Photos courtesy of Francois Pesant

This article was originally published on VICE Mexico

In 2012, while working on an article about American female veterans, Canadian photojournalist François Pesant found out that several of his interviewees had been raped by their male counterparts while on duty.

Since then, Pesant and journalist Alexandra Geneste have been investigating the issue, collecting the testimonies of rape victims and relatives of soldiers who committed suicide after being raped. Eleven of those cases have been compiled into a book calledAn Enemy Within.

I got in touch with Pesant to talk about this project.

VICE: When did you start working on An Enemy Within?
François Pesant: I started in January 2012, when I moved to New York from Montreal – my home town. I was working on a story on the experience of female war veterans returning to the civilian life after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two out of the four women I met told me they had been raped in Iraq, without me even asking. I was a total stranger to the subject and I was deeply shocked.

I did some research and found a Pentagon report that listed 19,000 rape cases that had occurred in just the previous year. So, I decided to talk it out with my editor and change the story's focus. That story was published in Canada, in June 2012. Then, I went back to the topic because I felt it required further investigation and started working with Alexandra, who is also a journalist.

What has been the the main challenge you've faced while working on the subject?
Listening to all those stories. The absence of justice has as huge an impact on the victims as the actual rape has. The first case in the book deals with a father whose daughter committed suicide after being raped. This shows that sexual violence not only affects the victim, but also their environment. Another case is that of a victim who got pregnant by her rapist but couldn't get an abortion. She talks about the relationship with the daughter she conceived through rape.

Did all rapes take place in Iraq and Afghanistan?
They took place all over the world. Some of the victims did not go to war. One of them was raped during her training. Another, in a military base in Portugal. Someone else was abused in a military base in the US.

Also, some victims are men. The book includes three testimonials from men who were raped by other men. It is very difficult to find men willing to talk about that kind of experience.

Have any of the cases you've dealt with been taken to court?
One of the offenders spent some months in jail. Then there was another case, where the assailant was taken to court but all the evidence disappeared during the trial; the rape kit the victim had delivered was gone. To top it all, the offender was promoted in the process; I think it was to the rank of sergeant.

Every year, sees about 25,000 rapes within the US military but only 3,000 are reported. Out of those, only 300 go to court.

How has the US military responded to your project?
We've tried to speak with them but they wouldn't help us, as you can imagine. In the US army, in times of war, the major is in charge of administrating justice. If you are raped you have to report it to a major first and they must decide whether you should go to court or go back to work or get fired.

Total impunity is what damages the victims most. Being raped is dreadful but getting some kind of justice helps you feel in control and move on. What actually happens is that many of the victims end up getting fired.

How did you and Alexandra start working together?
When I moved to New York, she was Le Monde's correspondent in the UN. She had already worked with soldiers and helped me get some contacts. Even though we've been working on this project for three years, sometimes we'll spend months without finding a single case to work on because there is no official list of rape cases.

At some point, I went on a four month-long roadtrip. We had no money so I started a kickstarter campaign to get some. She would do the preliminary interviews on the phone and write a report of each story afterwards. Then, I would travel to meet the interviewees and spend three to five days with each, do a full interview, take photos and send the material to Alexandra who would put everything together. Each story has been written in the first person.

Does your work focus on women?
Yes, it does. I have also worked projects about women in Canada and in India. When I got started with photography, my main topics were related to human rights and the environment. Subjects that have to do with women inevitably kept coming up.

www.francoispesant.com

Dave and his pals (Photo of Michael Gove via Policy Exchange, photo of David Cameron via the Department for International Development, photo of Jeremy Hunt by Ted Eytan, photo of Geroge Osborne by mrgarethm)

According to this week's iteration of the interminable YouGov poll, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is the least popular frontline politician in Britain, which should make him the most hated man full stop – barring, possibly, a few serial killers and paedophiles. He has, seemingly, gone out of his way to directly antagonise our junior doctors, which to the general English consciousness is an act of political evil that could be surpassed only by taxing dogs or banning tea. After all, many people have had positive, personal experiences of interacting with their family doctors, while possibly nobody, perhaps including his family, has had a positive, personal experience of interacting with Jeremy Hunt.

Besides, he's not a nice person to look at: his facial features are all scrunched up too close together, his hair looks like it's made of toothpicks, and he tends to be photographed with the expansive hand gestures and furrowed lips of a self-satisfied stage magician pulling his new NHS policies out of a previously empty hat. He is, essentially, unbearable. So it makes sense that so much of the resulting social anger has been projected on the person and body of our Health Secretary that he's more hated than George Osborne, or Michael Gove, or, say, David Cameron.

It's not my job to tell you who to hate, but it is notable how successfully our Prime Minister has managed to insulate himself from the hatred he deserves. He's managed to turn his Cabinet into a cast of comic-book baddies, while himself floating serene and orblike above it all. He might get his usual share of abuse on Twitter, hundreds of people lining up to call him dishface or pigfucker, but so does everyone. And at the same time polls consistently tell us that people still actually like him, far more than any other party leader – while the British people might think that his party is governing the country in the interests of a tiny financial elite, they still trust them to do this efficiently.

For a long time, I couldn't understand this. But then I watched the leaders' debates before last year's election, and I understood. Lined up on the stage was a horrifying cast of theriomorphic creatures: Nigel Farage, with his bulging fishy eyes and his sad gulping mouth; Ed Miliband, wearing the long head and short limbs of a shuffling seaside donkey; Natalie Bennett, who is Australian – and then there was Cameron. I don't remember anything he said, or how he said it, but there was this safe, still, merciful blankness about the man. He didn't look like a Prime Minister; he looked like someone playing a Prime Minister in a BBC drama. Which is, of course, what people want. The Tories won that election by campaigning on keeping "David Cameron as Prime Minister" – they even put it on their posters – and it worked, because it's a tautology. All it meant was that the Prime Minister would be the Prime Minister, because Cameron has no real qualities whatsoever.

"I want hobgoblins around me", says Nietzsche's Zarathustra, "for I am courageous." Cameron has ringed himself with hobgoblins. Besides the spikily unpleasant Hunt, there's Michael Gove, a slimy Gollum-thing who once tried to evade Freedom of Information requests by sending emails under the name "Mrs. Blurt", and Iain Duncan Smith, a slow-rolling ball of gelatinous putty glomming on to people's benefits payments.

American politicians tend to look like sleazy auto salesmen. Even if they've never sold a car in their lives they have that lubricious grin, they want you to like them, and they're ripping you off the whole time. Britain is different. Our parliamentarians are represented by the pale, bloated slug of a landlord, which is in fact exactly what many of them are. They don't care what you think about them; the power is theirs and it has been for centuries; pay up or get out. It's not damaging the government to hate these people – with an impressive military discipline, they're paraded in front of us precisely so that we can hate them.

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David Cameron is different. Before he decided to have a stab at running an entire country, he was a PR man for Carlton TV. Far more than even Tony Blair, his premiership is a triumph of form over content. At the last election, advanced statistical techniques called "the Knowledge" allowed the Conservatives to send out different messages to different people depending on their the darkest secrets buried in their internet histories. Each Facebook status update, or tweet, or even online shop was used to determine the kind of campaigning material you'd find most convincing. If you've got a Diptyque loyalty card and just booked a long holiday in the Cayman Islands you might be susceptible to a different type of online ad than if you spend most of your day tweeting about working at a bar. But you can only allow all these competing messages to be projected onto you if you start out as a blank, white screen. His world is the simulacrum, images without referents, a vast ring of light and colour and hatred that's all hollow inside.

Critics of Conservative policy have stressed the point that the austerity being imposed on Britain isn't a technical solution but an ideological one. This is true, but it's an ideology that matches the sinking spiral of the entire world; under global capitalism Tory policy is just the path of least resistance (if you want to see what happens when you try to swim against this current, just look at Greece). The Conservatives are just the political wing of the entropic collapse of the Universe. Who better to lead them than a non-entity like David Cameron? In the early modern era power was a big, lavish spectacle, all those monarchs of the anciens régimes weighed down by gold and lace and perfume; by the 20th century it had become anonymised into the figure of a shadowy Man with a business suit and a face clouded in smoke. The current Tory government represents the synthesis of these forms: a shit ensemble of ministerial monsters to do the dirty work of dismantling the country, while at the centre stands a man who represents absolutely nothing.

@sam_kriss

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Photo by Romain Gonzalez

This report originally appeared on VICE France.

They had planned to finish the show they started on 13th November 2015, and that's what they did. Just some hours after his controversial statement about gun control, Jesse Hughes came back on stage, this time with his buddy Josh Homme – who wasn't there when Eagles of Death Metal and the crowd were attacked inside the Bataclan just three months ago.

The Olympia, one of the biggest concert halls in Paris, expected around 2,000 people on Tuesday night, including 900 "survivors" who had been present during that horrific evening in November. Suffice to say, cops were everywhere, streets were closed and five security checks had been put in place in front of the auditorium. As could be expected, journalists were all over the place.

Photo by Jean Barrère.

The night was cold, and people looked tense – understandable, given the situation. For some, it was a unique opportunity to attempt to heal their injuries, particularly those that weren't physical. For others, the gig represented a chance to rise and shout their contempt towards the Islamic State and its wish to destroy our "decadent culture". But for all, the most important thing was simply to have a drink, listen to some tunes they knew by heart and enjoy some quality time – even if fear and anxiety were in the air.

I met some audience members at the end of the show in order to understand how they felt about the show, and what the atmosphere inside the Olympia on that very particular night had been like.

WATCH: Eagles of Death Metal Discuss Paris Terror Attacks

Julien, 34, left the show after one hour
"I couldn't take it much longer, it was too difficult. My girlfriend comforted me all day long, she accompanied me in the subway before the gig – but being alone inside was really hard for my nerves. On 13th November, I was in the Bataclan with a very close friend, who refused to come tonight.

"When I entered the hall, something struck me: everyone was behaving like it was a random gig. People were laughing at the bar, having beers, some girls were taking selfies. But after a moment, some details appeared clearly. Tons of journalists were there. I saw some people crying just before the show started. When the band stopped playing during the first song in order to honour the victims, people around me were really shaken up.

"I can't say I loved that show, because I wasn't even able to listen. My mind was drifting. Now, I just want to go home and to have some time with my girlfriend."

Photo by Jean Barrère.

Jeff, 42
"I'm just here because I felt I needed to be here. I bought my ticket because I love rock'n'roll, I love EODM, and I definitely wanted to see them.

"I wasn't there in November because I took a week off to go in Normandy with my wife – when I discovered that the band was playing in Paris, I was disappointed. With some perspective, I realised how lucky I've been. Can you imagine that? Being alive because of some holidays with your wife? That's impossible to explain, that's even absurd, but you have to deal with it. Life is unfair. Kids died and I'm still alive."

It was the most stirring concert of my life and one of the saddest moments of my existence.

Naomi, 37
"I can't find any words to describe what I felt during that gig. I'll never forget it. I went with friends; some were there on 13th November, others were not. Personally, I wasn't, but I was having a beer with some friends in the 11^th arrondissement. It could have been me that night, you know...

"It was hard not to cry. I tried to resist again and again, but when Jesse Hughes showed us his new blue-white-red guitar, it was too much to take. And they played Brown Sugar! I love that song. I had to react, and tears were my reaction. It was the most stirring concert of my life and one of the saddest moments of my existence."

Photo by Jean Barrère.

Marine, 28
"I wasn't present on 13th November, but I felt like it was my duty to be there tonight, to sing, to show my support. I know some people could criticise me because I "stole" a seat from some hardcore fans, but I don't care.

