The Dirty Laundry Issue

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VICE MAGAZINE VOLUME 12 NUMBER 11

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FREE VOLUME 12 NUMBER 11

THE DIRTY LAUNDRY ISSUE

EXPERIENCE ASIA WITH CONTIKI @contiki

2014

From the culture heavy cities of China to the breathtaking Thai Islands to the epic landscapes of Japan.

With an endless amount of experiences to be had, the only question is - where will your adventure take you?

Contiki.com/asia for more details

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A few weeks back, VICE helped throw a party to launch the Future Sport Project by Oakley.

The project involved getting leading athletes and industrial designers to imagine future technological advancements across surďŹ ng and snowboarding. The party involved music, free drinks, and the exhibiting of said advancements.

Now that Future Sport Project is ďŹ nished, you can see the results for yourselves at Oakley.com.au/fsp

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TABLE OF CONTENTS | Volume 12 Number 11

Illustration by James Jean. See our interview with Jean on page 34

26 FINDERS, KEEPERS A Guy Discovered a US Drone in His Backyard and Sold Its Parts to al Qaeda and the Pakistani Government

28 REFUGEE SUMMER CAMP Tourists in Thailand Are Traveling to See Suffering Burmese Migrants

30 POLITICAL FOOTBALL How Egypt Made Soccer a National Security Issue

32 THE MEAN GREEN Kids in the US Are Getting Sick from Harvesting Tobacco

34 JAMES JEANIUS A Master of Illustration Shares His Sketches

44 LUZZARA, 1953 Photos by Paul Strand

52 DISEASE WITHOUT BORDERS On the Front Lines of the Fight Against Ebola

60 POLAR BEAR MAN A Lawyer Was Savagely Mauled, but His Attackers Are the Ones in Trouble

ON THE COVER: A photo by Bill Henson from the book 1985, which is out now from Stanley / Barker

10 MASTHEAD 16 EMPLOYEES OF THE MONTH 18 FRONT OF THE BOOK Australia Exports Its Refugees, Psychonauts Get High on Xenon, Canadian Pilots Bring Porn to Work, FARC Harnesses the Power of TV, Nigerian Cops Have a Torture Problem

36 DOs & DON’Ts 70 CROOKED MEN: RULES, REGULATIONS, AND BLOOD RITUALS

72 FULL BLEED: ELIZABETH RENSTROM

74 RECORD REVIEWS Some Make Us Smile, Some Make Us Puke

82 JOHNNY RYAN’S PAGE Kid Rock in “Murder He Rocked”

8 VICE

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ALL SUBMISSIONS PROPERTY OF VICE MAGAZINE INC. THE ENTIRE CONTENT IS A COPYRIGHT OF VICE MAGAZINE PUBLISHING INC. AND CANNOT BE REPRODUCED IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITHOUT WRITTEN AUTHORISATION OF THE PUBLISHERS. VICE Australia Pty Ltd and its related entities (“VICE”) makes no guarantees, warranties or representations of any kind, whether express or implied, as to the accuracy, reliability, or completeness of the information provided. VICE will not be liable for incorrect use of the information and will assume no responsibility for consequences that may result from the use of the information. VICE is not responsible for damages of any kind arising out of use, reference to, or reliance on such information. While all reasonable care is taken, VICE will not assume responsibility for unsolicited material.

PRINTED IN AUSTRALIA VICE.com

10 VICE

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Free Spotify Premium on our Red plans.

Discover a world of music.

Choose one of our 12 or 24 month Red plans and enjoy millions of tunes on the go with 6, 12 or 24 months Spotify Premium access.

Vodafone Power to you

vodafone.com.au/spotify The nitty gritty: Compatible handsets only. Data not included. Extra data automatically added at $10/GB. Plan chosen determines free Spotify access period. Spotify access starts when you activate your Vodafone account not when you activate with Spotify. Usually $11.99/mth. A plan upgrade in the future will not increase your offer period. Full terms at www.vodafone.com.au/spotify/terms

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ŝŶĞŵĂ ŝƐ ŽŌĞŶ ĚŝƐĐƵƐƐĞĚ ǁŝƚŚ ĨŽŽĚ ƚĞƌŵŝŶŽůŽŐLJ͘ ^ŽŵĞ ŵŽǀŝĞƐ ĂƌĞ visual feasts͕ ĮůůĞĚ ǁŝƚŚ sumptuous imagery͘ KƚŚĞƌ ĮůŵƐ ĂƌĞ overly saccharine, cheesy, overcooked, Žƌ underdone. dŚĞƌĞ͛Ɛ ĂůƐŽ ƚŚĞ ǁĂLJ ĐŝŶĞŵĂ ŝƐ ŇĂǀŽƵƌĞĚ ĚŝīĞƌĞŶƚůLJ ďLJ ĮůŵŵĂŬĞƌƐ ĂƌŽƵŶĚ ƚŚĞ ǁŽƌůĚ͘ WƵƚ ǀĞƌLJ ƐŝŵƉůLJ͕ ŵŽǀŝĞƐ ĐĂŶ ƐĞĞŵ ůŝŬĞ ĨŽŽĚ ĨŽƌ LJŽƵƌ ĞLJĞƐ͘ dŽ ĞdžƉůŽƌĞ ƚŚŝƐ ŝĚĞĂ ĨƵƌƚŚĞƌ DhE ,/ ^ ĂƐŬĞĚ dŝŵ ZŝĐŚŵŽŶĚ͕ ŵŽǀŝĞͲůŽǀŝŶŐ ĐŚĞĨ Ăƚ DĞůďŽƵƌŶĞ ƌĞƐƚĂƵƌĂŶƚͬ ĐŝŶĞŵĂ >ŽŶŐƉůĂLJ͕ ƚŽ ƌĞŝŵĂŐŝŶĞ ĐůĂƐƐŝĐ ŝŶƚĞƌŶĂƟŽŶĂů ĮůŵƐ ĂƐ ƚŚƌĞĞͲĐŽƵƌƐĞ ŵĞĂůƐ͘ dĂŬŝŶŐ ŚŝƐ ŝŶƐƉŝƌĂƟŽŶ ĨƌŽŵ ƚŚĞ ƐƚŽƌŝĞƐ͕ ƚŚĞŵĞƐ͕ ĂŶĚ ŝŵĂŐĞƌLJ ŽĨ ĞĂĐŚ Įůŵ͕ dŝŵ ƉůĂƚĞĚ ƵƉ Ă ƐŵŽƌŐĂƐďŽƌĚ ŽĨ ŝŵĂŐŝŶĂƟǀĞ ĚŝƐŚĞƐ͘ ,ĞƌĞ ŝƐ Ă ƐĞůĞĐƟŽŶ ŽĨ ƚŚĞ ďĞƐƚ ŽŶĞƐ͕ ĂůŽŶŐ ǁŝƚŚ ŚŽǁ LJŽƵ ĐĂŶ ŵĂŬĞ ƚŚĞŵ͘ dŽ ƐĞĞ ŚŽǁ Ă ƉƌŽ ĚŽĞƐ ŝƚ͕ ĐŚĞĐŬ ŽƵƚ ƚŚĞ ǀŝĚĞŽƐ Ăƚ bit.ly/1FpA9DE

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STARTERS

Sabzi Khordan mixed with fresh herbs paired with whipped IHWD GLS DQG ÀDWEUHDG

De Puy Lentil Salad with Celeriac, Pear, and Goat’s Cheese

&ƌŽŵ &ůĂǀŽƵƌƐ tŝƚŚ ^ƵďƟƚůĞƐ͗ ͚ ^ĞƉĂƌĂƟŽŶ͛

From &ůĂǀŽƵƌƐ ǁŝƚŚ ^ƵďƟƚůĞƐ͗ ĞůŝĐĂƚĞƐƐĞŶ

dŚŝƐ ĨƌĞƐŚ ĂŶĚ ůĞĂĨLJ ĂƉƉĞƟƐĞƌ ŝƐ ƉĞƌĨĞĐƚ ĨŽƌ ďƌĞĂŬŝŶŐ ďƌĞĂĚ ǁŝƚŚ ůŽǀĞĚ ŽŶĞƐ͘

Ŷ ĞĂƌƚŚLJ LJĞƚ ƐŚĂƌƉ ƐĂůĂĚ ƚŽ ƚĂŬĞ ƚŚĞ ĞĚŐĞ Žī ĂŶLJ ĚLJƐƚŽƉŝĂŶ͕ ůĞŶƟůͲ ďĂƐĞĚ ŶŝŐŚƚŵĂƌĞ͘

Ingredients

Ingredients

, Z ^ >

• Ϯ ĐƵƉƐ ĚĞ WƵLJ ůĞŶƟůƐ

• Ϯ ďƵŶĐŚĞƐ ĐŽƌŝĂŶĚĞƌ • Ϯ ďƵŶĐŚĞƐ ĐŚŝǀĞƐ • Ϯ ďƵŶĐŚĞƐ ƐǁĞĞƚ ďĂƐŝů

• ϭ ďƵŶĐŚ &ƌĞŶĐŚ ƚĂƌƌĂŐŽŶ • Ϯ ďƵŶĐŚĞƐ ĨƌĞƐŚ ŵŝŶƚ • Ϯ ďƵŶĐŚĞƐ ĐŽŶƟŶĞŶƚĂů ƉĂƌƐůĞLJ

• ϭ ĐůŽǀĞ ŐĂƌůŝĐ • ϭ ďƵŶĐŚ ĐƵƌůLJ ƉĂƌƐůĞLJ • ϰ ƚƐƉ ǁĂůŶƵƚ Žŝů • Ϯ ƚďƐ ƐŚĞƌƌLJ ǀŝŶĞŐĂƌ • ϭ ƐŵĂůů ĞůĞƌŝĂĐ ĐƵƚ ŝŶƚŽ ŵĂƚĐŚƐƟĐŬƐ

t,/WW & d /W

• ϰ ĐƵƉƐ ďƵƩŽŶ ŵƵƐŚƌŽŽŵƐ ƐůŝĐĞĚ ƐƵƉĞƌ ƚŚŝŶ

• ϯϬϬ Ő ƐŚĞĞƉ͛Ɛ ĨĞƚĂ

• ϭ ƚƐƉ ŽĨ ŝũŽŶ ŵƵƐƚĂƌĚ

• ϭϱϬ Ő ŽĨ LJŽŐƵƌƚ ;ŚƵŶŐ ƚŚĞ ŶŝŐŚƚ ďĞĨŽƌĞΎͿ

• ϭ ƚƐƉ ŽĨ ŚŽŶĞLJ

ΎdŽ ŚĂŶŐ LJŽŐƵƌƚ͕ ƉƵƚ ŝƚ ŽǀĞƌ Ă ƚŚŝĐŬ ƉĂƉĞƌ ƚŽǁĞů Žƌ ĐŚĞĞƐĞĐůŽƚŚ ƚŚĂƚ ƌĞƐƚƐ ŝŶ Ă ƐƚƌĂŝŶĞƌ͘ WůĂĐĞ ƚŚĞ ƐƚƌĂŝŶĞƌ ŝŶ Ă ďŽǁů Žƌ ƐĂƵĐĞƉĂŶ ƚŽ ĐĂƚĐŚ ƚŚĞ ĞdžĐĞƐƐ ůŝƋƵŝĚ ĨƌŽŵ ƚŚĞ LJŽŐƵƌƚ ĂŶĚ ůĞĂǀĞ ŝƚ ŽǀĞƌ ŶŝŐŚƚ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ĨƌŝĚŐĞ͘

Directions ĂƌĞĨƵůůLJ ƉŝĐŬ ŚĞƌďƐ ĂŶĚ ƚŚĞŶ ǁĂƐŚ ďLJ ƉůĂĐŝŶŐ ĞĂĐŚ ŝŶ Ă ďŽǁů ŽĨ ǁĂƚĞƌ͘ >Ğƚ ƚŚĞ ŚĞƌď Ɛŝƚ ĨŽƌ Ă ĨĞǁ ŵŝŶƵƚĞƐ ĂůůŽǁŝŶŐ ƚŚĞ Ěŝƌƚ ƚŽ ƐŝŶŬ ƚŽ ƚŚĞ ďŽƩŽŵ͘ ZĞŵŽǀĞ ƚŚĞ ŚĞƌď ĨƌŽŵ ƚŚĞ ďŽǁů͕ ƐƉŝŶ ŝŶ Ă ůĞƩƵĐĞ ƐƉŝŶŶĞƌ͕ ƚŚĞŶ ƉůĂĐĞ ŝƚ ŽŶ Ă ƉĂƉĞƌ ƚŽǁĞů ĂŶĚ ĂůůŽǁ ƚŽ Ăŝƌ ĚƌLJ͘ zŽƵ ĚŽŶ͛ƚ ǁĂŶƚ ƚŚĞ ŚĞƌď ƚŽ ďĞ ǁĞƚ͘ KŶĐĞ ƉŝĐŬĞĚ͕ ĐůĞĂŶĞĚ͕ ĂŶĚ ĚƌŝĞĚ ƚŽƐƐ ƚŚĞ ŚĞƌďƐ ƚŽŐĞƚŚĞƌ ŝŶ Ă ďŝŐ ďŽǁů ĂŶĚ ďůĞŶĚ Ăůů ŽĨ ƚŚĞ ŝŶŐƌĞĚŝĞŶƚƐ ŝŶ Ă ĨŽŽĚ ƉƌŽĐĞƐƐŽƌ ƵŶƟů ƐŵŽŽƚŚ͘ dŽ ƐĞƌǀĞ͕ ƐƉƌĞĂĚ ƚŚĞ ĚŝƉ ŽŶ Ă ůĂƌŐĞ ŇĂƚ ƉůĂƚĞ ĂŶĚ ĚƌĞƐƐ ŝƚ ǁŝƚŚ ƉŝƐƚĂĐŚŝŽ͕ ƉŽŵĞŐƌĂŶĂƚĞ ƐĞĞĚƐ͕ ŇĂŬĞĚ ĂůŵŽŶĚƐ͕ ĮŶĞůLJ ƐůŝĐĞĚ ƌĂĚŝƐŚ͕ ƚŚĞŶ ĚƌŝnjnjůĞ ůŝŐŚƚůLJ ǁŝƚŚ ŽůŝǀĞ Žŝů͘ WůĂĐĞ ƚŚĞ ĚŝƉ ǁŝƚŚ ƚŚĞ ƉŝůĞ ŽĨ ŇĂƚ ďƌĞĂĚ ĂŶĚ ŚĞƌď ƐĂůĂĚ ĂŶĚ ĞŶũŽLJ ĐŽŵŵƵŶĂůůLJ͘

Connoisseur-DPS-1211.indd 2

• ϭ ůĞŵŽŶ ĐƵƚ ŝŶƚŽ ƐĞŐŵĞŶƚƐ ǁŝƚŚŽƵƚ ƉŝƚŚ ĂŶĚ ĐŚŽƉƉĞĚ ƌŽƵŐŚůLJ • ϭ ƉĞĐŬŚĂŵ ƉĞĂƌ ĮŶĞůLJ ƐůŝĐĞĚ • ϴϬ Ő ĐŚŽƉƉĞĚ ǁĂůŶƵƚƐ • ϮϬϬ Ő ŐŽĂƚ͛Ɛ ĐŚĞĞƐĞ • ƐĂŐĞ ůĞĂǀĞƐ • ŽůŝǀĞ Žŝů

Directions ^ŝŵŵĞƌ LJŽƵƌ ůĞŶƚŝůƐ ŝŶ ǁĂƚĞƌ ǁŝƚŚ Ă ƐƉůĂƐŚ ŽĨ ŽůŝǀĞ Žŝů͕ ƐŵĂƐŚĞĚ ŐĂƌůŝĐ͕ ĂŶĚ ƐŽŵĞ ƉĂƌƐůĞLJ ƐƚĞŵƐ ŽŶ Ă ůŽǁ ŚĞĂƚ ĨŽƌ ĂďŽƵƚ ϮϬ ŵŝŶƵƚĞƐ͘ ĚĚ ƐĂůƚ ĂŶĚ ĂŶĚ ƐƚƌĂŝŶ͘ ůĂŶĐŚ ϯ ĐƵƉƐ ŽĨ ƉĂƌƐůĞLJ ŝŶ ďŽŝůŝŶŐ ǁĂƚĞƌ ĨŽƌ ϱ ŵŝŶƵƚĞƐ͕ ƚŚĞŶ ƌĞĨƌĞƐŚ ŝƚ ƵŶĚĞƌ ĐŽůĚ ƌƵŶŶŝŶŐ ǁĂƚĞƌ͘ ^ƋƵĞĞnjĞ ŽƵƚ ǁĂƚĞƌ ĂŶĚ ƉůĂĐĞ ŝŶ Ă ĨŽŽĚ ƉƌŽĐĞƐƐŽƌ ǁŝƚŚ ǁĂůŶƵƚ Žŝů͕ ƐŚĞƌƌLJ ǀŝŶĞŐĂƌ͕ ƐĂůƚ͕ ƉĞƉƉĞƌ͕ ĂŶĚ ϭϬϬ ŵů ŽĨ ŽůŝǀĞ Žŝů͘ ůĞŶĚ ƵŶƚŝů ƐŵŽŽƚŚ͘ Dŝdž ƉĂƌƐůĞLJ ĚƌĞƐƐŝŶŐ ŝŶƚŽ ƚŚĞ ĚƌĂŝŶĞĚ ůĞŶƚŝůƐ ďĞĨŽƌĞ ĐĂƌĞĨƵůůLJ ƐƚŝƌƌŝŶŐ ƚŚƌŽƵŐŚ ĐĞůĞƌŝĂĐ͕ ŵƵƐŚƌŽŽŵƐ͕ ƉĞĂƌ͕ ǁĂůŶƵƚƐ͕ ĂŶĚ ůĞŵŽŶ͘ dŽƉ ƐĂůĂĚ ǁŝƚŚ ĐŚŽƉƉĞĚ ĨƌĞƐŚ ƉĂƌƐůĞLJ͕ ĐŚŽƉƉĞĚ ƐĂŐĞ͕ ĂŶĚ ĐƌƵŵďůĞĚ ŐŽĂƚ͛Ɛ ĐŚĞĞƐĞ͘

