violence
Dodging Water Cannons and Sound Bombs at Israel's Catastrophe Day
I arrived in Jerusalem on Nakba 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. I expected shit to get wild, but the speed with which...
Alabama’s Strip Clubs of Death
Most of the time, shootings in strip clubs are rare occurrences, the result of a drunk who’s thrown out of the club and comes back with a gun for revenge. But in Alabama the strip-club murder rate is completely out of control. Curious to see the sites...
Skateboarding's Most Violent Team Manager Has Mellowed Out
Deluxe Distribution's Mic-e Reyes has never kicked anyone off his team for smoking pot, but he has kicked a lot of ass over the years.
Papua New Guinea Is Still Burning "Sorcerers" at the Stake
Some of the people who live in the more remote regions of Papua New Guinea possess an extreme belief in the power of the occult. They take it seriously enough that, in the past couple of weeks, some of them have formed an armed mob and attacked two...
What Was the South African Military Doing in the Central African Republic?
There is much speculation over why South African President Jacob Zuma deployed his forces to support the Central Africa Republic's clearly failing, dictatorial government. The most popular theory is that both the ANC and its members have private...
Dying of a Dirty Mouth
Don’t think appearance matters? I once saw an old man get killed in prison for having bad breath. He was Puerto Rican, but we called him Miagi 'cause he had a very Asian look and resembled Pat Morita. Unfortunately, his mouth was completely decayed and...
A People’s History of April Fools' Day
Many date the day’s origins to the Persian holiday of Sizdah Be-dar, or “Day of Far Too Many Puddings.” In Scotland, a medieval holiday evolved into Hunt-the-Gowk Day ('gowk' meaning "Jew" in Scots). Whatever you call it, April Fools' is a tradition...
Watch This Eerily Erotic and Pretty Fucked-up 'American Ecstasy' Trailer
There isn't too much information available about 'American Ecstasy,' besides the fucked-up and strangely sexy trailer. To glean a little—and I mean just a little—insight on what the new film is about, I hit director Jonathan Leder up for a chat on the...
Explaining Bangladesh's Month of Massive Street Protests and Violence
The Shabagh protests are a liberal street festival with a morbid demand. Nooses and chants calling for accused war criminals to be hanged have become shorthand in a battle of what defines the nation, an unfinished struggle of identity for a pluralistic...
The State Representative Who Compared MMA to Child Porn
Steve Hickey, a right-wing Republican and ordained minister, called for a ban on MMA in South Dakota and compared the sport to child porn, meth, and feeding people to lions. "It is violent, and it isn't a sign of a healthy society that crowds gather to...
The Burned and Bloodied Sex Workers of South Mumbai
An estimated 100,000 sex workers currently earn a living working in the brothels of South Mumbai’s red-light districts. Most of them are not there voluntarily, but, rather, have been sold into sex work, sometimes by a relative or trusted family friend...
Notes from a Hitter: How Football Battered My Brain
It wasn’t until months after I played my last football game that the ramifications of the multiple concussions I suffered began to surface. The day after a long night of senior-year boozing, I came to in the back of an ambulance, flailing about as a...