BY GIORGIO VISCARDINI In the early 90s a group of ambitious and wildly hand-gesturing Northern Italians said vaffanculo to Rome’s centralized government and formed Lega Nord (Northern League). The somewhat volatile political party promotes federalism and autonomy for regions around the Po Valley, which its members refer to as Padania because they want to feel special. No stranger to controversy, Lega made headlines in July when they staged a protest against the reintroduction of brown bears into the nearby woods of Trentino. The gathering was promptly interrupted by the Italian authorities who seized 110 pounds of (very illegal) bear meat, acquired from a butcher in Slovenia. It’s been a few months now, and while the controversy hasn’t died down, we were finally able to track down Senator Erminio Boso, an old-school member of the Northern League and elected representative of the Italian Republic, to ask him a few questions about the controversy. VICE: Seriously, dude? A bear barbecue? What were you thinking?
Senator Erminio Boso: It’s simple. We’re still fighting a battle against the reintroduction of bears in Trentino. The plan to eat bear meat was a provocation—what matters to us is the situation in the North. Instead, it was reported as a barbaric, uncivilized idea. I live in Trentino, and I find it perplexing that some city folk should tell me how to live in my mountains. Agreed. When the fascists start saying, “You can’t eat bears,” it’s time to put your foot down.
The fault lies with this fake environmentalism that’s taken hold of the Italian people. It’s fake because it’s not based on loving nature and game, but on hating mankind. How can these environmentalists talk to me about hunting? They’d rather animals went extinct than be hunted. In this case it also seems like they were pretty wasteful.
They seized everything. We couldn’t have our party, and we had to throw out hundreds of pounds of perfectly good food. It was a phony ideological coup. What really disturbs me is that it was a fellow member of Lega Nord, Senator Martini, who sent the police to stop our party. How was the bear? Did you try it?
Yes, it’s delicious! A friend of mine hunted bears in Canada. He brought me a piece of grizzly meat and a piece of black bear meat. He’d learned how to cook it on the grill from some Canadians. I tell you, these people don’t even know how wonderful that meat is. They’re the real animals. I always say, these environmentalists are like watermelons: green on the outside, red within, with a few specks of black floating around. Good one.
Thanks.
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BY MATTHEW UHLMANN
PHOTO COURTESY OF ARNIE’S LIFE We think everyone can agree: Schwarzenegger was long overdue to get his own museum (Planet Hollywood didn’t count). This glaring cultural oversight was rectified on July 30—Arnold’s birthday, obviously—when the aptly named Arnie’s Life opened its myriad historical offerings to the public. The downside for most of the world is that they put the damn thing in his hometown of Thal, Austria. Scheduling conflicts prevented him from christening the building until October. Its curators rejoiced when the man himself was finally able to conduct a firsthand inspection of the museum’s display of priceless memorabilia, including an eight-foot-tall bronze sculpture of Arnold from his bodybuilding days, complete with steroidal vein protrusions and a bulging package. Randy Jennings, president of thearnoldfans.com, told us: “This is a time for great celebration among Arnold fans, like myself. Not only are we getting a Schwarzenegger museum, a project years in the making, but that opening ceremony also kicked off the official rebirth of Arnold’s much-anticipated comeback… This museum was not developed to promote Arnold. It’s not for the star or for his image; this museum is for his fans. There’s just no denying that Arnold is forever.” We agree, Randy, but instead of another Terminator sequel can you please get him and Danny DeVito in a room and convince them to make a follow-up to Twins? Junior was bullshit.
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BY HARRY CHEADLE
PHOTO BY TAJI AMEEN The Occupy Wall Street protests started in September with some vague inspiration from the Arab Spring and what, on the surface, seems like a pretty dumb and misguided premise: Let’s all go hang out in a park in New York’s Financial District and see if that topples capitalism. To pretty much everyone’s surprise, the idea caught on, and there are now “Occupy” protests happening in cities all over the world, with people—many of them young—sleeping outdoors, waving signs, and shouting stuff like “Rich people are assholes and the world is fucked!” In the first few weeks of the Occupy Wall Street protest, talking heads and other people who like to think they’re important made a big deal about how nebulous the goals of the occupiers were and how they lacked “specific demands.” And for the most part that’s still true. Obviously, they want the poor to be less poor and tighter restrictions on the financial system, but how all that is supposed to happen isn’t any clearer now than it was at the protest’s inception. In my visits to Zuccotti Park, a privately owned patch of grass and trees that serves as the movement’s base of operations, I found that pretty much the only concrete thing the protesters agreed on is that they would like to stay there. More than a month after the genesis of Occupy Wall Street, the goal still seems to be simply continuing the protest to see what will happen next. And on this front, they’re actually doing a pretty good job. On October 12, for instance, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the NYPD would kick the occupiers out of the park so that it could be cleaned. The occupiers responded by distributing brooms and garbage bags, staying up all night to sweep up trash and scrub the pavement in the rain, and letting out whoops of joy whenever the drizzle turned into a downpour. It might not have been the most effective cleaning job, and Bloomberg was arguably less concerned about cleanliness and more interested in finding a backdoor excuse to kick the protesters out, but try making those cynical points to a guy with a sign around his neck who is on his hands and knees scraping paint off the ground. Ann Coulter—who is still being paid by someone to say and type things—called Occupy Wall Street a “mob” and compared it to the French and Russian revolutions, which is one of the stupidest fucking things anyone has said about the entire ordeal. Compared with the violent protests that spread across the Middle East, the occupation in New York looks like a midnight breakfast in a college dorm lounge. Even as the movement has spread its “message” across the internet, the corporeal version of Occupy Wall Street has turned into an organized, politically-minded tent city, with its own kitchen, security, and occasional concerts (Jeff Mangum, Talib Kweli, and others have played impromptu sets among the crowds). And while the occupation in Zuccotti Park has yet to sway elections or affect banking regulations, it has turned into a pleasant place to hang out even if you don’t have Abbie Hoffman’s face tattooed on your leg. I’ve met people who can barely form genuine political opinions but love sleeping in the square. “You wake up happy as shit because everyone else is happy as shit,” one said. And he did look happy. If waving signs and block-printing commie slogans on t-shirts and wrapping yourself in dirty tarps makes you happy, does it really matter if you’re changing the world? We’ll see what happens once it snows, though.