2014-11-27 6:43 PM

MAINS

Pork Chop in Two Wines with Moreton Bay Bug /ŶƐƉŝƌĞĚ ďLJ ͚ϴ ϭͬϮ͛

Persian spiced southern fried chicken with cucumber mint salad

DŽƵƚŚǁĂƚĞƌŝŶŐ ƐůŽǁͲďƌĂŝƐĞĚ ƉŽƌŬ ĚŝƐŚ ǁŝƚŚ ĂŶ ĂůŝĞŶͲĞƐƋƵĞ ƚŽƉƉŝŶŐ͘

/ŶƐƉŝƌĞĚ ďLJ ͚ ^ĞƉĂƌĂƟŽŶ͛

Ingredients

DŝĚĚůĞ ĂƐƚ ŵĞĞƚƐ tĞƐƚ ŝŶ Ă ŇĂǀŽƵƌĨƵů ďƵƌƐƚ ŽĨ ŚŽƚ ĂŶĚ ĐŽŽů͘

Ingredients

• ϯ ƚďƐ ŽůŝǀĞ Žŝů

• ϭϮϱ ŵů ĐŚĞĂƉ ŚŝĂŶƟ

• ϰ ƉŽƌŬ ůŽŝŶ ĐŚŽƉƐ

• ϰ DŽƌĞƚŽŶ ĂLJ ďƵŐƐ

• Ϯ ƚďƐ ƉůĂŝŶ ŇŽƵƌ

• ϭͬϮ ŵĞĚŝƵŵ ĨĞŶŶĞů ďƵůď ƐůŝĐĞĚ ĮŶĞůLJ

• ϱ ĐŚŝĐŬĞŶ DĂƌLJůĂŶĚƐ

• ϭ ƚƐƉ ŐƌŽƵŶĚ ĐŽƌŝĂŶĚĞƌ

• ϭ ƚďƐ ƉĂƐƐĂƚĂ ;ƚŽŵĂƚŽ ƉƵƌĞĞͿ

• ϭͬϮ ƚƐƉ ĨĞŶŶĞů ƐĞĞĚƐ

• ϭͬϮ ƚƐƉ ŐƌŽƵŶĚ ĐŝŶŶĂŵŽŶ

• ϭͬϮ ƚƐƉ ŽĨ ŐƌŽƵŶĚ ĐƵŵŝŶ

• ϭƚďƐ ƉĂƌƐůĞLJ ĐŚŽƉƉĞĚ ĮŶĞůLJ

• ϭͬϮ ƚƐƉ ŐƌŽƵŶĚ ƚƵƌŵĞƌŝĐ

• ϭͬϮ ƚƐƉ ĐĂLJĞŶŶĞ ƉĞƉƉĞƌ

• ϭϮϱ ŵů DĂƌƐĂůĂ

• WĂƌƐůĞLJ ůĞĂǀĞƐ ĨŽƌ ŐĂƌŶŝƐŚ

• ϭͬϮ ƚƐƉ ĨĞŶŶĞů ƐĞĞĚƐ͕ ĐƌƵƐŚĞĚ ƚŽĂƐƚĞĚ

• ϲϬ Ő ĮŶĞ ƐĞŵŽůŝŶĂ

• ϭͬϮ ƚƐƉ ďůĂĐŬ ƉĞƉƉĞƌĐŽƌŶƐ͕ ĐƌƵƐŚĞĚ ƚŽĂƐƚĞĚ

• ϮϬϬ ŵů ďƵƩĞƌŵŝůŬ

• ϭ ƚƐƉ ŐĂƌůŝĐ ĐŚŽƉƉĞĚ ĮŶĞůLJ

Directions ,ĞĂƚ LJŽƵƌ Žŝů ŝŶ Ă ƉĂŶ ůĂƌŐĞ ĞŶŽƵŐŚ ƚŽ Įƚ Ăůů LJŽƵƌ ĐŚŽƉƐ ůĂLJŝŶŐ ŇĂƚ͘ ^ĞĂƐŽŶ ƚŚĞ ĐŚŽƉƐ ŝŶ ƐĂůƚ ĂŶĚ ƉĞƉƉĞƌ ĂŶĚ ĐŽĂƚ ǁŝƚŚ ŇŽƵƌ͘ ĂƌĞĨƵůůLJ ƉůĂĐĞ ƚŚĞŵ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ŚŽƚ Žŝů ĂŶĚ ĐŽŽŬ ĞĂĐŚ ƐŝĚĞ ƵŶƟů ǁĞůů ďƌŽǁŶĞĚ͘ ĚĚ ĐŚŽƉƉĞĚ ŐĂƌůŝĐ ĂŶĚ ĐŽŽŬ ĨŽƌ Ă ŵŝŶƵƚĞ ďĞĨŽƌĞ ĂĚĚŝŶŐ ƚŚĞ ǁŝŶĞƐ ĂŶĚ ƚŚĞ ƉĂƐƐĂƚĂ͘ ^ĞĂƐŽŶ ǁŝƚŚ ƐĂůƚ ĂŶĚ ƉĞƉƉĞƌ ĂŶĚ ĂĚĚ ĨĞŶŶĞů ƐĞĞĚƐ͘ ƌŝŶŐ ƚŽ ƚŚĞ ďŽŝů ĂŶĚ ƚƵƌŶ ƚŽ Ă ůŽǁ ŚĞĂƚ͘ ŽŽŬ ĨŽƌ ĂďŽƵƚ ĂŶ ŚŽƵƌ ǁŝƚŚ Ă ůŝĚ ĂƐŬĞǁ ƐŽ ƐƚĞĂŵ ĐĂŶ ĞƐĐĂƉĞ͕ ƚƵƌŶŝŶŐ ƚŚĞ ĐŚŽƉƐ ĨƌŽŵ ƟŵĞ ƚŽ ƟŵĞ͘

,/ < E

• ϭ ƚƐƉ ƐĂůƚ • ϭͬϮ ƚƐƉ ƐƵŐĂƌ • Ϯ ƚƐƉ ŽĨ ƐǁĞĞƚ ƉĂƉƌŝŬĂ

• Ϯ ĞŐŐƐ • ϭϬϬ Ő ĐŽƌŶŇŽƵƌ • ;KŵŝƫŶŐ ƚŚĞ ŽĚĚ ƐƉŝĐĞ ŝƐ ĮŶĞͿ

h hD Z D/Ed ^ > • ϭͬϰ ^ƉĂŶŝƐŚ ŽŶŝŽŶ͕ ĮŶĞůLJ ƐůŝĐĞĚ

• >ĞŵŽŶ ũƵŝĐĞ

&Žƌ ƚŚĞ ďƵŐƐ͕ LJŽƵ͛ůů ŶĞĞĚ ƚŽ ƐƉůŝƚ ƚŚĞŵ ůĞŶŐƚŚǁŝƐĞ ĚŽǁŶ ƚŚĞ ŵŝĚĚůĞ͘ dƵƌŶŝŶŐ ĞĂĐŚ ďƵŐ ƵƉƐŝĚĞ ĚŽǁŶ͕ ƉůĂĐĞ ƚŚĞ ƉŽŝŶƚ ŽĨ Ă ƐŚĂƌƉ ŬŶŝĨĞ ŝŶƚŽ ƚŚĞ ŚŽůĞ Ăƚ ƚŚĞ ƚŽƉ ŽĨ ƚŚĞ ůĞŐƐ͘ WƵƐŚ ƐƚƌĂŝŐŚƚ ĚŽǁŶ ǁŝƚŚ ƚŚĞ ƟƉ ŽĨ ƚŚĞ ŬŶŝĨĞ ďĞĨŽƌĞ ďƌŝŶŐŝŶŐ ŝƚ ĚŽǁŶ ĂůŽŶŐ ƚŚĞ ŵŝĚĚůĞ ŽĨ ƚŚĞ ƚĂŝů͘ tŝƚŚ Ă ƚĞĂ ƚŽǁĞů ƉƌŽƚĞĐƟŶŐ LJŽƵƌ ŚĂŶĚ͕ ŐŝǀĞ ƚŚĞ ŬŶŝĨĞ Ă ŐŽŽĚ ǁŚĂĐŬ͘

• Ϯ ĐƵĐƵŵďĞƌƐ

• &ůĂŬĞ ƐĂůƚ

KŶĐĞ Ăůů ƚŚĞ ďƵŐ ŚĂǀĞ ďĞĞŶ ƐƉůŝƚ͕ ǁĂƐŚ ŽƵƚ ŇƵƌŽͲĐŽůŽƵƌĞĚ ďƌĂŝŶƐ ;ŽŌĞŶ ƌĞĨĞƌƌĞĚ ƚŽ ĂƐ ŵƵƐƚĂƌĚͿ͕ ƵŶĚĞƌ ƌƵŶŶŝŶŐ ǁĂƚĞƌ͘ WůĂĐĞ ďƵŐ ŚĂůǀĞƐ ŽŶ Ă ƚƌĂLJ͕ ĚƌŝnjnjůĞ ǁŝƚŚ ŽůŝǀĞ Žŝů ĂŶĚ ƐĞĂƐŽŶ ǁŝƚŚ ƐĂůƚ ĂŶĚ ƉĞƉƉĞƌ͘ dŚĞŶ ƉƵƚ ƵŶĚĞƌ Ă Őƌŝůů ĨŽƌ ĂďŽƵƚ ϱ ŵŝŶƵƚĞƐ͘

&Žƌ ƚŚĞ ŚŝĐŬĞŶ͕ ĐŽŵďŝŶĞ ƐƉŝĐĞƐ͕ ƐƵŐĂƌ͕ ĂŶĚ ƐĂůƚ͘ Dŝdž ƚŚŝƐ ĐŽŵďŝŶĂƟŽŶ ƚŚƌŽƵŐŚ ƚŚĞ ƐĞŵŽůŝŶĂ ĂŶĚ ĐŽƌŶŇŽƵƌ͘ ^ĞƉĂƌĂƚĞůLJ ǁŚŝƐŬ ĞŐŐƐ ǁŝƚŚ ďƵƩĞƌŵŝůŬ͘ ŶƐƵƌŝŶŐ ĐŚŝĐŬĞŶ ŝƐ ĚƌLJ͕ ĚŝƉ ĞĂĐŚ ƉŝĞĐĞ ŝŶƚŽ ƚŚĞ ŇŽƵƌͬ ƐƉŝĐĞ ŵŝdžƚƵƌĞ͕ ƚŚĞŶ ƚŚĞ ĞŐŐ ŵŝdžƚƵƌĞ͕ ĂŶĚ ůĂƐƚůLJ ďĂĐŬ ŝŶƚŽ ƚŚĞ ŇŽƵƌ ŵŝdžƚƵƌĞ͘

dŽ ƌĞŵŽǀĞ ƚŚĞ ŇĞƐŚ ƐůŝƉ Ă ĨŽƌŬ ďĞƚǁĞĞŶ ƐŚĞůů ĂŶĚ ƚĂŝů ŵĞĂƚ͘ WůĂĐŝŶŐ Ă ƚŚƵŵď ŽŶ ƚŚĞ ŵĞĂƚ͕ ůŝŌ ŝƚ ŽƵƚ ĨƌŽŵ ŝƚƐ ĐĂƐŝŶŐ͘ /Ĩ ƚŚŝƐ ƉƌŽǀĞƐ ĚŝĸĐƵůƚ͕ ĐŽŽŬ ŝƚ Ă ůŝƩůĞ ůŽŶŐĞƌ͘ EŽ ŵŽƌĞ ƚŚĂŶ ƚĞŶ ŵŝŶƵƚĞƐ ƚŚŽƵŐŚ͘ dŽ ƐĞƌǀĞ͕ ƉůĂĐĞ ĐŚŽƉƐ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ĐĞŶƚƌĞ ŽĨ ĞĂĐŚ ƉůĂƚĞ͘ ^ƉŽŽŶ ŽǀĞƌ ƐĂƵĐĞ͘ WůĂĐĞ ƚǁŽ ƉŝĞĐĞƐ ŽĨ ƚĂŝů ŵĞĂƚ ŽŶ ĞĂĐŚ ĂŶĚ ŐĂƌŶŝƐŚ ǁŝƚŚ Ă ƐŵĂůů ƐĂůĂĚ ŽĨ ĮŶĞůLJ ƐůŝĐĞĚ ĨĞŶŶĞů ĚƌĞƐƐĞĚ ŝŶ ůĞŵŽŶ ĂŶĚ ŽůŝǀĞ Žŝů͘ &ŝŶŝƐŚ ǁŝƚŚ ƐƉƌŝŐƐ ŽĨ ƉĂƌƐůĞLJ͘

Connoisseur02-DPS-1211.indd 1

• ϭ ĐƵƉ ŵŝŶƚ ůĞĂǀĞƐ͕ ĮŶĞůLJ ĐŚŽƉƉĞĚ

• džƚƌĂ ǀŝƌŐŝŶ ŽůŝǀĞ Žŝů • WĞƉƉĞƌ

Directions

^ŚĂůůŽǁ ĨƌLJ ĐŚŝĐŬĞŶ ŝŶ Žŝů ƵŶƟů ŐŽůĚĞŶ Ăůů ŽǀĞƌ͘ KŶĐĞ ĨƌŝĞĚ͕ ƉůĂĐĞ ƚŚĞ ĐŚŝĐŬĞŶ ŽŶ Ă ƚƌĂLJ ƚŚĞŶ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ŽǀĞŶ Ăƚ ϮϮϬ Σ ĨŽƌ ϭϬ ŵŝŶƵƚĞƐ͘ Ƶƚ ĐƵĐƵŵďĞƌƐ ŝŶƚŽ ƋƵĂƌƚĞƌƐ ůĞŶŐƚŚǁĂLJƐ ĂŶĚ ƌĞŵŽǀĞ ƚŚĞ ƐĞĞĚƐ ǁŝƚŚ Ă ƚĞĂƐƉŽŽŶ͘ dŚĞŶ ĐƵƚ ƚŚĞŵ ĞǀĞŶůLJ ŝŶƚŽ ŵĂƚĐŚƐƟĐŬƐ ĂŶĚ ƉůĂĐĞ ƚŚĞŵ ŝŶ Ă ďŽǁů ǁŝƚŚ ŽŶŝŽŶ ĂŶĚ ŵŝŶƚ͘ ^ĞĂƐŽŶ ƚŚĞ ĐƵĐƵŵďĞƌƐ ǁŝƚŚ ƐĂůƚ ĂŶĚ ƉĞƉƉĞƌ͕ ƚŚĞŶ ĚƌĞƐƐ ŝŶ ůĞŵŽŶ ũƵŝĐĞ ĂŶĚ ŽůŝǀĞ Žŝů͘

2014-11-27 6:40 PM

DESSERTS

7XLOHV 6WX̆HG ZLWK ,FH &UHDP Served with Strawberry Coulis

Rum Pina-Cardamom Cake, Sesame 3UDOLQH DQG 5HG %HDQ &RFRQXW ,FH &UHDP

/ŶƐƉŝƌĞĚ ďLJ ͚ ĞůŝĐĂƚĞƐƐĞŶ͛

/ŶƐƉŝƌĞĚ ďLJ ͚ ŚƵŶŐŬŝŶŐ džƉƌĞƐƐ͛

dŚĞƐĞ ŝĐĞ ĐƌĞĂŵ ĮůůĞĚ ĮŶŐĞƌƐ ĂƌĞ ĮĚĚůLJ͕ ďƵƚ ƚŽƚĂůůLJ ǁŽƌƚŚ ƚŚĞ ĞīŽƌƚ͘

ďĂƐŝĐ ǁŝƚŚ ĂŶ ĂƐŝĂŶ ĂŶĚ ƚƌŽƉŝĐĂů ƚǁŝƐƚ͘ :ƵƐƚ ĐŽŵƉůŝĐĂƚĞĚ ĞŶŽƵŐŚ͘

Ingredients

Ingredients

dh/> ^

<

• ϭϬϬ Ő ĐĂƐƚĞƌ ƐƵŐĂƌ

• ƉŝŶĐŚ ŽĨ ƐĂůƚ • Ϯϱ Ő ŵĞůƚĞĚ ďƵƩĞƌ

• Ϯ ĐƵƉƐ ƉŝŶĞĂƉƉůĞ ƌŽƵŐŚůLJ ĐŚŽƉƉĞĚ

• ϭ ƚƐƉ ďĂŬŝŶŐ ƉŽǁĚĞƌ

• в ĐƵƉ ƉůĂŝŶ ŇŽƵƌ • Ϯ ĞŐŐƐ

• ϳϱ Ő ĮŶĞ ĂůŵŽŶĚ ŵĞĂů

• Ϯ ƚďƐ ĚĂƌŬ ƌƵŵ

• ϭϮϬ Ő ĐĂƐƚŽƌ ƐƵŐĂƌ

• ϭϰϬ Ő ďƵƩĞƌ

Kh>/^

• ϭϲϬ Ő ƉůĂŝŶ ŇŽƵƌ

• ϮϱϬŐ ƐƚƌĂǁďĞƌƌŝĞƐ

• ϭͬϮ ĐƵƉ ĐĂƐƚŽƌ ƐƵŐĂƌ

• ũƵŝĐĞ ŽĨ ϭ ůĞŵŽŶ

• ϭ ƚĂďůĞƐƉŽŽŶ ďƌĂŶĚLJ

• Ϯ ĐĂƌĚĂŵŽŶ ƉŽĚƐ ƚŽĂƐƚĞĚ͕ ĐƌƵƐŚĞĚ ĂŶĚ ƐŝŌĞĚ

WZ >/E • ϮϬϬ Ő ƐĞƐĂŵĞ ƐĞĞĚƐ

&/>>/E'

• ϭ ĐƵƉ ƐƵŐĂƌ

KEEK/^^ hZ <ŝŶŐ >ŽƵŝƐ y/s &ƌĞŶĐŚ ǀĂŶŝůůĂ͕ ĐŚŽĐ ŇĂŬĞ͕ ĂƌŵĂŐŶĂĐ ŝĐĞ ĐƌĞĂŵ

dKWW/E'

Directions

• ϭ ĐĂƌĚĂŵŽŵ ƉŽĚ

&Žƌ ƚŚĞ ƚƵŝůĞƐ͕ ƉƌĞͲŚĞĂƚ ŽǀĞŶ ƚŽ ϮϰϬΣ ͘ Dŝdž ŇŽƵƌ͕ ƐƵŐĂƌ͕ ĂŶĚ ƐĂůƚ ŝŶ Ă ůĂƌŐĞ ďŽǁů͘ DĂŬĞ Ă ǁĞůů ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ŵŝdžƚƵƌĞ ĂŶĚ ĚƌŽƉ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ĞŐŐƐ͘ tŚŝƐŬ͕ ƚŚĞŶ ŵŝdž ƚŚƌŽƵŐŚ ƵŶƟů ĐŽŵďŝŶĞĚ͘ ĚĚ ŵĞůƚĞĚ ďƵƩĞƌ ĂŶĚ ĂůŵŽŶĚ ŵĞĂů ĂŶĚ ƐƟƌ ŝŶƚŽ Ă ƐŵŽŽƚŚ ďĂƩĞƌ͘

• ϯ ĞŐŐƐ

• ϱϬϬ ŵů ƉŝŶĞĂƉƉůĞ ũƵŝĐĞ

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2014-11-27 6:40 PM

EMPLOYEES OF THE MONTH

See DISEASE WITHOUT BORDERS, page 52

WHITNEY MALLETT See THE MEAN GREEN, page 32

PAUL STRAND See LUZZARA, 1953, page 44

James Jean was born in Taiwan, raised in New Jersey, and graduated from New York City’s School of Visual Arts in 2001. His critically acclaimed illustration and fine-art career has led him to create covers for DC Comics, collaborate with Prada, and exhibit his work all over the world. Known for his lush imagery and virtuosic technique, he has amassed a large fan following, and yet he says he still struggles with everyday social tasks. His last name is translated from the Chinese word jian, which means “simple.” James recently spoke with our art editor, Nick Gazin, about his life and sketchbooks, and let us publish a few beautiful illustrations.