"The beginning of the show was incredible. Seeing the band coming on stage with that specific French song – "Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille" – was something hard to describe. It was madness. That tune represents everything I love about Paris – people, places, an atmosphere. Maybe it was strange, because the crowd wanted to have fun, to pretend nothing had happened, even if everybody knew something terrible hit Paris three months ago. You could say it's hypocrisy, catharsis, or "je ne sais quoi". No one gave a damn about that.

"I must admit I looked for the emergency exits before the show began. But it's only human: after that kind of trauma, you can't act normal. As I said, I wasn't there on November 13, but I live in Paris, I'm French, and I've been attacked too – I still can't accept it."

I must admit I looked for the emergency exits before the show began. But it's only human.

Bruno, 47
"I was there on 13th November. I managed to escape when the terrorists entered the Bataclan. I was so lucky that night, you know. I still feel guilty, especially when I see all the faces of people who've been killed.

Tonight, it was a chance for me to forget, to enjoy a beautiful gig with one of my favourite bands. I loved how they performed, I loved the entrance, I loved the fact that Homme was there. Maybe that was the most moving moment, when I discovered that he was going to perform with the Eagles.

"I know that lots of people are talking about Hughes, his pro-gun ideology and so on. But they are a rock band! He destroyed a guitar on stage, he doesn't need to be like French people want him to be. We defend freedom of speech when it serves our intention. If we want to be better than the Islamic State, we have to defend liberty, that's all."

Photo by Jean Barrère.

@romain_gonzo

Image via the BBC

The Night Manager is a Proper British Spy Drama. It's a six-part adaptation of John le Carré's 1993 spy novel of the same name and it stars a cast of Hollywood A-listers and BAFTA-baiters including Hugh Laurie, Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Colman. Former British soldier Jonathan Pine (Hiddleston) is recruited to get close to arms dealer Richard Roper (Laurie) and risks becoming a criminal himself in the process. It exists between Whitehall and Washington, and tells the story of the transatlantic powerhouses alliance with the secret arms trade.

We sat down with screenwriter David Farr, who told VICE about the difficulties of adapting le Carré's work for the modern era and how the "dodgy deals" of the modern political landscape in Britain inspired his work.

VICE: You've updated The Night Manager to take place in 2011 around the Arab Spring. What was the thinking behind that shift?
David: I had a strong reaction to the anger in the book, which felt very contemporary to me. le Carré was angry about British meddling in Latin American politics when he wrote the original in the 90s, specifically their complicit or foolish enabling of the arms and drugs trade. That issue is as important as it ever was but the focus of that has moved to the Middle East. I actually went and met le Carré and proposed the idea to him, expecting him to say no. I got an immediate yes, though, and we spent two hours collaborating on how to do it.

What was that like? Is he still as sharp as he was?
We met in a pub in north London. He's still ferociously quick, yes. Intimidatingly so. One of my earliest memories is watching Smileys People with my dad in 1982. Much of my life has been spent writing in that area and he's a big reason for that.

The world of arms dealers is alien to many of us. What research did you do into arms dealers and the world they inhabit?
I did a lot of internet research on people like Victor Bout, the legendary arms dealer. I also find Mark Thatcher to be very interesting. That's not to say in any way that he's a proven arms dealer, because I don't think that's the case, but he's a man of somewhat shady character who has lived in exile for 30-plus years and has dabbled in economic and sometimes military colonialism. He and Hugh Laurie's character, Richard Roper, both have opaque global connections but also links to the establishment.

So what does The Night Manager tell us about the British establishment in 2016?
We live in an era where it feels as though the establishment is as rock solid as it ever was. The deeper currents of the establishment's goals remain very similar. It is an empirical power that does not have the same leverage that it used to, so uses covert ways in finding it. If that means doing some dodgy deals then it will do that. In terms of this adaptation, it sees one evil, that is, Islamic extremism, and attempts to keep it at bay. To do so it is also prepared to collaborate with less tangible evils.

le Carré has always been extremely strong on the British establishment and its tendrils around the world. Particularly its abilities to use orthodox and rogue elements to perpetuate its economic and strategic goals. One of the key debates in the series is whether Roper is using the establishment or whether they are using him. Roper is extremely charismatic, especially in the hands of Hugh Laurie. He is a devil with the best lines and has an intoxicating effect on Tom Hiddleston's character Jonathan Pine, but also on the viewer.

Did you face any opposition from the BBC while making a series that challenges the establishment in this way?
Actually not, I am proud to say. The only thing I was careful about was not to demonise any political element abroad. The point is to show how the British establishment can exploit something like the Arab Spring to perpetuate their own strategic goal.

Was it hard to adapt the story for the modern era?
Well one of the first scenes of the book is set in Egypt. So I said let's keep it in Egypt and it works perfectly. Unlike le Carré's Cold War novels, which have an immovable quality, The Night Manager is of the modern era. It's about capitalism, economic colonialism and arms dealing.

How much of the back story of the Arab Spring does this go into? For a predominantly white drama, that feels like dangerous territory.
Yeah, absolutely. To be clear, this is not a telling of the story of the Arab Spring. That is not my story to tell. That is for Egyptian writers to tell. It's a story about a British spy who is sent to infiltrate the actions of a British arms dealer. The reason he wants to do it is that he has personal history with this man following something that happened during the Arab Spring. The political and personal hit each other all the time.

The cast is particularly impressive, with Tom Hiddleston in the lead. Tell me about his character, Jonathan Pike.
Well he is the night manager, the existential hero. He has connections to the intelligence community and he picks up information but he's hiding from the world and his own emotions. It's a very strange role because he's a self-effacing character who listens a lot. Tom was very clear of that challenge and he delivers a very calibrated performance. He's haunted by the tragedy of what happened in Egypt and the opportunity for him to catch Richard Roper is somewhere between revenge and redemption. The question is whether he can hold on to who he is while pursuing this man. His soul is at stake.

Another change from the novel is that you introduced a female character...
In the book he's called Leonard Burr and now she's Angela Burr and is played by Olivia Colman. When I proposed this to le Carré, he was concerned, and it took a week or so to convince him. He adores her now but he's so passionate about that original character as the beating heart of the piece. She's an underdog who works in intelligence but is an outsider, sort of a descendent of George Smiley, but with more grit.

Other versions of The Night Manager have failed to make it to the screen in the past. Why has this version succeeded?
It didn't work as a film because Pine's character is a slow burn. He's not Bond he's not Jason Bourne. Rhythmically it doesn't work across 90 minutes, but we have six hours. It's not quite as big as reducing War & Peace but it's big. It's a story about globalisation and the moral consequences of that. We wanted to honour that and you need time to do it.

The Night Manager starts on BBC One on Sunday 21st February at 9pm

@ddavidrenshaw

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It's almost impossible to estimate the true scale of modern slavery in the UK.

Today's slaves work and live alongside us, often trafficked into the country, their exploitation hidden in plain sight. Traffickers confiscate their passports and documents, leaving them powerless in a country where they have no support network and often don't speak the language. In fact, it's basically impossible to know who's being subjected to what without them coming out and telling you, and it's not like much small talk naturally leads to questions about whether or not you're currently being enslaved.

In 2015, British authorities identified 3,266 human trafficking victims, a 39 percent increase on the previous year, which in turn had seen a 34 percent increase on the year before that. Worst case scenario: more people are being trafficked; best case scenario: authorities are doing a better job of pin-pointing victims. Either way, it's clear that trafficking and slavery are both big problems facing the UK. Parliament passed a new law – the Modern Slavery Bill – in 2015 specifically to help authorities tackle the problem.

Many of the modern slavery cases that make the national news seem to relate to domestic servitude: people being kept in a home and forced to perform housework without pay, like the three women freed from a Lambeth house after 30 years in 2013, or the 28-year-old woman rescued from an address in Rochdale this past weekend.

What you hear less of are the cases in which trafficked people are put to work in regular jobs, before their captors collect all the pay for themselves. It's a surprisingly regular occurrence and begs all sorts of questions: why do they not tell their colleagues what's happening to them? Why do they not immediately report their traffickers to the police? How do they end up in this situation in the first place?

Through the Home Office, I was able to set up a meeting with "K", a Hungarian man – and a victim of that exact kind of enslavement – in his mid-thirties. He agreed to talk to me on the condition of anonymity. Sitting down opposite him at a cafe in South East England, K – dressed all in black and nervously clutching a coffee – took a deep breath and began to tell me his story.

Adopted at three years old with his younger brother, he never knew his birth parents. The brothers were raised in a small Hungarian city, not far from the Slovenian border, and once his adopted father passed away, K took a job in a factory to pay the bills.

"I worked there until my car accident in 2002," he said.

Following the crash, K spent three months in a coma and another six months piecing his life together. His memory was impaired, and it wasn't until he found old receipts and letters in his bags that he could work out where he used to be employed. "I went to work and asked if they knew me, and soon they had me back on the floor," he recalled, sipping his coffee.

He may have found the place, but operating the machinery he used to be a dab hand at was now a struggle, and before long he was let go.

"I became homeless – the kind of homeless person who wanted to be homeless," he said. "I didn't want anyone to find me at all. I went onto the street and I was sleeping wherever the night took me."

After a few years of sleeping rough – and a short time working for a local pimp, before apparently handing him over to the police – K heard of an opportunity to make a new start. "Someone told me about a job in England, and about this family who were arranging to take people," he told me. "Now I had this get-out. I mean, I couldn't speak English and couldn't get there on my own, but I felt like I needed to run."

The deal was done within two weeks. K met the trafficker, had his documents copied and the flights were booked. It's not really what I'd envisioned as a route into slavery: no abduction, no coercing, ostensibly no shady business. We'd been chatting for a good half an hour at this point, and for the first time I interrupted K mid-flow. "What were you expecting to happen?" I asked him. "Did you know you were volunteering yourself into modern day slavery?"

"I wasn't really sure what would happen," he responded. "I knew these were the kind of guys looking for slaves – people who no longer cared about life, but who just needed wine, you know, something to eat and shelter. It's all I wanted then. They never told me what I might get paid and, to be honest, I never asked."

Everything was paid for and the escape route laid out: K would be in England by October of 2004.

READ ON MOTHERBOARD: My Brief Encounter with a Dark Web 'Human Trafficking' Site

While more victims of modern slavery appear to be getting in touch with authorities, it's believed there are thousands more who still aren't. The Home Office's Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Bernard Silverman, estimated in 2013 that there were between 10,000 and 13,000 potential victims of modern enslavement in the United Kingdom.

The website modernslavery.co.uk, run by the Home Office and supported by the NSPCC, says modern slavery victims in the UK have come from a number of countries – Nigeria, Albania and Vietnam among them – with 90 from the UK identified in 2013. Hungary is another country that comes up often in people trafficking and enslavement cases, most recently in January of this year, when a West Yorkshire factory owner was found guilty of employing a large number of Hungarians as a "slave workforce".

The situation was much the same in 2004, when K arrived in the UK.

"I landed in Luton and this guy came to collect me," K told me. "When we got there I was shown my room, which I was to share with two other men, both of them Hungarian."

There were only three bedrooms in this house in Stoke-On-Trent, but 22 people were living there. K had tobacco, coffee and his pocket dictionary to help him learn English: "Everything I needed, really."

He started work the next day, and while he kept hold of his passport he never saw his wages. "Without money or language you can't get away anywhere, so they had no need to take my documents," K said when I asked what kept him from running.

K was paid £50 a week for his full-time work, with the majority of his salary going directly to his trafficker. "He filled in all the forms when I was signed up for the job – I never saw them."

In April of 2005, K was driven to Bolton to start a new job.

"This went on for 18 months or so," K continued. "We worked our money taken away. I ended up getting less than my £50, because the traffickers told me they were protecting me from another mafioso. I was getting nothing."