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What occupiers call their daily meeting, where the group debates and votes on important issues such as “We want to keep staying here, right, guys?” and “Please do not poop on the ground.” This meeting usually takes hours. COMMITTEES
Like all lefties, the protesters love splitting off into “working groups,” creating committees for things like sanitation (a big one), “direct action,” media, and security. These guys are generally way more committed and competent than the hangers-on who are usually getting wasted and yelling “Down with the man!” type of stuff. THE 99 PERCENT
Poor people and the middle class, i.e., the protesters and pretty much everyone you know—unless you’re a millionaire. THE 1 PERCENT
Rich people—the bad guys. You can be part of the 1 Percent and not be a bad guy, provided you show up at the protests, like Alec Baldwin and Russell Simmons did. Even communists love celebrities. PEOPLE’S MIC
The protesters aren’t allowed to have microphones so they’ve improvised a system where the group repeats whatever a speaker says, row by row, so that everyone can hear it. Occasionally impressive when it works on a large scale; often unfortunately reminiscent of a poetry jam. KETTLING
A police tactic that involves corralling protesters into small spaces, often by using orange nets so they can be arrested more easily. THE 53 PERCENT
A righty Tumblr campaign response to the protests, made up of people who say, “I’m fucking poor and miserable just like you lazy hippies, but I’m not complaining about it. And this doesn’t really count as complaining because I’m complaining about your stupid complaints.” #OCCUPYWALLSTREET, #OWS, ETC.
A bunch of tags people on the internet—many of whom have never been anywhere near the actual protests—use so they can pretend to be involved. THE CORPORATE-CONTROLLED MEDIA
People who write negative or lukewarm things about the protests.
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BY WILBERT L. COOPER
PHOTO BY RUDY WICAKSONO When it comes to sexual hang-ups, Indonesia seems to be stuck in an era when buying condoms was embarrassing and sixth-graders weren’t butt-fucking one another during homeroom. Perhaps this is because the country is home to the world’s largest Muslim population, which means it’s simultaneously one of the horniest and most sexually repressed places on the planet. Luckily there are people like Zoya Amirin, an intellectually gifted Indonesian Christian babe who knows that getting fucked real good is essential to human happiness and isn’t afraid to spread the message. In fact, she’s the country’s only female sexologist. Last month, despite the risk of majorly pissing off Indonesia’s extremist religious zealots, Zoya launched a sex-advice podcast called In Bed with Zoya that focuses on the topic of hardcore, cum-drenched fuck sessions. OK, it’s actually far more educational than that, but it probably sounds like blasphemous porn to a populace whose sexual education includes lessons like “gecko spit cures AIDS” and “men enjoy having beads placed under their foreskins.” Zoya calls bullshit on all that, and that’s why we love her and want to spread her message. VICE: Why are so many Indonesians offended by sex? Maybe they just need to have a lot more of it.
Zoya Amirin: Many people here believe they can solve all of the country’s sex problems with more religiosity. People try to coax me into talking about morals in my sex education, but I can’t do that. My job is to give people all the information they need to make the right decision for themselves. What kind of wacky shit do Indonesians do in bed?
Some women believe that they will feel younger and have tighter skin if they spread fresh sperm on their faces. Of course, the semen appears to work because when it dries it feels like a taut mask. But there’s no scientific proof that sperm on your face makes you look younger. Do you ever get naughty emails?
Yes, but when I receive them I get the same feeling I used to have when boys would tell me they had wet dreams about me in junior high. It’s not that I am proud, but most likely these guys send me pictures of their penises because they think I am pretty and also happen to be a sexologist. I can’t say I am truly offended, but I do think it is harassment. What message do you think they’re trying to communicate with their cock pics?
They don’t want real medical advice; they want me to rate them. They write, “What did you think about my penis?” Listen, if you think something is wrong with your penis, you should go to a urologist. My friends joke all the time that we should make a website for all the pictures I’m sent, but it would probably get banned in Indonesia.
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BY HARRY CHEADLE