A month ago Whitney emailed us to say she was traveling to rural North Carolina to shop at Piggly Wiggly, gorge on Mexican sweets, and, most important, talk to kids who work in the tobacco fields there—and would we be interested in publishing her dispatch? She’s written for n+1, the Paris Review, Filmmaker Magazine, and the New Inquiry and is a contributing editor to the Editorial Magazine. Sometimes she moonlights as a reluctant nightlife reporter and is prone to falling asleep at the club. Whitney also produces videos and documentaries, co-founded Térmé productions, and is currently finishing a film about the subculture of gospel mime.

Sabrina Shankman is a writer and multimedia producer with the environmental journalism nonprofit InsideClimate News. Before that, she helped produce documentaries for the PBS show Frontline and wrote for ProPublica and the Associated Press.

Sabrina grew up in Maine, so it’s no surprise that her favourite store is L. L. Bean and that she’s tough and hates big-city bullshit, like a salty-faced lobsterman.

When we sent her to the frigid limits of Northern Canada to report a story about the plight of the polar bear and a man who was mauled by one, she was one of the only members of our crew who didn’t vomit up her lunch on the boat ride.

We’re especially interested in Paul Strand right now because the Philadelphia Museum of Art just acquired 3,000 of his photographs and is holding the first comprehensive retrospective of his work in four decades. Because of this major purchase, combined with 600 photographs previously donated to the museum by Strand and his widow, generations to come will be able to see a massive collection of his work in one place. Other dead photographers who have entrusted work to their wives have not fared so well. Take Man Ray—the descendants of his widow are hoarding the majority of his photos in a car-repair garage on Long Island.

Rory copy-edits this entire magazine by himself. We send him lines like “I ate a apples pie’s slice and it tastes god” and he polishes them into lines like “I ate a slice of apple pie, and it tasted good.”

He’s such a pro that the other departments at VICE Media ask him to fix their nonsense copy all the time, and whatever it is—voice-over script, press release, PowerPoint—Rory will start to work on it, because he’s a gentleman. But editing their stuff is not part of his job, so someone on the magazine staff will have to step in and fend off the illiterate hordes. Get your own copy editor, people. Rory’s ours, and he’s fucking busy right now and forever.

JAMES JEAN See TABLE OF CONTENTS, page 8, and JAMES JEANIUS, page 34

SABRINA SHANKMAN See POLAR BEAR MAN, page 60

RORY TOLAN

Illustrations by Geffen Refaeli

DANNY GOLD

Danny has a tiny bearded face, and when he’s hard at work editing a story or reviewing a documentary he sucks in wind like a clubbed baby seal. But the truth is, Danny can do pretty much whatever he wants. As a VICE News correspondent, he’s logged time in superfun destinations like Iraq, Gaza, and the Central African Republic. Last month he went to Liberia to cover the current Ebola crisis. When he got back, none of us wanted him around the office, so he quarantined himself in his Brooklyn apartment and didn’t see anyone but delivery boys for 21 days. He says he finally got into Archer, though, and that show’s chill as blade.

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FRONT OF THE BOOK OOK

Australia Wants to o Export Its Refugee Problem Refugees in Australia are an unending source of political controversy.

Since 2012, asylum seekers attempting to enter by sea haven’t been allowed to set foot in Australia, and have instead been processed on three remote islands scattered across the Pacific, including Nauru. This has created a whole new set of problems, with refugees being detained in brutal conditions for an average of 413 days. The result has been dozens of hunger strikes, suicide attempts, and several riots, including one in February that led to a 23-year-old Iranian being murdered by a security contractor. Australia now wants to escape the issue entirely—by dumping its refugees in Cambodia.

The plan outlined by the government is for a small group of asylum seekers to be taken to another island (likely in the Gulf of Thailand) by Christmas. Once there, they’ll

receive a year of food and tuition for language classes. es. After that, they’ll be cut adrift in one of the world’s poorest nations, with little possibility y of ever settling in Australia.

“Nobody, apart part from the Cambodian and Australian government, vernment, thinks this is a good idea,” Graemee McGregor of Amnesty International told me. e. “Cambodia is simply not in the position n to meet the needs and rights of refugees being eing relocated.” He explained that half of the country’s annual budget is foreign aid, while ile Australia is ranked number two on the Human Development Index, second onlyy to Norway.

“This has fueled international condemnaondemnation,” he said. “All the way to the UN.” For Virak Ou, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, his concern is how immigrants will assimilate into a country already struggling with low levels of education and much discrimination. “There is a lot of talk that they’re from the Middle East, so they could be criminals or terrorists,” he warned. “There’s just complete misunderstanding of the refugees.”

The Australian government guarantees that deportation will be on a voluntary basis, but Ou believes that will change: “If they stay in Nauru they’ll be badly treated with their lives in limbo, or they’ll come to Cambodia and their lives will be in limbo, but worse. I think they’re going to end up with major psychiatric problems.”

Cities are a Creating New Breed of aN Super Spider

You might think living in a city keeps you safe from giant spiders, but researchers at the University of Sydney have found otherwise. Constant illumination, hard surfaces such as sidewalks, and stable climates found in some cities are creating super spiders that are larger and more fertile than their country cousins. City spiders enjoy a limitless food source thanks to flying insects attracted to streetlights. The urban environment’s ability to retain heat around the clock is also a plus. The result is spiders of increased ovarian weight—a sign they’re putting less energy into surviving and more into erupting hundreds of babies into your hair while you sleep. Enjoy the rest of your spiderfilled lives, city dwellers! |WENDY SYFRET|

|JULIAN MORGANS|

Boko Haram’s recent uptick in productivity—from mass kidnappings to shootings and bombings—has had a less predictable but no less shitty outcome: mass arrests and corresponding mass torture by Nigerian authorities. In sweeping efforts to crush the terror group, the Nigerian police and military have, according to a new report by Amnesty International, been systematically abusing many of the thousands of men, women, and children they detain in screening operations intended to root out the militants. Cheerily titled

“Welcome to Hellfire,” the report stresses that endemic and horrifying mistreatment of detainees is not restricted to those held in relation

to terrorism charges, but is common among robbery and murder suspects too. According to Amnesty, torture is so commonplace that some jails and police stations have an officer informally known as O/C torture, or officer in charge of torture. Tom Davies, of Amnesty International UK’s Stop Torture campaign, said, “The Nigerian police and army almost compete over who can dish out the most disgusting forms of torture to detainees. Anything goes: Ripping out fingernails is almost standard practice.”

Australia illustration by Ole Tillmann, Nigeria illustration by Chijioke Ugwu Clement, spider photo courtesy of the University of Sydney

NIGERIA’S TORTURE PROBLEM

|BRUNO BAYLEY|

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FRONT OF THE BOOK

New York’s Joseph Gross Gallery recently exhibited an eight-foot-tall nude portrait of painter and sculptor Ted Lawson, created not by the artist but by a robot he programmemed to paint using his own blood. Lawson designed the piece, titled Ghost in the Machine, by taking a photograph of his body and rendering the image into vectors and then code, which allowed a contraption called a computer numerical control milling machine to translate the data into a painting. Instead of wielding a pen and ink, the autonomous machine composed the artwork by drawing blood from an IV attached to the artist’s arm.

“I’m definitely not the first to make a selfportrait out of blood, but as far as I can tell, I am the first person to make a blood selfie

using a robot,” Lawson told me. While other artists like Urs Fischer and Jeff Koons have used similar automated technology, Lawson explained, “the main difference in my use of the CNC is largely based on the fact that I programme and operate the machine myself. In that way, it can become more of an instrument that can hit subtle and distinct notes, entirely within the language of the machine itself, rather than simply using it as a means to an end.”

He said he was “trying to make a clear connection between the self and the machine, the artist and the technology… Allowing yourself to be truly intimate with the machine and the materials allows this to come through and makes it hard to duplicate even if you have access to the exact same technology.” |ZACH SOKOL|

Danish Lawyer: Run Away from the Cops

Copenhagen’s “free city” of Christiania has long been known for its active hash market. This has naturally attracted police, who patrol the surrounding area and often stop and search passersby. Now, one Danish lawyer is calling them out for what he considers unlawful police behavior. Rasmus Paludan has produced a red card on which you can write the legal minimum of personal information that you must hand over to the police if they stop you. “The police have weapons, uniforms, and are dominating citizens with their behavior. They give the impression that you need to give them all your information and help them, but that’s not true. You only need to give them your name, address, and the first six digits of your social security number.” Once you’ve handed over the red card to the police, Paludan encourages you to leave, either by walking or running away. And after all that, if the police still arrest you, then you’re eligible for compensation for wrongful arrest, Paludan says—“provided, of course, that you’re not carrying anything illegal.” So far, Paludan has handed out more than 2,000 of the 10,000 cards he has printed.

Illustration by Ole Tillmann, blood-robot photo courtesy of Joseph Gross Galley, lawyer card photo courtesy of Rasmus Paludan

Ted Lawson’s Blood Selfie Robot

|ANDREAS DIGENS|

DRUG-ADDLED CHEMISTS DREAM OF XENON

For the psychonauts discussing ways to get high across the internet, xenon is thought of as a Holy Grail. It’s a nontoxic noble gas that’s usually used in lighting and lasers, but with an unusual anaesthetic effect on human consciousness that’s 1.5 times stronger than nitrous oxide.

Combine this with an intense rush of euphoria, and the fact that it enjoys almost globally unrestricted sales, and you’ll understand why the price is the only catch.

At around $1,200 a liter, xenon is expensive. Which is why only enthusiasts like VICE contributor Hamilton Morris can speak on the experience of taking it. “One ribbed condom

of gas afforded approximately a minute of anesthetised dissociation,” he said. “I thought it might have a sweet taste like nitrous oxide, but there was no flavour. I started laughing from the absurd intensity of the euphoria, then heard that my laugh sounded like a cartoon villain. I might even go so far as to say it felt ‘evil’ in a cartoon-villain sort of way, notionally like the Joel Schumacher Bane or Edric the Guildsman. The first thing I said when I came out of the X-hole was, ‘Future wars shall be waged over this precious element.’ That single inhalation may have cost one hundred dollars, but it was worth a thousand.” |JULIAN MORGANS|

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FRONT OF THE BOOK Romanian Priests Hate Rainbows

Do Air Canada’s Pilots Have a Porn Problem?

In late September, a leaked internal memo from Air Canada revealed the company was chastising pilots for hiding “inappropriate material” in their flight decks. According to the memo, this wasn’t the first time they’d been caught.

“I am disappointed to have to raise this issue once again but we unfortunately have some people that have yet to understand the message,” wrote Captain Rod Graham, Air Canada’s chief pilot and director of fleet operations, before threatening termination and criminal charges to any pilot known to leave the materials in the deck.

Canadian media quickly swarmed with breathless headlines like “Air Canada Pilots Can’t Stop Bringing Porn into the Cockpit” and “Porn Is Apparently a Problem in Air Canada Cockpits.” But according to one Air Canada pilot we spoke to who asked to

remain anonymous, the problem is hardly epidemic, though still kind of weird.

“It’s just a game that pilots who fly one particular flight into Las Vegas play,” he said. “They aren’t videos or magazines; they’re just those little pornographic business cards you get when you’re in Vegas.

The game is to hide as many of the cards in odd places in the flight deck as possible.”

Nudie-card-hiding games aside, Air Canada’s pilots may have accidentally backdoored themselves into some goodies: Montreal-based porn company Brazzers is offering any Air Canada pilot a free subscription to its site for the duration of his employment with the company. The catch?

The pilot has to reach out to the company publicly through Twitter. To date, one pilot has taken the company up on the deal.

The Romanian town of Botoşani hosted an art installation this fall featuring 400 umbrellas suspended over a street. A priest from a local parish called city hall and asked them to take it down because some of the umbrellas had a rainbow pattern, which, he pointed out, is a symbol of gay organizations, and the mayor’s office duly agreed to remove the umbrellas. Eugen Ţurcanu, the deputy mayor of the town, explained, “I didn’t want to create needless tensions, so we changed the umbrellas.” But local gay advocates weren’t satisified. Florin Buhuceanu, president of ACCEPT, the main LGBT NGO in Romania, said, “If a priest starts ranting and suggests the rainbow umbrellas represent a gay invasion in the peaceful and Christian town of Botoşani, public authorities should not take him seriously and remove the innocent colourful items.” |MIHAI POPESCU|

|JORDAN SOWUNMI|

These days, roads in Russia are policed not only by the cops but also by hefty young men who patrol sidewalks and parking lots promoting proper driving etiquette to unruly drivers. Calling themselves StopXAM, or “Stop Rudeness,” these clean-cut activists have taken it upon themselves to curtail illegal parking and sidewalk driving, and the movement has been gaining popularity and public support. Reportedly an offshoot of the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi, StopXAM started in Russia in 2010 and has since spread to neighbouring Eastern European countries. StopXAM’s primary method of intimidation is public shaming. They film their confrontations with offending drivers, stopping their cars and slapping giant stickers on their windshields with phrases like “I don’t care about anyone, I park wherever I

want,” and then post the videos on the StopXAM YouTube channel, which has more than 2 million subscribers. Their tactics are often met with anger, with some enraged drivers attempting to run over the activists.

StopXAM Moldova is a more violent embodiment of the campaign, whose members take dramatic measures like smashing the windshields of naughty drivers with baseball bats. Has the movement curbed illegal parking and dangerous driving in Russia? To some extent, yes. Recent YouTube posts show several cars sheepishly backing off sidewalks upon spotting StopXAM crusaders on the horizon. It seems that, nowadays, being shamed on the internet is a bigger punishment than being sentenced to eight years of hard labor in Siberia. |ESRA GÜRMEN|

Illustrations by Ole Tillmann, photo by Ionut¸ Tabultoc/Mediafax Foto

Russia’s Parking Lot Patrol

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DOWN WITH HOSPITAL GOWNS

FRONT OF THE BOOK

The Last of the Spanish Terrorists Spain’s 40-year dictatorship was a perfect breeding ground for terrorist groups. While some had political motivations—usually communism or anarchy—the most common goal was to secede from Spain.

Each territory with its heart set on independence had a separatist terrorist group, the most famous being ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna), the Basque separatist group that finally declared a ceasefire in 2011.

Today, all these groups have disappeared, renounced violence, or been assimilated into political parties. Well, all but one: In the green fields of Galicia, in northwest Spain, the members of Resistência Galega are still active and continue to put bombs in bank

offices, political party headquarters, real estate offices, and car dealerships—though, to be fair, they don’t seem to try to kill people.

Resistência Galega wants to create an independent, socialist, and feminist state in Galicia. The group is small, and according to some researchers its infrastructure is composed of only 15 core members (some of whom live in neighbouring Portugal), with a number of associates and supporters adding up to about 500 people.

While the Spanish police say they have 60 investigators monitoring the group, Resistência Galega still managed to detonate a bomb near the city hall in the town of Baralla this October. |JUANJO VILLALBA|

There are many reasons to hate going to the hospital.

Beyond being faced with the crushing weight of your own mortality, there’s that humiliating act of stripping down to your skivvies and putting on a standard-issue cotton hospital gown that exposes your sickly butt to the world. But here’s the thing: Most times they’re totally useless. In fact, researchers in a study of five hospitals in Montreal and Toronto found that 60 percent of patients could have worn something that covered their entire bodies, but only 10 percent had on more than a gown.

Sholom Glouberman, president of the advocacy group Patients Canada, called the current design flaw of the gowns part of a “historical hangover.” “[In the past] the hospital was in charge of your body—all the decisions were theirs,” he said. Today, Glouberman said that patients are increasingly involved in their own care, so hospital-gown designs are outdated.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a communist rebel group known as FARC that has kidnapped thousands of hostages, has launched an online news show in a country that’s happy to support its political views: Cuba.

From Havana, Tanja Nijmeijer and a man who goes by the psuedonym Boris Guevara are producing a news programme every three days.

Their 13-minute show deals with international affairs and covers the peace talks between FARC and the Juan Manuel Santos government. The programme will be televised during the talks, in preparation for the end of a conflict that FARC has been waging since 1964. To date, the insurgency has claimed 250,000 lives and forced several million people out of their homes.

Nijmeijer, a.k.a. Alexandra Nariño, is a former English teacher from the Netherlands and a farleft activist turned FARC soldier. She recently said that the show would be “uploaded to YouTube and screened on every social network during each step of the peace talks.” During an interview led by the AFP, Guevara has said that FARC wanted to enable a “better understanding” of the negotiations and hoped to break the Colombian government’s “media siege.” |JULIEN MOREL|

While open-back hospital gowns allow for easy access for checking the heart and lungs, IVs, and administering certain medications, more modest gowns manage to maintain a patient’s comfort and preserve his or her dignity. These have caught on somewhat in the UK but have yet to make their way into the Canadian health-care system. And it’s not just hospital gowns. The historical hangover Glouberman spoke of stretches to other things, like parking fees at hospitals, the emergency-room triage system, and limited visiting hours in Canadian facilities. |ALLISON ELKIN|

Illustrations by Ole Tillmann, photo by Eskio via Wikimedia Commons

Live from Havana, It’s FARC TV

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MYLES SHARPE & PAUL MCKIE ARE DIRECTORS OF THE AUTUMN CO.

No o two w days d y are e the h same s m Myles and Paul P u run The Autumn u u Co, a Brisbane-based r b studio t specialising g in n print, design, g , web and sign. g They studied d at Shillington part-time S p r and since n graduating i g have worked ed with tthe likes of Google Go and Semi-Permanent. e n “ “Having built up p the h credibility to o work o with these amazing m brands has h s been tthe biggest thrill r ffor us—there’s days a when we still i have h to pinch ourselves. u T There’s no other e course c that delivers r the full-on practical p c skills thatt Shillington h provides you with—and w h in such a compact and o timely m manner. Being n taught t by working professionals w s o gives you u such u a unique insight s h into life outside s e of college and prepares you y u for the challenges n e that the industry u r presents. Just u d do it!”

ENROL NOW TO O STUDY T IN 2015 SHILLINGTONCOLLEGE.COM.AU O L

Shillington-1211 (Rev).indd 1

College of graphic c design e shillingtoncollege.com.au e m F shillington.fb T @shillington_ s i SYDNEY • MELBOURNE N • BRISBANE NEW YORK • LONDON N • MANCHESTER M

2014-11-28 11:49 AM

Finders, Keepers A Guy Discovered a US Drone in His Backyard and Sold Its Parts to al Qaeda and the Pakistani Government

BY GOHAR MEHSUD

or many years I’ve wanted to report on the Taliban and al Qaeda bomb-making camps near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. After much difficulty, I got the chance to visit a Taliban camp in the mountains of North Waziristan in February 2014, but my trip did not go as expected. Though I arrived hoping to learn about bomb production, the discussion quickly morphed into a story about a tribal elder who’d discovered a fallen American drone.

A few days after I set foot in the camp, a talib (student) took me to a nearby market so I could stock up on supplies. The sky was studded with small clouds and showed clear blue against the high mountains. It was a beautiful view, but the menacing sound of

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drones humming through the air quickly reminded me where I was.

The market was about ten minutes from the camp and consisted of three shops in mud-brick buildings. About 20 people were assembled outside, deeply immersed in conversation. As we approached, the villagers rose and shook our hands. They were friendly, quickly offering tea and asking us to join them. We agreed. The talib introduced me as a journalist, heightening the locals’ interests even more. In the tribal areas, journalists are held in high regard, yet there is very little media presence here because of the highly hostile environment.