Over time, K's English improved and he began to once again desire his freedom. "It was after about two years when I wanted my independence back," K recalled. "I had given them too much of my life already. I didn't want to give them any more time."

In the past, K had considered running away, but says he saw no feasible way out. "For what purpose? To be homeless? No," he said. "Maybe I could have tried to stay in England – it's milder here; I could survive on the street. But I thought they might hurt me. If one person can get away, that means everyone else can get away, and they wouldn't let that slide."

Realising that he couldn't do it alone, K teamed up with a couple of others in the same situation as him. Hatching a plan in collaboration with the management of the company they worked for in Bolton, everything began to come together. One of the managers took K and the others down to a bank, helped each of them open an account and started paying their wages directly to them. Soon, the traffickers were complaining, asking where their money was, but the management pointed to a fake banking error.

"A week later, the company told the traffickers that the police were looking for them," said K. "They just packed up and left the country."

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For a while, things were stable. It was the summer of 2006 and K and the others were living and working in total freedom. But then it all went to shit, again. The contract expired. The six people K lived with, all Hungarian, spoke no English, and finding work alone was tough. With the last of his money, K flew the others to Hungary, but soon found himself alone again, skint and homeless.

"I no longer understood Hungary – it had changed; the politics, the people, the culture," he said. "I felt like a stranger. Not even the streets were the same. The city I grew up in was no longer my own."

So, working and saving up again, K bought himself a flight back to the UK.

By December of 2009, he was back in Manchester, working precarious jobs and feeling miserable. He couldn't afford the rent and was set to be on the streets for another winter, until he got a call from an old friend, who knew of a group of Hungarians being held as slaves, just like K had been three years before. "He knew what I had done last time, plotting our escape, and he asked if I could help them do the same," K said, smiling.

He went in, undercover. "I travelled to Leeds. A man came to meet me," he said. "When I arrived at the house, what I saw deeply scared me. Everyone there had been trafficked."

As K knew, building trust with a stranger when you've been exploited and manipulated takes time. K grafted, and in return was paid, like the others, just £10 a week. "Finally, after a few months, one guy I was living with decided he wanted to do something rebellious," K grinned. "He started to talk to me, asking questions about what we might do."

What K and his new friends decided to do was get in touch with the Hungarian press and authorities. Before long, an arrest warrant was issued and the police raided the house.

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Through The Salvation Army, K and the others were taken to a safe house and immediately put into a witness protection scheme. "When we arrived, it was after a long journey," K said. "We went in the house, and it was so big. I had a living room! I really liked it."

With the resources provided, K soon found work, helping the others find employment too. "To find a job in England, it is easy – whoever says they can't find a job is a liar," he laughed.

As our conversation came to a close, I asked K how he feels now, looking back on what happened.

"It is what it is," he responded. "I want to do more to help stop trafficking and slavery, though. Even if I never get paid for it – even if I am unofficially undercover – I will do it. If I have the chance to clean up more rubbish from the trade and help people, I will. I would do it again. I am single, so at least I don't have to worry about my children and my wife and my house."

K's story puts consent into the spotlight; his decision in 2004 to effectively volunteer himself into slavery, even if he wasn't doing it entirely consciously, raises an important point about what it means to be a slave. We imagine this process to be one of coercion and forced labour, but K offered up his freedom to his traffickers. Had his original traffickers been caught in 2004, this could have complicated the case. But fortunately under the new trafficking offence in section 2 of the Modern Slavery Bill, the consent of the victim to travel is not relevant.

"I still remember the feeling of not understanding what was happening around me when I first arrived here," K said, rolling a cigarette before leaving. "I was desperate, and they took advantage, exploiting me. I can't let that happen to anyone for as long as I live."

If you suspect that someone you know has been trafficked or is being enslaved, please call the Salvation Army's 24-hour confidential referral helpline on 03003038151, or visit salvationarmy.org.uk/human-trafficking.

@MikeSegalov / oliverrobertholmes.com

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Comrade Bala and South London's Crazy Communist War

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Mask– $5

This article was originally published on VICE Mexico

Last Friday, around 7:30 PM, Pope Francis landed in Mexico City's International Airport. This is the first time the Argentinian Pope is visiting Mexico since he assumed office. During his week-long stay, he is also expected to stop by the states of Chiapas, Michoacan and Chihuahua.

As anticipated, the country has been busying itself to receive the Pontiff with road closure announcements, billboard ads and stands that sell Pope memorabilia. We went out in the streets of Mexico City looking for objects that will help us remember this papal visit forever.

Scroll down for more photos.

Image via Wikipedia

If a betting shop was a family, then Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs) would be the nuisance cousin here for the summer; eating everything in the fridge, shaving the cat and bullying all the local kids for their pocket money.

In reality, these gambling machines, dubbed the "crack cocaine" of gambling, blare out neon-bright trailers and promises of huge payouts before sucking up punters' money. At the highest stakes, it's possible to lose up to up to £100 every 20 seconds, making betting shops £1.86billion a year.

It seems that FOBTs are in the middle of the dangerous gambling spectrum; to truly tackle the extent to which gambling is destroying people's lives, online betting shops need to be just as accountable as their physical peers. Because even though betting shop staff are reportedly unlikely to approach suspected problem gamblers to remind them they've had enough, for fear of being attacked, they are on hand to report violent reactions to losses to the police. And in late 2015, betting shops introduced a warning system which requires FOBT players to be registered so they can be advised to finish up after they lose a large sum of money in one go. There are even 'set your limits!' signs outside betting shops. These might not work incredibly well, but for even the most financially disinterested party concerned about problem gamblers, it smarts that there's no such provision when a player is locked into a feedback loop on their phone, using gambling apps which ape social media notifications. In the fight against FOBTs, it's worth realising that they're simply one way in which touch-screen gambling is hurting people across the country.

@sophwilkinson

More gambling from VICE:

I Tried To Infiltrate the Black Market of FIFA Ultimate Team Betting

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Photos By a Slot Machine Dream Queen

Little video doing the rounds of Paul McCartney off of The Beatles being turned away at the door of Tyga's Grammys afterparty. It's a TMZ video, so just know that before you watch it, and I'm going to be honest: I hate the cameraman responsible for it with my life. I want this fool to go to prison for his commentary. This man needs to be sent back to school and taught how to communicate with humans again. You are a parody of a human, unknown cameraman, you are possibly the worst man currently alive, and I include despots in that list, I always include despots:

We will get to Paul McCartney anon.

— you just, it's just: you know the cameraman responsible for this had three thoughts going on in a loop in his head while this was filming, and they were:

i. "I am definitely going to be able to sell this video to TMZ, so I should mentally start spending the money now. I am going to spend this money on new wheels for my car. I am absolutely not going to spend this money wisely, at all."

ii. "This question about the Rolling Stones is very funny and original and Paul McCartney has never heard this question before. I am a good and funny person and I definitely not should be shot in the head until I am killed."

iii. "This video is going to go viral, and as a result of that I should be as obnoxious as it is possible to be out loud. I should sound like an alien making an impression of human bewilderment. I should sound as much as possible like the kind of person who, instead of laughing, actually says 'LMAO'. Because that is who I am. That is the person I was born to be."

But hey! We're here to have fun today! At Paul McCartney's expense!

On MUNCHIES: Meet the 63-Year-Old Auntie Making Glasgow's Favourite Samosas

Paul McCartney is a thousand-year-old man with a successful line of vegetarian sausages and was also in a band once called The Beatles. He did some solo work, too, and the Frog Chorus, and now he has spent the last ten or so years pushing the very fucking limit of acceptable men's hairstyles and clapping slightly out of time in various activism videos that seem like a really good idea at the time but actually, as it turns out, were not a very good idea at all. Like, look:

The desperation, the urgency, of the words, "you can do it right now please." Look into those eyes and tell me that is a man not held captive by fame, a prisoner just needing to be let out. That developing this brand of vegetarian anti-patter is actually a deep howling cry for help. Please, Christ, please. Please pledge not to eat meat on Mondays. Please, please. Paul McCartney is dying in there. He needs this.

But so to the nightclub, where Paul McCartney is turned away, the moment Paul McCartney finally crosses over and touches his fingertips through the void and becomes – even if only briefly, even for a moment – human, in the same way that you are human, in the same way as me. Paul McCartney is made of the same blood and bones and flesh as all of us, he's just better at making music and having the same sad, tired eyelids of a dying dog than we are, and that makes him an icon. But when he gets turned away from Tyga's party with Beck and the drummer out of the Foo Fighters, he is saying: I know your struggles. He is saying: I am one of you. I have always been one of you.

On NOISEY: The Grammys Sucked – Is Pop Music Stuck in Neutral?

We have all been turned away from a nightclub. Anyone who has not been asked to leave a nightclub hasn't lived. Anyone who has not walked away from a nightclub calling a bouncer a "prick" – not loud enough that the bouncer will hear you and do a little tight-trousered bouncer run at you and attack you from behind and break the vertebrae in your neck, but loud enough to make you feel good, to make a point, maybe you will kick an errant Coke can while you say "prick" to disguise the word but not the sentiment – anyone who has done that has not, in my opinion, truly taken advantage of their whirl around the sun.

You might say: this is an embarrassing moment in Paul McCartney's life, documented and filed in the library of the internet for the ages. When we Google Paul McCartney in a thousand years' time, will we remember his work with the Beatles, his activism, his solo work? Probably not. We'll remember that time he, a 73-year-old man who really doesn't need to impress anyone anymore, got turned away from a Grammy party hosted by – of all the people in the world to host Grammy parties to get turned away from – Tyga, while some TMZ douche flatly says, "They won't let you in? What!" That this is his legacy, and it is an unfair one.

But in a way, McCartney's folly is a message of hope, a message of solidarity with a youth he is spiralling ever further away from. Even Paul McCartney can get turned away from a nightclub. Bear that in mind next time a bouncer looks at your shoes, ushers a few lads in trainers in past you, then tells you the place is full. Next time a bouncer has you and the girls shivering in the cold for an hour just to tell you there's a private party tonight and the cover fee has trebled. You are Paul McCartney, and Paul McCartney is you. You haven't failed, you haven't faltered. Paul McCartney can't even get into a party hosted by Tyga. It's the system that is broken, not you. All bouncers are bastards, and even professional vegetable-liker and knight of the realm Paul McCartney isn't safe from them. Every time you get turned away from an ID-only Wetherspoons, you are one step closer to becoming an icon.

@joelgolby

More stuff from VICE, mainly pro-bouncer propaganda tbqh:

A London Nightclub Bouncer Explains Himself

Strip Club Bouncers Have Feelings Too

They're Not All Meathead Wankers: In Defence of Britain's Battered Bouncers

A blacklisting protest in 2013 (Photo author's own)

Blacklisting was the secret war that big business waged against workers. From the 1980s into the 2000s, if you worked on a building site, it was advisable to keep your head down. If you kicked up a fuss about 'elf 'n' safety or crappy wages, you could unknowingly find yourself put on "blacklist" of workers that companies wanted to make sure never got work. The practice was illegal but it carried on for decades. At least 3,200 people were treated in this way, and lives were ruined as skilled workers couldn't get a job.

Last week, some of the workers who have been fighting for justice received some landmark good news. For the first time, some victims received compensation totalling £5.6million pounds. The average payout to individuals was £80,000, with some receiving as much as £200,000.

You'd think this would be a cause for a cash-wad-fuelled cigars-and-champagne blowout of the kind that happens in movie montages and cause the protagonists to wake up bleary-eyed somewhere they don't recognise. But when I called trade unionist Dave Smith to talk about the payout, he was a little more circumspect. "Part of us is celebrating," said Dave, who was himself blacklisted. "Seven years ago they denied anything and didn't offer a single penny, and now some of us are being offered £200k, so there are some of us jumping for joy. Then there are some of us, like the 350 who haven't taken their offer, who are concerned that the way of the British justice system works means that companies can essentially buy themselves out of a trial."

