being abused by law enforcement, and those cases are awfully easy to find. Here’s a sampling:

In March, a 16-year-old from New Jersey was charged with “making a terroristic threat” after slipping an envelope of harmless white powder under a school administrator’s door in what sounds like a slightly mean-spirited prank. A pair of 14-year-old Texans were arrested in April on a similar charge after harassing some other kid online and in person. Another 14-year-old, this one from Pennsylvania, got charged (again for a “terroristic threat”) after calling in a fake bomb threat to his school later that month—just days before a 13-year-old in California was arrested for making threats on Instagram. And in a case the conservative media latched onto, a high school senior in North Carolina got charged with a felony after accidentally bringing a shotgun to school in the back of his truck and calling his mother to come pick the gun up.

All of these acts were stupid or nasty to varying degrees, but it doesn’t seem like they rise to the level of getting the cops involved, because once that happens, it almost guarantees that very bad things will happen to very young people. Even when those involved in the system aren’t actually corrupt (like the judge who was caught taking bribes from private prisons to hand out maximum sentences to kids), the teenagers who are sent to juvenile jails endure horrific conditions, and those in adult prisons often end up in solitary confinement, which can only be described as a crime against humanity.

The good news is that the teen-arrest rate and number of kids in juvie, both of which peaked in the late 90s, are declining; “only” 70,000 teenagers nationwide are in the kiddie version of prison. The bad news is that more and more, public schools are welcoming cops into their hallways and classrooms, where they search kids for drugs and arrest them on a variety of petty, dumb-teenager stuff, ranging from doodling on a desk or talking back. This trend is especially pronounced in schools in poor and minority communities—because of course it is—and it results in everyday horror stories like that of Tieshka Aver, a diabetic high school kid in Birmingham, Alabama, who was arrested and treated roughly by the cops after falling asleep while reading in class. The ACLU and others have called this the “school-to-prison pipeline,” which conjures up a depressing, and depressingly accurate, image.

Abuse like that Tieshka received isn’t solely the fault of individual police officers, who likely didn’t sign up for the force because they loved kids and wanted to spend time overseeing them. The law-enforcement system isn’t designed for children—just about the only thing it can do is send people to jail, which in nearly every case is a horrific overreaction when it comes to kids being dumb. What’s needed is a response to teenaged stupidity that metes out punishment without resorting to handcuffs, trials, and detention centers. Parents and competent teachers and administrators can do that, but the police definitely can’t.

The upshot for all this for teens is simple: your lives suck a little more thanks to increased police presence and surveillance. If you’re in one of those poor schools dominated by cops, you could be prosecuted as a criminal just by acting out, so it’s probably safest not to engage with anything—just keep your head down and your mouth shut and try to get through it. If you use social media like an ordinary teen, you have to be hypervigilant (in a way you’re probably not capable of being) about what you post, lest you get charged with making threats. And pranks that to you might seem light-hearted or an honest expression of your anger could result in you being charged with felonies. So until the adults can figure out a way to get the prison-industrial complex in check, try not to do anything whatsoever, OK? And never film yourself rapping.

@HCheadle

More on Kids and Crime:

Silent but Deadly: School Cops Arrest Students for Talking too Loud, Graffiti, and… Farting

Prisons Punish Families Too

Three Teen Girls in Ottawa Pleaded Not Guilty to Pimping