The tribal elder, who requested not to be named, sat down across from me. He wanted my opinion about what was happening in the world today. “There is war and violence everywhere. Why?” he asked.

I said that I believed the war was the result of political interests and religious fanaticism that have been at play for centuries. He drew a long breath and replied, “I hope to God that the withdrawal of the American army from Afghanistan begins soon, because it is the root of all problems.” Many people here believe the US actually invaded Afghanistan because of its religion and rich mineral deposits.

I asked the elder how the local people feel about American drones. He explained that

North Waziristan was once one of the most peaceful areas in the world but ongoing war and drone attacks have now made it one of the most dangerous.

By this time the tea had arrived, and as we sat outside enjoying our hot drinks the elder said, “Let me tell you an interesting story...” ne day, late in 2007, the elder was relaxing in the courtyard of his home when he heard frenzied voices yelling that a drone was falling from the sky.

Looking up, he saw the aircraft moving unusually—jerking up and down across the horizon—until it smashed into a nearby mountain. He ran toward the crash site, but before he arrived, the elder’s son and his friends—who had been hunting on the mountain—surrounded the drone and claimed ownership of it, in accordance with local rules.

Other villagers quickly appeared on the scene. The elder explained that people in this region have a severe hatred of drones, especially the incessant sound they make as they hover above. Discovering a drone lying silent and motionless in front of them was extremely bizarre, and the villagers experienced mixed emotions of joy, concern, anger, and shock.

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How were they supposed to handle the situation? As they gathered around the drone, a man suddenly screamed at them to stay away, warning that the operator could blow it up at any second. They quickly called for an ax and cut off the two missiles still attached under the wings. The elder and his son then carried the drone home.

According to locals, it was off-white and had several cameras on its underside. he elder invited me to his house for dinner to continue the tale. He showed me photographs of his children and other villagers posing with the drone. He even had some hanging on his wall. Taking pictures with it had clearly been a point of pride.

The elder still keeps the engine, empty warhead, and other components of the drone’s missiles in his house. He let me hold them in my hands, but when I asked if I could have some photos of the drone, he declined. The elder explained that this was a delicate matter and he didn’t want any trouble.

As the food was served I asked the elder’s son how he’d felt when he brought the drone home. “Disturbed and afraid” was his answer. “We were frightened that the US might send another drone, which could blast our entire house and our entire family,” he replied. “So we took it outside and hid it on a mountain nearby. We guarded it all night so that no one would steal it.

And my dad strictly told the people of the village that no one was to mention anything about the drone.”

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Just two days after they discovered it, the elder and his family were contacted by regional Taliban and al Qaeda members. He said they tried to pressure him into handing over the drone but he refused, plainly telling them that he wanted to sell it for profit.

He also claimed that the Indian, Afghan, and US governments contacted him as well (both directly and indirectly) and showed interest in buying the drone. Some even offered a good price, he said, but he didn’t go through with a sale because he feared retribution from the Taliban and al Qaeda.

A few days later, some al Qaeda representatives arrived at his house, requesting to see the drone. They scrutinised it thoroughly, jotting down its serial numbers, before buying some of its cameras and circuit boards, explaining that they wanted to experiment with it and see if they could make a drone for themselves. Soon after that Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban’s founder and chief, who was later killed in 2009, also paid a visit.

The elder was worried about what would come of this situation. He was afraid of spies and concerned that someone might threaten him, hurt his family, or attack his house at night.

Then a different tribal leader contacted the elder on behalf of the Pakistani government, claiming they had sent him to buy it. The two men negotiated a price of 10 million Pakistani rupees ($100,000), of which the elder would get 1 million rupees in commission.

After this, Pakistani officials arrived under the cover of darkness, put the drone in a truck, and took it to the army camp in

Miranshah. The following day a helicopter transferred it to an unknown location.

The elder said he was not completely satisfied with the trade, because he thought the drone was worth more than 10 million rupees, but he felt that he and his family had no easier, or safer, way to sell it.

The region’s other tribal leaders were extremely passionate about the drone, however. With pride they recounted everything about the incident in great detail. According to them, losing the drone had created a major problem for the US, and they were very happy about that. akistan unveiled its domestically built surveillance drones in November 2013.

It has also reportedly been trying to develop combat drones for many years.

A Taliban commander told me over the summer that recent attacks on them have been extremely precise. The Pakistani military launched Operation Zarb-e-Azb against the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, and other groups in June 2014. This US-backed campaign began after the collapse of negotiations between the government and the militants, and a week after the June 8 terror attack on Jinnah International Airport, which killed 18 people and ten fighters.

On July 9 a Pakistani military spokesperson said that 80 percent of the target area in the tribal region of North Waziristan had been “cleared of terrorists.” After a six-month pause, the US restarted drone attacks in June, and they have intensified since. On October 7 American strikes killed at least ten suspected militants in two separate attacks.

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OPPOSITE PAGE: The elder keeps the empty missile warhead from the fallen drone at his home, proudly showing it to visitors. All photos by the author LEFT: Despite the interest of al Qaeda and the Taliban, the elder sold the actual drone to the Pakistani government for $100,000.

RIGHT: Villagers in North Waziristan discuss important issues through a tribal jirga (an assembly of elders).

This kind of gathering occurred soon after the discovery of the fallen US drone.

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Refugee Summer Camp Tourists in Thailand Are Traveling to See Suffering Burmese Migrants

BY LAUREN MARKHAM

The entrance to an encampment near the Burmese border. All photos by Eloise Baro

MAE LA REFUGEE CAMP BURMA LAOS Chiang Mai

Mae Sot THAILAND CAMBODIA

Home to 50,000 refugees, the Mae La camp is located outside the increasingly popular tourist town of Mae Sot.

n March of 2013, a section of the Ban Mae Surin refugee camp in Thailand burned down in a catastrophic fire. The refugees’ huts sparked like tinder, and 37 people succumbed to the flames. Hearing of the disaster, sympathetic Western travelers— colloquially called “voluntourists”—showed up in droves, offering money and lending hands to clear the damage. A voluntourist encampment sprung up across from the charred remains of the refugee village.

Despite its commitment to aiding migrants, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees is decidedly against the growing fad of refugee tourism throughout Thailand, a country that boasts more than 20 million tourists a year, attracted by the country’s pristine beaches and jungle highlands, as well as more than 130,000 refugees and half a million stateless people, many of them having fled the decades-long civil war in neighbouring Burma. Some of the volunteers at Ban Mae Surin “were there starting up their barbecues, stripping down, and swimming in the river,” recalled Iain Hall, of the UNHCR in Thailand. “It was disrespectful. This kind of tourism—it’s not good to see. These are human beings, not animals in a zoo.”

The following summer, I traveled to Thailand as a student and tourist myself. A military coup had taken place in May and, among many other things, had exacerbated the country’s migrant situation. The Thai junta, led by General Prayuth Chan-ocha, had announced plans to start sending refugees back to Burma. Currently, the Thai and Burmese governments are beginning to discuss repatriation programmes while the Thai junta tightens refugee-camp security. Travel to and from the country’s eight camps continues, but leaving to search for work beyond the communities’ walls has become dangerous and difficult for

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residents. People in numerous camps, including Mae La, the country’s largest— it was established 30 years ago outside a town called Mae Sot and is now home to about 50,000 refugees—will soon be asked to go back “home” to Burma, and if the government has its way, the encampment may close altogether within a matter of years. If anything, the need for the international community to pay attention to these camps is greater than ever.

After an onerous, twisting bus ride from Chiang Mai, one of the most popular tourist spots in Thailand, I arrived one night in Mae Sot, about 35 miles from the Mae La camp. Famished and drenched from the rain, I headed straight to a café and arts cooperative called Borderline, which provides jobs for refugee women, as well as a market for their handicrafts. That night, the place was so packed with refugee children (Burmese Karen, by their telltale woven bags and the white clay paste spread onto their cheeks) that there was

no place to sit down. A handful of expats excitedly circled about, setting up sound equipment on a makeshift stage. A 25-yearold American guy, clad in a muscle tee and sunglasses, jumped up on stage. “Good evening, Mae Sot!” he shouted theatrically, to the glee of his audience—his Karen students, it turned out, at a nearby school for migrants. The concert was ostensibly a showcase for the musical stylings of his pupils, but as far as I could tell it was his show, him wailing along to synth-y mall punk with the occasional student singing backup. “Man, I love performing in Thailand,” he proclaimed as I scarfed down my curried potatoes. “We’re rock stars up here, right, boys? And none of you even know what I’m saying!”

Later that night, I met a friend down the road at Exppact Café/Bar, a popular tourist haunt, owned by former political prisoners from Burma. “We started Exppact to generate income for ourselves, and to educate people about the situation in Burma,”

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Thiha Yarzar, a former refugee and one of Exppact’s founders, told me. The bar was filled with foreigners, mostly Western teachers and some aid workers, and a few Thai and Burmese patrons.

Some of these expat teachers had been barred from entering their camps in recent months, a result of the coup’s crackdown on unauthorised entry and exit from the camps. Their schools sat vacant, the teachers unable to teach.

Though founder Yarzar has respect for many of the volunteers in Mae Sot, he’s troubled by how well-intentioned aid funds are often spent. “Some people visit Mae Sot as tourists, and they see something and come back to Mae Sot with a pile of money. ‘I will set up a migrant school!’ they say. And then they get a big salary—and almost all of the money goes to their salary.” As I finished my beer, Exppact’s evening band, a trio of teachers with a Danish lead singer, started up, crooning their newest song, whose chorus, “Where were you during the coup?” mingled merrily with the crowd’s chatter and the rain outside.

I stayed the night at Picturebook Guesthouse, which provides lodging to tourists and volunteers while employing migrant youth to provide them with hospitality training. The guesthouse is run

by Youth Connect, a nonprofit that prepares young refugees for the workforce, and the proceeds from Picturebook help fund Youth Connect’s education programmes. When I asked Youth Connect’s director, Mickey Goggin, why the organisation chose to build a guesthouse over some other businesses, he laughed: “This is Thailand, man!” The tourism industry has been strong since hippies began visiting the country in the 60s. “It’s a reliable market. And even in tough times”—the recent political violence and coup, for example—“there’s still a high demand.”

The next morning, after speaking with so many people working with refugees and migrants, it occurred to me that I could sneak into a refugee camp myself— but for what real reason, I wondered, other than to say that I had? Part of me worried I was succumbing to the lust for exoticism in a foreign land, a been-theredone-that feather in my adventurer’s cap. But I, like many tourists, also had a genuine desire to learn something about the history and sociopolitical dynamics of the place I was visiting, and to get closer to those dynamics than was possible in Mae Sot’s expat bars. How to

do this without turning a human being into a spectacle?

I boarded a covered-truck taxi north from Mae Sot, on the one north-south road that, cutting through the gentle green border hills, connects various tourist centers and passes by several large refugee camps. Two young men chewing betel nuts loaded bags of rice into the truck—headed, I later found out, for one of the camps. Next to me, a fellow northbound passenger kept falling asleep, laying her head on my shoulder until a pothole jolted her awake.

Across from me sat a French couple clad in flip-flops and tank tops, resting against their rucksacks, the man jotting away in a notebook and his companion scanning through yesterday’s photos.

They were traveling north to Mae Sariang, they said, a hill-tribe region known for scenic views and cultural tourism. They told me that, a few days before, they had paid to visit a refugee encampment along the river border with Burma, just outside of Mae Sot, where ring-necked Kayan women with intentionally elongated spines pose for pictures and sell their wares. “We didn’t stay long,” the French woman said. “It felt really bad,” her boyfriend added, “just sort of standing there, looking around.”

As we spoke, Mae La appeared to our left, a fenced-in, dense collection of thatched roofs beneath towering green hills. Guards, newly instated by the junta government, stood at the access roads and by the random holes in the fencing.

You couldn’t really see people inside the camp, just the undulating mantle of thatch. Baro took out her camera and, after hesitating for a moment, began taking pictures.

I got off the truck, feeling emboldened to slip into a vast territory of migration that also held, for me, great moral uncertainty. But I was instantly stopped by the hiss of a guard, who waved his finger.

No one in, no one out. I walked the perimeter for a while, relishing the fresh air and mountain vistas, then sat with the guards, who pitched rocks at stray dogs and laughed. After the last of the dogs had slinked away, the guards helped me flag down the next southbound truck toward Mae Sot. Even though they are part of an anti-immigrant junta, I was thankful to them in a way, not just for flagging me a ride but for helping me make my decision—to visit the camp, or not?

A view over the Mae La riverside encampment

A Burmese Karen refugee sells crabs at her makeshift shop.

A refugee at the Friendship Bridge, which connects Thailand and Burma

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Political Football How Egypt Made Soccer a National Security Issue

BY EMIR NADER, PHOTOS BY KARIM ALWI AND DIAA ADEL

s the chairman of Egypt’s Zamalek soccer club was leaving his office on August 17, 2014, he was the target of what he claims was an assassination attempt. Mortada Mansour told the authorities that he was attacked by his team’s own fans, a branch of the country’s highly organised soccer enthusiasts known as Ultras. In the weeks that have followed, approximately 50 Ultras have been arrested, some of them tortured, and now a movement that is made up of tens of thousands of young Egyptian men faces charges of terrorism. But I have spoken to lawyers, journalists, and Ultras who believe the crackdown involves more than the accusations of a powerful sports figure or an uptick in soccer hooliganism. Many feel it is a campaign of revenge led by the state security forces that dominated Egypt before the revolution.

The Egyptian attorney Tarek El-Awady leads the defense team for the Ultras. “There is absolutely no evidence for any of this,” he told me. “Mansour had television cameras there at three AM and a lawyer in his office, as if they knew. His injuries, the doctor said, couldn’t have come from a gun. He claims he was shot at fourteen times, but the police could find only one casing, five hundred meters away. The casing was from a shotgun, and it’s impossible to hit a target with a shotgun from that distance.”

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TOP: Attorney Tarek ElAwady, right, and Dr. Walid El-Kateeb, from the Ultras’ legal defense team BOTTOM: ProUltras graffiti in Maadi, an affluent district in Cairo

I recently visited El-Awady’s office, tucked away in a dusty backstreet of northern Cairo. The defense team he heads with Dr. Walid El-Kateeb is all that stands between these young men and the brutal Egyptian prison system. For a lawyer, El-Awady was startlingly bold in telling me that the allegations had been entirely cooked up: “The ten arrested weren’t captured at the scene—their houses were raided after. How did anyone know who they were?”

El-Awady confirmed rumors of detainee abuse, saying, “They were tortured in the presence of chairman Mansour. The

confessions forced out of them were broadcast on TV, and when the kids made it to the court they all denied it.” hen millions of Egyptians took to the streets in 2011 to protest under the chant of “Bread, freedom, and social justice,” the response of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s president for 30 years, was anything but warm. The citizens who marched to Tahrir Square, high on the dream that they could create a better country, soon met the bullets and batons of Egypt’s only efficient infrastructure: the ruthless state security forces. It is yet

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to be proved whether the orders to shoot came directly from the top—that is, from Mubarak’s desk—but what is known for sure is that victory came from the bottom. The Ultras played a pivotal role in taking over the streets and ousting the leader of the world’s oldest nation.

Now, after four presidents and three years of upheaval, the feeling in the new Egypt under Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a former general, is not so much that things are back to the way they were as that things are worse. In the name of combating extremism, the government is suppressing any group that may voice dissent. The previously governing Muslim Brotherhood is now an official terrorist organisation, and leftist activists, secularists, journalists, gay people, and NGOs are being made to fall in line or face imprisonment.

El-Awady told me more about the charges the Ultras are facing. Responding to the injustice they saw in the assassination arrests, Zamalek Ultras quickly gathered to demonstrate, the situation turned violent, and by the next day 78 had been arrested. Half were randomly let go, and the rest joined the hunger-striking journalists and activists jailed under Egypt’s controversial new Protest Law, which effectively criminalises any demonstration. Then, capitalising on the hysteria, chairman Mansour went for the prize. He personally filed a lawsuit to have the whole country’s Ultra movement follow in the footsteps of the Muslim Brotherhood and be officially branded an illegal terrorist network.

If the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination attempt turn out to be true, it won’t surprise many. Mansour is a notorious figure from the pre-revolution establishment, a lawyer and loose-cannon television commentator who previously faced charges of orchestrating the bizarre Battle of the Camels, in which sword-wielding thugs rode into Tahrir Square and attacked protesters during the first days of the revolt. Mansour’s time as chairman of Zamalek has inspired little enthusiasm among the team’s Ultras White Knights: On October 12 he told the press that they’d thrown nitric acid on him as he prepared to unveil the team’s new coach. The Ultras replied by posting a video of the incident on their Facebook page, informing him it was actually urine and calling him a “dog of the system.”

El-Awady also believes that Mansour is a “tool being used by a bigger force” and that the security forces are flexing their muscles. “Their strategy is, if we can’t control them, we’ll put them in jail.”

Many share the sentiment that the government is targeting the Ultras in order to put them in their place as a retribution for their displays of strength since the revolution. In early 2012 a match between Port Said’s Al Masry club

and the visiting Al Ahly team of Cairo became one of the bloodiest encounters in soccer history. As the game was ending, men from the Al Masry terraces invaded the pitch, leaped into the away stands, and set about attacking Al Ahly fans with knives, stones, and bottles. It was a bloodbath as people were thrown from the stands and fans died in the arms of soccer coaches hiding in the locker rooms. It didn’t take long for questions to surface about how it had been orchestrated. Witnesses reported that the usual searches hadn’t been carried out at the entryways, that the gates separating the fans had been opened, and that the lights had

Nino

Mohammed

been turned off and the exit doors locked as people tried to escape. Many Ultras believe that baltageya (hired thugs) were present and that the security forces either ignored the massacre unfolding beneath their gaze or, much worse, watched their plan play out as intended.

Port Said is a tragedy that is deeply ingrained in the identity of Al Ahly’s Ultras Ahlawy. Their 74 martyrs are commemorated on innumerable T-shirts and on many walls throughout Cairo.

Since then, every major football game has been closed to fans, who can now only gather to watch matches on the TVs of cheap outdoor coffee shops. The convictions and death sentences handed down to those allegedly responsible sparked more armed street battles the following year, but with such strong suspicions of conspiracy it’s hard to feel that justice has been served.

ltras in Egypt have a long history of aggression—the biggest match of the season has been called “the world’s most violent rivalry”—but as pro-ISIS crowds in Morocco are filmed chanting stadium hits, could the fan groups of the Middle East actually be breeding terrorists?

Whatever the motives of their violence, tensions will only increase if the government refuses to ease its grip. “The Ultras’ main driver is soccer,” James M. Dorsey, an expert on Middle Eastern politics and soccer, told me. “But the attempt to criminalise the Ultras, coupled with the ban on spectators and the mounting general repression in the country, is a recipe for escalation and radicalisation.”

I put the idea to two soccer fans, Nino and Mohammed, at a Cairo café where many Ultras smoke shisha and let off steam. “Nobody will ever forget the blood of their brother who has been killed in front of them, so of course they will want to take revenge,” Mohammed said, though he added that few desire the ultimate form of retribution. “We don’t want martyrs.