If the companies manage to settle every case out of court, they won't have to go to trial, which could mean lower costs and less embarrassment.

Michael Newman, a solicitor with Leigh Day, a law firm involved in the cases, told me: "What is telling is how the companies have shifted their position over time: first they denied everything, then they set up a compensation scheme which was largely rejected by most workers and the unions, then they made an apology and limited series of admissions, then they started making better offers of compensation to everyone. This begrudging approach to the workers shows how the companies want to reveal as little information as possible, and minimise any compensation."

It's not just about money for these workers, but reputation. "The money represents a real triumph for many workers, as in many cases it is years' worth of pay", continued Michael. "However, it is only at the full trial in May where the public will see the details of exactly how the companies operated the blacklist."

Perhaps it's not surprising that companies don't want to hand over their info. In January, 30 companies were ordered to disclose all their emails about blacklisting. Among other things, this revealed that managers at Balfour Beatty referred to blacklisted workers as "sheep", which wasn't the best PR a caring company could hope for.

Then there's the fact that by avoiding court, the companies might be able to avoid exclusion from undertaking big public works. "You can be excluded from public contracts if you've committed grave misconduct, and that can include blacklisting," said Newman. The blacklisters run the risk of being blacklisted, so they're trying to pay their way out of it.

Fortunately for the companies involved, the British legal system has a mechanism that could help them avoid court – "Part 36 offers to settle".

Michael explained: "The rule is designed to put pressure on both the defendant and the claimant to accept reasonable offers. It's designed to prevent always asking for a bit more. In an ordinary negotiation you don't usually lose out anything by going back and saying, 'how about ten grand more?' How it works is if you don't beat the offer made, you have to meet the other side's costs."

Watch: Why the Deadly Asbestos Industry Is Still Alive and Well

"I'm just making up numbers. Let's say the offer is £5,000 and maybe we think if we go to court we'll get £6,000 or £7,000. Chances are I'd advise accepting the £5,000 because you could walk out of court with £4,000 – so you'd win, but you'd have to pay the companies' costs."

In this case, those costs are astronomical. No longer making up the numbers, Michael said: "The companies' legal costs are at the minute in excess of £25million. That is not a bill that any one individual or any one union can pay."

Dave had to leave the construction industry at the height of the building boom, thanks to a blacklist file that was 36 pages long and ran from 1992 to 2006. That's what he got for complaining about unpaid wages and raising safety concerns about asbestos and overflowing toilets. And that explains his determination to have his day in court when the trial starts in May. "For some of us, it's no longer about the money, it's about wanting the directors of these multinationals who did this to us to give evidence in high court. That's our driving ambition at the moment."

@SimonChilds13

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Europe's Steel Crisis Is Screwing Workers in South Wales

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Illustration by Jackie Sheridan

"He's new. Wearing a polyester number from Burton's. Looks cheap. Not like that one over there. Savile Row, he got that from, for sure."

It is 11PM in a cellar in the bowels of King's Cross – specifically, the still-slightly-ropey area round the back of the station. Doug, my hairy, red-faced guide, dressed in a natty brown three-piece suit and bright purple tie, pauses for a breather. He mops the sweat from his brow with a silk handkerchief. He is visibly excited, and no wonder: Doug is a suit fetishist, and we are at City Boys, London's premier (and, it seems, only) party for men who like to cruise in perfectly-pressed trousers, a dress shirt and a blazer or tuxedo.

The venue we're in hosts a number of the capital's more offbeat special interest parties; it's something of a last bastion of sleazy London in a part of town that's been all-but gentrified in the last few years. Tonight, though, the sight of a load of mainly middle-aged men standing around and sipping bottled beer in suits makes the place look more like it's been hired out for a risk assessment conference than a fetish party.

However, the video screens dotted around tell a different story, beaming out movies from the suit porn studio Men At Play. As a club remix of Marc Almond's "Worship Me Now" pulses in the background, a guy in suspenders (the hold-up socks that city gents apparently used to wear under their suits) is shown having sex with a second guy in a pinstripe number.

In the gloom of the basement bar, which is divided up by black drapes hung from the ceiling to create curtained-off play areas, the sophistication of the guests' attire ranges from baggy charity shop pleated trousers scuffed at the knees to immaculately-pressed Kilgour two-pieces with cutaway collared shirts and lush, expansive double-Windsor knotted Hermes ties. Tie and pocket square hues range from solid Square Mile blues and yellows to intricate paisley. So what is it exactly about suits that some people find such a turn on, and is it a fetish of the same order as, say, rubber or latex appreciation?

Jamie McDonald, who mans the cloakroom tonight and has worked at the club for five years, says that suit fetish is much more subtle.

"Ideas of a fetish are something out of the ordinary and 'kinky', yet something as mundane as a suit, or feet, even fingers, for some, can be a fetish. I wouldn't necessarily call it subversive if someone wants to look smart and enjoy a natural pleasure."

And yet, presumably there is more to it than that. Anyone hoping to join the US website suitandtiefetish.com is faced with nearly 40 questions about their suit-related kinks, ranging from the relatively innocuous "Do you like silky suit coat linings, vest and waistcoat backings?" to the more telling "Is looking at men in suits in catalogues and on the internet like looking at porn to you?" to the downright explicit "Do you cum on suit clothing?" and "Are you into suit bondage?"

Certainly, many of the men I speak to at City Boys are extremely particular about the cut and feel of their own suits, and those of the guys they seek to interact with in the club's darker corners. I ask Jamie how many of the regulars are hardcore suit and tie fetishists as opposed to dabblers just looking for a bit of action.

"About 95 percent are serious," he says. "As well as just enjoying wearing suits, they also enjoy quality materials; not just in suits, but in the shirts, ties, cufflinks, handkerchiefs, socks."

READ: Why Is the UK Suddenly So Obsessed with 'Chav Porn'?

And do they find high-quality designer clobber more erotic than, say, something cheap and shiny from Tesco's F&F?

"Definitely. Some of the guys have commented about the low quality suits on some 'newbies'."

One of the striking things about the club is how formal – almost "straight" – it looks in comparison with other fetish parties I've been to. Until, that is, you explore some of the darker corners where all sorts of things are going on. Does that add to the excitement?

"That is an element which has been there since the beginning... and has appealed to guys, to cruise, flirt and take it further, should they choose."

Tom, the club's promoter, has more to say on what makes suits so appealing.

"I think the turn on is because it is not a typical gay fetish like leather or rubber. There is a link to the real world. Like with sportswear, you can wear it in your daily life and nobody would even think that it is a fetish or you get turned on wearing it. It's also about masculinity. For me, a guy in a suit looks very manly. Also, power and dominance plays a part within the suit fetish. There seems to always be a boss and an office boy who has to work that little bit harder to please his boss."

I ask Tom what his strangest encounter at the club has been over the years.

"One night there was a gorgeous young guy here. I started talking to him and he told me that he was working in an investment bank in the city. He seemed very straightforward, and five minutes later I found myself with him in one of the darker corners of the venue. After we'd finished our business he told me he had to go because his girlfriend was waiting for him. I never saw him again, but it was one of the best encounters I ever had. I just wonder how he explained the stains on his suit to his girlfriend."

WATCH: 'The Digital Love Industry', our documentary about how technology is changing sex as we know it.

By now it's after midnight and most of the men who aren't getting to know each other in the two dungeon areas at the back of the club are standing around, beer in hand, cautiously eyeing one another in the hope of some action. I take the opportunity to ask Doug where he bought his outfit.

"This? Oh, it's Primark."

But you look like the kind of guy who'd spend considerably more on looking good.

"Well, I normally do. But what I'm really into is getting pissed on while wearing a suit. So it makes no sense to spend much."

Right.

"Best night I ever had was when I met this beautiful Swedish man with a huge beard. I dared him not to go to the toilet for the whole night. Finally he pissed on me, in me suit, and it was like the heavens opening. I walked home wringing wet with a smile on my face that night, I can tell you."

As Doug stares wistfully into his pint of cider, I make my excuses and leave the denizens of City Boys to their exceptionally well-dressed play. In a city like London, where people have such varied tastes and yet so many venues that previously accommodated those tastes are being closed down,it is heartening that an event as niche as City Boys is still thriving.

Names have been changed. CITY BOYS runs every first Friday of the month at Central Station, from 7PM to midnight.

More on VICE:

We Asked People About the Times Condoms Have Broken On Them During Sex

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A collection of tents in central Manchester

Manchester has seen a spike in homelessness in recent years. Official figures suggest that the number of rough sleepers in Greater Manchester rose by almost 50 percent from 2014 to 2015 – but then official figures can be misleading; it's been reported that town halls are getting their figures by doing head-counts in a single night and simply multiplying those over the year.

Homeless charities such as Manchester's Booth Centre believe the true figure is nearly triple the council's estimates, pointing to Manchester City Council's £59 million cut in funding to services in 2015/16 – which included reductions to the Homeless Prevention Grant – for the rise in rough sleeping.

On its website, the Booth Centre says: "In the last six months, the Booth Centre's Homeless Prevention Advice Service dealt with 2,557 advice enquiries from 556 individuals who were homeless or at risk of homelessness. Our four advice rooms are in constant use from 9AM every morning."

As such, one group of rough sleepers are taking matters into their own hands, which has prompted Manchester City Council to take action of their own against the homeless community.

The Ark, a group of homeless people who want to free up empty buildings so they can be used by the homeless, have been in running battles with the council. After after being forcibly removed from an area near Manchester Metropolitan University and pitching camp in the city centre, members of the group were served court summons, accused of breaking a court order that stops anyone from pitching tents in Manchester's city centre.

Ryan McFee

Ryan McFee, from The Ark, says: "They keep saying we're political – we're not. We're just trying to survive. The only thing we're trying to do is build a longer table, rather than a higher fence."

The council isn't having it, and has accused the defendants of disrupting businesses with intimidation, vandalism and more.

Ryan disagrees. "We had mattresses, clothes, portable toilets and a generator donated by people. We even had a sign out front saying 'This Is Not a Protest,' but the council came with bin-wagons and threw all our stuff away," he says. "We have to keep starting over, but we'll do it. We have to. If they're going to take the piss, we'll carrying on helping ourselves and each other out. The homeless shelters in Manchester are either too full, have no money, or they kick you out in the day. We want to do something different. Somewhere you can be, 24/7. Somewhere safe. The council don't want us to do that, for some reason."

The Stock Exchange Hotel

Local press in Manchester have been following The Ark story, but Manchester's homeless situation made national headlines towards the end of 2015, when a group of squatters and housing activists calling themselves the Manchester Angels – some of whom were also involved in The Ark – took residence in the Stock Exchange Hotel, which is being renovated by Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs, a couple of former Manchester United players.

One member of The Ark, who wants to remain anonymous, says: "The media were really interested in us all of sudden – probably just because they wanted some photos of some homeless people standing in a fancy building. Fuck 'em. They were gawping at us just because some footballers were involved – they didn't give a shit about what actually happened to us."

The agreement was that the group could stay in the building through the winter months, with Neville reportedly paying for security and regular meals for the new residents. However, at the end of January, the group were asked to leave so the major building work could begin.

READ ON VICE NEWS: Murder in the Jungle: The Brutal Killings That Woke Seattle Up to Its Homeless Crisis

The evictees moved on to Bradley House, a listed building being converted into a hotel, but were evicted from there a couple of weeks later. Shortly after, while coming up with their next move, a Romanian man apparently approached them and offered up a £10 note, which was divvied out to buy a hot meal for everyone.

"See? People think we're alright. And we are. No one person gets this money. That's not what this is about," says The Ark member.

Later, Ryan continues: "We all got together and wanted to help people – because the council aren't. They don't want us in unused buildings, so they kick us out on the street. We get together and they try to break us up. They don't like us being on the street, so they ban us from being in the city centre. What are we supposed to do?"

Another member of the group, Adam, adds: "We know what people think of us... we know what the media is like... we're not a political group, but people keeping making it political so we get listened to. It's nice that people want to get our voices out, but we really are just trying to make something happen that's better than what anyone else can do."

While Manchester Council opened up two night shelters in council buildings at the end of 2015, they are set to close in March, leaving a number of rough-sleepers to pay for rooms at hostels in the city centre. Away from the group, a homeless woman who wants to remain anonymous says: "It's a choice of eating or a bed for the night sometimes. And the streets are too dangerous at the minute."

Case in point: the tragic case of rough sleeper Daniel Smith, who was found burnt to death in his tent at the end of January. A post-mortem revealed he had been attacked before he died in the blaze, sustaining multiple injuries to his body.

WATCH: 'Hiding the Homeless'

So what's the solution? The easy answer: money.

Without funding, councils can't pay for services that allow the homeless a roof over their heads while they look for employment or apply for council housing. And this – unsurprisingly, given the Tory cuts that target the UK's most vulnerable – is not just a local concern. Speaking to a representative of homeless charity Crisis, I'm told that over 280,000 people in England alone went to help from their councils in the last 18 months. The Empty Homes Agency – an organisation that campaigns for empty homes to be used as housing for those who need it – say there are 610,000 empty houses across Britain which could be utilised to resolve this spiralling problem.

For now, Ryan and others will carry on doing what they can in the face of council opposition. "We're not here for a laugh. We're not trying to prove a point – we're just trying to survive," he says. "The Ark's trying to make a safe area. If no one is helping us, why try to stop us? Why refuse us legal aid? Why throw all our stuff in Biffa vans? Why not work with us? It's fuckin' bullshit."

If you want to support The Ark, you can donate money here.

@mofgimmers / @CBethell_Photo

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I Am One of Britain's Hidden Homeless

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The author and his baby, signing off.

Sup, y'all. I regret to inform you that this is my last installment of Yeah Baby. Sorry, no disrespect, but baby blogs are weak. They're corny as fuck. Who even reads them? I know I don't. If you have seriously been coming here for parenting advice you're sus as hell. Just live your life, man. Ain't no big mystery. You don't need nobody to hold your hand and walk you through it. It's simple as fuck, mane: feed it, change it, pinch its lil cheeks. YOU need ME to tell YOU how to raise YOUR kid? You must be trippin'. I don't even know you or your kid, and frankly how you raise lil homie is none of my business.

Like I told y'all right off the bat, I only did this column for the money, and now that I live in Mexico where median rent is like 20 bucks it's kinda like, the fuck I need to be writing this shit for?

Look, nobody knows how to raise your kid better than you. They're literally made out of you. You don't need some other fool you never met making you second guess your innate, inborn, natural parental instincts. People been having babies for like two hundred million years. It's like the main thing we do as an animal species. Matter fact it's pretty much like the only thing we do, aside from collectively building our robot replacements.

Parenting as a literary genre and general marketing concept is really just the needless compartmentalization and commodification of knowledges that are otherwise naturally apprehended through hella various facets of cultural experience, my g. You don't need to be a parenting expert—there's no such thing anyway—you just need to be a parent. See what I did there? It's folksy truisms like that that had the readers eating out of my hand. That's the whole game right there.

Contrary to what some of those parenting gurus out there might have you believing, it ain't rocket science. There are no rules to raising a kid, and the people trying to explain the rules to you are either just trying to make money (like your boy been) or else just boring squares, half of them with no concept of what reality is, let alone what it could be, let alone how to help a child kick it in and build these realities. They're solely operating on how they've been told reality should be, and that, brother, is neither lit nor wavy.

Parenting as a literary genre and general marketing concept is really just the needless compartmentalization and commodification of knowledges that are otherwise naturally apprehended through hella various facets of cultural experience, my g.

All that being said, I ain't gonna lie, I was a pretty tight parenting columnist. I was hella real at this. I gave it to you from the horse's mouth, bruh, you must admit. I was spitting fire darts and gems. I ain't hold back, I gave it to you straight, no chaser. I had hella fire bars on here. Man, we had some fun, didn't we? Good times. I dropped some real crystal diamond gemstones. If you ever find yourself missing my literary style, go check out my horoscopes on Paper Magazine. Horoscopes are the O.G. mommy blog.

Now, I know what you're thinking, and don't worry, I'll eventually compile all these 'Yeah Baby' columns into a slim lil book for all y'all hipster new parents to put on y'all's salvaged antique coffee tables in Billyburg, Portlandia, Oaklandia, Silver Lake, etc. Most likely coming out next year on Sorry House, cop that.

But more importantly—and I'm glad you brought up Sorry House, because that segues hella well into what I was about to say—I got a novel coming out on Sorry House. I already wrote it the one time but my wife ain't like it so I've been writing it over again since December. I'm on chapter like 94 out of 100. Should be done soon and out later this year. I like it better than the last one, I think. And I got a lil art book coming out before that so keep your eyes peeled. Anyway, in the meantime, to hold you over, you can listen to the soundtrack to the novel, this 100-song album I just put out (digital only, pay-what-you-want).

Oh, plus I just dropped a new video. It's flames, check that out.

And you can find the other videos off that 100 song album here here and here.

As you can plainly see, it's nonstop fuckin' hits from the kid.

Got some other lil music projects poppin' off soon, and I'm sure you'll read all about them on, say, VICE and elsewhere, but be sure to follow your boy @veeveeveeveevee on Twitter and IG. Also follow my wife @cultdays and peruse her haute bb couture line @kool_days and cop some rare gear for a bb in your life.

So I mean, like, yeah, peace. It's been real, guys. Good luck, break a leg, ciao, arrivederci, mashallah as salaam alaikum, mazeltov, Jah Rastafari, turn up, do your thing, have fun, much love. Babalu. Ave Maria, Chango.

Follow Kool AD on Twitter.

Louis Marinelli. Photo Courtesy of Louis Marinelli

You've heard this before: If California were suddenly its own country, its $2.3 trillion GDP would make it the eighth biggest economy in the world—just below Brazil and above Italy. Well, now a political party gunning for legitimacy in California has turned that hypothetical into its entire political platform.

"Our dream is to have California become its own country separate from the United States," said Louis Marinelli, one of the founders of the California National Party who is currently campaigning to be a representative for California's 80th State Assembly district, which includes much of San Diego. "We think the country system is broken, and we don't feel that our future is best if we remain in that system."

The name of the party is "inspired by the Scottish National Party," Marinelli told VICE in an interview, referring to the dominant political party in Scotland. "We would like to follow their footsteps," he added. The California party is an offshoot of a campaign called Yes California, a nod to Yes Scotland, the unsuccessful campaign in support of a "Yes" vote in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

The Scottish National Party (SNP)—unlike many nationalist groups, including its far-right British counterpart, the BNP—has a mostly leftist, though still fairly mainstream, ideology. However, Marinelli, who refers to himself as a "quasi-democrat who happens to support independence," has no such ideological agenda. "If you think California has what it takes to be an independent country, and that we should do that," he said, "welcome to the party."

California has made overtures toward officially recognizing the CNP. Last month, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla asked all of the state's counties to monitor the number of CNP registrations, although because that data hasn't come in yet, the party's actual popularity is still unknown. Sam Mahood, a spokesperson for the California Secretary of State, told VICE in an email that the CNP is still without the full privileges of a political party, and as such, is "not qualified to participate in the June 7, 2016 presidential primary election."

The process of earning recognition as a party involves establishing a platform and endorsing bills in Sacramento in order to "make friends," Mike Ross, a career lobbyist who works as CNP's political strategist and legislative liaison, told VICE. As Ross tells it, the creation of a new political party is routine: "You show up and testify. You talk to some legislators and that's it," he said. The CNP, he added, is "just wading into the shallow end of the pool."

As for the party's funding, there isn't much yet, according to Theo Slater, general counsel for the CNP. "We have not had many expenses so far, but we have begun to do some targeted spending." Slater said in an email. He added: "We have some basic infrastructure such as banners and signs."

Marinelli's ambitions as an assemblyman are relatively modest. In fact, he says people have the wrong idea about him and his separatist cause. "They say, 'You're gonna go to Sacramento and you're gonna declare independence!' But that's not the way it legally works," he explained.

Separatist views aside, Marinelli is just a 29-year-old moderate liberal from Buffalo, New York, who says he used to be "the conservative poster boy American patriotic citizen." Since he's not a native Californian, he considers himself an immigrant to the state, and professes a love for the diversity of cultures and languages in his adopted home. His pet issue is criminal justice reform, and he says as an assemblyman he would "go to Sacramento and take on police unions."

Marinelli is confident that his separatist cause will have allies in the remaining 49 states, and he says his previous background as a Fox News viewer gives him some insight. "If you look at public opinion of California, it's the least liked and respected state in the country." Congress, he explained, has 54 representatives and two senators pushing the agenda of Californians, a group that he feels is culturally and ideologically distinct from the United States.

"A lot of Americans would be willing to allow California to leave the country, and I don't think it would hurt them altogether, because it would make the country more governable," Marinelli said.

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The emojis in question

Social conservatism in Indonesia, the country with the world's largest Muslim-majority, is rising. Things took an almost comical turn last week when the messaging app LINE removed LGBT-themed emojis from its store, citing complaints from its 30 million Indonesian users. In a post on its Indonesian Facebook page, the app producer apologized to users offended by the LGBT stickers and emoticons, which included two men holding hands and two women with a heart between them.

But this is just the beginning. Ismail Cawidu, PR spokesman for the Ministry of Communications, told local media last week the government will consult with WhatsApp—used by over half of Indonesia's 255 million strong population—to remove any gay-friendly emoticons, which are available for free on the app. Cawidu praised LINE for its speed in removing the "offending" images, which he said "could potentially cause public unrest."

The government's demands come after weeks of increasing hysteria, dubbed the "LGBT panic" by one Jakarta-based news blog, marking an unease between LGBT-identifying Indonesians and the wider community.

In late January, supporters of a LGBT group based on the campus of the University of Indonesia in Jakarta went public after the university and Higher Education Ministry banned the group. The Support Group and Resource Center on Sexuality Studies (SGRC) had caught the attention of higher education minister Muhammad Nasir after pamphlets advertising the group's services, such as counseling for depressed and suicidal LGBT youth, were circulated online. The minister contacted the university's leadership directly and was told the student group had not been officially sanctioned. Shortly after, the University of Indonesia released a statement distancing itself from the center.

In the days that followed, Minister Nasir made a string of comments to the media about SGRC, strongly asserting his ministry's position on gay rights. "LGBT is not in accordance with the values and morals of Indonesia. I forbid ," he told local news portal Detik in January.

In a January blog post, SGRC co-founder Firmansyah hit back, arguing groups such as his are important on Indonesia's campuses. "We are fully aware of the high risk involved , as evident by the rampant media attention on our organization lately," he wrote. "We created a LGBT Peer Support Network because LGBT teens in Indonesia are more prone to suicide as a result of rejection and discrimination they received from the society."

Ridwan Kamil, the mayor of West Java's capital Bandung, also weighed in on the controversy, telling his 2.5 million constituents—including a likely sizable group of LGBT citizens—that while he supports the rights of LGBT people to exist, they should be neither seen nor heard.