We don’t want to have to take revenge on someone, someone else’s brother… But we don’t know what to do. After the Port Said massacre we had hold of someone who was responsible, and people had weapons, but we couldn’t kill him. We couldn’t do what he did.”

Nino shed some light on the shadowy logic he saw at work. “They are trying to push us to be more violent so instead of using a stick they can use bullets,” he said.

Nino had been involved with the clashes leading up to the revolution, but given the current political climate, he was eager to distance himself from previous activities. He banged our café table with the anger of someone frustrated by a force bigger than he could challenge. “The thing is, I don’t know whom I should be angry at—the interior ministry, the security services, people from Port Said… How can I define my anger toward them? I’m barehanded. I don’t have the ability to face the people I should take revenge on.”

When I asked them about the possibility of joint action from all of Egypt’s Ultras against the state, Nino nodded as Mohammed told me that “we are all on the same page now. We have one case we are fighting for—to return to the stadiums, against the will of the government.”

Back at El-Awady’s office, I asked whether the Ultras could become more militant if the government’s stranglehold on them continues.

His response touched on the scale of what’s at stake. “I hope it doesn’t happen. I hope the government doesn’t continue to push them, because at this point it could be a very critical situation.

It could be a national security issue.”

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The Mean Green Kids in the US Are Getting Sick from Harvesting Tobacco

BY WHITNEY MALLETT

GREEN TOBACCO SICKNESS A type of acute nicotine poisoning that occurs when tobacco seeps through workers’ skin

ddie Ramirez doesn’t smoke, but nicotine still makes him feel “lightheaded sometimes,” like he’s “going to vomit.” That’s because he’s one of the estimated thousands of kids who work in American tobacco fields, enduring long, hot days pruning plants whose leaves will be sold to big tobacco companies like Reynolds American and Japan Tobacco International, which turn the crop into Camels and Pall Malls. Green tobacco sickness, a type of acute nicotine poisoning, occurs when tobacco seeps through workers’ skin, and one report found that as many as three quarters of young tobacco workers experience symptoms like dizziness, headaches, nausea, and vomiting. Ramirez showed me his hand when we were out among the sunyellowed tobacco stalks of Snow Hill, North Carolina, where he works. “You feel how it’s sticky?” he asked, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. “That’s the nicotine.”

In the US, it’s perfectly legal for Ramirez, who is 15 and just started high school, to work in these fields. He began working at 12, the minimum legal age, lower than in any other industry in America. In 2011, former labor secretary Hilda Solis tried and failed to raise the federal age for farm work to 16, and recently NGOs have tried another approach: targeting the tobacco industry’s major players, like Philip Morris International, to get them to raise the age of the workers in their supply chain. Margaret

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Wurth, the author of a May 2014 Human Rights Watch report about children and teens who labor in the tobacco fields, believes that the age to harvest tobacco should be raised to 18. “This is a kind of work that children just shouldn’t be doing,” she argues. “It’s too dangerous for them.”

For Ramirez—and many immigrants from Mexico and Central America, who make up about 83 percent of agricultural workers in the US—the health risks are worth taking. “My dad’s not here, you know, so I help my mom a lot,” Ramirez explains. Because his dad was deported to Honduras, what he makes working 12- and sometimes 13-hour days, often at $8.75 an hour ($1.50 more than minimum wage), goes to rent and food. It’s a big help to his mom, who works in a sweet-potatoprocessing plant. She used to work in tobacco but became too sick. “The nicotine got to her real bad,” he explains. “We had to take her to the hospital.”

People’s sensitivity to nicotine varies.

Thomas Arcury, a public-health scientist at Wake Forest University, found that 25 percent of adult workers who handle tobacco experience symptoms of green tobacco sickness. Ramirez tries to protect himself from

the nicotine-filled early-morning dew, which can soak through clothes and into the skin, by wearing a trash bag over his body. He cuts holes in the sides for his arms and slips the black bag over his head. In spite of his homemade getup, he says, “You still get wet.”

No one knows the effects of exposure in the long term, especially on kids whose bodies and nervous systems aren’t yet fully developed. What scientists do know is that nicotine absorbed through the skin is metabolised into something called cotinine, which is then measured to assess how much nicotine is in a person’s system. At the end of the 1999 tobacco harvest in Wake and Granville counties, in rural North Carolina, one study found that nonsmoking adult workers had cotinine levels comparable to what you’d expect to find in someone who smokes a quarter pack a day. Although there aren’t the same risks involved as those associated with smoking, like lung cancer, exposure to nicotine during adolescence may have adverse effects on brain development, according to the US surgeon general.

In North Carolina, where it seems almost every man over a certain age grew up priming tobacco on his daddy’s farm, to some

Eddie Ramirez, 15, has worked in the tobacco fields to help his mother with bills ever since his father was deported to Honduras. All photos by the author

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the risks of green tobacco sickness don’t seem alarming. “We called it the ‘mean green’ thirty years ago,” says Graham Boyd, the vice president of the state’s Tobacco Growers Association. “I was one of these people who suffered from it every day,” he says, recalling the symptoms he experienced working in the hot sun starting from the age of 12 or 13. He says his own 16- and 17-year-old children “are large enough that I don’t see an issue with them working in a field like this with regards to the safety factor,” even though his own children don’t work in the fields.

It’s unclear who is most invested in keeping the minimum age at 12. The Tobacco Growers Association of North Carolina, following in the footsteps of another growers’ association, the Council for Burley Tobacco in Kentucky, has come forward to officially say that it doesn’t condone anyone under the age of 16 working. Of the eight major companies that buy tobacco leaves from farms in North Carolina, Philip Morris International has been willing to engage in a dialogue about children working on farms it does business with, detailing a list of hazardous tasks laborers under 18 should be prohibited from doing.

But while big tobacco has expressed concern, there has been little action. “We believe tobacco companies have responsibilities to adopt clear policies to prohibit children from doing dangerous work on farms in their supply chains,” Wurth, of Human Rights Watch, tells me. “The companies continue to say that they are concerned with child labor in their supply chains, but we haven’t seen meaningful changes in their policies.”

Despite the health hazards, however, many of the children’s families rely on their paychecks. “If I didn’t work, we wouldn’t get what we actually need,” says Saray Cambray Alvarez, a 13-year-old who works in the tobacco fields of Pink Hill, a county over from Snow Hill. Alvarez’s whole family work as farm laborers, traveling between tobacco fields in North Carolina and orange groves in Florida, and Saray is expected to work and help her family survive.

“If [the parents of kids like Alverez and Ramirez] were earning more money,” says labor-union representative and former farmworker David Flores, “they wouldn’t need their kids to work in the field.”

Yet for Eddie Ramirez, it’s easier to stomach the nicotine than the alternative.

“I see my mom working. She comes home late. She doesn’t earn enough money,” he says. “It feels good to provide her with some backup.”

TOP: Fernando Rodriguez, 13, works in the tobacco and sweet potato fields in the summer in Snow Hill, North Carolina, where he was born and raised.

MIDDLE: Brandon Rodriguez, 16, hadn’t had a cigarette in three days when this photo was taken. Legally, he’s old enough to work in tobacco but too young to smoke.

BOTTOM: Saray Cambray Alvarez, 13, started accompanying her family in the fields when she was only five after immigrating to the US from Mexico.

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James Jeanius A Master of Illustration Shares His Sketches

BY NICK GAZIN

ames Jean is the person I most wish I could draw like. I practice often, and occasionally I see flashes of his delicate forms and lines appearing in my work, but these qualities always dissipate quickly. Like many other artists, I tried buying the same brand of sketchbooks Jean uses (widely known as “the James Jean sketchbook”) and his preferred line of pens (“the James Jean pen”). Getting my hands on these sacred items actually helped a little. But even as I study his past work and try to understand how he made the amazing sketchbook images from his art-school days, he is methodically producing new work that is even more complex and multidimensional.

There’s a whole generation of artists tripping over themselves trying to imitate or at least understand how his six-time Eisner Award–winning brain is able to make his hand do what it does.

I recently had the chance to ask Jean some questions, but I don’t know if I got any closer to understanding how to be more like him. I did get some insight into the way personal economics have influenced how he balances fine art and commercial work. We also talked about his heroes and how the internet dispenses with traditional hierarchies in the presentation of images. He also threatened to slap me.

J

VICE: Are your parents artists?

James Jean: My parents are not artists. I didn’t grow up in an artistic environment. But a friend gave me a Wolverine comic book when I was thirteen, and I became addicted.

Do you remember which issue it was?

Wolverine 37, drawn by Marc Silvestri.

Who were the comic artists you looked at the most as a kid?

As a teenager, I looked at work from guys like Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Geoff Darrow, Frank Miller. I was fascinated with the indecent anatomy and how they could describe different surfaces and textures with just a few variations in line weight.

Do you ever get annoyed when you see people imitating your style?

No. I’ve emulated many artists, but most of them are dead.

What sort of advice do you have for people who want to learn to draw like you do?

Draw constantly, but avoid cheap mannerisms.

Is your work influenced by the history of Asian art?

I moved to the States when I was three. In my early twenties, I was fascinated with the work of Giuseppe Castiglione. He was an Italian missionary who became a court painter in China during the Qing dynasty. The work is a beautiful blend of Western and Eastern sensibilities.

Also, I was influenced early on by [Katsushika] Hokusai, [Tsukioka] Yoshitoshi, and manga artists like Maruo Suehiro. However, I’m not sure this predilection is genetic.

Was there ever a moment when you felt like you’d turned a corner and begun to really understand drawing?

There was a pivotal moment after my first year at art school when I started to work obsessively in my sketchbooks. I rejected the academic and experimental things we were being forced to draw, and returned to the imaginative doodles of my childhood. Interspersed through the pictures of figures and strange creatures were sketches of people riding the subway, and journal entries.

It was very pure—each spread was a personal challenge to make something new and interesting.

I kept working in my sketchbooks the following twelve years, but recently I stopped. I’m not sure I have the energy these days.

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What forces have caused your work to evolve?

Certainly, doing so much commercial stuff from 2001 to 2008 has changed and influenced the way that I work. My first solo show, Kindling, in 2009, was a reflection of that refined kind of energy. But shortly thereafter, I started making art that was more painterly, expressionistic, and experimental. I find that I keep boomeranging around different approaches. Maybe it will only make sense in a macro view of my body of work—but at the moment, I understand that it can seem a bit schizophrenic.

One of the things I admire about you is that you are able to do “low art” like comic-book covers and “high art” like your paintings and you don’t seem to pigeonhole yourself.

Have you been living by a specific career plan, or have you just taken the work that comes your way?

In my early twenties, I was supporting someone else, so I felt compelled to take on as much work as possible to build up a safety net. I wanted to be a painter after graduating from art school, but I didn’t plan on

becoming so prolific and well known as a commercial artist. The world is changing so rapidly it’s almost impossible to follow a plan or previous model of how your career should transpire. But at least now, I can be more selective.

What artists are interesting to you lately?

There’s too much stuff out there. I’m not a very good filter. I followed a lot of artists in my twenties, but many of them aren’t as prolific now. What informed some of my work in the early stages were etchings by [Albrecht] Dürer, Shanghai advertising posters, anatomical mezzotints. Cartoonists like Carlos Nine and Chris Ware. Painters like Neo Rauch and Michaël Borremans. But now, there’s so much stuff out there that it’s hard to be moved by anything in particular, and it all ends up looking the same or derivative.

Why? I think the internet has encouraged and enabled more people to be visual artists. But there seemed to be a more linear progression of visual styles and approaches before.

Now, there’s no hierarchy to the access or presentation of images. It’s all there in a multicoloured stream of visual diarrhea.

Tell me about the new book you have coming out.

It’s called Xenograph and will be published

by Asuka Shinsha. It’s around three hundred pages and will contain all new work.

What creative things do you still want to do that you haven’t done yet?

I’d like to make ceramics. And play more music. But I love making images the most.

What sort of music would you like to make?

Dave Choe just invited me to play in his band, Mangchi.

Do you listen to music while you work? Do you ever paint to the rhythm?

Paint to the rhythm? I should smack you.

Oh man, I bet I could resell that slap for so much money.

My caresses are priceless.

A sampling of sketches new and old by James Jean. He drew the X-Men characters when he was 13 years old.

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DOs

This captures the very best moment of a perfect Tinder date in the same way that picture of a napalmed child demonstrated the folly of Vietnam.

To pull off blind-man-in-athrift-store chic you need abs like these and a personality like a hurricane, and Keith makes Katrina look like a warm fart in the back of a cab.

A little street drinkin’ with the bestie prepares you for when the merger goes through and all the people at your company who managed the robots are replaced by bigger, smarter robots that can manage the regular robots themselves and street drinkin’ becomes the only thing there is to do.

Did Superman’s cape or Batman’s Batsuit ever give someone three seconds of pure joy? Point Dick Joke Man.

If I can’t tell whether your tattoo is an actual tattoo or Kaposi’s sarcoma, I love your tattoo.

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beachburritocompany.com

#feedingculture

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beach_burrito_co

lagoon_collective

#LagoonTakeover

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DON’Ts True love can find you anywhere—in the checkout aisle of a grocery store, on the sidelines of your kid’s soccer game, next to a burning pile of troll dolls, at that bar that hangs baboon corpses from the ceiling.

Head Shapes Monthly was too niche a publication to succeed long-term, but their photojournalism team was next-level.

Chill out, Wayne Coyne.

We get it. You’re a weird guy who does weird stuff.

At the height of the sheep-cloning craze, Dutch genetic engineers crossbred Oscar the Grouch with a street magician. Today, the resulting atrocity walks the streets of Amsterdam as a disquieting reminder that we should never play God with things we can’t legally kill when they don’t pan out.

I can’t talk right now, Mom. The captain needs me.

We are steering into the most treacherous waters our crew has ever seen, though we feel certain our initiatives will soon be maximising dividends for shareholders like you. Please make the new check out to my company, the Seafarering Imagineers Corporation, and mail it to my loft. You will receive confirmation via sea dove, or I’ll email you.

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DOs

What blind people see when they imagine what a Ruby Tuesday looks like based on eating at Ruby Tuesday.

You’ve got to hand it to those military lawyers. Now they’re forcing enemy combatants to “toke it up with B-Rad,” a fate worse than death that’s technically not torture.

They say that no matter where you stand in front of the Mona Lisa, it looks like she’s staring directly at you. The same is true of Lona Misa, the sickest kids’ birthday-party DJ in Fort Worth.

Criterion’s ballsy cover for the forthcoming Bluray release of The Complete Teletubbies box set features series creator Al Gore secretly attending a Soundgarden reunion concert in Times Square.

It gets pretty old having someone stare at your asshole every time you go take a shit.

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ACT: FUTURE ISLANDS ; TIME: 10:25PM ; DATE: 27/07/14 ; PLACE: OXFORD ART FACTORY "(38 # '4123 28#-$8 /'.3. JBD EBTFQQ @LJ /1.,.3$1 ' -#2.,$ 3.412 2$"1$3 2.4-#2

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DON’Ts Calling all units, calling all units. Immediate assistance required outside the Axe Festival Shower. A black guy is trying to bum a smoke from a white girl in broad daylight like a normal person. Calling all units, bring the Tasers—he’s strong.

The photo seems to suggest you get to watch the guy fuck the horse or vice versa. I’d be more impressed if they did real best-friend stuff: bitch about work over sushi, support each other through their divorces, pingpong, that sort of thing.

Krojar is a disc jockey like steroids-era Barry Bonds was a hitter of baseballs.

They won’t even let him touch the tables anymore. Every time they do, the beat gets walloped into the creative upper deck.

Being exposed to such arguments for sexual repression will make that little kid a great alcoholic Southern playwright one day.

It’s embarrassing when your dog barks at black people. It’s even more embarrassing when your cat grows his upper-lip hair into a Hitler ’stache and meows edicts of mass death.

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Marble bucket hat, mesh tee, marble track pant Independent Australian - Never Established

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GRANDSCHEME.COM.AU @grand_scheme

2014-11-21 3:37 PM

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Luzzara, 1953 Portrait of a Village PHOTOS BY PAUL STRAND

YOUNG MAN, LUZZARA (IVO LUSETTI) 1953; gelatin silver print Image: 5 7/8 × 4 5/8 in. (15 × 11.8 cm) Sheet: 6 3/16 × 4 15/16 in. (15.7 × 12.5 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art: the Paul Strand Retrospective Collection, 1915 –1975, gift of the estate of Paul Strand, 1980 - 21- 309

aul Strand has been put on a pedestal so high it can be difficult for a contemporary audience to notice him. In 1945, he became the first photographer to have a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art, and his early urban scenes and abstractions helped cement photography as an integral part of modernity’s aesthetic. But if he’s so seminal, why hasn’t there been a comprehensive retrospective of his work since 1971? Strand should without a doubt be considered one of the greatest American photographers.

So why does a Google search of his name return only a few of the photos that are on the following pages?

Strand didn’t think reproductions of his photographs did justice to the originals. Viewed in person, his masterful silver and platinum gelatin prints are full of inky shadows and delicate highlights that are impossible to duplicate in print and often translate poorly on screen. Strand’s work is also under-discussed because his photos rarely have a “hook.” These are serious pictures by a serious man—in many ways the antithesis of pop art. They are black-and-white, lingering on the dark part of the spectrum, and formal in composition.

Georgia O’Keeffe was a friend and subject of Strand’s, and she remembered in her later years that his first wife, Rebecca, “was a very lively, lean young woman, and Strand was thick and slow.” He liked to arrive at a town square and wait for hours until the locals began to ignore him. Once they would relax into their daily routines, he would sneak his photos. He often used a lens that contained a prism to photograph the people of these places without their knowing. While he pointed the camera in one direction, he could photograph the scene 45 degrees to his left or right. Today, photographing people without their knowledge is often considered problematic, but because of his sensitive approach, Strand managed to present his subjects as equals rather than others.

This fall, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is presenting Strand’s first careerspanning retrospective in four decades. The show celebrates the museum’s recent acquisition of 3,000 photographs and glass positives from the Paul Strand Archive at the Aperture Foundation. Combined with 600 pieces that Strand’s estate gifted the museum in the years following his last retrospective there, in 1971, it now holds the largest collection of his work in the world.

For years, Strand had dreamed of photographing an entire village, an ambition inspired by Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. In 1949, he met Cesare Zavattini, who wrote the screenplay for Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist classic Bicycle Thieves, and expressed this desire to him. Zavattini encouraged Strand to photograph the Italian town of Luzzara, his birthplace, over the course of more than five weeks in the spring of 1953.

Luzzara is a small agricultural town in the Po river valley, known for its cheese industry and its straw hats and horse bridals. Strand and Zavattini chose to focus on local craftsmen as well as family structures. A townsman named Valentino Lusetti, who had learned some English as an American prisoner of war during WWII, acted as their translator and fixer, giving Strand access. In fact, Strand’s most iconic group portrait from Luzzara depicts Lusetti’s family, posed in front of the facade of their ancestral home. This photograph became the cover of Aperture’s 1955 monograph Un Paese, which paired first-person narratives collected by Zavattini with Strand’s photographs. Despite the unique achievement of photographing an entire village, the following pages contain images contemporary audiences may largely be unfamiliar with.