Mayor of West Java's capital Bandung, Ridwan Kamil. Image via

"We cannot live as freely as we want. The fact is that there are people who are "different," he said in January. "Sexual preferences should be a private matter and cannot be exposed or campaigned about publicly because there are social behaviors that are not acceptable in Indonesia."

While a handful of Indonesia's leaders have taken a stand against the frenzy—notably Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama who characteristically dismissed the manufactured crisis as a distraction from more pressing issues, such as the spread of HIV/AIDS—there's little hope of change in the near future.

Veronica Korman, a public interest lawyer at the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute, told VICE that while Indonesia doesn't have explicit laws banning homosexuality—as its neighbors Singapore and Malaysia do—the current laws safeguarding human rights are "too general" to protect gay Indonesians. "The current laws, the current society, and the current government elites are all failing LGBT people," said Koman.

In Aceh, Indonesia's only province which practices Sharia law, individuals found guilty of "homosexuality" can expect 100 lashes as punishment, Veronica said. In a recent case, two women were arrested in the province last September for "hugging."

Majelis Ulama Indonesia, the country's top Muslim body, issued a fatwa (a ruling on Islamic law) against non-heterosexuality in 2014, calling for the death penalty to be issued for those found in violation.

However, it's the more subtle discrimination against LGBT Indonesians, from marriage, to pornography, to adoption, to emojis, that speak to the broader entrenched homophobia in the country.

"I think we are still far, far away from having a law specifically recognizing and protecting LGBT people from discrimination," Korman said. "The LGBT community has been pushing the agenda of recognition of LGBT people to the government, but it seems like it's not working."

Chika Noya of the Alliance for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) sees the failures of the law to protect Indonesia's LGBT community as another victim of the country's legal system, widely viewed as corrupt.

Noya cited a United Nations Development Program report that found the cynical belief in law enforcement and government in Indonesia may leave "many activists not confident in laws and policies that could protect LGBT people."

A Center for Strategic and International Studies poll conducted in October 2015 found the national police and the Indonesian parliament rank as the least trusted public institutions in the country. Often seen as operating outside of the law and with their own agenda, police and lawmakers face the derision of a community supportive of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), the country's anti-corruption agency that routinely ranks among the most trusted, in its efforts to weed out corruption in Indonesia's government and police.

"Everything has to conform with relevant social and religious beliefs in Indonesia," Noya said. "The government always hides behind morals to cover the corruption."

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The ninth floor of the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles has hosted every recent marquee criminal trial in LA, from OJ Simpson to Dr. Conrad Murray of Michael Jackson fame. On Tuesday morning, the place was packed for a trip back to the crack era of the 1980s, when prosecutors say Lonnie Franklin Jr. murdered ten women and tried to kill another.

"The evidence in this case will tell a story. A story of a serial killer who stalked the streets of South Los Angeles," said Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman. "And that serial killer, ladies and gentlemen is the defendant, Lonnie Franklin."

Franklin is known as the "Grim Sleeper" because he may have taken a respite from his allegedly murderous ways during the 1990s.

It's been five years since the man's arrest, and the family members of his alleged victims have been made to endure repeated delays in getting the criminal proceedings underway. On Tuesday, they took up nearly half of the courtroom, marked by special badges doled out to make sure they got a seat inside the overflowing galley.

Besides the occasional murmur or muffled exclamation from the crowd, the room was silent as Silverman described how and where each victim's body was found, along with the evidence she said linked them to Franklin. All the victims were black women between the ages of 15 and 35: Barbara Ware, Alicia Alexander, Valerie McCorvey, Henrietta Wright, Debra Jackson, Bernita Sparks, Mary Lowe, Janecia Peters, Princess Berthomieux; and the one surviving victim, Enrieta Washington.

Franklin sat motionless throughout the day, wearing a crisp, baby-blue collared shirt, a tie, and glasses. He's accused of killing the women between 1985 and 2007, with the bulk of the crimes allegedly taking place in the late 80s. Silverman painted a bleak picture of South Los Angeles during this era, describing crack cocaine's impact on the community as a "lethal epidemic."

"Crack devoured those who succumbed to its seductively cheap price and powerful high," she said.

When it first emerged, crack had an even higher purity than it does today, according to Silverman. Combined with the drug's "highly addictive" nature, the impact on the community was disastrous. All but one of the Franklin's alleged victims were found to have cocaine in their system at the time of autopsy, Silverman told jurors.

Many of the victims were women who "lost their way" and sold their "bodies and souls" to get the drugs they craved, she said, suggesting Franklin took advantage of that vulnerability.

" someone who knew the streets and the dark alleys by heart," Silverman said. "Someone who lived there and was able to blend in. Someone who knew where the drug-addicted women and perhaps prostitutes would congregate."

Although the broad strokes of the case have been well-tread by media reports, the first day of trial introduced some especially searing details. For one, some of the victims were shot at such close range that the gun burned their skin or clothes.

"The evidence in this case is, and I warn you, extremely disturbing," Silverman cautioned the jury.

Check out our documentary about a serial killer who targeted black women in Cleveland.

The prosecution went deep into these details when Lisa Scheinin, a retired deputy medical examiner from the LA County Coroner's office, took the stand. As graphic pictures of victim Janecia Peters's body flashed on the projector screen, Scheinin explained how she was found naked, curled in the fetal position and covered with a trash bag.

She pointed to diagrams and photographs of Peters's body and explained how a gunshot wound ripped through her back and spine. Peters's final moments would have been extraordinarily traumatic ones, Scheinin explained.

"I felt that because you have an injury to the spinal cord, she would have definitely been paralyzed below the waist," Scheinin said. "And she could easily have had trouble breathing because of spinal shock."

For his part, Franklin has pleaded not guilty to all counts, but his defense team, led by attorney Seymour Amster, declined to make an opening statement in the case. Instead, they remained silent throughout most of the day Tuesday, save for the occasional objection or cross-examination, at one point suggesting Peters should have been missing more than one acrylic nail if she struggled with an attacker.

The Grim Sleeper trial is expected to last three to four months, with the bulk of the testimony revolving around forensic and DNA evidence.

Follow Hayley Fox on Twitter.

A model holds up Black Lives Matter activist MarShawn McCarrel's last tweet in the Pyer Moss NWFW show. All photos by Jonathan Gardenhire

On Saturday afternoon, designer Kerby Jean-Raymond's Pyer Moss fashion label unveiled its fall/winter 2016 "double bind" collection. Kerby presented a collection of oversized shearlings, leggings underneath matching shorts, patterned puffy overalls, and statement shirts with phrases—"You don't have any friends in LA," for example—in small, black print that disparaged the City of Angels. The Erykah Badu-styled runway presentation physically manifested its theme in the way the singer wrapped two pieces of white masking tape around the models' boots and in the parallel lines that appeared throughout the collection.

The event also continued Kerby's use of fashion as a way to highlight issues that extend beyond the runway. In an effort to spotlight depression, Jean-Raymond opened the presentation with a choir of opera signers dressed in white Pyer Moss–designed hospital gowns, who made an aria out of Future's " Trap Niggas." The models also wore hats with prescription drug labels like "Xanax" and "Oxy" pinned on them. As the choir continued to create operatic trap music, a model dressed in a matching powdered blue jacket and pants closed the show by protesting down the runway holding a white sign that read in bold, black lettering: "MY DEMONS WON TODAY IM SORRY."

The moment represented a double entendre. It evoked the sad reality that depression sometimes leads to suicide. It also represented a clear continuation of the label's spring/summer 2016 Black Lives Matter theme. The words on the sign alluded to the recent suicide of MarShawn McCarrel, the Black Lives Matter protester who shot and killed himself on the steps of the Ohio Statehouse. The scene was a chilling reminder that, for Pyer Moss, the clothes truly are about making a statement.

Below, check out backstage pictures from the fashion presentation, which includes the queen of neo-soul's debut as a fashion stylist.

- Antwaun Sargent

The author, lounging in one of the rooms. All photos by Rebecca Colquhoun

This post originally appeared on VICE Australia.

Le Boudoir is one of Melbourne, Australia's few brothels to be run entirely by women. Jill, who has been in the industry for 40 years, opened the place in 1998. She's a sharp but kind lady, in a no-bullshit way, and after a few meetings, Jill invited me and my photographer friend to come spend Valentine's Day at her establishment. I had some questions that I thought only a brothel could answer.

It's often assumed women care about Valentine's and men don't. As a single bartender, I usually spend the day witnessing other people's traditions rather than creating my own, and honestly, from the other side of the bar, it doesn't look like I'm missing out. I don't think about Valentine's, and I don't get lonely, even though I know more than a few single women who do. Having said that, I wondered about the supposed gender divide on Valentine's loneliness and decided a brothel could offer some insights. Is it true that lonely men just want to fuck? Or does Valentine's have no bearing on the sex industry at all?

From outside

10:35 PM

Le Boudoir is in the Victorian-era industrial/hipster suburb of Collingwood, snuggled between an alley and the back of a Porsche dealership.

CCTV cameras outside the front door

Past the front door, we found ourselves in a public waiting room decadently furnished with two sofas and lots of gold. No one was around, but I felt underdressed. Is there even a dress code for visiting a brothel? I rang the doorbell, and a receptionist let us into the inner sanctum. The deal is that people can come in off the street, staff can eye them off via CCTV while they sit in the waiting room, and the employees can decide whether they're going to let these men inside. I wondered what kind of conversations arise while dudes hang around the waiting room.

Phones in the inner waiting room. The receptionist uses these to call the girls in the rooms when their client's time is up.

10:40 PM

Once inside, we were given a brief tour by the receptionist, who was an older woman with perfect hair and a warm smile. The rooms just got better and better. There was a kind of opulent Elizabethan theme to the place, contrasted with the sound of their constantly ringing phone and a playlist of DJ Snake and Zara Larsson. Was that "Habits" by Tove Lo? Yes, it was.

It's all about silky textures.

10:42 PM

The receptionist, who didn't want her name mentioned, led us to the staff room. "This is the only place you can stay because the rest of the rooms are being used," she announced, glancing at the CCTV monitor. "Wait a sec, I'll be right back." She left us to answer the phone outside.

Le Bourdoir has six working rooms, four upstairs and two downstairs. There are the two waiting rooms: one public and one private. On the CCTV monitor, we could see both, but we were under strict instructions not to leave the room because we'd freak out the clients. The girls would come in on their individual breaks, and we'd have a chance to ask questions. Until then, we'd just have to wait.

Here's what we could see on the monitors.

11 PM

The monitor was fascinating. I watched as guys were admitted into the second room, where they'd meet the girls one by one until they decided who to go with. This was a time for each woman to advertise her strengths and set boundaries, if need be. As each woman introduced herself, you could see her instantly get into character. They all seemed so confident and in control—from the way they walked to the way they sat down. As I watched the ghostly screen, I realized it was a skill but also an act.

I watched each new couple journey up the stairs, into a room, and close the door.

Doing some laundry

11:18 PM

Time was going slowly, so I decided to fold some towels in a wash basket on the staff room floor. I don't even do this at home. My photographer friend Rebecca and I took turns watching the monitor.

Phoenix didn't want a photo, so here's the house laundry.

11:24 PM

Finally, a 28-year-old woman named Phoenix came in on her break. With short blonde hair and a curvaceous figure, she explained to us that she was only working to raise cash for a business venture. She explained that she'd only been working two days but already loved the job. She also had a theory that guys are looking for more than just sex. "There's so much crap out there now with Tinder and all that, people can get a shag so easily," she said. "A quality connection is something that's really hard to come by, and that's what men are looking for, even on Valentine's Day."

Adaline's shoes

11:43 PM

Twenty minutes later, another woman named Adaline came into the staff room. She was easily the most excited person we heard from all night. She had a small figure, long brown hair, and I noticed how casually she lounged around on the couch. We started talking about her most memorable experiences, and she regaled us with a story of a guy who barked every time he came.

The conversation shifted to what she'd learned at Le Boudoir. She explained the insights sex work has given her about relationships. "We hear a lot about the arguments men have with their partners," she said. "When I went home, back when I had a partner, hearing these perspectives meant I could understand where he was coming from. So working here helped me gain that perspective in my own personal love life."

It never fails to amaze me how sex workers like Adaline can maintain romantic relationships. Personally, I don't think I could make that work, but I can understand how these women do. For these women, there's a dissociation between sex and legitimate intimacy, which their clients could even find attractive.

The best reality TV I've ever seen

12:00 AM

It was Valentine's Day, and I was surrounded by escorts, laundry, and some really interesting TV. I don't think any future partner can beat that.

Josie's back

12:25 AM

Josie, 45, told me that she'd been in the sex industry on and off for 20 years, and like Phoenix, she felt that working in a brothel allowed her to ditch some of life's pretenses. "We all have these socially acceptable masks that we've been brought up to put on," she said. "Getting intimate with strangers, as we do here, means we can get behind the mask quickly."

I asked her about how she thinks Valentine's Day affects sex work, and she paused to flick her fringe out of her eyes. "It's good for people who feel left out during this Valentine's crap to come here," she said thoughtfully. "We're all vulnerable animals you know, even when it comes to love." She told me that her last client, just five minutes earlier, wanted her to act as though they were in love. "It was weird, but it was a fantasy. He was even saying that he wanted me to have his children. I mean, I like fantasies. I put effort into fulfilling them, but the thing about fantasies here is that they eventually end."

Supplies in the house showers

With that, the receptionist popped in, and Josie rushed out to her next client, who had just finished showering and was waiting upstairs.

Raine in pink

12:40 AM

I was surprised all night at how everyone was so positive about men. Finally, a woman with a gentle demeanor and big boobs named Raine disagreed. "Porn is too accessible," she told me, before launching into a description of how damaged her customers can be. "You can tell the men who are affected by it because they base their ideas of sex, women, and relationships on porn. They lack a certain humanity and human connection in relation to love."

The staff room coffee table by the end of the night

1:00 AM

We left after talking to Raine, followed by the stares of the guys hanging around the house. At the receptionist's desk, I realized there is another monitor and a buzzer connected to phones in every room. This lets the women know when their time is running out. Our time at Le Boudoir had similarly come to an end.

1:11 AM

Valentine's Day for Le Boudoir ended up being busier than anyone expected. As I sat in the empty staff room, hearing thoughts from the girls as they came and went, I decided that maybe brothels exist for more complex reasons than I'd expected. Maybe Adaline summed it up best: "Guys want company, and we're here to provide it," she'd told me. "The whole industry is just funded by people who are lonely."

Follow Mariam on Twitter.

Heading back down the stairs to leave

Even 'The Simpsons' knows. Screenshot via 'The Simpsons'

When a link to a documentary about Winnipeg being colder than Mars came up in my feed, I felt a pang of sympathy for my former self, struggling year after year in the city of my birth. It was December 31, 2013 when reports flooded social media that it was -20.2 F on Mars, while in Winnipeg it was hella colder than that, with temperatures before the windchill dropping to -36.4 F.

While that particular day made headlines, Manitoba temperatures are rather prone to dropping below those of Mars. As a kid, I understood that from Christmas through Easter, -4 F was a tolerable day, 14 F was awesome, and -22 F or lower meant rough times. In Toronto, I get to add at least ten degrees onto each figure.

Looking back, this part of my childhood seems like a past triumph born of desperation: You're not totally sure how you got through it, or if you could do it again. (Quick shout out to all my pals chilling in the 'peg to this day.)

The author as a baby hanging out on a sled in a city colder than Mars. Photo via the author

When I was a kid, Mars was never something we compared Winnipeg's frozen winters to. I never even thought of Mars as having a cold atmosphere: In photographs, the red planet looked pretty balmy compared to the white glare threatening to blind us all on so many crushing mornings when we awoke to newly crested snowdrifts.

Pre-internet, when it was more difficult to compare climate stats, we kids were told our city was "colder than cities in Russia, but not some Russian towns," an odd distinction (plus pretty much untrue), but we longed to be the best, the most, the superlative at something, anything, clinging even to the dubious title of Murder Capital.

We knew it was colder up north (including the mysterious territories where "almost no one lived,"—thanks, Canada's education curriculum), but of the cities getting coverage on national news, it was easy to be confident that we had it the worst, and one of my aunts used to confirm this, on days when the windchill pushed below -40 F or a blizzard dropped 30 centimeters of snow, by calling from Vancouver to gloat. I grew up with the understanding that for half the year, my city and I were the planet's underdogs.

And maybe we needed that to pull through each winter. My great and great-great grandparents were likely less hostile colonial settlers and more refugees taken for fools when they immigrated to Canada and arrived at the point where the Red and Assiniboine rivers conjoin. It's understandable that they perhaps began to hold the Red River Valley's harsh conditions as proof of their strength and an excuse for their failures.

It's easier to be lenient of everything from mediocrity to intense eccentricity in a city where you and all your neighbors are held captive by a cruel deep freeze for half of each year.

There's a renown tolerance for weirdness (or, at least, white weirdness) in Winnipeg that's best exemplified by the strange art of Guy Maddin and the Royal Art Lodge, or all the musicians who've holed up over the winters making albums. But it also spills over into a stoic acceptance of and openness to humanity's shadowy sides, from substance abuse to mental health issues. Looking back on frank discussions about various family members or downtown maladies, I realize it was Winnipeg attitudes that taught me to look at seemingly perfect families and institutions with suspicion or even pity, wondering what awful secrets might defrost in their yards in the springtime.

Better to wear discontent on the outside, I learned, like the Red River Valley trees, which, frozen for nearly half the year, are forced to stop growing for so long that I imagine they begin again in spring with no recollection of where they left off, rushing to make up lost time through hot, dry Winnipeg summers, twisting their bodies over the years into strange, mangled monstrosities I've never seen the likes of anywhere else.

When describing life in Winnipeg now, I find the warped trees along the riverbank are my easiest metaphor, unless my conversation buddy has seen Guy Maddin's myth-building avant-garde homage My Winnipeg, a film which had my mom lol-ing in the theater and has served as an icebreaker with random movie lovers from around the world, who tend to then be super impressed that I'm a flesh and blood representative of the place.

"Are you really allowed to keep your old keys and enter all your old apartments?" one Australian asked me, in reference to one of the silly legends Maddin made up for the movie.

And it might have more to do with Winnipeg's small-town vibe (and our murder-capital eschewing "Friendly Manitoba" license plates), but I can't imagine any new tenant of my old Winnipeg addresses turning me down if I tried. I imagine, more likely, that they'd stand awkwardly in the doorway, smiling politely, and letting me mentally replace their furniture with the pre-IKEA ghosts of my past, all the while dreading the moment when my gang of robber pals run in to ransack the place. The tightrope walk of Winnipeg's high tolerance/high crime anxiety-state tracing lines of conflict over a guarded face.

The first time someone pointed out Manitoba-face to me, I was 17. A prodigal son on a brief respite back to Winnipeg after a decade of travel pointed at people on the 60 bus, saying he'd never seen faces like these anywhere else on the continent. I understood this more in the years to follow, when I'd become a stunned visitor myself, experiencing culture shock when confronted with symbols of my heritage.

I think it's true that over the years, the human faces in the land that's colder than Mars accrue the same staggered aging effects as the trees: a weathered, frozen countenances that haven't quite taken on the consistency of elm bark but have been marked by patterns of weather more harsh and vigorous than elsewhere. In moments of vanity, I'll wonder if my childhood winters sealed the fate of my features.

Born in February, a.k.a. the month when all my friends in Toronto decide to stop going out until it's leather jacket weather again, I remember my cliff-jumping birthday parties clearly, which is surprising giving what a cliff-jumping party was. I don't know where my parents got the idea (I assume their lack of budget made them resourceful), but on February weekends, a gaggle of children—mostly girls—would pile into my dad's truck, and we'd squish together in our puffy snowsuits all the way to the Red River, about a ten minute drive from my house.

There, we'd dive from the riverbanks into the deep (sometimes several-little-girls-high) snow drifts below, again and again, running and throwing ourselves from the cliff edges until someone landed too rough or couldn't take it anymore and started crying. Then we'd pull ourselves miserably back to my house and struggle out of our clothing, rings of burning-cold snow lining our wrists, ankles, throats, and waists, and prepare ourselves to pound back hot chocolate.

I mentioned these parties to a co-worker of mine in Toronto, and he remarked that my parents were lucky they never got sued, which stands, hilariously, in my memory as one of those moments when someone really can never get where you come from.

CanCon stereotypes are funny, but in Winnipeg, I did get pulled around behind a German Shepard in a wooden sleigh, and my friends and I had igloos or quinzees (basically a hollowed out snow pile) in our yards every winter until we got to lazy, or too cool, to bother building them anymore.

More than any other, though, this now legendary phenomena of Winnipeg being colder than Mars mostly conjures one specific memory for me.

Related: Watch 'Inside the Superhuman World of Iceman'

I was 12 or 13, past snow fort age but not past the age where I might have half enthusiastically helped my little brother dig one out over a weekend. I was walking to school in a blizzard in some of the harshest weather I can remember. Picture a journey-to-the-South-Pole type movie of the week, except instead of your protagonists fighting nature for some noble goal, I was going to my junior high school social studies class. I remember thinking a thought not unfamiliar to Winnipeggers: Maybe I should just lay down in the snow and give up.

A city bus stopped beside me, which was odd since I was walking on a side street. The door opened, and the driver asked me if I was going to school. When the driver said she was going to give me a lift, I could have cried. I rode the empty miracle bus the few remaining blocks to school as the ice melted off my eyelashes.

In the brick building where life was generally a monotonous nightmare for us all, it turned out while a bunch of kids had stayed home, some had shown up. No one was impressed that I'd dragged my tiny body through such extreme weather, and the heroic rescue faded from my mind for years.

In looking for photos for this essay, I realized I have almost none. We don't take photos when it's 20 or 40 degrees below freezing. We pull our sleeves over our mittens, and we keep an eye peeled, hoping some kind bus driver, or passing space ship, will offer a ride.

A small section of Mars is now named after Winnipeg, but the hype has been contested—one Winnipeg Free Press article points out, in typical Winnipeg-hating-on-Winnipeg fashion, that one stat comparison shows Vancouver could be described as colder than Mars.

While I have yet to see Colder Than Mars, the documentary that's attempting to capitalize on 2013's viral Winnipeg vs. Mars sensationalism, it's telling that the trailer starts with one of the two Simpsons quotes that reference the city: "We were born here, what's your excuse."

Winnipeggers, feeling constantly under-appreciated for our abilities to slog through the horror of -58 F with the windchill—and don't you dare say the windchill doesn't count—are just as identity obsessed as everyone else, only we want to compete for worst-place, seeking shout outs like the thirstiest of fanboys.

Yet it's the doc's quick frame of some party girls outside of country bar Whiskey Dix or wherever that makes me a little homesick. For the privileged majority, basic survival through a Winnipeg winter isn't that difficult, but for the city's entire population, it's actually living through one—going dancing, turning snowdrifts into amusement parks, not stopping to nap in a snowbank forever—that requires incredible emotional stamina.