Strand’s portrait of Luzzara is sincere. The series was created over a long stretch of time and was made using slow exposures in natural light. There is no irony here, only a desire to picture an entire human ecosystem in a way that is slow and cool, but by no means removed. As more and more selfconscious photography is hurled at humankind every day, it’s important to remember to stop and look closely at what we consume. Strand understood that photography has the power to change the world. He was willing to sit and wait for the world to look the way it does when nobody notices it. That’s why now is a good time to stop and notice Paul Strand.

MATTHEW LEIFHEIT

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MARKET DAY, LUZZARA 1953; gelatin silver print Image: 4 5/8 × 5 7/8 in. (11.7 x 15 cm) Sheet: 4 11/16 × 6 in. (11.9 x 15.2 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art: the Paul Strand Collection, purchased with funds contributed

by Zoë and Dean Pappas, 2011- 90 - 45 THE FARM, LUZZARA 1953; gelatin silver print Image and sheet: 4 11/16 × 5 7/8 in. (11.9 × 15 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art: the Paul Strand Collection, purchased with funds contributed

by Barbara B. and Theodore R. Aronson, 2011 - 90 - 44

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PLACE TO MEET, LUZZARA 1953; gelatin silver print Image and sheet: 4 5/8 × 5 7/8 in. (11.8 x 15 cm) Mount: 4 15/16 x 6 1/8 in. (12.5 x 15.5 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art: the Paul Strand Collection, purchased with funds contributed

by Zoë and Dean Pappas, 2011-90-48 BICYCLES, LUZZARA 1953; gelatin silver print Image and sheet: 4 3/8 x 4 in. (11.1 x 10.1 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art: the Paul Strand Collection, purchased with museum funds, 2010 -14-294

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IN THE RICOVERO, LUZZARA: 1953; gelatin silver print; image and sheet: 5 7/8 × 4 5/8 in. (15 × 11.8 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art: the Paul Strand Collection, gift of Lynne and Harold Honickman, 2011 - 197 - 16

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GLORIA, LUZZARA:1953; gelatin silver print; image and sheet: 5 13/16 × 4 5/8 in. (14.8 × 11.7 cm); Fleischmann Vintage Works, Zurich, Switzerland

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HAT FACTORY, LUZZARA: 1953 (negative); 1960s (print); gelatin silver print; image: 9 3/4 x 7 3/4 in. (24.7 x 19.7 cm); sheet: 9 15/16 x 8 1/16 in. (25.2 x 20.4 cm) The Paul Strand Collection, partial and promised gift of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest, 2009 - 160 - 417

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DISEASE WITHOUT BORDERS On the Front Lines of the Fight Against Ebola

BY DANNY GOLD PHOTOS BY TIM FRECCIA

A recently painted mural in central Monrovia, Liberia. To encourage a population that has been skeptical of Ebolaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s existence to remain vigilant, the city has launched a full-scale awareness campaign.

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VICE correspondent Danny Gold speaks with Redemption Hospital medical director Dr. Mohammed Sankoh. Having lost a number of staff members to the disease, Sankoh is adamant that Liberia is currently not equipped to handle the Ebola outbreak on its own.

aul Goi waited outside Redemption Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, in the passenger seat of his station wagon. His daughter, suffering from Ebola, had been vomiting and “toileting,” as they call it here, for five days and now sat in the backseat. Hospital staffers wouldn’t let her in for treatment because of a lack of space.

Across the street, other members of Goi’s family were waiting in an ambulance. They had also been sick, and Goi said it took five days of phone calls for an ambulance to show up. Though they’d finally arrived at the hospital, none were allowed to enter. Paul shook his head, exasperated.

“It’s like we’re sacrificing them,” he said.

Liberia’s capital city of Monrovia has been hit the hardest by the current Ebola outbreak that’s plaguing West Africa.

Still recovering from two civil wars fought between 1989 and 2003, and with government corruption endemic, the country is woefully unprepared to deal with the logistics necessary to stop the spread of the disease.

Ebola has an incubation period of two to 21 days, which means that symptoms can show up three weeks past the initial infection period. The symptoms are similar to those of the flu, malaria, and cholera, and that makes Ebola

P

extremely hard to detect in some of the poverty-stricken neighbourhoods where those other diseases are rampant.

Ebola spreads through bodily fluids, and Ebola victims infect an average of two people, as opposed to measles victims, who infect an average of 18. Though the pathogen itself isn’t highly contagious, low levels of awareness, widespread skepticism of the prevalence of the disease, and inadequate medical infrastructure have allowed Ebola to run rampant through the city.

Back at Redemption, medical director Dr. Mohammed Sankoh pleaded with the international community for more help in containing the disease. Sankoh said that his staff lack the necessary equipment to stop the infected from dying, and due to inadequate training, many health-care workers have passed away after contracting the virus.

We asked Sankoh if it would be possible to enter some of the high-risk treatment units where Ebola patients were quarantined, and he issued a stern warning. At the end, he said something that stuck with us even as we returned home and quarantined ourselves for 21 days. “Just see what you can see, and go back home and meet your family there,” the doctor said, his voice trailing off into a whisper.

For more, watch the documentary The Fight Against Ebola, now playing on VICE News.

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ABOVE: A Red Cross body-retrieval team member pauses while waiting for the rest of his crew to sanitise themselves. The teams average ten pickups a day and take extreme precaution with every one, putting on new protective suits for each stop. BELOW: A hospital worker cleans up infected waste at the entrance of Redemption Hospital, in the New Kru Town suburb of Monrovia.

An influx of Ebola patients has overwhelmed the staff and facilities.

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ABOVE: A suspected Ebola victim is quarantined in the West Point courthouse as an emergency-response team sprays chlorine. The man had been arrested and was awaiting trial when he began vomiting in the courthouse. It took nearly two hours for an ambulance to arrive. BELOW: A suspected Ebola victim sits outside her home in West Point after a contact-tracing team visited.

Contact tracing involves locating suspected Ebola victims and people theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been in contact with in an effort to quarantine them and stop the spread of the disease.

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ABOVE: A member of a Red Cross body-retrieval team dons protective equipment before entering the premises to remove the corpses of Ebola victims. When an Ebola victim dies, the body is at its most contagious. BELOW: Two suspected Ebola victims sit in a courthouse awaiting transportation to a treatment center.

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ABOVE: A staffer from Doctors Without Borders sprays chlorine on a worker leaving an isolation unit in Monrovia. Doctors Without Borders was one of the earliest voices calling on the international community to help fight Ebola. BELOW: Archie Gbessay, part of a contact-tracing team, gestures to a suspected Ebola victim in West Point.

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ABOVE: Two Red Cross workers wait for a body they plan to remove from Monroviaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s John F. Kennedy Medical Center. BELOW: A suspected Ebola victim sits outside his house in West Point. Local organisations have sent out teams to monitor potentially infected people and educate them about avoiding contact and staying in their homes.

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POLAR

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BEAR MAN A Lawyer Was Savagely Mauled, but His Attackers Are the Ones in Trouble

BY SABRINA SHANKMAN, PHOTOS BY LUCIAN READ Reported in partnership with InsideClimate News

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“O to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.”

—WALT WHITMAN, “Me Imperturbe,” Leaves of Grass

The author, left, and Matt Dyer at the Nachvak Fjord, where Dyer was attacked on July 24, 2013

T

he campers woke to the sound of screams.

“Help me! Help me!”

It was 3:30 AM in the Nachvak Fjord, a gorgeously desolate chunk of grassy wilderness in the Canadian subarctic, and the sound ricocheted through the silence like a gunshot. The fjord is about 530 miles from the Arctic Circle, and not much warmer.

Getting there requires multiple bouncy prop-plane flights or a ten-hour boat ride over choppy waters filled with icebergs, like ice cubes tumbling in a giant glass of ice water. The nearest bank or bar or convenience store is nearly 200 miles away, but who needs one when visitors to the fjord can drink directly out of its Brita-clean streams? In addition to Arctic char, a visitor here sees

minke whales splashing in the sea, soaring ptarmigan, and seal skulls dotting the beach—leftover lunch scraps from the 2,000 or so polar bears that call this place home.

Rich Gross, the Sierra Club tour guide who had helped organise the trip, jolted awake at the shrieks. He grabbed a flare gun stashed inside the boot near his head. He tore open his sleeping bag and leaped out of his tent.

Marta Chase, the group’s other guide, lay in a tent near Gross’s. She was terrified. As Gross climbed outside, she peered through a little window and saw a polar bear, just a few feet away, standing over the tent beside hers. It was down on all fours, eye level with Chase, huge and white except for the black of its eyes and nose. It turned and stared right at her.

“Rich!” she screamed.

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Her husband, a spritely man named Kicab CastañedaMendez, scrambled out of their tent while Chase searched for her flare gun. When Castañeda-Mendez emerged, Gross was standing in the grass, in his long underwear, aiming the gun at the bear as it started to run away. It was a moving target, now 75 feet down the beach, heading toward the shore of the fjord.

By now it was 3:31, maybe 3:32 AM. The night around them wasn’t pitch-black—like it might be in a horror movie—but it was still dark, that dusky twilight that makes the air feel as thick as smoke when it descends in far-northern climates. It was dark, in other words, but not so dark that Gross and Chase couldn’t see that the fleeing polar bear had something in its mouth as it ran off into the night—it was one of their travel companions. Matthew Dyer. He was no longer screaming, “Help me.” ine months earlier, when Dyer read an ad in the fall 2012 issue of Sierra magazine, it described exactly the type of adventure he’d been waiting for: two weeks trekking through the untouched lower reaches of Canada’s Arctic tundra, with the possibility of seeing the world’s largest land carnivore, the polar bear. Dyer, a 49-year-old lawyer in a small city in Maine, had saved up some money and had always been fascinated by the bears.

Participants would have to be fit and experienced hikers, the ad warned. They would also have to accept an element of risk, including lack of access to emergency medical care. But the payoff would be big.

“If you dream of experiencing a place that is both pristine and magical, a land of spirits and polar bears rarely seen by humans, this is the trip you have been waiting for,” the ad said.

Two seasoned Sierra Club guides, Rich Gross and Marta Chase, would be leading the adventure, called “Spirits and Polar Bears: Trek to Torngat Mountains National Park.”

Gross, 61, worked for a low-income-housing nonprofit in San Francisco, but since 1990 he had spent a week or two each year guiding Sierra Club trips in remote parts of the world. Chase, 60, was a medical-diagnostics consultant who’d been leading hikes since she was in high school. She and Gross had guided 14 excursions together.

It was Gross’s idea to go into the Torngats, one of Canada’s newest national parks, located in northeastern Labrador. He’d never seen a polar bear in the wild and was drawn to the spiritual appeal of the place. Torngat Mountains National Park was named after Torngarsuk, an ancient Inuit spirit that takes the likeness of a polar bear and controls the lives of sea animals.

In photos Gross pored over, the terrain itself had a mystical appearance, with sharply peaked mountains and fjords cutting into the park from the coast of the Labrador Sea. Only a few hundred people venture there each year, and Gross wanted to be part of that exclusive group.

Chase wanted to see the park too. But she worried about hiking in polar bear country.

A large male bear can weigh as much as 1,700 pounds and stand ten feet tall. While they have evolved to eat seals, polar bears, unlike most species, will actively hunt humans in certain circumstances—especially if they’re not able to access their typical prey. When the sea ice melts in summer, the bears come on land, and if there’s a time and place to see a bear, it’s midsummer in the Torngats.

Worldwide, the polar bear population is in trouble. The two best-studied bear populations, in Canada’s western Hudson

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Bay and Alaska’s southern Beaufort Sea, are both in decline, and experts predict it’s just a matter of time before other bear populations start to plummet. Why is this happening? The sea ice where bears hunt seals is diminishing as a result of rising temperatures and man-made climate change, so the bears’ hunting season is shrinking. In turn, bears are reproducing less and must migrate farther and farther to find food, even into cities, like the Canadian town of Arviat, more than 1,000 miles from the Torngat Mountains. Arviat recently hired an armed “bear monitor” to ward off the animals.

An increase of bears on the land is in turn leading to a rise in human and polar bear interactions—back in the 1960s and 1970s there were eight or nine attacks reported per decade, according to wildlife biologist James Wilder. Based on recent trends, that number is expected to reach 35 this decade.

While no individual incident can be attributed to climate change, the rise in interactions is precisely what biologists have expected to see as the bears lose their habitat. The result is a paradoxical situation in which fewer polar bears may mean more attacks on humans.

Gross had learned some of this by the time he received an email from Matt Dyer, on November 17, 2012. Dyer was prepared to pay $6,000 for this trip into the unknown, and he wanted to sign up. But Gross wasn’t sure Dyer was ready for such an extreme adventure.

“This trip requires backpacking experience and I don’t see any on your forms,” Gross said in an email after reading Dyer’s application. “This is a particularly tough trip since it is all off trail and packs will be quite heavy (50+ pounds). The area is remote and evacuation is only by helicopter.”

Dyer told Gross he was in good shape and had been hiking and camping in New England for years, including some trekking with the Appalachian Mountain Club.

“I’m not a city person (I grew up on an island about 8 miles from the mainland) so being away from the [7-Eleven] is not going to bother me,” Dyer wrote. “I totally understand that you don’t want to wind up a thousand miles from nowhere with a problem, but I think I can do this.”

Dyer agreed to follow a strict training plan, and Gross agreed to take him.

Matt Dyer doesn’t believe having a gun would have prevented his attack. “Even if I had an AK-47 in my tent, I never would have had time to use it.”

n July 18, 2013, Dyer lugged his 50-pound pack into the Quality Hotel Dorval in Montreal, where he would meet his travel companions and then fly north to the Torngats. To save money, he’d taken a 12-hour overnight bus from Lewiston, Maine, and then spent the morning wandering around Montreal. He ate two breakfasts and napped in a park, feeling “kind of like a bum,” killing time until he could check in to his hotel.

When Dyer arrived, Larry Rodman walked into the hotel lobby at the same time, fresh off the airport shuttle bus after a quick flight from New York City. Rodman, 65, was a corporate lawyer in Manhattan, and the walls of his office were adorned with photos he’d taken on previous wildlife trips, though he’d never seen a polar bear. He’d signed up the same day he read the “Spirits and Polar Bears” ad on the Sierra Club’s website.

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BELOW: This polar bear watched Dyer’s group for several hours.

Some believe it is the bear that attacked him. Photo

by Marilyn Frankel FOLLOWING SPREAD: The Nachvak Fjord, where Dyer’s group camped

The big-city law partner and the legal-aid attorney with the scraggly gray ponytail hit if off immediately—they both loved opera and fencing and had an easy sense of humor. Dyer was relieved. He’d been less concerned about the arduous journey than about the people he’d be trapped with in the wilderness.

Gross and Chase had flown in the day before to buy supplies and make last-minute arrangements. When they saw Dyer he looked as ready for this trip as anyone.

He had a ropy frame, tattoos, and seemed to have a permanent grin on his face.

Later that night, Gross and Chase gathered the crew to go over final details. Another group member, a doctor from Arizona named Rick Isenberg, arrived in Montreal after midnight, and the next morning the crew boarded a plane and headed north. here are two primary ways to get into the Torngat Mountains. The first is through the Torngat Mountains Base Camp and Research Station, a small collection of tents and outbuildings that serve as the official gateway into the park. The Canadian government opened it in 2006, but in 2009 handed it over to the local Nunatsiavut government, which runs Base Camp as a hub for researchers, visitors, and staff from Parks Canada, the government agency that oversees all of Canada’s parks.

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The other way in is through a privately run outfit called Barnoin River Camp, about 900 miles north of Montreal.

When Chase emailed Base Camp officials and got no reply, she reached out to Vicki Storey, an adventure-travel agent who’d been booking trips to the Torngats for years. Storey put Chase in contact with Alain Lagacé, the owner of Barnoin River Camp, who had been leading fishing expeditions and wildlife tours into the Torngats for decades.

“The thought of polar bears is still a concern to me,” Chase wrote in one of her emails to Lagacé before the trip. “I have experience with black and brown bears but not with polar.”

Lagacé said they’d need flares, pepper spray, and portable electric fences to protect them while they slept.

“Regarding the safety against polar bears, we have it all,” Lagacé wrote. “The 12 gauge magnesium [flare] gun are working extremely well, plus we have the pepper spray, and the pepper spray greanade (sic) and electric fence. These have worked very well in the past but there are always precautions to be taken.

Never cook food in your tent, don’t leave trash around your camp site, avoid camping along the shore of a coastal lake, etc.”

Previously, Chase and Gross had read that Parks Canada recommends that visitors to the Torngats hire a licensed Inuit bear guard who is allowed to carry a gun into the park and is trained in polar bear safety. But Chase and Gross say that when they confirmed their hiking route and let the government know they’d

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be traveling through Lagacé’s camp, which does not employ bear guards for hire, nobody at the agency mentioned hiring a bear guard. The only requirements for visiting were that they register with the park and watch a DVD on polar bear safety, which a Parks Canada employee said would be sent to Lagacé’s camp.

Instead of an armed bear guard, Gross picked up two electric fences from the Sierra Club—one to encircle their campsite, the other to protect the area where they would cook and store their food. The instructions weren’t included, so with the help of a close friend who is an electrician, Gross practiced setting them up outside his house in San Francisco.

Each fence stood about two and a half feet high and consisted of three parallel wires suspended from four-foot posts.

Although the wires looked flimsy, they carried five to seven kilovolts of charge—not enough to seriously injure a bear, but enough to send it running.

Before their trip, Gross emailed a picture of the fence set up in his front yard to Castañeda-Mendez.

“What’s the polar bear supposed to do?” Castañeda-Mendez wrote back. “Die of laughter?” t Barnoin River Camp, Lagacé, a fit, middle-aged man with a gray mustache, gave the group an orientation, pointing out the bathrooms, kitchen, and the bunkhouses. After the group settled in, Gross began testing their equipment. On a patch of grass near the crystal-clear Barnoin River, he pulled out a flare gun. Lagacé had rented two orange Gemini 12-gauge flare guns to the group, but Gross had never shot one before and he wanted to get comfortable with the weapon. When he pressed the trigger, there was a burst of light and a flare shot forward about 150 yards in a straight path toward the ground. Upon impact, the flare cartridge exploded with a second burst.

Marilyn Frankel, a 66-year-old exercise physiologist from Oregon and the group’s seventh and final member, saw the flashes from a shed where she was sorting food, pulling out the half that would be airdropped to them midway through the hike. OK, she thought after seeing the burst of flame, those are going to work.

At around 5 or 6 PM the group headed to one of the camp’s main buildings for dinner. Chase and Gross had planned to show the group the DVD on bear safety. But they say Lagacé told them that the DVD hadn’t arrived (in an interview, a Parks Canada representative claimed the DVD had been mailed to the camp). If they had watched it, they would have learned that the number of human and polar bear interactions is increasing, that the most common place to encounter bears is the coast, and that it’s important to know the limitations of bear deterrents and not be lulled into a sense of false security by them.

In lieu of the video, Lagacé agreed to talk to the group about safety in polar bear country, sharing what he had learned in decades of bringing people into the Torngats. (When I interviewed Lagacé about the video, he said he had shown it to the group, and then he declined to answer any more questions.)