As a white girl from Fort Garry who still mumbles, "fuck, a booter," when the ground gives and I feel my shoe fill with snow, Winnipeg shaped me in many ways—I won't leave anything of mine in a car without hiding it, which people in Toronto seem to find bizarre—but I'm grateful to its harsh winters for showing me that isolation and intense circumstances can breed not only weirdness but defiance and brilliance, whatever it is: a film like Maddin's Saddest Music in the World, artist Kelly Ruth's noise instrument, or Venetian Snares's fuck-you take on electronic music.

Winnipeg taught me that if we ever beam people up to the Red planet, there won't just be existence on Mars. There will be life.

Follow Kristel Jax on Twitter.

On his trip this week to Mexico, Pope Francis has described the local drug cartels as "dealers of death."

The pontiff isn't exactly holding back in lambasting the corruption and pain drug violence has brought to Mexico. Residents I spoke to in the border city of Juarez, once dubbed the murder capital of the world with more than 10,000 homicides between 2008 and 2012, eagerly anticipated his visit Wednesday, embracing the tough line on the cartels even as they feared a spiritual appeal was doomed to fall short.

"We hope that he offers mercy and peace, which is essential here," said Dr. Pedro Bedolla, a dentist in downtown Juarez. "There are cartels here and cartels there, and we are in the middle. Hopefully the pope's prayers will protect us."

Bedolla says his wife's nephew was killed in the city's violence, and that he knows business owners who have been threatened with extortion. In recent years, the level of violence has dropped in Juarez, but there were more than 430 homicides in the city in 2014, roughly the same number as Chicago last year—which saw the most homicides in the United States.

Of course, Juarez has a population about half the size of Chicago's.

Last spring, city officials launched a campaign to restart tourism called "Juarez is waiting for you" to overhaul the city's image. But some residents said the violence in Juarez has ebbed in recent years only because one of the cartels—El Chapo's Sinaloa—gained the upper hand.

The pope was deliberate in including the state of Michoacán—where he visited Tuesday—and the border city of Juarez in his five-day foray to the country. These are among the places hardest hit by the drug violence. Meanwhile, nearly 40 percent of people in Juarez live in poverty, and thousands work in the maquilas, border factories where workers make an average of around $400 per month.

But after once urging Americans not to travel to Juarez, the US State Department now just advises caution. Thousands of Americans are expected to cross the border to see the pope Wednesday.

In addition to addressing poverty and policing issues, residents like Carmelo Ramirez, 37, a street merchant, think the church has to clean its own house. Some Mexican priests have reportedly taken narco alms—or donations from the drug traffickers.

"The church can't close its eyes," Ramirez told me. He, too, has a nephew who was caught in the crossfire of rival cartels and died five years ago.

Marisela Medellin, 43, who works at an optical shop, thinks the pope can help just by calling attention to the violence. "We need his blessing," she said.

She added that some businesses closed after the violence peaked several years ago, but things are trending in the right direction. "The business district is calm now," she told me.

Medellin commended the pope for speaking plainly when many government officials, including President Enrique Peña Nieto, she believes, don't address the problems head on. Suspicion of government collusion with the cartels only grew after notorious drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera escaped from prison a second time last July. Actors Sean Penn and Kate del Castillo met with El Chapo before he was recaptured again last month, causing embarrassment to the government. (Guzmán could eventually be extradited to face trial in Brooklyn.)

"The president pretends that all is calm. But it's not. The pope speaks more forcefully," Medellin said.

Pope Francis on Saturday told priests and bishops at the cathedral in Mexico City to go to the peripheries, work with families, and connect with parish communities, schools, and the authorities. Only then "will people finally escape the raging waters that drown so many, either victims of the drug trade or those who stand before God with their hands drenched in blood, though with pockets filled with sordid money and their consciences deadened," he said.

Juarez, Mexico. Photo by the author

30-year-old Adriana Jaquez, who works in a shoe store in downtown Juarez, appreciates that message. "The pope isn't afraid. He says what he feels, and that is how it should be," she told me.

She, too, has seen the violence. Her neighbor was kidnapped, she says, and his wife killed in attempting to deliver the ransom. For her part, Jaquez has an unusual theory as to why the violence has dropped in Juarez: "They killed so many people that there were hardly any of them left to kill," she said.

But the damage from the drug war extends beyond the border region.

The death toll from drug war is more than 100,000 killed nationwide and tens of thousands disappeared. This includes the 43 students who went missing and were presumably killed in Guerrero in 2014. Human rights groups and forensic experts dispute the government's account of what happened to the students; the pope has not yet made a public comment on this case.

He also hasn't yet mentioned the word femicide.

According to the National Citizen Femicide Observatory, six women are killed daily in Mexico. But somehow only 24 percent of the roughly 4,000 femicides the group identified between 2012 and 2013 were actually investigated by authorities, it claims, with just 1.6 percent leading to sentencing.

Meanwhile, 18 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 2008, and 36 priests have been assassinated since 2005. The day before the pope arrived in Mexico, 49 people were killed in a riot at a prison in the northern city of Monterrey. On Saturday, 13 people were shot dead in the drug cartel–plagued Pacific state of Sinaloa.

In a Saturday mass in Ecatepec outside Mexico City, the pope equated the cartels with evil and the devil. "You don't dialogue with the devil," the pontiff said. Jaquez agrees with the pope but suspects it will be rather difficult to change their souls.

"The narcos don't believe in God," she told me. "They don't fear God,"

Teresa Puente is an associate professor of journalism at Columbia College Chicago and a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. She also writes the Chicanísima blog. Follow her on Twitter.

Tim Bosma, pictured above, was murdered in May 2013. Photo via Facebook

Tim Bosma was 32 when he was murdered in May 2013, having gone missing after taking a pickup truck he was selling on a test drive with two buyers. The body of the married father of one was later found burned beyond recognition. His remains were returned his wife Sharlene in a small wooden box.

Dellen Millard, 30, and Mark Smisch, 28, are accused of killing Bosma and are currently standing trial. They have pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.

The closely-watched case, which began February 1, is expected to resolve much of the mystery surrounding what happened—including why Bosma was targeted and what exactly happened to him on the night he died.

Here's what we've learned from the trial so far:

The prosecution's Case

Crown attorney Craig Fraser laid out the prosecution's case on Day 1 of the trial, telling jurors what they could expect the evidence to show.

He said Bosma and the accused were complete strangers, but the murder plot was premeditated. Millard had reached out to several people advertising vehicle sales, said Fraser, and contacted Bosma on May 4.

Fraser told the court Bosma was shot soon after the May 6 test drive of his black Dodge Ram was underway. His body was burned in an incinerator meant for farm animals located near an Ayr airplane hangar for Millardair, Millard's airline company.

The prosecution reportedly has a video recording showing Millard and Smith at the hangar early on May 7, 2013. Fraser said Millard warned his employees, "No one goes to the hangar today," via text message.

Fraser said Bosma's pickup truck was discovered on his mother's property in Kleinburg, Ontario, on May 12. It was hidden inside of a trailer, said Fraser, adding Millard and his girlfriend Christina Noudga moved it there.

The truck appears to be a key piece of evidence in the case. According to the Hamilton Spectator, its interior had been gutted. Fraser told the court it contained Millard's fingerprints (both inside and out), gunshot residue, a used cartridge, and Bosma's blood. The truck keys were found in Millard's SUV, a GMC Yukon, Fraser said.

Millard's Girlfriend

Millard's girlfriend, Noudga, has been charged with accessory to murder and is expected to be a witness in the case.

According to Fraser, a search of her property by police in April 2014 turned up the video of Millard and Smich at the airport hangar. It also produced letters from a jailed Millard asking her to compel another witness to change his testimony.

Fraser reportedly read aloud a quote from one of the letters, which Noudga had been instructed to burn:

"If he knew his words were going to get me a life sentence, he would change them. Show him how he can, and he will change them."

Noudga has been accused of helping Millard relocate the pickup truck to Millard's mother's property and the incinerator to a forested area on his family farm close to the airplane hangar.

'Weirdness' Prior to the Test Drive

Both Bosma's widow Sharlene and the couple's tenant Wayne De Boer testified to seeing two men drop by May 6 to meet Bosma and check out the truck.

Sharlene broke down on the stand while telling the court how her husband had asked her if he should go on the test drive with the men, the Toronto Star reported.

"I said, 'Yes, you should, because we want the truck to come back,'" she said.

Bosma had remarked that it was strange that potential buyers were coming to see the truck "this late" in the evening, she added.

De Boer told the court he recalled seeing two men come see the truck. They approached the house on foot, claiming a friend had dropped them off and gone to Tim Hortons. One of the men was tall and clean-cut, while the other was described as being shadier and quiet.

Both De Boer and Sharlene Bosma testified that the encounter was weird.

As Bosma left with the two men, De Boer told the court he quipped, "That might be the last time we see him."

The Truck

A man who worked for Millard testified to discovering Bosma's truck at the airline hangar days before the police found it on Millard's mother's property.

Arthur Jennings told the court he was very familiar with the description of the black Dodge Ram and was shocked to see it parked on green tarp inside the hangar May 8, 2013. It had no license plates, and the interior had been removed save for the back seat.

Jennings told the court he said, "Oh my god, could that be the truck?" The next day he took photos of the truck and reported his findings to Crime Stoppers.

When they confirmed it was Bosma's truck, he said he balked at giving the location to police.

Jennings said he witnessed his son-in-law, who also worked at the hangar, having an argument with Millard over the truck.

By May 10, the truck was gone as was a car trailer parked on the lot. That's when Jennings said he decided to report what he'd witnessed to police.

A fingerprint expert told the court Millard's thumbprint was a match for one found on the rear view mirror of Bosma's pickup truck. Fingerprints, he said, are still the most reliable form of identifying someone.

Cell Phone Records

Bosma's cell records led investigators to a prepaid phone, registered to Lucas Bate.

The prepaid had made calls to a man named Igor Tumemenko, who told cops he'd taken two men on a test drive for a truck he was trying to sell.

Tumemenko, who identified Smich as one of the two passengers he took for a test drive from a photo lineup, told the court he mentioned being familiar with diesel engines from his time in the Israeli army. He said the shorter of the two men, who was sitting in the back, asked what he'd done in the army, to which he responded, "You don't want to know."

He testified that the men exchanged a glance.

Tumemenko gave cops a description of the men once they tracked him down through the cell records; he'd noticed that one of them had the word "ambition" tattooed to one of his wrists.

The cops testified that they received tips about Millard having the same tattoo. They went to visit him on May 10, at which point they noticed he was in possession of a bag they were told to watch out for, and they arrested him later that night.

A bodyshop owner told the court he received a call from Millard on May 8—he wanted a red paint job on a black truck.

Police were eventually led to the truck, the court heard, by a neighbor of Millard's mother. While chatting about the case to a reporter, the neighbor noticed that the trailer in a photo the journalist showed him was the same as the one parked next door.

Cops also discovered the name Lucas Bate had been created to purchase the prepaid phone. They found the phone's movements were similar to those of Millard's on the night of Bosma's murder.

The Incinerator

A man told the court he was dirt biking near Millard's farm on May 10, 2013, when he noticed an incinerator sitting on a trailer along with a large propane tank and a nearby excavator. Thinking it odd, he took photographs and later told the cops of his findings.

Police found the incinerator May 16, 2013. The prosecution said parts of Bosma's body, including bone fragments, were found inside of it.

The court heard a receipt for an incinerator was found in Millard's SUV. Dated June 21, 2012, it was registered to Millardair—the bill was for more than $15,000.

The Smile

While testifying on the third day of the trial, homicide detective Paul Hamilton was asked to identify Millard—the man he'd met at the Millardair airport hangar during the investigation.

He pointed out Millard in the courtroom. In response, Millard smiled and waved his hand.

According to media reports, jurors responded by raising their eyebrows while Bosma's family expressed disgust.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.