According to the hikers, Lagacé told them to be aware and prepared at all times. Polar bears aren’t like the grizzlies they had come in contact with before, he warned—they’re hunters.

The bears travel along water, so the hikers should be sure to camp away from the edge of the fjord. Provided they slept inside the perimeter of the electric fence, he allegedly told the group, they should be just fine.

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he Arctic’s sea ice has receded rapidly as global temperatures climb. Since 1979, according to NASA scientist Claire Parkinson, about 695,000 square miles of sea ice there have been lost—an area about the size of California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Utah, and most of Idaho combined. In the Davis Strait, where the Torngat Mountains are located, there are about 15 fewer days of ice cover each decade, and 50 fewer days than in 1979. For two months of the year, where a visitor would have typically seen ice blanketing the strait and the Labrador Sea, he or she now sees dark water. This dark colour further warms the earth by absorbing a greater amount of sunlight—the way wearing a black shirt on a summer day makes you hotter than wearing a white one.

In the early afternoon of July 21, 2013, the group traveled east on a floatplane toward the blue waters of the Labrador Sea and Torngat Mountains National Park. Dyer watched breathlessly as their plane skimmed over mountain peaks and then dipped into a desolate but spectacular valley—treeless, with steep peaks cutting down to the water’s edge, leaving a spit of land and beach. The green vegetation covering the mountains and hills was new to the area. Years ago, the hills were all rock, but a shifting climate has brought with it new growth.

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While they prefer eating seals, polar bears, unlike most species, will actively hunt humans in certain circumstances.

The plane landed flawlessly on Nachvak Fjord, backing into the shore so they could exit without getting their feet wet.

Castañeda-Mendez held on to the plane’s pontoon while the rest of the group unloaded their gear. The pilot quickly said his goodbyes and the roar of the engines receded into the distance, leaving the hikers alone with just the sound of water lapping quietly onto the shore.

A cold rain started to fall, but a rainbow stretched across the expansive sky. Dyer took it as a good omen.

Chase and Gross left the group on the shore while they scouted for a campsite. Lagacé had warned them not to camp on the beach and to find a high place to sleep because polar bears are known to come right up the fjord where they landed.

But when Chase and Gross reached an area that met Lagacé’s recommendation—an elevated spot about a quarter mile away—they discovered it didn’t have easy access to drinking water. Farther down, closer to where they had been dropped off, they found a spot that looked ideal: flat enough for comfortable sleeping and cooking, with easy access to fresh water.

It was a bit closer to the shore, but still at least 150 yards away from the mouth of the fjord. People had obviously camped there before, because they’d left behind stakes and piles of rocks. But little did they know, according to Judy Rowell, the superintendent of the park, the campsite was smack in the middle of a “polar bear highway.”

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“H

ey!” Castañeda-Mendez called out in the dawning hours of the next morning. It was 5:40 AM and the group was cozily sleeping inside the perimeter of the electric fence. Castañeda-Mendez had climbed out of his tent to pee. That’s when he saw a huge white object, like a cross between a large dog and an abominable snowman, lurking near the water’s edge. “Polar bear on the beach!”

A mother and her cub were walking along the shore in the early-morning light. The mother bear’s snout was raised in the air, sniffing out her neighbours.

Chase joined her husband outside the tent. Dyer and the others grabbed their cameras. Here they were, in shouting distance of some of the world’s most violent predators, yet the scene was overwhelmingly peaceful. Dyer felt on the verge of joyful tears as he watched the bears walk along the shore, the cub close on its mother’s heels.

It was only later, as they looked over their photos and zoomed in on the bears, that they got a sense of the animals’ physical state. A concave hole fell between the mother bear’s sharply pointed shoulder blades. Experts who examined the photos confirmed that the mother appeared underweight, and a native guide would tell the group that he had seen what he believed was the same mother just weeks earlier—but she had had two cubs with her, leading him to believe that one had died.

The bear walked toward them, nose up in the air, apparently trying to assess the two-legged creatures it had stumbled upon.

Mother bears and their cubs have the most tenuous future when it comes to climate change, according to biologist Charles Robbins. Studies have found a direct link between earlier sea-ice breakup and fewer cubs surviving. When biologist Elizabeth Peacock studied polar bears in the Davis Strait, which includes the Torngat Mountains, she found that while the population numbers were strong, litters were smaller than anywhere else in the world, and fewer cubs were surviving into adulthood. She also found that the bears’ general health was in decline—a sign that a fall in population may be coming soon.

Essentially, Peacock found that there’s an abundance of polar bears in the region, but not enough of their natural habitat—sea ice—to support them. In a year when the ice breaks up early and refreezes late, that could add up to lots of hungry bears.

But on this morning, luckily, changes in the ice did not translate into the mother and her cub being interested in the hikers.

The bears just sniffed the air, laced with the scent of humans, and eventually sauntered away. Dyer and the crew marveled at how close they felt to nature, how lucky they were to have this National Geographic moment not even a full day into their trip. ater that morning, after a breakfast of oatmeal, the group packed their day bags to get ready for a hike deeper into the land. Gross carefully placed one of the flare guns in his backpack. Chase took the other.

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They headed east to explore the area around the fjord. The weather felt unpredictable, with heavy clouds settling in and wind and rain beginning to whip through their campsite.

The Torngat Mountains are technically subarctic, but they lie along the 58th parallel, putting them above the tree line and within the Arctic eco-region. The group hiked through scrub willows and grassy hills and along the ledges above the campsite. The rain turned to a cool mist and gradually cleared, revealing blue skies and spectacular views of the Labrador Sea. As they walked, Castañeda-Mendez took the lead, relishing moments alone and allowing some distance to grow between himself and the group. Occasionally Gross would call out, “Slow down,” “Wait up.” Gross, Rodman, and Isenberg made up the middle of the pack, while Dyer, Chase, and Frankel brought up the rear. They bantered pleasantly and playfully while they walked through a landscape that relatively few humans had ever seen and that by its very nature—the extreme cold, the remoteness—was inhospitable to human life.

At about 3:30 PM, after they’d turned back toward camp, they reached a wide stream near their campsite. They sat on some rocks and removed their boots. The water was shallow, clear, and cold. For feet that had been banging around in hiking boots all day, the cool of the stream offered quick relief.

Castañeda-Mendez was already halfway across the water when Dyer looked up and saw a creature lumbering toward them.

“Polar bear!” Dyer shouted.

“Get back here! Get back here!” Chase yelled at her husband. “We have a bear!”

The animal was about 150 yards away and closing in.

Castañeda-Mendez high-stepped back through the water, and the group clustered together, following the protocol that Lagacé had rehearsed with them before they left Barnoin River Camp: Stand together. Make yourself seem big. Make loud noises, especially metal on metal, like the banging of poles.

The bear was larger and had a fuller coat than the female bear they had previously seen. Slowly it walked toward them, nose in the air, and tongue sticking out, apparently trying to assess the two-legged creatures it had stumbled upon.

Despite the group’s banging and shouting, the bear approached. Castañeda-Mendez fired away with his camera.

Gross pulled out one of the flare guns.

“I’m gonna shoot,” he told Chase when the bear was within 50 yards.

“I think that’s a good idea,” she said.

As the flare fired, the animal kept coming toward them. But when it landed in front of the bear, causing a second burst, the animal turned and took off in a dead run.

The group burst into cheers, clapping, banging their poles, and celebrating their victory.

“It was like getting a touchdown at a football game,” Dyer said later.

But the bear hadn’t gone far. It settled itself on a ledge about 300 yards away and lay there quietly, watching the group make the short trek back to their camp.

By the time they reached the safety of their electric fence at about 4 PM, the rain was coming down heavily. Most of the group settled into their tents to rest until dinnertime, but Dyer was uneasy. He couldn’t relax while the bear was perched on the nearby ledge.

“I mean, my goodness, there was a very large carnivore watching us,” Dyer said.

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As the rain poured down, Dyer stationed himself outside of his tent, leaning on his poles, staring down the bear as it watched them. Castañeda-Mendez said Dyer looked like one of the guards at the British palace. He stood staring at the bear for more than an hour, drenched under the dreary gray sky as the afternoon waned.

Eventually, the bear and the rain wore him down. Dyer asked Gross and Isenberg if they were watching the bear from within their tents, and they said they were. So Dyer retired to his shelter, escaping into Leaves of Grass, the only book he had brought with him.

After reading for a while, Dyer walked through the drizzle to the tent next to his, where Chase and Castañeda-Mendez were relaxing. It was just a few steps away, but on the walk he saw that the bear was still there. Dyer had just read a poem that felt so right he had to share it. He read to them Walt Whitman’s “Me Imperturbe”: “standing at ease in Nature, Master of all, or mistress of all—aplomb in the midst of irrational things…”

At about 6 PM the campers started making their way across the rocky strip that separated them from their cook area to prepare dinner. Up on the ledge, the bear now appeared to be lounging. Using the zoom lenses on their cameras, they watched it roll on its back and then lie on its belly, resting its head on its crossed arms. To Frankel, it looked like a big dog. To others, it looked like a menace.

At sundown, the bear was still there, and Dyer couldn’t shake his sense of uneasiness.

“Why don’t we post a watch?” he asked Gross after dinner. They could take two-hour shifts overnight until the bear was gone.

But Gross wasn’t worried. “That’s what the fence is for,” he told Dyer. After all, Gross had done his research and spoken with the experts, who had reassured him that they would be fine. To be extra safe, he checked the fence again that night, making sure the wires were taut and the battery was switched on.

Dyer acquiesced, thinking back on their orientation at Barnoin River Camp where he remembered Lagacé telling them: “If the polar bear touches that, you won’t have to worry.” he first thing Dyer saw was two giant arms coming over the top of his tent. It was 3:30 AM, two days later.

Everyone else was fast asleep, and he had been too until seconds before, when he woke for some ineffable reason. The bear tore him out of the tent, its jaws quickly clamping around Dyers’ skull. As he was dragged farther from the campsite and felt the bear’s jaws sink into his head, he thought, This is it— you’re going to die now.

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To find out how Matt survived and learn more about the science behind climate change and polar bears, download the e-book, Meltdown, at InsideClimateNews.org, and watch our documentary, Polar Bear Man, airing soon on VICE.com.

Dyer hours after the attack. “He was probably going to drown in his own blood,” said a medic who helped rescue him. Photo

by Marilyn Frankel

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CROOKED MEN: RULES, REGULATIONS, AND BLOOD RITUALS

By Roberto Saviano

In criminal organisations hierarchy is everything. A few years ago, the Italian government led an investigation called CrimineInfinito that revealed the complex structure of the ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mob. Long considered a “horizontal Mafia,” or a simple confederation of clans, the ’Ndrangheta was shown to have a secret hierarchical structure with a central leader, exactly like the better-known Cosa Nostra.

The governing body of the ’Ndrangheta is the Crimine (Crime), supervised by the capo crimine (head crime). His spokesperson, the mastro di giornata (master of the day), passes along his orders. Underneath them are the colonels: the mastro generale (general master), the capo società (head of the society), and the contabile (accountant).

At the base of the ’Ndrangheta are the ’ndrine, clans made up of members of the same family (often enlarged through arranged marriages). Each ’ndrina is in charge of a distinct territory called a locale (local), which does not always coincide with a geographic zone: It is possible to have numerous locals in the same city, or multiple cities in the same local.

The Crimine controls every local in the world, and everyone there must obey its every command.

Each local has at least 49 members and answers to a capo locale (head local), also called a capo bastone (head crook) after the staff used by shepherds to round up sheep. He directs the criminal activity in his territory, calls meetings, decides on memberships and promotions, and resolves conflicts.

Just like the capo crimine in the central organisation of the ’Ndrangheta, every capo locale is flanked by a capo società, his chief manager; a mastro di giornata, who delivers his instructions to the underlings (in slang, “he passes the news”); and a contabile, who oversees the funds coming from illicit activities, the so-called valigetta (briefcase).

The locals have a double structure: the Società Minore (Minor Society), comprising the lowest-level members, and the Società Maggiore (Major Society), also called the Società Santa (Holy Society), composed of their superiors. There are many ranks (known as doti) in the ’Ndrangheta, and a member’s position determines his tasks, responsibilities, and salary.

In the Società Minore, the lowest tier is occupied by the giovane d’onore (youth of honor), a descendant of a boss and an honorary member by blood right. Above him is the picciotto d’onore (boy of honor), the first role given to those who join the ’Ndrangheta. He’ll carry out menial tasks, mostly manual labor, until he graduates to the position of camorrista (literally “someone who collects extortion money”) and takes on more complicated jobs. The top brass in the Società Minore is known as the sgarrista (soldier).

One enters the upper house of the local, the Società Maggiore, as a santista (the name refers to his being part of the Società Santa). A rung above him is the vangelo (gospel), so called because he swore loyalty to the ’Ndrangheta with one hand on the Bible (a tattooed cross marks his left

shoulder). Next is the trequartino (three quarters), who has privileged access to three quarters of the organisation (he has a cross on his right shoulder and an emerald rose under his foot). The ranks continue ever upward: quartino (one quarter), padrino (godfather), crociata (crusade), stella (star), bartolo (the origins of this title are unknown), Mammasantissima (Most Holy Mother), and infinito (infinity). The Società Maggiore culminates in the figure of the Conte Agadino. The name is probably a reference to Count Ugolino, whom Dante depicts as eating his own children in the Inferno. The boss of the ’Ndrangheta may eat his children, sell them, sacrifice them without facing a vendetta. Arriving at the top of the ’Ndrangheta means acquiring the power to kill and betray one’s own blood. *** Up to a certain point in the ’Ndrangheta’s hierarchy, each rank has a religious reference and is identified with a saint.

(The picciotto is associated with St. Liberata, the camorrista with St. Nunzia, and the sgarrista with St. Elizabeth.)

It’s important to keep in mind that the ’Ndrangheta’s initiation ritual is known as a “baptism.” The members position themselves in the shape of a horseshoe and receive the

Antonio Pelle of the 'Ndrangheta crime family reportedly reached the rank of vangelo (gospel), a high-level official who is sworn in with his hand on the Bible. Illustration by Jacob Everett

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baptismal candidate from a “guarantor,” a kind of godparent who vouches for the prospective member and the authenticity of his intentions to enter into the clan. A capo società officiates the rite, asking the initiate questions and reading him the honor codes that he will be required to maintain at the cost of his life.

The Mafia baptism is a “blood baptism”: The new member’s finger is cut by a sharp knife so that a drop of his blood falls on the prayer-card image of St. Michael the Archangel— considered the patron saint of the ’Ndrangheta—which is then slightly burned on one corner. At the end of this ceremony, a new “man of honor” is created. (Every promotion to a higher rank requires its own ritual.)

It seems unbelievable, but even today, as I am writing this, young people are joining criminal organisations through archaic rituals. And not only in Italy but all over the world.

On the night of August 15, 2007, in the quiet town of Duisburg, Germany, the final act of a 16-year-old feud took place. The Nirta-Strangio and the Pelle-Vottari—the two most powerful clans in San Luca, the Calabrian village that is the stronghold of the ’Ndrangheta—had been warring since 1991. Everything had started with an ordinary Carnival prank: During the festivities, some guys from the Nirta-Strangio threw eggs and flour in front of a bar run by the Pelles, dirtying the car of a member of the Vottari family. This was immediately interpreted as an affront, since everyone knew that the Strangios were trying to expand their power over the area. So began a feud that caused more than a dozen deaths over the next decade and a half. The last set of murders happened on that night in Duisberg, when the Nirta-Strangio sought to avenge a death that had occurred a few months earlier. They killed six people linked to the Pelle-Vottari families, almost all of them very young, in front of an Italian restaurant called Da Bruno, where one of the victims had just celebrated his 18th birthday. A burned prayer card with St. Michael’s image that was found in the pocket of the guest of honor led investigators to deduce that the restaurant had probably been the site of a rite of initiation of the ’Ndrangheta. Inside, there was a statue of St. Michael, and in a windowless room in the back numerous images of the Madonna di Polsi (Our Lady of Polsi, revered by members of the ’Ndrangheta) hung on the wall, watching over a long table with 12 chairs. The motivation for the murders and the ceremony that took place in Duisburg had originated more than 1,200 miles away, in the small town of San Luca. Rules, codes, and rituals travel from San Luca to Germany, to the rest of Europe, and to the United States—any place in the world where the ’Ndrangheta have extended their tentacles. *** Being in a criminal organisation means being a member of a structure that is part business, part religious order, and part ancient military (like the Roman army, which was organised in legions). Legends and codes abound in Mafias, which use them to construct a collective identity for their members. Rituals are useful because they provide rules in a world without rules: Italian crime families are considered

the most trustworthy underground organisations in the world because they have regulations, which aren’t the rules of jurisprudence—the law—but of behavior and discipline for illegal operations (which, by definition, have no rules).

It may seem paradoxical that a country known for its absolute lack of rules has the mob with the most rules in the world. Italian mafiosi are conservative, traditional—quite different from their modernised, emancipated ItalianAmerican counterparts. Joe Pistone (“Donnie Brasco”), the FBI agent who infiltrated the New York Mafia, maintains that the more mafiosi become Americanised the more they become mere bullies, failing to understand that you don’t commit a crime just to get rich, because if you break the Mafia’s rules you also break its way of life.

In the 1970s Vincenzo Macrì, nephew and designated heir of Antonio Macrì, boss of the ’ndrina of Siderno (in Calabria), was “laid down”—that is, banned from the organisation—because his behavior did not conform to that of a good ’Ndranghetista (member of the ’Ndrangheta). Vincenzo rode around on a Vespa, went out in a T-shirt and shorts, and was ultimately replaced. Even today a ’Ndranghetista must rigorously respect certain parameters: He must not be a playboy, and he must be careful not to cause trouble, avoiding fights and stupid stunts. In other words, he must not attract unnecessary attention.

I’ve always been struck by the spirit of absolute sacrifice exhibited by the bosses of criminal organisations. I’ve often wondered how a man can withstand the conditions of a maximum-security prison (where Italian law requires Mafia bosses to be held) for decades. You understand it when you see how bosses live as free men or, even worse, as fugitives: forced to stay closed up in tiny, windowless bunkers to avoid being discovered by law enforcement.

Italy has more bunkers than any other country in the world. There are places, such as the area around the town of Locri, in Calabria, where they are part of everyone’s daily life.

A household builds a bunker almost automatically, preparing for the worst: Hopefully it won’t be necessary, but it’s better to have it just in case. Bunkers are part of the blueprints of new homes. It’s as though good parents think about their sons’ futures by providing them with a safe place to spend their time as fugitives. Plus a relative, a brother-in-law, a cousin, or an uncle might need it. The mafioso knows that sooner or later his life on the outside will only be possible if he knows how to hide.

The bunker, however, is a mind-set more than a hideout—the mind-set of living with very little space, of never going out, of never seeing sunlight. It’s like an animal den. It’s a crawl space only made human by a scant collection of personal items: prayer cards, porn magazines, car and watch catalogues—things that prove the power of the mafioso is internal rather than external. The boss has to satisfy himself with the pictures of those watches and luxury cars, buying them with his eyes, because he will never be able to leave his spider hole.

This is the price someone pays when he wants real power, the power over life and death.

Translated from the Italian by Kim Ziegler

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FULL BLEED |

Elizabeth Renstrom

“You could say I’m about as nostalgic as anyone my age for those defining years, but mostly I’m interested in the amount of nostalgia I see on the internet and elsewhere for the 90s,” Elizabeth Renstrom told VICE. “My upcoming project is a blend of sculptures compromising and destroying my beloved markers of that lost age. It’s the fine balance of crazy that only an impressionable tween girl is capable of in her years of nubile sexuality.

We all filter through a billion identities during this time, and I think it’s fun to explore what’s left behind when a young person feels prompted to shift again at the expense of being uncool.”

Read more about Renstrom’s tween-age meltdown this month on VICE.com.

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Listen Up 2ser Radio

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2014-11-24 6:47 PM

RECORD REVIEWS Best Album of the Month:

AUSMUTENATS: Order of Operation

(Aarght!)

You can tell that Ausmuteants are a punk band because they write hyper fast and fun songs about cops beating on kids (“We’re Cops”) and being a fuck-up (“Wrong”).

Also their keyboardist/guitarist wears a lot of sweet punk band shirts. They are a band who seem made to play the opening spot on a 1978 Ramones or Devo show in some small Midwestern college town. As it is they are from Geelong and Canberra and it’s 2014 but they get extra points for needling Kirin J Callinan with “Publicity Stunts” and for possibly being the best live band in Australia.

JOSE BAUTISTA

as RZA stands in a corner, trying to snip the perfect Willie Mitchell sample while quoting the Tao Te Ching. And then I crush a gravity bong full of the dankest dank that ever stank.

HAPPY MAN

confirm my friend’s rumor. You just know that Arca would rather tear the Shinra Electric Power Company a new ass over popping bottles at some douchey club.

CHOCOBO

NICKI MINAJ The Pinkprint

EMINEM

ANDRAS AND OSCAR

Young Money/Cash Money/Republic

Shady XV

Cafe Romantica

Shady/Interscope/Aftermath

Chapter Music

I’m 28, and also a man, and I’ve only got one question I haven’t resolved for myself: Does wanting to wear women’s clothes make me gay? I’ll admit it—I’ve often found myself harder than a diamond in an ice storm when I’m watching MMA with the guys, but I don’t think I’d actually take the plunge and dive headfirst into an hombre’s musty O-ring. That said, I’ve been super into wearing chicks’ clothes lately. Recently, one night after work, I spritzed myself with Minajesty and prettied up with an entire ensemble of Nicki’s Kmart-exclusive clothes, which my girlfriend won in a raffle or something. I looked at my ass in the mirror for what felt like an eternity, and before I knew it I was maniacally repeating, “You got buns, hun,” and then my girl walked in and called me a little pussy boy. We’re broken up now. It’s shit like that that makes me switch the first two letters of my first and last name when I write reviews so that nobody will know who I am.

PIM TOOL

Something about Eminem just makes me feel all warm and tingly inside. It might be his artfully put-together monochromatic wardrobe, or the fact that no matter what happens, he always seems to put his daughter first. Maybe it’s our shared love-hate relationship with Vicodin, or that famous throwback bleach-blond buzz. It could be those pained, deep blue eyes, or that voice that always seems to be murmuring, “You’ll never know what I’ve seen.” Or maybe it’s the fact that he’s worth $200 million dollars and I just shoved so many peppermints in my pockets that the waitress at Kasia’s actually had to say something.

SHATTY HEARST

In some city in the future, I don’t know, in Tallinn, two friends will walk into a restaurant, maybe around midnight, sit down at a table, greet the waiter, order their favourite food, order a coffee, chat about the day, chat about the music they’re making, talk about the music they’ll make together, eat their food, drink their coffee, play some pool, talk some more about private and esoteric topics of mutual interest, decide at some point it’s time to leave and return to work, and then they will finally stand up, walk out, return home and resume their creative labours. They will collaborate and complete an album of analogue house, boogie, funk, and R&B. And it will be great but they will never know that everything they do has already been done before in the year 2014 in Melbourne, only better.

MARTY MCFLY

FLIGHT FACILITIES ARCA

Down To Earth

RAEKWON

Xen

Future Classic

Fly International Luxurious Art

Mute

Ice H2O/EMI

I’m 14 years old, so part of the allure of the Wu-Tang canon is pretending I understand. I like to put on Liquid Swords and daydream, transporting myself to a dark Staten Island basement room in 1994. I’m sprawled out on a beanbag wearing baggy Polo, eating turkey burgers, and watching samurai movies

A buddy of mine went to school with Arca. He told me that the dude spends most of his days playing Final Fantasy in isolation, despite being a famous weirdo producer who’s tight with FKA Twigs and Kanye. His new full-length album, Xen, is a Fourth World bricolage of experimental composition and serious genre pushing, and one listen will

Ever been on Supermarket Sweep? I have. Cameras followed me as I ran around throwing the most expensive groceries I could find into the trolley, high on adrenalin and the fumes of smashed pickle jars and crushed blueberries underfoot. It was my first and only taste of the price-is-no-object jet-set lifestyle of constant success that I imagine Flight Facilities experience everyday. When

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RECORD REVIEWS Worst Album of the Month:

DEERHOOF: La Isla Bonita

(Polyvinyl)

I can’t believe how much I liked these idiots in college. Deerhoof is one of those bands that interprets “artistic freedom” as letting each band member do whatever he or she wants at all times. (For argument’s sake, let’s call that “autistic license.”)

The girl singer has free reign to make high-pitched beepy noises about pandas, and the drummer’s Tourette’s makes it impossible for him to do anything besides splooge all over his kit with meaningless, diddling fills. Problem is, they’re all so cute and maladjusted to society that no one wants to call them out for how shitty their band is. It would be like irrumating Tigger.

BONES JUSTICE

they make a music video they hang out with Kylie Minogue. When they go to the shops they travel by helicopter with their own tasteful debut album on repeat in their headsets.

It’s called Down To Earth but they have no idea what it’s like down here. I just close my eyes and I’m back in that supermarket.

SW

evenings he drank Evan Williams mixed with water, fiddled with his oversise pocket chain, and told me about how his dad was almost a roadie for Sabbath in 1974. I was a young, dumb 24-year-old, and it was somehow endearing at the time. You’d think sex with metal dudes would be all rapey and exciting, but it ended up being pretty vanilla.

SALLY

DREAM POLICE Hypnotized Sacred Bones

TV ON THE RADIO Seeds Harvest

I know I’m in the minority here, but I can never get down with this band, and it isn’t only because Kyp looks like a Teddy Graham and all their songs besides “Staring at the Sun” sound like sonic mashed potaturds.

They just had such promise at the beginning, you know? It’s always disheartening being let down. Like there’s this guy we work with named Bobby Viteri, and we all just found out his real name is Robert Hess. Robert fucking Hess! I mean, I guess I’d change my name too if my name was that stupid, but it still pisses me off.

MUSCHA TRIMPOP

This reminds me of the time I roadtripped across the country in a broken-down ’75 Camaro with my boys. We all brought leather jackets hoping to wear them to hundreds of different greasy-spoon diners, but unfortunately it was July, so for every stop from Kansas on we just looked like a bunch of sweaty, emaciated bikers on the verge of amphetamine psychosis. We wore Ray-Bans inside and drank chocolate milkshakes with the vigor of a thousand men, and then, 200 miles outside of Tucson, Steve had his eyes off the road trying to figure out how to properly insert the iPod tape-deck machine and hit a cactus and we spent the remainder of the trip on a Megabus.

FREDDIE PRINCESS JR.

ERASE ERRATA DAWNBRINGER

Lost Weekend

Night of the Hammer

Under the Sun

Profound Lore

One time I dated a guy with a big ZZ Top beard who wore leather pants. He must have owned dozens of metal band T-shirts that had only been worn once or twice, as his taste kept changing depending on how much free time he had at his accounting job to listen to his Bathory Pandora station. In the

Much like “Nazism,” “no wave” is not a term you want to see with the word “neo” in front of it. It’s over now. We all know that one guy who wears his James Chance shirt everywhere and has been suspected on multiple occasions of playing Thurston Moore noise records loudly in his room to drown out the sound of him

masturbating to Naked Lunch. If you happen to be that guy, you probably own this record.

SLEUTH LOOSELY

ARIEL PINK Pom Pom 4AD

This is a message to Ariel Pink. Your bassist, Tim, lives in my building. He’s in 2R. I’m in 3L. Next time you’re in Greenpoint, come knock on my door. It won’t be weird, I swear.

BENJAMIN SHAPIRO

FOO FIGHTERS Sonic Highways Roswell/RCA

I want so badly to hate Dave Grohl, but it’s just fucking impossible.

FATHER GARBAGE

RICHARD IN YOUR MIND Ponderosa Rice Is Nice

Once upon a time, decades ago, four musicians travelled to India for an advanced course in transcendental meditation. Their minds were opened and they wrote some songs about it. This was an age before the internet. There was no such thing as a YouTube hole that you could just fall into and lose yourself and then find yourself again a completely changed person. People back then used to turn on, tune in, and drop out and it worked ok for some of them. Now you can just watch a whole lot of Beatles videos, early Beck interviews, listen to some Dust Brothers and raise your consciousness from the safety of your bedroom studio. It’s a lot

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FBiRADIO.COM/CLICK

REPERCUSSIONS

PURPLE SNEAKERS

GOODGOD SOUND UNLIMITED

THE PATH OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC: PAST, PRESENT + FUTURE

EMERGING CLUB MUSIC WITH PS DJs

AFRO, ACID + TROPICAL DANCEFLOOR BEATS

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ASTRAL PEOPLE

PICNIC

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC FOR YOUR EARS

A RAW TAKE ON THE SOUND OF THE FUTURE

DEEP HOUSE, DUB TECHNO, DISCO-TINGED EVERYTHING

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GUEST MIXES CURATED BY VICE’S MUSIC CHANNEL

ELECTRONICA WITH SOUL

SUB-BASS, FRANTIC PERCUSSION + STREET PARTY VIBES

SWEAT IT OUT

TOTAL ECLIPSE

THE LOWDOWN

EXCLUSIVE MIXES + CUTS FROM THE LABEL

AMBIENT + LUSH TUNES TO TO MAKE YOUR MIND FLOAT

THUNDEROUS TRAP BOMBS TO TECHNICOLOUR BASS MUSIC

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2014-11-24 6:42 PM

RECORD REVIEWS Best Cover of the Month:

ANDY STOTT: Faith in Strangers

(Modern Love)

We were really into Andy Stott when we got the We Stay Together EP, which was primarily composed of nihilist techno that sounded like being force-fed bars of Xanax while rolling through the Tokyo firebombing in a barrel. Since then, he’s mellowed a bit, but there’s still material on this new album hard enough to blow your mind out through your pooper.

GENEVIEVE MAY DOBBINS

faster and turned out fine for these guys, but it isn’t exactly prime material for a best-selling band biography is it?

RINGO STARR

THE SMITH ST BAND

PINCH HITTER

Throw Me in the River

When Friends Die in Accidents

Poison City

storytelling in songs and is carrying on Australia’s tradition of intelligent, non-saccharine folk music. But who cares what I think because I’m so dedicated to Chapter I would have given this album a Smile if it were a recording of my mum telling me I was adopted over and over again.

ROBERTA ALLEN ZIMMERMAN

Microphone & Loudspeaker

THE HARPOONS I’m sure it must be fun pumping your fists and screaming along to your favourite song in a room packed with 400 other people with beards and tattoos of food and household items on their thighs. The same thing used to happen at Jawbreaker and Hot Water Music shows. But imagine that in a flat Australian accent by a bunch of really down-toearth blokes Singing about stuff that you can relate to— Sydney Road, pale ale, and recipes for vegan casseroles. The energy and the songs make you feel like something bigger than the moment. The singers’ voices rise then stop and everyone sings the chorus in a rousing crescendo.

Fark, how connected does that make you feel?

STU BURNS

EXHAUSTION

My biggest fear, more than a spider laying eggs in a shallow flesh wound, is dying in a hilarious accident. I don’t have any fear about death, I won’t be around and have a bunch of awesome Spotify playlists so my funeral will have a dope soundtrack.

But going in a funny way would be the worst.

Imagine dying suddenly on the toilet, or while wearing a chicken outfit, or in a Subway restaurant. For years afterwards people wouldn’t be able to talk about it without laughing, which would be so disrespectful. You’d be in heaven just being so annoyed and embarrassed and all you could do was half-heartedly haunt your survivors by making all their TVs hard to program. Fuck that shit. I hope no one I know goes out in an accident of any kind.

MAMA CASS

Falling For You Two Bright Lakes

Falling In love is so easy, you just find the right person, get to know each other and love each other more and more as the days keep passing and things have never been so good, you’re both so happy you could just die, and then eventually after decades of bliss you do. The end. It’s why love songs always seem so unnecessary. Everything about love is so natural and uncomplicated it makes counting to one seem like a real drag. If it were any different I imagine this record might capture the highs and lows pretty well.

ROMEO MONTAGUE

Biker Aarght!

So it’s called Biker and it was recorded next to a Hell’s Angels clubhouse but outlaw bikers are going to hate this because it sounds nothing like Pantera’s A Vulgar Display of Power. What it does sound like is three guys with a love of Pere Ubu, kraut rock, heavy feedback, and drinking beers, and jamming hard and loud on a Tuesday night. Close your eyes, lie down on the floor, and take in the seven-minute head wreckage that is “Twin Lights.” Then get up and go sit back down at your cubicle and ignore the weird looks from your co-workers.

MAGGOT

LAURA JEAN

OLD MATE

S/T

It Is What It Is

Chapter Music

SDZ

To me, Chapter Music is that really attractive boy in high school who gives you just enough attention to keep you totally sure that he’s secretly in love with you too.

You know, the guy who you noticed had a Jack Johnson album in his school bag and years later that fucking album is still on your shelf, humiliating you every time your new, equally stress-inducing adult friends come over. Laura Jean’s self-titled album is delicate and thoughtful, she has a knack for linear

Old Mate have transformed from one of Australia’s best ramshackle nine piece basement party bands to the best ramshackle and downer Syd Barrett-inspired basement solo act. Essentially a project for Pat Telfer of Bitch Prefect and Silly Joel and the Candymen, it’s music that celebrates drinking large cups of cheap wine and wrapping spacey synths, tape machines, country, pop, and blues into some seriously strange twists. Be sure to check the brilliant “Stressin” which starts as

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RECORD REVIEWS Worst Cover of the Month:

...AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD: IX

(Superball)

Ladies and gentlemen, when I got the promo for this hot, steaming dog log I was forced to go online to “unlock” the album art by playing some stupid puzzle game!

I mean, c’mon! Who actually has the attention span for that anymore! I can’t even sit through a 30-second Asian donkey-porn clip, let alone piece together some dweeby album art for a record I’m only mildly excited about. C’mon, people! This is ridiculous!

In other news, I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.

BILL F. BUCKLEY

a jittery instrumental before the simple refrain “Sally’s stressin.” Good stuff Pat! JOSE BAUTISTA

can’t hang with this guy and his whole aura then we probably just shouldn’t talk.

B. J. ARMSTRONG

LES SINS

DOOBIE BROTHERS

Michael

NICK JONAS

Southbound

Company

Nick Jonas

Arista

Island

You’re trudging through LaGuardia, feeling like death. You and your girls just got back from the Oberlin reunion (yeah—it was SO cray), and after all those pot-stickers and Rolling Rocks it’s definitelytime for some thorough cleansing action. You get in a cab and tell the driver to stop at Juice Press so you can grab a super-jumbo Green Machine with all the detox boosters. But this, like, ends up being the worst day ever because your dad’s credit card has been fucked ever since you let your boyfriend try to buy you bulk quantities of 2CE on Silk Road for Pitchfork fest. So you have to sit in the fucking juice bar for almost ten minutes listening to Toro y Moi’s dance-music side project and wonder whether anyone in the world could possibly have it any worse.

SALLY

DAMIEN RICE

Sometimes I put on my very best John Varvatos suit, buzz my hair so it’s the same length as my half-assed pube beard, and go to a mood-lit bar in West Hollywood with a highly rated digital pointand-shoot camera I bought on Amazon. I avoid looking at anyone except for myself, when I see a mirror. I think of Silence of the Lambs and how much I vibe with “I’d fuck me. I’d fuck me hard. I’d fuck me so hard.” I position the camera perfectly so the photos end up seeming like they were taken by a professional photographer and my face ends up appearing pensive and reflective since I’m so frustratedly and self-consciously trying to get the perfect angle in the mirror. When I get the perfect shot I run home and spend upward of five hours retouching my face so it might just bear the slightest resemblance to Nick Jonas’s.

VLADIMIR POUTINE

My Favorite Faded Fantasy

DEAN BLUNT

Warner Bros.

Black Metal Rough Trade

Hmm, I wonder which “favorite faded fantasy” Damien Rice is talking about with this album title? Maybe it’s the one where he writes a single song that doesn’t sound like it was written by a wee Irish twat who’s doin’ me fuckin’ nut in, eh? He’s also probably disgusting in bed, and he’s exactly the kind of guy who makes it impossible for me to find girls, because they’re a wreck after they go out with him.

DAN WOOLF

Black Metal sounds more like a “statement” album for Dean Blunt, especially when compared with his last record, The Redeemer, which is seriously one of the best albums of the last decade. There’s a lot of different ideas on his new one, and they don’t always work together, but it doesn’t really matter because everything he does is different, unique, challenging, and beautiful, and if you

It’s November in Tuscaloosa. You and Paw Paw are riding in the Silverado to Ms. Mary Ellen’s general store to pick up some sugar for Maw Maw’s peach cobbler (God’s own, you reckon). Old Paw Paw’s getting older, and as the truck shakes with the bumps in the rocky road his dentures clink around like a diamondback rattler. Paw Paw turns on the radio and starts singing along: “Mississippi moon, won’t you keep on shining…” You tap him on the shoulder to ask what he’s singing. He jerks the car to a stop, goes fully cross-eyed, and starts violently pulling his hair out while drooling and screaming about the Vietcong.

SCRINT MCGRUBLE

MARIACHI EL BRONX III ATO

Three nights a week I slip out of my job at Arby’s around 4:30 PM, hit my local Equinox to buff up, sprint home, and mainline creatine to get some vascularity. Then I bolt to the closet where I keep my costumes, which I get dry-cleaned biweekly, in secret, so as to not draw attention to my identity. When I feel that elastic polyester hit my chafed thighs I know it’s party time. By day, I am an overweight pop punk who sells roast-beef sammies with a snarl. By night, I am Mariachi El Bronx, borderline racist anti-superhero with a penchant for chimichangas.

MARIACHI EL BRONX

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JOHNNY RYAN’S PAGE

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VICE MAGAZINE VOLUME 12 NUMBER 11

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FREE VOLUME 12 NUMBER 11

THE DIRTY LAUNDRY ISSUE

EXPERIENCE ASIA WITH CONTIKI @contiki

2014

From the culture heavy cities of China to the breathtaking Thai Islands to the epic landscapes of Japan.

With an endless amount of experiences to be had, the only question is - where will your adventure take you?

Contiki.com/asia for more details

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